‘Miss Fitzpatrick.’
‘It’s Finn, Dermot. It’s always been Finn until today. What’s changed?’
‘What’s changed is that, prima facie, you’ve brought this firm into disrepute. Unless you can show grounds for your, to say the least, odd behaviour.’
He adjusted his yacht club tie with one hand and, with the other, smoothed his thinning fair hair. We were in the boardroom at 17–19 MacSwiney Street: first floor, high ceilings, original restored Georgian sashes, enormous marble fireplace, a gracious drawing room in days gone by. Dermot was trying his best to restrain himself, but it was proving difficult. Over the collar of his blue-striped shirt, his fat neck bulged red and a blood vessel throbbed under his left ear.
‘What Dermot is saying, Finn, is that we’re seeking an explanation from you,’ Gabriel said. ‘And we’re entitled to it, I think you’ll agree.’
‘I do,’ I said.
I leapt to my feet and went to the projection screen at the side of the room.
‘I thought it might be easier if I did this visually.’
I smiled at Dermot. He tore a page out of the barrister’s notebook on the desk in front of him, crumpled it into a ball and threw it with force on to the long antique table. It rolled on to the floor at my feet. I kicked it out of my way and started the presentation. An image of Jeremy Gill, holding his Oscar over his head, flashed up.
‘This is outrageous,’ Dermot Lyons said. ‘A joke. Abuse of process.’
‘It’s not meant that way,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping it’ll save a bit of time. I want to make all this as clear as it can possibly be so that you and Gabriel understand exactly what I’ve been doing for the last while. And why I’ve been doing it.’
‘Make clear? It’s abundantly clear already. You’ve taken on a frivolous and vexatious claim without authority and without any regard for the consequences for this firm.’
‘As I said, I want to explain in full what I’ve been doing. But, in summary, my investigations …’
‘It’s not your job to investigate anything,’ Lyons said.
‘Let her talk, for God’s sake, Dermot, or we’ll be here all day,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m in favour of anything that shortens the matter. It’s all terribly unpleasant, I must say.’
‘As I was saying, my investigations have led me to the inescapable conclusion that Jeremy Gill is a serial sexual predator. I base this mainly on two statements. The first is from Gill’s former friend, the writer Christopher Dalton.’
I clicked into a photo of Dalton.
‘The second is from this woman.’
‘Who is she?’ Gabriel said. ‘Her face looks familiar.’
‘Her name is Rhona Macbride. She was murdered last week, the day after I met her, after she’d told me that she’d been brutally raped, beaten up and put in fear of her life while she was still a schoolgirl. She acted in Gill’s first film. That’s how he got to know her.’
I clicked back into the photo of Jeremy Gill.
‘He’s the one who raped her, and he’s a suspect in her murder. I need hardly add that this is highly confidential. You can’t tell anyone outside this room any of this.’
I paused.
‘Any questions so far?’
‘If any of this is true, which I very much doubt, I must say,’ Dermot Lyons said, ‘Where’s the civil case you’re supposedly pursuing? Any murder, any alleged murder, is a matter for the Gardaí. And as far as I’m aware from the news reports, it’s a drug-related mugging. The idea that …’
‘I agree that Rhona’s death is a Garda matter,’ I said. ‘But the civil case that I’ve been, yes, Dermot, investigating is a wrongful death suit by the parents of a deceased woman, Deirdre Carney, against Jeremy Gill. She died in January this year. She committed suicide following––’
‘Preposterous! No claim!’ Dermot said, thumping both his fists on the mahogany.
‘Be quiet, and listen, Dermot, if you are at all interested in what I have to say.’ I made a point of looking at Gabriel before I bent to scribble in my notebook.
‘Sorry, I just wanted to note these repeated interruptions.’
Dermot blushed an ecclesiastical purple, took a deep breath, shifted in his chair.
‘Go on, please, Finn,’ Gabriel said. ‘Though I fervently hope you haven’t spent office funds on this extremely speculative case.’
‘I haven’t. Very little. I did a few searches in the CRO and the Land Registry using my office access code. A tiny outlay. My intention was to reimburse the expense on my return to work, if you decide not to support the case further. My hope, of course, is that you will see that there is a legitimate cause of action, and that the firm will opt to fund the case, in the usual way, on the basis that the costs will be recoverable ultimately from Gill.’
