So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (12 page)

‘Everything except be my husband.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You know what it means.’

Alistair’s chair scraped on the tiles as he stood. He said nothing as he left.

Flanagan brought her hands to her face, rested her elbows on the table.

‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’

Flanagan woke in the night, stirred by her son’s cry.

A few seconds of disorientation scrambled past before she remembered she had gone to sleep in the spare room, on the lower landing, next to the bathroom. Eli’s cry had come from in there, echoing against the tiles. She threw back the duvet and went to the door, the creeping tendrils of a dream still snaking through her mind.

She found Eli crouched over a puddle on the floor, his soaked pyjama bottoms bundled beside it. He held a wad of toilet paper in his hand, mopped at the liquid with it. He looked up as she entered, shame and fear on his round face.

‘I couldn’t hold on,’ he said, tears coming. ‘I tried really hard, but I couldn’t.’

Flanagan kneeled down next to him. ‘It’s all right, love, don’t worry about it. It’s just an accident, that’s all. We’ll get it sorted.’

She pulled more paper from the roll and mopped up the rest then tossed the pyjama bottoms in the laundry hamper. After washing her hands, she reached for the buttons on Eli’s pyjama top.

‘Let’s pop you in the shower for a second.’

Eli pulled away. ‘I want Dad to do it.’

Flanagan reached again. ‘Dad’s sleeping.’

‘No, I want Dad.’

‘He’s sleeping. Come on, I can do it.’

‘I want Dad!’ His voice rang in her ears.

Flanagan stood and said, ‘Okay.’ She left Eli there, climbed the short flight of stairs to the top floor and entered the bedroom she should have shared with her husband. She nudged him and said, ‘Eli needs you.’

Alistair sat up in the bed, blinking in the light from the landing. ‘What?’

‘Eli needs you,’ she said. ‘He’s in the bathroom.’

She returned to the spare room, closed the door, and got back into the cold bed. The tears came then, and she covered her mouth and nose so no one would hear.

20

McKay set Roberta’s bags on the hall floor.

‘I can bring them upstairs for you if you want,’ he said.

Roberta followed his gaze up to the double doors of her bedroom. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re fine here.’

She turned and walked to the end of the hall and the closed door to her husband’s death bed. She turned the handle, opened it. McKay saw the bed, the wheeled table, the photographs. The framed verse on the wall.

‘Just two days ago,’ she said.

‘It’s done now,’ McKay said. ‘No going back.’

‘No,’ she said as she pulled the door closed. ‘No going back.’

They stood at opposite ends of the hall for a time, he staring at her, she staring at the door.

‘Look,’ he said eventually, ‘I’ll leave you in peace. I can come over this evening, if you like.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

That cold feeling in his stomach again. He realised it was somehow worse that she hadn’t understood why he offered than if she’d simply said no.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, they’re bringing him home tomorrow. With the wake and all the fuss, tonight might be the last chance we have to . . . to . . .’

He waved his hand towards her bedroom door, feeling heat creep up his neck and into his cheeks. Don’t make me say it out loud, he thought.

She walked the length of the hall to him, the click-clack of her heels resonating through the house. ‘It’s best we be discreet,’ she said before placing a dry kiss on his cheek.

‘For now,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right, let’s keep things simple for now.’

She nodded, smiled, took his elbow and turned him towards the door.

McKay saw DCI Flanagan’s Volkswagen Golf as he pulled into the church grounds. He parked his Fiesta by the house and crossed to where she waited, the driver’s door open. She looked up at him as he approached, but couldn’t hold his gaze.

With terror in his heart, McKay asked, ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

She glanced up at him and away again, indicated the building that cast a shadow over them both. ‘I thought I might come to the morning service,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ he said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. ‘Sorry, only Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for matins.’

‘Matins?’

‘Morning prayers.’

‘I see,’ she said. A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘It’s just . . . I . . . I think I need to pray.’

She took a seat at the end of the third row, gripped the rolled top of the pew in front of her. Her fingers flexed and relaxed, gripped
again. Real strength there, but they were not masculine hands. McKay’s eyes were always drawn to a woman’s hands before any other part of her. The touch of cool soft skin, hard bones within. These were the sensations he recalled when he thought of the few women he had been with in his life.

