04-The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  ‘But Graham what?’ Flanagan asked.

  Ida pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Forced the image as far back in her mind as she could. She knew it would not leave her, no matter how hard she tried to banish it.

  ‘This suspect,’ Ida said. ‘Is it the policeman Rea used to go with?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Have you arrested him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The waitress returned carrying two cups of coffee on a tray. She placed them in front of Flanagan and Ida, left a bill on Flanagan’s saucer.

  When she’d left, Flanagan said, ‘He’s absconded. But we’ll find him tonight or tomorrow.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong about him?’

  ‘I’m seldom wrong,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘But you might be,’ Ida said. ‘This time.’

  No might about it. Not in Ida’s mind.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Flanagan said. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Is that a bruise?’

  Without thinking, Ida’s hand went to her cheek. She had seen the purple-brown flare beneath her eye in the mirror that morning. A dusting of foundation had hidden it. Or so she thought.

  ‘Just a little knock,’ Ida said. ‘I’m clumsy.’

  Flanagan reached across the table and took her hand.

  ‘Ida, did something happen?’

  ‘No,’ Ida said, again with no thought. ‘Not at all.’

  Stupid, she thought. Crazy. You were ready to tell this woman Graham killed Rea, but you can’t bear to say he laid hands on you?

  Flanagan squeezed Ida’s fingers, looked her hard in the eye, and asked, ‘Did your husband hit you?’

  Ida sat quite still, trapped between the desire to tell the truth, to be freed by it, and the need to keep her secrets. To show the world her good face, the devoted wife, the loving family not blighted by the same shameful and sordid fissures as lesser people. Still, after all that had happened, Ida’s instinct was to shield herself and her family from embarrassment.

  What family?

  A laugh escaped from her, shrill and ridiculous, a ring of madness to it, even to her own ears.

  ‘I think I’m losing my mind,’ Ida said.

  ‘You’re in grief,’ Flanagan said. ‘You’re going through a terrible ordeal. There are counselling services, people you can—’

  ‘Yes,’ Ida said.

  Flanagan’s features creased with confusion. ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes, Graham hit me.’

  ‘I see,’ Flanagan said, her face softening. ‘You don’t have to go home. I can get you a place in a shelter this evening. He won’t be able to touch you again.’

  ‘No,’ Ida said. ‘I have to go home. I have things to do. Not for him. For Rea. I won’t run away from my husband. I’ve been a coward too long. Rea would still be alive, otherwise.’

  Flanagan’s hand gripped Ida’s harder. ‘Rea’s death had nothing to do with—’

  ‘What are you running from?’

  Flanagan sat back, her fingers slipping from Ida’s hand. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I can see it on your face,’ Ida said. ‘In your eyes. The way you walk, I can see it weighing on you.’

  Flanagan’s eyelids flickered. She breathed through her nose, deep, her shoulders rising and falling. Her gaze dropped.

  ‘What is it?’ Ida asked. ‘Here I am, telling you the worst thing I could think of telling anyone. Why do you get to keep your secrets?’

  Flanagan’s eyes met hers.

  ‘I have cancer,’ she said.

  Three words, blunt and clumsy, spat out like they carried the disease with them. Flanagan looked away, put her hand over her lips as if trying to force the confession back into her mouth, to swallow the words as if they had never been spoken.

  ‘What kind?’ Ida asked.

  Flanagan shook her head, her eyes brimming. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that. It’s not your worry.’

  ‘What kind?’ Ida asked again.

  A pause, an inhalation, then Flanagan said, ‘Breast cancer. Malignant, according to the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, pet,’ Ida said. ‘Can they operate?’

  Flanagan nodded. ‘They’ll remove the lump within a fortnight. And he talked about radiotherapy and chemotherapy. He said the survival rate is better than it’s ever been. But …’

  Now Ida reached for Flanagan’s hand. ‘But you’re terrified.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave my babies.’

  Flanagan crumbled in front of her, fell into a million scattered pieces.

