Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  I clicked on the scanned photo and expanded the PDF as high as it would go. But the resolution was poor and it was hard to see anything. I’d need professional help with it. Though if I expanded the original …? I rifled my desk drawers. There was a magnifying glass somewhere that I could use to examine the photographs more closely, to see if the name tag I’d found earlier was the same as the one Deirdre was wearing at the workshop.

  I found the magnifying glass in a drawer that also contained two ancient Nokia mobiles, which I should have taken to recycling, along with the old Hoover and broken toaster that clogged up the bottom of the wardrobe in the spare room.

  With the benefit of the magnifying glass, I saw that the name tag in the photo and the one I’d found in Deirdre’s room looked the same. They were, I was sure of it. I’d have to get the hard copy photo enlarged properly and the name tag analysed by an expert, if I was going to be able to use it as evidence. It had to be significant that Deirdre had saved and hidden it all these years since the time she’d met Jeremy Gill. I would need to talk to the others in the photos. Maybe they had seen or heard something.

  But, as I was squinting at the photos with the magnifying glass, I saw that they showed even more than I’d realised. I had been too stuck on the workshop connection to notice at first, but the students in the photos were wearing more than name tags on their school jumpers. It was hard to see but most of them had badges and in the four shot, with the magnifying glass, I saw that they were the same as the cartoon-style broken computer badge. Whatever that badge was, it was nothing to do with a band Deirdre had liked, and must have something to do with Gill because he was wearing one too. But what was it? I had been around the Film Festival in 1998 as a volunteer. Was it something he gave out at his workshop? Something to do with his job? A logo? Or free advertising for something? I drummed my fingers on the desk. What did the broken computer symbol mean? Back in the nineties, most references to computers had been positive: people raved about the information superhighway, and it was long before cyber-bullying or online privacy had become issues of concern. I turned it over and over to see if there was a ‘made in’ or ‘made for’ mark on it – any clue to where the badge might have come from. There wasn’t.

  Yet the more I looked at it, the more I felt that I recognised it. It would come back to me, I hoped. Though not if I kept staring at it. I put the badge and the other exhibits into my desk drawer, locked it and put the key on my key ring. This was never going to be a criminal trial. I was never going to have to prove a chain of evidence for a jury, but I didn’t know where the case might go ultimately. In the meantime, I’d have to keep the items exactly as I’d found them and free from interference. When an exhibit is used in a trial, you have to be able to show who handled it. A locked desk drawer would have to serve as my evidence room for now.

  Quickly I ran through the documents again and sent them to my work email. I couldn’t open a work file on my home computer so I’d get Tina to sort that on Monday in the office. I binned the pizza box in the wheelie bin outside the door, locked up for the night and went upstairs, checking my phone as I went. There was a message from Davy.

  ‘You out or at home?’

  I flicked on Radio 1, made a pot of camomile tea, and switched off the lamp. It was a little after eleven and Country Time was just starting. I sat and gazed over the lights of the city. I heard George Jones sing ‘He Stopped Lovin’ her Today’ and lost myself for a while. But, after a time, my mind drifted back to the case. I had forgotten to check the name of the education officer in the programme – I’d do that tomorrow. And I needed to contact Jessica Murphy in the morning. See her then too, if I could, because I had other plans for Sunday afternoon, plans that involved Davy Keenan, though he didn’t know it yet.

  I picked up my phone and texted Davy back: ‘Home. Doing nothing. You?’

  He must have had his phone in his hand because within seconds he’d texted back ‘Nada’.

  I wasn’t surprised. Careful of his sobriety, Davy avoided Saturday nights in town. I wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if I asked him to come over. There, in the dark, I could admit that I was attracted to him, and not only because he was gorgeous-looking and funny and smart. I had enough insight to know that Davy, an ex-addict, was perilous territory, an emotional minefield. I knew about repetition compulsion, how we are programmed to seek out the familiar. Davy was a push–pull for me: something in him spoke to something in me, something I had to keep under control.

