The Undivided

by Jennifer Fallon; Jennifer Fallon

  He took a deep breath. Maybe it would be better if he cooperated. Or at least gave the appearance of doing so. Although he’d been warned — more times than he could count — to say nothing if he was arrested again, he decided to ignore the advice.

  ‘We just wanted somewhere quiet to hang out. We found the warehouse —’ he started.

  ‘You broke into the warehouse,’ the officer corrected.

  ‘Not us,’ Ren said, trying to look innocent. ‘Someone else must have busted that door, officer. We found it like that.’

  ‘Yeah … right,’ the officer said, shaking his head. ‘Why do you keep saying “we”?’

  ‘I meant me and Trása.’

  The cop stared at him blankly. ‘Who?’

  ‘My friend. The girl they arrested with me.’

  He looked at Ren oddly. ‘Are you on drugs, kid?’

  ‘No.’ Ren started to worry. ‘What happened to Trása?’

  The officer shook his head. ‘There is no Trása,’ he said. ‘They picked you up alone, Kavanaugh. There was nobody else in that warehouse. Everything that happened today you did all on your lonesome.’

  ‘That’s not true. Trása was there …’

  The officer shook his head, as if he’d heard it all before. ‘It’s a bit late to start working on your insanity plea,’ he said, ‘by inventing an imaginary friend.’

  ‘This is bullshit!’ Ren cried, wishing now he’d asked for the cuffs to be taken off, so he could shake some reason into this man. The police were playing games with him, he was certain. Trying to rattle his cage to get a confession out of him for something he knew nothing about.

  ‘There was no girl,’ the officer insisted.

  ‘She was there! Right beside me! She’s about five six. She’s pretty … really pretty. With incredibly long blonde hair. She was wearing jeans and a blue tank top. They put her in the other car. What have you done with her? You’d better not have hurt her!’

  ‘I see.’ The officer was studying him with a strange expression. ‘Who do you claim she is?’

  ‘Her name’s Trása,’ Ren told him, realising he didn’t even know her last name. ‘She’s Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter.’

  ‘Really?’ The officer leant back in his chair, smiling like he’d just won the lottery. ‘Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter? That crazy old terrorist-turned-media-whore who lives next door to you? Are you serious?’

  ‘No … I’m making it up because I think it’s cute,’ Ren snapped. ‘Of course I’m fucking serious!’

  ‘Watch your mouth, Kavanaugh.’

  ‘Then stop trying to fuck me about. What have you done with her?’

  ‘Jack O’Righin doesn’t have a granddaughter,’ the officer said flatly. ‘His wife and three daughters were murdered in the Troubles up north long before you and I were even born. Do your homework, smart-arse, before you go making up bullshit that won’t hold up to even the most cursory examination.’

  ‘I’m not making this up! Christ, the cop who took my statement after Hayley’s accident took one from her, too. She was going to bring it to the house.’

  The detective consulted his file for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No mention of her here.’

  Ren slumped back in his chair. He didn’t understand what was going on. He thought they were just messing with his head, but the officer genuinely seemed to believe Ren was arrested alone.

  But Ren had seen Trása in cuffs. He’d watched them loading her into a patrol car.

  ‘Is there any chance they took her somewhere else? To another station, maybe, or —’

  ‘For chrissakes, give it up, will you?’ the officer snapped. ‘There is no girl, there was no girl, and if you have any brains at all, Kavanaugh, you’ll do a deal with us to give up O’Hara’s cocaine operation tonight, so we can all get out of here before morning.’

  Ren shook his head helplessly. ‘I have no idea who you’re talking about.’

  The officer laughed sceptically. ‘So … you were just driving around in a stolen car with your imaginary friend, seeing how the other half live, I suppose, and Dominic O’Hara just happened to pull up with a carload of cocaine?’

