Falling Suns

by J. A. Corrigan

  She got out her mobile and tapped it. ‘Tell you what, when I’m in need, I’ll get in touch with you, and you me. Deal?’

  ‘Deal,’ he took out another cigarette. ‘Promise you will?’

  ‘Promise.’

  She had texted him once since that time. The day after she went with Liam to identify Joe’s body.

  I might as well be dead. Nothing matters anymore.

  Her words had stayed with him. He needed to make a call to Marek Gorski in Poland. He had a hunch the Pole might know something; that, as Charlotte had suggested, Rachel might have gone to see him, or might have confided something to the solid, reliable and discreet surgeon.

  —

  Jonathan looked at the clock in his study. Four o’clock. 3 p.m. in Warsaw. He picked up the landline and punched in the numbers. It had been a long time since he’d spoken Polish. He’d spent six months there during the early 1990s investigating the strengthening rumours that the then President, Lech Wałęsa, had been a police informant during his time with Solidarity. He’d picked up the basics of the language easily.

  ‘Dobry wieczór.’

  ‘Hello,’ he said falteringly. He was rusty.

  ‘Jedna chwila, prosze.’

  The line crackled, and then was silent. He walked towards the study window, thinking whoever had picked up the phone had put it down again. Jonathan tapped his foot. Patience wasn’t something for which he was known.

  ‘Good evening, may I help you?’ The new voice was young and female, and spoke in unbroken English.

  ‘Yes, thank you. My Polish is adequate...’

  ‘I am sure it is. We have many people calling from the States and the UK. My English is good. How may I help you?’ she repeated.

  ‘My name is Jonathan Waters,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak to Doctor Gorski if he’s available. He knows me.’ Again the line was silent. ‘Hello – please – I’ll only take a moment of his time.’ More rustling down the line from Warsaw.

  ‘Jonathan? This is a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Hi, Marek.’ Now that he’d got hold of Marek he realised that he didn’t quite know what to say. ‘I wanted to ask you about Rachel.’

  A movement of the phone in Poland again. ‘How can I help you, Jonathan?’

  ‘I’m trying to locate Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel Dune? Why on earth are you calling me?’

  Jonathan cleared his throat. ‘She’s gone missing...’

  ‘Missing? She’s gone on holiday.’

  ‘So you have spoken to her recently?’

  Jonathan heard a sigh.

  ‘She emailed me,’ Marek said. ‘I haven’t seen Rachel since I left for Poland. I know she’s been having a bad time; it was a terrible thing that happened to Joe. I’m sorry but I can’t help you.’ Jonathan heard Marek’s deep breaths from a thousand miles away. ‘Jonathan, leave her alone.’

  Marek knew something.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Maybe you should speak with Liam, or Charlotte?’

  ‘I have. They think what you think.’

  ‘It was a horrendous thing that happened. You know this. Leave her alone. Let her find peace.’

  ‘Someone must know where she is. You were close to her.’

  ‘You were close to her, too. Look, I have no idea where she is, and to be perfectly honest I don’t understand why you think I would know.’ Jonathan heard hesitance in his otherwise confident voice. ‘She was a colleague and a friend. A strong lady.’

  ‘A devastated lady, I’d say,’ Jonathan replied quietly.

  ‘As I have said, I am not in contact with Rachel.’

  ‘Are you aware that Joe’s murderer is earmarked for his first tribunal review? That there’s a high possibility that he may be sent to a step-down unit?’

  ‘I know nothing about that. Why would I? I do not question the law and legislation of your country. It is not my place. Look, Rachel has obviously gone somewhere to find tranquillity. It’s the sensible thing to do. Any mother would do the same in her position.’

  ‘Come on, you know as well as me she’s not that type of woman. The type to look for tranquillity. Anyway, why not before? Why now?’ Jonathan thought he knew why and now suspected Marek did, too.

  ‘Perhaps she isn’t who she once was – events like this change people.’

  ‘I’m worried for her.’

  ‘I have to go. I have patients I need to check on. I can’t help you. I do not know why you are calling me. Goodbye, Jonathan.’

