Only We Know (23 page)

‘Yes – I was coming to that. Turns out
there are big problems. That accountant that Luke Yates had go over the books, he
unearthed a huge hole. Unexplained disappearance of funds. From what I’ve heard,
the accountant was urging a criminal investigation, but Luke was resistant. He even
wanted the whole thing wound up.’

‘Do you think the priest is
involved?’

He exhales noisily, with irritation, and
when he speaks again his voice is lowered. ‘I don’t know. But right now, we
can’t rule him out.’

I can feel the suspicion inside me – the
instinct that
leads me to distrust, to
doubt, to question. Every good journalist has it. The kernel of suspicion has been
inside me since the moment Murphy took my hand in his, that searching gaze passing over
my face, since he kept hold of my hand a second too long and said:
I remember
you
.

Down in the garden amid the topiary and the
grottoes, I glimpse the glow of a tiny red light in the darkness, then watch it
disappear. The tang of cigarette smoke in the air. I train my eyes on it, the darkness
composing itself into shadows, silhouettes. The bluish glow of a white shirt.

‘I wish I could be there with
you,’ Reilly tells me, and I can’t help but smile.

Even from this distance, I feel the warmth
and safety of his presence, the depths of his voice, the goodness that seems to be at
the very core of him.

‘When I get home, let’s go for a
long walk, you and me,’ I say.

‘I’d like that.’

‘Let’s go somewhere that we can
take the air and talk.’

‘I’ll take you to Dún Laoghaire
– the West Pier. The East Pier seems a little too refined for us.’

‘Reilly,’ I say then, a sudden
urgency that I find hard to understand or explain building in me, ‘there are
things I haven’t told you … things I’ve done …’

‘Katie, love,’ he says gently.
‘There’ll be time enough to lay bare our souls.’

Behind me, the music keeps on and on, a
swarm of conversation rising above it. I put my phone away, get to my feet, but instead
of returning to the others, I step away from the terrace, and move down into the
darkness of the garden.

It’s quiet out
here, the only sounds the chatter and call of night-life hidden in the dark foliage of
the garden and, beyond it, the long grass of the savannah. The river flows along the
edges of the estate, the grounds sweeping down to its banks where black trees loom large
and scrubby bushes form a ragged perimeter. There’s no light here, and as I
advance, shapes begin to define themselves, the contours of a path like an animal track
snaking through the undergrowth. My footfall is slow, deliberate: I’m anxious not
to disturb, not to draw attention to myself. An animal advancing on its prey.

Two figures, near the river’s edge.
One short and stocky, skin as dark as the night. The other tall and white, the bluish
glow of his shirt. From this distance, I can make out the stooped form of the priest,
pushing his face close to the other man’s, articulating his point in sharp bursts
of language. Kikulu or Swahili, I don’t know. Guttural sounds, sharp clicks of the
tongue, whatever it is he is saying is animated, almost wild except for the whispered
hold he keeps on it. Hands gesticulating, a question asked, while the other man leans
back against something – a post? a tree? – staring ahead, refusing to make eye-contact
with Murphy, smoking in a way that suggests the casualness is false. Here, in the
shadows, observing the exchange, I can feel the charge in the air between them. Murphy
is agitated: he shakes his head, baffled, then drops it briefly, large hands cupping his
face. The short man – his friend? – steps forward, puts a hand to the priest’s
shoulder, says something low, his intonation softened with concern, yet his voice is
hard around the edges. There is something familiar about him that causes my heart to
thrum.

I move a little
closer now, painfully aware of each crackle of grass beneath my feet, every dislodged
stone. Almost upon them now, I find myself holding my breath, listening to the words
coming out of the man – the stranger – an urgent throatiness coating the silence, like a
layer of grease.

‘No, no, no,’ Murphy says
emphatically. ‘That was not what I wanted!’

The other man continues in his own language,
persistence in his tone. I try to make out his face, but it’s so dark. Small eyes,
flat features, a broad nose, deep lines running to the corners of an unsmiling
mouth.

