‘Maybe we should phone them,’ the man muttered to Lucy.
‘I am one,’ she replied. ‘I’ll take him up to the hospital for a check-up, then get him home.’
‘I’m not going to the hospital,’ Gavin said, limping away from them. ‘I’ll walk home myself.’
‘I’ll drive you back at least, Gavin,’ Lucy said.
The boy turned to look at her, then looked around him, as if to see who was watching. ‘Me in a cop’s car? Not a fucking chance.’
Chapter Thirteen
In the end, after walking almost half a mile towards the residential unit with Lucy trailing him slowly in her car, Gavin gave in and agreed to be taken to Casualty. Lucy called Robbie, who was nearing the end of his shift in the unit and was waiting for his replacement for the evening shift. He suggested that if Lucy could take Gavin to A & E, he would come across and relieve her as soon as he was done.
The waiting area in Casualty was busy, though it was early enough in the evening that the habitual drunken injured hadn’t yet begun to seep in. A few obvious fracture injuries were waiting. A young man who had fallen through a pane-glass doorway was rushed through, the blood trailing behind him all the way in, despite his best efforts to stymie its flow from his arm.
Gavin sat sullenly next to Lucy, playing a game on his phone. He slouched low in the seat, his hood pulled up over his head.
Lucy glanced at the phone. ‘Do you play Angry Birds?’
Gavin answered without looking at her. ‘That’s ancient,’ he said.
‘That’s a nice phone. Is it new?’
His head twisted within the hood so she could only see his left eye, squinting suspiciously. ‘I didn’t steal it if that’s what you think.’
‘I didn’t think anything,’ Lucy said, though she was immediately reminded of the new phone Karen Hughes had been given.
‘Anyway, it’s not a phone. It’s an iPod Touch. My granda bought it for me.’
‘It’s nice.’
Gavin grunted in response, then resumed playing.
‘I was sorry about Karen.’
‘It’s shit,’ Gavin muttered. ‘She was nice. When I moved into care, like, she was good to me.’
‘Between your dad’s death and now Karen. I know she wasn’t family or that, but, you know ... it must have been a difficult few weeks for you.’
‘Me da was a useless bastard. No loss that he topped himself.’
Lucy said nothing, glancing across at the couple opposite who were watching them, perhaps attempting to work out how Lucy, in her late twenties, could have a son Gavin’s age.
‘He had issues,’ Gavin offered suddenly, making speech marks in the air with his fingers. ‘So the shrink told me.’
‘The shrink?’
‘They made me see one – a thingie. To talk about it.’
‘How’s that going?’
‘It’s a load of bollocks. She says that loads of men from the Troubles and that are killing themselves now. She says they have inter-somethinged their guilt and anger.’
‘Internalized.’
‘Aye, that’s it.’
The fingers stopped sliding over the screen. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked quietly. ‘I didn’t want to ask her in case she thought I was stupid.’
‘You’re not stupid.’
‘I didn’t say I was. I said I didn’t want to look it. There’s a difference, you know.’
Lucy ignored the comment. ‘It means when the Troubles were happening, people had places to direct their anger, to get rid of it. When it all ended, that anger didn’t go away too. It was still there, except a lot of people couldn’t get rid of it the way they used to.’
‘Like in riots and that.’
‘Aye. Or even just quietly supporting what was happening. Turning a blind eye to things. People can be complicit without doing anything.’
The boy didn’t speak and she knew she had lost him, though he wouldn’t admit such after the previous comment.
‘Anyway, whatever. It means that, because they can’t get rid of their anger – or guilt in your dad’s case – the way they used to, they turn it inward, on themselves.’
‘Like hurting themselves. Like Karen.’
Lucy was momentarily surprised that Karen had confided in Gavin about her self-harming. They’d not known one another long. Then again, they had been in the residential unit together, both let down by their families. The same boat.
‘Yes,’ Lucy said. ‘Like Karen.’
Gavin nodded.
