The Nameless Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t just disappear.’
    I grunted agreement as I got changed. ‘Did Shane say anything to you today about Penny?’
    She shook her head. ‘What about her?’
    ‘Not about her, about him. I think he’s feeling jealous of the attention she’s getting. He said he was glad the baby hadn’t been born because it would have shifted him
even further down the pecking-order.’
    ‘That’s a nasty thing to say.’
    ‘He’s a kid, Debs. Nasty is a given. Maybe we should try doing a little more with him.’
    ‘He’s being spoilt, Ben,’ Debbie said. ‘Penny almost died. We got her back again – there’s nothing wrong in us being happy about that. He’s being
selfish. We can’t encourage it.’
    I stood at the back door and lit a smoke while I waited for Frank to go out to the toilet before locking him in for the night. He slept in the kitchen now, the old shed where
he had slept being too draughty for an animal his age. He struggled slowly down off the lawn onto the path, his thick body seemingly too heavy for his short legs. He was old for a Bassett hound
and, in recent years, had slowed considerably. I suspected that the coming winter would be among his last.
    I was just putting out my cigarette when my phone rang.
    ‘Devlin,’ I said.
    ‘Inspector, this is Laurence Forbes.’
    It took me a moment to place the name. Forbes had been a DJ on a local radio station, but had graduated into TV news a few months previous.
    ‘Mr Forbes, what can I do for you?’
    ‘I wondered if you wanted to make a statement,’ he said. ‘About the child.’
    ‘What child?’
    ‘You found a baby on the island today, I believe,’ Forbes said. I wondered how he had heard. The Commission would not have announced the find until cause of death was
established.
    ‘Who told you about that?’ I asked.
    ‘Sean Cleary,’ Forbes said. ‘He gave us an interview on the 6 o’clock news about the injustice in the hunt for his father. You’ll be able to catch my piece repeated
on the bedtime bulletin, if you’re quick.’
    ‘I don’t have a statement,’ I said. ‘That information was not for public announcement,’ I added, hoping to appeal to Forbes’s sense of basic decency.
    ‘It’s a little late for that,’ Forbes said. ‘Switch on the telly and you’ll hear about it. Are you sure you won’t give a comment?’
    ‘Quite,’ I said, hanging up.
    The TV in the kitchen was turned on, though muted. It took me a moment to find the relevant channel. I recognized Sean Cleary instantly.
    ‘I’m not happy, no,’ he was saying.
    ‘Why?’ Forbes asked, the camera focusing on him for the duration of each question. He was in his forties though carried the affectations of men twenty years his junior; his hair was
highlighted blond, his skin a permanent glow of bottle-induced tan.
    ‘My father died before I was born. I was never given the chance to meet him, to speak to him. No one ever told my mother or me what happened him, or why they took him from us. We
didn’t even know for sure that he was dead. We’ve been living in a state of . . .’
    ‘Limbo?’ Forbes suggested.
    ‘Aye,’ Cleary said. ‘That’s just what it has been. Now the men who did that, who took my father from me, think they can just wash their hands of it.’
    ‘You’ve had thirty-five years of wondering about your father, isn’t that right?’
    Forbes angled his head sympathetically, even as he stoked Cleary’s anger.
    ‘We still don’t know for sure why my father was killed. I don’t believe that my father was a tout. So, I want whoever reported his burial-spot to the Commission to meet me; I
want them to tell me why my father had to die. People know where I live.’
    Forbes nodded. ‘You need the closure, isn’t that right?’
    The word closure itself was enough to make me switch off the set. I wondered how Millar would feel about Cleary’s interview. While not criticising the Commission, he was clearly angry at
the legislation that