The Child Before

by Michael Scanlon

  ‘He came home with blood on him,’ she said after a long pause. ‘He didn’t think I saw him, but I did.’

  Beck felt a sensation like an elbow nudge him in his belly, at the same time his breath caught at the back of his throat and he coughed.

  ‘When you heard what happened,’ Claire said. ‘Did you think that strange?’

  ‘Of course,’ the voice rising, then dropping to an inaudible whisper as she added, ‘But he’s still my husband, despite everything.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’ Claire again. ‘Maybe he cut himself.’

  ‘Well,’ the pitch elevating once more, ‘How else would he have blood on him?’

  ‘What did he say?’ Beck asked.

  ‘Can’t you wait? Stop asking questions. Just for a moment. There’s something else I want to add.’

  Again, that elbow into his stomach.

  ‘He was there too…’ she began.

  Silence.

  Claire opened her mouth, was about to speak.

  ‘… He was at Kelly’s Forge after me. When I got there, it was deserted. There was no one there, so I only stayed a minute, then went home. But he was there later.’ Mrs Crabby said.

  And the nudge into Beck’s stomach became a punch now.

  ‘I know,’ she added, ‘because I checked the sat nav on the Range Rover. He took the car out after I got back, and I know he was there. After I’d been there. And maybe that was when Samantha Power was killed.’

  Beck shook his head in amazement. ‘Both of you,’ he said incredulous, ‘both of you were there, you’re telling me?’

  She nodded. Beck imagined a hawk, but instead of soaring high, it was flying low, and yet still unable to spot not one, but two mice scurrying about in the high grass below. Beck had missed this one completely.

  Sixty-Six

  Sergeant Connor drove the marked patrol car, his elbow resting out the open window. The sun had turned his skin a golden bronze.

  Next to him in the passenger seat was Garda Ryan, brooding. She had been hoping to finish work early today. But that wasn’t going to happen now. Although she was physically sitting next to Connor, the important bit, her presence, was missing. Subconsciously she was far off somewhere else. In her mind she was compiling a shopping list, checking off items against the contents of what she remembered to be in her fridge-freezer. Her husband had already rung twice. Like she was a family information centre. Where was the potato peeler? the first question. Where was the grill setting knob on the oven? the second. She had tolerated the first, but the second, the straw that broke the camel’s back, drew the response, ‘Work it out for your bloody self,’ before she hung up.

  Garda Ryan was sorry about the way she had reacted now. Her husband could be so domestically helpless at times. Still. She was beginning to sweat inside her hi-vis jacket, but it was too awkward to take it off in the car. Connor’s constant smiling was starting to irk her too. What the hell had he to be so happy about?

  She yawned, and rubbed her tired eyes, trying to remember when she’d last had a full night’s sleep. She couldn’t, so gave up.

  They asked directions at a shop and post office standing in the middle of nowhere at the side of the road. It was an old two-storey building with living quarters above. There was a bus stop outside, the emblem of the national bus company, a galloping Irish Setter, across the top. A sign over the door said Cool-na-Tol Convenience Store and Post Office.

  A middle-aged woman in a grey dress was sat reading a newspaper behind the counter in the supermarket section. The post-office area consisted of a single empty booth with a long counter next to it fixed to the wall. Official forms and brochures were displayed on the wall, along with a sign: ‘Be Smart. Open A Post Office Savings Account Today’. The woman stood when they entered, looking nervous. Sergeant Connor could see the headline on the open page of the newspaper: Raiders Disguised as Gardai Rob Dublin Post Office.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘We are Gardai.’ He tapped his shoulder number, ‘Look.’

  ‘I’m here on my own. Out here, we’re isolated… we’ve never been robbed thank God. Yet.’

  ‘You know a Colin Hegarty?’ Garda Ryan said. ‘We need to know where he lives.’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Why do you say it like that?’ Connor asked.

  ‘Because. No reason. Just because. You know how it is, some people…’

  ‘So, you know where he lives?’ Connor again.

  She gave precise directions: straight ahead, second left, then first right, left again and down that boreen, Colin Hegarty’s place. ‘It’s easy to miss that second left, keep an eye, and the house is hidden behind bushes, you mightn’t see it from the road. Oh, and there’s a rusty gate, keep an eye out for it. Be careful. He can be a little paranoid.’

