Blood Tears

by Michael J Malone

  ‘Oh, Daryl. I don’t know anymore. This detective stuff is so fucking hard.’ Allessandra leans against the worktop and presses her head against a cupboard.

  ‘Think about the Ray McBain you know,’ Daryl says. ‘Think about the man you work with; the man who led our team to catch some really bad guys.’ He moves over and stands directly in front of her. He grabs both her wrists. ‘Think about the short time you have spent with him. Has he in anyway, in those moments given you any reason to doubt him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well don’t.’ Daryl looks deep into her eyes. ‘Ray McBain is one of the good guys. Be sure of that.’

  Allessandra reads Daryl’s certainty and relaxes into it. He’s right, the boss is a good guy. A good cop in a bad mess. Isn’t he?

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just…’ She rubs her forehead in an attempt to disguise the tears that sting her eyes.

  ‘Aye. No worries,’ Daryl says with his hand on her shoulder. ‘Can you make me that coffee now? I’m fucking parched.’

  Chapter 33

  In the dark and from the pavement, Devlin’s house looks just like Connelly’s. The same lacklustre architecture, small windows and chipping on the walls. At least there, the gardens were looked after. In this street just further up the road, in lieu of a garden gnome, the remains of a car’s engine decorate a small patch of grass. Everywhere else the chosen look is austere.

  Every cliché is bound in truth, and I witness the truth of net curtains twitching with curiosity. I doubt they see many cars like mine here. The nets at the Devlin household, however, remain undisturbed.

  When I first started in the police, as I approached each house I would always remind myself of the purpose of my visit and what the aim of it was. This made sure I wasn’t distracted, nor was I complacent. A habit I need to get back into. The door opens before I can formulate a plan of attack.

  Carole leaves the door open enough for me to see her head and one side of her body. Black T-shirt and grey leggings are obviously her dossing around clothes.

  ‘What a busy place this is today. What you wantin’?’

  ‘Can I come in for a wee chat, Carole?’

  ‘Piss off. You’re no’ the polis any more.’

  ‘News travels fast.’

  ‘Aye, how clever was that? The very man who visits here and tries to put the blame on our Joe, is arrested himself,’ she crows. ‘If you don’t piss off pronto, I’m going to phone the police and do my duty as a public-minded citizen.’

  ‘Right. You do that, Carole. And they’ll start to wonder why I was here. ‘’Cos it’ll not be long before they realise I didn’t kill Connelly after all and then they’ll be looking for other suspects.’

  I can see her mind working out all of the possibilities.

  ‘The phone is just to the right here,’ she warns.

  ‘Give me five minutes. Help remove Joseph from my lists of suspects.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘When the police find out that Joseph is Connelly’s son, they’ll be fighting over themselves to question him.’

  ‘How do you…’ She is so caught out by this that she forgets to lie. Her mouth hangs open in shock. Before she can regain her balance, I push past her and walk into the living room.

  She follows me.

  ‘Have a seat, why don’t you?’

  ‘Sorry about that, Carole. We don’t want the neighbours talking.’

  ‘Fuck them. Who gives a toss what they think.’

  ‘Is that the kettle going on?’

  ‘Is this a social visit?’ she bristles.

  ‘Let‘s call it a walk down memory lane.’

  ‘Fuck off with the memory lane crap and while you’re at it, fuck off with the kettle shite. Ask your questions and piss off back to your midden.’ Charm was clearly not one of her christening gifts.

  ‘Do you remember me from the convent?’

  ‘Of course I remember you. I remember everything about you, Ray. I remember…’

  ‘I remember you.’ I interrupt her. For some reason I’m not sure of, I don’t want to know anything she remembers. ‘Used to think you were really bright.’

  ‘Bright? Me?’

  ‘Truth be told I used to have a wee fancy for you.’

  ‘You were just a scrawny wee thing.’ She dismisses my comments, but tidies her hair up a little.

  ‘Aye. The nuns used to get me into trouble for spending time with you.’

  ‘Sister Mary?’ she asks. A smile curves her lips as she considers an old notoriety.

