The Annie Carter Series Books 1–4. Jessie Keane

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       47

      Orla Delaney bent and laid a bouquet of twelve blood-red roses on her brother Tory’s grave. Kieron stood to one side and watched her as she emptied the dead blooms, put in fresh water from one of the council cans, and carefully started to arrange the fresh flowers in the urn. Petey, her minder, watched them from the cemetery gates.

      She was good to do it, thought Kieron. Every week, she was here.

      ‘I do it for Mum and Dad,’ she said once when he questioned her about it. ‘I promised them I would.’

      Still, he thought she was good to do it. Very good, under the circumstances.

      It was cold today. An arctic breeze swept through the graveyard. It was autumn and soon winter would be here. Jaysus, he hated the winter. Africa had been heaven compared to this. He pushed his hands into his coat pockets, hunched his shoulders against the cold, and watched her.

      ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should report Pat missing to the police, what do you think?’

      Pat hadn’t been seen for over two months now. All right, Kieron hated the bastard, but the bastard was his brother and it seemed like he had dropped off the edge of the world. Whether he wanted to or not, he was starting to feel concerned.

      Orla thrust the last of the blooms into the urn and straightened up. She looked him dead in the eye.

      ‘You’re having a laugh,’ she said.

      ‘No,’ said Kieron. ‘I’m not. It’s looking odd, Pat not checking in with any of us for this length of time.’

      ‘We don’t ever deal with the police, Kieron,’ said Orla. ‘Jaysus, you don’t know much about this family but you must know that.’

      There it was again. He was Kieron the outsider. Kieron the precious little artist, while his brothers did all the real work. It annoyed him.

      ‘So what do we do then?’ he demanded. ‘Just let it go?’

      ‘Yes, you’ve got it. We just let it go.’

      ‘You’re joking.’

      ‘I’m not joking, Kieron.’ Orla stuffed the dead roses into a bag and handed him the watering can.

      Kieron looked at the grave. The roses looked starkly red in the cold grey light. Hothouse blooms, he thought. A frost was threatened. They’d be dead overnight, too delicate to survive the elements. A bit like him, maybe. He still felt bad about how Max had made him look the other night at the exhibition. The bastard had belittled him in front of all the important London faces, and he was still seething with hatred over it.

      Annie hadn’t even had the decency to call him on the phone, either. That really riled him. She’d been there as his guest, and she’d just fucked off with Carter without a word. She couldn’t treat him like that, and he intended to tell her so.

      ‘Pat’s a very big boy now, Kieron,’ Orla pointed out. She glanced at him. ‘Hey, are you listening to me?’

      Kieron snapped back to the present. ‘Yeah. I’m listening. And I know that. But I suppose we should at least enquire …’

      Orla shrugged. ‘We’ve put the word round that we’re looking for him. No one’s come up with anything.’

      ‘Well, do you think anything’s happened to him?’

      Orla looked at Kieron. Her eyes were cold. ‘We both know that’s a possibility,’ she said.

      ‘Then perhaps we ought to be more worried?’ said Kieron.

      ‘Perhaps we ought.’

      Kieron thought with irritation that she sounded completely dispassionate. Orla was a cold fish and he hated her lack of feeling sometimes. Redmond was the same. Both of them, cold as haddock.

      Orla stood there, looking down at their brother’s grave, murmuring something under her breath. She was a diamond of a girl, he knew. She did this for their parents in Ireland. She tried always to do the right thing. Molly was old now, and their father was shot away to put it mildly, didn’t know what day of the week it was, by all accounts. Didn’t know which way was up. A sad end to a dynamic man. Sad for those around him, anyway. Davey himself seemed perfectly happy. It was Molly who shed tears over the man who no longer even knew her. So Orla did this little service, and phoned Molly and told her so. Just a little thing, but to Molly, so important. Davey had adored Tory.

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