Hope Dies Last

by Deborah Finn

  A woman walked past with a baby in a pushchair, a preschooler trailing behind her, picking up things from the pavement and dropping them again. The woman caught sight of Gallagher and turned around to the child. “Matty, come here,” she called.

  The child jumped up and down, laughing for no particular reason. Gallagher smiled. The kid was so happy. The woman held out her hand. “Matty,” she called again. The child toddled up to her and put his hand in hers. Gallagher watched the little hand swallowed up in the woman’s grasp. The woman smiled at the child and the child giggled in glee. Then the woman’s gaze moved up and swung forward, ready to carry on walking, but on the way her eyes travelled over Gallagher’s. In just that microsecond, he could see the cold dismissal.

  Bitch, he thought. And the thought brought him back to the woman in the vault. She was a bitch too. And he remembered the kid’s eyes, looking at him. He took another swig of whisky and stood up and started walking.

  This road joined the main road, the long drag into town. There was a garage on the corner, then a string of grimy shops and even grimier houses, their curtains permanently drawn against the traffic. Here was an electrical repair shop. There was a TV running in the window. Gallagher stopped when he caught sight of Bryony Haslett. He fucking hated her. Look at her, in her neat little suit, her mouth always on the move. He took another swig. He’d better stop now. Didn’t he have a radio interview later? Was it radio? Did it even matter anymore?

  He walked on until the shopping centre came into view. It had looked good once, he supposed. Now it just looked cheap; cracked tiles on the walls, old Christmas decorations still hanging from the ceiling, shops selling cheap frozen food and knock off watches and cafes selling burgers that you wouldn’t feed to a dog. He walked through the slide doors. The Greenway would have been beautiful. How could anyone say this was better for people? He stopped and looked at himself in the darkened reflection from an empty shop window. He didn’t look bad, not bad at all. He looked better than these peasants, that was for sure.

  He heard laughter behind him and turned around. She was looking straight at him, insolent little slut, standing there with her mates, smoking.

  He walked up to her. She watched him every step of the way, her lip curved into a smile.

  “Something funny?” he asked.

  She looked him up and down. “Yeah.”

  He could feel something at the front of his head, like tiny beads of rage exploding inside his skull. He was breathing hard, breathing in her smoke.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” he said.

  “Is that right, old man?” She took another drag and blew the smoke right into his face. Her friends laughed. One of the lads did a wheelie around him on his stupid little bike.

  Gallagher jutted his chin forward. “I’m asking you nicely to put it out.”

  She tipped back her head and laughed. He could see the column of her throat, could see her open mouth. He wasn’t really aware of putting his hand on her throat. All the sound was gone. Everywhere went silent and he was making her shut up. He could see her popping eyes staring at him, and then suddenly there was a pain in the back of his head. He let go of her and reached up to touch his head. There was blood. Someone had hit him. He looked around in amazement. He could see the faces all looking at him and slowly the sound started to come back.

  “You fucking mental freak,” the girl was yelling at him.

  “Get the bizzies on him,” someone said.

  “He was trying to fucking kill me,” the girl was saying to her friends. Someone shoved him and he staggered backwards. Then they were all laughing. He was sitting on a bench now. The shopping centre music was suddenly very loud. They were gone; when did they go? The kid on the bike circled back and spat at him, then sped off. For a second, he felt trapped inside his body, paralysed. And then he stood up. He had to get out, he needed air. He staggered through the automatic door and onto the pavement.

  Farren cackled. He was listening to local radio as he drove to the vault. The boss had totally fucking lost it. He turned the volume up.

  “He tried to kill me,” some girl was saying. “If me mates hadn’t been there, he would have killed me.”

  Back in the studio, the newsreader reported that several of the girl’s friends had video footage on their phones, which did appear to show Lester Gallagher with his hands around the neck of a teenage girl. The girl had not yet reported the matter to the police, but the office of the DPP had expressed concern.

