The Photographer: Longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize 2018

PROLOGUE

GLASGOW, MARCH 2008

Lainey Henderson drew down hard on her cigarette with one eye on the clock, her free hand working continually to waft the smoke out of the window. Less than thirty seconds to go, her cheeks sucking the life out of the death stick.

The nerves were to blame but she thought of them as a good thing. What kind of person would she be if she wasn’t nervous on behalf of the woman who was about to walk through that door? The woman expecting Lainey to make everything all right when nothing could possibly do that.

It was an ISS, an Initial Support Session. They were the worst and the best.

The worst because you got it all in the raw. The open wound of a victim talking, often for the first time, about their worst nightmare. They might be calm or hysterical, might talk or might not, might lash out at you because there was no one else there or they might cling on for dear life. They might just break down and cry in a way that ripped at your emotions and left you feeling worthless. That happened a lot. An ISS could break your heart.

But it could be the best too, because if you managed to take away even an inch of their pain then it would all be worth it.

The knock at the door was quiet, almost apologetic.

‘Just a minute.’ Lainey encouraged the final swirls of smoke out the window and pinged the butt out after it. She leaned far enough out that she could see a couple of dozen pieces of evidence of previous guilt and swore under her breath, making a mental note to clear them up before she got fired. The cigarette packet went in her pocket – she liked to have it at hand even when she couldn’t smoke. ‘Come in.’

The door slid open barely enough to let the girl slip through the gap. Lainey knew she was supposed to say, and think, woman rather than girl, but the ghost of a teenager who was gliding over the carpet made Lainey want to sweep her up in her arms and mother her. But she wouldn’t. Or she’d try not to.

An ISS had rules. The idea was to make the client feel welcome, to assess them and find out what they wanted from the service. The case worker wasn’t to ask a lot of questions or offer advice. Lainey had never been one for rules though.

The girl was a shade over five feet tall, dressed in baggy black from top to toe, pale as the moon with dark auburn hair that had been brushed with her eyes closed. She glanced nervously round the room, looking for the monsters that Lainey had seen others search for.

‘Jennifer? I’m Lainey. Do you want to take a seat? Coffee, tea, water?’

‘No. No thanks. Well yes, water would be good. Thank you.’

Lainey poured her a glass from the bottle, taking the chance to gently touch the back of the girl’s hand as she passed it to her. Jennifer flinched, but only slightly. It was a good sign.

Their chairs were just a few feet apart, facing each other. Lainey would rather have moved them till they were touching but she knew better or, more accurately, had been told better. She sat back and gave Jennifer the chance to speak first but soon realised it would be a long wait. The girl studied the walls even though there was precious little to see, just a couple of cheap, bland prints and a shelf studded with leaflets. When she finally returned her gaze to Lainey, Jennifer’s eyes were wet with pleading. Please talk. Ask me something. Say something. So she did.

‘The first time I came here, I had no idea what to expect. No idea what to say. Or even what to think. I might have sat here all day with my mouth shut and a million ideas running riot in my head if someone hadn’t finally saved me from it. She told me that it was always scarier in your head than it was when said out loud. It’s tempting to think if we don’t say it then it’s not real, it didn’t really happen. That doesn’t work though. If we leave them inside, they just get bigger and bigger. Let them out and they get small.’

Jennifer bobbed her head, although still not entirely convinced. ‘Have you . . . Do you know what I’m going through?’ There was a second question in there, unasked but unmissable.

‘I do. Maybe not exactly because cases are different. But yes, I know.’

A little noise escaped from the girl. Relief of sorts. She swallowed and nodded and readied herself.

‘I was raped. A man broke into my flat and raped me.’

Lainey just nodded to let her know she’d heard and understood. The words were unnecessary but important for Jennifer to say. The evidence of it was all over her, it was why they were here. The stomach-churning damage to her face was proof, too, that the rape had been accompanied with a fearful beating.

‘Was it someone you knew?’

‘No. I don’t think so. He wore a mask. A balaclava.’

Anger twisted in Lainey’s gut, something more too, and she had to wear a mask of her own to hide it. It wasn’t going to do either of them any good if she had a meltdown. Her cigarette packet found its way into her hand and she began tapping on the top of it the way she always did when she was in desperate need of a fag.

‘We’re here to help in any way we can, Jennifer. Whatever you want from us.’ The words sounded trite, meaningless, and they were. She wanted to be able to say she’d hunt the bastard down and cut his balls off with rusty shears.

