The Game Changer (35 page)

There was an element of doubt implicit in her words.

‘It’s okay, Sarah,’ the doctor said.

Sarah couldn’t remember her name. The doctor leaned in closer, lowering her voice to a whisper, as if she was about to tell Sarah a secret, something between only them. ‘Sarah, listen to Jessica, the medication has worked wonderfully. We’re all very pleased. You’re on the mend, but you need to keep healthy, for Lily’s sake.’

Sarah blinked in acknowledgement, pulling her body upright again, somehow managing to repeat her earlier words, ‘I need to call John,’ her voice a crackly whimper. She saw disapproval in their eyes, and then her mind didn’t want to think any more. She needed sleep. When the darkness hit, it was a relief, until she heard the doctor speak again, asking Jessica about her.

‘You’re aware, Lisa, of what we’ve been told about dissenters? Saka won’t be happy that Sarah is harbouring links to her old ways. He will see it as an offence, an affront to the self-enlightenment path.’

‘Should we mention it to him?’

‘I’ll tell him. He can decide what’s best. If Saka agrees, we can give her back her phone.’

‘Jessica?’

‘Yes?’

‘That thing we spoke about this morning, about there being no absolute right and wrong?’

‘What about it, Lisa?’

‘Do you think that extends to life and death?’

‘Saka believes many people see death as welcoming. It is ahead of us all.’

WHEN KATE HEARD THE DOORBELL RING, SHE FROZE. It must be Pat Grant, but what if it was someone else? She took a number of tentative steps towards the bedroom door, and as she did so, the bell rang again, three fast rings, indicating impatience that it hadn’t been answered the first time. She took the stairs a couple at a time, stopping when she reached the bottom, hearing Pat Grant’s voice calling through the flap of the letterbox. It wasn’t the woman’s impatience that had made her pause: it was because she had remembered something else. Not now, Kate told herself, opening the front door.

‘You took your time.’

‘Sorry,’ Kate replied, breathless. She composed herself, then asked, ‘Pat, do you know the names of the people who live here?’

The woman eyed her with suspicion.

‘Please, Pat. It’s important.’

‘I can’t say I ever met him. It was the woman who gave me the key.’ She still seemed unsure.

‘What was her name?’ Kate pushed.

‘Jessica.’ A slight pause. ‘Yes, that was it.’ Her voice was more confident. ‘I never got a second name. I didn’t want to pry.’ She raised her eyebrows, indicating to Kate she had already been in the house for too long.

Kate repeated the name a couple of times. It meant nothing to her.

Pat Grant stretched out her hand for the key. ‘Well,’ she said, stepping back to allow Kate to leave, ‘if you’re quite finished?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Kate placed the key in Pat’s palm, then punched the alarm code in to reactivate it, and joined her on the front step.

‘Are you all right, my dear? You look like you’ve been to hell and back.’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied, although she felt far from it. ‘The house brought back memories, nothing more.’

When they reached the gate, Kate said a speedy goodbye to her old neighbour, desperately wanting to get away from the house she had once called home, from the rumour and innuendo about her father, from the agonising memories of her mother’s death, and the anger that had been so much part of their lives.

Kate ran and ran, and when she thought she couldn’t run any faster, she pushed herself even more, the pain of endurance acting like some form of balance against the thoughts jumping around in her mind. She needed time to think, but she wasn’t ready to let anything settle. Instead, it all crisscrossed inside her head, Malcolm and her father, the anonymous notes, the feeling of being watched, followed, the fresh memories from her past, her mother, Charlie, her failed marriage with Declan, Adam, and the one aspect of her past that she couldn’t deny: that it was full of secrets and lies. What lay behind them? What had lain behind her father’s anger? And why had she never sought answers before? Was she a conspirator in all this? Had she done something wrong?

Finally, she climbed the stone steps to the front door of her apartment building, hearing the familiar beep of the access code being punched in. Stepping in from the cold into the warmth of the hall, her body pumped out more sweat. Once inside the apartment, she checked that everything was as she had left it, lifting up the plant pot to make sure the study-door key was underneath. Going into the living room, her eyes scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary. Walking into the bedroom, she did the same, then sat down on the bed.

It was only when she felt safe, and confident that she was alone, that she could allow herself to drift back to memory. After her father’s death, her mother had said, ‘That’s it, then,’ as if he was something to be put behind the two of them. There hadn’t been any
outward sign of sorrow. Kate had believed her mother was being brave. It was then that she thought of all the other conversations they had had, before her mother’s mind had slipped. Strangely, none had been about her father. The conversation Kate had remembered at the bottom of the stairs was one she had pushed to the back of her mind. It had taken place shortly after her father’s death. Her mother had phoned her one night out of the blue, asking if she would take her for a drive. Kate hadn’t asked where to, knowing that grief operated in strange ways. Instead she waited while her mother put on her heavy coat and fur hat. Kate had told her she looked like a Russian. ‘A warm Russian,’ her mother had replied, sounding ever practical. Pulling the passenger door closed, and putting on her seatbelt, she said to Kate, ‘I want you to drive me to the mountains.’

