After He Died

by Michael Malone

  ‘Suppose you tell me what it is you think I have? Why you’re so afraid and who you are afraid of?’

  ‘You really don’t know?’ His panicked eyes searched hers.

  ‘No, Kevin, I really don’t.’

  ‘In that case’ – he rubbed at the top of his head – ‘I’m fucked. We’re…’ He looked at Paula. ‘We both are.’

  ‘What the hell did I do?’

  ‘Not you. Tommy. They’re not going to believe he didn’t tell you anything. And I’m not sure he didn’t tell you anything either.’ He studied her as if looking for a sign of duplicity.

  Paula changed tack; pulled herself in and made herself small. She sat on the chair opposite him. ‘So who are these people who’re going to come after me?’

  ‘It’s really best you don’t know,’ he said and got to his feet.

  Paula had a thought. ‘Kevin, do you know Anton Rusnak?’

  ‘Who?’ The tone of the question was a denial. He cocked his head to the side, but there was a flicker there. He was lying, Paula was sure of it.

  ‘Tall guy. Red hair. Goes by the name of Rusnak. Polish, I think.’

  Kevin coughed, got to his feet and moved towards the door. ‘I have to go.’ He patted the side of his right leg as if reassuring himself his car keys were still in his trouser pocket.

  At the sound of movement, a voice sounded from the other side of the door. ‘You okay in there, Paula?’ asked Cara.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ Paula answered. Then she looked at Kevin’s arm. ‘Are you going to tell me how you broke that?’

  ‘I fell,’ he replied, with the look of someone terrified to inform on his bully.

  ‘Is it connected with whatever you think Thomas told me about?’

  Kevin took a few laboured steps closer to her. Paula shrank back automatically – was he going to try to hurt her again? But she relaxed when she read that the fight had truly left him.

  ‘If you really don’t know…’ he studied her for confirmation.

  ‘I really don’t know, Kevin.’

  ‘Then for your own protection it’s best that we leave it that way.’

  20

  Cara followed Kevin and Elaine out of the office and down the stairs. She tossed back a ‘whatever’ when Paula thanked her again for helping her. Thanks that felt grudged to Cara. What the hell was wrong with that woman?

  ‘Mr Farrell. Mr Farrell,’ Cara shouted after him as he exited the main door. It was dark now, and he hurried with Elaine across the road to the car park, his body language suggesting he was almost frightened of Cara. Or was there something else he was frightened of?

  ‘Can’t you leave him alone?’ Elaine asked, as she tried to support him as he walked. ‘The man’s in a lot of pain.’

  He’s not a bloody cripple, Cara wanted to say. Instead, she hopped in front of them and stood in their path.

  ‘Leave me be, Miss Connolly,’ Farrell said, and moved to get past her.

  Cara stepped to the side, cutting off his progress.

  ‘How do you know my name? Do you remember me from somewhere?’ she asked.

  He grimaced, holding his bad arm closer to his body with his good arm. ‘You came round here spouting all kinds of shite about Tommy.’

  ‘I was there, too,’ Elaine said, and took a step closer to Cara, her eyes narrowing. ‘You were very rude.’

  Cara dismissed her with a glance. ‘I was here, but I didn’t leave my name…’

  ‘Tommy looked into you.’

  ‘He did? Why?’

  ‘I said he was wasting his time. He thought you looked the type to go to the press, so he wanted to make sure he had something on you, just in case.’

  ‘Just how close were you as business partners?’ Cara asked.

  ‘None of your business, doll,’ Farrell huffed. ‘Now get out of my way or I’ll have you down at the local nick on assault charges.’

  ‘Assault?’ Cara asked.

  Farrell held up his plastered arm. ‘I’ll say this was you.’

  ‘Might as well break your other one then.’ Cara moved closer, but Elaine stepped in between them.

  She was a few inches shorter than Cara, but she held herself straight, ready for confrontation. ‘Calm down, sweetheart. The man may be difficult, but I’m not going to let you hurt him. Now why don’t you just leave us alone, eh?’

  Cara studied Elaine’s expression. She read the certainty there, and knew she could get her out of the way without any problem, but admired the fight in her.

  ‘Mr Farrell, your business partner tortured and killed my brother. I got this from a good source.’

  ‘Did ye, aye?’ said Farrell, his face telling Cara he thought she was talking shite.

  ‘And I can’t believe you – his business partner – had no knowledge of the fact that Mr Gadd was one of the city’s worst gangsters.’

  Elaine Teenan’s laugh was a mix of exasperation and disbelief. ‘Listen, Miss whatever your name is, you need to leave,’ she said. ‘I need to get this man home to his bed. Can you not see he’s in a lot of pain?’

  ‘I’m gathering evidence. And once I do, I’m coming for you,’ Cara said.

  ‘Sure ye are, doll. Now run along and play detectives in your own time,’ Farrell said, dismissing her by turning and walking away.

  Cara let them go but only because she had nothing left to say. She hoped she’d rattled him, but his lack of response had her worried. Was she wrong to focus her energy on him? Paula Gadd was even less likely as a source. From the little time she had spent in her company it was quite clear the woman knew nothing about what her husband had been up to.