  ‘She used to think you were leading me astray.’

  ‘God, I hated that place. Remember that was our mantra? “I hate this place.” That was like our mad wee chant.’

  ‘Why did you not let on you recognised me that time I came with another copper?’ I ask.

  She shrugs. ‘Seemed like the right thing to do. You weren’t letting on either. Thought I’d give you a break.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I look at the photographs. ‘Aye. It was terrible what happened to your mate.’

  As close to a companionable silence as we can manage settles in the space between us as we both consider the past.

  ‘Did he… were you?’ Shit. Too soon for that question. The shutters that were easing up have slammed back down, judging by the look in her eyes.

  ‘You wanted to talk about Joseph?’ Back to business.

  ‘It must have been terrible, bringing him up knowing that kind of secret?’

  ‘Aye, how the fuck did you find out?’

  ‘Joseph told me.’

  ‘He what?’ Her eyes are almost out of her head. ‘How does he know?’ Her voice is a whisper, it’s the conversation she has dreaded all her life, and the boy already knows.

  ‘I thought you might have told him.’

  A noise sounds in the room above. My head shoots up.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s only the cat.’ Carole then changes the subject back to the purpose of my visit. But something has changed in her voice. It is quieter. More respectful?

  ‘Frances asked me not to tell him. I promised her just before she died that I wouldn’t tell. Who else would know to tell him?’

  ‘Must have been someone from the convent.’

  ‘No way. Hardly anyone knew.’ Her eyes look to the ceiling as she considers the suspects. ‘Sister Mary knew. It was that wee simple woman who told her. You remember Betty. She used to help the nuns out. She wasn’t as daft as she looked. She worked out that poor wee Frances had missed her period when she hadn’t asked for any sanitary towels.’

  I get a picture of a head of black hair with streaks of grey at the sides and thick, black glasses. She was the woman who used to wake up the “Wet the Beds” as we were known, just after midnight. She would drag us to the toilet, in the hope that an emptied bladder would result in a dry bed. It didn’t work.

  I’d forgotten all about her. She was a harmless wee soul, put upon by the nuns almost as much as we were. How did she manage to get herself into that position in the convent? Taking small boys to the toilet in the middle of the night and doling out sanitary towels is hardly what you would call a vocation. As a child I never even thought for a second that Betty had her own story.

  ‘Whatever happened to Betty?’

  Carole shrugs a couldn’t-care-less response.

  ‘Anyway. I can’t help wondering why all these years later you’re looking after Connelly’s bastard.’ I look over the photographs. Carole and Frances with Joseph in between. Flattened smiles to indicate they really were having a great time. As if in that second when the camera flashes you can shrug off all your worries. And then let them fall back on your shoulders when the film has run out. A moment of time captured forever they say. Who in this situation would want to? So in years to come you can pull the box out of a drawer and look back at the “good” old times?

  Frances has a pair of shoulders almost half the width of Carole’s. She might have been pretty, but she never got the chance. Her hair w
as lifeless, her eyes flat and the smile could do nothing to hide the look of a victim. It’s difficult to pin it down, to define that look.

  Perhaps it’s the expectation that bleeds from the eyes, the anticipation that it’s going to happen again. Or is it the tilt of the head, the run of the shoulders that questions the happiness in any moment? Like it’s only seconds before misery will strike again: you have a curse and all the bad people know it.

  So they seek you out.

  But why would Devlin take on Frances’ son? Why would she feel so beholden?

  ‘Carole.’ My voice is soft. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself.’ I allow the words to come unsure of their direction.

  ‘What?’ She studies me and is taken aback by the change in my demeanour.

  ‘You think it was you who should have been raped… instead Connelly got Frances?’

  ‘How do you…’ She stands up. ‘Right, get out of this house. I’m calling the cops.’ Her voice is without purpose. She’s saying what she thinks she should say, but I can tell she desperately wants to know what I know. Tears gather at the rim of her lower eyelids. She sits back down. ‘How do you…’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself. You were only a wee girl, for chrissake.’ Connelly, I hope you are roasting on a spit as we speak. ‘You’ve spent your life trying to make amends.’

