Potter's Field

by Dolan, Chris;

  “They live subhuman lives.” In a sing-song accent you’d normally associate with islands and soul and rain.

  Coulter was at the ex-head teacher’s side now. The two men looked at each other, Coulter put his arm on his shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous, man,” MacDougall said.

  Then the smile suddenly vanished from his lips. Every expression dissolved; for a moment his face was so blank as to be inhuman, void of any character, benign or malign. Only then came the crack, like thunder. Nobody had been watching Belinda Laird. She stood next to Darren, his gun in her hand, her face focused, poised, purposeful and clear.

  An angelus bell nearby struck, and the morning was lost.

  VI

  His father sat him on a wall and looked straight into his eyes. Vittore could see the reflection of the sea and the sand in dad’s dark shining pupils. But it wasn’t this sea and sand around them now. The scene in his father’s eyes didn’t have the wet sting the boy could feel in his hands, his cheeks, and below the knees of his short trousers. The twin suns in Papà’s eyes were Elba’s sun. The sand lay below a hill – the hill their old house sits upon. Nonno and Nonna still there, on the parched earth, keeping Carlo company.

  “You made very good,” his father said. He was trying to teach himself, and Vittore, English. “A hard journey. You made good.”

  Vittore looked away, at the new beach that surrounded them. It was as if this was the reflection. It looked odd, out of shape, discoloured. The beach dulled and curled. The sea stretched too high towards the horizon before meeting the sky. The colours were all wrong – the sand was dark, the sea silver, and the sky was creamy, like French cheese. As if a child had mixed up the crayons.

  “I Am…” Papà was struggling to find the right words in English. “I am Proud Of You.”

  He put his hand on Vittore’s head and it felt like God had reached out of the curdled sky.

  “Look.”

  Ettore stood aside, but Vittore saw nothing. Just an endless ribbon of early morning sand, sky and ocean. Three strands of silver. He wasn’t even sure where he was. Since London – which they had more or less bypassed – his father had said almost nothing about where they were or where they were headed. Quiet, but not morose or moody any more. When either one of them mentioned Carlo they had had to fight off tears together. Papa’d ruffle his hair and say, “Carlo, eh?”

  Vittore knew they were in Scozia, and he knew that their new home was by the sea. But whether they had arrived there or not he wasn’t sure. They had passed through a few seaside towns yesterday and this morning. Big solid houses glowing red or pale like sentries around the bays. Men with caps, ladies with bags. Narrow, rangy boys in caps and heavy shoes, white-skinned and dark-eyed. They held little Vittore’s attention when they passed, like street performers. They frightened him, but fascinated him more.

  Then he saw. She came moving across the sand, in full skirts, dressed for a ball, her hair tied back, a pretty blue bonnet on her head, her hair as dark and rich as the galaxies. She didn’t float, as he had daydreamed she would. Didn’t glide above the ground like a vision. Her walk was buoyant and hearty. He could see her feet work against the sand in her good shoes, her legs against the blowing breeze, sending loose hairs up into black, waving tendrils. As she got closer he could hear her breathing. His mamma was no angel, no vision, but a solid, fleshy, breathy, moving body. There was joy and sadness in her at the same time the way only earthbound creatures are. She stumbled the last step or two as she hurried to reach him. Vittore couldn’t move, transfixed by this spectacular moment. She laughed when she almost fell into him. So did his father. The noise they made between them – high and low, sad, happy, strong and weak. Vittore’s whole world in that one, complex sound.

  And when her arms finally enfolded him, the universe ordered itself. When her breast crushed tight against his own small, fragile frame, the planets fell into line and everything made sense. The dry, grudging land of before, the strange colours of this new world. Carlo and Carlo dying. It was all fine. Papa’s moods, Vittore’s own worst fears and nightmares. The touch of her skin, the scent of her hair, her breath – death and defeat and fear vanquished. The fact that this one person existed made sense of his own and everybody else’s existence. She lifted him. She was strong, but Papa helped too. They raised him up like an offering to the sky.