‘Did Karen ever mention any boys to you? Anyone called Paul Bradley, maybe?’ Lucy asked. If she’d confided her harming to Gavin during the period when they had been in the care unit together, she might have mentioned the new boyfriend, if that was what Bradley had been to her.
The boy considered the name then shook his head. ‘I saw her once or twice with a fella. A bit older than her, short dark hair. That was it. She never mentioned him though. Never mentioned any names anyway. Is he a suspect?’
‘She met someone on Facebook. We’re not sure if the name’s real or not. It’s something we’re following up,’ Lucy said. ‘Speaking of following, why were that crew following you tonight?’
‘Maybe they had anger issues too.’ Gavin chuckled darkly to himself, then resumed the game again.
By the time Robbie arrived, Gavin was already being assessed by the doctor on duty. He’d removed his top to reveal a series of vivid bruises forming along his back and ribcage, a mixture of reds and purples. There were other, yellowed bruises too, healing already from earlier beatings.
‘It’s just scars on top of scars,’ the doctor said to them disgustedly after the assessment. ‘He has bruised his ribs, so I’m going to get some X-rays done. He has taken a few blows to the head, too, but no concussion. Maybe keep an eye on him tonight. Wake him a few times during the night to make sure he’s OK. We’ll get him back from the X-rays as soon as we can.’
Robbie and Lucy went back out to the waiting area again and Robbie bought them two coffees from the vending machine humming in the corner. It was the first time they had been alone together since Lucy had broken off their relationship a month earlier after hearing from one of the kids in the residential unit that Robbie had been seen kissing one of the other social workers at a Hallowe’en party. Robbie had tried to explain to her that the kiss had gone no further than that. To Lucy’s mind, a kiss was already too far. As she watched him approach, bearing two steaming polystyrene cups, she wondered, not for the first time, whether she had overreacted.
The first drunk had arrived and was declaiming to all those still waiting as to just why Christmas was so shite. He waited for fifteen minutes before announcing that he’d been kept too long, and so left. It was never clear to anyone else there what the nature of the injury that had brought him to A & E in the first place had been.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ Lucy said, sipping at it.
They sat for a moment, drinking in silence.
‘You don’t need to stay if you have somewhere to go,’ Robbie said.
‘I know,’ Lucy said.
Robbie nodded. ‘So, any plans for Christmas?’
‘Not yet. You?’
‘I’ll cover the day shift so that the workers with families can be at home with their own kids. Then in the evening I’ll probably head home to Omagh. My parents still like us all to come home for Christmas. We all muck in and make dinner. It’s always good fun. For an hour. Then you remember why you moved out.’
Lucy laughed lightly. ‘I don’t remember family Christmas’,’ she said. ‘I’ve vague recollections of Santa and that, but the one I remember clearly was when I was eight, just after Mum left. Dad decided I was old enough to be told the truth after he read my Santa letter that year.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d asked him to bring my mother back.’ Lucy glanced at Robbie, the expression of concern on his face, and smiled. ‘That was the last time I wanted that, mind you.’
&
nbsp; ‘Santa’s a bastard that way,’ Robbie said. “I always wanted Mousetrap, and he never brought that to me. That and a James Bond attaché case.’
Lucy laughed, then turned her attention to the polystyrene cup in her hands, tearing the rim and folding down the top of the cup.
Robbie nudged her and handed her a folded piece of paper.
‘What’s that?’ she asked. She took it, unfolded the page and found an address written on it.
‘You’d asked me where Mary Quigg’s baby brother, Joe, ended up. Before we ... you know. Before.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Thanks, Robbie,’ she said, refolding the page slowly and slipping it into her back pocket.
‘A token of my regret,’ Robbie said. ‘Over all that happened.’
‘And mine,’ Lucy added, though she suspected not referring to the same events as Robbie.
‘Nothing broken,’ Gavin said, interrupting them. They looked up to where he stood. ‘No bones at least,’ he added, looking from one of them to the other.
