Alone with the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller (18 page)

She turned to Mick, blinked and took a deep, resigned breath: ‘We started going out three years ago, in 1988. I used to meet him in his room at the home. He lived in staff accommodation at the time. He came to my twenty-second birthday party at my house and met my family. We went for drinks. We took up classes together, weight training and aerobics.’

‘Christ,’ chuckled Shep, ‘I’d have thought he got enough weight training and aerobics humping that lump.’

‘How would you describe your relationship at that time?’

‘We was girlfriend and boyfriend, you know? That’s how I introduced him to my family. That’s how he introduced me at the classes, as his girlfriend.’

‘Did you not find it strange that he was never available at weekends?’

Karen shrugged.

‘And when did you learn that he was in a relationship with Marion?’

‘They threw an engagement party for them at the home.’

‘That would have been, let me see, almost two years ago, in June 1989? How did you react?’

‘I was furious. I didn’t speak to him for months.’

‘Did you resume your relationship with Pete after this?’

‘After the wedding in June last year, he told me that he’d made a mistake, and that he didn’t love Marion. He loved me.’

‘So you resumed your affair with Pete?’

She nodded.

‘I need you to answer the question for the tape recorder,’ said Colin, gently.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I realised he was lying to me and using me. The night of his birthday, in December last year, he tried it on with me and I refused. I ended it.’

‘So when was the last time you had sex with Pete?’

‘November last year. Nine months ago. By then I’d got to know Marion and I liked her. We became good mates. We went to the pub. I baked a cake for her birthday. I helped them move out of the home. By the end of last year I hated Pete and thought Marion deserved better.’

Colin laughed: ‘It was Marion you hated really, wasn’t it, for standing in the way of you and the man you loved?’

‘I didn’t love him. I was angry and hurt. But that was last year. Like I said, I became friends with Marion and stopped seeing Pete.’

‘It can’t have been easy, Karen, especially when Marion moved into Pete’s room after the wedding, seeing them together, happy. The man of your dreams married and in love with someone else.’

Karen darkened.

‘You went to the room next to theirs to eavesdrop. This sounds to me like you were obsessed with Pete. I think that you remained obsessed with Pete. I think this obsession turned into a murderous hatred. Of Marion.’

Karen muttered something to her brief and folded her arms. ‘My client does not want to make any further comment at this time,’ he announced.

Mick told the tape recorder they were stopping for a break. We reassembled in the kitchen.

‘I tell you what, for a fat bird, she’s lively on her feet,’ said Shep, ‘she gambled that we only knew about them having sex last year. I bet he carried on screwing her, right up until the murder.’

‘The trouble is we have no evidence that the affair continued after November last year,’ said Mick.

‘And she’s clamming up,’ added Colin, ‘she’s probably guessed that her best bet now is to keep her trap shut.’

Shep checked his watch: ‘I’ll make sure we get a twenty-four-hour custody extension, let the bitch stew for a day. By the time we finish with Lover Boy tomorrow, we’ll have enough to charge her with perverting the course of justice. That should open her up a treat.’

Trinity Road, South London

Tuesday, August 13, 1991; 19:00

‘I’m at the Wheatsheaf, Eve x’ read the Post-it note on my flat door that evening. I wondered how she got inside the building’s front door.

I studied that ‘x’ for clues. It looked very neat, very formal. I wondered what it meant, if it meant anything at all. What did she really want? Me? Fintan? Neither of us? The other evening at the Archway had been a disaster. The whole night felt as if the three of us had regressed to 1988, or before.

I walked into the pub and scanned the tables. I met her smile in the very far corner: had she been watching the door? Butterflies that had been dead for years rose for a fluttery circuit of my chest.

She looked pretty, if a little formal: skirt, blouse and suit jacket, ready for business. I walked to the bar, gesturing if she’d like another. She nodded, toasting me with another smile. God knows how many gin and tonics (lime not lemon) I’d bankrolled the other night.

As our drinks were being poured, I glanced over and caught her looking at me. We shared bashful smiles and I wondered why your first love remains special after you’d forgotten all others. I suppose aged sixteen or seventeen, you don’t believe
anyone
could really actually love
you
. Not in a sexual way. Maybe your first love helps you learn to love yourself.

I wanted to tell her all of this, but said instead: ‘Well, how’s the head?’

‘Still fragile,’ she husked in a voice that made Lauren Bacall sound like Mammy Two Shoes out of
Tom and Jerry.

‘Listen, I meant to say the other night, it’s great to see you.’ And I meant it. ‘I was just a bit shocked, and half cut …’

I scolded myself for the unwitting knife pun. She didn’t seem to notice.

‘I did try to let Fintan know I was coming to London. I left God knows how many messages but he never got back. Do you think he’s okay with me? He seemed very … cold would you say?’

