The Child Before

by Michael Scanlon

  ‘Do you now?’ Beck heard him mutter.

  ‘Was it really called for?’ Wilde asked when the briefing was over. ‘To directly contradict what I had said in front of my officers?’

  ‘I didn’t directly contradict you. I thought I was being quite subtle. I do believe the baby is probably dead.’

  ‘But you don’t know. That’s the thing. And speculation is dangerous. We must be openminded. To all possibilities. If you have opinions of that nature in future, tell me in private. Understand?’

  Beck nodded. ‘I understand. Anyway, where the hell is Inspector O’Reilly? I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning, and he needs to be here, doesn’t he? Has anyone heard from him? If not, isn’t it time someone went round to his house?’

  Wilde’s brow furrowed. ‘Someone has been round to his house. Apparently he’s not there. I spoke to his ex-wife. She usually hears from him every couple of days or so. Because they still have a boy in college. But she hasn’t heard from him in a while. That’s how she put it. We spoke yesterday evening. She said he hasn’t been himself for the last few weeks. Make of that what you will. Something wasn’t right with him, she said. I really don’t know what to make of any of it. Do you have an opinion on this?’

  ‘Where does he live?’ Beck asked.

  ‘Just outside town. On the Loughrea Road. I don’t know much about the man any more, to be honest. Not since he separated. Everything changed. Up to then we’d see each other socially from time to time, our circles would cross… you’ve heard the rumours of course, the sex party scandal from some years back, the swingers thing. He’d never get another promotion because of it. He was stuck, and he knew it. You’ve seen him. His resentment. You’ve had personal experience of it, haven’t you?’

  ‘For a time,’ Beck said.

  Over Wilde’s shoulder, he could see Claire Somers enter the Ops Room. She crossed and sat at her desk.

  ‘When you say you know he wasn’t there, at home,’ Beck asked. ‘How do you know?’

  Wilde raised an eyebrow.

  ‘There was no reply, of course, when the patrol called earlier. No one answered the door. That’s how I know.’

  ‘Boss,’ Beck said. ‘I think you need to send someone round again and kick the door in.’

  Thirty-Five

  Maurice Crabby sat on an upturned box at the back of the supermarket storeroom. He liked everything about this storeroom. He liked the smell of it – like dried figs – he liked the grey-painted bare block walls, he liked the high-vaulted roof with its lattice of exposed metal girders. But most of all, he liked the fact that he could hide in here, amongst the shelves and row upon row of stacked goods, in this warren of cardboard walkways. Here he felt safe.

  Today he had retreated further to the rear than he had ever done before, pushing beyond the staples, past the savouries, past the tinned soups, into the realm of the mango chutney and organic coconut milk, the almond butter spreads. Rarely did anyone come here. After all, a box of mango chutney could be expected to last a year. He settled himself into an alcove hollowed from the boxes around him, and sat with his head held on fisted hands, staring ahead. Opposite was a shelf containing an assortment of jars and bottles. These were plainly out of date, the tins specked with rust and the bottle labels mottled and peeling. A stash of back rowers that had never been rotated properly according to the policy Maurice himself had pinned to all the walls about the place. Left by a lazy teenager long since moved on to some university course or other.

  He didn’t care about any of it now. Because it was only a matter of time before they came looking for him. And he knew what would happen then. Because he had been there before. He had seen the windows that looked out onto the pretty gardens. But all was not as it seemed. The windows that looked out onto the pretty gardens had iron bars across them. And he had heard those pitiful screams that echoed along those gleaming corridors where shrouded ghostly figures glided with no sound but the flapping of their capes. Some nuns had great bunches of keys that hung from their waists. They were the nuns that the orderlies accompanied. The orderlies, big, barrel-chested simpletons selected from the orphanages and reared there for this very purpose. Bred more like, Maurice considered, like the Nazis bred Doberman pinchers. To keep order, in the Loony Bin. That’s where they’d put him too. So Maurice kept his mouth shut.

