From the Shadows by G.R. Halliday

Author:G.R. Halliday
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473565333
Publisher: Random House

Chapter 37

It was after 1 a.m. when Monica got into the shower and turned the water up as hot as she could stand it. She washed the dirt off her skin and tried to wash the memories away. Those dead bodies. MacLennan’s expression when he’d mentioned Lucy’s name. The way he drank in Monica’s hurt, the way he had enjoyed that little taste. The thought of what he could do to Lucy if he got to her.

What were Lees’s condescending reassurances worth? Nothing. Less than nothing, because he hadn’t looked into MacLennan’s eyes. He hadn’t seen what Monica had seen. He didn’t know what it meant: that she could never leave her daughter alone while MacLennan was out on the streets. She could never sleep knowing that he was out there.

She turned off the shower and tested her knee. It was still painful where she’d jarred it. She tapped out two ibuprofen and dry-swallowed them.

Monica stared at her long body in the mirror, lit white in the eerie bathroom light. She glanced down at her big feet, which were rubbed red raw and blistered from those ridiculous boots.

‘Jesus Christ, you’re pathetic,’ Monica whispered as she stared at her reflection. Then looked over her naked body again and for the first time in a long time really let the poison flow: Man-ica, gangly, saggy, disgusting. Monica shook her head and wiped her eyes. Monica the man, grotesque, horse-legs.

She forced her mind to come back with the rebuttals she’d taught herself. All those years ago as a teenager when it was getting so that she wouldn’t undress to bathe without turning the lights off: ‘Strong, statuesque.’ And she added some new ones: ‘Life-giving, nurturing.’ Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper but it was some kind of psychic defence. She found herself thinking back to Miss Bennington, the classics teacher at school who used to call her Athena. In a strange way it had made her feel better because Miss Bennington genuinely seemed to revel in Monica’s size. Maybe behind the teacher’s heavy glasses and thick red lipstick, in her antiquated mind, she really did think Monica carried some little spark of the divine. She remembered the time Miss Bennington had run after her to push a battered green Loeb edition of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations into her hands at the end of another day of casual taunts and comments in the school corridors. She’d felt special then. Funny how a little thing like that from an adult could make you feel noticed.

Monica finished drying herself and tapped out two codeine tablets to go with the ibuprofen. In the living room she swallowed them with a mouthful of red wine and picked up the case file again. There had to be something: some way to prove that MacLennan was involved.

She stared at the photographs of those bite marks on the bodies. The pieces of rock forced down their throats while they were still alive.

She picked up her phone and called Fisher, only realising when it started ringing that it was already well after midnight.

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