‘I didn’t think so,’ I lied.

‘Now I’m not newsworthy I don’t think he gives a shit,’ Eve spat.

I was shocked by her sudden change of tone. Underneath that sombre brown bob still lurked a volatile redhead.

She saw the alarm in my face and quickly changed tack: ‘Well, Detective Constable, have you cracked that case yet?’

We weren’t supposed to discuss live cases with anyone, but I couldn’t help myself. Especially the part about me unearthing Marion’s damning letter to her friend.

‘Wow, you’re quite the Columbo aren’t you?’ she teased. I laughed it off, wondering why no one ever compared me to a sexy detective.

For the rest of the night, I sat back and let Eve take me on a languorous, drink-fuelled trawl through the lives and times of our contemporaries.

Some sort of unspecified Catholic guilt prevented us getting straight down to the sweet
schadenfreude
of other people’s misfortunes. Instead, Eve kicked off with a few success stories: someone’s brother scouted by United; Fidelma Daly landing a role in a daytime soap; a guy we barely knew inheriting a fortune from some great uncle in Canada. But the really interesting news invariably involved downfall and ruin: babies popping out, students dropping out and people coming out.

I was surprised by the number of girls back home who’d fallen pregnant, clearly without planning to. I wondered how many more had undergone secret abortions in England, like Tara Molloy, the girl I’d unwittingly chaperoned to a clinic in Stepney. Mind you, in late Eighties Tullamore, it was easier to get hold of Semtex than a pack of Jonnies. Women had to beg their inevitably God-fearing, pro-life GP to go on the pill. So Eve and I went without. We did everything but. Why play the Russian roulette of unprotected sex? Yet I couldn’t help thinking now: were they all at it, all along, hammer and tongs, except us?

Some of the pregnancies resulted in shotgun weddings, usually in Rome. One couple compounded their degenerate behaviour by ‘living in sin’, forcing their hard-line religious families to disown them. As Fintan says: ‘He sure moves in mysterious ways.’ But most of the ‘fallen’ young mums were staying with their families. I was amazed to hear that none of the dads had scarpered, at least not yet. I couldn’t help thinking what a life these young parents faced now, trapped in a town with few job opportunities, playing second fiddle to a child they didn’t want, beholden for the rest of their lives to some man/woman they’d shagged a few times, unable to meet someone else because they were ‘damaged goods with baggage’, forever under the thumb of the child’s maternal grandparents. But that was the Irish way. You didn’t run away. You made your bed. Pain was your penance.

A couple of guys hadn’t so much come out as been flushed out by local gossip, mostly spread by Tullamore’s only openly gay man. Maybe he resented the competition because, once outed, none of them hung around for long.

As for those who made it to third-level education, most were already abroad. Every year, Ireland dished out 120,000 degrees/diplomas to people who then had to emigrate to get a job. We were the leading supplier of over-educated barmen, waitresses, labourers and cab drivers to the world.

I couldn’t begrudge Eve the merciless relish with which she imparted these grim allegories. As far as she was concerned, there was only one difference between her and the rest of us: her life went off the rails first, and very publicly.

‘Fintan tells me you’re sharing with Aidan Walker.’

I nodded.

‘Jesus, Aidan “Stalker” Walker. Is he still falling in love every week?’

‘Three times a week now, what with all the random women he encounters in London.’

‘How does he find time to write all those bad ballads? He still writes bad ballads, I presume?’

‘I can confirm that he still writes bad ballads. Though he’s been seeing the same girl for over three weeks now, so he’s got a double album of new material all about Ruth. Or is it Rachel?’

‘Rachel’s hard to rhyme. It must be Ruth. He could knock out a song a day with a name like that. Just think of the possibilities: truth, forsooth, youth …’

‘Phone booth. Bucktooth. Uncouth.’

‘He should call the album
Now That’s What I Call Moothic
.’

We both laughed again, hard. We used to laugh so much.

We recovered to find ourselves in that awkward post-joke void. I sensed Eve’s green eyes molesting me. She had something to ask.

‘Listen, Donal, I need a favour,’ she said sadly.

I stopped myself from saying,
Name it.

‘There’s a photographer sniffing around the hostel, someone must have tipped off one of the papers that I’m staying there. They’ve agreed to move me to another hostel but there aren’t any free spaces at the minute. Could I stay at yours? Just for a few nights, until I get myself sorted?’

‘Of course,’ I smiled. Surely this meant she still had feelings for me?

‘Thanks, Donal. When I get back on my feet, I’ll buy you all the beer you can drink,’ she said, pointedly planting her empty glass on the table.

It felt good drinking with a woman who could keep up, even if it was costing me a fortune. But I needed to know what she had in mind for us. How would we move on from here?

I slung her the gin and cut to the chase: ‘What are your longer term plans, Eve?’

