So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2)

by Stuart Neville

  She went to reply, but the phone trilled and vibrated in her hand. DS Murray’s desk number on the display.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ma’am, I have an Inspector Guillermo Sala, retired, on the line for you.’

  Flanagan smiled at Murray’s fumbling at a Spanish accent when he said the name. She got to her feet and walked towards the canteen exit. ‘Give me a minute, I’ll take it in my office.’

  Once at her desk, she turned over to a fresh notebook page, lifted the telephone handset, and hit the blinking call waiting button. Murray had said the retired inspector’s English was excellent, so no translator was needed.

  When Murray had connected them, Flanagan said, ‘Inspector Sala?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. She could hear the grit of age in his voice.

  ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Serena Flanagan, Police Service of Northern Ireland. I’d like to ask you about a case you dealt with four years ago.’

  ‘Yes, the sergeant, he told me this,’ Sala said. ‘About the baby girl.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘It was very sad,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to remember. What do you ask me?’

  ‘If you can, please tell me what happened the day the child died.’

  He exhaled a sorrowful sigh, and Flanagan sensed the recollection pained him. ‘I come to the beach after. A Sotsinpector, he go first, then he call me. When I go, the mother, she is already gone to hospital. The father, he is there on the beach. He is crying, crying, crying, he says do something for her, the baby, but the paramedics say, no, she is gone, we can do nothing. It was difficult. It is more time before I know what happened. The mother carries the baby out into the sea, but there is a drop, the water is deeper, and she lets go of the baby. She cannot get her back, and she goes under water also.’

  Flanagan noted it all down, the events matching what McKay had told her a few days before.

  ‘The mother, she is hurt. A broken rib. They stay her in the hospital, and I call the British Consulate. I talk to the mother and the father the next day.’

  ‘What was your impression of them?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know this meaning.’

  ‘What did you think of them?’ Flanagan said. ‘Did you like them? Not like them?’

  ‘Ah, si. Yes, first I like them. They are good people. The mother is, how do I say it, cold? No feeling. But, you know, a child dies, how do you act? The father is very sad, very angry, he cries all the time. I am sad for him.’

  ‘You said, at first you liked them. Did something change?’

  Sala clicked his tongue as he thought. ‘I don’t know I should tell. The father, Mr Garrick, he tells me say to no one. Is a secret.’

  ‘Inspector Sala,’ Flanagan said, ‘anything you can tell me will be helpful. I’d really appreciate it.’

  ‘Why do you call me?’ he asked. ‘Four years ago, this is. Why call now? What happens there?’

  ‘I’m investigating the apparent suicide of Mr Garrick,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘Ay, ay. This is bad news. Tell me, please, did they have more children?’

  ‘No, they didn’t.’

  ‘Is sad. Is very sad. He was a good man. A good father, I think.’

  ‘Inspector Sala, can you tell me what Mr Garrick said to you?’

  Silence as he considered it, before he said, ‘Okay. Mr Garrick is dead, so I can tell. He was very sad in this time, you understand, very weak. So weak he tells me this thing.’

  ‘What did he tell you, Inspector Sala?’

  ‘He tells me, she beat him. Not all the time, but some time, she beat him. And she calls him stupid, weak, a bad man. He cries when he tells me this in my office. He tells me he is afraid of her. Then he tell me not to say.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  ‘What can I do? They take the baby home, back to Ireland, they go together. I cannot arrest her for what he tells me. I tell him go home, go to police, ask they help you.’

  ‘Seems like he didn’t,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘You know, I think Mr Garrick is big in his heart, how to say it . . . proud, yes?’

  ‘Proud,’ Flanagan echoed, thinking of what George Garrick had told her about his brother.

  ‘A proud man, is difficult to say a woman beat him. It makes him feel like he is not a man. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do,’ Flanagan said. And pride was not an exclusively male trait. She had known women who refused to report abuse by their husbands simply because they couldn’t bear the shame of it. It was easier to take the beatings than it was to admit they had been taken.

