Those We Left Behind (13 page)

CUNNINGHAM LISTENED AS
Flanagan spoke, picturing the child Ciaran Devine had once been. The child he still was, really.

‘I suppose that’s the thing that struck me most,’ Flanagan said. ‘He was at that age when boys change. I could see the man he might have been, if he’d had a chance, and the little boy he was leaving behind.’

‘That’s the saddest part of kids that age being locked up,’ Cunningham said. ‘Ciaran went away a twelve-year-old, and he came out seven years later, still a twelve-year-old. All that growing up he’s missed. How anyone expects him to cope, I don’t know.’

‘I guess that’s your job,’ Flanagan said.

‘My job is risk management. To do my best to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else. I can take him shopping, I can help him get a job, but I can’t show him how to live among ordinary people, how to cope without the structures forced on him when he was inside. Whether or not he’s mentally fit enough to look after himself is neither here nor there. I don’t get to make that decision.’

Flanagan gave a sad smile. ‘That’s the problem with jobs like ours, isn’t it? The gap between what we wish we could achieve and what we can actually do.’

Cunningham nodded. ‘True.’

She wondered what it would be like to know Flanagan outside of her work. Cunningham had lost more friends than she’d gained over the years. Since she and Alex had split, she had often found herself wondering about the people around her. Were they all lonely too? Were their lives more complete than hers? The trilling of her mobile phone brought her back to the present, away from this self-indulgent wallowing.

She took the phone from her bag, saw the number. ‘I’d better take this.’

Flanagan nodded.

‘Miss Cunningham? This is Sergeant Peter McMurray.’

‘Yes,’ Cunningham said. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I just thought you should know, Daniel Rolston was arrested this morning following a disturbance at his workplace. He was fired. Seems he didn’t take it too well.’

‘Is he in a lot of trouble?’ Cunningham asked.

Flanagan looked at her across the table.

‘The management at the call centre don’t want to make a fuss about it,’ McMurray said. ‘He’ll be let go with a caution. I just thought I should let you know. If he comes anywhere near you, if you see him at all, call 999 immediately. I’m guessing he’ll just lie low now, but it does no harm to be careful.’

‘Okay,’ Cunningham said, ‘thank you.’

She returned the phone to her bag and repeated what she’d been told to Flanagan.

The policewoman gave her a smile that was probably meant to reassure. ‘Like the sergeant said, he’ll lie low. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about,’ Cunningham said. ‘What if he goes after the Devines?’

Flanagan shrugged. ‘If it happens, it happens. There’s nothing you can do about that.’

Cunningham pushed that thought aside and asked, ‘So what went wrong?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said you’d got through to Ciaran. Got him to open up to you. But he wound up getting charged anyway. He didn’t withdraw the confession.’

Flanagan’s eyes focused on the street outside. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It was complicated. A lot of factors. Things I didn’t . . .’

The words trailed off, and Cunningham considered pressing harder, but she sensed Flanagan’s discomfort. She held her silence, waited to see if the policewoman would find a way to say what she wanted to say.

Eventually Flanagan said, ‘The last interview didn’t go so well. Let’s just leave it at that.’

Cunningham had known enough police officers to understand the trauma they endured in the course of their work, and that often they found it hard to revisit those ugly moments.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘When you feel like you can talk about it, I’ll be ready to listen.’

Flanagan looked back to the window, wading in some dark memory.

They talked almost to eleven. About superheroes, about
Star Wars
, about football, about family, about love, about death. She told him secrets, and he told her lies. Curled there, held beneath her arm. Ciaran talked about Thomas, how his brother always had looked after him and always would. They talked about the future, the years ahead of him.

When she asked him to imagine a life without his brother, he froze, as if the watch on her wrist had stopped, along with every other clock in the building.

‘You can live without him,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen him for nearly three days. You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

Silence until, eventually, he said, ‘I’m tired.’

‘I’ll let you sleep, then. But it’s an early start in the morning. Unless something changes, you’re going to be charged at five-thirty a.m. Then I won’t be able to talk to you again.’

As if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if there was no line to be crossed, he lowered his head into her lap.

Flanagan lifted her hands away. They hung above him, suspended by uncertainty. She looked up at the camera in the corner, held her palms up and out. Not touching. Her mouth opened, ready to ask him to move, when he spoke.

‘I want to tell the truth,’ he said.

Flanagan lowered her hands. She touched her fingertips to his cheek. ‘Okay. But not now. It has to be on record or what you say doesn’t count. I’ll arrange an interview for the morning, before the deadline. All right?’

He nodded and closed his eyes. Soon his breathing settled, his shoulders rising and falling as he slept. His breath warmed her thigh. As gently as she could, she lifted his head, slipped from under him, and left the cell. He did not wake.

