AT TWO O’CLOCK, I returned to court. I have no idea how I managed to get through that afternoon; I certainly wouldn’t have won any awards for my advocacy skills, although I hoped that my persistent cough provided something of an excuse for my slow reactions and needless repetition. I must have said “Sorry, Judge, could you repeat that?” at least ten times. I glanced over at Molloy, prosecuting cases for the state, desperate to speak to him, but there was no opportunity.
I walked back to the office at a quarter to five, Molloy still in court, my sense of dread increasing with each step. The supermarket, Liam’s place, and Phyllis’s shop all seemed far more attractive options than my own office as I passed them by.
When I walked into reception, Susanne Craig was in the waiting room. Alone. I felt faint with relief when I saw her; I hadn’t realized how afraid I was of having Luke Kirby in my space. She stood and smiled with a politeness I hadn’t seen before, her usual brazen expression and defiant stance absent. She followed me into the front room.
She started to speak before I had closed the door. “I know my dad has spoken to you …”
“Yes,” I replied, my voice surprisingly calm. “He has. But I thought you’d changed your mind. I thought you weren’t staying around?”
“We’ve decided to stay on for a few weeks.” She looked down. “There’s somewhere we need to be, but not yet.”
I couldn’t help but notice the we. Was it my imagination, or did she seem to be under some sort of instruction, not entirely in control of her own destiny? Or was I seeing what I expected to see? I offered her a seat, which she took, perching on the edge of it as if ready to take flight.
“I wondered if there might still be some work,” she said. “Just for a week or two. Part-time. I’ll do anything really.”
I looked at her hollow cheeks and the dark patches under her eyes and saw a vulnerability I hadn’t noticed before. I also saw another pair of eyes, as dark as Susanne’s, with the same shadows beneath. I shook myself. Susanne wasn’t Faye.
“The thing is,” I said, “we’re not as busy as we were before Christmas. I’m not sure—”
Abruptly she stood up and made to walk out. So she had Faye’s recklessness too, a readiness to throw everything away on the slightest whim. But what would she be going to? I wondered as I watched her turn the handle and pull open the door. A life following Luke Kirby around in whatever new persona he had created for himself? Until he chose to discard her too.
I made a snap decision.
“You can come in tomorrow, if you don’t mind clearing out an attic that hasn’t been touched in about twenty years?”
She turned back and smiled gratefully. “I don’t mind.”
“There’s only work for a week or so, but it’ll be a good start to the new year if we get it cleared.”
I watched through the blinds as she crossed the street and thought about what Róisín had told me – the relationship that George and Susanne had had when Susanne was only a girl, if you could call it a relationship. That was what had made her such an easy mark for Kirby, I thought, a man so much older and more sophisticated than she was.
I told myself I had a plan. I would have Susanne work for me, keep her close, get her to trust me, and then I would talk to her about Luke. I would find out what she knew and I would tell her everything. I knew that I couldn’t tell Tony. He might never forgive me for that, but he had enough on his plate trying to rebuild the Oak in the wake of Carole’s death, as well as his relationship with his brother. I told myself I had a plan, but what I was really doing was following my gut and trying to protect Susanne in the way I had been unable to protect my sister. I could not let Luke win. Not this time.
I went back into reception and Leah looked up from her computer.
“Well?”
“She’s starting tomorrow. Just for a week or two. Can you put her to work in the attic? We can’t have her doing anything that would give her access to files, so that’s really all she can do.”
“I hope she doesn’t have a fear of spiders!”
I smiled. “She’s an animal lover, remember?”
Leah leaned back in her chair. “You know, I think she may have got that from Róisín. Sinéad was telling me that Róisín was a veggie in school. She sent an email around once, using the school’s address, saying that meat was no longer allowed in lunch boxes.”
“You’re kidding. After the burst pipes one, or before?”
“After. Suspension didn’t scare her, apparently.” Leah grinned. “Always the quiet ones!”
That night, I cooked for Molloy.
When I look back, I don’t know what we were thinking, spending the evening together. I felt terrible and Molloy looked terrible. I could see he was under pressure; it had been twelve days since Carole’s body had been found, more than two weeks since the fire, and almost a week since Stan’s assault, and there hadn’t been a single arrest. It made no difference to the people of Glendara that the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was involved and they had been unable to get to the bottom of it either. As far as they were concerned, it was the local sergeant who was supposed to protect them.
I was tempted to share what Liam had suggested on New Year’s Eve, that perhaps Molloy should try to be more approachable, but he didn’t seem to be in the mood. Instead, I told him about Stan and Tony, and he reacted as I’d expected him to, frustrated that people chose not to confide in him but pleased that I had told him.
It was when we were sitting by the fire with a glass of wine after dinner that I told him about Luke and Susanne’s return and my giving Susanne a job in the office.
