by Amy Cronin
She had read with interest online details of the cold-blooded murder and attempted murders committed by none other than Elise Taylor. The very same detective who had been so reassuring to her whenever she had reported David Gallagher’s attacks on Natalie. The same woman who had convinced him to let Kate’s nieces out of the car when he had driven them to the quays and threatened to drive into the water. She felt little consolation from the fact that she was proved right that there was an informant in the Lee Street Garda station. And she felt huge sympathy for Anna Clarke, the girl who had helped her so many times. Her old friend had been attacked and almost killed – she assumed she was the unnamed woman who had been seriously injured in Elise’s attack.
Every time she thought of Anna, she felt a large pang of guilt settle in her stomach. It was difficult to shake off. Her childhood friend had saved her life, taken her in and offered her a safe place to stay. And she had lied to her, betrayed her trust and left without explanation.
She told herself she’d had no other choice. She could not turn herself in. And Tom Gallagher’s gang was everywhere, surrounding the city. Time was pressing on and she was no closer to getting a passport and a way out of there. For her, it was an easy decision.
Once Anna had left the house that Monday over a week ago, Kate had made full use of her internet. Her searches confirmed what she already knew – she needed a passport to get into France. Briefly, she had felt despair. But she’d had to fight for so long, the last hurdle could not be the one where she faltered. Every avenue open to her was difficult, but nothing was impossible. She had survived worse than this.
She was proud of how her sister found the courage and stuck to the plan. Natalie had fled with her children, and then it was her turn to run.
When David came to the house, she had been packed, almost ready to leave. David had been like a man possessed; his face was a shade of grey she had never seen on anyone before, his eyes bulging and red-rimmed. She knew he could hardly believe Natalie had robbed and left him. It must have been a huge shock – that thought had made her smile many times. She had seen fear in David too. He had shouted about buyers trying to contact him – or perhaps he had said “Meiers” – he had slurred his words – and said he needed the memory key. He had spoken of nothing but the key.
She remembered her words that afternoon. David had stood opposite her in her living room, his fists balled up, his whole body shaking.
“My sister has left you, you piece of shit, and taken her children with her. You can rot in hell!”
David had bellowed in rage, a guttural sound borne of fear and anger and disbelief. He had launched himself at her and wrapped his hands around her throat. For a split second his eyes had terrified her. Then she remembered her own rage at this man who had put her sister through so much …
The autopsy report was right – David Gallagher had suffered a vicious assault before his death. But so had she – David’s knuckles would surely bear evidence of that. When he had pulled a gun and told her he had called John to come over, she knew it was his life or hers.
She had lied to Anna about the struggle for the gun with David Gallagher that day – it had been easy to disarm him. Whatever drugs he had taken that morning were probably wearing off, and their fight had exhausted him. She was a skilled kickboxer, and David was suffering for it. Pointing the gun at him, she had felt nothing. She had him where she had always wanted him, yet she felt empty. There were six feet between them, and little threat to her when she pulled the trigger. David’s lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear anything but Natalie’s voice.
“I fell down the stairs … yeah, I’m so clumsy!”
“Iburnt my hand on the stove.”
“Yes … OK… it was David. Please, Kate! Just leave it!”
“It’s my fault, I should have known he was tired.”
“Kate … help me! He has the girls!”
When she pulled the trigger, David Gallagher was midway through shouting a threat at her, spittle flying from his mouth and sweat coating his face. She heard none of it.
She would never regret what she had done. All she regretted of that afternoon was not taking her passport so she could get the next available flight out of the country before the Gardaí knew to look for her.
As her neighbour had banged on the front door, she had fled through the back door, assuming the noise at the front door was John, and was still running.
And as Elise Taylor pulled the trigger and shot Janet McCarthy dead, she was in the back of a taxi, en route to the city-centre bus station. From there she boarded an overnight bus to the town of Rosslare and had never looked back.
When she had arrived in Rosslare, she quickly realised she had missed the next available ferry to Cherbourg in France and had days to wait until the next crossing. She checked into a small hotel, feeling safer than she had in days. She was still careful – she assumed the Gardaí would be watching the ports, but she felt able to relax a little. The worst was over. She went out the next day, bought some new clothes, and had her hair properly styled.
Mostly, she ate and slept. It had been too long since she had fulfilled both of those basic human needs properly. She finally purchased a mobile phone, feeling less anxious in Rosslare than she had in Cork. Her first call was to Natalie. It was so good to hear her sister’s voice! And speaking with her only fuelled her desire further to make it to France. In the dead of night, when she woke suddenly amid nightmares of David Gallagher’s face, she thought of all the mistakes she had made. The suitcase and passport left behind, the near-suicidal attempt to buy a passport in the Mad Hatter. And the most fundamental mistake of all: they should have taken the money and fled the same day. It was reckless, all of it! She knew she was lucky to be alive, and not in Garda custody. There had been so many mistakes – she was determined to make sure every move from now on was bullet-proof.
