Marie Wade had been right in her recollection: the former education officer was from Clare, from the Gort Road in Ennis. Estranged from his family following his parents’ acrimonious separation, he had studied art in Limerick and worked a succession of short-term jobs before meeting up with Jeremy Gill in Cork in 1998.
The guards found Donnie Bryant at Shannon Airport, in the queue for a Ryanair flight. If he had made it to Lanzarote, he could have lived very comfortably at Esther Gill’s holiday apartment for a long time without being caught. He had enough cash on him to last several months and he had dyed his hair dark brown. He had on Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and a ‘Dodgers’ official merchadise baseball cap turned backwards. But his Irish passport gave his name as Daniel O’Brien. And he was going nowhere.
Disappointingly, the station didn’t have one of those two-way mirrors you see on the TV cop shows. Instead, Sadie and I were hunched over a laptop in Lenihan’s office, watching a live feed from Interview Room 3, now occupied by Donnie Bryant and his solicitor, and Lenihan and one of the detectives Lenihan hadn’t introduced me to.
I was glad that Donnie had been caught, but I wasn’t at all happy with what he’d been saying ever since. Still talking in that ridiculous Californian accent, he had made a full confession, taking on all responsibility for Rhona’s death; for everything, it seemed. Lenihan hadn’t yet asked Donnie if he knew where Shergar was, but I had a hunch he’d admit to the horse’s kidnap if he thought it might help Jeremy. Donnie absolved the Gills of all guilt, including the allegations of sexual misbehaviour made by Christopher Dalton. Donnie had never seen any of that: Jeremy was a gentleman who never laid a finger on anyone. That part would be easy enough to disprove, and would damage Donnie’s credibility, but he was sticking solidly to the story that he had acted alone, and that Esther had driven him in fear of her life.
‘Why did you kill Rhona, Donnie?’ Lenihan kept asking.
‘I did it,’ Donnie kept replying. ‘It’s none of your business why I did it. Jeremy and Esther had nothing to do with it. It was my idea. They just got caught up in my madness. I want to do everything I can to make it up to them. They’ve been so good to me. I don’t want them to spend another second in this awful place. I want you to charge me with the murder of Rhona Macbride. I know my rights. You have to charge me or you have to release me. You can’t keep a suspect here indefinitely when you have enough evidence to charge.’
Unfortunately, Donnie was right. The clock was ticking. If there wasn’t a break soon, he’d be heading for court, charged with Rhona’s murder, and Esther and Jeremy would be released and their file sent to the DPP. They might end up being charged with nothing. The DPP only brings forward charges where there’s a reasonable chance of conviction. The way Donnie was talking? I wouldn’t bet on ever seeing the Gills in the dock.
In fairness to Lenihan, he was dogged. He was walking Donnie back through his story for the tenth or twelfth time, excavating any inconsistency, hoping he might start to become complacent.
‘Tell me again how you got to Shannon.’
‘You know this already.’
‘Humour me, Donnie. I’m just doing my job. And this is the last time, I promise.’
‘Okay, Inspector Lenihan,’ Donnie said. ‘As you well know, I drove to Shannon.’
‘What kind of car do you drive?’
‘As you well know, I drive a 2013 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sportiva.’
‘Small,’ Lenihan said.
I sat up. Lenihan was going off script.
‘It’s a beautiful car, Inspector Lenihan. Beautifully designed. Anyway, I’m not here in Ireland much. I drive a bigger car back home in Los Angeles.’
‘Another Alfa?’
‘Yes, as it happens.’
‘I drive a Passat,’ Lenihan said. ‘Very reliable.’
‘Reliable but dull,’ Donnie said.
‘You can’t beat the Germans, though. When I’ve some money, I’m getting a Merc.’
‘You’ve no romance in you, Inspector. I’ve always driven Italian cars.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Even when I hadn’t a bean, I had style.’
‘Yeah?’
‘My first car was a Fiat, a yellow Cinquecento,’ Donnie said.
‘Hang on,’ I shouted. ‘A yellow Cinquecento. That’s the car Joey O’Connor saw him driving. Dropping Deirdre off at her house …’
‘What?’ Sadie asked. ‘What has this to do with anything?’
‘Where did I put my fucking phone?’
‘Here’s your fucking phone,’ Sadie said. ‘Are you okay? You look …’
I grabbed the phone from her and started scrolling through my pictures until I found the one I was looking for. My fingers shaking, I enlarged it.
‘Thanks be to God,’ I said. ‘Poke your head in the door of the interview room, Sadie – I can’t do it, Donnie would recognise me – and tell Lenihan I’ve got something and that I need to talk to him now.’
‘What have you got?’ Sadie asked.