  ‘I should have stayed. I was just in the next bed. Together we might have fought him off. Instead I ran and hid in a cupboard, like a coward.’

  ‘You were, what, fourteen? What could you have done?’

  ‘We could have kicked him in the balls. Stabbed him… something. Instead I ran.’ She sobbed. ‘Can you imagine the guilt? Can you?’ Her fingers pull at her leggings, her bottom lip is arched. She can barely speak. But she had held this in for over twenty years.

  ‘But we got him, Ray. Didn’t we? Well… after a trial run and twenty years.’ Her eyes take on a zealous light and she moves towards me.

  Trial run?

  I screw my eyes shut against a dream of small hands and a huge struggle. A pillow. A feather in flight.

  ‘But what about Frances and her son, Joseph? Connelly’s son?’ I can’t, I won’t let her take me there.

  Devlin takes a step back. Her heels hit a chair and she falls into it. ‘She was my best friend. She saved me. I left her to rot. That bastard…’ rarely has a word been imbued with such hate. ‘… made her pregnant. Can you imagine the guilt?’ Her question is barely audible.

  ‘You tried to bring up the child, as a penance. To try and make things right.

  ‘Except every time you look at him he reminds you of him. You love the idea of the child, but the boy disgusts you.’ The words are out of my mouth before the thought reaches my brain.

  What child wouldn’t pick up on this? They wouldn’t know why, but they would know. So, not only does Joseph grow up knowing what his mother is and in the absence of anything remotely like love, but he grows up under the burden of a memory fuelled by hate. Another ingredient in the mix that spells out murderer.

  ‘You were there. Is that how you know all this? You must have told Joseph.’ Her finger stabs at the air. ‘Who else knows?’

  Just then the living room door opens.

  ‘Yeah, who else knows, Carole?’ Joseph’s features are twisted with something beyond rage.

  Chapter 34

  Dogs are barking, people are shouting and feet are drumming as I chase McCall through the back gardens. The bastard is fast. And fit. I can hear his taunts.

  ‘Keep up, prick!’

  ‘Where’s that fuckin’ herd o’ elephants?’

  Each insult is punctuated with a hysterical, high-pitched giggle. He sounds like he’s got energy to spare, while I’m starting to tire. We’ve been running for what feels like hours, but is probably only thirty minutes. Here’s me thinking I was fit as well. But I’m running faster than normal and I have the added problem of anger. His shouts are really starting to piss me off. If I catch the bastard he’ll wish the nuns had forced his mother to abort.

  There’s no point in shouting back at him, it will just burst my lungs. I need to concentrate on where McCall is going. He’s not too far ahead of me. I can hear his feet and occasionally catch a glimpse of his head as he enters a nimbus of light from people’s kitchen windows and the odd streetlight that is still working. Here and there he turns to face me. Light catches on the blade of his cheekbones as he shouts back another insult.

  I’ve got to catch the fucker. Got to make him confess. Then I can get my life back.

  My legs are coping with the strain. My lungs are not so good. There’s an asthmatic pitch to every keenly gulped mouthful of air. Got to keep up. Got to. I’m willing the anger into my legs, pumping my arms and struggling to get enough air.

  Where’s he gone? I stop running and bend forward, hands on knees, fighting for oxygen and wondering where the bastard has gone. No sign of him. I fight to control my breathing so that I can hear something. Apart from the odd shout at dogs from owners, telling them to calm the fuck down, I can hear nothing.

  Fuck.

  Where will he be? This is his neighbourhood. I could wander around here forever and not see the bastard again. The best option would be to go back to Devlin’s. She is holding out on me. She knows stuff and by fuck she will tell me.

  When McCall came in the room, she put on a shabby piece of acting.

  ‘Joseph. What’re you doing here?’ She stood up, that ugly mouth of hers open in a supposedly innocent “O”. What was not feigned was the look of fear in her eyes. That was real. Meryl Streep would struggle with accuracy of emotion like that.

