Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  ‘A penny for them,’ Sadie said, and flung herself on to the seat beside me.

  ‘Only a penny? You’re going to have to do better than that. I’m in a rather precarious financial position or hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘I just heard about your car from Eamonn in the Public Office. You’re in getting a form stamped following an arson attack? I knew there was a car burnt. Didn’t realise it was yours. Foolishly, I’d assumed you might tell me if something like that happened.’

  ‘Sorry, Sadie – it was late. And I’m telling you now, sure. Anyway, the fire chief said there’s some guy going around the place torching cars so maybe my poor old Golf was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  ‘Though I’d bet anything it was Gill’s bodyguard. We know he was following me, though I thought he had stopped. Still, it wouldn’t have been any bother to Pawel to fit in a spot of light arson as Gill’s parting gift to me.’

  ‘Pawel has to be a suspect,’ Sadie said. ‘If it isn’t some randomer.’

  ‘Or the arsonist the fire chief was talking about.’

  ‘Of all the cars to pick, though?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘But, hey, Sadie, is there any news from Dublin? I didn’t think much of DI Pat Lenihan, by the way. Didn’t like him at all.’

  ‘Huh. You should be his number one fan. There’s a strict news blackout on it, but Lenihan brought in Jeremy Gill and the mammy this morning.’

  ‘Arrested them?’

  ‘Not quite. The two of them presented themselves voluntarily with their solicitors in tow – Lenihan told Gill it was either that or flashing lights at home in Clontarf at 7 a.m. When they got to the station, they were detained under Section 4 and they’re still being held. For the moment. But the word is, there hasn’t been much progress. He’s admitting now that he had you followed, but he’s saying that it was for his own protection. He says that his security guard Pawel will make a statement that Gill told him to follow you after the incident at the workshop. Gill is saying that he didn’t say that sooner because he was embarrassed to admit that he was frightened of you. He says he’s had experience of stalkers in the past …’

  ‘Oh come on!’

  ‘That’s what Gill is saying. That that’s why he reacted so quickly. I’ll tell Lenihan about your car, though. Having a potential criminal charge against Pawel might oil the wheels a little, get him to spill the beans.’

  ‘What’s Gill saying about Rhona?’

  ‘That he had a friendly relationship with her in the past, but no contact for years. She lost interest in acting as far as he knew, he thought it was a shame but the idea that he in any way interfered with her is a figment of your imagination. He’s made no specific comment on the Dalton allegations, except blanket denial. But the fact is, Finn, none of what Dalton said is admissible. And the experts have examined the CCTV again. They say it’s good, definitely not tampered with. Gill lives on a terrace, one way in and out. The CCTV shows for sure that he didn’t exit his house by the front. He didn’t take one of his cars out for an early morning spin. And the mother is absolutely adamant that he was with her all the time while Rhona was being killed. I know it feels like he did it, it feels like that to me too. And he is certainly guilty of something, but it looks like the one thing he’s not guilty of is Rhona’s murder. You’re going to have to accept it: Gill’s alibi is watertight. You must let this go. You’ve done enough, Finn. It’s known now, the kind of man he is, he’s not going to be able to get away with what he did before. But it’s time for you to stop.’

  ‘Gill’s guilty,’ I said. ‘And I’m not letting it go.’

  ‘Christ, Finn, you’re an almighty pain in the arse, do you know that? Look, promise me you’ll sleep on it, promise me, please.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry for being a pain.’

  ‘No hassle. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. Rest is the best thing for you.’

  I nodded my assent. But rest was the last thing on my agenda for the evening.

  34

  I sat in front of my computer, welded to my chair. I planned to stay there until I found something, anything, that might chip away at Gill’s alibi. I was starting from the premise that Gill had murdered Rhona Macbride. In other words, that what Gill was saying was a lie. And that what his mother was saying was a lie. Two lies. And big lies are often made up of a collection of little lies, of all different kinds of lies. Lies of commission and lies of omission. Things said and things unsaid. And the most successful lies of all were the ones that blended seamlessly with the truth. To isolate and identify what was false, I needed to test the truth of every element of the Gills’ story. The same as if I was cross-examining them in the witness box, I would have to go through what they were saying and take down the wall they had constructed, brick by brick.

