MY PHONE VIBRATED at the same time as my alarm clock the next morning. It was Simon apologizing for the night before. By text. I didn’t reply. I didn’t need the hassle this morning. Instead, I opened the curtains to let Guinness in through the window and climbed back into bed convincing myself that I could afford five more minutes. But the cat had different ideas; he padded out of the room and sat where I could see him at the top of the stairs, staring back at me reproachfully.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” I said as I pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a fleece and headed downstairs to serve the cat his breakfast, before dragging myself towards the shower.
The heavy fog from the night before had cleared and the morning was bright and crisp when I pulled into a parking space behind the County Council office. I was taking the keys out of the ignition when a knock on the driver’s window made me jump. It was Aidan Doherty.
I wound down the window. He looked awful – worse, if that were possible, than the night before. His eyes were pink and his skin had a waxy sheen.
“Can I have a quick word?” he said.
He smelled even worse than he looked. Though he had clearly showered, the combination of toothpaste and stale alcohol through the open window was hard to ignore. But I did my best.
“Of course. Do you want to sit in?”
“No, thanks. It won’t take long. I just wanted to apologize for last night.”
Two apologies from two different men, and both about their behavior last night, I thought.
“It’s okay. There’s no need. I’ve forgotten about it.”
He gave me a watery smile. “So have I, unfortunately. Can’t hold my drink, I’m afraid. Made a bit of a fool of myself. What was I talking about?”
I gave him a wry smile. “You told me about love destroying your life.”
Aidan groaned. “Did we talk about …?”
“I mentioned Marguerite,” I conceded.
“You knew her?”
“Yes.”
He looked at his watch. “Maybe I will sit in for a bit. I have a meeting in ten minutes.” He walked over to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and sat down.
“So you know,” he said flatly.
“About you and Marguerite? Yes.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know you’re acting for Hugh. That’s where my priority should be. I shouldn’t have been talking to you. I was just feeling sorry for myself.”
“No, it’s fine. It was my fault, to be honest. I started it – but you appeared upset.”
“I was. I am. Look, I know solicitor-client confidentiality shouldn’t really extend to the pub, but would you mind keeping anything I said to yourself? It’s not something I want gossiped about. I have to take care of my family.”
“Of course.” I paused. “Can I ask you something, too? In confidence, too, of course.”
He seemed to relax a little and he nodded.
“You said last night that it was your fault Marguerite was gone. What did you mean?”
He sighed. “I shouldn’t have had an affair with her. That was wrong. I realized that and ended the relationship. But I’m afraid I hurt her very badly.”
“When did you end it?”
“About a month ago, maybe six weeks?” He looked down, the picture of misery. “What’s so awful is that she asked me for help the night she died. She rang me, upset.”
“What was she upset about?”
“She wouldn’t tell me over the phone,” he said sadly. “She wanted me to come and see her, but for once, I decided to do the right thing. I told her I couldn’t see her and I locked myself in my study with a bottle of whiskey.”
“I can relate to that one,” I told him.
“If I hadn’t, maybe she wouldn’t have taken her own life.”
“You don’t know that. We don’t know what happened.”
“It’s the truth. She needed me and I let her down.”
“You can’t possibly think like that,” I said gently. “It’ll destroy you.”
He looked up at me; his eyes were bloodshot. “Don’t waste your sympathy on me. If you knew some of the things I’ve done …”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I protested. But if I was honest, I didn’t know.
With an effort he seemed to pull himself together. “I’m sorry, Ben. Ignore me, I’m talking nonsense.” He gave me a watery smile. “Put it down to the hangover. I just wanted you to know that I’m determined to make my marriage work. Keep my family together. Or else it’s all been for nothing. I just hope Clodagh knows that. And Hugh.”
He opened the car door and without saying goodbye, he climbed out. I watched him walk off in the direction of the church, still carrying his terrible, invisible weight.
I locked the car. Why had Marguerite wanted to talk to Aidan on the night she died, I wondered. Was it to tell him about the pregnancy? And what or who was she afraid of? Jealousy was a hell of a motive for murder.
Before going to the office, I dropped briefly in to Iggy Mc-Daid’s wake. Iggy had lived with his mother in the same terraced house down a narrow laneway off the Derry road all his life. The house was quiet when I called in; Iggy’s mother and his three nephews in the room with the coffin and a couple of neighbors making tea and sandwiches in the kitchen. Old Mrs. McDaid sat by the coffin, clutching a set of rosary beads, looking utterly shocked and bereft. I was reminded that you are always a child to your parents, even in your fifties. I exchanged a few words with her, offered my condolences, and left to call in to the office and collect some files before driving to Letterkenny.
And to check whether Brendan Quinn had returned my call. Which he hadn’t.
Letterkenny courthouse is a fine old Georgian building used for the District Court, Circuit Court, and the High Court when it comes on circuit twice a year. This morning, both the District and Circuit courts were sitting, and the foyer was teeming with solicitors and barristers, insurance company representatives, and punters. I had no cases listed for hearing this morning, but I had arranged to meet a solicitor for an insurance company to agree figures in two personal injury cases, and I needed to see the State Prosecutor in a burglary case to exchange papers, so I made my way downstairs to the bar room at the back of the building to seek them out. The room was deserted so I sat down to wait, taking advantage of the extra few minutes to call Brendan Quinn again. His secretary put me straight though.
