There was something about the way the young policewoman looked at the flowers then nodded to her tall colleague that told me I’d been right to call them. This was no simple coincidence, or someone trying to wind us up.
‘And when did these arrive?’ Constable King asked.
Julie, who’d pulled on some yoga pants and a loose sweater, and who’d thankfully pulled a comb through her hair, wrung her hands. ‘I phoned my husband. He thinks it arrived this morning. I was in bed. I didn’t even look at it until Rachel arrived.’
She lifted her glass and drank some more. The ice clinked and clattered as her hand shook. She was just as spooked as I was.
‘And, Rachel,’ the policewoman, turning to look at me, said, ‘what drew you to these flowers and the cards?’
‘I was up at Coney Road this morning. I’d seen an identical arrangement where Clare was found. The card with it was bizarre. The wording, I mean. I was sure I was just being overly dramatic, given what’s happened, but when I saw the flowers here, too …’
‘We are just being overcautious, aren’t we?’ Julie asked, her eyes wide.
She, and I, needed the police to tell us that yes, of course we were being completely overcautious and there was nothing to worry about.
‘That’s possible,’ Constable King replied unconvincingly. ‘But I think we should take these and the card for examination all the same. And perhaps you can get your husband to call us. Just to see if he can fill us in on any details about the delivery.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ Julie asked.
‘At the moment we’re looking at a number of lines of inquiry,’ Constable King said, which of course told us nothing that we didn’t already know. She turned to me. ‘Have you received anything like this?’
I shook my head. ‘No, nothing like that all.’
‘But you’ve been out all morning, you said,’ Julie interjected. ‘Maybe something’s been delivered and you just don’t know about it.’
She was right, of course, so I agreed to call home and ask Paul. I hoped he’d tell me no. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe while I waited for the phone to be answered. I wasn’t expecting Molly’s baby voice to pick up.
‘Mammy! When will you be home? I miss you a hundred and a million and can we go swimming or to the library?’
The sound of her voice didn’t soothe me as it normally did – everything about her was pure and innocent and I couldn’t help but feel it was all under threat.
‘Hi, baby,’ I said, trying my very best to keep my voice normal. ‘I’ll be home in a bit and sure, we can make some plans then. Is Daddy there?’
She didn’t answer. I could just hear the sound of her feet running across the wooden flooring in the hall down to the kitchen and her calling ‘Daadddeee, Mammy’s on the phone.’
‘Paul, this might sound a little strange,’ I said as soon as he picked up, ‘but have any flowers arrived for me this morning?’
‘As it happens, yes,’ he said and my heart sank.
I nodded at Constable King and saw Julie put her head in her hands from the corner of my eyes.
‘A bunch of blue flowers; they look like wild flowers. Is there something you want to tell me?’ he said with a false-sounding laugh. ‘Have you a bit on the side or a secret admirer?’
‘Are they tied with ribbon?’ I asked, ignoring his question.
‘No. Well, sort of. They’re tied with twine and then some black ribbon. I’d say whoever paid for these hasn’t the best taste in florists.’
I sat down, my legs shaky beneath me. I asked him if there was a card attached and if he could read it to me. I waited until he spoke.
‘Well, this is a nonsense,’ he said.
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s some stupid rhyme or something …’
‘What does it say, Paul?’
‘Everything is a source of fun. Nobody’s safe, we care for none.’
I lifted a pen from the coffee table and scribbled the words on the back of an envelope.
‘Rachel, what’s going on?’ Paul asked. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘It’s to do with Clare. I don’t know exactly what it means, but, look, I’ve to talk to the police. I’ll talk to you when I get home.’
When I hung up, I looked at the expectant faces of Julie, Constable King and her colleague.
‘There was a rhyme in mine, too, but it’s not green bottles. I don’t know what it is.’
I repeated the words Paul had read down the phone to me. Julie and Constable King looked at me blankly. Her colleague, Constable Black, a sturdily built man at least six feet in height, cleared his throat and spoke.
‘It’s The Mikado. The opera? Gilbert and Sullivan. You know, the one that goes “Three little maids from school are we”?’ He sang the words to the song in a falsetto voice that seemed at extreme odds with his appearance.
On any other occasion it would have made me laugh – the sight of this tall, well-built man in uniform singing about being a schoolgirl. But this didn’t make me laugh. Julie and I had received these flowers. Another bunch had been left where Clare died. And two of the messages made vague references to our schooldays – our group of three. I felt tears prick at my eyes. Heard Julie mutter: ‘Oh, God …’
‘I think we need to bring this to the immediate attention of the DI,’ Constable King said.