‘He kept calling me a slag. Like he knew me and it was my fault. He called me a slag every time he punched me in the face.’

Lainey felt like she’d been punched too. Sudden and hard. She looked at Jennifer, unable to say anything. Transfixed by her words and suddenly, though she’d tried not to be, by her face.

‘He just kept thumping me. Pounding his fist into my nose and my cheek. Slag. Slag. Slag. Punch. Punch. Punch. I couldn’t see. Just heard the noise. Heard my nose breaking. My cheek being smashed.’

Lainey’s heart had stopped, her throat closed over.

‘He had me pinned down. His knees on my chest and arms. I tried to fight but I couldn’t move. He hit me till I passed out. Then he . . . he . . .’

Lainey managed to nod to save Jennifer from saying the rest. There was no need. She knew.

The girl’s nose was almost at forty-five degrees to her pretty face, like a rugby player’s or a boxer’s. Both eyes were blackened and one was barely open at all. Her ashen skin was a canvas for violent patches of purple and red. Her lips were twice the size they should be.

Lainey had to resist the temptation to put her hand to her own face, mimic the places, feel where her own wounds used to be. There was a burning she wanted to cool with her touch.

Jennifer talked on, about waking to find herself naked, a searing pain between her legs, the bed sheets bloodied, her flat empty again. She saw herself in the mirror and screamed at the sight. She called a friend who called an ambulance.

Lainey knew the rules and the reasons for them. Jennifer had been raped, any semblance of control wrenched from her. It was Lainey’s role to empower her as a survivor, not to reinforce the trauma by offering unwanted touching. If she sensed that the touch, the consoling hug that burst to be released from within her, was wanted then she had to ask permission to do so. Rapists never asked permission so counsellors had to.

Her gut told her Jennifer wanted and needed it. She could see it in the girl’s eyes. Lainey teetered on the edge of asking and hugging and holding. And couldn’t do it.

The words came out of her mouth by rote.

‘What happens now is I need to ask if you want to proceed, then we put you on the waiting list and when you get to the top, your new worker will give you a call to arrange your first session.’

‘New worker? It won’t be you?’

‘It might be me,’ Lainey blurted out. ‘But not necessarily.’ It wouldn’t be her.

‘Oh. Okay.’

They said goodbye and Jennifer slipped out the door as quietly as she’d come in. Lainey waited as long as she dared to make sure the girl had gone then rushed to the corner of the desk, picked up the waste-paper basket and vomited into it.

It wasn’t that the police sergeant wasn’t sympathetic. It was more that he couldn’t rather than wouldn’t do anything. He would if he could, he reassured her. He had a daughter of his own. She nearly called him on that, being bothered about rape because he had a daughter, but she let it go. The sergeant, McCluskey, called in a female detective, a tired-looking blonde woman named Parks, and they dutifully listened to everything Lainey told them.

‘And you’re sure, Ms Henderson,’ Parks repeated, ‘it was the same man that raped you?’

‘As sure as I can be. Without either of us seeing his face, I can’t be certain, but I know. I know. He called me a slag every time he hit me in the face. And he did that a lot. Pinned me down and punched me into unconsciousness then raped me. He broke in while I was sleeping, beat me, raped me and then left while I was still out. The same with the girl.’

‘The girl whose name you can’t tell us.’ It sounded like an accusation.

‘I’m not making this shit up! I told you why I can’t give her name. Client confidentiality. But it was the same guy. No doubt about it. The same guy.’

‘I appreciate that, Lainey.’ Parks was trying to be all sisters-under-the-skin. ‘But if we don’t know who she is, we don’t have a case to work. And you told us she didn’t go to the police.’

‘She didn’t. I wish she had but she didn’t. That had to be her choice. Look, the man that attacked and raped me is still out there. Still doing this. Surely you see that?’

McCluskey shrugged resignedly but Parks nodded. ‘I believe you, Ms Henderson, but I’d be lying if I said we’re likely to be able to do much about it. I’m sorry. Your case is obviously still open and I’ll add—’

‘My case is four years old. Four!’ She was shouting now. ‘And in that time, you’ve managed to do nothing, find nothing. He’s been out there all that time and he still is. Who else has he done this to?’

She left the police station in search of hard alcohol and cigarettes. Drowned her sorrows in vodka and nicotine before ordering a cab, demanding the firm send a woman driver. That added an extra forty-five minutes to her wait and she filled it with shots of Jägermeister until the barman refused to serve her any more. She flicked him the Vs and stormed outside to wait.

