Those We Left Behind

by Stuart Neville

  ‘When your supervision’s up,’ Thomas says, ‘we’ll go away somewhere. Maybe to England. Somewhere decent, somewhere nobody knows us.’

  Ciaran is too busy eating to think of a reply.

  ‘Where would you want to go?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Dunno,’ Ciaran says. ‘America, maybe.’

  ‘You can’t just go to America to live,’ Thomas says. ‘You need a visa or a green card or something. We don’t even have passports. If we get passports, we can go somewhere in Europe. Germany or France. Maybe even Spain. They’ve nice beaches there. Would you like that?’

  ‘I can’t speak foreign,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘Me neither,’ Thomas says. ‘It’ll have to be England, then. Maybe Scotland. Not Wales, though.’

  Ciaran doesn’t ask why. Thomas looks back out to sea.

  ‘Mum’s old house is near here,’ Ciaran says.

  Thomas turns to him again. ‘Yeah. Just up the coast a bit.’

  ‘Can we go there?’

  ‘No,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to. Besides, it’s not ours any more. Not since I sold it. It was a dump anyway. It’s all fenced off now. I suppose they’ll knock it down soon. I’m surprised you even remember that place.’

  Ciaran remembers. The only clear memories he has of his mother are located in that house. He can’t recall his father: his first memory is the funeral. The weeping carried on the breeze through the graveyard. They lived in another house then, but it had to be sold, and the two boys and their mother moved to the old farmhouse by the sea. It had belonged to her parents, and Ciaran remembered her telling him how she and his father had planned to fix it up, to make it a holiday home for them all.

  How happy they would have been, she said. And then it was all gone, stolen from them by a teenager in a hijacked car.

  The land surrounding the house was sold off acre by acre to keep them going, until it stood alone behind its walls, cold and damp, the air seeming to creep through the rooms and hallways in ghostly currents. They would huddle around the fire in the kitchen every evening, sometimes sharing a blanket. Teresa staring into the flames, her soul drifting farther and farther away.

  At first, she would hug her boys and tell them everything was going to be all right. But that lasted only a few months. After a while, she barely spoke to them at all. She kept them fed, made sure they had clothes to wear. But if Thomas didn’t want to go to school, she wouldn’t argue. And if Thomas stayed home, then so would Ciaran. The brothers would leave her in the house and walk the quarter-mile to the beach. Running through the fields and grass-capped dunes, they would laugh and chase each other until they were too cold or too hungry to stay out any longer. Then their laughter would die in their throats as they headed back to the house.

  The social workers started to call. Asking after the boys. Why had they missed so much school? How was their health? Were they eating properly?

  Teresa would make tearful apologies and promise to do better, to make them go to school, to be a better mother.

  A man came twice or three times a week. A small man with dead eyes. Sometimes he would go no further than the doorstep, other times he would follow Teresa to her bedroom. But he always left a small package behind.

  ‘Mummy’s medicine,’ she said, when Ciaran asked.

  One morning Ciaran and Thomas woke late in the room they shared. They walked downstairs together and found Teresa slumped over the kitchen table, her eyes half closed and glassy, drool pooling on the wood.

  The needle still in her arm.

  They stood and watched their mother for a time, listening to the shallow wheezes from her chest. She smelled of urine and excrement. Her bare feet rested in a puddle.

  Eventually, Thomas said, ‘I should get a doctor.’

  They had no telephone, no car. Ciaran had to wait half an hour before Thomas came back with a neighbour who had called an ambulance. In that time, he sat opposite his mother, counting the puncture marks on her skin.

  They spent the night in a shelter, and Ciaran never entered the house again.

  He wonders if the table is still there, and the syringe sitting on top of it.

  ‘The other night,’ Thomas says, ‘why were you looking up that woman cop on my computer?’

  Ciaran stops chewing for a moment, feels something fold in on itself low down in his stomach.

  ‘Well?’

  Ciaran swallows. Takes another bite. Thomas takes the buttie from his fingers and tosses it away onto the sand. Seagulls swoop and feast. Ciaran wipes his empty hands on his jeans.

  ‘Answer me,’ Thomas says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ciaran says, his voice very small. ‘I wanted to know if she was still in the police. Maybe if she’d been in the news for anything. Something. I don’t know.’

  ‘She was a bitch,’ Thomas says.

  Ciaran forces his hands down into the pockets of his hoodie to keep them still.

  ‘She’s probably still a bitch,’ Thomas says. ‘She tried to get between us. To break us apart. And you almost let her. I told you a million times, you can’t trust people like that. Not cops, not probation officers, not social workers, not foster carers. They’re all the same. They’ll make out they’re on your side, that they’re only trying to help you. But all they care about is putting you away. That woman cop, she let you think she was your friend, didn’t she?’

  Ciaran looks out to sea, picks out the hazy shape of a freighter on the horizon.

  ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘And what did she do in the end? She made sure you went away for seven years. What kind of friend does that? So why were you looking her up?’

  ‘Just because,’ Ciaran says. Anger has sharpened his voice.