  ‘Want do something tomorrow afternoon?’ I typed.

  ‘Could be persuaded maybe, what is it?’ Davy replied.

  ‘Muskerry Castle? Afternoon tea? My treat. Dress up – what you think?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Davy replied.

  ‘Fab. Will phone for reserv, will text you time. PS you’re driving,’ I wrote.

  ‘Guessed I would be,’ Davy replied.

  ‘Hmmm. See you tomorrow. Night night.’

  ‘You will. Sleep tight,’ Davy replied.

  I left my phone on the side table and went to my bedroom, on the middle floor of the tower house, and undressed for bed. I was regretting my trip to La Tana. Delicious at the time, the pizza lay like a boulder in my stomach.

  I fell asleep quickly but was awake again after ten minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness for the second night in a row. As I lay in the darkness, I went over and over what had happened that day, what I knew, and what I didn’t, puzzling still over the broken computer symbol. At around 4 a.m., I remembered, or thought I did, where I’d seen it before.

  I got out of bed, went downstairs to the study and searched YouTube again for the Gill short film. I was right. The opening titles and credits were in a comic, cartoonish script. And the name of the film showed through when an animated desktop computer broke in jagged half revealing the words Another Bad Day at the Office. The badge was publicity material for Gill’s short film. That’s why the kids in the photos were wearing them. Gill must have distributed them at the workshop. And that’s why Deirdre had kept it. It was another connection. I wrote it up and, as I was awake anyway, checked the identity of the 1998 education officer – he had to be the other adult male in the photos. The name in the catalogue was Daniel O’Brien. I didn’t know him, so he had to be long gone from the festival.

  I put the computer in sleep mode. In the hall, I glanced at the full-length rectangular window to the side of the front door. My reflection made it look like a dark figure was skulking in the tiny garden outside.

  I went to the top floor. I pulled the Foxford blanket from the back of the sofa and walked to the armchair. I sat in the dark, facing due north, as I had earlier. No music played, and the room felt the wrong side of chilly, but I was too cold to get up and turn the heating back on. I curled my legs beneath me and arranged the blanket so that it covered me from the neck down.

  First memory? Awake in the middle of the night, like now, but noisy, people sounds from the next room.

  Laughing. Shouting. Doors slamming. A party?

  Her voice.

  Her.

  My mother.

  Me, a baby.

  No. Bigger than that.

  Not in a cot, in a bed, chairs lined up along the side. To keep me there.

  Not so big.

  Must keep eyes closed.

  Must be asleep.

  I heard my breath, mouth breath, shallow, and quick.

  ‘May I be safe,’ I whispered, the opening words of the Loving Kindness meditation.

  ‘May I be safe,’ I said again and again until my breath slowed and deepened. Then I remembered the rest of the mantra.

  ‘May I be safe, may I be healthy, may I be happy, may I live with ease,’ I said, repeating the words as I got up from the chair and got my yoga mat from the nook at the top of the stairs. I unfurled it slowly, and sat on the mat, cross-legged, eyes closed, breathing, nadi shodhana. As my strength returned, I moved through the quietening asanas, ending with savasana, corpse p
ose.

  Then I went back downstairs and slept till morning.

  9

  Clarity came with the dawn. Whatever progress I’d made, I was a long way from proving anything. And the Film Festival was starting this evening. As I gulped back my Morning Growler, I began to scribble my priorities on a sheet of paper. Top of the list was to talk to Jessica Murphy today, if possible. I needed to find out what she knew about what had happened to Deirdre – and if she knew anything about Jeremy Gill. Though I wouldn’t lead with him. I didn’t want to put words in her mouth. I had to keep open the possibility that Gill wasn’t the one, had to look for evidence of his innocence as well as his guilt. But I’d bring along my iPad with the photographs of the workshop on it and the pictures of the items that I had found in Deirdre’s room and see what Jessica had to say. She’d recognise Jeremy Gill, anybody would, so that was a way in for me. Ringing someone before ten on a Sunday morning was a no-no, even a mother of young kids who was most likely up since before seven. I had to wait. And waiting has never agreed with me.

