The Sleeping Season

by Kelly Creighton

  Linskey and I looked at each other briefly in a way I liked to think others couldn’t see, but Raymond suddenly looked concerned.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  *

  We brought Zara back in on her own to ask her about the epilepsy.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, folding her arms.

  ‘And River needs medication for this condition, is that right?’ Linskey asked.

  ‘River was due his half spoonful of Epilim at a quarter to eight, just before bed.’

  ‘This is important. Why didn’t you mention it earlier?’ I asked.

  ‘I hoped he’d be home long ago.’

  ‘But if we’d known this …’

  ‘Does that mean you aren’t already doing everything you could be doing?’ Zara asked. ‘Are you suddenly interested now you know about the seizures?’

  I tapped my pen on the desk.

  ‘Listen,’ said Zara, ‘you know those baby-on-board stickers people put on their car windows?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I used to have one. It was one of the first things Shane bought when we found out we were having River – him being into cars. Shane, I mean. River couldn’t care less. Trains … now, yes. Well, River arrived. Shane collected me from the hospital in this Jaguar. He’d borrowed it from someone for the day just so I could write a flash answer in the baby book under First car I drove in. “Someday we’ll have our own,” Shane would say.’ Zara bit her lip and inspected her nails. ‘We never got a Jaguar. I had a little runaround, like a shoebox. I wasn’t bothered, but I took the baby-on-board sticker and put it in the back window. I was proud. Stuff the car – it was what was inside that counted, you know. My wee man.’ Now she became tearful. ‘I was driving along the Bangor to Newtownards carriageway one morning. River was nine months at the time, all strung up in his car seat. These two young guys in sporty cars started chasing each other along the carriageway. I ended up between them somehow. They didn’t overtake and just go do their own thing. The one behind me – well, he wasn’t for stopping, so I just … I had no choice, I had to go off the road. It happened in a split second. I just hit this fence – went straight through it. Ended up in some field upside down. I don’t know how I moved, because I was sore after for ages.’ She sighed. ‘Maybe adrenalin took over. But first thing I did was looked around and there was River, still in his car seat, upside down. He’d slept through everything. For a second I thought he was … you know. I got out. This man who had stopped by the side of the road came and helped me get him out and he drove us to hospital. I was a bit battered but there wasn’t a scratch on that boy. With something like epilepsy you blame everything. Was it that crash? Was River injured in his head and it just wasn’t visible?’

  Linskey gave her a little knowing nod.

  ‘Anyway, the car was a write-off. Shane brought us home in another new motor. He hardly visited River in hospital. He was more concerned with the wheels, as usual. He’d went and got a baby-on-board sticker for the back. You know, the first thing I did was pull that sticker off that window and rip it up.’

  ‘Why, Zara?’

  ‘Does anybody look at those things? Those boy racers didn’t look and go “oh no, better be careful here.” They didn’t give a shit. People either care or they don’t. Before that man stopped to help, others drove on past. People will either help you or they won’t. I never thought to play the epilepsy card. It didn’t even occur to me,’ Zara said.

  Chapter 8

  Did Zara live on another planet? Why did she think we wouldn’t be interested? That people weren’t doing all they could? That the neighbours wouldn’t be out all night searching for her child?

  I offered to work all night too, but the Chief told Linskey and I to go home, that we would need to be fresh for the following day, because if River wasn’t found within the first twenty-four hours, then something was seriously wrong and we would need to step up the search.

  Before I left the station, Sarge Simon informed us that he had run Shane’s car details and been out to his house at Brandon Terrace, and found nothing, although he did comment on the décor. Having been a painter/decorator in a past life, Simon never quite got away from flock wallpaper and feature walls; he would sit in a victim’s home and tell them that whoever did their edging had done a good job. He and Constable Higgins would head to RAD Car Parts the next morning and let us know as soon as they had brought Shane in for questioning.

  But Raymond was a funny one to pinpoint. Granted, the boy was not his, but he had shared a roof – shared Zara – with him for the past year and a half, was something of a father figure to him. And Zara, it seemed to me, had acted as mother to them both.

