The night i killed him, p.20
The Night I Killed Him, page 20
‘Bollocks to that.’ He moves to look at one of the photos behind his desk, one of those black-and-white family portraits that people get done for big birthdays. Cig, Linda and Leonie are all in white T-shirts and faded jeans, Linda and Leonie barefoot, playing with the dog – Ziggy, I think its name is – and Cig stands behind the three of them with, thanks be to Christ, his runners on. I don’t even want to imagine what a barefoot Cig would look like.
Absent-mindedly, Cig adjusts the frame, his fingers resting on it for longer than necessary.
‘Never mind the yachting yahoos, I said to him. It’s a cold case. And you’ve feck-all evidence. Isn’t that right?’
He carries on without waiting for my reply. ‘Which means you might have to accept that you’ll never work out the truth. So’ – he turns to look at me, his face pained – ‘I told O’Riordan that ye can have twenty-four more hours at this lark – at the detective frigging yacht club malarkey, but if nothing’s doing, you’re both back here whip-smart. After the funeral.’
‘Right, Cig. Gotcha.’ A part of me is relieved. We’re on a losing streak. We’re going round in circles, and it’s too long ago, and he’s right, there’s the small matter that we have no evidence. And while I don’t want to be mollycoddling myself – I promised myself that I would go after this baby with all that I had, but I wasn’t going to wrap myself in cotton wool in the process – but still and all, it wouldn’t hurt to be based here for the next few weeks. A couple of easy cases. Job satisfaction.
‘And, Darmody’ – he sits back down, a long sigh escaping him like air leaving a balloon – ‘what was the point of doing your sergeant exam if you’re doing nada about it?’ He waits. ‘Are you taking it further? You know you – you know it only lasts five—’
‘Five years, I know. Thanks, Cig,’ I stammer, worried he’ll murder me for cutting him off. ‘I – I’m still, you know – thinking. You see—’
There’s a knock on the door before I can answer – thank Christ. I open it and stand back, because a plate of brownies – brownies? – is coming through first. The hands holding the plate belong to Sarge – Declan.
‘How’re you, Darmody?’ he says, flushing.
‘Did I miss – is there, like, a special occasion?’ I’m too mystified to answer Dec. He strides past me, head down, and places the plate on Cig’s desk, like some class of high priest at an Egyptian temple.
‘Thought these might go down well – at home,’ he says shyly, scuttling back towards the door. Passing me, he turns his head like a swimmer, mouths something I can’t work out.
‘Ah, Jaysus!’ says Cig, looking like he might be about to cry again. ‘You’re too good. Thanks.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I say, seizing the opportunity to get out. In the corridor, I grab Declan’s sleeve.
‘What the hell? Did I miss something?’
‘His dog died.’
‘Ziggy?’ I say. ‘Ah, that’s—’
‘Siggy – as in Sig Sauer,’ he corrects me. ‘He was fifteen.’
I shake my head, not sure what’s making me sadder. The fact that the dog is dead, or the fact that, all this time, I’d got its name wrong. Cig had called his dog after one of the most popular Garda guns and I hadn’t realized it. Or the fact that it took desk sarge Declan to step up with a random act of kindness.
I can’t work this job out, sometimes. I fecking can’t.
45
Laura
Stephen hands me the coffee and I smile my thanks. The cup is clean, Laura. They’re stored in long tubes wrapped in plastic. Nobody touches inside the cup. I do the tapping sequence, or the start of it, as Jackie taught me.
‘Flat white, right?’ He waits for me to sit before pulling a chair over for himself and sitting down. Nice manners, Detective Bourke. I find myself wondering if it’s Mammy Bourke or Daddy Bourke we’ve to thank for the charm. I shake my head as if that’ll stop the irrelevant thoughts. We’re in Corrig Point in the incident room. No sign of Senan this morning.
‘Right, thanks,’ I say, lifting the lid and checking. A small compulsion that I regret as soon as I give in to it. He grins.
‘Do you not trust me?’
‘Something like that.’ I smile back. ‘Not used to this posh Southside coffee.’
