Russell Geary was clearly not expecting to work today. He’s a slapdash mix of crumpled cotton and frayed tweed and the sweat oozing from the pores on his nose tells the story of a night spent without an eye on the clock. In the close confinement of the consultation room, a sickly stew of cheap antiperspirant and stale smoke wafts between us, keeping me alert and nauseous as I run through the events of last night. I keep my account short and concise, wavering only over the emergence of Melissa into the picture.
“Now, you have to be completely straight with me, Louise,” says Russell. “Is she the only person who could have seen you?”
There is Shauna of course, but her testimony will surely vindicate me.
“Yes.”
“Well then it’s just her word against yours,” he says, his voice a low and rasping warning. “Stick to the story you told me and don’t be drawn into any questions that don’t seem relevant, OK?”
“OK.”
There’s a rap at the door and I jump up, although my legs are shaking with the strain.
“Just try and stay calm,” says Russell as he wipes the sweat from his forehead. “Keep your answers short and direct and you’ll be grand.”
Regardless of his yellow-stained fingers, the layers of grime around his cuffs, I need to believe in Russell Geary. Because once I leave this room, I’m on my own again.
GARDA COLEMAN AND DETECTIVE SERGEANT Grace are back in position, and I can barely focus with the pace of the panic in me.
“So, Melissa Courtney saw you enter the swimming pool complex at seven o’clock last night and then leave it at seven fifteen,” says the sergeant. “What do you have to say about that?”
“She couldn’t have seen me because I wasn’t there,” I say with a strained composure.
“You were at home? With your mother, Rose Manson?”
“Yes.”
“You see,” says the sergeant, “I have a problem with that. Rose Manson has no memory of you being home at 7 p.m. In fact, she seems to think it was a good bit later when you got back.”
My mind races and I don’t know how, why, they’ve got to her already. But I know I have to sacrifice her if I want any chance for myself.
“Mam was drunk,” I say as tears prick the corners of my eyes. “That’s why she cut her hand. She was so out of it she wouldn’t know what time it was.”
“How much did your mother have to drink?”
“Probably most of a bottle of vodka. I can check when I get home. She’s an alcoholic,” I say, lowering my eyes at the shame of the betrayal.
“Can anyone else verify her drinking habits?”
“Yeah.”
I’ve protected her for so long, but I know it’s an open secret.
“The staff at the Black Swan in Ballybrack,” I say. “We both work there. And the Rambler’s Rest. She lost her job there because of it.”
I stifle a sob as I wipe a finger under each of my eyes.
“Well, Rose thinks she first heard you around eight or nine. She said you were playing loud music in your room. The Jesus and Mary Chain, she thinks. She turned it off, but you put it back on again. Would you agree with this part of her testimony?”
I don’t know. I can’t remember.
“I suppose.”
“And it continued well into the early hours. Was there any reason you were up so late?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
As I scramble for words, I remember Russell’s advice; I don’t need to have all the answers. “I don’t think that’s relevant.”
Sergeant Grace smirks as he sits back in his chair and looks me in the eye.
“Is it true Maurice McQueen was your mother’s boyfriend?”
“What? No.”
I can’t believe Mam would be deluded enough to say that.
“I mean, they went out twice,” I say. “That was it.”
“Is it fair to say you weren’t happy about it?”
Nothing about this is fair and I can’t take the veiled threats anymore.
“When did you talk to Mam?” I ask, looking from one Guard to the other. “What have you told her?”
“We spoke to her earlier today,” says Garda Coleman gently. “It’s all part of the procedure.”
“Tell me about your mother’s relationship with Maurice McQueen,” says the sergeant.
“There was no relationship. He was only trying to…”
“Trying to what?”
I open my mouth and then pause. “Nothing. I dunno.”
Detective Sergeant Grace unclasps his hands and stretches his fingers while I try to ignore the screaming in my head.
“You said you wanted to kill Maurice McQueen when you found out he was going out with your mother.”
“I didn’t mean…”
I can’t remember who I said it to, or if I even said it at all.
“You were obsessed with him, weren’t you?”
“No.”
“We have statements from Melissa Courtney, Aisling McWilliams, Stephanie Burke and Karina Kenny,” says the sergeant, “who all say very similar things. That you spoke about your feelings for Maurice McQueen, often in a lewd and inappropriate way.”
“That’s not true.”
“And that you took every opportunity to spend time with him, going to his office, asking for lifts, staying behind after class.”
“That was all him,” I shout. “He was the one who came after me.”
I’m dizzy with the onslaught, the gunfire of names and accusations. Stephanie and Karina, even Melissa, I could almost understand, but I thought Aisling was my friend.
“You also made some serious allegations about him at school…”
My breath catches somewhere between my leaden breastbone and my throat and all I can do is shake in reply.
“… after he spurned your advances.”
“No.”
“And we have in our possession a copy of a magazine in which you published your defamatory comments.”
“It’s all true,” I shout, “and none of it makes me guilty of anything.”
My voice slaps off the bare walls, shifting in tone and timbre until I’m too scared to utter another word.
“It’s OK, Lou,” says Garda Coleman. “We’re not here to talk about that. We’re just trying to find out what happened last night.”
I can hardly remember. I need to get out of here and see Shauna, piece it all back together.
“Right,” says Sergeant Grace. “Last night. You say you were not at the school between seven and a quarter past, the times Melissa saw you.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes,” I say, although I can barely hear myself. I already recognize the pattern of these questions and I know there’s another wave coming.
“Melissa is not the only person who saw you at the school.”
In a rush of panic, I try to remember a shape or shadow, but there is nothing.
“Shauna Power,” he says, “saw you in the swimming pool complex during that time.”