  ‘That’s exactly what happened, officer. I even called it in. Check my phone. Better yet, check your records with the nine-nine-nine call centre. I was the one who made the call.’ Then he added as an afterthought, ‘And I didn’t steal the car. I borrowed it from my mother’s manager.’ Picking up the keys off the counter in the kitchen while Jon was in the study with his mother didn’t make it stealing, Ren reasoned. After all, he was planning to return the car.

  ‘Yeah,’ the officer said, glancing down at the file. ‘Funny … borrowed is not the word he used when he reported it missing.’

  Bastard.

  The door to the interview room opened and an older female cop walked in before he could be asked any more questions. She was accompanied by a very sleekly groomed, mid-thirtyish woman in a business suit, who Ren knew all too well. Eunice Ravenel, his mother’s lawyer — she was usually dispatched to deal with the Ren problem.

  ‘My client has nothing more to say,’ Eunice announced in her clipped and perfectly correct Swedish accent. She glared at Ren as she slammed her briefcase onto the metal table. Ren wasn’t sure why, but she always slammed her briefcase down. Maybe she liked the noise it made. More likely she enjoyed the idea of seeing cops — every one of whom she was certain was either corrupt or incompetent — jump.

  The officer who’d been interviewing Ren looked at his boss. The inspector shrugged. ‘Sorry, Pete.’

  ‘Yeah, Pete,’ Ren said. ‘I’m sorry, too. We were just starting to bond, I thought.’

  Eunice turned to Pete, her eyes blazing with indignation. ‘Why is this boy still in cuffs?’

  Pete looked to his boss for help. ‘He said he liked them.’

  ‘Is this your idea of revenge? Because my client is the son of a celebrity?’ Eunice turned on the inspector, who wore a pained look that spoke of long experience with Eunice Ravenel and her righteous indignation. ‘You can be sure I’ll be lodging a formal complaint about this, Inspector Duggan. Ren is a minor. And you’ve kept him here, interrogating him like a prisoner of war, alone, without representation and chained like a common criminal. This is police brutality!’

  Ren rolled his eyes, glad Eunice had her back to him and couldn’t see him doing it. Police brutality. For once, he sympathised with the police. Although he supposed he shouldn’t. Eunice was here to bail him out, after all.

  The inspector sighed and nodded. ‘Why don’t you do that, Ms Ravenel? In fact, I can give you a form. You can fill it out while we book your client for dealing in commercial quantities of prohibited substances, breaking and entering, trespassing, arson, and maybe even murder, if the homeless man they pulled out of the warehouse your client burned down doesn’t make it through the night.’ She turned to the detective who’d been interviewing Ren. ‘Unlock the cuffs, Pete.’

  What fire? What are they talking about? Homeless man? Did they mean the guy with the shopping trolley?

  With a grunt of disapproval, Pete produced the keys to the cuffs and freed Ren’s wrists from the restraints. Ren eased his shoulders forward, glad to be free, but fairly certain it wasn’t because they were about to let him go.

  Eunice stared at him, dumbstruck. ‘God, Ren, you tried to kill someone?’

  So much for innocent until proven guilty.

  ‘No. I don’t know what they’re on about.’

  Eunice shook her head with a heavy sigh, not believing him any more than Inspector Duggan or Detective Pete did.

  ‘How long before I can arrange bail?’ Eunice asked.

  ‘Bail?’ the inspector scoffed. ‘There won’t be any bail for your boy this time, Ms Ravenel. He’s facing serious charges.’

  ‘My client is not a flight risk. His mother —’

  ‘Hasn’t been able to stop him doing anything he wanted since he was ten years old. This kid is the very definit
ion of a flight risk. He’s not in the slightest bit sorry, he’s facing serious time, has a valid passport, easy access to credit cards and a private jet, last I heard.’

  ‘We don’t have a private jet,’ Ren said. ‘It belongs to the studio.’

  ‘Be quiet, Ren,’ Eunice ordered. ‘You’re not helping.’ She turned back to the inspector. ‘If Ms Kavanaugh could guarantee Ren’s good behaviour —’

  ‘Then the little smart-arse wouldn’t be sitting here, would he?’ Pete said, glaring at Ren.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms Ravenel,’ the inspector said in a tone that suggested she was anything but sorry. ‘Your client will be our guest for the evening and if you want to argue what an upstanding member of society he is, you can do it tomorrow. In court. To a magistrate.’

