So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (11 page)

Flanagan’s shoulders fell as she exhaled. ‘All right. But please tell Mrs Garrick I’ll need to speak with her by tomorrow at the latest. You have my number. I’d appreciate it if you called me as soon as Mrs Garrick is ready to talk.’

‘I will,’ he said. He watched her walk back to her car, then closed the door.

Roberta waited in the kitchen, standing by the table. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘You’ll have to talk to her some time,’ McKay said. ‘You can’t put her off much longer.’

‘I need a shower,’ she said, and walked past him out of the room.

McKay watched her climb the stairs, heard her enter the bathroom, then running water. Then he went to the table and opened the laptop. The web browser still showed the BBC news article he’d read last night. He clicked on the History tab. Only the last few pages he’d browsed. She’d used the private browser window, the computer recording no traces, no history, no cookies.

She’d been covering her tracks, hiding from him.

Hiding what?

That sick feeling again, deep in his stomach. Like the ground shifting beneath his feet.

I will suffer for this, he thought. I will suffer and I don’t care.

17

Flanagan entered the darkened utility room, closed the back door behind her. She passed through the dim kitchen, then out into the hallway. The sound of her footsteps on the wooden floor reverberated in the grand space, rippling through the still air. She froze and listened for a few moments, trapped by the quiet of the house, as if it held its breath, waiting for her to speak.

Intruder, it would say. Get out. Leave us in peace.

But I need to know her better, Flanagan would reply, I need to know her secrets.

She had toured this house the day before, room to room, and saw nothing to shed light on Roberta Garrick. Only the same tasteful shows of wealth Flanagan had already seen and desired for herself.

The bedroom. If the truth lay anywhere in this house, it would be there. Flanagan climbed the stairs to the double doors, opened them, stepped through. Light in here. Someone had opened the blinds. Either Mrs Garrick or the rector. A few items of clothing lay on the bed, considered for wearing and then discarded.

Flanagan’s gaze went to the wall above the dresser, the space where the missing picture had been. She walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer. The same portrait of the child, hidden here among the papers and letters. Flanagan lifted a
bundle of envelopes and leafed through them. Bank and credit card statements. A car insurance renewal notification. Passports in Mr and Mrs Garrick’s names, both with several years left on them. Medical cards. Reissued birth certificates for both of them, a marriage certificate. And here, kept together, the birth and death certificates for the child, the latter issued in Spain.

‘Can I help you?’

A cry escaped Flanagan’s throat before she could stop it. She turned towards the voice.

Roberta Garrick stared at her from the threshold, her face blank.

‘Mrs Garrick,’ Flanagan said. She swallowed, searched for something to say. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘What are you looking for?’ Mrs Garrick asked, stepping into the room.

‘Nothing specific,’ Flanagan said.

‘It’s hard to find something if you don’t know what it is,’ Mrs Garrick said. ‘I’ll give you anything you need, but I’d consider it a courtesy if you’d ask before you go rummaging through my personal items.’

Flanagan held Mrs Garrick’s stare. ‘I would have asked if I’d been able to speak with you. But Reverend McKay wouldn’t allow it.’

Mrs Garrick put her hand to the drawer, began to push it closed.

‘Why do you keep your daughter’s photograph in there?’ Flanagan asked.

Mrs Garrick’s hand paused, the drawer still half open. ‘Because sometimes it’s too hard to look at her. Sometimes I can’t bear
it, other times I want to see her, then I take the picture out and hang it up.’ She pushed the drawer the rest of the way, sealing the framed photograph inside. ‘You wanted to talk with me. Let’s get it out of the way.’

They sat opposite each other in the living room, the blinds open, sunlight reflecting off the polished surfaces. Flanagan, pen in hand, set her notepad open on her lap.

‘Reverend McKay tells me you met your husband online,’ Flanagan said.

Mrs Garrick nodded. ‘That’s right. Lots of people meet like that these days.’

‘True,’ Flanagan said. ‘And how long after that did you marry?’

‘A bit less than a year.’

‘That was quick,’ Flanagan said.

‘We knew we were right for each other,’ Mrs Garrick said. ‘Why wait?’

‘And you had your little girl within a year. Was she planned?’

‘Not really. Harry was a bit older than me. He wasn’t sure about having a baby at his age. But when I realised I was expecting, then we accepted the Lord’s blessing.’

