So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) (8 page)

Flanagan swallowed, considered letting it go, then she said, ‘It’s the photographs.’

McCreesh sat back. ‘Photographs?’

‘That’s the one detail that doesn’t sit right. He had photographs of loved ones arranged around him.’

‘Suicides often do.’

‘But they were facing away from him. If he wanted to see them as he died, they would have been facing him. Why put them there at all if he couldn’t see them?’

McCreesh sighed. ‘I don’t know. We probably never will. What I do know is I found what appear to be crushed morphine granules on his teeth and the rear of his tongue, which is consistent with him chewing them before swallowing. The stomach contained exactly what we expected to find there, the mass spectrometer tests on the liver and blood samples will confirm the lethal
morphine levels. All of it adds up. This was a suicide. I can’t see it any other way, and I’m going to advise the coroner accordingly. I expect him to sign the interim death certificate, Mrs Garrick will put her husband to rest, and until the inquest, that will be that.’

‘Fair enough,’ Flanagan said. ‘But I can disregard your findings, and the coroner’s report, if I so wish.’

McCreesh bristled. ‘That’s your prerogative. But you’re just making grief for yourself.’

A sudden smile burst on Flanagan’s lips, in spite of everything, surprising her. ‘Oh, I’m good at that.’

McCreesh returned the smile. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Anyway, enough business. How’ve you been?’

‘Okay,’ Flanagan said. ‘Still on the tamoxifen for the foreseeable future, still having the check-ups, still terrified I’m going to find another lump. You?’

McCreesh’s eyes glistened. She blinked. A tear threatened to spill from the lower lid. ‘I found something. I have an appointment at the Cancer Centre first thing on Friday.’

Flanagan reached across the desk, took McCreesh’s hand in hers.

‘It’ll be a cyst,’ Flanagan said. ‘Just like the last time.’

‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ McCreesh said. ‘Over and over. But I can’t drown that other voice out. You know what it’s like.’

‘I know,’ Flanagan said, squeezing McCreesh’s fingers tight.

‘All I can think of is, how will I tell Eddie, what will I say to the kids? What if it’s worse this time? What if it’s not been caught soon enough? What if it’s spread to the lymphatic system? What if, what if, what if ?’

Now McCreesh squeezed back, sniffed hard, blinked again.

‘But I won’t be beaten now,’ she said. ‘Six years clear. I’m not fucking letting it get the better of me after six years clear.’

‘Good,’ Flanagan said.

They embraced, and Flanagan walked from the mortuary wing out to the car park. She paid at the kiosk and found her car. Before she inserted the key into the ignition, she closed her eyes and said a small prayer for Miriam McCreesh.

12

Reverend Peter McKay left Roberta Garrick alone in his draughty house and crossed the grounds to the church. The morning prayer service, a daily tradition few parishes maintained. But McKay opened the chapel two mornings a week for the handful of parishioners who still wanted to commune with God on a Tuesday or Thursday morning.

Mr McHugh waited at the vestry door, a folder full of sheet music under his arm. A retired schoolmaster, he’d taught music and religious education at a grammar school in Armagh for forty years. Now he turned up at each service to play organ for the faithful.

‘That was a bad doing, yesterday,’ Mr McHugh said. ‘How’s Mrs Garrick?’

‘She’s coping,’ McKay said.

‘Well, tell her Cora and I are thinking of her.’

‘I will, thank you.’

Mr McHugh touched McKay’s sleeve. ‘We had the police at the door last night. Asking about it. A fella and a girl, I think they said they were constables. They were asking all sorts. Made me and Cora uncomfortable, if I’m honest.’

‘I suppose they have to do these things,’ McKay said.

‘Well, I didn’t like it,’ Mr McHugh said. ‘It’s not respectful. To us or the Garricks.’

McKay gave no response. He opened the door and allowed Mr McHugh into the vestry and through to the church beyond, before entering the code to disable the burglar alarm. Over the next half hour, while McKay donned his black cassock and white surplice, while he scribbled notes on loose sheets of paper he took from the old printer in the vestry, a scattering of people, more women than men, mostly elderly, sat in the pews. More of them than usual. Death brings out the God-fearing.