  Marek put the phone down.

  Something was very wrong. Fuck. Maybe he was reading things that weren’t on the page. Maybe he was desperate. Jonathan felt desperate. Perhaps Marek was right and Rachel had gone somewhere to be peaceful. But then, Jonathan saw her eyes looking at him the last time they’d met and he felt himself filling with dread. He understood her. Jonathan paced again towards the small window and peered out.

  Rachel was not relaxing in some unknown destination.

  He thought of her during the trial: her blonde hair greasy, and tied into an uncharacteristic and untidy ponytail with a rubber band. Sleepless nights etched onto her once fine, smooth features. He’d asked the question the newspaper readers would want him to ask; and then immediately regretted it. How do you feel about the sentence, Rachel? It was an inane question. The worst question he’d ever asked.

  She’d looked at him, her prominent chin jutting out, her shoulders slumped and sunken. He’s practically got away with it, hasn’t he?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jonathan retained a fondness for old-fashioned paper notes. He pulled out all the files he had on Joe’s case, the small amount of info he had on Margaret Hemmings, and his investigations into Littleworth, while at the same time scanning the notes on his whiteboard.

  He got to work on the computer. He needed to find out the names of all Marek’s staff, plus those of the patients who’d checked into his clinic over the past three months. Marek’s system was easy to access. He went into the clinic’s appointment diary: no Rachel Dune. Nothing. He sat back in the chair.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Marek was smart; he wouldn’t put in Rachel’s real name. He studied the diary entries in more detail, starting again at the beginning of the previous December. Two letters caught his attention on 8th January. He worked quickly; his eyes didn’t leave the screen; his fingers moving over the keyboard like a spider. M.A. An acronym? Jonathan guessed it meant something.

  Rachel had stayed with Charlotte over Christmas, and he’d emailed around then asking again if she wanted to meet up in London soon after the festive season. She’d replied with a very polite but firm no. She’d also told him she was going away for a while; a week or so, she’d said. He checked his inbox. That was 28th December.

  Jonathan went on to verify who worked at Marek’s clinic. He had three full-time nurses: Malina Król, Cecylia Piotrowski and Irina Nowicki. There was one receptionist and the occasional med student, often from London. He opened a drawer, pulling out the screen-cloth, and absentmindedly cleaned the computer. Then he went on to find the histories of the clinic’s employees, their addresses, ages, backgrounds. He might need the information, and subconsciously thanked fate for giving him the chance to learn some Polish all those years ago.

  The pulse in his neck throbbed; the adrenaline began to flow, endorphins exploding through his body. He loved his job. His real job: finding out, investigating.

  He clicked on and eventually found what he was looking for. The clinic’s itemised phone bill; he looked as far back as last October. No calls registered from Rachel’s home phone to the clinic or vice versa, but one call from the clinic to Charlotte’s Birmingham number ... on the 28th December. Rachel had spoken with Marek. He looked at the diary once more, but again could find no sign of Rachel. The initials M.A. kept jumping out at him. He spent an hour getting back into Marek’s personal diary. Marek was online, and live now, but Jonathan found nothing, o
nly, and he smiled, a note by Marek that he, Jonathan, had called.

  Then he stopped. At the top of Marek’s personal diary was a name. Amanda McCarthy. Was this Marek’s girlfriend? Was the M.A., perhaps Amanda McCarthy the other way around? He didn’t know, but he stored the possibility in his mind. Best place – no one could hack that – not easily, anyway.

  Jonathan clicked on another window and studied the list of patients booked in over the period just after Christmas. None had the initials M.A. or A.M. And none were British. There were four Polish names, three Indian, one Russian and, in the same column, just an asterisk and ‘U.S.’. Another acronym, thought Jonathan. Fuck knows what that meant. He attempted to think laterally in the small amount of Polish he knew, which obviously wasn’t enough. Think, Jonathan, think. All the info’s here, you’ve just got to find it. Harry had taught him a lot, but the most important thing he’d ever taught Jonathan was that if you looked hard enough, there was clue to every puzzle somewhere. Harry should have been a copper, not an editor, and Jonathan smiled to himself at the thought.

