The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  Ten days since she’d gone to her GP, her hands trembling even as she told herself it was nothing, nothing at all, stop worrying.

  The GP – a girl so young Flanagan wondered how she could know anything – had examined her, pushed, squeezed, pulled, while Flanagan fought to suppress a giggle. When Flanagan went to her car, locked herself in, an appointment with the clinic made, she wept until she couldn’t see.

  And now Dr Prunty, who was so terribly nice, and clean, and had such a kind voice matched with cold eyes and hands.

  But oh fucking God, the children are so small.

  Stop it.

  She told herself to stop it, grow up. She had held her nerve with guns pointed at her. By Christ, she would hold her nerve through this.

  Flanagan had arrived at the Cancer Centre early that morning, thirty minutes before her appointment. Built as an annexe to Belfast City Hospital only a few years ago, the centre’s lobby sparkled like no medical facility she’d visited before. She had to stop herself from checking for her passport as she entered, as if she was running to catch a flight.

  At ten minutes past ten, Flanagan found out exactly how cold Dr Prunty’s hands were. This time, she had no urge to giggle as he examined her. She stared at the ceiling, listening to his breath whistling in his nose. He moved from her breasts to her armpits, seeking abnormalities in the lymph nodes. She listened harder, waiting for a telltale pause in his breathing. None came.

  Then the mammogram. The nurse said it might be a little uncomfortable, but Christ, as the perspex plate squashed her flat, she had to bite down on her lip to stifle a cry. Then an ultrasound scan, like she’d had when she’d borne her children, except the gel was slathered on her chest instead of her belly.

  Suddenly, from nowhere, she had remembered the breaking of her heart when she’d failed to breastfeed her second baby. Two weeks of tears, anger, frustration at the thrashing infant squealing with hunger because she couldn’t give him what he needed. At four in the morning, defeat crushing both of them, her husband Alistair had driven to the nearest twenty-four-hour supermarket and bought baby formula. Flanagan and her husband both sobbed with regret as tiny Eli drew deep on the bottle, calm for the first time in days.

  This morning, finally, after all the feeling, squashing, prodding, they took a biopsy. A local anaesthetic, Dr Prunty said, a needle, a little pressure, then it would be done.

  They sent her away for two hours while the sample was analysed. She wandered along the Lisburn Road, southwards past the bars and cafes, past the student digs, towards the art galleries and closer to the exclusive clusters of houses at Balmoral.

  Flanagan stopped at the window of a lingerie shop. The mannequins draped in sheer lacy things, staring back at her. She studied the lines of their bodies, perfectly plastic, not a lump or abnormality between them. Her hand went to her right breast, the feeling coming back as the local anaesthetic wore off. She remembered Alistair’s lips there, warm, gentle, like he’d found the sweetest of all manna. Flanagan wondered if he would ever want to taste her there again.

  She had not told him. She didn’t know how. Dozens of opportunities to share her terror with him had been allowed to slip by. The first few times she lied to herself that she was sparing him something, but she realised the keeping of such a secret was entirely selfish. She dreaded that conversation, inevitable as it was, and avoidance was the easier course.

  When Flanagan returned to the Cancer Centre, stinging and itching beneath the cotton wool and sticking plaster they’d covered the puncture with, she waited in a room with a dozen other women. Some had their partners with them, worried, fidgety men, or mothers, or sisters, or best friends. Flanagan sat alone, suddenly ashamed to have no one.

  A nurse called her name, led her to Dr Prunty’s room. At the door, the nurse asked, ‘Did you come on your own, love?’

  Flanagan nodded, ignored the pity on the nurse’s face.

  She noticed the box of tissues on Dr Prunty’s desk, one bursting up and out, waiting to be plucked like a flower.

  I won’t cry, Flanagan thought. A command to the frightened little girl that still lived inside her despite all the rotten, ugly things she’d seen.

  The nurse sat on the seat beside her, took her hand. Flanagan had the urge to pull away, she didn’t need mollycoddling, but she remained still, not even a tremor.