  Ida moved to the seat beside her, put her arms around the policewoman. Rocked her back and forth, felt the warm dampness of her tears against her own cheek as she whispered, ‘Oh darling, oh sweetheart …’

  33

  UPRICHARD’S WIFE ANSWERED the door, her dressing gown pinched tight to her bosom. She blinked at Lennon through the gap, the security chain pulled tight, her gaze picking over the bruises and cuts on his face as she struggled to remember where she’d seen him before.

  He could have told her it was at her daughter’s wedding reception four years ago. Lennon had drunk too much and made a fool of himself trying it on with one of the bridesmaids. Uprichard had taken him aside, gently suggested that it was time to go home.

  Mrs Uprichard didn’t say a word to Lennon. She turned away from the door and called, ‘Alan? Alan! It’s for you.’

  Uprichard entered the kitchen and sat down opposite Lennon. A mug of instant coffee steamed on the table.

  Lennon asked, ‘Who goes to bed at nine o’clock on a Saturday night?’

  Uprichard didn’t return the smile. ‘We do, when I’m on an early shift the next day. She wants you away by the morning.’

  Lennon nodded.

  Uprichard looked old. His grey hair jutted out from his temples. The pillow marks had almost faded from his cheek.

  ‘Who did that to you?’ he asked, indicating Lennon’s battered features.

  ‘Kevin McKenna.’

  ‘Michael McKenna’s nephew?’

  ‘Bernie McKenna has my little girl. I went to get her back. Kevin kicked me down the street.’

  Uprichard wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘Maybe it’s the best place for her just now.’

  Lennon stared hard at him. Uprichard didn’t back down.

  ‘What, you’re going to take a child on the run with you?’ he asked. ‘You know, I ought to call Flanagan right now. She’d have my job for this.’

  ‘I know,’ Lennon said. ‘And I appreciate it. You’ve been a good friend to me.’ He lifted the mug of coffee. ‘Have you anything stronger than this?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘All right.’ Lennon took the blister strip of painkillers from his pocket. One for tonight, one for the morning, then he was out.

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a prescription for those,’ Uprichard said.

  ‘Somewhere,’ Lennon said. ‘Did you have any luck with what I asked you about on Thursday?’

  ‘About Graham Carlisle? A little. As far as I can gather, he was involved with loyalist paramilitaries as a young man. That’s not unusual. Plenty of politicians have their hands dirty in some way or other.’

  ‘How involved?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Uprichard said. ‘I have one friend in Intelligence Branch, and she clammed up when I started asking questions. A little too quickly and a little too tightly, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘What’ve you heard around the station?’ Lennon asked. ‘About me. And about Rea.’

  ‘Not much,’ Uprichard said. ‘Flanagan runs a tight crew. They don’t go mouthing about what they’re up to.’

  Lennon took a sip of coffee, wishing it were beer. ‘Not much is more than nothing.’

  Uprichard looked at his hands, fingers entwined on the tabletop. ‘Just that she’s convinced you killed that woman.’

  ‘She’s no reason to be convinced,’ Lennon said. ‘She’s reaching. She
wants an easy collar, and I happened to cross her path.’

  ‘Jack.’ Uprichard shifted in his seat.

  ‘What? Come on, say what you want to say.’

  ‘We’re talking about DCI Serena Flanagan,’ Uprichard said. ‘Not a lazy git like Jim Thompson. She’s a good detective. She’s smart, and she’s professional, and she’s thorough. She’s a better cop than you or I will ever be, and she doesn’t throw around accusations like a fishing line. That woman doesn’t put the finger on someone without good reason.’

  Lennon set the mug down harder than he meant to. Dark brown liquid sloshed over the edge. ‘You think I did it?’

  Uprichard couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’

  Uprichard stood, his shadow spilling over the table. Lennon felt it on his skin.

  ‘You know, I got a call from him last night.’

  Uprichard asked, ‘From who?’

  ‘The man who killed Rea.’

