‘Fuck,’ she said.
The marked car accelerated past her on the inside, its engine roaring, then pulled in front of her. She jerked her steering wheel left and right, but there was nowhere to go. The white BMW pulled up close behind her, and the convoy slowed as it rounded the eastern end of the roundabout, then onto the straight leading back to the western end.
Two Land Rovers blocked the road ahead completely. Trapped. She was trapped.
One thing left to do.
Roberta closed her eyes. Slammed her foot hard on the accelerator pedal. Hauled the steering wheel to the right. Readied herself for the impact and the fall.
The crash came, and she was thrown against the steering wheel, feeling it punch her chest. No airbag, her torso took the full force of it. But no fall. She had expected the car to plough through the fence and plummet to the motorway below, but it had merely buckled the metal.
She pushed herself off the steering wheel, howled at the pain, then groaned as she realised she had broken something inside. Her vision cleared, and through the smoke and steam she saw that the BMW and the marked car had stopped twenty yards ahead, in front of the Land Rovers that blocked the road. A few blurred figures emerged from the cars.
Roberta reached for the pistol on the passenger seat, found it wasn’t there. She blinked smoke out of her eyes, coughed, screamed at the pain. Her hand explored the seat, under it, down the sides. The gun had slid off in the impact, bounced away somewhere in the recesses. It didn’t matter now. What good would it do her?
She tried the driver’s door handle, but the door wouldn’t budge, jammed in place. Despite the pain, she leaned over to the passenger side, pulled the handle, let the door swing open. She hauled herself across, pausing to cry out at the grinding of whatever had fractured in her chest, her broken right hand clutched to her belly. The ground slammed into her left shoulder as she fell out, and she lay for a few seconds, glorying in the pain and the sudden clarity it brought.
‘Don’t move!’
She craned her neck to see who had shouted at her. A woman’s voice. She could barely hear it above the whine and clamour inside her head. Flanagan, maybe? There she was, behind the BMW, along with a line of other officers. Weapons pointed at her.
‘Put the weapon down!’
‘I don’t . . . I . . .’
She didn’t have the breath to push the words out. Somehow, she got her knees under her, and her left hand, then her feet. Upright, she raised her good hand, showed them it was empty, her right still held tight to her stomach.
‘Drop the weapon!’
She tried to lift her right hand, but a sun burned there, too heavy for her to lift.
‘I don’t have it,’ she said, but she heard her own voice as a rumble inside her head and throat. ‘Don’t have it,’ she said again.
Pretend you do, she thought. Pretend you’re going to shoot them, and they’ll shoot you. And then it’ll be over.
She smiled and pointed her left hand at them, made the fingers into a gun, moved her thumb to mime the hammer fall. Then she laughed at the foolishness of it, and howled at the pain it brought.
Flanagan moved from behind the BMW. Someone, that nice young policeman whose name Roberta could not recall, tried to stop her, but Flanagan shook him off and kept coming.
Roberta looked to her right, saw the traffic backed up on the slip road down to the motorway beneath, the cars slow on the inside lane, quicker on the outside, all heading away towards the city to the north-east. The idea presented itself clear and simple to her. So she acted on it.
She walked the few steps to the metal railing covered in blistered blue paint. One hand useless, the other grasping, she pulled herself up on it, screamed at the fresh surge of pain from her chest.
I don’t have the strength, she thought.
Yes you do.
She hauled her left leg over, then her right.
Somewhere very far away she heard Serena Flanagan shout, no, no, no, but she ignored the frantic voice as she found the concrete ledge with her toes. Her chest to the railing, her back to the wind, she saw Flanagan coming in a lopsided, limping run, Murray sprinting behind her, more officers following.
Roberta’s eyes met Flanagan’s, and she gave her a smile.
Then she let go.
58
Flanagan ignored the pain, the nausea, the drifting of the world on its axis, and threw herself towards the railing, her hands outstretched. The fingers of her left hand snatched at the fabric of the coat, took hold, her other hand reaching further. Then Roberta’s weight jerked her forward, and her body slammed into the railing, her shoulder shrieking at the strain. As her feet left the ground, she got her right hand under Roberta’s arm, pulled with everything she had.
