WE STOOD THERE, the four of us, at the top of the cliff looking down at a sea that was green and frothing and hundreds of meters below. Helpless. There was no sign of David; it was impossible to tell if he had landed in the sea or fallen on to the rocks.
Molloy moved first. He instructed McFadden to take Simon to the squad car and told him to call all emergency services, including the coastguard station and lifeboat service. I watched as they walked away, Simon silent and hunched as if he had shrunk in height in the past few minutes. He didn’t look at me. Molloy took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.
“Do you think he’s …?” I said, knowing the question to be a stupid one.
“There’s no way he could have survived that fall. Are you okay?”
“No, but at least I’m not down there.” I shivered. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your sculptor …”
“He’s not my sculptor,” I replied automatically.
“Come on. Let’s get you into the warmth,” Molloy said gently as he walked me over to his car, arms around my shoulders.
“What did he know?” I asked as Molloy turned the car’s heating up full blast. “Simon, I mean.”
“He’s known for a while that his son was having problems. At first he thought there was something going on between David and Marguerite – a relationship of some sort – or at least that his son had a crush on her.”
“So that’s why he backed off … why he didn’t finish the sculpture of her,” I murmured.
“Okay,” Molloy said slowly. “I’m afraid I know nothing about that.”
“Sorry, go on.”
“The night that Marguerite died, Simon saw David calling at her cottage, so when her body was found the following day, he suspected that his son had something to do with her death. Then when he saw David with Marguerite’s daughter on the day of the funeral, it became clear that his son must have some involvement in the cult. He challenged him about it, and I don’t think David even bothered to deny it.”
“So Simon has known all along.”
“Suspected, at least. This morning, he had an altercation with David that concerned you – so when David took off in his car, Simon felt sure he had gone to find you. Simon called 999 and they got us. He was worried about you, sufficiently concerned to tell us everything he knew. He actually told us he thought David had killed Marguerite, before we informed him that someone else had confessed.”
“How did you know that David had taken me here?”
“Simon saw him drive back up past his house after he had been to yours, heading in this direction. There’s only one reason to come up this road.”
I glanced at the squad car where McFadden was still on the phone. Molloy was right. No one could survive a fall from Knockamany Bends. The emergency services would be searching for a body. Simon knew that too; he sat beside McFadden with his head in his hands.
Molloy saw me look. “Do you want to talk to him? I know you are close.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t the time to say it, but Molloy was wrong, Simon and I were not and had never been close. He had stayed close to me physically, true, to ensure that I did not discover his son’s secret, and I had spent our time together trying to extract information from him. For both of us our priorities and our loyalties had been elsewhere.
Molloy left the car. I was dimly aware of him speaking briefly to McFadden and then getting back into the driver’s seat.
“I’m going to take you back into town.”
“What about McFadden?” My voice sounded very far away.
“He’s staying here with Simon. We’ve called for back-up and the lifeboats are on their way.”
We didn’t speak at all on the drive back into Glendara. I was grateful to be left alone with my thoughts and Molloy seemed to sense that.
I still had no idea whether Simon had ever had a relationship with Marguerite, but it seemed likely now that he had made up the story about finding Marguerite naked in his bed to deflect attention away from David. He had known of his son’s connection with the cult and suspected his involvement in Marguerite’s death, which was why he tried to get me to back off, even following me to Norway in case I discovered something. The saddest thing of all was that David had been wrong about his father. Simon clearly cared about him very much. He had been trying to protect his son all along.
It was only when we turned into the garda station that I remembered. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked the question earlier; I must have been in shock.
“Who confessed?”
Molloy pulled the keys from the ignition and turned to me. “A kid named James Quinn. As a matter of fact, his father’s asking for a solicitor. He says he knows you so he’s asked for you specifically. The father is Brendan. Are you up to talking to him?”
“Brendan Quinn, the psychiatrist?” I struggled to grasp what Molloy had said. My brain seemed to be frozen. “His son’s confessed to Marguerite’s murder?”
“Yes. He’s a minor – seventeen, I think. So his father will be with him. But he wants you as his solicitor.”
I walked into the garda station to be greeted by a face I could have done without – DS Frank Hanrahan, although I thought I saw a hint of sympathy in his expression: I assumed he had been told what had happened on the cliff.
He pointed towards the little interview room at the back of the station where we had had our first encounter. “The kid’s in there.”
“We’re holding him under Section Four,” Molloy said. “He came to us. Just walked into the station about an hour ago.”
“His father wants to speak to you first,” Hanrahan added.
I followed his gaze. Brendan Quinn was sitting in the narrow waiting area, hunched over with his head in his hands – a carbon copy of Simon Howard. For a split second I was glad not to be a parent.
I walked over to him and put my hand gently on his shoulder. “Brendan.”
