The Child Before

by Michael Scanlon

  The timing was perfect, Vicky thought. Sad, yes, of course, that was true, but perfect. She looked around the crumbling old house. A bit like this place, she considered, what she had in mind, full of potential. But she had to be quick, had to strike while the iron was still hot, while this dreadful business was fresh in people’s minds. And if she did, if she did this thing right, secured the funding from Frankfurt, went straight into production, had everything – fingers crossed – wrapped up by Christmas, in time for the International Independent TV Production Fair in Oslo for the end of February… Well, if she could do all that, then Cobana Productions might have a TV hit on its hands, the equivalent to the publishing success of Angela’s Ashes.

  Vicky undid an extra button on her blouse and checked the time. He’d be here soon, and he was usually never late.

  Forty-Eight

  Maurice Crabby drove slowly, oblivious to the traffic that was building up behind him. Once or twice when a driver overtook they honked their horn and held up a prominently displayed middle finger. But Maurice didn’t notice, he didn’t notice anything, and he didn’t care. He continued, the big SUV hogging the road, crossing the border into County Clare. By the time he arrived, it was after five o’clock. It was a long time since he had been here, years in fact, but once he passed under the stone arch and started along the driveway to the main building, it all came back to him. The building was different now. The bars on the windows long removed. The gravel driveway had been replaced by tarmac, and parking spaces were neatly marked in white paint. The old wooden doors with their metal hinges were gone too. Now the doors were of glass, and even in the evening sunlight, he could see the bright lights inside the building. Warm, welcoming. Hello.

  The final change he noted outside was the sign, set in the grass margin by the door. In a corner of this was the health service logo, and beneath it the words ‘Psychiatric Services’, and beneath this again, ‘St Bridget’s Open Facility’.

  The old wooden sign it had replaced, in austere gothic script, had said: ‘St Bridget’s Hospital for the Mentally Deviant’.

  All had changed. And yet all had remained the same. But Maurice found his breathing was a lot easier now.

  Forty-Nine

  Jacinta O’Reilly lived in a house that reminded Beck somewhat of a steam locomotive: flat roofed at one end with a chimney stack rising from its centre, while at the other it was raised with a sloping slate roof. The front predominately was of glass, with huge windows and, uniquely, corners of dimpled glass bricks, two bricks thick. The house was painted a gleaming white and the window surrounds black. The door in the centre of the building was also black. It was set in from the road behind a neat lawn. There was no garden wall, no trees, no embellishments, not even flowers. It was quite striking.

  ‘The flat roof is covered in solar panels,’ Claire said, pulling up behind a green convertible VW Beetle parked at the side. ‘Designed this herself.’

  ‘Impressive,’ Beck said. ‘And expensive. You know her?’

  ‘A little. It’s a small town. She’s her own woman, as they say. Originally, she trained as a nurse, then became a homoeopathist. It’s a booming sector, alternative medicine. Chalk and cheese really. The pair of them.’

  ‘Children? Two I heard?’

  ‘Two boys. One’s in New York, an artist, but O’Reilly called him a bum. The other, the one he was proud of, training as a solicitor in London.’

  She was waiting for them when they rounded the side of the house, standing at the front door. Inspector O’Reilly’s ex-wife was a small petite woman, attractive but not pretty, with a round face, small eyes and thin lips. She was dressed in a short red dress, a belt that had a large gold buckle secured around a slim waist. Her breasts were prominent, her legs perfect. She oozed sensuality, but also practicality, all at the same time. O’Reilly would have picked up on that.

  ‘I was just about to go out when I heard,’ the voice cracking. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  They reached the door. Jacinta stared at Claire, turned to take in Beck.

  ‘How did you know?’ Claire asked gently.

  ‘Someone rang. A newspaper or other. It doesn’t matter. I know, Claire.’ She turned. ‘Come on. Come in.’

