17

Darby felt the skin of her face stretch tightly across the bone.

A man’s tender, sympathetic voice filled the sunny kitchen: ‘You’re human, Sheila. Everyone makes mistakes. God knows this.’

It wasn’t Byrne. The voice belonged to Father Keith Cullen.

‘I can’t forgive myself,’ Sheila said. Darby could tell her mother had been crying. ‘I don’t see how God can forgive me.’

‘Have you told Red about the affair?’

‘No,’ Sheila replied, choking on the word. ‘If I do, he’ll – I don’t think he’ll stick around this time. In fact, I know he won’t.’

This time, Darby thought, and her heart dropped. Was her mother saying she’d had a previous affair?

From across the table, Byrne watched her like a lion that had sighted prey. Darby could feel his eyes on her. She kept her attention locked on the recorder, a storm of anger and embarrassment and vulnerability roiling inside her. She wanted to shut it off and another part of her wanted to keep listening to her mother showing an extremely private and wounded side to her personality.

‘Sheila,’ Cullen said, ‘I can’t advise you about what to do on a personal level. If you decide to tell Red, I can recommend an excellent marriage counsellor.’ His voice was surprisingly empathetic. ‘The important thing, what I want you to understand and believe, is that God can see what lives in our hearts. He forgives those who can truly forgive themselves first.’

Sheila broke down in tears. She drew in a sharp breath, and was about to speak when Darby calmly reached across the table and hit the ‘Stop’ button.

Then the only sounds she heard were the slight hiss of oxygen from Byrne’s tubing and the click of a grandfather clock coming from one of the adjoining rooms. She felt sick all over and her hands were shaking. She folded them on her lap, underneath the table, and stared at a space above his shoulder as fragments of her conversation with Father Cullen ran through her mind: Richard isn’t going to give you what you want … That he asked to speak to you tells me he has something he can use to hurt you … When you’re done speaking with him, you won’t be the same person. The man is evil …

‘Your mother,’ Byrne said, ‘goes on to say she’s frightened about what will happen if she tells your father – frightened that you’ll ending up hating her if she and your father get divorced.’ Darby heard the smile in his voice. ‘Did she ever tell you about the affairs?’

Affairs. Darby slid her gaze to his, her stomach filling with acid as she fought to keep the pain from reaching her face.

It didn’t work.

Byrne nodded in mock sympathy. ‘I see,’ he wheezed. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you knew. I should then also assume your mother didn’t tell you she was with one of her lovers the night your father was murdered.’

Blood pounded in her ears and through her limbs, and she stared at the curtains of loose flesh hanging from his chin, at his fragile neck.

Don’t engage him, she thought. That’s what he wants.

Byrne finished his whiskey and poured himself another. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like that drink?’

‘I’m fine.’ Her voice sounded far away, unrecognizable to her own ears.

‘You certainly don’t sound it – or look it. If you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘We’re here to talk about you.’

‘Your father developed quite a drinking problem, according to your mother. I think she might have told him about her infidelities.’

Darby wasn’t going to talk about it – and not because it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Byrne might be recording this conversation. She wouldn’t speak to him about her mother or father or anything personal because he wanted to see more of her pain and she had already given him enough – too much.

‘Your mother – I don’t know if it’s on this tape or another one – she carried a lot of guilt about the boy she and your father gave up for adoption, back when they were high-school sweethearts.’ His features suddenly relaxed, his eyes widening slightly, his mouth forming an o. ‘Oh my,’ he wheezed. ‘I guess this is the first you’re hearing of this. I’m so sorry.’

He’s playing you, she thought. Don’t let him play you.

Darby slowly got to her feet.

‘Would you like to know his name?’ Byrne asked.

She picked up her jacket.

‘You haven’t asked me about little Claire Flynn yet.’

Darby slid into her jacket, her face hot, as though she were standing in front of a fire.

‘I know where Claire is buried,’ Byrne said.

She zipped up her jacket.

‘If you leave,’ Byrne said, ‘I’ll never tell you.’

Darby slid her hands into her pockets, balled them into fists.

Waited.

‘First, a small favour,’ he said. ‘I want to see you.’

‘You’re seeing me right now.’

‘Yes. And you look lovely. What I’d like to see is the way God made you.’

It took her a moment to find her voice. ‘You’re asking me to take off my clothes.’

‘And stand before me, right in this good, strong, winter light, in all your beautiful glory. I want to see every inch of you.’

Darby said nothing.

Byrne’s eyes danced with a merry light. ‘I’m offering you a chance to solve the case,’ he said. ‘To bring those poor little girls home.’

Darby said nothing.

‘If Mickey Flynn were here,’ he said, ‘what would he ask you to do?’

‘That’s all you want. To see me naked.’

‘You won’t have to touch me, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘What a relief.’

‘But I will touch you. That condition is non-negotiable.’

Darby turned her head and looked out of the window, at the snow banks crusted with ice and dirt.

‘So how about it?’ Byrne asked. ‘Would you like to bring little Claire home and end the mystery?’

‘Is she nearby?’

‘Oh my, yes. I like having all my girls nearby so I can visit them.’

My girls. The words made her flesh crawl. ‘What about Elizabeth and Mary?’

‘Don’t get greedy.’

Darby took in a deep breath and held it.

‘Little Claire is waiting,’ Byrne said.

She came around the table and stood in front of Byrne. His eyes took on a dreamy, lascivious quality. He held his glass with two hands and took a sip of his drink. Some of it dribbled down his chin.

