Blood And Water Read online

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2016

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: [email protected]

  © SIOBHÁIN BUNNI 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978178199-2173

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Born in 1968 in Baghdad, Iraq, Siobháin is one of six children born to her Irish mother and Iraqi father. Educated in Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, she then graduated from the College of Marketing & Design in Dublin. She lives in Malahide with her three children, Daniel, Lara and Lulu.

  Acknowledgements

  I don’t for one minute take for granted the honour of having a publishing contract, but writing with a real deadline is a totally different experience to writing with only myself to answer to. Blood & Water should have taken a year to deliver but life got in the way and it has taken almost three. And it’s been an incredibly rewarding but strangely focused experience, so when it comes to those I need to thank, this time around, there is only a handful of amazing people on my list.

  Thank you so much, Paula Campbell, Poolbeg’s fine publisher, for having the patience to stick with me.

  No nonsense and straight to the point Gaye Shortland, my enduring editor, gentle but firm, I am very grateful for your keen eye and for recognising the thread that made the story.

  Outside of writing but ever present in the background are my parents, Nael and Anne Bunni to whom this book is dedicated, for their continued advice and support.

  For my brother Layth and his fiancée SarahJane for constantly checking in and making sure I’m on track.

  Once again I have to thank my sister Lara. What can I say? You’re a mad yoke, but you keep me smiling and make me feel loved!

  For my sister Nadia and brother-in-law Paul who pleaded to read a draft – not sure if they’ve actually read it, but thanks anyway for being curious!

  On the lighter side, literally, for Aidan and the Gym Bunnies (!) at Just Classes in Malahide for the brief, very energetic and utterly fatiguing moments of fun in my week – thanks a million.

  And finally for my three children, Daniel, Lara and Lulu. You make me proud habitually, you make me laugh loudly, you make me happy daily and are the reason I get up each day glad to be alive and honoured to be your mum.

  Dedication

  For my Mum and Dad, Anne & Nael, with infinite love and gratitude.

  Prologue

  They carried the coffin into the crammed church, two abreast and three deep, their footsteps falling in time to the sombre drone of the organ. In silence they offered up the polished rosewood casket at the front of the altar. A long display of white lilies was placed on its top, then one by one they genuflected and turned to take their places in the pews reserved for the family at the top of the church. The three brothers stepped into the first pew beside their sisters and mother. From behind they were a unified force, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder, all dressed in black for the occasion.

  Here the siblings were in familiar territory: this was where they had come as children to pray each week. It was where their parents had married and where they were each christened, all five of them. However, on this day they were burying one of their own earlier than they could ever have expected, and under less than usual circumstances.

  An enormously well-respected family with almost celebrity status, this deference was evident in the numbers that gathered to mourn alongside them, with sympathisers spilling out the doors onto the gravel square outside. Government ministers standing side by side with local dignitaries, friends and neighbours. To the outside world, spectators to the event, they were solid. This, they reflected quietly in their seats, was a close-knit family that didn’t need the emotion of grief to be united. They were the family that was referenced around other folks’ dinner tables, the ‘Why can’t you be more like Sebastian Bertram, so polite, so smart?’ or ‘Cormac Bertram, he’s handsome, so entertaining’. The tactless statements that every other child dreads to hear: the comparison and the disappointment. Today that admiration and respect was amplified.

  Together they stood tall, heads bowed: a fine and imposing example of family unity. A family any parent would be proud of.

  Detective Inspector Milford stood at the end of his carefully chosen pew in the west transept and watched them standing together. The opening hymn ended and they took their seats, heads down, eyes focused on the floor, each lost in his or her own grief.

  From the pulpit, one of the celebrating priests welcomed the congregation, calling it a day of great sadness, a day of enormous loss not just for the family but also for the community and the county – the loss of a true statesman and long-serving politician who gave his service to the county and the cause he so obviously loved. He bowed his head in sorrow as he extended his sympathies to Barbara, the grieving widow, who without lifting her gaze from the floor shook her head as if to deny the reality of what was happening. Poignantly then he invited them to join him in prayer for the repose of a soul that was taken so prematurely, so violently, from them.

  Milford didn’t take his eyes off the front pew, noting their every move, every nod of their heads and shift in body pressure. He didn’t miss a budge or nudge or a single word, their incantations and their hymns, their participation and their expressions. He watched them from start to finish and admired their staunch, stoic performance. And when they spoke from the rostrum their voices boomed through the vaulted church, the readings and prayers delivered so beautifully and with such perfect pitch and diction. And, like the rest of the congregation, he found himself thinking how extraordinary they were but for reasons different to those of the grieving onlookers.

