I wait for her to give up more. And when I don’t prompt her, she pulls back, her lips give a little purse before she speaks. “Rona O’Sullivan.”
I swallow. “Rona O’Sullivan?”
“Yes. Jack Clancy’s daughter.”
* * *
—
THE PRESS WAIT like piranhas in a hot swamp. Their mouths open on mics, Dictaphones thrust forward. Donna Hegarty stands at the lectern, looking out at the room. Jack Clancy has been suspended. In a way it feels like a relief to know what he’s been hiding. His daughter’s name next to Hennessy’s. She’d been the girlfriend he mentioned. His Courtney. They’d met at an interschool football tournament. She’d played. He’d watched. They started up. Hanging out, then more. Paths leading up to that day, to when he said he was with her and couldn’t have murdered his parents. To when she’d said otherwise. And her dad, a respected detective at the time, Jack Clancy. Jack Clancy, who kept her name away from papers and reports with a court injunction. Kept Seán Hennessy’s alibi hidden.
Hegarty is pleased, I think. She has someone to pin the blame on if Seán’s conviction is overturned. She’s throwing Clancy to the wolves, so to speak. And with him, his daughter. How Clancy thought Hegarty wouldn’t find out eventually is beyond me. She could’ve found out at any time. But something tells me Donna Hegarty knew all along and it suited her at the time for it to remain beneath the carpet and now it suits her better to scoop it out and shovel it into the mouths of the media.
Hegarty sweet-talks the press into submission. Or she thinks she does. She presents our investigation as if we’re in control. But I’m not so naïve to think the press buy into any of it. Not that it matters. Seán Hennessy’s innocence is selling papers, filling news channels. The debate over our failure to see it was the father that wrought destruction on his own family speaks out from every station. And with that, a wagging finger at us for trying to link him to these new cases.
Hegarty steps down with a firm “no further questions.” She’s happy; she thinks it’s settled. Her position lulls her into the belief that she’ll get her own way but I know better. And when the evening news opens with the line: Gardaí desperate to take Seán Hennessy down in the midst of compensation claim, I feel a sad sort of vindication.
* * *
—
MAYBE IT’S CURIOSITY that has me sitting outside her house but it feels like guilt, a little weight of regret that I’ve been carrying around since I last spoke to Tanya, that Seán was punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and I have a desire to unpick the errors that were made.
It only took a quick call to Athlone Dental to give me a brief sense of Eva Moran’s schedule. She has the day off and I’ve followed her: from her cream cottage, down the wet pavements, across the rail bridge toward a sprawling outlet mall. She’s shopping. Dressed casually in jeans and a light blue hoodie. She walks with quick short steps, head down, her handbag tucked beneath her arm. She weaves in and out of pedestrians like a mouse stalked. I stroll behind her, keep my distance. A takeaway coffee ready at the mouth should she turn.
I wait outside a grocery store, check my phone, my back to the shop entrance. After a few moments she emerges with what looks like a bottle of wine in a paper bag twisted at the neck. She stops on the pavement, so close I can smell the peachy fragrance of her shampoo. She lifts her arm, pushes the bottle and a newspaper into her handbag. She looks around the other shops in the outlet, taking her time, as if she’s debating whether the crowds are too much, or whether she can be bothered sifting through rows of clothing on her day off. Then she turns, her head down, steps lightly round me, and walks quickly away.
Back at her house, I wait until she’s let herself in then find my car on the street. I get in, check myself. I tell myself, I’m not pulling away pieces of Cara Hennessy, only putting them together. In my mind’s eye, I see Geraldine Shine huddled on the floor of her bedroom, the door bolted against her husband. Bríd Hennessy waddling away, walking back to the darkest of houses. Conor Sheridan, alone in his room. Searching for a way to cut free of the past. I put my hand on the door, get out of the car. Cross the road. Walk up the short drive.
Cara Hennessy opens the door cautiously. She peers out round my body, as if searching for where I’ve come from. Her face is half-turned away, ready to retreat.
