So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) Page 16

  Think about it.

  She played out scenarios in her mind. Desires. Impulses. Actions. She sought logic in them, even if – especially if – it was in intent rather than deed. Was there a sequence of events that could fit such an unlikely answer? She closed her eyes and imagined threads intersecting, each a course of action, each intersection a choice made, and the end of every thread led to a dead man surrounded by photographs of his loved ones that he could not see.

  ‘Evidence,’ she said aloud as she opened her eyes. ‘There is no evidence.’

  Forget it, she thought. You’re chasing a phantom.

  No reason, no logic. Let it go.

  Flanagan thought of her husband and her children, that she could be with them now, enjoying them, not sitting here, torturing herself over something far beyond her control. She turned the key in the ignition once more, felt the resonance of the engine starting.

  She reversed out of the space, shifted into first, and approached the forecourt’s exit. As the car idled and she looked for oncoming traffic, she saw McKay’s Ford Fiesta pull out of the church grounds at the far end of the street.

  Flanagan knew where he was going: to the Garrick house.

  Follow him?

  And what would that achieve?

  Once more, Flanagan thought of her family, and she pulled out of the forecourt, drove towards Lisburn and her children.

  32

  McKay rang the bell once more, rapped the door with his knuckles, hard enough to hurt. And again, leaving a trace of red on the wood.

  The door opened, Roberta’s face in the few inches between it and the frame.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Now’s not a good time,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Not now,’ she said, her voice hardening.

  He pushed the door inward, making her stagger back into the hall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked as he walked past her.

  He looked into the living room, saw it empty, headed towards the kitchen. There he was. Casually dressed in polo shirt and beige chinos. A mug of something steaming on the island in front of him. Sitting there like he belonged in this house. Like he belonged with her.

  ‘Peter,’ Jim Allison said. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Why are you here?’ McKay asked.

  ‘Roberta called me,’ Allison said.

  ‘Why?’

  Roberta entered, came to McKay’s side. Put a hand on his arm. He shook it away.

  ‘Reverend Peter,’ she said, ‘I think you should go home and get some sleep.’

  ‘Why did you call him?’ he asked.

  Allison answered for her. ‘That policewoman Flanagan called here this morning and questioned Roberta. She’s crossed the line into harassment. I’m going to see what can be done about it.’

  McKay stepped forward and put his hands on the black granite. ‘Why are you here?’

  Allison gave a nervous smile. ‘I just told you. Roberta was—’

  ‘Why are you here?!’

  The shout reverberated off the tiles, made all three of them flinch. Allison raised his hands, palms out.

  ‘Peter, I really think you need to calm yourself down, get some rest. Pardon my language, but you look like shit.’

  McKay felt his face contort with hatred as he said, ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  Allison’s mouth dropped open.

  McKay turned to Roberta. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Later,’ she said, reaching for his arm again. ‘What you really need is—’

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘We’re going to talk now, whether you want to or not.’

  She went quiet for a moment, her eyes flickering, before she said, ‘Okay.’ She turned to Allison. ‘You go on, Jim. I’ll call you later.’

  Allison shook his head. ‘No, no, I’m not leaving you alone with him when he’s like this.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m going to make sure he gets some rest.’

  ‘Roberta, no.’

  McKay flinched at the tenderness in Allison’s voice.

  ‘Jim, go,’ she said. ‘I can handle this.’

  ‘Roberta—’

  ‘Go!’

  Allison shook his head, but he stood and reached for the jacket and keys on the island. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he said as he headed for the door. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll deal with Flanagan.’

  Alone now, McKay turned to her.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m going to confess,’ he said.

  Roberta stared at him for long seconds before she said, ‘No you’re not. Calm down.’

  McKay watched her pace the kitchen, arms folded across her chest, and realised that he was indeed calm. For the first time since Mr Garrick had taken his last guttural snoring breath, McKay felt peace in his heart.

  ‘I am calm,’ he said, and as much as it shocked him, a smile found its way to his mouth. And a feeling of lightness behind his eyes, and on his shoulders. A terrible weight lifted away so it felt as if his feet hovered an inch above the floor. Heat in his eyes.

  He recognised this feeling, a sensation rooted deep in his youth. The euphoria he felt when he first accepted Christ into his heart, when he first felt his sin washed away by the Lord.

  I am saved, he thought.

  Roberta stopped pacing. ‘What are you smiling at?’

  ‘I’m saved,’ he said.

  A high laugh escaped him, and he put his hand over his mouth. Roberta watched him, concern on her face.

  ‘You need to get some rest,’ she said. ‘Sleep for a couple of hours. Then you’ll feel better. You’ll see things differently.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, the words clarifying his feelings as he spoke. ‘I don’t need to sleep. I need to tell the truth. I need to get this over with.’

  ‘You’re not in your right mind,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘My right mind?’ He laughed again. ‘I haven’t been in my right mind since the first time I touched you. And I can’t take any more. It’s time to stop this.’