‘Am I supposed to kneel?’ Flanagan asked.

He looked from her hands, along her arms, her shoulders, up to her face. How frightened she looked. And yet he suspected this was a woman who feared little in the world.

‘You can kneel if you want,’ he said. ‘Or you can sit, or you can stand, or you can run laps around the church.’

He gave her a smile, but the joke seemed lost on her.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘What I’m trying to say is, God doesn’t much care what you do when you pray. All He wants is for you to open your heart to Him.’

‘Okay,’ she said, returning his smile now, if only a flicker. She looked towards the altar, her eyes wet, reflecting the greens and reds of the stained-glass windows.

‘Shall I leave you alone?’ he asked, pointing his thumb back to the vestry.

She opened her mouth, her voice crackling in her throat before she found the words. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t believe in this.’

‘Then why are you here?’ McKay asked.

Flanagan shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

McKay hesitated a moment before sliding into the pew in front of her. He rested his arm on the back. Her hands lifted from the wood, hung in the cool air, then returned, knuckles showing white beneath the skin as she gripped.

‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘whether you believe in prayer or not, just saying something out loud can make it smaller, take away the power it has over you.’

‘I’ve been having counselling sessions,’ she said. ‘Dr Brady, once a fortnight, fifty minutes of me talking and him pretending to listen.’

‘Has it helped?’

‘Not one fucking bit.’ She gave him a shamed glance, then dipped her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘Swearing does the soul good. Keep it to yourself, but I’ve been known to let the odd f-word slip myself.’

She smiled, held it on her lips a little longer this time before it slipped away. She took a breath before she spoke. ‘There was an incident a few months ago. I suppose it wasn’t a full-blown breakdown, but it wasn’t far off. A man died. I didn’t kill him, it was entirely his own doing, but all the same I felt like I had. He and another man had tried to shoot me five years ago. The shooter was the pillion passenger on a motorcycle. His pistol jammed, and I shot him. One in the head, one in the chest. He died right there.

‘The other, the one driving the bike, he took off. A couple of streets away, he ran a red light right into the path of a bus. Took him five years to die. Like I said, it was his own stupid bloody fault, but when I found out he’d died, I fell to pieces. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve spent my career dealing with killers. I’ve seen the cost of what they do. And I’m one of them. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t choose to be.’

McKay’s mouth dried as she spoke. He put a hand over his lips and nodded.

She can’t see inside me, he thought. She can’t.

‘Have you buried any murder victims?’ Flanagan asked.

He managed a nod as he took his hand from his mouth. ‘Just one,’ he said, his voice a whisper.

‘Then you know what it does to the people left behind. It blows families apart. Destroys marriages. Ruins children’s lives.’

Tell her.

The thought rang clear and bright in his mind.

Tell her and be done with it.

His hand went to his mouth once more, teeth hard on his palm. He nodded again.

Tell her or save yourself, he thought. One or the other. Do it now.

Flanagan stared at him. His skin burned where her gaze touched. She went to speak.

Do it now.

‘But that’s not why you’re here,’ McKay said. No quiver in his voice. ‘Is it?’

She dropped her eyes, and he exhaled.

‘Is it?’ he asked again.

Flanagan’s left hand shook as she lifted it from the pew back and wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. McKay waited, left room for her, knowing the confession would come before long.

Finally, she said, ‘I’m losing my family.’

A sob from deep in her chest, and she looked away.

Fear leaving him, relief taking its place, McKay put a hand on her wrist and said, ‘Tell me.’

21

Flanagan couldn’t be sure what had brought her here this morning. She’d left the house before Alistair rose, before the children stirred, and had driven to Lisburn and the fortress-like station. Her office door locked, she sat at her desk, paperwork laid out across its surface. All of it meaningless to her, nothing but shapes and scrawls on pages.

Some time before nine, she messaged DSI Purdy, said she was going to follow up on the last details for the Garrick suicide. She went to her car and drove the small roads across country as far as Lurgan, then circled back east towards Moira, with the intention of going home for an hour. Just an hour to think, that was all.