  He cradled his arms across his chest now and began to rock back and forth slowly.

  He thought of the missing baby, imagining the screams of it so loudly he clamped his hands across his ears to drown it out.

  But he could not.

  He could still hear it. Louder than ever.

  The baby. Crying. Screaming.

  He pressed his hands tighter onto his ears and closed his eyes. Yet still he heard it.

  Go away. Go away. Go away.

  It did not. He heard it louder than ever.

  ‘Gooo awaaaay,’ a whimper.

  It was no use of course. The sound remained.

  She stood a little distance from him, watching, one end of her mouth up, the other down, two teeth poking over her lower lip. She heard him whimper, ‘Gooo awaaaay,’ and began to laugh. Crabby’s eyes snapped open. He glared at her.

  ‘You pathetic little man,’ she said. ‘Did you kill that woman? Well, did you?’

  Crabby stood slowly, awkwardly. He raised his upper lip, pushing his two front teeth over the bottom one, made a clicking sound.

  ‘You look like a rat,’ he said. ‘Do you know that?’

  She blinked.

  ‘Yes, maybe I did kill her. So what?’

  That look on his face.

  She took a step back.

  Crabby took a step forward.

  Again she blinked, took another step back, bumping into a bank of cardboard boxes. They quivered dangerously, before settling again.

  ‘But maybe you finished her off,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because you were there too. Weren’t you? In the Range Rover. I didn’t think of it at the time. When I was passing. But the sat nav pinged. It pinged twice. That new sat nav. Can do anything but boil a kettle. You forgot to clear it, didn’t you? It pinged. Twice. I was only there once. You were there. In the Range Rover. Weren’t you?’

  Her mouth realigned, was no longer lopsided. Then it opened again, wide. She brought a hand up and covered it. He didn’t think he had ever seen his wife look so helpless before.

  Thirty-Six

  Inspector O’Reilly sat reclined in the red velvet armchair with gold braid tassels hanging from the ends of the armrests. The curtains were drawn and the gaudy chandelier threw down shafts of weak light. A panelled mirror in the shape of a half moon fixed to the wall by the door reflected the light back in dimples. The curtains were parted just enough to reveal the marked patrol car pulling up outside, its two occupants opening the doors and getting out. But O’Reilly did not move, instead he stared ahead through the gap, waiting for the officers to walk up the garden path and knock on his front door.

  Garda Dempsey lifted the heavy brass knocker and brought it down onto the brass plate three times, careful not to push too hard. This was the home of an inspector after all. When he received no response, Probationer Smyth tapped on the glass with the ring of a finger, tack, tack, tack.

  ‘I think that’s enough,’ he said, when it appeared she was about to repeat the procedure.

  She looked at him, holding her folded ring finger next to the glass.

  ‘Really,’ he said. ‘I think that’s enough.’

  She ignored him. Tack, tack, tack, again, louder this time. Dempsey took a breath and counted to ten. It always worked.

  There was no letterbox to look through. An American style postbox was fixed by the garden gate instead.

  Still, Inspector O’Reilly did not react. The sounds of the knocking had reverberated throughout the property. A face blinkered by the palms of two hands appeared at the window soon after, two eyes swinging back and forth as they peered into
the house. The inspector stared back, but the searching eyes did not see him.

  ‘That window is slightly open,’ Smyth said, pointing.

  It was, very slightly, the window to the right of the door. They walked to it and looked through. A corner settee inside, a patterned rug in the centre of the floor, a coffee table, a large flat screen TV against the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  ‘Wonder why the curtains are pulled in the other room and not here?’ she asked, nodding her head in the direction of the other window.

  She looked at Dempsey again. Do something, it said.

  ‘What are you looking at me for?’ he snapped now. This girl was irritating him. ‘Try the bloody window yourself. See if you can open it?’

  Thirty-Seven

  Beck stood next to Claire Somers, who was seated at her desk, head bowed. She did not look up at him. He waited for her to speak but she did not. She reached for some papers, began shuffling them.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, starting to turn away.