Tuesday 18 December
Chapter Fourteen
The following morning, Lucy drove into work via the Culmore Road. The note Robbie had given her sat open on the passenger seat. The address listed was in Petrie Way, a fairly affluent area of the city. Joe Quigg had been the only survivor of the fire that had killed Mary and her mother. With no family left, he would be placed with foster parents in the hope that someone might adopt him. Lucy had asked Robbie, while they had still been together, for details of the family with whom the baby had been placed. He’d refused then; it said something about the guilt he felt that he should give it to her now, she reflected.
The house in question was detached, two storeys, with a faux Tudor facade. A silver 4 X 4 was parked in the driveway, and, behind it, a smaller Ford. Lucy had intended to drive past, but when she reached the house, she found herself parking up on the kerb a little down the street from it, then twisting in her seat to better examine the place.
Just then, the front door opened and a man stepped out, dressed in a suit, clutching a plastic shopping bag which looked to contain his lunch. He was perhaps mid-thirties, Lucy thought. His wife appeared at the doorway, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. In her arms, she held an infant. Lucy felt her throat constrict as Joe lifted a small fist and reached out to the man, looking to be held. Joe had only been a baby the last time Lucy had seen him. He’d grown in a year. The man moved quickly towards him and embraced him, then turned away and climbed into the 4 X 4 while Joe cried and the woman shushed him, bouncing him lightly in her embrace.
As Lucy watched the woman and child retreat back inside their house, the husband passed her in his 4 X 4, staring in at her, as if realizing that she’d been watching his home.
Tom Fleming wasn’t in his office when she arrived nor had he left a note to say where he was. However, the phone was ringing in the main office and Lucy went in and answered it.
‘Can I speak to Tom Fleming, please?’ a young, female, English voice asked.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s not here.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Lucy repeated. ‘Can I help?’
‘This is Euro Security. Mr Fleming’s burglar alarm has registered an intruder. Are you a key holder?’
‘I’ll check on it,’ Lucy said, hanging up.
She was already on the dual carriageway towards Fleming’s house in Kilfennan when she reflected that she should, perhaps, have asked someone to accompany her, in case there actually were intruders in the house. She comforted herself with the thought that, if Fleming himself had been there, he’d have used his panic button. She decided to get as far as his address. If it appeared that there was a need for backup, she’d call for it then.
As she pulled into the street, her stomach constricted. Fleming’s car, still owned from his disqualification for drink driving, sat in the driveway, as she’d expected. The curtains in the windows of the house, however, were closed. She pulled up outside and went up the drive. The alarm continued to blare, the blue light on the box attached to the front of the house winking, as if against the morning breeze.
None of the windows or door to the front seemed disturbed, though all were curtained, including one across the front door. Lucy skirted the side of the house, climbing the low gate into the back yard. Again, the windows were shut and the back door locked. She peered in through the kitchen window, using her gloved hand to shield her eyes from the glared reflection on the glass.
The kitchen gave way onto the hallway to the immediate right of which climbed an open staircase. As Lucy squinted to see better, she thought she could make out something, at the far end of the hall, at the foot of the stairway. Shifting her position slightly for a better view, she caught clearer sight of it. Someone was lying at the foot of the stairs.
Taking out her phone, she called for an ambulance immediately. She hammered on the back door a number of times, leaning against the window and calling Fleming’s name, but the body did not move.
Finally, she hunted through the overgrown flowerbeds bordering the garden until she found a rock. Using it, she smashed the pane of glass in the back door and, reaching in, grateful for the protection of her work gloves, she unbolted the door and ran into the kitchen.
Tom Fleming was lying face down in the hallway, the lower half of his body still stretched up the staircase from where he had fallen. A pool of vomit haloed his head, sticking to his hair and skin. Lucy pulled off her gloves and placed her hand against his cheek. His skin was pale and clammy, his breath rank with sickness and alcohol.
‘Inspector Fleming,’ she said, shaking him. ‘Tom.’