  She walked slowly around the island to him, and he knew that look on her face, the mask she wore. The seductress, Eve with the serpent’s whisper in her ear, the taste of apple on her tongue. She came close, spoke softly.

  ‘Just come upstairs and lie down,’ she said. ‘I’ll lie with you.’

  She went to put her arms around his neck, lace herself around him like so many times before, but he took her wrists in his hands and lifted them away, held them tight against his chest.

  ‘I see what you are now,’ he said. ‘I should have seen it months ago, but I was weak, and you knew it. Just like you knew your husband was weak, when you found him, and you knew you could bleed him dry. Until you were faced with caring for him for the rest of his days, and you couldn’t have that, could you? So you came after me. Because I was weak.’

  She tried to pull her wrists away from him but he held them firm.

  ‘And Jim Allison is weak too, isn’t he? What is it you want from him? You’ve got all the money you could ever want. What can you take from him? Protection? Is that it? You think he can protect you from Flanagan, don’t you? Does he know what we did?’

  Now she pulled with a strength he didn’t know she possessed, wrenched her wrists from his grasp. He saw the rage in her, burning and crackling, barely held in check.

  ‘You’ve lost your mind,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I’ve just found it again. Either way, tonight or tomorrow morning, whenever I’ve got the courage, I’m going to call the police. I’m going to call Flanagan and tell her everything. I just wanted to warn you so you can prepare yourself.’

  He walked to the kitchen door, but she called after him.

  ‘I’ll deny it,’ she said, clo
sing the distance between them, anger and hate in her eyes. ‘You go ahead and tell them what you did. But remember, you did it. Not me. You have no proof that I knew anything about what you planned to do. After all, you’d been chasing after me, hadn’t you? Trying it on with me for the last six months, you were, all the time my poor husband was lying there suffering. You were trying to take advantage of a poor woman coping with a terrible situation.’

  A grin, familiar to him, stretched her mouth as the lie took form. Close now so he could feel the heat of her. ‘You tried to exploit me. You tried to exploit my vulnerability. And when you couldn’t, when I wouldn’t let you because I loved my husband so dearly, you decided to kill him. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what happened, and that’s exactly how I’ll tell it. And there isn’t a single piece of evidence to say otherwise.’

  McKay laughed once more. Not the near hysterical laughter of before, but the calm and easy laugh of a man who knows he’s right.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said. ‘I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what you do. You can tell them anything you want. All I need is to tell the truth. Nothing else matters.’

  He walked along the hall to the front door, reached for the handle.

  ‘I’ll kill myself,’ she shouted from the kitchen doorway, her voice rising with each syllable.

  He looked back over his shoulder and said, ‘I don’t care.’

  She screamed as he closed the door behind him.

  33

  Flanagan’s phone rang as she parked outside the restaurant. A number she didn’t know. She should have rejected the call, she knew that, but she didn’t.

  ‘Flanagan,’ she said.

  ‘Good afternoon, Inspector, this is Jim Allison.’

  She closed her eyes and mouthed a string of the worst curses she could bring to mind. Then she said, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Allison, what can I do for you?’

  ‘What can you do for me?’ She heard the sneer in his voice, and anger. ‘What you can do for me is stop harassing my friend Mrs Garrick.’

  Flanagan took a slow and deep breath, in and out, willed her temper to be still. ‘Mr Allison, it’s Saturday, and I’m late for lunch with my family. Do you think we could keep this conversation for Monday morning? I can give you a call, say, ten—’

  ‘That’s right, it’s Saturday, but you were happy enough to call at Mrs Garrick’s home this morning. And Peter McKay. You’ve pushed that poor man to breaking point, and you’re trying to do the same with Roberta.’

  Her temper roused whether she wanted it to or not. ‘What I’m trying to do is my job, and I’d thank you to let me get on with it without interference.’

  ‘You might think it’s your job to intimidate a grieving woman in her home, but I think otherwise. As an elected representative of this constituency, and a member of the Policing Board, it is my job to protect people from this kind of—’

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’

  Flanagan listened to the silence, already stinging with regret. She winced and put her hand over her eyes.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  I should apologise, she thought. I should beg forgiveness and back off. Even as those ideas moved through her mind, she knew she would ignore them.

  ‘Let me rephrase that,’ she said. ‘I would very much appreciate it if you’d save your grandstanding for the Assembly. You might be on the Policing Board, but your job is to tick whatever boxes and sign whatever declarations the civil servants put in front of you, nothing more, nothing less. Some people might be impressed when you start swinging your dick around, but I’m not one of them. Now kindly shove your indignation up your arse while I go and spend a little time with my family. Goodbye.’

  She hung up before he could get a word out in response, held the phone in her fist.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ she whispered, shaking her head.

  Doesn’t matter, she thought. It’s done now.

  She stowed the phone in her bag, got out of the car, locked it, and made her way to the restaurant. Inside, she craned her neck and stood on tiptoe, scanning the booths full of parents and children, young teens on dates, middle-aged couples looking out of place. There, near the back corner, Alistair and the children. Ruth and Eli staring wide-eyed at the ice cream sundaes the waitress was placing before them; she had a coffee on the tray for Alistair. She went to lift the untouched plate of food, chicken wings and fries, but Flanagan interrupted her.

