The Final Silence (12 page)

‘She’s dead? Rea’s dead? You’re sure?’

Exasperation hardened Uprichard’s voice. ‘Yes, I’m sure, there’s no doubt. Jack, are you listening to what I’m telling you?’

‘Rea’s dead,’ Lennon said. The idea lay there, a dull and hard fact. He didn’t know how to feel. Yesterday had been the first time he’d seen her in five years. How did he feel?

‘Yes, Jack, but that’s not what I’m driving at.’

Angry. He felt angry.

‘Then what are you driving at?’ Lennon asked.

‘You were seen at her house around the time she was killed,’ Uprichard said. ‘It’s only a matter of time before someone twigs it was you. It’ll look better for you if you come in and explain yourself. Don’t wait for them to figure it out and send a car for you. Are you listening to me, Jack?’

‘Yes,’ Lennon said, but he really wasn’t.

He’d left her there, tearful because she knew he didn’t believe her. And now she was dead.

‘Jack, get yourself down to Ladas Drive first thing. Tell them you’re going to cooperate.’

‘Cooperate with what?’

‘With the investigation.’ Uprichard’s voice rose to a shout. ‘You get down there and tell them everything you know. If you don’t, I’ll put them on to you myself. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ Lennon said.

He hung up.

LENNON SPENT MOST
of the day in an interview room. Bill Gracey had been on the desk when he walked into Ladas Drive station, staring from behind the glass.

‘Who’s on the Rea Carlisle case?’ Lennon asked.

‘Why?’ Gracey’s frown made him look like the officious prick he was.

‘Because I need to talk to them.’

Gracey shook his head. ‘The ACC hasn’t officially assigned the team yet, but it’ll be Flanagan’s crew.’

‘She’s based in D District, isn’t she?’

‘True,’ Gracey said, ‘but there isn’t an MIT going spare in B District right now.’

‘What about Thompson?’

Gracey leaned closer to the glass. ‘Between you and me, they’re nudging Thompson towards retirement after the balls he’s made of his last few cases. They’ll not give him anything serious now.’

About time, Lennon almost said. He’d been on Detective Chief Inspector Thompson’s Major Investigation Team up until his own suspension more than a year ago, and had hated every minute under that idiot’s command.

DCI Serena Flanagan was a different matter.

She was young for her rank – only a year or two older than Lennon – and ambitious. And hard as nails, Lennon had heard. Republican paramilitaries had tried to kill her twice, the first time with a car bomb that had failed to explode, the second up close and personal with a Springfield 1911. The pistol had jammed after the first shot missed, leaving the gunman wrestling with a useless piece of metal while DCI Flanagan calmly drew her personal protection weapon and took aim. The would-be killer had been the pillion passenger on a motorcycle. The driver took off, spilling his friend off the back of the bike, already dead from holes in his heart and lung.

The bike had slammed into the rear of a bus a quarter of a mile away. As far as Lennon knew, the rider remained in a vegetative state.

It was common practice for an MIT to be assigned a case outside of its district and for the crew to be moved to the station nearest the crime they were to investigate.

‘Is Flanagan here?’ Lennon asked.

‘I assume she’s at the scene,’ Gracey said, ‘but DS Calvin’s setting up an office for her. What’s this about?’

‘None of your business. Just let me talk to Calvin.’

Gracey’s frown deepened. ‘No need to be rude, Jack.’

Lennon watched through the glass as Gracey went to his desk, lifted the phone, and spoke to somebody. When he hung up, he did not return to the partition. ‘He’ll be a minute,’ he called, and made a show of busying himself with paperwork.

Lennon waited, listening to the familiar thrum of the station, the shrill telephones, the voices and footsteps from behind closed doors.

Five minutes passed before the doors opened and a young detective stepped through.

‘DI Lennon?’ he asked, extending his hand.

‘DS Calvin,’ Lennon said, returning the gesture.

He guessed Calvin to be in his early thirties. Stocky with a face like a glowing light bulb, prematurely thinning hair, a suit that looked like it had come from a supermarket or a discount store.

‘What can I do for you?’ Calvin asked.

Lennon talked and Calvin listened.

It felt strange on this side of the table, in the interview room with its bare painted walls, the expanse of wood between the two men, the audio recorder sitting idle at one end.

