The Sleeping Season

by Kelly Creighton

  ‘Thanks, Harriet,’ he said.

  I noticed the questioning look Stuart gave Raymond for his over-familiarity. It probably seemed weird to Stuart, being male and all. The Chief, drinking coffee, allowed his eyes to take Raymond in, then Zara, who walked to the scanner smoothing her clothes down. Stuart guided her, speaking as pleasantly and distractingly as a Family Liaison Officer speaks to a child. She looked back at him with doe eyes. She looked really pretty, for a second I felt a pang of jealousy. I know! Me? Jealous of her? Here in the Venn diagram of the scan room pity and envy overlapped in me. It was madness, I know that now.

  ‘That’s some piece of gear there,’ Raymond said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘it’s all different nowadays, with technological advances.’

  ‘We’ll have our answers wild and fast then.’

  Then there was a racket, Higgins saying, ‘How did that get in here?’

  Circling the room above us was a parakeet, yellow and green, a red hat of feathers topping its head. Dunne soon left the room, like it wasn’t his problem, and closed the door behind him. Raymond was mesmerised. A smile brought his tongue to the edge of his mouth. I couldn’t see anything but that; I couldn’t see past that expression on his face. Raymond was happy. It would be good to be that happy. He was not taking his situation seriously.

  ‘Well,’ said Linskey as she entered the room, ‘we all done here?’

  ‘Close the door behind you,’ Higgins shouted.

  She paused, saw the bird and then obliged.

  ‘Nearly done,’ said Stuart, trying to ignore the bird. ‘I just need your autograph please, Zara.’

  She signed the form dutifully.

  ‘Done,’ Stuart said.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ asked Linskey.

  Higgins put his hand out, the back of it steady. There the parakeet settled.

  ‘First time you get the bird,’ said Simon.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Higgins.

  We all gathered round, Raymond and Zara included. Stuart was saying, ‘This is someone’s pet. Obviously used to being handled.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, trying to get everyone away.

  ‘Get a cage,’ said Linskey. ‘If no one comes for it later, I’ll take it home.’

  ‘We’ll go get one now,’ said Higgins, looking at Sarge Simon.

  ‘I doubt it takes two of you,’ I remarked.

  ‘Okay, I’ll get a cage,’ Higgins said.

  Zara’s face tightened; she was growing impatient. I thanked Stuart. Linskey led the couple to the interview suite, and I followed along the dark corridor behind them. She turned and gave Raymond and Zara that mumsy little smile of hers, her snub nose creasing up, and opened the door to the waiting room.

  ‘Take a seat, Raymond, and we’ll be right with you,’ she said. ‘We’re just going to speak with Zara first, okay?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Raymond as he hobbled in. ‘Zee,’ he said as an afterthought, ‘you’ll do fine.’

  *

  Although we’d told Zara she could have a solicitor and that we could sort that out for her, she waived her right to one.

  ‘There’s no call for all that palaver,’ she said. She was sure River would come home, then she looked unsure.

  I couldn’t help but think about Donald Guy when I was with Zara. I remembered the look in Sorcha Seton’s heavy eyes, the fear, the weight of her own guilt.

  Linskey pressed record: ‘Monday 17th October 2016, just about. It’s 11:24 p.m., and we have Zara Reede in the interview suite.’

  ‘Procedure?’ Zara asked with a little smile.

  Zara picked at her nails, the cuffs of her oversized cardigan covering almost the length of her fingers. The prettiness that had been on her in the scanning room had gone. Now she seemed small and frail, quite ill looking. Her elfin features gave her a girlish look, as did her impish haircut, and when she opened her mouth her front teeth, big, straight and white, perpetuated the youthful myth. But when we took her date of birth, it turned out she was the same age as me – thirty-seven. Only a few days between our birthdays.

  ‘When was the last time you saw River?’ I started off asking.

  ‘Sunday night, at bedtime,’ said Zara.

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘The bedtime routine.’

  ‘What time did River go to bed?’

  ‘Eight or so.’

  ‘What was he doing on Sunday during the day?’

