So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (4 page)

Don’t weep, McKay thought. Don’t weep. At least give me that.

But she wept, and for a moment so fleeting he couldn’t be sure it had ever been at all, he hated her.

5

The photographer had finished his work long ago. Now the coroner-appointed undertakers wheeled the trolley into the room, the black body bag upon it open and ready to receive Mr Garrick. The empty morphine sachets, the yogurt pot, the spoon, had all been bagged up and taken away.

The undertakers rolled back the bedclothes, exposing what remained of the lower portion of Mr Garrick’s body. One of the undertakers, a young man showing his inexperience, hissed through his teeth. A buttoned pyjama top covered Mr Garrick’s torso, an adult nappy enclosed his groin. And the stumps of his legs beneath. Still wrapped in bandage and gauze, still stained brown and yellow with serous fluid. He rested on a layer of medical absorption pads, the kind Flanagan remembered from having her children, one of the indignities of childbirth no one mentions in polite conversation.

‘Can’t blame him, really, can you?’

The same undertaker who’d hissed a moment before. Flanagan looked up at him, but did not reply. He couldn’t hold her gaze, though she hadn’t meant it as a challenge. But what he’d said . . .

Can’t blame him.

Blame him for what?

The older man said, ‘I apologise for my colleague.’

The younger man’s face flushed red as he whispered an apology of his own.

They counted off, then hoisted the corpse onto the trolley. They folded the body bag around Mr Garrick and zipped it closed, an ugly sound in this quiet room, then wheeled the trolley out to the hall. Dr Barr entered as they left.

‘You still here?’ Flanagan asked.

‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ he said, walking to the patio doors. ‘Are you going to close the scene now?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Everything useful has been packed up. DS Murray’s gathering up any other medication in the house. I don’t think there’s anything more to do here, do you?’

Barr shook his head and pulled aside the curtain, showing the room in natural light for the first time since Flanagan had arrived. Flanagan moved the table back towards the bed, gave him room. As she did so, one of the framed photographs toppled forwards, almost fell to the floor, but Flanagan caught it. She put it back in its place, a picture of a child, in the row of loved ones who’d kept watch over Mr Garrick’s last peaceful breaths.

Except they hadn’t.

A strange thought. Flanagan tried to connect it to whatever had started to tug at her mind shortly after Mrs Garrick and the minister had left. Like an itch she couldn’t reach.

Barr said something, but Flanagan didn’t hear.

The photographs.

She studied them, one after the other. The itch deepened.

Barr spoke again. ‘I said, he’d have had a nice view from here.’

Flanagan turned her head, followed his gaze. A well-kept garden, an expanse of healthy green lawn, an assortment of
shrubs, a few rock and water features, all bordered by a small wood, leaves beginning to brown, late afternoon sunshine spearing through the branches.

‘A nice view,’ Flanagan said, returning her attention to the photos. ‘But not much of a life.’

Dr Barr buried his hands in his pockets. ‘It would have got better, though. He still had a lot of healing to do. A lot of pain to suffer. I spoke to his doctor earlier. Mr Garrick had lost too much muscle tissue for it to be wrapped over the bone, so healing was slower than below-the-knee amputations. That and a couple of infections had made it an even harder road for him. But given time, he’d have got there. He could’ve been mobile again. He wasn’t going to be locked in here for ever.’

‘Then why did he do it?’

‘With a journey that tough, that painful, maybe he couldn’t see the end of it.’

Flanagan hesitated, then asked: ‘Are you definitely citing suicide?’

Dr Barr turned to her, his eyebrows drawing together. ‘I haven’t seen anything here that suggests otherwise. Have you?’

‘No,’ Flanagan said. ‘Not really. Just . . .’

‘Just what?’

She indicated the photographs, put words to what had bothered her. ‘We’ve both attended suicides before. We’ve both seen something like this. The pictures of family. When people take that step, they often want to see their loved ones.’

‘Yes,’ Dr Barr said. ‘And?’

‘He couldn’t see them,’ Flanagan said. ‘They were facing away from him. I didn’t realise when I first came in, the way the table was sitting by the patio doors. But when I moved it back . . .’

