I Saw You (15 page)

She bent down to get a closer look and to compare it with the number written on the slip of paper in her hand. So this was Jimmy Fitzsimons’s final resting-place. The earth had settled
unevenly and there was a small hollow at the head of the grave. Dandelions had flowered and now their nimbus of down waved delicately, waiting for the time to let the seeds fly. A tall bunch of
thistles swayed from side to side, a butterfly resting on a fearsome leaf, its brightly coloured wings opening and closing slowly. Margaret held her breath as she watched. It was a peacock, the
large false eyes on its wings glowing, almost iridescent blue. Its proboscis coiled and uncoiled like the spring of an old Swiss watch. Then, as Margaret watched, holding her breath, it lifted from
the leaf and, with a languid flap, drifted away. She had a sudden image of Mary, walking down the front path, turning to say goodbye, a wave of her hand, her black curls lifting and bouncing,
tumbling down the back of her dress. Her eyes were so blue, the bright blue of the peacock’s eyes. And she moved with such grace and ease. Her feet always seemed ready to leave the ground, so
light was her tread. As if she had some kind of a spring in her instep, something that gave her bounce and levity.

Margaret watched the butterfly until she could see it no longer, then gazed at the grave.

‘So,’ she said, her voice low, ‘we meet again. I never thought I’d come back here. I never wanted to see you, to be reminded of what you did to my daughter. I wanted you
to suffer as she suffered. To die with the same pain she had. To feel her terror. When you beat her, when you raped her, when you made her feel worthless and dirty. I wanted all that for you and I
succeeded. But now I’ve realized what else I did. I’ve tied myself to you for ever. My every waking minute, my every minute asleep is filled with thoughts of you and of what I did. And
I can no longer bear it. I have not come here to make my peace. I do not forgive you. I am as filled with hatred as ever. But now I must think of myself and of my own future. I must atone for my
sin. Do you hear me? Do you hear me down there beneath the earth? Because that’s where you are, in the remains of a wooden box, a collection of bones, all that’s left. Do you hear me,
Jimmy?’

Suddenly she was conscious that she was not alone. A group of mourners were standing near a large well-kept grave. They carried bunches of flowers and they were smartly dressed. A priest stood
with them. He walked towards her and smiled in a reassuring way. She picked up her bag.

‘Are you all right?’ His tone was professionally sympathetic.

Margaret nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, you just looked a bit . . . distressed.’

‘Well,’ she tried to smile, ‘this is a place of distress, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course it is. Look,’ he said, ‘we’re here to remember a beloved daughter who died tragically a year ago. Perhaps you would like to join in our prayers. Perhaps
it would help you too.’

‘No.’ Margaret’s voice was firm. ‘Thank you, but no. I’m going now. I’ve done all I can here.’ She turned away. Behind her she could hear the murmur of
voices, random at first then acquiring the pattern, the rhythm, the structure and coherence of the Rosary.

‘The Lord be with thee,’ she whispered, as she walked through the gates and out on to the road.

Another day had passed. The half-moon was high above her. It had been so strange when Vanessa spoke about Michael McLoughlin. Of course he would be of retiring age now. She
couldn’t imagine what he would do without his job. It had seemed so much a part of his life. But maybe she was wrong. After all, what did she know? What did she know about anything or anyone
any longer? She closed her eyes. But she saw. Jimmy Fitzsimons. His eyes wide and terrified. His frantic struggles. His body, as it would have been when it was found. And his grave. Neglected.
Untended. Unmarked.

The door swung open at his touch. McLoughlin stepped tentatively into the narrow hall. He glanced to the left into the sitting room. The coffee-table was strewn with
photographs.

‘Hallo,’ he called. The music was loud, almost deafening. He crossed to the CD-player on the shelf. There were no obvious buttons on the high-tech panel, and no sign of a remote
control either. He recognized the music. It was from
Dido
by Purcell, Kathleen Ferrier’s voice. ‘“When I am laid in earth,”’ she sang. It was beautiful,
exquisite even, but loud, far too loud.

He walked quickly into the kitchen and peered through the glass doors on to the small patio. There was no one in sight. He moved back towards the stairs and began to climb them.

‘Hallo,’ he called again. ‘Is anyone up there?’

