Perfect Death Read online

  ‘You think I’m incapable of driving now? I’m sad, Luc, not drunk,’ Ava said. She sighed. ‘God, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this very well. It was good of you to offer but I’ll be fine, really. I have to update the squad about the Chief’s death. They’ll want what details I’ve got. Can you organise everyone into the briefing room for 3pm?’

  ‘I can,’ Callanach said. ‘The drone footage from Lily Eustis’ death will be available by then. I’ll organise a copy for you to see after the briefing.’

  ‘Good, then we can visit Ailsa at the mortuary together.’ Ava’s phone rang. Callanach made his way out. ‘Hold on, Luc,’ she called after him. ‘You’re sure?’ she asked the person at the end of the phone. ‘You checked her identification? No, don’t show her up yet. I need to talk to him first. He’s in my office. Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.’

  Luc stood with his back against Ava’s door, hands in his pockets, head to one side.

  ‘Is it Astrid?’ he asked. ‘I knew she wouldn’t leave me alone forever but walking in here, after what she did …’

  ‘It’s not her,’ Ava said. She knew how hard it would have been for Luc to have faced Astrid – the woman who had set him up on a false rape charge. In many ways, seeing the woman waiting for him downstairs was going to be even worse. ‘Luc, I don’t know what’s happened. She hasn’t offered any explanation for why she’s here, but your mother is downstairs.’

  Luc ran a hand through his hair, looking for words but finding none.

  ‘I don’t want to see her,’ he said finally, as Ava made her way around her desk to stand nearer to him.

  ‘I understand,’ Ava said. ‘You’ve every right to feel like that. She abandoned you when you needed her …’

  ‘It wasn’t just abandonment. You couldn’t possibly understand. I was accused of a rape I didn’t commit. It was devastating. I wasn’t even sure I had the strength to make it through to the trial. My mother was the one person who should have known, without question, that I didn’t do it, that no part of me was so monstrous. When she left as I was going through the trial preparations, I even started to doubt myself. There were times when I thought that maybe I had raped Astrid and just invented another reality in my own mind. How could I have been innocent when my own mother couldn’t bear to stay with me and support me through it?’

  ‘Luc, I’m sorry this has come as such a shock. But she’s here. Downstairs, right now. There must be a good reason why she’s come. Don’t you want to find out what that is?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you want me to go down and talk to her first?’ Ava offered.

  ‘She changed her mobile number,’ Luc said. ‘I phoned her, left voicemails, texts. I emailed. I wrote letters. Every silence I got in return was a nail in the coffin of our relationship. It was months, Ava. Months from when she left to when the court case collapsed and I was told I was free to go. Even if I could understand why she wasn’t able to support me before the trial, she’s had more than a year to contact me since it ended. There’s no excuse, no possible explanation for treating your own child like that.’

  ‘Luc, please. I lost my mother. By the time I knew she was dying it was too late to get the years back when I’d been too busy, too obsessed with myself to spend time with her. I never had the chance to forgive her for all the petty, perceived slights of growing up. I don’t want you to make the same mistake,’ Ava said.

  ‘Ava, this is my life, not yours. And these aren’t perceived slights. These were body blows. I’m not making any mistakes,’ he said.

  ‘I get it. Really, I do. But go down there and face her. If nothing else, tell her how you feel. Find an ending to it all. There’ll come a day when you need it,’ she said. Luc walked towards the door. ‘So you’ll speak with her?’

  ‘I’ll treat her exactly the same way she treated me,’ he said. ‘I’ll let her talk to her heart’s content. She can beg for forgiveness, tell me she needs me, whatever. Then I’ll cut her out of my life forever.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘I can’t stay indoors any longer, Christian,’ Lily’s sister, Mina, whispered into her mobile. ‘I’m getting out of this house once my parents are both asleep. Can you meet me?’

