Worst Case Scenario Read online

  WORST CASE SCENARIO

  HELEN FITZGERALD

  To criminal-justice social workers,

  who do the hardest job and have the best chat

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE: THE WIFE KILLER

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  PART TWO: THE NED

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART THREE: THE PAEDOPHILE

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  WORST CASE SCENARIO

  PART ONE

  THE WIFE KILLER

  1

  Every time Mary tried to relax in a bath, a paedophile ruined it. Tonight it was McKinley, who she’d visited on the way home, and who had sat on the sofa for ten minutes with one or more balls hanging out of his shorts. She still wasn’t sure if it was deliberate. Probably not, as Mary was fifty-two, not five. ‘I’m not allowed to think about that,’ Mary said out loud, and McKinley’s ball/s disappeared into the bubbles.

  As ever, another case invaded immediately – not a sex offender, but a far more palatable wife killer who she’d be meeting for the first time tomorrow. Ten years ago, Dr Liam Macdowall took his beloved wife to Loch Fyne for oysters and on the way home, drove the car off a bridge. A lot of ‘murder-suicides’ seemed to end this way – with one party still alive, usually the prick whose idea it was. Mary put her head under water and called on her victim-empathy skills, imagining she was Macdowall’s dead wife, Bella:

  Liam’s in the car beside me, belted in as I am. The water’s rising and I’m running out of breath. Please do something because I can’t get out. He’s undoing his seatbelt. Why won’t mine budge? I can’t define the look he gives me – is it love? – before he forces his way out of the car.

  Mary lifted her head out of the bathwater, took a deep breath, and repeated: ‘I must not think about that.’ This mantra had helped keep her sane enough. Home was precious; work must not invade. I must not think about that: a sacred rule that was impossible to obey, and the only one she wanted to.

  The next morning, Mary pressed her ID against the flex machine. She was forty-one hours up. If she didn’t use the hours by the end of the month, which was today, they would be wiped. She wanted to smash the machine with her forehead. Instead she ruminated as she gathered the paperwork for the prison meeting: Fucking management. Fucking job.

  Mary’s respect for her impoverished employer had been dissipating for years but had slipped substantially over the last week. It was a week ago that Mary was scolded by her boss’s boss for allegedly breaching flexitime rules. The inciting incident involved lunch, which workers were required to take, even though there was no time, no where, and no thing to eat. If workers didn’t clock in and out at lunchtime, they were docked an extra thirty minutes. Mary’s ‘pod’ of six therefore removed their IDs from their necks at noon and took turns to go downstairs and flex each other in and out. It was a futile exercise, as no-one ever had time to take the minutes they saved, but it provided some comfort. Once rage-filled poverty-busters, Mary and her pod now rebelled by pooling lanyards at noon.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mary’s boss’s boss, Shirley, had said when she caught her gang-pinging the machine seven days previously.

  Mary had been getting red-mist attacks for eighteen months and could feel one coming on. Weight-related insults screamed within. She had to suppress them.

  ‘It’s prohibited to use another person’s ID,’ Shirley had said.

  ‘Is it?’ Mary continued to ping. ‘Look how many hours I’m up, and there’s no way for me to use them.’

  ‘In that case, what’s the point in what you’re doing, Mary?’

  Using someone’s name in a sentence should be banned. ‘Mary’ hung there for seconds before she said, ‘It’s all right for you, Shirley. You obviously have plenty of time to eat lunch.’

  Oops.

  Because of that incident, a meeting was being convened by Shirley and Mary’s boss to discuss the potential need for an urgent meeting with Mary.

  News quickly spread throughout the office. Mary was a Registered Flex Offender.

  She was also at stage three in terms of sickness. Stage three was a terrible thing to be at, apparently. Colleagues took sharp intakes of breath when Mary told them she was at stage three. Mary had spread, she could metastasise, and die. If she took another sick day this year – and it was only halfway through – very, very bad things would happen.