He looked up, his expression wretched. “They tell me he’s confessed to murder,” he said. “He’s seventeen, for God’s sake. What’s going on?” His face searched mine for answers I didn’t have.
“I don’t know, I’m afraid. That’s all I’ve been told. They’re holding him under Section Four of the Criminal Justice Act 1984, which means they can hold him for an initial six hours to question him, then a further six if ordered by a Superintendent, and a further twelve after that if ordered by a Chief Superintendent.”
Quinn hadn’t taken in a word. I could tell by his face.
I distilled it down. “Unless they charge him, they can only hold him for twenty-four hours.”
“He’s only been here an hour,” he said vaguely. “I had no idea he even knew her.”
“Look,” I said, “he’s a minor so he needs to have you present with him. So let’s go in and see him, shall we?”
With a mammoth effort, Quinn hauled himself out of the chair and followed me towards the interview room. Molloy opened the door for us but didn’t come in. Hanrahan was there already, sitting at the table with his back to us with a thin-looking boy in a gray hoodie sitting opposite. The boy had his elbows on the table and his head bent, a curtain of greasy brown hair covering his face. He didn’t look up when we came into the room, nor when his father sat down beside him. I took the seat beside Hanrahan.
Hanrahan spoke. “You are entitled to have a solicitor present, James, along with your father. Your father has asked Miss O’Keeffe to be here.”
The boy glanced up for the first time. He was deathly pale and he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days – not what you would expect of the son of a prominent wealthy psychiatrist. With a jolt, I realized I had seen him before. He was the gangly-looking youth who had been sitting beside Hugh O’Connor that day outside Phyllis’s book shop, and hanging about in the Oak on the day of the Wax Auction.
I smiled at him and offered my hand. He shook it and gave me a weak smile. There was fear in his eyes.
“I’m just going to turn on the tape recorder,” Hanrahan said as he reached over to flick the switch on the old machine. He leaned forward. “Now, James, I want you to tell us again what you told me earlier. Take your time, and in your own words.”
James spoke in a whisper. “I did it. I killed her.”
“You’ll have to speak up for the tape, James,” Hanrahan said.
“I killed her,” he said again, marginally louder. “It wasn’t suicide like they said.”
“We need you to be clear, James. Who are you talking about? Who did you kill?” Hanrahan spoke gently to him.
“That French woman.”
“Marguerite Etienne?”
“That’s the one.”
“And why are you telling us this now?”
“Because I can’t live with it.”
“Thank you. Now, James, just tell us what happened.”
“I took Dad’s car,” I heard Quinn’s sharp intake of breath to my left, “while he was away. And I followed her.”
“You followed her from where?”
“From Glendara. She came out of,” he nodded in my direction, “your office.”
Hanrahan interrupted, “For the purposes of the tape, can you clarify what you mean when you say ‘your office’?”
“Thank you, James. Please continue. What happened next?”
“The French woman went to another house and then she went home.”
“Was this something you had done before, James? Follow her?”
“No.”
“So why did you do it that night?”
“Don’t know,” he shrugged. “Just for something to do.”
“Was there anyone with you?”
“No one. I was on my own.”
“Are you quite sure about that?”
“Aye.”
The door opened and Molloy came in. He shut the door behind him.
“And what did you do then?” Hanrahan asked.
“Sat in the car down the road from her house for a wee minute. I saw a man go in.”
“Can you describe the man?”
“Skinny.”
Molloy and I looked at each other. David Howard.
“And what did you do then?”
“Drove down to the beach. Walked along the shore.” He paused. “Smoked a joint.” He glanced uneasily at his father. Something didn’t add up, I thought on seeing this. The boy had just confessed to murder and yet he was afraid to admit to smoking a joint in front of his father.
“How long were you down there for?”
“Half an hour. Then I walked back up the beach towards the stony part.”
“And then what happened?”
“She was just lying there, passed out on the beach. Drunk or something. Down at the road end, where the rocks are.”
“And?”
“I picked up a rock and I hit her. On the head.”
“Why would you do something like that, James?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I had been smoking. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You had no other reason? Did you know Ms. Etienne?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“What did you do after you hit her, James?”
“I panicked. I took off her clothes and I dragged her into the sea. I thought it would look like suicide.”
Distressingly, he started to cry, burying his head in his arms on the table. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled. “I had to tell you. I can’t live with it.”
“Was there anyone with you, James – at any point during the evening?” Hanrahan asked again.
James raised his head, tears smeared across his cheeks. “No,” he said firmly. “I was on my own.”
“And you’ve kept it to yourself all this time? You’ve told no one?”
“No one knows but me.”
“And you had never met Miss Etienne before this happened?”
“No.” He hung his head again. “I don’t know why I did it. It must have been the dope.”