Her legs kicked at the air as her chest slid over the top of the railing. Roberta writhed in her grasp. Flanagan pushed her foot through the gap in the railing, hooked it there, tried to stop the steady slide over the top.
‘Let me go,’ Roberta screamed, her mouth inches from Flanagan’s ear.
‘No,’ Flanagan hissed. ‘You don’t get to die.’
Roberta wedged the soles of her feet against the concrete ledge, pushed, pulled Flanagan until the top of the railing dug into her stomach. She screamed, hooked her other foot into a gap.
‘Then you can come with me,’ Roberta said, and she jerked her body from one side to the other.
Footsteps behind. Flanagan turned her head, saw Murray and two uniforms, shouted at them to help. She closed her eyes as her feet began to slip, her own weight beginning to carry her forward, out over the edge.
‘You don’t get to die,’ she said again.
Then strong arms around and over her, hauling her back.
‘Don’t let her fall!’ she shouted, her hands digging into the fabric of Roberta’s coat, her fingernails bending and tearing.
More footsteps, more arms and hands.
‘Get her, don’t let her fall!’
The fabric slipped from Flanagan’s fingers and she was weightless, tumbling back, the road hitting her shoulders hard. She heard a scream, waited for the shrieking of tyres, the sound of a car hitting flesh and bone.
But it never came.
Instead, Flanagan heard another body hit the ground beside hers, followed by a cry of pain and despair and anger. She turned her head, saw Roberta Garrick, Hannah Mackenzie, face down, staring back at her, pure fiery hate in her eyes.
‘You don’t get to die,’ Flanagan said.
59
They kept her in a side ward, away from the good people. Four beds in this room, all empty. A laminated sign taped to the door said ORTHOPAEDIC CLINIC. Bustle beyond the door, voices and footsteps. Somewhere out there an old man shouted incoherent rants between cries of pain.
Roberta had not cried out when the doctor set her hand. Instead, she bit down hard until the muscles either side of her jaw ached with the effort. The young doctor had inserted a needle between her third and fourth fingers, and again in her wrist, and a vague numbness followed. But not enough to blank out the pain as he realigned the bones.
She had cracked a rib, he said, looking at the X-ray clipped to a light box. He had been nervous in the company of the police officers, unable to look her in the eye. Afraid of her. She had smiled for him, parted her lips, let him see the tip of her tongue. But the fear did not leave him, because he knew what she was. They all did.
Now the nice policeman, Detective Sergeant Murray, dozed in a chair in the corner of the side ward while two uniformed officers sat in silence by the door. Pale dawn light through the windows. The cast felt clumsy and heavy on her hand, the skin beneath itching. Strapping around her chest made it impossible to take more than shallow breaths.
The anaesthetic in her hand had long since worn off, but she could endure the pain. It wouldn’t be for long, anyway. She’d be left alone sooner or later, and she had no intention of going back to prison. A belt, a length of material, a sharp edge. She had studie
d these things, the methods, over many months. All she needed was the opportunity.
A little after seven in the morning, going by the clock on the wall, DCI Serena Flanagan entered the ward. Swelling on her lip, a gauze pad on her temple. Murray jerked awake, cleared his throat, sat upright. Flanagan came to the bed beside Roberta’s, sat on its edge.
She pointed to the side of her head, said, ‘Three stitches, in case you’re wondering.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Roberta said.
‘We’ll be leaving soon,’ Flanagan said. ‘The Serious Crime Suite in Antrim. We’ll make sure it’s a ligature-free cell. We won’t give you the chance.’
Roberta smiled at Flanagan’s perceptiveness. ‘I’ll find a way. I tend to get what I want.’
‘I know you’ll try,’ Flanagan said. ‘You’ll be in DCI Conn’s custody for the journey. This is still his case. But I wanted to ask you something before you go.’
Roberta waited, still smiling.