“Eva Moran?”
“Yes,” she says. Her lips don’t move when she speaks; the reply whistles between small teeth. “Can I help you?”
I smile. “I hope so.” I remove my ID, hold it out. “I’m Detective Frankie Sheehan. I have some questions for you.”
She looks at me then, full. Small, round blue eyes. “I have work to do.” Her hand tightens on the door latch.
I step closer, hold the door. “Please. It won’t take long.”
Her chest rises and falls beneath her hoodie. The small thumb-shaped declivity at the base of her throat deepens. Her tongue moistens dry lips.
She studies my ID then looks back up at my face. Nods, a whisper of a movement. A signal that I can come in. She steps aside and I move into a narrow hallway. She closes the door, throwing another slanting glance into the driveway before she lets down the latch.
“The kitchen is through here,” she says.
She leads me into a room on the right. A simple counter, two-ring stove. Dull, yellow Formica covering. She moves to the kettle, flicks it on. One mug. One teabag. In case I had any ideas of getting comfortable. Then she sits down at the table, places her hands in her lap, and clears her throat.
“What do you want?”
I take a breath, try to arrange my thoughts. Now that I’m here, I don’t know where to start. The burnished gleam of Cara Hennessy’s testimony and the answers that might be hidden beneath it have left me running blind. I shrug out of my coat and she watches the movement.
“Eva, I’m going to be straight with you. I’m not sure how to approach this, but I guess there’s no easy way. No right way.”
The kettle bubbles to a stop on the counter; white clouds of vapor settle over the cupboards. She gets up, slips out from beneath the table, quick and easy, without moving the chair. She pours the water. Adds milk. Scoops the teabag out with her fingers, throws it into the sink. Then she she’s back in the chair. Small hands curved round the mug.
I begin, “I know who you are. Who you used to be. Cara Hennessy.”
Her eyes settle on the smooth, hot surface of the tea. She blows on it.
“Your brother, Seán . . .” The briefest of movements, a twitch in the thin skin under her left eye at the mention of his name. “You may have seen something about the documentary? Around his conviction and the circumstances that led up to it.”
She brings the mug to her lips, takes a mouthful. Closes her eyes. Dark lashes on pale skin. She doesn’t look at me when she speaks but her voice is steady.
“By ‘circumstances,’ I suppose you mean the murder of my parents.” The round Mayo accent softens the edges but the pointed end of bitterness is sheathed in her voice.
“Yes.”
Eyes still down. “Is that why you came? To talk about a documentary?”
I shift in my seat. Rest my hands on the table. “Not only that. Because of the media interest, we’ve had to look at the case again. Do you recall your testimony?”
“I was ten.”
I wait. Hope that she’ll fill the space, fill it with the past. She lifts the mug of tea, takes another sip, puts it down, then she lifts her eyes to mine, looks right at me, blue eyes unblinking. Her mouth remains quiet.
“Seán insists he’s innocent,” I try.
“He’s not.”
I clear my throat. “Some of the footage suggests your father was a violent man.”
“Seán learned from the best.”
I nod and there’s another taut silence, Cara’s body held still, braced for the next question. “Do you reme
mber that day?” I ask quietly.
Something crosses her face, the past’s shadow running by, but when she speaks, her voice is clear and strong. “I try not to.”
She looks at the scar on my temple and I feel her gaze trace along it.
“I’ve scars too,” she says. She reaches up, draws down the neck of her hoodie. A thick scar, clean and straight, the white skin around it strangely hollow, pulled over a deep wound. A fine gold chain glints over her collarbone; an oval locket rests against her chest. She flicks her head in the direction of my temple. “Do you remember that day?”
I feel a familiar ache along my scar. “Yes,” I answer.