‘Haha! I know! If someone told teenage me that I’d be asking for a freaking low-fat oatmilk matcha latte—’ He breaks off, shaking his head. Then he shrugs. ‘But it tastes great.’ He opens the file and starts spreading pages out.
‘So look, there’s a couple of things going on here.’ He passes me the photo of Conleth and Max head to head, glaring at each other. ‘There’s this – the photo – and then this.’ He opens a dog-eared folder in which lie pages of blue-biroed notes in a sprawling cursive script that I don’t recognize.
‘What’s this?’
‘Detective Inspector Gerard Nolan’s retirement project, it seems,’ he says, frowning. ‘Unfinished business. I haven’t had time to go through the notebooks, but there’s a fecking mountain of stuff here. And all – well, most of it is focused on one guy. The best friend – Conleth O’Hara.’
He shuffles the pages, some of which have Post-its curling in various degrees of tackiness from the edges.
‘Apparently he was doing this on his own time after he retired. And he was the perfect guy to do it – he even took part in the search for Max, back in the day. He was an RNLI volunteer and he’d do stints in the lifeboat. But this case for him, it was, you know, the case I can’t forget kind of thing. So from this’ – he points at the photo of Conleth – ‘I reckon this puts O’Hara firmly in the frame.
‘And these,’ he adds, before I can answer, tapping the bag of notebooks, Garda-issued sturdy reliables. ‘I’m going to have to do a lot of reading.’
I nod.
‘The best friend,’ I say, walking over to study the wall of photographs pinned on the board.
‘And Nolan had been looking at the finances as well,’ he says. ‘O’Hara’s personal accounts and later, info on MaxSpirit.’
He runs a palm from eyebrow to jaw and leaves his hand half splayed across his mouth, as though not wanting the wrong words to escape.
‘I asked Mrs Nolan if he’d spoken to her about it, and she said no, but that he was always working on it. That he never actually retired properly. He just exchanged one office for another, closer to home. All this was in a shed in the garden, along with all his fishing stuff. It’s sad, isn’t it? When you can see, like, the whole person, just from the contents of a shed?’
He suddenly looks old. Weary.
‘She said her husband didn’t believe for a second that Max drowned in the harbour – or they’d have found him. It was a still night, apparently, and a full moon. Someone would’ve seen him going in. And sure, they’d everyone on the search – the inshore lifeboat, the coastguard, the sub-aqua team – everyone.’
‘And what did he think really happened? Did she say?’
He shrugs, tipping his palms upwards in a who-knows gesture.
‘Not suicide, anyway. Someone killed Max – maybe on the boat – and disposed of the body later, plain and simple. And then Nolan, poor fecker, didn’t even get two months’ full retirement, you know? Before he’s found floating off the coast.’
I think of Mum – dead before she could retire. And then an image of my father comes to mind and I feel a lurch of guilt. I picture him as Alva described it: in his hospice bed, too weak to write a letter of farewell. I see him shrunken into the pillows and – how come life is so short? I never set out – it’s not as if I made a vow never to speak to him after he left. It just happened that way. And now, it’s too late.
‘It has a dodgy bang off it, wouldn’t you say?’ Stephen sighs. He’s looking at the stack of pages.
I slide the photograph into the clear space at the front of the desk, then I tap the sheet of figures. Get a grip, Laura.
‘Have you had time to look at these? Monies in?’
‘Yeah. He had it registered as a charity in jig-time. MaxSpirit was bringing in cash from the get-go. And you know they don’t own the whole house?’
I shake my head. ‘Well, I thought – I mean, I knew that they rented out apartments upstairs?’
‘No, no,’ he’s saying, leafing through a series of pages. ‘The house was sold to a consortium way back – over ten years ago – and it’s Conleth and Gemma who are renting.’
It’s not theirs. Interesting. He takes a slug of his coffee, wincing at the heat.
‘Not as glamorous a life as they’d have you believe.’
I sip my coffee, thinking.
‘Do you know what?’ He sits forward, energized. ‘It makes me so sad to think of Nolan working all those years and never even getting to enjoy the fecking pension. You’d need to have seen the shed. Wall-to-wall shelving stacked with fishing tackle – flies and spinning whatchamacallits and rods and, I don’t know what half of the stuff is, but it’s all like for deep sea fishing – and the empty desk and this lone box. She said – Mrs Nolan said – she hadn’t the heart to clear it away.’