  ‘That’s mine, thanks.’

  Alistair looked up at the sound of her voice, surprise on his face at first, followed by anger, then a blank coldness that cut her deepest of all.

  The waitress smiled and left them. As Flanagan lowered herself into the booth beside Eli, Alistair said, ‘Hardly worth your while sitting down.’

  ‘I can throw this into me while you have your coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry for being late. I couldn’t avoid it.’

  Flanagan felt a faint itch of guilt at the lie as she took a bite of chicken from the bone. There had been a choice: go to see McKay or not. She still couldn’t be sure if she’d made the right choice. She supposed she’d find out soon enough.

  ‘So, what did you guys have?’ she asked, a cheer in her voice that probably sounded as fake to them as it did to her.

  ‘Burgers,’ Ruth said.

  ‘Were they any good?’

  Ruth shrugged and resumed pushing ice cream around with her spoon. Eli hadn’t even acknowledged her presence.

  Flanagan put down the chicken, wiped her fingers on her napkin, reached for each of their hands, grasped them tight. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Honestly. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, I promise.’

  ‘You promise,’ Ruth echoed, her voice flat. ‘You always promise.’

  Flanagan let go of their hands, brought hers together on the tabletop. She considered arguing, pleading, but knew it was useless. Let them be angry, she thought. They’re right to be angry. She ate her food, all four of them silent apart from the clink of spoons on glass.

  By the time Flanagan had eaten all she could stomach, which was barely a third of the plate, the children had cleared their bowls and Alistair’s cup was empty.

  She set down her knife and fork, pushed the plate away. They all looked at her, knowing she meant to speak. She cleared her throat.

  ‘I know this is difficult to understand,’ she said, ‘but I have a very important, very difficult job. A lot of people depend on me to do this job. And sometimes that means I can’t be around as much as I want to be. I know that’s difficult for you, that you think it’s not fair, but I can’t let those people down.’

  ‘But you let us down,’ Ruth said. ‘All the time.’

  Flanagan felt Alistair’s eyes on her, gauging her reaction. Don’t get defensive, she warned herself. It won’t help.

  ‘I know,’ Flanagan said. ‘Sometimes I let you down. And sometimes I let down the people I’m trying to help. But I want to do better, for you and them both.’

  She reached across the table for Ruth’s hand.

  ‘Will you let me try?’

  Ruth did not answer, but neither did she pull her hand away. Flanagan was glad of that.

  Alistair ran his fingers through Ruth’s hair, leaned over and kissed the top of her head. He exchanged a glance with Flanagan, a hint of a smile. Flanagan returned it.

  ‘Doesn’t mean I’m not angry,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow will be better. We’ll do something.’ She reached for her children once more. ‘Come on, what’ll we do tomorrow? What about the zoo? We haven’t been in ages.’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘I don’t like the zoo. The way the elephants walk up and down like they’re crazy people. It makes me sad.’

  ‘All right, what else?’

  Eli spoke for the first time, a smile breaking on his face that lit a flame in Flanagan’s heart. ‘The museum,’ he said. ‘The one with the dinosaur
s.’

  ‘The Ulster Museum,’ she said. ‘Good idea. We can go to the park after. What does everyone else think?’

  Her phone trilled in her bag before anyone could answer. She squeezed her eyes shut, cursed under her breath. Without looking at Alistair, she fished it from her bag, looked at the screen.

  DSI Purdy.

  ‘Shit,’ she said.

  Now she looked to Alistair. With an expression of defeat and a wave of his hand, he indicated, go on, take it. She squeezed her husband’s shoulder as she passed on the way to the corridor that led to the toilets. As the door swung closed behind her, she thumbed the green button.

  ‘You know what I’m calling about,’ Purdy said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Allison,’ she said.

  ‘What in the name of Christ did you say to him?’

  ‘We had a disagreement about my methods,’ she said.

  ‘I’m supposed to be here preparing for my last week in this bloody job, not dealing with your mess.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I’m so tired of apologising, she thought, feeling a heavy weariness like sand in her soul.

  ‘Sorry my arse,’ he said. ‘Allison tells me you’re harassing his good friend Mrs Garrick.’

  ‘His very good friend,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Sir, I think you know what it means.’

  ‘Watch your mouth, Flanagan.’

  She bowed her head, covered her eyes with her palm. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  The men’s toilet door opened and a tubby teenager in goth gear stepped past her and out through the door to the restaurant.

  ‘All right. Whatever you think the relationship is between Jim Allison and Roberta Garrick, you don’t allude to it again without proof.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Allison says you insulted him, effed-and-blinded at him,’ Purdy said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Flanagan said. ‘And I might have said something about his dick.’

  ‘Oh, fuck me pink,’ Purdy said with a despairing sigh.

  ‘Is he going to pursue this?’