Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  ‘Fuck,’ I said aloud, and turned back down the lane, the blue bin even heavier than on the way out, it seemed. I shoved it back into place and dragged out the other two bins, the brown and the green ones, and wheeled them in front of me, the lane just wide enough for both if I staggered them, kept one arm long. At the end of the lane, I parked the two bins and walked across the road, opened the brown compost bin opposite. It stank like there was a dead body inside, but it was full, so they hadn’t been around with the lorry yet. Retching, I headed home. I unhooked the gate, closed it quietly, went into the house, kicked the umbrella out of the way, and let the door shut behind me.

  In my en-suite bathroom, I washed my hands, had a quick pee, then washed my hands again and went back out to the bedroom, and checked the clock. It was 6.15. I picked up a pair of tracksuit bottoms and socks off the floor, put them on, and went upstairs to the living room, flicking on the heating as I went but keeping the lights off, relying on the street yellow of the city, not wanting to admit that morning had come, hoping that yoga and a cup of camomile tea might warm and relax me enough to win me a couple of hours’ rest. Upstairs, I walked to the kitchen island and started to fill the kettle.

  ‘Are you making me a cup of tea? Ah that’s lovely,’ a voice said, a male voice, a voice I recognised, coming from the direction of the armchair. I hadn’t looked when I came into the room, I hadn’t thought, couldn’t have imagined, and I was dizzy now, my mouth dry, a buzzing in my ears, black spots in my vision, my stomach churning. I stayed very still.

  ‘Lovely place you’ve got here,’ Jeremy Gill said. ‘But you should be more careful, Finn. There are a lot of bad people in the world, you know, and leaving your front door wide open is never a good idea, is it?’

  The kettle had overflowed. I tipped out the excess water and put it back in its place. It clicked on automatically. I was still standing with my back to Gill. I looked to the right, in the direction of the knife block. It was empty. And my phone was on the coffee table at the far side of the room.

  Jesus Jesus Jesus.

  ‘Now, now, not looking for a knife, Finn, are you? Come on. Knowing how you feel about me, I’m hardly going to leave lethal weapons lying around in easy reach, am I?’

  ‘Get out of my house,’ I said.

  ‘Get out of my house,’ I said again.

  ‘No need to shout, Finn,’ Gill said. ‘I’ll go. But not yet. I want us to have a little chat first. But I can’t talk to you when you’ve got your back to me. So would you like to turn around? Or would you like me to do the turning for you?’

  In the silence that followed, I heard one slow footstep, and then a second, coming towards me. Then he stopped.

  ‘Are you going to look at me, Finn?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but softly.

  ‘I can’t hear you, Finn, I should probably get closer to you.’

  I heard him take another slow step.

  ‘So, are you going to turn around, Finn?’ Gill asked, almost conversationally.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, louder this time, and I turned to face Gill, keeping contact with the worktop with my left hand, swivelling slowly on one foot and pressing my right hand back on the worktop as soon as I had completed the turn.

  ‘That’s good, Finn.’

  He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands in the pockets of a short zipped black jacket, hood up, that he wore with black jeans and black boots. Behind him on the coffee table, scattered around my mobile phone like a bad student sculpture, the knives from the knife block glinted. How many were there? I couldn’t remember, and I was afraid to check the block again. Did he have one of the knives in his pocket? Or a screwdriver? He was going to use something, it didn’t matter what, and I was going to die, of that I was certain.

  ‘Now we can have our little talk.’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I thought you were in custody.’

  ‘Oh I was,’ Gill said. ‘But they let me go. Had to. No evidence, you see. No evidence because I’m innocent. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. To ask you personally what is your fucking problem, you fucking cunt?’

  I tried to press myself further back into the worktop but there was nowhere to go. Behind me, the kettle was coming to the boil as if nothing was wrong, as if my world hadn’t started to implode. I held on to the counter with both hands but it felt like the edge of a cliff.

  ‘Oh dear, Finn, you don’t like that word? Funny, it’s one of my favourites. And it’s never been more fucking appropriate, let me tell you.’

