The Sleeping Season

by Kelly Creighton

  *

  At the Royal Victoria Hospital was Addam and his wife Sylvia. They always dressed like grown-ups: he was in his suit and she in her silver and blue layers that hid the great little figure she had, like it was something to be ashamed of. Her long grey hair was tied in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. We were waiting out in the corridor.

  ‘Timothy has to have an operation,’ Addam said. ‘Charlotte’s with him now.’

  What capacity was Addam there in – uncle, brother or minister?

  ‘God will look after him,’ Sylvia said.

  ‘Cool,’ I said, ‘we’ll tell the doctors they can have a day off, shall we?’

  ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ said Addam. He was clutching his Bible in one hand and Sylvia’s hand in the other.

  ‘Sorry, Sylvia.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Sylvia said through clenched teeth.

  Charlotte and David came out of the room and saw us. David was quiet, his mouth twitching as he bit the insides of his cheek. Charlotte’s eyes were dark, her body shaking slightly, hand held aloft as though she was carrying a torch and had been using it to help her see a way through.

  I hugged her. Charlotte didn’t react.

  ‘How long will they be, do you reckon?’ I asked David when I let go.

  ‘An hour – maybe more. I have no idea.’

  ‘I’d like us all to pray together,’ said Addam.

  He held the Bible in both hands and closed his eyes. Charlotte reached out for me with one hand, David with the other and made this half-circle while Addam prayed for Timothy. As much as I wanted to resist, I didn’t. I wouldn’t, not if it helped someone. Silently I added River to the prayer.

  Chapter 40

  The wind had nearly blown the day from the bone when my mobile went. I was sitting in the car at the hospital. Timothy had been brought to intensive care and I had just spent the last two hours waiting in the corridor hoping for news.

  It was Paul on the phone. He wanted to meet up – he had a spare ticket to a show in the Grand Opera House. The old spare ticket excuse; I found it weak and presumptuous.

  ‘We can dovetail in together,’ Paul said.

  ‘Do you really like opera?’ I asked.

  ‘I like it if you like it.’

  ‘Look, I’m already seeing someone, Paul. Charlotte knows that, so I don’t know what she was doing trying to matchmake us.’

  He went quiet for a while. ‘Come to the show, just as friends,’ he said. ‘You can never have enough friends.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer—’

  ‘I promise, as friends,’ he said, interrupting me. ‘I don’t see what the problem is.’ But I detected a sharpness in his tone.

  ‘I don’t need this, Paul – not right now.’

  ‘You know, you could be a bit friendlier to the people who’re nice to you. I know you’re seeing someone. It’s obvious. So who is he … married?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘That’s right. You keep on doing what you’re doing – see where it gets you.’

  I hung up on him, missing the effect of slamming down the receiver on an old phone. I tapped Greg’s number.

  ‘Can you speak right now?’ I asked when he picked up.

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Are you coming around later? It feels like I haven’t seen you in ages. Not properly.’

  ‘There’s no chance. I’m not going to get away from here tonight. How’s your nephew?’

  ‘Seriously ill.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll get back to the station soon?’

  ‘I will and I need to tell you something.’ Really, I needed to tell him two things: that Linskey knew about us; and the bad news, that I was late, really bloody late. My breasts were heavy, and I hadn’t had a bleed in such a long time. I hadn’t been keeping record, but I knew it was a long, long time. After the science project Jason had made of it in the past, I refused to monitor it.

  ‘I’ve just been asked out,’ I told him instead. ‘Charly tried to set me up.’

  ‘Are you going to go?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not. Why? Do you think I should?’

  ‘I’m really busy here, Sloane. As you well know.’

  ‘What have Higgins and Simon found out?’

  ‘Nothing. There were no tyre marks where Reede’s car was supposedly stopped. Anyway, you’ll be updated when you’re back on shift.’

  ‘Perhaps Shane was at the lights and already stopped,’ I suggested.

