Falling Suns

by J. A. Corrigan

  ‘It’s good of you to meet me,’ Jonathan said.

  Alan seemed to study Jonathan. ‘Rachel likes you.’ He paused. ‘A lot, I think.’

  ‘The feeling’s mutual. We go back a fair way.’

  ‘It’s nice to get out the house.’ Alan paused again. ‘If you know what I mean?’

  ‘You not working?’

  ‘Finally retired. Should have done years ago.’

  ‘Enjoying it?’ Jonathan thought not.

  ‘It’s a new thing, only decided just before Christmas.’

  ‘You need a hobby.’

  ‘I do.’ He rubbed thin, chiffony hands together as if he were attempting to get rid of something. ‘Get out from underneath Margaret’s feet.’ He put his juice on the table, his hand shaking a little, and the liquid flowed over the edge. ‘I didn’t tell Margaret I was meeting you. Are you here to ask about Michael? I know about the tribunal review, his whistleblowing. Rachel told me last time I saw her. Are you after a story? About us? Michael?’ He faltered. ‘Rachel said you wouldn’t bother us ... or her. But you’re here?’

  ‘Why did you agree to come if that’s what you thought?’

  ‘Because I know Rachel trusts you.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Just before Christmas, after she resigned her job.’

  ‘Were you surprised she resigned?’

  ‘I was, yes. I knew she was enjoying being back.’ He paused, trying to stop rubbing his hands, and placed them underneath his thighs. ‘As much as she can enjoy anything.’

  ‘I guess she told you she was going away: no phone, no computer.’

  ‘Yes, she did tell me.’

  ‘She’s still away. It was seven weeks ago. Have you heard from her?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, but...’

  ‘What?’

  Alan shuffled forwards in his chair, skinny knees falling outwards. ‘Unsure if she will call me ... to be honest.’

  ‘You two are close. Why wouldn’t she get in touch with you?’

  ‘We’ve drifted.’ He stopped talking, his eyes moving towards the flames of the fire.

  Jonathan sensed the reason Alan had agreed to meet him was to talk. Even if it was to a journalist. He wondered if Alan Hemmings had any friends. He wondered what his life was like with Margaret. Jonathan didn’t like to imagine being married to Margaret. In fact, the thought even flashed through his mind that having no parents might be a good thing.

  That wasn’t true, though. He had been only seven when his mum and dad had been killed, but still he softened into an unbearable melancholy at the smell of lily of the valley and the sound of Match of the Day, both reminding him of childhood, home and his parents. Their deaths had changed his destiny. He knew that as surely as he knew that Rachel was in trouble. Their sudden deaths had sensitised him to the world and to other people. It’s what set him apart from most journalists. Harry had told him that one night a few months after he’d joined the paper. Jonathan had a stronger than average sense of people’s lives, their motivations, and he was able to translate his understanding concisely and entertainingly into rounded articles.

  ‘Since Joe, things have been difficult between you and Rachel?’ he said. ‘Why, Alan?’

  ‘You were there. The Michael thing. I wanted to tell Rachel years ago but Margaret didn’t want me to, so I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t want to upset Margaret?’

  ‘No.’ He watched Jonathan, the rims of his eyes red, his jaw hanging in desolation. ‘I never wanted to upset Margaret, at the expense of my daughter’s happiness, often. I regret that now, but it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s never too late.’

  Alan seemed not to hear. ‘She didn’t want to marry me. No idea why she did. I was so grateful. I adored her. So clever. So together. Not like me.’ He took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I was child number one of the family. The first born...’

  Jonathan shrugged a question.

  ‘Number three died in a river accident. Left Sam and I. Sam was the middle brother, and not the one who’d been at the river and failed to save our younger brother.’ He seemed to choke. ‘That was me.’

  Jonathan was unsure how to answer and felt as if Alan didn’t need a response. He only needed to make a confession. ‘What do you mean, Alan?’ he said gently. “‘At the expense of my daughter’s happiness?’”