  No-one took sick leave anymore. Apart from anything, the workers were terrified that others would get a chance to look into their cases then out them as lazy and shit. Lil had come in with pneumonia the previous year and fainted in the loo, but only Mary knew. Helena shared terrible infections with her pod almost weekly, and Jeff had come in two days after breaking one leg, two arms and his collarbone in a car accident on the way back from Troon Live. He needed three support workers to help him write court reports and go to the loo, but his sickness record was impeccable.

  So far this year, Mary’s sick leave totalled seven days, but that was enough to be stage three. The first day was to go to the doctor. For months, she’d been moody and rage-filled and ruminating and tired, so tired. Someone had unscrewed the top of her head and poured wet cement in; glug, glug, glug, she explained to the young male GP. It was surprising how much room she had inside for wet cement. And then it set, and she was immovable. When someone wanted her attention – Mary! Call for you Mary, Jimmy McKinley in reception for you Mary, Mary, Mum, Mary! – a huge concrete drill zzzz-ed at her casing: deafening, echoing, shuddering, cracking at her chest: MARY!

  The young male GP gave her antidepressants.

  Which caused sick days two, three and four, and her escalation to stage two. Mary had never felt less herself than while she was on Prozac. She didn’t understand the world. She couldn’t hear herself speak. She felt the anxiety, but she wasn’t thinking it. She poured sweat, she smelt, she gained five pounds.

  Days five, six and seven were spent weaning herself off the pills, rocking in bed wondering if she was uncannily similar to Virginia Woolf. She suspected not; she suspected she’d have just taken the rocks out of her pockets and swum back. Also, fiction was pointless in Mary’s opinion. No-one ever told stories as wild and upsetting as the ones that happened for real in Renfield.

  The flex incident one week earlier was indeed inciting. Mary decided, Fuck it, I’m giving notice. Now Roddie’s hit the big time, I’m gonna knit poufs and have a proper go at tap-dancing. She had narrowly escaped a thorough sacking and would resign with her record intact. She would leave with her head held high.

  Mary arrived at the prison with two minutes to spare. Officer Mac-Donald (one of the ‘badduns’, rumour had it) tagged her from gate to wall to gate and deposited her at the ICM Suite. She’d been to these meetings many times, and the feeling of dread in her tummy was always justified, but even more so today, because Liam Macdowall was famous. His ‘book’ – Cuck: Letters to My Dead Wife – was being released on the same day as his person, which is why he had invited his ‘publisher’, Derek McLaverty to the meeting.

  Derek was twenty-nine, skinny, bookish (i.e., could read), and a leading Men’s Rights Activ
ist (MRA). Written in black lettering on his white t-shirt were the words: THIS IS WHAT A MRA LOOKS LIKE. Mary had an immediate chemical reaction to the guy. He reminded her of Thomas McInnes at St Pat’s, who spread rumours about her when she beat him at spelling and who chased her round Queen’s Park a few years later to finger her, spreading worse rumours cos she got away.

  Derek was her childhood nemesis on steroids. He oozed self-satisfaction. At the coffee stand Mary said: ‘It should be “an MRA”. The article is decided by pronunciation. But I’ve read your blog, so I know grammar’s not your thing.’

  ‘You’ve read my blog? I’m flattered.’ Derek hailed himself as a ‘proud Scot’ but he was educated at Gordonstoun and spoke like Prince Charles would if Prince Charles was trying not to speak like Prince Charles. His blog was called The Lion’s Roar. Mary couldn’t read it for more than three seconds without needing alcohol. The guy had a face you’d never tiring of slapping, probably why his mama sent him to the Highlands to build rafts, hone sexism and puff his chest about the Union. When his father’s dotcom business went downhill, Derek was forced to leave boarding school. He travelled ‘extensively’, meeting and marrying Pretty Pam from Renfield, who was beneath him in every way except reality (now rid of him, she wore heels whenever she wanted). They shared five years together, all of them unhappy according to his social worker, Nel. Their two boys, Freddie (four) and Oskar (two), now lived with their battered mother and her parents, and Derek spent most of his time arguing – as publicly as possible – that he should be allowed to see them whenever he wanted, at the same time as failing to attend supervised contact week after week, leaving the wee lads sobbing in a sad room on the ground floor of Kenneth House. Derek’s brief career with the police force had been brought to an abrupt halt after his first conviction for domestic assault, but he continued to ooze authority with mind-blowing arrogance. Mary already hated Derek more than anyone she’d ever met, and she’d met the Symington Strangler, but that was another story.