  ‘Mina, your parents need you. If they wake up and find you gone, they’ll be terrified,’ he said. ‘You know I’ll come if you need me, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing for you to be going out in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s suffocating me. Lily’s room’s right next to mine. Mum insists we keep the door wide open, as if shutting it pushes her further away. But I walk past it and see something of Lily’s – a scarf, a pen, a bloody hair band for God’s sake – and it starts again. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never stop crying.’

  ‘All right, I’ll be there. Wait in the bus stop up the road from your house. Just do me a favour and leave your parents a note explaining that you needed a break. It’s not fair to risk them finding an empty bedroom,’ Christian said.

  ‘You’re right. I will. Just please come.’ She rang off.

  Christian went to shower and change his clothes. He’d spent the earlier part of the evening in a dive bar that held open mic evenings with a covert smoking room at the back and now his clothes reeked of cigarettes. Mina would hate it and he wanted to be able to comfort her the way she needed. Pulling on a denim shirt and black jeans, he wrapped a scarf around his neck and grabbed a thick duffle coat. He grabbed a book on the way out, throwing it casually onto the back seat. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was one of next term’s texts for Edinburgh University’s Masters in US Literature course. Mina was always fascinated with what he was reading.

  His car was the typical student vehicle. It had scraped through its most recent vehicle check, had the lowest insurance policy available and inside you could pretty much see the springs coming through the seats but it was functional and avoided breaking down, most days. Before he left his flat, he made two hot chocolates, put them in reusable takeout mugs (Mina was ever conscious of the environment), and picked up a bag of marshmallows he’d been saving. He couldn’t do much to put a smile on Mina’s face right now, but he could do that.

  She was waiting for him in the rain, just her head poking out from the bus stop as Mina looked for his car. Christian pulled over and flashed his lights, wiping condensation off the inside of the passenger window so she could see it was him.

  ‘Hey you,’ he said, as she threw herself into the passenger seat. ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘Could we just drive for a while?’ Mina asked. ‘I need to feel as if I’m moving. Everything else has stopped.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘we don’t even have to talk. Where are we going?’

  ‘Take me as close as we can get to Arthur’s Seat,’ Mina said. ‘I have to see. I want to figure out why the hell Lily did what she did.’

  Christian put a cup of hot chocolate in her hands before setting off.

  ‘Mina, are you sure about going to Arthur’s Seat? I’m sure Lily would have hated the thought of you hurting yourself like this.’

  ‘Yeah, well you never met her, so please don’t tell me what she would or wouldn’t have liked. Oh God, Christian, I’m so sorry. I don’t know where that came from.’ Mina looked away, out of the passenger window. ‘I’m not sure I even know myself any more. Shit, listen, you can drop me off if you like. I’ll understand if you just want to go home. And thank you for the hot chocolate. I don’t deserve it. Or you.’ Mina dashed an already rain-wet sleeve across her eyes.

  Christian looked at her hunched shoulders, her hair that hadn’t seen a shower or a brush in the two and a half days since her sister’s body had been found, at her feet twisted in towards one another as if her body was literally trying to make itself disappear. He reached into the driver’s door compartment and retrieved the marshmallows.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘But I am going to insist that you eat at least a dozen of these. You ne
ed sugar and you need a friend. You’ll have to do more than snap at me for a second to make me desert you.’ Mina turned her face back towards his and did her best to force a smile. ‘If going up to Arthur’s Seat is what you need, then that’s what we’ll do. There are no rights or wrongs when you lose someone you love. There’s only getting through each day. Perhaps you will feel something. Let’s find out.’

  They drove for fifteen minutes, the traffic less of a problem than the driving rain, until Christian parked up on Queen’s Drive as close as he could get by road to the area of Arthur’s Seat that Mina had wanted to visit. It was utterly dark, even the light pollution from the city not daring to creep up the hillside. He killed the engine and sat in silence waiting for Mina to talk.

