Read So Say the Fallen (Dci Serena Flanagan 2) for Free Online

out, but she ignored it, climbed out by herself. She walked to the door of the house where he had lived alone for a decade and stopped there, not looking back as he approached.
    The house had been built at the same time as the church, a century and a half ago, from the sandstone quarried near Armagh. Like all rectories, it was large, with four bedrooms and three receptions. Had he and Maggie ever had children, then they might have made good use of the space. But there were no children, Maggie was ten years in her grave, and McKay couldn’t remember the last time some of those rooms had been opened. Cold and damp, draughts slipped through every closed window and door. He sometimes imagined himself a ghost haunting the dark hallways.
    The church grounds stood behind an iron fence at the south-western end of Morganstown’s main street, the last buildings before the countryside. The Morgan family had paid for the building of the church in order to serve the community thatearned its living in its linen mill. The mill had died with the linen industry, but the rows of red-brick two-bedroom houses remained, as did Morgan Demesne, the mansion seated in acres of woodland at the other end of the village, now owned by the National Trust.
    These days, the village was mostly populated by young professionals who took advantage of easy access to the motorway that served Belfast, but few of them ever saw the inside of McKay’s church. His congregation was drawn from the older generations who had stubbornly refused to be bought out of their homes, and the dozens of farms that sprawled across the surrounding countryside.
    Main Street – in truth, Morganstown’s only real street – stretched to just a few hundred yards, a filling station with a small shop at the north-eastern end. Clusters of modern houses, built during the property boom, branched away from Main Street, SUVs and executive saloons parked on their driveways. Apart from a handful of band parades every summer, it was as uneventful a place as could be imagined. Sometimes McKay enjoyed the peace here; sometimes the quiet made him want to scream.
    He unlocked the door and stood aside to let Roberta enter. Still she did not speak, not even to thank him. He followed her into the hallway, watched as she paused at the bottom of the stairs, looked up, then back at him. Then she walked into his living room. He remained in the hall, looking at the stairs. No, not at them, but at the memory of them. That Sunday four months ago.
    She had smiled at him from the second to last pew as all others around her bowed their heads in prayer. He had stood in thepulpit, his stare fixed on her as he recited the words, just shapes in his mouth, no meaning to them whatsoever.
    Roberta sat there, glowing like an ember among the sad, grey, slack faces. Farmers, most of them, scrubbed-up for their weekly duty. Broad-backed wives, thick-fingered children. Boys who could drive tractors before the age of seven; girls who longed for the monthly socials and the chance to spin around in the arms of some pimply lad.
    He’d been dreading this service, just as he dreaded every one. He felt certain they would see the sin on his face, know what he’d done. And they would point and hiss, and call him hypocrite, how dare he preach to them after he’d taken her into his bed, after his weakness had betrayed them all.
    He watched as Roberta stood, sly and silent as a cat, and made her way to the door. She gave him a glance over her shoulder, her eyes meeting his, and he could not help but stumble over the prayer. The door closed silently, and a few seconds later, as he found his place again, he felt the cold wash of displaced air.
    After the service, after he had shaken hands with the departing congregation, after he had listened and laughed and consoled and thanked, he let himself into his cold and lonely house. With a fluttering in his stomach, and a heavy heat beneath that, he went straight to the living room,