  ‘Margaret was never a great mother to Rachel. I knew she missed Michael. Truth was, we thought we couldn’t have a child, and by the time she got pregnant with Rachel, I don’t think she wanted one. I knew that she missed having an older boy around. I stuck up too much for Margaret, I did. With too many things, too many things I didn’t question. I didn’t want her to leave me. Did as much as I could to make Rachel’s life nice but she knew, Rachel knew. God knows what I’ve done.’

  ‘What did Rachel know?’

  ‘That Margaret sometimes did things in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘You haven’t finished your drink. Did Margaret ever hurt Rachel?’

  Alan sank back into the chair, crossed his legs, his arms. Completely defensive body language. ‘Not purposely, never deliberately.’

  ‘Does Margaret have a temper?’

  ‘She does, always has.’

  ‘And what about Joe? How was she with Joe?’

  ‘Rachel would only allow Joe to stay if I was around and, as you picked up, I wasn’t around the day Michael came to visit.’ He looked at Jonathan. ‘I shouldn’t have gone into work that day. I let Rachel down.’

  Many things were becoming clearer to Jonathan. ‘Rachel needs you more now than ever before.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’ Alan asked.

  ‘No, that’s why I’m here. No one else seems to be worried about her.’ He paused. ‘Including you.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to her.’

  ‘I’d like to know where she is.’

  Alan lumbered up. ‘Do you have any ideas about where she might be?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Call me when you know something.’ Alan Hemmings seemed sure that Jonathan would find her.

  ‘I will definitely do that, Alan.’ Jonathan looked up and met his eyes.

  ‘I do need to go. Margaret will be wondering where I am.’

  Alan Hemmings looked completely defeated.

  ‘I’ll find her. And Alan, you and Rachel should try and talk. It’ll help both of you.’

  ‘Yes, I will, and it would.’ He hesitated and peered at Jonathan. ‘When you find her, tell her I’m sorry.’ And then the older man stumbled towards the door to return to his wife.

  Jonathan stared at Alan’s half-empty glass. He took it to the bar and placed it on the counter, watching as the sediment of the drink finally settled.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ the barman said. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘A pint please,’ Jonathan said, ‘and a packet of cheese and onion if you have them.’

  He sat down heavily on the barstool.

  The barman put the pint and the crisps in front of him. ‘Looks like you could do with something stronger, mate.’

  Jonathan smiled thinly. ‘Later, maybe.’

  He thought about Margaret, Alan, Bridget and Sam. He needed to chase up the ferreting on Margaret Hemmings.

  He also needed some time off work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Harry Broomsgrove, Jonathan’s boss, mentor, sometimes tormentor and best friend, summoned Jonathan as soon as he’d aimed his jacket towards his worn office chair. Jonathan’s designer scruffy denim caught the edge perfectly. Marie, who sat two spaces away, clapped. She clapped every time. Broomsgrove scuttled quickly back to his office.

  ‘Better not keep him waiting, the beast’s in a foul mood,’ Marie said.

  ‘Worse than usual?’

  ‘Much worse.’

  Jonathan clicked on h
is computer, checked his emails and then walked nonchalantly through the main office area, speeding up when he knew Maria could no longer see him.

  He stood outside Harry’s door, took a breath, knocked and entered. The room was stuffy, smelling of stale garlic and cheap aftershave. Jonathan clocked the bottle still sitting on Harry’s desk. The window was closed. He’d never seen it open, nor had he ever known Harry to flick on the air con.

  ‘Ah, Jonathan. Got your request for annual leave. Four weeks? That’s not annual leave, that’s resigning.’

  ‘I never take all my leave. I need some time out – I’ve been working like a dog since Christmas.’

  ‘I know you don’t and I’m sure you have.’ He gave Jonathan that look: the look that said stop fucking with me. ‘And why do you want time off?’

  ‘Personal stuff.’

  ‘Not got anything to do with Rachel Dune, has it?’

  God knows where Harry got his information. Jonathan didn’t answer.