‘Proof that Daniel “Donnie” O’Brien stayed in Muskerry Castle with Thomson AdGroup in 1998. He signed the guest book. I have a photograph of his signature. The 12th of December 1998. The same night Jeremy Gill raped Deirdre Carney. Joey O’Connor saw Donnie – Daniel O’Brien, as he was then – dropping Deirdre Carney home in his Cinquecento. Joey can’t say when he saw it happening, but Donnie doesn’t know that. And I know in my heart and soul it was the morning after the rape. That fucker Donnie, he’s not just protecting Gill now, he’s been protecting him, enabling him, all along. For years. Donnie’s the organiser, the manager. He must want to tell that story.’
It took a little longer than I’d hoped to convince Lenihan, and it took even longer than that for Donnie to start talking. Sadie and I were watching the interview on-screen in Lenihan’s office and for a while we were losing hope.
‘I know you’ve explained before,’ Lenihan said. ‘But I still can’t figure out what your job was.’
‘Assistant, like I’ve told you about fifty times.’
‘Like some kind of a secretary?’
‘No. I was Jeremy’s personal assistant.’
‘Picking up his dry-cleaning kind of assistant?’
‘That was not my job. I had no domestic duties.’
‘O-kay,’ Lenihan said. ‘Putting petrol in the car, maybe?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t get it. Not a secretary. No domestic duties. No general duties. Nothing that sounds like anything. Oh, hang on, am I missing something here, was it some kind of a Rock Hudson scenario?’
Donnie sighed.
‘I might have expected you’d be homophobic as well as stupid,’ he said. ‘For the record, Jeremy Gill is not gay and neither am I.’
‘For the record could you tell me what the fuck you were getting paid for, so?’
‘We had a strictly professional relationship.’
‘Professionally doing sweet fuck all by the sound of it.’
‘No no no,’ Donnie said. ‘I worked hard. Nothing happened without me.’
‘You mean you were like a producer or something?’
‘It’s a simplistic analogy but you could put it like that, I suppose.’
‘Have you a better way of putting it?’
‘Maybe first assistant director is a better analogy.’
‘Sounds menial.’
‘Only someone who knows nothing about the film business would think that. A first A-D runs the set, the logistics, the whole fucking thing, you fucking dope.’
‘And that’s what you did?’
‘Yes.’
‘But for Gill personally.’
‘Yes.’
Lenihan sat back in his chair and scratched his head.
‘I still don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘But it sounds like some cushy number.’
‘Cushy is the last thing it was, you fucking ignoramus,’ Donnie said. ‘Jeremy would have been caught years ago only for me. He thinks he’s invincible and that he can do anything but he needs a support team. Genius is genius, but genius needs help. His mother knew that too. You know, right at the beginning, Jeremy didn’t understand why Rhona had to die. With the arrogance that makes him a great director, all that certainty, he was sure she’d keep quiet, like she had done all these years. But the risk was too great. Eventually he saw that, eventually we persuaded him. Well, his mother did. She made him see that Rhona had more on him than any of the others. He was still doing it DIY back then with Rhona, doing the collecting in his own car, that old Toyota, doing the drop-off after. That was the very first thing I changed. Right from what’s her name, the girl in Cork in that great hotel, Muskerry Castle. It was really nice being back there recently, actually.’
‘The girl from Cork? You’re talking about Deirdre Carney?’
‘Yes, Deirdre, that was her name. She was a fighter. All talk about reporting Jeremy on the way back from the hotel. Until I explained to her that no one would ever believe her. And told her what would happen if it ever went to court. In intimate detail. You know, all the usual stuff, about how it’s the victim who’s on trial, really.’
He paused.
‘Tell me I’m wrong.’
Lenihan shrugged.
‘You see, you can’t,’ Donnie said. ‘That’s what I told Deirdre, how she’d never recover, all of that. I was good at it and I got better over the years. I had to. I learnt on the job. A steep learning curve that was, I can tell you. Jeremy, well, he’s a handful. Once he gets a fixation on one of them, he has to follow through. That Carmel from the workshop, she was next in line, once the coast was clear. He wasn’t going to do anything until it was, obviously. He’s got his, em, well, weaknesses, but he’s not a fool. He was able to wait, he was always able to wait once he knew that it was going to be worth his while.’
‘And Rhona? Her death?’
‘She would have ruined everything if she’d talked. That’s why she had to go. He knew we were right. He saw it. He was grateful. And Esther … We were, we are, so close.’
‘Who planned it?’
‘What?’
‘Rhona’s murder?’
‘Well, Jeremy did, of course. Something big like that? I know my limitations. No, Jeremy was reluctant at first but once he’d decided, he swung into action. And it worked with military precision, right down to the last detail. I was really nervous. But having Jeremy on speakerphone in the car all the way to Rhona’s house and back, my nerves disappeared. He’s a great actors’ director, you know. Everyone says that.’
‘I’m sure he’ll be a great addition to the prison drama group,’ Lenihan said.