I’m the last to leave the office. That’s not unusual. Ryan went home an hour ago. The rest of my colleagues left a good hour or more before that.
‘Do you not have a home to go to?’ he asked me, his earlier terseness forgotten, as he slipped into his coat and pulled his scarf around his neck.
He asks me that question every night. And every night I tell him I work better here. When I’m alone. When there are no distractions.
Sometimes he tries to distract me before he leaves. He leaves his office with a wolfish smile on his face and I know immediately what’s on his mind. He’s an attractive man. Older than me, of course. In his mid-fifties, but he looks after himself. Dresses well. He’s well groomed; tanned and toned, but not too much. He’s not vain. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Piercing – that’s how I’d describe them. When he turns on the charm, I find him impossible to resist, even if most of the time he enrages me with his arrogance. Some would say we have a love–hate kind of an arrangement. But it’s more complicated than that. I wouldn’t say that I loved him, and yet I find myself drawn to him anyway. I’m pretty sure he feels the same.
He wasn’t in a predatory mood tonight, though. ‘I’ll have to talk to HR about this,’ he said, which is a threat he makes at least once a week. He always follows it with waffle about ‘lone working protocol’ as if, as reporters, we aren’t dispatched to talk to dodgy people in dodgy places on our own all the time.
I didn’t argue with him. I just rolled my eyes. Nodded. Told him I’d see him in the morning.
As soon as he left, I looked at the negatives I’d retrieved from the archive room earlier. They were from pictures of the funeral. Pictures of Kelly Doherty’s grieving family. Pictures of me and my school friends standing, shivering in the cold, as a guard of honour outside of the chapel. Thankfully, I seem to be hidden behind one of my classmates, the top of my head just about in view, but that doesn’t stop me from remembering the day. The wind was icy-cold, whipping around our legs. School uniforms – skirts and knee-high white socks – were not enough to protect bare legs from the cold. I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered together, giving me a headache.
I remember the sense that this was something very, very important. Our teacher had told us we weren’t to show her up. We were to be on our very best behaviour and if we were, we would get no homework for a full week and we could go home with our mammies and daddies after the Mass. I remember the sense of solemnity about the whole thing.
But I also remember the fear. This was our friend. And she was dead and in a box – and we didn’t, none of us, quite understand it.
And then I saw Kelly’s mammy and daddy crying. Her mum roaring with grief, like nothing I’d ever heard before. The grief of a mother who had lost her child. It haunts me still, even though I’m the least maternal person in the world. Maybe that’s why I’m the least maternal person in the world. Much too scared ever to risk experiencing pain like that. I remember there were people holding her up, helping her to walk into the chapel while she was bent double with the pain of her loss. I couldn’t look away, even though I couldn’t bear what I was seeing.
I remember I saw my mother crying. And my teachers. And the neighbours. And my friends. I remember my own lip trembling but being determined not to cry. Not even one little bit. Even though I was sad and scared and it all felt very grown up.
I remember thinking if only Kelly had been with us that night. With our gang. None of this would have happened. I was ten years old and riddled with guilt. We were the older kids on the street. We should have watched out for her more, but she had her own friends. I couldn’t even start to imagine what they were feeling.
I slip another strip of negatives into the old scanner, watch the full images appear on screen and study them. It’s all, more or less, as I remember. I look at the crowd. A sea of heads bowed in procession outside St Mary’s Chapel. I see a face I think I recognise. Head up, looking directly at the cortege. I zoom in closer, only to have the image pixelate and blur. But I’m sure, or as sure as I can be, that it is Jamesy Harte. He looks just as I remember him – younger maybe. I know I’m older now than he was when he went to prison. He doesn’t look like a killer, but then again, what does a killer look like?
I save the file on to my computer. Then I email it to myself, just to make sure I have a second copy.
I work until my eyes threaten to jump out of my head and go home on their own. Only then do I switch off, lock up just as Ryan reminded me and leave for home, stopping at Sainsbury’s to pick up some sort of ready meal on the way. And a bottle of wine – for the fridge, of course. I promise myself I’ll do more work after I’ve showered and eaten, but I find my eyes drooping as I sit on my bed and towel my hair. I lie back on my pillow, vow I’ll just rest my eyes for five minutes, but I can already feel myself drifting off. The world is swimming somewhere between reality and my imagination.
It takes a minute then for me to realise that the sound I hear is not the siren of an approaching police car in my dream, but the ringing of my phone. Head fuzzy, eyes heavy, I reach out and answer, muttering a garbled hello.
‘Is that Ingrid Devlin?’ a male voice asks.
It’s deep, husky, as if its owner smokes thirty a day, but there’s also a nervous edge to it.
‘Yes. It is,’ I reply.
‘Good. Good,’ he says before he clears his throat. ‘This is Jamesy Harte. I heard you were looking to talk to me.’
I’m immediately awake, reaching to my bedside table for a pen and the notebook I keep there just in case. First rule of journalism: never be beyond reaching distance of a notebook and pen. I’m surprised to find my hand is shaking. I take a deep breath. This is Jamesy Harte. Fucking Jamesy Harte! The man who changed everything. Who made monsters real.
‘I am, Mr Harte. Thanks for getting in touch. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so quickly.’
Second rule of journalism: always be polite when first talking to a new source. Build a relationship of trust with them from the very beginning, even if they are suspected of being a very bad person.