He reached the upper landing and stopped. He turned towards Marina’s bedroom and moved to the door. He could see a pair of legs crossed at the ankle. They were shoeless. He took a step
closer. The legs were clad in cream-coloured cords. Another step. Now he could see a brown leather belt into which a denim shirt was tucked. Then he was in the room. A man was lying on the bed. His
arms were folded behind his head. He swivelled his eyes to look at McLoughlin. Tears were wetting his cheeks. He made no move to brush them away.

‘Hallo,’ McLoughlin said. The man did not respond. McLoughlin cleared his throat and continued, ‘Hi, my name’s Michael McLoughlin. I’m a friend of Sally Spencer.
She asked me to look in on Marina’s house.’

There was still no response from the man on the bed. There was a moment’s silence as the music stopped, and then it began again.

‘“When I am laid, am laid in earth . . .”’ Kathleen Ferrier’s voice floated up the stairs.

‘And you are?’ McLoughlin raised his own voice.

The man looked at him. ‘Sally told me about you,’ he said in a whisper. ‘She thinks you’re going to tell her that Marina didn’t take her own life. She thinks
you’re going to find out that something else happened to Marina, that she didn’t want to die.’ He sat up and wiped his face with the back of his hand. For a moment he reminded
McLoughlin of a small child woken in the night by a bad dream. He swung his legs off the bed. They dangled, the tips of his toes resting on the wooden floor. ‘But you won’t. Marina
wanted to die. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her she had plenty to live for. I loved her. I told her how much I loved her. But my love wasn’t enough to keep the demons at
bay.’

‘And you are?’ McLoughlin repeated the question.

‘You know me. We met earlier today. Don’t you remember?’ The man’s face wore an expression of affront. McLoughlin tried to think. Earlier? What had he done earlier?

‘At Gwen Simpson’s.’

He was waiting outside on the step, the door opened and a man was putting on a motorbike helmet.

‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry.’ McLoughlin smiled in what he hoped was a conciliatory manner. ‘It was your helmet. I didn’t see you properly. So, you must be Mark
Porter, am I right?’

‘Yes. You’ll have heard of me – if you’re trying to find out what happened to Marina, that is. In fact, I was going to phone you.’ He stood up. He was very small.
His head barely skimmed McLoughlin’s chest. He slipped his feet into a pair of white runners and bent over to lace them. His shiny brown hair flopped forward. McLoughlin could see the small
boy with the new shoes. He straightened up.

‘Do you think you could turn the music down a bit?’ McLoughlin moved through the door. ‘It’s lovely, but a bit hard on the hearing at that volume.’

‘Sure.’ Mark Porter squeezed past him and headed for the stairs. All trace of tears was gone. ‘Marina loved it. She used to listen to it all the time. She always said she
wanted it played at her funeral.’

‘That was a bit morbid, wasn’t it?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ He sounded irritated. ‘I know lots of people who like to think ahead. Sensible, it seems to me. And it was lucky she told me.’ He stopped.
He was smiling broadly now. His face, with its freckles and round bright eyes, reminded McLoughlin of a character from one of the comics he had read when he was a kid. ‘Her mother would never
have had the imagination to do what Marina wanted.’

He ran down the stairs. His head and shiny hair disappeared from view. McLoughlin glanced back into the bedroom. The bed was rumpled and he noticed that the wardrobe’s mirrored door
wasn’t completely closed. He went in, pulled it back and looked inside. One of the inner drawers was half open. Some of Marina’s underwear was poking out. McLoughlin pushed it back
inside and closed the drawer. He slid the door over, then bent down and felt around the edge of the bed. His fingers touched something soft and silky. He pulled it out. It was a pair of black
pants. They were trimmed with red lace and a red rose was embroidered across the crotch. He bent down and held them under the bedside lamp. He could see a trace of something white, slightly
crusty.

‘Ugh.’ The sound was involuntary. He straightened up. He held the pants gingerly with his fingertips, turned them inside out and folded them. Then he slipped them into his pocket. He
lifted the duvet. The bottom sheet, a bright sea blue, was stained in a number of places with the same silvery sheen. Snail’s tracks, he thought, the unmistakable ooze. He flipped the duvet
in the air, shook it, then laid it on the bed. The room was neat and tidy now, the way he was sure she would have wanted it.

‘Mr McLoughlin, are you coming? There’s something I want to show you.’ Mark Porter’s peremptory tone floated up towards him. McLoughlin wondered about his accent. It was
virtually BBC English, barely a trace of the Dublin in which he lived.

