So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2)

by Stuart Neville

  ‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘whether you believe in prayer or not, just saying something out loud can make it smaller, take away the power it has over you.’

  ‘I’ve been having counselling sessions,’ she said. ‘Dr Brady, once a fortnight, fifty minutes of me talking and him pretending to listen.’

  ‘Has it helped?’

  ‘Not one fucking bit.’ She gave him a shamed glance, then dipped her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘Swearing does the soul good. Keep it to yourself, but I’ve been known to let the odd f-word slip myself.’

  She smiled, held it on her lips a little longer this time before it slipped away. She took a breath before she spoke. ‘There was an incident a few months ago. I suppose it wasn’t a full-blown breakdown, but it wasn’t far off. A man died. I didn’t kill him, it was entirely his own doing, but all the same I felt like I had. He and another man had tried to shoot me five years ago. The shooter was the pillion passenger on a motorcycle. His pistol jammed, and I shot him. One in the head, one in the chest. He died right there.

  ‘The other, the one driving the bike, he took off. A couple of streets away, he ran a red light right into the path of a bus. Took him five years to die. Like I said, it was his own stupid bloody fault, but when I found out he’d died, I fell to pieces. I know it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve spent my career dealing with killers. I’ve seen the cost of what they do. And I’m one of them. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t choose to be.’

  McKay’s mouth dried as she spoke. He put a hand over his lips and nodded.

  She can’t see inside me, he thought. She can’t.

  ‘Have you buried any murder victims?’ Flanagan asked.

  He managed a nod as he took his hand from his mouth. ‘Just one,’ he said, his voice a whisper.

  ‘Then you know what it does to the people left behind. It blows families apart. Destroys marriages. Ruins children’s lives.’

  Tell her.

  The thought rang clear and bright in his mind.

  Tell her and be done with it.

  His hand went to his mouth once more, teeth hard on his palm. He nodded again.

  Tell her or save yourself, he thought. One or the other. Do it now.

  Flanagan stared at him. His skin burned where her gaze touched. She went to speak.

  Do it now.

  ‘But that’s not why you’re here,’ McKay said. No quiver in his voice. ‘Is it?’

  She dropped her eyes, and he exhaled.

  ‘Is it?’ he asked again.

  Flanagan’s left hand shook as she lifted it from the pew back and wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. McKay waited, left room for her, knowing the confession would come before long.

  Finally, she said, ‘I’m losing my family.’

  A sob from deep in her chest, and she looked away.

  Fear leaving him, relief taking its place, McKay put a hand on her wrist and said, ‘Tell me.’

  21

  Flanagan couldn’t be sure what had brought her here this morning. She’d left the house before Alistair rose, before the children stirred, and had driven to Lisburn and the fortress-like station. Her office door locked, she sat at her desk, paperwork laid out across its surface. All of it meaningless to her, nothing but shapes and scrawls on pages.

  Some time before nine, she messaged DSI Purdy, said she was going to follow up on the last details for the Garrick suicide. She went to her car and drove the small roads across country as far as Lurgan, then circled back east towards Moira, with the intention of going home for an hour. Just an hour to think, that was all.

  But to get there, she had to pass through Morganstown, with its one main street, the church at one end, the filling station at the other. She made no conscious decision to hit the indicator, to slow, to pull the steering wheel to the right. And yet she found herself parked by the grey wall of the church, reaching for the key to kill the ignition.

  She sat there for a time listening to her own breathing, hearing its strange dry resonance in the car, before it seemed the glass all around was only an inch from her skin. Then she opened the driver’s door and felt the cool morning air wash in.

  So quiet here. No traffic on the street. Nothing but the whisper of leaves on trees, silvery threads of birdsong between the branches.

  She knew no one else was here, hers was the only car on the grounds, even McKay’s was gone. Looking across the car park, she saw the old house and wondered if Mrs Garrick was in there, grieving the desperate angry grief of those robbed by suicide. She remembered the widow’s tears and felt a sting of guilt.

  Why had she been so determined to find some dark stain on this woman? A woman who had borne more loss than most would in a lifetime. What had Flanagan seen in Mrs Garrick that she wanted to believe her husband’s death had been anything more than it appeared? Was it bitter envy for all Mrs Garrick had?

  Flanagan would never have believed herself capable of such a base emotion, but there it was. She had been ready to torment Roberta Garrick further in her time of grief in pursuit of a truth that existed only in her own mind. Mrs Garrick’s husband had been physically devastated by a terrible accident, and months of agonising recovery had left him unable to face more. That was all, and Flanagan had to let it go.

  But the photographs . . .

  No, too thin. Too much of a reach. Still wanting Mrs Garrick to be guilty of something just because she disliked her.

  ‘Enough,’ she said aloud, startling herself.

  Only when she looked around to see if anyone had heard did she notice Reverend Peter McKay walking towards her. Now he was sitting in the pew in front of her, his warm hand on her wrist, and she wanted to tell him every rotten thing that festered in her soul.

