Now That You're Gone

by Julie Corbin

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

From the author of DO ME NO HARM and WHAT GOES AROUND.

You can bury the past, but it never dies.

Isla's brother, an ex-Marine and private investigator, has just been found drowned in the River Clyde. The coroner declares it an accidental death. The police are happy to close the case.

But Isla is convinced he was murdered.

Determined to find out what really happened the night Dougie died, and what he was doing in Glasgow, she starts looking into his unsolved cases.

What she finds will put her in grave danger and force her to question everything she thought she knew about those closest to her . . .

'A twist laden, psychological thriller.' Reading in Bed

'This is very much a character driven novel with a strong and exciting mystery running through it.' BeadyJans Books

'Julie Corbin writes superb psychological thrillers that always keep you on the edge of your seat, never knowing what will happen next.' Ismay1012, Vine Voice

Release date: June 5, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

The exact moment your body was being pulled from the Clyde, I was driving to work. I was singing along to the radio – badly! You know me – I wouldn’t win any prizes for my voice – but when the 80s’ tunes get going, so do I. The sun was well above the horizon, and Edinburgh was in the distance, looking grand like she always does. I made it to work before the rain started, and two hours into the morning I had a second mug of coffee by my hand and was assessing an insurance claim. The policyholder had made three substantial claims in as many years, and I was about to dig deeper into his story when Alec came into the room.

‘Isla.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You need to come into my office.’

‘Can I finish this first?’

‘No. Come now.’ His fingers tumbled through the change in his pockets. ‘Don’t ask me why, love. Just come through.’

My smile faltered because, well, you know Alec. He has difficulty with eye contact never mind terms of endearment, and he had never called me ‘love’, not even when Gavin had just left me and he found me crying in the loo. All I’d warranted then was a vague ‘never mind’ and ‘you’re better off without him’, and he’d left me to quietly mourn the end of my marriage.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘The police …’ He trailed off, throwing an arm out behind him. ‘In my office.’

‘Why?’ I stood up slowly. ‘Jesus, it’s not one of my kids, is it?’ Breathing was suddenly difficult. I shut my eyes and immediately felt dizzy so I opened them again. ‘Please tell me it’s not one of my kids.’

‘No, love. It’s not one of your kids.’

He took hold of my elbow and I walked alongside him into his office. I didn’t think of you at that point, Dougie. Family names and faces pushed to the front of my mind – Dad, Gavin, Marie, Danny, Jess, Martha, Erik – but not yours. You could always take care of yourself. You’d spent twenty years in the Royal Marines. You had combat skills. And you had the reflexes of a man half your age. You were the last person I ever worried about.

Two police officers were standing by the window. The younger one had a sharp haircut and a body-builder’s frame; the older one was lithe and balding. They introduced themselves, but I didn’t hear their names or their ranks because when I saw the serious expressions on their faces my ears filled with a high-pitched ringing sound. ‘What’s happened?’ I said too loudly. ‘Is it Gavin?’

‘Are you Isla McTeer?’ the younger one asked.

I nodded.

‘Would you like to take a seat, Isla?’

‘Just tell me.’

‘Isla,’ Alec said. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘I don’t want to.’ I kept my eyes on the officers. ‘Please just tell me what’s happened.’

‘Have you been in contact with your brother recently?’ the younger one said.

‘Yesterday.’ I shook my head at him. ‘Why?’

‘We are sorry to inform you—’ He stopped talking and glanced at the older man, whose face was unreadable. ‘We are sorry to inform you that the police in Glasgow have found a body.’ His Adam’s apple moved through a slow and deliberate swallow. ‘We think it might be your brother.’

A silent scream tunnelled through my chest, but I held it there. Tightly. There was no letting it escape, because Dougie, how could it be you? I’d have known. I’d have felt something. You are my twin, for God’s sake! We might not have been kids any more, but we were still closer than most siblings. ‘No. No. Can’t be. Can’t be my brother. He’s in good health. He’s well.’ I nodded my head. ‘He’s really healthy.’

