The Child Before

by Michael Scanlon

  The rest was exactly as Garda Ryan had said: The blue Picasso reversed into its parking space – Beck noted this was directly opposite the other vehicle, but three rows back. The other vehicle lingered, then slowly edged forward, occupying its parking space again.

  Of course, Beck knew, there could be a perfectly legitimate reason for it all. It was too early to tell.

  ‘Claire,’ he said, ‘let’s go forward now. Jump right ahead. By two hours this time. Let’s just have a look at how things are then. See if this vehicle is still there.’

  Claire pushed the video bar with her finger, watching the time line click forward now, jumping to 17.30 hours. She stopped.

  It sat alone. The same vehicle. He could see it properly now for the first time. It was a blue and silver Mitsubishi pickup.

  Eighty-Seven

  Vicky left the hardware shop, walked across the car park, placed the heavy tins of deck oil on the ground by her Mercedes and fumbled in her pocket for the keys. She extracted them and opened the boot, lifted up the tins one at a time and placed them inside.

  She got into the car, placed the key in the ignition. Thinking. She had already rung Frankfurt. A tentative arrangement had been made for a meeting the following week. She’d have to fly out on an overnighter. She got a crazy idea: maybe the cool policeman might come with her? She dismissed the thought, but not completely: we’ll see, she thought. But she needed to act fast. Because if her theory was right about who was responsible… well then, wow! That would be enough to make prime-time TV worldwide. And a podcast. Don’t forget the podcast, she thought. She smiled. A podcast, that would be a first. And Danny was due in Crabby’s the following day. By lunchtime tomorrow, she thought, I might have what I need.

  She was about to turn the ignition key when she saw someone come round the corner from the farm and building supplies yard at the back of the shop. A fleeting glimpse, check shirt open, billowing over a black T-shirt, wearing a baseball hat. She drove forward, looking left and right to make sure nothing was approaching. When she glanced back again, the person was gone.

  She drove out of Cross Beg, swung onto River Road, driving by the big houses behind their ivy walls. The people here controlled the town, more or less. The movers and shakers. Or the hand-me-downers. Protecting their status and passing it from one generation to the next.

  She thought of this as she drove. At the end of River Road, she turned left onto Atlantic Drive, heading towards the coast. When a westerly blew, the salt air blew in from the sea. Maybe she should have bought a property nearer to the sea, she wondered? That would be something. But she had limited funds, and even a tumbledown shack with sea views was fetching €75,000. Easy. And without plumbing. Or central heating. Take another €75,000 just to make it habitable. No, she was fine where she was. It might not have sea views, but she could still smell the salt on the air. Who knew, if this worked out, she could afford to renovate her exiting property and buy a seaside house too. Because she was talking millions here, not piddly €75,000. Bring it on!

  She turned onto Atlantic Drive. The land was good around here, lush and sweet. It was horse-breeding country too. Often, when she went for walks along the beach she would see horses from the local stables being galloped across the sand, running at the waters edge, throwing up a fine mist of spray. To her left, over the grey stone walls, the land was flat, stretching to the Atlantic Ocean, and beyond, next stop, New York.

  Around here, the blight of emigration had emptied the landscape of young people for generations, each one like a death, because until recently, few ever returned. The American Wake they called it.

  An unusual sadness crept into her now, passing the ruins of cottages, relics of lost generations, whose descendants now called themselves British, American or Australian. These ruins, from where they had left, forgotten about now, the ghosts of long dead mothers and fathers still waiting for their return. There was a story to tell in that too. Maybe she could combine the two? Now, wouldn’t that be something?

  She was approaching the junction now with the coast road. Still, she thought to herself, stopping, checking both ways, it wasn’t like that any longer. The thought cheered her, as she pulled out, turning right for home.

  She glanced in her rear-view mirror. There was a car there. It had appeared out of nowhere, a small car, coming up fast behind, overtaking her with a roar from its big exhaust. The boy racer disappeared into the distance.

