In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  “Ye don’t ever give the bastards even a crack to reach ye through. If they want to come after ye, ye make it difficult just by maintainin’ yer silence an’ yer dignity.”

  ‘Easier said than done, you bastard,’ she said to the man in her mind. She was only a Riordan by marriage after all, not by blood. She didn’t have that remote indifference that they could cloak themselves in, seemingly at will. If anything, every thought and feeling she had bloomed fully on her face like a rose in summer heat.

  Despite the bright lights, the room was horribly dingy and smelled of sweat and dirt. It was the smell of fear, the smell that was, she knew, rising off her own body right now. She was shaking hard enough that her teeth were chattering together. She only hoped the men across the table from her couldn’t hear it.

  They had made her empty out her pockets before coming in to the room, and so were treated to the detritus of a mother’s day: the ear of a velveteen elephant, which needed sewing back to said elephant’s head, two dusty humbugs which Conor had asked her to hold on to for him, a vet bill for Paudeen, and a shiny hazelnut which she had dug out of Isabelle’s protesting mouth this very morning. She had to turn away from the objects when the officer began placing them in an envelope, afraid the sight of the homely bits and pieces would make her cry. Right now, she would have given much to even have the torn velveteen ear to clutch in her hand, as though that tiny touch of home would give her the strength she needed to get through this without breaking.

  She swallowed, her throat dry. They hadn’t so much as offered her a drop of water. It was clear they wanted her to be uncomfortable. The phantom touch of her husband had stiffened her resolve and she sat up, keeping her expression neutral.

  Across from her sat two men. Constable Blackwood, whose chill and wet gaze she studiously avoided, though the hair on her arms stood upright in revulsion at his proximity. The second man had been a surprise for it was Mr. Davison, whom she was now quite certain was Special Branch. That raised her anxiety level a little higher—Special Branch was the level at which things could get very ugly, very quickly. His trying to recruit her to spy on Noah made far more sense now. Noah had told her Special Branch had been trying to turn someone near him for years, though it had never worked, and for good reason.

  They took a moment sorting papers, taking sips of water and conferring with each other in half-whispers. It was all designed, she knew, to unnerve her and make her more susceptible to the game they would force her to play.

  She cleared her throat, and both men looked up at this. She addressed herself to Mr. Davison, refusing to look at Constable Blackwood. She knew there was no set of circumstances under which the man would be reasonable with her.

  “Before you begin, I would like to know where my children are,” she said. She would play their game if only they would let her know that Conor and Isabelle were safe.

  Constable Blackwood smiled, a cold gesture that caused the trickle of ice water in her stomach to turn to a flood. “They’ll be put in care temporarily, better for them no doubt.”

  “What?”

  “Ye heard me, we couldn’t just leave them there unattended now could we?”

  She had gone cold all over and the floor under the chair seemed to have tilted sharply. The thought of how frightened Conor must be, and Isabelle waking up and not understanding in the least why a stranger was there and not her mother or at the very least a familiar face. She was the one constant in her children’s lives and it made her furious that these men had shaken that faith even the tiniest bit. Please God, let Patrick know what to do. If Conor had managed to call Gert before they took him away, then Pat would know and he would move heaven and earth to get the children back.

  “You should have called my brother-in-law; he has the legal right to take them when something happens to me.”

  “Yer brother-in-law? Would that be the same brother-in-law who is the solicitor that’s suin’ us?”

  “Is that what this is about?” she asked.

  He smiled, and her blood chilled. “Of course not, we’re here to discuss the murder of Philip Kirkpatrick.”

  “Yes, so you said.”

  “We understand there was bad blood between the two of ye.”

  “You already know this; I was questioned at length right after the incident.”

  “Incident? That’s a bit of an odd term for a body burned beyond recognition in a fire which destroyed the distillery you were in charge of at the time.”

  “I’m not sure how you’d like me to refer to it,” she said. “I did not like him, but I wouldn’t have wished him such a terrible death.”

  “Ye were heard to say, an’ I quote, ‘I’d as soon see him dead as allow him to get his hands on this company or this house.’”

  “What? I never said any such thing.” Certainly she had thought it, but she had been careful not to say it out loud.

  “We have the sworn statement of someone who heard you say it.” Mr. Davison finally spoke, his voice calm but firm. She wasn’t sure which of the men she was more worried about. There was no point in asking just whose sworn statement that might be. They wouldn’t tell her and it might be a bluff on their part any way. She had a very good idea just who it was, however, if it was, indeed, true. She had the sense that this interview was about something other than Philip’s death, murder or otherwise.

  “Men have died around ye before, no?” One side of the constable’s mouth was turned up, as though in a smile.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, though she did. How on earth these men could know about that long ago nightmare was another matter altogether. There was one man who knew outside of Pat and Jamie, one man who had ties within the policing community. She wondered how much the Reverend had to do with today’s events. There wasn’t any proof linking those dead men back to her and the horrible things they had done to her and Patrick on a train. She knew Jamie and Casey between them had made damn certain of that. But having these men know about the rape and beating and having them use that knowledge to threaten her was a violation of another sort.