  Gill took a step closer. Two more steps and he would be able to touch me. Three more and I would feel his breath on me. Four more steps and I would die.

  ‘They kept me longer in the station than my mother, wouldn’t even let me drop her home, get her settled. I had to get my solicitor to employ an agency nurse to stay with her. She’s a tough bird, but she is old now, an OAP, and you put her through that. I wanted you to hear it. You put my mother in a cell like she was some kind of junkie whore. All because of your deluded obsession with me. But I’ve told them about you, they know, the guards know what you are, you mad stalker bitch. And it’s only the beginning. I’m having a meeting with my lawyers later today, and we are going to rain down vengeance upon you, Finn. Your days practising law are over. And this house? It will please me no end to take it from you. Maybe I’ll keep it as a pied-à-terre.’

  He paused.

  ‘Hang on, wait a minute, sorry – did you think I was here to kill you? Or rape you? Did you think that? Finn, when will you learn that I don’t do those terrible things.’

  He smiled.

  ‘What I have in mind for you is going to be a lot worse. Slow and painful. In the end, you’ll pray for death, you’ll fucking beg for it.’

  He took a step closer.

  ‘On the other hand. It would be so much kinder to put you out of your misery now.’

  He leant forward. His long hair brushed against my face. He pressed his mouth against my left ear.

  ‘You’re the same,’ he whispered. ‘Ye’re all the fuckin’ same when ye’re stripped.’

  I felt his gloved hand on my neck. Then his fingers tightened around my throat and I heard his breath, faster than before. I was paralysed.

  Until I remembered Rhona’s story. Reaching behind me, I grabbed the handle of the kettle and swept it forward between me and Gill. I felt the heat of it through my clothes. He would feel it too.

  ‘Take your filthy paw off me, you fucker, or you’ll be peeling burnt skin off your dick for the next six months. I’ll burn too.’

  He loosened his grip. Straightening, he looked down at me.

  ‘Oh, please. You’re too much. It’s like a game of Cluedo. Miss Fitzpatrick in the kitchen with the kettle. Do you really think I’d let you hurt me?’

  His hand tightened again briefly. Then he let go, stepped back and walked slowly towards the stairs. He stood at the top for a moment and looked at me.

  ‘This was surprisingly good fun,’ Gill said. ‘Goodbye, Finn. See you soon.’

  He took his phone out of his pocket, and he must have made a call as he went down the stairs, because I could hear his voice talking softly to someone, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The front door slammed and I sank to the floor.

  36

  Once my terror had subsided, I was utterly confused. Had Gill driven to Cork to frighten me? The idea that he had would have made a lot more sense if I hadn’t known about my car: I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that Joey was responsible for that and possibly – no, probably – for what had happened to Deirdre. As for Gill, there was no doubt that he was a rapist – Rhona had confirmed that – but he had insisted that he was innocent of killing her. Was that why he had come? He had an alibi. The guards believed him. I was starting to think that I had been wrong all along.

  But what if I had been right? What if Gill was guilty? The fact that he had come down all the way to se
e me might mean that he was losing control, and if he was losing control, he might start to make mistakes. Was that what his visit was? The start of an unravelling?

  And what next? Should I make a formal complaint? Report this morning’s incident to Lenihan? But what had I to report? I looked in the mirror. Gill had been clever, he had left no bruises or marks on my neck. He had walked into my house through an open door, had told me he wasn’t going to rape and kill me, but that he was consulting his lawyers and planning to sue me. I had never been as scared of anything or anyone in my life, but none of it would translate into a charge that would stick. My credibility was hanging by a thread. I didn’t want to risk compromising it further.

  I wrote up what had happened, and went back over my notes from the previous night. The facts were there in black and white: Gill was still a suspect in the murder of Rhona Macbride, he had to be, and I had valuable new information I needed to pass on to the investigation team. I rang Lenihan. He was his usual polite self when he answered.

  ‘I’m in the middle of my fucking breakfast. What do you want?’

  ‘It’s Gill,’ I said.

