JP

I suppose, looking back, I suffered with depression in the wake of Charlie’s death. I didn’t put a name on it. I didn’t go to the doctor – not at first, anyway.

That was for weak people. I wasn’t weak. I’d been strong my whole life.

But there was something that worried me. The way I’d reacted when I thought McNamara was about to kill his wife – that scared me. It was a part of my personality I hadn’t seen before and hadn’t realized existed.

I started to read up a bit, to try to figure out why I was the way I was. I didn’t think I was a psychopath or anything. But I did begin to accept that maybe I’d been under too much pressure. Grief is overwhelming at the best of times, but Charlie’s death coming on top of a life of various traumas did things to my head.

That night outside the McNamara home, I had a breakdown of sorts.

Afterwards, I tried to make sense of how I’d been behaving – the things I’d done and how far I’d been willing to go. And also of what I’d seen of the McNamaras. What had gone on between the pair of them in that sitting room? What had been said?

The thing is, I just didn’t know what to do. The mourning I had postponed so I could get to the bottom of what had happened hit me like a tsunami. I was overcome, and the only firm ground I could grasp was the desperate need to see Harry McNamara pay for what he’d done.

Julie McNamara knew the truth. I was sure of it. There was no other reason for her to have watched that show, got so upset and have had the big blow-out with her husband.

Yet even when Harry had grabbed her and it seemed like he was hurting her, she’d done nothing.

Did I have it wrong? Was she afraid of him?

No. That wasn’t it. I’d seen the way she held him that night. She had chosen to support him. All this time, I thought she might be a potential ally, but for all I knew she would give her husband an alibi. And with his car fixed, what evidence would I have that it had been Harry who’d killed my sister? Tony would never testify to repairing the Mercedes – it would put him up shit creek.

I had been expecting that Harry would cave when I confronted him with the truth but really, would that have happened?

Then events overtook everything.

I had gone to their home in August 2007. By the end of the following month, Harry McNamara’s life was in freefall. His bank was perhaps the biggest player in the financial crash that hit that year. HM Capital was billions in debt. The whole country was going to shit. As trainwrecks go, Harry’s was impressive.

I watched from the sidelines as his business collapsed, as he was declared bankrupt and the coppers opened a file on him.

I lived through the months that followed in a sort of daze. McNamara was in the papers almost every day. I was in limbo. What could I do when the man was in the public eye and already under the scrutiny of the Guards? It felt like God had stepped in to decide this man’s fate and I could do nothing other than watch.

So that’s what I did.

It didn’t give me the same satisfaction. Not like it would have if I had exacted my own justice on the man for Charlie’s death. But I was still in shock after that night in Dalkey. I was coming to terms with the fact that should opportunity provide itself, I could be capable of something evil too.

I slipped further into the darkness.

By 2010, I looked for a bit of help. By that, I mean I went to the doctor and told him I hadn’t slept in months and asked him to give me some pills. He talked to me for over an hour, made me come back for a second session and diagnosed severe depression. Instead of sleeping pills, I got antidepressants.

I considered taking them all. That was how low I’d gone at that stage. I counted them all out on the table one night and poured myself a glass of whiskey.

It was the table where I’d shared breakfast with my sister at the morning before she died. And just thinking that – how much she’d have given to live – made me see sense. I poured the whiskey down the sink and put the tablets away.

I would see McNamara’s head served up on a plate, even if it was taking aeons. Every time a trial date was set, it was postponed. Teams of lawyers were pictured on the news looking very important, dashing from Chambers out to their brand-new BMWs.

Then, in 2012, Harry had his day in court.

His wife held his hand as they arrived for the opening arguments. The papers wrote about how strong the couple looked, how supportive she was, how she’d chosen to wear a high-street skirt suit rather than her usual designer labels to send out the message that McNamara had not benefitted personally from his bank’s dodgy dealings. This, despite the fact they lived in a house worth millions.

I followed court proceedings every day, even when most of it went over my head. A few journalists managed to do a decent job of breaking down the exchanges and the evidence for normal joes like me. Some of the reporters obviously hated McNamara and wrote about how he had managed to pull a fast one by stepping back from the bank’s top job in 2006 and handing it to some chump called Richard Hendricks. Hendricks had already been prosecuted for multiple counts of market and accountancy fraud. He was the first banker in the state to be sent down for actual jail time. I’m sure he was gunning for McNamara.

As the months wore on, I began to get a sinking feeling.

McNamara wouldn’t be found guilty.

His defence team was running rings around the state. Magazines were starting to do fluff pieces about McNamara and his wife, painting the couple as the injured party. Had McNamara stayed at the head of the bank, maybe nothing bad would have happened. The man was a business genius, a lovely guy. He had flaws but he knew how to run a bank. Hendricks hadn’t the same experience, and he and the senior executives got carried away. Hendricks had even driven his own former business, some airline, into the ground.

The tide of public opinion was turning in McNamara’s favour.

It was a double blow and one that tipped me over the edge.

I had to change my plans.

He had to suffer, whatever the outcome of the fraud trial.

In fact, it would be even better if he thought he’d got away with everything and it was then that I made him pay.