So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (27 page)

Flanagan looked to the floor. ‘Yes, sir. I apologise, sir.’

He nodded and said, ‘Get out.’

She approached the desk, went to gather up the sheets of bank records.

‘Leave them,’ Purdy said. ‘I’ll let Conn go through it all. If he thinks it’s worth following up on, he can. I won’t say you’ve been chasing it. He’ll not bother his arse if your name comes into it.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Go and do something useful.’

Flanagan waited in the reception area of the General of Register Office.

Something useful, Purdy had said. She had gone back to her office and tried to apply herself to the reports being readied for the Public Prosecution Service, but her mind would not leave Roberta Garrick and the dead she had left in her wake. The Manx-Hibernian account still nagged at her. She wasted more time googling the investment firm, scouring social media, none of it leading anywhere.

There was still one thing, though.

So Flanagan had driven to Belfast city centre, parked, walked to the General of Register Office, and presented her warrant card. She had given Roberta Garrick’s full name, place and date of birth, then taken a seat to wait.

Less than ten minutes passed before the clerk came back with a C4-sized envelope. Flanagan thanked him and left the building, walked the five minutes back to her car, behind the Central Library. Huddles of red-brick buildings hemming in narrow streets, once bustling with industry, now mostly abandoned, some in redevelopment.

Once in the driver’s seat, she checked the rear-view mirror.

Two young men, baseball caps, hoodies, tracksuit bottoms.

She locked the doors. Hijackings had become commonplace in the city, young thugs taking cars – usually from women – simply to race them around the estates before burning them out on some patch of waste ground.

Flanagan turned her attention back to the envelope and slid out the A4 sheet of pink and purple within. She studied the birth certificate. All was in order. Born Roberta Bailey in Magherafelt Hospital, 15
^th
July 1980. The mother, Maisie Bailey, née Russell, the father Derek Bailey. Nothing untoward.

She glanced back to the rear-view mirror. The two young men separated, each approaching at either side of the row of parked cars behind her. She looked in her side mirrors, made eye contact with one of them. He didn’t look away.

Flanagan set the envelope and the birth certificate on the passenger seat. Her right hand unclipped her holster, the other took her mobile phone from her bag. She dialled DS Murray’s number, brought the phone to her ear.

The young men reached the car, and they each tried the door handles. The one at the driver’s side tapped the window with the blade of a knife. Flanagan drew her Glock 17, let him see it. She smiled as he sprinted away towards the city centre, his friend still at the other side of the car, staring after him. He looked down into the car, saw the pistol, and followed the other, the soles of his trainers blurring as he ran.

Murray answered, and Flanagan holstered her weapon.

‘Are you at your desk?’ she asked.

‘Give me a second, ma’am.’ A few seconds of rustling and fumbling. ‘I am now. What do you need?’

‘Call up the electoral register,’ she said.

She listened to a minute’s worth of mouse-clicking and key-tapping, along with a few muttered curses, before Murray said, ‘Right, got it.’

‘Bailey, Derek,’ she said, ‘and Bailey, Maisie. Magherafelt area.’

More key-tapping, then a pause. ‘Bailey,’ Murray said. ‘That’s Roberta Garrick’s maiden name.’

‘That’s right,’ Flanagan said.

‘This is DCI Conn’s case,’ Murray said. ‘I’m not sure I should be doing this for you, ma’am.’

‘I won’t tell if you don’t,’ Flanagan said.

Another pause, then the key-tapping resumed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got an address in Moneymore. Are you ready?’

Flanagan pulled the notepad and pen from her bag, juggled them and the phone as she got the cap off the pen and found a new page to write on. ‘Go ahead,’ she said, and wrote down the house number, the road, the postcode.

When she thanked him, Murray asked, ‘What’s going on, ma’am?’

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Flanagan said as she started her engine.

45

The police arrived at Roberta Garrick’s home at five in the afternoon. A small group of them led by a middle-aged man who introduced himself as DCI Brian Conn.

‘Where’s DCI Flanagan?’ Roberta had asked.

‘She’s no longer working on this case,’ Conn had said, and she could see that he suppressed a smirk. In truth, she had to do the same.