  The declutttering had gone further than she’d ever intended. It had taken on a force of its own, making her fill boxes with pictures and letters and disks and old ribbons and dresses that she wasn’t at all sure she no longer needed or wanted. But she had time on her hands and it was a good way of killing an afternoon.

  Next week she’d be back at work – fully reinstated after the most cursory of internal inquiries. There had been too many questions all round on the police’s, the procurator’s, even the parliament’s, relations with murderers and accessories to murder, for Maddy’s peccadilloes to matter much. A couple of tabloids had dubbed her a heroine, for putting herself in the line of fire. Monsignor Connolly hailed her, randomly she thought, as an agent of the divine.

  The two cases of murder she had been working on a month ago had spiralled into several cases and a couple of dozen charges against Convener MacDougall, Father Jamieson and collaborators yet unknown. Maddalena Shannon would be prosecuting none of them. But her visits to Darren in hospital and Belinda in prison were readily granted.

  The images never stopped playing in Maddy’s mind. Two kids walking along a summer street in a dusty scheme. Darren kicks a can, Frances hits a stick off railings and car bumpers and bonnets. If they say anything at all to each other, Maddy can’t hear it. At the hospital, Darren couldn’t remember exactly what happened the day he took his sister to see the priest. But he knew what was going to happen. And he thought the priest was right. He couldn’t stand another minute of watching his wee sister take drugs, get into fights, give in to the abuse of every brutal male prepared to exploit whatever power they wielded. He remembers he wasn’t nervous or crying – that it was like going to church.

  The odd car passes by; they meet the occasional friend or acquaintance along the way. One little event could have changed the outcome. A car offering them a lift, a quick word with anyone – just enough to break Darren’s resolve. Some excuse for Franny to go off, leave her nice but boring, too-serious brother behind. Skip off in the other direction, laughing that laugh of hers, calling him names, but smiling. If ever a boy needed to laugh…

  There’s a smile waiting for them round the corner. A beatific smile, on the attractive face of the dark-haired little priest. Franny turns to her big brother and shakes her head, amused. She has nothing against the priest, but guys like that need noised up. Priests, teachers, shopkeepers, they hated Franny and her friends, Franny’s mum; they hated Darren too, but Darren couldn’t see that. So Franny struts, bold as you like, a swagger on her hips, up to the priest. They’re behind a row of condemned houses, the wall of a now disappeared school hiding them from the posh houses in Bearsden two football pitches’ lengths away. She hasn’t time to reflect on the bizarre choice of rendezvous before the priest raises his hand to make a sign of the cross over her head.

  Maddy can see, from her front-row seat in her mind, that the gesture enrages Franny. So full of arrogance and presumption. He’s judging her. Nobody judges Frances Mulholland. Teachers and dinner ladies and bus drivers have tried that before and it didn’t get them very fucking far. This smug little bamstick is just asking for a bawling out. She’s just about to let rip when another figure steps out from behind the wall.

  This one’s young, good-looking, long-haired, hippy-ish. Franny’s no idea who he is or where he comes from but she likes him. She recognises him. He’s one of her kind. He’s got that depth in his dark eyes, that rigid way of holding your body against the world. His smile is so wide and edgy that she takes no notice of the little priest falling to his knees, dragging Darren down there with him, making him pray. She sees how ridiculous her brothe
r and the man in black look, their knees on the litter and dirt and broken glass. She opens her mouth to laugh. The tall, dark boy takes a step towards her. It’s the evening of a sunny day and everything is outlined to perfection. Even though she wants to, Maddy can’t miss anything in the scene. It’s been beautifully shot. The boy reaches inside his shirt. There’s a scream. Darren’s. Then there’s another.

  The priest is dragging Darren away. The boy with the gun is strong – he can pick the deadweight of Frances Mulholland up without too much hefting. As he walks away, towards the big houses over by, the priest makes the sign of the cross on his own lips and glances at Franny’s face. Paul Pacchini nods. He drags her, hanging from one arm, as though she were drunk or stoned. Nobody bats an eyelid at a junked-up or spaced-out thirteen year old. Not round here.