When she got home, the taxi driver helping her inside, she double locked all doors, set the alarm and went to bed, where she cried herself to sleep.

Lainey kept a close eye on the waiting list, urging Jennifer to the top and cutting a couple of corners to get her there quicker. It still took an age and every day that passed made Lainey’s broken nose throb and cheeks ache, made her that bit more anxious and angry. When the name finally got to the front of the queue, Lainey said she’d call Jennifer herself. There was no answer.

When she didn’t get any response on the second attempt, she left a message. When there was no reply to that or the third call, she texted. On the fourth call, the line was dead.

Lainey went out to the address they had, a block of flats on Paisley Road West, but the people there had never heard of a Jennifer Buchanan. Maybe in one of the other flats? No.

She searched the phone book, went to the library and pored over electoral rolls. Nothing. She even hired a private investigator. He came back after two weeks and gave her her money back. Jennifer Buchanan, the girl who’d suffered the exact same rape and beating that Lainey had, wasn’t missing. She’d never existed.

CHAPTER 1

NINE YEARS LATER. OCTOBER 2017

Detective Inspector Rachel Narey looked at the clock for the fifth time that hour and saw that the hands had barely budged. It was a little before 2.30 in the morning and Stewart Street station was quiet enough that she could hear the rattle of rain on the window on the far end of the squad room. The only other person present, a new DC named Tom O’Halloran, had his head stuck in paperwork.

Two and a half miles away across Glasgow, on Belhaven Terrace, her husband and daughter were asleep. She wanted to be with them. Or at least, they were supposed to be asleep. If the baby was awake, then Tony would be too. She was strongly tempted to text to find out but managed to resist. He was due to start at the Standard at eight and wasn’t going to thank her if he got any less sleep than he needed to.

Their new life was only nine months old but already she could barely remember what the old one felt like. Alanna had changed everything. Sleep patterns. Work patterns. What and when they ate, what they talked about, what she felt and what scared her. Life had been him and her and them and now it was her.

She got up and walked to the window, watching the rain form neon-dappled puddles in the car park. Two and a half miles away. It seemed further in the dark, the gloom putting extra distance between her and the ones she loved. She wouldn’t mind so much if she was doing something to make the separation feel worthwhile, but the city was as quiet as the grave. It was Tuesday-night slow, for which she knew she ought to be grateful, but it just left her pacing the room and pining for her child.

Something moved in the car park. A figure splashing across the tarmac towards the front door, hood up against the rain. She didn’t get her hopes up for a break in the tedium, knowing that the kind of emergencies that required the services of a DI usually started with a call to 999 rather than a sprint through puddles.

She’d been back on the job for four months, part-time to begin with, reduced hours to suit her and Alanna, fitting in with Tony’s hours as a photo-journalist at the newspaper. Now she mixed these horrible graveyard shifts with more humane hours, managing a family life as best they could.

Oh, stuff it. She reached for her phone and sent a single line of text. If he was sleeping, he wouldn’t hear it. Hopefully. If he was awake then she’d soon find out.

Seconds later, her phone rang.

‘Yes, we’re awake. What else would we be doing at this time of the morning except playing pick-up-throw-down?’

Alanna’s favourite game. Up, down, up, down, endlessly, tirelessly. Tireless for her at least.

‘Tell me she’s not wide awake.’

‘Wide as the Clyde. Want to speak to her?’

‘You know I do. I hate being stuck here when you’re both there.’

‘I know. We hate it too, but you can’t be so hard on yourself. I go out to work too, remember, and I feel just as bad. But we do miss you.’ His voiced changed. ‘We miss momma, don’t we? Alanna, do you want to speak to momma? Speak to momma.’

There was silence. She imagined the little blonde head shaking violently from side to side, lip pouting. Not speaking to bad momma.

‘Alanna, speak to momma. She misses you.’

Nothing.

‘Sorry. She’s too busy practising for the 2036 Olympics pick-up-throw-down gold medal.’ He was doing his best to take the knife out her heart.

‘She’s punishing me. Which is fine, because I deserve it. Am I the worst mother in the world?’

‘Of course not. You’re probably not even in the top ten.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Rach, you know you just make it worse for yourself by phoning. We’ve talked about this.’

She hated him for being right. ‘I know that. I knew it before I called and I know it right now. I just miss her. There’s too much time to think on these night shifts. I need to be busier.’

