Daffodils in March (5 page)

He held in the groan. “You'd have liked that, wouldn't you? It'd fit in with the plans you two had made. But stuff happens, you know. We broke up. End of.” He waited quietly while Hanna checked in.

“Well, be nice to her—for me,” she said as she turned, holding her boarding card.

“Fine,” he muttered, hugging her. “Have a safe trip. I'll be here on Friday evening. Well, not here
here
because this is the departure lounge, but you know what I mean.”

“I know. Thank you. See you then. I love you.”

“Love you, too, Han.” He watched her head through the security check, not moving until she was out of sight. Then he turned, crossing towards the doors with long strides. His phone rang as he reached the car. “Hello.”

“The payoff was short.” His boss sounded even more irate than usual.

“It can't be.” David unlocked the car and slid inside. “He promised it'd all be there this time.”

“Well, it wasn't. Grant's messed me around for the last time. Meet Joey at the Brown Bear in half an hour and sort it.” The phone went dead.

David hung up. He rubbed a hand over his face. This was the last thing he needed. Rather it was another reason to keep Eden at arm's length for as long as he could. He drove as fast as he could while keeping to the speed limit, albeit barely. He parked just down the road from the Brown Bear public house.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the glove box and pulled out the nine millimeter handgun he kept there. He reloaded it. Then, he slid it into the back waistband of his jeans. He really didn't want to have to start wearing the holster again. It just raised far too many questions. Like why was a journalist armed? The answer he always gave ceased being funny a long time ago.
Shoot first, ask questions after.

He closed his eyes for a long moment. He hated this part of the job. Barry Grant was a no one. Everyone makes mistakes. Yes, Grant had just made a big one, but that didn't mean this was necessary. Pulling out the phone he kept in a box taped to the underneath of the driver's seat, he sent a coded text then put the phone back into its hiding place.

He locked the car, turning up his collar against the soft rain. A few minutes later when he saw Joey leave the pub, he got back inside making it look like he'd just arrived.

Joey crossed the road and walked towards him.

David's stomach turned. He opened the car window. “What did you do? You have blood on your hands. The boss said half an hour. I wasn't that late, couple of minutes maybe. There's a lot of surface water on the roads.”

“Grant was in the pub.” Joey climbed into the car and pulled off his hat. “Boss wanted us to send a message. Of the permanent variety. I didn't see the point in waiting for you.”

David frowned. “Was that really necessary? There are other, far more effective ways of doing that. He can't pay if he's dead. And watch what you touch. I don't want blood on the leather seats.”

“Granger wanted Grant dead, and he asked me to deal with it. I parked about a mile away. I need you to drive me to the car,” Joey commented as he cleaned up. “Boss says ten in the morning. Usual place.”

David jerked his head. “I'll be there.” Now let's get out of here before the cops show up. I hope you steered clear of the CCTV.”

“Taken care of, mate. Along with the ones outside the pub.”

David drove off, not surprised when sirens filled the road in front of him, and several marked police cars zoomed past, blue lights filling the darkness.

He dropped Joey at his vehicle and drove around for a while, taking the circuitous route home. Unable to put off the inevitable any longer, he headed back to the house. He parked on the drive and set the alarm on the car.

A light came from the lounge. He took a deep breath and headed in. Eden sat on the couch, feeding Marc and watching the TV. David slung his coat over the chair and headed over to the sideboard.

He needed something tonight. He took a long, hard look at the bottle of brandy, then picked up the soda and poured a small glass.

“Did Hanna get off OK?” Eden asked.

“Yeah.” He took a long drink, drained the glass, and refilled it. “The roads were pretty bad though. Lots of surface spray out there.”

“Did you hear about the stabbing?”

David froze. “No, I didn't have the radio on. What stabbing?”

“Some bloke got murdered in a pub about five miles from here. It was on the local news at half-past six. Apparently, it was an unprovoked attack. This bloke just walked in and attacked him.”