She lets the hoodie fall back over the old wound, tugs the neck up. “I can smell it.” She wrinkles her nose. “Still. All the time. The blood.” She brings the mug to her face again. “I told them Dad tried to take the knife, that Mam was already down. I said I hid under the thick bushes that surrounded the lawn. But Seán, he knew all my hiding places.” She swallows and I see the narrow column of her throat expand and contract. “I knew it was too late. But I didn’t want to leave her.” She gives a sneering kind of laugh. “I thought if I cried hard enough, she might come back, lift me away.” She gives a little shrug, throws her sadness aside.
“He came to you last?”
“Yes.” She remains with her statement that she witnessed everything. But I know it wasn’t possible. The evidence tells us that Cara was down before her dad turned on himself.
“Have you ever attempted to get in touch with Seán?”
Her hand tightens against the mug. “What do you think?” The words come out in a spit of anger.
“I think it would be understandable if you did.”
“Why?”
It’s my turn to shrug. “For answers. Or because he’s the only family left to you.”
“Something he made sure of.”
“In a different light, you might say he was driven to act the way he did. He was backed into a corner by your dad.”
And the reply comes smooth as a blade from her mouth. “He killed my mother. He tried to kill me. And, however much he deserved it, he killed my dad.” She stops. Places her hand on the table, her upturned fingers folded inwards. The tips twitch, a strange rhythm like a heartbeat. “His hand,” she says. “Dad’s hand. I feared it all my life. And then there it was, beaten, fallen down, the life playing its last through his fingers.” Her hand stills. After a moment she wraps it back around the mug. “Then he, Seán, came for me.”
“Your blood was found on your dad. But none of his was on you.”
She shrugs. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
I tilt my head. “It’s got to do with the fact that you must have been injured first.”
Those eyes. Again. Right on me. “I know what happened.”
The mind is a fragile being, a vulnerable mesh of soft cells. Malleable. The hard shell of the skull unable to shield it from memory or nightmare, loops both together in the brain’s primitive pool for survival making memory unreliable. I know this; I’ve experienced it. Fear or trauma leaving you unable to tell the difference between what’s good or helpful and what’s bad and dangerous.
“I’m on your side, Cara. I want to help you.”
“I don’t need help. Anymore.” She’s silent, then: “Seán has professed his innocence for years. A documentary won’t make any difference to the past. It doesn’t change anything for me. I want to make something clear: I want nothing to do with him.”
“Okay,” I say. “The charity working with your brother, Justice Meets Justice, has asked me to look at his profile. But it’s very one-sided as you can imagine. I’ve a few questions to try and even things out. Would you be happy with that?”
She gets up, deposits her mug in the sink, but she doesn’t return to the table, instead leans against the drainboard. “I guess. I don’t know what I can remember.”
“What about a dog? Lola? Do you remember her?”
A dimple at the corner of her mouth that could be the beginning of a smile or as easily a struggle against tears. “Yes.”
“What happened to her pups?”
Her mouth tightens like a bow. “Seán.” The name shoots out. “He killed them. My dad made him do it.”
I make a note. “And you agree your dad was violent?”
“He was a monster.”
“Did you know your mum was going to leave him?”
Guilt. A flash of fear. It’s there and gone in an instant. “She wouldn’t have done that.”
“She’d looked into a refuge. She’d found a place in the city, just ten days before she was murdered. She planned to leave with you both.”
There’s a softening in her eyes at the mention of her mother. She’d like to know more.
“I didn’t know that.” The pain in her voice reduces it to a brittle whisper.
“You were a child. You weren’t supposed to notice these things.”
I see the muscles along her neck work again. She reaches up, hooks a finger on the chain at her neck, spins the locket with her finger.
I wonder at what secret image is hidden inside the locket. I nod toward the chain. “That’s pretty.”
Her hand closes over the gold disk. “Thanks.”
“Is it of her? Your mum.”
Her eyes drop to the floor. Hand tightens.
“May I see?”
She lifts her head and for a moment I think she’ll say no but maybe it’s a relief to have someone to talk to about her old life. Maybe it’s to prove that Cara Hennessy was a ten-year-old girl who did exist because she unclasps the chain, opens the locket, then passes it to me.