  Eunice looked like she might keep objecting, but the inspector never gave her the opportunity. She turned for the door. ‘C’mon, Pete. I’m sure Ms Ravenel wants a word with her client.’

  Pete gathered up his file, gave Ren a serves-you-right-you-little-smart-arse look, and followed the inspector out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Ren,’ Eunice said, taking the seat recently occupied by Detective Pete.

  ‘I didn’t do anything, Eunice.’ Ren stared down at his hands, locking his fingers together until they turned white.

  ‘A magistrate will go much more leniently on you if you take responsibility for your actions.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything, Eunice,’ Ren repeated in a monotone. He felt like adding you have to believe me, but that just seemed like begging, and he shouldn’t have to beg his own lawyer to have a little faith in him.

  She sighed heavily. Eunice Ravenel often sighed heavily when she dealt with Ren. ‘I’ve spoken to your mother. She’s tempted to let you rot in here, Ren. So unless I can give her a compelling reason to believe you’re innocent — no mean feat, given you stole a guest’s car from her house — then I’m afraid there’s no stopping the natural course of justice.’

  ‘How about you just accept it when I tell you I haven’t done anything wrong, and you defend me like you’re supposed to. You know … because you believe me.’

  Eunice wasn’t so easily persuaded. ‘Then tell me what you were doing in that warehouse.’

  Ren didn’t answer.

  ‘Are you involved with this O’Hara character?’

  ‘I never heard of him until ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Then how is it you happened to be at his warehouse at the precise moment his drug deal was going down?’

  Ren was wondering that, too. For a moment, he even thought about telling Eunice everything. About Murray Symes. About where he got the information from about the drug deal …

  But he didn’t want to betray Jack until he was certain Jack had betrayed him. The old man had helped Ren too many times, and kept quiet about it, for Ren to hand him over to the police, just to get his own backside out of the fire. Besides, he was more worried about what might have happened to Trása. ‘It doesn’t matter why we were there, Eunice. Can you find out what happened to my friend?’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter. They arrested us at the same time, but now the cops are saying she wasn’t there.’

  Eunice let out one of her trademark sighs. ‘Jack O’Righin has no granddaughter. If you’d read more than the dustcover of that shameless attempt to rewrite history that he’s peddling and were less impressed by notoriety, Ren, you’d know Jack O’Righin’s family was killed years ago. Vengeance for their deaths was one of his feeble justifications for the violence he perpetrated on all those innocent people.’

  ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Murray Symes about her,’ Ren said, sick of everyone trying to convince him that Trása was a figment of his imagination. ‘He’s met her. He even threatened to have me arrested if I tried to have sex with her.’

  Eunice stared at him, saying nothing.

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Ren insisted. ‘If I was lying I’d have thought up something way better than that, Eunice, believe me.’

  The lawyer shook her head sadly. ‘You’ve had so many opportunities, Ren. But this time, you’ve crossed the line. Your mother has spent her life campaigning against drugs. You know how she feels about drug dealers.’

  ‘God! Aren’t you listening to me? I wasn’t dealing drugs!’

  He might as well have remained mute, for all the attention she was paying to him.

  She let out another sigh. ‘And now you’re in danger of taking a man’s life. What were you thinking, Ren? Setting fire to that place? Are you so starved for attention you thought you’d give arson a go? Was cutting yourself not getting the results you wanted, so you decided to hurt someone other than yourself?’

  Ren closed his eyes, overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness. How was it possible that everybody got him so wrong? This woman was supposed to be defending him, and even she thought he was a lost cause.

  ‘I swear to God, Eunice, I know nothing about the fire at the warehouse.’

  ‘The Gardaí tell me that when they searched you, they found another cut on your ribs. Is that true?’

