Those We Left Behind (15 page)

DANIEL ROLSTON HAD
been drinking since the morning. He had jumped onto the first bus that stopped and found himself in the city centre. Not long after eleven, he wandered into a bar on Chichester Street and ordered a pint of lager. It was gone in minutes, and he asked for another. The barman looked at the cut beneath his eye and asked if he was all right. Daniel did not answer the question, repeated his request for another drink. The barman obliged.

As lunchtime clientele began to fill the bar, Daniel neared the end of his fourth pint. Lifted the glass to get the barman’s attention, relishing the buzz in his head.

‘Maybe you should have something to eat,’ the barman said. ‘A glass of water, too.’

‘No,’ Daniel said. ‘Just give me another.’

‘I’ll get you a sandwich. On the house.’

‘No. Another pint. Please.’

‘All right,’ the barman said. ‘One more, but after that, I want you out the door.’

Daniel nodded and handed over his money.

As he left the bar, the noise of the city rushed in on him, the cars, the people, the undying clamour of it all. He marched past the front of the City Hall, hating the kids who gathered there, mouthy little bastards all of them. He bumped shoulders with some tracksuit-wearing knuckle-dragger who shouted after him to watch where he was going. Daniel spun to the angry voice, saw the confidence drain from the boy’s face at the sight of him. He kept walking, headed south, around the City Hall, past the upmarket restaurants and fashionable bars, out of the city centre, towards Shaftesbury Square and beyond, until he made his way to the northern end of Botanic Avenue. If he kept walking, he’d come to Botanic Gardens, the trees and the grass there, the flowers. As the sun warmed him, that seemed a wonderful place to be.

Daniel stopped at an off-licence and bought a bottle of cheap vodka, paid the extra few pence for a plastic bag to conceal it. The purchase left him with less than ten pounds on his person. He had less than a hundred in his current account. Not that he cared much.

A few minutes’ walk took Daniel to the park, its open lawns, tree-shaded paths, the Palm House as its centrepiece. He found a bench with a view of a green where a gathering of people threw balls and sticks while their dogs chased and gambolled.

Happy people, he thought, every reason to enjoy a Saturday afternoon in the park. He would never be one of them, Daniel knew that: a normal contented life was lost to him long ago.

He twisted the bottle cap, breaking the seal, and took a deep swallow of vodka. His stomach threatened to expel the liquid, and he doubled over, coughing and spitting, but kept the vodka inside. The second mouthful went down a little more easily. The third easier still. He did not remember the fourth.

A hard hand shook Daniel from a dream of mangled flesh and bone, of horrors upon horrors, death walking among the living, cutting them down as it went.

He opened his eyes, blinking at the sun, now low in the sky. His mind scrambled and tripped, trying to piece the real world together from the scattered fragments of his drunken sleep. He swallowed, his mouth dry and sour tasting, then a wet burp forced him to cough.

‘Come on, son,’ someone said. ‘Wakey, wakey.’

Daniel blinked, said, ‘What?’

Another voice. ‘Time to go home, young fella. Up you get.’

A hand taking his arm, pulling him upright. A policeman, and another.

‘Can you stay on your feet?’ one of them asked.

Daniel wasn’t sure. He tried and flopped back down onto the bench. His trousers clung to his thighs, and he felt a spear of humiliation knowing that he had wet himself.

The policemen each took an arm, hoisted him up again.

‘Right,’ the older of them said, ‘I’m giving you one chance to stay on your feet and walk away. If you can’t, then I have to place you under arrest. You’ll have to spend the night in a cell to sleep it off. Do you understand?’

Daniel laughed. He wanted to say he’d seen enough of police cells to do him for a good long time, but somehow he couldn’t make the words come out in the right order.

‘Now, start walking,’ the policeman said, nudging him in the direction of the park’s southern exit.

The policeman emptied the remainder of the vodka onto the grass and tossed the bottle into a bin. ‘Get yourself a taxi, if you can find one who’ll take you in that state.’