  ‘Try to rest in your downtime. Do something to take your mind off your nephew.’

  ‘Downtime? Ha! Or maybe I’ll go on this date to the opera, since you don’t seem to mind.’

  ‘Opera? … If you want to.’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I want.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Okay then, I don’t want you to.’ Greg coughed.

  ‘Then tell me that.’

  ‘I don’t have time for these games. I’ll see you tomorrow, Sloane. Not tomorrow night. In the morning.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Greg?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My period’s late,’ I said, before I could back out of it again. I held my breath. ‘Really late.’

  ‘Can you find out a conclusive result and then let me know?’

  ‘A conclusive result?’

  ‘We’ll need to run a risk assessment on your position.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘Harry, I can’t talk about this now. Do you know the stress I am under? You’re being ruled by your emotions right now. This isn’t the kind of person I thought you were.’

  ‘It is actually. And I’m glad I’m not a fucken robot like you.’

  ‘Come in, Sergeant,’ Greg shouted. ‘Look, I have to go now.’

  I could hear Higgins in the background. ‘Is this the search warrant for Brandon Terrace?’ he was asking.

  Chapter 41

  Mostly Belfast is grey and brown, and the sky reflects this in its ceiling-mirror up above. But the city has a different character at night; it might even be called beautiful. And with a bit of green and the introduction of some colour in the summer, the place can be positively festive.

  I blamed the Mela for that, for bringing the colour two months before. Charlotte’s kids loved throwing coloured powder at each other. It hit them – hair, skin, clothes – and exploded, bright and vivid. The girls shrieked and laughed and chased the boys who kept their mouths shut tight; Timothy, in his wheelchair, had his mouth wide open like he wanted to eat the colours.

  I watched as the sky above puffed into clouds of magical hues: pink, yellow, green and purple. Everyone was happy and dancing; drums were pumping on the stage. Charlotte sprinkled yellow powder onto my head. I turned to grab her, my hand full of coloured dust, ready to retaliate. Then I saw him.

  Jason.

  He was covered in yellow and green, a smear of blue under one of his eyes.

  It could have been any man his height, his build, but there was a feeling I got when I sensed he was nearby. My stomach would flip and I’d plummet into a visceral spell of seasickness. No one else has ever made me feel like that, and I have dealt with some out and out scumbags over the years.

  To think that this was the man I once signed up to be with for the rest of my life. Now, the mere thought of him appearing, the anticipation of it, made me ill. In actual fact, I didn’t know if he was still stalking me, or if it was just the imprint of it that had not yet dried.

  At the end of Mela, feeling far from protected and repaired, as I should have after the festival, I got Charlotte to drop me home rather than stay on with the family for dinner. I needed my own apartment, sofa and wine. I drank a full bottle of Merlot before Greg arrived, straight from work, with the added protection of a baseball cap.

  He poured himself a finger of scotch. It was all he drank, and he only drank with me because I did.

  �
�You’re looking very vibrant,’ he said, setting his cap on the table and sitting down on the sofa beside me.

  Something was unearthed in me with these colours. I had only wiped my face; the powder still sat in my hair, on my clothes. I felt languid and submissive. I took off my shirt. Greg looked greedily at my body. I walked to the window in my bra and looked down, angry now. If Jason was there, I couldn’t tell. There had to be a point when I stopped looking for him, stopped allowing him space in my life.

  ‘I love you, Greg,’ I said.

  We fucked then.

  ‘I’m going to have to head,’ Greg said after, putting his trousers back on.

  I watched him out of the window, baseball cap on, returning to his car and going home to his family.

  Chapter 42

  I headed out through the grey Saturday afternoon streets of East Belfast to Shane’s house in Brandon Terrace. I had to see for myself. Simon and Higgins were there with the search team and had been for hours.

  ‘Have you nowhere better to be?’ Simon asked me.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ I said. ‘How did it go in Monaghan? How are you back so soon?’