  ‘Don’t.’

  He noticed the top sheet – it had the logo of an insurance company on it – appear before her a second time. She was shuffling for the sake of it. She stopped, put the papers down.

  ‘I’ve left Lucy,’ still not looking up at him. ‘Temporarily. We need a break. That’s all.’

  Beck said nothing.

  ‘I need a place to stay.’

  Beck hesitated.

  ‘You want to stay with me?’

  ‘Christ,’ looking up now. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’

  Again, Beck hesitated, before answering.

  ‘That’s not a problem. I have a spare key.’

  ‘Are you sure? I feel like I’ve just asked you for one of your kidneys.’

  Beck fished out a keyring from his pocket. ‘I’m surprised,’ he said, beginning to prise a key from it. ‘That you’d want to stay with me, that’s all.’

  ‘But not that I’ve left Lucy?’

  ‘Hmm, that too. You’ve only just gotten married, after all.’

  He held out the key.

  She took it.

  ‘You think I don’t know that. It’s temporary, like I said. Anyway, I also said I needed a place to stay. Not that I wanted to stay. With you that is.’ She smiled. ‘Only joking. Thanks, Beck.’

  ‘You know where the house is, right?’

  ‘I know where the house is.’

  ‘There’s only one rule.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t treat you as a visitor. That’s too much like hard work. You make yourself at home. Do your own thing. Okay?’

  ‘That’s two rules.’

  ‘The second is a clarification of the first.’

  She smiled again.

  ‘Understood.’

  Thirty-Eight

  It was an old type, wooden-framed window. It was open just enough for Probationer Smyth to slide the hard cover of her notebook in and lift the latch from its holder and knock it to the side.

  ‘You first,’ she said.

  If she went first, he’d have nothing to stare at but her arse. She didn’t want that.

  Dempsey latticed the fingers of both hands together and bent down.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a leg up. Makes sense. You’re lighter.’

  Not by much.

  ‘Come on. We need to get in. Quick. Do it.’

  She didn’t think about it, placed her right boot into the stirrup of his hands and started to lift herself up. She leaned forward through the window, saw a radiator directly beneath, and clamped a hand onto each corner. She understood at that moment the advantage of the baggy and formless uniform trousers she and the girls had been moaning about in training college. She twisted and slithered through the window until she could place both her feet onto the floor and finally, stand up.

  She looked about the room. It was chilly in here. She noted the coating of dust on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

  ‘Get on with it,’ Dempsey said. ‘Open the front door and let me in.’

  When she did, he crossed to the bottom of the stairs and called up, ‘Anybody home? Inspector O’Reilly. Hello. This is the guards, sir.’

  Smyth placed her hand onto the door knob of the room that had the curtains pulled. She turned it and pushed the door open. A light was on. A chandelier no less.

  She saw a red velvet armchair some feet in front of her, tassels hanging from the ends of the armrests. On the wall was a large picture, of a naked woman, lying on a floor, her tongue curling from between closed lips, her legs crossed, one leg folded over the other, playfully concealing her crotch, an arm draped across her breasts. The room was what she considered a cheap whorehouse might look like.

  She saw now that someone was sitting in the armchair. She could see grey hair circling a bald patch rising over the back of it. She knew that head. It was Inspector O’Reilly’s, and he was sitting very still. She wondered if he was sleeping, and considered retreating back into the hall. At that moment, Dempsey came into the room.

  ‘It doesn’t seem anybody’s home,’ he said.

  His voice was loud, which startled her. She jumped, quickly pointing to the armchair, mouthing the word: ‘There’.

  He followed her finger, and nodded. He approached the chair.

  ‘Inspector O’Reilly,’ he said. ‘Is everything alright, sir?’

  The probationer watched, holding back. She expected Inspector O’Reilly to wake about now and bark like an angry dog. The less he saw of her the better.

  Dempsey moved to the front of the chair. Here it comes, she thought.