  What did I know already? His house. Everyone in the country knew that, when in Dublin, he lived with his mother Esther in a Georgian house in Clontarf. I googled ‘Jeremy Gill Georgian house Clontarf’ and found an article from a three-year-old property supplement describing painstaking restoration of the house at Clontarf Crescent using best conservation practice, his membership of the Irish Georgian Society, how he was a proud northsider born in the Rotunda and would never move to the southside. Same old, same old.

  But what did I know about the mother? Not so much. I checked Gill’s Wikipedia entry and followed links to press articles on Esther Gill. Esther had grown up dirt poor in the flats off Dorset Street, near the Convent of the Blessed Eucharist. She had had Jeremy when she was eighteen, and in everything I had read before, and in what I was reading now, there had never been a mention of Gill’s father. Esther was a single parent, never married. Based on my calculations she was sixty-six or sixty-seven now, and Jeremy was forty-eight. She lived in the Clontarf house, but that was as far as entries on Esther Gill went: a life of total devotion to Jeremy, serving her only child in every possible way. I went into Google Images and studied photograph after photograph of Esther Gill. No lavender-scented silver-haired little old lady, she was wiry and glamorous in a hard, cheap, fake tan, fake nails kind of way. Esther looked tough. And she had the same eyes as her son. Was she capable of lying to protect him? My gut said yes.

  Next, I checked the Property Registration Authority website on the house where Gill lived. Did he own it or was it held in his mother’s name? Nothing turned on it, probably, but my search confirmed Gill’s ownership. I kept the PRA window open and went into the Ordnance Survey to compare the PRA and OSI images. The sites looked identical, but it was easier to read the Ordnance Survey maps. I wanted to check the back gardens. If he didn’t go out the front, he must have gone out the back.

  Sadie was right. There was no rear exit. The OSI map showed that to get access to the road, Gill would have had to cross through the next-door neighbour’s garden. Though, as the house next door to his was at the end of the terrace and had a boundary that abutted the public road, in theory, Gill could have scaled his fence, crossed through the next-door garden and climbed their side boundary to reach the road. Google Street View didn’t help much as to whether it was a wall or fence. Whichever it was, having Gill climb two obstacles to reach the road seemed too risky.

  Unless Gill knew for sure that the house next door was unoccupied? I clicked back into the PRA window. Gill’s neighbour’s house was owned by a company called ProProperty Limited. Some kind of property development company? Strange. All the houses on Clontarf Crescent were listed buildings so there wouldn’t be much scope for redevelopment. Unless it was an executive lettings agency? I ran a Companies Registration Office search but the CRO link was down. Yet something about the name seemed familiar. I’d come back to it.

  I decided to accept for now that Gill had got out somehow on to the public road without being seen. If he had, he’d have needed transport to take him to Rhona’s house. So I started thinking about Gill’s cars. And that there had been no mention
of Esther’s car. Maybe she used his? But her son’s success had come relatively late in her life. Ten, twelve years ago, she would have been in her mid-fifties. That was late for a woman born and brought up in dire poverty to get used to driving a Range Rover or an SLK. I brought up pictures of the cars from Google Images. I am a confident driver but I would be terrified of scratching them. No. I reckoned Esther had a runabout, something manageable, if she drove at all. If Gill had got out the back, unobserved, and if Esther had her own car, parked on the road, he could have borrowed hers. For now, I had no way of checking if Esther even had a car. But DI Lenihan could. I’d talk to him in the morning. And if Esther didn’t have a car, maybe Gill had hired or borrowed one?

