The damage to her car had put Kate Forrest in the mood for replacing the thing altogether. She had got the windscreen fixed quickly but she was still finding minute pieces of glass wedged into the folds of the upholstery and under the floor carpet and just being in the vehicle made her feel tense and uncomfortable.
So on Wednesday, her usual day off, she embarked on a tour of the showrooms of various south Dublin car dealers, seeing what they had to offer. Gallagher volunteered to do the driving and they went in his untidy little Renault. She would not be getting one of those but then she should not blame the car for the way it was being driven.
A couple of times she had to point out that the lights were against them and on one occasion he almost clobbered a cyclist by driving too close.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked him. ‘You seem a bit preoccupied. Do you want me to drive?’
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘I’m fine.’
He was not fine; she was not blind. His mind was somewhere else, not with her. It did nothing to assuage her growing worries about his health. His problems with Emma and his financial difficulties would not be helping him, either. Maybe they should discuss it. But she did not know how he would respond. She found herself less at ease in his company than before.
He had been extremely odd when he had seen her in the Shelbourne with Philipe. Was his mood today anything to do with that?
The encounter had given her a lot to think about because it was at that moment that she recognised how much she was being drawn to Philipe. This was more than just a business relationship; there was something stronger between them that neither had yet admitted to. But she recognised, too, that part of the attraction was the stability she saw in Philipe and that she did not see in Tom Gallagher.
That did not stop her feeling deeply for Tom and worrying.
Their lunch on Saturday had been an uncomfortable event, with her trying to make conversation and him going off somewhere inside his head. When he had taken her home in the afternoon he had not stayed long. She had telephoned him on Monday night, just to say hello and because she was feeling guilty about her feelings for another man. She had found him short on communication but he had offered to be her driver today and she had accepted, in part to see how he was.
Not good. There was an invisible wall around him and she wished she knew what lay beyond.
From behind it, Gallagher searched for a face and a blue BMW. But since Saturday the only place he had seen Gilbert Leslie had been in his dreams, during those brief periods when he had actually managed to get some sleep.
He wondered if he should tell Kate what was on his mind. Could he do so without opening up everything that had happened in the past? Or was it time he did that at last?
He hesitated.
At about five thirty they ended the search, she for a new car and he for a fantasy, and they went back to the house at Ranelagh, burdened with brochures and indecision.
Paul was there with school books spread out in front of him on the kitchen table. He put a full stop at the end of a sentence and looked up. He had not realised Gallagher was there.
‘Oh, hi. Bloody revision,’ he explained. ‘The exams start tomorrow.’
‘Hi,’ Gallagher said quietly and wandered off in the direction of the living-room.
Kate and Paul looked at each other and she gave a shrug that said don’t ask.
‘Right, who’s for a cup of tea?’ she inquired.
She brought a mug to Gallagher and found him on the settee in front of the television. The news had started.
She could not let this go on. ‘Look, Tom,’ she said, ‘I think it’s time we—’
‘Wait – shut up a minute!’
He stood up abruptly, staring intently at the screen, and raised his hand to stop her speaking. Startled, she put the mug down and followed his gaze. Paul came into the room to see what was going on.
It was another report about the murder of a girl in Temple Bar at the weekend. They were showing a computer impression of a man the girl had been seen with on the evening she died. The face looked cultivated and almost serene, Kate thought, not like a murderer at all.
‘It is believed the man is foreign, possibly Italian,’ the reporter said, ‘and the police are anxious to interview him in order to eliminate him from their inquiries.’
And now here was the reporter with the evening sun on him, live from a little square in Temple Bar, talking to Chief Superintendent Barrett Greeley who had something to say about the way the case was being reported.
‘While everyone’s appalled by the murder of Sinead Patterson,’ he said, ‘I think we have to get things into perspective and that’s why I’ve been horrified by some of the reports I’ve read in the Press, these suggestions that there’s a sex killer on the loose who may strike again. This is utterly insensitive and irresponsible journalism which has no basis in fact whatsoever.’
‘So you’re saying the man’s unlikely to strike again?’ the reporter asked.
‘Well, we don’t even know that it is a man.’
‘You’re looking for a man, aren’t you?’
‘That’s a normal part of the investigation. We’re not saying he’s the killer. Look, it would be totally wrong for me to speculate. We have the appalling murder of a young woman to solve and we intend to do so quickly. This has been a single incident, horrifying though it was. I want to reassure people here in Temple Bar and throughout the Dublin area that these scares are unfounded.’
He had finished. The reporter had not.
‘But you can’t say for certain that the murderer won’t strike again?’
‘I – eh – I can’t say that, no. But I think it would be foolish to—’
‘I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there, Chief Superintendent,’ the reporter said, turning to the camera with a complacent smile. ‘And now back to the studio.’
The next item was about farm workers in the west of Ireland seeking a pay rise.