  I moved to the next item on my list: Muskerry Castle, but here I was a lot vaguer about my aims. I had been there twice, once for the wedding of a college friend, and again for the Law Society annual conference in 2010, but I had never stayed over, or seen it during its normal working day as a hotel. Afternoon tea was a good excuse, and bringing Davy along was good cover. Nobody goes for afternoon tea on their own, and the hotel was too far from town, and too exclusive, to permit cheapskate solo coffee-drinkers.

  What I hoped to find out, I didn’t know, other than to check the coasters they used and compare them with the one I’d found in Deirdre’s room. If they had changed them at some stage, maybe I’d be able to date the one I’d found, though I hadn’t much hope of it. But Gill liked the hotel and he’d been there before, so it was worth a look.

  I checked my phone. It was 9.15 and I had a text from Ann, saying that she had phoned Jessica and told her to expect to hear from me. Next, I rang Muskerry Castle and made a reservation for afternoon tea at 3.30 p.m. I texted Davy to let him know the time. No reply. He was probably out running or doing something equally torturous.

  My phone pinged. It was a message from Sadie O’Riordan asking if I wanted to go to a film. Any other Sunday, I would have. We often met up to go to the cinema while her husband Jack Lehane went to a match (hurling in summer, rugby in winter, the Premiership on telly, if he was stuck). Sadie was a detective in the Garda Síochána, based at Detective HQ in Coughlan’s Quay. She had been in my law class at UCC. Our closeness was situationally inevitable: she and I sat in the back row at every lecture. By the end of week one, we were friends for life.

  After college, Sadie had opted for Garda training in Templemore instead of going into legal practice. It was a decision I hadn’t understood at the time. I had always seen the law from a defence rather than a prosecution standpoint. But, based on my behaviour over the last few days, I was beginning to understand that we were more alike than I’d realised. I would have liked to have shown the evidence I had to her to see what she thought. As I was bound by client confidentiality, I couldn’t do that unless the clients permitted the disclosure. Though why wouldn’t they? I’d check it with them. I texted Sadie to say I couldn’t meet today but that I’d call her during the week to arrange something else.

  Along with the messages from Sadie and Ann, I had a voicemail from my mam, Doreen, wondering how I was, as she hadn’t heard from me for days and didn’t know was I alive or dead, let alone if I was coming around for the dinner and should she put on spuds for me or not and would I please phone soon or my father was going to have to drive over and see what was wrong. I groaned as I listened. Then I rang her.

  ‘Finn! At last. Thank God. We were worried,’ Mam said.

  ‘Sure wasn’t I only talking to you Friday afternoon? Anyway, how are things?’

  My mother went into an animated recital of local news, weather, sick relatives, dead neighbours, funerals attended and upcoming medical appointments, ending with ‘So we’ll see you later on?’

  ‘Not for dinner, Mam, but I might be able to call in – or during the week. I’ve been busy, sorry, working all weekend as it happens so …’

  ‘I knew that’s why we didn’t hear from you. Your father wants to talk to you.’

  I heard muffled voices as my mother summoned Jim, my dad, to the phone. He’s not a phone person and would have been a lot happier saying whatever he had to say when he saw me next. But if Doreen wanted him to talk to me now, he would. Otherwise he had no hope of a quiet read of the Sunday papers.

  ‘Ah, Finn, how are you at all?’

  ‘I’m grand. How are you, Dad?’

  ‘Grand altogether. Listen, don’t be working too hard now, sure you won’t?’

  I laughed.

  ‘No, Dad, don’t worry, I won’t,’ I said.

  ‘Grand altogether. Sure we’ll see you soon so, will we?’

  ‘Yes, Dad. Listen, I have to go, I’ll talk to you. Say goodbye to Mam for me.’

  It was 10 a.m. I rang Jessica Murphy. She told me that she’d sent the kids out with their dad, and that it would suit her best if I called over right away.