  I liked that theory less. It complicated things, and that didn’t ring true. He had kept it simple. I had said it to Lenihan, and I was even surer now. I needed to strip away everything extraneous. The truth was bare and unadorned. It had to be.

  It was heading on for 9 p.m. and I needed to pee. Just one last thing? The CRO window was still open. I might as well complete the search on ProProperty Limited, if the CRO link was back. It was.

  As I read the results, I sat back in my chair and smiled.

  Upstairs, confident for the first time in days, I flicked on the kettle. I remembered that I needed to call Marie Wade but my phone rang before I could. It was a blocked number.

  ‘Finn, sorry for calling so late, but there’s been a development in your case.’

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  ‘Jesus, sorry, did I not say? It’s Garda Ruth Joyce. About your car?’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘I can meet you tomorrow if you want.’

  ‘Well, actually I could see you now, if it was convenient,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’m on nights at the moment and I came in early to view the CCTV footage and I think I’ve found something.’

  If it shows Pawel Zdziarski burning my car, that’s the beginning of the end for Gill.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the Bridewell.’

  ‘Em, I’m actually on Barrack Street. I downloaded the footage to my laptop so as I could come to see you, but you’ll have to tell me exactly where your house is.’

  I buzzed her in and met her at the inside door on the ground floor.

  ‘We can go to my study, which is a mess, or the living room, which is two floors up. Your choice,’ I said.

  ‘This is an amazing house,’ Ruth Joyce said. ‘I’d love to see the living room.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  I ran ahead of her, flicking on the lights as I went. I like rambling around in the dark but I didn’t want Garda Joyce to have an accident.

  ‘Wow,’ she said on reaching the top of the stairs. She blushed.

  ‘Em, well, em, as you know, I’m here about the CCTV.’

  She removed a laptop from the messenger bag she had hanging from her right shoulder and put it on the table. She sat in front of it, tapped a few keys, and asked me to sit beside her. When I was in place, she clicked play.

  The suspect walked down Gilabbey Street past the Abbey Tavern in the direction of Fort Street and out of coverage. Six minutes later he walked back, moving faster but not running, going out of view again as he headed in the direction of College Road. The timing dovetailed with the burning of my car. And the figure was male and bulky. It looked like Pawel Zdziarski, but because he kept his hood up and head down, it was hard to tell.

  I played and replayed the video and tried to tune out Ruth’s running commentary in my left ear. There was one section where it was almost possible to see the suspect’s face but only for a microsecond. Every time I went back over it I missed it. I slid the laptop across to Ruth and asked her to try. She went back and forth repeatedly, grimacing, until she got a freeze-frame on the face. Then she passed the laptop back to me.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know him? Do you?’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Who is he? What’s his name?’

  ‘He’s on your system. He has previous. He works in his dad’s garage on the Kinsale Road. His name is … it’s Joey O’Connor.’

  35

  I woke with a start.

  Remembering.

  Last time I saw her.

  Her coming to collect me for a visit. Mam letting her in.

  ‘Come in, Nora, good to see you.’

  Me in the dining room, hearing her voice.

  Her rushing in, standing, looking.

  ‘Hello you,’ her saying. ‘Bigger every time I see you. Come here for a hug.’

  Me. Nine years old. Staying back, standing, far side of the table from her, the door to the garden open behind me, sunny day. Me watching. Her. Summer dress on. Pink with black lace. Bracelets jangling. Pink lipstick. Hair high, all fresh blonde, dark roots hidden, flowery scarf around her head. Pretty today. Like Barbie. Like Madonna.

  Won’t last.

  ‘No hug?’ she says. ‘Plenty of time for hugs in our new home, that’s where we’re going, our own house, two bedrooms, a little garden, we can plant sunflowers, look?’

  Her taking a packet of seeds out of her bag, pushing them at me, teeth smiling.

  Her putting the seeds back in the bag, the purple bag, always full of her stuff.

  Books.

  Ciggies.

