The confession, p.28
The Confession, page 28
Gallagher got the distinct impression she’d thrown that in to sound like it was an aside, when really it was the purpose of their whole conversation.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘I stopped waiting for our colleagues in the Met to send us something and did a search on Carney’s history in England. You were right. I shouldn’t have left it to Doherty. He is a useless shit. Anyway, I looked myself into Carney’s early days, when his folks were together. There’s something he didn’t tell us.’
‘Brilliant. So you’re telling me you cocked up, and to fix it you conducted an unauthorized investigation in a separate jurisdiction on a closed file. I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt us at all. What did you find out?’
‘Carney wasn’t always our boy’s name. Prior to 2006 he was John Paul Andrews – he used the father’s surname. I spoke to an old neighbour of theirs when they lived in London – Rose something. She kept referring to him as the Andrews boy. So I checked in with the High Courts, and he lodged a deed poll with them a few years back. The neighbour said there was a sister too. Charlie. Said JP doted on her.’
‘How the fuck did we miss that? But what’s his bloody sister got to do with anything?’
‘Well, where is she? Why hasn’t she come to see him?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t talk to him any more. Or she’s dead. Besides, if Julie McNamara knew of a Charlie Carney, she’d have said something.’
‘Maybe.’ Alice shrugged. ‘But doesn’t it seem unusual that JP wouldn’t have mentioned her at all, especially if he was fond of her? Anyway, I’ll look into it. Doherty searched for Carney siblings but it never dawned on him to check for siblings under Andrews, and there’s nothing to say Charlie went back to her mother’s surname too.’ Alice winced at the look on her boss’s face. ‘I’m sure he’d have got there eventually. There’s no need to fire him, or anything. I have his balls in my pocket. He’s suffered enough, Sarge.’
‘What’s your point, Moody? Carney didn’t tell us he’d a sister. He didn’t tell us anything. We had to find out everything. I’m not sure I see where you’re going.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. I checked through the system this morning for a Charlie Andrews but got nothing in the preliminary search on our files. She’s no criminal record, anyway.’
‘Hm.’ Gallagher scratched his beard. ‘The name does seem familiar. I don’t know why. Charlie is unusual for a girl. Try Charlotte, or Charlene maybe. Charlie's probably not her birth name. What are you telling me for, anyway? Isn’t your MO to just do whatever the hell you want?’
‘I thought you were gung-ho to be involved in this investigation. Are we not the new Starsky and Hutch?’
‘I wouldn’t go using that line, Alice. Our lot will very quickly turn that into Starsky and Butch.’
‘Aren’t you very funny. I just need you to give me a little breathing space and not mention any higher up that I’m still pursuing the McNamara stuff. Maybe if I put the word out that JP Carney is John Paul Andrews, somebody will come forward. You know, Harry could have had his wicked way with JP’s sister and dumped her with a sprog – something like that. He did have a way with the ladies, by all accounts. Maybe that’s what drove JP to batter him.’
‘That would be one possessive big brother. And the girl in Dún Laoghaire?’
‘I’ll throw my eye over the case and put somebody on it.’
‘Jaysus, Alice. You’re relentless.’
‘Thanks, Sarge. Stay off those bars now, won’t you? I won’t always be here to lighten your calorie load, ya big fat bastard.’
Gallagher stared down at his midsection, which was straining unhealthily against the seams of his trousers, as Alice plodded off. All those unkind thoughts he’d had about Moody’s weight. Karma was giving him a big kick in the arse.
He dropped the remains of the bar into the bin and trudged back to his office.
JP
Julie McNamara is coming in to see me.
I’ve been waiting for this. God, I’ve been waiting for this.
What does she want? Is she looking for some sort of apology? Or has she figured it out?
Is the truth about to come out?
It’s only been six weeks. If any more time passes, that detective is going to figure everything out. Somebody will come forward and talk about Charlie. There are still some people who remember me from back then. Somebody will make the connection.
I don’t want it to happen like that. I have other plans.
I agree to the visit, after pretending to think about it for a day or two, feigning nerves. I say I should meet her, because it’s the right thing to do. But I have conditions. I say I’ll meet with her alone. No cops. No solicitors. No doctors. This is a reconciliation meeting – it has nothing to do with the law. The hospital attendants will be there, but I don’t care about them. They’re like stone columns; their only job is to keep the ward standing. They won’t repeat anything. They hear all sorts, every day.
They say it’s not going to go down like that but then she says that’s what she wants too. Just the two of us.
It’s on.
On the morning she’s due, I lie in bed a bit longer. They don’t force me to get up, to join the queue of oddballs and crazies for a breakfast of pills and cold toast and milky tea. They imagine I’m stressed out because I’ll be facing my victim’s wife. All of my behaviour so far says that I’m only dying with guilt and remorse. Today could set me off. Plans are afoot to place me on suicide watch when she’s gone.
I stay in bed because I want the quiet and solitude. I want to think. I want to remember.
Not what I did to Harry McNamara. Well, not directly. I want to think about the day I knew I had it in me to kill him. The day I realized I was capable of murder.
