I Saw You (3 page)

‘Wondering?’

‘Just go and see her, Michael. She’s a lovely woman. You’ll like her. She’s in bits. Janet had lunch with her the other day. She says Sally can’t believe it was
suicide. She says her daughter wasn’t the type.’

‘Tony, come on. That’s what they all say.’ McLoughlin rocked back on his heels. ‘No one thinks their son or daughter is suicidal.’

‘You know that. I know that. But Sally doesn’t. Please, do it for me. I can’t get involved. Not officially. Go and see her, have a chat with her. Show some interest. Maybe
that’s all it will take. Someone to be nice to her.’

Nice, oh dear. McLoughlin drained his drink and signalled to the barman for another. So it had come to this. He was nice now. A shoulder to cry on, a friendly face, a purveyor of sympathy.
Nothing more, nothing less. Then, as he was about to succumb to a deep, alcohol-induced gloom, his old friend Johnny Harris had got to his feet, his pathologist’s scrubs swapped for a suit in
Prince of Wales check that must have belonged to his father, and delivered a spirited rendition of ‘What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor’, complete with extemporized verses, which
raised a few eyebrows and cheered McLoughlin up. After that it was all a bit of a blur.

But now there was the text message to confirm his status as nice guy, do anything for you kind of guy, all round good guy.

He switched his phone to silent and let it drop on to the floor. He rolled over on his side. He’d make an excuse when the woman phoned. The last thing he needed was
another grieving mother. They were trouble. That much was for sure.

Margaret couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was because the nights were so light. The sky never seemed to darken completely. It lost its colour gradually so it ceased to be bright
blue and became pale and wan until just before dawn when it turned a soft dove grey. But perhaps it was nothing to do with the brightness of the sky. Perhaps it was because she didn’t want to
waste any of the time left to her, here in this house, which held so many memories.

She had made up a bed in the small room overlooking the garden where she had slept when she was a child and where Mary had slept for those six weeks before she died. In the hot press under the
stairs she found some plastic bags that held sheets and pillowcases, eiderdowns and blankets. They were clean, although the smell of mothballs still lingered in the creases where they had been
folded. It was good-quality linen. It would last at least one lifetime, her mother had often said, as she sniffed at the polycottons and synthetics, all the ‘non-irons’ and ‘easy
cares’, that the shops had begun to offer. Of course, she was right. Margaret had inherited her rigid attitude towards natural fibres. Mary had laughed at her. But she had come back from
staying with her friends and confessed that the sheets didn’t feel right.

‘They’re yucky on your skin, Mum, aren’t they? And they don’t have that nice smell our sheets have.’

She had wanted to wrap Mary in one of her mother’s sheets before she was placed in her coffin. She had wanted to swaddle her tightly the way she had seen nurses wrap the dead. It had
always seemed humane and dignified, the crisp white cotton, folded over and around, keeping the body intact, its integrity guaranteed. But the undertaker had prevailed and Mary had been clothed in
her favourite pink dress. As if it mattered. Nothing could disguise the damage done to her before death. The shearing of her hair. The bruises to her eyes and mouth. The marks on her neck. And
beneath the dress, the burns, the scars where he had cut her breasts and stomach with the sharp blade of a Stanley knife. And the internal wounds he had inflicted on her.

She had thought that these images would fade with time. But they hadn’t. Sometimes at night when she closed her eyes they were there, as fresh and as raw as they had been the first time
she saw them. And they were even more so now as she lay in the narrow bed, her head on her old pillow. Mary had been conceived in this bed too. That weekend all those years ago when
Margaret’s parents had gone away and Patrick Holland had come to spend the evening with her. She had cooked for him, and after dinner they had sat at either side of the fire, like an old
married couple, drinking and talking, and then as the flames died down they had gone upstairs to her room and lain under the eiderdown, still talking until it was time for him to go home to his
wife.

She hadn’t asked him to stay. He had got out of bed and begun to dress. Then he had stopped, looked down at her and, in a rush, pulled back the quilt and lain beside her, his hands
grabbing at her body as if he would never touch her again. Afterwards she had slept so deeply that it was midday before she woke.