‘Did you kill your daughter?’
She felt the smile leave her mouth like dust blown from glass. Closed her eyes, opened them again, stared at the fluorescent light above her.
‘Yes, I did,’ she said.
A crackle went through the room, a lightning arc between the men, but not between Flanagan and Roberta. There were no secrets between them; perhaps there had never been, right from the start.
‘Tell me,’ Flanagan said.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘No, I don’t. Tell me anyway.’
Roberta took a breath, turned her eyes to Flanagan, and began.
‘The pregnancy was unplanned. I never wanted a child. I had everything I wanted. What did I need a baby for? Harry knew I was pregnant before I did. He said I’d changed, something was different. My period was late, but I didn’t think it was that, not a baby. I ignored him, and another week went by with no period, then another. Then he brought home one of those testing sticks. And there it was, a little blue cross.
‘If I could have, I would have got rid of it. Flown to England, if I had to. But there was no way to get past Harry. He was so happy. He’d told everyone almost as soon as the test was done, so there was no getting out of it, unless I had some sort of accident. And I did try. All I did was make myself sick.
‘Then the baby came – I had a Caesarean – and everyone around us was so delighted and all I wanted to do was throw it out of a window. But I played my part. I fed it, I looked after it, and it grew. I suppose I liked it well enough, but what about me? It was constant, not a second to breathe. My life had gone. Harry was no use, he thought it was a woman’s job to look after it. He just played with it now and again. And his brother and that horrible little wife of his, always hanging around. I hadn’t worked so hard for this life to lose it to a baby. I stood it for almost two years, two years of my life soaked up by this little creature that wasn’t even really mine.’
Flanagan cocked her head to the side. ‘Not yours?’
‘Who gave birth to it? Was it really me? It never felt like it came from my body, even after they cut it out of me. Anyway, I persuaded Harry to take a week off work and take us to Barcelona. We rented an apartment in Poblenou. Do you know Barcelona?’
Flanagan shook her head.
‘It’s beautiful in Poblenou, not so many tourists. Our apartment was on the Rambla there, just a stone’s throw from the beach. Every evening when Harry went to sleep, and the baby, I went and sat out on the balcony and just watched people pass by. It was lovely.
‘Then one day the three of us went to the beach. Harry didn’t want to go in the water, so I left the baby with him and went swimming by myself. I’m a good swimmer, did you know? I always have been. When I came out, Harry asked me, why don’t you take the baby in for a while? It had one of those special nappies on, the ones for swimming. So I carried it out, up to my waist, then a bit further.
‘I remember it was shivering, saying cold, cold. So I walked out a bit further, till the water was up to my chest. That lovely feeling when the waves lift you off your feet. Then a bit further again, and I felt the drop beneath my feet. Not much, but enough that I couldn’t stand with my head above water.
‘You know, I didn’t plan anything. It’s not like I set out to do it. I remember suddenly seeing it, all those years stretched out in front of me, raising it, sending it to school, all the times it would get sick, and I’d have to clean it up, years and years before I could get my life back. So I knew what to do.’
A pause, then in a very small voice, Flanagan asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘I held it under. One hand on the back of its neck, paddling with the other, kicking with my feet. It was hard to do. Physically, I mean. I struggled to keep my mouth and nose out of the water. I started to get a little afraid, especially when it started thrashing around. Then it stopped, and I let go.’
Roberta remembered the sensation of floating in the water, lifted and dropped by the waves, her right hand beneath the surface, so terribly empty. A few seconds of elation.
‘And then I realised what I’d done,’ she said. ‘I realised I shouldn’t have. I wanted to take it back. I thought maybe I could save it. I suppose I panicked a little. So I dived under with my eyes open – you can keep your eyes open in seawater, it doesn’t hurt – and I could just make it out, drifting near the bottom. I swam down and tried to get hold of it, but I needed air, so I had to go back up. That was when I called for help. I went under again, but it had drifted further away, and I had to stay under longer. I breathed water. It hurt. Everything went black. Next thing I remember is lying in the sand, vomiting salt water. And that’s all.’
