Guilty
Page 11
His training demands he stay here. Civility demands it. Humanity demands it. But in doing so, he’ll be inflicting grievous hurt on a trusting child thousands of miles away. Nina is waiting for them. And Alison is right, they will never come. Nina will always wonder what became of the couple who’d promised her a happy life with them. His mind reels back to his Aunt Christine’s house. He’s five years old.
He’s lying in bed wondering why Mum and Dad are spending so long at this bloody wedding. He shouldn’t say bloody. Mum doesn’t like it. Doesn’t Mum have to go to work in the hospital? What about all Dad’s patients? Luke isn’t the only one waiting for his parents. When are they coming back? Aunt Christine is nice enough but she’s no fun. She doesn’t know anything about kids. She makes him eat eggy bread. Every night after his prayers he tells himself they’ll be home tomorrow. He makes himself believe it. He nearly believes it. But they never come. He has a pain in his tummy.
Is he going to do all this to Nina? His career will be over. Working in paediatric medicine? Not any more. It was the only thing that had defined him until recently. He’d been looking forward to fatherhood. He thinks about little else on his walks in the woods by Lough Carberry. Alison is right. However unthinkable it is to leave the scene, what matters now is Nina.
‘A little girl in an orphanage is expecting us in two months’ time.’ Alison’s eyes pierce his. ‘Are we going to let her down? Are we?’
Alison is grabbing his sleeve, pulling him back towards the car. He allows her. Stumbling, snatching glances at the child lying in the spreading pool of blood. Her legs are splayed, the bloodied netting of her dress not even affording her the dignity of covering her legs. He wants to go back, to cover the little girl, but Alison is propelling him away.
She takes control, getting into the driver’s seat, taking off without so much as a look over her shoulder. He feels sober now. Cold with shock. He knows just how heinous this is. They pick up speed. It is difficult to see with the shattered windscreen. Somehow Alison finds the elusive turning and they find themselves driving through the Talbot estate without meeting another car.
Luke gawps out the passenger window. Stupefied. Horrified. Everything is surreal. The enormity of what they have done heightened by the eeriness outside. Block after block of housing is deserted, the only signs of life are the flags flapping in the breeze from bedroom windows. The whole country is indoors watching the match.
In the failing light, a lone black dog darts out and chases them for a couple of blocks before retiring. A hunched woman on a Zimmer frame looks as they speed by. Alison drives in silence, ignoring speed limits, stopping only to check a road sign at the junction. A left turn and there are eight more miles to the lough.
Luke sees the dent on the bonnet. He feels a sudden rush of lucidity. What the hell are they doing? What is he thinking? He is a medically trained professional. What he is doing is unconscionable.
‘Stop! Turn around, Alison. NOW. We’re going back.’
She ignores him.
‘Do you hear me, Alison? I want to go back.’
‘Get a grip, Luke. We’re nearly there.’
‘I mean it …’
He grabs the wheel. Suddenly and without warning there is a tinkling sound. Beads of glass spray onto their laps. The windscreen has disintegrated completely.
‘Christ!’
Alison brakes, shaking glass from her hands.
She keeps on driving.
‘You want to kill us both as well?’ she screams. ‘Get a grip.’
Exposed to the elements, the wind whips around their faces. The chill wraps itself around his midriff and he starts to shake. Splinters pierce his trousers. He stares at them. Luke looks up. It dawns on him they are not heading to the Glasshouse as he’d thought.
‘Where are we going?’ he shouts, the wind taking his breath away.
‘To sort this out,’ Alison shouts back.
Haunted
A deathly lull had descended on Terence’s office. Luke opened his eyes, bracing himself for a reaction.
‘Now you know who I am,’ he said. ‘Not the respectable, charitable, humanitarian everyone thinks,’ he prompted.
Was Terence about to reach for his phone? Or would he wait until Luke had left before he called the police?
Silence.
‘I’ve lived with what I’ve done for all these years. I can’t take it any more,’ said Luke. ‘I need help.’
Still nothing.