  Thomas’s hand where Ciaran’s neck meets his shoulder, squeezing tight. ‘Don’t get thick with me. We’re only talking. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Ciaran says, breathing the anger out.

  ‘What would you do if you found her?’

  The question sends Ciaran’s mind into a spin. He couldn’t speak the answer even if he knew it. Thomas’s hand moves to the back of his neck. Slow, soothing motions, like he knows the chaos he’s caused.

  ‘Would you talk to her?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Would you hurt her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you try to kiss her?’

  ‘No!’ A shout, carried away from them on the breeze. Ciaran pulls away from his brother’s hand.

  Thomas grins. ‘She’s married. She has kids. What would she want with you?’

  Ciaran wants to tell Thomas to shut his fucking mouth, but he doesn’t dare. Instead, he bites his knuckle, hopes the pain will chase the anger out of him.

  The grin slides away from Thomas’s face. ‘You know, if you ever went near her, she’d put you back inside. No question. She’d go to that probation woman, and they’d say you were a risk. You’d be back inside, and I don’t know if I could wait for you like I did these last few years.’

  Ciaran’s eyes are hot, but he will not cry. He will not.

  Thomas leans in close, his warm damp hand wrapped around the back of Ciaran’s neck, his lips against Ciaran’s ear. ‘Do you want to hear a secret?’

  Ciaran closes his eyes.

  ‘I know where she lives.’

  Thomas stands and walks away across the sand.

  24

  CUNNINGHAM LISTENED AS Flanagan spoke, picturing the child Ciaran Devine had once been. The child he still was, really.

  ‘I suppose that’s the thing that struck me most,’ Flanagan said. ‘He was at that age when boys change. I could see the man he might have been, if he’d had a chance, and the little boy he was leaving behind.’

  ‘That’s the saddest part of kids that age being locked up,’ Cunningham said. ‘Ciaran went away a twelve-year-old, and he came out seven years later, still a twelve-year-old. All that
growing up he’s missed. How anyone expects him to cope, I don’t know.’

  ‘I guess that’s your job,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘My job is risk management. To do my best to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else. I can take him shopping, I can help him get a job, but I can’t show him how to live among ordinary people, how to cope without the structures forced on him when he was inside. Whether or not he’s mentally fit enough to look after himself is neither here nor there. I don’t get to make that decision.’

  Flanagan gave a sad smile. ‘That’s the problem with jobs like ours, isn’t it? The gap between what we wish we could achieve and what we can actually do.’

  Cunningham nodded. ‘True.’

  She wondered what it would be like to know Flanagan outside of her work. Cunningham had lost more friends than she’d gained over the years. Since she and Alex had split, she had often found herself wondering about the people around her. Were they all lonely too? Were their lives more complete than hers? The trilling of her mobile phone brought her back to the present, away from this self-indulgent wallowing.

  She took the phone from her bag, saw the number. ‘I’d better take this.’

  Flanagan nodded.

  ‘Miss Cunningham? This is Sergeant Peter McMurray.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cunningham said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I just thought you should know, Daniel Rolston was arrested this morning following a disturbance at his workplace. He was fired. Seems he didn’t take it too well.’

  ‘Is he in a lot of trouble?’ Cunningham asked.

  Flanagan looked at her across the table.

  ‘The management at the call centre don’t want to make a fuss about it,’ McMurray said. ‘He’ll be let go with a caution. I just thought I should let you know. If he comes anywhere near you, if you see him at all, call 999 immediately. I’m guessing he’ll just lie low now, but it does no harm to be careful.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cunningham said, ‘thank you.’

  She returned the phone to her bag and repeated what she’d been told to Flanagan.

  The policewoman gave her a smile that was probably meant to reassure. ‘Like the sergeant said, he’ll lie low. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m worried about,’ Cunningham said. ‘What if he goes after the Devines?’

  Flanagan shrugged. ‘If it happens, it happens. There’s nothing you can do about that.’

  Cunningham pushed that thought aside and asked, ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You said you’d got through to Ciaran. Got him to open up to you. But he wound up getting charged anyway. He didn’t withdraw the confession.’

  Flanagan’s eyes focused on the street outside. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was complicated. A lot of factors. Things I didn’t . . .’

  The words trailed off, and Cunningham considered pressing harder, but she sensed Flanagan’s discomfort. She held her silence, waited to see if the policewoman would find a way to say what she wanted to say.

  Eventually Flanagan said, ‘The last interview didn’t go so well. Let’s just leave it at that.’

  Cunningham had known enough police officers to understand the trauma they endured in the course of their work, and that often they found it hard to revisit those ugly moments.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘When you feel like you can talk about it, I’ll be ready to listen.’

  Flanagan looked back to the window, wading in some dark memory.

  MONDAY 26TH – TUESDAY 27TH MARCH 2007

  They talked almost to eleven. About superheroes, about Star Wars, about football, about family, about love, about death. She told him secrets, and he told her lies. Curled there, held beneath her arm. Ciaran talked about Thomas, how his brother always had looked after him and always would. They talked about the future, the years ahead of him.

  When she asked him to imagine a life without his brother, he froze, as if the watch on her wrist had stopped, along with every other clock in the building.

