I’m crying again, I realise. Crying and choking and crouching on the floor, clinging to the legs of my chair like a toddler.
Anna was right. I’ve done all of this wrong. I’ve let El down. Worse, I’ve betrayed her in every way. I stole from her, hated her, disbelieved her, deserted her, over and over again. I thought only the worst of her for years, when I was the coward. I was the one who ran away. And now I can’t even get justice for her. I can’t even say sorry.
Rafiq doesn’t try to calm me down. She stays with me until my grief runs out of fuel, and then she helps me back up onto my chair, produces a bottle of whisky from her desk drawer.
I gulp down one measure, and she pours me another. Every few seconds, tired tremors shake through me like aftershocks.
‘She always said she wanted to be cremated,’ I whisper.
‘It’ll be a wee while yet before you can start making arrangements,’ Rafiq says. ‘The procurator fiscal has to see our report and the post-mortem report and make his own ruling before the body can be released to the next of kin. And if El did want to be cremated, the PF has to sign off on that as well, I’m afraid.’
‘But why? If it was an accident, or if she killed herself like you say she did, why do you—’
‘Because no matter what we might think or know, all evidence must still be collected, reported upon, and ruled upon in exactly the same way, in every single case, without prejudice.’ She looks me square in the eye. ‘Besides, there have been some complications in this particular case. Some anomalies, uncertainties.’
I sit up straight. ‘What anomalies? Why didn’t you tell me about them earlier?’
And I recognise far too late the return of that speculative look. The sharp scrutiny in her too-dark eyes.
‘These days, we can ID a body in a variety of ways, but we always follow the same checklist: personal effects, distinguishing marks, visual ID, dental records, DNA.’ She holds my gaze. ‘In El’s case, like Dr MacDuff said, there was significant trauma and decomposition, so distinguishing marks and visual ID weren’t possible.’
Just like in the viewing room, I suddenly can’t let go my breath, can’t breathe in another.
‘And I know this is a traumatic time for you, I understand that. But what you want is what I want. For El’s body to be released, for her case to be correctly and properly closed. Which is why these … anomalies need to be addressed.’ She blinks. ‘Explained.’
I don’t speak. Don’t breathe out. Don’t breathe in.
Rafiq leans forwards until we’re nearly touching. ‘Do you remember I said there were questions I had to ask you, Catriona?’
I don’t nod, even though I do remember. And even though I know now what those questions will be. What has been behind all those sidelong stares and pregnant pauses, as if she always thought I knew something she didn’t, as if she was waiting for me to trip up, to give it away. She was right. And I think I just have.
‘After the forensic divers went down to collect any personal effects,’ Rafiq says, ‘we moved on to El’s dental records. What do you think we found, Catriona?’
I swallow.
‘We found no dental records for El at all.’ Rafiq’s smile is small, humourless. ‘So I had Logan run a more detailed case history on her while we started DNA investigations. Just the basics: birthplace, parents, schools. And what d’you think we found then, Catriona?’ Her voice is still kind, but her words are steely.
I manage to shake my head.
‘Nothing. We found nothing.’
I close my eyes.
‘Because before September the fifth, 1998, it’s as if El – and you – never existed at all.’
CHAPTER 21
El and I are sitting cross-legged on the bed in the Clown Café. El, in shiny pantaloons held up by spotty braces. Me, in tartan dungarees, an orange wig. My face is painted to match Dicky Grock’s sad eyes and sad mouth. El is white-faced and red-lipped, grinning like the terrifying Pogo.
We’re sitting at a plastic table in a fifties American diner. Drinking black coffee and eating fried doughnuts. Pogo sits next to us, while Dicky Grock mans the deep fryer. A jukebox plays ‘Teddy Bear’, ‘Love Me Tender’, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’. I whisper to El, When can we leave? When can we go? Because we’re not really Clowns and they might know it, they might work it out. Because Clowns are clever, Clowns are scary, Clowns are a species entirely separate from people. Clowns hate people. Everyone knows that. But El’s big red grin says, Not yet, not yet. Because she’s more scared of the Tooth Fairy, and everyone knows that the Tooth Fairy is terrified of Clowns.
But Bluebeard isn’t.
The café is busy, hot, too noisy. Chatter and the constant scrape of chairs, the grind of coffee beans and the loud hissing of steam. I look out of a big window running wet with condensation, watch the bob of umbrellas and bundled-up bodies fast-marching along the streets outside.
‘Snow in bloody April,’ Rafiq says as she sits down, pushes a huge cappuccino and a three-pack of bourbons towards me.
I warm my hands around the cup. On a table behind us, a child starts to yell and a baby starts to scream.
‘Try and eat the biscuits,’ Rafiq says.
Nausea sits inside my stomach like a stone. Another baby starts to wail.
‘Never wanted kids,’ Rafiq says, rolling her eyes. ‘Apart from a very weird day in 2006. One wee tick-tock, and then my clock stopped for good, thank God.’
When I still don’t speak, still don’t look at her, she sets down her cup, clasps her hands tightly.
‘Look. It’s not my intention to cause you any more grief, but this needs to be sorted.’ She pauses. ‘Instead of a birth certificate, or a hospital report, or even one of those wee hand-and-feet prints, the first actual document we have for either of you is the police report of one PC Andrew Davidson dated the fifth of September, 1998, stating that you were runaways found by a Mr Peter Stewart, sixty-six, of 10 Muirdyke Place. And when Logan and I took a closer look at that report, d’you know what was even more bizarre?’
The heat from the coffee cup burns my skin.
‘Mr Peter Stewart found you at Granton Harbour.’
My fingers tingle, as if they can still feel El’s heat, the tight grip of her hand. I shiver from the bone-cold North Sea wind trapped inside the firth’s gullet, whipping up waves, rattling masts and buoys. And instead of a white sky heavy with snow, I see a red dawn creeping over the breakwater like a bruise. Like blood, sour and dark and sly.
‘When you’re both twelve years old, you appear – poof! – out of nowhere at Granton Harbour. You refuse to say why you’re there, where you’ve come from, anything but your names. Not one person ever reports you missing, comes looking for you, although you’ve both got injuries indicative of physical assault. Your names don’t exist on any register of any sort. You don’t exist.’
She pauses again, leans back in her chair. Waits. I say nothing, do nothing, look back out the window at the worsening snow.
‘So, what happened then? Social services take you into care, ask you no questions, just give you new lives?’
They asked plenty of questions. We just never answered. And when it became obvious that we wouldn’t be adopted, they helped us apply and register our names, our new lives, as long as it took, as hard as it was. Mum had always told us our surname was Morgan. After the pirate king who’d abandoned us. The father we had never known. I watch fat flakes of snow disappear into the wet pavement.