‘Is whoever did this coming for us?’ Julie asked, her eyes wide.
Constable King shook her head, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced.
‘It’s important that we all try to keep calm now,’ she said. ‘Things like this, they bring all sorts of weirdos out of the woodwork. There’s nothing to say it was the killer who left these – it could just be someone’s idea of a sick joke, someone with a grudge.’
She looked at me and I tried to think who, if anyone, might have a grudge against us. We weren’t the kind of people to make enemies. We lived our lives. We’d spent most of the last couple of years just trying to hold on against the trauma of Clare’s marriage breaking up, my mother dying … I shook my head. Julie just looked at me, as if she needed me to tell her it was all going to be okay. But I couldn’t. Could I? The knot in the pit of my stomach grew tighter, heavier. I thought I might be sick.
Constable King left the room to call her superior officer while Constable Black perched uncomfortably on the edge of an armchair.
Julie spoke first.
‘I need to call Brendan. Get him to take the kids to his mum’s. Should I go to his mum’s, too? Or what if that puts us all in danger?’
She was spiralling again. I didn’t blame her. I may have held onto the appearance of being calm on the outside, but inside my heart was thudding and I was asking myself the same questions she was. I told her I didn’t know, because I didn’t. Should I be on the phone to Paul just now to ask him to take the girls away from the house? The thought of someone harming them made me feel physically sick.
It wasn’t ideal, but maybe he could take them to his flat in Belfast. There were two bedrooms, so the girls could share. Beth wouldn’t be happy sharing her space with a three-year-old, but surely they’d be safe there? If I spoke to Beth’s school, I’m sure they’d understand. Maybe I could get her to attend classes in Belfast for a while. Just until this all blew over. Was I overreacting? I didn’t care if I was, because I didn’t want to take a chance – not with my girls. Not after reading those details in the paper.
‘Is it true?’ I asked Constable Black.
‘Is what true?’ he replied.
‘The reports in the papers today. In The Chronicle. The report about how Clare died. The horrific injuries. A “source close to the investigation” told that Ingrid Devlin woman all those horrible details.’
Constable Black shifted uncomfortably in his seat. A thin layer of sweat had formed at his hairline. I felt sorry for him in this heat – in full uniform, the only concession to the weather being a short-sleeved shirt.
‘I’m not in a position to comment on that,’ he said, his face blazing a little.
‘Maybe I’ll call her and ask,’ I said just as Constable King walked back into the room.
‘Call who and ask?’
‘Ingrid Devlin at The Chronicle. Ask her if it’s true about how Clare died. That she was almost decapitated.’
‘I wouldn’t advise that you speak to the press at the moment,’ Constable King said. ‘I’m sure you understand that the investigation team want to make sure that the release of information to the press is handled sensitively and in a way that benefits our work.’
‘Then you should tell your sources to keep their mouths shut,’ Julie said, wringing her hands. ‘I don’t know what to think, or what to do. And I don’t know why we’re receiving these notes. Or why they’re mentioning our schooldays. It’s more than twenty years ago, for God’s sake.’
‘And no one from then would be holding on to a grudge?’
I shook my head, noticed that Julie, too, was shaking hers. The very notion was absurd. Who carries a grudge around for more than twenty years? It made no sense, but regardless of that, our schooldays weren’t particularly noteworthy.
‘We weren’t anything special in school. We weren’t trendy enough to be in the popular cliques and we weren’t moody enough to hang out with the cool girls – the goths and the rockers,’ I said.
‘We just did our thing. Hung out together. Nothing to report at all,’ Julie added.
Constable King nodded. ‘Okay. Look, ladies, we’re going to get forensics to look at these flowers. I’ve spoken to DI Bradley and we’ll be putting an extra police presence in your areas. We’d like you to contact us immediately should anything out of the ordinary happen. Even if it seems inconsequential. I’ll give you both a direct line through to the incident room, which’ll guarantee you won’t have to wait to speak to someone. I know this must all seem a bit overwhelming just now, but we remain hopeful that we’ll catch whoever is responsible.’
I can’t say that either Julie or I felt comforted at all by her words.
Paul was on edge by the time I got home. He was standing in the kitchen chopping vegetables to make a stew, but the manner in which he wielded the knife was very much like those poor vegetables had personally offended him. The loud thud of the blade as it hit the wooden chopping board over and over made my head hurt.
‘You’ve had an eventful morning, then,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.