  Raymond was forty-five, though he looked older. Even Linskey commented on his looks after we let him go home, how he was so clunky compared to Zara’s petiteness, gross to her prettiness. An oil and water mix.

  ‘I don’t believe it. Do you?’ Linskey asked me before we went off shift.

  ‘Which part?’ For me the list was growing.

  ‘I don’t see the two of them as a couple.’

  ‘He said she’s his carer.’

  ‘Doesn’t sit with me.’ Linskey folded her notes, ready to hand over to Inspector Seymour who was on nights. She looked in at the parakeet and tapped the cage; it was chirruping sweetly. ‘You should get yourself a pet, Harry,’ she said.

  ‘The management company doesn’t allow us to have them. Besides, you’re my pet.’

  She laughed as she creased the page on which she had written out a schedule of feeding instructions for the bird and set it in front of the cage.

  *

  I arrived home at one a.m. The heat had knocked itself off long before and the apartment was cold again. I liked to be shrewd, taking advantage of the heat that rose from the floors below. I only heated the place if Greg was calling.

  I texted him to see if he had finished work, knowing I wouldn’t sleep anyway and he may as well be here with me. He didn’t respond, so I expelled any nervous energy by pacing, shoeless. I reminded myself of Zara, so I sat on the sofa with a glass of Merlot, waiting for Greg to text back. But he didn’t. I knew he would tell me he was still at work. I suspected it was also the perfect defence for being late home too. Rarely does anyone question you when you say you have to work.

  But eventually sleep came to me. I had that dream again about Christmas at Lough Erne and Jamesy Lunney, who we found dead in the lough. When I was younger the dream was a recurrent thing that eventually petered out. But in the last four years, it had come back again all too vividly, especially while working certain cases.

  The chalet at the lough had always been cold. It lay neglected during term-time and was always full of cool air no matter what time of year it was. The walls seemed to pull themselves together, release loose plaster as if the bricks rubbed together for warmth. The air tasted like a candle put out on your tongue. In the dream it was always the same: the candlewick taste faded away, the walls crumbled completely, and I would be by the water, warding off a cold-edged wind pushing up the lough. I never seemed to have the presence of mind to lift a coat. In the dream I never learned to remember. Where were the coats kept anyway? And which one was mine?

  The coats I wore weren’t memorable – not enough to have permeated my subconscious. Not like River’s coat, that soft, corrugated blob of green. All night, that was the scene my mind kept bringing me to, interspersed with all the unrelated mumbo jumbo of my emotional to-do list: try to be a friend to Linskey; try to be a better sister and daughter; decide what the fuck to do about Greg.

  I used to always dream about Jamesy Lunney. But I’d dream about different people on different days. I watched Brooks tussling with another version of himself in the lough, as if he’d been duplicated the way Charlotte and I were, and I would wake asking myself which half of Brooks was left, if any of him was. I would wake up wondering if he was even still alive. And how would I know if he wasn’t?

  Some nights Jame
sy Lunney was not dead. Some nights it was little Timothy, who could have passed for a fish in Brooks’s arms. I would be haunted by that in a way I hadn’t been when I was eight years old and my brother had pulled that dead man from the water and threw him down at my feet.

  That day had been too bright, too chilled for us to be afraid; we were too together for Jamesy to haunt us then. It wasn’t until Brooks kicked a hole in the door of his own bedroom in the middle of the night that I felt scared. That’s when I saw my brother inside the storm for the first time.

  Inside the chalet I sat in the soft centre of the matt-rimmed sheepskin looking around at the rest of the family as they talked and waited for the RUC to arrive. And that’s the part, right there, where I snuck out, when it becomes all dream instead of memory. In reality, I stayed put, trying to summon up the courage to go and look. It was the lead up to the dream being over, the big reveal of the face that had remained hidden since that December day in the late 1980s.

  What usually happened was that I would go down to the scene of the find, hands and shoulders shaking like I was carrying two overfilled bags. The dream went like stepping stones: I was on this one, then I was on that one, then I knew I was on the final stone where there was nowhere else to go but wake up.