Sudden movement – a creature in the
undergrowth; a gasp of surprise. The talking stops. Everything grows still, and in the
silence that surrounds me, I feel the nudge of fear. They have seen me. The stillness in
their pose tells me as much. Instinct tells me to turn away, to run, yet there is an
itch in my brain – a question that demands an answer. I take a step towards them.

Murphy’s companion appears older now
that I approach. He carries with him a faint air of menace. His eyes – small, obsidian,
flashing in the moonlight – stir something within me.

‘Did you follow me?’ Murphy
asks, and I turn to him. There are white bristles all over his chin, bags under his
eyes; any trace of kindness has been chased away.

‘Yes.’

He nods and looks me up and down.

‘Why did you lie to me,
Father?’

‘Lie to you?’

‘You know what happened. You know what
we did. So why did you lie about it?’

Still he says
nothing, his gaze hardening.

‘I don’t think you’ve been
altogether straight with me, Murphy.’

‘I don’t know what you
mean.’

‘Dead birds. Pictures of drowned
girls. Threats. Luke, too. I think you know exactly what I’m talking
about.’

A hunch, that’s all. The insistent
voice of instinct that speaks up now tells me he knows, he must do. I think of Reilly
and what he said, feel the hardening crust of distrust.

He holds my gaze for just a moment, and when
he breaks it, a small self-deprecating smile comes over his wizened features. He seems
to give himself a little shake as if to shrug off this unpleasantness. And it is this
gesture, this one small shudder, that triggers it. All at once I’m hurtling back
through time, brought forcefully to a moment in my childhood when I stood behind a door
and observed an argument. I had forgotten it completely, as if my mind had tipped it out
onto a floor and left it. But now I know it was there all along, lurking in the
shadows.

‘I remember you,’ I tell Murphy
now, and he raises his head, his attention snagged by the seriousness of my tone, the
grain of something remembered. ‘I saw you. That day in the house, with
Sally.’

Close my eyes, and I’m back there.
Eight years old, awkward and out of place in that house where I don’t belong,
seeking a pocket of coolness in those dim rooms, the window shutters closed against the
battering heat of the noonday sun. Where were the others? My mother, the boys and their
father? I have no idea. That part of the
memory has been lost. What remains, though, is so
breathtakingly clear that I can see everything in sharp focus – the dark wooden
furniture, the striped ticking of the bed-covers, the lazy revolution of a ceiling fan,
my feet hot and dusty in the red sandals I disliked, and the sway of Sally Yates’s
skirt as he grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her back to him. Behind the door I held
my breath, all too aware that I shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be watching,
and although I didn’t fully understand what it was I was a witness to, I had the
sense that it was something clandestine, forbidden even. The whispering presence of a
man in a bedroom that wasn’t his own. His grip on Sally’s arm, the way he
pulled her to him, then letting go of her arm, his hand moving to her hip. I
couldn’t see his face, couldn’t hear his words, but I heard something in the
tone – an insistence, a firmness of purpose. And while he spoke, she didn’t look
at him, just stood there staring at the floor, as if waiting for him to finish, enduring
the clasp of his hand and his river of words until the moment he released her and she
could get away. The shake of her dark hair then as she vigorously denied whatever it was
that he put to her. And when she spoke, her voice came out fractured with emotion.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘You
know I can’t, so stop asking. Don’t you know it only makes this
harder?’

His wheedling tone again, the pull of his
hand moving her body closer to him so that she was trapped in his embrace. Briefly, the
fight went out of her and I felt a lurch of fear or dread as she seemed to lean into
him, her head resting on his shoulder, her arms loosely about his waist. In my head I
felt the words flowing:
oh, no, oh, no, oh, no
.
Standing there, unable to pull my gaze away, I felt the
order of things changing. Sweat in my sandals, my heart beating wildly, I felt the
tumult of that change come over me. I don’t know why it affected me in that way.
After all, she was not my mother. But standing there in the shadows, my eyes fixed on
them through the narrow crack between the door and its frame, I felt something slipping
away from me and it made me afraid.

She straightened, pulling herself from his
embrace with a kind of determined ferocity, and when she spoke to him, the tears had
gone from her voice, and her tone was upset, accusatory.

