She was sitting at her desk when I found her earlier, her pen poised over documents on her desk, her head bowed studiously as she analysed them. Kelly, much to his frustration, had waited in the car while two uniformed Gardaí met me at her building, so that I would have backup should the need arise. As soon as I got confirmation that the search warrant had been granted I had made my way inside. Her secretary had shown me into her office and Sarah had greeted me as though my being in her office with two uniformed Gardaí was no surprise. And when I told her I was there to bring her in for questioning, and that there was a search warrant issued for her premises, that didn’t faze her either. She turned off her computer, closed over her the file she was working on and pressed the intercom to her secretary outside. After she had instructed her to go home for the day, making sure anyone else in the building did too, she asked me to explain what the questioning would be about. When I told her that we had reason to believe that she was involved in the murder of Jennifer Buckley, she didn’t even react and in the four hours that we’ve been back at the station, she has barely said a word.
‘Sarah,’ I say again, but her eyes are closed, the small freckles across her nose magnified on her pale face and her once perfectly-groomed hair falling in stray strands over the side of her face. Every so often she lifts her hand to tuck them behind her ears. ‘If you’re not going to talk to me then I think I’ll talk to you, tell you what I’m thinking.’ I pause a moment and she opens her eyes to glare at me before she looks away again.
‘I think that a story is about to be written about Jennifer Buckley’s death and you are not going to like it.’ She shifts uneasily and clears her throat. ‘I think that once upon a time…’ I deliberately lower my voice making her strain to hear what I have to say. ‘There were two friends, the closest friends that could be.’
‘Detective Kennedy, where are you going with this?’ she says impatiently and I smile, encouraged that she has decided to speak.
‘I’m just trying to piece together all the facts and put them in order so that the correct story is told.’ I open the file in front of her, already it is a few pages thick. ‘So far, with the search of your house,’ I turn the pages inside the file, ‘and the search of your office premises,’ her eyes watch my hands as I flick through the pages, ‘I have the makings of a very interesting story. A story about two best friends.’
‘You have nothing, Detective, because there is nothing to be had.’
‘Nothing?’ I repeat and open back another page. ‘I have enough evidence here to put you away for the death of Jennifer Buckley.’
‘It’s speculation,’ she says. ‘If you had enough evidence, you’d have charged me by now.’
‘Maybe,’ I pause and dip inside an evidence box that I’ve placed beside me on the floor. ‘But while I speculate on evidence that my forensics team are working on as we speak, I’m giving you the chance to tell the story your way, the way you want it to be told.’
‘There is no story, this is ludicrous.’
‘Well then, just hear me out. While we’re waiting for the evidence to come in, I’ll tell you what I think happened based on evidence I already have and you can correct me, how about that?’ She doesn’t answer and sits back in the chair and crosses both her arms and her legs.
‘What if I told you I can place you at 26 Oakley Drive within ten minutes of Jenny Buckley’s death?’
‘I’d say your story’s over before it has even begun because that’s ludicrous. It’s a known fact that Liam Buckley was the last to see her alive.’
‘What if I said that up until this afternoon before I got my hands on certain pieces of evidence, I would have thought the same thing?’ Her mouth twitches and the lines in her forehead deepen as she waits for me to continue. But I don’t, I fall silent instead.
‘I’d say, “So what?”’ She says.
I turn over another page in the file, this time a print of the photograph that I want her to see. ‘What if I told you that we are very interested in a particular package that we know for a fact was delivered to your house on the evening of Friday June 2nd 2018.’
‘A package?’ she sniffs. ‘You’d really want to be a little sharper than that.’ I unclip the photograph and twist it slowly on the table so that it’s facing her. I watch her as her eyes widen before she looks up at me.
‘That sharp enough for you.’ I squint my eyes and watch as she draws a deep breath. The photograph is the close-up of the label that was on Josh’s phone. ‘This is the label from the package that we are interested in.’
‘And?’
‘And this is your signature?’ I show her a copy of the delivery manifest that we secured just a couple of hours ago.
‘It has your house address, Jennifer’s name, your signature on the delivery and your house is currently been combed through by forensics looking to establish what the contents might have been.’
‘That’s just crazy.’ Her eyes flicker from the photo to me.
‘It might very well be. There is every possibility that the package did in fact contain perfume like it says there.’ I point at the label that’s been magnified. ‘And there’s every chance that it contained sodium pentobarbital, the substance that killed Jenny Buckley… who knows, it’s amazing how detailed forensics can be. Even odours leave a trace on certain surfaces, especially if they were prepared near wood.’
‘So what? I had perfume delivered to my house. Jesus, it must be a crime to bypass House of Fraser and buy cheap perfume online.’
‘No, perfumes, even the cheap ones, are fine. It’s the ordering of sodium pentobarbital from the black market that’s the crime. Especially if it’s with the intent of ending someone’s life.’