She got up now. There was no point in lying staring at the ceiling, all those memories fighting for attention. She walked downstairs into the kitchen. She filled the kettle. Then she sat down at
the table. Her laptop was open, its screen dark. She touched the keys and waited for its welcoming purr. Her hands formed themselves into their familiar shape as she logged on, put in her password
and waited for her emails to brighten the screen. Here was good news from Australia. The estate agent, Damien Baxter, had received an offer for her house. And another serious buyer was interested
too. He’d let her know when they had reached their limit, but for the time being he was keeping an open mind. She’d bought the house from his father, Don, when she’d arrived in
Noosa nine years ago. He was a nice man, polite and thoughtful, and his son had inherited his father’s quiet, unassuming competence. She hadn’t much money to spend. It had been the
worst time to sell her New Zealand property. But she had her savings. A sense of thrift inherited from her father. A nest egg put by over the years. And Don had found her the house and got her a
good deal. It was rundown and neglected, but he’d recommended his cousin, Jeff, who was a builder and between them they had transformed it. White walls and native-wood floors. A large
open-plan kitchen and dining room. Her own small bedroom and bathroom. And four rooms to be rented. Bed and breakfast for passing backpackers, tourists, nature-lovers who wanted to spend some time
in the Queensland rainforest. The house was always full. Word of mouth did it. Her name and address, passed from person to person along the trail.

‘Lovely place. Very clean. Simple, but nice. Great food. As much as you can eat for breakfast. Scrambled eggs to die for. Good coffee and tea. And she makes her own bread and muffins and
scones too. She’ll give you a lunch to take on the road that would last you for two days.’

And for a while it had been good. She had been content. But sometimes there would be a face that would remind her. And she would wonder. And then she began to read the Irish newspapers on line.
She didn’t want to. She wanted to be as remote as possible. Far, far away from everything to do with home. But she was drawn to them. So easy now with the Internet. So instant. And there it
was one day. Five years ago. A photograph of the cottage in Ballyknockan. A body found. No idea as to its identity. And then slowly, gradually, inevitably. More and more information. Name and age.
And then the rest. The girl’s murder. The suspect. Then the trial. The shock of its sudden ending. A smudgy photo of Mary from her student ID card. Her own face, a photograph taken at the
funeral, her grief so overwhelming that she barely recognized herself. A Garda investigation set up. Detective Inspector Finney in charge. Finney of all people. Finney, whose incompetence had given
her what she wanted. The chance to take her own revenge on the man who had destroyed her life.

She checked the websites daily, but the investigation into the death of Jimmy Fitzsimons soon disappeared. Six months after the finding of his body a couple of paragraphs stated that
‘Garda sources’ had admitted they had not made any progress towards finding out what had happened to him. The case would, of course, remain open, pending further information.

Then, a few months later:

Why had she not known that Patrick was dead? Why had her heart carried on beating after his had stopped? She checked the date again – what had she been doing that day? – she worked
out the time difference. Patrick had died at two in the afternoon on 14 June in the swimming-pool of his villa outside Marbella. There was an eight-hour difference. It would have been ten p.m. in
Eumundi. Summer in Spain. Winter in Australia. Cool but still sunny. She looked back over her diary for the day in question. All her rooms were full. An English couple had arrived that evening. She
had cooked dinner for them and sold them a couple of bottles of wine to go with it. The other guests, a boy from Sydney, two German girls and an American zoologist, had gone to Noosa for dinner.
They got back around midnight. She had stayed up with them, drunk some more wine. The American was curious about her. She had fended off his questions. He was good-looking in that American-academic
way. It would have been easy. He was leaving the next day. No strings, just the comfort of a warm body to get her through another night.