Dr Barr looked down at the table, from one framed photograph to the next, a frown on his lips. ‘Maybe he wanted them close, but he couldn’t stand to see them. Or let them see what he was about to do. Who knows? When a person is about to take their own life, rationality doesn’t come into it. Anyway, it’s in the coroner’s hands now. Hope not to see you again too soon.’

‘Likewise,’ Flanagan said as Dr Barr exited.

Alone, now.

She stared at the table and the photographs for a few seconds longer before blinking and shaking her head, chasing the notion away. Another question she could never answer, one of a long list that spanned her career. This was a suicide, and no photograph would change it into something else.

Flanagan turned in a circle, surveying the place where Henry Garrick had spent the last miserable months of his existence. The bible on the nightstand to one side of the bed, the selection of motoring magazines on the other. Above the bed, another framed verse of scripture, like those in the hall. Flanagan whispered the words.

Isaiah 41: 10: Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

She stared at the verse, suddenly aware of the currents of air around her, warm and cool. The sound of other people in the house. Birdsong outside.

‘Ma’am.’

She stifled a gasp as she spun on her heel to see DS Murray in the doorway, a plastic bag full of medicines and pills hanging from his hand, Sergeant Carson behind him.

‘Shit,’ she said, catching her breath.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Murray said. ‘Is there anything more you need us to do? We’re all kind of twiddling our thumbs here.’

Flanagan walked to the doorway. ‘Close the scene, Sergeant Carson.’

Carson scribbled on the scene log as she bit her lower lip in concentration, then handed the clipboard to Flanagan. With her signature, Flanagan authorised the closure.

‘You did good work today,’ she said to Carson.

A faint bloom flushed on Carson’s cheeks. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

As the sergeant walked away, Flanagan spoke to Murray. ‘I’ll lock up here. Send the uniforms on their way, and you head back to Lisburn. Make a start on the paperwork. The FMO’s going to report suicide, to be confirmed by the coroner. You know what to do.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Murray said. ‘Keys are on the hall table. Two sets, so I’m not sure Mrs Garrick took hers with her.’

‘All right, I’ll see to it. Get going.’

Flanagan listened to their muted voices and the scuffing of their boots as they left, the front door closing, two engines igniting, tyres on driveway. Then silence, even the birds outside seeming to have hushed.

This rarely happened, that she was left alone at the scene. Normally, she would come and go from the site of a murder, the body lying
in situ
for as long as it took to explore every inch
of its surroundings. But not today. This is simply a house of the bereaved, Flanagan thought, as if Henry Garrick had died of some illness on a hospital ward.

What, then, do we do for the dead?

It had been years since she or Alistair had lost a family member. Before the children, in fact, when Alistair’s father had died. She remembered his going around their home, closing blinds, shutting out the light. She had wanted to open them again, saying no one would see their isolated house. But Alistair had insisted. It’s what you do, he’d said. A mark of respect.

So now Flanagan went back to the patio doors and pulled across the curtain that Dr Barr had opened. Then she walked from room to room, doing the same, the darkness deepening as each window was blotted out. She noted the objects, the artwork, the furniture, the ornaments, the electronics. Wealth she would never know in her lifetime. If the Garricks weren’t millionaires, they must have been close.

Flanagan walked through the kitchen, again pulling down blinds, so the granite worktops changed from glistening sheets of black to dark pools. Through to the utility room, top of the range washing machine and tumble dryer amid more cupboards and a sink. A door leading to the rear of the property; she checked it was locked. Another door, open, a small bathroom. A third door, a key in the lock. She tried the handle, then turned the key, snick-click.

The door opened outward. A step down into a large dim garage. Flanagan felt around the door frame for a light switch, found it, and fluorescent tubes flickered into life.

Glistening metal from one side of the garage to the other. Space for five cars, but only four were lined up here. For a moment Flanagan wondered where the fifth could be. She hadn’t seen anything other than the modest cars of the visitors when she pulled up, but then she remembered: the car Mr Garrick had been driving when he crashed.

