I sat in my car for as long as it took to make a detailed handwritten note of what Rhona had said. Then I signed and dated it, read it into my phone and saved it to my iCloud account: my legal training had taught me the importance of a contemporaneous note and this was as close as I was going to get. There was one other procedural matter to be dealt with. As Rhona was a potential witness, I had had the Carneys’ implied consent to disclose their confidential client information to her. Still, I’d call to see them when I was back in Cork to obtain their explicit consent and I would do a back-up note for the file. All I could say for now was that I had interviewed a potentially useful witness, and that it had been necessary for me to reveal some information to her. I couldn’t yet disclose Rhona’s identity, or the details, to them.
As I was writing up my notes, the missing information, the questions I would have liked to ask, the corroboration that would be needed if Rhona’s case went to trial, came into sharp relief. Dates and times. Where he had collected her. The Toyota car he had used to collect and drop her back, could she recall the model or any part of the registration? Or the room number? How had she known it was an advertising shoot, had he told her or had she found out some other way? And more. I noted down anything I could think of that I needed to ask the next time we met. If we ever did. There mightn’t be a second meeting, though I didn’t want to think about that possibility. Either way, there was no point in staying up in Dublin now. I pulled out. If I got going, I’d be back in Cork before midnight.
I crossed the Liffey and was on the motorway in twenty-five minutes. I travelled in silence. No wittering radio presenter. No music. What happened to Rhona had happened to my sister, too. But Rhona had been stronger than Deirdre. People had different levels of resilience; it was a lottery, it seemed, who got enough to survive, and who came up short. It was like the way some alcoholics went into treatment and recovered, and some didn’t. The way Davy did. The way my birth mother didn’t. And what about me? Had I enough strength to cope with all of this? Or was I as weak as I felt in that moment?
I tried to focus on exposing Gill. For my own protection, I couldn’t get sucked into the foul vortex that he had created. And I had a sense that something in the pattern of behaviour Rhona had described might help with Deirdre’s case, even if I couldn’t see it yet.
After Naas, I couldn’t see much else either. A thick fog descended and traffic slowed to a crawl. Hunched over the steering wheel, I gave all my attention to staying on the road but, by the time I got to Cashel, I had to stop for a break. The driver behind me had the same idea, I saw, as he or she exited the motorway behind me and followed me along the unnecessarily complicated system of loops that led finally into the motorway service station. I filled up with petrol, paid, got a large coffee, and went upstairs. There was a nasty seating area with a couple of black fake leather sofas. Uncomfortable, as it turned out. I had intended to rest for a while. But that feeling I had had all day, that I was missing something, wouldn’t leave me. After no more than five minutes, I gulped back my coffee, went to the loo, and drove on.
It was almost 12.30 when I got home, jittery from the tension of the drive and the strain of the last few days. With no work to go to in the morning, and no hope of sleep, I flicked on the television and surfed half-heartedly through the TV channels. I perked up. Night of the Hunter, one of my favourite films, was just starting on Film4. I watched to the end, then switched off, and sat for a while in the dark, ‘Leaning’ and Robert Mitchum’s voice, going round and round in my head. For the first time in years, I had missed most of the Film Festival and wouldn’t see the rest of it either. All because of Jeremy Gill. Which I might call ironic, if I wasn’t so dog-tired.
I woke from a half-sleep at seven and went down to my study, where I typed up a to-do list for the day, scanned my note of the night before, and updated my connections file. Assuming I got back to work some time, it would be easy to download it to the firm’s system later. Then, I pinged an email to Tina, asking her up to my house for lunch, and to bring the exhibit box from my desk (she had my spare desk key but not the key for the box).
At 8.15, I checked my Gmail and found a message from Rhona, sent at 8.01.
Hi Finn,
I have been thinking about what you said all night, about Deirdre and the others. I am not making any promises but I will think some more and talk to my counsellor. Do not put any more pressure on me or ask anything else of me at the moment. Please. I was very upset after you left last night and I need time to recover. I will contact you when I am ready, if I ever am.
Rhona
This was progress, the progress I had hoped for. I should have been happy. But there was no timescale, and there was an express prohibition on further contact from me. Should I reply, or would that be a breach of Rhona’s terms? It seemed rude not to reply at all. In the end, I sent back a short neutral email:
Thanks Rhona, I will wait to hear from you, Regards F.
Then, overcome with a wave of exhaustion that felt a lot like dread, I went back to bed and fell into a deep sleep.
Awake again before ten, and feeling more energetic, I rang Ann and Sean Carney and arranged to call out to see them at 11.30. I needed to update them on what had been happening, and get their retrospective consent to my disclosures to Rhona. And I needed to obtain a sample of Deirdre’s DNA for the case I was trying to make. It had occurred to me overnight too that, if I asked the lab to test my own DNA simultaneously, I would be able to find out if Deirdre and I shared a father as well as a mother, although I wasn’t yet sure if I wanted an answer to that question.