She had finished her drink and stood up. He made as if to follow, but she shook her head quickly, smiled her goodnights and left the room. It would have been a mistake. And what had happened to
Patrick after she had gone to her room? At the time he was in the ambulance, the paramedics were working on him, his heart was failing, its muscle already dying, his organs shutting down, his brain
cells withering from lack of oxygen. She couldn’t remember. She would have gone to the bathroom, cleaned her teeth, washed her face, changed into her pyjamas. Picked up a book to read, put it
down. Switched off the bedside lamp. Lain first on one side, then on the other, tossed and turned. Dropped off to sleep somewhere between two thirty and three. Slept until the birds woke her at
six. The kookaburra’s ancient laugh, the whip birds, the male and female calling back and forth to each other. Time to get up, to bake the bread for which she was renowned. Prepare the
breakfast. The American had a plane to catch that morning in Brisbane. She’d ordered a taxi to come at eight. She would have called to confirm it. She would have checked the bookings for the
day. Made out a shopping list for her weekly supermarket run. While Patrick’s body lay in a morgue in a hospital in Málaga. Already stiffening with rigor mortis. Already decaying.

She had printed out the death notice from the newspaper. Survived by his three children, it said. Well, that was true. He’d once had four. Now there were three. He had wanted her to have
an abortion. He had given her the money. She had gone to England. Then, when Mary was a year old, to New Zealand. As far away as she could go. She had stayed away from him. But he had helped her,
later, when she really needed him. He had gone with her to Ballyknockan. He had beaten Jimmy Fitzsimons on the head and knocked him out. He had helped her drag him to the shed and chain him up.
Then he had walked away with her, knowing what would happen. All this he had done for her and for Mary. One day, she had thought, one day he will come to look for me and we will be together. The
way we should have been.

But that day would never happen now. And now he was dead she no longer needed to protect him. She closed down her laptop. She poured boiling water into the teapot. She opened the back door and
stepped out into the garden. The sky was a clear pale blue. She shivered, suddenly exhausted. She turned back into the kitchen, poured tea into a mug and added milk, then walked upstairs. She would
sleep now. Now that it was morning and the time for ghosts was over. She would sleep until the sun was high in the sky. And she could face her past once again.

The Lake House was in the Wicklow mountains, barely ten miles or so from the city but another world altogether. Its roof was just about visible from the high road through Sally
Gap. Beyond it was Lough Dubh, where Marina Spencer had died. In the summer it was a sliver of silver between the heather-covered hills, in the winter a gleaming slice of polished jet. McLoughlin
looked at the row of photographs that hung on the wall. Sally Spencer stood beside him.

‘It’s such a beautiful place, you’ve no idea. Just so beautiful.’ She reached out and touched the nearest picture with the tip of her finger, then stepped back and sat
down on the sofa. She gestured to McLoughlin to take the chair beside the fireplace.

‘The estate had been in James’s family for years. He was so proud of the place. I remember when I first met him he couldn’t wait to bring me out there. We’d go every
weekend. Before we got married, even. Winter and summer. Even when Sally Gap was snowed in, he had a Land Rover with special tyres and we’d stock up like we were going to the North Pole.
I’d bring Marina and Tom and he’d bring Dominic, his son. And we’d have a ball.’ Sally’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I remember one New Year, it snowed really
heavily and even with the special tyres we couldn’t get out. We slept in the one room. Kept the fire going all night. It was such fun.’

McLoughlin said nothing. He sipped the tea she had placed on the table beside him.

‘But then, after we got married, it changed. Dominic would have nothing to do with me. Or my kids. Up till then they’d got on quite well apart from the usual teenage tensions, but
after the marriage it changed. Especially with Marina. He used to pick on her. Wind her up. Tease her. You know the sort of thing?’

McLoughlin nodded. He knew the sort of thing.

‘I did kind of wonder if he was attracted to her. But I don’t think it was that. I think he was jealous, resentful. I think he’d always been suspicious that I was to blame for
his parents’ separation. But that was rubbish. All that had happened before I met James. They’d grown apart. Stopped being . . .’ she paused and looked away ‘. . . stopped
being intimate. James wanted a divorce. His wife, Dominic’s mother, agreed to it. And they seemed to work things out quite well between them. They had joint custody of Dominic and I knew he
was close to both his parents. I thought time would sort everything out between him and me but . . . I don’t know. Something went badly wrong and it never got put right.’ The tears
slipped from her eyes.