She looked at the rest, marvelling at the money invested in these machines. She recognised a Porsche 911 by its profile, and a vintage MG, and a Mercedes convertible, the long boxy kind she remembered seeing on television as a child. Closest of all, a Mini Cooper, no more than a year or two old. The far wall was lined with racks of alloy wheels and tyres, and a large red tool chest. All of it appeared too clean to have seen much use. The cleanliness of the cars, however, suggested Mrs Garrick had continued to enjoy them, even if her husband could not.

Flanagan turned off the lights and locked the door behind her, leaving the key where she’d found it. Back through the kitchen, out to the hall and its wide central staircase. She climbed up to the gallery landing above. From up here, the hall looked all the more impressive. Facing the top of the stairs, a set of double doors. The master bedroom, Flanagan assumed. For no reason she could grasp, she went to the other rooms first, all blandly decorated spaces for guests, all neutral colours and beech veneers. Once all of them were darkened, Flanagan returned to the master bedroom and opened the double doors.

This room was not like the others. Her eyes were drawn first to the cherrywood four-poster bed and its silk canopy. Flanagan guessed it cost more than her car. Everywhere else, furniture that at least appeared to be antique. She stepped inside, felt the depth
of the carpet underfoot. A scent of perfume hung in the air. On the dressing table beneath the window, a selection of bottles, Chanel, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and more that she guessed were too expensive to be familiar to her.

Flanagan looked to the other side of the room, and the two doors at either end of it. One stood ajar, showing the bathroom beyond. She guessed where the other led to, and opening it proved her right: a dressing room. A light flickered on automatically and she saw rows of dresses in cellophane shrouds, drawers of jewellery, racks of shoes. She lifted one of the dresses down from its rail, checked the label. Not only could Flanagan never afford such a thing, she’d also never fit into it. Not now, anyway.

Something turned inside her, a hard, ugly thing. An emotion she felt so rarely that it took a few moments to recognise it.

Envy.

I covet these things. I covet this life.

No you don’t, Flanagan thought, as she felt a ridiculous blush heat her cheeks. She returned the dress to its rail, backed out of the dressing room, and closed the door. Why had she even entered? She had no business in there. What had begun as a courtesy to the dead man and his widow had turned into a sordid exploration. A familiar sense of intrusion crept into her, the same as she felt when she searched any victim’s home, a house full of secrets revealed to a stranger. Except this time, she was indeed an intruder.

Time to go, she thought. She went to turn towards the window and its open blind, but something caught her attention on the wall. What? She let her eyes defocus and refocus until they found what had snagged her: a picture hook on the wall,
centred over a tall chest of drawers. The dusty shadow of a frame that had once hung there.

Flanagan’s gaze moved to the chest’s top drawer, and the single brass knob at its front.

I have no reason to look in there, she thought.

‘I have no reason,’ she said aloud.

Even so, she reached for the knob and pulled. The drawer slid open with no resistance. She took one step closer so she could better see inside. Bundles of papers, brown envelopes, a scattering of hairbands and clips.

And a large framed photograph of the child, perhaps a year old, held in masculine arms. Bright-eyed, smiling, two small teeth in the lower gum. A wisp of hair on her head.

Dead and gone, Flanagan thought. And I envied this life.

She pushed the drawer closed, held her fingertips against the wood as she pictured her own children, at school now. The Garrick child would have been close to six, a year younger than Eli. They might have been in the same playground, chasing and teasing each other.

The chime of the doorbell made her cry out.

6

Roberta hadn’t spoken on the short drive to McKay’s house. Her gaze had remained fixed ahead, her face cut from flint. When they arrived at St Mark’s and the adjoining rectory, she waited in the passenger seat for him to open the door. He had offered her his hand to help her out, but she ignored it, climbed out by herself. She walked to the door of the house where he had lived alone for a decade and stopped there, not looking back as he approached.

The house had been built at the same time as the church, a century and a half ago, from the sandstone quarried near Armagh. Like all rectories, it was large, with four bedrooms and three receptions. Had he and Maggie ever had children, then they might have made good use of the space. But there were no children, Maggie was ten years in her grave, and McKay couldn’t remember the last time some of those rooms had been opened. Cold and damp, draughts slipped through every closed window and door. He sometimes imagined himself a ghost haunting the dark hallways.