Authors: Julie Parsons
Rachel raised her head and looked at him again for a moment, before dropping her eyes to her hands.
‘Tell me, Rachel, why did you want to come and live here? Surely this place, this area must have so many memories for you? Surely it must make it all much more difficult?’
She stared at him, a look of puzzlement on her face. Then she spoke. ‘Where else would I go? This is my home as much as anywhere, outside the prison, that is. And I have spent the last
twelve years dreaming about the sea. I had to be by it again. You’ve no idea how wonderful it is to see it every day from my window, to walk beside it, to smell it, to feel saltwater on my
skin again. You’ve no idea.’
He nodded. ‘Fine. That’s what you say. But I’m warning you. Any more messing around and you’ll be back inside. It’s extremely important, particularly for your first
six months or so, that your behaviour is impeccable. Temporary release is just that, Rachel. There is nothing fixed and immutable about it. You are still serving out, you must remember, a life
sentence. We cannot afford for there to be any trouble or scandal associated with you. We’ve been lucky that the media haven’t found out that you’re not still in prison. But
it’s probably just a matter of time. Your case was such a huge story, there’s bound to be some snotty-nosed journalist poking around where they’re not wanted. And if there were to
be any bad publicity we’d have no choice but to reconsider your position. And tell me,’ his fingers drummed on her file on the desk, ‘how
would
it feel to go back inside
now?’
She stared at him again, and this time her eyes did not drop. Her cheeks reddened, then the blood drained away from them and she was white again. She stood up.
He watched her on the video monitor as she closed the street door behind her. She paused, hesitated, then turned towards the camera. She straightened her shoulders and smiled right up at him.
Even the distortion of the wide-angle lens could not hide the transformation in her face. For an instant she was beautiful again. But then, as quickly as it had come, the smile faded and in its
place was an expression of defeat and resignation. He watched her until she had gone beyond the camera’s narrow range. He had wanted to ask her how she felt about her husband now. How she
felt about his death. He wondered how she had grieved for him. He wanted to understand how grief and guilt would combine. He wanted to know what she had thought about all through those years. When
she lay in her cell in the dark, what pictures of her husband did she see? And what lies did she have to tell herself in order to stay in control? He wanted to know because he wanted to know how he
was going to feel. Afterwards. After he had taken the decision and acted upon it.
He got up from his desk and walked out on to the landing. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to the wooden cabinet screwed to the wall. He reached inside and pressed
the stop/eject button on the video recorder. The machine clicked and whirred and a cassette slid smoothly out. He picked up a new one from the shelf above and fed it into the recorder’s
wide-open mouth. Then, with the old tape in his hand, he walked back to his office. He labelled it, dated it, then turned on his own machine. He watched the tape slide in, click into place, then he
pressed play. He looked at her face, joyful in the sunshine, and wondered how long it had been before she could smile like that again. He watched her and wondered. Over and over and over.
I
T WAS DISAPPOINTING
really, Jack Donnelly thought as he wandered through the shopping centre, eating an apple and thinking about what he’d do for
lunch. There had been, after all, no real mystery about the death, the murder, in fact, of poor little Karl O’Hara. He was just another junkie killed by just another dealer. It was shocking,
tragic, depressing, all those sentiments. But it wasn’t a mystery. Jack had gone to visit all the people whose names had popped out of the computer, including Karl’s girlfriend. She had
sobbed bitter tears all over the baby boy who bounced happily on her knee as she told how Karl had tried going on methadone, stuck to it for a while, then slipped back to the real thing. Then when
she’d had the baby he’d told her he was going to give it all up, try to get himself together. And for a while it seemed fine. They’d been offered a flat by the Corporation, and
there was some money coming in for a change. But then she realized that Karl was dealing as well as using. She’d tried to get him to stop. But he told her it was only until he got a few bob
together. Then he’d give it all up, buy a van, get into the delivery business like his old man.
‘So, what happened?’ Jack leaned towards her and tickled the kid beneath his ample red chin. The baby looked at him with an expression of amazed surprise, then looked away, looked
back, and burst into peals of excited laughter.
Karl was trying the oldest trick in the book, and the one least likely to succeed. He was using more of the gear than he was selling. Helping himself to samples of the product. Something had to
give, and at the end of a very long day it was Karl’s frail, undernourished and wizened little body that succumbed.
