‘Certainly, sir.’
For a second Claire felt her stress levels rise as she pictured herself telling Matt he’d have to cope on his own in the morning. Surely he’d understand, wouldn’t he? And then Byrne’s next sentence drove everything else out of her mind. And this time there was no word to describe his tone other than ‘excited’.
‘We also think we know who Richard is. Sean Gilligan’s team has done sterling work and has found a series of emails between the two of them on Eileen’s computer. It looks like Richard is the son’s – is Alan Delaney’s – father.’
Of course he was. Claire felt a thud as that piece of the puzzle fell into place. Richard was Alan’s father. Looking for revenge in the same way Eileen had been. And she should have seen that coming. They all should have. All along they’d been focusing on a mother’s obsession with avenging her son. It had been really stupid of them to leave the father out of the equation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Right so, she needed a plan. Leah lay back on the couch, hands under her head. And to think that when she’d first been flung in here she’d been worried about the smell of the cushions. God, it was only a couple of days ago, but already the Leah from then seemed so lame. She couldn’t give a toss about smells now, or dirt, or any of it. Finding that gap in the floorboards was significant, she knew it. She just needed a plan.
Where to start, though? Leah hadn’t a clue. She swallowed, then winced as acid burned the back of her throat. She was so thirsty. At some stage during the night the man, the dickhead had opened the door and flung in a bag of food, some apples, a packet of digestive biscuits and a bottle of water, but the water was long gone and Leah was afraid to eat too much in case she ended up needing the toilet again. She’d already used the bucket in the corner to wee in, twice, but there was no way she was going to use it for anything else, and she was pretty sure the man wouldn’t let her use the one in the corridor again. The only small mercy was that she’d been lying to him when she’d said she was on her period. That particular joy awaited her next week, and she’d be well home by then. She’d have to be.
She rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged herself gently. A plan, a plan. She needed a plan. Maybe she could do some – what was it her mum called it? Visualization, or some such shit. She could visualize herself somewhere nice and it might relax her enough to inspire a good idea. Where was the last really beautiful place she’d been? That beach maybe, the one she’d visited with her mother the last time they’d been to Greece, with the dark beige sand and the water that looked almost dyed, it was so blue. Leah closed her eyes. Think of that beach, that water.
But another beach appeared in her mind.
Don’t think about it. Think of Greece, heat, the wine the barman had served her when her mum wasn’t looking.
The grey stones and dark green water of Rua Strand. Leah pulled her knees in tighter but the memories swirled in her head, tugging her backwards.
This is for Alan Delaney.
Bloody Alan Delaney. But it had all started with him, hadn’t it? He shouldn’t even have been in her dad’s apartment that night. They’d never met before, only spoken online, and if it wasn’t for that stupid photograph they’d never have come into contact with each other. Stupid random thing – if Leah had known how much trouble it was going to cause she would never have put it online. But it had been Father’s Day and all her friends were posting cute pictures of them with their dads when they were babies and the only one Leah could find was a snap of her sitting on her dad’s knee in some restaurant when she was, like, four or five. Her mum had been in the picture too, along with some other woman and a kid, but she hadn’t really looked at them, hadn’t wondered who they were. And then, a couple of days later, she’d got this message from a guy she’d met in Irish college, Michael Taft. He’d said he thought he recognized the other people in the photograph, and did she mind if he tagged his friend Alan Delaney in it, to see if it was really him? So Leah in turn friended this Alan dude and it turned out that, yeah, he was the kid in the photograph. His mum had been in school with Leah’s mum.
And that was where it all should have ended. A couple of comments, oh, it’s a small world, the usual shit. But it didn’t end there: instead this Delaney guy kept chatting to her. He wasn’t a weirdo or anything – in fact you could tell from his comments that he was a pretty funny guy, so Leah had started responding to him, nothing major, bit of banter, that sort of thing. She wouldn’t describe it as flirting even – they were just chatting, exchanging the odd joke. Yeah, Alan looked kind of cute in his profile picture but Leah wasn’t interested in him, not in that way, because she’d been planning to get off with Shane Fitzpatrick for months and nothing was going to change her mind about that, especially not some bloke she only knew because his mum had been to school with hers.
And then one day she and her friends had been having a conversation online about this party she was having in her gaff that weekend and this guy, this Alan, asked if he could come along. It was a bit pushy, Leah thought initially, but then again, they’d been chatting for weeks at that stage and she didn’t mind. Besides, Shane was playing really freaking hard to get and Leah reckoned it mightn’t do her any harm to have some stranger turn up, some boy from outside the school loop, to show him she wasn’t totally dependent on Shane and the rest of the guys from St Paul’s. So she messaged Alan her home address and he turned up on the night around eight o’clock, four supermarket beers under his arm.