Calvin scribbled in his notebook. ‘So how did you know about the killing?’

‘A colleague phoned me this morning,’ Lennon said.

‘Which colleague?’

‘You don’t need to know,’ Lennon said.

Calvin looked up from his notebook. ‘But I will do. Eventually.’ He closed the book, tucked his pen into his breast pocket, and stood. ‘I need to make a phone call. Wait here.’

Lennon asked, ‘Are you calling Flanagan?’

Calvin paused halfway to the door. ‘I’m calling DCI Flanagan, yes.’

‘Tell her I want to talk to her.’

‘She’s busy,’ Calvin said, turning back to the door. ‘But I’ll pass it on. Don’t worry, DCI Flanagan will deal with you in her own time. And if you talk to her like you talk to me, she’ll cut your balls off.’

‘So, I should be scared of her?’

‘Very,’ Calvin said. ‘She fucking terrifies me.’

He opened the door.

‘Grab me a coffee when you’re out,’ Lennon said.

Calvin looked back over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised.

‘Please,’ Lennon said.

Calvin left without replying.

DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR
Serena Flanagan sat very still in the chair by Dr Prunty’s desk, barely breathing. His face was so expressionless it looked as if it were cut from pale pink chalk. He reminded Flanagan of her late grandfather, who always smelled of cloves. They had the same feathery white hair that revealed too much of the scalp beneath. The same awkward length to the limbs, countered by an unlikely grace in their movements.

Ten days since she’d gone to her GP, her hands trembling even as she told herself it was nothing, nothing at all, stop worrying.

The GP – a girl so young Flanagan wondered how she could know anything – had examined her, pushed, squeezed, pulled, while Flanagan fought to suppress a giggle. When Flanagan went to her car, locked herself in, an appointment with the clinic made, she wept until she couldn’t see.

And now Dr Prunty, who was so terribly nice, and clean, and had such a kind voice matched with cold eyes and hands.

But oh fucking God, the children are so small.

Stop it.

She told herself to stop it, grow up. She had held her nerve with guns pointed at her. By Christ, she would hold her nerve through this.

Flanagan had arrived at the Cancer Centre early that morning, thirty minutes before her appointment. Built as an annexe to Belfast City Hospital only a few years ago, the centre’s lobby sparkled like no medical facility she’d visited before. She had to stop herself from checking for her passport as she entered, as if she was running to catch a flight.

At ten minutes past ten, Flanagan found out exactly how cold Dr Prunty’s hands were. This time, she had no urge to giggle as he examined her. She stared at the ceiling, listening to his breath whistling in his nose. He moved from her breasts to her armpits, seeking abnormalities in the lymph nodes. She listened harder, waiting for a telltale pause in his breathing. None came.

Then the mammogram. The nurse said it might be a little uncomfortable, but Christ, as the perspex plate squashed her flat, she had to bite down on her lip to stifle a cry. Then an ultrasound scan, like she’d had when she’d borne her children, except the gel was slathered on her chest instead of her belly.

Suddenly, from nowhere, she had remembered the breaking of her heart when she’d failed to breastfeed her second baby. Two weeks of tears, anger, frustration at the thrashing infant squealing with hunger because she couldn’t give him what he needed. At four in the morning, defeat crushing both of them, her husband Alistair had driven to the nearest twenty-four-hour supermarket and bought baby formula. Flanagan and her husband both sobbed with regret as tiny Eli drew deep on the bottle, calm for the first time in days.

This morning, finally, after all the feeling, squashing, prodding, they took a biopsy. A local anaesthetic, Dr Prunty said, a needle, a little pressure, then it would be done.

They sent her away for two hours while the sample was analysed. She wandered along the Lisburn Road, southwards past the bars and cafes, past the student digs, towards the art galleries and closer to the exclusive clusters of houses at Balmoral.

Flanagan stopped at the window of a lingerie shop. The mannequins draped in sheer lacy things, staring back at her. She studied the lines of their bodies, perfectly plastic, not a lump or abnormality between them. Her hand went to her right breast, the feeling coming back as the local anaesthetic wore off. She remembered Alistair’s lips there, warm, gentle, like he’d found the sweetest of all manna. Flanagan wondered if he would ever want to taste her there again.