‘Don’t you think I would if I
could?’

She moved so swiftly that I had no time to
react. The door pulled back, her face as she saw me changed into a mask of anger and
fright. ‘Katie! What are you doing?’

I looked up at her, at the features I had
once thought so beautiful, contracting now around her suspicion, and the tears welled up
inside me, with the powerful need to run.

Just a glance at him was all I got. It was
enough, though. His eyes, small and blue, flashing reproach at me. And then the little
smile to himself as he looked down at the floor, his hands going into his pockets, and
that little shake of his shoulders – the shudder repeated now, almost thirty years later
– as I turned from them both, the rubber soles of my sandals slapping all the way along
the tiled floor and out into the sunshine.

‘It was you,’ I say to Murphy
now, all of it falling into place. ‘You were the one Luke spoke of. You were the
one he told Nick about.’

He doesn’t
respond, keeps his eyes narrowed, his gaze fixed determinedly on the trees behind
me.

‘You and Sally Yates. I saw you
together that day in the house. Before we left for the safari. You were
arguing.’

It must have happened shortly before we left
for the Masai Mara so there was no opportunity for her to confront me again, find out
what I had seen or heard.

‘Did my mother know about it?’ I
ask Murphy now. ‘Did Ken? Did they know you two were having an affair?’

‘Enough!’ he hisses, his anger
surfacing. He holds up his hand, but I see that it’s shaking.

He fixes me with a baleful look but all I
see in that moment is a dry, withered old man trapped in the wasteland of his own
grievances, bitterness and regrets.

Silence for a moment, the whisper of running
water. Murphy’s companion says something I don’t understand. I’d
almost forgotten him. But now, as I turn my attention to him, I see the hardness of his
stare, a malignant flash in the amber light of those glassy eyes before he backs away
into the shadows.

‘Wait,’ I tell him, but he turns
on his heel.

‘Tell him to wait,’ I say to
Murphy, but he draws in his chin, watches his friend disappear into the dark clump of
trees.

‘Who is he?’ I ask, my heart
beating loudly now. A kind of excitement taking hold of me, interlaced with fear.
I’m close, so close I can almost touch it.

A tightening in his face, mouth crimped in a
defiant pout. Hands in his pockets, he turns from me and starts back towards the
hotel.

‘Murphy!’ I shout after him, but
he doesn’t turn.

A frozen instant of
indecision, but the pull of the river is there – a path through the trees. Without
stopping to think, I turn to follow the stranger.

I don’t know what direction he’s
gone in, but feel I’m close nonetheless. A faint stirring of branches up ahead,
the crunching footfall. I hurry now, the trees a hard, dark presence above me, the river
bubbling. I don’t know where I am but I need to move, to follow, to find. I know
this man. Somewhere down the dark corridors of memory, a match has been struck. In these
woods are answers to my questions and, whatever the risk, I’m propelled by
something outside myself to hurry, to hunt him down.

The path thins – an animal track – and
leaves become densely packed. The earth under my feet is softer, branches scrape my
face, and I flick them away, pushing hard now against the growth, the dripping trees.
Heat trapped in this space, musty and savage, odours rising from the river, animal and
strange. The track is leading me to the water, and as I near its banks, a shape forms
and moves, a lizard slipping into the depths. I stop. Feel the breath catching in my
throat. The air grows still. The darkness around me seems oppressive. A threat forms in
the air. It comes to me at once: no longer in pursuit, I have become the hunted one. All
at once I feel it – a presence. Watchful. Disturbed. The silent power of the river.
Cora.
Her name carried in the water, dripping from the trees above;
it’s there in the wet mud that grips my feet. The cloying presence of her; the air
clogged with her death.

I hold myself still. Senses heightened like
a startled deer.

A crack behind me and I swing around. Pain
breaks like a wave against my head, a thousand nerve endings
screaming in chorus. Blackness sings in my ears, a wash of
it coming over me, pulling me down, down. A presence at the edge of my sight, a faceless
figure, my fall silently observed by him and no one else but the listening trees and the
hanging vines.