  The hallway was tiled. It was like daylight inside. Beck considered it the only property he’d ever felt the need to wear sunglasses inside. She led them into a room, like a picture from a soft furnishings brochure, colours vibrant and coordinated, everything clinically clean and tidy. Beck saw a mural on the wall, an abstract. He worked out it was of a woman reclining into a chair, nothing but a scarf around her neck. He thought of the picture on the wall of the room where Inspector O’Reilly’s body had been found. Maybe not so chalk and cheese after all.

  She noticed him looking.

  ‘Gerry liked it,’ she explained. ‘Picked it up at an auction somewhere. It kind of grew on me. Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee?’

  ‘No,’ Claire said.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Beck said.

  ‘Look,’ Claire said. ‘Don’t you worry about us, please, Jacinta. We came to…’

  Claire suddenly looked uncomfortable.

  Jacinta O’Reilly sat down, crossing her legs, her short dress sliding up her thigh. She cupped her hands around one knee, indicated a sofa with a nod of her head.

  ‘Take a seat, please.’

  They sat down on a button-back red leather settee.

  ‘I’m still processing the information,’ Jacinta O’Reilly said. ‘I don’t think I want to know the details. Is it true though? That he was, actually… murdered?’

  ‘It appears that way, yes,’ Beck said.

  ‘Did he suffer?’

  Beck balled a fist and rubbed it against the palm of his other hand.

  ‘Unlikely,’ he said, not sounding very convinced.

  Jacinta Reilly picked up on it.

  ‘Is it true, his… throat?’

  You said you didn’t want to know the details.

  Beck nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  She blinked rapidly, then her small eyes widened and were still.

  ‘My, God,’ she said. ‘You know, we’ll be seven years separated next month. And yet, in some ways, it was like we had never separated at all.’

  Grief can sometimes be like a wave, Beck knew. It begins as a current, one of many currents that flow and ebb, joining other currents that hide beneath the surface, unseen and deep, so, so, deep. The grief is carried with these, the momentum building, slowly rising from the deep, breaking through the surface, rising up, curling into a white top, building and building, the white top becoming a boiling foam crust, bubbling and hissing, all the time heading to shore…

  Beck knew, knew that if they needed to get questions answered, they needed to do it now, before it was too late.

  ‘Mrs O’Reilly,’ Beck said. ‘If I may ask. How was Gerry lately, his demeanour?’

  The question distracted her, forced her to focus on practicalities. The wave settled somewhat, fading back into the dark sea.

  ‘The boys are grown now.’ Suddenly, she looked startled. ‘My God. I need to tell them. Maybe I should do that now? I mean, I wouldn’t…’

  ‘This won’t take long,’ Beck said. ‘It’s important.’

  She paused, took a deep breath, settling herself.

  ‘Gerry was not himself lately,’ she said. ‘No. Definitely not. We always tried to keep on good terms, you understand. And we did. For the boys’ sake. But he wasn’t himself. He was withdrawn, quiet… didn’t you notice? Down at the station?’

  Beck hadn’t. He hoped Claire might answer, but she remained silent. O’Reilly wore a mask, but no surprises there, so did everyone else.

  She continued, ‘He said it was all futile. A waste. Said that he knew that now.’

  Beck and Claire exchanged discreet glances.

  ‘What was a waste?’ Beck asked.

  Jacinta O’Reilly sighed, looked down at the long red fingernails of each hand.r />
  ‘Gerry had an addiction. That’s what I’d call it. An addiction to sex. There, I said it. I’ve never said it before, not to anyone else in the whole world. But I’ve said it now, and you know what? I feel better for having done it. He was never happy with what he had. Including me. It was very difficult. I think it stemmed from his childhood. His mother died when he was very young, when he was only five. He had issues with commitment, that I won’t go into, because I don’t really understand it myself. But I had to deal with the aftermath, that’s all I know.’

  A light was briefly being cast into the dark corners of Inspector O’Reilly’s life. For the first time, Beck felt an empathy for the man. As so often happens when someone dies, he wished he’d made more of an effort to overlook the guff and instead get to know the man.

