Those We Left Behind

by Stuart Neville

  Detective Sergeant Calvin had been Flanagan’s assistant on her Major Investigation Team. He’d suffered a shoulder wound before she had taken leave for her surgery, and that had been enough for him. The Police Federation had helped him push for a medical pension, and then he was off.

  ‘I don’t imagine she’ll want to start off pushing paper around for you,’ Purdy said, ‘but we all have to do it sometimes.’

  Flanagan felt a growing weight inside. A file full of busywork and drudgery, sweeping up someone else’s mess.

  Purdy saw the disappointment on her. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’ve been out of action for weeks. You can’t expect just to land back here and dive into a hot case. It’ll be a month or more until you’ve got a proper team established again. I can’t have you twiddling your thumbs for all that time.’

  She waved at the file. ‘I know, but this . . .’

  Purdy gave her his sternest look, usually reserved for the lower ranks. ‘It’s not exciting work, I know, but there are victims in those pages that still need someone to speak for them.’

  ‘Of course,’ Flanagan said, feeling like an admonished child. ‘You’re right. I’ll get working.’

  Purdy nodded and said, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He stopped at the door. ‘Oh, I meant to say. You heard about the Devine boy?’

  ‘That he’s due for release, yes.’

  ‘Wednesday,’ Purdy said.

  ‘That soon?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to know that. They’re keeping it quiet to stop the press going after him. A call came in last week from the probation officer who’s been assigned to him. She wants a word with you. I told her to come by today, late morning. All right?’

  She remembered Ciaran Devine, a child then, a young man now. A little over seven years ago, the first awkward signs of puberty about him, sitting across the table from her in an interview room. She was the only one he talked to. He called her by her first name. Even when he confessed, she struggled to picture this small boy doing that terrible thing.

  She had voiced her doubts, but the boy had confessed, and that was enough.

  Ciaran had sent her a letter after his and his brother’s convictions. It came via the station. She had blushed when she read it. It still lay at the back of a drawer in her bedroom at home, even though she should have destroyed it.

  ‘All right,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘Good. Here’s hoping he stays out of trouble.’

  As Purdy left the room, closing the door behind him, Flanagan pictured Ciaran Devine’s thin fingers, the tiny cuts on his skin. She pushed the image from her mind and opened the folder in front of her.

  Flanagan met Paula Cunningham in the reception area at twenty-five minutes past eleven. A little less than average height, slim build but not skinny, perhaps a decade younger than Flanagan. Businesslike in her manner.

  Stop it, Flanagan told herself. Every new person she met was subject to the same kind of snap judgements, as if they were a suspect in some investigation only she knew about.

  She gave Cunningham’s ID a cursory glance, nodded, extended her hand. They shook.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ Cunningham said. ‘I know you’ve just returned to work. I’m sure you’ve a lot to catch up on.’

  ‘Surprisingly little,’ Flanagan said. ‘My office okay?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  They did not speak as Flanagan led Cunningham beyond the locked doors and up to her room. Cunningham took a seat. Flanagan sat opposite.

  Cunningham looked up at the window over Flanagan’s shoulder. ‘Doesn’t it get claustrophobic in here? So little light.’

  ‘You get used to it,’ Flanagan said. ‘So you wanted a chat.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cunningham said, pulling a notebook and pen from her bag. ‘About Ciaran Devine.’

  Moleskine notebook. Parker pen. Good quality, but not flashy. Functional. Plain shoes with a small heel. Not much jewellery, minimal make-up.

  Stop it, Flanagan told herself again.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ Flanagan asked.

  Cunningham opened the notebook, readied her pen. ‘I understand you conducted most of the interviews with Ciaran.’

  ‘That’s right. You should be able to access the transcripts that were submitted by the prosecution.’

  ‘Yes, I have them. But I wanted your impressions of him. What did you feel about him?’

  Flanagan looked away, hoped her discomfort didn’t show. She examined the back of her left hand. Her wedding and engagement rings. The small scar from when, as a child, she’d tried to crawl beneath barbed wire into the field behind her grandfather’s house to see the pony with the sagging belly and matted coat.