I dispensed with any pleasantries. “Brendan, you never called me back. Can you meet me today or not?”
“Yes.” He sounded cornered.
“Two o’clock in An Grianán?”
“I’ll be there.”
At a quarter past two I walked into the café of the theatre building in Letterkenny. Quinn was waiting for me at a table by the window, an untouched black coffee going cold in front of him.
He looked up. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”
Quinn looked almost as miserable as Aidan Doherty had earlier. I was beginning to revise my opinion about Marguerite’s death passing unnoticed.
“I can’t, Brendan. It wasn’t an accident. Either she killed herself or someone else killed her and made it look like suicide. Her clothes and shoes were found on the shore opposite the Isle of Doagh – that stony section just at the end of Lagg? Do you know where I’m talking about?”
He shook his head. “I know Lagg but not well. I have no reason to be up that part of the peninsula.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “That’s odd because your car was seen there the night she died. Down at the beach.”
“You heard me.”
“Seen by whom?”
“I’m not going to tell you that. But yours is a pretty unmistakable car, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I swear, I never visited Marguerite’s house!” he said vehemently. “We only ever met in Letterkenny or Buncrana. And I was still away on holidays the night she died. I told you that!”
I wondered if there was any way of confirming that. In the meantime, I changed direction. “The first time I spoke to you about this, you said it was unlikely Marguerite would have committed suicide.”
“Yes, but … I didn’t think that someone might have killed her.” He seemed appalled.
“So, you were thinking accident?”
“Yes, I was. But I didn’t know the details at that stage. I didn’t even know she was dead until you told me.”
“And now?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “As I told you, I hadn’t seen her for over a month when she died, but I wouldn’t have considered her at risk at that stage. As a matter of fact, from the time I started treating her, I never considered her a suicide risk. Her concern was always for her daughter. She was desperate to re-establish contact with her. I can’t see how she would have given up on that.”
I could feel my temper rise. “You do know that if you had told the guards that, they may not have closed the investigation? They got some other idiot of a psychiatrist who didn’t know her from Adam to say that she was a suicide risk because of her cult history.”
Quinn had the grace to look uncomfortable.
“You could still talk to them. Tell them what you know,” I said.
“You know I can’t do that. They’ll investigate my connection with her. And remember, I hadn’t seen her for six weeks before she died. I can’t be sure she wasn’t a suicide risk after that.”
“Okay,” I said, unable to conceal my disgust. “If you won’t go to the guards, I want you to help me.”
“How?” He looked at me warily.
“The guards have closed their investigation.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I think they’re wrong. I think it’s possible Marguerite was murdered. If she was, I’m going to find out who did it. And if she wasn’t murdered and she took her own life after all, I’m going to find that out for sure. I feel that I owe it to her,” I added pointedly.
Quinn sat back. “How on earth do you think you’re going to do that?”
“By finding out everything I can. How she lived. Who she was close to. Who would have wanted to hurt her. You can help by telling me everything you know about her. You must have found out a lot during your counseling sessions.”
“I can’t do that, Ben. You know I’m bound by patient confidentiality.”
“You didn’t seem to be so concerned about the rules when you wanted her in your bed.”
He winced. I knew it was a low blow but I didn’t care. I took another pot shot. “And how will you feel if it turns out that she did commit suicide? Won’t you feel some degree of responsibility for that?”
Quinn put his head in his hands. Neither of us spoke.
Eventually, he said, his voice weary, “Very well. What do you want to know?”
“Thanks, Brendan. I know this isn’t easy for you.”
“Don’t.” He glared at me.
“Okay. Tell me when she came to see you first of all, and why.”
Quinn took a deep breath. “She came to me exactly a year ago. She was referred to me by her GP in Glendara. It was shortly after Alain Veillard died. His death was in the media quite a bit at the time, I don’t know if you remember. Having to deal with that threw up quite a few issues for Marguerite, issues she had buried for a long time.”
“Like what?”
“Each person’s experience after a cult involvement is different. Some people seem to walk away relatively unscathed while others are tremendously damaged. In Marguerite’s case a number of factors counted against her recovery in the immediate aftermath of her involvement with the Damascans.”
“Family being one of them?” I prompted. “Or lack of family. She told me her parents were dead.”
“Yes. She joined the cult after her parents had been killed in a car crash and she was living with her grandmother. By the time she left, her grandmother had also died. In fact, Marguerite inherited quite a bit of money from her grandmother. She gave it all to Veillard. So she had neither family nor security when she came out.”
“And that has an effect?” I waited for Quinn to confirm what Michaela had said.
He nodded. “The availability of a network of friends and family as support has a huge bearing on a person’s reintegration after a cult involvement. Marguerite had no one. Also, her immersion in the cult was absolute. She was in a relationship with Veillard himself so she was part of the inner circle, and she had a child with him when she was still very young. She was completely controlled by him.”