‘Careful what you wish for,’

‘Yeah okay, Confucius. Listen, you better get her down and get some sleep.’

‘I’ll be fine. Sleep’s overrated anyway. And . . .’ he lowered his voice to a near whisper, ‘she’s gone. Time for us to go, Detective Inspector. We’ll see you in the morning.’

It was only once she’d said her goodbyes that she heard the voices floating up from downstairs, weaving like spirits through the silent building. Someone was shouting, but there was no way Narey could make out what was being said. Chances were the late-night, early morning visitor was drunk or high on something. It was Glasgow, after all.

She considered sending O’Halloran down to see what the fuss was but all that was likely to achieve was putting the desk sergeant’s nose out of joint. Gordy Masterson captained his own ship in the midnight hours and didn’t need telling how to sail it. She outranked him but knew enough to keep on his good side if she wanted the pick of whatever cases came in.

Pickings had been slim since she came back. There was a big ugly blot on her record that no one mentioned but everyone knew about. It was a stain that was taking a lot of scrubbing to remove. A reputation can take years to earn and seconds to wreck. She’d made a fine job of it on both counts, hence having to put up with the unsociable hours.

The squad room door swung open and Masterson poked his head inside.

‘DI Narey. One for you.’

‘The shouting downstairs?’

He nodded. ‘I think you’ll want to talk to her.’

She picked up something in Masterson’s expression, canned any further questions and followed him downstairs.

‘She says her name is Leah Watt and is demanding to speak to a detective. She won’t tell me what it’s about but she’s very agitated. Not drunk, not on drugs, perfectly rational, but very anxious and upset. Only a detective will do, apparently. I’d have chased her if I thought she was a timewaster but I don’t think she is.’

Cops like Masterson knew when people were genuine and when they weren’t. Desk sergeants were on the front line. It was their job to read people, to take their temperatures and keep the crazies from bothering those too busy to get tangled up with them. If he said she’d want to talk to this woman then he’d be right.

The visitor had been placed in an interview room. Narey opened the door and slipped inside, seeing her on the other side of the desk, head down and pulling at her chestnut brown hair. On hearing the door open, the woman jumped to her feet, eyes wide and slightly manic.

‘Are you a detective? I need to speak to a detective.’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Rachel Narey. How can I help you? Please, sit down.’

She was still intent on standing, that was obvious, but Narey took a seat and waited until the woman had little choice but to follow suit.

The woman was perhaps in her mid-thirties, brown eyes, nervous and agitated, as Masterson had said. There was something off about her look. She was pretty but wore too much make up, particularly around her eyes and cheeks, as if she was hiding behind it. Something else too; Narey just couldn’t figure what it was.

‘It’s Leah, is that right?’

‘Yes, Leah Watt. I need someone to help me. To listen to me. I’ve been here before but things have changed. What I mean is, my case is still open but there’s . . . I mean, I know something I didn’t know before. Shit, I’m not making sense. What I . . .’

The words tripped over each other in her rush to get them out.

‘Slow down Leah, please. Look, let me get us both a tea or coffee. I’m happy to take as long as you need but this will work better if we relax. Okay?’

‘Okay, okay. Thanks. Coffee, please. Thanks.’

Narey left the interview room and headed for the front desk.

‘Gordy, can you get someone to rustle up two coffees? One black and sugar, one with milk and no sugar. And she’s talking about her case, saying it’s open. Can you get me the crime report and see what’s there?’

Masterson handed over the papers. ‘Just done it.’

Narey cast her eyes over the headline points and her heart sank. ‘Shit.’

They had to wait nearly forty-five minutes until a SOLO could get to the station, a specialist Sexual Offences Liaison Officer whose job was to take the statement and work a victim through the reporting process. Louise Crichton was dark-haired and intense, content to listen as Leah Watt told her story to Narey.

‘It was three months ago. I’d been out with friends, had a few drinks then home to my flat in Partick West. I’d watched a bit of TV but I was tired and starting to nod off so I went to bed. I fell asleep pretty much right away. It was the sound of breaking glass that woke me.

‘I knew what I’d heard even though I’d been dead to the world. My heart was thumping like crazy and I was scared but a bit of me was also wondering if I’d just dreamed it. Then I heard footsteps inside the flat. I froze.

‘I just didn’t know what to do. I was terrified. I was thinking that I had an alarm, one of those personal alarms that go in your bag and sound a siren if you’re attacked. But my bag was in the other room and so were the footsteps. I still hadn’t moved when the door flew open and he was standing there. In the frame of the door, tall and all dressed in black. A balaclava over his head.