‘OK, I’m on my way. Just need to use the toilet. Won’t be a minute.’ He stepped quickly into the bathroom. The room was tiled from floor to ceiling. It had the usual
fittings. Bath, with shower. Washbasin, lavatory. Mirrored cabinet. And, above, a circular globe with a pull cord, and beside it a ventilation fan. He put down the toilet seat and climbed on to it.
He steadied himself with one hand and with the other reached up to the light. He unscrewed the shade and pulled it away. It looked all right, dusty, but untouched. He put it back, then stretched
towards the fan. There should have been four screws holding it in place, but one was missing. He reached up and felt the space with his finger. No problem to take out the screw and replace it with
a tiny camera. No problem at all. He could imagine. Marina opened the envelope. She saw the photos. She knew where they had been taken. She stood on the toilet seat. She did what he had. She
unscrewed the light. Then she saw the fan. She checked the screws. She found the camera. She stamped on it. Broke it. She smashed it to pieces. The same way her privacy had been smashed, her sense
of security. Or perhaps . . . He got down off the toilet seat. He looked in the mirror. He opened the door. She didn’t find it. But whoever put it there came back after he had got what he
wanted and removed it. But he couldn’t be bothered to replace the screw. McLoughlin flushed the toilet vigorously. Then he walked downstairs.

They sat in the sitting room. Porter had gone into the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine. He busied himself with corkscrew and glasses. He had apologized for the lack of something to eat.

‘Nibbles,’ he said, a number of times. ‘So nice to have a few nibbles.’

Marina always had lovely nibbles, he told McLoughlin. It was because she’d lived in so many interesting places around the world. She’d been in Algeria for a while and then
she’d moved to Kenya and then she’d gone to Mexico and then to the States. She was such a good cook.

‘You knew her well?’ McLoughlin sipped his wine cautiously. He tried not to stare at Porter. It wasn’t so much that he was small. It was more that his body was completely out
of proportion. His head and shoulders were much bigger than his legs. His upper body was well developed, as if he lifted weights. His biceps bulged through his cotton shirt. But his face was round
and plump, his hips tiny and his legs hardly big enough to carry him.

‘Very well.’ Porter gulped from his glass. ‘We were very close. She told me everything.’ His eyes glistened. ‘I miss her very much.’ He leaned forward and
stirred the pile of photographs with his small hands. ‘I thought you’d like to see this.’ He handed McLoughlin a large black-and-white picture. ‘See?’ He stabbed at it
with a plump finger. ‘We went to the same school. The Lodge, in Ticknock. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.’ He looked at him for confirmation. McLoughlin nodded politely.
‘See? There’s me, and standing behind me is Marina.’

The pupils were ranged in tiers. Boys and girls wearing identical white shirts with ties with a diagonal stripe and a dark sweater. Seated in the front was a row of adults. Teachers, McLoughlin
assumed. He cast his eyes over the group. There must have been about two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty altogether. They were a good-looking lot. Even though the photograph was faded and
creased in places, the teenagers’ clear skin, shiny hair and eyes were immediately apparent. Like thoroughbred racehorses, McLoughlin thought. Pampered and nurtured. Bred for strong bones and
fine configuration.

‘Yes.’ He put the photograph back on the table. ‘I heard you and she went to school together. A number of people have told me. But I also heard,’ he put his glass on the
floor, ‘in fact just this evening before I came here, that Marina wasn’t very nice to you. That she and some of the other pupils caused you a lot of pain. Am I right?’

‘Who told you that?’ Porter’s tone was a mixture of anger and outrage.

‘A woman called Poppy Atkinson.’

‘Oh, Poppy, for God’s sake,’ Porter said dismissively. ‘The ugly sister, that was what we called her. What would Poppy know about anything?’

McLoughlin shrugged. ‘Well, I think she knows quite a lot, Mark. Now, I’ll grant you she was upset. You’ve heard about her sister, I presume.’

‘Rosie? Yes, poor Rosie. I wasn’t surprised. She was very unhappy with her husband. He’s a bad type. Too much money. New money, you know what I mean?’

Not really, McLoughlin wanted to say. But he smiled. ‘Be that as it may, the situation as Poppy described it, in relation to the, um, bullying you experienced, sounded horrific. She told
me that you . . .’