He leaned forward, glass in hand, eyes wide. “You’re what?”
“I’m giving her some work in the office. Just for a week or so.”
“Are you insane?”
I flinched as if I’d been struck. “No, I’m not. She’ll be clearing out the attic. No confidential stuff.”
His tone was incredulous. “Why on earth would you do that?”
I looked away. Part of me wondered if he was right. “I don’t know. There’s a vulnerability about her. I want to keep her close for a while. I don’t know if she knows the full story about Kirby.”
“And you’re planning on being the one to tell her?”
“Yes. No. Probably. If I get the chance.” I put down my glass. “She needs to get away from that man.”
“So do you. But by giving her a job, you’re inviting him back into your life.”
“No, I am not!”
Molloy put down his glass too. “But you’ll see him regularly. He’ll be dropping her into work. Collecting her. Meeting her for lunch. You’re playing into his hands, Ben. It’s dangerous.”
“I just need to—”
He cut across me. “Listen to me. A few days ago, you thought it was possible that Kirby had killed Carole Harkin. And now what? You’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” I said indignantly. “But we don’t know what happened to Carole, do we? We haven’t got proof of a damn thing.”
Molloy looked hurt, and immediately I wanted to take it back.
“We’ll get there, Ben. It’s just taking some time. But the fact remains that there are links between Luke Kirby and this murder. There’s the fact that he shared a cell with Dominic McLaughlin, who is the only one whose DNA was found, and that he has a prior conviction for killing a woman. By a similar method,” he added quietly.
I felt a stab. The fact that both Faye and Carole had been strangled hadn’t escaped either of us, I knew, but it was the first time we had acknowledged it.
Molloy’s voice softened. “Those are facts we can’t ignore, Ben. That you can’t ignore.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Why do you think I want to keep Susanne Craig close?”
He shook his head. “You can’t protect her on your own.”
“Well maybe if you arrested Kirby, I wouldn’t need to.”
“You know we don’t have enough to do that yet. He didn’t leave any DNA; we have no witnesses. There is no direct connection that we can find between him and Carole.”
There was silence between us for a few minutes. Guinness seemed to sense something wrong and climbed onto my knee to nuzzle my hand, not something he did very often.
“It doesn’t mean we’re not keeping an eye on him, you know,” Molloy said. “If it was him, at some point he’s going to make a mistake. If he hasn’t already.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it. He doesn’t seem overly concerned anyway, hanging around the town as if he owns the place.”
That was the final straw for Molloy. He stood up. “Look, I’m going to leave you to it. I have work to do. I’ll ring you later and I’ll come back and stay.”
“There’s no need. I’ll be fine,” I snapped.
I didn’t want him to leave, but I was furious with him. How could he not understand my need to try and protect Susanne after all that I had told him about Faye? As he walked towards the door, I remembered something.
I still don’t know why I said it. I think I just wanted to take a potshot at him. “Why did I see Laura Callan on the Malin road on Thursday?”
He stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“Laura, the pathologist, your ex. I saw her the other day coming from Malin. Why was she still knocking around? She’d finished her postmortem on Carole by then.”
He looked at me, astonished. “She’s from Malin Head. Her parents still live there. I presume she went up to see them for a few days after she finished working in Letterkenny.”
“Is there a reason you never told me that she was from Inishowen?” My voice was icy.
“Not particularly. I thought you knew.”
“How would I know?” I tried to soften my tone and failed. “What are you not telling me? I know there’s something.”
Molloy shook his head. “Look, I’m going to go. I think we both need some breathing space.”
“Agreed.”
I locked the door behind him, fuming. Badly needing a distraction, I slumped on the couch and turned on the television. Flicking angrily through the channels, I came across a film that I loved: John Huston’s The Dead – his adaptation of the James Joyce short story. Guinness leapt onto my knee and I settled in to watch the final scene, where the couple Gabriel and Gretta are in their hotel room in Dublin after the party. Gretta is crying over a boy who loved her when she was young and who died, and Gabriel turns to the window for his final monologue, jealous that he has never loved in the same way.
I felt my anger subside and began to think about the shadows that past relationships could cast. A well of emotion that must be managed, kept in the background, so that you could move on. I thought about Carole and her secret marriage to Dominic; about Susanne and her affair with George while she was still a teenager. Both relationships long past but present nonetheless. I had picked a fight with Molloy about his ex, but I knew Laura Callan wasn’t the real problem. I’d felt for a while that Molloy was hiding something from me. It was making me doubt myself, wonder if I had made a mistake in trusting him with so much.
The last man I thought I loved was Luke Kirby. That’s how good a judge of character I was. I had loved the man who killed my sister, was full of grief and jealousy when he left me for her, and because of that, ignored her call on the night she died. An appalling misjudgment that haunted me every day.