I LIT THE fire. The cottage was freezing, turning my breath to white mist. Molloy had said he’d get here at seven, but I was beginning to hope that he’d be late. I turned on the heating, opened one of the bottles of red wine, placed it by the hearth, and sat down on the couch to wait.
Two minutes later, I stood up again and went into the kitchen to put out some food for Guinness, who hadn’t made an appearance yet although I was sure he would turn up eventually. I sat down again, decided I felt hungry myself, made a cheese and tomato sandwich, which I found I couldn’t eat, then went to sort out a load of laundry instead. My mind was racing. This whole idea of pouring my heart out to Molloy was a bad one. He wouldn’t understand, he would judge me. I should ring him and cancel. I looked at my watch. If he didn’t arrive in the next fifteen minutes, I promised myself, that’s what I would do.
Surprisingly, shoving dirty clothes into the machine helped to calm me down, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to think about Faye, properly. To picture her as she was that last time I’d seen her. Always thin, she was gaunt then, but it only made her look even more striking. But she had been distant, taut and erratic, her eyes not meeting mine, despite a flashy show of affection. I remained glad my parents hadn’t seen her then. They could remember her as she was.
I jumped at the knock on the door. Molloy was standing on the doorstep wearing a heavy blue sweater over his uniform, and carrying a heavy-looking brown paper bag in his hand.
“I thought you mightn’t have eaten yet either, so I took a risk and brought Chinese.”
The sitting room had warmed up, and I could feel my appetite returning. I disappeared into the kitchen and produced a couple of plates and glasses. To my surprise, Molloy accepted a glass of wine.
“Just what I need,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Long day?”
“You could say that.”
I poured myself a glass. “Something happen?”
“You’ll hear tomorrow, I’m sure. It’ll be all around the town. We’ve arrested Mick Bourke.”
“For what?”
“For all those robberies.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope.”
“How do you know it’s him?”
“He made a few mistakes getting rid of the stuff. We managed to trace it back.”
“God. Do you think Danny Devitt knew it was him? Was it Bourke he was talking about?”
“No idea. We think there was someone else involved as well. Bourke wouldn’t have had the wit to run something like that on his own, but he’s not saying who helped him.”
“Have you any idea who it might be?”
“It has to be someone with local knowledge. Someone who knew who was getting married and when, who was going on holiday and so on. Bourke made a blunder with Paul Doherty’s place. He didn’t have time to do the job properly and cover his tracks like he did with the honeymoon break-ins.”
“That was him, too?”
Molloy nodded. “We think he did that one on his own and made a mess of it as a result. Got greedy. He had to change his contacts to get rid of office equipment rather than household appliances.”
I thought about what Phyllis had told me earlier. Had Bourke been trying to get rid of dirty money by giving it to charity? Did he suspect someone was onto him? I needed to speak to Phyllis again before I could pass that information on to Molloy.
After we had eaten, I took the remains of the food into the kitchen. Molloy leaned against the sink, glass in hand, and watched me as I loaded the dishwasher.
“So do you still want to have that chat with me, or have you changed your mind again?”
I straightened myself and said, “No, it’s time I spoke to someone. I should have done it years ago.”
“It’s entirely your business, you know, Ben. You’re under no obligation to tell me anything.”
“I know, but we’re friends, and I should at least have told you before you heard it from someone else. Which, let’s face it, was always a possibility.”
He gave me a smile. “I will admit it was a bit odd discovering that I didn’t even know your real name.”
“You make it sound as if I’m using a false name. It’s my second name and my mother’s maiden name. I haven’t done anything illegal.”
He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Conceded.”
“And, by the way, for all your magnanimity now, you were pretty cold to me for a while there when your ‘friend’ was around.”
His smile disappeared.
“You seemed angry with me,” I said.
Molloy avoided my eye and gazed at the wall.
“I’m sorry for that,” he said slowly. “But there was more going on there that I don’t really want to go into. It wasn’t to do with you.”
My stomach did a flip. “Oh.”
“You said you needed my advice?”
“I do.” I paused, but I couldn’t seem to drop the subject of the pathologist even though it was clear Molloy wanted me to. “What did she tell you?”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want to? As much or as little as you like.”
“Okay.” I opened the second bottle of wine and poured myself a glass.
Molloy refused a top-up. I took a sip and placed my glass on the counter.
“You know I’ve been in Inishowen for six years.”
“Yes.”
“And you know I was in the States for a year or so before that.”
“Yes, you’ve told me that.”
“Well, what I hadn’t told you, but which you now know thanks to your friend, is that before I went to the States, my sister Faye was killed.” I heard a slight tremor in my voice.
Molloy was silent, still leaning back against the sink and continuing to study me as I spoke, listening intently. I was grateful to him for not delivering some sympathetic platitude at that point. I didn’t think I could have continued if he had.