Time stretched and bent as Daniel walked, clinging to fences and walls as he went. A car horn blared as he staggered into the road. He fell onto its bonnet, was carried a few yards, but somehow managed to slide off and onto his feet without slamming into the ground. The driver got out of the car, called after him as he lurched away.

The sun had sunk lower, barely showing above the rooftops, and Daniel felt suddenly cold. He looked around, realised he had no idea where he was. Just another street of redbrick two-up two-downs of which there were hundreds, probably thousands, in Belfast. Not even a flag on a lamp post to tell him what kind of area it was. But it couldn’t be far from the park, he thought, maybe Stranmillis.

He felt his stomach tighten. His mouth opened through no will of his own, and he doubled over, leaning on a garden wall. The sound of a knuckle rapping on glass. He looked up, saw an elderly woman open her living room window and lean out.

‘Don’t you be boaking in front of my house. I’m not clearing that up. Go on and do it somewhere else.’

Daniel stumbled on, one hand on his stomach, the other on the garden walls and fences to keep him on his feet. At the end of the block he turned the corner, found the alleyway that ran between one terrace and the next. He walked into the cool shadows, deeper, until he couldn’t hold back any more. The force of it doubled him over, spraying vodka on the ground. He collapsed against a yard wall, supporting himself with his shoulder as he retched again and again.

As a sliver of sobriety crept in, it brought with it a clarity Daniel did not welcome. The reality of it, how low he had fallen in less than a week. As he coughed and spat, he thought of Niamh and what she would think if she saw him now, puking his guts out in an alley, covered in his own vomit and piss. Through the heaving of his stomach, he began to cry, helpless child tears, for that’s what he was: a child lost in the world of adults. He had only been playing a grown-up for all these years. He knew he remained the child he had been when his mother and he sat in the big McDonald’s in town, a special treat for him because he’d been doing well at school despite all the distraction at home, and she had brought him there and told him he could order anything he wanted.

Almost fifteen, then, he should have been going into town with his own friends, should have been embarrassed to be seen out and about with his mother. But he didn’t care; he simply enjoyed having her to himself for a couple of hours, leaving the Devine brothers at home with his father. Not that she was an affectionate woman, far from it, but he still longed for her attention. He had been eating an ice cream sundae when she took a phone call. He still remembered how her face transitioned from that of his mother to a cold hollow woman unknown to him.

That was the moment his life was broken, and the first step on his seven-year journey to this alley, now complete.

Daniel straightened, gasping for air, dizzy more from the exertion of vomiting than the alcohol still in his system. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaned his forehead against the wall, his skin sensing every grain of texture on the concrete rendering.

A movement behind him.

He turned his head, saw only the vaguest shape before the searing pain in his side, something sharp and fiery hot between his ribs. He went to cry out, but a hand slammed into his head, rammed his skull against the wall. His legs disappeared from beneath him, then he was sprawling in his own foulness.

Someone, on his lower back, pinning him down. And that piercing pain again, higher, between his shoulders. And another, his neck now, his cheek, his arm, more and more, coming faster and faster.

The weight left his back, a tugging at his pockets, footsteps running away.

Then he was alone, the last of him draining away onto the cement and weeds.

And then Daniel was walking into the roaring sea with his mother, hand in hand, to stay there with her for ever and ever.

CIARAN CAN’T SLEEP.

Close to midnight, he is wide awake and very alone. He can hear voices from the other rooms, music somewhere, and someone watching a television.

Thomas had promised to come and see him tomorrow, take him shopping for boots before he goes to work at the hotel. They’ll get lunch together, he said. A proper one, not a sandwich outside a supermarket.

Ciaran imagines sitting opposite Thomas as they eat. He can’t think of what they’ll say to each other. Not with what Ciaran knows.

For the first time in his life, Ciaran wonders if he really wants Thomas to be his brother.