  ‘I don’t know – he was at his dad’s.’

  ‘How long was River at his father’s for?’

  ‘Since Friday at dinner.’

  ‘What time is dinner in your house?’

  ‘I don’t … six o’clock?’

  ‘What did River do with his father over the weekend?’

  To this Zara, stated again that she didn’t know.

  There was no energy from her when she spoke, like she was pinned right in the middle of some storm or other, like she was no longer a person but a space where a person once was.

  ‘How can you be certain they didn’t go to the playground?’ I tried again.

  ‘Because they don’t do that. Not playgrounds.’

  ‘Is there any particular reason why not?’

  There felt like there should be a reason. I thought about when Mother was working at court and my siblings and I would go over to the very park at Shaw’s Bridge where River’s coat had been found. We loved it there. Then Charlotte’s five loved it too, but she would never let them go alone, as we had done; besides, there was no disabled swing for Timothy. Instead, his sisters would take a break from playing themselves on the seesaw and spin his chair about until he laughed, until his little body went rigid, his breathing quenched.

  ‘Does River not like parks?’

  ‘I suppose he does,’ Zara muttered.

  ‘Can you just speak up for the tape recorder?’ Linskey directed.

  Zara didn’t appreciate the change in Linskey’s tone. She was no longer Zara’s shoulder to cry on; she’d become systemic and practical. I could see Zara drawing herself in, pushing her back against the chair, slumped over.

  ‘I suppose he does,’ Zara repeated in a tight, loud voice.

  Linskey, fearing she’d lost her, changed tack. ‘River spent Sunday at his dad’s home, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Zara sighed.

  ‘Shane Reede is River’s father. Is that correct?’

  ‘That’s right …’ Zara’s eyes flitted to me; she was primed to give me the ‘so what’ response.

  ‘We have an address for Shane. Could you confirm it for us please?’ I asked.

  Zara confirmed it. There were officers already headed there with Reede’s details.

  ‘So, how long does River see his father for?’

  ‘As long as he wants,’ Zara answered.

  ‘As long as who wants? Could you just clarify?’

  ‘As long as Shane wants.’

  ‘And how often and how long would that be?’ Linskey was poised with her pen again, ready for Zara’s answer.

  ‘At the moment Shane sees River one weekend in a month. Has done for the last four months.’ Her words came fresh and fast now, in a tone like they had almost been learned by rote and she had no interest in going into detail. She was bored and would rather be anywhere else, do anything else, than talk about this.

  Her cardigan was gathered around her belly and it fell open. There was a dark patch on her blouse around her breast. Why would she keep a pregnancy from us? I supposed there could have been a stack of reasons.

  ‘Shane stopped seeing Riv when he was living over the border,’ she added.

  ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Where over the border?’

  ‘County … Monaghan?’

  ‘You don’t know where he was living?’

  ‘We split on bad terms. Shane was off with someone else. I let him get on with it. Things ended with them, then he came up here to be near River. So, I thought …’

  ‘
And yet a weekend in the month is all he sees him after coming all this way to be near his son?’

  ‘It’s all he’s asked to see him,’ Zara said abruptly. ‘Well, he hasn’t asked to see River at all. He came to the door one night four months ago and said “I’m back”.’

  ‘Out of the blue?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Zara frowned, clearly pissed off at having to back up her claims.

  ‘We just need to be sure,’ said Linskey.

  ‘I know, I know. It’s just there are far more important things … like where is my child? Have you spoken to the officers waiting at the house?’

  ‘They’ll get in touch as soon as they hear anything.’

  I don’t know what possessed me: I reached over the table and squeezed Zara’s hand. She pulled her hand away and onto her lap, her cardigan falling open further. Linskey sat up, flicked through her notes.

  ‘Zara, are you pregnant?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I already told you in the house.’

  ‘You haven’t just had a baby, have you?’

  Zara glared at us, eyes watering, nostrils flared, stifling a yawn. She set me off with one of my own. ‘No! Of course not,’ she said.