  Vodka.

  Me saying nothing.

  ‘That’s okay,’ she says. ‘We can decide later.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I say.

  ‘Now, Finn,’ Mam says. ‘We talked about this.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I say again.

  ‘I didn’t say it right,’ she says. ‘We’re only visiting today. Just for a look. We’ll go as slowly as you want. The judge says I’m nearly ready to get you back, and I know I am, but I want you to be ready too, so we’ll be really gradual, won’t we, Doreen?’

  ‘We will,’ Mam says.

  ‘She’s my real mother,’ I say, pointing at Mam. ‘Not you.’

  ‘Finn,’ Mam says. ‘Be kind. Please.’

  I’m not kind, though, I’m bad.

  ‘I hate you,’ I say to her. ‘I never want to see you again.’

  Her face.

  Her tears.

  So sad.

  So what.

  Her head down, running away, door slamming, Mam after her, loud words out front.

  Then quiet.

  Me in the garden.

  Mam coming out to me.

  ‘Oh, Finn,’ Mam’s saying. ‘Poor Nora is very upset.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t want to see her any more,’ I say.

  And I never did.

  The mistake I made.

  And.

  Not straight away. A few weeks, a month, later.

  Her dead.

  She tried so hard, then stopped trying.

  Because of me.

  My mistake.

  The biggest mistake I ever made.

  Didn’t know the full story till later.

  But always knew the truth, deep down.

  That it was my fault.

  All my fault.

  And now Rhona.

  Two deaths.

  My fault.

  My fault.

  My fault.

  I got out of bed and opened the blind. The moon filled the room with a cold hard light. I scrunched myself into the window seat, knees drawn up to my chin, my body twisted, my hands pulling at my hair, my forearms in front of my face, my breath coming in wet gasps.

  Then sleep.

  Awake again, with a sore neck, I unpicked myself from the frozen knot I had become. I went to the other side of the room, and checked the time on the ancient luminous travel clock I keep on my locker. 5.40 a.m. Monday. No work to go to.

  And the investigative work I had been doing? A disaster. How could I have messed up so badly? When I met Joey O’Connor, I saw what he was like, the spurned boyfriend, the obvious candidate for what had happened to Deirdre. Al
most everything he had said had identified him as the man responsible for the vicious attack on Deirdre, everything had fitted, but I had ignored him and gone chasing after Jeremy Gill. Who had an alibi for the time of Rhona’s death. Maybe I had been wrong about that, too. Maybe it was a random mugging, like the Gardaí thought. Random or not, it was my fault. Normally so security conscious, Rhona must have been distracted by what we’d talked about. She had told me how upset she had been as a result of my visit. And she had sent me an email only ten or fifteen minutes before she was killed.

  Or was it possible that Joey had something to do with Rhona’s death? My head said no, that it was too far-fetched, but then so was the idea of him burning my car. He was capable of extreme violence. Was he capable of murder? But there was no evidence that he knew Rhona. Even if he did, what would his motive have been? I discounted the idea.

  Yet what had become abundantly clear was that I was looking at two unconnected crimes: Joey had to be the one responsible for Deirdre’s rape and Gill, though he had raped Rhona, hadn’t killed her.

  I checked my clock again. 6 a.m. My head was exploding. And there was something I needed to do but I couldn’t remember what.

  Jesus.

  The bins.

  I stepped barefoot into my Birkenstocks, pulled a hoodie on over my pyjamas, ran down the stairs and opened the front door. I grabbed an umbrella, left it on the floor between the door and the jamb so that I wouldn’t be locked out, and ran out the door to the yard. First, I opened the yard door wide and hooked it back on the stone wall, then went to the bins. Recycling or rubbish this week? I couldn’t remember. But the recycling bin felt heavy, it had to be that one. I pulled up my hood and started down the lane towards Barrack Street, dragging the bin after me.

  When I got out as far as the street, I realised I’d picked the wrong bin.