I ran the shower – cold so that it would shock me into waking up. Shock me into being fully aware of what was happening. Shock me into being with it enough to be able to deal with what was to come next.
It wasn’t so much that the police could well be on their way to my flat right that very moment – I had known that was likely as soon as Cian had given my name as an alibi.
It was more that they had visited Scott’s and spoken to staff there and let them know they were going to speak to me. That would make no sense, none at all, to my colleagues. As far as they were concerned I was a blow in. A new start who took over the job left behind by Rose. I was someone who knew nothing, except what they told me, of how she died. Someone who only knew Cian because of his visit to the surgery. Someone who couldn’t possibly be linked to the nightmare that had unfolded since Rose had pushed that buggy out of the lift and walked into the path of Kevin McDaid.
They would think the worst of me. Owen – God only knows what Owen would think. God only knows what Owen would do. If, as Cian suspected, he was in some way involved in Rose’s death – would I be putting myself in danger by consorting with the man he hated most of all?
The cold water stung as it hit my skin, turning it red, then blue with the cold. My teeth chattering, I turned it off and pulled a towel from the rail. Dressing in yoga pants and a baggy sweatshirt, I pulled a hairbrush through my hair, made a large coffee and waited for the doorbell to ring.
While I waited, I tried to phone Cian. If the police were searching his house I could understand why he was so off with me before. He must be going through hell. The article didn’t work. It didn’t put the police off at all. It didn’t slow them down. They were continuing to look for information to put him in the frame.
I wondered why they didn’t look elsewhere? Why they hadn’t invited Owen in for a chat? Surely Cian had told them what kind of a man he was? Surely Cian had access to messages he had sent Rose? Something that proved he felt aggrieved? Surely that would be enough to have the police sniffing around him too? Maybe I’d mention that? Maybe I’d tell them they were barking up the wrong tree with Cian and they should look elsewhere.
Cian’s phone went straight to voicemail. I left a short message, telling him the police were looking for me. Asking him to call me. Saying I hoped he was okay. I tried to hide the hint of desperation from my voice.
The blinking email notification flashed at me again and I clicked in, my heart stopping to see it was a reply from Ben. It was as if he timed these things for maximum impact. I threw the phone to the floor, resisted the urge to kick it under the sofa. I couldn’t, just could not, find the strength on top of everything else to read it just then. I nudged it just out of view under my coffee table.
I jolted when the buzzer went at the door. As expected, when I answered it was DS Bradley and one of his colleagues, wondering if they could talk to me.
Should I call a solicitor? I had used one before. With Ben. I could get her number if I needed to, but she was in Belfast. Not likely to be interested. I chewed on my thumbnail as I buzzed the police in through the main door and waited for them to arrive at my flat. I wondered if I should have put on make-up. War paint. Something akin to armour. To give me the courage to lie.
It was okay to lie when it was for the greater good, wasn’t it?
DS Bradley offered me a small, tight smile when he arrived. He had a female officer with him who looked like she should still be in sixth form. She stood swamped in her heavy boots and full uniform, looking deeply uncomfortable.
‘Please, have a seat,’ I said to them both, probably a little too formally, before making my own way to the armchair, where I sat down, suddenly feeling as if my limbs were inordinately large and clumsy. I pushed my hair behind my ears and looked at them both as they sat down and the young female officer pulled a notebook from her pocket.
‘We seem to keep running into each other,’ DS Bradley said, his tone neutral.
‘That will happen if you call to my house,’ I said, trying to keep my voice light. Making our conversation sound like banter, belying the nerves that were jangling through my body.
He smiled. ‘I suppose so. But at the Grahame house. And Scott’s? And if I’m not mistaken, outside Kevin McDaid’s wake? You keep yourself busy. Did you know Kevin McDaid?’
I felt heat start to rise at the back of my neck, I put my hand to it. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, I knew one of his cousins. So I was there for them,’ I lied.
DS Bradley nodded. ‘Coincidence all the same – given the Scott’s connection and Rose, and of course your friendship with Cian.’
‘They do say truth is stranger than fiction, don’t they?’ I said, rubbing my neck. ‘Is this an official interview? You know, like Cian had? Under caution?’