  Macdowall had invited his lawyer as well, who didn’t need to be on the personal invite list, plus a balding alcohol counsellor called Tracy and his twenty-six-year-old daughter, Holly.

  Six days earlier, Mary had visited Holly to compile a way-overdue home background report. It was a day after she’d made her decision to resign. For one freeing day, she had stopped thinking of herself as a social worker. Her boundaries, which had been withering for a while, were almost totally gone, and it was wonderful. Speaking her mind didn’t seem dangerous at all.

  ‘Your father’s asked if he can stay here,’ she explained to Holly. ‘Apparently you’re okay with that. How ’bout you make us tea and we get these questions out of the way? I’m white with one.’ She paused and looked at the kettle.

  Holly looked at the kettle as well, then at her. ‘I’m uncomfortable with your expectation of tea.’

  Mary didn’t flinch. ‘Would you like to make a formal complaint?’

  ‘What? No.’

  Mary had already set out her notepad and pen on the table. She dated the fresh, lined page then deadpanned: ‘Tea’s gonna help with rapport.’

  One lengthy silence later, Holly put on the kettle.

  ‘Gingernut?’ Mary fished two dodgy-looking biscuits from her cavernous fabric bag then removed her jumper.

  Holly did not want a biscuit.

  ‘Tell me about yourself.’ Chewing, Mary made a rolling motion with her hand to start things off. ‘E.g., “I was born…”’

  Mary’s bag was open on the floor, so Holly could see the book inside. ‘You got a proof copy?’

  ‘As part of his prison dossier. Read it in two sittings,’ Mary said.

  ‘What did you think?’ Clearly expecting high praise, Holly sipped her tea and seemed to relax.

  ‘Load of shite. I’d prefer to share a house with Hannibal Lecter. No matter what you say to me today, I’m gonna recommend that your father should not live with you under any circumstances.’

  ‘Who’s your manager?’

  ‘My senior’s name is…’ Mary jotted the name and number of her boss on a council issue With Compliments slip, then reached into her bag for an A4 piece of paper headed ‘Official Complaint Form’. ‘Her name’s Catherine Buteman, and she will agree with your complaint wholeheartedly. Now, where were we?’

  Holly reached down and pulled the book out of Mary’s bag. She touched the cover, which the picture of her dad’s face filled. The title was across his chest, with the letter C embroidered in red on his t-shirt: Cuck: Letters to My Dead Wife, by Dr Liam Macdowall.

  ‘Doctor.’ Mary sniggered a tad. ‘Of what again?’

  ‘Geography.’

  ‘Haha.’ Her laugh was accidental.

  ‘What’s funny about geography?’

  Mary thought about it a while and then laughed again. ‘Oh, come on, you know it just is.’ She blew her nose until all the laugh came out. ‘He never did use it though, did he?’

  ‘Mum’s job came first. Mostly he looked after me.’ Holly’s face was burning red. ‘In your day it was okay to talk about a man like he’s nothing. You don’t know my father.’

  ‘I know hundreds of him.’ Mary stared the girl out; a battle of the generations. ‘Do you want revenge – is that why you’re putting in all this work to have him here?’ Holly’s impressive suburban terrace had been painted and renovated within an inch of its life. ‘Have you been planning this for years?’

  Holly was filling in the complaint form, and honed in on the employee number on Mary’s ID – 84737.

  ‘It’s 84787. The second eight’s smudged. Merlot I think. Looks like a three but it’s an eight. That’s right, good. So, Daddy gets out, and you make him pay by nagging him while you poison him slowly. Or is your plan to unman him all over again – how do you un-man a superhero like your father? MISOGNY MAN! Can demoralise a woman with a single glance.’