  Jessica’s house was a twenty-five minute walk from my house. On the way, I went back over the phone conversation with my parents. Overprotective was putting it mildly when it came to how Mam was with me. Though she never said it, I knew that she watched for signs of the damage done to me in my early years, the harm that she and Dad had done their best to repair.

  After I had found out about my birth mother’s suicide, I abandoned whatever interest I had had in my roots. I had never even seen my original birth certificate. I knew as much as I needed to know. My legal parents were Doreen and Jim Fitzpatrick. My legal name was Finola Fitzpatrick. My previous identity no longer existed unless I allowed it to. I locked all of it away.

  But, no matter how hard I tried, at times the pictures and sounds and feelings of that other life took control. It wasn’t something I could predict, though usually I tried to avoid – and at the same time was drawn to – anything that might trigger me. Things like this case. Whatever I did, occasionally it was like a switch flicked inside me. I had learnt how to handle myself, had a whole toolbox I used to put myself back together: music, meditation, yoga. Often I was tired of the effort.

  Before yesterday, what had I known about my past? There had been a lot of alcohol, I knew that. And depression. I knew that too. Assumed it, given my birth mother’s suicide. And there had been chaos and neglect and terror. I felt that, a shadow barely glimpsed at the edge of me, a darkness, unknowable, at the core of me. I had faint memories, like scenes from an old TV show. The rest was burnt into my brain like melted plastic, the true shape of what happened long gone. I had read up on the theory, and putting a label on it helped a little. I had been exposed to relational trauma, certainly. And ‘Big T’ trauma, probably. Though there had been love, too, some warmth, some care. And now I’d found out that there had been a secret sister. What effect would this new information about my background have on me? Were there other secrets? And, if there were, did I want to know?

  Jessica lived near the church in Ballyphehane, one of the necklace of churches built around Cork during the 1950s, at the height of the Catholic Church’s institutional power. At the time, some of the women in the surrounding area had donated their engagement rings to fund the enormous and, these days, mostly empty church. But the hierarchy’s influence on Ireland had declined over the intervening decades, precipitously so after the revelations of recent times: the Mother and Baby homes, the priests and Christian Brothers convicted of serious sexual offences, and how Church institutions had colluded in serial cover-ups. I wondered what those women would think of their sacrifice now.

  By 10.35, I was knocking on the door of an ex-City Council end of terrace, an ordinary home that was becoming more extraordinary with every passing year. Most of the houses in the area had been built when the State w
as young and poor and had had many faults but had, at least, cared enough to house those of its citizens who hadn’t been forced to emigrate. But for a long time now, government policy had decreed that large schemes like this one were a source of social problems, and publicly funded house-building had more or less ceased. The resulting homelessness crisis, a spectacularly serious social problem in itself, hadn’t yet led to an effective change in policy.

  I rang the doorbell, and stood down off the front step again. I saw that the house had been renovated and extended. The work looked less than ten years old and, with a ramp and handrail, there was a granny flat with a separate entrance built on to the side.

  ‘Coming,’ a voice said from above.

  Feet clip-clopped down uncarpeted steps and a scrawny woman, with fine dyed blonde hair pulled into a thin ponytail, opened the door. She looked a lot older than thirty or thirty-one, which was all she could have been if she was in Deirdre’s class. Her pale skin had a matt dullness to it, and a deep cleft had developed between her over-plucked brows.

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I was upstairs doing a few bits while I’ve peace.’

  I introduced myself, and handed her my business card.

  ‘You’re Jessica?’

  ‘God yeah, sorry, that’s me, I should’ve said.’

  She smiled, and put her hand to her forehead.

  ‘Come in out of the cold, for God’s sake.’

  She showed me into the front room, which had been turned into a play area. The floor was almost entirely covered with a jigsaw-style rubber play mat, littered with plastic toys and picture books in varying states of repair. The Very Hungry Caterpillar had survived best, but I feared for The Gruffalo: the front cover had come loose and was holding on by a hangnail. I thanked Jessica for seeing me at such short notice, and sat on the sofa.