He studied the soda in the glass, swirling it, his stomach matching the movement. He desperately tried not to give a more visible reaction. “Wow. Do the cops know why?”

“Not yet. I reckon its drug related, or he was just in the wrong pub at the wrong time.”

The comedy show on the TV stopped. David glanced across the room, wondering if the signal had gone again. Rain often affected the satellite dish like that. A huge red sign saying “news report
”
filled the screen for a moment. The voice-over sounded.
“We now go the news studio for breaking news.”

David angled himself so he could see the TV better. “Wonder what happened.”

“More on the murder maybe, or something happened to the PM or the Queen.”

The newsreader appeared, a picture of a flaming plane behind him
. “A plane has crashed on landing at Manchester airport. Early indications are that none of the 126 people on board survived.”

David froze. Manchester? Hanna was flying to Manchester.

Amateur footage shot by a witness showed the plane attempting to land before flames lit the night sky.
“Early reports indicate the pilot radioed the airport, mentioning a jolt and loss of hydraulic pressure half an hour before arriving at Manchester. Emergency services scrambled to the airport runway, but the plane was unable to slow down, landing at well over two-hundred knots. It rolled and exploded on impact. Manchester airport is expected to remain closed until tomorrow morning. Our reporter, Philippa Reynolds, is at the scene.”

David dropped the glass to the sideboard with a loud chink.
Manchester.

Eden glanced up at him. “Did Hanna call to say she'd arrived?”

He pulled out his phone and checked. His throat constricted and a dull ache settled in his chest. “No.”

“Try…” Her voice caught and she coughed to clear it. “Try calling her.”

His eyes glued to the TV, David dialed Hanna's phone. It went straight to voicemail. “No answer.” The hollowness in the pit of his stomach grew.

“Fire crews are on the scene,”
continued the voice on the TV.
“The plane broke up on landing. Mobile phone footage of the plane attempting to land has been given to us by several eyewitnesses.”
The video images changed to those of the plane crashing again.

The doorbell rang, and David went to answer it.
Please let it be Hanna, having changed her mind and caught a taxi or train home.
A pot of daffodils sat on the doorstep. He sighed, but picked up the flowers and carried them into the lounge, setting them in the front window.

“David…” Eden called his name, her voice thready and weak.

He glanced at her. She was as white as a sheet, shaking, tears pouring down her face. “What's wrong?”

She pointed at the screen.

David followed her gaze. Hanna's flight number scrolled across the bottom of the screen, along with a number for relatives to call.

His legs buckled beneath him, and he sagged against the wall. “No….”

****

Eden sat on the sofa, the news still playing on the TV. There had been nothing new for hours. When David had called the number on the screen they hadn't given him anything the TV news didn't have, so he'd jumped in the car and driven to Manchester. Eden had wanted to go with him, but David had said it'd be better for Marc if she stayed here and she'd reluctantly agreed.

She called her parents and Pastor Jack and told them all she knew, which wasn't much more than what was on the TV.

She didn't want to add presumed killed, even though that's what the TV was saying.

Just after two in the morning, the phone rang. Eden snatched it up, praying it was Hanna, and she'd decided not to take the flight after all. “Hello.”

“Eden, it's me.” David's voice was hollow and drained. “It's been confirmed, there were no survivors.”

The bottom once more fell out of her world. “Noooo,” she whispered. A spear pierced her heart as her fears became reality.

“Hanna was thrown from the plane when it crashed,” David said quietly. “They found her still strapped to her seat. I've seen a photograph of her and made a preliminary ID.”

Eden's hand rose to cover her mouth, a strangled moan escaping. Tears burned her eyes, escaping down her face in a never ending stream.

“She's gone.”

It was a moment before her voice worked. “I'm… When are you coming back?”

“Later. I'll, uh, we've, that is, the relatives here, have been allocated rooms in a hotel for a couple of days.”

“Oh…OK.” Eden swallowed hard. She tried not to let disappointment and grief overcome her voice. Alone in Hanna's house, amongst Hanna's things was the last place she wanted to be right now.