It was 2011 and I’d just finished up work. I’d gone back into office supplies. Not the original company. That one had closed. But my old gaffer had set up a smaller outfit and gave me a job when I came knocking. It wasn’t as well paid and there was no chance of promotion. The whole country was in the pits because of Harry and his mates. It wasn’t even looking too good for the boss’s new venture, and he would eventually lose that too. But at the time it paid the rent and kept me honest. It was important that – seeming honest. Just in case I had to do something at a later date. Even then, I was plotting.
On that day, I decided to walk home from town, taking the old route through Drumcondra that I used to stroll with Charlie when I moved into my first flat. It was well out of my way, but I felt restless. I’d cleared out her bedroom the previous week, after four long years of watching dust accumulate on her belongings, her treasures. A layer of grey that had settled and grown and reminded me every day that there was no more Charlie, only things. I was thinking of this when I saw him.
Seamie, our dad.
He was sitting on a bench by the canal, sipping from a bottle in a brown paper bag, looking out at the swans. The same wide shoulders, shaggy black hair, now a drink-mottled face. Older, but he’d never looked particularly young.
I don’t know what made me decide to approach him. It might have been because I was so alone in the world and he, for all that I’d given up on him years ago, was the closest living connection I had to a time when I had a family. I felt drawn to him.
Seamie looked up when I appeared in front of him and recognized me straight away.
‘Well, what do you want, John Paul?’ he said. No ‘Hello, how are you?’ Just ‘What do you want?’ As though time hadn’t passed.
It was like an electric shock, hearing my name from his lips after so many years.
‘Come for a drink with me,’ I said.
He eyed me suspiciously but stood, a little unsteady already, and walked with me to a nearby pub.
I didn’t talk much. I felt like I was in a dream. Like time had gone into reverse.
He filled the silence with tales of how hard his life had been. He didn’t ask how I was. How Charlie was. She’d lived with me for years without so much as a phone call, a birthday card – nothing from that man. It was one thing for us to forget him but I still couldn’t get my head around him giving up on his own children, especially considering how young we’d been – how young she’d been – when we moved out.
‘You look like you’ve done all right for yourself,’ he said, giving me the once-over. I didn’t look anything special. I was wearing one of the two cheap suits that I owned and had worn that day to accompany the boss to a sales meeting.
But I was clean and sober – positively civilized compared to Seamie those days.
‘You should have been helping your old dad out all this time,’ he said, that bitter accusatory note in his voice that all drunks seem to master.
‘That right?’ I said.
‘Yeah. You and that sister of yours. Lazy wagon. What kind of a daughter abandons her own father? Where is she, anyway? Run off and marry some fecker, did she? Just like her mother.’
He threw more drink into him, grimacing when he realized he’d reached the bottom of the glass.
‘Charlie is dead,’ I said, staring at the bar counter.
His eyes widened and his mouth fell open.
‘Fuck. When?’
‘Four years ago.’
‘What . . . Why wasn’t I told?’
I stared at him.
‘Seriously? You ignored us for years and you think I should have contacted you? Charlie came to live with me when she was still just a child. You were already getting plastered every day by that stage. You were never a proper dad to her. You’d no right to be there.’
He closed his mouth.
His eyes filled with tears. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
‘I deserved to be told,’ he spat. ‘I did my best for you. Both of you.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You didn’t.’
We left the pub late, walking down the canal, him staggering but still standing. He had some capacity for the drink, I’ll give him that. Any other man would have been on his ear by that stage.
I walked ahead, just like I used to when we were kids and he got drunk. It used to embarrass me, people thinking I was with that man who was roaring at total strangers.
Charlie had always stayed with him, trying to hold his hand, even when he could barely walk straight. Despite everything, she showed loyalty. She so badly wanted Dad to love her, a man who’d more or less stopped giving a toss when she was still a tot.
‘What happened to her?’ Seamie called out. We’d spent another hour in that pub and he hadn’t thought to ask that until now.
I stopped and turned to face him.
‘She was killed in a hit-and-run. A man drove into her. A rich bastard. The cops don’t know who he is, but I do. He got away with it. He drove into her and left her body broken on the road like she was dirt, and he got away with it. It was on the news. On Crimecall – everything. If you’d lifted your nose out of the glass for five fucking minutes, you might have seen it.’
Why did I bother telling him? I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to provoke a reaction, something deeper than the poor me crap he lived for, after years of poisoning his own body.
He had a look in his eye – that same cruel expression he’d had the night he told me what Betty had done to me when I was a baby.
Seamie’s defence was always to go on the offence.
‘Well, you didn’t do such a good job of minding her, did you, John Paul? You throw that in my face, but maybe she’d have been better off with me. And what have you done to make sure this man doesn’t get away with it? What kind of a brother are you? This scumbag murders your sister – my girl. You know who he is and you do nothing? Chickenshit. I bet Charlene would have thought that and all. My brother, the coward. You should have killed him.’