  Farren shook his head. He pulled up the car near where the fence was cut. He turned the rear view mirror so he could look at himself. He’d grown a goatee. He stroked his chin. It was a good look.

  He picked up the keys and made his way into the compound. He couldn’t go on doing this, but he hadn’t figured out what he was going to do. He made his way down to the vaults, his mind running round a closed loop. He wasn’t going to finish her or the kid, and he wasn’t going to let Gallagher do it either. But he couldn’t let them go; they’d seen him.

  He opened the door, registered the relief on her face when she saw it was him. He looked at the boy.

  “He looks better. How are you, champ?”

  He squatted down in front of the boy. The boy blinked at him uncertainly and didn’t speak.

  “He’s a lot better,” his mother said. “Did you bring some more water?”

  Farren set down the grocery bag: water, sandwiches, toilet roll, chocolate, more Imodium.

  “He doesn’t need this now,” she said. She handed the packet back to him.

  He dropped it back into the carrier bag. “May as well leave it there,” he said. “Just in case, like.”

  She looked down suddenly, as if she’d been smacked. Her voice was quiet. “Please let him out,” she said.

  Farren stood up and walked away from her. “I can’t do that, lady,” he said. He turned round and looked at her. She was watching him now, her eyes pleading.

  “Please,” she said again. “He’s just a little boy. How can you do this?” Her eyes were filling with tears and the kid was starting to whimper, leaning over to cling onto his mother.

  “Stop it,” Farren said, taking a pace towards her. “Look, you’re getting him all upset. I’m telling you, it’ll be alright in the end.”

  She shook her head, tears running down her cheeks now. “No,” she said, over and over. “That man...”

  Farren tried to laugh at it. “I won’t let him do anything,” he said.

  “You’re letting him keep us here,” she said.

  Farren twisted uncomfortably, scratched his chin. “It’s just business,” he said.

  Her forehead screwed up. “Business?” she said. She looked at her child. “How is this business?”

  “You don’t understand,” Farren said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Farren rummaged in the carrier bag and pulled out the chocolate bar. He handed it to the kid. “Here you go, mate,” he said.

  The kid shook his head and turned his face against his mother’s chest.

  Farren sighed. “It’s nearly all over,” he said. “The man’s going down. And then... well then...”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. It’ll be alright.”

  “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright. You keep saying that. But it’s not. When he comes here again...” Her breathing went all funny and Farren saw her trying to steady her breaths, her shoulders going down. “If he comes here when you’re not here, what are we going to do?”

  Farren scratched his face and screwed up his eyes. “He won’t come here when I’m not here.”

  “He does,” she hissed. “He comes here and he stares at Ben, and he...” her voice trailed off as her chest heaved. She shook her head, her eyes staring into the darkness. “What is he going to do with us?”

  Farren lifted his palms. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  She looked at him. “You might not hurt us,” she said. “But what about G
allagher?”

  They stared at each other, neither moving. There was the sound of the river running, water dropping from the ceiling onto pools on the floor.

  “You know who he is?” Farren said.

  She dropped her head, looking at her lap where her fingers were twisting together. Her head barely moved in a tiny nod.

  “He’s been wearing that stupid hood thing,” he said.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Right,” he said. He paced around the room. He turned on his heel suddenly towards her. “So why are you here, then? I bet you know more than I do.”

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. “He’s sick,” she said. “Gallagher, I mean. Anyone can see that.”

  “Yeah, but why has he picked on you?”

  She looked up at him. She looked almost surprised. “You do this, without even knowing why?” she said.

  Farren turned away from her. “Sometimes you don’t wanna know why,” he said.

  She laughed bitterly. “I imagine that makes it a whole lot easier.”

  He span back towards her. “I don’t like this either,” he said.

  “Then let us out,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he said, leaning down to put his face close to hers. “Stop saying it.”

  “He’ll come back,” she said. “Give me a knife.”