  As funerals go it was almost perfect. It had mood and humility; it spoke of greatness in this life and rewards reaped in the next. Extolling the life lived and celebrating great achievements, the priest rejoiced not just in the deceased, but also in those that he had influenced around him. And the music: what an impressive arrangement – sentimental when required yet uplifting as the words declared a welcome into heaven.

  Heaven: do we really still believe in that concept, Milford wondered while he watched and listened. He was more of a live-for-today kind of a guy – Carpe Diem and all that – happy to leave the caretaking of heaven to God, if one existed. And while he wasn’t so sure about heaven he was certain of a final judgment, and not in heaven but here on earth, in the here and the now. Sceptically he scoffed as the creed warned: “From thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.”

  Yes, apart from his own heathen wonderings, the service was almost faultless and that, for Milford, was the quandary. If the priest hadn’t regularly mentioned the name of the deceased thro
ughout, it could have been anyone’s funeral. It was textbook stuff. Definitely not his preference.

  Curiously, for someone who died so suddenly there were no tears, like it was a relief or a long time coming, Milford surmised, then silently admonished himself for stepping ahead of the investigation, a classic error he often had to reprimand his overly eager juniors for. But his instinct wasn’t often wrong.

  As the service reached an end, again the men took up their positions at the elaborate casket to lift and bear its weight on their shoulders. Slowly, arms bracing each other, they followed the three celebrating ministers down the aisle, passing through the heady scent of burning oils and incense. The church bell tolled loudly, once for every year of his life, its ring sounding a bleak and sorrowful pulse into the crisp autumn morning.

  Barbara, dressed elegantly in an expensive fur coat and hat ensemble, flanked on either side by the girls, stood to take up her position as chief mourner behind the coffin. Someone, she wasn’t sure who, handed her a single long-stemmed lily which she held loosely in her hand. Why, she wasn’t sure. He always hated lilies, she thought as they paraded down the red carpet towards the glaring brightness of the open doors. She did her utmost to ignore the well-meaning but, in her mind, patronising stares that honed in and watched them like hawks as they moved. She felt exposed, on display. Not sure what to do or how to behave she kept her eyes, like raging fireballs in their sockets, focused forward. She wished she’d had the foresight to take her sunglasses from her bag before leaving her seat. There should be tears. Why are there no tears, she asked herself. Taking assurance from the hand that gently squeezed her arm, she briefly entertained the urge to wring one out, for show if for nothing else. What must they think of us? But she simply didn’t have the energy and instead did her best to ignore the audience. The stinging sun assaulted her eyes as slowly they stepped into the sunshine. Shielding herself from the burning rays, she let Ciara take her bag and dig out her glasses for her. Putting them on, she smiled and nodded politely, relieved by the privacy they afforded.

  Reverently the coffin-bearers navigated the steps into the crowds outside: the late arrivals and the ones that couldn’t squeeze into the packed church. Parting biblically, heads lowered, the gathering made way for the procession that snaked around and alongside the old majestic granite church, then headed up the gently sloping path to the graveyard where the open grave and an unsettling pile of freshly dug clay awaited. Perfectly timed, the last toll sounded as they reached the graveside where the coffin was awkwardly lowered on to the banded pulleys that would drop William Bertram’s rigid bulk into the ground.

  How had it come to this, Barbara asked herself, hardly able to remember the past few days, never mind the last few decades. Was there a point in time that she could actually mark, a point from which it had all spiralled so wildly out of control? This wasn’t a spontaneous thing, she knew that. Things like this didn’t justhappen. It had been building for a very long time. Our finest hour, she mocked silently. She wished she could say it wasn’t, wished she could say that it had been an impetuous act of frustration that just got out of hand, went too far. But that would be a lie. This, she acknowledged rationally, was a culmination of years of actions. No one was more cognisant of that than she.

  Hilarious, she thought, watching as the coffin was lowered and somehow one of the inexperienced pallbearers managed to almost let slip his end of the pulley into the hole. She imagined William standing beside them, glaring at them, infuriated by their inability to co-ordinate and get it right. ‘Why do you insist on being such idiots?’ she imagined him roar, always the perfectionist. Always himself imperfect.

  “Our family,” she said aloud. She hadn’t meant to, but it had come out involuntarily, quiet but audible nonetheless. If the girls were surprised they didn’t show it. She knew they had heard: she felt them flinch. But they looked neither up nor at her.