He immediately scolds himself for such a wicked idea.

Thomas is all he has. All he’s ever had, all he ever
will
have.

When Ciaran was very small, Thomas told him God wasn’t real. Just a made-up story to make people behave themselves. But Ciaran wishes God was real so that he could say a prayer, ask God to let him go back to the start, to be a baby once more, with all these nineteen years to try again.

Ciaran says the prayer anyway, a whisper trapped between the walls.

FLANAGAN PACED HER
kitchen, back and forth, mobile pressed to her ear as Alistair cooked bacon and sausages for the children.

‘I want this case,’ she said.

Purdy said, ‘It’s not mine to give you. It’s B District. Why would it go to you?’

‘You can ask the ACC for me,’ she said, sidestepping her husband as he moved from the cooker to the table, a plate stacked with toast in his hand. ‘Who’ve they got in B District now? They can hardly give it to Thompson, can they? And Conn’s still working on the Walker case.’

‘Oh yes, about DCI Conn and the Walkers—’

‘You can tear me to pieces for that tomorrow,’ Flanagan said. ‘Right now, I want the Daniel Rolston case. Just talk to the ACC.’

‘Maybe I’m forgetting. Who’s the higher ranking officer here, you or me?’

‘If you won’t talk to him, I bloody will.’

Alistair scolded her with his eyes for the language.

‘All right,’ Purdy said. ‘You talk to him if you want. I’d sooner he tells you to fuck off than me.’

‘Why would he? It makes sense. The Devine brothers have to be the first suspects, and I know them both, Ciaran in particular. I know how to talk to him. I know their history. Come on, it’s the logical thing to do. Talk to the ACC.’

‘Oh, Christ, all right. One condition, though.’

‘Name it.’

‘You keep your neb out of the Walker case. Conn’s spitting bullets at you trampling all over his feet. Promise me you’ll drop it, and I’ll talk to the ACC.’

Flanagan leaned against the sink, screwed her eyes shut, cursed silently to herself. Eventually, she said, ‘All right.’

‘Okay,’ Purdy said. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

As she ended the call, the phone vibrated in her hand: a voicemail from Paula Cunningham. Flanagan didn’t bother listening, just called her straight back.

Alistair asked if she was going to sit down and eat. Flanagan waved him away as she listened to the dial tone.

‘I saw the news,’ Cunningham said. ‘They named him, but they just said he’d been stabbed.’

‘He’d been drinking,’ Flanagan said. ‘Two uniforms saw him in the park yesterday evening, told him to go home. They took an almost empty bottle of vodka off him. He already had a cut on his face, they said. I’ve requested that I be given the case.’

‘And will you?’ Cunningham asked.

‘I’d bloody better. I begged hard enough.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘Unless something presents itself, physical evidence or a witness to actually link either of the Devines to the killing, I’ve no grounds to interview them under caution.’

‘But they have to be involved,’ Cunningham said. ‘It’s too big a coincidence.’

‘Knowing that and proving it are two different things. But there’s nothing to stop me having a word. See what I can shake out of them.’

‘Do you think Ciaran will talk to you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Flanagan said. ‘But I have to try.’

‘Okay. You’ll keep me informed, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

When she hung up, Alistair asked, ‘Will you come and eat now? It’s getting cold.’

‘You have it,’ she said, reaching for her car keys.

As she kissed each of the children, telling them she was sorry she had to go, Alistair grumbled under his breath and shovelled food from her plate onto his.

‘
I CAN TIE
them myself,’ Ciaran says.

Thomas kneels at his feet, pulling the laces of the work boots tight. He sets about securing them with double knots.

‘I can do it,’ Ciaran says.

Thomas doesn’t look up, keeps pulling and tying. ‘How’s that?’ he asks.

‘S’okay,’ Ciaran says, flexing his toes beneath the steel cap and black leather.