‘No need to call me mister,’ he replies. ‘Jamesy will do. And if I’m right, you’re wee Ingrid Devlin from Creggan?’
‘Well, not so wee any more,’ I tell him. I’m about to remind him of my age, that I’m just a little older than Kelly Doherty would have been, but I think better of it. ‘But yes, you’ve a good memory. I am indeed from Creggan. Although my mum has moved away from Leenan Gardens now.’
‘There weren’t many wains called Ingrid around,’ he says, pausing to take a breath. ‘You remember a name like that.’
There’s something in the timbre of his voice that makes me uncomfortable. The thought that he remembers me, maybe. That maybe it’s more than just my name. I shiver, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I can’t escape what he was convicted of.
A memory of him comes to my mind. In the small front garden of the house he shared with his mother. He would be there every day, just in time for all of us walking home from school. He’d chat to us. Sometimes he gave us sweets. Sometimes we gave him some of ours.
I heard grown-ups say there was ‘no harm in him’, but my mother warned me not to talk to him for too long. ‘You let Jamesy get on with his gardening and get yourself home to do your homework,’ she’d say.
After he was arrested, of course everyone in the neighbourhood had something to say. They no longer thought there was no harm in him. ‘There was always something about him,’ they’d whisper to each other over hedges and fences, or gossip over shop counters. They didn’t think, or care, that we could hear them, too.
I’d always thought he was a nice man. At Halloween his mammy would make a batch of toffee apples and if you were really quick, you’d get one for your goody bag. It was Jamesy who would hand them out, grinning, at his front door, delighted to see our excited faces.
I realise I’ve paused for a moment or two too long. I will myself to get it together. ‘Well, okay, Jamesy,’ I say. ‘I do want to talk to you. You know I work for The Chronicle now …’ I begin.
‘The Chronicle hasn’t been a friend to me,’ he says slowly.
His voice is thick with sadness. I clear my throat. ‘I’m aware of that, Jamesy,’ I say. ‘But I also do a bit of freelance work, you know. Write for other papers. I’ve even written a couple of books. True crime stuff.’
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘I saw that one you wrote about that Grahame woman’s death. It was a good read. Awful business altogether.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, trying not to think about how that entire episode had complicated my life way too much. ‘The thing is, I’d love to help you tell your side of the story. I know you’re claiming you were set up.’
‘I was set up,’ he says. ‘I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do anything like that,’ he continues, his slow, deep voice losing its soft tone. ‘I didn’t deserve to go to prison. I never touched that wee girl, never mind did all those things they said. I’m not like that. I’m not a bad man. I wouldn’t ever do something like that. I wouldn’t do those things. Those dirty things. I never killed anyone. Not even a spider. Mammy would call me and I’d put them out the window. Those people, back then, the police and all, they just told lies, and made everyone believe they were telling the truth.’
‘I’ll help you tell your story if you let me,’ I say. ‘I’m looking into everything surrounding Kelly’s death. I’d like to meet you and talk to you about it.’
‘But it’s not for The Chronicle?’ he asks. ‘I don’t want anything to do with that paper.’
I suck in a breath. ‘No, Jamesy. It’s not for The Chronicle. It’s for the other papers I told you about. Maybe even a book.’
I hear him suck air in through his teeth. ‘A book? About me?’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I mean, I have to run it past my editor and all, but we could start to chat.’
‘You won’t tell people I’m a monster,’ he says. ‘I’m not a monster. You have to believe me. I can’t talk to you if you don’t believe me.’ There is a childish pleading quality to his voice now.
‘I just want to hear your side of the story, Jamesy. So I can tell it to people. Don’t you think it’s time you had a voice in all this?’ I purposely don’t tell him whether or not I believe him – because the truth is, I’m not sure where I stand.
But I won’t break the third rule of journalism – flatter and cajole your subjects. Make them feel they are in control of the narrative.
‘I do, I really do,’ he answers.
‘Then can we arrange to meet? Talk about this face to face?’
He pauses for a second. ‘Well, I’m not in Derry,’ he says. ‘I’ve never gone back there. Not when I got out eight years ago, and not since. And sure, there’s nothing for me to go back to anyway. Mammy’s long gone. The house passed on to someone else. Derry forgot about me,’ he says.
I hear him sniff, wonder if he’s crying.
‘Where are you staying?’
He pauses, clears his throat. ‘Ingrid,’ he says, ‘can I really trust you? Because if the people here knew what they said I did, I think they might try to hurt me. Or if people from Derry knew where I was … I’m scared, you know. I know there’s a price on my head.’
‘You can trust me,’ I tell him. For the most part I mean it, certainly when it comes to his location anyway.
He shares his address with me; a small seaside town on the Antrim coast. The kind of place flooded with children in the summer looking to play on the beach or at the amusements. It strikes me as an odd choice for him, but then again, if he is as innocent as he says he is, why would it matter if there are children running around all over the place? He’s no threat to them.
I arrange to meet him at the weekend. Outside normal working hours. I want to keep this from Ryan as much as possible.
When I hang up, the details scrawled into my notepad, I punch the air. I’ve got him and I’ve got the story. I push away the niggle of fear – my nerves at the thought of coming face to face with the man we’d come to think of as the bogeyman who’d stolen our childhood innocence from us.