You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll (snow like ashes series .txt) 📗

the accelerator to make the turn, the tight margin causing Bridget to wince. ‘But Thomas doesn’t come across as the remorseful type, does he?’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

The O’Shea family dwelling is on the high side of the street, a dozen or so sandstone steps leading to the front door.

Sasha rings the bell and they wait. Mr O’Shea opens the door. He is pale-skinned, with the same unruly hair as his son.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ His face registers recognition when he sees Bridget. Then dread seeps into it. ‘It’s not bad news, is it?’

‘No,’ she assures him, with a restrained smile. ‘No news yet. But we have some further questions to ask and would like to take another look around, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course I don’t mind. Come in. My wife is out.’

So far so good. Cooperation makes everything so much easier. Warrants are a bureaucratic pain in the ass.

The house is furnished with heavy antique furniture and chintz fabrics. There are original watercolours on the walls of the front room and Bridget is reminded that Dylan, Thomas and Jess all come from privileged backgrounds. Megan was the odd one out. Still is.

Mr O’Shea, despite being cooperative, divulges little information of use.

‘Have you ever met or heard Dylan speak about a young woman called Hayley Webster?’ Bridget searches for – and fails to find – recognition at the mention of Hayley’s name.

‘No. Dylan isn’t much good with women. Never so much as had a proper girlfriend.’

‘Do you know if Dylan and Thomas got back in contact?’

Mr O’Shea frowns and purses his lips. ‘I doubt it. Dylan doesn’t like Thomas very much at all.’

‘Does Dylan own or know how to ride a motorbike?’

The older man is visibly puzzled. ‘He had one in his early twenties. Few nasty falls and sold it after a couple of years. Why is this relevant?’

‘Do you know Dylan’s whereabouts on the evening of Tuesday, August twentieth? Approximately four and a half weeks ago,’ she adds, to help him navigate back through the weeks.

He shakes his head before answering. ‘Dylan is a grown man. He might live at home, but he keeps to his own schedule. Besides, it’s difficult to recollect what happened last week, let alone August!’

With Mr O’Shea’s permission, Bridget and Sasha have another, more thorough, look in Dylan’s bedroom. The room is sparse and rather sad, encapsulating how a neat unimaginative single male adult might live. In one of the bedside drawers, Bridget finds various membership and loyalty cards, one of which is for a shooting range. The shiny bright-blue card is obviously quite new. Hairs stand up at the back of her neck.

She flashes it in front of his father. ‘Did you know that Dylan was a member of this club?’

‘No … but the club is legal, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘As I said, he’s a grown man. He doesn’t need to tell me everything.’ Mr O’Shea’s words are at odds with his tone. Doubt is creeping in.

Bridget and Sasha, with Mr O’Shea in tow, proceed to the garage. It contains a car, a few bicycles, some cast-off furniture and an unpleasant odour. Bridget notices a shabby brown door inset into the sandstone wall.

‘What’s in there?’ she asks, stopping in her tracks.

‘Just a storeroom. We don’t use it much. Too damp and dingy.’

‘Can we have a look?’

‘Of course. Of course.’

The door handle is rusty and grimy. Bridget turns it and the door opens a mere crack before the stench forces her back.

Jesus … Oh no …

She knows that pungent, distinctive smell. It’s the scent of her job, the scent of rotting flesh. Bridget swallows the urge to gag and holds out her arm, to prevent Sasha and Mr O’Shea from going any further.

‘Wait … don’t …’

The older man barges through, clicking a light switch inside the doorway.

His howl is one of pure agony. ‘Dylan, what have you done, boy? What have you done!’

58

BRIDGET

‘He was here all the time … he never left at all …’ Mr O’Shea is sobbing into his hands. A uniformed officer is sitting next to him, on camping chairs located from elsewhere in the garage, patting him on the back. ‘Why would he do this to us, in his own home, with his mother and father upstairs? Why couldn’t he talk to us?’

Dylan had obviously reached the stage where words wouldn’t suffice, the stage where he thought the world didn’t need him or care for him, where he believed himself beyond help or redemption. A piece of rope looped around an overhead beam, a chair that was kicked away when no longer needed. He would have felt lightheaded after a few seconds, his hearing and vision fading before eventually losing consciousness. A few minutes until death and irreversible oblivion.

The house is swarming with paramedics, forensics and uniformed officers. There are four emergency vehicles parked outside: two police cars, an ambulance and fire truck. Family services are on their way. Mrs O’Shea still isn’t home but her arrival is imminent. According to her husband, she went for a walk to clear her head. Unfortunately, she didn’t take her phone with her, so all they can do is await her return. Poor, poor woman.

Kate, one of the forensic specialists, emerges from the storeroom holding a box in one hand and a set of plastic gloves in the other.

‘You might want to look at this,’ she says to Bridget. ‘We found it next to the body.’

Bridget snaps on the gloves before opening the old shoebox. There are three things inside: Dylan’s phone, with his passcode written on a Post-it; a solitary key, with a tag saying ‘storage unit’; and a plain white envelope, which she assumes contains either a suicide note or a confession.

Bridget steps outside with the envelope, away from the distraction of Mr O’Shea’s keening. Night has fallen. The temperature has plummeted. She turns on the torch function on her phone, carefully unfolds two typed sheets of paper and begins to read.

My name is Dylan O’Shea. This is my statement …

Tiny