‘It’s him,’ she said mechanically, staring at the man as he moved on.
‘Who?’ Alastair asked.
‘Mair! Who do you bloody think!’
Her lungs were hurting, her head down, arms swinging wildly, mouth full of warm saliva. A gallon of acid must have been pumped into her chest, the pain was so intense. All her attention was on her prey, her eyes streaming and puffs of frozen breath billowing from her as she ran. Catch him, catch him, CATCH HIM. And then she fell, hard, onto the unyielding ground, legs entangled in some kind of snake-like obstruction. Panting loudly, she raised herself up and found a toddler, reins fluttering in the wind, crying angrily beside her.
‘You’ll need to watch where you’re going, Lucy, you’ve tripped the nice lady up,’ the woman said, glancing apologetically at her child’s victim while lifting the uninjured tot off the road. Alice ran on in the direction she had seen Mair take, increasingly conscious of an agonising pain stabbing her knee with every footfall. On the High Street she stopped to recover her breath. Gasping noisily, she stood, hands on her hips, trying to scan the pavements on either side of the busy road. A few hundred yards ahead, on the river side, she noticed a cluster of pedestrians being jostled as a dark-haired man pushed through them into an Oxfam shop. Fat bloody chance it’s him, she thought, and unable to run any further, she hobbled towards her destination.
Circular racks of trousers, jackets and skirts barred her way as she crossed the shop-floor towards a counter where two elderly women, apparently oblivious to her presence, were chattering with each other. Edging past a skyscraper of stacked jigsaw puzzles, she noticed a narrow archway above which was written ‘Children’s Books’, leading to an additional room, and limped in its direction. The man within had his back to the entrance but he wheeled round instantly on hearing the sounds of an approach.
As Alice looked in Donald Mair’s eyes, she knew from the expression of fear that flitted across his face that he had recognised her as his pursuer. In that instant he launched himself at her, a human battering-ram, smashing her shoulder and the side of her face with his own. Her instinctive attempt to grab him failed, her grip broken at the sickening sensation as he slammed his knuckles into her nose. Excruciating pain engulfed her whole face and blood poured from both nostrils, streaming over her lips and cascading off her chin.
Turning round she saw Alistair blocking the doorway into the street. When Mair charged at him she watched as her friend swung a heavy wooden lamp at the man’s temple, the cracking contact causing him to stop in his tracks, legs buckling beneath him as if they could no longer bear his weight.
The Hendersons were an organised pair, the sort that not only have a family first-aid box but also know where to find it and how to use it. Alice’s bloodied nose was bathed and anointed by Elizabeth Henderson, while her husband busied himself making a pot of tea. They both recognised the man in the photo. He was the one who had come to their door, only a week earlier, offering to tidy up their oversized, neglected front garden.
‘Did you take him on?’ Alice asked, her voice uncharacteristically nasal.
‘No,’ Elizabeth Henderson replied, putting the hank of lint back into its box, ‘He was a bit odd. The garden is a mess, and we could do with help, but we don’t have the money. I told him that. Then he said he could do DIY work in the house. To be honest, he spooked me a bit.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s hard to say. He was polite, I never felt in danger or anything, but he was so desperate, begging almost, beseeching us. I suggested that he try in Inveresk-there are big houses in that part of the town-but he wasn’t interested, which seemed a bit odd. I thought he wanted to talk, but Ken thought that was fancy on my part…’
An ear-splitting shriek pierced the air and Alice looked round, startled, to find the source of the cry, and saw Davie smiling beatifically at an illuminated lava lamp. Elizabeth Henderson got up and patted his head fondly, and he appeared, momentarily, to catch her eye before returning his attention to his toy.
‘Is he alright?’ Alice asked, shaken, her ears still ringing from the eerie noise. ‘It sounded like he was in pain or terrified of something.’
‘He can’t help it, and I don’t think it means anything. He does it several times a day, sometimes at night too, and we’re just beginning to get used to it…’ the woman replied, handing her a cup of tea. ‘I nearly jumped out of my skin the first time, so did Ken, even though we’d been warned. I thought the boy had been burnt or scalded, hurt in some way, but there he was, smiling sweetly away to himself.’
The kitchen door bumped open and Alastair Watt entered, Donald Mair, now in cuffs, beside him. Both men were breathing noisily and their faces were cherry-red from the exertion of the chase. Mair’s head was bowed and Alice watched as he slowly raised it, took in his surroundings, caught sight of Davie and beamed. When the child, unaware of his uncle’s proximity, let out a little coo of pleasure as a big bubble of red lava erupted upwards, the man’s tender smile broadened. Despite the sweat running down his forehead, the curl of damp hair clinging to his bruised brow and his laboured breath, he appeared happy, as if being with Davie, simply looking at him, was enough for complete contentment.
‘Can I say goodbye to the laddie?’ he asked.
Without speaking, his escort moved towards the child, allowing Mair to accompany him. The prisoner placed his cuffed hands on the boy’s soft curls and twirled the fine, golden hair in his fingers before kissing the crown of his head. Davie’s attention, briefly, left his toy and he gurgled happily again as if aware of a familiar, benign presence at his side.
‘But he doesn’t want a solicitor, Ma’am,’ Alice said to DCI Elaine Bell defensively.
‘He needs one, so get him one anyway. The duty solicitor, please,’ her superior responded.
‘He’s adamant that he won’t have one, Ma’am. I can’t force him. He says he’ll speak to us but he wants nothing to do with “the law”, as he calls them. He knows his rights, and I told him it would be in his interests to have a lawyer in attendance, but he’s unshakeable.’
‘Just get the duty solicitor, Alice. Alright?’
So Alice sat and watched as Mair talked his way into prison, the tape recorder picking up every syllable and every pause, catching every word in order for it to be used against him. His legal representative might have been on Mars for all the attention he paid to her increasingly desperate attempts to protect him from himself. As he spoke it was like witnessing the actual moment when the dam bursts, the instant when the might of all the accumulated water causes the first crack in the massive structure and it forces its way out, splintering and smashing everything in its way.
‘I did do it,’ he began. ‘I killed them and each of them deserved exactly what they got…’ Alice nodded as if she understood, and, encouraged, Mair continued.
‘Teresa’s at rest now. We thought we’d get justice from the courts, but they are not courts of justice-injustice, more like. I know, I was there every day, so I saw it for myself. Teresa was not, WAS NOT, offered a Caesarean section by anyone…’ His voice rose in anger and he looked round as if to ensure that he had everyone’s full attention. Again, Alice nodded sympathetically at him, but she said nothing.
‘I know that. That’s what caused all the trouble, believe me. She was petrified, shit-scared, before Davie was born, she didn’t want to go through it all again, and if she’d known she could have had a section she’d have been at the front of the queue. We’d talked all about it, long before the laddie was born. But that Dr Ferguson said in court, in the actual courtroom, that he’d offered her one and she’d turned it down. Just lies from start to finish, but, of course, it was just her word against his, and you should have seen him, smart suit, smart tie, with the plums fairly falling out of his mouth. He’d even fixed the records, the hospital’s own records. There was no second meeting! When Dr Ferguson said it was supposed to have happened, Teresa, Sammy and the kids were on holiday in Ayr, but Teresa only remembered that once she got home after the trial was over and when she was talking to Granny Annie about it… so that Dr Clarke was lying when she said she’d checked with Ferguson and he’d said he’d offered…’