Those We Left Behind

by Stuart Neville

  ‘Thomas told me he did,’ Ciaran says. ‘Thomas doesn’t tell me lies.’

  ‘Oh God, Ciaran, he’s been lying to you your whole life. He’s been using you. Can’t you see that?’

  Thomas says, ‘Tell her about Daniel.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she says.

  ‘I had to do it,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘You didn’t,’ she says. ‘Please tell me you didn’t do it.’

  ‘I had to. He was going to make trouble and put us in jail again. Except it’d be the big prison, and I wouldn’t be able to see Thomas.’

  She covers her face with her hands.

  ‘Tell her how you did it,’ Thomas says.

  ‘We watched him,’ Ciaran says. ‘We followed the bus in Thomas’s car. We saw him get off in town. Then I stayed with him. Far enough away so he didn’t see me. But I saw him. I watched him getting drunk in the park. There were too many people to do it then. The police came and talked to him. I followed him through the streets until he went into an alley. I snuck up behind him. With a knife from the supermarket. I didn’t mean to do it so many times but once it started I couldn’t stop.’

  Ciaran remembers now, the whirling rush of it, the knife in his hand. In and in and in and in, sometimes the blade meeting bone, sometimes not, until Daniel went still and quiet, and then in and in again because there could never, will never be enough, not ever.

  Serena sits huddled against the wall, one hand covering her eyes, the other pressed against her side. He wishes Thomas hadn’t told him to hurt her.

  ‘You promised you’d come back for me,’ Ciaran says.

  She lets her hand drop. Her eyes are red and wet. ‘I wanted to, but I couldn’t. My boss took me off the case, told me to leave. I swear to you, I would’ve come back if I could.’

  Thomas smiles. ‘She disappointed you, didn’t she, Ciaran? She was all talk, pretending to be nice to you, and then she goes and leaves you alone. That’s why you had to come and see her now. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ciaran says. ‘You told me you’d take me to the seaside.’

  She stares at him for a moment, breathing hard, then she says, ‘It’s not too late. We can still go. We can go now if you want.’

  ‘She’s lying again,’ Thomas says. ‘Trying to get you to trust her. Then she’ll try to turn you against me.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘No,’ she says, getting up onto her knees, her hands reaching out to him. Then she points across the room. ‘In that drawer, the top one, right at the back. Underneath the other papers.’

  Ciaran looks to the chest of drawers. It looks old, chips and scratches in the dark-stained wood. ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘The letter,’ she says. ‘Remember you sent it to me? I kept it. Because I cared about you, Ciaran, I always did.’

  ‘She’s lying,’ Thomas says. ‘She never gave a shit about you.’

  Ciaran stands and crosses the room to the chest. There are two drawers at the top. He points to the left. ‘This one?’

  ‘The other one,’ she says.

  ‘Leave it,’ Thomas says.

  Ciaran ignores him, opens the drawer. It’s full of jewellery boxes, hairbands, clips, a sewing kit. He reaches in to the back, to a stack of envelopes and folders. He lifts them out. Letters from insurance companies, a car registration form, birth certificates, medical cards.

  ‘I said, leave it.’ Thomas is getting angry now, Ciaran can hear it in his voice. Still he ignores him.

  ‘It’s hidden in an envelope,’ Serena says. ‘It’s addressed to me, marked from the Family Planning Clinic.’

  Ciaran finds the envelope, opens it, reaches inside. His hand closes on another smaller envelope, and he slips it free. There, upper-case letters in his own childish handwriting.

  TO SERENA

  THE POLICE STATION

  LISBURN

  He doesn’t hear Thomas cross the room, is startled when the envelope is snatched from his fingers. Thomas stuffs it into his jacket pocket.

  ‘That’s mine,’ Ciaran says.

  Thomas pays no attention. ‘Now,’ he says, hunkering down beside Serena once more. ‘Enough messing about. Open the safe.’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  Thomas looks back to Ciaran. ‘She tried to break us apart. You saw that letter from court. She wants to keep us apart, and we can’t let that happen.’