‘We understand that this is a shock for you,’ the older man said.

I met his eyes and immediately flinched away from the sympathy in them. I stared across at Alec, hoping for him to voice loud denial. ‘Dougie? Not a chance! There’s the door! Fuck off and bother someone else.’

But Alec said nothing. He was standing by the window, his head bowed, his hands joined in front of his stomach. His sorrow was palpable, and it ignited a panic inside me. I held onto the corner of the desk to steady myself. The ringing in my ears had stopped, but my heart had expanded to fill my ribcage and was beating fast enough to make me gasp.

‘This morning, at seven-thirty, a barge operator noticed a body in the Clyde,’ the younger officer said. ‘When the body was pulled out of the water, there was a wallet with photo ID and a mobile phone in the jacket pocket.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Both items belonged to your brother.’

‘No. No, no, no.’ I gulped a couple of shallow breaths and clenched my fists by my sides. ‘That can’t be right.’

The younger policeman took a step away from me while the older one moved forward and steered me into Alec’s chair. I focussed on the desk, on the familiar: photos of Alec’s grandchildren, messy piles of papers, pens and clips and drawing pins, a rubber-band ball. I picked up the ball and gripped it in my hand.

‘He needs to be formally identified, but the evidence would suggest that the man is your brother,’ the older one said.

My mind clutched blindly for a reply, but I couldn’t find any words to counter what he’d said. I squeezed the ball tighter.

‘You don’t have to do this on your own, Isla.’ The older policeman was kneeling down in front of me now. ‘Is there someone you would like to accompany you?’

I closed my eyes then. I closed them because I wanted the men to stop talking so that I could think.

We were twelve, on holiday in Skye.

‘Come on, Isla!’ You shouted.

I stayed on the bank and watched you dive into the freezing water, swim all the way out to the buoy and back again. One hundred metres or more. My heart was in my mouth.

‘Mum will be mad!’ I shouted after you. ‘It’s dangerous!’

Still you swam.

‘It won’t be Dougie.’ I opened my eyes and stared the policeman down. ‘He’s an ex-marine. And a strong swimmer. He couldn’t possibly have drowned.’

The older policeman pursed his lips and put a hand on my arm. I could tell what he was thinking – I was in denial. And he was right. I was. I was in so much denial that my whole body hummed with enough energy to send me off on a hundred-mile run, non-stop, taking me far, far away from a possible future that didn’t include you.

‘It won’t be Dougie,’ I repeated. I stood up and faced the three doubting men. ‘We can go to Glasgow if you like. But it won’t be him. If you’d met my brother you’d know that he’s just … He wouldn’t drown.’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘He just wouldn’t.’

I left the room to fetch my bag and my coat, but before I rejoined Alec and the policemen I locked myself in the loo and called your mobile. ‘Just pick up, Dougie. Pick up.’

I willed your voice on the other end of the line, but there was no answer and then I remembered that the policeman had said your mobile was in the dead man’s pocket. I was momentarily deflated, felt myself begin to plummet back down into a quicksand of panic. You weren’t one for losing your things, and you were too canny to have anything pinched, but there could always be a first time. Of course there could. You weren’t infallible! Just because the police had your phone and your wallet, that didn’t mean that the dead body was you. And when I got to Glasgow I would see that that was true. Some other poor sister had lost her brother. Not me.

Before I left the bathroom I called your landline, twice. And twice it went through to your answering machine. ‘This is Douglas McTeer, private investigator. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

‘Dougie! It’s me,’ I said, the first time. ‘Call me as soon as you get this. There’s been a terrible mix-up. I need to know you’re okay. Please call me.’

And the second time, ‘Dougie, it’s me. For fuck’s sake! What’s going on? Call me. Call me now!’

All the way to the morgue, I had myself convinced that it wouldn’t be you. I sat in the back of the police car and the two policemen sat in the front, wipers full on, clearing raindrops the size of elephant’s tears from the windscreen. For most of the journey I kept my eyes closed, visualising you walking, talking, laughing, and full of life, as if my thoughts alone could keep you alive.