On the final evening in Rosslare she found him. She was having dinner at the Sole Diner, a busy pitstop for truckers and drivers before they crossed the channel to France. She had been looking for a specific type of man, and here he was. He wasn’t too tall nor too heavily built. And he was wearing a gold band on the ring finger of his left hand. So, she assumed he was a family man. She sat down opposite him as soon as his food arrived and offered to buy him dessert. He declined, looking slightly mortified, his cheeks reddening.
Bingo.
The man wasn’t a deviant or a pervert and he wasn’t so big she couldn’t defend herself if things got difficult between them.
She explained what she needed. She slid one thousand euro across the table under a red chequered napkin. The man looked nervously around the diner, but no-one was bothering to look at them. Everyone was engrossed in their own meals, distracted by the toils of their own lives. She left his table shortly after and walked in the direction of the ferry port. She took care to walk as close as she could to the edge of the road; it wasn’t made for pedestrians, and the road was congested with traffic.
Shortly, his blue-and-white Arctic truck pulled up alongside her and she hopped into the passenger seat. Without a word, and without making eye contact, she climbed into the sleeper in the back. She pulled the blankets over her head and began to pray.
The ferry crossing took almost eighteen hours. While they were sailing, she tried to relax with the gentle sway of the ocean. She was cramped and uncomfortable. She slept a little and ate a little of some food she had brought in her bag. She saw no sign of the driver, and her heart pounded loudly in her ears every time she heard a noise nearby. When she had to, she moved from her hiding place to urinate into a small plastic bucket in the back. Once she added vomit to its contents. The eighteen hours felt like days. Sparks of hope kept her misery at bay.
Eventually the driver climbed back into the cab and wordlessly started the engine. She assumed he must be nervous – security checks were stringent these days; searches for migrants were commonplace. As the truck drove on, stopped at what she assumed was a securi
ty checkpoint, and on again, she waited with bated breath. Eventually it stopped completely, and she climbed gingerly into the passenger seat again. She nodded briefly to the driver, put another thousand euro on the seat, and left the truck. No words had passed between them since their encounter in the diner.
She smiled as her feet hit the concrete of the road. David Gallagher had done everything while he was alive to drive her and Natalie apart. Now two thousand euro of his stolen cash had brought them together again.
It was mid-afternoon when she had arrived at Cherbourg. A Google search on her new phone told her that her sister was almost six hours away by train. She needed another hotel. She was growing tired of being alone, but she knew the end was in sight.
She chose the most rundown hotel she could find – she had no form of identification and wanted to answer no questions. As soon as she shut the door of her room she called Natalie.
“I’m in France, in Cherbourg. I’ll catch a train to Chartres tomorrow.”
Natalie was unable to speak, sobbing into Kate’s ear instead. They had never gone this long without seeing each other, and now they were almost together again. When she ended the call, she couldn’t stop the tears that poured down her cheeks. All the pent-up fear and anxiety of the last few weeks came flooding out. She curled into a ball on the bed, hugging her knees, while her body shuddered with exhaustion and relief. She slept better that night than she had in months.
And now here she was in Chartres, waiting for her sister at the train station. Sitting on a wooden bench, she clutched the red bag to her chest. She consoled herself that the train was a little early, that Natalie could be delayed for a variety of reasons – perhaps the twins had needed the bathroom. The minutes ticked on and felt like hours.
Suddenly, there she was. Natalie. Her green eyes swam with tears as she ran up the platform to her sister. They embraced tightly, each reluctant to let go. Natalie’s long red hair whipped in the wind and she studied her sister’s face, held between her own hands. Never had either sister felt such happiness.
Natalie had left Rhea and Rachel with a hotel guest she had befriended, an elderly lady who appeared to dote on them. She greeted Kate warmly when they went to collect the twins. The woman made no remark as to how alike Natalie and Kate were, which was a first for the Crowley twins. Kate realised how different they looked now, with her hair cut short and died a darker colour. Or perhaps it was that the events of the last few weeks had aged her so much.
She was a little crushed that her nieces didn’t recognise her straight away. They were shy, hiding behind their mother’s leg. With gentle coaxing and lots of stories read to them on the small sofa in Natalie’s hotel apartment, they eventually came around. By the end of the day the twins were calling her ‘Aunty Kate’ again. Her heart soared.
Once the girls were asleep Natalie and Kate settled into their armchairs in the small living room. Natalie had opened a bottle of wine, and Kate filled her in on everything that had happened in Cork, and then Rosslare. She gasped as Kate recounted her run-ins with Gallagher’s men in the Mad Hatterand the Kingsman hotel. Natalie hated that she had suffered so much, but they both knew it could have been far worse.
Kate told her sister of her encounters with their old friend Anna Clarke.
“You owe Anna your life,” Natalie stated, and Kate nodded solemnly. “Do you think you’ll contact her again?”
“No, I don’t think so. I hate the way I left, and from what I read in the papers, she was almost killed over that memory key. I don’t think she’d want to hear from me!”
Natalie nodded, and stared into the distance. “So, is it over now?”
“Almost,” Kate replied. “We need to leave France. The Gardaí and the Gallaghers will continue searching for us. We’ll leave here as soon as we can.”