  There are old photographs. Boxes of them. Dad always fancied himself as a chronicler of his times. Snaps of amusement arcades in Girvan in the sixties. Kids’ motorboats in the pond at the front – Maddy could still smell their petrol, hear their too-loud noise as they struggle through the mucky water. There are seascapes, at dawn and at dusk, pictures of the Carrick hills – from the ground only, Packy was never one for walking up slopes. Family groups. Nine, ten, thirteen, fifteen-year-old Maddalena with Mamma and dad, seldom with them both, and with Nonno.

  She tried hard to keep these pictures in her mind instead of this horror film on a loop… The handsome boy again now with Sy Kennedy walking along a canal path as an early June sun shins high up into the sky like an athlete scaling a tree.

  Nobody’s yet sure exactly how Paul and Sy met. There are plenty of places two school-dogging, runaway, bad boys might meet. Quite possibly a dodgy B&B behind the University. One of the places Sy took couples, or lone ladies – never men by themselves. He had suggested the place to Elaine and Jim Docherty, on-line, for a wee money-making scam.

  MacDougall was still denying any knowledge of the Pacchini boy. Despite literally scores of testimonies, sightings, even photographs. It wasn’t, Maddy knew, the last defence of a madman, but the advice of lawyers who knew where their only judicial hope lay.

  Maddy sees the scene from Darren’s POV… He’s alone, behind bushes somewhere. There’s someone behind him. Dawn lifts softly, a glorious morning of pink blossoms.

  She hears them before she sees them. The raucous sound of two lads approaching, one’s voice deeper and more rasping than the other. Abrupt bursts of guttural laughter, skirmish of feet as they suddenly indulge in a spot of horseplay. The sounds funnel up along the canal, filter through the bushes and out into the quiet park.

  Then she sees them, as Darren did. Paul is virtually unrecognisable. He’s had his hair shorn off – most likely by his new pal, Sy. He’s wearing trackies. Sy Kennedy, as far as anyone can figure out, had no connection with Father Jamieson or John MacDougall. He simply had the bad luck to become a friend of Paul Pacchini’s at the wrong time. Paul was already the friend of another boy, waiting in the bushes with a shaky hand and a loaded gun.

  There’s a movement behind Maddy. A voice close to her ear; close to Darren Mulholland’s ear. She can’t make out the exact words, but the voice is urging Darren onwards. Darren knows what he has to do. Knows how it works. His sister’s soul has been saved. Now it’s time to save the soul of another, and in so doing, commending himself unto God. God will love them all. Though he may die, he shall live. When they get to the other side, the Infant Jesus of Prague will smile upon them. He’ll understand and love Darren all the more for the difficult thing he is about to do.

  But there are two boys on the canal path, and Darren wasn’t really ready for one, let alone a total stranger. The man behind is angry, too. From what the investigation can gather, Pacchini knew he was walking to his martyrdom that morning. Whether he brought Kennedy along for company, or to stop it happening, nobody will ever know.

  The boys are laughing and the old man is outraged and praying. Telling God to free his children from this terrible corrupting flesh, this evil world. When Darren remains frozen, terrified, and Paul spots them, MacDougall grabs Darren’s arm from behind, raises the gun, puts his own finger over the boy’s, and pulls the trigger for him. Twice.

  What happens next is blurry in Maddy’s mind. Like the closing titles are hiding the full picture. MacDougall is pushing the bodies into the bushes, swearing and praying, then going back for Darren, grabbing him by the wrist, pulling him away. There’s a tiny bit of life left in Paul: when MacDougall’s back is turned, restraining the traumatised Darren, Paul reaches out for Sy’s hand. He hasn’t the strength to quite make contact. MacDougall shoves Darren to his knees. Throws a knife beside him, and makes the Sign of the Cross roughly on the living boy’s lips with his thumb. Darren turns, knife shaking in his hand, and looks down through tears at the dead faces and lips.

  Maddy pours herself another gin and stares at a photograph of her eleven-year-old self and her granddad, trying to superimpose the image.

