Dead And Buried

One Year Later (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1992 (#ulink_1bc78ad8-0a2b-5559-a8e6-357275eb9fee)

WHAT had woken him? A voice?

No – there was no voice – only the strident double-tone of the phone, and then, from under the covers, Christine sleepily asking, ‘What time is it?’

The bedside clock told 3.12.

As Conor reached for the receiver, the cold air of the bedroom raised goose flesh on his arms and chest.

A thoroughbred with a torsioned colon up at the McGill stables. A sheep hit by a lorry out on one of the high roads. A cow that can’t calve in some godforsaken byre down Ballycullen way. That’d be it. Conor turned over the possibilities in his head: breech birth, prolapsed uterus, dead calf…

‘Conor – fucking hell.’

This wasn’t any Ballycullen farmer. He half-recognised the voice through the layers of panic. ‘Patrick?’

‘Fuckin’ hell, Conor, man – you have to help me.’

Patrick Cameron – Christine’s little brother. Conor swallowed; kept his voice level.

‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve done something…something stupid.’ On ‘stupid’ Patrick’s voice broke into a strangled sob. Pissed again, Conor supposed. Patrick liked a drink, no question. Hadn’t he done for the best part of a bottle of Bushmill’s at Conor and Christine’s wedding in the summer and made a twat of himself on the dance floor?

How many have you had? Conor wanted to ask. But with Christine listening he couldn’t ask that. So instead: ‘What’s the problem?’

‘I think I’ve killed somebody.’

Jesus. Conor thought his heart had stopped. He cleared his throat.

‘Say again?’ he managed. Calm, professional, just another late-night call-out…

But Patrick only sobbed into the phone. Then he said, ‘Come out, Con. I’m outside. Come outside.’

It was a freezing night, black and cold and hard as iron.

Conor, closing the front door quietly behind him, made out Patrick jogging back from the callbox at the end of the road. Right down the middle of the empty street, between parked cars, his feet a soft crunch and skidding in the frost. As he passed under the streetlamps, he saw the bloodstains. On his tracksuit bottoms, on his face and hands. He was only a rag of a lad, Paddy Cameron. Twenty-two years of age but could’ve passed for eighteen. A scallywag, to hear Christine tell it – a sharp-edged little scanger, to hear anyone else.

He approached slowly, hands shoved deep in his pockets like he was searching for a lost bit of change. ‘What’d you tell Chris?’ he whispered.

‘Had to go out to Nesbit’s place to foal his mare. The poor girl’s six months pregnant, what am I going to tell her?’ Conor glanced anxiously over his shoulder, but all down the street the upstairs windows were unlit. No one awake on Rembrandt Close – no one watching.

He fixed Patrick with a stare. ‘So?’

Patrick rolled a plug of chewing gum over in his mouth and then, with a half-shrug, said, ‘In the car.’

‘What’s in the car?’

‘He is.’

Conor wanted to turn, run back indoors and lock the door. But something stopped him. He followed Patrick to the car. Already his brain was working to the inevitable conclusion: phone the police. There’s no harm seeing what you’re dealing with, but then walk back to the house and phone the fuzz. No, better, use the phonebox. Keep Christine out of this for as long as you can.

The knackered old Escort was parked by the kerb beneath a broken streetlight. Patrick opened the rear door. The car light came on like a flashbulb.

‘Turn that fucking thing off,’ Conor hissed. Patrick reached in and killed the light – but Conor had seen enough. The body sprawled face-down on the back seat. Unmoving – the right arm crooked awkwardly – the left hanging limp. Patch of blood on his back.

With the smell of blood in the air, Patrick started muttering. ‘Christ almighty, Con. Christ.’

‘Quiet.’ Conor closed the car door and leaned on it. ‘It’s all right,’ he lied. ‘It’ll be fine. Just – just tell me what happened.’

Patrick was trying to light up a cigarette but his hands were shaking too hard.

‘Forget the fucking cigarette,’ said Conor. ‘Just tell me what you did.’

Patrick shrugged and shoved his cigarettes back into his jacket pocket. His eyes were wide and white in the darkness.

‘It was self-defence, Con,’ he said.

‘How did I know you were going to say that?’

‘I swear to God, man, it’s the truth. What d’you take me for?’

‘You promise me now?’ He felt like a schoolteacher – or anyway Patrick looked like a schoolkid, skinny and pale and finally finding himself in a jam he couldn’t talk his way out of.

‘I promise. I never meant, I never wanted—’

‘Okay.’ Conor cut him off before his voice could break again. More bloody tears were the last thing they needed. Besides, he’d had enough of this. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to go back to Christine. ‘So we call the police,’ he said, digging into his jeans pocket for change for the callbox. ‘We explain. There’s no law against—’

He’d never have thought Patrick had it in him. The kid’s shoulder hammered into his chest; his forehead jolted Conor’s chin – Conor, thrown off balance by the suddenness of the attack, was stunned for a half-second. Patrick’s bony left hand took a tight hold on his right wrist.

‘No police,’ Patrick hissed. His face was wild and close.

‘Get to fuck,’ Conor said.

With an easy half-turn of his arm he broke Patrick’s grip on his wrist. Patrick had caught him off-guard but Conor still had four inches and forty pounds on the kid. Besides, he kept himself in shape – Patrick always looked like he’d been weaned on smack and potato crisps.

He pushed Patrick back with one hand. ‘You can forget about that stuff,’ he said firmly.

But Patrick was still scared. Mad scared.

‘No police.’