“And as you know, there was a trial. A fairly public one. Her killer was convicted of manslaughter. He’s serving ten years. That’s the information in the public domain so to speak.”
Molloy nodded.
I took a gulp of my wine.
“For my family, the whole nightmare started nine years ago. I was working in a big commercial practice in Dublin, one of the big five. A plum job that I got straight out of college. My parents were very proud. It was at the beginning of the boom and there was lots of money about.” I paused again. “There was another young lawyer working there. Luke Kirby.”
As soon as I said his name, I realized I hadn’t uttered it since the trial. I took another mouthful of wine before continuing.
“Luke was handsome and successful, and very dynamic. He was used to getting what he wanted and good at getting things done. That was part of the attraction at first. We started a relationship of sorts. I think I realized very early on that it meant more to me than it did to him, but I thought that might change. I introduced him to my parents. They liked him.”
I forced out the words. “And then he met my sister.”
Molloy didn’t move. He made no attempt at any kind of comforting gesture, such as putting his hand on mine or his arm around me, for which again I was grateful.
“As soon as I introduced him to Faye, I saw the look in his eyes. Luke wanted her – I could see it. It was the same expression he used to have when he was about to close a big deal. He looked at her like a lion contemplating his prey; it was all he could do not to lick his lips.”
A scratching at the door made me jump. It was Guinness; he went straight to his bowl. I locked the door and continued.
“Faye had just qualified as a nurse. She was pretty and kind, but she’d always had a wild streak in her – a recklessness that I envied in some ways. I was so straitlaced. She was always the first to try the most dangerous things. We took a trip together once to the south of Italy, and the one thing she wanted to do was this Flight of the Angel stunt – Il volo dell’angelo, an adrenaline junkie’s dream. You fly on a high-wire between two villages, with only a helmet and a safety harness. Terrifying – I couldn’t do it. But Faye did. Halfway across, she let go of the safety line. The organizers were furious with her. In fact, we were nearly kicked out of the place, but she just laughed. She said it was amazing, that you felt like you were really flying.”
I smiled at the memory of it.
“Anyway, she and Luke started spending time together. It began with the odd coffee here and there when they ran into each other. She told me whenever they met – she was quite up front about it. But there was one thing I hadn’t told my family about Luke. He was a cocaine user. A heavy one. It worried me when Luke and Faye started to meet up, since Faye had such an extreme and addictive personality. But Faye said that they were just friends who had a laugh together, and Luke never allowed anyone to tell him what to do – he made sure to tell me that. He said I should be glad he got on well with my family.
“I pretended otherwise, but it drove me crazy. I was besotted by him, and jealous, stupidly so. Eventually I split up with him, hoping that would bring an end to whatever was happening between him and Faye. It didn’t.” I swallowed. “They became a couple. I went to Luke’s apartment one night to see if I could talk to him, and I saw them together outside. That night, something snapped for me. I decided I needed to cut them both out of my life. And to my parents’ great distress, I did. I stopped returning Faye’s calls, stopped seeing her, and gradually she stopped contacting me. It upset my parents greatly, because then she started to avoid them, too. When she died, they hadn’t seen her in six months.”
I could hear the shake in my voice, so I spoke quickly to get through it.
“One night, my phone rang. It was late, about two o’clock in the morning. It was Faye. I ignored it. Let it ring out. She couldn’t leave a message because I’d taken my voice message off so I wouldn’t be tempted by hearing her voice – or his, for that matter. It rang again a number of times. Each time it was Faye and I ignored it. Eventually I put it on silent, even put the handset in another room so I wouldn’t see it light up. And I went back to sleep.
“The next morning, Faye was dead. She was found by her flatmate returning after a weekend away. She’d been strangled. The evidence given by the pathologist was that there was cocaine found in Faye’s system when she died. Luke Kirby’s DNA and semen were found on her. He was charged with murder, convicted of manslaughter.”
I stared down at the floor, the black tiles blurring before my eyes. My throat hurt. “He presented what had happened as a sex session, an asphyxiation game – strangulation to enhance pleasure. He claimed that the sex was consensual, if ‘a little rough’ as he put it. As usual he sounded utterly plausible. They were both up for it and it went wrong, he said. Unfortunately your friend the pathologist was unable to say definitively that this could not have happened. So he was convicted of manslaughter.”
I looked up at Molloy for the first time since I’d started speaking. His expression gave nothing away.
“What do you think happened?” he asked quietly.
I took a deep breath. “As I said, Luke Kirby was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. I think Faye said no to him that night. And he took what he wanted anyway. I think she was changing her mind about him and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t used to having people say no to him and that made him turn violent.”
Molloy nodded silently.