  It was exactly as she described. The rusty gate gave it away. Ahead, the small rough road, or boreen, meandered on, grass spouting from its centre. It was 18.14. Garda Ryan was thinking she wasn’t going to get any shopping done now. But for Connor, nothing could shake his eternal optimism of working in the light of day.

  As they pulled up, Colin Hegarty was watching them, hidden from view, running a finger along the trigger guard of his double-barrelled shotgun, angry at the whole world.

  Sixty-Seven

  Sergeant Connor led the way to the rusty gate. The bushes on either side pressed in. They had parked on the roadway, there was nowhere else that they could see. At the gate he viewed the house. It was unpainted, bare plaster, a narrow window on either side of a plain wooden door, a sloping tiled roof. There was a garden of rutted grass and cowpats where animals had recently grazed. He could see a cluttered farmyard beside the house, old oil drums, discarded tyres and machinery, a car resting on cylinder blocks, a tractor and a small white van.

  Connor placed a hand onto the gate. As he did so a symphony: high pitched, also a baritone, and a base line, of throaty growls, then a chorus of yelps. A pack of dogs. A long white face, a black patch around one eye appeared inches in front of his, two rows of gnashing white canines, the neck straining against a metal chain. Connor jumped back, instinctively raising his hands to protect his face, but knocking his hat off in the process. Garda Ryan, on the other hand, remained calm. Connor cursed under his breath. He felt, as the senior ranking officer, he had let himself down. A loud deep voice rumbled through the air: ‘Go back! Now! I’m tellin’ ye! Go back! Go on! Now!’

  Connor retreated a couple of steps. But Garda Ryan, standing behind him, did not move. He bumped into her.

  ‘Not you,’ the voice rumbled again. ‘I’m talking to the feckin’ dogs.’

  ‘Stop the messing and put the dogs away,’ Garda Ryan shouted. ‘There’s a good man.’

  ‘When you tell me what this is about. Then I’ll decide.’

  ‘It’s not for you to decide,’ Garda Ryan announced. ‘Let us in or we’ll have an armed response unit around here in double quick order. They won’t be so polite. Now put the dogs away and let us in.’

  Hegarty looked down at the shotgun in his hands. He was hidden behind the bushes at the side of the farmyard. He didn’t have a licence for the firearm. He used to have one. But it was taken off him, after the, what he called, incident. They took his shotgun away. The one he was holding now was stolen from a dead neighbour. After he had found the old man slumped in his chair when he went to visit, and so took the opportunity when it presented itself. And because he didn’t want to bring suspicion on himself, he hadn’t called an ambulance. It was two more days before the body was eventually found.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ he said.

  He clicked his tongue and called the dogs. The sounds of their yelps and barks receded, becoming muffled as he locked them into a shed. He went into an outhouse, and hid the shotgun under bags of calf meal.

  Connor stretched himself to full height when he heard Hegarty’s footsteps approach, attempting to open the gate. It was only then he noticed that it was locked. Hegarty appeared from around the s
ide of the house, but walked by in front of them, along the path against the wall of the property.

  ‘Come in this way,’ he said, pointing.

  He disappeared behind bushes at the side of the garden.

  ‘Down here,’ he called from the other side.

  They followed his voice and found him standing on the other side of a farm gate. It was completely concealed by the bushes.

  ‘I had a gate across the top of the road there,’ pointing back the way they had come. ‘But the Council made me take it down. They said it’s a public road, that I had no right to put it there. There’s nobody lives down this road. Nobody but me.’ His face contorted. ‘Bastards.’

  Hegarty was tall and gangly, hollow-cheeked, the skin on his face draped over his bones like filo pastry. His hair was white and his face had a couple of days’ stubble. He was dressed in a blue-and-white check flannel shirt and dirty jeans, metal-tipped boots. They knew the boots were metal-tipped because the top of one had worn away, revealing the shiny metal plate beneath. White chest hair curled out of the open neck of his shirt.

  ‘You have problems with intruders?’ Garda Ryan asked.