  She stole a glance at each of her children standing to her left, her right and directly in front of her across the grave. Silently this time she spoke to her dead husband. Look at them, she told him. Our family, connected by blood, but divided by personalities. We were supposed to nurture them, to teach them how to experience each other, to tolerate and care for each other. Outwardly she shook her head. This was the conversation she didn’t have the chance to have with him in person. These were the words she needed him to hear. Look what we have done to them. Look what you have done to me. Now she felt the tears that had been so obviously absent freefall down her cheeks. But they weren’t tears of grief, rather they were tears of frustration and shame. She had watched it happen and did nothing to stop it. She let it happen. Her body shook.

  Ciara, of all people, put an arm around her shoulders and let her head rest against her shoulder. How ironic, Barbara mused, that this child should be the one to offer her comfort, their roles reversed, their lives changed. She felt the strangely welcome pressure of her fingers on her upper arm. She was free now to feel, as she should, waking finally from years of inertia, the sensation of Ciara’s embrace peculiarly exceptional.

  His mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear the priest’s words. She watched him flick oil at the polished timber and bow solemnly but she wasn’t listening. Way over his head she watched the trees sway gently against the clear blue autumn sky, their leaves discolouring beautifully, just waiting to be carried to the ground to decay and complete their life cycle, just like the coffin that was without doubt a coffin fit for a king, now resting in the rectangular hole which was its final destination, primed to decay and rot. It was nature’s way.

  “Mum,” Enya prompted from her left, waking her from her evanescent thoughts and nodding to the flower in her hand.

  The lily: William’s least favourite flower. Barbara cast it from her hands and waited for its quiet, comical thump as it hit the wooden box below. If she could have chortled aloud and got away with it she would have, but it just wasn’t appropriate for the grieving widow to snigger at her husband’s funeral.

  Around her, one by one, her children reached down to cast still-moist handfuls of clay on to the coffin. The organic, wet smell of it made her stomach lurch and her skin prickle. She didn’t need to look up to know how they appeared or how they would behave. In the silence of the past few days she had come to know them well: the distinguished leader, the careful diplomat, the amusing joker, the rebellious doer and the sensitive carer. The remaining line-up of her team.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Three weeks earlier

  Like a startled rabbit he jumped instinctively, alarmed by the feel of his brothers wife’s hand passing purposefully across his groin. He took a short gasping breath and checked himself. Did that really just happen? Watching her back as she moved about the kitchen like nothing out of the ordinary was going on, he wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps he’d imagined it. But when Kathryn looked over her shoulder to throw a wicked, sinful glance back at him he knew he hadn’t and she had meant it. Every provocative nerve-tickling nanosecond of it. He looked around, as if someone else might have noticed her move but, apart from himself and herself, they were completely alone in the expensive, solid and shiny red kitchen.

  Cormac, spooked by the innuendo, swallowed nervously and tried to discreetly reposition himself out of her way, but it was pointless. Moving within her dominion she found a way to make contact each time she passed, which was without doubt unnecessarily frequent. Whatever he had been expecting from her, it wasn’t this.

  “You alright?” she asked casually, busy chopping and mixing and stirring. “Be a pet,” she said with a wink, “and help me set the table.”

  His heart was beating double time and, in the absence of any better ideas, he did as he was told. Having found what he thought was the right moment to talk to her again about his predicament, this wasn’t the anticipated response. And now, distracted by her unexpected but not inexplicable behaviour, he couldn’t think straight. And while he may have been temporarily stunned, he
wasn’t completely stupid: he had a pretty good idea what was happening – he just wished he were wrong. Perhaps he had misunderstood, maybe he was misreading her constant skimming. Maybe it would be different with everyone around? But he needed her alone.

  Frustrated by a situation slipping out of his control, he stopped trying and allowed himself to become her stooge for the afternoon and prayed for a moment to organically arise where he could talk to her properly.

  “Be a doll and check the spuds.”

  “Do me a favour and get the serviettes from the top drawer.”

  “Reach in there and grab the opener for me, would you?”

  “You wouldn’t mind shining up the glasses, would you?”

  “Be a pet and fill up the salt cellar for me?”

  Attending to her every beck and call, hoping to win her favour, he did as he was asked and scurried around her while one by one the family arrived to take their places at the now beautifully set lunchtime table.

  On the plus side, he consoled himself as he navigated between tasks, his activity served to legitimately remove him from the mindless, bullshit conversations around the table. He never understood why they did this to themselves: these ‘first of the month’ Sunday lunches were a form of self-inflicted torture that he and his siblings forced upon themselves in the desperate hope of actually becoming the close-knit family everyone in their acquaintance had them down as. Why and to whom it was so important he couldn’t remember anymore.

  His father was, as always, being difficult, finding fault with his younger daughter on her unannounced return from abroad while his mother, as usual, remained silent but pissed. Rian was indulging in excruciating displays of affection with his newly announced fiancée Martha while Seb and Ciara verbally scratched at each other like children.