Those We Left Behind (25 page)

DSI PURDY ENTERED
the ward, looking around. Flanagan didn’t wave to get his attention. She didn’t feel much like being sociable with him. Nevertheless, he spotted her along the corridor, seated on the row of vinyl-covered chairs outside the Intensive Care Unit. Her blouse still clung to her stomach, its fabric soaked with patches of deep red.

‘Well?’ he asked as he approached.

‘He’s going to be all right,’ Flanagan said. ‘No organ damage, thank God.’

She hoped the same was true for her. She had been to the bathroom once since coming to the hospital, and there had been blood in her urine. It might have been wise to visit A&E herself, but she wanted to be here, not stuck in a waiting room with dozens of other walking wounded.

Purdy sat down beside her. ‘Where are the kids?’

‘Alistair’s sister has them.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘And you should stay away from home tonight.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Flanagan said. ‘This is where I’ll be sleeping tonight. Or trying, anyway.’

He sat quiet for what seemed an age, fidgeting, adjusting his tie, twining and untwining his fingers. When he eventually took a breath, ready to speak, Flanagan closed her eyes.

‘I suppose I owe you an apology,’ he said.

He waited for an answer, probably expecting her to say no, not at all. Flanagan opened her eyes, but kept her mouth shut. He cleared his throat.

‘I shouldn’t have turned them loose,’ he said.

‘No, you shouldn’t.’

‘But your behaviour was inappropriate, and I was right to take you off the case.’

‘Who’s taking over?’ she asked.

‘The ACC has stepped in,’ Purdy said, ‘taken it off my hands. It’s a manhunt now. The murder investigation can wait.’

‘And how is this manhunt progressing?’

‘It’s not. The Devine brothers have vanished in a puff of smoke. No sightings of the car.’

‘They’ll have dumped it,’ Flanagan said, ‘taken another.’

‘There have been two reported hijackings and one creeper theft this evening, two in west Belfast, one in Craigavon. Nothing that looks like our boys. They’ve no friends, no family. No one they’d run to. They could have made for the border. The Garda have been notified and asked to keep a lookout.’

‘The house they lived in before they were taken from their mother,’ Flanagan said. ‘It’s not far from Newcastle. Ciaran talked to me about it, said he wanted to go there.’

Purdy shook his head. ‘That was left to Thomas. He sold it when he got out of Hydebank.’

‘It’s still empty. Ciaran told me. It’s the nearest thing they have to a home.’

‘I can’t see it. Not if they don’t have access to the property.’

‘That’s where they’ll be,’ Flanagan said, more to convince herself than Purdy.

‘All right,’ Purdy said. ‘I’ll pass it along, make sure a local patrol has a look.’

He stood, put his hands in his pockets, shuffled his feet, glancing towards the exit.

Flanagan looked up at him, no patience for awkward pauses. ‘You have something to say. Go on and say it.’

Purdy exhaled. ‘Now’s not the time.’

‘Bloody say it.’

She felt heat on her cheeks, knew she shouldn’t speak to her superior in such a way. But it was too late now.

Purdy stepped closer, leaned in, spoke in a hushed tone. ‘I was right about Ciaran Devine. The confession was sound seven years ago, and it’s sound now. I always knew it was. You shouldn’t have had to find out exactly how sound the way you did, but there’s no helping that now. You shouldn’t have questioned my professionalism.’

Flanagan nodded. ‘Fair enough. And you shouldn’t have let them go.’

Purdy’s shoulders slumped. ‘All right. I’ll keep you posted.’

He walked towards the exit, paused, and turned.

‘We’ll get them,’ he said. ‘They can’t hide for ever.’

Flanagan did not reply. She watched him leave, the ward doors closing behind him.

She knew in her gut she would see Ciaran Devine before he and his brother were captured.

It was only a question of when.

CIARAN WATCHES THOMAS
pace the floor of the kitchen, back and forth, like the caged tigers in the zoo he’d seen as a child. Anger spits from Thomas like flares from the sun. It seems to Ciaran that it will ignite the air around him.

The table is still here. The same table their mother sat at when Ciaran last saw her. He sits there now feeling the damp in the air creep into his lungs, chill him from the inside out.

Ciaran doesn’t know if the old man is alive or dead.

They left him bleeding on his hall floor, the dog running in frantic circles. Ciaran’s knuckles still hurt, the skin cracked, blood in the creases. Maybe Ciaran’s. Maybe not.

Thomas drove, first towards Belfast, then he followed the signs for Castlewellan and Newcastle. It wasn’t the shortest way, but it was the way Thomas knew. It took a long time, journeying in silence. Lots of time to think.

Except Ciaran didn’t like the thoughts he had, so he closed his eyes and chased them away. Eventually, as the sky turned from grey to dark purple, Thomas pulled in to a church car park.

‘It’s about two miles,’ he said, taking the torch from the glovebox, the one he’d lifted from the old man’s house. ‘We can walk.’