  She turned and walked back to her car. Once inside she angled her wing mirror, watching Elaine and Kevin Farrell settle themselves in his car. She was tempted to open her window, stick out a hand and give them a finger as they passed.

  Decided that was beneath her.

  Instead, she buttoned into her own frustration, wondering how on earth she was going to find out the truth about what happened to her brother.

  She glanced back at the office just in time to see that Paula had left the building and was making her way across the car park. Her movement was slow and purposeful – almost as if she was drunk. This confused Cara for a moment, until she realised the woman was weak with fatigue.

  She suddenly felt guilty. Paula looked utterly worn down by grief, and the attack from Farrell wouldn’t have helped. She recognised the line of her body and the gait – it was the same as she’d seen in her mother after Sean had died. Her mum had walked as if every step was an effort, as if the ability to plant the next foot on the ground was based on hope rather than expectation, her head bowed, back stiff from trying to hold everything together.

  Feeling a sudden need to apologise, Cara thought that perhaps she should go over and offer the woman some help, but then her view was obscured when Farrell’s BMW slid past. Kevin was in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. Elaine was driving and entirely focussed on where she was going. It was only a second as they passed her, but to Cara it seemed like they were both preternaturally still. Even that brief moment was enough to see that they were both frozen in position. As if they were afraid to move.

  Then, as if in slow motion – perhaps Elaine was driving deliberately slowly – the rear of the car drew level and Cara saw that there was a third person in the car. A man in the back seat. A large man.

  The car sped up and they disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  21

  Paula barely made it back into the house before her strength gave out.

  Going up to the bedroom was beyond her so she aimed for the sofa in the living room and curled up there. She had a stray thought that she should eat. This tiredness surely indicated her body needed fuel, didn’t it? But that would mean having to go through to the kitchen, raking through the freezer and making a decision about what she should prepare. Such effort was beyond her. As was raising the energy to chew, to swallow.

  Then s
he recalled she had episodes just like this after Christopher died; of feeling that she was walking on the bare bones of her heels, that her knees weren’t solid enough to hold her, her mind struggling to compute everything around her.

  So Cara’s brother was responsible for Christopher’s death? But did she really believe her? Why would the woman make something like that up? She must be aware how earth-shattering it would be for a mother. No, she clearly had an agenda against Thomas. Paula returned to her original theory that they had had an affair and this was Cara’s twisted way of getting back at him. So outlandish were Cara’s claims, an affair seemed preferable.

  Or was the woman telling the truth?

  It was too much. Too much to process. Too much to believe. She was just a middle-aged, middle-class housewife from the suburbs. Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. They happened to people in movies and books.

  Everywhere ached. Everywhere.

  Maybe she had the flu.

  How long she lay there she had no idea. Daylight weakened, the streetlights on the pavement outside lit her room in amber hues. It made the room around her look cold. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself in a vain attempt to generate some heat. So cold. And somewhere … she lost track of her thought and closed her eyes because the illumination was making her head ache. But still the light made it through the paper of her eyelids, prodding hard fingers of muted colour into her brain.

  Curtains. She should close them. She should pull them shut, but that required actually moving. And finding the energy to do that from somewhere was…

  Thomas. She imagined him lying on the floor just below where she lay on the sofa. His shirt pulled open to show skin shining from the electric light. A shirt that had been opened to allow the medics to work on him.

  She opened her mouth, fighting to breathe. Her need for oxygen was such that she was forced to sit up. A painful sob escaped, scouring her lungs and the soft tissue of her throat as it passed. Then she was taken over by grief so hard, so solid, she was surprised it didn’t sound like a siren as it forced her head backwards. She heaved air in and out of her lungs, filling her ears with the sounds of her own panic and loss. And guilt.

  She should have been there with him. At the restaurant when he keeled over. In the ambulance when they tried to resuscitate him. At his side when they pronounced him dead.

  ‘Call yourself a wife,’ she sobbed, and wiped the saliva and mucus from her face with the back of her hand.

  Aware of a pressure at her back, she reached round and felt the soft give of a fake fur blanket. She got a hold of it, lay back down and pulled it over her head to shut out the light.

  Maybe someone would find her there in six months or a year, and they’d have another funeral. Poor Paula, they’d say, she just wasted to nothing. Because what was the point of anything now? No Christopher. No Thomas.

  She slid over to the edge of the sofa and allowed herself to slip off, to fall onto the spot where she had just imagined Thomas had laid while waiting for a paramedic to save his life. She stroked the rug, trying to imagine that the fibres were the hairs on his chest. This action became a frantic tug.

  Why aren’t you here, Thomas? Why did you go first? It should have been me.

  It should have been me.

  She woke to the sound of the bin men in the lane behind her garden. To her sleep-drunk mind it sounded like their footsteps were coming from inside the house. She sat up in a panic and realised she was in bed. How did she get there? Hadn’t she been on the sofa downstairs?

  The noise continued and she thought: Kevin again. How had he got in? It was only when her brain registered the rumble of the plastic wheels that she realised what she was hearing.