  She told him about the Devine brothers, Ciaran and Thomas, how they came to her home a year ago with the intent to do her harm, and how instead Ciaran stabbed her husband in their bedroom while their children cowered downstairs. She told him how the case came to an end on a beach near Newcastle, how everything that she’d done had helped no one, least of all the young man the brothers had murdered in a Belfast alleyway. Over the following twelve months, as she drifted from her husband and children’s reach, she had wondered over and over what she had achieved in her career. Had it been worth the loss of her family?

  ‘Then quit,’ McKay said.

  She stared at him for a moment, disoriented at being pulled from her spoken thoughts. ‘What?’

  ‘If your job’s making you miserable, then quit,’ he said. ‘Simple, isn’t it?’

  Flanagan shook her head, fumbling for an answer. ‘No, it’s . . . it’s not . . .’

  He smiled that kind smile of his, the one that warmed his eyes. ‘No, it’s not that simple, is it? We have this in common, you know. Neither of us has a nine-to-five job we can leave behind at the end of the day. We don’t work in some office, watching the clock, waiting for home time. You don’t stop being a police officer when you go home any more than I stop being a priest. Not even when we go to sleep at night. Do you dream much?’

  ‘Every night,’ Flanagan said. ‘About the ones I couldn’t help. They stare at me. They point at me. They tell me I should have tried harder, asked one more question, turned over one more stone.’

  ‘Then you are your job, your job is you. Same for me.’

  ‘And I am my family. I need them, even if they don’t need me.’

  His fingers tightened on her wrist, a small pressure. ‘Then the answer lies somewhere between the two. It’s like two sides of an arch. One can’t stand without the other.’

  ‘Then what do I do?’ she asked, another sob catching in her throat.

  ‘What you came here for,’ McKay said. ‘You pray.’

  As new, hot tears spilled from her eyes, McKay got to his feet.

  ‘Now I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘Let yourself out when you’re ready.’

  As he stepped away, Flanagan reached for his hand. He turned and
looked down at her, and she suddenly realised how tired he appeared, darkness beneath his eyes, lines deepened by the light and shade of the church. She regretted the insinuation she’d made the day before when interviewing Mrs Garrick, that there might be more to the minister’s and the new widow’s relationship. It had been unfair and uncalled for. She decided she would apologise to Mrs Garrick, if she got the chance.

  ‘Thank you,’ Flanagan said. ‘You’re a good man.’

  Something flashed across his face, something quick and furtive, gone before she could fully see it.

  ‘A good man,’ she said again.

  He nodded, smiled, squeezed her hand, then left her alone with the God she did not believe in.

  22

  McKay closed the vestry door behind him, leaned his forehead against the wood.

  Shakes erupted out from his core, to his hands, to his legs. His knees buckled and he collapsed into the door, then staggered across to the desk beneath the window.

  A good man.

  The words clawed at him.

  ‘I am not,’ he whispered. ‘I am not.’

  A good man.

  Maybe once. But not now.

  I killed a man so I could have his wife.

  Go back out. Go back out and tell her.

  Tell her there is no God, that she is praying to air and stone and glass and nothing else.

  Tell her this good man is a killer who deserves hellfire for his sins.

  But McKay went nowhere. Instead, he remained at the desk, wishing he had a God to pray to.

  23

  Flanagan spent the next two days in prayer. An hour in the silence of the church before the stillness of the air seemed to press against her, squeezing her chest tight. Then in the car. Then in her office with the door locked. Then in the bed in the spare room, duvet pulled up to her mouth.

  On the second night, she left the spare room, climbed the small flight of stairs to the master bedroom. She knocked lightly on the door. After a few moments, Alistair opened it.

  ‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s your bed,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to ask. And you don’t need to knock.’

  She followed him to the bed, climbed in beside him, into his open arms. Warm and familiar and shocking. She rested her head on his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  A few seconds passed before he asked, ‘What for?’

  ‘For not being here for you and the kids. And for the distance I’ve put between us.’

  She felt his chest fall as he exhaled.

  ‘I’m as responsible for that as you are,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’ve been pushing you away since before what happened last year. I think I need to talk to somebody about it. Get some counselling.’

  She almost told him about the prayer that had brought her back to their bed, but felt suddenly shy. They did not believe in such things, she and her husband. And anyway, her prayers were between her and whatever listened.

  ‘Maybe we should both talk to someone,’ she said. ‘As a couple, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘But listen.’ She moved her head so she could see the profile of his features in the darkness. ‘You have to understand, I need to do my job. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’ve worked for my whole adult life. You can’t ask me to choose between my job and my family, because it’s not really a choice. I need both. I’m not me without them. Both of them.’

  Quiet, the only sound their breathing in the dark.

  Then Alistair spoke. ‘All right. But you have to leave your work outside. When you come into our home, all that other stuff, it stays outside.’

  ‘Says the man who spends his evenings marking homework,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘I know. And I promise I’ll try. And you have to promise not to push me away.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  They kissed and slept hard into the morning.

  Flanagan arrived early at the church, but still she had to park a hundred yards down the road, wheels up on the kerb. She had known it would be a big funeral – Henry Garrick had been a well-liked man in the community – but even so, she was surprised. Before she got out of the car, she sent a text message to Miriam McCreesh, wishing her luck with the appointment at the Cancer Centre.