“It's late,” David said, and to give him his due, he did sound exhausted and grief stricken, despite the way he recounted the news in a cold, almost clinical manner. “I'm tired, and if I drive back now, I'll end up falling asleep at the wheel and crashing. Besides, they need me here tomorrow to formally identify her body in person, rather than from a photograph, and they'll be giving a briefing as to what happened. I want to be there for that.”

“OK,” she whispered.

“How's Marc?”

“Sleeping.”

“You should try to sleep, too. It's going to be a long few days.”

“OK.” Why was she incapable of forming whole sentences? And why hadn't he asked how she was coping with all this? Then she stopped. She hadn't asked him either. Perhaps for both of them the pain was too raw, too new and awful to contemplate fully. But she ought to ask. “How—”

“Well, 'night.” The phone went dead before she could rectify the mistake.

Eden grabbed Hanna's cardigan from the back of the sofa and curled up with it, giving into the sobs. She needed a minute before she rang her parents and told them. But before she had a chance, from upstairs came the cries of the baby who was now an orphan.

****

David sat in the hotel room, an open bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him. He'd bought it from a small off-license across the road from the airport hotel. The double shot he'd poured an hour ago still sat in the glass. The old him would have drained both it and the bottle, by now. He wanted to drink it so badly--to blot out the pain and grief filling him.

It was three AM and despite the fact he'd told Eden to sleep and he was exhausted himself, sleep was beyond him.

His heart was breaking, and he didn't know what to do. He wanted all this to go away, but it wouldn't.

Hanna was gone.

In his mind's eye, he saw her lying in the makeshift morgue, looking the way she did in the photograph they'd shown him. Cut, bruised, burned, and dead. He turned his attention back to the glass. Hanna would tell him no, “don't give in, not when you've come so far,” but she wasn't here, was she?

She'd never be here again.

God, please, what do I do? What do I do without her?
He wasn't sure his prayer would even be heard, so far had he sunk into his current line of work.

Sometimes it engulfed him so much he didn't know who he was anymore. He certainly didn't like the person he'd become and prayed that he hadn't changed so much, plunged himself so far into the filth of the underworld, that he was beyond even God's love. Part of him knew that wasn't true, but times like these he had his doubts.

His phone lit up, cutting off his train of thought. As always after midnight he put it on silent so as not to disturb Hanna or Marc. He picked up the handset out of curiosity, not really caring who it was, and hoping it was no one from work. Liam's photo showed. They'd been friends for a couple of years now, having met at a meeting and discovering they had an awful lot in common.

How did Liam know he needed to talk to someone? His finger hit the reply button and his hand moved the phone to his ear as if on autopilot mode. “Hello.”

“Hi, David, it's Liam.” Liam Page's Irish accent filled his ear. “I couldn't sleep. Was lying here, looking at the moon, and I had this overwhelming feeling from God that I needed to call you. How are you doing?”

“I'm not,” David managed. His stomach clenched and his voice broke. “Hanna's dead.”

There was a pause before Liam responded. “Oh, David, no. I'm so sorry. What happened? Are you and Marc all right?”

“Hanna was on the plane that crashed in Manchester. She was going up there for work. I dropped her off at the airport this afty—yesterday afty,” he corrected. “She…”

Something creaked in the background as if Liam had sat up. “Do you want me to come over?”

“Thanks, mate, but I'm in Manchester at the moment. They've put the relatives up in a hotel for a couple of days. I'm…” David broke off. He needed help and perhaps Liam was right about God prompting him to call. “I have an open bottle of whiskey in front of me. I've even gone as far as to pouring a shot—actually it's more of a double.”

“Have you drunk any?” Liam's tone changed ever so slightly.

“No, but I want to. God knows how much I need a drink right now, which is probably why He kept you awake so you could phone me. I just want to make all the pain and grief that's filling me go away.” He knew he could tell Liam that without being judged.