‘And you should have been there for her,’ I snarled. ‘For both of us. You’re a joke, Seamie. Shit, I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Wasting my time on a useless pisshead drunk like you.’
‘I’m your father.’
‘You’re not my father. You haven’t been for years. And you were never a father to Charlie. I was the closest thing she had to a dad.’
I turned and walked away from him. I could feel something building inside me, a rage so huge there’d be no coming back from it. My head was going to explode with it.
It angered him, me ignoring him. It was like he wanted to provoke a fight.
‘How dare you? I lost everything because of her. Betty was doing all right before that baby came.’
I stopped, turned around slowly.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said it would have been better if Charlene hadn’t been born.’
It took three steps. I grabbed him and dragged him to the water, the two of us stumbling in with a splash.
He didn’t put up as much of a fight as I’d expected. All that strength he’d once had was gone – his body was just skin and bones. He resisted a little, but then it was like he just gave in.
Later, the post mortem would reveal he had advanced cirrhosis of the liver. He wasn’t long for the world.
When I learned that, I realized he’d wanted to end it all.
He was at the end of his life with nothing to show for it and only a slow, painful death ahead of him.
Maybe he’d deliberately provoked me so I’d put him out of his misery. Whatever the reason, that was the night I found out what I was capable of. Holding a man underwater until he can’t breathe is as violent as you get.
And if you can murder your own father, you really can do anything, can’t you?
Julie
I had no idea what the Central Mental Hospital would look like until I was in it. If you’d asked me, I’d have come up with a description of some outdated Victorian building with iron grilles on the windows. I’d have pictured long grey corridors, manly-looking nurses in starched uniforms and patients in straitjackets. Pretty much whatever I’d read about psychiatric institutions in the classics or seen in movies.
Not this place. I’d never have imagined this place, with its pastel colours and modern, open rooms, the glass instead of bars, the friendly staff and the illusion that you can just walk in and out whenever the mood takes you.
It will be Christmas in a month and the place is already decorated with artificial trees and tinsel. Papier-mâché stars hang from the ceiling. It startles me. I haven’t thought about a single normal thing since the attack. I haven’t shopped. I haven’t watched television. I certainly haven’t thought about getting a tree or buying a gift.
Maybe after today I should try to do something small. A first step. Go and buy a coffee and a magazine, that sort of thing. Get something for Mam and Dad and Helen to say thank you.
The doctor in charge of Carney’s care speaks to me first. He insists on getting me a cup of weak tea. Then he explains that his patient has been making good progress in coming to terms with what happened in my home that night but still doesn’t know why it happened. Carney is racked with guilt, apparently, and that’s why he’s agreed to meet me. He’s grateful for the opportunity, in fact, to be able to apologize in person.
I nod along at all the relevant spots, appearing outwardly calm, if a little distressed.
Inwardly, I’m trying to keep a lid on the turmoil I feel.
I have no doubt that JP Carney knows exactly why he did what he did that night. To still be putting me through this is just cruel and unusual.
I almost didn’t come this morning, thinking I couldn’t bear to meet him. The last time that man saw me I was sitting on my chair, gawping redundantly while he battered my husband to death.
Sometimes I don’t know what I’m angrier at – his lies and how people are lapping them up, or how I reacted to his onslaught.
‘We’ve set up one of the counsellors’ rooms for you,’ the doctor says. ‘An orderly will sit in the corner, but he’s only there for your safety. He won’t be listening in on your conversation. He’ll have earphones in. This meeting is for you and Mr Carney. As you both agreed you wanted it like this, we will respect your privacy. We take reconciliation very seriously.’
He hesitates.
‘I know you have suffered a grievous loss at the hands of my patient, Mrs McNamara. I hope you attain some small degree of comfort from meeting JP and seeing how sorry he is. We have found that this type of one-to-one is extremely beneficial for victims and their relatives, as well as for the perpetrators. Normally, it’s after more time has passed. It’s a testament to your strength of character that you wish to have this conversation now. And if you want to talk to me afterwards, I would be more than happy to oblige. But – and I imagine somebody has explained this to you already – please know that there is no point in looking for answers or reasoning. The type of psychosis that came upon JP on the night in question is one of the many inexplicable workings of the human brain. There is no logic to it. It’s one of those things that we will never understand. He is being punished, even though he is in here and not in jail. Both through his incarceration with us but also because he has to live with knowing what he did, even if his crime was out of character.’
‘I know,’ I say, biting my tongue.
He brings me to the room and makes sure I’m sitting comfortably while he goes off to fetch Carney. It’s a basic space. Two armchairs are inclined towards each other, a table bearing a bouquet of flowers and a box of tissues between them. There’s a lamp in the corner throwing out soft lighting. It’s warm and comfortable, a safe place to relax and open up.
There’s a chair by the door, and an orderly has already taken up residence. He smiles at me politely then puts his hands on his knees and stares into the distance. I turn from him and observe the painting on the wall. It’s impressionist in style – twinkling stars in a clear sky, a bench in a park filled with a pair of lovers holding hands.