  Thomas takes a small knife from his pocket. A kitchen knife, the kind you’d use for peeling an apple. Its blade is shiny new. It cuts the air. Thomas holds the knife by the metal, the handle towards Ciaran.

  Ciaran pauses.

  He hates Thomas. He loves Thomas.

  Ciaran reaches for the knife.

  ‘All right,’ Serena says. ‘I’ll open it.’

  Ciaran turns the knife in his hand. The blade glints in the sunlight from the window. He tests its edge with his thumb. It leaves a line of tiny red beads on his skin.

  She crawls to the safe, takes a breath, puts her finger to the keypad.

  ‘Remember,’ Thomas says, ‘unlock it, but don’t open it. Move away as soon as you’ve put the number in.’

  She presses a number. Then another. And another.

  She presses a fourth. The safe whirrs and clicks. The door opens an inch.

  ‘Serena?’ a voice calls from downstairs. ‘You up there?’

  Thomas looks to the bedroom door.

  54

  NOW.

  Flanagan threw the safe door back and grabbed for the holster. She thumbed the catch off, wrapped her fingers around the Glock’s grip, tried to turn, bring the pistol back up, but Thomas fell on her.

  His hands clutching at the pistol, her grip too strong to break. She fell back into the wardrobe, Thomas’s weight upon her, the hard corners of the safe digging into her back. Clothes and hangers fell from the rail above, snaring them both.

  Teeth skimmed the skin of Flanagan’s neck and cheek, seeking a hold to tear at the flesh. She whipped her head from side to side, denying Thomas purchase. His hands closed on hers, on the pistol.

  So strong.

  She gasped as she resisted, but he forced her pistol’s muzzle up until it pressed beneath her chin. His weight bore down on her, crushing the air from her lungs. She tried to bring her knee up to his groin but it only thudded against his thigh. She pushed with her feet, tried to lift her body, but her soles skidded on the slick floor.

  His fingers crept towards the trigger guard, forced their way between hers. The muzzle pressed harder beneath her jaw. His fingers squeezed. The pistol jerked.

  A click.

  She felt his body soften with surprise.

  One chance before he realised the Glock’s chamber had been empty.

  She released the pistol with her right hand, let her arm drop, slammed the heel of her hand up and under his jaw.

  His head rocked back, compressing the nerve cluster at the base of his skull, and he fell away from her, stunned. Before he could recover, she rammed her elbow into his nose, felt the hot spurt of blood on her forearm.

  Flanagan fumbled for the Glock, found it, scrambled to her feet, brought the pistol up, her finger on the trigger, ready. She swung her aim between Ciaran and Thomas as she backed away to the corner opposite the wardrobe where she could keep both of them within range.

  Ciaran stood rooted to the floor, his arms by his sides, his mouth wide, terror in his eyes. The knife still in his right hand. Thomas coughed and groaned, spat blood on the floor as he got to his hands and knees.

  ‘Fucking bitch,’ he said, the words blunted by the damage to his nose.

  ‘Ciaran, drop the knife,’ Flanagan said. ‘Do it now or I will shoot you.’

  Thomas tried to get to his feet, but stumbled.

  Flanagan moved her aim to him. ‘Stay down.’

  He ignored her, used the bed to haul himself upright. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he said, spraying the bedding with red. He took Ciaran’s arm, said, ‘Let’s go.’

 
From downstairs, Alistair’s voice. ‘Serena? You all right up there? I thought I heard banging.’

  ‘Don’t move,’ Flanagan said.

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  Thomas guided his brother towards the door.

  ‘Stop,’ Flanagan said. She raised her voice. ‘Alistair, don’t come up here.’

  From the landing, ‘What?’

  Thomas bundled Ciaran to the other side of the room.

  Alistair at the door.

  Flanagan’s finger left the trigger. The brothers between her and her husband. She couldn’t fire and be certain of not hurting him.

  Ciaran’s hand moved.

  Metal flashed.

  Alistair gasped and fell.

  Flanagan said, ‘Oh no.’