Terence’s expression was hard to decipher, his eyes inscrutable. Both men surveyed one another, a weighty pocket of silence between them. There was no sound but the low hum of Terence’s computer. The therapist displayed no overt signs of shock or any obvious signs of revulsion.
Luke waited. After some time, Terence cleared his throat. ‘I’m not too sure what I was expecting you to disclose, but I assumed it was going to be something … difficult. What you have just told me is utterly tragic.’ He looked at Luke as if he were trying to figure something out. ‘Have you told me everything? Is there more to this?’
Luke looked down at his hands. Strange. They seemed steady. Inside he was shaking. ‘There is,’ he said.
‘Do you want to tell me?’ Terence prompted. ‘Do you feel safe to talk about it?’
‘Give me a moment.’ Luke’s throat was dry. He took a long drink of water. He rested the glass back on the table.
‘In your own time,’ Terence said.
Leaning back and closing his eyes, Luke crawled back to the place where he’d left off.
They were at Crow Hall. Darkness had fallen and it was chilly under the clear sky. Luke could make out the shape of a cat slinking along the walls of the stone outhouses before disappearing around the corner. A harsh glare came from the security lights in the yard. Wearing a blanket and clutching a hipflask, Alison stood at his side. Luke shivered, scant warmth provided by his blazer.
As the machine lurched into action, he felt a deepening horror at the sickening crunch of the compacter. Metal crunching on metal. Cornelius Thompson had launched into action straightaway. They’d get rid of the car immediately. A load of scrap was due to be collected from Crow Hall the following Monday so the evidence would be off the premises inside forty-eight hours.
Cornelius approached the task with such composure and efficiency that Luke had a horrible feeling it may not have been the first time he’d used the compacter to make something disappear. His demeanour was urgent but business-like.
Crows cawed into the dark as Cornelius worked, his brow furrowing in concentration in the yellow glow of the cabin. There was something disturbing about the way he smacked his lips together, a macabre elation, a foulness that sat easily on his face. Luke felt like he’d thrown flesh to a monster.
As the compacter ground to a halt, Alison sighed beside him. She offered him the hipflask. He shook his head. More alcohol was not what he needed. She screwed the top back on and linked his arm.
‘This is wrong,’ he said. He pulled away from her. They did not deserve the comfort of one another after what they’d done.
‘We had no choice,’ she said. Tears trickled down her cheeks.
As the yard fell into rural silence, Cornelius made his way towards them, his deerstalker pulled low, concealing his face.
‘Inside. Now,’ he said. ‘You’ll stay here tonight.’
Whatever Luke’s anguish and reservations, Cornelius didn’t want to know. ‘We’ve said all we’re going to say about what happened,’ said Cornelius. ‘From what you tell me, Alison, it sounds like you may not have been seen. Fortunately for you both, I think the whole country was watching the match. And even if it’s the case that you were seen, there’s no proof now. There’s no longer a car. There’s no evidence. So this is what we do. Nothing. We lie low. We don’t mention it, not even among ourselves. Understand?’
They were standing in the dark terrazzo passageway between the kitchen and the drawing room. Luke stared at Cornelius, unable to form an answer, horror-struck by
what had happened, aghast at Cornelius’s response.
‘We understand, Dad. Don’t we, Luke?’ Alison sniffed. She had mistaken Luke’s silence for acceptance.
‘No. Sorry, I can’t do this.’ A wave of revulsion rolled over him. ‘I just can’t. It’s wrong.’
‘What are you talking about, man? Let’s get a brandy inside you,’ said Cornelius. ‘You’re in shock.’
His father-in-law’s acceptance of the situation made it more grotesque. Luke was escorted by the arm into the drawing room and a large brandy thrust into his hand. He sank onto the sofa and stared into the yawning chasm of the empty fireplace. Without a fire, the room was like a crypt.
A white-faced Alison sat in Cornelius’s armchair. She also had a brandy in hand. She started to shiver. Cornelius draped her in his lap-rug.