Thomas has been strange today. All quick movements, jittery fingers, lickety lips.

Ciaran is afraid of him today. He thinks Thomas might be broken, that he might be coming apart. He seemed fine on Wednesday, but now it’s Sunday, and each day a little more of him has cracked open.

Thomas stands. ‘Get up and walk about a bit.’

Ciaran does as he’s told. He walks back and forth past the display of work boots. Children and mothers chatter in other parts of the shoe shop. Fathers stand around looking bored and impatient.

The sales girl steps over. ‘How do those feel on you?’

Without thinking, Ciaran looks to Thomas for permission to answer. When Thomas lifts his chin in agreement, Ciaran feels an unfamiliar emotion. Not hate, but something like it. Resentment, maybe? No matter. He turns to the girl.

‘They’re all right,’ he says.

‘You sure?’ Thomas asks. ‘Not too tight?’

‘They’re fine.’

‘We’ll take them,’ Thomas says to the sales girl.

‘Do you want to wear them now, or will I box them for you?’

Again, Ciaran looks to Thomas. Again, he feels that same bitter anger.

‘He’ll wear them now,’ Thomas says. ‘They need breaking in.’

The sales girl packs Ciaran’s trainers into the box and leads them back to the till. Once Thomas has paid, and they’ve exited the store into the swarming tide of Sunday shoppers on Royal Avenue, Ciaran opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. He’s afraid to say it.

Thomas notices. He hands Ciaran the box with the trainers in it. He asks, ‘What?’

Ciaran opens his mouth again. Closes it. Shakes his head.

‘Come on, say what you’re thinking.’

‘I can talk for myself,’ Ciaran says.

‘How do you mean?’

‘You always talk for me. When people ask me things, I have to look at you first before I can answer. It was always like that. But I can talk for myself.’

Thomas watches him as passing shoppers nudge them both, making them sway like wind-worn trees. After a while, he says, ‘All right. Let’s get something to eat.’

They walk to the McDonald’s at the top of the street, join the queue at the row of tills.

The boy at the other side of the counter asks if he can take their orders, please.

Thomas orders a Big Mac meal. He stands aside to let Ciaran order.

Ciaran stares up at the board. His mind freezes.

Thomas says, ‘He’ll have a McChicken Sandwich meal, large, with Coke.’

They find a table upstairs. Ciaran eats in silence. The food is tainted by the small defeat he has just suffered. Just ordering a burger at McDonald’s. It shouldn’t be difficult. He hates himself. He hates Thomas.

No.

He banishes that thought from his mind, chases it away. Ciaran does not hate his brother. Thomas looks after him. He can’t hate Thomas. But even so, he can talk for himself. And now he does so.

‘Will the police come today?’ Ciaran asks.

Thomas doesn’t answer. He looks around the room.

‘That security guard,’ Ciaran says. ‘If he sees Daniel’s picture on—’

Thomas reaches across the table, seizes Ciaran’s wrist. ‘Maybe talk about it later.’

‘If he sees his picture on the news, he’ll recognise him.’

Thomas squeezes. His eyes flash. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

‘He’ll call the police. He’ll describe us.’

‘Ciaran, stop talking.’

‘Daniel told me his mum killed herself,’ Ciaran says. ‘His mum and dad are both dead, just like ours.’

‘Ciaran, shut your mouth.’

‘Now they’re all dead. The whole family.’

Thomas stands, takes Ciaran’s arm. ‘Do you need the toilet? Let’s go to the toilet.’

He pulls hard. Ciaran gets to his feet, allows Thomas to guide him towards the stairs leading to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. The fingers digging hard into Ciaran’s flesh.

‘My trainers,’ Ciaran says, looking back at the box on the table.

‘Leave them.’

At the top of the stairs, Thomas hits the door so hard it slams into the wall. It bounces back, hits Ciaran’s shoulder as Thomas drags him through, and on into the men’s room. Thomas looks around. No one at the urinals. The two stalls open and empty. Thomas pushes Ciaran inside the far one, crowds in behind him, locks the door.