‘How did he take your child’s death?’

Mrs Garrick’s features hardened, her lips thinned. ‘That’s a ridiculous question,’ she said. ‘How do you think he took it?’

‘Well, I’m told he coped well with the consequences of his car accident, under the circumstances. Was he able to deal with your child’s death in the same way?’

‘No. No, he wasn’t. It almost destroyed him. It almost destroyed us both. We put a brave face on it, but we barely held
our marriage together. It took a year to come back to anything resembling a normal life. Even then, it was still difficult. But the Lord got us through it eventually.’

‘And Reverend McKay helped.’

‘He’s been very good to us. I don’t think we could have coped without him.’

‘You and he are particularly close,’ Flanagan said.

Mrs Garrick nodded. ‘He’s a good friend.’

An idea flitted across Flanagan’s mind, a question. Too much? Too hard? She asked anyway. ‘More than that?’

Mrs Garrick stared, her eyes burning. ‘How dare you?’

Yes, it had been too much, but Flanagan kept her face impassive, would not take it back. ‘It’s just a question.’

Mrs Garrick stood. ‘We’ll have to do this another time.’

Flanagan remained seated. ‘Can’t we just keep—’

‘Another time,’ Mrs Garrick repeated, a tremor in her voice now. ‘Please.’

‘Mrs Garrick, if we can—’

‘Isn’t it enough?’ she asked, her voice rising, breaking. Her hands shaking. ‘When is it enough? I have nothing left to give.’

Now Flanagan stared. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

Mrs Garrick blinked, seemed to return from somewhere. ‘First my little girl,’ she said, her voice thinner, softer. ‘Now my husband. Just when I think God might let me breathe, let me live, He burns it all down again. I don’t know if I can take any more.’

Mrs Garrick collapsed back onto the couch, her body limp. Tears spilled.

Flanagan sat frozen, caught between her instinct to comfort this bereaved woman and the need to follow her suspicion.

Mrs Garrick shook her head as she spoke, her face contorting as she turned it up to the ceiling, her voice aimed beyond. ‘I can’t, I can’t take any more. If you want to kill me, then kill me. Don’t make me suffer this, please, I’ve had enough. No more, please, no more.’

Flanagan thought of the white coffin, the devastated car, the body she’d watched being taken apart that morning.

‘Christ,’ she whispered. She set her pen and notebook aside, then crossed to the couch, beside Mrs Garrick. She slipped her arm around the other woman’s quivering shoulders, gathered her in.

Mrs Garrick curled into Flanagan’s lap, muttering, ‘No more, no more, no more . . .’

Back in her car, Flanagan called DS Murray’s mobile.

‘Are you at the station?’ she asked.

‘Yes, ma’am. Just got the last of the info back from the computer searches.’

‘Anything to trouble us?’

‘No, ma’am, not that I can see.’

‘All right,’ Flanagan said.

She closed her eyes, placed her free hand on the dashboard, concentrated on the sensation of the soft plastic on her skin, the coolness of it, allowed it to settle her mind.

‘Ma’am?’

Flanagan opened her eyes again. ‘Gather up all the paperwork, all the reports, get everything in order for me to sign off on.’

‘You’re going with suicide?’

‘Yes,’ Flanagan said. ‘Yes I am.’

18

McKay waited for her in the kitchen, a mug of tea long cold in front of him. It had occurred to him to prepare a meal, but he didn’t know what she’d want to eat. What if he made something she didn’t like? The idea of displeasing her caused a small terror in him.

Could that be right? If he loved Roberta, how could he be afraid of her? And yet he was. McKay banished the thought. To seek logic in the madness of recent days was the maddest idea of all.

Roberta had said she wouldn’t be long, no more than an hour. It had been more than two going by the clock over the kitchen door, and he had been picking at a thread of worry for thirty minutes now. As the notion that she might not return, that she had fled, began to take form in his mind, the front door opened.

From the kitchen table, McKay watched Roberta, the fading evening light silhouetting her on the threshold as his fear dissolved. She closed the door and approached the kitchen.

‘Don’t worry about the policewoman,’ she said.

‘Why?’ McKay asked, fear returning, colder and brighter than before. ‘What happened?’

‘Never mind why,’ Roberta said. ‘We don’t have to worry about her any more, that’s all.’