‘The longer we wait, the worse this gets,’ said Luke. He didn’t touch the brandy. He wasn’t supping with the devil. He eyed the landline on the writing desk. ‘We need to phone the police.’
‘Now you listen to me, lad. Think this through.’ Cornelius had followed his eyes to the phone. ‘What good can come of that? You’ve run someone over and of course that is tragic. But what’s done is done. Think of that child waiting for you in Russia. Are you going to let that poor orphan down?’
Luke sat tortured and silent. Two sets of eyes bored into him, waiting for an answer. He listened to the steady ticking of the ugly, carved grandfather clock in the corner. He said nothing.
Alison knocked back her drink and stood, hugging the rug around her.
‘I think I’ll have a hot bath and a lie down.’
‘You do that, Ali,’ said Cornelius. ‘You’ve had a shock. I think one of the bedrooms at the back is made up.’
Alison headed for the door. ‘Are you coming, Luke?’ she asked in a small voice.
He stared hopelessly into the empty fireplace. ‘No.’
The door closed and he was left with Cornelius.
‘This is so fucked up,’ he said.
Cornelius rounded on him. ‘What happened tonight was a terrible, terrible accident. I told you once, not so long ago, that we stick together around here. We especially stick together at Crow Hall.’ His eyes crawled up the blackened chimney breast to the carved limestone plaque. It was dated 1624 and bore the Thompson family crest. ‘That’s exactly what’s going to happen now. What happened was awful. That said, you are not going to bring down this family. If you choose to do that, and if you choose to take my daughter with you, as God is my witness, I’ll finish you off altogether. Do you hear me?’
Luke stood, placing the brandy on the coffee table.
‘I think I’ll head to bed now, Cornelius.’
‘Good idea,’ said Cornelius, more conciliatory. ‘You’ve had a shock and you’re not thinking straight.’ His rheumy eyes were hooded. ‘Get some rest. And grab hold of yourself, man. All you need to remember is that nothing happened.’
Luke remembered lying on damp-smelling sheets on a lumpy mattress in a back bedroom that no one had slept in for years. The bedroom was at the eastern gable of the house. It had a large open chimney. Each time he rolled into the well in the mattress next to a lavender-scented Alison, he pulled himself away.
He stared at the ceiling, at the brass light-fitting fashioned like a deer’s antlers. A stag’s head stared at him from a far wall, its dead eyes looking at him. He wondered what the child would look like when they found her? Would her eyes be wide, pupils blown, never again to follow the nearby birds swooping from branch to branch, to see the sun burn as it did tonight, pink and orange as it bowed and dipped below the horizon?
He must have dozed off, and waking with a start, his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He couldn’t move. He felt a weight on his chest. There, in the chimney well, was a child in a white pinafore. Was it the ghost of Marigold Piper? The child who’d disappeared centuries earlier? Here, hovering in the membrane between this world and the next? Or was it the ghost of the child he’d just killed? His breath came in panicked bursts. He blinked and she was gone. Had he imagined it? Was he losing his mind?
* * *
‘Luke …’
He was startled back to the present, to the garish fluorescent lights of Terence Black’s office. He was tired. Very tired. He tasted the salt of his tears as they moved towards his mouth. He plucked a tissue from the box.
‘I think I get some sense of the burden you’ve been carrying,’ Terence opened.
Luke held up his hands. ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t come here looking for absolution or redemption.’
Terence uncrossed his legs. ‘I’m not in a position to offer anything like that. I left the priesthood years ago.’ He smiled wanly. ‘But tell me something.’ He leaned in close. ‘I know I’ve asked you this before. I’ll ask you again. Do you, Luke Forde, think you are a good person?’
Luke was taken aback.
‘How could any sane person think themselves a decent human being after what I’ve told you?’
‘Well, the person I see here before me is a thinking human being,’ Terence said softly. ‘A caring man who did a terrible thing. Tormented because of what he has done. What I say to you, is this: you can still own up to what happened. At any time. Even now, after all this time. There’s a family out there somewhere who want to know what happened to their daughter.’
