Red Ribbons (45 page)

He heard someone call out. A man’s voice. The man was roaring in a rage, ‘Kate. Kate. Kate.’

O’Connor gave the signal and the teams moved immediately and in unison, closing the net on the area. As they worked forward, there was a flash of colour through the trees. The noise of scampering increased – like a fox running away from a pack of hounds. The teams raised their weapons, at the ready.

‘Hold fire. Wait. Hold back,’ O’Connor called.

Then he saw her: it was Kate, crashing down through a pathway
in the woods, her hair streaming behind her, her eyes wild, her son clutched across her chest. She wasn’t thinking, wasn’t looking – she was just running blindly, running for her life.

O’Connor moved quickly, Kate and her son were still a good way down, a steep drop separated them. He ran towards the incline, closing the gap, leaving Ellie behind him. When he saw Cronly emerging from the trees, he could see he was gaining pace on her. O’Connor saw the blood coming from his neck. He had a bloodied knife in his right hand, holding it up high, his face a mask of anger and hatred.

O’Connor bellowed into the walkie-talkie. ‘Suspect armed with knife. Cronly’s injured.’

O’Connor jumped down to the ledge and Kate finally saw him. Her eyes registered disbelief before her face clamped down with a determined look – she ran even faster, straight towards him.

He shouted to his teams again. ‘Victims close. Get ready to make your move.’

‘O’Connor,’ she screamed. Cronly was almost in touching distance of her.

O’Connor lunged for her, pushing her to one side and throwing himself on top of her and the boy. He roared into the walkie-talkie. ‘I have them. Get him. Now!’

≈

O’Connor let DI Carey carry out the arrest of William Cronly, once they had taken him back to where the cars were parked by the amusement arcade. As far as O’Connor was concerned, he wanted to put as much distance as he could between him and the man he had wanted to track down from the moment they discovered Caroline Devine’s tiny body. His concern now was Kate, Kate and her son.

‘You two okay?’

Kate was bent over Charlie’s rigid body, cradling him like a baby,
a broken silver chain with a crucifix discarded at her side. She looked completely done in. Gently, she removed the duct tape from Charlie’s mouth and massaged his face, whispering to him all the while. O’Connor stood awkwardly beside them, watching. Slowly, the boy’s body relaxed somewhat and he fell against his mother, holding her hand tightly and crying into her shoulder.

‘Now, now, there’s a good boy. It’s all over. The man is gone. The police have him. It’s okay.’

O’Connor knelt down beside them. ‘Charlie,’ he said, rubbing the boy’s arm, ‘I’m Detective Inspector O’Connor.’ The boy sniffed and looked at him. ‘I’m the policeman who was in charge of catching that bad man. He’s safely in the back of the squad car now – you know, the one with the blue flashing light. He’s going straight to jail, Charlie. He can’t get at you or your mum ever again. Okay?’

Kate smiled gratefully at him. Her heart was still pounding, but she attempted to speak as normally as possible – for Charlie’s sake.

‘What was that thing you did back there, some kind of combat manoeuvre?’

O’Connor smiled at her. He wanted to touch her face, but he didn’t let himself. ‘I needed to get you both down quickly.’

Her smile faltered. ‘I know you did. Thanks.’ She pulled Charlie’s face in close to her chest. ‘Can I borrow your phone, O’Connor?’

‘Sure.’

O’Connor issued instructions to the tech team that was examining the hideaway. ‘Take your time down there, guys, we can’t miss a beat on this one.’

Declan’s phone rang once before he answered it.

‘It’s Kate … Yes, we’re fine. Don’t worry, we’re okay. We’re both here. Charlie is right here with me.’

O’Connor turned away.

‘I know,’ Kate continued. ‘We love you, too.’ She handed the phone to Charlie. ‘It’s Daddy.’

O’Connor turned back to them. He saw the tears streaming down Kate’s face as she knelt beside her son, still holding him close to her. O’Connor nodded to himself; things like this make people stronger as a family.

He looked away again and snapped into the walkie-talkie, ‘Carey, have you got him in the car?’

The cracking sound of gunfire blocked out Carey’s response.

