Free The Rising by Brian McGilloway

passed on my condolences,’ he concluded, already turning from me as he gestured towards his door with the pen in his hand.
    I called Rory Nicell on the number Patterson had given me, though it cut straight to an answering machine. I left a brief message, explaining who I was and that Patterson had passed on the details, finishing by asking Nicell to call me when he got a chance.

Chapter Twelve
     
    My parents agreed to watch our two children that evening so that Debbie and I could attend Peter Williams’s wake. The rain continued for the duration of our journey down, falling in fine needles that careened off the roadway at angles. Debbie was uncharacteristically quiet, looking out the side window as we drove.
    ‘What’s up, Debs?’ I asked, patting her lightly on the knee.
    She took my hand in hers, though did not, at first, look over at me. ‘I’m just thinking about Penny and this disco tomorrow. She’s so excited about it.’
    ‘I still think she’s too young,’ I ventured, half joking.
    ‘She’s grown up on us without our noticing,’ Debbie replied, looking across the car at me.
    ‘She’s still a child,’ I said. ‘She’s not looking to get married.’
    ‘This is the start of it. She wants to go because there’s some boy in her class she really likes.’
    The comment affected me in ways I could not express.
    ‘So you said. Who is he?’ I asked, swallowing hard against the words.
    ‘Some new boy. She’s got a real crush on him.’
    ‘We’ll soon stop that,’ I said. Half joking again.
    ‘It’s cute,’ Debbie said, smiling. ‘Her first crush. At least she can tell me about things like that. I’d hate for her to feel she couldn’t tell us, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Mmm,’ I agreed, though part of me could do without knowing that my daughter had a crush on someone. And the other part of me thanked God, as I approached Peter Williams’s wake, that I still had a daughter who was alive and well enough to have a crush at all.
    A group of people were gathered outside the wake house by the time we arrived, just ahead of the hearse carrying Peter’s remains. I stood to one side as the coffin was lifted from the back of the hearse and a group of men gathered, a little embarrassed, to share the weight of Peter Williams, as they attempted to manoeuvre the coffin in through the narrow front door of Caroline’s parents’ home. The undertakers shuffled beside them, umbrellas held aloft, though they did little to shield the coffin from the rain, which rattled on its lid. I was surprised at the size of the coffin. I had, I suppose, been expecting something smaller – it being some years since I’d known Peter Williams.
    We gathered in the hallway for a few moments while the family said prayers upstairs around the coffin. When the rosary was finished, Caroline’s parents brought the priest downstairs again. He was now sitting on one of the hard wooden seats brought in from the kitchen, a cup of tea and a sandwich balancing on his knee. Caroline’s father, John, nodded to us and gestured that we could go upstairs.
    The stairway was narrow, and we had to stop and stand against the wall as those mourners coming down from the wake room squeezed past us. At the top of the stairs, a middle-aged man I did not recognize, in white shirt and black trousers, nodded to us solemnly and pointed with an open hand towards the room where the coffin had been placed.
    The bedroom was tiny, even with most of the furniture removed. Peter’s coffin rested on a stand against the wall behind the door. The lid had been left on the coffin, for Peter’s body was marked beyond the capability of even the most seasoned undertaker. A batch of Mass cards rested on the lid, to which pile Debbie added the one we had brought. At the head of the coffin, her hand placed lightly on the brass crucifix at its centre, Caroline Williams sat, flanked by two women who introduced themselves as her cousins. Caroline smiled sadly when she saw