  ‘We didn’t go in the end. We were about to, then Higgins thought we should call Cleary first. In fact, the guards phoned us.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Cleary had told them everything he’d told you. The guards searched the barn and Shane’s old house again.’

  ‘No joy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the carjacking?’

  ‘We did get as far as Armagh. There were no tyre marks where the carjacking was alleged to have taken place. CCTV in the area isn’t up to it, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Dunne said that. And what about Margaret?’

  ‘Cleary did have one piece of new information – there is no Margaret McGuire. Shane’s mother’s name was Janice Bell and she’s been dead years.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘According to Cleary, Janice Bell moved to New Zealand when Shane was a kid. Married a man out there, had a family. She died in ninety-eight.’

  I gloved up and followed Simon into the kitchen where Higgins was emptying drawers. More officers were taking the house apart. Simon and I stepped over the piles of papers, receipts, old keys.

  ‘Oh, look at you, Higgins,’ I said, ‘actually doing some work for once.’

  ‘Ha! Fergus tell you the news?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘Yes, about Janice Bell you mean?’

  ‘Oh that? Yes. But the second set of prints – they aren’t a match for Sandy Hammitt’s.’

  ‘Really,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t think he did it, did you?’

  ‘Most of the time, no.’

  ‘Yes, I hadn’t got to that,’ said Simon. ‘We can rule Hammitt out. So now we’re looking for someone else, someone who hasn’t been into the station at all yet.’

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked Inspector Seymour who was walking down the stairs with a computer.

  ‘There’s nothing that stands out. Not yet,’ Seymour replied. ‘We’ve received orders from the powers that be to seize this.’

  I walked into the living room. There were toys strewn across the floor, some with the price sticker still on them, and a stack of DVDs beside the TV. I rifled through them. Six for a pound, read the Oxfam sticker. The top one was The Magdalene Sisters.

  ‘I’m just going to turn on the TV,’ I said to no one in particular.

  Behind me, Higgins laughed. ‘Do you want me to get you some popcorn?’

  The DVD player was on pause; the solid blue light at the front stared back at me. I pressed ‘Play’. It was the final scene of the movie, followed by the end credits. Margaret McGuire, played by Anne-Marie Duff. I paused it again.

  ‘Good film?’ asked Higgins.

  ‘Very inspiring, thanks.’

  I went looking for Simon who was looking at the kitchen wall.

  ‘Is that blood, do you think?’ he asked.

  I squinted at the marks. ‘Could be,’ I said.

  Then I saw something else on the wall. It was so tiny it could easily be missed. In fact, last time we had missed it. It winked at me as the light caught it.

  Chapter 43

  I jumped back into the Skoda and hightailed it to the station. Linskey was there and talking to Greg when I arrived.

  ‘Can I see you in my office?’ he said to me.

  He led the way. I stood in front of his desk.

  ‘Harriet,’ he said once we were alone – no ‘Sloane’, no ‘Harry’, definitely no ‘darlin’. ‘I’m taking you off the case.’

  ‘What? You can’t do that! I’m the crime scene manager.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Linskey knows about us?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘It’s not professional for you and her to work together in the present circumstances.’

  I looked him in the eye. ‘Greg, please don’t do this. I’ll talk her round.’

  ‘We need to get someone else briefed,’ said Dunne. ‘They found something in the roofspace at Brandon Terrace – the spare tyre from the jeep with I like it dirty on it. But it’s not enough to hold Reede. Anyway, there’s another case I want you on. Brody Pottinger – it’s a reopened—’

  ‘Please don’t. I have the Reede case. I can do it.’

  ‘So where is River Reede? Can you tell me that, Sloane?’

  ‘No, but I know I can get Shane to admit to taking the boy. Give me the chance.’

  ‘Linskey refuses to work with you.’

  ‘She wanted Higgins pulled off the case and you ignored that.’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘Why? Because your name’s in the mix?’

  ‘We’re in work now, Harriet. Be professional.’