  ‘One last question,’ she said. ‘Was there ever any doubt about what happened on the beach that day?’

  Sala’s voice thinned, as if the speaking of his answer diminished him. ‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘I wondered about the mother. I think, maybe, can she do this? Then I think, no, a mother cannot do this. And the coroner says an accident, I don’t argue. But sometimes at night, when I don’t sleep. I lie in bed and I think, maybe? Maybe?’

  A pause before he spoke again.

  ‘Please, Inspector Flanagan, will you make a promise to me?’

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘If you find out maybe is yes? If you find out she kill the baby? Please. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’

  28

  McKay stared at the ceiling, Roberta beside him on his bed.

  They had emerged from the bathroom five minutes apart. No one had seen them, no one had noticed their absence in the time they were gone. When McKay had returned to the main hall, only a few stragglers remained; the ladies had already begun clearing the tables.

  Ten minutes later, within earshot of Miss Trimble, Roberta had said she felt tired, unwell, could she please go over to Reverend McKay’s house for a lie-down? Of course, he had said, and he escorted her through the hall, pausing for a few polite farewells, and across the road to the church grounds.

  She had taken everything he could give her, taken it so voraciously it had frightened him. Now they both lay spent and exhausted, the blinds drawn, the room dim around them. They had lain for an hour, neither of them speaking. He had drifted in and out of a thin and whispery sleep, jerking awake as the images that played in his mind grew more scarred and bloody.

  The drowsiness passed, and the urge to move took its place. Perhaps she sensed the change in him because she rolled onto her side to face him. He turned to look at her. Her eyes just inches from him, glittering in the points of light that pierced the blinds. She brought her hand up, rested her palm on his cheek.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.’

  She waited as if to let him argue, object, but his mouth was empty.

  ‘Just for a few months,’ she continued. ‘Maybe six. Until the dust settles. Then we won’t have to sneak around any more. We can be together, like we talked about.’

  He searched for something to say to her, a reason they shouldn’t be apart, even if it was only for a few months. But he couldn’t defend against her cold logic.

  Her hand moved to his chest, her fingers spread wide.

  ‘I’m going to go away for a couple of weeks,’ she said. ‘Maybe more. I need to get out of this village for a while. Miss Trimble and all that lot will be torturing me, bringing me cakes and cottage pies and lasagnes when all I really need is to be left alone.’

  At last he found a word to speak. ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere warm,’ she said. ‘South of France, Montpellier’s lovely, or the Canaries. Just so long as it’s away from here.’

  ‘Away from me?’

  The words escaped him before his right mind could intervene. He felt her body first stiffen against him, then go loose once more.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘We’ve come this far together. It won’t fall apart now. I just need some space. We need to think about the long term.’

/>   ‘It’s just . . .’

  He lacked the courage to finish the sentence.

  She propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Just what?’

  ‘I feel like you’ve been pushing me away since . . . you know . . . like I’m being closed out. Like you’re putting distance between us.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said.

  ‘And you’ve been . . . angry at me.’

  ‘It’s been a stressful few days. You know that.’

  She seemed so calm, so reasonable, his fears seemed trivial when spoken aloud. But inside him they remained barbed and tangled. Try to explain, he thought. Make her see.

  ‘If all this was for nothing,’ he said. ‘If I did what I did just for you to turn away from me, then I don’t think I could survive that.’

  She kissed him and said, ‘I’m not turning away. Just being pragmatic. Now, I need a shower.’

  The bed rocked as she got up. He watched her naked back as she left the room and he told himself to believe her, not to let the doubt eat at him. Truly, he didn’t know what he would do to himself if she left him now. He didn’t know what he would do to her.

  He imagined her throat squeezed between his hands.

  No, he could not do that.

  But hadn’t he thought, all those weeks ago, that he’d never be able to kill a man?