I wonder if he’s talking about Sandra Powell, a fourth-year. He can’t mean my Shauna; she’d never have told him that.
“No, you’re lying,” I say. “That’s not possible.”
Sergeant Grace flicks back a few pages on his notepad, looks down the bridge of his long nose and starts to read.
“Shauna told us that at around 7 p.m. you entered the pool area shouting Maurice McQueen’s name. Mr. McQueen was in the storeroom and when he asked you to calm down you ran at the door, pushing it into him and knocking him to the ground.”
“Oh no, Jesus.”
It’s my voice, but it’s too distant to be me.
“Mr. McQueen tried to reason with you, but you were hysterical, shouting that you wanted to kill him. You shoved him again and he fell and smacked his head on the tiles.”
The room fills with the growl of a low moan, guttural and sustained. Muffled voices float above it, catching the rising pitch of a muted scream. I shut my eyes and let it drown me.
TIME PASSES IN WAVES OF light, pale shadows that drift like dust past the chink in the cell door. Minutes or hours slip by, measured only in the pulse of dreams. Flashes of dead eyes and bleeding bodies inhabit cycles of thin sleep punctured by bursts of jagged chatter. I can’t be sure what’s inside or outside my head and I don’t know which voices to believe anymore. There’s only one that hasn’t yet denied me, the sole anchor I have left.
As soon as I enter the visitors’ room Joe is on his feet. The tube lighting flickers and spits above him as the Guard instructs him to sit, and puts me across the table from him, no contact allowed. Joe’s crumpled smile can’t hide the fear in his eyes. It’s the same expression he wore at Tina’s funeral, an event that feels like it belongs to another realm, one where grief and time are human luxuries.
“I’ve been charged,” I say.
“I know,” says Joe, eyeing the Guard standing at the door behind me, as if I might forget.
He smiles, a desperate attempt to mitigate against everything that has happened in the last few hours, and it only makes me feel even more helpless.
“I just want to get out of here,” I say, and the tears come at last, rolling down my cheeks as angry waves of despair shudder through me.
“Ah Lou, don’t worry, please,” he says, and he’s crying too now. “I’m gonna do everything I can to get you out.”
I know that means Kenny O’Kane, and I don’t care. I want to wake up and find out that Kenny is the worst thing I have to worry about.
“I’d do anything for you, Lou, you know that?”
His eyes flare wide and I wonder what he means, if he’s talking about an alibi, but it’s too late for that. I’ve already told the Guards that I saw McQueen rape Shauna, that he went for me too before he slipped and fell. But there is something else he can do.
“Joe, I need you to find something for me.”
“What is it?”
“I took a photo. Of Shauna with him, last night. I left the camera at the pool but the Guards say they never found it. Will you look for it? It’s the only piece of proof out there.”
“Yeah, of course I will. I’ll do everything I can.”
“Thanks.”
I rub the tears from my eyes, but the exhaustion remains.
“Do people know yet?” I ask. “About me?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” says Joe. “It’s been on the radio and in the evening papers. I dunno yet about the telly.”
“Oh god. Like, my name and everything?”
“Yeah.”
He reaches his hands across the table and then pulls them back when the Guard looms over my shoulder.
“Did you talk to Mam?” I ask.
“I tried, but…”
“What?”
“She was … eh…”
“Drunk?”
“Upset.”
I thought I couldn’t sink any deeper, but there goes my heart.
“About him, I bet.”
“Of course not. She’s devastated about you.”
I stare at the spasms of light on the ceiling as tears prick the corners of my eyes.
“I’ve made him into a martyr, haven’t I?”
“You haven’t done anything,” says Joe firmly.
“No, fuck, I didn’t mean…”
“I know, Lou,” he says, glancing at the Guard.
My head throbs with the pain of remembering. What I did and didn’t do, what I’ve said and should never say.
“I just meant … the press, they’re going to idolize him and crucify me, aren’t they?”
“So what if they do? None of that matters.”
“And you, they’re going to go after you too. That stupid fucking article.”
“Please don’t worry about me,” he says. “Seriously, just focus on keeping yourself together while you’re in here. Look, I’ve spoken to your solicitor and he’s sure you’ll get bail. You’ll be home for Christmas, I promise.”
Joe speaks with such certainty, but I shake my head.
“No, my hearing’s tomorrow. They told me. In Dún Laoghaire.”
“But…” He sucks his lips as he chooses his words. “You know that’s the District Court? They can’t set bail for a murder charge. You have to apply to the High Court for that. Didn’t anyone explain it to you?”
When I was charged, there were voices and there were words, all merging into one discordant hum as I retched and spat onto the floor in front of me. After that, I clung to the one thing I could decipher: tomorrow’s court date.
“Your solicitor said you should get a High Court hearing within two weeks,” says Joe. “And then you’ll be out. That’s what you’ve got to focus on.”
I look at him in bewilderment, this boy who’s become a legal expert in the course of one day, who can talk murder charges with lawyers as if it’s simply another academic module.
“No,” I say.
“I wish I could do more, but look, it’s just another few days and then, once you’re out, we’ll be able to make sure you never have to come back.”
“No.” I’m louder this time, breath coming quicker as the rage builds, as Joe slips further away.
“Ah god, Lou. I’d swap places with you if I could, you know I would.”
“No,” I scream. “I can’t stay here.”
I push back my chair and stand up, and the Guard is on me, a hand on each of my arms.
“Lou,” says Joe, his face cracked with despair. “They won’t keep you here. You’ll be in St. Patrick’s while you’re on remand.”
I try to shrug off the Guard, but he wraps an arm around my chest and pulls me to the door.
“It’ll be way better there,” says Joe as we leave, but he is wrong. After one night in St. Patrick’s, I’ll be begging for the luxury of Dundrum Garda Station.