DS Bradley shook his head. ‘Not at this stage,’ he said. ‘This is just a chat, Ms D’Arcy. Nothing to be worried about. It’s just part of our ongoing investigation. We may ask you to make a formal statement at some stage but for now, we just want to ask a few questions.’
The female officer nodded at me, smiled as if this was all perfectly normal everyday stuff.
‘And how long have you known Mr Grahame for?’
‘About a month,’ I said – trying to ignore how he raised his eyebrows at my admission. ‘He came into the surgery with his son, and we got talking.’
‘Quite a connection really, to be so close that within a very short time you were trying to counsel him to stop him taking his own life?’
I prayed I wasn’t blushing. ‘We clicked,’ I said. ‘He needed someone to talk to. People tend to open up to me.’
‘Did you know Mrs Grahame – Rose?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I didn’t know her. I told you that at Scott’s.’
‘And you were with Cian the night Kevin McDaid died?’
I nodded. I didn’t speak. Maybe if I didn’t actually say the words it wouldn’t be lying. I could get away with it.
‘He was upset and you were counselling him?’ He repeated the question he had asked just a few moments before. Was he trying to catch me out?
I nodded. ‘He’s been finding life very tough. When you add people pointing the finger at him to the mix, it’s not hard to see why he would be close to breaking point.’ I hoped I had made my point, but DS Bradley just nodded and looked to the female officer beside him who was scribbling in her notebook. She hadn’t spoken at all since they arrived at my flat.
‘Has Mr Grahame indicated to you anyone he feels would have or could have hurt his wife?’
I thought of Owen. Who had given me my second chance and had welcomed me into the surgery and been a kind and fair boss – that is until the last week. He’d shown how he could behave when he was stressed, but could he really be the kind of man who would have someone killed?
I suppose anything is possible if you feel scorned enough. If you felt betrayed and hurt. If you wanted to hurt someone else – not just Rose, but the man who had taken her for ever.
I swallowed. ‘He did tell me that Owen Scott had been infatuated with Rose. Was angry, even, when she didn’t return his advances.’
‘Owen Scott, your boss?’
I nodded.
‘And has there been any talk of Owen’s relationship with Rose among your work colleagues since you started there?’
I shook my head. I couldn’t in good conscience say there had been – nothing negative anyway. ‘No,’ I said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. I wrapped my arms around my tummy and took a deep breath to try and steady myself.
‘Are you feeling okay, Ms D’Arcy? Your work colleague told me you had gone home sick today – still sick from yesterday, she said.’
I blushed deeper – cringed. He knew that yesterday I had been perfectly well and in Cian’s house, making tea for him. Being caught lying was one thing. Being caught lying by a policeman was something else. Especially when he looked at me with the hint of a smile on his face. He’d be handsome, I guessed, if I didn’t feel so intimidated by him.
‘Well, actually today I don’t feel so well – but yesterday, yes – well, it’s not against the law to fake the odd sickie.’ I attempted a quick laugh but it sounded fake and the lie rolled around the room like giant balls of tumbleweed.
DS Bradley cleared his throat. ‘No. It isn’t. We’d be rushed off our feet if it was,’ he said, calm, collected, playing the good cop. ‘When it comes to work, can I ask, has anyone spoken ill of Rose? Has there been any chat that would indicate she – Mr Scott aside – had any enemies?’
Inwardly I wished she did. It would make all of this easier. ‘No,’ I told him honestly. ‘I’d say if they had it in their power they would have put her forward for a sainthood. She seems to have been completely faultless.’
‘We all have our faults,’ DS Bradley said, looking at me pointedly – making me feel as if my faults were written all over my face.
‘Yes, I suppose we do,’ I replied.
‘Well, Ms D’Arcy—’
‘Emily, please call me Emily,’ I said, in a last-ditch attempt to try and make things less awkward between us. If I could hold on to him in good cop mode maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.
He nodded again. ‘Well, Emily, I think that’s all we need from you for now. As I said before we may well invite you in to make a formal statement in the near future but in the meantime, if you can think of anything – anything at all – that might be of use to the investigation, perhaps you could give me a call?’ He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a business card.
‘I will,’ I said, standing up and taking it from him, itching to get them out of my flat as soon as possible.