The girlfriend’s bags were packed for London. She was going to stay with her sister.
‘I’ve had it with this dump,’ she sobbed, while the baby pushed himself up on his sturdy little legs and pulled at her nose and hair. Jack reached over and took the child from
her, taking care not to rest his wet and reeking bottom on his lap.
‘And before you go,’ he said, unpeeling the kid’s sticky fingers from his tie, ‘you’ll tell me who was the bollocks who threw your Karl into the sea, won’t
you?’
She did. And she told him a lot more than he’d asked. All kinds of intelligence that would be very useful in the days to come. As he passed the baby back to her, surreptitiously wiping his
hands on a piece of crumpled tissue from his trouser pocket, he pulled out a couple of twenty-pound notes.
‘You might need these, for the little one.’
She turned away, her sobs even louder. He slid the money under a plastic bowl half filled with soggy cornflakes and stood up.
‘Good luck,’ he said, and meant it.
Poor kid, he thought as he turned into the supermarket and joined the queue at the sandwich counter. Not a great start in life for either mother or child. He thought of his own daughters. They
were aged six and ten – bright little things, cute and lovely. Well behaved, got on fine at school, no trouble at all. They even seemed to be coping with his split from their mother. He
couldn’t quite believe that he’d actually made the break. He’d been living on his own for three whole months in a one-bedroomed flat in the new development, just by the inner
harbour, barely big enough for the three of them when they came to stay, every second weekend.
It was the younger of the two, Rosa, who asked all the really difficult questions.
‘Don’t you love Mammy any more? Do you love us still? Why did you leave us if you say you love us? Do you love anyone else? Mammy says you have a girlfriend. She says you’re
going to get married again and then maybe you’ll have more children, and you won’t want us any more. Is that true, Daddy? Are you coming home tonight? Why won’t you come home
tonight? Mammy’s cooking your favourite dinner, roast chicken and lots of crunchy potatoes. Please, Daddy, just come home for one night. Please, Daddy, we miss you.’
That was typical of Joan, leaving him to make all the explanations.
‘And, Daddy, we don’t like her new friend. He smokes. He makes a smell everywhere. He sleeps on your side of the bed, and he always wants to watch football when we don’t. We
want you to come home and tell him to go away.’
He didn’t like being a cuckold. He could see that everyone at work knew. They were polite about it. But he’d caught the smirks, the whispered asides. He wondered if Joan had slept
with any of his friends. He asked her, when eventually he got around to confronting her about the messages on the answering machine, the cigarette butts in the ashtray in the sitting room, the used
disposable razor in the bin beneath the sink, when his electric model was there on the shelf.
‘That’s all you care about, isn’t it, Jack?’ she screamed at him. ‘That I might have fouled your miserable little patch. Thinking about yourself for a change, is
that right, Jack? You don’t give a damn about me. You never have. Why did you marry me? Tell me why? Or maybe I should tell you, get it all out in the open for once.’
He’d cringed then, waiting for it.
‘You liked fucking me, didn’t you? I was easy. I was pretty then, and I was available. And do you remember when we got engaged, whenever we had a row or a disagreement over anything,
what was your answer to it? You’d go out and you’d get plastered, and then you’d come to my flat and we’d fall into bed and that would be that. But it couldn’t carry
on like that, could it? Sooner or later you were going to have to start talking to me, getting to know me, letting me get to know you. But you didn’t want that, did you? And even after I had
the girls, I thought you’d want it then, but somehow you didn’t. You were happier talking to them, getting to know them, than you ever were getting to know me. So don’t you give
me a hard time about what I’ve been doing. Just don’t try it.’
She said a lot more that night too. About the way he lived his life. Or rather the way he didn’t. She was right about a lot of it too, he had to admit. And he wondered for a moment if
maybe this might be the catalyst that could make it all happen between them. He tried to kiss her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She told him to go. And it was easier to do what she
wanted, although he could see what the bitch was up to now. Rewriting history, coming the injured party with everyone they knew, so there was no sympathy heading his way.
