I woke with a start.
Remembering.
Last time I saw her.
Her coming to collect me for a visit. Mam letting her in.
‘Come in, Nora, good to see you.’
Me in the dining room, hearing her voice.
Her rushing in, standing, looking.
‘Hello you,’ her saying. ‘Bigger every time I see you. Come here for a hug.’
Me. Nine years old. Staying back, standing, far side of the table from her, the door to the garden open behind me, sunny day. Me watching. Her. Summer dress on. Pink with black lace. Bracelets jangling. Pink lipstick. Hair high, all fresh blonde, dark roots hidden, flowery scarf around her head. Pretty today. Like Barbie. Like Madonna.
Won’t last.
‘No hug?’ she says. ‘Plenty of time for hugs in our new home, that’s where we’re going, our own house, two bedrooms, a little garden, we can plant sunflowers, look?’
Her taking a packet of seeds out of her bag, pushing them at me, teeth smiling.
Her putting the seeds back in the bag, the purple bag, always full of her stuff.
Books.
Ciggies.
Vodka.
Me saying nothing.
‘That’s okay,’ she says. ‘We can decide later.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ I say.
‘Now, Finn,’ Mam says. ‘We talked about this.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ I say again.
‘I didn’t say it right,’ she says. ‘We’re only visiting today. Just for a look. We’ll go as slowly as you want. The judge says I’m nearly ready to get you back, and I know I am, but I want you to be ready too, so we’ll be really gradual, won’t we, Doreen?’
‘We will,’ Mam says.
‘She’s my real mother,’ I say, pointing at Mam. ‘Not you.’
‘Finn,’ Mam says. ‘Be kind. Please.’
I’m not kind, though, I’m bad.
‘I hate you,’ I say to her. ‘I never want to see you again.’
Her face.
Her tears.
So sad.
So what.
Her head down, running away, door slamming, Mam after her, loud words out front.
Then quiet.
Me in the garden.
Mam coming out to me.
‘Oh, Finn,’ Mam’s saying. ‘Poor Nora is very upset.’
‘I don’t care,’ I say.
‘I don’t want to see her any more,’ I say.
And I never did.
The mistake I made.
And.
Not straight away. A few weeks, a month, later.
Her dead.
She tried so hard, then stopped trying.
Because of me.
My mistake.
The biggest mistake I ever made.
Didn’t know the full story till later.
But always knew the truth, deep down.
That it was my fault.
All my fault.
And now Rhona.
Two deaths.
My fault.
My fault.
My fault.
I got out of bed and opened the blind. The moon filled the room with a cold hard light. I scrunched myself into the window seat, knees drawn up to my chin, my body twisted, my hands pulling at my hair, my forearms in front of my face, my breath coming in wet gasps.
Then sleep.
Awake again, with a sore neck, I unpicked myself from the frozen knot I had become. I went to the other side of the room, and checked the time on the ancient luminous travel clock I keep on my locker. 5.40 a.m. Monday. No work to go to.
And the investigative work I had been doing? A disaster. How could I have messed up so badly? When I met Joey O’Connor, I saw what he was like, the spurned boyfriend, the obvious candidate for what had happened to Deirdre. Almost everything he had said had identified him as the man responsible for the vicious attack on Deirdre, everything had fitted, but I had ignored him and gone chasing after Jeremy Gill. Who had an alibi for the time of Rhona’s death. Maybe I had been wrong about that, too. Maybe it was a random mugging, like the Gardaí thought. Random or not, it was my fault. Normally so security conscious, Rhona must have been distracted by what we’d talked about. She had told me how upset she had been as a result of my visit. And she had sent me an email only ten or fifteen minutes before she was killed.
Or was it possible that Joey had something to do with Rhona’s death? My head said no, that it was too far-fetched, but then so was the idea of him burning my car. He was capable of extreme violence. Was he capable of murder? But there was no evidence that he knew Rhona. Even if he did, what would his motive have been? I discounted the idea.
Yet what had become abundantly clear was that I was looking at two unconnected crimes: Joey had to be the one responsible for Deirdre’s rape and Gill, though he had raped Rhona, hadn’t killed her.
I checked my clock again. 6 a.m. My head was exploding. And there was something I needed to do but I couldn’t remember what.
Jesus.
The bins.
I stepped barefoot into my Birkenstocks, pulled a hoodie on over my pyjamas, ran down the stairs and opened the front door. I grabbed an umbrella, left it on the floor between the door and the jamb so that I wouldn’t be locked out, and ran out the door to the yard. First, I opened the yard door wide and hooked it back on the stone wall, then went to the bins. Recycling or rubbish this week? I couldn’t remember. But the recycling bin felt heavy, it had to be that one. I pulled up my hood and started down the lane towards Barrack Street, dragging the bin after me.
When I got out as far as the street, I realised I’d picked the wrong bin.
‘Fuck,’ I said aloud, and turned back down the lane, the blue bin even heavier than on the way out, it seemed. I shoved it back into place and dragged out the other two bins, the brown and the green ones, and wheeled them in front of me, the lane just wide enough for both if I staggered them, kept one arm long. At the end of the lane, I parked the two bins and walked across the road, opened the brown compost bin opposite. It stank like there was a dead body inside, but it was full, so they hadn’t been around with the lorry yet. Retching, I headed home. I unhooked the gate, closed it quietly, went into the house, kicked the umbrella out of the way, and let the door shut behind me.