‘WHEN DETECTIVE O’CONNOR LEFT ME TO HELP KATE and her son, I slipped away unnoticed. During the mayhem, everyone thought I was with someone else. It was a risk, going to the caravan park. There was no guarantee that Ollie Gilmartin would still have his gun.’

‘How did you know he had one?’

‘I couldn’t be sure, Dr Ebbs, that he still had it, but I remembered the night he caught me sneaking out of the caravan. I was trying to get to Andrew. I think Gilmartin was out poaching.’

‘The night before the fire?’

‘No, no, it was a couple of nights before that. I recognised the type of gun, a Lanber. He was all mouth about it, talking about its reliability or some such nonsense. He was trying to distract me from asking too many questions. I guess I was doing the same thing.’

‘I see.’

‘His place wasn’t far, positioned right at the front of the caravan site. I had only been there once, with Joe. It’s funny the things you remember.’

‘So what happened when you got there?’

‘I can still see myself walking towards it, then thumping the front window of his caravan, hard, the noise reverberating, as if it was knocking on the doors of memory. I stood back when he opened the door. I watched him walk down the steps from his caravan, wanting to get a handle on what was going on. The police cars and officers at the
amusement arcade hadn’t made a sound, but when he stood forward, he could see their blue lights flashing behind me.’

‘You were calm during all this, Ellie?’

‘Fifteen years is a long time to wait, Dr Ebbs. At first, when he saw it was me, Gilmartin looked like he’d seen a real ghost. He was speechless. But I could tell his curiosity was aroused when he noticed the squad cars in the distance. It didn’t take a lot to get him going. Even if I hadn’t told him the police wanted him, he’d have looked for any excuse to hightail it out of there.’

‘Away from you?’

‘Yes. I recognised the guilt on his face. The truth isn’t an easy thing to handle. I know that more than anyone. A guilty conscience, Dr Ebbs, is a mighty powerful thing.’

‘What did you say to him exactly?’

‘Not a lot.’

Dr Ebbs looks surprised.

‘He went to go back inside, to grab his coat or whatever, but I stopped him. I told him he needed to hurry, that Detective O’Connor wanted him now. They had Cronly. He had to hurry. He was hardly going to argue with me.’

‘So you went inside his caravan?’

‘Memory, Dr Ebbs, it’s a strange thing, isn’t it?’

‘I guess it is, Ellie.’

‘When I stepped inside that caravan, it was like I was back to the day I stood there with Joe, Amy waiting for us outside in the car. Gilmartin, he had a small plastic statue of the Virgin Mary. It had caught my eye that first day, sitting on top of a black leather Bible. They were both still there, in exactly the same spot. Incredible, isn’t it, Dr Ebbs, how some people are such creatures of habit?’

‘So you looked for his gun?’

‘I ransacked the place, found his tools in the corner. There was a
locked cabinet, a makeshift thing, barely keeping itself together. I used his crowbar to prise it open.’

‘And the bullets?’

‘They were in a cardboard box in the kitchen drawer, handy in case of unwanted visitors.’ I let out a short laugh. I can tell Dr Ebbs isn’t amused, but he doesn’t interrupt.

‘I broke open the barrel of the Lanber, put in two cartridges, closed the gun, pulled the safety button back, the way my father had shown me, ready to take aim. I was more sure about what I was about to do than I had been about anything in my entire life.’

‘Go on, Ellie.’

‘I walked back to the amusement arcade. It wasn’t far. When I got there, one of the detectives had William Cronly. There was blood on his neck, and his hands were cuffed at the front.’

‘You fired?’

‘Yes. I felt the gun bolt, jolting me, the sound of both bullets, louder than anything I had ever heard.’

‘So what stopped you, Ellie?’

‘What stopped me shooting William Cronly?’

‘Yes.’

‘When I looked at him, Dr Ebbs, I believed I would kill him. The choice, at long last, was mine to make. For what it’s worth, after I called out his name, before I pulled back the trigger, when he stared back at me, I think he knew exactly who I was.’

‘But you fired the bullets into the air instead?’