‘Strip down to your bra and panties, if you please.’

Darby looked out of the window again.

‘Don’t worry about being interrupted,’ Byrne said. ‘I gave Grace the afternoon off. We have all the time in the world, which means you can undress slowly. You can start by getting rid of that awful leather jacket. It’s doing you no favours. Makes you look like a dyke, quite frankly.’

‘Mind if I have that drink?’

‘As much as your heart desires.’

She leaned forward for the glass and grabbed the air tube instead and yanked it from his nose.

Either Byrne lacked the strength to fight, or the inclination. Or maybe he was too stunned by what she had done. He knew he was in trouble, and he turned to the table and reached for the inhaler. Darby scooped it up with her free hand and then she pulled the tubing from the tank and leaned the small of her back against the edge of the kitchen counter. She folded her arms across her chest, the tubing dangling from one hand as she sighed.

‘I feel so much better now,’ she said, smiling. ‘Don’t you?’

The way his mouth opened and closed reminded her of a fish marooned on land.

‘You,’ he wheezed, his face mottled with both rage and fear. ‘You just made a grave –’

‘Let’s start with something easy, like the tapes. Where are they?’

Byrne didn’t answer. Darby watched his growing panic at having been deprived of his oxygen. She could hear the raspy wheeze grow louder with each breath, as though his lungs were being squeezed.

‘I gave you a gift,’ Byrne said, looking genuinely hurt. ‘I offered you a wonderful gift, and all you had to do was –’

‘Tell me where the tapes are, and you get to breathe for a bit. Then I’ll go find them, come back, and you’ll get to breathe some more. That’s a fair trade, don’t you think?’

‘Possession of these tapes is not a crime. A judge will never sign off on a search warrant.’ Byrne smiled in sour triumph.

‘We’re in court right now,’ Darby said. ‘Right now, I’m your personal judge and jury, Richie. Now, would you like to keep breathing?’

Byrne didn’t answer. He gulped at the air, wheezing.

‘Go ahead, think about it,’ Darby said. ‘You gave Grace the afternoon off, remember? So take your time. Well, don’t take too much. It sounds like your lungs are filled with quicksand.’

‘I don’t have to put up with this.’ Shakily, he tried to get to his feet.

Darby came off the table and used the sole of her boot to push him back down in the chair. He stared at her defiantly, the way a child would. He clutched at his neck, as though an invisible hand were strangling him.

‘I … can’t breathe.’

‘Neither can your victims,’ Darby said. ‘Now you have something in common with them. How does it feel, Richie?’

‘You’ll … you’ll never … know … what happened.’ His lungs made a sick, whistling sound. He looked like he was going to cry. ‘Our Father, who art … in heaven …’

As she watched his mouth working, trying to draw in air between the words of the Lord’s Prayer, it occurred to her how all her efforts at trying to do the right thing – her whole eye-for-an-eye philosophy and the feeling not necessarily of comfort but of completion after dealing with men like Richard Byrne – it was all for nothing. The dead would still be the dead. The victims would suffer, dragging their guilt and hopelessness and their piercing sense of loss that never fully healed through the rest of their days, the only cure their faith that whatever world lay beyond this one would grant them a sense of serenity and peace.

The cycle would never stop. She wasn’t a cure. If anything, she was a Band-Aid, a temporary fix.

‘… thy kingdom come …’

Byrne slumped forward and fell out of his chair.

Darby hooked the tube back up to the oxygen tank and turned the valve. A hissing sound filled the kitchen.

‘Answer my question and I’ll hand this to you right now.’

‘Give us this day …’

He’s going to die, an inner voice said.

So let him die.

If he dies –

He’s not going to tell me or anyone else what he did to Claire Flynn and the others.

This isn’t about the Flynn girl or any of the others. This is about his taking advantage of you, and your wanting him to suffer. If you let him die, you won’t have another chance with him.

Darby didn’t move.

Don’t let him take away what little humanity you have left. Don’t become like him. Don’t –

Darby stepped forward and pressed the heel of her boot on Byrne’s shoulder, rolling him on to his back. She dropped the air tube on his chest.

Byrne wouldn’t take it. He stared up at her, glassy-eyed, his lips moving silently. She got down on one knee and placed the tubing around his nose. Then she retrieved the inhaler from her pocket and stuck it in his mouth and pressed down on the aerosol container. Medicine hissed out of the tube but his eyes didn’t focus on anything. She pressed down on the container again, then a third time, and then she saw his wormy lips wrap around the plastic nozzle and suckle it like a hungry newborn as his hand, ravaged by arthritis, wrapped around hers. It felt like sandpaper against her skin.

His eyes refocused, locked on hers, and she could smell the sour odour rising from his clothes, his breath foetid, like the rotting remains of food left at the bottom of a dumpster in summer, and he grabbed the back of her head with a furious strength, pulled her towards him and kissed her. He shoved his tongue into her mouth and she felt it mash against her teeth, and before she could react he let go of her head and slumped back to the floor.

Darby drained the glass of whiskey, but she didn’t swallow it. She swished it around her mouth, gargled and spat it on him. She eyed the tape recorder, thinking about the tape in there, and made a gut decision to leave it behind. When she reached the archway separating the kitchen and the hall, she felt compelled to look back at him, and did.

He was still lying on his back against the floor, his eyes now closed, and he was smiling, blissfully lost inside his version of heaven, finally alone with the cherubs who delivered a harvest of nightmarish thoughts, images and memories that calmed his frantic, dying heart.