  Before she pressed send, she checked her watch, realised the test might have already happened. She knew the routine: the probing, the scanning, the sting of the biopsy. The hours between being sent away and coming back for the results. A long and lonely day, even if you had someone to hold your hand.

  Flanagan walked towards the church, buttoning her black jacket. Groups of men and women, some younger, most older, moved in the same direction, and Flanagan found herself part of the tide. She listened as people exchanged greetings, their polite laughs, their remembrances of past encounters. A strange comfort in these voices, and she recalled funerals she’d attended in the past, the coming together of family and friends, aunts or uncles seldom seen, cousins she barely recognised.

  The farewell to an elderly relative often had a muted joy about it. If their time was due, and the suffering and indignities of their withering years were at an end, then wasn’t that a good thing? Sad, yes, but wasn’t life itself ?

  But this kind of funeral was different. Mr Garrick had not been taken by heart failure after days wired to machines in a hospital side ward. There had been no long and slow decline to be endured. True, Mr Garrick had spent his last months in terrible pain, but even so, it was not his time. Flanagan had gone to enough suicide funerals to know there was no joy or gratitude to be found here.

  Police cones at the gates to the grounds to keep them clear for the hearse and the family cars. As Flanagan walked towards the church, she checked her watch. Quarter past eleven. The service was to start at noon. As she entered, an elderly gentleman handed her an order of service printed on folded A4 paper. He smiled and said good morning as he did so, and Flanagan couldn’t help but return the smile.

  Inside, she found a place in a pew two rows from the back. Soft organ music played, sending warm waves of sound through the church. It was already two thirds full. With the first two rows reserved for family, the place would be packed tight.

  As she let her gaze wander the congregation, Flanagan noticed a middle-aged man, slender, well dressed. Mid fifties, or perhaps younger but prematurely grey. It was difficult to tell from this angle. He sat across the aisle, two rows forward. Flanagan watched as he bowed his head, rested his knees on the prayer stool, and clasped his hands together. She could just make out the movement of his jaw as he spoke to his God.

  Right there in front of everyone. As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  And wasn’t it?

  It is a church, after all, Flanagan thought. If he can’t do it here, where can he?

  She looked around. No one paid him any attention. No one cared.

  Flanagan put her hands on the back of the pew before her, brought them together, twined her fingers. Then she slid forward until her knees rested on the padded bench. She took one more look around, saw no one watching, then bowed and closed her eyes.

  ‘Dear God,’ she whispered in a voice so low only the Creator could possibly hear. ‘Thank you for my blessings. Thank you for my children, for my husband, for keeping them well, and for keeping us together. Thank you. And please help Miriam with her test this morning. Please let it be good news.’

  She raised her head and said aloud, ‘Amen.’

  When she got back up onto the seat, she looked back towards the middle-aged man whose prayer had inspired her own. He sat turned in his pew, watching her. Flanagan froze as if caught in some misdeed. She saw now that the man was older, perhaps near sixty, and his eyes were tearful and hollow. He nodded to her, and she returned the gesture, realising his features were familiar. The man turned away, and Flanagan studied the back of him, diggin
g for a memory, anything to reveal his identity.

  She spent the next forty-five minutes wondering about him as the church filled. By the time the coffin arrived, shoulders pressed against hers at either side. The hum of chatter faded as the widowed Mrs Garrick arrived, walked up the aisle to the reserved seats, arm-in-arm with another woman.

  Then Flanagan heard Reverend McKay’s voice behind her, coming from the vestibule. She turned her head, but she could not see him.

  ‘We receive the body of our brother Henry Garrick with confidence in God, the giver of life, who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead.’

  When he finished the verse, the congregation said, ‘Amen.’ Flanagan said it too.

  She watched as McKay led the group of six men along the aisle, the coffin resting on their shoulders. Two undertakers guided the coffin onto the waiting trolley at the front.

  McKay went to the lectern and said, ‘We meet in the name of Christ who died and was raised by the glory of God the Father. Grace and mercy be with you all.’

  The congregation said, ‘And also with you.’

  Flanagan said it too, beats behind everyone else. As she said the words, McKay’s eyes met hers, and from the back of the church, even over this distance, she saw despair in them.

  24

  McKay recited the words with no awareness of their meaning. They were only shapes in his mouth, movements his tongue had made hundreds of times over the years.

  He looked out to the people, his gaze finding Flanagan.

  Save me, he thought.

  She stared back, and she saw it on him, he was sure. He looked away, looked anywhere but at her. Then he found Roberta in the front row, and she did not look at him.

  She had barely looked at him the day before, during the wake. All the same people, the congregation of this church, milling around the house. Cups of tea, small sandwiches, biscuits, cakes, sausage rolls. The kitchen a production line of kindly women, the hall lined with folding chairs, borrowed by the vanload from the old school hall across the road from the church that served as a community centre, now bearing the weight of middle-aged men holding cups and saucers.