Blood And Water (37 page)

I won’t lie to you by saying I wasn’t tempted by the bottles on the tray and as you know I even went so far as to take one with me that night as I left the sitting room but I have invested too much at this stage to go back and I refuse to give him that pleasure. I have to say I haven’t enjoyed myself much. I had forgotten how my mind actually works, how I work. I’m not sure I like myself much, but I deserved a chance to at least try to reacquaint myself with myself if only for a few weeks.

And I’m intrigued by who I have become. It’s like I’ve been driving all these years with the handbrake on: the distance I make is a struggle and it just doesn’t feel right. And now, released, I know what I’ve been doing wrong all these years.

I’ve written and rewritten this letter a hundred times over trying to eloquently describe what happened that night. But each time I read it back it fails to capture the experience as I believe it warrants to be both documented and remembered.

What I cannot vocalise in words from my mouth I had hoped I would be able to transfer easily to paper, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Remembering isn’t coming effortlessly, not from the shame or the disappointment or even the remorse of the events of that night but more from the speed at which they happened. My mind raced. It happened so very quickly. I had hardly time to think.

That evening, when I did finally wake all I saw in Enya’s eyes as she looked over me was relief: relief that I was alive, I think. She hugged me so hard. I can’t ever remember her, or any of them for that matter, doing that and it felt gorgeous. She struck a chord in my heart and it sounded too beautiful to let go, so I didn’t.

Seeing the bottle by my bed she just assumed I’d been drinking, as did you, I believe, and it was easier to let her believe she was correct. She looked flushed but at the same time remarkably calm. I was sorry she had to be the one to find him. She asked me what I’d done and I told her the truth: I told her it was over. I told her I’d finished it. Incredibly she hugged me harder. I didn’t want her to let go. Sleep she said, so I did.

And when I woke up again she was still there. They rallied about me then, the children, all of them, in the days that followed. And I loved it. My plan hadn’t involved being around this long. But I couldn’t leave, not yet. I only wanted to experience their love a little bit longer. It was never, I thought, too much to ask and definitely worth the risk. But I see you now, watching them, interrogating them over their every move. I can see you wondering which one of them is to blame. Just who is the culprit. But I am telling you now that the only thing they are guilty of is protecting me, or trying to. I am telling you now, you can stop looking because I did it. I ended William’s life.

“
Evans!
” Milford roared from his office without putting the letter down.

“Yes, sir,” she responded at his door almost immediately, still chewing a mouthful of freshly prepared ham-and-cheese toastie.

“See if there’s a squad car in the vicinity of the Bertrams’ and send it round there
fast
to check on Barbara Bertram. And when you’ve done that get yourself together and we’ll follow. Right? I’ll wait for you downstairs. And hurry.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, gulping down her food.

He was ready and waiting when only minutes later she met him at the entrance, his face flushed and urgent.

“Here,” he said, throwing her the keys. “You drive.”

Putting the car in gear Evans drove out of the station and with their lights blaring and her foot to the floor she tore up the road to the Bertram family home.

And for Milford his thoughts, intensified by the speed and urgency he was experiencing, started to make some sense. This case was one of his most challenging, mainly, he decided, because it was different. In most crimes there were inconsistencies, little discrepancies that niggled and irritated into the small hours of the morning. Irregularities that couldn’t be explained, moments unaccounted for. But not here. With this one it was absolutely seamless, no flaws, no time delays. Their stories matched perfectly. And that was odd. And then there was his instinct, which up until now he could rely on to point him in a direction, any direction, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, but a direction nonetheless. But with this one there was nothing. With the Bertrams, they had stripped all the personality out of their father’s murder and he couldn’t figure it out. Until now. They had, he now knew, erased its character to protect their mother.

Caught in the moment of his revelation, Milford continued to read.