  ‘Well, my first impression,’ Flanagan said. ‘My first impression was the blood on the wall.’

  SATURDAY 24TH MARCH 2007

  Purdy, a DCI then, led her through the house. A detective sergeant for almost five years, Flanagan had seen many murder scenes. The ugliness of the act, the indignity of it. And the intrusion of strangers into the victim’s home, his or her life laid bare in all its banality and oddness. Evidence of personal habits that would shame the victim if he were alive to know they had been discovered. Slovenliness, loneliness, addiction. Sudden and violent death rarely visited those with stable lives, with loving families, with purpose to their days. More often than not, murder happened on drunken nights between friends brought together by their mutual dependencies, petty arguments exploding into bloodshed, kitchen knives buried in throats, heads cracked open by heavy objects. No planning, no intent, only rage unleashed.

  But this was different. Purdy had told her about it on the drive over. A prosperous middle-aged couple on a good street on the outskirts of the city, one son of their own, fostering dozens of less fortunate children over the years. Now two of them had apparently turned on David Rolston.

  They pulled up outside the house, saw the two marked cars blocking the road. Through the tinted glass, Flanagan saw them, a boy in the rear of each car, waiting to be brought to the Serious Crime Suite in Antrim station by the officers who had arrested them. An hour ago, they had been children. Now they were killers, their lives burned away by one terrible act.

  In a downstairs sitting room, Purdy and Flanagan met the two uniformed officers who’d found the body, and the boys just feet from it. Good furniture in the sitting room, a three-piece suite, well used but fine quality. A large flat-screen television, well-stocked bookcases, tasteful ornaments on the mantelpiece. Over the fireplace, a large landscape painting in oil. Somewhere along the north coast, Flanagan guessed, a local artist. Probably at least fifteen hundred pounds. Photographs here and there. A handsome couple, their one son smiling with them. Decent people, people of substance. Flanagan took it all in within seconds, building an image of the lives destroyed, and felt a small and aching mourning for them.

  The uniformed policemen looked grey like ghosts, the younger of them struggling to contain his emotions.

  ‘From the start,’ Purdy said, ‘just as it happened.’

  The older officer spoke. ‘We got here a few minutes after the call. We found the neighbour on the doorstep, the one who’d dialled 999. He said he’d heard a commotion, a lot of shouting and banging, then it had all gone quiet and no one was answering the door. We tried knocking too, but no response. We were able to force a window and get in through the kitchen. The neighbour had told us the noise seemed to come from upstairs, so we went straight up there. We found the body in the master bedroom, and the two boys lying on the bed. I checked for signs of life, not that there was much point.’

  Flanagan saw the reddish-brown beneath his fingernails, in the creases of his knuckles.

  ‘Then we took the two boys into custody and called for the second car.’

  The younger cop lost his grip on himself as his colleague spoke. He sniffed and rubbed his hand across his eyes.

  ‘Your first killing?’ Purdy asked.

  The young cop nodded and wiped at
his cheeks.

  ‘Cry all you want. I’d be more worried if it didn’t get to you.’ Purdy turned to Flanagan. ‘Let’s take a look.’

  As they left the room, the older cop called after them. ‘It’s bad. Just so you know.’

  Purdy and Flanagan exchanged a glance, then made their way up the stairs, Purdy leading. More paintings on the walls, smaller than the one in the living room, but probably valuable nonetheless. And photographs. Flanagan looked at David Rolston’s face in each as she passed, him and his loving family ageing frame by frame, knowing the life she observed had ceased to exist.

  Purdy entered the bedroom first, stopped, breathed in and out once, a long sigh of an exhalation. Flanagan imagined him expelling a little of his soul, a piece of him for ever lost.

  She had prepared herself for the smell. Always the same. But she could never have been ready for the devastation she saw when she looked into the room.