  ‘What was Lily doing up there?’ Mina whispered. ‘She’d never talked about going there before. We climbed it as children, and I think she visited as part of a school trip once. But at night, in December?’

  ‘Did you hear any more from the police?’ Christian asked.

  ‘They said we’d get the preliminary autopsy findings tomorrow. No other progress, though. No one’s come forward to say they were with her. None of Lily’s friends were aware who she was with.’ She dunked a marshmallow in the hot chocolate, waited until it was half melted, then put it in her mouth. ‘This is good,’ she said. ‘Thanks for coming to get me.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Christian said. ‘I wanted to help. I just didn’t know if you needed space or to be alone with your family.’

  ‘I need to understand how she could leave me!’ Mina blurted, pieces of marshmallow flying from her lips. She choked, leaning forward, spluttering hot chocolate across her jeans, giving up and dropping the cup into the footwell.

  ‘Mina,’ Christian said gently.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ll clean it up,’ she sobbed, both arms clutched across her stomach, hair hanging down over her face.

  ‘Don’t apologise. Just come here,’ he said, sliding his left arm over her shoulders, the other hand pulling her right arm out from her body and towards him. He wrapped her in his arms, stroking her hair. ‘It’s okay to cry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Mina surrendered to the comfort, leaning her head against his chest, letting herself crumple. Christian rocked her gently as she cried, holding her safe, pressing his face into the top of her head, fighting the rushing tide of his own emotion. She was so fragile, and trying to absorb such an unbearably heavy blow. Minutes went by. Mina’s sobbing abated, replaced with the involuntary hitching of her lungs. The more she tried to hold it in, the more wracked her body became.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, her breath raw in her throat. ‘I’m never going to be able to let her go. It’s like Mum has died, too. She aged right in front of me. It was like gravity distorted her face into some sort of grey mask. I can’t even describe it.’ Christian let her talk. He knew better than to tell her it was going to get better. He’d lost someone he loved and there was no comfort to give when it was all so new. Mina moved back to look him full in the face, pulling her knees up to her chest. ‘I keep thinking, if she’d been ill would that have been better or worse. I could have said goodbye, held her hand. But I don’t even know if … if she was scared. I mean, God, what if she wanted to die up there? Do you think it’s possible that’s why she went up there? How do people cope with this? It’s like we’ve turned into a story about ourselves.’ She sobbed again, her face a tortured version of the carefree girl Christian usually saw. ‘They’re fucking cutting her open. That’s where she’ll be now. Lily’s lying on some metal tray somewhere, in pieces. I can’t do anything to help her. I can’t tell her I love her, I can’t tell her not to be so stupid and selfish. I think I hate her. I hate her for leaving me. How can I hate her when she’s dead? It’s like everything inside me is rotting.’

  Mina threw open the door and bolted, reaching a ditch before stopping to vomit. Christian ran behind, catching her in time to stop her falling forward with the spasms of her stomach. She retched twice more before her body relaxed and allowed her to stand upright.

  ‘I should get you home,’ he said. ‘This isn’t helping. You’ve got to take it a day – an hour – at a time. It’ll help when the police have some answers. Come on,’ he said, one arm around her shoulders as he guided her back to the car. ‘I’ll be here, night or day, whenever you need to talk.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mina rasped. ‘I’m so grateful to have you. Promise you won’t leave me. I can’t make it through this without you.’

  Chapter Seven

  Callanach threw his keys down and went into the kitchen, reaching instinctively for a coffee pot and fighting his desire to open the bottle of single malt he’d had in the cupboard for months. He wasn’t usually much of a spirits drinker but if ever there was cause to change that, he was entitled now.