  ‘You can live without him,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen him for nearly three days. You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

  Silence until, eventually, he said, ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I’ll let you sleep, then. But it’s an early start in the morning. Unless something changes, you’re going to be charged at five-thirty a.m. Then I won’t be able to talk to you again.’

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if there was no line to be crossed, he lowered his head into her lap.

  Flanagan lifted her hands away. They hung above him, suspended by uncertainty. She looked up at the camera in the corner, held her palms up and out. Not touching. Her mouth opened, ready to ask him to move, when he spoke.

  ‘I want to tell the truth,’ he said.

  Flanagan lowered her hands. She touched her fingertips to his cheek. ‘Okay. But not now. It has to be on record or what you say doesn’t count. I’ll arrange an interview for the morning, before the deadline. All right?’

  He nodded and closed his eyes. Soon his breathing settled, his shoulders rising and falling as he slept. His breath warmed her thigh. As gently as she could, she lifted his head, slipped from under him, and left the cell. He did not wake.

  As Flanagan left the block, Sergeant Richie approached, ready to lock up after her. His gaze fixed on her, eyes hard. She did not look away.

  ‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘You were a long time. I was watching on the monitor.’

  She stopped, challenged him with her posture. ‘And?’

  ‘You were getting awful friendly with him,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘I was close to coming in to see what was going on.’

  Flanagan took a step closer. ‘And what exactly do you think was going on?’

  He seemed to lose an inch in height under her stare. ‘Nothing. But I’m responsible for that kid while he’s in here. I won’t have any . . .’

  ‘Any what?’

  The custody sergeant backed away. ‘It’s late. I think it’s best you leave the block now.’

  Flanagan walked to the car park and called DCI Purdy. He grumbled at his sleep being disturbed, and even more when she told him she wanted to set up an interview for four-thirty a.m. But he agreed. One more call secured yet another out-of-hours social worker.

  She re-entered the building and found a stained and weathered couch to sleep on.

  She dreamed of small, bloodied hands on her body and woke up gasping.

  Flanagan brought tea and toast to Ciaran’s cell at four a.m., along with a fresh set of clothes. She left him to eat and dress before signing him out of the custody suite and taking him to the interview room. Checking her watch, she saw they had five or six minutes before the social worker was due. She slouched at the table, Ciaran on the chair beside her. Weariness made her head heavy and dried her eyes.

  ‘What do you want to be when you’re older?’ Flanagan asked.

  Ciaran leaned his chin on his forearms. ‘I wanted to write comics. Do you have to go to university to do that?’

  She studied him beneath the room’s hard fluorescent lighting. A handsome young boy. She wondered what he’d look like as a grown man. Then she felt a pang of sadness for the future he’d thrown away.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s a particular qualification you need. But having a degree is good, no matter what you want to do.’

  He traced imaginary shapes on the desktop with his forefinger. ‘I’ll never go to university now.’

  ‘There’s no reason why not,’ Flanagan said. ‘You’ll be in the Young Offenders Centre for a few years, there’s no getting away from that. But it doesn’t mean your life’s over. You can still get an education and do your exams. GCSEs, A levels even. There’s nothing to stop you going to university when you get out. Not if you w
ork hard enough and keep out of trouble.’

  Ciaran stayed quiet, staring across the room.

  ‘What?’ Flanagan asked. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  Ciaran sniffed, rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Thomas won’t let me go to university.’

  ‘Well, that’s not really up to Thomas, is it?’

  He rested his forehead on his arms, his nose touching the desktop. Flanagan watched the rise and fall of his back, his ribcage expanding and contracting.

  ‘Is it?’ she asked again.

  ‘Everything’s up to Thomas.’

  Flanagan placed her hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, felt the bones of him through the sweatshirt. ‘I know you love him,’ she said. ‘But he doesn’t own you. You’re your own person. No one can tell you how to live but you.’

  His shoulders quivered. A sharp inhalation, then a watery exhalation. Tears pooled on the desktop. She moved her hand in a circle, then down his spine, back up again.

  ‘I wish it hadn’t happened,’ he said, the words choked between sobs. ‘I wish I could take it back. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want Mr Rolston to be dead. I want . . .’

  The words were lost, drowned by weeping.

  ‘C’mere,’ Flanagan said. She gathered him up like a bundle of rags, took him in her arms, held him close. Rocked him as he cried his heart out once more.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed as the sobbing died away, his cheek hot against hers, his lips against her neck. Only that she became aware of the movement of his hand beneath the hem of her skirt. She inhaled, her mind suddenly paralysed.

  His hand, so warm there.

  Flanagan put her hands on his upper arms, eased his body away from hers. She reached down, moved his hand back to his own lap. His eyes, still red with tears, remained fixed on hers.

  ‘Ciaran, you can’t touch me like that.’

  His hand crossed the space between them, went to her breast, his fingers spreading, cupping. His eyes so blue.

  She slapped him once, hard, rocking his head to the side. The sting of it hot on her palm. She stood, left the room, closed the door, leaned her back against it. Trembling all over, heart galloping.