Those We Left Behind

by Stuart Neville

  Meehan drew the car up close to the fence.

  ‘Looks as empty as it did last night,’ he said.

  ‘It probably is,’ Flanagan said. ‘Look, I know you checked thoroughly and I’ve no business dragging you out here again. But I need to be sure. I don’t expect you to understand, but that’s the way it is.’

  Meehan yawned and wiped his eyes. ‘It’s not up to me to ask about the whys and wherefores, ma’am. I just do what I’m told. Want to take a look?’

  Flanagan opened the passenger door and climbed out. At the other side of his car, Meehan yawned again and put his cap on. ‘I’ll go first, will I?’

  Flanagan nodded.

  He went to the lowest part of the wall, which was still up to his chin, and grabbed hold of the top before jumping and hoisting himself up.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not so agile,’ Flanagan said.

  Meehan reached down and pulled her up, and she privately thanked God that she’d worn jeans. She rested at the top for a moment, a hand to her side and the bruises beneath her clothing, breathing hard.

  ‘You all right, ma’am?’ Meehan asked, concern on his face.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  He lowered Flanagan down on the other side then jumped down after her, one hand keeping his cap in place.

  Flanagan stood and observed for a moment, noting the patches of pebble-dashed rendering that had cracked and fallen away, the stout padlock on the door, the grime on the windows. Then she walked along the path, to the step, and examined the padlock. It showed no sign of having been tampered with, nor the latch it bound shut. No one had tried to force the door. She went to the window to the left, cupped her hands around her eyes, and peered in through a gap in the net curtains.

  An upturned television, tatty furniture, mould and decay. She could almost smell it from out here. Meehan came to her side, tall enough to see over the top of the sagging line that held the curtains. He said nothing, but Flanagan knew he was thinking, told you so.

  She walked past the front door to the other window. A couch directly in front of her, a sink and cupboards at the other side, and a table and chairs in the middle.

  On the table, a loaf of bread, crusts, an empty water bottle, a jam jar.

  Flanagan stepped back, indicated that Meehan should look through.

  He did so and said, ‘Fuck me pink.’ He glanced at her and said, ‘Sorry.’

  Flanagan couldn’t be sure if he was apologising for his language or for not seeing before what he saw now. It didn’t matter either way.

  ‘Move away from the window,’ she said. ‘Draw your weapon.’

  Meehan backed towards the corner of the house, pulled his Glock from its holster. Flanagan drew her pistol, ducked past the window, came to Meehan’s side.

  In a hushed voice, he said, ‘There’s a back door with no padlock. We tried it last night, but it was locked.’

  ‘Come on,’ Flanagan said, stepping past him.

  She stuck close to the gable wall as she walked to the rear of the house, her shoulder brushing loose chips of stone and rendering onto the moss-covered concrete path. Meehan’s boots crunched on them as he followed.

  Flanagan edged towards the corner, leaned slowly out, her pistol leading. The garden stood empty save for the jungle of grass and overgrown shrubs. She made her way to the window that overlooked the sink, glanced inside, then dashed past. Meehan did the same, then joined her at the back door, he at one side, she at the other.

  She reached for the handle, pressed down.

  The door opened an inch.

  ‘Jesus,’ Meehan said, his voice small and low in his throat. Flanagan noticed the tremor in his hands, his Glock aimed skywards. ‘Are they armed?’

  ‘Knives, maybe. No firearms as far as I know. Right, I’ll take the rear corners,’ Flanagan said. ‘You take the forward. Ready?’

  Meehan swallowed and nodded.

  Flanagan kicked the door and entered, swinging her pistol left and right to ensure the corners were clear. Meehan came behind. She ducked down, peered under the table, pulled back the curtains over the larger cupboards while Meehan checked under the stairs.

  ‘Clear,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘Clear,’ Meehan said.

  They went to the foot of the stairs, and the open door beyond. Meehan kept the muzzle of his pistol trained on the landing above while Flanagan checked the room with the overturned television. She noted the scattered videotapes: children’s films, mostly.