  The face contorted again.

  ‘If they’d half the chance I would. I had a fella here the other day askin’ me had I anything for sellin’. He was casin’ the place to come back and rob me later. I set the dogs on him. He didn’t come back.’

  ‘You can’t…’ Connor began, but then changed his mind. ‘We’d like a word.’

  ‘About what,’ suspicion in the eyes.

  ‘We need to check something, that’s all,’ Connor said. ‘You have a Landrover Discovery. One is registered to your name.’

  Colin Hegarty turned his head, pursed his lips and went ‘pwut’ as he spat onto the ground.

  ‘I never had you people around here till I had that incident. Now you come here whenever something’s wrong. In case I had something to do with it, whatever it is. Always something. I’m on the list now, amn’t I? I’m one of your customers, an auld reliable.’

  ‘What list?’ Connor said. ‘I’ve never even been here before.’

  ‘Aye, but you’re here now. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Landrover Discovery,’ Garda Ryan prompted.

  A scraping sound as the gate bolt was slid across, then Hegarty pulled on it and the gate swung open.

  ‘This way,’ turning and walking ahead of them.

  He led them into the yard. A bale of animal feed was torn open, the handle of a pitchfork sticking out of it, with it the sickly-sweet smell of silage.

  ‘In this weather there’s no grass. I’m feeding my livestock from winter supplies. No one’s talkin’ ’bout that, are they?’

  They stopped in the centre of the yard.

  Connor looked around. But there were no animals that he could see. He noticed a stone outhouse with an open doorway. Hegarty watched him looking at it. At one end of the farmyard was a wooden fence, the fence posts crooked and the barbed wire between sagging.

  Connor looked to the outhouse again, then turned to Hegarty. Their eyes met. Connor took a step, about to go over, see what was in there. He felt a tug on the sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘Over there,’ it was Garda Ryan.

  He turned, saw what she was pointing at off to the side of the yard. There, against a low wall, parked on grass, was a vehicle. A green vehicle. A jeep. A Landrover. Specifically an old Landrover Discovery.

  Connor forgot about the outhouse, started walking towards the Discovery instead. When he reached it, he squatted down onto his knees, inspecting the tyres. They were clean and in good condition.

  A breeze blew across the farmyard and a flock of starlings suddenly took flight, rising up from behind a shed, performing a cartwheel and flying away.

  All that remained was silence.

  ‘Why you so interested in it anyway?’ Hegarty asked.

  ‘You heard about the girl?’ Garda Ryan said. ‘Who was killed. And whose kid is missing…’ She let him think about that. Then: ‘That’s why.’

  Hegarty did not reply. Not immediately.

  ‘One minute,’ he said then, walking away.

  ‘Where you going?’ Connor called after him.

  ‘One minute.’

  They watched him head towards the outhouse. He reached it and disappeared through the open doorway.

  ‘What the hell?’ Connor wondered aloud, setting off after him.

  Sixty-Eight

  Dr Gumbell was in what he called the post-coital tristesse stage of his hangover.

  The philosopher Baruch Spinoza had said the mind became so caught up in the sensual pleasure of lovemaking that afterwards the greatest sadness, one that confuses and dulls the mind, followed. Gumbell had spent the entire evening before drinking brandy and Crested Ten at the Brown Water Inn, trying to decide which he favoured most. Charged to room service, of course, even though he still had to work out how to get his expenses to cover it. His drinking gave him, while not the same pleasure or euphoria, but the same intense distraction as lovemaking. And for much longer. He couldn’t remember when he’d last done the naughty. When he tried, all he remembered were messy sheets and looking for a taxi afterwards.

  He pushed the protruding tongue aside and peered into Inspector O’Reilly’s mouth. As he did so a chuckle forced its way from his own. He hadn’t expected it, but it had accompanied a joke he’d just remembered: Man asks another man, what’s the definition of eternity, mate? Other man says, I don’t know, what is the definition of eternity? The first man says: The time you finish making love and your taxi arrives. Boom! Boom!

  The chuckle disappeared just as quickly as it had come, lost to the sterile, antiseptic and formaldehyde-laced air.

