Those We Left Behind

by Stuart Neville

‘I’ll have Thomas with you in just a minute,’ Brolly said, and left them alone.

  Ballantine pulled out a chair and sat down. When she saw that Flanagan remained on her feet she coughed, stood, and pushed the chair back, her face reddening. They waited in silence until the door reopened and Thomas Devine stepped through dressed in the uniform of a kitchen worker.

  He froze when he saw Flanagan.

  ‘Hello, Thomas,’ she said. ‘How’ve you been?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Sit down.’ Flanagan pointed to a seat. ‘Just a quick chat. It shouldn’t take long.’

  Thomas lowered himself onto the chair. His back stiff, the chair out from the table as if he was ready to run. At Flanagan’s signal, Ballantine sat down opposite Thomas, opened her notepad, clicked her pen.

  Flanagan moved close to Thomas, perched on the table beside him. He inched his chair away.

  ‘You didn’t have to come to my work,’ he said. ‘Dinner service is just over. I’m supposed to be washing dishes. Chef’s going to give me grief for this. You could’ve talked to me at home.’

  ‘True, but let’s just say time was a factor.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Have you seen the news today?’ Flanagan asked. ‘Listened to the radio, maybe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then presumably you haven’t heard about a fatal stabbing in the Stranmillis area last night.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A young man, stabbed repeatedly in an alley, found at seven this morning. His wallet was missing, his pockets were emptied, so it looked like a robbery. But they missed a Translink travel card, so he was quickly identified.’

  Thomas folded his arms. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But what’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘The victim was an old acquaintance of yours.’

  Thomas said nothing.

  ‘Daniel Rolston.’

  Silence.

  ‘I should think you’d remember him. You and your brother were convicted for killing his father, after all.’

  Thomas looked up at her. ‘I was convicted as an accessory, even though I’d nothing to do with it. It was Ciaran who killed him. It was Ciaran who was convicted for it.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Flanagan said. ‘Forgive me, I should have chosen my words a little more carefully. Tell me, when was the last time you or Ciaran saw Daniel Rolston?’

  ‘Not since back then.’

  ‘Back then? You mean, since you and your brother were involved in his father’s death?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘So you’re telling me you haven’t seen Daniel Rolston for more than seven years.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, let Detective Sergeant Ballantine here tell you what happened just before we came over to see you.’

  Ballantine’s face flashed with startlement for a moment before she gathered herself, leafed through the pages of her notepad, and spoke.

  ‘We got a call from a security guard at the Forestside shopping centre about thirty minutes ago. He recognised Daniel Rolston’s photograph when it was shown on the news. He said a young man who looked very like him had been involved in an incident at the shopping centre yesterday morning. It involved two other young men. There was some shouting, apparently, and punches were thrown.’

  Thomas remained quiet for a few seconds, then said, ‘So?’

  Flanagan asked, ‘How did you get that cut on your lip, Thomas?’

  ‘I fell. I had to call in sick yesterday because of it.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Forestside is right next to Ciaran’s hostel, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  ‘Well, that security guard is going to give us a full statement tomorrow, with descriptions of all three involved in the incident. I’ll interview him myself. We should have the centre’s CCTV footage by tomorrow evening. Do you think the two young men involved in that incident with Daniel might look a bit like you and Ciaran?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘If those two young men look like you and your brother – and something tells me they will – I’ll have you both brought in and questioned under caution. You could save me a lot of trouble and just tell me what happened yesterday.’

  Thomas looked from Flanagan to Ballantine and back again. ‘Have you talked to Ciaran yet?’

  ‘No,’ Flanagan said. ‘But we will.’

  ‘And I’m not under caution.’

  ‘Just a friendly chat, that’s all,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘So there’s nothing to stop me just getting up and going back to my work.’

  ‘Not a thing in the world.’

  Thomas stood, walked to the door.

  ‘One thing,’ Flanagan called after him.