  She leapt across the room to the doorway as Alistair crumpled against the frame. The thunder of the brothers’ feet on the stairs.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, staring wide-eyed at the growing red stain on his abdomen. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Okay,’ Flanagan said, ‘it’s not as bad as it looks. Stay calm.’

  She had no idea how bad it was, but she had to staunch the bleeding. She grabbed a pillow from the bed, shook the case free, balled the cotton up, and pressed it into his stomach.

  Between groans of pain, he said, ‘The kids. They’re downstairs.’

  ‘Shit,’ Flanagan said. ‘Keep pressure on it.’

  She lifted her pistol and stepped over her husband, ran for the stairs, down, calling her children’s names. As she reached the hall, she found Ruth in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Mum, who were those men? What’s going on?’

  Flanagan took Ruth’s shoulders even as she flinched from the gun.

  ‘Did they touch you?’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘No.’

  Flanagan heard an engine roar, tyres scattering gravel.

  ‘What about Eli? Where’s Eli?’

  She looked over Ruth’s shoulder into the kitchen, saw Eli standing by the table, his fingers knotted together with worry. ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’

  Flanagan went to the back door, closed and locked it. ‘Ruth, take Eli to your room, lock the door and don’t open it to anyone but me.’

  Eli protested. ‘Mum, I don’t want to—’

  ‘Just go. Now.’

  She ran past them both, back upstairs, stopped at the airing cupboard and grabbed an armful of towels. As she returned to Alistair, she dropped the Glock to the floor and took the soaked pillowcase from his belly. She put one of the towels in its place.

  ‘Press it down, tight,’ she said.

  Flanagan stepped over Alistair once more, fetched her phone from the bedside locker, and turned back to him.

  ‘Stay awake,’ she said as she hit the emergency icon on the phone’s home screen. She hunkered down beside her husband. ‘Don’t fucking die on me. If you do, if you leave me alone with two kids, I’ll bloody kill you again myself.’

  55

  THOMAS PUSHES THE car hard through the roundabout. Ciaran feels the front end struggle for grip as Thomas jerks the wheel left to exit onto the main road. The sign says this is the way to the airport. Are they going to get on a plane?

  Ciaran’s hands shake like jittering pink spiders in his lap. One hand has red speckles on it. The knife lies in the footwell by Ciaran’s feet.

  A laugh escapes Thomas, high and edgy. Blood still drips from his nose into his lap. Not broken, he’d said, but bruises are already forming beneath his eyes. He accelerates past the filling station, swerves into the other lane, passes a lorry and a van.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Ciaran asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thomas says. ‘But we need to change cars. We haven’t got long before they start looking for this one. We need to get onto the back roads.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone else,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘We’ll probably have to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’ll be coming for us,’ Thomas says. He spots a right turn, signed for Maghaberry. Ciaran knows that name. There’s a prison there. Thomas steers into the box junction. ‘Whatever we do, they’ll come for us. We can run for a while, find somewhere to hide, but they’ll catch up with us eventually.’

  He makes the turn onto the narrower road, green all around them.

  ‘We shouldn’t have touched Daniel,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘He shouldn’t have been stirring things up. He brought it on himself.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have to run if we’d left him alone.’

  Thomas takes a left turn off the road, onto a lane barely wide enough for one car.

  ‘Yeah, but he wouldn’t leave us alone, would he?’

  ‘I don’t want to go back inside,’ Ciaran says.

  Thomas slows the car to a halt, puts it out of gear as he pulls the handbrake.

  ‘Me neither,’ he says. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

  Ciaran doesn’t have an answer, just stares at his hands.

  ‘They’ll come for us,’ Thomas says, ‘and we can either fight or let them take us. Me, I’d rather fight. Because when they take us, it’ll be to a real prison. Not like we had before. Maghaberry, near here. Proper walls and bars. And the other prisoners. They won’t be kids. They’ll tear you to pieces.’

  Ciaran leans forward. He hides his face.

  Thomas puts a hand on the back of his neck, strokes it, gentle like a big brother should be.

  ‘It didn’t have to be like this,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘Yes it did. It was always going to end up this way. We started down this road when you killed Mr Rolston. We were both fucked from then on. No point crying about it now.’