The still mute female officer nodded at me and headed for the door – while DS Bradley stopped, turned back to me and spoke.
‘Emily, it might be worth really thinking about any details that might help this investigation. Perhaps you’re mistaken about what night you were with Mr Grahame – counselling him? It can be easy to mix up evenings, the things we do. Life is so busy these days. So if you find you have misremembered things – maybe you could get in touch?’ His expression was soft, his voice gentle.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to react. Did he know I was lying? Did he want me to tell him – categorically – that Cian had been on his own when McDaid died because it would fit in with the version of events he wanted for that night? Whatever the reason, it was clear he had his sights firmly set on Cian and he was taking aim and getting ready to fire.
*
I looked out of my living room window until I could see DS Bradley and his colleague drive off. I admit my paranoia was at an all-time high. I’d probably watched too many corny crime movies. I wondered if he would have left a bug somewhere and then gave myself a good shake. Told myself to wise up. Told myself what had just happened was nothing more than a routine chat as part of an ongoing investigation. If it was something more, DS Bradley would have played a full-on bad cop. He would have hauled me over the coals for lying to work. He would have questioned me more about being at McDaid’s wake. But he hadn’t. Not yet anyway. He had smirked a bit, yes. Been formal, of course. But there had also been a kindness there.
Still, my flat suddenly felt claustrophobic and my options for people to call on to reassure me were even more limited than they had ever been. My phone, and the email from Ben, was still taunting me from under the coffee table. I was afraid to look at it, as if it would summon him directly into my living room.
I realised I had no one to reach out to – no one except the one person in this world who would understand the hell of this investigation. The only person who would, or could, understand was Cian.
I picked up my phone and dialled through, swearing to myself as it went once again to his voicemail. In my anger I threw my phone on the sofa before picking it back up, thinking the evening was unlikely to improve anyway and I might as well just rip the giant Ben-sized plaster off there and then.
He’d written only a couple of lines, which blurred in front of my eyes before I was able to read them.
Emily,
I don’t know why I sent that friend request. Except I was thinking about you and about us and I’d had a few drinks. I shouldn’t have. We’re both much better off without being in each other’s lives.
A journalist has been in touch asking about our relationship. Emily, I’ve moved on. I know I fucked up back then. We both did, but please don’t rake up the past. Let’s just get on with our lives.
Ben
So that was that. All that fear, all those worries, boiling down to a short email in which he said he’d had too much to drink and was better off out of my life. God, I knew he was right. There wasn’t a part of me that wanted him in my life again. But somehow the part that should have been doing cartwheels of joy that he wasn’t about to show up on my doorstep and that he was as scared of Ingrid Devlin as I was, was still and silent.
I felt a deep sense of shame to realise that a part of me felt rejected again. Irrational, I know, but I felt tears well up and start to run down my cheeks.
In that moment I felt the need to be held and to be loved and to be told I mattered to someone.
So I went into my bedroom, slipped on a pair of trainers. I pulled my still damp hair back into a loose ponytail and grabbed my chunky cardigan from the back of the bedroom door. Grabbing my phone, my purse and my keys, I left the flat, jumped into my car and set off for Cian’s house.
I kept the radio off. The noise of it annoyed me. Everything annoyed me, to be honest. The red lights. The slow drivers. The rain that started to fall in sheets making visibility so poor I was forced to slow down myself, while my stupid car started to steam up. At every junction, at every red light, I checked my phone – which was laying on the passenger seat – to see if he had called me back. But if the call had gone to voicemail, would he even know I had been calling him in the first place? I tried to reassure myself that of course he wouldn’t – because if he did, he would have called me back. He would have understood how desperately I needed to talk to him.
Arriving at his house, I was relieved to see the lights on. I tried not to think about him being home and why he wouldn’t have called me. I tried not to get stressed about the car I didn’t recognise, sitting alongside his in the drive. Wrapping my cardigan tight around my body, I jumped from my car, into the pouring rain and ran to his front door. Shivering, I rang the doorbell, then rapped on the door with my fist.
The rain was taking no time at all to fall, the deluge leaving water running down my face and from the end of my nose when the door creaked open and Cian, looking distinctly unstressed, peeked out.