  He stopped, the door open, his fingers on the handle.

  ‘Three nights ago, Daniel called at the home of Ciaran’s probation officer. He made some pretty serious claims.’

  Thomas remained quiet and still, staring back at her.

  ‘Daniel said Ciaran was wrongly convicted. He reckoned you killed his father and made Ciaran take the blame.’

  Thomas turned and left the room.

  Flanagan turned to Ballantine. ‘You got all that?’

  ‘Yes, not that there was much of it. Can I ask, if we haven’t got enough to interview them under caution yet, why talk to them at all?’

  ‘To rattle them,’ Flanagan said. ‘And to get the measure of them. We know Thomas will be evasive when he’s interviewed, try to shut us out. No comment all the way. So I can work on grinding him down. Ciaran, on the other hand . . .’

  She thought of the child she had known, felt a sudden terror at the idea of seeing him again. Ballantine said something, but Flanagan didn’t hear.

  TUESDAY 27TH MARCH 2007

  At five-twenty a.m., Flanagan watched from behind the bars as DCI Purdy brought Ciaran in front of the custody sergeant. Their shoes scuffed and squeaked on the linoleum floor. Purdy with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Ciaran weeping with terror, one step from hysteria. The social worker following behind.

  God help him, Flanagan thought.

  God help me.

  She still felt the heat on her palm from slapping him. His cheek still red.

  Like watching an execution, she thought. This boy’s life being taken, every other possible future gone. She put her hand over her mouth to smother a quivering inhalation.

  Ciaran heard. He turned his head, saw her there. A hollowness in his eyes.

  There’s nothing I can do for you now, she wanted to say. But it was too late.

  He turned back to the small window and the custody sergeant on the other side.

  As the charges were read, Ciaran sank to the floor as if his spirit had departed his body, leaving only the shell of a boy.

  Flanagan could watch no more. She left the building, left him behind, certain he hadn’t beaten David Rolston to death.

  Later that morning, while Flanagan showered with the intention of going straight to bed, the first cramps doubled her over, almost took her legs from under her. Then she began to bleed. The miscarriage was confirmed at the Royal Victoria Hospital’s maternity unit that afternoon.

  In the days that followed, Flanagan couldn’t think of Ciaran Devine without seeing swirls of red circle a drain. Soon, she did not think of him at all.

  35

  CIARAN IS SITTING alone in his room, letting the dark gather around him, when Mr Wheatley knocks on the door.

  ‘Phone call for you,’ he says.

  Ciaran follows him down the stairs to the payphone in the entrance hall. He lifts the handset and says, ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me,’ Thomas says. ‘The cops are coming to talk to you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Right now. They’ll be there any minute. Listen to me. You don’t have to say anything to them. You can refuse to talk to them if you want to. You don’t have to do or say anything if they don’t arrest you. Do you understand?�
�

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘Daniel Rolston went to see your probation officer,’ Thomas says. ‘They told me. He went to her house. Now she’s mouthing off too. She’s going to try to put you away again. But don’t worry about that.’

  ‘Why?’ Ciaran asks.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I said. There’s one more thing. One of the cops who came to me. It was that woman cop. Flanagan.’

  Ciaran feels a chill on his forehead and back as sweat breaks on his skin. His knees weaken. He leans against the wall.

  ‘You still there?’

  Ciaran swallows, says, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All right,’ Thomas says. ‘Just stay calm. You’ll be all right. I’ll call you back later.’

  Ciaran hangs up. He sees Mr Wheatley standing in his office doorway.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Mr Wheatley asks.

  Ciaran nods. Mr Wheatley doesn’t go away. Ciaran wonders if he ever goes home. Even on a Sunday night, there he is.

  ‘You all ready for work in the morning?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘You’ll have to be up early. The van picks you and the other lads up at seven.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says. He wishes Mr Wheatley would just go back into his office, leave him alone.