  His mother, Véronique, was sitting on the couch, coat buttoned to the chin, handbag on her lap with both hands gripping the handle as if it might fly away. Callanach stared at her silhouette against the picture window of his apartment in Albany Street, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the busy restaurants and bars of York Place, not that he went out much. He’d spent fifteen months making the apartment his own since beginning work with Police Scotland in Edinburgh. In all, it had been two years since his suspension from Interpol when a colleague had made the rape allegation that had stopped his career in its tracks. A few friends had stood by him, fewer colleagues, but what had hurt most was being abandoned by his mother. Even so, he still loved her. That was why he couldn’t let her back into his life. It was hard enough getting over the pain she’d caused him the first time. He couldn’t risk going through it all again.

  He stirred the coffee, wondering if his mother still took milk in hers. She was painfully thin, that was the first thing he’d noticed. The last time he’d seen her had been in Lyon. He’d been on bail with severe restrictions on where he could go and who he could see. She’d turned up at his door with an overnight bag and a speech about how it would all turn out all right, how the allegations would vanish into thin air. Her prediction had been wrong. Even now, his world was still askew. His mother had stayed with him for two weeks, each day more tense than the one before as they’d waited for the French prosecutor to see sense, to realise it was all a vicious lie, borne of a woman’s obsession with him.

  His mother had withdrawn from him, in person at first, growing quieter each day, the hope draining from her almost visibly, then she’d left and he’d heard nothing more from her. Even when Astrid Borde had decided against attending court to give evidence and a not guilty verdict had been entered, his mother still had not contacted him. It was as if he was dead to her. Callanach had grieved for the loss of her from his life. Now here she was, a ghostly, diminished version of the woman he remembered, barely able to meet his eyes, even her voice a whisper of the confident, laughing person in his memories.

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’ Callanach asked her in French, translating back to English in his head as if he’d never lived in France at all.

  ‘Neither, thank you,’ his mother responded politely.

  He carried two mugs into the lounge and put them on the coffee table between them, choosing the chair opposite her, keeping a barrier between them. He took his phone from his pocket and left it on the arm of the chair. He’d left Ava to brief the squad but had agreed to meet her at the city mortuary at 10pm. That gave him just one hour, not that he was concerned. Whatever his mother had to tell him after all this time could be said in the space of sixty minutes. It wasn’t as if anything would change now.

  ‘I like your apartment,’ she said, sipping her coffee, holding the mug as if it were an anchor. Callanach didn’t respond. Back at the police station he’d walked down the stairs from his office to reception in a daze, convinced there had been a case of mistaken identity or that it was some stupid prank by his team who had no idea what minefield they were treading in. But there she had been. Dressed in black, her dark
hair still long but streaked with grey. She had been a beauty in her youth, but now dense shadows hung under her eyes, and her mouth was turned down as if pegged to her chin. She had stared at her shoes as she’d greeted him.

  ‘Luc,’ she’d said. ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘All right, Véronique,’ he’d replied, holding the door to the street open for her, knowing he had to get her out of the station. She had no place in his new life. He didn’t want the memory of her in his office, and he couldn’t bring himself to address her as mother. She was not that any more, that had been made quite clear to him through her desertion. He had walked her to his car and they’d driven through the dwindling rush hour without sharing a word. Now here she was and he had no idea what to say to her, and no sense of what she could possibly want from him.

  ‘Are you staying in Edinburgh?’ he asked, glancing out of the window.

  ‘At the Radisson,’ she said. ‘I’ve booked in for a week.’

  ‘Are you in Scotland on holiday, then?’ Callanach asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, finally setting her bag down on the floor. ‘I’m only here to see you, Luc. I’m glad it worked out for you. Do you like Scotland?’

  ‘I miss France,’ he said. ‘But I’m used to it now. It rains a lot, and it took me a year to get used to the accent.’

  Véronique allowed herself a half-smile at that, reaching her right hand across her left to take hold of her wedding ring. She still wore it, in spite of the decades since his father had died. Callanach had been only four years old at the time and had no more memory of him than a large man, soft voiced, always warm, constantly laughing. It was a blur.

  ‘When your father spoke too fast I couldn’t understand his Scottish accent, even after years together. It’s still hard coming back here,’ she said.