And there, near the front, Jim Allison, MLA. Forty-something, tanned and well-dressed, owner of a print business on the outskirts of Moira. He’d been an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly at Stormont since the re-establishment of the devolved Northern Ireland government in 2007. A man of influence who’d fought battles for many in the parish, from denied benefits claims to planning refusals, Allison had tackled bureaucrats in every government department on behalf of his constituents.

Although the MLA and his wife were regular attendees on Sundays, McKay struggled to remember a time when Allison had bothered with a weekday service, save for funerals or weddings. But he knew why Allison was here this morning. The parish had suffered a terrible tragedy and the local politician had come to show his solidarity with his people.

Such a cynical thought, but McKay had been given to cynical thinking over the past few months. Since his own faith had left him, he had questioned the belief of every other person who stepped inside his church. We’re all just playing along, aren’t we? Just going through the motions, doing what’s expected of us.

And so McKay worked his way through the service, point-by-point as prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer: the gathering of God’s people, the sentence of scripture, the opening hymn, the exhortation, the confession, the Lord’s Prayer. Like an actor who’d performed the same lines every night for twenty years, he recited each segment with detached authority.

But today was different, wasn’t it?

Today, they listened harder. This morning, every word he spoke carried the weight of Mr Garrick’s death. He had chosen the hymns and readings carefully to reflect the sombre mood the congregation expected from him. And this morning, he would go further. A sermon, a rarity in a weekday service. After the canticles and the psalms were done, he turned over two pages of scribbles that would carry him through the next ten minutes.

He heard the door open, felt a cool breeze, and looked up from his own barely legible scrawls. The policewoman, Flanagan. McKay’s throat dried. She slipped into the second to last pew, exactly where Roberta Garrick had sat all those months ago. Her eyes met his, held his stare.

Start talking, he told himself.

Start talking now.

‘My friends,’ he said, or at least he tried. The words came out as a crackling whisper. He cleared his throat, looked down at his notes, and tried again.

‘My friends, this morning we come into the Lord’s house carrying the great weight of tragedy. You all know the Garrick family, and you all know they have endured more heartbreak than any family should. First, with the loss of little Erin Garrick,
not even two years old, in a terrible accident four years ago. Back then, Mr and Mrs Garrick sought the solace of their faith, their Lord God and His son, Jesus Christ. And they sought the support of the congregation of this church, they turned to their friends here, and with your help, and the Saviour’s, they survived the loss of their only child.’

McKay glanced up once more. Flanagan still watched him.

And why shouldn’t she? Everyone else watched him too. That’s what they’re here for. Stay calm, he told himself. She can’t see inside you. She can’t read your thoughts. She doesn’t know the terrible things you’ve done.

And still she watched him.

He coughed once more, and recommenced his sermon.

‘Then six months ago, another accident almost took Mr Garrick’s life. He survived, but with the loss of his legs, and the cost of a lifetime of pain. And still, Mr and Mrs Garrick turned to the only ones who could help them through such a torturous time: their God and their church.

‘Now, if Mr Garrick had reacted to this life-changing accident with anger, all of us would have understood. Wouldn’t any one of us have been angry? We’d have had a right, wouldn’t we? But Mr Garrick was not angry. He and I talked and prayed together many times over the last few months, and not once did he speak a word of bitterness. What he did say was that if it was God’s will that he should survive, there had to be a reason.’

McKay looked once more to the back of the church. Now, at last, Flanagan did not stare at him. Instead, she looked up to the vaults of the ceiling, around at the commemorative plaques, the stained-glass windows, the military standards hanging at
intervals along the side walls, the harvest displays of pumpkins, root vegetables, sheaves of wheat, all arranged around the church by Miss Trimble and the other elder ladies of the congregation. He guessed Flanagan seldom visited a church unless someone needed burying. He returned his attention to his notes.