  ‘Maybe you should head on up to bed, get some sleep.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says. But he doesn’t go anywhere.

  Mr Wheatley stands and watches Ciaran fidget.

  ‘You sure nothing’s wrong?’ Mr Wheatley asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ciaran can hardly stand it. It’s almost a relief when the door buzzer sounds. Mr Wheatley goes into his office to answer it. Ciaran hears his voice from inside, but he can’t make out the words. He can guess, though. When Mr Wheatley comes back out he gives Ciaran a hard look before going to the door and opening it.

  Two women enter, but Ciaran only really sees one of them.

  Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. His head so light his body seems to dangle from it like a string from a balloon.

  ‘Hello, Ciaran,’ Serena Flanagan says.

  Mr Wheatley lets them use his office. Ciaran sits on a hard plastic chair in the corner. He feels as if tiny spiders are crawling all over his skin, tingling from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He tries not to stare too hard at the policewoman as she sits on Mr Wheatley’s chair, but he can’t look away either. His gaze darts from her to the floor and back again, over and over, until he feels like he might faint. He lingers on her body, and she notices. Heat spreads on his cheeks.

  The other policewoman, the younger one, stands by the door, leaning on the frame. She holds a pen and notebook.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ Serena says. She’d always told him to call her by her first name. ‘How’ve you been?’

  Ciaran can’t speak. He tries, but his throat only makes a wet clicky noise.

  ‘I bet you’re glad to be out,’ she says.

  He tries again. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Miss Cunningham, your probation officer, she told me you were very good when you were at Hydebank. You had hardly any trouble there at all.’

  Ciaran nods.

  ‘Do you know why we’re here?’

  Ciaran shakes his head.

  ‘Daniel Rolston was found dead in an alley in the Stranmillis area this morning. He’d been stabbed multiple times.’

  Ciaran stays very still. He watches Flanagan’s mouth move, the curve of her lips. He remembers how it felt that time she held him close as he cried against the warmth of her neck. He has thought of that often over the years. When he was alone in his room at Hydebank, in the dark, he played it over in his mind again and again. Like a movie. Sometimes, in the version that unravelled in his mind, she did not pull away. She did not slap him when he touched her. And he would reach for himself, there under the covers, the rest of the world fading away to nothing, his entire existence focused on that one point of pressure, building and building until it exploded, the heat spilling out of him.

  Sometimes he would bundle the pillow, sheets and blankets into a form that stretched along his bed. He would hold it through the night, imagining it was her, hearing her heart beat next to his. The smooth weave of the sheets becoming her skin beneath his fingertips. Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – he whispered that he loved her. Alone in the dark where no one could possibly hear.

  ‘Ciaran, are you listening?’

  He falls back into the office from wherever he’s been. ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘I said Daniel was seen yesterday morning having a confrontation with two other young men. At Forestside, the shopping centre just across the road from here. Do you know anything about that?’

  Ciaran shakes his head. Everything moves slowly. The air feels thick and warm around him.

  ‘Some time tomorrow, we’re going to get CCTV footage from the centre. We’ll see it was you and Thomas. When that happens, you’re going to be arrested and questioned under caution. Do you understand, Ciaran?’

  Ciaran says nothing.

  ‘And we’re going to trace Daniel’s steps from when he left the shopping centre to Botanic Gardens and on to where he was killed. We’re going to pull together all the CCTV recordings from that route. There are cameras everywhere. If we see you or Thomas were in the area, if you were following Daniel at any point, then you’ll be in a lot of trouble. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says.

  She stands, moves her chair closer to him, sits down again. So close he can almost feel her through the space between them. Like the air conducts currents of electricity, sparks and flashes of it.

  ‘Ciaran, you don’t have to protect your brother. You don’t need to do what he tells you. You’re your own person.’

  ‘I can do what I want,’ Ciaran says.

  Flanagan smiles. ‘That’s right. Now please listen very carefully to me.’

