Free The Lost Sister by Russel D McLean Page A

harm.
    â€œAnd she didn’t. You understand?” Wickes snapped the question into his narrative with an intensity that could have knocked me off my seat.
    Did he expect me to judge?
    Or was he trying to convince himself?
    Whatever the case, Deborah was upstairs with the baby. Digging into boxes. Looking for something she could give the baby. Something that would make it appear as though Mary was truly her daughter, now. Nothing was ever going to separate them.
    The baby gurgled. The baby squirmed.
    Deborah wanted to cry. Couldn’t say for sure whether this feeling was good or bad. Just that it overwhelmed her; made her want to break down and cry.
    That was around the same time she heard the noise from downstairs. The door breaking in. Wood splintering.
    Male voices shouting. Their words indistinct.
    Footsteps on the stairs.

    Wickes couldn’t continue.
    As though there was something he didn’t want to say.
    I guessed at it. Maybe just knew instinctively.
    I pressed the issue. Said, “She tried to kill the baby.” Bad interview technique. You never push the subject in a direction. You never put words in their mouths. But I was acting like we were on a deadline here. Like this was my case. But I’d given it up. Right?
    Wickes said, “She’s not a bad person.”
    I nodded. “If she couldn’t have it…”
    He finished for me’ “…then no one could.” I was giving him the cues here. Against every professional instinct. “She was ill,” he said. “You know that, right? The kind of ill you don’t get better from.” He tapped the side of his head. Not with a sense of distaste or mockery, but reinforcing the point. “Up here. They don’t have medicines that work, you know. Not really. The last few years, we tried a lot of things. I wanted her to get better. To be well again. You have to know that. You have to understand.”
    For a moment, I didn’t know for sure whether he was still talking about Deborah Brown.
    Couldn’t bring myself to ask.

    I’d dealt with Burns’s thugs before. Subtlety wasn’t their strong suite. He picked his lads for loyalty and ferociousness, not for their conversation or their Mensa applications.
    Their brief had been simple:
    Get the baby. Persuade Deborah that she wasn’t wanted round these parts.
    Be thankful for small mercies; they left Deborah alive. Battered and bruised, aye. But still breathing. They took the child – crying, Wickes said, as they separated her from her mother – and left.
    On their way out the door, one of them said to her, “The boss sends us back here again and we’ll fucking kill you.”
    His friend added, with eloquence: “Cunt.”
    Wickes hesitated as he told me this story. Stumbled over the words. They upset him, somehow. Perhaps because of Deborah; he didn’t want to think about what had happened to her.
    All things considered, Deborah’s injuries were relatively minor. Her sister came back home to find Deborah sitting on the end of her fold out bed, legs tucked up to her chest, face bloodied, eyes blackened. She was left with a sprained wrist, a broken rib and enough lumps that they couldn’t lie to the hospital, couldn’t say she’d had some kind of accident.
    â€œIt became a mugging. The sister – and this was the only time she ever really came through for Deborah – she understood what would happen if either of them went to the police.”
    Deborah stopped leaving the house. Became paranoid. Sank further into her own depression.
    â€œAnd you asked,” Wickes said. “So I’m telling you. That’s where I came in.”

Chapter 14
    â€œI had ideals,” Wickes said. “Don’t get me wrong.” He was talking about his own career. Putting me in the picture.
    Confession is good for the soul, right?
    I was curious what he had to confess.
    Ideals.
    I got into this gig