But to get there, she had to pass through Morganstown, with its one main street, the church at one end, the filling station at the other. She made no conscious decision to hit the indicator, to slow, to pull the steering wheel to the right. And yet she found herself parked by the grey wall of the church, reaching for the key to kill the ignition.

She sat there for a time listening to her own breathing, hearing its strange dry resonance in the car, before it seemed the glass all around was only an inch from her skin. Then she opened the driver’s door and felt the cool morning air wash in.

So quiet here. No traffic on the street. Nothing but the whisper of leaves on trees, silvery threads of birdsong between the branches.

She knew no one else was here, hers was the only car on the grounds, even McKay’s was gone. Looking across the car park, she saw the old house and wondered if Mrs Garrick was in there, grieving the desperate angry grief of those robbed by suicide. She remembered the widow’s tears and felt a sting of guilt.

Why had she been so determined to find some dark stain on this woman? A woman who had borne more loss than most would in a lifetime. What had Flanagan seen in Mrs Garrick that she wanted to believe her husband’s death had been anything more than it appeared? Was it bitter envy for all Mrs Garrick had?

Flanagan would never have believed herself capable of such a base emotion, but there it was. She had been ready to torment Roberta Garrick further in her time of grief in pursuit of a truth that existed only in her own mind. Mrs Garrick’s husband had been physically devastated by a terrible accident, and months of agonising recovery had left him unable to face more. That was all, and Flanagan had to let it go.

But the photographs . . .

No, too thin. Too much of a reach. Still wanting Mrs Garrick to be guilty of something just because she disliked her.

‘Enough,’ she said aloud, startling herself.

Only when she looked around to see if anyone had heard did she notice Reverend Peter McKay walking towards her. Now he was sitting in the pew in front of her, his warm hand on her wrist, and she wanted to tell him every rotten thing that festered in her soul.

She told him about the Devine brothers, Ciaran and Thomas, how they came to her home a year ago with the intent to do her harm, and how instead Ciaran stabbed her husband in their bedroom while their children cowered downstairs. She told him how the case came to an end on a beach near Newcastle, how everything that she’d done had helped no one, least of all the young man the brothers had murdered in a Belfast alleyway. Over the following twelve months, as she drifted from her husband and children’s reach, she had wondered over and over what she had achieved in her career. Had it been worth the loss of her family?

‘Then quit,’ McKay said.

She stared at him for a moment, disoriented at being pulled from her spoken thoughts. ‘What?’

‘If your job’s making you miserable, then quit,’ he said. ‘Simple, isn’t it?’

Flanagan shook her head, fumbling for an answer. ‘No, it’s . . . it’s not . . .’

He smiled that kind smile of his, the one that warmed his eyes. ‘No, it’s not that simple, is it? We have this in common, you know. Neither of us has a nine-to-five job we can leave behind at the end of the day. We don’t work in some office, watching the clock, waiting for home time. You don’t stop being a police officer when you go home any more than I stop being a priest. Not even when we go to sleep at night. Do you dream much?’

‘Every night,’ Flanagan said. ‘About the ones I couldn’t help. They stare at me. They point at me. They tell me I should have tried harder, asked one more question, turned over one more stone.’

‘Then you are your job, your job is you. Same for me.’

‘And I am my family. I need them, even if they don’t need me.’

His fingers tightened on her wrist, a small pressure. ‘Then the answer lies somewhere between the two. It’s like two sides of an arch. One can’t stand without the other.’

‘Then what do I do?’ she asked, another sob catching in her throat.

‘What you came here for,’ McKay said. ‘You pray.’

As new, hot tears spilled from her eyes, McKay got to his feet.

‘Now I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘Let yourself out when you’re ready.’

As he stepped away, Flanagan reached for his hand. He turned and looked down at her, and she suddenly realised how tired he appeared, darkness beneath his eyes, lines deepened by the light and shade of the church. She regretted the insinuation she’d made the day before when interviewing Mrs Garrick, that there might be more to the minister’s and the new widow’s relationship. It had been unfair and uncalled for. She decided she would apologise to Mrs Garrick, if she got the chance.