Ciaran backs into the space between the bowl and the wall, as far into the corner as he can go. He didn’t need the toilet before, but he does now.

‘I told you to stop talking,’ Thomas says. ‘And you kept talking.’

‘Daniel didn’t deserve it.’

Ciaran’s head rocks to the side with the force of Thomas’s palm. The sting hot and fierce. He closes his eyes, ready for another. It doesn’t come.

‘He was causing trouble,’ Thomas says. ‘He was mouthing off. If he kept on, they might have started paying attention. We can’t have that. We won’t stand for it.’

Ciaran opens his eyes. ‘But he didn’t have to die.’

Now it comes, Thomas’s palm. A ringing in Ciaran’s ear as the pain blooms there.

‘Listen to me,’ Thomas says. ‘Are you listening to me?’

Ciaran nods. He wants to cry, but he holds it back.

‘Do you love me?’ Thomas asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Then say it.’

Ciaran keeps his gaze downward. ‘I love you.’

‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then say it. Look at me and say it.’

Ciaran raises his eyes to meet Thomas’s. ‘I trust you.’

‘Good,’ Thomas says. ‘Daniel Rolston had to go away. He brought it on himself. If he’d stayed out of it, he’d have been fine. But he didn’t. That was his choice. Not yours. Not mine. You’ve nothing to feel bad about. Neither of us has. Do you understand?’

Ciaran nods.

‘Say it.’

‘I understand.’

‘All right,’ Thomas says. ‘Now give me your arm.’

Ciaran’s eyes are hot now. He feels the tremors in his fingers. He shakes his head and says, ‘No.’

‘Give me your arm,’ Thomas says. He reaches out his hand.

‘Please, no,’ Ciaran says. The tears come then. Sudden and shocking hot. ‘I’ll be good. I promise.’

Thomas takes a breath. His voice is flat, the demand final. ‘Ciaran, give me your arm.’

Ciaran does as he’s told. Like a good boy.

Thomas rolls back Ciaran’s sleeve, reveals the smooth freckled flesh of his forearm. Old scars there, faded pink. One hand holding the wrist tight, Thomas’s mouth opens. Ciaran sees the wet sheen of his teeth. Feels them on his skin, then the pain, fiery hot.

Ciaran knows he should be quiet, a good boy should always be quiet and take his punishment, but it’s been so long and the pain is so fresh and new. He opens his mouth, lets out a high whine that wishes it were a scream. Thomas leans his body in close, clamps his free hand over Ciaran’s mouth, presses his head back into the corner of the stall.

Outside, the men’s room door opens. Through the thunder in Ciaran’s head he hears someone enter, a zip opening, water splashing, taps flowing, then a hand-dryer roaring. All the time, Ciaran is locked there, still, only the movement of Thomas’s mouth and tongue, seeking unmarked skin. The wetness, the hardness, the pressure.

At last, whoever is outside goes, and Thomas releases Ciaran, steps back, wipes his mouth. Ciaran crouches down in the corner, leaning on the toilet bowl, cradles his arm, weeps like a baby.

‘All right,’ Thomas says. He unspools a fistful of toilet paper, hands it to Ciaran. ‘Pull yourself together.’

Ciaran wipes at his face, soaking up the wetness from his cheeks, the snot from his nose and chin. Thomas reaches down and pulls him to his feet. When his brother’s arms snake around him, Ciaran wants to push him away. But he knows he can’t. Instead, he stands very still in Thomas’s embrace, even when Thomas’s lips press against his cheek.

They leave the bathroom together, lift Ciaran’s trainers from the table where he’d left them, then downstairs, out onto the street.

Ciaran does not touch his forearm or look at the marks on his skin until he’s back at the hostel. Then he draws the blind, lies on his bed, and cries until he has nothing left.