‘Okay, Cat. Then start with this. Why did El have no dental records?’
I close my eyes. Pretend I’m not shivering. Shuddering. ‘She had a phobia about dentists.’
‘Okay.’
‘She was always meticulous about cleaning, hygiene, all of that. Mum made sure we both were. And when we were in the Rosemount, El always refused to go to the dentist.’ I swallow. ‘I guess that didn’t change.’
‘Why?’
One of the wailing babies passes by our table, its arms and legs fighting to escape a sling, its mother grim-faced.
‘Mum would pull our teeth. You know, like parents do.’ I chance a quick look at Rafiq, but her expression is blank. ‘If a tooth was loose, she’d tie one end of a piece of string around it and the other around a door handle, and then slam the door shut. That usually worked. And if it wasn’t loose enough, she’d just pull it out with pliers.’
Rafiq frowns. ‘Your baby teeth.’
I don’t know if it’s a question. ‘Mostly. And once or twice, when we were older. If we got a bad cavity or an abscess.’
‘Jesus,’ Rafiq says.
‘Parents do that. Sometimes.’
‘No, they don’t, Cat.’
I remember El screaming and screaming. Me banging on the locked bathroom door, feeling the fear, the pain, the helplessness. I remember what it was like to have a mouth full of blood. To be spitting it out for days. I remember the silvery, shivery dread of hearing the squeak of the kitchen cupboard where the bent-nose pliers lived.
‘Mum was scared of clowns.’ I try to laugh, but it comes out as a choking cough. ‘She was scared of a lot of things, but she was terrified of them. I think there’s a word for that; I’ve never looked it up, but she had it. So El got the idea that if one of us had toothache, we’d dress up as clowns so Mum couldn’t … you know, do anything. Grandpa bought us the costumes, thought it was just fun. He always said Mum was too afraid of everything, that she’d pass it on to us.’ I only realise I’m twisting my fingers back and forth when one of them makes a loud crack. ‘We’d paint a clown on the bathroom mirror as a warning, and then dress up and hide in the spare room – we called it the Clown Café – and stay there. For days sometimes. Till we got too hungry or thirsty, or bored. And Mum would never come in.’
‘Jesus,’ Rafiq says again.
‘It wasn’t her fault.’ I think of her pinched, unsmiling face. Her endless stories and lessons and warnings. ‘She just … worried. She just wanted us to be safe. They both did – her and Grandpa. Why do you want to know all this?’
‘Why did they not just take you to a dentist? What happened if you got sick?’
I remember lying in bed and wondering if you could die from the flu. El’s black-and-blue ankle after falling out of Old Fred. How when it healed it left a knobbly bump. Separating us a little more. ‘We got better.’
‘But they never took you to a doctor, right? They couldn’t. Just like they couldn’t take you to a dentist. Because your births were never registered. What about school?’
‘We were home-schooled. Mum was a great teacher.’ I think of the pantry and its walls of messy orange and yellow daffodils, the wooden desk that looked out across the exercise yard and the orchard beyond. The Tempest, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, Crooked House. I think of lying in the Princess Tower as she told us about Snow-white and Rose-red; Bluebeard, Blackbeard, and the pirate king.
‘They kept you prisoner?’
‘No. No!’ But I think of those long crooked nails driven into every windowsill; the turn of the red door’s deadlock. And I start to get up, the back legs of my chair scraping noisily along the floor.
Rafiq grasps my wrists, pulls me back down.
‘Were you ever allowed outside?’
‘Yes. We played in the back garden all—’
‘Outside the garden?’
‘No. But that—’
‘Did you ever see or talk to anyone but your mum and grandpa?’
‘Yes!’ I say, and the first person I think of is not Ross, not even Mouse, but the Witch: tall and skinny and full of black fury.
‘Who?’ The quick flash of Rafiq’s eyes is the only indication that she isn’t as calm as she wants me to think she is, and that frightens me suddenly. Revives my dread. I know exactly what name she’s expecting me to say.
I start shaking my head, start trying to get up again, but not even my legs will obey me any more.
‘Where was your house, Cat?’
I still can’t seem to move, to get up. My teeth are chattering.
‘Cat. It’s okay. Try to relax.’ Rafiq lays her palms flat on the table between us. Takes a long breath. ‘Okay. Here’s what I think. Most of it’s what I know. But some of it’s what I think.’
I say nothing. Look at nothing.
‘Back in September 1998, I was a lowly shit-for-brains PC, working in the East End of Glasgow. Not much happened there back then, same as in Leith, I suppose: drugs and drunks. But after Logan and I read that PC’s report from the fifth of September, someone in my team who was working in Leith at that time remembered something. On the morning of the fifth of September, he remembers an anonymous 999 call was made by a young male, directing officers to an address on Westeryk Road. Less than three miles from Granton Harbour. And when the police went to 36 Westeryk Road and eventually broke in, d’you know what they found?’
I say nothing. Look at nothing.
‘They found two bodies. One male, one female. A murder–suicide it was reckoned.’ She looks at me, looks for a response. And I go on trying my hardest not to give it to her. ‘So I wondered about that anonymous caller, that young male. Had Logan run a check on everyone doorstepped or interviewed in relation to the case. And imagine our surprise when whose name should come up but one Ross MacAuley, living right next door at number 38.’ She stops, softens the sharp voice she probably uses in interrogation rooms. ‘That’s what I know, Catriona. So, do you want to tell me what it is that I think?’
I shake my head.
‘I only want to clear things up, that’s all. It was nearly twenty years ago. You were both just kids. Kids who, as far as I can see, had a pretty frightening upbringing.’ She looks at me as if she expects me to object. ‘Seems like the police did investigate the possibility that you had come from 36 Westeryk Road that night. Because in that first report from Granton Harbour, Mr Peter Stewart insisted that one of the girls had been wearing a jumper covered with blood. Now, PC Davidson also reported that Mr Peter Stewart was drunk as a skunk. And no bloody clothing was ever subsequently found. Nor did a search of number 36 find any evidence that anyone other than the victims – much less two children – had been living at the address. So it stayed what it was: the moving mystery of two identical twin girls exhibiting signs of abuse, who appeared from nowhere and belonged to no one.
‘But now, a young woman – an identical twin – who lived at the very same address of that murder–suicide, has been found dead after leaving that very same harbour. So maybe I’m just a wee bit ahead of the curve. Because, you know, the first rule of being a detective, apart from the fact you can no longer be a shit-for-brains, is that coincidences do happen – but they don’t come in multipacks.’
I try to breathe, but I can’t. I try to speak, but it’s even more impossible. I have no idea what to say.
Rafiq takes pity on me, leans back in her chair again, gives me a good smile. ‘I don’t think you’re guilty of anything, Cat, that’s not what this is. But I need to be able to tell the story the way it was. Because someone else will ferret all of this out. And when they do, I need to be able to head them off. To explain it, draw a line under it. So, please. Tell me. Do you know the names of the two people who were found dead at 36 Westeryk Road?’