Summoning the Dead (DI Bob Valentine #3)(12)

When he had first looked at the child in the barrel, with the blackened, leathered face, he wanted to take away his pain. It was an overwhelming feeling – a need like a parent’s to keep a child safe. He didn’t know who the child was, and it didn’t matter, because he was every child. He was the child Valentine had once been, who played on the same streets, collected conkers and ran errands for adults, set jam jars out for bees in summer and made snowmen in winter. The child was his friend, every one of his friends, climbing trees and kicking a football at a wall, playing soldiers with sticks and knock door run. And then it hit him. At some point, all those long summers and longer winters ended for two children. There were two fewer children queuing at the ice-cream van when it did the rounds. Two fewer children being called in by their mothers as the sun faded and playtime drew to a close. For no reason that those children could have fathomed, everything ended. The lives they had known, the hopes they had held, any dreams for the future, ended.

Child murder was the most grievous sin Valentine could imagine. Taking one child away from their family was a crime like no other; but worse, it diminished us all. Child murder took all our futures away and told us there was nothing left. Because if we couldn’t care for our children, couldn’t protect their lives, we had nothing left. And we deserved nothing more.

Valentine closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the windowpane. The glass was cold and damp, and he felt his skin absorbing the moisture. His head felt warm. There was still an ache in the back of his skull that he couldn’t account for, but that pain didn’t matter to him now. It was the feeling of sadness, of a solemn loss, that had overtaken everything else; he was filled with hurts that were greater than himself.

The hand that touched his forearm felt very far away, and it took several seconds for him to register what it was.

‘Boss, are you ready?’ said DS McCormack.

Valentine snapped out of his thoughts and stepped away from the window, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Sorry, Sylvia, I was off on one.’

‘Sir?’

She deserved an explanation, as much as he could supply anyway. ‘Those kiddies, I was thinking about them. I don’t think I’ll ever shake that boy’s image from my head.’

‘Me neither. It’s horrifying. Are you sure you’re OK now?’

‘I won’t lie to you – I don’t feel myself. You of all people know how I get, since the . . .’ He touched the centre of his chest with fingertips.

‘You don’t feel yourself?’

Valentine looked back to the window. ‘Do you remember what that bloke said?’

‘You mean Crosbie?’

‘Yeah, him. He told me, in time, I’d come to know what the signs were. That I’d get to know when they were coming.’

‘Is that where you think you are now?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I know something’s not right with me. I feel this impending dread inside me, but I’ve no idea what it is or what it means.’

‘You really should see Crosbie again. I’ll set something up as soon as I can.’

‘Now wait a minute.’

‘Sir, this could be related to the case. All those other times it happened . . . just think how much easier it would be if you could control this for your benefit.’

‘I don’t know, Sylvia.’

‘You have trouble buying into all of this, I get that, but didn’t Crosbie say you were over-intellectualising?’

‘I don’t think that’s a word he would use.’

‘You know what I mean. He said you were trying to comprehend something in your mind that couldn’t be understood at the level of the mind.’

‘Yes. Something like that.’

‘Your trouble isn’t a problem you can rationalise, Bob. You need to find acceptance. I can’t do that for you.’

‘OK then.’

DS McCormack turned for the door; her movements indicated the conversation was over. ‘Are you ready for Keirns now?’

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’



Garry Keirns sat facing the two officers with his hands positioned flatly in front of him. They were not big hands, certainly not farmer’s hands, but small and almost podgy. The nails had been bitten to the quick and the knuckles were freckled. Thin wisps of red hair occupied the extremities and joined with more freckles where they attached to the wrists. As confidently as Keirns had laid out his hands, when he caught the officers assessing them, he whipped them away and put them beneath the tabletop.

‘Bit jumpy aren’t you, Garry?’ said Valentine.

‘I don’t think so. No more than anyone in my position would be.’

‘And what position’s that?’

He huffed. ‘Do I need to spell it out? Jesus, you raided my foster father’s funeral not an hour ago.’

DS McCormack replied, ‘I think that might be an overstatement of the facts, Garry.’

He shook his head. ‘Look, just get on with it. What the hell do you want from me?’

Valentine detailed the morning’s events, adding the second body at the end of his description of the first. When he was finished speaking Keirns sat impassively before them as if he was preparing himself for further shocks to come. It was difficult for the DI to judge his reaction because there was little or no reaction at all. He had often found that, in similar circumstances, people simply shut out the fantastic because they had no points of reference for it.