  ‘It was painful,’ she added. ‘I sometimes…’ She looked away, then slowly back again, ‘… went along with it. Look, can I tell you something?’ They remained silent. ‘I’ve never said this before either. I enjoyed those sex parties. But unlike him, I got attached, to people…’

  Beck stopped rubbing his fist against his palm. Instead he sat motionless.

  ‘And he didn’t like it. That was the reason we broke up. He accused me of having affairs. Unbelievable. To him, sex didn’t count. It just didn’t. It was a purely physical act. It was like an itch, he said, the worst itch you could get, an itch that absolutely had to be scratched. But it was the so-called affairs I was having that were the problem. Not his itch. But to me, I couldn’t have one without the other. To me it was more than a bloody itch. Am I making you both uncomfortable?’

  ‘So, he wasn’t himself lately,’ Beck said, ignoring the question.

  ‘No, like I said. And he’d started coming round here, begging me to take him back. He said he had realised the futility of one-dimensional relationships. That he was tired of it all. He wanted what we once had. He was very upset. I told him he needed to see a doctor. I was worried for him.’

  ‘In what way,’ Beck asked, ‘were you worried for him?’

  ‘He rang yesterday morning and sounded particularly upset. He said a girl had been killed. I couldn’t understand why he was so upset about it. He didn’t know her, I don’t think he did anyway. It seemed to have affected him in some way. I’d never seen him like that before. I was concerned, that’s it. I don’t know why, I just was.’ She dropped her voice. ‘But I told him it was too late for any of that. I told him I loved my new life. And I had him to thank for it, because in a way, he had liberated me, from myself that is. If you see what I mean?’

  She fell silent.

  ‘Do you know who may have done this?’ Claire asked.

  And then it happened. While they weren’t paying attention, the wave had crept up and now smashed to shore, curling onto the sand, the white spray exploding into a white mist that stretched to the sky. Her face was lost in her hands, as she slumped back onto the couch, and a cry of anguish came up from the very depths of her soul as she cried:

  ‘Ah Gerry. God in heaven. Ah Gerry.’

  Fifty

  Maurice Crabby stood in the doorway, looking up at the camera on the wall, and pressed the buzzer. The automatic door slid open and he entered. It was a different world inside too from what he remembered. Unrecognisable. The wood-panelled walls and floors, the high ceilings where voices carried and echoed, the screams from hidden rooms and wards that swirled about the place, never ending, all gone. Inside the door were potted plants and armchairs spread about the vast foyer. Like a hotel. But no matter, here would always be a place of misery and fear for him, where the ghosts of inmates – not patients – flittered about the corridors and dark places, shuffling in white gowns, always shuffling, a slow procession of madness. This was the place the big detective had taken his mother to on that night, back in 1954.

  He thought again of her sitting at the table, in her brightly coloured coat and that hat that tilted to the side. As if she was going out somewhere for the day. But it was here she was going to. And it was here that she had been ever since. But no one cared. She was of the Clachán. An outcast. As they all were. Who remembered them or cared less? No one, that was the answer.

  A smiling figure in a blue skirt and jacket appeared before him. Her name was prominent on a badge fixed to the lapel of the jacket: Lucinda.

  ‘Are you a nurse?’ he asked. ‘Your badge doesn’t say.’

  ‘Yes. Our name tags are generic. We do not refer to ourselves by title. It seems to help the residents. Lucinda Nally. Resident house nurse.’

  Maurice detected a trace of a Scottish accent.

  ‘I didn’t tell Kathleen you were coming. The last time you never showed, you know. She was upset.’

  He noted her use of the term residents, not patients, or inmates. Residents. Like a hotel.

  ‘The last time. I wanted to come. Really. I just… couldn’t.’

  She gave a faint smile, but didn’t comment any further.

  ‘The first time I came here was with my father,’ Crabby said softly. ‘He had returned from England.’ Crabby pointed vaguely behind him, towards the windows. ‘There used to be a gate out there, covered in wire mesh, and a small gate house set into the wall. For a man. In a uniform. A security man.’