  ‘It’s okay. Okay,’ Linskey paused. ‘Zara, can we get back to Shane? Is there a custody agreement in place?’

  ‘No. Well … Shane left, he came back. I was phasing them in with each other. River couldn’t remember Shane initially, so it was an hour here or there, then a day, then an overnight. So this is where we’ve got to. In time, yes, if he wants more time, if either of them want more time, I’ll help them do that.’ Her elbows hit the table. She steepled her hands and let her face fall against them. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so tired. I think I’ve got a virus of some sort. Or maybe it’s everything else. Stress.’

  ‘We’ll take a break here,’ said Linskey. She glanced at the clock, wrapped the interview up. ‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ she told Zara, beaming at her.

  Zara gave a wary smile in return. ‘When will we hear something?’ she asked as if there was a schedule.

  ‘Most kids come back within forty-eight hours, nearly all within seventy-two,’ I told her.

  ‘And what if he doesn’t?’

  I said we’d cross that bridge if we came to it.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Shane Reede,’ Raymond was saying, ‘works in a mechanics garage in Orangefield – RAD Car Parts off Ladas Drive.’

  I slipped out of the interview suite and handed over the details to Sarge Simon. When I returned Raymond confirmed that Shane brought River home at dinnertime and his times corresponded with Zara’s.

  ‘We ate dinner – pizza from Dominos for us lads, Chinese for Zara. But it didn’t agree with her – too spicy. River was overtired. He hardly ate anything. He was bouncing off the walls.’

  ‘How do you mean, bouncing?’ I asked.

  ‘E numbers, most likely. Zara doesn’t like him having orange juice or sweets, and when he goes to Shane’s we’ve no idea what he’s eating. It’s hard for Zara because she’s quare and regimented with him.’

  ‘Regimented?’

  ‘No, not regimented, just in a routine.’ Raymond interlocked his fingers; his breath fell into a wheeze. There was a crackle of silence.

  Linskey tilted her chair forward, wrapped her ankles around the chair legs. ‘Raymond, is there anything you think we should know?’ she asked. ‘We just want to see little River safe. The child’s welfare is always paramount to us, as I’m sure it is to you.’

  ‘Yes. Definitely,’ he said.

  His stubby, underdeveloped-looking hands scratched his belly in small urgent movements.

  Rolling over me was this feeling. I felt sorry for Zara now; that’s what it was. Not just sorry for what she was going through, but sorry for how she had ended up living with Raymond. I could picture Zara when she was younger. She would have been brimming with potential. To have ended up where she was, with a man like Raymond … I felt certain she must have been lacking in self-worth.

  ‘He’s a hyperactive child. River can be hard work,’ Raymond said.

  ‘What are you saying about River, Raymond?’ Linskey pushed.

  ‘He was hard to handle, until Zara changed his grub, you see. But still, he doesn’t sleep.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked.

  Sometimes it sounded daft to me, asking these questions, but they were necessary when we had someone like Raymond in for questioning – or ‘assisting the PSNI with enquiries’, as we put it at that stage. He was on the verge of telling us something useful and all he needed was a nudge here and there. Zara was the opposite – a hard nut to crack – and I wasn’t sure that we did. How much could we lean on her? How far could we push her without sounding like we were accusing her of something? And what was there to accuse her of at that point? There was no crime scene, no corpse; it was purely a missing person’s case. Still, the questions had to open themselves out for the answers to pass through.

  ‘River would go to sleep at eight o’clock,’ said Raymond, ‘then waken at one a.m. and stay awake until four.’

  Raymond told us that River had been hard to shift in the morning, especially on days when he had preschool, which he started only a month earlier – Strandtown Preschool, a church nursery on the Belmont Road. I took the details in the hope that we wouldn’t have to go there, that River would show up before the next school day, that he’d appear back in his own bed in his blue and green pyjamas.