  One side appeared normal. The neat conservatism of any middle-class couple, the décor clearly chosen by the wife. Tasteful floral wallpaper. More good quality furniture and fittings. One antique dressing table, probably an heirloom.

  But the other side of the room, beneath and around the window. Walls slashed and smeared by madness and hate. Red arcs across the wallpaper. Spattered on the window, drops too fine to be visible from outside.

  There, where he’d retreated into the corner, what remained of David Rolston. One arm hooked up and over his head at an unnatural angle making him look like a rag doll that had been thrown in a childish rage. Skull fragments. Flaps of skin, strands of hair. One eye gone, the other open and dull.

  On the stained carpet, between his splayed legs, a cast iron bookend in the shape of a cat. Its pair remained on the dresser beside the body, books spilling onto the floor.

  ‘Dear Christ,’ Purdy said. ‘Children did this. Children.’

  Flanagan’s hand went to her stomach, an instinctive motion. She had not yet told anyone other than her husband that she was pregnant. She said a silent prayer that this horror would not seep through her flesh and touch the growing life within.

  Flanagan first met Ciaran Devine in his cell at Antrim Serious Crime Suite. The doctor had finished his examination, passed her in the corridor. A custody officer held the cell door open for her. Ciaran was sitting on the bench that served as a bed when she entered.

  So small.

  He looked up at her, startlement in his eyes. He had not expected a woman, she realised. His blood-soaked clothes had been removed, replaced by standard issue dark navy sweatshirt and joggers. Too big for his skinny frame, they sagged on him, the cuffs draping over his hands, revealing only his fingers. Slip-on plimsolls like Flanagan had worn as a child at school gym classes. Blond hair cut close to his scalp.

  The custody sergeant had told Flanagan about the bruises, both fresh and fading, on Ciaran’s arms. Some of them like teeth marks. Self-harm, the custody sergeant had said. The boy had a history of it. Young for that, the sergeant observed. Flanagan told him biting was the most common form of self-harm amongst younger children. The custody sergeant had shrugged and said, young for killing people too.

  Ciaran’s hands shook. Tears ready to come at any moment. He had been as calm as could be expected so far, the custody sergeant had told her, even when he was booked in. But Flanagan could tell the boy’s composure was a thin veil that might slip or be torn away in an instant. The staff in the custody suite had a nervous resolve about their work. They hated to have children locked up. So many dangers, so much to go wrong.

  Flanagan took a breath, reminded herself once more that Ciaran was a child undergoing an experience more terrifying than most adults would ever have to endure. She gave him a shallow smile and spoke with the friendly but firm voice she had practised and refined over many hours.

  ‘Ciaran, I’m Detective Sergeant Serena Flanagan. I’ll be interviewing you in a little while, once your social worker gets here. Right now, I have to take a DNA sample.’

  She showed him the clear plastic tube in her hand, the cotton swab inside.

  ‘Is that all right?’ she asked.

  He blinked, and a tear rolled down his cheek. ‘Where’s Thomas?’ he asked.

  Not even a whisper, barely a croak in his throat.

  ‘Thomas is in another block, in a cell like this one.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  Flanagan shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, you can’t.’

  Ciaran’s control began to break. His hands danced in his lap, fingers grabbing at air, at cloth, at skin. His shoulders rose and fell as his breathing quickened. Panic creeping in, taking over. Panic blots out reason, lashes out, causes harm. It must be held at bay.

  Flanagan crossed the cell to him, hunkered down so her eyes were level with his.

  ‘Ciaran, listen to me. I know you’re frightened, but I need you to try to stay calm. I know this is a scary place, but you’re safe here. You’re going to be all right, I promise. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘I want Thomas,’ he said, his voice a despairing whine.

  ‘You can’t see him, I’m sorry.’

  He brought his hands to his face, bent over, curling in on himself. Weeping like the lost child he was. Even though she knew he had been involved in the most brutal violence, even though the blood still dried on his palms, Flanagan felt a piercing sorrow for this boy.