  I woke on the sofa, disorientated and with a crick in my neck, Merlot zingy on my teeth, sour on my tongue. Moonlight made knives on the walls through the open blinds. Of course I had a bed. I had bought a new one when I moved in; I couldn’t bear to bring the bed from the old house.

  It was four a.m. I turned the volume up on the telly and sat with my arms circled around my knees. Stayed like that for a while. But I must have drifted off because it was after eight when I woke again. I could feel the cold unclenching like two fists in my stomach. And when I was no longer submerged in sleepiness I thought about River.

  Then I had a call from the station. Ronnie Dorrian, Shane Reede’s boss at RAD Car Parts, was claiming that Shane had not weighed into work the day before.

  Chapter 9

  An end terrace house in Grays Park Gardens in the Belvoir Estate was where we would find the Hammitts that Tuesday morning. Under the flat run-off porchway stood a woman who looked like she was expecting visitors. Jan Hammitt, waiting at her bottle-green door, wore a pink top with a black collar, little swallows on the print. She was smiling like Linskey and I were the visitors she had been expecting.

  I opened the short cast-iron gate and saw the chicken-wire partition at the end of the drive that was no doubt for the dog. Behind it came the cooing of pigeons.

  Jan shook my hand. She had exceedingly long fingernails, as if to elongate her fingers the way high-heeled shoes work on short legs. The tips of her nails were as white as if they’d been dipped in melted candle wax.

  Inside the house she dived straight in. ‘That wee coat,’ she said, ‘Sandy told me about it. Is it the boy’s? Is that right?’

  ‘The coat is River’s,’ Linskey said as she sat on the fabric sofa: it was brown on the seats, bottle green at the back. The house smelled of cooked breakfast and hearth fires.

  After a moment the back door opened. We could hear footsteps, and claws clopping on kitchen tiles.

  ‘The police ladies are here, Sandy,’ Jan shouted.

  ‘Yes, so I see,’ Sandy called back. His voice was like gravel. He came into the lounge. ‘Hello, again. How are you doing?’ He touched Linskey on the shoulder. I saw her flinch.

  Sandy removed his chunky scarf, his weathered leather coat, fixed them over his armchair and sat down. His hair, in the muted light of the lounge, was not as bright as it had looked outdoors. You could tell he dyed it. His face was brown, a tan that only made his skin appear more wrinkled than it was.

  ‘Dusky’s just having a drink, then she’ll be in to greet you,’ Sandy said.

  The Weimaraner remembered us. She entered the room and nuzzled her head under the crook of my knee, her mouth dripping water onto my trousers; then she did the same to Linskey. The smell of eggs and bacon was replaced by that of wet dog.

  ‘Are you walking her close to home because she’s off season now?’ Linskey asked.

  ‘No,’ Jan told her. ‘It’s put Sandy off going to Shaw’s Bridge after what he found. Hasn’t it, Sandy?’

  Sandy ignored the question, not wanting to look weak. He stared at the dog, then sat back, his spine to the back of his chair, his watery blue eyes looking bloodless against the reds and browns of his hair and skin.

  ‘There’s a new photo of the boy, I see,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, Mr Hammitt.’ I nodded. ‘But we’re here because of the coat you found, and to see if there’s anything else you remember seeing yesterday.’

  ‘Have you traced that woman yet, the one out walking her dogs?’ asked Jan, twiddling a silver locket on her necklace, pressing it against the underside of her chin.

  ‘We haven’t heard from the woman yet, no. There’s a public appeal for any witnesses to get in touch.’

  ‘You really need her before you can move along,’ Sandy said.

  Jan studied a bunch of flowers on the mantel. A petal drooped; she pulled it off and threw it into the fire. A feather of smoke escaped. The cabinet she was standing beside held DVDs – crime movies mostly.

  ‘I’d love to have been more help but that’s all I have to say,’ Sandy told us. ‘There was mention of the coat on the radio. I got out of the car, walked with Dusky along the water towards the park, then down to the boat house and back.’

  ‘Is this the walk you always do?’ Linskey interjected.

