Darkest Truth

It was almost eight o’clock when I left the Carney house. I walked past the football ground, home of Cork City FC, shuttered and silent now. The streets were empty, and the night air was murky, and the footpaths were damp and slippery underfoot. Around the corner, on Evergreen Road, the giant concrete slants of Christ the King Church menaced.

I pressed on, picking my way through the mist. Ann had said that Deirdre’s school friend Jessica Murphy was married with a couple of kids, so there was no hope of a meeting at this time on a Saturday evening. I would ring her in the morning. By then, too, Ann would have phoned Jessica and told her to expect my call, which might make for an easier first contact. There was no legitimate excuse for going back to the Film Festival office twice in one day and, though I was even more convinced now that I needed to examine the 1998 archive, there was nothing else to be done tonight. I would go home, absorb and process all that had happened. That was the appropriate thing to do.

And I couldn’t do it. I hurried down the narrow steep incline of Nicholas Street, and around past the Red Abbey, and across the river on to the city’s central island.

The festival office was quieter than it had been that morning. There was no sign of Alice, but there were a few junior staff members and, as I had hoped, Sarah-Jane Dooley. In her late twenties, Sarah-Jane had a carefully curated look that changed with every hairdo. Recently, she’d gone for a pixie crop that made her look like Jean Seberg in Breathless, though she was too chatty and smiley to pull off the required ennui. Sarah-Jane handled the in-house publicity for the festival and in planning this year’s campaign she’d be bound to have dug out the festival archive of Gill’s previous visit.

Sarah-Jane raised her eyes towards the ceiling, its paint flaking and grimy: arts funding cutbacks left no room for a decoration budget.

‘I’m demented, Finn, trying to get on to someone in TV3, they’re supposed to be running an item in tomorrow evening’s news and I’m organising the meeting time and about a hundred other things simultaneously – sure you know, yourself. If you’re looking for Alice, she’s gone – she was in since half five this morning and she was dead on her feet.’

‘I kinda was looking for her,’ I lied. ‘But maybe you could give me a hand if you have a minute? It’s just that I’m supposed to be meeting Jeremy Gill on Wednesday for the workshop as board representative, I was in this morning talking to Alice about it, and I realised afterwards that I really needed to look at the records of his 1998 visit to the festival so that I’d be fully up to speed. I was wondering if you had the archive handy?’

‘Em, sure, yeah,’ Sarah-Jane said, staring at her computer screen. ‘I’m a bit busy right now, I …’

‘Just point me in the right direction and I’ll take it from there,’ I said.

My conscience itched with the knowledge that I was using my position on the board and my friendship with Alice to worm my way in. But, as I cleared a corner for myself and sat with the five box files that comprised the 1998 archive, I pushed all squeamishness aside. It would be worth it if I found something.

The first three boxes yielded nothing of interest: posters, flyers, guest attendances, audience records, copies of the catalogue and publicity materials. The fourth one was all Jeremy Gill. Somebody had realised early on that Gill was going places and had preserved everything they could about his time at the 1998 festival, including his original handwritten entry form for the short film competition, the original videotape that he’d submitted, a thank-you card that he’d sent afterwards, numerous press clippings, many of which I had seen online, as well as a note of the prizes he’d won and the judges’ comments. There was a bundle of photos, too, mostly duplicates or alternate versions of the prize-giving ones that had appeared in the Examiner.

But wrapped separately in a white page were two other photographs. The top photo showed Gill standing in a posed shot with a group of teenagers in various school uniforms. I took a closer look. The teenagers were wearing white name tags. I would need an enlargement to confirm that the tags were exactly the same as the one I had found at the Carney house, but they looked similar.

I recognised Deirdre immediately from Sean’s photo. As well as Gill, there was another adult male in the photograph. I’d need to find out who he was. The second photograph was another posed shot, this time a foursome: Deirdre, Gill and two other teenagers, both boys, wearing different uniforms which meant that they were from different schools. I didn’t recognise the uniforms but, as they had name tags, I could find out who they were and talk to them.