“But she managed to leave. That must have taken some strength.”
“Yes, but without her baby. She told me that she tried to leave with her baby, was found, and brought back. Not surprisingly, this angered Veillard, and she was ultimately rejected by the group and removed from it and her daughter. That would have been profoundly traumatic.”
“I can imagine.”
“She felt considerable guilt and shame at having to leave her daughter behind. She grieved for the loss of her daughter but also for the loss of the group even though she tried to leave them. And she never dealt with this grief. She was afraid to. She was afraid of Veillard and she remained that way until he died.”
“That’s a long time to suppress your feelings.”
Quinn nodded. “Emotional suppression would have been a way of living she was used to in the Damascans. It was her position of default. After she left the cult, she moved frequently, never became close to anybody, and eventually ended up in Inishowen – possibly because of its proximity to where her daughter is now. Norway, I think, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “So she pretty much lived a life of emotional isolation until last year when she heard that Veillard had died, when she came to you?”
“Yes. Cult members are also generally encouraged to shun medical and mental health professionals, but when Veillard died, she felt that she could finally open up, talk about what had happened to her.”
“In the long run yes, it would have been. But in the short term, it meant that all of her suppressed memories were returning and she was having to deal with them. She started to have nightmares and flashbacks. She also started to engage with people.”
“A good thing too?”
“Yes and no. One of the most common difficulties people experience on leaving a cult is issues with intimacy – difficulty trusting people but also inappropriately trusting or trusting too much, resulting in unstable personal relations or promiscuity.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Yes, yes, I know. Do you not think I’ve been over and over this in my head since she died?”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Marguerite was taking down the walls she had built around herself and maintained for over twenty years. But it wasn’t easy. It was like learning to walk again.”
“Are you saying she had relationships with other men apart from you?”
“I can’t be sure about her sexual relationships. She didn’t talk to me about that area of her life after …”
“After your affair.”
“Yes. But she was learning to trust people again for the first time since leaving the cult. Her instincts would not have been great to begin with. I have a sense from what she told me that she’d rebuff people who were trying to be kind to her and then trust the wrong people. It was a learning process for her.”
“Tell me about your affair.”
Quinn lowered his voice. “There’s not much to tell. It didn’t last very long. It started a few months after we met, only happened a few times, ended more than six months ago. We both got over it. I carried on counseling her because she wanted me to,” he said defensively.
“Until six weeks ago?”
“Yes. I don’t know anything about her sexual life after me. But I do think her only relationships of any kind were with men. She had difficulty relating to women. The Damascans were a patriarchal cult; Veillard kept the women servile and unseen. Marguerite seems to have been an exception. As his chosen consort, she mixed with the men in his inner circle.”
“And yet she had a baby girl.”
“Yes. Her daughter. She wanted so badly to have some kind of relationship with her. She was attempting to contact her all the time I knew her – writing letters every week. I don’t suppose she ever succeeded?”
“It doesn’t look like it. Although the guards managed to track the daughter down and she came to the funeral. Which you’d have known if you’d bothered to come yourself.”
“Yes,” he said shamefacedly. “That would have meant a lot to her, her daughter being there.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“As I said, about six weeks before she died. Around the beginning of August. I can check my diary to confirm that. She rang me out of the blue and said she wanted to stop our sessions. No warning.”
“How was she when you last saw her?”
“Good. She was making progress. The initial trauma she suffered when we started the counseling only lasted a couple of months, the nightmares and flashbacks. She was over that a long time by that stage. She seemed stable, as content as I’d ever seen her, actually. But …”
“A lot can change in six weeks. Remember, she was away from counseling for all that time.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“No. You said she was two months’ pregnant when she died so she probably didn’t know herself the last time I saw her.”
“Do you think that might have changed things?”
“Possibly. Depending on the circumstances.”
“And you have no idea who the father might have been?”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” He looked at his watch. “Look, I have to go. I have an appointment at half past three.”
“Are you sure you didn’t prescribe anything for her? No drugs of any kind?”
“No, nothing. I told you that. Why?”
“She had clonazepam in her system when she died. The epilepsy drug.”
Quinn frowned. “Marguerite didn’t have epilepsy.”
“Panic attacks? It’s used for that too apparently.”
“No, she didn’t have those either. I’m sure of it. She would have filled in a questionnaire when she came to see me first. I don’t know why she was taking clonazepam, but it didn’t come from me.” He got up to leave.
“One more thing,” I said. “I spoke to someone who used to be in the Damascans, and she told me that Veillard had his followers believe that they need to die by drowning to get to the afterlife. Do you think that was something that Marguerite might have done?”
Quinn’s face registered confusion. “Marguerite was afraid of the sea.”
“And yet she chose to live near it?”
“It was a sort of challenge for her. To face it. To some day be able to walk on the beach, or even go for a swim.”
“Some day?” Now I was confused. Molloy had said that Marguerite liked to walk on the beach.
“Yes, she was a long way away from that. She was still petrified of water the last time I saw her.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.”
Quinn gave me one last look before he left. “I promise you, that wasn’t me at the beach the night she died, Ben.”