We arrived at the morgue just as office workers were braving the weather to buy some lunch. Umbrellas were blowing inside out and coats were being held close to bodies shrinking inwards against the rain. We parked at the entrance and went inside a drab grey building lodged between two red-brick Victorian ones. My two escorts left me there and someone else, a woman this time, had me sign myself in at reception. She introduced herself, but I didn’t register either her name or her job title. She hung a temporary identification badge around my neck and asked me to come with her. We walked along a corridor, the cold stone floor amplifying the sound of our footsteps so that the noise echoed up past the grimy, opaque windows to the ceiling. The walls were decorated to shoulder height with bottle green tiles that must have once been shiny and new but were now dull and chipped, the grouting between them grey and tired. We stopped in front of a lift, and the woman pressed the button.

‘Would you like us to call a family member or a friend?’ she asked me, her tone solicitous. ‘You don’t have to do this on your own.’

‘No.’ I’d already turned down Alec’s offer to accompany me, and Ritchie was in Florida with his daughter, Leonie. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Her face was all sympathy and doubt. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘Chances are it isn’t my brother.’

The lift took us down to the basement, and we walked a few paces into a sparsely furnished room containing just four chairs and a coffee table, a water cooler, and a pile of plastic cups. There was a window almost filling one whole wall from waist height up to the ceiling. I looked through the glass and into another room where a man in blue scrubs and white clogs stood next to a long table. And on the table, there was a body-shaped bulge lying beneath a white sheet.

‘We think his body was in the water for at least twelve hours,’ the woman told me. ‘There are some injuries to face and neck, most likely where he made contact with a boat or the banks of the river.’

She paused, and I managed a jerky nod of my head to show her I could hear what she was saying. And I could hear what she was saying, but I wasn’t listening. I was praying with all my might, making frantic promises to God: I’d never be mean again. I’d give money to charity. Even better, I’d work for a charity. I’d join the church. And I’d never complain, ever again. Just please, please, please don’t let me see my brother lying under the sheet.

The woman kept talking. The skin colour would be ‘mottled’; he was ‘dressed in a white gown’.

‘I’m ready,’ I said, interrupting her. I was beginning to imagine a strange smell in the room: decay, blood, and chemicals, mixed together into an unpleasant cocktail that made me want to vomit.

The woman nodded to the man on the other side of the glass and he lifted the sheet away from the face. He didn’t roll it back onto the chest, but held it up in the air, in an attempt to screen the right side of the head and body. The shielding didn’t work. I was able to see what he was trying to hide. The man’s ear was torn, the side of his face bruised, a four-inch gash on his neck. It took about five seconds for me to register that this bloated and battered corpse belonged to my brother. To you, Dougie.

It was you.

‘Is this the body of your brother, Douglas McTeer?’ the woman asked.

I nodded, then swayed to one side. The woman caught hold of my shoulders and directed me into one of the chairs.

Over the next hour, I alternated between numbness and sorrow, both intense and disabling, a prelude to the road ahead. The woman took me back upstairs to an administrative office where there was a blur of people and information, but I couldn’t retain any of it: faces, words or instructions. One second I was coping, my eyes were open, I could see to read, I could hold a pen, I was nodding and answering as if following what was being said to me. The next second I felt as if I’d been punched hard in the stomach, winded, unable to breathe, curling my spine forward until I was hunched on the chair.

The woman sat down beside me. She gave me a hot mug of tea that grew cold in my hands. I could hear her words of comfort but was unable to respond, until finally, one clear thought emerged. ‘I have to tell my dad,’ I said. ‘He lives in Dundee.’

‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘And do you have any other family members?’

‘My mum’s dead. My sister lives in Norway.’

‘Was your brother married?’

‘Divorced,’ I said, from Tania, who still professed to love you, despite the trouble she’d caused.

‘Did your brother have any children?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a partner who can come to the station and collect you?’