‘He moved so quickly. Just rushed across the room and punched me in the face. It hurt like hell but it was more the shock. I’d never been punched before. He punched me again and again. I could taste blood, feel my teeth coming loose. My nose made this horrible noise as he hit it and I nearly passed out but he kept hitting me, I don’t know how many times, until I blacked out.

‘I came round, briefly, a while later, God knows how long. The light was on in the room. He was above me. Naked. He was dripping in sweat. And I saw his face. He didn’t see me at first but when he did he swung his fist at me, at my eye. He called me a slag like he was mad at me for waking up. Slag. Slag. Slag. He battered at my face until I disappeared.

‘The next thing I knew, it was daylight. My body was in agony and I could only see through one eye. There was blood everywhere, the sheets were soaked in it and so was I. Everything hurt. My head, my eyes, my lips. Inside me. I knew I’d been raped. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. My head hurt so much. My phone was next to the bed but it’d been smashed. I screamed. It was all I could do, but a neighbour heard and called the police.

‘They had to break the door down, found me unconscious – I’d passed out again. Called an ambulance and got me to hospital. I didn’t know anything about it until I woke up there three days later, wired up to machines. They’d put me in an induced coma to prevent my body from collapsing in shock.

‘They said I’d been raped several times. There was no semen, no skin under my fingernails, no DNA that was any use, no fingerprints in the house that weren’t mine or family and friends.

‘My eye socket was smashed and had to be repaired. It still isn’t right, still tender to the touch. My cheek was broken and it’s still a bit flatter on that side than the other. Two teeth were pushed back into my palate, my lip was burst. I had two broken ribs. Lost a lot of blood.

‘They think he left me for dead. I very nearly was.

‘When I could, I gave them a description of him. Tall, maybe six feet two or three, but slim. Wiry. He had these very pale blue eyes. Like ice. He had thick, dark hair, not long but not short either. His face was lean, like he was a runner or something. I remembered a smell too, like musk or sweat. It was all I could tell them and it wasn’t much use.

‘Nothing happened. Nothing.

‘I’m sure they did all they could but they got nowhere. They were nice and kind but they couldn’t find him. Couldn’t catch him.

‘When I was fitter, I moved back home, with my mum and dad. I just couldn’t go back to the flat. Couldn’t face it. The Family Protection Unit came round to see me, kept me up to date with what was happening. Which wasn’t much. I got counselling and that helped but I still didn’t sleep much, didn’t go out. I was scared all the time, scared he’d come back and find me. That he’d do it again.’

Narey sat in silence through most of it. She felt useless, able to offer nothing more than a sympathetic ear. She had to fight back tears, something she wasn’t used to. Murder investigations called for a cool head, leaving your emotions at home. This was different and something that, unlike the SOLO, she simply wasn’t trained for. Leah’s story shifted her compass.

She wasn’t in her mid-thirties as Narey had thought – she was just twenty-seven. The heavy use of make-up was explained, so too the raised eye socket that she couldn’t quite pick up on at first. The nervousness was obvious and completely understandable. The agitation was new, though. Something had caused that and brought her running through the night and the rain. Narey braced herself to hear what it was.

‘I’d been in my room reading a few hours ago. I stay up late now because I struggle to get to sleep, so when I went downstairs my mum and dad had gone to bed. The newspaper was there, the Daily Record, and I picked it up to flick through it. And I saw him.

‘It was definitely him. I maybe couldn’t have described his face but I knew it when I saw it.

‘It was a story about his company, how he’d made all this money before and sold the business for a fortune. A chatroom site. He had some new venture and there were photographs. A photograph of him.

‘His name’s William Broome. It’s him. I know it’s him.’

CHAPTER 2

‘I screamed into a pillow so my mum and dad wouldn’t hear me. I was nearly sick. Seeing him made it all real. I know that probably doesn’t make any sense but until I saw that photograph, it was like the bogey man had broken into my house and did that to me. Like it was just some horrible, never-ending nightmare. But he’s real. He’s living a life. He’s still out there.

‘That fucking bastard beat me and raped me and now he’s getting his picture in the paper like he’s a star.’

Leah’s hands were knotted into nervous bunches and her voice was cracking. Narey felt the urge to sweep her up and hug her.

‘I didn’t know what to do. I was crying in my room for maybe an hour. Part of me didn’t want to do anything. Just curl up