  The nurse looked at him strangely.

  ‘My father banged on the door,’ Crabby said. ‘We waited ages before someone came and opened it. It was a nun. She reminded me of a great big bat with its wings folded standing before us with her cowl wrapped about her. She didn’t apologise for having kept us waiting. She said we could stay only a short while and to wipe our feet on the way in. I remember she had a big bunch of keys. She brought us to my mother’s room. It was at the end of a long, dank corridor up two flights of stone stairs. I’ll never forget the sound of the key in the lock. It clanged and echoed. And there she was sitting on the edge of the bed, the white of its sheet folded back over the coarse-haired blanket. Her bare feet were on the stone floor, her hands crossed on her lap.’

  Crabby’s voice faltered as he fought back tears.

  ‘It’s getting late now,’ the nurse said, laying a hand gently on his arm. ‘I’d ask you not to stay long. Routine is very important.’

  But it was the bat’s voice that echoed in his head, ‘You will take care not to mention any talk of taking her away from St. Bridget’s. Do not be putting notions into her head now.’

  ‘… Mr Crabby?’

  Maurice focused his eyes.

  ‘What? Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You looked…’

  ‘Please, can I see her now?’

  She looked at him, as if deciding.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

  He followed her along a corridor, the walls covered in brightly coloured murals, of beaches and twinkling blue seas, glorious sunrises. A world of make-believe. A visual tranquilizer. At the end of the corridor they stopped at a door, number 43 on it.

  ‘Wait here a moment please, thank you.’

  She tapped on the door gently, then opened it a little and squeezed in, taking care that Maurice couldn’t be seen from the inside. The door closed again with a soft clumping sound.

  Alone in the corridor, Maurice was struck by the utter silence. It was so silent it almost hurt his ears.

  And then the door opened, and Lucinda Nally stood to one side, smiling.

  He entered. She was sitting by a window that no longer had bars across it. The curtains were open, a garden of cut grass, flowerbeds and shrubs framed behind the glass. Everything pretty, bright colours, anything that was dark forbidden. He stared at the little old lady seated next to the window, looking at him now. Her face was small, the features sharp, her white hair gathered behind her head in a bun. She wore a pretty dress printed with a butterfly design.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, the word catching in his throat, tears coming to his eyes now.

  Fifty-One

  They had been concerned about leaving Jacinta O’Reilly alone. They offered to wai
t until someone came round, but she insisted they go, that she needed time alone. So they did.

  Beck’s phone rang as they reached the car, the screen showing Private Number. It seemed the only certainty about the uncertainty of Natalia ringing was that the timing would be all wrong. He ignored it, pressed the red termination button, finished the cigarette he’d lit as soon as he’d left the house and got into the car.

  ‘You were never married, were you?’ Claire asked, opening the window and starting the engine. She drove along to the end of the driveway, pausing before moving onto the road.

  Beck still hadn’t answered.

  ‘Well, were you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Married. Were you ever married? Just curious.’

  ‘No. I told you that before. Never married.’

  ‘Hhmmm,’ changing gear, the question unresolved.

  ‘Don’t you ever want to get married?’

  What is this?

  ‘Can we talk about it another time, Claire?’

  ‘Of course. I was just wondering, that’s all, about people, who don’t get married. I was thinking, is it because they don’t need someone in their lives? Is that it? A part of me wishes I could be like that.’

  ‘Just curious in return,’ Beck said. ‘Where did you meet Lucy Grimes?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, becoming silent for a moment, thinking. ‘It was Dublin. I was new to the city. A country girl, a redneck, wet behind the ears, call it what you will. I wanted to experiment. To splash whatever colours I chose onto a blank canvas… Make sense?’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Beck said.

  ‘I wanted to understand who I was. Dublin was more than a freedom for me, it was a liberation. You see, I thought I liked boys, but it was such an effort. So I didn’t bother trying any more. I didn’t want to hide is what I’m saying, so I just went for it. I could be myself. I didn’t have to bully…’