“Jamie, I have no wish to put my troubles on you. You need time to readjust to your world, and judging from the stream of people who have been to see you already, you won’t be allowed much freedom to do that.”
She had always been able to read him when others could not; apparently this had not altered in his absence.
“Pamela, whatever changed while I was in Russia, this one thing has not—that I am your friend, not just in name, but in action as well.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, and even in those two words, he could hear the strain in her voice, the undercurrent of fear so strong that she could not, must not give in to it in any way. Everything about her spoke of an attention that was fixed to a narrow point, in a far distant country. The country where her husband now dwelt, and whether he was alive or dead made no difference to his residency there, for he belonged to the country of the disappeared.
“I think, Jamie, that he was into something that he couldn’t share with me, and that’s what took him.”
“Do you have any idea of what it might be?”
“No, I was so busy with everything here, and I only had Isabelle in July. If he was in trouble, I know he wouldn’t want to worry me, despite the fact that we had agreed not to have any secrets with one another. And to be honest, I was so wrapped up in what had happened with the attempted takeover that I wasn’t paying attention as I should have.”
He could say the empty phrases that came to a man at such times, but here there seemed neither room nor use for them. She was going to feel this was in some part her fault and there was nothing he could say to change that. He would not insult her by trying.
“I hope you don’t mind that I came here tonight. I feel safe here and that makes me feel guilty, I suppose. Plus my house is overrun with well-meaning aunties. Deirdre put them on notice this morning. I think she knows I can’t manage it much longer.”
“Pamela, this house is as much yours as mine, especially after these last few years. I hope you always know that.”
She smiled, though it was more of a grimace, as if it hurt to smile. It did hurt for her right now, he supposed. The smallest gestures would hold a terrible cost.
He spoke now to the questions she had not asked, but that hummed in the air. He was gentle because it was not the news she wanted, and it might never be.
“It will take time, Pamela. My connections with the various organizations are tenuous if, indeed, they exist at all anymore. I won’t be trusted, not that I ever really was. From what I’ve been able to gather thus far, no one has found a trace anywhere. I realize someone must know something. It’s just a matter of finding that person. Whatever happened to Casey, there’s no more sign of it than a wisp of smoke upon the air. I’ve spoken to the policeman assigned to the case and to a man I know with connections deep inside the Provos.”
She nodded and tried to mask her disappointment. Had she been less exhausted she might have succeeded. She swallowed and changed the subject. She had never lacked for courage, and it hurt him to see her exercise it in this way.
“Will you see Julian soon, do you think?”
He sighed, rolling his glass between his palms, the scent of ginger and lemon peel floating up out of the vodka and tickling his nose.
“I suppose I will have to.”
“He’s not so terrible, Jamie, just very young and, I think, easily led by the wrong people.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Wrong people—is that what we’re calling the Reverend?”
“I think he could be taken from the Reverend’s influence. It’s possible their bond was shaken when Julian failed to take over your companies and home. Besides, you are his father and I think that matters to him terribly. You have the greatest chance to turn him around, Jamie—when you’re ready and feel able.”
He felt neither ready nor able; he knew that she understood that all too well. She had grown into something more in his absence, a woman who had taken on the bad guys and won, and then lost more profoundly than anyone could have foreseen.
“You must miss them,” she said, voice pitched barely above the soft hiss of the peat and the distant sounds of the household going about its nightly business. There was no need to ask whom she meant; he understood. The rapport between them had always been this way, unnecessary words not needing to be spoken. It was a shock to find it still there between them, this invisible thread which had existed from the time they met, all those years ago on the Vineyard, when he had been a young husband who had lost two sons, and she an abandoned child who needed a friend.
“I do. Were I still there though, I would be dead by now. Things were not straightforward with my marriage, to say the least. She was—or at least it appears that she was—an agent for the KGB.” He took a drink, his throat suddenly dry. “If she was KGB it’s possible she made a deal and if so, I hate to think what it might have been. We weren’t followed out of Russia, and that in itself was odd. We had to be careful and we walked through untrammeled wilderness for the most part, but still the border is not exactly porous. It troubled me at the time, but I was just grateful to get out with my life and Kolya.”
“I’m grateful too,” she said, voice starting to blur slightly. He held his breath for a moment and then continued to chat to her, keeping his voice low, speaking whatever nonsense occurred to him, the pleasant bits of Russia, embroidered and shed of their cruel trappings so that he might give her something kind, something slightly fairy tale in nature to drift away upon.
He walked across the room to place the blanket, kept always on the back of the sofa, over her. She looked like a delicate flower that had been caught out in a hard frost and now was bent on its stem, petals translucent with shock.
She appeared to be heavily asleep. He added a few bricks of peat to the fire. If she was warm then she might sleep for a bit. He stood at the study door, hesitant, worried that if he left she would wake, but that his presence here might disturb her too.