  She did the only sane and reasonable thing she could imagine: she dropped the plastic tube and put her arms around Ciaran, gathered him in close to her. Rocked him as his tears soaked through her jacket.

  Dear God and Jesus help him, she thought.

  An hour later, in a cold interview room, Flanagan sat opposite Ciaran and a social worker. Michael Garvey wasn’t the brothers’ case worker; rather he had the misfortune to be on call for out of hours duty. Flanagan had sat at an interview table with him many times before, but never for anything like this. Garvey looked pale and uneasy. She couldn’t blame him.

  Flanagan composed herself and arranged her notes on the table. No sooner had she released the boy from her embrace than she regretted the impropriety of it. She instructed herself to firm up, remember the victim, not to let her empathy cloud her judgement. This interview was the First Account. No time to be distracted.

  She studied the boy for a moment. Ciaran Devine, only twelve years old. Father killed in a hit-and-run by a joyrider just yards from the family home when Ciaran was four years old. His mother had died five years ago from heart failure caused by endocarditis, not uncommon among heroin users. She’d lost custody of her boys eighteen months before that, mental health issues compounded by drug and alcohol abuse. The brothers had been shunted around the care system ever since, had nobody but each other.

  A shitty start to life, Flanagan thought, but no excuse.

  She and the social worker went through the ritual of opening sealed cases, examining blank CDRs, before she inserted them into the audio recorder. She cautioned the boy, and Garvey double-checked that he understood.

  Then Flanagan began.

  ‘Ciaran, do you understand where you are?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, the word no more than an expulsion of air.

  ‘The detained person has replied in the affirmative,’ Flanagan said. ‘Try to speak up, Ciaran, so the microphone can hear you. It’s important. So where are you?’

  ‘The police station.’

  ‘Yes. The Serious Crime Suite at Antrim Police Station. How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve,’ he said.

  ‘And what is your brother’s name?’

  Ciaran hesitated. He knew she was aware of the answer. But he couldn’t know about cognitive interviewing, the information funnel, the art of beginning with vague, open questions, narrowing down over time to the hard root of truth.

  ‘Your brother’s name, Ciaran,’ she said.

  ‘Thomas.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Ciaran said. ‘He’ll be fifteen in May. He didn’t
do it. It was me.’

  Flanagan inhaled. Garvey put his hand on Ciaran’s thin arm.

  She gave the boy a smile she intended to be reassuring, but it felt tight on her lips. ‘We’ll come to what happened to Mr Rolston in a while. Right now, we need to—’

  ‘Thomas didn’t have anything to do with it,’ Ciaran said, his voice rising. ‘It was me on my own.’

  Flanagan looked to Garvey. He stared back at her, his eyes wide. He turned to the boy and said, ‘Ciaran, you’re entitled to have a lawyer here. Do you want me to get one for you?’

  Ciaran did not react to the words, as if they were spoken to some other boy in some other room.

  Flanagan leaned forward. ‘Ciaran, I want you to think very carefully about what you’ve just said. It’s very important that you tell the truth. Even if what you said is true, Thomas was still there with you when it happened. He’ll still be in trouble for it. You won’t spare him anything by lying about it.’

  ‘He was there in the room,’ Ciaran said, staring at his hands. ‘But he didn’t do it. It was all me.’

  ‘Ciaran, I saw the blood on Thomas’s clothes. He was as covered in it as you were. You’ll not convince anyone he wasn’t at least alongside you when it happened. But now’s not the time to—’

  Ciaran looked up at her, and she noticed for the first time how blue his eyes were. ‘I’m not lying,’ he said. ‘He tried to stop me. But I didn’t want to stop. He didn’t do it. It was me on my own.’

  ‘The time is eleven minutes past six,’ Flanagan said. ‘I’m suspending the interview now.’

  She reached for the audio recorder, hit the stop button. She left Ciaran alone with the social worker, headed out into the corridor and found Purdy leaving the room where he had been watching a video feed of both the boys’ interviews.