  ‘Yes, Chief,’ I said. ‘Linskey’s okay talking to you, but you’re the one who’s married.’

  ‘Linskey’s barely speaking to me,’ Chief Dunne said. ‘This might ruin the case if it were to come out.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve taken these risks before.’

  He looked numbly at me. ‘If you can’t talk her round, you’ll have to get taken off this case.’

  ‘I’ll smooth things out.’

  ‘If you’re staying on, a black Suzuki Vitara has been found burnt out in a field three miles from the scene of the alleged carjacking in Armagh. It’s in the CSU garage being analysed by forensics.’

  ‘Okay, Chief. Thanks,’ I said, and went looking for Linskey.

  I’d been expecting him to ask if I’d done a pregnancy test yet. He really didn’t care one way or the other. He’d been kinder when I thought I was pregnant by my ex-husband than he was now, when the mess was his. I knew Greg would throw money at the problem, if it came to it.

  Linskey was in the briefing room with Shane Reede’s solicitor.

  I stuck my head round the door. ‘DI Linskey, can I have a word?’

  She probably wanted to tell me to fuck away off, but the solicitor was Lance Worth. He represented a lot of legal aid folk and was a total piss-take: an ex-copper who used that knowledge to help people who he knew full well shouldn’t be helped. As much as Linskey felt angry at me, she hated Worth more so she came out.

  We went into a side room where she stood examining her fingernails, her mouth drawn tight, hard as a nut.

  She sighed. ‘I don’t really blame you for all this,’ she said, still refusing to look at me. ‘I don’t blame you for getting with him, but there’s something far worse going on. It’s what you’ve done to Jocelyn. You don’t care about other women, Harry, that’s what I’m learning about you.’

  ‘Bull!’

  ‘You’re sneaky. You’ve been trying to get me to tell you things about Greg and Jocelyn’s marriage, but that’s playing dirty. You think Charlotte is stupid to have kids. You think Zara murdered her son, or is at least covering it up, because she creeps you out. Why? Because she’s too motherly. For days Zara has been sentenced to this worry, but you do
n’t get it because you aren’t a mother.’

  ‘That’s low.’

  ‘It’s coming down to your level.’

  ‘Sometimes you’re wrong about other women, Diane. You like to believe that we’re all on the same team. Brody Pottinger’s mother was far from perfect, but you skimmed over her old convictions.’

  Linskey shook her head. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of parents would never do anything to harm their own child. What about Sorcha Seton? We were right to listen to her when she came to us about Donald Guy.’

  ‘You weren’t there for most of that.’

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I was putting my own family back together.’

  I felt another sting in her words. ‘ So I didn’t choose to have one,’ I said.

  ‘But you still have a family, whether you’re a mother or not. You still have family responsibilities.’

  ‘Is it my mother you’re talking about?’

  ‘Not necessarily—’

  ‘Are you saying I don’t have any sense of responsibility for my nieces and nephews? For Timmy?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘He’s still in intensive care. I’ve gone there, spent time with my sister and her family. I don’t need to feel guilty about anything.’

  ‘But do you not feel guilty about Jocelyn?’ Linskey asked.

  ‘Greg has affairs – always has done, and everyone knows it. Why should I feel guilty about her when he obviously doesn’t – never has. If you were a true friend to Jocelyn you wouldn’t stand by and listen to her complain about him. You’d tell her to get out, get a job and a life.’

  ‘Everyone has their own battles,’ Linskey said, looking as if I had smacked her. ‘You don’t know what else Jocelyn is going through.’

  ‘We’ve kept it between us all this time, Greg and I,’ I said. ‘There’s no reason why we can’t continue to do that. No one needs to get hurt.’

  ‘With affairs, sooner or later someone always gets hurt. You need people to lie for you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do that. In fact, go and tell her. I don’t care any more.’ There were footsteps outside the door. ‘Di, what’s the craic here with me and you?’ I asked her softly.