‘And she didn’t hand it – this – into the station when he died?’ I say, gesturing at the file. ‘Because it shouldn’t really have been taken away. I’m surprised it wasn’t handed over to MisPer.’
We exchange a look, both of us knowing that the missing persons unit does not have the manpower or authority to investigate something like this. He pushes his chair back, sliding it across the floor with a clatter, and gets to his feet. I stand as well.
‘Right,’ he says in a brisk tone. ‘I’ll start going through the notebooks. This definitely puts the focus firmly on Conleth O’Hara. Let’s get him back in. Time for a proper interview. Then we need to look again for any witnesses – anyone who saw Max or Conleth outside the club. Someone’s got to have seen Max on his way to the boat. And the weapon – we’re still looking for the knife.’
46
Gemma
Ferdia is lying on the flagstones beneath Dad’s wooden bench, whispering to his digger, one arm slung over it like they’re sleepover buddies. I take a photo and post.
@gemstone: This little guy keeps me going. Best friends with a JCB. #simplethings #kidsdocrazieststuff #familylove #cutekidsinsta #hugyourkids
Straightaway, the messages start to come in.
@missymurfi: Ferdia is a lovely little boy. Thinking of you, Gemma.
@theirishmammy: The worst is over. May your brother rest in peace.
@marymary2: Hope the funeral goes well tomorrow. The dress looked great.
@nolimitsgrl: Love and sympathy.
There are heart emojis and hugs. No matter what Conleth says, they do care. It’s genuine. I click on the ‘Thanks’ emoji and then switch it to silent, putting the phone away. I feel Dad watching me, and I hang my head.
‘You know I really love you, Dad, don’t you?’ I whisper, sitting as close as I can to his chair while still keeping an eye on Ferdia.
Dad doesn’t reply. He’s distant today, which is maybe for the best. Because I can’t keep doing this. He deserves better. I can’t keep doing this, but I don’t know how to escape. It’s like that cube puzzle; Max had one, we both did. Rubik’s cube. I would twist and click the plastic toy, my movements increasingly impatient as I got closer and closer to having one whole side of it the same colour. Then I’d show it to him, carefully hiding the remaining faces, the jumble of colours incorrectly aligned.
‘Great,’ he’d grin, before knocking it out of my hands with a little upward tap and catching it on the upswing. ‘What about the rest?’ And he’d show me the other sides, with all their mixed-up squares of colour.
‘Loser.’
‘Pig.’
‘Baby.’
‘Bully.’
Even when he was calling me names, I loved him. Even when he was being mean or teasing me for being too scared to climb out of the treehouse by the rope ladder or threatening to throw me in the sea, I still loved him.
But that night, when he came down to the boat, I hated him with a roaring red hatred for what he was saying, for every prize and every award and every well done from Mum and Dad, who barely noticed me – and it seemed to me that he was jealous. That he wouldn’t tolerate me taking the tiniest step into his world. And I hated him for interfering and for coming between me and Conleth. And for being a killjoy, because I knew even then what the drugs could do and where they bring you.
How is it possible to hate someone – and love them too? That night I hated my brother. Though I loved him too.
How can I still be alive when Max is dead? How can I have continued living, lying, hiding the truth? I should have confessed that night. No. I should have killed myself that night.
‘Can he have a Jammie Dodger?’ Ferdia says in a stage whisper, eyeing the plate of biscuits they gave us with the cup of tea. They’re so kind – after all this time, they’ll still offer us tea when we arrive. The hissing whisper is because I’ve told him he has to be quiet and not disturb the Seaview residents, although I know they really don’t mind. They love it when I bring him along to visit.
‘You mean, can you have one,’ I say, handing him a biscuit and, when no one is looking, pocketing the remaining three. ‘Okay, because you’re a very good boy.’