‘I don’t really know,’ she said quietly.

‘But you’re staying in London?’

‘I can’t go back,’ she said, slightly panicked. ‘I’m like the scarlet bloody woman over there. I could never live in Ireland again, not after all that’s happened.’

‘What about the bungalow?’

‘We tried to sell it but no one can afford to buy such a monstrosity. Some of the neighbours put in offers way below the asking price, because they knew we were desperate. Can you believe that? That’s why Mum and the boys had to go back to New York, to pay the mortgage.’

I wondered why she hadn’t followed them; then remembered that the Land of the Free doesn’t admit people with criminal records.

‘We’ve got a company that hires it out to tourists but we don’t get a lot of takers. I mean, who in their right mind would want to spend a week in a big damp bungalow in the middle of the bog?’

‘What about your dad? Maybe he could help …’

‘Do you honestly think I could bear to set eyes on that home-wrecking bitch Sandra Kelly? I’d rather sleep on the streets. She broke my mother’s heart.’

I felt confused: she had seemed happy enough to accept a favour from Frank three years ago, when we were planning our move here.

‘Don’t worry, Donal, I won’t be a burden on you for too long,’ she spat, her red fuse fizzing.

‘That’s not what I mean, Eve …’

‘I signed on today, and I’m seeing the probation people Thursday, so it might just be for two nights. Hopefully you can stand me for that long.’

‘Stay as long as you like, Eve,’ I said, ‘honestly. We’ve got so much to catch up on. And so much we didn’t get a chance to talk about before I left.’

I thought to myself: ‘Where could we even start with that?’

But Eve seemed to know exactly where she wanted to kick off our darker reminiscences. ‘You know the other night, when you mentioned Meehan?’

I nodded.

‘Tell me again, Donal. Everything you saw that night.’

‘God, Eve, are you sure you can handle …’

‘Tell me,’ she demanded.

She listened intently as I ran her through the sequence of events in graphic detail: scored as it was inexorably on my memory.

When I wrapped up, I asked, ‘What I saw, Eve, is that actually what happened?’

She nodded gravely.

‘Did he …?’

She kept nodding.

‘God, I’m so sorry.’

Eve looked at me with those big watery eyes: ‘You said you couldn’t hear anything?’

‘No, it was all in total silence.’

‘But you can hear everything when Marion comes to you?’

I nodded, surprised she could remember minutiae like this from our booze-fuelled night at the Archway Tavern.

‘The way you talked about it, you sounded really convinced that she is actually coming to you with clues?’

‘Even more so now.’

‘Why?’

I explained how my dual sighting of Marion on Sangora and Strathblaine Roads the previous Friday turned out to be pivotal to the case, exaggerating the impact, but not wildly. I next reiterated my absolute certainty that the identity of Marion’s killer lay on a door somewhere at number 21.

‘My God,’ she said, troubled, uncomfortable, ‘that’s so specific.’

Meehan flashed into my mind suddenly; the way he came for me as I lay in Tullamore General Hospital, hours after Eve had killed him. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her about this the other night. I decided it would do no good telling her now.

‘Will you ever go back?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Only to see Mum, probably after Dad croaks it.’

‘I heard what he said,’ she took my hand and squeezed it, ‘I don’t blame you.’

I explained that I felt no loss for Martin, just regret that we’d failed to find a way to tolerate each other, if only for Mum’s sake.

As we left the Wheatsheaf, Eve sensed my gloom and resurrected a running joke from the old days. No vocabulary on the planet has more words for being drunk than Ireland’s:
clattered, flootered, ossified, mangled, locked, stocious, scuttered, manky
to name just a few. As we staggered into the night, we traded them just like we used to, until one of us could think of no more.

I felt this connection to Eve that I doubted I’d ever develop with Gabby. We’d grown up together, in a way. She knew me inside out. Because of what happened to her that night, we had a bond that would never be broken.

She dozed off on the couch as I sank a Shiraz. The crook of my shoulder felt as if her head had never left it. When she stirred, I raised her gently to her feet and walked her to my bed.

‘So soft,’ she slurred as I laid her out. I pulled off her shoes and sandwiched her in duvet.

She rolled over and giggled. ‘Soft,’ she whispered again.

I watched her grind her face into the pillow and thought about lying down behind her, throwing my arm over her slender shoulder like the old days.

Retreating to the door, my mind raced: what did this all mean? Could we pick up where we left off? Why not? But what were we to do about the missing three years? Maybe we could start again, from scratch?

I didn’t know the answers, but decided that if Eve wanted to give our relationship another go, then I owed it to her – to us – to try. After all, external forces split us up last time. By getting back together, we’d find out ourselves, once and for all, whether we were meant to be. If it didn’t work out, then at least we’d know, for certain.