  ‘Did you tell that to Flanagan?’

  ‘I tried,’ Lennon said. ‘She hung up on me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d had a drink.’

  Uprichard indicated the blister strip. ‘On top of those?’

  Lennon shrugged.

  Uprichard shook his head. ‘You couldn’t do without, even when you’re about to lose everything. I never told you I had a son, did I?’

  Lennon looked up at him. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Gavin. Bright young lad. Could’ve done well for himself. He was studying engineering over in Warwick. He started out on cannabis, as far as I know. When I found out, I didn’t make too big a deal of it. More students try it than don’t, I suppose. But it didn’t stop there for Gavin. He wound up getting kicked out of university. Before too long he was on the streets, shooting heroin.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lennon said.

  ‘I tried to help him. He was living rough in Birmingham by then. I travelled over, got him into a treatment programme, got him a place in a hostel. But he didn’t last. A month later, he was back on the streets, needle in his arm. I went over again, tried to put him straight. Lasted six weeks that time. Then I got a call one night, a police station in Walsall, saying he was caught shoplifting, trying to steal stuff so he could sell it on.

  ‘So I flew over again. I went to the station to lift him, took three months off work and stayed there with him. The magistrate let him off with community service so long as he got treatment. I got him set up. Did everything for him. Nursed him through the withdrawal. Got him a wee flat, sorted out his benefits, all of that. And we sat there in his kitchen, talked like you and me are talking now. He cried his eyes out, swore on his mother’s life he’d never go back on the heroin, swore blind he’d sort himself out.’

  Uprichard’s face reddened, his hands shaking with the memory. Lennon couldn’t look at him any more, turned his gaze away.

  ‘I left him there, happy with him, happy with myself. Sure he was on the right road. A month later, another phone call in the night. Him crying down the line to me from another police station. He’d been lifted for stealing again. A bike from someone’s garden, this time. He needed to sell it to buy more heroin. I hung up the phone. I haven’t heard from my son or spoken to him since. That was twelve years ago. I don’t know where he is now. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I don’t want to know until he’s ready to stand up for himself.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Lennon said. ‘I’m sorry. Really.’

  ‘I don’t need your pity,’ Uprichard said. ‘I just need you to understand that I won’t help you if you won’t help yourself. You’ve been digging yourself into this hole for how long now? When are you going to reach the bottom? You’ve all but lost your career. Your daughter’s gone. You’ve got a cop after you for murder. How much worse does it have to get for you, Jack, before you stop digging?’

  He went to the door.

  ‘You can have the couch in the front room. Me and the wife get up around six. You’ll be gone by then.’

  Uprichard left the room without waiting for a response.

  Lennon looked at the blister strip on the table. One for tonight, one for the morning. He touched his fingertips to the plastic and the foil. He swallowed, imagining the warmth the pills would bring, the comfort. Just to get through the night.

  He swiped the strip away, sending it skittering across the table and onto the floor.

  34

  CALVIN APPROACHED FLANAGAN, yawning.

  ‘Go home,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’

  He shook his head, yawned again. ‘It’ll not be long till they’re done.’

  They watched the team pick over Lennon’s car beneath the searing workshop lights. Rubbish lay strewn around the floor – tissues, empty packets, wrappers, a few CDs, the car’s tattered manuals. The clothing they’d taken from the flat had been sent to the forensics lab in Carrickfergus.

  DC Farringdon finished his inspection of the well beneath the spare wheel, the carpet pulled aside.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘You want us to pull the panels out?’

  ‘No,’ Flanagan said. ‘Let’s call it a night. Thank you, everyone.’

  As the crew downed their tools and readied to leave, Calvin asked, ‘Are you going public?’

  Flanagan had agonised over it all day. The press had been told she would make a brief statement outside the station at ten the next morning. Would she name Lennon as a suspect? Should she? The media and the politicians would descend like vultures on the news that a policeman was being hunted by his own. Naming a suspect was a risk at the best of times. She had to be sure.