“Okay, James, we’ll leave that for the moment.” Hanrahan switched off the tape recorder.
We left the interview room and Molloy headed off to get James a glass of water while his father and I went outside to get some air. The interview room had felt like a cell.
“Did James know about you and Marguerite?” I asked.
“No,” Quinn replied. “There’s no way he could have known.”
“Are you sure?”
He gave me a look of horror. “Why – do you think he found out? Do you think that’s why he did it?”
“I’m not saying that. I just want you to be sure.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ, what have I done? Should I tell the guards about it?”
“Maybe. Let’s wait and see what happens.”
Molloy emerged from the station. I left Quinn pacing up and down in the car park and went over to talk to him.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Well, his story has lots of holes in it. There seems to have been no motive and Hanrahan thinks that he would have found it pretty difficult to lift a dead body on his own, let alone undress Marguerite down to her underwear. He’s not the biggest kid in the world.”
“What’s he thinking?”
“Well, he agrees with me. If the kid’s telling the truth, it seems very unlikely he was on his own.”
The arrival of the squad car interrupted our conversation. McFadden climbed out of the driver’s seat looking wet and dishevelled. “Need a change of clothes, then I’m heading back up there.”
“Any news?” Molloy asked.
“Nothing yet. We’re searching the cliffs and the lifeboat service are searching the sea. We’ll keep at it till we find him.”
Five minutes later, Hanrahan confirmed that they were suspending questioning James for an hour so he could have something to eat. Molloy tried to make me go to the hospital to have myself checked out, but I resisted. I was fine physically, bar a little bump on the head. So I left the station and walked back out onto the street.
I looked at my watch. It was half past ten. I wondered if I should try to talk to Simon, to offer him some comfort, but I doubted what good it would do, since it was clear now that there had been nothing real between us in the first place. Also, I couldn’t go too far – I might be needed again at the garda station if they resumed questioning.
So I went to the office.
I made myself a coffee and sat at Leah’s desk. I couldn’t believe that James Quinn had killed Marguerite; it just didn’t add up. But James was Hugh O’Connor’s friend and both boys’ fathers had had relationships with Marguerite. Affairs, in fact. Surely that couldn’t be a coincidence.
The guards thought that James couldn’t have done what he said he did on his own. Could Hugh have been with him? I went to the filing cabinet and fished out the file on closed district court cases, pulled out Hugh’s sheaf of charge sheets and ran my finger down through the descriptions of the offences. I checked the date they had occurred and immediately felt that pins-and-needles sensation traveling up my neck again. The date on the charge sheets was 13 September – the date Marguerite had died. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked before.
Finally, I knew what had happened. But there was one last piece I needed to be sure.
I rang Quinn.
There was fear in his voice when he answered. “Hello?”
“Brendan, it’s Ben. What is your car registration number?”
He replied without hesitation. “DL 09 98788. Why?”
I checked the charge sheet. The number matched. Hugh O’Connor had been driving Quinn’s car the night Marguerite died, not James.
“Did you notice any damage to your car when you came back from holidays?”
“No, none. If anything, it was in top shape. Looked like it had had a paint job. I thought James had given it a good going over with the wax. What’s this about?”
“I’ll let you know.”
I dialed the number of the garda station at high speed. Hanrahan answered. I asked for Molloy.
“He’s gone back up to Knockamany Bends with Garda Mc-Fadden. Do you want me to give him a message?”
“No. It’s okay, thanks. I’ll track him down myself. I need to get hold of him fairly quickly.”
I hung up, tried his mobile, but the call went straight through to voicemail.
I raced down the stairs and out the door, charge sheets in hand, crossed over to the County Council car park and searched frantically for my car until I remembered that the Golf I had borrowed from Hal was still outside my house. I ran back into the office, grabbed a note from the petty-cash box and made my way to the taxi rank in the square. I opened the passenger door of one of the cabs.
“Paddy, can you take me back to my house, please? I need to collect my car.”
The driver grinned. “Big night last night?”
“Something like that.”
We were back in Malin in five minutes. I rummaged around in my bag which Molloy had given me from Simon’s car and found my car keys, but I couldn’t find my phone. Where the hell was it? Could I have left it in the car? I searched the Golf, but it wasn’t there, and I didn’t want to leave without it. I would need it to get hold of Molloy if I couldn’t find him on the cliff.
I tried to think back. I was sure I’d had it in my hand before I was knocked out, so maybe I had dropped it somewhere outside the house. I walked up the path, searching as I went, but there was no sign of it on the path or on the doorstep.
Might it have been kicked under the back door? I went round to the back of the house, unlocked the back door and walked through the porch and into the kitchen, but there was no sign of it there either. I dropped the bag and charge sheets on the table while I searched the pantry, then returned to the kitchen and started up the hallway towards the sitting room. But my way was barred.