  But Inspector O’Reilly did not speak. Dempsey did. Two words.

  ‘Holy God!’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘All airports and sea ports have been notified. We must continue to believe she is alive until we have verifiable proof to the contrary.’

  Superintendent Wilde sat back in his seat, observing Beck. Who considered his boss was waiting to be challenged. Which Beck had no intention of doing, because Wilde was right, Beck did not know. The baby may not be dead, and watching the airports and sea ports was a good call to make.

  But despite this rationale, Beck still felt it. And knew he was only trying to fool himself that he did not feel it. Because the feeling had not gone away. The intangible but as real as something he could reach out and touch feeling was only stronger now.

  That child is dead.

  ‘The press has finally drawn the distinction,’ Superintendent Wilde said. ‘Between the murder of Samantha Power and her missing baby. They have at last begun to treat the baby as a separate story. Which is good news. Means we might get a tip off. Jeez, we need it. One tip off could end this immediately, it usually does. Someone out there knows something…’

  There was a loud knock on the office door, but before Superintendent Wilde could say anything, it opened. A young uniform was standing there.

  ‘The patrol has reported back from Inspector O’Reilly’s house, sir.’

  Superintendent Wilde looked at the uniform, annoyed at his uninvited entry.

  ‘What…’

  ‘They found him.’

  ‘About time. Is he coming in?’

  The uniform looked surprised.

  ‘No, sir. He’s not. He’s dead. His throat’s been slit.’

  For the second time in just two days, Beck found himself reeling out crime scene tape. He tied one end around a pillar in the garden wall and extended it to the last pillar on the other side of the gate. The house was a narrow three storey building with a grey peeling façade. The garden was overgrown but with splashes of colour from shrubs set in the gravel along the edges.

  When Beck went in, SOCO Mahony was standing inside the door of the room where Inspector O’Reilly’s body lay sprawled on the armchair, the smell pungent but not overpowering. Two dead bodies, their throats slit, in less than forty-eight hours. Coincidences didn’t stretch that far, Beck knew. One person, he thought, a crazy person
perhaps, was responsible, who was out there now, walking around, taking the air maybe, nodding his head in greeting as he passed people on the street.

  The room was surprisingly chilly. And there were no flies. Beck thought about that. He’d come across bodies in the past in rooms where the doors and windows were tightly shut. Usually old men the world had forgotten about. Some had been dead for months. In such cases the skin tissue slowly and indecipherably turned into a slimy, stinking gel, before coalescing and over time becoming the texture of a wrinkled prune that disintegrated to the touch. There was no sign of forced entry, that Beck could see.

  Mahony bent down and looked closely at the door panels while another technician moved along the wall, scrutinising it from top to bottom. Their first job was to look and appraise. The third technician recorded everything on a handheld camcorder. They were oblivious to the body. For now. Beck edged along the wall. He hadn’t asked anyone if he should be here, because he knew what the answer would be. Next to him on a shelf was a marble clock, beside it a brown and white porcelain jug surrounded by brown and white porcelain cups, a collection of books at the end. He moved again, edging along until he came to a point where he was in front of the chair and had a view of O’Reilly’s body. By its nature, death by murder comes swiftly, without warning, is always violent, sometimes brutal, and usually, but not always, a surprise. In Celtic mythology, it is believed it sometimes traps the spirit. Hence ghost stories rarely have their origins in deaths that are peaceful and natural.

  Murder changed everything. Victims did not repose, because usually coffins were sealed. Where they were not, it was impossible not to look at the body in its velvet trimmed box and think, first and foremost: someone has taken this person’s life from them. The natural symmetry between a life lived and of its passing was lost. Like now. This would be a closed coffin. O’Reilly’s face was a blackened, swollen caricature, the mouth open, the underside of a purple, bloated, tongue curling up, filling the mouth, the veins limp and black, drained of their blood, the head lurched at an angle: hanging. But still, Beck was struck by the expression on the late Inspector’s face. Despite everything, that look could be summed up in one word: relief.