Nowhere To Hide

‘Seems like it. Someone else’s business. Tallent wasn’t connected enough to set up those kind of arrangements on his own.’

‘But we’ve an idea what the business was?’ Brannan straightened up and looked at the DI. Like getting blood from a sodding pebble, he thought, even though we both know I’ve read the bloody file.

The DI nodded. ‘Four of them in the car, according to the border records. Tallent. Mr X. And two women. Working girls, we’re assuming. Probably illegals, being taken to a nice new home in the big city – Liverpool or Manchester. That’s where Tallent did most of his bigger business.’

Brennan turned and surveyed the flat, unenticing landscape. There was some fine country in North Wales. This wasn’t it. ‘What about Tallent’s associates?’

The DI shrugged. ‘We’re pursuing that, of course. But everyone’s clammed up, as you’d expect.’

‘And the women?’ Brennan had already begun to walk back towards the road and their parked car. He couldn’t imagine that he was likely to learn much more from being out here. Other than never to wear his best shoes to work.

‘Nothing. We presume they were taken.’

‘Jesus.’ Brennan paused, his eyes fixed on the passing traffic. ‘Pieces of meat.’

‘Pretty much.’ The DI caught up with him, sounding slightly out of breath. ‘I imagine they’ve probably ended up in your neck of the woods.’ He made the words sound slightly accusatory, as if Brennan had been casting aspersions on local morality.

‘I dare say,’ Brennan agreed. ‘So what do we think this was, then? Turf war?’

‘Something like that. But if so, it’s a bloody serious one. This isn’t just some local hoodlums giving the opposition a warning. This is two very bloody corpses. Expertly dispatched.’ The DI paused, fumbling in his pocket for the car keys. ‘But then I imagine that’s why you’re here.’

Brennan nodded, strolling back along the hard shoulder to where the DI’s car was parked. Just a few yards from the spot where the victims’ car had been parked. ‘Well, I assume that’s why I’m here,’ he said, smiling now. ‘But frankly, at the moment, your guess is almost as good as mine.’

‘Shit. Shit!’

She could hear the voice from the rear of the house, and for a moment she was tempted to turn around, step silently back outside, and head for the pub. There was nothing wrong here that a good evening’s drinking couldn’t cure. Except, of course, that there was. She’d tried drinking it away once or twice. It brought a temporary respite, but everything was still there the next morning. And you had to face it with a hangover.

She closed the front door noisily, making sure she’d unmistakably announced her entrance. ‘Liam?’

‘In the back.’ The fury of his previous utterance had drained away. There was another tone in his voice now. Something not too far removed from despair. Christ, she thought. Another fun-filled night in the Donovan household. Almost immediately she regretted the thought. This wasn’t about her. Whatever this was like for her, it was a thousand times worse for Liam. Of course, she knew that. And of course it didn’t help in the slightest.

She trudged her way slowly through the house and stood in the doorway of the former dining room that Liam had adopted as a studio. He was sitting slumped in his wheelchair in front of his easel. There was paint smeared across the canvas in a way that looked anything but artistic, unless Liam was attempting a radical shift in his painting style.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said.

She didn’t know how to respond. She could offer platitudes, try to tell him it wasn’t true. But they both knew that it was true, at least up to a point. She was no judge of art, though she liked Liam’s paintings. But even she could see that he’d lost something – a sureness of touch that characterised his best work. It wasn’t that his recent work was bad. At least, Marie didn’t think so. She could tell that the same vision was there, the same sense of imagery and perspective. But she recognised that he could no longer render his ideas with his old precision.

She’d tried to reassure him that it didn’t matter. It would just mark a change in style. After all, weren’t there theories that some of the old masters had developed their unique techniques as a result of various medical conditions – poor eyesight, colour-blindness, that sort of thing? Perhaps Liam could work within the confines of his condition to create something new.

It was bullshit, of course, and Liam’s response had been so scathing that she’d never tried the same argument again. But that left her with not much else to say. Even so, Liam stared back over his shoulder at her, challenging her to disagree.

‘What happened?’ she said, finally.

‘Christ knows. I thought I’d have a go at something new. At least try to make a start. I’ve been feeling knackered all week. But I just wanted–’ He stopped, his mouth moving slightly, as if he didn’t have the words to express what was in his mind. ‘I can’t just stop. I’ve got to keep trying.’

She moved forward and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘I’ve not done anything for weeks. Not really. I’ve played around putting a dab or here or there, pretending I was improving things–’ He stopped again. It was as if his mouth ran ahead of his brain, so that he had to stop every minute or two for his thoughts to catch up. ‘But I was just fooling myself. Most of it’s not worth trying to improve, anyway.’ He paused again, watching as she dragged a chair from the corner of the room and sat down beside him. ‘So this afternoon I just thought – well, let’s have a go.’ He waved his hand towards the canvas. ‘I’d been doing some sketches. They weren’t very good, but I thought they’d at least be the basis of something. Shit–’

She looked up at the smears of red and brown paint across the blank sheet. ‘I take it that wasn’t what you intended?’

He stopped and smiled for the first time, recognising that she was trying to engage with him. ‘No, not exactly. Christ, I wasn’t even trying to do anything very complicated. Just a few initial brushstrokes. And I couldn’t even do that properly. The lines were all over the place. In the end, I just scrubbed it out.’ He looked back at her, the smile faded, the eyes despairing. ‘Shit, Marie. It’s the only thing I could do, and now I can’t do it any more.’