“I also think she had started using cocaine.” I stopped. “Wait a minute – that’s not true. I knew she had. I recognized the signs. I ran into her one night in a club in town and she was in bad shape. I told her to be careful and she said she was fine, that she was happy. But I could tell she wasn’t. Then I saw she was with Luke, and I just walked away from her. I still wasn’t over him. How pathetic was that?”
I wanted to weep.
“That was about a week before she died. It was the last time I saw her.” I cried out: “My jealousy blinded me to the danger she was in! What happened to Faye is my fault!”
“How could it be your fault?” Molloy said gently.
I looked up at him. “I was the one who brought that bastard into my family’s life. I was the one who introduced him to my sister, and I was the one who ignored her calls on the night she died – because I was jealous.” I spat the words out. “What kind of sister does that?”
Molloy took a step towards me. I pushed him away.
“What was she ringing to say? That she was afraid, that she didn’t trust him anymore, that she needed my help, that he was hurting her?” My voice broke. “There were four missed calls on my phone that night – four. What the hell was wrong with me? How could I not have helped her?”
Finally the tears came, tears I had blocked for eight years. My vision blurred and I slid down along the cabinet and sank to the floor, my hands covering my face. I felt someone beside me, strong arms around me. Holding me as my body shook with grief.
The fire was still alive, if dormant. Molloy threw some extra logs on it and it crackled back to life. He poured each of us another glass of wine and handed me a glass of water to go with it. My head was pounding, my eyes dry and itchy. I clutched a white handkerchief, now considerably less pristine than when Molloy had given it to me in the kitchen.
“My parents know none of this. They don’t know anything about her drug use, or the fact that I deliberately ignored her calls that night.”
“It didn’t come out at the trial?”
I shook my head. “At the trial there was evidence that Faye had tried to ring me and that the phone had rung out. Both phones were produced in evidence. But I never admitted to ignoring the calls. Only said that my phone had been in a different room and I hadn’t heard it. My parents know that Faye had cocaine in her system, but they’re so bloody innocent about these things, they’ve convinced themselves that Luke spiked her drink or something. And I’ve never told them otherwise.”
“Was Faye taking cocaine before she met Luke, do you think?”
“I don’t think so. But Faye would try anything once. Luke was the same kind of adrenaline junkie she was. I think that’s what made me so jealous. I knew I couldn’t compete, I was so different from both of them.”
I concentrated hard on looking at the ceiling, trying to stop the tears from starting again.
“My parents were devastated. I couldn’t destroy their memory of Faye as well as everything else. But I got to the stage where I knew I couldn’t keep up the pretense. They wanted to talk about it all of the time. It was as if, after she was gone, they craved news about her, anything at all that they hadn’t heard before. They mined the memories of all of her friends, for any little snippets of new information. I was afraid I would tell them too much.”
Molloy leaned forward. “So you went to America.”
“Yes. I went to America. I took a secondment from the firm and I ran away. I convinced myself that I was doing my parents a favor, that my very presence was a reminder of what had happened.”
I sighed. “And then my old firm contacted me and offered me a big payoff. They didn’t want me coming back to Dublin. They wanted to wash the firm of any trace of Luke Kirby, and with me still working there, they couldn’t do that. So I took it.”
“And came here.”
“Yes. I saw an ad in the Law Society Gazette, offering a practice for sale. I looked at the map, saw how far away it was from Dublin, and realized it was perfect. I started using my middle name and my mother’s maiden name, so no one would connect me with the trial, which, of course, my old firm were perfectly happy to facilitate. And here I am. Smalltown solicitor.”
Molloy smiled. “I’m not going to complain about that particular turn of events.”
My eyes welled again.
“I’m glad you’ve told me,” he said.
“So am I.”
“You said you wanted my advice. Or was that just a reason to talk?”
“No. I did want your advice. Do. My parents want me to talk to the pathologist.” I stumbled. “Laura.”
Molloy’s expression didn’t change.
“They’re convinced they can persuade her that Faye wasn’t a drug user and that there could be some sort of retrial, which could result in a murder conviction. I’ve told them that that’s not a possibility, but I’m terrified that they’ll contact her themselves and that it’ll only open up a whole other can of worms for them. That she’ll tell them Faye was a regular user or something worse. It’ll only hurt them more. It didn’t come out in the trial, and I see no reason for them to know.” I hesitated. “Maybe I’m wrong about that.”
“Only you know your parents, Ben. You know what they can handle. But if it looks as if they’re going to contact Laura, I’ll talk to her first if you like, and let her know your concerns.”
I was grateful to him, though oddly uncomfortable about the obvious intimacy betrayed by what he said.
“Thanks.”
“I do have one other suggestion,” he said. “But you mightn’t like it.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe if you spent a little more time with them, it would ease things for them, and they might stop trying to look for answers that aren’t there.”