He paused to study Luke. ‘You don’t need to do it today, tomorrow, or even next week,’ he added. ‘Think about it. Weigh it up. You’ll arrive at the answer in your own time.’
Terence’s computer whirred into the fetid air. There was no judgement in the room. No opprobrium. Most people would be repulsed by Luke’s disclosure. And rightly so. Yet Terence’s expression remained one of stoic contemplation. He sat calmly, giving Luke space to breathe.
‘You have lived with this for a very long time. I feel confident that you will do the right thing. I have some experience of this in a previous life, and I know that life is a long song.’
Luke shook his head. ‘I know exactly who I am, what I am,’ he said. ‘I lost my way a long time ago. For me there’s no way back.’
‘There’s a way back for everyone,’ said Terence. ‘You’ve shared enough for today. For now, this remains strictly between us. You might book something with my receptionist outside. Ideally in the next day or two.’
Luke stood up. His legs felt hollow. Despite Terence’s hope for his redemption, Luke was headed for damnation. For there was worse to come.
No Worst, There is None
Luke recalled those lurid bulletins as the story broke. The crime reporter painting the scene, lasciviously. Breathless at the tragedy of it all. Titillating the viewers as he led the camera to the police tape on the cordoned road. And all the while, checking back over his shoulder, connecting with the viewer, wetting his lips and panting.
It had been years since Luke had spoken about it. Alison was the only person he could have discussed it with. But it was best not spoken about, she said. Best forgotten as Cornelius had advised.
‘I’m glad you decided to follow up on our last session as quickly as you did,’ said Terence. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, as no doubt you’d expect me to. I imagine you have as well.’
‘I have.’ Luke took a breath and prepared himself. ‘You see after the … the accident, things took another turn …’
‘I’m listening.’
Luke’s words came in fits and starts. The clock on the filing cabinet ticked loudly as if wanting to drown him out. He imagined himself like a snake crawling out of his skin and slithering off to hide in the undergrowth.
He was back in Crow Hall. Staring at the TV screen, trembling in the doorway of the library, watching the horror unfold. Alison and her father were on the sofa. Cornelius had a supporting arm round his daughter. Outside, it was as sunny as the day before. But the library was cold, dust motes floating high above the TV screen. Luke leaned against the dark panelling of the door recess for support.
There was footage of children smiling outside churches, boys like young James Bonds and girls in frothy dresses. Happy scenes cut with video of houses decked with flags, bunting draped on trees and hedges. Luke stared at the TV, hypnotised. A live camera panned to the edge of the road, to the wheel of a pink bike in a ditch, forlorn.
‘For one family, the twenty-seventh of May is a day they won’t forget,’ the reporter said. ‘A day of celebration that so quickly turned to tragedy.’ The reporter stopped to lick his lips. ‘Young Maisie had cycled to a neighbour’s house. She promised to show her communion dress to the pensioner who was wheelchair-bound. It was Maisie’s first time on the main road, her father agreeing to let her cycle as it was quiet with people indoors watching the match.’
The reporter paused, his expression troubled. ‘Unfortunately for Maisie, there was someone else using this road last night … someone who knocked little Maisie down. Her bike …’ the reporter angled his head, ‘… as you can see here behind me, was found a good twenty yards away.’
The reporter’s eyes squinted in the sunlight as he looked directly at the camera, his voice dropping, affecting greater sincerity. ‘Information from the police so far suggests that this tragic incident went unseen. So far, no one has come forward except a young local priest who happened upon the scene. Ironically, the priest had been on his way to administer last rites to a parishioner when he came upon the injured child. Emergency services arrived quickly after that and little Maisie was taken to St Matthew’s University Hospital where a trauma team worked into the night trying to save her.’ The reporter paused. ‘Unfortunately, little Maisie lost her fight for life at six-fifteen this morning.’
Luke gasped. His eyes darted to Alison. She was staring blankly at the TV. Had this even registered with her? The child had not been dead, she’d been alive. Alison said the child was dead but she was wrong, she was alive. ALIVE …