  In this very bed, another sunny afternoon sealed out of the room, when she said, ‘Kill him for me.’ Hadn’t he said, ‘No, no I can’t?’ And she hadn’t argued. Simply gone quiet, clinging to him as if he was all she needed in the world.

  She had asked again two days later.

  Like before, she had been talking about her husband’s suffering. How the pain never left him except at night, when the morphine shut him down. The indignities of his existence. The urine and the excrement she had to clean away in their daily rituals. The ruin of him. How he would never be a husband to her again.

  ‘But he’ll get better,’ McKay had said. ‘It’ll be hard, but things will improve. The pain, the healing, all that has to be got through to get to the other side. He’ll be mobile again one day, even if it’s just a wheelchair.’

  ‘Years,’ she said. ‘The doctors say it’ll take years before he can even try to move. And they said there’s a good chance he won’t be able to use artificial limbs when there’s so little left of his legs. And the suffering he’ll have to go through to get there.’

  ‘But he’s strong,’ McKay said. ‘He’s been so positive when I’ve prayed with him.’

  She buried her face in the pillow. Her shoulders fell and rose again. ‘That’s what everyone says.’ The pillow muted her voice, but the bitterness still cut through. ‘They come and visit for half an hour, they can’t stand any more than that, and they come out of his room saying, oh, isn’t he doing well? Isn’t he cheerful, considering.’ She lifted her face, and he saw the tears as her voice cracked. ‘But when they’re gone, when you’re gone, I see what it’s really like for him. He can barely stand breathing, it’s so hard for him. He tells me when I wake him in the mornings, he’s sorry he didn’t slip away in the night. That’s what he told me: he wants to just go to sleep one night and not wake up.’

  She covered her eyes and wept, tears dripping onto McKay’s arm.

  ‘Just imagine what it’s like for him,’ she said between sobs. ‘Imagine living in constant pain. Imagine being unable to move, to care for yourself. Imagine staring at the same four walls all day, every day, for years and years. Imagine being a grown man and your wife having to clean up your shit and your piss like you’re a baby.’

  He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t get past the truth of it. ‘It’ll get better,’ he said, knowing what he said meant nothing.

  ‘When?’ she asked. She spat the words at him. ‘When will it get better? Tell me. When will I be able to face a day that doesn’t feel like hell to me and him both. For Christ’s sake, we’re kinder to dogs.’

  So the following day, Reverend Peter McKay went to Mr and Mrs Garrick’s beautiful house outside the village. He sat down with Roberta on the luxurious couch in the living room and took her hands in his.

  He asked, ‘How do I do it?’

  The answer was simpler than he could have believed. Every night, Mr Garrick ate a pot of yogurt – he preferred strawberry flavour – laced with the prescribed morphine granules the pharmacist delivered once every two weeks. One sachet per night, fourteen sachets per delivery. The granules were to be swallowed whole to allow them to disperse slowly in the stomach. The doctor had given dire warnings that they shouldn’t be chewed lest too much of the drug be released at once: mixed with yogurt was the best way to consume the granules. And so had begun the nightly ritual of Mr Garrick finishing his small evening meal – he didn’t need a great deal of calories, but the nutritionist had insisted on an abundance of protein to promote healing – followed by a pot of yogurt spoon-fed to him by his wife, or occasionally by a concerned friend. Like McKay.

  They talked about it over the weeks that followed. It seemed an abstract idea, not something they would actually do. Like the way a couple might talk about leaving their jobs to buy a vineyard in France, or take a round-the-world trip. A fantasy to pass time in each other’s arms, not a real act to be undertaken in earnest. But the plan grew flesh, details emerged, problems were revealed and resolved.

  The granules would have to be crushed, but that was easy, just use a pestle and mortar, ditch them after. But surely they’d know he hadn’t chewed them? Simply rub some of the yogurt and crushed granule mix onto his teeth with a cotton bud. But wouldn’t the cotton bud leave traces of its fabric on the teeth? Then use a finger in a rubber glove.