Why? I suspect you’re asking yourself. Well, let me tell you. William was no good, not for himself, not for me and not for the children. I should have stood up to him just as I should have stood up for them but I did neither, and seeing him behave like such a bastard only served to make me feel like an idiot all over again. And while back then, when the children were much younger, I knew no better, I had the excuse of youth to fall back on. However, I am not so lucky now. What is it they say: fool me once shame on you but fool me twice shame on me. Well, shame on me, thinking I could remain with him, after everything he’s done. I should have left him then in the past but I had neither the confidence nor the brains to do it. And here I was, only days ago, about to make the same monumental mistake all over again. But watching him rage on like that, listening to the words falling from his mouth, each one nastier and meaner than the last, was thankfully just too much. And I thought to myself: Really? Is this the way I want it to be? It was supposed to be different. I just assumed after his heart attack that he would be different: he certainly seemed so in the hospital. But, as we now know, I am a fool.

“Sorry, sir,” Evans interrupted, “but can you fill me in on what’s going on?”

“Just drive, Evans,” Milford said, anxious to get to the end of both the letter and the journey.

I sat that evening listening to him drone on and on, until I stopped hearing his words. I don’t know how long we sat, him in the chair at the bureau ranting to himself but wanting me to hear and me by the fire just staring at the flames flickering. And it caught my eye. It was decent enough size with the butt end of a branch coming out of it. I don’t think I thought much about it. I just imagined myself doing it. And then it came to me, an odd but honest question: What if? What if I hadn’t called the ambulance then? What if I just hit him now? And then: Why not? Funnily enough, he didn’t hear me get up from my chair to rummage in the log basket, nor did he hear me as I approached him. I didn’t try to sneak up on him or anything. I suppose I’m just light on my feet, that’s all. And lifting it high I brought it down hard on his head and, just like that, he shut up. The noise it made was so
peculiar but the silence immediately after was delicious. He didn’t fall immediately, just kind of teetered before slipping a little then toppling over, his head first on to the desk. I watched for a minute, rapt by the sight of the blood that trickled from his wound to colour the desk and thicken in his hair. But it didn’t stay that exciting for long and bored by it I left. I was making my way upstairs and I’m not sure what came over me – an intense fury perhaps at what I had just done? That burst of anger drove me into the study to rip that room asunder, his room. I swept books off shelves, papers off his desk. I smashed lamps and ornaments: I wanted him and everything to do with him gone. I even emptied the safe. At last I stopped myself and, exhausted by it all, emotionally and physically drained, I surveyed my work and, satisfied, left and went to bed. And that’s it.

“
That couldn’t be it!” Milford shouted at Barbara Bertram’s letter. “What about the broken window?”

“Sorry, sir,” Evans interjected, running another red light. “What are you talking about?”

“This,” he blustered, shaking the letter in his hand, “is apparently Barbara Bertram’s confession but she’s left us hanging!”

So you see, you can stop looking now. I’ve told you the important bits, the rest is self-explanatory and really quite superfluous. I’ve enjoyed the last few days immensely, I’ve experienced my children as I should have and I think, I pray, I have
corrected a great wrong done to Ciara. I know she forgives me and I guess she’ll eventually forgive her father, not that I really care but it’s not in her nature to hold on to her rancour for long. But I’m done now, and it’s my time to go.

“Jesus, Evans, step on it,” he urged. “She’s in trouble. It’s all here. She’s telling us.”

By the time you get this I will have picked up the end of my original plan and sent myself off to where it is I truly deserve to be: let God be the judge of that. I know I’m being a coward, but I cannot face my future with only myself to entertain me. This is my gesture to Lillian: a lovely innocent child deceived and abused by a monster. I am that monster.

By the time they reached the house the squad car was there. One of the officers had scaled the wall to gain access to the garden and was now knocking hard on the door.

“It’s no use knocking, she won’t answer!” Milford yelled over the tall timber gate. “Open the gate, use the sensor!” he shouted and minutes later heard the mechanism kick in and the gate slowly draw aside. Dashing in, he ran up the steps.

“Find the key thingy,” he told them frantically, searching around the pots of shrubs.

“The what?” the confused Garda asked.

“It’s a key holder that looks like a rock,” he told them. “Enya said she used it to get in the night William was murdered. I told them to get rid of it, but I’ll bet a million to one they didn’t listen.”