‘Paul, we need to talk,’ I said.
‘Talk away,’ he said, turning his back to me to start throwing some of the vegetables into the pot bubbling on the stove.
‘Paul, this is really serious. I need your attention,’ I said.
He turned and glared at me for a moment. ‘What is it now, Rachel? You know, I thought we were getting somewhere last night. Then you sneak out at first light this morning, gallivant around the place and wander back in here now with a face like thunder on you, demanding I stop what I’m doing because you need to talk to me now. Well, maybe it doesn’t suit me right now.’
He lifted the knife and started chopping a carrot. The repetitive thump of the blade made me jump. I closed my eyes, tried to squeeze away the headache that had been building over the last few hours.
‘This isn’t about whether it suits you or not. This is about our girls. About us.’
He stopped chopping and sighed. ‘One of those big, serious conversations, then. God, Rachel, do we have to start pulling everything apart again?’
He was right that any time we’d been in a room together recently we’d ended up having a serious conversation, which inevitably seemed to turn into a row, but this was different, which was just what I told him.
‘The police will be here shortly to pick up those flowers,’ I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
‘For forensic examination. Julie got a similar display and one was left at Coney Road. All had weird messages.’
‘And?’ He shrugged, lifted the knife and started cutting again.
I wanted to scream at him to stop. How could he not see how serious this was?
‘They can’t rule out a link between the flowers and Clare’s murder. They can’t rule out, yet, that her killer sent them – that he might have some grudge against us, too.’
He put the knife down, looked straight at me as if waiting for a punchline. ‘Are you actually serious?’ he said.
‘Of course I’m serious!’ I snapped. ‘I’d hardly joke about something like this, would I? The police are putting on extra patrols. They’ve given me a direct line to the incident room in case anything happens.’
He visibly blanched. ‘Why would anyone have anything against you three? Come on,’ he said with a hollow laugh.
He was trying to lighten the mood, detract from the fear he was feeling, but it just angered me more.
‘I don’t bloody know!’ I said. ‘I wish I did. No, I wish none of this was happening, but it is. And I’m scared. Julie’s barely holding it together. Ronan’s like a broken man – it’s devastating. We don’t know what to do.’
‘When did you see Ronan?’ he asked as if that was the most important part of what I’d just told him.
‘I drove up Coney Road and he was at the site of Clare’s death. That’s where I saw the flowers that had been left there.’
‘Did he ask you to meet him there?’
‘Of course not. He just happened to be there. He’d taken his parents up. But that’s not important, Paul. It’s important that we do what we have to, to make sure we’re all safe, the girls in particular.’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea why you’d want to put yourself through going up there, Rachel. It’s like you’re revelling in the horror of it.’
He lifted the knife and started chopping again. I wanted to snatch it from his hand.
‘We’re in the middle of the horror of it!’ I shouted. ‘We could be at risk, Paul. How many times do I have to say it before it sinks into your head? And I’m sorry if all this is taking over our lives at the moment – Clare was one of my best friends, I’ve known her longer than I’ve known you. She’s been a part of my life for thirty years. Do you think I should just get over that? Did you even see the paper today? The horrific details Ingrid Devlin printed in The Chronicle? That whoever did it cut her throat so deeply that they almost decapitated her? Do you think it’s okay to subject the girls to that kind of risk? And what about me? Are you happy knowing it could be your wife that’s next?’ I was shouting now to drown out the repetitive slam of the knife blade against the block.
I was shouting so loud that I hadn’t heard Beth come down the stairs and walk into the room. It was only when I heard her wail ‘Mu-um!’ that I looked around to see her pale face, her eyes open wide in shock. ‘That’s not true, is it? Mum?’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I heard from Paul behind me.
I turned to look at him, saw the sharp end of the knife pointing directly at me.
‘Just look what you’ve done now!’ he yelled.
I stared at him, the silence stretching between us. I didn’t know how to react or what to say. The phone rang. We both looked at each other for a moment before I turned and picked it up. It was Ronan.
‘Rachel,’ he said. ‘The police have been on to us asking about any unusual floral arrangements. They said some of Clare’s friends had received something strange. Have you?’
I turned my back to Paul and walked out of the room, cradling the phone to my ear. ‘Yes. Julie and I both have.’
‘Like the ones left at the roadside? The forget-me-nots?’
‘Yes, with a strange note.’
‘We received some, too,’ he said. ‘Some garbled eye-for-an-eye type message on it.’
I sat down on the sofa. How was it possible that this nightmare kept getting worse?