Leah’s dad had cleared off hours before to see his girlfriend. He was shagging a woman down in the village. It was quite disgusting, actually, she was only, like, thirty years old and the daughter of one of his golfing buddies. And she still lived in her parents’ house, just two streets away from where Leah herself had grown up. The only reason her dad was able to call around at all was because the old pair spent every weekend in their house in the west. Leah’s dad thought she didn’t know any of this, of course. He was forever spinning yarns about having to work late, and sleeping over at the office, but Leah had used his phone to call a cab once, saw the woman’s address in the saved searches on his app and figured out the rest. So, totally mortifying on one level, but at least it left her with a free gaff every Saturday night so she couldn’t really complain. The one thing they both knew, without saying it to each other even, was that Leah’s mother could never know about the parties, the girlfriend, any of it. It suited them to keep each other’s secrets. That was why, when the cops called around asking about Alan Delaney, Leah had told them, without even checking with her dad, that he’d been in his bedroom asleep while the party was going on. That was the story they’d agreed on, if her mum ever found out, and she figured it was best to use it here too. Cops were like mums, right? And mushrooms. Keep them in the dark, feed them shit.
That day when the cops called round though – God! Leah groaned and ground her face into the dusty sofa cushions, but there was no stopping the flow of memories now and she knew from past experience that if she didn’t go through them, like sitting through a bad movie, they’d be with her all day and she wouldn’t be able to clear her brain and move on.
The place had been totally rammed when Alan arrived – there must have been twenty, maybe even twenty-five kids there – so Leah just showed him where the fridge was and then introduced him to Caoimhe and a few of the others and told him to look after himself. She was kind of hoping he’d get together with Caoimhe, actually: she’d just broken up with Darragh for the third time and it would do her good to kiss someone else for a change. But Alan wasn’t interested in anyone except Leah. She tried to make it clear she was with Shane, but bloody Shane wasn’t exactly helping her in that department. Every time she went over to him he seemed more interested in talking to his mates about the match on Saturday than to her. It was quite upsetting, actually, being ignored like that so Leah found herself having a shot to make herself feel better.
And then another. And then one more.
And that was when the memories started to flicker. The movie was jumping all over the place now, badly edited, freezing, then speeding up in places. Leah had been drinking wine as well as shots, which was stupid because red wine always totally destroyed her, but she’d overheard Shane saying that girls who drank cans were, like, total huns, so she’d nicked a bottle of decent stuff from her dad’s stash, and drunk most of it while she was waiting for Shane to finish his conversation and start paying attention to her.
Eventually the wine gave her enough courage to go over and sit on Shane’s knee and say something about how he should leave the rugby on the pitch and come and dance with her, but he’d just given her this look, like she was a kid or something. So she’d walked off and left him there. And that was when Alan Delaney had come over and said he really needed to talk to her, in private. Normally she’d have laughed at the serious head on him, but Shane was being such a prick that she decided it would be good to get away from him for a while, so she went out onto the balcony, bringing another bottle of wine with her, and asked Alan what he wanted. Things got seriously weird then. She had been prepared for him to, like, come on to her or something, but instead he started asking her about her dad of all things, all about his business and how he’d lost his money. As if Leah knew or cared about that. Yeah, her dad had been in the papers for a bit and things had got a bit weird, but then her mum had married Fergal and everything was pretty much okay again, as far as she was concerned anyway. It was, like, no biggie and she couldn’t figure out why a kid like Alan Delaney would be in the slightest bit interested.
By then, Leah was drinking the wine straight from the bottle, and offered it to Alan to see if that would distract him, but he didn’t seem interested in getting drunk. He just kept going on and on about her dad, and after a while he actually got quite nasty, saying stuff like ‘Why did he do it?’ and ‘Does he get off on ruining people’s lives?’ Then he got even more intense. He told Leah that he and his mother were, like, homeless? They were, like, living in a hotel or something, and he claimed it was all Leah’s dad’s fault and that he was going to make him pay. Leah told him to get the fuck out of the apartment. Serious, some homeless kid? She wouldn’t have dreamed of asking him to her party if she’d known that. And Alan got kind of quiet then and said, ‘Okay, cool. I’ll leave if you tell me where your dad is.’
Leah would have said pretty much anything to get rid of him then, so she told him all about her dad’s girlfriend and how he was with her in the big house in the village. She told him everything, mostly to get rid of him but also, if she was being totally truthful, to hurt him. Like, who did he think he was, coming to her party under false pretences and saying shit about her dad? So she told him again, very slowly and carefully, that her dad was down in Fernwood village, shagging a thirty-year-old, and that he couldn’t care less about Alan Delaney or his mother and their problems. He probably didn’t even remember their names. Her dad had moved on from all that business, Leah told Alan, and if he had any sense then he’d move on too. Alan turned kind of white when he heard that and then he said, so quietly that Leah had had to strain to hear him, ‘He’s not even sorry, is he? He doesn’t give a damn.’