The scene of her husband’s death had to be reopened, Conn told her, and a cursory search undertaken. He hoped she would understand, and apologised for the intrusion. She had graciously offered to make tea for Conn and the three other officers, and they accepted.

Murray was not among them, she noted. A pity, she thought. Murray was much easier on the eye than the group Conn brought with him.

Now they worked in the rear reception room where the hospital bed remained. She heard grumbling about the futility of the search, particularly as she’d had the cleaner in since last week. Surely nothing useful could be found. Look anyway, Conn instructed.

Roberta listened with one ear as she watched the evening news. She had watched a lot of news in recent days; it was becoming a
habit, adding punctuation to her routine. The newsreaders had become familiar, their names, their mannerisms, their turns of phrase. On a few occasions she had caught herself mimicking the female presenters, the tilt of their head, the pitch of their voice, the shape of their mouth. An old habit from her childhood, distant as that now seemed, the taking on of others’ tics and quirks.

On the television, Peter’s house appeared, and the church. Police officers wandering in and out. Just like here, she thought, as she heard two pairs of shoes climb her stairs. Searching the bedroom next. It didn’t matter. They would find nothing there. Everything she had worth hiding was nowhere near this house.

The television caught her attention again.

‘George,’ she said as her brother-in-law filled the screen with his loping frame and country-handsome face. She had spotted him at the funeral, lurking at the back, keeping his head down. She had pretended not to see him. Not that she cared, anyway.

The reporter caught George on the doorstep of some shabby terraced house – his home, presumably, since his wife had kicked him out – and questioned him about his brother’s possible murder.

‘I don’t know what I can say,’ George mumbled in that blunt-edged country way of his. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever get to the truth of it. There’s more to this than will ever come out, but that’ll be up to the police, and them that knows what really happened. And them that does know, I hope their conscience will guide them. If it doesn’t, then I pity them.’

He glanced at the camera lens, and Roberta knew he spoke to her.

‘They’ll have to live with this and everything else that’s gone on. I don’t think they’ll have a peaceful night’s sleep as long as they live. And I know I couldn’t live too long with that hanging over me. That’s all I have to say.’

The report cut back to the studio, and she threw the remote control at the screen, making it flicker.

‘Fuck you,’ she said. ‘Fuck you.’

‘Is everything all right, Mrs Garrick?’

She spun to the voice. DCI Conn in the kitchen doorway, concern on his face.

‘Fine,’ she said, offering a regretful smile. ‘It’s fine. It’s been a difficult time, that’s all.’

He nodded and said, ‘Of course.’

She went to the door, closed it behind him as he left. Alone now, she rested her forehead against the cool wood. No good. This wouldn’t do at all. She was nearly through it, almost out the other side. All she had to do was keep control.

Her hand shot to her mouth, stifling a cry, as her mobile phone trilled and vibrated on the granite worktop. She went to it, saw the number, thumbed the green icon.

‘Jim,’ she said.

‘Roberta,’ he said.

Then nothing. She could picture him at the other end, mouth moving like a goldfish as he reached for the words.

‘Say what you want to say.’

‘I just . . .’

‘Come on,’ she said, her patience flaking away.

‘I don’t think we should see each other any more,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘I think you’re probably right.’

‘I want you to stay away from me,’ he said.

‘That won’t be a problem.’

‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Stay away. I’ve deleted all those photographs. Don’t send any more. Don’t call me. If you do, I’ll . . .’

‘You’ll what?’

Call the police, she thought. It was clear he suspected, but he was too much of a coward to do anything about it. A weak man, even weaker than Peter had been, weaker still than her dead husband.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You’ll do nothing. That’d be better for everybody, don’t you think?’

‘Just keep away from me,’ he said, and the phone died.

46

Flanagan followed the satnav’s directions, skirting the town of Magherafelt, heading south towards the village of Moneymore. A long steep descent down a hill, pastureland all around, deep greens and cattle and sheep. The smell of the countryside, thick and heavy in the air. She passed a tractor coming the other way, towing a slurry tank, slow on the incline, half a mile of traffic backed up behind it. Drivers with angry faces, impatient for the tractor to pull in and let them past.