I thought again about Ritchie. ‘I have a friend, but he went to Florida yesterday. My ex-husband will come, though. He’s a policeman.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Gavin Coates. He’s an inspector. He’s stationed at the headquarters in Edinburgh, but I know he’s in Glasgow today. Pitt Street, I think.’

She smiled her relief, grateful that at last I had given her something to go on. I watched as she made a phone call, and then an image flashed before my eyes – your battered body lying on a metal table, lifeless as an arctic winter – and a top-to-toe shiver robbed me of breath. I waited until I could breathe again, kept my head up and focussed my attention on the poster on the wall in front of me: a health and safety directive, detailing emergency exits and assembly points.

I was determined not to think about your last moments – how you might have suffered, struggled, called for help. How you could have fallen into the water in the first place – and forced myself to think instead about when I’d last seen you, only three days previously, when you’d come to take Finlay to the football.

‘Come on Fin!’ I shouted up the stairs. ‘Uncle Dougie’s waiting.’

‘I’ll take him for something to eat afterwards,’ you said.

‘Caitlin’s staying over at Gavin’s so I thought I’d go and see Ritchie.’

‘Love in the afternoon.’ You nudged my shoulder. ‘All right for some.’

I laughed and pushed you away and you fell against the doorjamb, clutched your arm, feigning an injury.

You were your usual cheery self, looking forward to spending time with your nephew. There was no mention of a trip to Glasgow. We talked about work, and you told me you were still busy running surveillance for Alec, gathering evidence for the Prendergast insurance fraud. All of it based in Edinburgh.

Fin came clattering down the stairs.

‘Got your singing voice ready?’ you asked.

‘Yeah.’ He grinned up at you. ‘Come on the Hi–bees!’

You laughed and put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Say goodbye to your mum, then.’

‘Bye Mum!’

‘Be good now!’

‘We will,’ you said. You were halfway through the door, and then you turned back and smiled at me. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ you said.

Fin and Caitlin were going to be devastated. You were such a large part of their lives. Not having kids yourself had worked in their favour. I didn’t know how I was going to break the news of your death to them. The very thought made me want to fall to the ground and weep.

‘Your ex-husband’s on his way over.’ The woman was back beside me. ‘He’ll only be about twenty minutes.’

‘That’s great.’ I aimed for a smile, but my facial muscles were frozen. ‘Thank you.’

‘Can I get you another tea?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Something to eat?’

‘No.’

She moved away from me, and I drifted off into memories: you as a child, larger than life and twice as much trouble. You couldn’t sit still; you were always up to something. We’d been great friends, me and you, hadn’t we? Because Mum was usually busy with Marie, and we were expected to just get on with it. Long school holidays we played together, loading up our rucksacks and setting off on journeys on our bikes. We didn’t go far, but we felt like we were intrepid. I always carried the food and the map; you carried the compass and our drinks. We would lie on hills and watch cars go by, recording the licence plates into old school jotters as if the letters and numbers might one day prove to be significant.

Of course, you weren’t always nice to me. You gave me Chinese burns, twisting the skin on my wrist around in both directions until I let you have what you wanted – I had to set the table for you, or lend you my pocket money, or lie to Mum and Dad about what you’d been up to after school.

‘Isla?’

I glanced up, clocked Gavin’s face for a split second before he lifted me off the chair and into his chest, my cheek pressed up against his jacket, which was wet with rain. We hadn’t hugged for years and it felt too strange to be comforting. I tried to pull away, but he held me tighter.

‘Jesus, Isla! Jesus! This is terrible. So terrible.’ He let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Why didn’t you call me? I could have identified his body for you.’

‘Because I was sure it wouldn’t be him.’ I pulled away again, successfully this time, and stared into Gavin’s face. ‘Because how could he have drowned? You know what a good a swimmer he was. He’s only just swum a mile for Cancer Research. He was fit and healthy and …’ I threw out my arms. ‘Why was he even in Glasgow?’