  She reaches out and takes his hands in hers. He feels his heart swelling inside him, pushing against his ribs, like it might split him open. He tries to shallow his breathing, but he can’t. Air rips in and out of him.

  ‘I think you and Thomas know what happened to Daniel Rolston last night. I believe one of you might have killed him. If I’m right, and you were involved, you will go to prison for a very long time. It won’t be only a few years, and it won’t be like Hydebank. A real prison, Ciaran. Probably a life sentence. Even if you behave yourself inside like you did at Hydebank, you’ll be in your thirties before you’re allowed out again. What’s left of your life will be ruined and thrown away.’

  She watches his face for a moment. He doesn’t know what she sees there. He doesn’t know what he feels himself, so many emotions chasing each other around his soul. So much noise inside him, he can’t hear his own mind.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way,’ she says.

  She reaches out and touches his cheek.

  He shivers.

  He sees the other policewoman straighten.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Serena says. ‘Tell me exactly what happened. I can make things easier for you.’

  Ciaran looks down at his hands. His sleeves have risen. The livid traces of Thomas on his skin have crept beyond his cuff, out where anyone can see them, not hiding like they should. The red and the pink, bruises forming. She notices. Her fingers slip away from his face.

  ‘Jesus, Ciaran,’ she says, her voice rippling soft. She takes his wrist, rolls his sleeve up further. ‘Are you still hurting yourself?’

  He studies her face. More lines there now. Small wisps of grey at the roots of her hair. Then he thinks of Thomas, and how hard he can bite.

  ‘I need to go to bed,’ Ciaran says. ‘I have to go to work in the morning.’

  ‘Or did Thomas do this?’ she asks.

  He tries to take his hand away, but she holds on. She touches her fingertip to a break in the skin, already scabbing over.

  ‘No,’ Ciaran says. ‘I want to go.’

  Ser
ena releases his wrist and sits back. ‘All right. But I have something else to ask you.’

  Ciaran pauses.

  ‘Did you really kill Daniel’s father?’

  Ciaran does not answer.

  ‘Did you lie to me? To all of us? Did you take the blame for your brother?’

  Ciaran stands and says, ‘I have to go.’

  He walks to the door. Serena is still talking, but he doesn’t hear her any more. He leaves the office. Mr Wheatley is waiting in the hall, watches Ciaran pass on his way to the stairs. Ciaran climbs them, goes to his room, and sits on the bed.

  He knows he will not sleep tonight.

  36

  BALLANTINE DIDN’T SPEAK as she drove back towards the motorway. Her silence grated on Flanagan more than a deluge of words would have.

  ‘What?’ Flanagan asked.

  ‘Nothing, ma’am,’ Ballantine said as she turned from the Malone Road towards Balmoral, and the M1 beyond. Flanagan would’ve taken the Hillhall Road, but she passed no comment.

  ‘Speak your mind,’ Flanagan said. ‘I can hear you biting your tongue. You’ll chew it off if you’re not careful.’

  ‘It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘He’s strange,’ Ballantine said.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  Ballantine stopped the car at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the light to change.

  ‘It’s not just that he’s quiet,’ she said. ‘He’s strange in himself, all right, but . . .’

  As the car got moving again, Flanagan said, ‘For Christ’s sake, just say what you’re thinking.’

  ‘What’s strange is the way he was with you,’ Ballantine said. ‘The way he looked at you. Like a schoolboy with a crush. But deeper than that. When you took his hand, it was like he got an electric shock.’

  ‘Well, I guess he hasn’t seen many women over the last few years. It’s hardly surprising he gets a little doe-eyed when he comes face to face with one.’

  Ballantine stopped again at the junction with the Lisburn Road, the railway bridge at the other side. Flanagan looked down at her hands, saw the red light reflected there.

  ‘It seemed like more than that,’ Ballantine said. ‘And ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying, you didn’t seem to discourage him. And the way you touched him . . .’