Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(29)

“I was only young, and I did what I was told. I went back upstairs, put a pillow over my ears and my parents turned the telly up loud. Y’ know what happened? The screams stopped, just like that,” he said, and clicked his fingers.

Ryan felt his heart stutter, already knowing what his friend would say.

“Aye,” Phillips said, turning briefly to look at him. “Turns out, Harry fell down the back stairs. Funny, as he’d never had trouble going down those stairs before. Police came, they heard Terry’s version, and we watched them come and take Harry’s broken body away in the dead of the night. Like he’d been nothing, and nobody.”

He swallowed, hard.

“I’ve never felt more of a coward than the day I went back up those stairs to my room,” Phillips said. “I’ve never felt more trapped or confined in a community that believed family problems should stay in the family. Harry’s the reason I wanted to get out, the reason I joined the Force. The first day I walked into CID, I asked my DCS to re-open the case, and I kept asking, until Terry Fletcher was charged with manslaughter, back in ’98.”

“You never told me that,” Ryan said softly.

“Aye, and you know why?” Phillips said, rhetorically. “I was doin’ the same thing as my Da’. Thinkin’ it was just my problem, thinkin’ it was all about where I came from or the fact that we didn’t have a pot to piss in…and that it was somethin’ you wouldn’t understand. But, over the years, I’ve realised that’s only half the story. It doesn’t matter if you come from a two-up, two-down miner’s cottage in Elswick, or a rambling stately home that looks like Crayke bleedin’ College. You can still feel trapped, and you can still be surrounded by folk who think there are some things best left unsaid.”

Ryan spoke, when he could be sure he could trust his own voice.

“You’re right, you know,” he said, eventually. “About lots of things, it pains me to admit, but one thing, in particular—I grew up in a place like Crayke, away from my family and my home. I lived by rules, schedules, expectations…and craved love like an addict, whenever any was thrown my way. You talk about feeling trapped? I know that feeling, Frank, and what it takes to break free from the chains that bind you to it. You can’t change the past, but you can live in the here and now.”

Phillips nodded, and thought of one more thing he wanted to share, in the quiet space of the car.

“Before he died, my Da’ talked about what happened that day,” he said. “He told me he’d lived with the guilt and shame of having turned the other cheek, and was proud that I’d done the right thing by re-opening the case. I know he got a lot of stick for it from some of the neighbours, but he was instrumental in gettin’ others to come forward and give statements. It made all the difference.”

Ryan smiled into the darkness.

“I s’pose, now I’m a father, I wonder about how good of a job I’ll make of it,” Phillips continued. “I think about all the mistakes I’m makin’ and ones I might make in the future. Then, I remember my old Da’, and how, when he died, he was a better man than the one he’d been in the years before. It gives me hope.”

“You don’t need to worry—”

“I’m no saint,” Phillips said, before Ryan could go on. “Another reason I never told you about Harry is because…well, it was me who thought up that awful nickname. It was me who labelled that poor kid, to get a few laughs from the other kids on the street. Little Frankie Phillips, with his big gob and his spotty chin, who wanted to be tough like all the rest—”

“Frank—”

“No, listen to me, lad, because this bit’s important,” Phillips said, more quietly now. “I’ve made my mistakes, God knows, but I’ve tried my best to correct them. I worry about Samantha, about Emma, about all the young ones because, in the world we live in, it seems like nobody’s allowed to make a mistake and feel sorry about it. But how else do you get to be a better person? It’s never too late to change…I’m livin’ proof of that.”

Ryan inhaled a long breath and let it out slowly, unaccountably thinking of his own father, and of whether he’d judged him too harshly over the years.

Food for thought.

And, speaking of food…

“Well, I never thought I’d see the day you chose quinoa over a bacon butty, so I’d have to agree,” he said.

Phillips grinned. “See? It was fear of the quinoa that kept me from tryin’ it, more than the taste itself.”

Ryan gave him the side-eye. “And the taste?”

“Okay, bad example,” Phillips admitted. “It still tastes like death, warmed up. But you know what I’m tryin’ to say.”

“I do,” Ryan said, and yawned. “Doesn’t all this warm air make you feel sleepy?”

“Nope,” Phillips said. “You should rest your eyes for a few minutes. I’ll wake you up when we’re nearly there.”

“Well, maybe…just for a minute.”

Seconds after his eyelids closed, Ryan fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, safe in the knowledge that his friend watched over him.

Phillips drove on through the night thinking of all the lessons he’d learned during his lifetime, and of how much he owed to Harry Fletcher. Through the windshield, he looked up to see a blanket of stars overhead, glittering like diamonds.