  She sat back, thinking of American Wakes again. She should count her blessings more often. Okay, so she was no longer married, and granted, she didn’t have children, but there were enough children in the world, right? Maybe it would happen, one day. She was still young enough. But if it didn’t… She smiled. Life was good anyway. And she was going to ride this wild friggen horse for all it was worth. Ya, baby!

  It was then she saw it. In the rear-view mirror. Turning onto the coast road further back. A silver and blue Mitsubishi pickup.

  Eighty-Eight

  ‘Now we have to wait,’ Beck said.

  There was a charge in the room. He could almost reach out and touch it. Everyone could. He considered that forensics and scientific wizardry do not always solve cases. Sometimes they have no influence at all. Under the hegemony of the western political system, or civilization, An Garda Síochána formed part of a sophisticated international crime-fighting apparatus headed by the FBI, and which included Interpol and Europol. They had access to the most sophisticated crime-fighting tools, including satellites.

  But in this case, as in many others, none of that mattered. Right now, what it came down to was one CCTV camera high up on a pole.

  They waited.

  Eighty-Nine

  She watched. There was something about the way it had swung onto Atlantic Drive. Too fast, wobbling before it managed to straighten up again. Something familiar about it. Approaching fast now. Maybe there was an emergency? Which would explain why it was being driven like that. Emergency. Had to be. She eased her foot from the accelerator, wanting the vehicle to catch up, to overtake. Slowing right down, the speedometer needle barely registering twenty-five miles an hour. She watched it, the pick-up growing larger and larger in her rear-view mirror, and then it was filling it completely: the silver grill, the ugly black bull bars, and above it, that face, behind the wheel, everything off kilter.

  She relaxed. What was he doing here? She hadn’t seen him in that truck before. He wore a check shirt and had a baseball hat on. She realised it was him she had seen outside the hardware shop too.

  Should she stop?

  A sudden, intense, blinding flash of white light. She closed her eyes and opened them again, her vision pockmarked by a thousand swirling stars. She focused again, on the rear-view mirror. And again, an explosion of white light, her vision disintegrating into a kaleidoscope of flashing wispy threads, all shapes, all sizes. She slowed down almost to a stop now, her vision a blizzard, impossible to see the road ahead.

  And then an earthquake. The world literally shaking beneath her. With it a cacophony of sounds – thunder, a ship’s klaxon, persistent and angry. She shook her head, the car just about crawling forward. She looked in the mirror, squinting her eyes, through the swirling, flashing stars, could just about make it out. As it came a second time. The blue and silver machine. Bigger. Bigger. Bigger. Filling the rear-view mirror again. And then the earth shook once more as it rammed into her a second time. Receding now, fading, then coming forward once more, the ugly black bull bars, closer and closer, finally disappearing from view as they drew level with the back of her car and…

  This time there was no earthquake.

  This time it was different.

  Ninety

  The CCTV gave the time as 18.47. Crabby’s supermarket car park was less than a quarter full. The blue and silver pickup stood alone in an empty row of parking spaces. Fat off-road tyres, bull bars, spot lights, air horn, the vehicular equivalent of a body builder showing off his stack in a tight T-shirt. The screen was so
still it appeared almost as a painting. They had been watching the CCTV for almost ninety minutes. No one had slumped into their seats yet, bored. No one had spoken. No one had even taken a comfort break.

  They waited.

  At 18.52 the figure approached from the rear of the vehicle, the distance lending it a fuzziness. The room sat forward in their seats. The charge had become a static, buzzing through the air, almost tingling. Senses razor sharp. Adrenalin pumping. Total focus. Nothing else in the whole world mattered.

  Now.

  He was medium build, balding, wearing a dirty white T-shirt, an unrecognisable motif across the front. Claire zoomed in. He walked quickly, looking about, nervous, moving down the side of the pickup towards the driver’s door. Fumbling with the key in the lock, all the while looking around, the door opening as he then sat inside. A second later the engine started with a throaty roar. Reversing from the space, the engine revving.