  “Don’t ye?” he said, the half-smile still twisting his mouth.

  “When was the last time you saw Philip Kirkpatrick?” It was Davison again.

  “Two days before his body was found in the distillery,” she said.

  “And did you argue at the time?”

  “No, we disagreed. I wouldn’t have called it an argument, it didn’t escalate far enough for that.”

  “What did you disagree about?”

  “A shipment of whiskey he had arranged, it wasn’t part of our regular shipments and it would have shorted our standing orders had he gone ahead and done it. It was the twelve year whiskey, and since it’s made in smaller quantities, it’s in high demand. He wanted to use it as a gift to someone with whom he was trying to curry favor. I refused to allow it.”

  “You refused? That sounds rather strong.”

  “Does it? Lord Kirkpatrick left his business in my hands, and he trusted me to keep things going, and to meet the commitments of said business. I was merely doing that.”

  The questioning went on in a similar vein for some time. Her head had begun to ache rather badly, and she realized she hadn’t eaten nor had anything to drink since breakfast which seemed like it was weeks ago now, rather than eight or so hours. Davison had taken over from the constable, and she could see that Constable Blackwood did not like having his power usurped at all.

  She wasn’t certain how much time had passed, as there were no windows in the small room and the pain in her head was causing one question to run into the next. She was lucid enough to realize they had nothing other than their ‘witness’ statement, which amounted to no more than hearsay. The wonder was that they had felt the need to drag her in here with such flimsy evidence. This only shored up her certainty that they had another agenda entirely. The questions just continued on into what she thought surely must be the evening. It would be full dark now and
she prayed Conor and Isabelle were somewhere safe and warm where someone would feed them and take care of them. Please let them be with Gert, or Pat and Kate. Then they would be fine, even if Conor had understood enough of what was going on to be panicked for her.

  “I’m not sure what I can say to make you understand,” she said finally, weary of answering the same questions, phrased ever so slightly differently for the tenth time. “I did not kill him, but I think perhaps you know who did.”

  Davison made a face of incomprehension. “I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Riordan. There isn’t anyone else we suspect. And there are times circumstantial evidence is more than enough. Do you understand my meaning?”

  “Unfortunately, I believe I do,” she said, too weary to summon up any tartness to her tone.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Davison said, and exited the room, leaving her alone with Constable Blackwood. She longed to stand up and stretch her legs and to have a glass of water. Her head hurt so badly now that she thought she might get sick from it. She couldn’t remember ever having a headache come on this suddenly and intensely. She wondered if they would even allow her the dignity of a trip to the washroom.

  Constable Blackwood got up and began to pace the small room. It seemed an innocuous enough act, but she knew it was designed to make her nervous. He paced the entire room until he was behind her. She stiffened, afraid that he might actually hit her. She had the sense there was no oversight committee to worry these men about just how they behaved in this interrogation room. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, hard enough that she had to grit her teeth together to keep from crying out.

  “I think ye know exactly what it is I was talkin’ about. There was a policeman died after spendin’ an evenin’ in your company. He was my sister’s husband.”

  She swallowed, her throat so dry it felt as if it were stuck fast. This man was Bernard McKoughpsie’s brother-in-law. Bernard McKoughpsie had been the ringleader of the four men that had raped her that long ago night on the train. This made the whole situation worse, but it also explained just why the constable had such an intense dislike for her. How he knew what his brother-in-law had done was the question that truly frightened her.

  Her collarbone was beginning to creak under the pressure of the man’s fingers but she sat as still as she was able, knowing it might well break her collarbone if she were to move too suddenly. The touch of his long and clammy fingers sent shivers of revulsion through her body, as if venom leaked from his skin and into hers. The pain in her collarbone was near to unbearable, and she thought she was going to have to risk pulling away from him just to alleviate the agony.

  Davison returned just then, and took in the situation in the second it took the constable to let go of her and step back, as though he had merely been walking about the room. Davison was clearly not fooled and he gave Constable Blackwood a long unpleasant look. He was not the arrogant actor who had visited her kitchen some weeks back. This was, she realized, a man to worry about.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Riordan?” he asked, though the sharp gaze was directed toward the constable.

  She nodded and he put a glass of water on the table for her. She wished she had the wherewithal to refuse it, but she needed it desperately. It took everything she had not to gulp it down. Her head hurt so badly that small whirling flashes were hovering in front of her eyes. She thought she might confess to anything at this point just to make them stop. If they threw in a few paracetamol it would be a done deal.

  Davison cleared his throat. “Perhaps, Constable Blackwood, I could have a few minutes alone with Mrs. Riordan.”

  The constable didn’t like being ordered about, and his scarred face turned an ugly red. He had to defer to this man, though, Special Branch put Davison far higher in the pecking order than a mere detective constable.

  He waited until the door shut behind the constable and then turned the tape recorder off and put his hands on the table. “I would like to suggest to you,” he said, the hazel eyes resting calmly on her face, “that there are other ways to deal with this situation. We are willing to see our way to a sort of contingency plan.”