  Harry carried on, ‘Got a call from Tom Gillespie. Said you’d been asking questions and he wasn’t happy.’ He shuffled in his chair. ‘Leave it, unless there’s a story. The Littleworth story was a storm in a teacup, legislation from the Home Office wrapping it up so tightly it went unnoticed; but that’s not your fault, or mine. You did a good job on the Sam and Bridget interview.’

  ‘You didn’t publish it,’ Jonathan said petulantly.

  ‘No point. The big cover-up of Littleworth made it a bit of a damp squib, though the corruption thing should have blown by now, but it hasn’t, and we can’t touch it. You know the score.’

  ‘There’s still a story. Give me some time to get it. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘There’d better be a story somewhere, about someone, Jonathan.’ Harry’s voice softened.

  ‘There will be.’ He thought about Toby Abbs and Doctor Patterson; there was more than enough story there for Harry.

  —

  As Jonathan stepped out onto the grimy Farringdon Road pavement he felt a sense of freedom. Now he could find out where Rachel had gone. After speaking to Alan Hemmings, he’d called Liam who said he hadn’t spoken to Rachel since before Christmas. Far from worried about his ex-wife ‘disappearing’, he seemed almost relieved.

  He crossed the street. It was lunchtime and, despite the cold and rain, people were out in droves. He’d made an appointment to see Rachel’s old colleague and enemy, William Morley, at his flat in Lambeth, where he’d moved after ‘retiring’.

  He’d called Morley late in the day to arrange the meeting, and Morley had found it hard to hide the slur of his words; it was clear he was already on his way to being completely sloshed. Jonathan had made sure that the meeting took place earlier than the phone call.

  He approached a line of Georgian houses, now conversions. Morley lived in the basement flat. He had to walk past the kitchen window to get to the front door. The basement was littered and in disrepair – a bit like Morley.

  Before he had time to knock, Morley answered the door.

  ‘On time, you bugger.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ Jonathan watched him gulp down something from a mug which didn’t look like tea.

  ‘Come in. Haven’t got long. Taking my granddaughter out later.’

  Jonathan could smell the whisky. ‘Would take it easy with that then, if I were you.’

  ‘You trying to piss me off before we’ve started? Come in. I’ve got exactly half an hour.’

  Jonathan followed Morley through the tiny hallway to the kitchen. He was a tall man. His crumpled trousers hung from emaciated hips. His grey hair was too long but he possessed a full head of it. The skin on his face was leathered; the lines on his expansive forehead deep and numerous, criss-crossing at the centre of his brow.

  The kitchen was surprisingly neat. Morley poured hot water over a teabag, squashed the bag against the side of the mug and added milk. He shoved it into Jonathan’s hands. Jonathan didn’t bother telling him that he took sugar, three in fact. He took a sip. It tasted shit.

  ‘So you want me to tell you something about Rachel Dune, you said on the phone?’ He eyed Jonathan up. ‘You know her better than me, Waters. There was gossip all over the place during the Asian-bride case. What do you want to know?’

  Jonathan ignored the inference. ‘You worked alongside her for quite a few years.’

  ‘Yeah, and if it weren’t for Rachel Dune, the bitch, I’d still be working.’

  ‘She tried to keep you in the force. It was your fault that you got the heave. You were the one taking bribes –’

  ‘Fuck you, Waters. Everyone’s at it.’ Morley snorted. ‘She was as dodgy as me. We all knew she bent the rules to get the Asian fucker who poured acid on his wife’s face. And, before that, the stuff that went down with Colin Masson. She got away with all of it. Unbelievable.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any of that,’ Jonathan lied.

  ‘Don’t want to know, more like? She’s hard and cold is Rachel Dune. Look, I have two grandchildren. I love kids. What happened to Joe was fucking terrible. And I wouldn’t want that to happen to my worst enemy. Why have you come to see me? What do you want to know?’

  ‘You worked with her, and, despite your ... dislike for her, you probably knew her better than many people, in a way.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her husband? Because I’m thinking you’re here because she’s gone. Liam’ll know where she is.’