  ‘At certain times. But not usually. Usually I just walk her around the estate here. I got to the gate of the playground and saw the fluttering of something bright green out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe it when it was a coat. I took out my phone straight away and called it in. Then I waited until you got there to make sure no one touched it. Think I already said all that yesterday, though.’

  ‘You must think me terrible,’ said Jan. ‘Would either of you ladies like a cup of tea or something cold? How about a wee bacon soda for breakfast?’

  We refused but thanked her. She sat on the arm of Sandy’s chair and listened, self-conscious and distracting, picking imaginary fluff off her skirt and blouse.

  ‘When was the last time you were at Shaw’s Bridge, Mr Hammitt?’ Linskey asked. ‘Before yesterday, I mean. Were you there on Sunday?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘She just came into heat yesterday morning. It must have been months ago.’

  ‘You saw that woman with her two dogs.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Would you remember what she looked like if you saw her again?’

  ‘Umm. I can’t … she was leaving.’

  ‘Her car – can you remember what it was?’

  ‘A hatchback, maybe a Volvo. She was able to open the back up and the dogs jumped in.’

  ‘What breed were they?’

  ‘Well … I wasn’t taking it in but something tells me that they were spaniels. I did look, with Dusky being on heat. They seemed female, just in the way they went by us, or maybe neutered males. One was smaller than the other. Maybe a Springer Spaniel and a Cavalier. Two small dogs, anyway.’

  ‘Hopefully the woman will get in touch,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ He stroked his chin and with a deep breath sucked in the gloom. ‘It will come out in the long grass.’

  ‘Poor little boy,’ said Jan. ‘Beautiful child. What his parents must be going through.’

  ‘Mr Hammitt,’ Linskey started, ‘where were you between the hours of midnight on Sunday and nine a.m. yesterday?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘He was here,’ said Jan. ‘Our daughter Meggi stayed on Sunday night. She had a few days off work so she stayed over. Yesterday we all had coffee together and a fry-up. Then Sandy took Dusky for her walk.’

  ‘Can you vouch for Sandy? Can your daughter?’

  ‘Yes. She was house-sitting for us last week, minding Dusk
y. We were in Marbella, you see. Meggi’s been going through a divorce, so we thought it would kill two birds. Give her space. But you can call her if you want. She’s back to work today, but you can get her.’

  Mrs Hammitt wrote her daughter’s name and phone number on a piece of paper and I put it into the depths of my pocket.

  ‘I suppose there’ll be loads that people don’t tell,’ said Sandy. ‘Like when that boy went missing ten years ago, that little Brody Pottinger. They never let on but his mother – that Verda headcase – already had a conviction for child abuse. None of that came out in the papers though.‘

  ‘That boy showed up safe, Mr Hammitt,’ Linskey said.

  ‘He did indeed,’ said Sandy. ‘But I always found it strange that they kept that private. I knew there was something dubious the minute I saw Verda give that press conference. Then the next thing, he shows up. Was hiding in the bloody roofspace under his own steam they said. She bloody put him up to it!’

  Linskey narrowed her eyes at him. I looked out the back window at the pigeon carrier.

  ‘What’s the collective noun for pigeons?’ I asked Sandy.

  ‘A bloody nuisance,’ said Jan.

  ‘A flock? A loft?’ Sandy shrugged. ‘It’s only a hobby.’

  ‘You aren’t missing a parakeet?’ asked Linskey.

  ‘I don’t have parakeets.’

  ‘No? That’s fine.’

  ‘If you think of anything else, Mr Hammitt, please give us a call,’ I said.

  We all moved to the front door.

  ‘I’ll call.’ Sandy looked at Linskey.

  Jan stood there shivering while her husband came all the way outside and stood at the gate, reminding me of how we found him at Shaw’s Bridge. The couple stayed in position until we left.

  ‘Jesus, that was odd,’ Linskey said on our way out of the estate.

  ‘Which part?’ I asked.

  ‘I worked on the Pottinger case and no one knew about Verda’s conviction. Chief Dunne said it would colour the case. He was right too. There was no crime in the end. Just a naughty boy, hiding out.’