  ‘Well,’ Dr Prunty said. ‘The result came back as C5.’

  The nurse’s fingers tightened around Flanagan’s.

  ‘C5? What does that mean?’

  Dr Prunty did not blink. ‘The lump is malignant. It’s cancer.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ she asked.

  ‘Absolutely sure,’ he said.

  Flanagan stopped listening.

  The doctor spoke about early diagnosis, stages, grades, high survival rates, surgery, appointments, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, options, possibilities, scenarios. The chain of surgeons, radiographers, consultants, with Flanagan to be passed between them like a parcel in a children’s game. She heard little of it.

  When he finished talking, Flanagan pulled her hand away from the nurse’s and stood up. Her skin tingled from her scalp to the soles of her feet.

  Dr Prunty scribbled on a notepad as he spoke. ‘I’ll call with the surgeon’s appointment before end of business on Monday. Don’t worry, the lump will be removed within a fortnight.’

  ‘Don’t worry?’ Flanagan said.

  He looked up. ‘The NHS still runs like clockwork when it really matters.’

  ‘Don’t worry?’ she said again.

  He looked to the nurse. ‘Colette here will give you some literature you might find helpful. I’ll be in touch on Monday.’

  Dr Prunty gave her a joyless smile. The nurse opened the door, guided her by the elbow, out and into the corridor, pulled the door closed behind them.

  Placing a hand on Flanagan’s shoulder, the nurse said, ‘We have on-site counsellors, if you’d like a quick chat.’

  ‘No,’ Flanagan said, walking away.

  The nurse followed. ‘Well, I can give you some leaflets, phone numbers, and—’

  Flanagan quickened her pace. ‘No, please, leave me alone.’

  ‘Mrs Flanagan,’ the nurse called.

  She kept walking, her head down, through the corridors, through the lobby, the exit, across the road through the queue of cars, her step turning to a jog, her chest heaving as she climbed the stairs to the car park’s top level, into the open air, Belfast’s sky grey above her. She ran to her Volkswagen Golf, thumbing the button on her key, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel.

  Quiet like an empty church.

  Wild tremors in her hands. She brought them to her mouth. The children. Oh Jesus, the children. How would she tell them?

  It’s not a death sentence. She had read that a thousand times as she’d scoured websites over the last week. It can be treated. I can survive this. I will survive it.

  Calm, she thought. Be calm.

  Flanagan closed her eyes, lowered her hands to her lap, and breathed deep. The rumble and hiss of city traffic seeped into the car. She opened her eyes and reached down into the footwell where she’d dropped her key. It slipped into the ignition. The car park ticket was in her pocket.

  She’d forgotten to pay it.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Fuck. Shit.’

  Anger erupted, blinding hot, a torrent. She screamed every foul word she knew, slammed the steering wheel with her fists, the car horn blaring with each impact, cursed every kind of god, slapped her palms against the windscreen.

  And then the rage was gone, leaving a cold and hollow mourning inside her.

  Once Flanagan had gathered herself, gone back to the pay station, then returned to her car, she drove to Deramore Gardens. To the house where the woman’s body still lay.

  She had work to do.

  20

  IDA CARLISLE SAT alone and silent in the good room, the room with the pale wool carpet, silk upholstered suite and no televisi
on. If she’d ever had any grandchildren, they wouldn’t have been allowed in this room. This room was for important visitors only.

  Graham bought the house not long after Rea was born. A nice place in a cul-de-sac off Balmoral Avenue, in the BT9 area, where the hoity-toits lived, as Ida’s mother would have said. A 1930s detached villa with a detached garage and a driveway, five bedrooms if you counted the one Graham used for his office, two receptions plus a dining room. Ida had felt a delicious thrill when they viewed it for the first time more than thirty years ago, knowing they could afford such a home. Such luxury, such a beautiful place to raise their daughter.

  And all for nothing.