  ‘Stop,’ Beck said. ‘Stop it right there. And play it again. Slower this time.’

  Ninety-One

  The driver in front of him took her chance, the Mercedes pulling away just a fraction, but he nudged the accelerator and the big pickup was right on it again, this time the bull bar catching the right rear end of the car. The famous PIT manoeuvre, Pursuit Intervention Technique. He’d seen it plenty of times on American reality cop programmes. He’d always wanted to do it. And now he had.

  ‘Woo hoo,’ slapping his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Now bitch.’

  The car spun in one complete circle and one partial, slow, lazy revolution, coming to a stop at the edge of the road, tottering over the edge to a ten-foot dip. He’d chosen it for this specific purpose, knowing the crash barrier had not yet been installed over the new drainage pit.

  The car was sideways across the road in front of him, facing the edge. He revved the pickup’s diesel, brought the truck round to the back of the car. Quickly now, before anyone came along on the road, before she had time to react, before the shock wore off. He drove forward, connecting with the car square on. It went over the side like a pin in a bowling alley.

  It happened so quickly it was almost as if it wasn’t really happening at all. A rollercoaster ride. The sensation of spinning, of slowing, then from behind, an impact, her head bouncing back against the headrest. Then, moving forward, the sensation of falling, as the car slid into an abyss. Down it went. Screaming now. But just as suddenly it stopped again. This wasn’t a crash. More like a thud. She was sitting, strapped into her seat, an astronaut waiting for launch. Except she was facing the wrong way.

  And with it a panic.

  A blind panic.

  Screaming, unclipping the seatbelt, opening the door and pushing the full weight of her upper body against it. But it wasn’t locked, of course, and she tumbled out onto the gravel of the freshly dug drainage pit. She thought of a grave, of being buried alive. She clambered up the side, digging her nails into the gravel, her feet grappling for grip behind her, moving upward, sliding back, then upward again. She reached the edge of the road, pulled herself over. Standing, feeling the sun on her face. There was nothing ahead of her but a clear road. She began to run. But something was stopping her. She pulled harder against this invisible force, felt the fabric of her blouse tighten about her. Confused, she looked over her shoulder.

  He was right there, his hand clamped around the tail end of her blouse hanging from her jeans. A triumphant smile on that slightly deformed face. Like he’d been fishing and just got a prize catch. His back against the pickup. The bull bars, like the lips of a monster.

  Her body sagged. This was impossible. She felt her legs give way beneath her. And then she was falling. His arms hooked in underneath her, stopping her fall.

  She stared at her shoes as they dragged across the ground. She could not take her eyes from them. Those feet, which she’d been in control of all her life. That always did what she told them to do. Now, she had no control over them at all. She thought of screaming, but knew it was useless. She prayed a car would come along. Surely someone had to? But they didn’t. Because, although it had seemed like an eternity, everything had happened in less than one minute.

  Ninety-Two

  On the second replay, Beck ordered the image frozen and magnified as the man approached the pickup. He could now see that what he had thought was a motif was, in fact, a streak of dirt. The T-shirt was also torn along one sleeve and down one side. The expression on the face was one of agitation. Beck looked for something else, saw it splattered on the T-shirt: blood. It had been over two hours since Samantha Power had driven from the car park. That was when this man had arrived. Where had he been since?

  Beck instructed Claire to trawl back further. It was exactly nine minutes before the arrival of Samantha Power that the pickup entered the car park. The driver got out of his vehicle and went into Crabby’s supermarket, re-emerged a short time later with a bag of groceries. What happened next they already knew, the pickup reversing from its parking space, then into it again as Samantha Power drove by a couple of rows in front of him.