In the four-person photo, Deirdre was standing beside Gill with the boys on either side of them. Deirdre and Gill were standing close to each other. They looked happy, and the boys looked happy. It seemed like everyone was having a great time. I took both photographs, the large group and the foursome. I would write a note on the page that had wrapped them confirming that I’d borrowed the two of them to get them copied. But I stopped before I wrote anything. The page wasn’t blank. Created on a computer and not specially printed, it was an A3 promotional poster publicising a schools workshop which read:

FREE SHORT FILM WORKSHOP FOR SCHOOLS

‘GETTING IT MADE: IDEA TO REALITY – AND HOW TO AVOID THE PITFALLS’

(CASE STUDY WITH FILM-MAKER AND Q + A)

THURSDAY 10AM–1PM

TEACHERS ONLY PLEASE CONTACT EDUCATION OFFICER

LIMITED NUMBERS – BOOKING ESSENTIAL

The poster didn’t mention Jeremy Gill but, given that the page was filed with the rest of the Gill memorabilia, he could have been the one giving the extra schools-only workshop. The education officer of the time – whoever that was I didn’t know but I’d find out – would be able to say how it had come about. I photocopied the poster and slipped the copy and the two original photographs into my bag. I was fairly sure nobody in the office had noticed.

As I placed my note in the file I told myself that that was nearly the same as getting permission. And that I’d return them on Monday. Then I put everything back and had a quick look through the fifth box. But there was nothing more: all the Gill material was in the file I’d checked already. I re-stacked the boxes on the shelf where I’d found them, said goodbye to Sarah-Jane, and left. I had a photo of Gill and Deirdre Carney together. That was better than I could have hoped for, though I still had nothing directly on him and I knew it.

As I walked home, I repeated to myself that I had to keep an open mind, that Jeremy Gill might not be the one who had attacked Deirdre, and that there must be other suspects. There was no need to remind myself of what else I’d learnt that day, but it was hard to take in, all the same: a surprise sister found and lost.

I barely remembered my birth mother, though I had lived with her full-time until I was four and started school, until the teachers had noticed me and made a report of neglect to the Southern Health Board. The assessments had started, then, though I didn’t learn the lingo until later when I started going to court for my job: the temporary care orders, the supervised access, the foster placement with the Fitzpatricks that had become permanent when I was nine, old enough to be told that my birth mother had gone to heaven, old enough to go to the funeral; not old enough to be told everything.

That came later, when I turned sixteen and started asking about my history, and talking about looking for my father. Except that there wasn’t a father to look for: that section on the original birth certificate had been left blank, my adopted mother Doreen had said. She had told me about my birth mother’s suicide at the same time. And one other thing: that my birth mother had been drunk when she threw herself in the river.

It would have been more of a surprise if she had been sober. She had been on and off the drink numerous times by then. I wouldn’t see her for ages, and then she’d reappear, back from holiday or hospital or whatever her euphemism for rehab was at the time. It must have been when she was away on one of those extended absences that she had had Deirdre and given her up for adoption.

On my way up Barrack Street, through wooden blind slats and net curtains and clear glass, I glimpsed other people’s lives, like a succession of short films. In one of them, a group of friends sat easily together on a sofa. A TV was on and they were half watching it, half talking to each other, checking their phones, too, but sharing the same space. In another, two men in sportswear stood in a kitchen, drinking bottles of beer, trading stories, laughing.

I was starving and exhausted but kept walking, past the turn-off for my house, as far as La Tana. When it comes to emotional eating, sometimes only pizza will do.