‘I used to think, Dr Ebbs, that the hardest thing about loss was the remembering, because within it, the true enormity of things becomes fully realised. It is strange the way the mind can trick you into believing one thing. To be so sure of something, you never doubt it. You keep failing to ask the right questions. The truth hides, you see. It can stay hidden from you for a very long time, if you let it. I know I did. Right
up until the moment I realised I needed to grasp the one thing I was trying hardest to run away from.’

‘And what was that, Ellie?’

‘The very thing that mattered most of all. When I walked that dirt track, the one at the back of the sand dunes, I felt Amy there with me, walking ahead, willing me to follow her, as if the past fifteen years hadn’t mattered. She called to me, Dr Ebbs. She was there, waiting for me. She always has been.

‘When the choice was mine to make, I thought of Amy and me, and not of him. Evil had visited the two of us. We had not asked for it or wanted it to enter our lives. When I looked at William Cronly, I understood. All the evil belonged to him, or whatever rotten life had made him who he was. It did not belong to Amy, or to me. The evil wasn’t part of us. I think, in the end, I decided there had already been far too much killing.’

‘So what now, Ellie?’

‘Have you ever been on a carousel, Dr Ebbs?’

‘Yes, Ellie, as a boy.’

‘It turns around and around for so long, you think it is never going to stop. The coloured lights can be blinding, its music playing over and over, until you feel almost part of it, as if the world beyond the carousel is a world you are no longer ready for, or belonged to.’

‘And are you ready now, Ellie?’

‘No, not quite, but I will be.’

The creation of a novel is a journey which begins well before the first word is written and continues long after the last full stop. I owe a huge debt of thanks to many people who I have been lucky enough to meet along the way, and I will try to thank as many of them as possible here.

Firstly, I would like to thank the members of An Garda Síochána who assisted in the research for this novel, specifically, Tom Doyle of Rathfarnham Garda Station and Paul Smith, Bookman at Tallaght Garda Station and Incident Room, who helped me with a wide variety of questions regarding police procedure. Any inaccuracies within the manuscript are mine and not theirs.

The publication of this story would not have happened without the hard work and belief of a number of key people: Ger Nichol, my agent, who has been a trail blazer from the outset; the team at Hachette Books Ireland, especially Ciara Doorley, commissioning editor, and thanks also to Rachel Pierce, editor extraordinaire, who made the whole editorial process such a positively creative experience.

I returned to writing in 2006 after a twenty-year gap, taking small steps at first but learning and making great friends within the writing community. I would like to thank Eileen Casey, who facilitated my first creative-writing class, and who rekindled in me the wonder of the written word. Also, Dermot Bolger, who took myself and a small group of emerging writers from South County Dublin under his wing, helping each of us to follow this wonderful creative process. Shortly after returning to writing, I joined Lucan Creative Writers Group, and words cannot express the debt I owe to my fellow writers and lifelong
friends within this group, people who I feel privileged to know, and who will always be close to my heart. I would like to say a particular thanks to the late Joan O’Flynn, a writer, a friend and a woman who made an enormous difference to my life.

My thanks to Vanessa O’Loughlin from Inkwell and Writing.ie, a wonderfully energetic lady who has stepped forward and channelled a vibrant, writing and reading community. Also thanks to the amazing team at the Irish Writers’ Centre, who do enormous work supporting writers within this fantastic writing sanctuary.

I would also like to thank Triona Walsh, who gave me the impetus necessary to take this brave step; Mary Lavelle, who kindly and diligently read the first draft of this manuscript, and Valerie Sirr, who suggested
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury
.

Social media has changed the way we communicate with each other and in the main I have found this to be a hugely positive experience, gaining many friends through Twitter, Blogger, Facebook and other media links. The list of people I have met, and who have helped me along the way, is far too extensive to mention individually here, but you know who you are, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks to all my friends, writers and non-writers, for believing in me and being such a support throughout this wonderful experience. My deepest and heartfelt thanks to my family, especially my husband, Robert, to whom this book is dedicated, my wonderful daughters, Jennifer and Lorraine, and my equally wonderful son, Graham, and a very special thanks to my beautiful first grandchild, Caitriona, who waited patiently in the wings while the last edits to this manuscript were put in place.