  Ciaran has no tears left. ‘You told me to do it. You made me.’

  ‘I can’t make you do anything,’ Thomas says. ‘We talked about this. Anything you do, you do it yourself.’

  ‘I wish I’d never done it,’ Ciaran says. ‘I wish . . .’

  ‘You wish what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I wish we hadn’t been taken from Mum. I wish she hadn’t been sick. I wish she was still alive.’

  ‘Wish all you want, it’s not going to change anything.’ Thomas leans over, puts his arm around Ciaran’s shoulder, brings him close. ‘Look, all we have is each other. No one will ever love you more than I do. No one will ever love me more than you do.’

  ‘I hate you,’ Ciaran says.

  He can’t see his brother’s face. He feels him stiffen, then his arms go soft.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Thomas says. ‘Sometimes loving someone’s the same as hating them. There’s no reason to it. It just is. Look, I waited two years for you. I could’ve done anything, but I kept myself right so I could be here when you got out. All the things I kept to myself, kept tied up inside me. Now you’re here and we can do what we want.’

  ‘But I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ Ciaran says.

  Thomas lifts Ciaran’s head in his hands, places dry kisses on his eyelids, and says, ‘Want’s got nothing to do with it.’

  He lets go of Ciaran, puts the car in gear, and moves off.

  Twenty minutes to find the right place.

  An old bungalow at the end of an unkempt driveway, hidden in the hollow between the fields. A ribbon of smoke from the chimney even though it isn’t cold. Greying net curtains at the windows.

  ‘Old people live here,’ Thomas says.

  He pulls the car up to the iron gates. ‘Get out and open them,’ he says.

  Without a word, Ciaran does as he’s told. Like a good boy. The gates squeal as he pulls them wide. One side has to be wedged by a concrete block to keep it in place. Thomas drives through and parks alongside an ageing blue car with a Ford badge. As Ciaran walks up the driveway he sees Thomas wipe at his nose and lips with a tissue, checking himself in the mirror for traces of blood. Then he climbs out of the car and joins Ciaran at the front door.

  Somewhere inside the house, a dog barks.
A small one, by the sounds of it.

  Thomas doesn’t like dogs. Ciaran watches him pick at the cloth still wrapped around his hand.

  Before they can ring the doorbell, a small, hunched form appears behind the frosted glass of the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ a voice calls. An old man’s voice, high and cracked.

  The door has a lever handle, probably locked from the inside, level with the letterbox.

  ‘We’re from the council,’ Thomas says.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’re from the dog control office. We’ve had a complaint about a dog that lives on this property.’

  ‘What sort of complaint?’

  ‘About barking,’ Thomas says. ‘We’ve had a complaint about the noise.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Sure, no one lives close enough to hear anything.’

  ‘Well, that’s the complaint we’ve had, and we have to investigate. You’ll need to open the door.’

  ‘Put your identification through the letterbox,’ the old man says.

  Thomas looks down at the letterbox.

  ‘My ID’s attached to my wallet. I’m not putting my wallet through the letterbox. How do I know you’ll give it back? You’ll have to open the door.’

  ‘My arse, I will. Now piss off and close that gate behind you.’

  ‘All right, I can get the police here, if that makes you feel better. But I have to warn you, they might seize the dog. You don’t want that, do you?’

  ‘Tell you what, son, I’ll just call the cops myself.’

  The form moves away from the door.

  Thomas crouches down, slips his hand through the letterbox, reaches to the left, towards the lock. He grunts as he strains. The barking grows louder, and Ciaran hears paws scrabbling on a hard floor. Thomas hisses in pain and pushes harder.

  From inside, ‘Here, what do you think you’re at?’

  The shape returns to the other side of the glass, ghost-like arms trying to grab at Thomas’s. Thomas grins. Ciaran hears the click-clack of the lock opening, then Thomas pulls his arm free. He stands, presses the handle, pushes the door, but the old man pushes back on the other side. One good shove, and the old man lies sprawled on the hall floor, the door bouncing off the wall.