I made a few more calls. Tomas de Barra was the one who picked up. A barrister, he specialised in criminal defence work: he was sure to know of a private forensic lab where I could get DNA and chemical constituent tests done, along with a report that would stand up in court. I had used a brilliant London-based scientist as a DNA expert in the past and, usually, if I had to do a paternity test for a client, I would use one of the local labs and get a DNA kit sent to a GP. But, in this case, the DNA I hoped to find was on a drinks coaster. Something different was needed. Tomas gave me the name of a specialist lab and started up with the questions about had I seen Twitter and the Examiner, and how I’d even made the Irish Times, and what was going on with me anyway?
‘Not talking about, Tomas,’ I said. ‘But, hey, great to know my fame has spread.’
Next, I rang the lab, explained what I had, and told them what I wanted: tests for every possible sedative that might have been used fifteen years before, along with alcohol and cola and DNA. Then I asked for a cost estimate.
‘You’re looking at nearly four for everything you’ve mentioned there,’ the lab representative said.
He didn’t mean four hundred.
‘Let me think about that and I’ll get back to you,’ I said.
At this point, any money I spent was going to have to be my own. For now, I couldn’t run any of this as an expense through the office: I was suspended in all but name. And, for the same reason, I couldn’t seek payment of the expense from the Carneys either – if I wasn’t officially working, they weren’t really my clients. Yet, to move the case forward, I had to do the tests. Like I had all along with this case, I felt compelled.
But there was more to it than that. Getting the tests done contained an element of self-preservation. If the tests revealed what I expected then, even though I was still a long way from proving Gill’s culpability, arguably I would have objective justification for my work on the case. I would be able to show the partners at work that there was real substance to Sean Carney’s suspicions. And, even though this first set of results would be inadmissible in any court proceedings, they would give me the solid ground I needed to pursue the case officially, with the full backing of the partners and access to the firm’s funds and resources. If I could show Gill’s DNA and Deirdre’s on the same coaster, I had a plausible argument to make that I had been right all along. And I’d no longer be at risk of dismissal.
Looking at it that way, even though I couldn’t afford it, the huge financial investment was the easy part. If I was right, I’d get a refund of the costs so far from the firm. If I was wrong, I was out of a job, but at least I would have given the case everything I had. And nobody would ever know about the tests.
But, coming at it another way, I was edging close to being disbarred for misconduct by getting the tests done at all. Gill could argue that I had planted the DNA. He might be believed: taking DNA without his consent was unethical, procedurally faulty, and illegal. Lastly, and most importantly, it was unconstitutional, in breach of his fundamental rights, his rights to privacy and bodily integrity, to start with.
Though Gill hadn’t cared about Deirdre’s constitutional rights, or Rhona’s, hadn’t cared about anything except getting as much as he could from them, discarding them afterwards like broken dolls. I told myself that the circumstances were exceptional – and that exceptional measures were called for.
Which was exactly the argument used to justify torture and extraordinary rendition. And the death penalty.
What had possessed me to use a stupid pen to steal Gill’s DNA without his consent? What I had done was legally and morally wrong. I would have to wait, make a formal request for the DNA, and obtain it by court order. Going ahead with the tests now was absolutely not the right thing to do.
And yet, it was the only thing to do, if I was to find out for sure.
‘Fuck it,’ I said.
On the walk over to the Carney house, I thought through the specifics again. I’d need to search for Deirdre’s DNA. Probably all I’d have for that was a hair sample from the brush I had seen in her bedroom. And I was also looking for male DNA that I hoped would belong to Jeremy Gill. I knew that there was a good chance he hadn’t touched the coaster, but if he had touched Deirdre, she might have transferred his DNA.
After talking to Rhona, I knew that I should be testing for alcohol and possibly a sedative too. DNA was remarkably persistent, as all the cold cases solved in recent years showed. I didn’t know how long alcohol and sedative traces might last but I knew enough to surmise that they could have deteriorated, and possibly disappeared, unless they had been refrigerated and kept at an optimum temperature. But if I could get proof of Gill’s and Deirdre’s DNA together, it would damage Gill, I was sure of it. The very request for Gill’s DNA might be the catalyst I’d need to force him to the settlement table.
I decided to bank on the DNA and forget about the drug and alcohol residue tests for the moment. It was worth a try. And it would cost a lot less than four grand.
While I was waiting for the Carneys to answer the door, I checked my phone. I had had it on silent and in the twenty minutes it had taken me to walk to Turners Cross, I had got seven missed calls from Sadie. Normally, if she wanted me to contact her, she sent one text, and never, ever, repeat-called. I walked backwards towards the garden gate, simultaneously phoning her. As Ann answered the door I mouthed ‘Just a sec’ and turned away.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘Something’s happened,’ Sadie said. ‘Something bad.’
She paused.
‘You can’t say it yet, the name hasn’t been cleared for public release. Word came down to us from Dublin this morning. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but it’s Rhona Macbride. She’s dead. And, Finn, it looks like murder.’