The kitchen was a haven of warmth and mellow light. The dishes had been tidied away and Shura had left something steeping in a bowl on the counter and was now preparing tea for himself and Maggie. Maggie watched him with a gimlet eye. Jamie was shocked, however, that she was willing to allow Shura free rein in her kitchen. He had never known her to let anyone breach her territory before.
“Where’s Vanya?” he asked, for he had only seen his exotic houseguest at meals today, though that meant little, as he had been holed up in his study, with only small forays out between visitors.
“That one,” Shura said with one of his eloquent shrugs, “he has been in your library all day.”
Vanya was an insatiable reader, in both Russian and English and a library such as this house possessed would seem little short of King Solomon’s mines to him. Where he had come by his ability to read English was a bit of a mystery.
“Yasha, you will take more tea for you and your guest?” Shura asked.
“I still have half a pot left in the study, and my guest is asleep.” The latter information was in response to Maggie’s inquiring look. Isabelle was profoundly asleep in Maggie’s arms, an empty bottle at Maggie’s elbow. Conor played quietly near Maggie’s knee, and Kolya sat beside him, gnawing on the corner of one of his trucks.
“Poor wee thing,” she said and he knew she meant Pamela, not the baby she held. “She’s been looking like a ghost gone the far side of the grave this while. It’s good that she sleeps as long as can be managed. Best she does it here, rather than wakin’ in the bed that’s empty of her man.”
“Can we manage the children, maybe call her mother-in-law to let her know, in case she sleeps through the night?”
“Aye, we can manage fine. Ye just let her sleep as long as she needs. I can put these wee ones to bed.”
He put Kolya to bed himself, for he wasn’t ready to allow another the privilege of it. He had been bathed and he smelled sweetly of talc and clean rompers. Jamie held him tightly, allowing the warmth of his small body and the silk
of his hair against his cheek to relax his own body. Kolya had been, Maggie informed him, utterly fascinated with wee Isabelle Riordan. Kolya had never seen a child smaller than himself, which likely accounted for much of the fascination.
He put the boy into the crib in which he had slept as a baby, and stood for a moment merely watching him breathe. He thought of how quickly this year of Kolya’s life had passed, how much had changed, how far he was from the events that had put this child into his governance. He did not think of Kolya’s mother, he had become quite adept at not thinking about her.
Russia had put a strange stillness at the core of him, so that even when events were spinning wildly about him, there was this place inside where he could retreat and view things through a lens of quiet. It was clear he was going to have to call upon that still core in the days and months to come.
He returned to the study once Kolya was deeply asleep, and sat at his desk, working quietly through the mountain of paperwork which had accrued in his absence. There was no fear he might run out before the dawn.
Occasionally he would look up, surprised to find himself in his study, which was both wonderfully familiar and joltingly strange to him after three years away, two of them spent in the gulag. It had always been his favorite room in the house. It had been his grandfather’s as well. Sometimes he thought he could still smell the ghost of the man’s aftershave and the cigars he’d occasionally smoked. There had been nights, when he had sought refuge here, when he thought he felt his grandfather standing by his shoulder, giving him what comfort he could. Pamela, asleep on the sofa, was comfortingly familiar too, she had done so more than once, claiming that the study had a spell on her, which halted time and gave her sanctuary. It was why he had brought her here tonight, in the hope that the room would give her some small dose of those healing properties, or even just respite for a moment.
He looked around the room, at the worn Bokhara rugs, the gilt-edged bindings on the books, the glass walls, supported by a structure of wrought iron, making it resemble nothing so much as a Victorian birdcage. The study was an addition to the house, and was built in the shelter of a ring of oaks and clambering rose cane. He realized, after a moment, he was seeing none of it. His senses were turned inward to a face that was blazoned upon his inner eye.
He took the picture out from the drawer where he had put it yesterday. Even with repeated viewings, it was a jolt to realize how much the young man looked like him. He had barely had time to think about this newest ripple in his life today, but the image of this boy had been at the back of his mind through every interaction, through every hour. This young man whom he had not been allowed to see, whom he knew not the slightest part of, other than he held within him a destructive amount of anger. Pamela’s words had been soft and designed to soothe, the look on her face, however, had told him far more about his son’s nature. He was going to have to take the proverbial bull by the horns and arrange to meet. Julian had returned to Oxford, that much he knew.
Pamela muttered something in her sleep and took a sharp breath, as if she were on the edge of a cry. He held his breath, letting it out only when he saw that she had settled back to her rest.
He laid the picture of Julian to the side and returned to his work, pausing from time to time, looking over to where she slept, huddled tight beneath the blanket, as if it could shield her from the hurts of this city, the loss of her man and the unbearable pain in which each dragging moment of her day was steeped. She was right, when she woke it would be to forgetfulness for a moment and then to remember afresh. For grief, in her arts, was a cruel mistress.
He would be here when she woke, not the man she wanted or needed, but here, nevertheless.