Kate thought she knew the route her mother meant. As a family, they had often gone for Sunday drives around Glencree, so she started the engine even though it was after eleven o’clock at night. They drove past rows of houses with smoke billowing from the chimneys, city traffic giving way to clearer roads on the outer suburbs, then reaching the mountain road that would lead them to Glencree. Kate decided to pull in at the viewing point with the lights of the city below. ‘Don’t stop here,’ her mother said. ‘Keep going towards Killakee.’

There was something about her mother’s words that told her to do as she was asked, and to do so without question.

The road had narrowed, and her mother had said, ‘Not much further now,’ then instructed her to stop near a tumbledown bridge. When Kate pulled in, there was nothing but pitch blackness around them, and when her mother opened the passenger door, Kate had worried she would trip and fall on the mountain road. She had opened the driver’s door to follow her, but her mother had told her she was better off alone. Kate hadn’t wanted to intrude on her privacy, but she put on the car headlights, hoping her mother wouldn’t be long. The last thing either of them needed was a dead car battery and to be stranded on a dark mountain road.

Sitting in the car, Kate watched her mother take a dozen steps towards the bridge, then stop to look down into further darkness and, what seemed to Kate, a steep drop. For a brief few seconds, Kate worried her mother was going to do something stupid, that she might even climb up on the bridge and jump off. Why had she thought that?

When her mother got back into the car, she shut the door, put her seatbelt on and looked straight ahead. She had asked Kate if she thought this was a good place to die, and Kate had wondered about suicidal thoughts again. When Kate didn’t answer, her mother broke the silence, saying, ‘I know someone buried near here, a young boy.’ There was something about the way she’d said it, as if the words were full of regret.

The strangeness of the event, and the relief that her mother wasn’t suicidal, had kept the memory in the back of Kate’s mind. At the time, she had thought about the various burial grounds nearby, the ones that locals used, empty plots belonging to ancient relatives. She hadn’t pushed it but now all she could think of was that newspaper article, and the red circle around the name Peter Kirwan. Was it guilt her mother had felt that night – for a dreadful wrong?

ADAM HAD KNOWN THAT THE DNA SAMPLE extracted from Michael O’Neill and shared with their US counterparts on an intelligence basis would need to be verified Stateside. He wasn’t surprised to hear that Detective Lee Fisher would be making the trip himself. The senior officer attached to an investigation was often the one who made the journey to pick up the sample. Adam himself had made any number of trips abroad to do the same thing. What he hadn’t expected was the timing of the visit. The police in Manhattan were no closer to identifying a suspect than they were in Dublin, so what was the rush to collate evidence for a trial that might or might not take place?

His gut told him there was more to it, and during their telephone and Internet communications, Fisher had seemed circumspect about the many strands developing in the O’Neill case. That circumspection, Adam decided, was behind the timing of the visit, and he wondered whether, if the boot was on the other foot, he would be doing the same thing.

Lee Fisher’s flight into Dublin airport would arrive the following morning, and Adam had already committed himself to collecting the detective. Despite the risk of jetlag, Lee had insisted on attending the next brain-storming session at Harcourt Street Special Detective Unit, scheduled for less than an hour after his arrival. Adam admired the detective’s determination and vigour – if nothing else, having a US investigator present would add some colour to the proceedings.

He looked at his mobile phone. Three missed calls from Addy’s mother, Marion. There was no denying the magnitude of change
in his personal life. At times, it had felt like a baptism of fire. Being with Kate was the best decision he had ever made, but he had gone from being a man without responsibilities for anyone other than himself to loving and worrying about Kate, while attempting to have a relationship with a son he’d ignored for years. He needed to be a solid figure in Charlie’s life too, and Adam was concerned about how their relationship would develop after Charlie returned to Dublin, having spent time with his real father. He wasn’t complaining. This was par for the course, and although Addy wasn’t making things easy for him, he also understood that his son’s aggression and distance were no more than he deserved. Still, if he was honest, Addy being away had made some things a lot easier.

Knowing he had a number of calls to make around the investigation, he texted Marion instead of calling her, saying it would be another hour before he could be in touch.

THE CLOSER ADDY GOT TO BELIEVING HE WAS wangling his way out of solitary confinement, the more he thought about what Donal had told him. The boy was obviously frightened. Why else pretend to be dead? Donal thought he had seen bodies being buried but he might been have mistaken: things looked different at night. It was all too ridiculous and extreme, and a child’s imagination could conjure up all kinds of stuff. Hadn’t he gone a little stir-crazy on a few nights, convincing himself he heard the boy moving around in the pipe chambers? Maybe Donal didn’t trust him any more. It was then that Addy remembered something Adam had said to him. It was about people thinking that the truth was an easy thing to work out, but it wasn’t. Addy hadn’t paid much attention to it, putting it down to Adam playing his new father role, but, still, he did need to work a few truths out.

Start off with the facts, he told himself. Let them lead to balanced conjecture. He began to make a mental list of all the things he could be sure of. If he got that right, it was a good beginning. The clearer a person was about where they wanted to go, the better chance they had of getting there.

Once he was outside, he could consider his next move. His instincts told him to get as far away from the island as he could. His heart told him differently. Even if Donal was wrong, he couldn’t shake off what the boy had said about Chloë. Neither could he turn his back on Aoife.

He might have felt like a fraud when he arrived, and a bit of an overgrown kid, but things had changed. If Chloë was in trouble, he would try to help her. He would find Aoife too. He might be his father’s son, but he wasn’t going to turn his back on those who needed him.