Back home, I went straight to my ground floor study and sat at my desk. The room was small and cramped, piled high with books and the prints and posters I’d bothered to get framed but hadn’t bothered to hang up yet. Somewhere underneath everything there was a futon I’d used for guests, before I’d been able to afford a bed for the spare room, also on the ground floor, along with a laundry and storage space and a small shower room. I’m a ‘keep it just in case’ person; not so severe that I’m going to end up on a TV show, but a hoarder nonetheless.

Between bites of pizza, I turned on my computer and began logging my progress into the file I’d opened the previous night. I checked through my notes of the meeting with the Carneys and did a file memo. I set up an exhibits file, saved my photographs there and listed the items I’d found. Then, I recorded my attendance at the Film Festival office, did a note of Gill’s itinerary while in Cork, and saved copies of the photos retrieved from the Film Festival box file and a scan of the workshop poster.

Next, I opened a new document and called it ‘Connections’. For now, all I could do was list the connections, or possible connections, between Gill and Deirdre and see where they led next.

There was the suicide note, referring to the academy, that I’d photographed and saved, and the time coincidence between Gill’s Oscar nomination and Deirdre’s suicide a day later. And that, according to the festival catalogue, Deirdre had championed his short film at the 1998 Cork Film Festival. I knew for sure now that Deirdre had met Gill: I had incontestable evidence of their meeting. I knew too that, in the aftermath of the festival, she had developed a telephone relationship with an unknown male. But there was little hope of getting phone records of any kind so many years later and I reckoned I’d waste too much time looking for them. I needed to concentrate on what I had.

I clicked on the scanned photo and expanded the PDF as high as it would go. But the resolution was poor and it was hard to see anything. I’d need professional help with it. Though if I expanded the original …? I rifled my desk drawers. There was a magnifying glass somewhere that I could use to examine the photographs more closely, to see if the name tag I’d found earlier was the same as the one Deirdre was wearing at the workshop.

I found the magnifying glass in a drawer that also contained two ancient Nokia mobiles, which I should have taken to recycling, along with the old Hoover and broken toaster that clogged up the bottom of the wardrobe in the spare room.

With the benefit of the magnifying glass, I saw that the name tag in the photo and the one I’d found in Deirdre’s room looked the same. They were, I was sure of it. I’d have to get the hard copy photo enlarged properly and the name tag analysed by an expert, if I was going to be able to use it as evidence. It had to be significant that Deirdre had saved and hidden it all these years since the time she’d met Jeremy Gill. I would need to talk to the others in the photos. Maybe they had seen or heard something.

But, as I was squinting at the photos with the magnifying glass, I saw that they showed even more than I’d realised. I had been too stuck on the workshop connection to notice at first, but the students in the photos were wearing more than name tags on their school jumpers. It was hard to see but most of them had badges and in the four shot, with the magnifying glass, I saw that they were the same as the cartoon-style broken computer badge. Whatever that badge was, it was nothing to do with a band Deirdre had liked, and must have something to do with Gill because he was wearing one too. But what was it? I had been around the Film Festival in 1998 as a volunteer. Was it something he gave out at his workshop? Something to do with his job? A logo? Or free advertising for something? I drummed my fingers on the desk. What did the broken computer symbol mean? Back in the nineties, most references to computers had been positive: people raved about the information superhighway, and it was long before cyber-bullying or online privacy had become issues of concern. I turned it over and over to see if there was a ‘made in’ or ‘made for’ mark on it – any clue to where the badge might have come from. There wasn’t.

Yet the more I looked at it, the more I felt that I recognised it. It would come back to me, I hoped. Though not if I kept staring at it. I put the badge and the other exhibits into my desk drawer, locked it and put the key on my key ring. This was never going to be a criminal trial. I was never going to have to prove a chain of evidence for a jury, but I didn’t know where the case might go ultimately. In the meantime, I’d have to keep the items exactly as I’d found them and free from interference. When an exhibit is used in a trial, you have to be able to show who handled it. A locked desk drawer would have to serve as my evidence room for now.