  ‘Of course it’s fucking Gill,’ Lenihan said. ‘It’s never anyone else with you.’

  ‘What I mean is, last night I found out that he owns the house next door to where he lives. Or, more precisely, his trust company, ProGill Trust, owns ProProperty Limited which, in turn, owns the house next door. He got out through that house, the garden of it, and I think Esther has a car, and that he used it to drive over to Rhona’s place and kill her.’

  Lenihan wasn’t saying a word.

  ‘Gill’s no longer in custody,’ I said.

  ‘That’s an operational matter. As a civilian you are not entitled to know that information. But, yeah, we let him go. That info about the other possible exit is interesting, though. We’ll take a look at it when we get a chance.’

  ‘Are you watching Gill’s house? Make sure you watch it front and rear.’

  ‘That’s another operational matter,’ Lenihan said.

  Which meant that they weren’t. But after hearing about the second exit, they would be watching from now on. And if they could catch Gill going in the back way after his visit to Cork …

  ‘Don’t forget about the car, Esther’s car.’

  ‘We thought of the car ourselves. We’re not as thick as you seem to think. Nice idea, Finn, but Esther Gill has no car registered in her name. We checked Gill’s insurance too. She’s not registered as a named driver on his insurance either. And there’s no third car in his name, he only owns the two you already know about.’

  ‘Fuck no,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ Lenihan said. ‘Welcome to the real world. So, thanks for your input anyway, like, and we’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Gill didn’t go home after he left Garda custody, did he?’

  ‘That is the last question of yours that I am answering, Fitzpatrick. He went for a consultation at his solicitor’s office. He’s still there, last I heard. Good. Bye.’

  It was the opening I needed to get in the information about Gill’s morning visit.

  ‘He’s not at his solicitor’s office,’ I said. ‘He’s––’

  Lenihan had hung up. I tried calling back but he didn’t take my call.

  I threw my phone on the sofa and reviewed the conversation. Ultimately what it amounted to was that Esther had no car registered in her name. I thought it through again and again and came up with an alternative possibility. I reckoned that whatever income Gill was paying his mother had to be through one of his companies. By calling her an employee, his Dublin PA, say, he’d get a tax write-off. And the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that his mother’s car, if she had one, was owned and registered the same way. I emailed my thoughts and a list of Gill’s companies and directorships to Lenihan, saying I had more important information on Gill’s movements and that I needed to talk to him. Then I texted him and tried phoning him again. I gave up after the fourth go.

  I went to my bedroom, took off what I was wearing, and the sheets on my bed, and the towels from the en suite, and threw everything down the stairs. I went to the storage and laundry room on the ground floor and dumped the towels and linen in the washing machine. There was no knowing what he had touched. My skin crawled from the memory of him. I smelled my underarm. I stank. I ran the shower in my en-suite as hot as I could bear, scrubbed myself nearly raw and shampooed twice. Then I dried off and threw on leggings and a giant black sweatshirt. I had just started to comb through my hair when I heard the doorbell ringing.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me,’ Sadie O’Riordan said.

  I buzzed her in the gate and, combing my hair, ran down to open the house door.

  Sadie’s face was white.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’ve had a complaint about you,’ Sadie said. ‘From Jeremy fucking Gill.’

  ‘What? Oh my God.’

  ‘Oh my God goes nowhere near how I felt when I heard it.’

  She stomped upstairs, followed by me. Then, leaning against the table, she took out her notebook, flicked through it, and started talking, intoning, like she was giving evidence at a trial.

  ‘Complainant states that he was upset after being released from custody, that he decided to try to talk things through with you, that he left his solicitor’s office via the basement car park, where a hired vehicle had been left for him.’

  She looked up from the notebook.

  ‘We’d been watching the front door, didn’t see him exit,’ she said, in her normal voice, then looked down at the notebook again.

  ‘Complainant states that he had planned to go home, but on impulse he came down to Cork to see if he could talk some sense into you.’

  ‘Sadie, how is this complaint even being tolerated, let alone investigated? Isn’t he intimidating a witness by coming anywhere near me?’