As Flanagan left the block, Sergeant Richie approached, ready to lock up after her. His gaze fixed on her, eyes hard. She did not look away.

‘Everything all right in there?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said.

‘You were a long time. I was watching on the monitor.’

She stopped, challenged him with her posture. ‘And?’

‘You were getting awful friendly with him,’ the custody sergeant said. ‘I was close to coming in to see what was going on.’

Flanagan took a step closer. ‘And what exactly do you think was going on?’

He seemed to lose an inch in height under her stare. ‘Nothing. But I’m responsible for that kid while he’s in here. I won’t have any . . .’

‘Any what?’

The custody sergeant backed away. ‘It’s late. I think it’s best you leave the block now.’

Flanagan walked to the car park and called DCI Purdy. He grumbled at his sleep being disturbed, and even more when she told him she wanted to set up an interview for four-thirty a.m. But he agreed. One more call secured yet another out-of-hours social worker.

She re-entered the building and found a stained and weathered couch to sleep on.

She dreamed of small, bloodied hands on her body and woke up gasping.

Flanagan brought tea and toast to Ciaran’s cell at four a.m., along with a fresh set of clothes. She left him to eat and dress before signing him out of the custody suite and taking him to the interview room. Checking her watch, she saw they had five or six minutes before the social worker was due. She slouched at the table, Ciaran on the chair beside her. Weariness made her head heavy and dried her eyes.

‘What do you want to be when you’re older?’ Flanagan asked.

Ciaran leaned his chin on his forearms. ‘I wanted to write comics. Do you have to go to university to do that?’

She studied him beneath the room’s hard fluorescent lighting. A handsome young boy. She wondered what he’d look like as a grown man. Then she felt a pang of sadness for the future he’d thrown away.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s a particular qualification you need. But having a degree is good, no matter what you want to do.’

He traced imaginary shapes on the desktop with his forefinger. ‘I’ll never go to university now.’

‘There’s no reason why not,’ Flanagan said. ‘You’ll be in the Young Offenders Centre for a few years, there’s no getting away from that. But it doesn’t mean your life’s over. You can still get an education and do your exams. GCSEs, A levels even. There’s nothing to stop you going to university when you get out. Not if you work hard enough and keep out of trouble.’

Ciaran stayed quiet, staring across the room.

‘What?’ Flanagan asked. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

Ciaran sniffed, rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Thomas won’t let me go to university.’

‘Well, that’s not really up to Thomas, is it?’

He rested his forehead on his arms, his nose touching the desktop. Flanagan watched the rise and fall of his back, his ribcage expanding and contracting.

‘Is it?’ she asked again.

‘Everything’s up to Thomas.’

Flanagan placed her hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, felt the bones of him through the sweatshirt. ‘I know you love him,’ she said. ‘But he doesn’t own you. You’re your own person. No one can tell you how to live but you.’

His shoulders quivered. A sharp inhalation, then a watery exhalation. Tears pooled on the desktop. She moved her hand in a circle, then down his spine, back up again.

‘I wish it hadn’t happened,’ he said, the words choked between sobs. ‘I wish I could take it back. I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want Mr Rolston to be dead. I want . . .’

The words were lost, drowned by weeping.

‘C’mere,’ Flanagan said. She gathered him up like a bundle of rags, took him in her arms, held him close. Rocked him as he cried his heart out once more.

She didn’t know how much time had passed as the sobbing died away, his cheek hot against hers, his lips against her neck. Only that she became aware of the movement of his hand beneath the hem of her skirt. She inhaled, her mind suddenly paralysed.

His hand, so warm there.

Flanagan put her hands on his upper arms, eased his body away from hers. She reached down, moved his hand back to his own lap. His eyes, still red with tears, remained fixed on hers.

‘Ciaran, you can’t touch me like that.’

His hand crossed the space between them, went to her breast, his fingers spreading, cupping. His eyes so blue.

She slapped him once, hard, rocking his head to the side. The sting of it hot on her palm. She stood, left the room, closed the door, leaned her back against it. Trembling all over, heart galloping.

From the other side, the noise of thrown furniture, screaming rage, animal fury.

‘Fuck,’ she said.

THEY LET DANIEL
go at six that evening. No further action so long as he accepted the caution. They’d taken him to the police station on Victoria Street, by the shopping mall in the city centre. He’d spent most of the day in a cell, had been calm and compliant all along, even when they stopped in the street to arrest him. The other two people at the bus stop had tried to look uninterested in what was happening, looking anywhere but at Daniel. But they could have looked all they wanted. He didn’t care.