And sure enough it was eventually found behind one of the many plant pots.

Pushing the key into the lock and the door into the hall Milford charged up the stairs while Evans followed, calling out a pointless “
Barbara!
” as he ran.

She was in her room, lying on the bed, on top of the covers, fully dressed and made up as if prepared to go out for lunch at her favourite restaurant with the girls.

“Shit,” Milford whispered as he stepped towards the bed, breathless and defeated. Kneeling at her bedside he felt for a pulse. Her make-up looked dense against the pale grey of her lifeless skin. In her hand she clutched an old St. Christopher medal, for her safe passage no doubt, he thought.

“Oh God!” Evans gasped, reaching the room only seconds behind him.

“She’s gone,” he told her. “Call the ambulance.”

She looked at peace, finally, he thought, liking the way her lips curved round in what he could only describe as a satisfied half smile. Her job was done.

On her bedside table was a neat bundle of letters, one for each of the children explaining, no doubt, what she had done and saying goodbye.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he told the ever-elegant Superintendent Burke with a disappointed air of defeat, “but I can’t fill in the details here.”

“But, you have a confession, don’t you?” she asked, exasperated by him and his demands for meticulous detail.

“I do, ma’am, but it doesn’t –”

“Stop right there,” she told him, showing him the palm of her hand. “I’ve followed this one with you, I’ve seen what you’ve seen. You have here a woman so obviously distressed and oppressed that for her the detail
is
the murder, by her own admission and her own hand. So take it. Another solved and closed case under your belt. You know as well as I do sometimes we can’t explain –”

“But I feel –” he interrupted.

“Stop!” she cautioned firmly. “I know what you feel, I know what you always feel. But in this instance I’m guiding you to stop and you would do well to take heed of my advice. Unless of course you’re telling me you don’t believe her? Do you have an alternative theory?”

“No. I believe her, but it’s too easy,” he ventured defiantly to which she responded with a look sharp enough to cut his argument down.

Chapter 32

The bells tolled at the end of the ceremony and once again from behind they were a unified force, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder, all dressed up for the occasion.

Here they were in familiar territory. This was where they had come as children to pray each week. It was where their parents had married and where they were each christened, all five of them, and now where both parents were buried. However, on this day they were celebrating with tears of joy rather than tears of sorrow.

Hand in hand they walked down the aisle to the joyous carnival of bells that rang out merrily to announce the blessing of their marriage. Martha and Rian smiling at their guests, hugging many, kissing some and touching fingers with others as they passed. Behind them their siblings followed. Enya beside Cormac and Ciara with Seb, walking arm in arm out of the church, into the waiting embrace of the bride and groom.

“Thank you so much,” Martha whispered to Seb, looking beautiful in her cloudy-pink silk A-line dress.

Seb held open the door of his beribboned Jaguar.

“It’s the least I can do,” he replied honestly with a small bow.

“I hope that’s because you want to and not because you feel have to,” she said, feeling Rian squeeze her hand, not wanting her to upset the perfectly balanced equilibrium of the day.

But he needn’t have worried. Seb, blushing brightly, lowered his eyes, knowing she knew that at a previous time not long past he wouldn’t have bothered with her. “Have no doubt, it’s because I want to,” he said.

And once she was settled into the car he leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek and firmly grasp his brother’s hand.

“It’s never too late to change,” he said and actually meant it.

It was he who had spoken to Rian not long after they buried their mother and convinced him to at least give Martha a second chance. He had, Seb told him, found someone in Martha who genuinely loved him despite all the odds and it was a venture, Seb reasoned in his inimitable way, worth both the investment and the risk. The fact that Seb was even remotely concerned was the deciding factor for Rian. At the time when Seb cornered him while dealing with an overheated barbeque he was tempted to tell him to mind his own damn business, he’d done enough damage. But against his better judgement he listened without speaking, turning over the sausages and drumsticks one by one as Seb made his pitch. In doing so he opened a door to his domestically awkward brother who was doing his best to not necessarily make amends, but to connect. And Rian was glad he did.