  Farren laughed, and walked to the far corner of the room. “Give you a knife?” he said. “Oh right, that’s a great idea.”

  “So I can protect us,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m not giving you a knife.”

  “Then let us out,” she said again.

  Farren rubbed his eyes. It was doing his head in. Round and round in circles. “I can’t,” he said, but it came out weak.

  Her fingers stretched out towards him. “I won’t tell anyone about you,” she said. “You’ve been good to us.”

  And he saw it in her eyes, the lie. Of course she’d tell them. She was playing him. She knew who Gallagher was and that would lead them straight to him.

  “I’m going now,” he said. “You’ve got your stuff. You’ll be alright.”

  Her chin dropped to her chest and he heard her starting to cry. Something swelled inside his chest, something like anger. “You’ll be alright,” he insisted, but she didn’t stop crying.

  He pulled the door shut behind him and locked it.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Thirty Three

  Martin put his head in his hands. “For the thousandth time, I did not kill Marilyn Souter. I barely knew her.”

  “We know you weren’t there on the night she died...”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Martin shouted. “What does that tell you? Doesn’t that tell you that I didn’t kill her? Isn’t that what a fucking alibi means?”

  “You barely knew her,” McIntyre said smoothly. He looked at the written note, sealed in its bag. “And yet you wanted to get rid of her?” He looked up and smiled. “I’m quoting,” he added.

  Martin sighed. “It’s not how it sounds.”

  “So you’ve said. But you still haven’t managed to explain just what you did mean,” said McIntyre. “Like here,” he went on. “What if Marilyn tells Beth? Or here: Police, question mark; Ben, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.” McIntyre looked steadily at Martin. “Mr Halton, it’s time you told us what’s been going on.”

  Martin looked at him and felt the truth of it sinking in. If Gallagher had Ben, then he was in danger. Keeping quiet now meant nothing. There was nothing he could do to protect his son or his wife. His shoulders sagged as his head dropped. He took a deep breath. “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

  Martin didn’t look at McIntyre, but he could hear the satisfaction in his voice when he spoke. “Good,” said McIntyre. “We’ll start with Marilyn Souter. What was your relationship with her?”

  “She was Ben’s mother.”

  There was a momentary silence. McIntyre had been writing notes, and the scratch of his pen on paper ceased. There was just the electrical hum of the recording machine.

  “So you did have an affair with Marilyn Souter?”

  “No.” Martin shook his head, and looked up at McIntyre. For a moment, he was almost amused by the wary puzzlement in the other man’s eyes. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

  “Try me,” McIntyre offered.

  “OK.” Martin leaned forward on the table. He frowned. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning,” McIntyre advised.

  “Right,” Martin agreed. He shook his head, as though trying to shuffle the information into place. “OK. Well, I guess it starts ten years ago.”

  The inspector raised an eyebrow. “Ten years ago? When Marilyn Souter dropped out from her life, yes?”

  “Thereabouts,” Martin agreed. “Ten years ago, I came home from work to find my wife sitting on the sofa, holding a newborn baby. That baby was my son Ben. The son I have reported missing.”

  McIntyre nodded for him to continue.

  “Beth said that a woman had turned up on the doorstep, a woman she’d never seen before in her life. She was carrying a baby. You have to understand,” Martin interrupted himself. “What I mean is, we’d been trying for a baby for years, Beth and I, but it never worked. We’d had all the tests and...well, you know. Anyway, it looked like we’d have a chance with IVF. So we tried that. Five rounds of it, we did. Five miscarriages. It nearly killed her.” He stared off into the past, remembering her crying behind the closed bathroom door, refusing to let him in, refusing to share the grief.

  “Go on,” McIntyre prompted.

  “OK. Well, we were lined up for adoption. They were starting the checks and we were waiting for the next stage. And then this woman turns up on the doorstep. With a baby.”

  “The baby who was Ben?”