  She slumped back onto her pillows and forced open her eyes. They felt so heavy it was an effort to hold them open for more than a couple of seconds. Turning on her side, she brought her knees up to her chest. There. There was nothing more to do than to just lie here and pray for the annihilation of sleep.

  But sleep resisted her this time.

  She sat up. Rubbed at her forehead and slipped her legs over the side of the bed. Best get up, she thought, and then fell back from her sitting position to lie across her bed.

  Get up for what? The day yawned ahead of her. Nothing in her diary. No purpose. And the constant ache of missing Thomas. The lovely, beautiful, big bastard.

  Purpose. That’s what she needed. Something to occupy her mind.

  And her thoughts turned to the matter of the string of bank accounts with, quite possibly, a huge amount of money in each of them.

  Coffee. Perhaps that would help her focus on this new mystery Thomas had left behind him.

  His dressing gown was hanging from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. She put it on, enjoying the warmth of it, the plush pile of it against her neck. She sniffed at the collar and found a faint note of his aftershave. She fastened the belt around her waist. There was enough fabric to go around her twice.

  Down in the kitchen she made straight for the coffee machine and turned it on. Normally, she liked silence when she was in the kitchen, but today she turned on the small TV in the corner. Perhaps a voice from outside her bubble would help. The machine was a little indulgence for Thomas. When he was cooking – which was a once-a-month event – he liked to chop his vegetables with the sound of the TV for company. Thinking that perhaps watching the news would be a good idea, Paula clicked onto the news channel.

  There was a serious-faced woman on screen, and a scrolling headline underneath her. Something about a murder in Glasgow. Paula cringed. That was not what she wanted to hear about. Then someone was talking about a money-laundering scheme involving shell companies that officials from a foreign country had used to steal money from their own government. There was something she couldn’t quite follow about the Scottish financial system making this possible. Just another excuse for the London media to have a go at the Scottish Government, thought Paula. Then they moved on to a bombing in the Middle East, showing a grief-stricken mother holding a dead little girl, her limp body covered in grit and dust.

  With a shudder she turned it off. She was barely holding it together. Why compound her troubles by watching endless misery from another part of the world?

  As she waited for her drink to brew she located her mobile phone and looked to see if she had any messages.

  There was an email from one of the charities she worked with, reminding her about an imminent AGM, a whole bunch of spam emails, and one from a travel company suggesting that she and her husband would enjoy a trip to Venice or Rome or Paris.

  She lingered over that one for more than was healthy, before deleting it. They’d never do that again. Go on holiday. And Venice was one of those places they’d never got round to. And now…

  She put the phone down as if it was hot.

  She needed something to keep her busy, she told herself. Distractions would help and it came to her that there was a mountain of paperwork she had to complete. The business of grief was a paperchain, or so it seemed. Bank accounts, the deeds on the house, companies who billed them to be informed to remove Thomas from the account. And so much other stuff. The death certificate. She quailed at the thought. She leaned forwards on the blue-marble work surface, rested her forehead on a cradle she formed with the palms of both hands. Tired. She was once again so tired.

  Thankfully, their finances weren’t too complicated. She and Thomas had a joint will. The survivor was to get everything, and if they both died at the same time Father Joe was to put everything into a charitable foundation. As far as she knew the house was worth about half a million. And there was at least the same again in bank accounts and then whatever the business was worth.

  Although now Paula wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with the business. Judging by the state of Kevin, there was something horribly wrong there.

  A text pinged through. It was from Joe:

  Have you seen the news?

  ‘The n
ews?’ she asked out loud. Why was he asking about the news? And, anyway, shouldn’t Joe be apologising for leaving her on her own? Then it came to her that he already had. And that was enough.

  She sighed at last and pressed reply, considering what response she should send, when there was a knock at the door.

  She should move to the cottage in Bute, she thought, then everyone would leave her alone. But then a series of images presented in her mind: the man on the ferry, standing in the doorway, sitting in the living room. Was he really who he said he was? Would she feel safe if she was in his company there? Alone. The cottage was fairly remote on that corner of the beach. Few people ventured that far round the bay.

  The knock at the door came again. A solid rap, like a pronouncement.

  With a sigh, she located the pocket of the dressing gown, dropped the phone inside and walked down the hall to the front door.

  She opened it to see two people: a woman and a man, both wearing dark suits and looking incredibly official.

  ‘Mrs Paula Gadd?’ The woman said. She was pretty in a kind of stern way.

  ‘Yes,’ Paula said, automatically crossing her arms in front of herself.

  ‘My name is DS Alessandra Rossi. This is DC Daryl Drain.’ She held a card up, just long enough for Paula to see that it had a police logo on it.

  Paula was instantly taken back to that moment when the police came to her door to tell her about Christopher. Then the day they came to tell her about Thomas.

  Her eyes refocussed on the two people in front of her. It couldn’t be Joe who was dead – because it had to be about a death, hadn’t it? That was the only reason the police ever came to her door.

  She felt her legs weaken and held onto the frame of the door.

  ‘May we come in, Mrs Gadd?’ asked the woman. Rossi? Was that what she said her name was?

  ‘Sure. Sure…’ Paula stood where she was as her mind continued to try to work out why they were here. Who else was there in her life that could be dead? Bill?