  ‘Clear,’ she said.

  As they climbed the stairs, Meehan leading, Flanagan felt a growing certainty that they were alone in this house. The Devines had surely been here, but not now.

  But they might be, she scolded herself. Don’t talk yourself into a mistake.

  A moment’s glance confirmed the bathroom was empty, then she entered the bedroom to the left. A double bed, the mattress half off, wine bottles everywhere, clothes discarded on the floor. Their mother’s room, her illness still ringing from the walls.

  Flanagan backed out, crossed the landing into a room with two single beds at opposite sides. Madness scrawled on the walls.

  ‘They’re not here,’ Meehan said, holstering his pistol.

  Flanagan wanted to say she had no desire to be here either, the cold dampness of the place crawling beneath her clothing, the air tainted by something else, something darker she could not define.

  ‘But they’ve been here recently,’ she said. ‘At least now we know that much. They could have headed south along the coast from here, crossed the border at Newry. I’ll call it in from your car.’

  She turned to the window overlooking the back garden.

  A path so dense with grass and weeds she had not noticed it at ground level. Now she saw it led to an iron gate in the rear wall. A gate that stood open, the branches and long grass around it pulled aside.

  ‘When you and Sergeant Nelson were here last night,’ Flanagan said, ‘did you open that gate?’

  Meehan came to her side and followed her gaze. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, making for the stairs.

  62

  CIARAN AND THOMAS stand at the water’s sighing edge. Spray from the sea makes cold points on Ciaran’s cheeks. The wind burns his skin. Grey out there, stretching all the way to touch the sky. Clusters of rocks hem this small beach in, a hundred yards of sand trapped between wet black walls. Orange and yellow buoys dip behind the waves a hundred yards out, reappear with the next swell, and then they’re gone once more. Over and over, coming and going.

  ‘Is it like you remember?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘I think so,’ Ciaran says, but he really isn’t sure. This place has been a dream to him for years. A fragment of a memory. Smells and colours.

  A question has been hiding behind Ciaran’s lips for hours. Now he asks it.

  ‘Did Mr Rolston really do those things to you? Did he really touch you?’

  Thomas exhales, the sound of it lost in the rushing air around them. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Ciaran says.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘I think you were afraid,’ Ciaran says. ‘But not of Mr Rolston. I think what Daniel told me was right. I think you saw me and Daniel were getting to be friends, and you couldn’t stand it. I think you got me to kill Mr Rolston because you were afraid of losing me.’

  Thomas folds his arms across his chest. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Or maybe I just wanted to watch someone die. To see what it felt like.’

  Ciaran shivers as he looks out to sea and thinks of the lives he destroyed. His own among them.

  ‘So all this because you wanted to see what it felt like,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe,’ Thomas says. ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember any more. I just remember he’d been lecturing me, telling me I needed to work hard at school, you and me didn’t have to be nothing just because we were orphans. He said he was an orphan too, and he’d done all r
ight. He said I didn’t have to be angry all the time. And he kept on and on, every day, nagging at me.’

  Thomas makes his hand a claw, drags his fingertips across his scalp and forehead.

  ‘And every time he sat me down and started talking it got all hot inside my head, all noisy and confused, so I couldn’t even think properly.’

  The muscles in Thomas’s jaw bulge, his words squeezing and hissing between his teeth.

  ‘And I just wanted him to shut up and leave me alone. That’s all. Just to leave me alone.’

  He clenches his hands into fists, his shoulders rising and falling, his lips sealed shut now, his nostrils flaring. Then he breathes out, his hands drop loose to his sides, and he laughs once.

  ‘Not everything has to have a reason. Sometimes stuff just happens.’

  Thomas reaches into his jacket pocket. He takes out the envelope that Serena had hidden in her drawer. He goes to open it.

  ‘Don’t,’ Ciaran says.

  Thomas removes the single sheet of file paper from the envelope. He lets go of the envelope, and the wind carries it away. Ciaran sees his own spidery handwriting, the tumble of words, some of them crossed out, some of them underlined.