The policemen had been polite and friendly. Daniel had watched many reality shows on television following the police on traffic patrols and drug raids. The criminals on the television always fought, always wound up face down on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs, sometimes their legs strapped together to stop them kicking. Sometimes they were even pepper-sprayed, leaving them screaming in agony and fury as their eyes streamed and snot bubbled from their noses. Daniel didn’t understand why. It wasn’t that bad being arrested.

At five minutes past six, Daniel left the station and crossed the road to the bright yellow ornamental fountain at the shopping mall’s eastern entrance. The pub beside it had already filled with workers from the surrounding office buildings having a drink to celebrate the end of their week’s labour. After a moment’s thought, he decided to join them.

Three and a half hours later, pleasingly drunk, Daniel let himself in to the flat. He found Niamh in the bedroom stowing a last few items into their biggest suitcase.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked from the doorway.

‘I’m going to Mum and Dad’s for the weekend.’

‘All the way to Strabane? At this time?’ He looked at his wrist, realised he wasn’t wearing his watch.

‘If there’s a late bus, I can be there by midnight,’ she said, zipping the case closed. ‘If there’s not, I’ll stay in a hotel and go in the morning.’

He wiped his hand across his mouth, wondering what there was to drink in the flat. ‘But you’ll be back on Sunday, won’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Probably not.’

‘So when?’

‘Maybe never.’ She would not look at him. ‘Probably never.’

‘But I need you.’

Niamh sniffed, covered her eyes with one hand as if shielding them from the light. ‘I’m not what you need. What you need is counselling. You need to talk to someone who can help you move on. That’s not me. I can’t live like this. I can’t live in fear of you.’

‘Fear?’

‘The way you’ve been. That side of you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve gotten physical. You’ve pushed me. How do I know you won’t go further next time?’

‘I’d never hurt you,’ he said. ‘Never. You know that.’

‘But I
don’t
know that. I really don’t.’

She hoisted the suitcase off the bed and crossed the room to him. He did not move.

‘I want to get past,’ she said. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi to the bus station. It’ll be waiting.’

Daniel felt numb from his chest to his stomach. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

She did not make eye contact. ‘Let me past.’

‘You’re killing me.’ The words felt thick in his throat. ‘Do you know that? You’re killing me.’

‘I’ll ask you one more time,’ she said. ‘Please let me past.’

‘No, love, please don’t—’

Daniel saw the flash of the keys in her hand, felt the hard pain in his cheek as she stabbed at him. He fell back into the hall, clutching at the wet heat on his face. Niamh staggered past, the suitcase thudding against her thigh. Before he could recover, she was gone, the apartment door slamming closed behind her. He called her name once, then dropped to the floor, his back against the wall. Blood streamed through his fingers, onto his shirt, red streaks down his chest towards his belly.

‘Shit,’ he said.

He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and crawled to the bathroom at the far end of the hall, leaving a trail of penny-sized red dots on the laminate wood flooring. At the sink, he pulled himself up onto his feet and saw his bloodied face in the mirror. He turned the tap and scooped handfuls of water up to his face, washed the red smears away. A quarter-inch rip beneath his right eye, the skin around pink and puffy. His eyelid flickered of its own accord. Not as bad as it felt. He wondered if he should go to the hospital, see if it needed a stitch.

‘No,’ he said aloud.

He grabbed a facecloth from the top of the radiator, soaked it beneath the tap, wrung it out, then pressed it against his cheek. As he held the cloth there with his left hand, red seeping from beneath it, he studied his reflection in the mirror. He formed his right hand into a fist, drew it back, felt the strength gather in his arm and shoulder.

‘No,’ he said again.

Daniel Rolston had better things to do with his anger.

Early light woke him as it crept between the open blinds of the bedroom. A grinding ache pulsed inside his head, keeping time with the throb in his cheek. He’d drunk most of a bottle of wine after he’d left the bathroom and had no recollection of climbing onto the bed. Stains covered the pillowcase and duvet cover, deep red to dark brown. His vision in that eye seemed diminished, smaller, as if the swelling had constricted not only the flesh but also the light allowed to find his retina.

Daniel was already on his way to the bathroom when he felt the first tightening of his stomach, the first loosening in his throat. He retched over the toilet bowl until his sides ached and his nostrils stung, his belly emptied.

It took another thirty minutes to clean himself up, change, and head out. The other passengers on the bus stole glances at the cut and the swelling. Probably assumed he’d been in some bar fight. Didn’t look the type, they probably thought. Not a clean-cut young man like him. He smiled at the idea.

The bus stopped at the shopping centre opposite the hostel. As Daniel stepped off the bus, he checked the time on his mobile. Just after nine. Still early.

Time to wait. Time to watch.