‘There’ll be an investigation, Isla.’ He took hold of both my hands. ‘But for now, we need to tell your dad and Marie.’

‘And the kids.’

‘And the kids.’

I began to tremble, the enormity of what lay ahead flooding me with fear. I wasn’t about to wake up. I couldn’t pretend that this was all a mistake, slip back to the office and continue with work as if nothing had happened. I had lost you, Dougie. For good. For ever. And now I was going to have to break the news to the people who loved you the most, and the thought of having to do this proved to be my tipping point. I cried, then. Tears erupted through me, wave after wave, rising from my feet, gathering strength in my middle, and pouring onto my cheeks in an abandonment of hope.

‘Isla.’ Gavin was hugging me again. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

‘Okay?’ Sorrow ricocheted inside me, making my chest heave. ‘How, Gavin? How?’

The next couple of weeks passed slowly, my emotions swooping and plummeting on a second-by-second basis. My head and my heart were full of missing you, Dougie. I was angry and desolate, but mostly I felt a heart-thumping, dry-mouthed anxiety.

‘Grief feels like fear,’ Collette told me. ‘I remember that from when my dad died.’

As you would have expected, Collette was rallying round. Gavin came over every day to give us an update on the police investigation and, mostly, Collette came too. She brought homeopathic remedies and regular sleeping pills, chamomile tea, and lavender-scented candles, boxes of tissues and bottles of wine. I could have easily thrown most of it back at her, but she shopped and she cooked and she cleaned up after us. She did all the things I had no energy for, and so even though she was the woman who had stolen my husband, I was grateful for her help.

I spent all of my time with Dad and the kids. And while Dad and Fin were mostly quiet, Caitlin stomped around slamming doors, then bursting into sustained bouts of crying that left her exhausted. I spent hours sitting on her bed, stroking her hair while she talked through her pain. It hurt so much to watch her, I can’t tell you.

Dad came straight down from Dundee as soon as he heard the news. Gavin collected him from the station, and when I opened the door to them, Dad fell against me, holding me as if he never wanted to let me go. I found it hard to look him in the eye because his expression mirrored my own: both bleak and questioning, the how and the why of your death as yet unknown to us. He spent his time sitting in the corner of the living room on the armchair that belonged to Gran, or walking Myrtle up and down the hills, taking Fin with him. I watched the pair of them crossing the field at the back of the house, Myrtle chasing around at their feet. Dad’s arm was on Fin’s shoulder, and they leant into each other, holding one another up.

In those early days, it was only Ritchie who brought me comfort. Just six weeks into our relationship and I hadn’t expected much from him, but when he called me that first evening the sound of his voice gave my heart the tiniest of lifts. ‘We’re standing in a queue at Universal Studios,’ he said. ‘How are things back in Scotland?’

‘My brother died,’ I blurted out.

‘What? What?’

‘He drowned.’

‘Isla, Isla. Sweetheart. This is …’ He took a breath. ‘Listen, I’ll come home early. I can easily change our flights—’

‘No, no. That’s not fair on Leonie. She’s been looking forward to her holiday with you.’ I closed my eyes and leant up against the doorframe. ‘Just talking to you is enough.’

He spoke to me for an hour every day. Or mostly I spoke and he listened. He made me feel as if I wasn’t sinking, that I wasn’t going mad, and that, while life without you felt impossible, I would find a way through. I would. And he would help me.

You knew about Ritchie, but I hadn’t yet mentioned him to the rest of the family, so I took the calls in my bedroom, always after midnight when everyone was asleep. You thought there was no need for me to keep him a secret, but after the false start a year after Gavin left – my Internet dating disaster – I’d made the decision that I wouldn’t introduce a boyfriend to the kids unless I was sure he’d be around for a while. Ritchie was the first man I’d been out with in three whole years. We were just at the point where I was ready to have him meet the family, and then you died.

I wish I’d the chance to introduce him to you, Dougie. You would have liked each other. I’m sure of it.

Three days after your death, Gavin came r. . .