Gallagher looked at Kate and Paul. They were staring at him uneasily, without any understanding of what was going on, and he realised that he was smiling stupidly.
The shadow of self-doubt had been blown away. The computer impression had done that. Although it was not exact – the hair was not quite right and nothing could ever properly convey the effect of the grey eyes – it was enough to confirm the identity of the man he had seen.
Someone from New York.
Gilbert Leslie. That’s who it was. He was sure of it. What was he doing here? What connected him to Sean Donovan?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Kate. The moment had arrived and he could avoid it no longer. ‘I didn’t mean to shout at you. Look, you’d both better sit down. There are things I should explain.’
He stood quietly for a moment, ordering his thoughts. They sat expectantly, as if waiting for a performance to begin.
When it did, it was a revelation.
First he told them about Leslie, who he was and what he was, and in the telling he felt a release, as if a poison was draining away from him. Then he told them about Leslie’s son, the incident in which he had died, and his own subsequent mental collapse.
That was harder, as he knew it would be.
All he had ever told Kate was that he had retired from the FBI due to ill-health. He had admitted having a breakdown which had led to severe depression but he had never been specific about the cause. Since he had come home to Ireland, he had not spoken to anyone of those black events. He looked at Kate to see how she was responding but found it hard to interpret what was in her gaze.
When he told them of the deaths of Gaines and Dobchek he felt the shame again, the guilt, but as he spoke he knew that this was better for him than what he had been doing before, trying to hide it all away.
He recounted to them what Donovan had told him, his insistence that someone from New York had been sent to shut him down. Now there was Donovan’s own strange death itself, as well as the murders of Marcus Kelly and Mr Justice Purcell.
Finally he came to the man he had glimpsed outside the hotel last Saturday, how the face he had seen had disturbed and haunted him until he had seen the picture on the news bulletin just now.
‘It’s not just the resemblance in the computer impression; it’s the circumstances. A girl strangled.’
He remembered things. Incidents, crimes, dates, he could turn them up like a card sharp dealing aces.
‘There was something in Miami years ago, the murder of a hooker. The FBI became involved on the fringes because an organised crime figure was a possible suspect. Gilbert Leslie again. He had been with the girl for a time the night she disappeared but he had an alibi that was fireproof. The case was never solved and no one was ever charged. I wonder if the file is still open? I suppose it was a long time ago.’
Paul was excited. ‘Tom, this is fantastic. It’s – it’s like some movie.’
Kate did not share his elation.
She felt shock at first, then irritation and now she felt a little sad. She looked at Gallagher and thought that she did not know him at all. She had had no idea of the secrets he harboured. She had spent the last few days feeling bad about what might be between her and Philipe Foucaud but it would scarcely have troubled him, had he known. What was eating at him was this man, Leslie, or whatever his name was, the obsession of the past.
‘That time, when I met you in the Shelbourne,’ Gallagher said, ‘I checked with reception but there was no one by the name of Leslie and they wouldn’t let me know the name of the man who’d just left.’
‘Then if they had no one called Leslie, maybe it wasn’t him,’ Kate said.
‘But, Mum, he wouldn’t have been using his own name, would he?’ Paul turned to Gallagher. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I really should tell Emma about this. Unfortunately that might not be easy since she’s in England. It was on the news before you came in. She’s at a meeting with the British Home Secretary and she’s taking part in some debate or other at Cambridge after that.’
‘So then—’
‘So then that leaves bloody Barrett Greeley,’ he said. ‘Again.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kate said. ‘Isn’t it possible you might have made a mistake?’
‘Of course it’s possible. Do you think I haven’t agonised over that for the past few days, wondered if I was cracking up again? That’s what you’re thinking now, probably.’
He looked at her and she blushed.
‘No,’ he said, ‘Gilbert Leslie’s real, flesh and blood. He’s here. I know it.’
Kate sighed. ‘I just thought – if you’re wrong and you go to the police – it might be embarrassing.’
‘Mum, I think Tom knows what he’s talking about.’
She turned to look at her son. There was a challenge in his face. He was lining up against her. Getting at her again.
‘Is there any way I can help?’ he asked Gallagher.
‘You’re not getting mixed up in this,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘What don’t I understand?’
How could she explain something that he seemed to be choosing to ignore – the obsession that drove people, the demons Tom had spoken about? Yet as she looked at Gallagher, she saw that the gloom had left him and that there was a brightness in his eyes. It would be hard for Paul to accept that there could be anything – wrong – with this man.
‘This isn’t some make-believe adventure story, Paul,’ she said.
Gallagher walked forward and took her shoulders in his hands.
‘That’s right, Kate. It’s not make-believe. It’s reality.’
He smiled at her. His eyes urged her to believe him but he could see that she did not.
She eased herself out of his grasp and he realised to his dismay that there was something more in the simple movement. She was backing away from him to somewhere beyond his reach.
‘Okay, Tom,’ she said softly. ‘You know best. You must do what you think is right.’