Chapter Three
The Disappeared
January 1976
IT WAS THE USUAL sort of station, the usual sort for Northern Ireland that is, meaning there was a Plexiglas cage between herself and the constable on the counter. There were security buzzers and gates to go through and the constable facing her was wearing a bulletproof vest. This particular police building had been bombed once before. The bomb had done a fair bit of damage despite the fact that the place was built to the specifications of a concrete bunker. She hated coming here, but it was necessary to check in, to ask questions and to prod them to do their job. She wasn’t naïve though about how earnest they would be in searching for yet another disappeared person in the six counties. In this case, it was worse, because Casey had been ex-PIRA and would be considered the enemy.
Her neighbor and the children’s honorary grandmother, Gert, was at her house with the children, as she knew it was likely she would have to wait before someone could see her, and trying to do that with a rambunctious toddler and a tiny baby was unthinkable. She had become a familiar, if not terribly welcome, face in the last few weeks to the officers here.
She sat to wait, her hands clasped in her lap to still their trembling, or at least to make it less visible. With each day that passed her anxiety went up another notch, so that now it seemed the dark bird in her chest never ceased to flap its wings. She found herself having to stop to catch at a decent breath of air. She couldn’t seem to get warm, even now, though the waiting area was overly heated, she still felt a cold that went straight through to her marrow. Just sitting here, as tired as she was, felt like a poor use of time, when she felt she ought to be out searching, scouring every dead-end lane and hollow in the land.
On the day that Casey disappeared she had been gone from early morning until just before supper, away at Jamie’s house, tidying up loose ends, signing paperwork and making decisions. She hadn’t thought much of it when she arrived home to an empty house, for Casey was often home late, depending on the stage of the building on which he was working. But then the hours had ticked past, and he had not come through the door. She had fed the children, bathed them with a rising tide of panic in her chest, put them to bed with stories, kisses and lullabies, even though her throat felt as though she were choking on needles.
She had come back down the stairs praying he would be sitting in the boot room, apologizing for his tardiness and looking for his dinner, which she had kept warming in the Aga. She had given it another hour, the longest hour, or so she had felt at that point, that she had experienced in quite some time. Then she called Pat, who had done what he could to disguise his own alarm. He had shown up at the door an hour later. Casey had not been at the construction site, and no one had seen him all day.
That was when she truly started to panic. That feeling, that terrible dark blooming in her chest had not stopped since, not even when she slept, which admittedly wasn’t often or of any depth. It was a constant feeling that she had no control over anything, that the entire universe had become a whirl of chaos and terror, of thoughts she could not stop and fear that gnawed at every last nerve ending in her body. Gert had come to watch the children while she and Pat searched everywhere they could think that Casey might have traveled that day.
By morning, she knew she had to go to the police. While she had worked with some of the police in the various Belfast RUC stations, she wasn’t familiar with any of the men that worked in her own area. She was very much afraid that they would not be terribly sympathetic to a woman who was looking for her notoriously republican husband. She was justified in her fear, as it turned out, because they were not sympathetic in the least. She had left the station and thrown up right outside the doors. They refused to take a missing persons report on Casey until he had been gone a week. She knew the rule was generally 48 hours, not a week, and understood their cruelty was deliberate; that she was going to have to steel herself for more of the same, and also to look for unorthodox avenues of finding out what had happened to him.
Things had not improved much since. She had been assigned an officer—Constable Severn, who did his best to be kind, even if he did not instill much confidence that the police would be in any way effective in helping her to find out what had happened to her husband. He was a bit of a plo
d, but he meant well, she knew, even if she sensed he had no power at that station.
Today, however, it was not the kindly if ineffective constable who came out to the waiting room. A shadow fell over her, and she startled, for she hadn’t heard the man approach. He was standing too close, as if he were one of those people who didn’t understand that other people had spatial boundaries, invisible, but very real. She had to crane her neck to see his face, for he was very tall, as tall as Casey was perhaps, though he had a much slighter frame.
He was young and had one of those rawboned faces with an overly prominent chin and a hint of acne peeking out from his collar. His eyes were grey, the sort that held neither water nor light, rather they were pale and predatory, made more so by the sparse lashes that surrounded them.
“I’m usually referred to Constable Severn,” she said, hoping the man was here.
“Well, he’s not here today, he’d family business to attend to, so I’m to answer yer questions. I’m Constable Blackwood.” He didn’t shake her hand, or do anything else that might be construed as a social nicety, he only gestured abruptly that she should follow him.
He took her into a dingy room, with a table and two chairs and little else to recommend it. She could only assume it was an interrogation room, and she began to get a distinctly bad feeling. He held a file that looked terribly thin; it couldn’t possibly contain more than two pages.
He sat and opened the file and shuffled the two papers around in an attempt, she thought, to look officious. He hadn't offered her tea or a glass of water, something that Constable Severn always did. She never drank it but it was a small comfort to have the offer, as if just the smallest civility somehow kept the reality of her situation at bay.
“I’m here about my husband, Casey Riordan, he went missing a month—”
He held up a hand and cut her off. “I know why ye’re here, I looked at the file.”
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 4