  ‘He hasn’t been charged with anything, remember? And the fucker is saying it was the natural thing to do in the circumstances, given how you’ve been stalking him, and making up stuff about him. Poor lamb blames you for all the shit he’s had to put up with in the last week or so, but he’s a reasonable guy, he says, jaw jaw better than war war and all that, so he rings your doorbell, and you very kindly invite him in and all is going great until you threaten to castrate him with knives from your knife block which he says you had scattered all over a coffee table.’

  Sadie paused.

  ‘That would be those knives, on that table, I imagine.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I said. ‘He was the one …’

  Sadie continued.

  ‘And then, this is my favourite bit actually, Complainant states that you produced a kettle of boiling water and told him he’d be peeling burnt skin off his prick …’

  ‘Dick,’ I said. ‘That’s the word I used. That part is true, but the rest is lies. Well, he was here, okay, but I didn’t let him in, the door was open while I was putting out the bins, and he was waiting here when I came back in. And I never threatened to castrate him, just the boiling water. He was the one who … I told him to leave and he wouldn’t and …’

  ‘All right,’ Sadie said. ‘He let himself in. And you didn’t think to ring me, or any Garda station, to report this? You allowed Gill to be the one to do it?’

  ‘I didn’t think. I was going to tell you, and Lenihan, but it seemed kind of lame, and I let it sit for a while, only an hour or so, probably a bit more, while I thought about it. Anyway, I wasn’t able to … not immediately. I was in shock. But I was on the phone to Lenihan earlier, I was trying to tell him, and the arsehole hung up on me, and wouldn’t take my call when I tried to get him back. I’ve tried ringing him four times.’

  ‘He was probably taking a call from us in Coughlan’s Quay, telling him that Gill was in making a complaint about you. Jes-us, Finn, I know you say you were shocked but I can’t understand why you didn�
��t call 999 while he was here, or straight after he left. Why you didn’t call me, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I couldn’t get to my phone while he was here. He was blocking my way. And, after, I … I felt like a fool, the woman who cried wolf, after Gill had been interviewed for the second time and released, despite everything.’

  ‘I know you must have been terrified but most people would’ve called the cops straight away, in all fairness. Christ. The main thing is that you’re okay, I suppose, and you’ll have to make a full statement, but you needn’t do it today. The DPP will decide ultimately if there’s a case to answer. It’ll all depend on what happens next, if Gill follows through with the complaint, or withdraws it. It’ll be a swearing match between the two of ye, your word against his. He may just want to torture you for a while. We’ll see. Go on, make me a cup of coffee for God’s sake, and there had better be biscuits or I will scream because let me tell you, I am so fed up of you and Jeremy fucking Gill.’

  ‘No biscuits. Cheese and oatcakes are the best I can do.’

  ‘Jaysus. All right. Just coffee so,’ Sadie said. ‘Now tell me again what happened. And slowly. I want to take notes.’

  I walked to the worktop, picked up the kettle.

  ‘Are you making me a cup of tea? Ah that’s lovely.’

  I dropped the kettle.

  ‘You’re going to have to make the coffee,’ I said. ‘I have to sit down.’

  Then I vomited into the sink.

  ‘You don’t need to dump the chair,’ Sadie said, after I had finished telling her what had happened. ‘From what you’ve told me, Gill was sitting in it for ten or fifteen minutes, max.’

  ‘I have to get it out of here. I’ll never sit in it again.’

  I grabbed the back of the chair and started pulling it towards the stairs.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  ‘This is idiotic,’ Sadie said, but got up anyway, and started to help.

  We half lifted, half dragged the chair down the stairs, marking the paintwork in places, and I couldn’t have cared less. On Barrack Street, I wrote a sign (‘Free to take away’), stuck it in a plastic folder and Sellotaped it to the leather. In the ten days since I’d met Sean Carney, I had lost a car and now the armchair. If things kept going like this, I’d have nothing left. And yet, the idea was a lot less terrifying than it might have been a couple of weeks before. When you were close to death, as I felt I had been that morning, possessions didn’t matter all that much.