  Ren hesitated before he answered, knowing the truth was sure to condemn him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ Eunice rose to her feet, with another sigh. ‘I’ll call your mother and tell her what’s happened. I’m sure she’ll try to be in court tomorrow, but …’

  ‘I know. She may not be able to get away.’ Ren knew that excuse by heart.

  ‘She’s still at the hospital with the rest of the family, Ren,’ Eunice told him. ‘I think poor Hayley’s vigil is likely to take precedence over another one of your court appearances, don’t you?’

  Eunice had that much right. Hayley’s fate was far more important than his.

  The lawyer picked up her briefcase and knocked on the door. She glanced at Ren as she waited for someone to unlock it, but said nothing further. Pete opened it, looking far too smug for Ren’s liking. He let Eunice out, entered the room and closed the door firmly.

  ‘What now?’ Ren asked.

  ‘We’re going to book you into the five-star accommodation of Chez Watch-house,’ Pete informed him, as he pulled Ren to his feet. ‘And it seems there’s nothing your mother’s celebrity lawyer can do to stop it, either.’

  ‘Can I order room service?’

  ‘Keep it up, smart-arse.’ Pete shoved Ren toward the door, apparently pleased with the notion that Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh would spend the night behind bars and that — unless he was kidnapped by aliens — that was where he was probably going to stay for the rest of his life.

  The watch-house cells were noisy and brightly lit. There was no window in Ren’s cell, so he couldn’t tell what time it was. The walls were white, made of some sort of laminated material impervious to graffiti or vandalism. A narrow bed was built into the back wall and had a thin, vinyl-covered foam mattress. There was a stainless-steel toilet in the opposite corner. Ren wore overalls made of paper, presumably to stop him strangling himself with his own clothes. Because he was only seventeen and still legally a juvenile offender, Ren was treated to a solitary cell, rather than a communal one full of drunks and addicts. He thought that was something to be grateful for, until he realised he’d been confined to one of the observation cells they used for suicide watch, which meant they cranked up the heating instead of giving him a blanket — again, he assumed, to prevent him making a noose out of it. He wasn’t officially on suicide watch, but he figured he might soon be, if they didn’t stop checking on him every thirty minutes to ask if he was okay.

  Despite the regular interruptions, Ren had lost track of the time when they made the next round of checks. He even managed to doze off. It was several hours since dinner — which had turned out to be takeaway from the local fish and chip shop down the road — when he was woken by someone saying his name.

  ‘Ren Kavanaugh?’

  ‘Wasn’t
that my name the last time you checked?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes. Then he realised that it wasn’t what they’d asked him the last time. The last time they’d called him Chelan Aquarius. He squinted at the newcomers in the sudden brightness. They’d turned on the main light, which he assumed the cops had picked up at a sale of leftover stadium illumination equipment.

  ‘Are you Ren Kavanaugh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with a sigh that would have done Eunice proud. ‘I am Ren Kavanaugh.’ He focussed on his visitors and frowned. They were a man and a woman of indeterminate age, both dressed in dark suits. They looked like door-to-door salesmen.

  ‘Come with us please.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Please, do not question us.’

  Had he been less exhausted, Ren decided later, he might have started to worry when they wouldn’t tell him where they were going. Given Trása had already vanished — seemingly without a trace — he had reason to be concerned. Not until he followed the suits out into the corridor and past the door at the end of it that normally needed a card and a PIN to get through, did it occur to him that something was amiss. The watch-house desk was abandoned, too, and an elderly sergeant was slumped over the keyboard of his computer, where he’d apparently been playing Solitaire before falling asleep.

  Ren looked around the deserted reception area. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You are being evacuated,’ the woman said. She seemed to be in charge.

  ‘To where? For what?’

  ‘Please. Be patient.’

  ‘Can I have my clothes, then?’ Ren asked, pointing at the white paper overalls that crackled as he walked.

  ‘Clothes will be arranged for you when we reach our destination,’ the woman assured him.

  ‘Destination? What destination? Where are we going?’

  ‘Your questions will be answered soon enough, Ren.’