A thirty-mile-per-hour limit sign as she entered the village. She slowed the Volkswagen, shifted down to fourth gear, noted the newbuild houses climbing the hillside to her left, older dwellings to her right. A busy filling station that doubled as a supermarket. A sweeping bend and a small roundabout brought her into the heart of Moneymore. A typical Ulster plantation village, lacking the quaint charm of an English equivalent but pleasant in its own way. Austere functional buildings, painted rendering rather than attractive stonework, bunting and Union flags still lingering from the dying summer’s marching season.

She followed the road through a sharp bend, passing an Orange Hall and a Presbyterian church, obeyed the satnav’s command to go straight on, the signs guiding her in the direction
of Cookstown. A quarter mile outside the village, the satnav told her to take the next right, a narrow lane, its junction barely visible until she was on top of it.

Another quarter mile, and the Baileys’ house was up ahead, on the apex of a bend. A large open gate leading to a modest bungalow set in half an acre of well-tended lawns and outbuildings. As she steered onto the short driveway, she saw a chicken pen to the rear of the house. Somewhere at the back, a dog barked at her arrival.

Flanagan shut off the engine and checked her mobile phone. No signal out here. She had intended on texting Alistair to apologise for missing dinner, but that would have to wait.

As she got out of the car, the front door opened, and a white-haired man stared out at her. Mid sixties, she thought, neatly dressed, wearing a tie for no apparent reason in the way that country Protestant men did.

‘How’re ye,’ he said, a wary look on his face.

‘Good evening,’ Flanagan said with as friendly a smile as she could manage. ‘Are you Mr Bailey?’

‘Aye,’ he said, giving a single nod, his expression impassive.

Flanagan wondered had he been a reservist, a part-time soldier or policeman; many of his generation had been during the Troubles. Not very long ago, a strange car pulling up at a reservist’s home meant danger, shots fired through windows, doors broken down, men killed in front of their children. He said nothing more and remained watchful.

She reached into her bag, produced her wallet and the warrant card within, brought it to his doorstep. With quick blue eyes, he read it as she spoke.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr Bailey,’ she said. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Serena Flanagan, based at Lisburn. You can call to verify, if you’d like.’

She hoped he wouldn’t. No one knew she had come here, and Purdy would rip her to shreds if he found out.

‘That’s all right,’ he said, looking from the card to her face, a flicker of worry in his eyes now. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Nothing for you to be concerned about,’ she said. ‘I wanted to have a word with you and Mrs Bailey about your daughter, Roberta.’

‘Roberta?’ he asked, his brow creased.

‘Yes, if you can spare a few minutes.’

He stepped back, opened the door fully. ‘You’d better come in.’

‘Thank you,’ Flanagan said as she entered.

Mr Bailey reached behind the open door, lifted the double-barrelled shotgun he had propped there and put it into a closet. ‘I’ve got a licence for it,’ he said. ‘There’s still some bad boys about the country. Maisie’s just doing the dishes. Go on in the living room and I’ll get her.’

Flanagan heard water running, the clatter of cutlery. The house smelled of beef and potatoes and boiled vegetables, warm homey scents that sparked a memory of her grandmother, even though she barely remembered what Granny Jane looked like.

She thanked Mr Bailey once more and walked through the open door into the living room where a log burned red and grey in the hearth. A plush three-piece suite, small bookcases, a china cabinet, figurines, brassware. A carved wooden elephant on a sideboard.

On the mantelpiece above the fire, a framed photograph of a young girl, fiery red hair, pretty, someday beautiful. A school portrait, and Flanagan imagined the young Roberta Bailey, the first flush of puberty about her, sitting for a photographer in an echoing assembly hall while a line of children waited their turn.

She turned a circle, looking for more pictures. There were a few, all of her as a youngster, smiling. A little girl who was loved.

What happened to you? Flanagan thought. What went wrong?

Mr Bailey entered, followed by his wife, a sturdy woman showing little sign of going grey, still more copper in her hair than silver. A redhead like her daughter. High cheekbones like Roberta’s, but the face rounded with age. She dried her hands on a towel and tucked it into the pocket on the front of her apron.