  It was because of his post-coital tristesse hangover that he had missed it. His senses, normally sharp, now sodden and slow. It was as he placed Inspector O’Reilly’s hand back again by his side onto the morgue table that he noticed something glint. It was a glint different to that which he had been experiencing all day. The glint caused by disruption to the electrical impulses of his hungover brain, causing him to see bright particles like little shooting stars across his vision. He was used to those.

  But this was different, part of a cluster, centred on the palm of the hand. He reached for tweezers and leaned in, picked one up and placed it into a vial. He crossed to the microscope, tipped it out, blinked, then looked into the lens. Next, he went to a shelf and took down the box of exhibit samples. He found what he was looking for and went back to the microscope. He compared a fragment taken from the knife handle with what he had just taken from the hand. Then he stood back and took a deep breath. He went to the sink and washed his hands, then crossed to a chair on which he’d hung his jacket. He fished out his mobile from a pocket and rang Beck.

  Sixty-Nine

  Hegarty emerged from the shed just as Connor reached it, brushing past him, striding back the way he had come.

  ‘Stop, Hegarty,’ Connor commanded.

  Hegarty had something in his right hand: a piece of metal, short, stubby, grey.

  Connor was wary now.

  ‘What’s that? In your hand.’

  ‘Relax,’ Hegarty said, slowing down but now stopping, looking back over his shoulder as he went. ‘It’s a jimmy bar. Not a bloody shotgun.’

  He laughed. It was his private joke. But neither guard laughed.

  Connor, relieved, followed him.

  ‘What you need it for?’ it was Garda Ryan.

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  The three of them walked towards the Discovery.

  ‘Where were you on Tuesday last?’ Connor asked when they reached it. ‘Early evening say, from ’bout four o’clock on.’

  ‘No foreplay, eh? Straight to the point.’

  ‘Watch your bloody mouth.’ Garda Ryan hated smutty talk. ‘A careless word can bring an indecency charge. If that’s what you want, keep it up.’

  ‘I’m like someone with a bad blood
y credit rating, aren’t I?’ Hegarty sounded sorry for himself. ‘It’ll never be forgotten, will it? That night. The incident. It wasn’t all the way it was presented to be in court you know.’

  ‘Really,’ Garda Ryan, her voice rising. ‘Wasn’t it now? You pleaded not guilty if my memory serves me correct. The jury decided. Were you wronged then? Miscarriage of justice, was it?’

  ‘I’m not getting into it again. Not now. It’s over with.’

  ‘Then why the fuck are you bringing it up?’ Garda Ryan’s face was turning red. ‘You don’t want to get into it because there’s nothing to get into. And you know it. Isn’t that right now, sunshine?’

  Hegarty’s hand tightened around the jimmy bar. He smirked, walked to the front of the Discovery, pushed it between the grill and bonnet, pressed down sharply, and the bonnet opened with a clunking sound. He ran his fingers under the rim, released the catch, and pulled the bonnet up. He held it while he clipped the supporting arm into place. Then stepped back, outstretching his arms in a theatrical gesture.

  ‘You’ll not see a Discovery like it for miles around,’ he said.

  They stepped up and looked into the engine bay.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ it was Connor. ‘It doesn’t have an engine.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hegarty with a smug smile. ‘And hasn’t for at least a year.’ He pointed. ‘It’s over there.’

  They looked. It sat on a wooden pallet, rusting, covered in bird droppings.

  ‘I’m planning on putting a diesel in,’ Hegarty said. ‘That V6 would drink Lough Erne dry so it would.’

  From above, the low rumbling sound of jet engines as an aeroplane crossed the sky.

  ‘Now,’ Connor said. ‘I want to see what’s in that outhouse of yours.’

  The smug smile disappeared from Hegarty’s face.

  Seventy

  Pulse Alert. Cross Beg Gardai seeking Maurice Crabby of Mountain Top View, Doirelog, Cross Beg, driving vehicle reg 172G for Golf Zero Zero Four Three Niner black Range Rover. STOP AND DETAIN. Wanted in connection with the murder of Samantha Power Pulse incident number 647564539 refers. Approach with CAUTION. Investigating officer Inspector Finnegan Beck, Cross Beg.