  ‘My mother managed.’

  ‘You think your mother emasculated your father?’

  ‘He couldn’t find work in Glasgow.’

  ‘What a bitch.’

  ‘Are you going through the change?’ Holly had taken Mary’s sarcasm and raised it one fuck-you.

  What was that rising from Mary’s belly: heat? ‘I’ve always been like this.’ She wasn’t sure if she was lying.

  ‘Mmhmm,’ judged the girl. ‘I caught her at it two years earlier, you know that? Night before my fourteenth – got up as usual to see if my presents were in the lounge and if one was bike-shaped. Heard her whispering in her office, so I peeked in thinking she might be wrapping it, but she was Skyping a hairy dude with her top off. She promised not to do it again if I promised not to tell. So, for two years I lied to him, the person I loved most in the world. Can you imagine what it felt like? And she kept on doing it.’

  ‘You think your mother was a whore?’

  The girl shook her head; not a no, not a yes.

  ‘Fair enough then, eh? Drown the slut.’

  Holly put her pen down. ‘I’m gonna need a bigger form.’

  A vision of pink-haired Mary intruded: twenty-five, all hopey and carey and believing the things clients told her. Pink-haired Mary would never get herself into this situation, and if she did she’d be shitting herself. A complaint? Oh my God, sorry. What have I done; what should I do? Intrusive thought. Mary banished it.

  ‘I was very good at my job for over twenty-nine years,’ she said. ‘I was all – “and how does that make you feel?” – but yesterday I decided to leave, which means I don’t have to pretend to care anymore and I don’t have time to manipulate you into seeing the truth. I’ve decided to be bad at this job. My guess is that I’ll be much better at it when I’m bad at it. Being good has rather held me back. Your father’s dangerous; tell him to get to fuck.’

  ‘I’d rather tell you.’

  ‘Practise on me.’

  Holly stood and pointed in the direction of fuck. ‘Get to fuck.’

  Mary was unmoved. ‘See how easy that was.
You’re a doormat, a classic victim. You’re: I don’t matter. You matter. The type who says to your more-significant other: I don’t mind, what would you like for lunch? Of course, you go out and have fun, honey. I’ll see if I can get enough hot water to take a bath! Or Come and live with me, Daddy. I’ll cook for you.’

  ‘Dad’s a great cook.’

  ‘You’ll do the cooking because it’s dull, and you don’t matter and he does. Why on earth are you still in this big house on your own? In these rooms filled with hatred and death? I can feel it. It’s yours now, not his. Sell it. Get out of here. Go live in Auckland, or Peru. You don’t even work, do you? Don’t even need to? Buy a one-way ticket somewhere. Leave.’

  Holly may well have been taking this in. Hard to tell. She’d sat back down and was staring at the complaint form, not writing anything.

  ‘What’s scary is the I don’t matter type of person snaps in the end. The wife takes it and takes it, then one night she finds herself drugging her man’s hot chocolate and chopping his dick off when he’s sleeping. The girlfriend takes it and takes it, then one night she’s washing and he’s drying, and she’s smashing him over the head with a Le Creuset.’

  Holly looked up, finally. ‘A what-say?’

  ‘A really heavy saucepan.’

  ‘I do matter.’ Holly stood up again. ‘And I need you to leave.’

  ‘Then behave like you matter.’ Mary began packing the large number of items she’d deposited around her in the last fifteen minutes. ‘Your life not miserable enough? What do you do besides smoke bongs? Yes, I can smell it. It’s not like you’re Catholic. You don’t have to forgive him.’

  Holly signed the thoroughly completed complaint form and took on her stare. ‘I’ll be requesting a different worker.’

  ‘I’m not your worker.’

  Holly shooed her to the door, tried to shepherd her out. ‘Hopefully not, but what you are – definitely – is damaged, dated, and a bigot.’