‘Why?’ Alice asked, ‘Why should Dr Clarke have been lying?’
‘I told you, she must have been lying, because Teresa was not offered a Caesarean section by anyone, I said…’
Alice interrupted. ‘Maybe she was telling the truth. It’s possible that she did ask Dr Ferguson and he, to protect himself, lied to her. She was his boss after all. He wouldn’t want to admit to her that he’d failed in something so important.’
‘Naw,’ he shook his head, ‘they’re all liars. They’re all in it together. Protecting each other, like, protecting the hospital too. And the judge was no better. He believed every word she said. She could have been singing nursery rhymes to him and he would have been happy enough. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, bewitched by her he was, and, make no mistake, she knew it. Smiling at him in her expensive suit and expensive shoes… and poor Teresa could hardly find the money for a new skirt for her own court case. You see, everything went on the kids, and she needed, she really needed that compensation money…’
‘Why did you kill Sammy?’ Alastair asked.
‘Because he deserved it!’ Mair responded immediately and aggressively.
‘Why did he deserve it? We need to know. Tell us, please,’ Alice said, keen to placate him and keep the flow running.
‘Because the wee shite left her to drown when she depended on him. She bloody loved him, too. Sammy was fine when the wean was a baby. Claimed him then, acted the proud dad even, but once things got hard, once the doctors started to say that he wasn’t right, that he would never be right, then Sammy didn’t want to know. Never changed him once, never got up in the night once. When Davie’s screaming began he’d just leave the house… leave it all… leave it all to Teresa. He was a useless cunt but he broke her heart when he left… and he wouldn’t even help her with the court case. She might never have killed herself if he’d stayed. It wasn’t because he’d found out anything… He didn’t know. I checked on that before I killed him.’
‘Found out? Found out what?’ Alice asked, puzzled.
‘That he wasn’t the dad.’
‘Do you know who the dad was?’
‘Of course I know. I was, I am.’
Noting the sergeants exchanging glances, Mair bellowed at them, ‘I know what you’re bloody thinking, but you’re wrong! It wasn’t incest and that’s not why he’s the way he is, it was the birth! I was adopted by Teresa’s parents when I was 10. Okay? You must be sick, the pair of you. I took their name, Mair. We are not blood relations, I’ve got no fucking blood relations. I don’t know how it happened with Teresa, it shouldn’t have, but it did, and just the once, believe it or not. But it was not incest. Davie should have been perfect. You’ve seen him, he would have been, if it wasn’t for those fucking doctors. Teresa and I knew from the moment he was born that he was mine. There’s photos of me as a baby and he was the split. Got the same birthmark even.’
‘How are you so sure that Sammy never knew?’
‘I told you. I made certain. When I saw him, before, like, we had a wee chat, I brought some cans and he was happy to share. I asked him if he fancied having a kid with Shona and he said no, one was enough for him. I said how come he never saw Davie? He said he didn’t care, and never wanted children anyway, didn’t like them. Sammy. He was just a fucking animal. I’d have looked after Davie even if he wasn’t mine. I’d have done it for the wee boy himself and for Teresa…’
‘Why the lawyers? Why were they to blame in all of this? What had David Pearson ever done to you?’ Alastair interrupted.
‘You know perfectly well.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
‘He and his sidekick got the hospital off, didn’t they? The Infirmary would have had to pay up if it hadn’t been for them. The doctors destroy Teresa and Davie’s lives and walk away scot-free, all thanks to the top QC, Mr Pearson. You should have seen him in action. He fairly laid into Teresa, all oh-so-politely. He got her so confused she wouldn’t have been able to give you the day of the week. Made it sound as if she was lying when she was the only one in the whole fucking building who was telling the truth. “So, Ms Mair,” he says, all hoity-toity, “on a previous occasion you did turn down a Caesarean section?” and she said she had, she never said she hadn’t. But this pregnancy was different, she was so scared. Then he goes on, “But you expect us to believe that this time if you had been offered the same procedure you would have given a completely different answer and gone for the section?” and she said she would have. Because she would have. And all the time he keeps glancing at that Erskine woman, and she smiles back at him, like they’d scored a point in a match or something. I overheard them, the pair of them, talking together, and they were laughing away and do you know why? A video of Davie’s day had just been played in the court, showing his routine if you like, and there he was smiling, like he’s always smiling, only this time at the camera. “His lovely looks will add a couple of noughts to the figure for damages,” the QC says wittily, and his girlfriend laughs. That’s the way they look at things.
The judge wasn’t much better. He got so impatient with Teresa when she was muddled that she panicked. She could hardly speak, she was so nervous, and then when Pearson started to get things all mixed up for her she was nearly in tears. You’d think she was fucking on trial or something. The judge didn’t help her, he just kept saying “Keep your voice up, please, Ms Mair”, as if she could help herself, and “Please answer the questions you’ve been asked”, when she couldn’t understand the fucking question, never mind answer it. I seen him, too, the judge, I mean. I was sitting outside the courtroom at the end of the last day, and there he was, as bold as brass, talking and laughing with Pearson, like they were all dressed up for some kind of game, but now they could relax as the contest was over and the spectators had gone home. A fake wrestling bout or something.
And every day Teresa goes home to Davie and the other kids in that flat and she believes, she still believes, that because she’s told the truth they will get the compensation and they’ll be able to buy a proper house. Like the one she seen in all the experts’ reports, wi’ a garden for Davie, and a ramp, and special equipment too. She believes it! Her baby… our baby… was damaged, through no fault of hers, and all she’s asking for is the means to make his life and the other kids’ lives, better. And if there was any fucking justice that’s what would have happened. But what she didn’t know, what we didn’t know, was that they were all in it together, Dr Clarke, Dr Ferguson, Pearson, Flora Erskine and the judge. All old pals together, on the same side, playing their game to their rules, and Teresa didn’t understand any of it. She believed she’d get the money because she’d told the truth… and she’d made such plans, told the kiddies they’d have a room each, have holidays like other families, get a car… maybe even get some help wi’ Davie. She was so bloody trusting. Then she fucking goes and kills herself…’ Mair broke down in tears and Alice, instinctively, put her arm around his shoulders.