Ciaran stayed behind his brother all the way, carrying the plastic bag with the food they had bought at a filling station. Thomas had made Ciaran go to the counter and pay, even though he didn’t want to. They’d notice the bruises on my face, Thomas had said, so Ciaran had to do it. The walk felt longer than two miles, but then Thomas might have taken some wrong turns. He didn’t say if he did, just kept walking like he knew everything there ever was to know.

Ciaran remembered then that he once believed that of Thomas. That his older brother was the wisest, cleverest, bravest boy in all the world, who knew the answer to every question that Ciaran could possibly think to ask.

He didn’t know how old he was when that idea crumbled and fell away. Some time after they’d been put in Hydebank. And by then it was too late.

It was full dark by the time they reached the lane that curved between the trees with its small house at the end. A head-high wall surrounded the property, and a chain link fence had been erected in the gateway.

The sign said:

DOWN COASTAL PROPERTIES

BUILDING SITE

DANGER: KEEP OUT

Ciaran couldn’t see beyond the fence.

‘Have they knocked it down?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Thomas said, ‘it’s still there. Here, help me up.’

Thomas went to the wall, reached up to the top, and pulled. Ciaran put his hands under Thomas’s feet, pushed against them, boosted his brother up. Thomas sat astride the wall and reached down.

‘Come on,’ he said.

On the other side, they walked along the driveway, gravel and weeds beneath their feet. Ciaran made out the shape of the house, a simple two-bedroom construction, pebble-dashed, sash windows. Hanging baskets still by the door, whatever had been in them long dead.

A bar had been screwed to the front door and its frame, a padlock attached.

‘We’ll try the back,’ Thomas said.

The darkness thickened around the side of the house, their path obstructed by overgrown bushes and shrubs. Thorns pierced Ciaran’s clothing, scratched his cheek. Something fled through the growth, sped away into the night, leaves rustling as it went.

At the back of the house, knee-high grass moved in waves through the torchlight. Ciaran remembered playing here, sun hot on his skin. There had been a path, now lost in the flowing grass, leading to the iron gate in the rear wall. The gate that he and Thomas would run through, and the trees, and on across the field until they reached the dunes.

‘Do you remember?’ he asked out loud.

‘What?’ Thomas trained the torch’s beam on the back door.

‘We used to go that way to the beach,’ Ciaran said. ‘Before Mum got sick.’

‘I don’t remember anything before she got sick,’ Thomas said as he took the jangling keys from his pocket. He searched through them, tried one in the lock, then another, grunting at the effort of turning it.

Ciaran heard a snap and a click. He watched Thomas’s fingers go to the handle, press it down, and push. A sound like a sticking plaster being peeled from skin as the door opened. The smell of mould carried by cold air currents.

‘Here we are,’ Thomas said.

Now Thomas paces, his shoes whispering on the old stone floor.

Ciaran’s eyes have adjusted to the dark. Blue moonlight through the window allows him vision enough to see his brother’s fury.

‘What do we do now?’ Ciaran asks.

Thomas doesn’t answer as he turns at one wall, marches to the other, turns again.

‘What do we do?’ Ciaran asks again. ‘Do we just wait?’

‘Shut up and let me think,’ Thomas says.

Once again Ciaran wonders if Thomas might be coming apart. The idea terrifies him, so he brushes it aside. Thomas cannot lose control. Because if Thomas is not in control, then all the world is madness.

‘Are we going to live here?’ Ciaran asks.

‘Maybe for a day or two,’ Thomas says. ‘Then we have to move. Maybe go south. Cross the border at Newry. We’ll have to get another car, though.’

Thomas stops pacing, stands still at the centre of the room. Ciaran realises his brother is shaking, small tremors in his fingers.

‘Maybe we should eat,’ Ciaran says, indicating the bag on the table.

Thomas pauses, then says, ‘All right.’

He sits down opposite Ciaran and switches on the torch. The beam illuminates his face from beneath, makes it look even thinner than it really is. He places the torch on the table, lights up the bag of food. Thomas opens the bag, removes the loaf of bread, the packet of ham, the pot of raspberry jam, the two-litre bottle of water. He wipes the tabletop with his sleeve, scraping away a decade of dust. It’s no good, the table is still dirty. He takes the plastic bag, splits it along its two outer seams, and spreads it flat across the table.

‘There,’ he says.

Ciaran’s stomach grumbles.

Thomas removes two slices of bread from the packet and places them flat on the torn plastic bag, then unscrews the lid of the jam jar. He stops, quandary clear on his face.

‘I’ve nothing to spread it with,’ he says.

Ciaran removes three knives from the coat slung over the back of his chair, the ones he’d taken from the old man’s house. Only one is sharp enough to use for a weapon. He hands one of the blunt knives to Thomas.

Thomas spreads jam on the two slices of bread and gives one to Ciaran. As they eat in silence, Ciaran’s mind travels back to this very place, many years ago. Sitting where Thomas sits now, eating jam sandwiches that his mother made.