  Ida held her hands together in her lap, her coat still buttoned over her nightdress since she’d come home an hour and a half ago. The phone had rung almost constantly. She’d switched her mobile off, but the landline kept trilling like a demented bird. The newspapers. The radio stations. The television reporters. They all had the number, ready to get a comment about whatever stories they thought Graham Carlisle would have an opinion on. Now they were scratching at the doors like hungry dogs, looking for scraps of grief to devour.

  Ghouls, all of them.

  Worry had got the better of Ida at eleven the night before. She had called Rea’s mobile half a dozen times, left three messages, and no reply. One of the girls Rea shared a house with answered the landline there, told her sleepily that Rea wasn’t in her room, that no one had seen her all evening. Graham had dismissed Ida’s concerns, said Rea was probably out on the town somewhere, but their daughter had given up that kind of carry-on years ago.

  So, at one-thirty in the morning, when Graham was asleep, Ida had gone downstairs, put shoes on her feet and her coat on over her nightdress, and then went out to her car.

  Raymond’s semi-detached house stood as quiet as it was dark. When Ida saw Rea’s little Nissan wasn’t parked outside, she almost drove back home. But instead, she pulled in, shut her engine off and got out of the car.

  Thinking about it now, she remembered the soft sound of distant traffic as she approached the front door. The whisper of it spilling over the rooftops to this peaceful little road. And she thought how lovely a place this would be for Rea to live, if she could get over what was in that awful book.

  The key opened the lock without resistance, just the smooth rotation of the tumblers, but Ida had to put her shoulder against the door to push it open. All was grey and black. She kept her fingertips on the wall as she made her way down the hallway, her leg brushing against the bin bags and boxes that still lay there, until they found the light switch.

  Ida blinked against the glare of the bare bulb overhead.

  ‘Rea?’ she called.

  Realising her voice rang through the street, she went back to the door and pushed it closed. She turned and looked up the stairs.

  Rea stared back down, her head resting on the top step, trickles of red falling away.

  It felt to Ida that her mind had split in two at that moment. One half wondering why Rea was just lying there, why didn’t she get up out of that paint she’d spilled? The other knowing beyond all certainty that her daughter was dead. She had stood there, trapped between her two selves, unable to move or speak for a minute or a lifetime, she couldn’t be sure.

  The following hours bled into one hellish smear. Ida could only recall them as a series of still images, tableaux of the end of the world. She couldn’t remember whom she’d called first – Graham or an ambulance – but the paramedic arrived before anyone else. A man wearing green and yellow high visibility overalls. Ida saw the SUV with its fluorescent decals as she opened the door to him. The paramedic saw Rea over her shoulder, said almost nothing, and climbed up to her.

  Ida watched him crouched on the steps, feeling, listening, shining a tiny torch into Rea’s eyes. Then he stayed quiet and still for a while before taking a phone from his pocket and calling someone.

  Graham arrived at the same time as the ambulance.

  The crew entered first. The paramedic looked down at them and shook his head.

  It was then that Ida fell.

  The rest was a stream of flashing lights and questions, policewomen with notepads, offers of water, cups of tea, assurances, whispers, a hundred secrets being kept from her by the seemingly thousands of people who came and went in those hours.

  Graham had driven Ida home.

  He stopped outside an off-licence, got out of the car, and went inside. Graham had given up alcohol more than thirty years ago. Not a drop, not even a glass of sherry at Christmas.

  While she sat there waiting, Ida realised two things. First, that Graham had barely spoken to her in all the hours since his arrival at Raymond’s house. Second, that she had not gone to Rea, had not touched her, had not held her. She hadn’t even put a foot on the stairs.

  ‘What kind of mother am I?’ she asked the empty car.

  It came at her then, all of it, as one great wall of fear and grief and regret and pain, every piece falling on her at once. She howled until her throat burned.

  Then Ida felt the car rock on its suspension as Graham climbed in, felt a bottle drop at her feet, and heard the engine cough into life. She had recovered herself by the time the car was moving through the traffic. Searching her pockets, she found a crumpled tissue and dabbed the tears from her cheeks.