‘Emily?’ He said, not stepping backwards enough to allow me in.
‘I needed to see you, Cian. The police have been round.’
I wanted him to pull me into house, into his arms and hug me and tell me everything would be okay, but he just looked at me blankly before speaking. ‘I have someone with me just now, Emily. I’m not sure this is the best time to talk.’
Someone with him? I looked at him – in his loose jeans, bare foot. A white T-shirt, which highlighted his toned frame. He was holding a glass of red wine in his hand.
I started shivering violently. The cold seeping through to my bones. ‘Please, Cian. I’m scared and I need to know what to do. They asked about the night Kevin McDaid died.’
He stared at me again, a hint of disdain on his face, which I told myself was just my paranoia at play. Then, as if a switch had been flipped inside his head, he stood back.
‘Oh Emily, you poor thing, come in,’ he said, maybe a little too loudly, ushering me in. ‘You must be freezing. Hang on,’ he said, turning to walk down the hall but stopping, turning back and kissing me lightly on the tip of my nose. He walked off again and I stood, rain dripping from the ends of my hair to the floor. I sniffed loudly, dragged my sleeve across my face in an attempt to dry myself off only to discover the cardigan was well and truly soaked through too.
I watched as he walked back into the hall from the kitchen. A bundle of towels in his hand. ‘Fresh out of the drier,’ he said. ‘Still warm. Come and get a shower. Get warmed up and dried off.’
‘The police, Cian. They asked all sorts of questions,’ I said as he took my hand.
‘The most important thing is to get you out of those wet clothes before you catch your death. Get a warm shower. We can talk then.’
‘But your guest?’
‘She’ll be fine for a few minutes,’ he said and I tried not to feel any hint of jealously at the word ‘she’. He led me upstairs, back to the guest bedroom with the beautiful en-suite where he pulled the curtains, switched on the lamp on the side table, before walking into the bathroom and starting to run the shower.
‘This will make you feel better,’ he said putting the towels on the bed. ‘If you give me those wet clothes, I’ll put them in the drier for you. I’ll leave a dressing gown here for you to wear while they’re drying. You’ve gotten yourself into such a state. You shouldn’t worry. There’s no way the police can know we weren’t together that night unless you tell them.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, still shivering.
Then, very tenderly, he walked towards me and put his hands to my face, tipping my head back so that I was looking directly at him. He bent his head towards mine and kissed me gently – before sliding his hands down my neck and slowly pulling my cardigan from my shoulders, letting it pool on the floor behind us. I shivered again, but it wasn’t from the cold this time.
‘Let me undress you,’ he whispered in my ear, the roughness of his stubble brushing against my cheek. The smell of his cologne invading my senses. I felt his hands slip under my sweatshirt – felt them hot on my cold skin.
‘You’ve had a tough day. You poor thing. You’re so cold,’ he whispered, brushing my neck with his lips – forcing a soft moan to escape from my mouth as his hands moved upwards and he peeled my sweatshirt from my body. He drew one long, strong finger from my collarbone down between my breasts and I inhaled deeply as he moved his hands lower. ‘You’re beautiful, Emily,’ he said as his hands circled my waist. As he kissed me again I kicked off my trainers, closing my eyes as he dropped to his knees, kissing my stomach as he pulled my yoga pants down and I stepped out of them – grateful at least that I was wearing half-decent underwear. His mouth was on me, for the briefest, most blissful of moments, kissing me through my lace knickers. His hands, warm on my body had me desperate to pull him closer, hold him to me – to lose myself – and all the worries of the last few hours in him. But he stood up again, brushing his hands along the length of my body – close but not close enough to where I wanted them to be and he gave me a wicked smile.
‘Oh Emily, you’ve no idea what you do to me,’ he said, his eyes dark. ‘If you don’t get in the shower right now, I’m going to lose control of myself and I have a guest downstairs.’ He kissed me lightly, scooped up my clothes from the floor and turned and left – leaving me confused, with no chance not to get in the shower straight away and allow him to lose control of himself. I stripped off my underwear and climbed under the hot streams of water, shook any negative feelings out of my head. He still needed me. He called me beautiful. Things were good, I reassured myself. I would make him lose control as soon as I got the chance.