She had not told him. She didn’t know how. Dozens of opportunities to share her terror with him had been allowed to slip by. The first few times she lied to herself that she was sparing him something, but she realised the keeping of such a secret was entirely selfish. She dreaded that conversation, inevitable as it was, and avoidance was the easier course.

When Flanagan returned to the Cancer Centre, stinging and itching beneath the cotton wool and sticking plaster they’d covered the puncture with, she waited in a room with a dozen other women. Some had their partners with them, worried, fidgety men, or mothers, or sisters, or best friends. Flanagan sat alone, suddenly ashamed to have no one.

A nurse called her name, led her to Dr Prunty’s room. At the door, the nurse asked, ‘Did you come on your own, love?’

Flanagan nodded, ignored the pity on the nurse’s face.

She noticed the box of tissues on Dr Prunty’s desk, one bursting up and out, waiting to be plucked like a flower.

I won’t cry, Flanagan thought. A command to the frightened little girl that still lived inside her despite all the rotten, ugly things she’d seen.

The nurse sat on the seat beside her, took her hand. Flanagan had the urge to pull away, she didn’t need mollycoddling, but she remained still, not even a tremor.

‘Well,’ Dr Prunty said. ‘The result came back as C5.’

The nurse’s fingers tightened around Flanagan’s.

‘C5? What does that mean?’

Dr Prunty did not blink. ‘The lump is malignant. It’s cancer.’

‘You’re sure?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely sure,’ he said.

Flanagan stopped listening.

The doctor spoke about early diagnosis, stages, grades, high survival rates, surgery, appointments, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, options, possibilities, scenarios. The chain of surgeons, radiographers, consultants, with Flanagan to be passed between them like a parcel in a children’s game. She heard little of it.

When he finished talking, Flanagan pulled her hand away from the nurse’s and stood up. Her skin tingled from her scalp to the soles of her feet.

Dr Prunty scribbled on a notepad as he spoke. ‘I’ll call with the surgeon’s appointment before end of business on Monday. Don’t worry, the lump will be removed within a fortnight.’

‘Don’t worry?’ Flanagan said.

He looked up. ‘The NHS still runs like clockwork when it really matters.’

‘Don’t worry?’ she said again.

He looked to the nurse. ‘Colette here will give you some literature you might find helpful. I’ll be in touch on Monday.’

Dr Prunty gave her a joyless smile. The nurse opened the door, guided her by the elbow, out and into the corridor, pulled the door closed behind them.

Placing a hand on Flanagan’s shoulder, the nurse said, ‘We have on-site counsellors, if you’d like a quick chat.’

‘No,’ Flanagan said, walking away.

The nurse followed. ‘Well, I can give you some leaflets, phone numbers, and—’

Flanagan quickened her pace. ‘No, please, leave me alone.’

‘Mrs Flanagan,’ the nurse called.

She kept walking, her head down, through the corridors, through the lobby, the exit, across the road through the queue of cars, her step turning to a jog, her chest heaving as she climbed the stairs to the car park’s top level, into the open air, Belfast’s sky grey above her. She ran to her Volkswagen Golf, thumbing the button on her key, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel.

Quiet like an empty church.

Wild tremors in her hands. She brought them to her mouth. The children. Oh Jesus, the children. How would she tell them?

It’s not a death sentence. She had read that a thousand times as she’d scoured websites over the last week. It can be treated. I can survive this. I
will
survive it.

Calm, she thought. Be calm.

Flanagan closed her eyes, lowered her hands to her lap, and breathed deep. The rumble and hiss of city traffic seeped into the car. She opened her eyes and reached down into the footwell where she’d dropped her key. It slipped into the ignition. The car park ticket was in her pocket.

She’d forgotten to pay it.

‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Fuck. Shit.’

Anger erupted, blinding hot, a torrent. She screamed every foul word she knew, slammed the steering wheel with her fists, the car horn blaring with each impact, cursed every kind of god, slapped her palms against the windscreen.

And then the rage was gone, leaving a cold and hollow mourning inside her.

Once Flanagan had gathered herself, gone back to the pay station, then returned to her car, she drove to Deramore Gardens. To the house where the woman’s body still lay.

She had work to do.

IDA CARLISLE SAT
alone and silent in the good room, the room with the pale wool carpet, silk upholstered suite and no television. If she’d ever had any grandchildren, they wouldn’t have been allowed in this room. This room was for important visitors only.