  If her head hadn’t hurt so badly she might have laughed at him. So this whole thing, the terror, the questioning and the fear that she might not see her children any time soon, was all so they could test the waters and see how far they had to push before she agreed to spy on Noah for them. She suspected it was a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone situation as well—get her to spy on Noah and fire a warning shot across the bow for Pat and Tomas.

  She stared back at him, refusing to dignify his suggestion with a response.

  “If that’s the way you choose to play it, Mrs. Riordan, you might well come to regret it,” he said quietly. “I’ll give you some time on your own to have a think about what I’ve said.”

  They put her in a cell after that. She was relieved to be alone. She was exhausted and trembling, starting to see double and her head hurt so badly that she couldn’t think clearly at all. She tried not to think about her children, as panic set in the minute she did. It was possible the constable had lied to her, just to frighten her, but it also was possible they were in care. She had heard too many nightmarish stories of children taken into care by the state or by the church that were never seen again by their mothers. She was, for all intents and purposes, a single mother in the eyes of the system, and the system didn’t always deal fairly with mothers who were alone.

  She was cold, tired and frightened. She curled up on the bed, which was only a very thin mattress with a solitary and very scratchy blanket. She put her hands to her eyes, so that she could rest the burning pain against the coolness of her palms. And she prayed for all of them—her babies, Pat, Tomas, Jamie and herself—that they might survive this country.

  Pamela slept for a bit, huddled under the scant comfort of the rough blanket. Her dreams were a muddle of fleeting images and the constant sense of fear. She was caught on a staircase, trying to climb it, hearing a baby crying—Isabelle crying—up somewhere in a room at the top of the stairs. But the stairs went on and on spiraling up into some great darkness which seemed like it must stretch out beyond the stars. Then suddenly she was in a boat, and she could feel water soaking into her skin, cold and salt and slick with kelp. There were no oars and the boat was leaking, and she was frantic wondering how she could ever get to shore. She paddled with her hands, for the baby’s cries were escalating and she only knew she must reach her before she disappeared. Suddenly, she was swimming, waves hitting her in the face, her lungs burning with cold fire, her arms the consistency of lead as she tried to find the shore. She rolled over on her back, desperately needing to rest, and found that the sky above was a cascade of stars, the Milky Way a visible spine of light holding up the world. Wearily, she thought that maybe she could orient herself and find her way home by the stars, using them as way posts in the infinite.

  The water closed over her head without warning and she knew she was going to drown, the shore was too far away and despite the stars, she knew she would not make it. There was a strange relief in the knowledge, as if she could just let go now and drift down, down, down where there was no pain, only darkness and an all encompassing quiet. But a hand reached down and pulled her up, shaking her and making the red pain in her head rage and boil through her blood.

  She pulled away from the hand, angry that it had brought her back up from the cool quiet depths. It took a moment to realize that the face hovering above her was a familiar one. Constable Fred. She had worked with him on more than one crime scene and had come to know him as an innately kind and decent man. He was a Protestant, but one who paid no mind to the religious affiliations of others. He held a cup of tea and a bun in his hands, both of which he handed to her.

  “The tea is just the wee bit hot there, love, so mind how fast ye drink it. Look, I’m not meant to be in here, but I sent the WPC off on an errand, so I’ll have to be quick. I just wanted to let ye know yer solicitor wil
l be in within the hour. Now, I’d best go, eat yer bread there, ye’ll need a bit of starch in ye.”

  Mercifully, the tea was hot but not too hot to gulp down. She drank it all and handed him the cup, which he promptly tucked inside his coat and then he was gone. She could have melted with gratitude just for the knowledge that her solicitor was on the way. She assumed it would be either Patrick or Tomas.

  She nibbled cautiously on the bun, though she was without an appetite and felt decidedly nauseous this morning. She just wanted to pick Isabelle up out of her crib, still warm with sleep and dreams, her curls frowsy and standing out around her head like a halo. She wanted to make Conor his breakfast and have him show her a toad or a snail or any of the other treasures he had found during his early morning forays in the garden.

  Twenty minutes later she was back in the grim little interrogation room with Davison. He was freshly washed and shaved and looked like he’d had a good night’s rest. He had brought her a cup of tea and placed it on the table in front of her. Constable Blackwood was thankfully absent.

  He sat down, and she became aware of how grubby she felt. She’d given her face and hands a cursory wash and slicked a bit of water through her hair, though the short curls were springing free already. It was the best she could do with the limited amenities available to her.

  He smiled, and there was a bit of warmth in the expression. She wasn’t fooled by it in the least.

  “Well, Mrs. Riordan, have you had time to think over my offer?”

  “What exactly was on offer, Mr. Davison? You don’t charge me with false and baseless accusations of which you have absolutely no proof and in return I betray and spy on a man who has done me no harm?”

  “Done no harm?” Davison laughed, shaking his head, the hard light back in his face. “Do you have any idea what that bastard has done in this country?”

  “Yes,” she said coolly, “and I am just as aware of what the police and Special Branch have done. None of it’s pretty, but at least Noah isn’t a hypocrite about it.”