Before either of them could respond, I clicked into a bullet-pointed summary:
I took them through a series of slides on the evidence that I had found linking Gill and Deirdre. They weren’t convinced. I clicked through to the final slide. It contained just one word:
‘The lab report came back yesterday.’
‘I thought you said there was little or no outlay,’ Dermot said.
‘I paid for it on my credit card,’ I said. ‘It’s a private expense.’
Dermot’s eyes narrowed.
‘And?’ Gabriel said. ‘Have you a result?’
‘Deirdre Carney’s DNA is on the drinks coaster. There are two other female DNA samples on it. Not mine – the control sample I gave didn’t appear on the coaster. It may be cross-contamination from a hotel employee, or possibly a classmate: she hid the coaster in a mechanical instrument box that she used at school. But there’s male DNA too. And it matches the male DNA on the pen that Gill used to sign my programme at the Opera House.’
Silence.
‘It’s inadmissible,’ Dermot said. ‘And a breach of his constitutional rights. Not to mention being unethical and an invasion of Gill’s privacy. DNA from a pen he used. Utterly out of order. You could be struck off for this.’
‘I told you, Dermot. It was a private expense. I never had any intention of using these results against Gill. But the DNA sample I get via discovery in the course of the civil proceedings will be an entirely different matter. If it ever gets that far. I’m inclined to think that Gill’s legal team might be keen to enter into early settlement talks with me.’
‘It’s not enough,’ Dermot said. ‘Even if we accept all that you have to say, even if we accept that Jeremy Gill sexually assaulted this unfortunate girl …’
‘It was rape and her name was Deirdre Carney,’ I said.
‘Okay, okay, even if we accept, for the sake of argument, the alleged rape of Deirdre Carney deceased,’ Dermot said. ‘It was fifteen years ago. How on earth can Jeremy Gill be said to have caused her death?’
‘Just a moment, please.’
I went to the phone on the side table and rang Tina’s extension.
‘We’re ready for the medical records.’
‘You have medical records?’ Gabriel said.
‘I collected them in a taxi this morning. There are a lot of them. Two banker’s boxes, in fact. Deirdre had a long psychiatric history that started in the months after the 12th of December 1998, and none before it. Frequent readmissions. Self-harm. Serious depressive episodes. And a lot of therapy. I was worried that she wouldn’t give any details of the attack. As it turns out, my fears were groundless. Her version tallies almost exactly with Rhona Macbride’s. How the incident took place in a hotel room, unnamed hotel unfortunately but, as you saw earlier, Lorcan Lucey puts her in Muskerry Castle on the 12th of December, the same night Gill stayed there, according to the guest book, with him leaving on the morning that Ann Carney found her daughter bruised and bleeding, having been out all night. The medical records describe alcohol, and possible sedative use. A threat to kill her if she reported the rape. And the name she refers to him by throughout is ‘J’. There are hundreds of pages of notes detailing her severe trauma secondary to rape and violence at the hands of her assailant, her inability to pursue a criminal complaint as a result of ongoing psychiatric disability, and her fear for her personal safety if she were to do so. Near the end of her life, she was working with her therapist towards making a report about ‘J’. But his Oscar nomination seems to have made her change her mind. That’s what her suicide note said. That he’s too strong now. She must have thought she’d never be believed.’
There was a knock at the door. I let Tina in.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and took the box from her.
‘These are some of the records. I didn’t have time to prepare slides. And I haven’t yet obtained a formal psychiatric report but once I get it I’m certain that I will have enough evidence to draft and file the Carneys’ claim against Gill. Absent the full psychiatric report, maybe you’ll bear with me, Dermot, as I read out a few extracts.’
‘Is this necessary?’ Dermot said.
‘I think it is,’ Gabriel said. ‘Go ahead, Finn.’
‘Before you start, Finn, Detective O’Riordan is in reception for you,’ Tina said.
‘What does she want?’ I said.
‘All I know is she’s here to collect you. You’re wanted in Dublin immediately.’