Ciaran wonders if he was happy then. Certainly it was a better time than any other he could remember. Those rare minutes when he had her all to himself. When she was the only woman in the world, and he the only boy.

Light rolls across the kitchen ceiling.

Ciaran reaches out for the torch to stop it falling to the floor. Then he realises it hasn’t moved at all.

Thomas stares over Ciaran’s shoulder, at the window.

Ciaran turns to look, sees the car headlights in the lane.

Thomas switches the torch off and says, ‘Someone’s coming.’

He stands and goes to the window, peers through the grime and cobwebs.

‘It’s a cop car,’ he says.

‘Can you see?’ Ciaran asks.

‘No,’ Thomas says. ‘But it’s cops. Has to be.’

He goes back to the table and lifts the sharpest knife. His eyes glint in the darkness.

‘What are you doing?’ Ciaran asks.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Thomas says. ‘I’m going to fight. And so are you. We’re not going back inside.’

Ciaran stands quiet.

‘What?’

Ciaran says nothing.

‘Say it.’

‘We don’t have to fight,’ Ciaran says. ‘Not if they don’t find us.’

Thomas leans on the table, the knife in his right hand, breathing hard.

The rumble of an engine draws close, the sound of tyres on loose stone.

‘Lock the back door,’ Ciaran says. ‘They don’t know we’re here. If we hide, they won’t know without breaking in.’

Thomas hesitates.

‘Lock the door,’ Ciaran says.

Thomas stands up straight, wavers like he might fall over, then runs to the back door, finds the key, turns it in the lock. Ciaran gathers the things from the table, bundles them up in the coat, shoves them under the sink. They run to the staircase that cuts the house in two, slip into the alcove beneath it. Thomas takes Ciaran in his arms, holds him close.

Ciaran can see the front and back windows from here. The light on the ceiling has stopped moving, died along with the noise of the engine. A car door opens and closes. Then another.

New, sharper lights flickering across the room. They have torches.

A metallic rattle as they try the fencing that blocks the gateway.

Voices and radio crackle.

Ciaran’s breathing, soft and even, Thomas’s quivering and ragged.

From outside, a grunt, followed a second or two later by heavy boots landing on the ground. Then another pair, and cursing, and laughter.

‘. . . not fit for . . .’

‘. . . take a look . . .’

‘. . . get out of here . . .’

Feet crunching on gravel, coming closer, closer.

Torch prints skitter and dash across the walls and ceiling.

A giggle creeps into Ciaran’s mouth. From nowhere, it forces his lips apart, air from his lungs. He puts a hand to his mouth, but the giggle escapes nonetheless.

Thomas’s body shakes, Ciaran feels it in his embrace, and a laugh bursts from him too as a policeman appears at the window, torch and nose pressed to the glass. They ease back further beneath the stairs.

‘Shh,’ Thomas hisses, but he can barely contain his own laughter.

Like little boys playing hide-and-seek.

Like children.

Another cop at the window, peering in alongside the other, the light from their torches moving from one dust-shrouded object to the next.

Ciaran snorts, and he feels Thomas’s hand slip over his mouth.

‘Stop it,’ Thomas whispers.

Still Ciaran shakes in his arms.

‘Stop.’

The policemen leave the window. Ciaran listens. Hears footsteps pass the front door and fade. Ciaran breathes hard, recovering from his fit of laughter.

‘Quiet,’ Thomas says. ‘They haven’t gone yet.’

Soon lights flicker against the bushes through the window over the sink. Footsteps and voices approaching the back door. A rattle as one of the cops tries the handle. Then they appear at the window, hands cupped around eyes, torchlight bouncing across the room once more.

One of the beams dances close to the brothers’ hiding place. Thomas pulls Ciaran back, further still, until they press against the wall. Ciaran feels the damp of the brickwork seep through his shirt. He shivers.

‘Nothing here,’ one of the cops says, his voice muffled by the glass. ‘Come on. Might make the Chinese before it closes. Otherwise it’s bloody sandwiches from the filling station.’

‘Aye, let’s go,’ the other cop says.

They leave the window, go back in the direction they came from, their footsteps receding.

Thomas releases Ciaran from his embrace, crawls away from him, out from under the stairs. He stays on his hands and knees as he crosses to the front window. Placing his fingers on the rotten wooden sill, he peeks through the glass.

Ciaran comes to his side, looks out. The cops trudge back towards the makeshift gate, discussing the Chinese takeaway’s menu, and whether or not their chips are any good.

As one helps the other back over the wall, Ciaran stands and says, ‘Told you.’

‘Get down,’ Thomas says. ‘If they look back this way, they’ll see you.’

Ciaran lowers himself to the floor, sits down cross-legged.

‘In the morning, when it gets light,’ Ciaran says, ‘can we go to the beach?’

‘Yeah,’ Thomas says.