 

  Louis gets in touch regularly. Usually by email or text. On the phone, voice to voice, they’re awkward. It reminds them of being back in her darkened room, naked.

  NYPD haven’t made a single arrest yet – though they’ll be over in a week or two with their own indictments against John MacDougall. They can positively place him twice in the US in the last three years, on each occasion just before a murder. But they can only make tenuous connections with the victims.

 

 

 

  When she does phone, she keeps the tone light. “Will you be coming over, Louis?”

  “Doubt it. The legal eagles will get the jaunt this time, is my guess. There’s stuff over here for you guys to investigate.”

  She bought herself a phone with a camera on it, just to send across pictures of hairy cows.

  Alan Coulter hardly got out of the station. It felt like he was the criminal. Being questioned – interrogated. By everyone. Every rung on his own chain of command, plus anyone with an epaulette and a need to stick his nose in. Procurator Fiscal never off the phone trying to get the story straight on Maddy Shannon. Journalists, apologists for the Scottish Parliament, minor members of the Committee on Youth and Crime…

  And lawyers. Lawyers coming out of his ears. This new posh bloke from the Lord Advocate’s in Edinburgh doing his head with quaint old Scots law phrases – Jus Federale, anyone? McKillop, Maddy’s colleague, said to him, “LFC we call them. Learned Fucking Council. You get the pistol for them, prime it, load the chamber, uncock the safety catch, aim it for them in court directly at the guilty party – and the LFC twat still misses.”

  A special operations team was being funded to research every child missing in areas where Family and Faith operated, and places where MacDougall was known to have visited regularly. It was Coulter’s own – maybe hopeful – opinion that they had caught MacDougall early. Not quite early enough, but before he could recruit any more Father Jamiesons or Paul Pacchinis.

  Maddy had emailed him – going out for her first public drink. He couldn’t not go. He owed her that much at least. She’d solved this one before him. Anyway, they were old friends. Soon be colleagues again, now that she’d been reinstated. Beth and Jen would be out tonight; Martha will have gone round to Lauren’s – the one place her headaches seemed to leave her alone.

  At the hospital, Rosa di Rio Shannon held her father’s hand. No change, for good or ill, in nearly a month. She had reconciled herself to it. Nonno wasn’t outstaying his welcome. Wasn’t hanging on, frightened to move over to whatever lay beyond. He was giving everyone a chance to make their farewells. Family man to the end.

  Every cousin and half cousin and third cousin four times removed from Elba to Edinburgh, London to Girvan had been to visit. Every friend still alive, and the chi
ldren of several others, had passed by. Rosa was still scared at the prospect of being without him entirely, and at times her tears still ran free, but he had given her time to prepare herself. She would live. She would carry him inside her, just as he carried Mama, and his own parents, and the brother he lost as a child. He’d given his granddaughter time, too, to get through her personal little hell, so that she could come to him and say a proper goodbye. “You always said she’d be trouble,” Rosa squeezed his hand.

  That priest, Father Jamieson. Seemed so nice and holy. She was a silly, lonely woman, who took friendship in ridiculous places. “You always kept them at arm’s length, Papà. The clerics. God’s politicians you said, and the king’s. If I’d been that woman, I’d have shot the whole bloody lot of them.” She squeezed her daddy’s hand tighter.

  Dan McKillop put a long, cold G&T on the table. “Get that down you, boss.”

  It was warm again outside, a couple of days of cloud and smir nearly washing away the memory of a half decent spring and summer. Walking down from the hospital, Maddy had felt her spirits rise unaccountably – a bit of sun and you start whistling away all the bad stuff, all the crap. In sunlight her city becomes a good-time girl.

  Izzie glowed perfectly in the snug of the Vicky bar, a light floral dress that made her look like a Lewis Carroll fantasy of a girl-woman. Manda’s latest look was Glaswegian Björk – some weird fluffy top made of god-knows-what over a skirt so short she had to splay her Roman-sandalled feet to keep her thighs modestly shut. Dan had ventured out of a suit into matching jacket and trousers that might as well be a suit. They all raised their glasses to Maddy.