  “Yes. She came in the house, and she told Beth that she didn’t want to give her baby away to just anyone. She wanted to give him to the right people.”

  “Your wife didn’t know her?”

  “No. They’d never met. There would be no reason for them ever to have met.”

  “But she knew you, of course; Marilyn Souter knew you. So she knew that you were trying to adopt?”

  Martin shook his head. “No. That’s not the kind of thing I would ever have talked about at work. It was from the social work office. That’s how she found out. She saw us there one time when she was talking to the social worker. She was going to have the baby adopted, you see. Adopted properly, I mean. And then she saw us there, and she decided on a different plan.”

  “I see,” said McIntyre, though his frown suggested that he didn’t.

  “I guess she wanted to know where the baby was,” Martin suggested. “Maybe she wanted to be able to track him. Or maybe she just thought that me and Beth, we’d be alright. I really don’t know.”

  “OK,” McIntyre said. “So, go on. She brings the baby round and she gives the baby to Beth. She explained how she knew you?”

  “No,” Martin said. “She said nothing. We never knew who she was. She just left the baby, with a bottle of milk and a blanket. We still have that blanket,” he added.

  McIntyre stared at him, his eyes narrowed. “And you just kept the baby?” he asked, incredulously.

  Martin nodded, with a short breath of laughter. “I know. It sounds mad,” he agreed. “At first, I said we had to go to the authorities. We couldn’t just keep a baby. Maybe the woman needed help, maybe she wasn’t well.”

  “But you didn’t?” McIntyre asked. “Go to the authorities.”

  Martin shook his head. “She talked me into it,” he said simply. “The thing is, I loved Beth, and she wasn’t happy. I couldn’t make her happy. Each day, we were falling apart.” He looked downwards, shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably. “It was all a show for the social workers checking us out. We weren’t really a couple anymore. She wouldn’t sleep with me. She wouldn’t let me near
her anymore. She wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t let me in.”

  “And so you...?” Gallagher prompted.

  “Yes, you were right about that.” Martin sighed heavily. “The affairs. It meant nothing,” he said. He sat up and loosened his shoulders. It felt good. It actually felt good to get this all out. “I didn’t even care about the sex. I just wanted someone to hold me, someone who wouldn’t look at me like I was a failure, like I was the enemy.”

  “OK,” McIntyre said. “And Beth found out about these affairs?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “But we got past it. When we got Ben... there was no way I was going to mess up then.”

  “So everything was happy families again,” McIntyre said, with a wry look. “So why did she kick you out?”

  Martin shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “She wouldn’t tell me. It was after her birthday. I don’t know what happened. It was like it all came back to haunt her, to haunt us both.”

  McIntyre frowned and was silent for a moment. “OK,” he said. “We’ll come back to that. Back to the baby. So you just kept the baby?”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “It was weak. I know it was weak.” He shook his head. “But I can’t regret it.”

  “Right,” McIntyre said. “So you kept Marilyn Souter’s baby. But you didn’t know it was Marilyn Souter’s baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “And somehow,” McIntyre shrugged expansively, “you passed him off as your own?”

  “Yes,” Martin agreed.

  “So, when did you find out? About Marilyn, I mean. About Ben being her baby?”

  “It was just a few weeks ago,” Martin said. “She came up to Beth in the park. Ben was playing on the pirate ship and Beth was hanging around. She wouldn’t normally, I mean Ben’s ten. He doesn’t need us to hang around the park with him.”

  “So it was just by chance that she was there this time?”

  “Yeah. Who knows how long Marilyn had been watching Ben, watching him go to the park, watching him play football.”

  “That’s what she’d been doing? Watching him?”

  “That’s what she said. Said she’d been watching him for weeks. But this was the first time she’d seen one of us out there with him. And so she went to sit next to Beth, and she says: don’t you even know who I am? And Beth looked at her, and slowly the penny dropped.”