  ‘Do you want me to read it to you?’ Thomas asks.

  ‘Please don’t,’ Ciaran says.

  He crosses the few feet of sand to his brother, tries to grab the paper, but Thomas snatches it away from his reach.

  ‘Dear Serena,’ Thomas says as he backs away, the page held before him.

  ‘Stop it,’ Ciaran says, following.

  ‘I want to say thank you for taking care of me in the police station,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Stop.’

  ‘I was very scared, but you made me feel better.’

  Ciaran dives for the page, but Thomas stumbles. He loses his grip on the paper and it flutters away, up into the wind, higher and higher. Out over the water.

  As Thomas laughs, Ciaran walks away.

  63

  FLANAGAN REACHED THE bottom of the stairs in seconds, turned, headed for the back door then ran along the path, kicking her way through the grass and weeds.

  ‘Ma’am, wait,’ Meehan called from behind.

  She ignored him and walked through the gate, her pistol still ready in her hands. She stopped, listened. Only the call of gulls overhead, the rustling of the salty breeze through the thin line of trees. And not far ahead, the rumble and rush of the Irish Sea.

  ‘Should we go back to the car?’ Meehan asked.

  ‘No,’ Flanagan said.

  She picked her way through the trees and into a field. The ground rose to a crest, a low wall of loose stones at the top. She walked up the slope and rested her hands on the wall as she scanned the rise and fall of the grassy dunes on the other side. Beyond them the sea, dark and angry.

  Flanagan threw one leg over the wall, let her body follow. Stonework dug into her bruises and she swallowed a groan. Meehan came behind.

  ‘You think they’re out here?’ he asked.

  ‘Quiet,’ Flanagan said. ‘Listen.’

  Only the crash of waves on the beach, the screech of the birds. The wind came in strong, carrying spray with it.

  She descended into the bowl of the first dune, beckoned Meehan to keep up. At the bottom, her shoes ploughing through loose sand, she lost sight of the sea. She climbed to the next grassy rise, her thighs protesting at the effort of pushing against the soft footing. The sea again, and a few yards of beach. Empty but for washed up seaweed and stones.

  The drop revealed a channel on the other side, a small sluggish stream of run-off water that twisted through the dunes towards the tide. Flanagan splashed along it, the sandbanks rising all around, grass leaning away as the wind strengthened.

  The stream turned one way, then the other, seeming to take them no closer to the open. The wind funnelled through the channel, gathering speed, bringing water to her eyes. She lifted a hand up to shield them. At last the sea came into view, and something creamy white fluttering across the sand. An envelope, one Flanagan recognised. The envelope the brothers had taken from her drawer.

  It drifted past, propelled by another gust of wind, and she turned to follow its trajectory towards the dunes behind her.

  She saw Ciaran Devine withdraw the blade from Meehan’s neck and let the policeman fall at his feet.

  64

  CIARAN WATCHES HER raise the gun and point it at him.

  Her mouth moves. She shouts something, but he can’t make out the words because the wind is battering against his ears. The blood on his hand goes from hot to cold.

  She shouts again, jerks the gun at him.

  Ciaran steps over the policeman, his feet splashing in the stream, comes closer to her. He shakes his head, raises his free hand to his ear, tells her he can’t hear what she’s shouting.

  She steps back, shouts again, and this time he understands.

  ‘Drop the knife,’ she says. ‘Stay where you are and drop the knife.’

  Ciaran stops, but he keeps the knife in his fingers.

  A sadness pierces him. It was always going to be her, wasn’t it? No matter how hard he wished for it to be different, it was always going to be this way.

  He takes another step, watches her finger move to the trigger, the wrinkles on her knuckle thinning and fading as she applies pressure. Do it now, he thinks.

  No, tell her.

  ‘Do it now,’ he says, but his words are swept away by the wind. He barely hears them himself. He shouts now, his body bending at the effort. ‘Do it now!’

  ‘No,’ she shouts back. ‘I won’t. Don’t make me. Drop the knife, Ciaran, please.’

  Another step.

