The Child Before
An absolutely gripping detective thriller
Michael Scanlon
Books by Michael Scanlon
Where She Lies
The Child Before
Her Last Goodnight
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Where She Lies (Available in the UK and the US)
The Child Before (Available in the UK and the US)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Epilogue
Hear More From Michael Scanlon
Books by Michael Scanlon
A Letter from Michael
Where She Lies
Her Last Goodnight
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to my late grandfather, fondly known as Jock, survivor of the Great War, storyteller, and a bit of a lad.
Prologue
Winter is slow to loosen its grip here. Here in this place where tectonic plates once ground and crashed, forcing up sandstone and granite rock from the deep, wild Atlantic. Here, where nature has shaped the landscape, forcing trees into bent and crooked posture, tearing the coastline into a jagged wound. And it is here that the town of Cross Beg awaits the first sweet, warm breath of summer that surely, eventually, must come.
But this year it is different. Summer does not come slowly, or tentatively; does not, as in other years, creep in. No. It arrives suddenly, overnight, and although it is still mid-May, people wake one morning to find their cold, damp rock basking in sunshine beneath a clear blue sky, while the carcass of winter still lies fresh and unburied on the ground.
One
October 1954
The only light in the small, decrepit cottage came from a single candle burning on a saucer and secured in place by the falling wax that cooled about it. Its flickering flame threw shadows onto the wall like petals around the pistil of a flower. In the stone hearth, the fire that usually never went out was now nothing but a pile of grey ash. Outside, the night was cold, the sky a black canopy pinpricked by a thousand stars. There was no moon and the place they called Kelly’s Forge was washed in a grey darkness. Here was nothing more than a collection of thatch cottages, a Clachán, the inhabitants farming the commonage and scrubland thereabouts, seeking in each other a common strength for a common purpose: survival.
A cold wind rustled the branches of the trees. Frost had begun to form, and even in the grey light, it radiated a dull glow on the narrow gravel track that ran through the centre of this place.
The girl stood in the doorway. There was not enough light to lend her a silhouette. Instead, she appeared as part of the darkness itself. For her nightdress, once white, was now of such a deep crimson that, in the dim light, it appeared black. But the reason for this was simple. It was soaked in blood.
She began to sing, the girl. Her voice was soft, so soft it was almost of the wind. It was a lullaby. She cradled her arms, rocking them gently back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. As if she was holding a baby. But she was not. Her arms were empty.
Two
Beck had tossed and turned for much of the night, unable to sleep. The words of a radio talk show host from somewhere in the distant past played over in his mind: ‘Folks, did you ever wake in the middle of the night and all that is wrong with your life, all that you worry about, all that makes you anxious, all that troubles you, everything, all of it, together, suddenly hits you in the face? Did that ever happen to you folks? Bang! Right in the face. There it is. Well, that happened to me last night.’
Beck had never forgotten those words, because it meant that other people felt the same way he sometimes did too. But now, his tossing and turning was not to do with something wrong in his life, although he had much of that already. No, this was about something that had been so right in his life. Something, however, he just didn’t have any more. But even when he did have it…
He imagined her face. Natalia smiling, her particular smile that came only at particular times. A smile of cunning and lust. The smile of a woman cuckolding her husband, her husband who just happened to be Beck’s old boss. It was a relationship ultimately toxic, morally corrupt, yet irresistible in that it had that which most people seek: excitement. And without which relationships can flounder, disappearing beneath the waters in a sea of apathy.
Stop it, Beck.
This was useless. He gave in, abandoning any attempt at sleep, and decided to get up and face the day, even if it was still the middle of the night. But then, as he lay there, he felt his eyes starting to grow heavy. Sleep, now that he was no longer grappling with it, turned to him, luring him in. It would not be ignored. Finally, he drifted off through an open, waiting door.
He slept for an hour or more without interruption, not deep enough for his dreams to come up from below, but just enough for them to stir. Before they could fully come alive he was jarred back to consciousness, and in that moment before his eyes snapped open, he thought he heard something, a scream maybe, and a sound like that of a baby crying. But it was something else that had awoken him. He heard it again. Like drumm
ing.
Someone was banging on his front door.
He immediately moved from the bed and crossed the room to the window, parted the curtains and peered out.
Maurice Crabby, big fish in a small pond, owner of the town’s main supermarket, was standing on the street below, in his ridiculous lycras, the bicycle that cost him a fortune discarded on the ground behind him. Crabby was agitated, hopping from one foot to the other, unable to stand still. He banged on the door again.
‘Hold onto your hat, calm down, I’m coming,’ Beck said to himself as he looked around for his trousers. He couldn’t see them.
He went down the stairs and opened the door.
‘There’s a body,’ Crabby blurted.
‘A body?’
Crabby was shaking.
‘Are you deaf? I said a body!’ Crabby repeated.
The man was normally so polite.
‘Where?’
‘A body. Murdered. There’s blood everywhere. Oh Jesus.’
‘Where?’
‘I left my phone at home, went off on my bike you see, so I couldn’t ring…’
‘Can you calm down?’ Beck said, stepping onto the street now. He realised he was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. He took Crabby by the shoulders and shook him. ‘Where? Where’s this body you’re on about?’
‘My wife doesn’t like me taking off like that. So I didn’t tell her. I did leave a note though.’ Crabby garbled on.
Beck shook him again.
‘One more time now, Mr Crabby. Where is this fucking body?’
