Where There is Evil by Sandra Brown

Author:Sandra Brown [Brown, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780330469784
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Twenty-Two

During the week when the story broke in the media, I felt exposed and self-conscious. It would have been easy to sink into further depression but I reminded myself that I had to go and meet Jim’s sidekick, Gus Paterson.

He was a friendly bear of a guy, who chatted away, putting me at ease. Over a coffee, he asked me the question I was now becoming used to: was I sure nothing had happened to me?

I sighed and said I really did not think so, though I could not be a hundred per cent sure. I told him I had thought of having regression hypnosis through a practitioner to whom my GP could refer me. That might put my mind at ease.

Gus told me that the team had had a good response to the publicity Jim had generated, and was following up a number of calls. ‘One of Baxter’s ex-employees actually phoned from down south after someone sent him the local paper with the headline, and the first thing he said was he wanted to travel north, stay with his sister here in Airdrie, and make a statement if he was correct about the identity of the man being questioned. We would not, of course, comment on your dad’s name over the telephone, but the guy actually said he’d suspected a man whose initials were A.G. for many years, and he wanted us to say yes or no to that. We’ve arranged for him to travel north.’

Finally a Baxter’s employee was prepared to spill the beans.

My mother and Aunt Margaret made their statements on Friday 26 March 1993. Both were nearly hysterical, petrified of neighbours spotting police cars at the gate. Finally I quietened Mary by reminding her of the Biblical quotation about how we should confront evil. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Where there is evil, cast it out.’ Detective Chief Inspector Ricky Gray decided to interview my mother himself, while Aunt Margaret spoke to the WPC, Audrey. Before he began Ricky Gray told me that Jim McEwan, in Australia, had discovered by sheer chance that he was just a few miles from Janet Anderson Hart, Moira’s elder sister. She had contacted Scottish police when a relative had told her of the mounting interest in the media about the reopened investigation. Jim visited her Sydney home on the same day my mother made her statement.

‘So you’re not the only one we are speaking to, Mrs Gartshore, about painful past events,’ Ricky Gray said gently. ‘I know you’re divorced from him now, but you need to tell us all about Alex – how you met, what you learned about him, and what he was like as a husband, how he was at his job—’

‘He was teetotal, wouldn’t touch a drop all the years he was on the buses,’ my mother declared. The DCI commented wryly that drinking was certainly one vice that caused his team headaches but there were worse offences.

If I had thought that my memories emerged like an

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