  He studied the files and data well into the night, then had a shower and tried to go to sleep. He couldn’t, and, after an hour, got out of bed and started to compose some emails. He sent off a few phrases to a Polish correspondent friend to translate, to which he replied quickly and helpfully. It wasn’t only Jonathan who couldn’t sleep. He was notching up drinks owed.

  His mind still too active, he decided to use the time to follow up on his Margaret Hemmings’ investigations, something he’d planned to put on hold. He was on a roll.

  Fortuitously and in the middle of the night (were all journos night-owls?) an email came in from Barry Haslop who’d been digging into Margaret’s past, and looking into the school at which Margaret Hemmings had taught. The email struck the journalist in Jonathan as interesting, but to Rachel’s friend, Jonathan, as sinister. He was absorbed for twenty minutes.

  In the mid-1950s, Margaret had been a primary school teacher at a private boys’ school. She had resigned her job under much speculation in 1955. The official line was that she left to have her own children.

  Several years after she left the school, the complaints began to trickle in. Perhaps the more open-minded 1960s made it easier for the boys to speak out. It began with a boy who was picked up for shoplifting. He was from a stable, affluent family. His parents sent him to see a child psychologist and that was when the first allegation came to light. It was followed by several more. The accusations were that Margaret Hemmings had been interfering with the boys in her care, responsible for both sexual and physical abuse. One boy claimed that she had trapped his ankle in a classroom door after he had threatened to tell the headmaster what she had done to him. It had been a ‘severe compound fracture of the distal tibia’, the medical notes indicated.

  The school was expensive and exclusive, with a reputation to maintain. The claims were hushed up. God knows how they managed that, Jonathan ruminated, but of course he knew how. At that time, there was still a widespread unease about questioning the establishment or authority. Children’s stories were not taken seriously – or not seriously enough, to risk destroying the reputation of valued institutions: as true for a school as for the church or government.

  Even the parents were reluctant to pursue anything. Sometimes the parents didn’t believe what their children said had happened to them, or didn’t want to believe. That they had chosen a school and paid massive fees for the privilege of sending their child there, only to find out that the young English teacher was interfering with their investment, didn’t sit easily with them.

  Rachel had been born in 1963, and Alan Hemmings turned a blind eye regarding the rumours about his wife. Jonathan was unsure if he felt pity for Alan Hemmings or anger towards him. Probably a little of both.

  He studied the email and attachments again. In all likelihood Margaret Hemmings was a paedophile, and, as with many paedophiles, her nearest and dearest suspected nothing.

  Had something happened between Margaret and Michael Hemmings? Surely Hemmings would have said something? Someone would have known. Bridget? Sam? Was that what he hadn’t found out from the couple?

  And what about Rachel? He was certain nothing had happened to Rachel. Maybe Margaret had sought help, and that’s why Rachel hadn’t been on the receiving end of Margaret Hemmings’ perversions.

  Jonathan moved back to the computer he used for his more clandestine investigations. He spent twenty minutes getting back into Marek’s system. There must be something. He looked again through the clinic diaries. The M.A. hit him again. Back to Marek’s personal diary. Amanda McCarthy stared out at him. And then he saw it.

  ‘R to go to Malina’s’, he thought it said, but didn’t trust his Polish. He pulled out his Polish dictionary. To go. Yes, he was right.

  He clicked out of there and went back into the information on his staff that Marek kept in a separate file. Malina Król. Jonathan sat back in his chair; he didn’t want to have to go to Poland but, if he was going to do this properly, he must. And not to see Marek, but to visit his nurse, Malina.

  —

  Malina Król’s parents, Maria and Stanislaw, lived on Dluga Street in a very smart part of Gdańsk. Jonathan clambered from the taxi. He knew that when Malina was on leave from Marek’s clinic she lived with her parents, who looked after her seven-year-old son, Kacper.

  A few linear clouds hung motionless in the sky; the wind that had blown at Warsaw’s Chopin airport had died down. Jonathan spotted an ornate bench and sat down, retrieving notes from his computer satchel.