  But even though a course of action emerged clear and firm from their wonderings, McKay never truly believed it to be real. Even on Sunday night past, when he arrived at the Garricks’ house, he didn’t truly think he’d go through with it. Even when he saw the ceramic pestle and mortar on the kitchen worktop, the open box of morphine sachets beside it, along with a box of the surgical gloves she used when cleaning her husband.

  ‘There,’ she said, pointing at them, as if he hadn’t seen them as he entered the room. She took a step back, showed him she would take no further part in it. It was up to him, and him alone.

  He looked at her, and she saw the question on his face.

  ‘Yes, tonight,’ she said. ‘Just like we talked about. It has to be tonight.’

  He stayed where he was. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

  McKay moved to the worktop. Slow steps, as if a noose waited for him there. He reached for a sachet.

  ‘Gloves first,’ she said.

  A latex glove protruded from the dispenser box. He plucked it, then the second that sprouted in its place. Tight. He struggled to put one on, then the other.

  ‘Two pairs,’ she said. ‘To be safe.’

  He took another pair, pulled them on over the first. Talcum powder dusted the worktop.

  ‘You’ll need to wipe this down,’ he said.

  She did not answer. He took the first sachet, tore along its top edge, and poured the milky white granules into the pestle.

  ‘Ten, you reckon?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  One after another, he tore them open, emptied their contents into the bowl until ten empty packets lay on the worktop and granules mounded in the pestle. He gripped the pestle in his right hand, the edge of the mortar in his left, and set to work. It didn’t take long. The cracking and crunching of the larger pieces breaking down gave way to a sandy grinding that made him think of the beach in Cushendun where he had spent childhood summer Saturdays.

  When the morphine had been reduced to a gritty powder, McKay lifted the bowl and showed it to Roberta.

  ‘Good enough?’ he asked.

  ‘Good enough,’ she said.

  She went to the fridge and fetched a large pot of strawberry yogurt, the expensive kind, the kind they advertised with b
eautiful actresses licking the spoons, purring words like creamy and decadent. Not the type he usually had, the type the supermarkets sold in packs of six, bound together at the rim to be snapped apart.

  Roberta took a teaspoon from a drawer and joined McKay at the worktop. She set the pot down and peeled back the lid, put it aside. McKay held the pestle for her while she scooped spoonfuls of powdered morphine into the yogurt. She worked with a steady care and precision, not letting a single grain fall from the spoon, stirring occasionally as she went.

  When the last of the morphine had been scraped from the pestle, McKay set it down next to the yogurt pot. Roberta pulled a crumpled-up carrier bag from the cupboard beneath the sink, opened it wide while McKay put the pestle and mortar inside, along with the gloves. She tied the handles in a loose knot.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Roberta asked.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

  She lifted the yogurt pot, the spoon standing inside it, and handed them to him. He followed her out of the kitchen, across the hall, to the closed door of Mr Garrick’s room. Roberta knocked once and opened it.

  Mr Garrick lay on the bed, its back raised, pillows propping him up. He seemed to be adrift somewhere inside himself, his eyes open but unfocused. A sharp breath and he came back, looked towards the door.

  ‘Oh, what’s this?’ he said, the scarred mouth stretching into a smile.

  ‘Reverend Peter dropped in to see you,’ Roberta said.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ he said. ‘Good to see you, Peter. It’s been a while.’

  Mr Garrick had always called McKay by his first name, ever since he first took over the parish.

  ‘Been busy,’ McKay said, following Roberta into the room. It was a lie. In truth, he had avoided seeing Mr Garrick as much as possible since he’d taken the poor bastard’s wife into his bed. ‘I brought you your pudding.’

  ‘Good man,’ Mr Garrick said.

  Cheery. Always cheery. When he had all the reasons in the world not to be.