  ‘I don’t think he does. Anyway, he’s not her husband any more...’

  ‘You pleased about that then, Waters? That why you want to find her?’ He grinned. ‘Still getting hard-ons for Rachel Dune?’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about me.’

  ‘I know they’re divorced.’ Morley sat down heavily on a flimsy kitchen stool. ‘Too burdened with grief they were, too burdened to help each other. It’s tragic. Fucking life’s tragic, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Profound for you, Morley. Must be the whisky.’

  ‘You know about Michael Hemmings and the planned trib reviews at Littleworth, don’t you?’

  ‘Course,’ Jonathan replied quietly.

  ‘That’ll really piss Rachel Dune off. But you already know that, don’t you, that’s why you’re interested.’ Morley, forgetting or not caring, pulled out the whisky bottle from a cupboard and refilled his mug. ‘I’ll tell you what I think you want to know. I worked with Rachel Dune for years. She’s harder than any of the blokes I worked alongside. Cool, intelligent and focused. Basically, unforgiving.’ He paused. ‘And these days, probably unbalanced.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘She’s a dark horse. Joe’s death sent her towards an edge that she’s lived close to all of her life. Tell you what, though, if I were the bastard who killed her son, I’d be watching my back.’

  Despite Morley’s obvious vitriol towards Rachel, he understood her personality and Jonathan took him seriously. Unbalanced? Perhaps, but she was also just, fair and empathetic with those who’d been dealt a rough hand in life. Jonathan listened but could not agree.

  Morley carried on talking about Rachel, begrudgingly admitting she was a superb detective, cutting no slack. It was this that had led Morley towards the disciplinary hearing, and his voluntary early retirement. He blamed Rachel.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Waters. He gulped the whisky down in one. ‘But I’m telling you, Rachel Dune has not gone away to find peace.’

  —

  Using the walk to the nearest Tube station to think, Jonathan tried to imagine himself in Rachel’s shoes. Since Joe’s death she’d immersed herself in work, she’d divorced Liam, and she was, it seemed, alienating herself from everyone, including her dad. Even Charlotte saw little of her. And Rachel was avoiding him, too. He knew she was, and his pride had been hurt. Now it was healing with the thought that there was a reason. Her anger that Hemmings had been sent to a psych hospital instead of a mainstream prison, where he would have had the shit kicked out of him, had never left her. And that anger
and sense of injustice – now the possibility loomed that Hemmings might be released from there – was pushing her somewhere. Hemmings was only a few steps away from a type of freedom. A freedom that Joe would never have.

  Jonathan now had a strong idea of what she might be doing.

  He had been there and spoken to her soon after Joe’s body was found. He’d seen her grief and then watched as it had turned into anger aimed at Michael Hemmings. The worm of emotion running through Rachel Dune burrowed deep, into her depths. Jonathan saw it. And it was seeing this which drove him.

  The night he’d fallen in love with her was still clear and bright. It was before he’d met Michelle, but Rachel was married, so he’d kept his feelings buried. But now she wasn’t and neither was he. They had gone to the pub after a long day with Sorojani Jain, and it had been the only time he’d seen Rachel slightly inebriated. But rather than tipsiness leading to revelations about her life, it had been him who’d spilled his gut. He told Rachel everything about his childhood: his loneliness and isolation in his great-aunt and uncle’s home in Scotland.

  Rachel had listened, saying little. Not until they shared an illicit cigarette much later did she tell him about herself. It hadn’t seemed that bad to Jonathan, but it was clear the relationship with her mother was not good. Now he was starting to suspect that her childhood had been much worse than his.

  She had gone into no more detail about her past. Stubbing out the cigarette, she’d laughed and he remembered clearly what she’d said.

  ‘Might be me though, eh, Jonathan? Maybe I’m just a bad daughter, a bad member of the family. My dad thinks that, I know he does. Anyway, we’re all alone, aren’t we, really?’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ he’d replied. ‘I’d always be there for you, Rachel.’