  Jonathan looked along the opulent row of houses across the street for number eighty-six. Many of the buildings housed shops or restaurants on the lower level, and all were painted in different colours: happy pinks, pastel greens, sky blues. The tops of the buildings were prettily gabled. He rose from the bench and walked. As he neared the property the houses lost the restaurants, the shops, and became regular homes.

  Eighty-six sat at the south end of Dluga, in its full historical glory. But the buzzer was modern. Jonathan pressed it and waited a few minutes. No answer. He pressed it again. Still no answer.

  ‘Moge pomac?’

  He turned quickly. A woman stood with a boy who must be her son. She had dark brown, glossy hair, which fell over her shoulders like a silk curtain, and violet-coloured eyes. The boy was nearly as tall as his mother, like a male replica, and just as striking. Both wore slim-fitting trousers that showed off their long, toned limbs. It had to be Malina.

  ‘Dzien dobry Czy mowisz po angielsk?’ he asked hesitantly.

  ‘I do, but not well. You looking for my parents? They away, be back in few days.’

  ‘Are you Malina?’

  She nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Actually, it was you I was looking for.’

  Malina said something to the boy, who smiled at Jonathan before running up the two steps that separated them, pulling a key from his pocket and letting himself into the elegant house.

  ‘Nice-looking boy you have,’ Jonathan said.

  She smiled politely but suspiciously. ‘Thank you.’

  Jonathan felt some awkwardness. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say regarding the boy. She had no idea who he was. He pulled his journalist’s ID from his wallet, together with his passport. ‘I’d like to talk to you about your job in Warsaw.’

  The semi-smile she’d worn up until this point dropped from her face. ‘Is there problem?’

  The boy appeared again and said something to his mother; Jonathan roughly translated it as something about not wanting to stay in the house. She smiled at him indulgently and he remained by her side.

  Jonathan grinned at the boy. ‘No, no, there’s no problem with anything,’ he said. ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions. Would it be OK if I came in? It won’t take long.’

  She took on the appearance of a scared rabbit, placed her arm around her son’s shoulders. She scanned the street, pulling at the curtain of hair. ‘Co
me, Kacper comes with us, we go across street, sit on the bench and talk?’ she said.

  ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten minutes, OK?’

  Jonathan wasn’t certain why she’d agreed. He didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. The woman standing facing him now, with hesitance and slight confusion etched on her face, reminded him of Rachel, reminding him why he had flown a thousand miles to be here.

  The three of them sat on the bench.

  ‘Why you here?’ she asked quietly.

  Jonathan looked at the boy and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No secrets between my son and I.’

  ‘How well do you know Doctor Gorski?’

  ‘I’ve known him long time. Was my lecturer at medical school; before Kacper.’

  ‘You were a med undergraduate.’ It wasn’t a question; he knew a fair bit about Malina.

  ‘Yes, Doctor Gorski was our anatomy lecturer. Then I left to have Kacper, and Doctor Gorski gave me job in clinic so I could save up to finish medical training.’ She seemed to have gained some confidence. ‘What do you want?’ She peered at him.

  ‘Malina. Is it OK if I call you Malina?’

  She nodded.

  Jonathan continued. ‘Five years ago a little boy went missing in the UK. He was around the same age that Kacper is now. He was missing for nearly a week before they found both the man who had taken him – and the boy’s body.’

  Malina’s violet eyes widened, but the rest of her face remained expressionless. ‘What does this have to do with me?’ She looked anxiously at Kacper, who was listening to every word. ‘What the little boy’s name?’

  ‘Joe.’

  ‘Carry on,’ she said.

  ‘The mother of the boy disappeared at the beginning of this year.’ Jonathan wondered now what else to reveal. ‘She was friendly with Doctor Gorski...’

  ‘What you saying?’

  Jonathan turned to face her. ‘The boy, it’s nothing to do with Gorski – we know he’s a good man.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Jonathan had found the photo of Rachel in his rucksack. ‘Do you recognise this lady?’