I’d wished I still smoked. Or there had been someone in the house who I could have cadged a cigarette off. The only ‘smoker’ there was Ciara and she used those stupid e-cig things. It wasn’t the same. Not at all.
Work had been full-on. I’d wondered if half of my colleagues had any competency at all, because none of them seemed to be able to manage when anything out of the ordinary happened.
That day, one of my more annoying colleagues, a graduate called Dean, had stood over me huffing and puffing. He’s the kind of person who has all the academic skills needed to score him a first-class honours but none of the common sense required to function in the real world. He’d been feeling under pressure to get the intranet system he was working on for a local firm up and running. And he’d been quite happy to pass all that stress on to me.
By the time I’d arrived at Aberfoyle Crescent, to be met with an atmosphere so thick with tension you nearly needed an oxygen tank to breathe, I was already on my last nerve.
Heidi seemed quite close to being on hers, too. Ever since Joe had taken ill, she had been put upon to care for him. I’d watched as, with every visit, she became less and less happy.
She withdrew more and more from me and as much as I tried to reach her, there was something untouchable between us. A sadness of sorts.
I saw it on her face when I came back to the house on that night. She was fidgety. Uptight. Despite the cold weather, she went to stand outside. Said she needed air and I followed her. Wishing for that elusive cigarette. Maybe a glass of wine. Maybe a time when Heidi and I could just be a part of our own little family again without all this noise around us.
‘You seem tense,’ I said.
At least she smiled – that kind of twisted ‘you don’t say’, but there was a warmth to it. I wrapped my arms around her and told her I loved her. I could feel the thunder of her heart against my chest and I wished I could take away all her stress – to see her happy again.
I figured it might help if I offered to do a little more to help with Joe, though there was something about him that made me feel uncomfortable. I put it down to his self-assuredness, his arrogance. I knew the type well.
There was something sly about him, too. He gave off bad vibes, although I could never quite put my finger on why. What I did know was that Joe McKee liked to be in control as much as he liked to be the centre of attention. I’d seen enough of him over the years to figure that out.
Still, I’d be polite and I’d do my bit because God knows Heidi didn’t need any more stress. It was bad enough to have Ciara and Stella, not to mention Kathleen, hovering around. That was a whole other complicated dynamic right there. There was no denying the tension that existed between them and Heidi.
She told me that she felt she’d never been accepted by any of them. Watching them interact with each other I could see that was true.
Just after ten thirty, or thereabouts, I’d gone upstairs to get Lily, stopping to use the bathroom first. I was so tired, I could feel my eyes starting to droop. I splashed my face with cold water, pushed the bathroom window open wide and had allowed the fresh, ice-cold air to wash over me. I prayed that Lily would sleep through the night. Both Heidi and I needed the rest.
I had just closed the window when I heard a strange, strangulated cough from Joe’s room, which was just next door.
I tapped on his bedroom door, quietly said his name in case he was sleeping, and opened it just a crack.
‘Are you okay, Joe?’ I asked, looking at the figure lying in the bed.
His bedside light was still on, an empty teacup on his locker, a notebook or diary and pen discarded on the bed. I could hear the faintest of rattles, so I moved closer.
‘Joe?’ I asked again, a little louder but not much.
He didn’t move. His eyes didn’t even flicker. I wasn’t sure for a moment or two if he was breathing, and then there it was again – a sickening gargling sound, not quite a breath but maybe. He went still. I couldn’t hear another breath. I started to panic a little, sat down on the edge of the bed and took his hand in mine, tried to feel for a pulse. I couldn’t feel one, or maybe I could. But it was so weak, I just wasn’t sure.
I reached over to grab his other hand, thinking maybe I’d get a better reading from his other wrist, but as I stepped closer my foot caught on something on the floor. I looked down and there was a book, what looked like a diary, and it was open. I don’t know, I’ll never know, what it was that made me look a little closer rather than just kick it under the bed, but I did and my stomach contracted.
I didn’t read it all. I swear I didn’t read it all. Not at first. Just words that were blurring together and then spinning. Snapshots. But enough, more than enough, to make me want to hurt Joe McKee more than I ever wanted to hurt anyone in my life.
Girls. Child. Sick. Hurt. Perverted. Illness. Abuse. Sorry.
The words became more important than the pulse I was supposed to be looking for. I stopped focusing on how frequently he was breathing. Any instinct I’d had to try to help or call for help slipped away. I reached for the book, turned it around. Focused on the words.
A confession of sorts. He needed to get it off his chest. He was sorry. He was a sick man. He had always been a sick man and he had tried to control it but he was weak.
He never meant to hurt anyone.
He just had a compulsion.
My stomach turned. ‘Just a compulsion’? Just who had he hurt? Had he hurt my Heidi? Was that why she seemed broken when she was around him? It would explain so much. How vulnerable she could be. How it had taken her a long time to start a physical relationship with me. My poor Heidi. And who else? Ciara? Unknown girls. Young girls. Just how young?
My mind flitted to my daughter. My innocent, beautiful daughter. Had he ever been alone with her? Had he changed her? I almost couldn’t breathe for thinking about it. I knew he had held her. I knew there were pictures of him, smiling at the camera. His creepy grin. And my child.
Something in me snapped as I closed his diary and looked at him there, the mouth slack, minute foamy bubbles forming on his lips.
I made a decision then, you see. I could’ve saved him, maybe. I could’ve called for help, but I didn’t. I sat and watched as those short, gasping breaths drew further and further apart, the odd gurgle growing quieter. I sat and wished he was at least conscious so I could tell him what a bastard he was. I hoped he knew he was dying. That he felt the struggle for every one of those short, shallow breaths. I hoped he felt fear. I hoped he felt pain. I hoped he knew I was there beside him, but there was no way I was going to help him. I hoped he felt as powerless as his victims had. Joe McKee, man of the people. Disgusting paedophile.
I waited until he was silent. Until there was no hope for him. I let him die.
The enormity of my actions, or my lack of action, hit me quickly. I was shocked, horrified at myself. Yes, he deserved to die, but was I now just as bad as him? Was I now a killer?
I lifted the diary and slipped it into the drawer of his locker. I’d deal with it later. Once I figured out how to talk to Heidi about it all. If she told me what I was now sure was true, if she confirmed what he had done, I could maybe find some way to justify it to myself. To live with it.
Of course, when I went back to look at the diary the next day, it was gone. Funeral arrangements were being made and I got swept up in it all. I tried to find the right time to tell Heidi, but is there ever a right time?
Then the police said it was murder and the crushing reality of the situation swept over me. I vowed I’d tell them the truth and I tried, I really tried, to find the courage to tell them. But then when they said he had been suffocated, I’d almost been sick. If I spoke up then, told them no, that he’d taken ill, and I’d just not called for help, they’d have no reason to believe me. Especially as I’d said nothing before.
They mentioned unexplained injuries and bruising, further test results from the postmortem. Things I knew I hadn’t done, but I’d gone too far then and I was too scared to speak up. Heidi was unravelling. I couldn’t make her life harder. And yes, I was a coward, too. I was scared of prison. I was scared of losing Heidi and Lily. I was scared that all anyone would see me as from now until the day I died was a cold-blooded killer.