He blinks that near-sighted smile at me, takes hold of the biscuit and starts trying to snap it in half. When he can’t do it, he immediately hands it back to me for me to do it. I know him well enough that he’ll have a freak if it’s messily done, and there’s no way of pulling apart a Jammie Dodger tidily, so I rummage for my keys. I’ve a miniature blade on my keyring, which I pull out and use to cut a neat line through the biscuit. And that’s when I think of it. Max’s knife. I can picture it so clearly – and the engraving on it. I brought it to the jewellers in Dún Laoghaire to get it engraved. Maxattacks. Our joke.
They asked me what happened to it.
Ferdia rolls back under the bench and starts feeding one half of the biscuit into the front-loading part of the toy. I love him so much I would die for him. And I love him so much that, if I had to, I could kill him. I love him so much I will bring him with me when I leave this life.
How can I consider something so against nature? I’m his mother. My job is to protect him. But that just shifts colours around the cube – because if I confess, they’ll take me away from him and send me to prison. If I tell them about Conleth, what he did to me, what he still does, Conleth will deny it. And even if they get him, he’ll tell them what I did. And they’ll take Ferdia away, maybe put him into care. But is that the solution? To protect Ferdia from Conleth, I have to keep the lie. To save myself, I have to keep the lie. Round and round it goes.
Ferdia is still lying under the bench, his feet pressed against the seat.
‘Don’t kick Grandad’s bench, please, love,’ I say. ‘It’s too noisy.’ He drops his feet immediately, watchful.
‘Sorry, Mummy,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t tell on me, okay?’ And we both know who he means. I smile at him.
‘You’re a great boy,’ I say. ‘That’s all I’ll ever say about you. I’m just telling Grandad how great you are.’
His smile cracks another fissure in my heart.
‘Dad, I can’t stay long—’ I start, then close my mouth. I try again. ‘Max is coming home, Dad.’
Nothing.
His body will be released this evening. I’ve called the undertakers and they’re picking him up at seven thirty and he will repose – their word – in their chapel until the cremation on Friday. Tomorrow. I asked if I needed to find something for him to wear. I don’t know what I was thinking of. The guy – he was so kind – if he was shocked at my stupidity, he didn’t show it. How could they put clothes on him? For once, the phrase ‘human remains’ describes exactly what it is.
‘Not in cases like these,’ he said, and I felt better, thinking that there’s a little club somewhere of girls like me, burying their brothers’ remains after eighteen years underwater. It’s an exclusive club. A club with a membership of one where the girl in question killed her brother.
‘The casket will be closed, as requested,’ he said. ‘And the body wrapped in linen. We have beautiful linen shrouds.’
‘I’m going away, Dad,’ I say. ‘With Ferdia and Max. You – you won’t see us for a while.’
Because this is the only answer.
47
Niamh
Stephen shows Conleth into the interview room. He waits for a moment, raised eyebrows signalling that he’ll hang on if needed, but Laura just nods. We’ve got this.
Conleth is spitting feathers, though hiding it well. I glance at Laura. She’s in full-on armour mode, the sharp edges of her suit mirroring her set jawline, the high cheekbones. She’d added a layer of make-up when she nipped to the bathroom a short while ago, and not a soft, smoky-eyed touch-up – it’s like she put on a layer of frost. She’s a marble statue of tension. I know what it takes out of her to confront these guys. So I won’t be slagging. Not now.
He pulls out the chair and sits without waiting to be asked. Laura is still eyeballing him, so I do the friendly-cop schtick.
‘Thanks for coming in at short notice,’ I say. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, glass of water?’
He attempts the charming smile, but trapped energy radiates off him, like he’s dying to smash something.
‘Before we start—’ Laura uses the side of both palms to align the pages in front of her and gives the voluntary caution statement. ‘So, to clarify, this is a voluntary statement. It’s being recorded, but you are not under arrest and you’re free to leave at any time.’
He swallows and clears his throat, waiting as she finishes the caution, informing him that he does not need a solicitor, but that he can have one if he wants. I start the audio, knowing that both cameras are already rolling.
‘No, thank you, ladies – officers, rather.’ He slaps his thighs in a ‘let’s do this’ motion. ‘Happy to help, though I’ve told you everything I know already. And I don’t know if you realize this, but I should be with my wife and family at the moment. So let’s keep it brief.’