‘This is just rubbish,’ she spits. ‘I don’t ever remember having that package delivered to my house.
‘You don’t?’ I point to the courier’s details. ‘We also have a team tracing through the courier’s records and checking how the delivery was paid for. You never know, when our financial team cross-reference all the details of your online purchases with the courier’s, maybe there’ll be a match. You know anything about that?’
‘No,’ she says, her voice withering by the second. ‘This is utter rubbish.’
‘Oh and we do know for a fact that you did receive this delivery.’ I unclip the next photo. ‘As you can see, it’s there sitting proudly on your hall table.’ I show her the photo, only this time it’s zoomed out and with Josh’s note clearly visible for her to see.
‘How on earth did you get this photo?’ her voice is louder now, more agitated than before.
‘Do you not recognise the name, the handwriting of your friend, Jennifer Buckley’s son?’ She doesn’t answer, but at this point I don’t expect her to. Then I pull out another photo so that I can compare. ‘This a picture of your hall table today, same angle, even the same vase.’ I smile sarcastically at her. ‘So all in all,’ I close the file and look at her, ‘I’d say we are in pretty good shape. Wouldn’t you?’ She drops her head into her hands.
‘So you see, I know have the makings of a very good story, I just have to wait for a few more pieces of the puzzle to come in and then I’ll piece it all together. But from where I’m standing, it’s looking pretty good.’ I push my chair back, stand up and scoop the file under my arm. ‘You see, the thing is, Sarah, why you did this, why you killed your best friend is immaterial to me, the story for me is just a sideshow, a distraction to the facts. It’s facts I’m interested in and I have everything I need. It’s you that needs the story.’
‘What do you mean, I need the story?’
‘You need a story to go with this, a reason behind why you did everything that you did. The media, as soon as you’re charged, will rip you apart… and the jury?’ I sniff loudly to exaggerate how lethal juries can be. ‘The jury will eat you alive if you don’t tell them why, if you don’t explain what drove you to do this, to kill your best friend.’
‘I didn’t kill Jenny, I didn’t kill my best friend.’
‘Well, that’s what the media are going to say, straightaway… it will be all over the news in the morning, hell, if we charge you it might even be on the nine o’clock news tonight. So if there is something else you want said, now’s your chance.’ I place my hand on the handle and glance back at her. ‘And wait until they get wind of you having an affair with your best friend’s son, they’ll crucify you, Sarah, even you know that.’
‘I didn’t have an affair.’ Her voice is louder now. ‘And anyway he was seventeen, perfectly legal.’
‘That very well may be, but you know as well as I do, the public are not going to see it that way. A forty-five-year-old career woman and a boy, seventeen years of age, the vulnerable son of a dying woman. I can see the headlines already.’
‘I didn’t kill Jenny.’ Her voice is softer now. She sticks her tongue out slightly and licks her lips. ‘I did for Jenny what any best friend would.’
‘What was that Sarah?’ I ask holding my breath my voice stretched.
‘I helped Jenny end her life, it was the only thing I could do for her. She was miserable, she was afraid that she’d wake up one day and that she would have passed the point of no return and she said to me that she wished…’ she swallowed and closed her eyes. Thick salty tears squeezed out and slid down her face. ‘She said that she wished that one day she would just wake up dead, just die in her sleep so that she didn’t have to live with the fear anymore.’ She dropped her head into her hands. ‘And I hated seeing her suffering every day.’
‘So you decided to do it for her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you injected the sodium pentobarbital into Jenny that night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jenny didn’t know that that was your plan?’
‘No.’
‘And did Jenny know about the sodium pentobarbital, that you’d ordered it?’
‘Yes, she had asked me to order it and keep it in a safe place for her and that she would ask for it when she needed it.’
‘I see.’ Her tears are in full flow and I hand her a tissue. ‘And why then, why when Liam had just moved back in to be with the kids?’
‘I just,’ she exhaled. ‘I just hated the idea that he was getting to move back in with Jenny and take up where he had left off. I wanted him to suffer, know what it was like to live a restricted life like Jenny had to. He didn’t deserve to just take back up where he had left off. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted the finger to be pointed at him.’
‘So he gets locked up for Jenny’s death and you’d then take over where Jenny left off?’
‘Sort of, yes.’
‘Okay.’ When I first brought Sarah in, I noticed the emptiness in her eyes, they weren’t evil or even malicious, just full of ill-intentioned ideals and my hunch about Jenny’s death being more out of mercy than anything else, had been proven.
‘Sarah Barry, I’m charging you with the murder of Jennifer Buckley on the 3rd of June 2018. You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and used at a later date in court against you. Is there anything else you’d like to say?’
She shook her head and dried her face. ‘Just that I’m sorry.’