  ‘Shoot me!’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, Ciaran. Drop the knife.’

  Some absent part of Ciaran’s mind wonders if she will shoot Thomas too, and as if summoned by the idea, Thomas appears behind her.

  She notices Ciaran’s gaze has left her, and glances over her shoulder to see what he sees. She swings her gun around, but not fast enough. Thomas drives the hand-sized stone into her temple and she falls down. Her gun tumbles end over end and lands in the stream.

  A grin of animal triumph splits Thomas’s face until he looks like a devil in a Halloween picture. He crouches down, leans over her as she blinks the blood away from her eyes. Ciaran can barely hear her groan.

  Ciaran crosses the ground between them, stands over Serena and his brother.

  Thomas raises the stone to him. Ciaran sees the blood on it, the strand of hair whirling in the wind.

  ‘Finish her,’ Thomas says.

  Ciaran reaches for the stone, as much from instinct to obey his brother as from any desire of his own. He pulls his hand back, empty.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Do it,’ Thomas says. ‘Like you did to Mr Rolston. Do it before she recovers.’

  It’s too late. Already she lifts her head, tries to get her arms and legs moving, to get away.

  ‘No,’ Ciaran says. ‘Not her.’

  Thomas tries to push the stone into Ciaran’s hand. ‘Do it or I’ll bite you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do it or I’ll bite you hard.’

  Ciaran swallows. He takes the stone from Thomas’s hand, feels its weight. He thumbs the bloody patch, sees the red on his skin. Then he throws the stone away, past Thomas, out towards the beach.

  Thomas stands, glares at him.

  At their feet, Serena turns on to her stomach, gets to her hands and knees, crawls towards the sea. While Thomas stares hard into Ciaran’s eyes, she gets to her feet, staggers a few yards, drops to her knees, climbs up again.

  Thomas shakes his head, snatches the knife from Ciaran’s hand, and walks after her. As he closes on her, he raises the knife, ready to bring it down.

  ‘No!’ Ciaran shouts.

  Thomas swings the knife, but she sees him coming, twists away, her arm up. The blade catches on her sleeve. Ciaran hears her cry out as she falls back onto the san
d.

  He runs, arms and legs whirling.

  Thomas raises the knife again. Serena raises her hands. Thomas laughs.

  Ciaran’s body collides with his brother’s.

  He hears the air driven from Thomas’s lungs. He glimpses metal out of reach. They roll on the sand, arms and legs tangling, the shock of cold as they fall at the lip of the sea. Ciaran comes to rest on his side, his chest against Thomas’s back, his arms wrapped tight around him.

  Thomas reaches back, drags his nails down Ciaran’s face. Ciaran snaps at the fingers with his teeth, feels skin and bone between them, hears Thomas squeal.

  He climbs on top of his brother, pins his arms with his knees, balls his fists together, lifts them over his head.

  ‘No more!’ Ciaran screams.

  He brings his fists down, feels Thomas’s nose crunch beneath them. The blood sprays outwards like a red angel on Thomas’s face. Then a wave comes, rushes over him, washes the blood away. The cold hits Ciaran’s thighs, almost shakes him loose, but he holds on.

  Thomas coughs and gags, spits water and blood. Ciaran raises his hands again, brings them down once more. Thomas turns his head, and the blow skims his cheek.

  ‘No more!’ Ciaran screams again.

  Thomas calls his name, but it’s lost in the crash of another wave.

  But Ciaran hears his name anyway.

  Not from beneath him, but from the beach. He turns.

  Serena stands at the edge of the water.

  ‘Ciaran, stop,’ she shouts. ‘Please stop.’

  65

  THE WATER SWALLOWED Flanagan’s ankles, the cold making her gasp, trapping her pleas in her chest. Ciaran stared back at her, centuries of pain written on his young face.

  She caught her breath, shouted, ‘Ciaran, let him go.’

  Thomas’s eyes, mouth and shattered nose broke through the foaming water, and she heard him suck in air. He threw his weight to the side, taking advantage of Ciaran’s distraction, and they both rolled into the surf.