  Zara had said at the end of her interview that she just wanted to wake up the next morning and realise it had all been a dream. Everyone wanted that. Except Raymond, it seemed. He didn’t seem concerned that a four-year-old child was out in the big world – in the streets of East Belfast, or further away – without an adult to accompany him. Or maybe there was an adult. That was the subtext of everyone’s thoughts, the thing the neighbours dismissed but the fear in their eyes seemed to say.

  Raymond implied a few times that River could handle himself, and maybe he could in nursery, at home or wherever, but there’s a difference between a boisterous child who is confident and savvy in familiar surroundings and one who is streetwise. I couldn’t even imagine Gus, my fourteen-year-old nephew, being talked about in terms like these. I had to make Raymond see sense, to flit from the reassuring copper I was with Zara and remind him that the boy was at risk. Apart from anything, they lived beside a busy road. Wasn’t that enough?

  ‘Is there anyone you could imagine would have taken River?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah,’ Raymond said. ‘They’d bring him back as soon as they realised what he was like.’ He laughed; his joke struck me as ignorant, not malicious.

  ‘What is River like?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he’d be hyper,’ Raymond said.

  ‘Is he hyper the way all four-year-old boys are?’ asked Linskey.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. He’s the only one I know.’

  ‘It must be hard, the lack of sleep.’

  ‘The sleep terrorist, I call him. It’s torture, absolute torture.’ Raymond scratched his head.

  ‘Why do you think he doesn’t sleep?’

  ‘That’s the million-dollar question there!’ he said. ‘I’m sure he could have a wee bit of a sleeping pill – you know, the way people give their dogs a painkiller. They can’t have the whole thing, but if you work out the weight of an adult and the weight of the animal, then you can give them a quarter, say, of an aspirin. It’s not recommended but everyone does it. There’s no harm.’

  Linskey was writing furiously.

  ‘Years ago, there was this old woman lived beside us,’ Raymond went on. ‘I grew up on a farm near Limavady, see. This farm was overrun with cats. There was this one cat who, well, that old woman used to go around saying this cat was a raper – she meant rapist. This cat, a big black one, well, he kept getting all the cats in the area pregnant. It’s not like it’s a consensual thing. Have you ever seen cats in mating season? Anyway … the girl cats would be hissing, and when they were in s
eason they would disappear. They’d eventually come back and you knew where they’d been and what they’d been up to. And the cats we had, two ginger females, which is very rare – ask anyone who knows anything about cats and they’ll tell you – they’d disappear and then come back. So, did they enjoy it or not? I was always confused about that. It’s in their make-up to mate, but were they being raped? I don’t know. The animal kingdom is a cruel place.’

  Raymond stopped for breath, wheezing in that slow way we’d come to know over the course of the day.

  ‘But this old woman,’ he added, ‘she was way past what my mother would have called the change, and she was a spinster – never had a man as far as anybody knew. But she got the doctor to give her the pill because she was sick of all these kittens. She never drowned them nor nothing, never gave any away. People didn’t neuter their animals then. My father told her that the vet was just away and that one of our cats was expecting again. And she told him that when the cats were coming up to being in season, she cut the contraceptive pill into tiny pieces and put it into the females’ food. So it wasn’t foolproof, but the cats didn’t fall pregnant as often. It was a good idea when you think about it. I’ve never forgotten it.’ Raymond reached for his plastic cup of water and took a sip.

  I had that feeling I had when I looked at Donald Guy … or when I thought of Jason. Linskey looked up from her notepad, a smile mixed in a frown.

  ‘And you’ve asked his doctor for something to help River sleep?’ she asked trying to unzip the loose covers of Raymond’s meaning.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said Raymond. ‘The doctor won’t give River anything for it. She can’t, you see.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s the meds he’s on already.’

  ‘What medication is River taking?’

  ‘It’s for his fits – just wee ones where he stares into space. You call them petit mal seizures. It’s like epilepsy but not as bad. The wain’ll be eating his breakfast and you’ll see him stop. He comes out of it quickly. People think he’s just daydreaming. But the meds control it. The worry is that he’ll have a big seizure, but he never has. A tonic-clonic. They’re the boys, alright. I knew nothing about any of this until recently and now I’m an expert!’