Quiet for a long time, not even the sound of breathing. Roberta wondered if she should have felt some sort of relief from telling it all, but there was none. Same as before. A hollow place where she supposed her guilt should have been.
Eventually, Flanagan slid off the bed, stood upright, and said, ‘Okay, let’s go. Get up.’
Roberta reached out her left hand. ‘Please.’
Flanagan took her hand, helped her sit upright. Then Roberta lowered her feet to the floor, straightened, and faced the policewoman. It hadn’t occurred to her before now, but she stood a good couple of inches taller than Flanagan. The policewoman seemed so small now, so tired.
When Roberta opened her mouth to say she hoped Flanagan would get some rest, the fist shot up, caught the underside of her jaw, and the floor tilted beneath her feet. She fell back on the bed, her mouth filling with blood from the bite in her tongue. Then Flanagan’s hand was on her throat, the policewoman’s weight on her chest, and the pain, oh the pain.
‘It was a she,’ Flanagan said, her teeth flashing. ‘Her name was Erin.’
Roberta wanted to scream, but she couldn’t draw breath, and pressure swelled in her head as the fingers tightened beneath her jaw. Flanagan’s nose inches from hers, Roberta saw her mouth work, the lips part, then felt the hot saliva as Flanagan spat in her face.
Murray grabbed Flanagan by the shoulders, pulled her away, the hand slipping from Roberta’s throat.
60
Alistair slipped a hand around Flanagan’s waist, and they leaned into each other as the waiter led them to the restaurant’s back room. Deep and rich aromas drifted through the place, turmeric, cardamom, garlic, fresh baked bread. Diners ate tandoori chicken, bhunas, saags. The sights and smells made Flanagan’s stomach growl, the first real appetite she had felt in almost two weeks.
She had called Miriam McCreesh that morning, and they’d had a long talk. Flanagan had apologised at least three times for not being in touch, but McCreesh had brushed it off each time. She knew the demands of this life. After the call, Flanagan had locked her office door and kneeled beneath the window. She prayed thanks for her blessings, for her family, for her own health, and for Reverend Peter McKay’s soul. A female minister from the north-east coast had given a statement, said she’d met McKay on the beach at Cushendun. They’d talked about faith and pra
yer, and Flanagan hoped it had done McKay some good.
Flanagan took a half day, went home at two o’clock, and luxuriated in the rituals of getting ready to go out. It seemed an age since she and Alistair had gone anywhere as a couple, so long a time that she didn’t dare count the months.
They arrived early, and DSI Purdy and his wife were the only ones waiting in the private room. Purdy already had an empty bottle of Cobra beer in front of him, and was working on the second, his arm draped around his wife’s shoulder.
He stood as Flanagan and Alistair entered. He shook Alistair’s hand, then wrapped his arms around Flanagan, tight, squeezing the air out of her.
‘Thanks for coming, love,’ he said before planting a kiss on her cheek.
‘Love?’ Flanagan said, leaning back.
He grinned. ‘As of five o’clock this evening, I am no longer your boss, and I can call you love if I want. And I can give you a kiss if I want, so here’s another one.’
She giggled and accepted the gesture, smelled the booze on him. ‘Jesus, when did you start?’
‘One minute past five,’ he said, his smile beaming. Flanagan couldn’t help but reflect it back to him.
They took their seats, Purdy insisting that Flanagan sit beside him. His wife didn’t seem to mind; she was every bit as merry as her husband.
‘She’s confessed everything,’ he said.
Flanagan didn’t need to ask whom he meant. ‘Her husband? And Reverend McKay?’
‘That’s right,’ Purdy said. ‘She started an affair with McKay not long after the husband had the car accident. He was weak, and she knew she could manipulate him. She convinced him to slip Mr Garrick the overdose, thinking she could break it off with him after and he’d be too scared to say anything. But you messed it up for her, talking to McKay the way you did. He was ready to tell you everything, so she did him in.’
So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) Page 26