Quickly I ran through the documents again and sent them to my work email. I couldn’t open a work file on my home computer so I’d get Tina to sort that on Monday in the office. I binned the pizza box in the wheelie bin outside the door, locked up for the night and went upstairs, checking my phone as I went. There was a message from Davy.

I flicked on Radio 1, made a pot of camomile tea, and switched off the lamp. It was a little after eleven and Country Time was just starting. I sat and gazed over the lights of the city. I heard George Jones sing ‘He Stopped Lovin’ her Today’ and lost myself for a while. But, after a time, my mind drifted back to the case. I had forgotten to check the name of the education officer in the programme – I’d do that tomorrow. And I needed to contact Jessica Murphy in the morning. See her then too, if I could, because I had other plans for Sunday afternoon, plans that involved Davy Keenan, though he didn’t know it yet.

He must have had his phone in his hand because within seconds he’d texted back ‘Nada’.

I wasn’t surprised. Careful of his sobriety, Davy avoided Saturday nights in town. I wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if I asked him to come over. There, in the dark, I could admit that I was attracted to him, and not only because he was gorgeous-looking and funny and smart. I had enough insight to know that Davy, an ex-addict, was perilous territory, an emotional minefield. I knew about repetition compulsion, how we are programmed to seek out the familiar. Davy was a push–pull for me: something in him spoke to something in me, something I had to keep under control.

‘Fab. Will phone for reserv, will text you time. PS you’re driving,’ I wrote.

I left my phone on the side table and went to my bedroom, on the middle floor of the tower house, and undressed for bed. I was regretting my trip to La Tana. Delicious at the time, the pizza lay like a boulder in my stomach.

I fell asleep quickly but was awake again after ten minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness for the second night in a row. As I lay in the darkness, I went over and over what had happened that day, what I knew, and what I didn’t, puzzling still over the broken computer symbol. At around 4 a.m., I remembered, or thought I did, where I’d seen it before.

I got out of bed, went downstairs to the study and searched YouTube again for the Gill short film. I was right. The opening titles and credits were in a comic, cartoonish script. And the name of the film showed through when an animated desktop computer broke in jagged half revealing the words Another Bad Day at the Office. The badge was publicity material for Gill’s short film. That’s why the kids in the photos were wearing them. Gill must have distributed them at the workshop. And that’s why Deirdre had kept it. It was another connection. I wrote it up and, as I was awake anyway, checked the identity of the 1998 education officer – he had to be the other adult male in the photos. The name in the catalogue was Daniel O’Brien. I didn’t know him, so he had to be long gone from the festival.

I put the computer in sleep mode. In the hall, I glanced at the full-length rectangular window to the side of the front door. My reflection made it look like a dark figure was skulking in the tiny garden outside.

I went to the top floor. I pulled the Foxford blanket from the back of the sofa and walked to the armchair. I sat in the dark, facing due north, as I had earlier. No music played, and the room felt the wrong side of chilly, but I was too cold to get up and turn the heating back on. I curled my legs beneath me and arranged the blanket so that it covered me from the neck down.

First memory? Awake in the middle of the night, like now, but noisy, people sounds from the next room.

Laughing. Shouting. Doors slamming. A party?

Her voice.

Her.

My mother.

Me, a baby.

No. Bigger than that.

Not in a cot, in a bed, chairs lined up along the side. To keep me there.

Not so big.

Must keep eyes closed.

Must be asleep.

‘May I be safe,’ I whispered, the opening words of the Loving Kindness meditation.

‘May I be safe,’ I said again and again until my breath slowed and deepened. Then I remembered the rest of the mantra.

‘May I be safe, may I be healthy, may I be happy, may I live with ease,’ I said, repeating the words as I got up from the chair and got my yoga mat from the nook at the top of the stairs. I unfurled it slowly, and sat on the mat, cross-legged, eyes closed, breathing, nadi shodhana. As my strength returned, I moved through the quietening asanas, ending with savasana, corpse pose.