‘And this morning, we gather here knowing yet another tragedy has struck the Garrick family. All indications are that, on Sunday evening, Mr Garrick took his own life. I want you all to know that he died peacefully, without pain. We’ll never know what brought Mr Garrick to this final decision, but we understand that six months of tremendous suffering have taken their toll. But I want to believe that when Mr Garrick closed his eyes for the last time, he did so with his faith as strong as it had been four years ago when he lost his daughter, and six months ago when he came so close to death. Because without faith, what do we have left?’

McKay knew the answer to that question.

Nothing. Without faith, we have nothing.

13

Then I have nothing, Flanagan thought.

She felt a piercing spike of self-pity, an emotion she detested above all others. Get out of me, she thought, I’ll have no more of you.

Reverend McKay wrapped up his sermon and said, ‘Let us pray.’

Flanagan kept her head upright while the rest of the congregation lowered theirs. And McKay too, his eyes open as he turned to the prayer desk, side on to the congregation.

‘Dear Lord, we pray this morning for the soul of our departed friend, Henry Garrick. We pray that he is now at peace, that the depth of his faith in You brought him into Your eternal embrace, that his suffering is at an end, and that he is made whole again through Your grace and compassion.

‘And Our Father, we also pray for Roberta Garrick, that she can find strength in us, her friends, and in You, that You can guide her through this difficult time. Lord, guide us in our efforts to provide comfort for the bereaved.’

McKay looked up from the desk, turned his head. His eyes met Flanagan’s.

She felt a hot flush of shame, like a child caught stealing. She dropped her gaze to her hands, bowed her head like the others.

As McKay recommenced the prayer, Flanagan wondered at the power of this place to make a middle-aged woman bow her head even if she didn’t believe. The memories a church roused in her, the little girl she had once been, the ritual of putting on her best Sunday clothes, fidgeting beside her mother as a minister droned on, then the Bible classes led by plain women, and how the stories frightened her.

When had Flanagan last attended a service? A year ago, she thought, when her friend Penny Walker had been buried along with her husband. And Flanagan had prayed then, just as she prayed an hour ago for Miriam McCreesh.

Prayed to whom?

If Flanagan did not believe, then why did she pray so often? She rationalised it as a form of self-talk, an internal therapy session. Wasn’t that it? Or were those Sunday mornings spent in places like this so rooted in the bones of her that deep down she believed this nonsense, even if her higher mind disagreed?

McKay’s voice dragged her back to herself, the words, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’

With no conscious decision or effort, Flanagan recited the Lord’s Prayer along with the rest, every word floating up from her memories of school assembly halls and windswept gravesides. As the syllables slipped from her tongue she weighed the meaning of each.

And she thought of her daughter, and the question she’d asked last night: was their marriage over? She had denied it, but truthfully, she didn’t know. And she thought of the cold distance between her and her husband, his anger stoking hers. If it really happened, if they really split, she knew Alistair would fight for the
children. And he might win. With a job like hers, with the hours she kept, she couldn’t be sure the court would favour her. There was a real risk she would lose her children because of her job. A job that had once given her days meaning, now a daily mire of futility.

McKay had asked: without faith, what do we have left?

Without the job, Flanagan thought, what do I have left?

Her family should have been the answer. But even that seemed to be slipping beyond her reach.

The service over, the small congregation left their seats and drifted towards the exit. Flanagan felt the cool draught on the back of her neck as the door opened. McKay did not look at her as he joined his people in the late morning light. She heard snatches of hushed conversation between him and the parishioners.

Yes, a tragedy. She’s bearing up. Keep her in our prayers.

The church empty now, Flanagan alone, her thoughts seeming to echo in the hollow space around her. She closed her eyes, leaned forward, her hands on the back of the empty pew in front of her, her forehead resting on them.

Oh God, what do I have left?

I am my job. I am my children. What am I without them?

Flanagan turned her mind away from the question, because she knew the answer was there, waiting to snare her and drag her further down. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, and saw Reverend Peter McKay standing over her, his hands in his pockets, his cassock and white gown draped over the back of another pew. Reflexively, her palm went to her cheek, wiped away a tear that wasn’t there.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt your prayer. Please go on.’