Setting her wineglass on the small coffee table, Kate moved into the kitchen and pulled the sharpest knife she could find from Natalie’s cutlery drawer.
“Where are they, Natalie?”
With an excited smile Natalie walked into the girls’ room. She emerged moments later with the two blue teddy bears they loved so much and passed them to Kate without a word. Kate carefully cut the four glistening eyes from the teddies and laid them on the coffee table.
She and Natalie sat and looked at the four diamonds for some time. They were perfect, in the twins’ opinion. They were oval in shape, almost all the same size, and glistening brilliantly in the light. Presently Kate took a photograph of each of them on her new mobile phone. She sent the image to her old college friend and waited. After a few minutes, the phone beeped, and Kate’s face broke into a smile.
“Hannah is on board. She will fly in from Antwerp later this week. She’s finalising a price.”
The twins clinked their wineglasses and sat back in their armchairs, relaxed and hopeful about the future. A future without David Gallagher, whose stolen goods just kept giving and giving.
Epilogue
The new year dawned as cold as the last had ended. Anna was on extended leave from work, at the insistence of the new Chief Superintendent Frank Doherty. She was recovering well and was keen to return to her desk. She missed Lauren and the others, missed her morning coffee in Victus, and the busyness of her days. For now, though, she was relishing her time away from the macabre case files that usually marred her day.
Anna continued to train with Jason and teach her Taekwon-Do Tykes. Some things she was not prepared to give up for longer than absolutely necessary. The martial art had saved her life, and she had never felt more fully alive than when she was practising and teaching.
After her trips to the gym, she spent her mornings listening to music on her father’s record player, cello pieces mostly, in her living room. She lit the stove early and sat with a book and a coffee, savouring that fact that she had little else to do. She knew this couldn’t last much longer. Her bruises were completely faded. In truth, she felt the familiar stirrings of restlessness push into her relaxation. She would go back to work soon.
The first Sunday of the new year found her at Alex’s house, immersed in the raucous squeals of five-year-old princesses, racing up and down the narrow hallway and into the living room again. Chloe had turned five and her only wish was to have a Frozen-themed party. Ten mini-princesses had turned Alex and Samantha’s home upside down. Anna had painted tiny fingernails and braided hair as best she could, ever the dutiful aunt. She sipped mugs of coffee with Samantha in the kitchen while the girls raced around, both women lamenting that it wasn’t glasses of wine in their hands. At five o’clock she stood up and kissed her brother and his wife goodbye.
“You absolutely cannot leave us!” Alex protested.
Anna confessed she had plans. She observed the slight intake of breath, the furrow of eyebrows, as her brother digested this. He was always worrying. It didn’t grate on her anymore – she understood it was his way, and she didn’t need to give him a hard time over wanting to protect her.
“Just coffee with Myles,” Anna reassured him, patting his shoulder.
Traffic was light into the city. It was Sunday, in the first week of January, and the temperature was almost freezing again. Anna felt weary of the weather – Lauren had asked her to go abroad for a week, to get some vitamin D and a suntan before her wedding. Every time Anna went outside and had to layer on her thick coat, scarf and hat, she edged closer to agreeing to go.
Myles had texted Anna and asked her to meet him in Victus, but it was closed. Anna wasn’t surprised. They opted for a city-centre hotel instead. Anna found parking on the street on the South Mall and walked quickly to the hotel, savouring the heat that blasted at her as soon as she stepped inside the lobby. She was early. And excited. She hadn’t seen Myles since he had visited Cork for Janet McCarthy’s funeral many weeks ago. Their relationship was conducted through technology lately, and Anna couldn’t wait to see Myles’ warm brown eyes and broad grin in person.
She sat alone at a table-for-two by the windo
w and looked out into the city lights. The Christmas lights were still shining, and Anna lost herself in memories of her childhood, of family Christmases when everything had been so much simpler. She had spent Christmas in Alex’s house, sleeping over in Chloe’s room, and had allowed herself to get lost in her niece’s magical joy. She had smiled for almost two days straight.
The waitress brought her coffee just as she observed a tall dark-skinned man walk with a slight limp past the window and into the hotel. He was dressed in a suit and thick coat, carrying a briefcase. She couldn’t be sure until he stood beside her and grinned his hello, but it was Myles. He looked so different. She had barely seen him in anything other than skinny jeans and sweaters. His formal clothes confused her. His hair was longer, swept back into a bun at the nape of his neck.
Anna couldn’t contain her surprise.
“Myles, you look so different!” she said, rising to return his hug. She noticed his right arm was still stiff, not able to rise as high as the other.
Myles laughed and sat down. “I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?”
They settled into easy conversation, each asking questions of the other: how have you been, how are your family? Myles had spent Christmas in the bosom of his large family, and Anna laughed as he told stories of his brothers’ antics over the festive holiday. At some point the waitress brought coffee to Myles and refilled Anna’s cup, but they were too lost in each other to notice much else.
Eventually there was a lull in the flow of their conversation, and Anna caught Myles’ brown eyes. “Are you going to explain the suit?”