Leah, sick of the conversation, had turned and left him. She took her wine and went back to the living room where Shane had finally stopped talking about the bloody rugby and was standing in the centre of the floor. And Leah had been so freaked out by Alan Delaney and his sob story that she’d wanted to get back into the party mood straight away so she’d swallowed a mouthful of wine and walked right over and kissed Shane Fitzpatrick full on the lips, in front of everyone. People started cheering and everything, but she didn’t care, she’d needed to kiss him, and the rest, to get her evening back again. To make it feel like a party again. When she grabbed Shane by the hand he didn’t pull away so she turned and led him to her bedroom. There were two kids kissing on her bed but she kicked them out and shut the door behind them. Then she kissed Shane Fitzpatrick again, leaving him under no illusion as to what her plan was.
God, she really fancied him! Even now, lying here on the filthy sofa, after everything that had happened, Leah still felt a flicker of excitement at the memory, the look on his face when she put her hand on his crotch and whispered what she was going to do. He had been hers, totally, at that minute and she had never felt so powerful. She’d dropped to her knees and he’d sighed, a small, quiet sigh, and said, ‘No, you’ve been drinking, leave it.’
But Leah had said, ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ and pulled his zip down. Shane groaned and she felt it again, that surge of absolute power. She bent her head towards him, and then there was a beam of light across her face and the bedroom door was open and Alan Delaney, Alan fucking Delaney, was standing there, staring at them. Shane opened his eyes and they both realised straight away what was happening but they were too pissed to move quickly, and before they could do anything, Alan had taken out his phone. Leah turned, but some of her hair got caught in Shane’s zip and she was left staring straight into the lens while Alan snapped and snapped again. And then he smiled at her, a horrible, cold smile, and said, ‘What will Daddy think of this, Leah? Maybe this won’t be as easy to move on from.’ And before she could say anything else, he turned and run out of the flat and was gone.
When the guards turned up at the house the next day, Leah told them a version of the truth: that Alan Delaney had been there but had seemed in bad form and had left early. He was upset about his Mum, she told them, they were living in a hotel or something and he seemed really pissed off about it. And, as promised, she told them her dad had been in the apartment the whole time, but in the bedroom so he hadn’t seen anything. Her dad had been delighted when he’d heard that: it would only complicate things, he’d told her, to say anything else. He hadn’t seen the chap, anyway, so what difference would it make? Two days later, the guards had come back to say Alan had been found dead. And there was no way Leah was going to change her story then.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Garda Kieran Coughley wasn’t one of the brightest sparks on the force, but what he lacked in lightning-sharp reflexes he made up for, to some extent at least, in height. Slouched in a chair, his outstretched legs almost reached the opposite wall of the hospital corridor. If he failed to stop someone breaking into Eileen Delaney’s room, Claire thought, then there was every chance he’d trip them up on the way out.
‘Morning, Guard!’
Her brisk greeting brought him clambering, blushing, to his feet, and when she handed him her ID, Garda Coughley made a show of scrutinizing it carefully. Claire bit back a yawn. It was five past seven in the morning, and she honestly wasn’t sure if she had slept at all the night before. After she’d spoken to Inspector Byrne, she’d turned on the radio news to catch the late headlines and then, despite her better judgement, begun listening to a late-night talk-show panel trashing the guards for their role in finding, or rather not finding, Leah Gilmore. Only the fact that her daughter and husband were asleep on the floor above stopped Claire yelling at the radio. Bloody journalists and even bloodier politicians, it was all very well for them to talk, sitting on their fat arses and pontificating without having to actually do anything. You’d swear, from listening to them, that the guards didn’t give a toss or didn’t understand how time sensitive the situation was, even. Bullshit. You only had to step inside Collins Street to see how seriously the whole station, the whole bloody organization, was taking this case. Everyone felt under pressure to get results. Everyone was watching the hours as they ticked past. Claire and her colleagues didn’t need some know-it-all on the radio calling out a list of names to remind them of the many young Irish women who had been taken off the streets and never been found. Young women whose faces had been stuck onto lampposts, young women whose pale, grieving families had appeared on TV many times begging for information, a clue, any word that would bring their daughters
or sisters home. Some of those family members had since gone to their graves never having found out what had happened. Claire was determined Heather and Marc Gilmore would not be among that number, but no amount of hot air steaming out of the radio about ‘agency’ and ‘proactivity’ would help find their daughter.
So, by the time she’d dragged herself off the sofa and hauled her exhausted body upstairs to the bedroom, her brain had been far too alert to allow her to fall asleep. She could almost feel the thoughts thudding off the sides of her skull, and had eventually given up trying to relax, playing with her phone under the blankets and searching social media for mentions of the Gilmore case, which, of course, only served to elevate her stress levels. She might, she thought, have drifted off around three, but Anna had woken at four, and by the time she’d settled her again, she’d known she hadn’t a hope of going back to sleep, so she’d gone downstairs and sorted laundry until a quarter to six, when she’d had the joyous task of waking Matt to tell him she was off to work and he would have to look after Anna on his own. So, no, not what you’d call a restful night. It didn’t matter, though. Until Leah Gilmore was found, sleep was definitely an optional extra.
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