  They waited, and some minutes later, as Samantha Power made her way back to her car from the supermarket, the driver got out of his pickup for a second time. He walked between the row of vehicles in front of his and stopped. One row now separated him from her. There he stood, staring, body stiff, arms by his side: Predatory. Samantha Power walked, in that bouncy way of hers, mass of curly hair rising and falling with each stride she took, the final few feet to her car.

  She stood out, this beautiful exotic fish, in a small, stagnant pond.

  Knowing what he knew about her now, her life had not been easy. And now it was almost over. He felt that bitter sense of sadness well up inside him again.

  Run. Before it’s too late.

  Beck recognised that man’s face. The reg check had already provided all the details. But he didn’t need a reg check to tell him who this was. A name like his was easy to remember.

  Beck looked back towards the man, it wasn’t an invisible elbow that he felt hit him in his stomach this time. It was a kick from an invisible horse.

  Because he had disappeared from the screen. The man. Whose name was Danny Black.

  Ninety-Three

  She placed her groceries into the back of the car, and looked at baby Róisín. The baby’s eyes flickered, and she turned her head from side to side a couple of times as if she was about to wake up. But her eyes did not open. Róisín settled again. Samantha went to the driver’s door, opened it and got in, closing it gently. Still, baby Róisín did not wake. She turned the key and started the engine, reversed from the parking space, drove forward along the roadway, glancing in the rear-view mirror, smiling, whispered, ‘You make it all worthwhile, my darling. You make my life worth living.’

  But there are times when a person’s mind lags behind the comprehension of the reality they face. A sudden reality, one they had not anticipated nor prepared for. Often when the mind becomes stunned, when neurotransmitters are unable to process information, confusion sets in. And it all happens in the blink of an eye, when all a person can do is stare, frozen…

  Now, moving slowly along the roadway, she remembered… the passenger door opening, how she had instinctively turned, had seen a person slithering in. That’s how she thought of it, slithering in. This person now rested half on the passenger seat and half in the footwell of her car. She stared, looking back to the road again, driving on as normal. As if nothing had happened. For she couldn’t process what had happened, or make sense of it. All in the blink of an eye. But it’d been long enough for Black to press the chisel into her side.

  ‘Drive. Just drive,’ his voice low and hard, a verbal punch.

  She knew him. That was her first thought. And: What’s he doing here? That was her second.

  Still, she said nothing. She just drove. Glanced in the rear-view. Róisín turning her head from side to side again. Soon, she would wake.

  Her mind processing again. All in the
blink of an eye.

  Danny Black.

  Who had been a year ahead of her in secondary school. A builder now… no, no, a handyman. Called himself a builder, but he wasn’t. Had a job in Dublin with one of the biggest construction companies in the country. For a time. But something happened, no one knew what. Now he was back in Cross Beg. Quiet, but weird, was the general consensus. She’d seen him in a couple of pubs around town. Or passed him by in the street. Always on his own. He always looked at her, in that way. Most men in Cross Beg looked at her in that way. She was used to it. Danny Black. What the fuck is he doing in my car?

  All in the blink of an eye.

  Danny Black. Pressing a knife into my side.

  She glanced back at Róisín again. Thought of screaming. But it was different now. Now that she had a child. It wasn’t about her. She had Róisín to think of.

  She drove on.

  ‘You at the road yet? Turn left at the road. Turn left, okay?’

  She nodded. At the road. Turned left.

  They were heading out of town now, along the Mylestown Road.

  ‘Why?’ She found the word escaping from her mouth. Had to open it wide and push it out.

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Why?’ she asked again, louder.

  She drove on, and still he didn’t answer.

  Mylestown was eight miles away. Ten minutes should cover it. There, she’d stop, in the middle of the road if she had to, honk the horn, one long continuous blast, wouldn’t take her hand away until someone noticed, until people came and helped her. They would help her, she had no doubt. All she had to do was keep that horn pressed. Once she got to Mylestown. Just a little further on. Ten minutes should make it. The thought reassured her.