Three
The village that literally died. A photograph hangs in the library, of the last inhabitant of Kelly’s Forge, standing by the stone bridge over the River Óg, a tributary of the Brown Water River. May flowers and gorse are teeming over the ditches all about, wild flowers sprouting from between the rocks of the bridge itself. He stands there. A tall, proud, white-haired man. If you looked closely enough you could see he was hiding a cigarette in the cup of his hand. The brass plaque beneath reveals the year, 1957, and an inscription:
Michéal Peoples, Village Elder, who assumed a role akin to an old Gaelic Chieftain. It was he who established the Clachán on the site of a medieval forge. Its people were his tribe. The inhabitants of the place known as Kelly’s Forge were rehoused in Galway in 1956, the year the village was finally abandoned.
The man stares from the faded photograph. He looks lost, bewildered even.
Now, standing by this very same place, Kelly’s Forge, Beck thought of this photograph. He’d seen it on a visit to the library once, hanging prominently in the foyer for all the world to see.
But the existence of that place was an aberrant, a freak, an oversight, something that had fallen between the cracks of a stagnant society, a society that did not want to be reminded of the ways of the past, of how it had once lived. And so they did what people in such situations do, they ignored it, maligned it, and ultimately, feared it too. And because of this, Kelly’s Forge did not abide by the rules of the established order. Rather, they ignored them, created and abided by their own.
Leaving Crabby in the squad car, Beck walked with Garda Fergal Dempsey towards the gap in the hedge at the narrow road’s dead-end. The sky was a clear blue and the heat of the sun like an unexpected kiss. Dempsey was wearing shiny shoes, something he always did on the 7 a.m. early shift, the time to catch up on admin work, the registering of fines and transferring of outstanding incidents to Pulse and such like. And, on a Tuesday, to attend at the district court for the prosecution of cases. Dempsey had told Beck once that the 7 a.m. shift was what returned him to a state of being a normal person, of having lunch at a proper hour, of being home in time for the early evening news on TV. It was a shift where only occasionally someone might shout in his face or need to be arrested. Usually for shoplifting, or being drunk and disorderly, usually because they hadn’t sobered up from the night before. Generally, you could wear shiny shoes on the day shift and get away with it. Now, Dempsey was clearly trying to keep his shiny shoes clean as he followed Beck in through the gap in the hedge.
As they passed through, Beck spotted the back end of the car as described by Crabby on the drive over, registering that it was a Citroen Picasso, two years old. He paused, preparing himself for what was to come. People don’t act the way Crabby had without good reason. Beck walked over to the car and slowly stepped out from behind the rear.
It doesn’t matter how many times a person witnesses the aftermath of a violent death, it leaves its mark. That is, if the person witnessing it possesses the normal faculties of emotion and empathy. And Beck, despite his flaws, did.
He observed the head, shoulders and arms of the female victim protruding through the open front passenger door, noted she was lying on her back, her head at an odd angle, hanging so far back it appeared to be on a hinge. He observed all this and wondered: Why?
Beck took a couple of steps forward and stopped. There was a long, wide, gaping wound to the neck, stretching from beneath the earlobe on one side of the head to beneath the earlobe on the other. Blood smeared the bottom half of the windscreen by the passenger door, tapering towards the door. Considering the severity of the wound, there wasn’t as much as would be expected. Then, he noticed the large patch of crimson on the ground. Had the victim been trying to escape the car when the wound was inflicted? He turned again to the victim. Her eyes were wide and stared ahead, frozen. A mass of light brown hair tumbled to the ground, some wisps stuck to the grey flesh of her forehead. Dempsey started to speak, but Beck raised his hand.
‘Get tape from the car, Dempsey. Bring it here to me. And check the reg plate. I want to know who this person is. And I want you to go round to the registered address the first chance you get. Take somebody with you. Got that?’
Dempsey nodded, but didn’t move.
‘Now! Dempsey. Get on it now.’
Whatever Dempsey had wanted to say, he didn’t say it. Instead he turned and headed quickly back towards the squad car, showing no regard now for his shiny shoes. Alone, Beck approached the car, stepping carefully through the grass. The passenger seat was semi-reclined. He noted the victim’s feet were in the footwell on the driver’s side, cork-heeled sandals discarded next to them on the mat. Half of each foot disappeared under the seat. Beck imagined she had used her feet as an anchor, wedging them in under the seat in an effort to stop herself from being dragged from the car. She was slim, her arms stretched out behind on either side of her head, frozen in rigor mortis. The body itself was remarkably blood-free. It appeared to have just that one, single, fatal wound. The floral-patterned blouse she wore had been ripped open. Beck could see buttons scattered on the floor of the car, and two others on the grass outside. Her bra had been partially pulled up, exposing one breast. She was wearing a short skirt, pulled half way down over her hips where it appeared to have become stuck, the centre crumpled and pulled up over her crotch, revealing purple underwear, the elastic broken, the material puckered and frayed. Someone had tried with great determination to pull those off. The glove compartment was open and the contents had spilled out. Beck took in the rest of the interior. Beside him, directly behind the passenger seat – the door pillars had obscured it until now – was a baby seat.
He stepped right up to the rear passenger door and pressed his face close to the window, peering in. The baby seat rested on the grey, suede-like fabric of the seat. At the other end, a loaf of sliced bread and a two-litre container of milk. The writing on the bread wrapping, ‘Crabby’s Shop Rite Wholemeal Bread’. In the footwell below lay a half-empty baby bottle of milk.
Beck attempted to reassure himself, thinking that just because there was a baby seat in the car, it didn’t mean there had been a baby. He thought of Garda Jane Ryan, who parked her car at the station for the duration of her ten hour shifts and it always had a couple of baby seats in the back. He told himself he didn’t constantly have to expect the worst.
But deep down, he knew he was
kidding himself. Because he did.
Returning to the back of the car again, he pulled his shirt out from his trousers, wrapping the fabric around his index and middle finger. Fumbling for the boot lever, he found it and pressed it open. Inside were two long-life shopping bags, a pair of sneakers, and a set of jump leads wrapped in an elastic band.
And something else.
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