  I felt it myself as I looked at the young man. There was an aura about him, a look that spelled out nothing was beyond him, nothing could stop him and nothing mattered. It was written all over his stance, the way his black hair framed his face, and in his eyes. They were black, devoid of colour and hope.

  Looking into those eyes was like looking into the worst aspects of your own psyche, all the more difficult to bear because you couldn’t, wouldn’t accept it in yourself.

  He looked at me, his mouth open in a noiseless, humourless laugh.

  ‘Plod,’ he said. ‘You just don’t have a fuckin’ clue.’ Then he turned and ran out of the room like it was some kind of game.

  Maybe it is to him. But this is my life and no mad fucker is going to spoil it.

  Devlin’s back door is still open. I don’t bother knocking, I just go in. No point in observing the niceties now. Carole is in her usual perch, a lit cigarette gripped in her right hand.

  ‘Has he came back?’ I stand in front of her and look down.

  ‘Who?’ She bites a nail.

  ‘The fucking tooth fairy. Who do you think?’ Who. Woman or no, I’m about to pin her up against the wall and pull the information out of her. Along with a couple of teeth.

  ‘No.’ Her voice is barely audible.

  ‘Where will he go?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, Carole. You can do better than that.’ I bend further into her space.

  ‘I’m telling ye. I don’t know.’ She shrinks back into her chair and takes a defiant drag at her cigarette. I pull it from her mouth and throw it across the room.

  ‘That was fucking clever.’ She jumps from her chair and runs round the side of the coffee table to retrieve the cigarette. ‘You could have set the hoose on fire there. Wanker.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Carole. Where is the sick bastard?’

  ‘You still think he done it, don’t you?’ Her cigarette finds its way to her mouth again as she moves towards me. Anger pinches at her already thin lips.

  ‘I know he did it.’ My face is inches from hers.

  ‘You know fuck all,’ she sneers. ‘Always were a wee know-all, weren’t you, Ray? And a wee sook. Bowing and scraping to those nuns like that. Watching you used to make me sick.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Her barb cut deeper than I allowed to show.


  ‘Terrified so you were. Terrified. They nuns had you exactly where they wanted you.’

  ‘I was ten, ya stupid bitch. Of course I was terrified of the nuns.’ But she isn’t listening.

  ‘And I had to take you in hand. Get you the revenge you needed.’ Her eyes move to a spot above my head as she recalls events from the past. ‘’cept we got the wrong man. But it wasn’t our fault, was it? He always did it in the darkness and we…’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Revenge? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Joseph is doing all this for you and Frances. You turned him into the man he has become.’

  ‘Man? He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be. Some wee women in black were enough to have you cowering in your bed and pissing in your sheets. Until I showed you what to do. ’

  ‘Shut up, Carole.’ I try to force myself to calm down, but it’s like I’m ten again and these insults are intolerable. And the things she is alluding to, just too frightening. ‘Just shut the fuck up. You were hardly perfect yourself. Poor wee Frances having you for a pal. Saves you from Connelly and she gets raped for her troubles.’

  Her hand shoots out and catches me on the ear. Before I can formulate a response my arms have stretched out and she is lying at my feet. She stands up, face contorted with fury.

  ‘Ya cunt. Nae bastard hits me.’ She runs at me, her fist drawn back.

  Black.

  There is black.

  Then there is rage.

  Leaning on one elbow, I try to sit up. Opening my eyes can wait. Too painful. My head is so sore. There’s a wet patch at my arm and shoulder. I feel warm enough. So where has the liquid come from?

  I manage to sit up and lean forward. Beyond the shield of my eyelids a light is blaring. I have to open my eyes. Have to see where I am. I suck in some air, between my top teeth and bottom lip. Here goes. My eyes are open enough to let in a sliver of light.

  Okay. I’m still at Devlin’s. So why is nobody shouting at me? And how have I ended up lying on the floor?

  Pain at my right temple sends an extra surge to distinguish itself from the rest of what’s happening to my head. I send a hand to explore. There doesn’t appear to be any broken skin, but there is a lump that any self-respecting ostrich would like to model her eggs on.