He moaned, but did not rouse from his torpor. The ringing bell of the outer alarm had been replaced in here by an intense electronic tone that was pitched at such a level it made Lucy wince.
She slapped Fleming’s face lightly, all the time calling his name. Eventually, unable to rouse him that way, she went into the kitchen, filled a kettle with cold water, brought it back to the hallway and poured it on his face.
The effect was instantaneous. He jerked awake, staring around him blindly. He caught sight of Lucy standing above him and seemed to struggle to focus on her or place her in the context of his own home. He smacked his lips together dryly and looked as if he might speak. Then he twisted and vomited again onto the carpet, his back arching with each retch.
Lucy heard the wailing siren of the ambulance cut through the white noise of the alarm.
‘What’s the code for the alarm?’ she asked.
Fleming looked up at her, then turned to the floor once more as he dry-heaved. Finally he struggled to stand, seemingly not realizing that his feet were still on the stairs.
‘The alarm, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘What’s the code?’
‘One, two, three, four,’ he managed hoarsely.
So much for police officers being security conscious, Lucy thought.
Lucy had just managed to get the code entered and the alarm silenced when the blaring of the siren outside crescendoed, then stopped abruptly. She could see the flickering of the blue lights through the chink in the curtain over the front door. She pulled the curtain back, turned the key left in the lock and opened the door, flooding the stultifying atmosphere of the hallway both with light and fresh air.
‘Is there an officer down?’ the paramedic asked, stepping into the hallway and catching sight of Fleming at once.
‘I thought he was injured when I looked in from outside,’ Lucy explained. ‘I don’t think it’s quite as serious as I thought.’
The paramedic approached him. ‘Sir?’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
Fleming groaned and tried to shift himself again.
‘Is he pissed?’ the paramedic asked incredulously.
Lucy nodded, the gesture greeted by Fleming’s grumbles of disagreement.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought it was ... you know. I looked in and saw him lying there.’
‘We’ll give him a quick check over,’ the man said. ‘He might have injured himself in the fall.’ He shifted across to Fleming again. ‘We’re going to lift you, mate, all right?’
Fleming muttered something, but the man moved in and, gripping the drunk man under the armpits, hefted him to his feet.
‘Sit there a moment and I’ll get some help,’ he said as he helped Fleming to sit on the bottom step of the staircase.
Fleming slumped on the step, then leant sideways, against the wall. His face was pale, his stubble grey against his skin, flecked with his vomit.
‘Are you OK, Tom?’ Lucy said, stepping past the pool on the floor and laying one hand on his shoulder.
He stared at her accusingly. ‘What the hell did you call them for?’ he said.
Chapter Fifteen
She was making coffee for them both in Fleming’s kitchen when Tara Gallagher called. They’d had a hit on the metal thefts. Finn’s scrap metal yard had called to say that a team was offloading cabling at that moment. Finn, keen to avoid charges of handling stolen goods, had said that if the police were quick enough, they might catch them in the act.
Finn’s yard was on the outskirts of the city, past Ballyarnett, where Amelia Earhart had landed following her cross-Atlantic flight in 1932. The yard itself was a half-acre compound, enclosed on all sides by a metal palisade fence. A small portable unit from which the owner operated his business sat behind the front section of the fence, at the single gateway into the yard.
The PSNI teams had parked some distance away and were watching the gang as they moved to and fro, shifting metal from the rear of their white Transit van, which was parked on the roadway that bisected the yard.
To the left-hand side of the road, the skeletal remains of crushed cars sat atop each other, three high, six piles deep, against the palisade fence. The other half of the yard, to the right of the gang’s van, was comprised of piles of scrap metal and skips, some already filled, as best Lucy could tell. She could see four men moving backwards and forwards, removing scrap from the back of the van and depositing it in different piles and skips, perhaps in an attempt to mix the stolen metal more thoroughly with the legitimate scrap.
Someone You Know Page 6