In my en-suite bathroom, I washed my hands, had a quick pee, then washed my hands again and went back out to the bedroom, and checked the clock. It was 6.15. I picked up a pair of tracksuit bottoms and socks off the floor, put them on, and went upstairs to the living room, flicking on the heating as I went but keeping the lights off, relying on the street yellow of the city, not wanting to admit that morning had come, hoping that yoga and a cup of camomile tea might warm and relax me enough to win me a couple of hours’ rest. Upstairs, I walked to the kitchen island and started to fill the kettle.
‘Are you making me a cup of tea? Ah that’s lovely,’ a voice said, a male voice, a voice I recognised, coming from the direction of the armchair. I hadn’t looked when I came into the room, I hadn’t thought, couldn’t have imagined, and I was dizzy now, my mouth dry, a buzzing in my ears, black spots in my vision, my stomach churning. I stayed very still.
‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ Jeremy Gill said. ‘But you should be more careful, Finn. There are a lot of bad people in the world, you know, and leaving your front door wide open is never a good idea, is it?’
The kettle had overflowed. I tipped out the excess water and put it back in its place. It clicked on automatically. I was still standing with my back to Gill. I looked to the right, in the direction of the knife block. It was empty. And my phone was on the coffee table at the far side of the room.
Jesus Jesus Jesus.
‘Now, now, not looking for a knife, Finn, are you? Come on. Knowing how you feel about me, I’m hardly going to leave lethal weapons lying around in easy reach, am I?’
‘Get out of my house,’ I said.
‘Get out of my house,’ I said again.
‘No need to shout, Finn,’ Gill said. ‘I’ll go. But not yet. I want us to have a little chat first. But I can’t talk to you when you’ve got your back to me. So would you like to turn around? Or would you like me to do the turning for you?’
In the silence that followed, I heard one slow footstep, and then a second, coming towards me. Then he stopped.
‘Are you going to look at me, Finn?’
‘Yes,’ I said, but softly.
‘I can’t hear you, Finn, I should probably get closer to you.’
I heard him take another slow step.
‘So, are you going to turn around, Finn?’ Gill asked, almost conversationally.
‘Yes,’ I said, louder this time, and I turned to face Gill, keeping contact with the worktop with my left hand, swivelling slowly on one foot and pressing my right hand back on the worktop as soon as I had completed the turn.
‘That’s good, Finn.’
He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands in the pockets of a short zipped black jacket, hood up, that he wore with black jeans and black boots. Behind him on the coffee table, scattered around my mobile phone like a bad student sculpture, the knives from the knife block glinted. How many were there? I couldn’t remember, and I was afraid to check the block again. Did he have one of the knives in his pocket? Or a screwdriver? He was going to use something, it didn’t matter what, and I was going to die, of that I was certain.
‘Now we can have our little talk.’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I thought you were in custody.’
‘Oh I was,’ Gill said. ‘But they let me go. Had to. No evidence, you see. No evidence because I’m innocent. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. To ask you personally what is your fucking problem, you fucking cunt?’
I tried to press myself further back into the worktop but there was nowhere to go. Behind me, the kettle was coming to the boil as if nothing was wrong, as if my world hadn’t started to implode. I held on to the counter with both hands but it felt like the edge of a cliff.
‘Oh dear, Finn, you don’t like that word? Funny, it’s one of my favourites. And it’s never been more fucking appropriate, let me tell you.’
Gill took a step closer. Two more steps and he would be able to touch me. Three more and I would feel his breath on me. Four more steps and I would die.
‘They kept me longer in the station than my mother, wouldn’t even let me drop her home, get her settled. I had to get my solicitor to employ an agency nurse to stay with her. She’s a tough bird, but she is old now, an OAP, and you put her through that. I wanted you to hear it. You put my mother in a cell like she was some kind of junkie whore. All because of your deluded obsession with me. But I’ve told them about you, they know, the guards know what you are, you mad stalker bitch. And it’s only the beginning. I’m having a meeting with my lawyers later today, and we are going to rain down vengeance upon you, Finn. Your days practising law are over. And this house? It will please me no end to take it from you. Maybe I’ll keep it as a pied-à-terre.’
He paused.
‘Hang on, wait a minute, sorry – did you think I was here to kill you? Or rape you? Did you think that? Finn, when will you learn that I don’t do those terrible things.’
He smiled.
‘What I have in mind for you is going to be a lot worse. Slow and painful. In the end, you’ll pray for death, you’ll fucking beg for it.’
He took a step closer.
‘On the other hand. It would be so much kinder to put you out of your misery now.’
He leant forward. His long hair brushed against my face. He pressed his mouth against my left ear.
‘You’re the same,’ he whispered. ‘Ye’re all the fuckin’ same when ye’re stripped.’
I felt his gloved hand on my neck. Then his fingers tightened around my throat and I heard his breath, faster than before. I was paralysed.
Until I remembered Rhona’s story. Reaching behind me, I grabbed the handle of the kettle and swept it forward between me and Gill. I felt the heat of it through my clothes. He would feel it too.
‘Take your filthy paw off me, you fucker, or you’ll be peeling burnt skin off your dick for the next six months. I’ll burn too.’
He loosened his grip. Straightening, he looked down at me.
‘Oh, please. You’re too much. It’s like a game of Cluedo. Miss Fitzpatrick in the kitchen with the kettle. Do you really think I’d let you hurt me?’
His hand tightened again briefly. Then he let go, stepped back and walked slowly towards the stairs. He stood at the top for a moment and looked at me.
‘This was surprisingly good fun,’ Gill said. ‘Goodbye, Finn. See you soon.’
He took his phone out of his pocket, and he must have made a call as he went down the stairs, because I could hear his voice talking softly to someone, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The front door slammed and I sank to the floor.