  ‘I’ll decide in the morning,’ she said. ‘Anything from the hotels?’

  ‘He checked into the Days Hotel on Hope Street last night. He hasn’t checked out, but I doubt he’ll go back there. I’ve got a car on the way to pick up whatever he left behind.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now for Christ’s sake, go home.’

  ‘What about you?’ Calvin asked.

  ‘I’m heading back to the office. I want to go over my notes for the morning.’

  That was a lie. Flanagan knew that if she went home now, Alistair would still be up. They would have one or two glasses of wine, maybe a gin and tonic, and talk about things. She would have to tell him about Dr Prunty and his cold hands, about the surgery she would have in less than a fortnight.

  Was she a coward? After all the things she had seen and done in her life, all the horrors she had witnessed, was she now finally revealed?

  Flanagan couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying than telling her husband about the cancer. To say it out loud to him would make it real. Their life together would be split in two for ever: the time before the words were spoken, and the time after.

  If Serena Flanagan was a coward, she could remain so for another day.

  35

  LENNON HEARD AN alarm clock from upstairs as he pulled the Uprichards’ front door closed behind him. Darkness had begun to ease away, black sky ceding to deep blue and grey, frost touching everything. This was a decent part of East Belfast. Not the most expensive, but not bad. Good hard-working middle-class families doing the best they could. Uprichard’s home stood midway along a pleasant avenue that ran between the Cregagh and Ravenhill Roads. A few lights went on and off behind the curtains and blinds of neighbouring homes, but mostly the street remained Sunday morning quiet.

  Lennon felt an ugly sore of resentment at the good lives these people had, and he hated himself for it.

  His breath misted as he walked west, head down. Even if no residents paid attention, he risked being seen by a passing patrol car. And Ladas Drive station was less than a mile in the other direction. He tightened his jacket around him as he worked his way towards Ormeau Park, the expanse of green that stretched along the eastern side of the River Lagan.

  Lennon wanted to get off the streets. A lone man on a Sunday morning, even one without battered features
and a pronounced limp like his, would be noticed. The longer he stayed visible, the more likely it was that some concerned resident would put a call in to the police to report a suspicious loiterer. The park was his best bet. Lose himself among the trees and wait the early morning out.

  Only one man could help Lennon right now, a man he could hardly bear to be in the presence of. And when he planned to call at his door begging for assistance, it would do him no favours to arrive too early.

  Lennon checked his watch as he crossed the Ravenhill Road. Quarter past six, at least three hours to kill. He reached the iron fence that bordered the eastern side of the park and golf course. It stood no more than five feet high, and before his injuries Lennon would have been able to scale it easily. But not now.

  He walked north until he found a litter bin next to a lamp post he could use to hoist himself over. A quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, and he climbed, careful of the spikes on top of the fence. He landed hard on the other side, his shoulder taking the brunt of the fall, and lay there for a while to recover. When the cold got to him, he struggled to his feet and moved.

  Lennon felt exposed, almost naked, as he crossed the fairway of the golf course, heading for the clusters of trees at the other side. Once hidden within their shelter, he hunkered down, hugging himself to combat the shivers that rattled through him.

  He never would have believed he could sleep in such conditions. But he did.

  It had gone nine by the time Lennon was on the move again. He had woken with a start, freezing cold, his teeth chattering. A few golfers were already on the course getting an early round in, so Lennon stuck to the treeline as he headed north and out of the park. He needed a taxi to get him to Sydenham, but he saw none as he worked his way from street to street. He couldn’t risk turning on his mobile phone to call one, so he relied on luck to hail a passing cab.

  Tattered Union flags hung from lamp posts, marking out territory, leaving no question who these streets belonged to. Lennon had lost track of his direction, given up telling north from south, had only a vague idea of where he was. The street names didn’t mean anything to him. He felt a quiet relief when he emerged onto the Woodstock Road, knowing a taxi would be easier to chance upon here, or failing that, a bus stop.