Inside, a small picture. Bríd and Cara. Beneath the sycamore in their backyard. I can just make out the collar of Bríd’s green coat; the bright color pops against the dull background. Cara is wearing a tiny veil and I realize it’s a photo taken on the day of her First Communion. “That’s a nice photo,” I say, and she smiles.
I close the locket and hand it back to her. She clips it around her neck. Keeps her past close. Safe. “They took everything,” she says, referring to the officials who swept her life up and secreted her away in a foster home then to here. “They wouldn’t let me have photos even. But my aunt, my mum’s sister. She visited me in the hospital before they brought me away. She gave me the photo. Told me to hide it. I guess it was the best she could do for us,” she says with some bitterness.
“What was Seán like before? Before that day?”
She shrugs. “Normal. A brother.”
“He was never cruel to you? Show any signs of aggression toward you or indication he might be looking for some kind of vengeance?”
“No. He was good. He wasn’t like that until . . .” she trails off, not quite able to finish the sentence.
I put my notebook away. Tuck the pen into my pocket. I’ve got what I came for, a woman who is sticking to her testimony. Who wants to believe the lie her life is built around. And I don’t blame her. The truth, hard to hear, is often harder to live with.
I stand, push my hands through my coat. “I’m sorry if this has been an intrusion.”
She pushes away from the sink. “You don’t think he’s behind these new murders?”
I zip up my coat. “Murders?”
“I saw the press conference. The lady, the commissioner? She said there’d been three murders.”
I move toward the door, show her a smile. “We’re still investigating those murders. Don’t worry, your brother won’t know where you are unless you want him to.”
“What about if his conviction is overturned?”
I swallow. “I don’t know. It’s not an easy process to achieve that; it could take years if it happens at all.”
Her eyes fall to the ground but she nods. I hand her my card. “You can call me any
time. Even if it’s just to talk.”
She pushes the card back. “I don’t want to be rude but I’ve no interest in any of this. I’d prefer it if you didn’t come back here.”
I nod, put the card back in my pocket. “I understand.”
I move toward the hall but stop at the front door. “One thing,” I say. “Wasn’t one of Seán’s arrests for arson? A teacher who had mocked him at school?”
Her shoulders turn in, arms cross. Folding herself away. “Yes,” she says with some effort.
“That’s quite vengeful, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she says. Quiet. Quiet, like snowflakes on water. “I’d forgotten about that.” But I can see she hadn’t.
* * *
—
IT’S LATE. I’m tired and Clancy is already halfway through his pint when I find him in the back of the pub. I glance around, barely a sinner about, only the usual old blokes holding up the bar. Enda, the barman, is standing with his back to the room, remote in hand, flicking between Gaelic football and horse races on the small portable TV behind the bar. I slip free of my coat. Throw my bag down. On the way here, I’d it all worked out. How I would ask him about his daughter, Rona, her relationship with Seán. I thought I’d start from the side, like I’d do in a suspect interview, but Clancy knows the dance too well and won’t give unless he wants to.
I sit and he reaches forward, pushes a glass of wine toward me. “’Tis not often you summon me to the pub, Frankie. Although I notice I’m still the one putting me hand in my pocket.”
Spit it out, he means. So I do. I twist the sleeve of my sweater between my fingers, wind it tight then let go, take up the glass of wine. “Thanks.”
I take a breath. “I need to know about Rona.”
He remains back in the chair, his hands clasped at his mouth; his lips purse and pucker behind his knuckles.
“Jack?”
He lifts his face out of his hands. “I don’t need to talk about Rona. I’m off the clock now, thanks to Hegarty.”
“Jack, please, we’re fighting for our lives here, trying to deal with these new murders while keeping the past at bay. It’s not only you who’s feeling the brunt here. The Bureau could close if it looks like we’re less than clean.” He swallows. His eyes take on a haunted look. And it makes me scared. Jack Clancy is not one for showing fear. I feel my mouth dry; my teeth clip together. “Talk to me.”
The Killer in Me Page 20