McKay studied her face, but it was unreadable. He wiped his fingers across his dry lips and said, ‘There was a call from the coroner’s liaison. They’ve declared it suicide, pending the inquest, and they’ll have the interim death certificate ready by tomorrow.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

‘It means you can bury him.’

Her shoulders fell. She placed a hand on the table to steady herself.

‘Then it’s all done,’ McKay said. ‘It’s over.’

She exhaled, a long, whispery expulsion of air. ‘Over,’ she said. She pulled out the chair opposite McKay and sat down, rested her palms on the table. Stared at some point miles beyond his shoulder.

‘We can talk after the funeral.’

Her gaze returned to him. ‘About what?’ she asked.

He swallowed. ‘About us.’

She blinked once and said, ‘I’ll go back home first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘It’d be best.’

He looked down at his hands. ‘All right.’

Without speaking further, she stood and left the kitchen. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, he called after her.

‘Can I bring you something to eat?’

She did not reply as she climbed the stairs, and the idea that he had lost her reared up again. And again, he told himself no, no she is mine now, always and for ever.

To think otherwise might kill him. Might kill them both.

19

Alistair looked up from his plate as Flanagan let herself through the back door and into the kitchen. Ruth and Eli both glanced in her direction, but neither spoke. Bolognese sauce smeared Eli’s chin. Ruth went back to spinning spaghetti onto her fork.

‘Anything for me?’ Flanagan asked.

Alistair nodded towards the hob. ‘There’s a little left in the pot. I wasn’t expecting you home.’

Flanagan put her bag on the worktop, slung her jacket over the back of a chair. ‘Well, I wanted to make sure and eat with everyone tonight. I haven’t done that enough lately.’

Alistair shrugged and picked up his fork. ‘If you’d let me know, I would’ve made more.’

She scooped the few spoonfuls of minced beef and pasta from the pot onto a plate. ‘This is plenty,’ she said, even though it wasn’t. An empty jar of ready-made sauce sat by the cooker. She took a fork from the drawer and brought the plate to the table. She sat down opposite Alistair, with Ruth and Eli at either side.

The children stared at their food. Alistair stared at the wall.

Flanagan reached for the last piece of garlic bread, broke it in two, chewed a mouthful without tasting it. She swallowed and said, ‘So, any news?’

No one answered.

‘Ruth, what about school? Anything happening?’

Ruth shrugged and said, ‘Same as usual.’

Flanagan reached for Eli’s hand and asked, ‘What about you, wee man?’

Eli looked down at Flanagan’s hand, kept his gaze there until she released her hold on him. His hand retreated to his lap.

‘All right,’ she said, forcing a laugh into her voice. ‘I’ll just shut up, then, will I?’

Alistair’s fork clanked on his plate. ‘You can’t just waltz in here and expect us to act like everything’s fine. You’ve barely spoken to your children in months, and you think they’re going to be all over you just because you decided to show up tonight? You know I had to go and see Eli’s teacher today?’

Flanagan shook her head.

‘Mrs Cuthbertson,’ Alistair said. ‘Do you even know that’s who his teacher is? No? Well, I had to go and see her today and be told he’s been picking on other kids.’

She turned to her son. ‘Oh, Eli, why—’

‘Save your breath, I’ve already talked to him about it. The point is, you have no idea what’s going on with your own family. You think it’s just another late night on the job, what does it matter? And every night I’m having to make excuses for you when they ask where you are. Now, I’m at the end of my bloody rope with this. You need to decide if you’re part of this family or not.’

Ruth pushed her plate away and left the table. Only when she’d gone did Flanagan notice the tiny pools where her tears had fallen.

‘If you want to stay with us,’ Alistair continued, ‘then stay with us. But be
here
with us. Or else there’s no point. Or else you might as well pack up and get out.’

Now Eli stood and left. His fork rang as it hit the tiled floor.

‘Well?’ Alistair said. ‘Are you going to say anything?’

Flanagan brought her hands together to suppress the tremor of anger. ‘Of course I want to stay here. This is my home. Those are my children. But what are you? You’ve been pushing me away for a year now. Longer than that. Ever since I was first diagnosed, it’s like I was tainted.’

‘That’s not fair.’ Alistair sat back, his hands on the table. ‘I did everything I could for you while you were having the treatment.’