  She and Graham didn’t speak as he parked in their driveway, as they climbed out of the car, as he unlocked their door, as they entered their home. Already the phone was ringing.

  Graham went to the kitchen, the bottle of whiskey in his hand. Ida went to the good room, the tissue in hers.

  And here she sat, quiet and still, a rage burning in her like a bright electric filament, an anger like she’d never felt before.

  21

  FLANAGAN WALKED TOWARDS her temporary office, a bundle of files under one arm, her jacket under the other. They’d stuck her away in the darkest corner of the station, her only view the gravel-covered roof of the adjoining block and a string of utility buildings. God-awful sixties architecture, all straight lines and concrete.

  A suited man stood waiting at her door, leaning on the frame, his arms folded. His head tilted as he watched her approach, like a predator unsure whether to eat or play with its victim. She stopped several feet short of him.

  ‘DCI Flanagan, I presume,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not taking his extended hand. It dropped back to his side.

  ‘DCI Dan Hewitt,’ he said. ‘C3.’

  Her mind stumbled in confusion. But Dr Prunty told me it was C5, she almost said, malignant. Then she understood. He was C3, Intelligence Branch. Confusion gave way to suspicion.

  Flanagan swallowed and took a breath, hoping she hadn’t revealed too much of herself.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.

  ‘Jack Lennon’s downstairs in an interview room, waiting for you,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. I’m just dropping off some things, then I’m heading down there.’

  She had been standing at the top of the stairs in Deramore Gardens, leaning over Rea Carlisle’s devastated skull, when a constable had called from below, ‘Ma’am, DS Calvin’s been trying to reach you.’

  ‘My phone’s off,’ she had replied. ‘I’ll call him back.’

  ‘He says it’s urgent, ma’am.’

  So she had left the body and returned to the station.

  ‘Maybe we could have a quick chat before you do,’ Hewitt said.

  ‘What about, exactly?’

  Hewitt shrugged. ‘Jack and me go back a long way. Personally and professionally. I can give you some background that might be useful. If you want.’

  She looked him up and down. He wore a charcoal-coloured suit, well tailored, better than most of his colleagues dressed in. And French cuffs, tasteful links binding them.

  Flanagan made a dozen judgements before she opened her office door and said, ‘After you, Inspector.’

  As she followed him ins
ide, he said, ‘Call me Dan.’

  He offered his hand once more. She dumped the files and jacket on her desk, shook his hand before gesturing towards the seat. His fingers were smooth and cool, like silken worms. Her skin itched where they had touched and she had to force herself not to reach for the bottle of hand sanitiser in the drawer.

  Flanagan went to her own chair and said, ‘So what do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Jack was mixed up with the woman who died last night,’ Hewitt said, crossing his legs. The crease of his trouser ran sharply along his thigh, over his knee, down to the hem. A watch that looked like an Oris from her side of the desk.

  She wondered if Hewitt could really afford such details, or if he liked to live better than a DCI’s income should allow. Even if he was C3, the force within a force.

  Stop it, she thought. You’re not investigating him.

  ‘He told my colleague he saw her yesterday afternoon,’ Flanagan said.

  ‘Is he a suspect?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not ruling anything out. You said he’s a friend of yours.’

  ‘Yes. Well, he used to be, anyway.’

  ‘Not any more? What happened?’

  ‘This is off the record, yes?’

  ‘Of course,’ Flanagan said. ‘What ended your friendship with him?’

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ Hewitt said. ‘We just drifted apart. Especially these last few years. We still speak the odd time, but he’s not the same Jack I went to Garnerville with.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He used to be a good guy. You know, even when this was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, we were like any other police force. We had good and bad, and Jack was more good than bad. He got a commendation for bravery one time. He and his patrol were ambushed by republicans in the city centre. He took a bullet to the shoulder and still saved the life of one of his colleagues. But he wasn’t the same after that. I mean, he always had an eye for the girls, he chased every bit of skirt he saw – pardon the expression – but he got a bit more desperate as he got older. He had to work harder at it, and I think it made him bitter.’