And what had he done with the rest of his life? Catching petty thieves and locking them up. Catching mad bastards and locking them up too. It was all pretty pointless, he thought. Not so high on
the list of services to humanity. But on the other hand who was he to be so dismissive of the whole business? There were plenty of other guys, he knew, who loved the way of life and got real
satisfaction from it. Who relished every masculine moment. But not him. The trouble was that he didn’t love anything else either. Aimless, that’s what I am, he thought as he cast his
eye across the list of sandwiches on offer, and picked, as always, Swiss cheese and tomato, aimless and truly pathetic.
He paid for his sandwich and walked out of the shopping centre. Bright sunlight pricked at his eyes, making them water. He fished around in his jacket pocket for his dark glasses. He sat down on
a bench in the little paved area between the shops and the new cinema complex that had just been built. The metal back to the seat was comfortingly warm as he leant against it and took a bite of
cheese and tomato. In spite of his gloom he was looking forward to picking up that bollocks of a dealer this afternoon. Now that was useful, that was worthwhile. He could see examples of the
guy’s handiwork everywhere around him. In the pale, sullen faces of the kids who lolled around him, shrieking abuse at each other and anyone else who came too close. Junkie voices, he
thought. An unnatural tone that had nothing to do with accent and everything to do with unreality.
He finished his sandwich and leaned back. His eyes closed behind the tinted lenses, his head dropped on to his chest. He dozed. And woke suddenly, jerking upright as a car alarm nearby began to
sound. He blinked, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then put them back again, stretched and straightened, glancing at his watch to make sure that his lunch break wasn’t yet over. He
noticed for the first time the woman seated by herself in the corner diagonally across, squashed between a row of parked cars and a litter bin. She was taking items of food from a plastic
container. An apple, an orange, a small sandwich, a bottle of water. She arranged them carefully beside her on the bench. She looked around as if she was checking to see if anyone was watching,
then she began to eat. Quickly, neatly, breaking the sandwich up into small pieces, cutting slivers from the apple with a plastic knife, breaking the orange into segments. Her movements were
precise and tidy. She reminded him of the sparrows that hopped on springy legs between the lunchtime strollers, picking up scraps of food invisible to the human eye. It was only as she was
finishing and stood up, turning to face him as she pushed scraps of orange peel into the litter bin, that he recognized her. Andy Bowen was right. She wasn’t gorgeous any longer.
He stayed very still, wondering if she would see him. But she was completely self-absorbed. She sat down again on the bench and began to pack away her lunch box. She drained the last of the
water from the bottle and put it back in her bag, then she stood up and began to walk away.
To follow or not to follow? He thought of the way it had been that day in the house. Detective Superintendent Michael McLoughlin bending over the body. Blood everywhere. So much of it. The
post-mortem report said that he was exsanguinated, that he’d bled out. He remembered McLoughlin talking about it afterwards, saying that it looked like someone had taken a hatchet to him, and
commenting on how calm she was. They’d thought it was shock, because she’d been there in the same room with him for at least twelve, maybe even fourteen hours. She’d have watched
him die. And then when they let her go, cut the handcuffs off her wrists, then she got upset, started to cry all right. But it was the daughter she was worried about. Made them phone the hospital
immediately to see how she was after the accident. That was all she seemed to be worried about, that the kid was OK, that she wasn’t upset. McLoughlin always said they should have suspected
something wasn’t right immediately. But she was so clear about everything, about what had happened that night in the house.
The house. That he had been invited to how many times? He remembered the first time was for the baby’s christening. Martin had sent out a general invitation. Everyone was welcome. It was a
beautiful sunny day. And one hell of a party. It went on all night. Martin was the life and soul, until he got so drunk he keeled over. Looking back on it now, with two children of his own, he
wondered how Rachel had coped with them all. And there had been that moment, he had remembered it afterwards, when he had gone upstairs, looking he supposed for the bathroom, opened a couple of
doors off the landing, and had seen her feeding the baby. It was dark in the room and he had pulled back quickly, embarrassed by the sight of her bare breast, so full and white in the light from
the stairwell. He noticed that there was someone else with her, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her low chair, his hand on the baby’s head, and recognized that it was Dan. Well, he
was the baby’s godfather after all. He’d been carrying her around all afternoon, showing her off, giving Rachel a hand with the food and the drink and everything. While Martin had done
what Martin always did. Hung out with his buddies. The other guys from Special Branch. The elite, they liked to think. Always a group apart.