There was nothing she could say. There was no point in denying it or in trying to offer any attempt at consolation. She knew from experience that he wouldn’t be in any mood to listen to that. She grasped his hand in hers, squeezing slightly, trying to express physically the emotions she couldn’t articulate in words. It wasn’t worth, now, even trying to pretend that his condition might improve. The consultant had made that clear. Liam had gone well beyond the point where they might expect any remission. The best they could hope for – and even this seemed increasingly forlorn as week followed week – was that his condition might stabilise, that he might remain as he now was. Looking at him this evening, that hardly seemed a consoling thought.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll get some supper on. Open a bottle of wine. You’re exhausted now. You can try again tomorrow–’ Even as she said the last words, she regretted them, knowing how Liam was likely to react.

‘Jesus, Marie, haven’t you worked it out yet? I’m always bloody exhausted. I sit around on my arse all day in this bloody contraption, watching fucking makeover shows on TV. And I’m still bloody knackered. It’s not something a good night’s sleep’s going to sort out. Assuming I could even get a good night’s sleep.’

Not even trying to respond to any of this, she climbed to her feet and pushed the wheelchair back through into the sitting room. Depression, she thought. On top of everything else, like some bad joke. Apparently, it wasn’t uncommon for sufferers from multiple sclerosis also to suffer from clinical depression. Liam had had bouts of that before, long before he’d been diagnosed with MS. Just my artistic temperament, he’d half-joked, when they’d first talked about it. But now it looked as though it might have been just one more indicator of this bloody illness. Christ knew, he had enough to be depressed about.

She positioned him in front of the television, searching through the channels to find something that wasn’t entirely mind numbing. That was another thing, she thought. Perhaps the most worrying of all.

She’d expected the physical disability. Maybe not the extent of it or the speed of its progression – but she’d known it was going to happen. She’d steeled herself for it, as best she could.

What she hadn’t expected was the condition would affect him in other ways. His cognitive abilities, to use the jargon that had become so painfully familiar. It wasn’t unusual for MS to have some impact of that kind, but usually the effects were relatively minor – the odd difficulty in remembering a word or in formulating a sentence, some increased forgetfulness. Not that different from the fate that awaits most of us as we grow older, she thought.

But in Liam’s case it already seemed worse than that. He forgot things that had happened only minutes before. He struggled with words. There were activities, familiar day-to-day tasks that he seemed to have abandoned entirely – using their PC, operating the microwave, even using his mobile phone. Some of that resulted from the physical effects, of course. It was increasingly hard for him to get about the house, get into the kitchen, so he was less inclined to do things that previously would have seemed routine. And, as he’d snappily pointed out, if he hardly ever left the house, why would be need to use his mobile phone?

But it was more than that. She’d watched him, on a few occasions when he hadn’t realised she’d been observing, and seen how he’d struggled with what should have been straightforward tasks. Sometimes trying over and over again to complete an action like making a phone call. She’d heard him getting into tangles trying to explain something to a caller – making arrangements for a delivery, say, or change a medical appointment. Once or twice, she’d had to intervene to sort something out, and she’d seen the mix of despair and irritation in his eyes.

He would barely admit that there was a problem. He couldn’t deny the deterioration in his physical condition, but he refused to acknowledge any other problems. If she tried to raise the issue, he cut her off or insisted that it was tiredness. But she’d called the consultant back after their last joint visit – feeling as disloyal as an errant lover in doing so – and asked his view.

‘There’s definitely something there,’ the consultant had confirmed. ‘Some cognitive problems. A degree of disinhibition.’

‘More than you’d usually expect?’ she’d asked.

‘Nothing’s usual with MS. But, yes, definitely something more significant than the norm.’

It was the luck of the draw, the consultant had explained. It very much depended on which areas of the brain were being affected. Generally, the effects were primarily physical. But sometimes, if you were unlucky, there could be a significant cognitive effect as well.

‘We could get the clinical psychologists to have a look at him,’ the consultant had offered. ‘Do some tests. Get a measure of how far things have progressed.’

She’d turned down the offer, at least for the present. She knew there was a problem. She could see no real benefit in finding out quite how much of one. It would be like rubbing Liam’s nose in something he was trying hard to avoid. She’d go down that route only when it was really needed – which would no doubt be when she had to persuade social services to give Liam more support.

Now, though, watching him sit in front of some cosy police series on the TV, she was haunted by the consultant’s concluding comments. She’d asked the doctor what the prognosis might be, what further deterioration might be expected.

As always, the consultant had been unforthcoming. ‘There’s no way of knowing. It might just stabilise–’

‘Yes, I know that,’ she’d interrupted. ‘You’ve explained that. But what do you think?’

There’d been a pause, as if the consultant was considering the idiocy of her question. ‘Well, the only guidance we’ve got is how quickly it’s progressed over the last year or so. And that’s been very rapid. So, well, if you forced me to give you a view, I’d say it’s probable that it’ll continue to progress at a similar rate.’

‘And in terms of his – cognitive abilities? What can we expect there? If I forced you to give an opinion.’

Another pause. ‘Well, the same, I suppose.’

‘And what does that mean? What will it look like?’