by Alex Barclay
‘Who’ll you get, now, to do that?’ said Val. ‘Would Terry Hyland get up out of the bed on a Sunday morning?’
Johnny laughed. ‘You’d never know with Terry, all right. But I do have something I need him to look at down on the jetty too.’
33
Val glanced towards the window. ‘I’m not sure how good the forecast is for tomorrow.’
‘Not great, apparently,’ said Laura. She looked at Johnny. ‘I wouldn’t go near the jetty, if I was you.’
‘Speaking of Terry,’ said Val. ‘Mally was telling me about the chapel windows. What’s the story there? And Terry trying to say Dylan did it. What was that about?’
‘Don’t mind him,’ said Johnny.
‘Mally was disgusted,’ said Val. ‘Said Terry saw someone in a hoodie and jeans running away and decided it was Dylan. And you know Mally: “Sure, that covers half the lads in town.” But what interests me is that there’ve been a few reports of property damage about the place.’
‘Really?’ said Edie.
‘What do you know about the Britten lad? “Finno”.’
‘Who?’ said Johnny.
Edie frowned at him. ‘The Brittens, Johnny! The wood people.’ She rolled her eyes at Val. ‘They only made all the signs for the grounds … and the fairy houses, and—’
‘Sorry,’ said Johnny. ‘Of course. What about him?’
‘There’s a few rumours flying around about him,’ said Val.
Edie nodded. ‘I heard that, all right.’
Johnny looked at her. She looked at Val. ‘He’s dealing,’ said Val.
‘His poor parents,’ said Edie.
‘Apparently, if people aren’t paying up, he’s retaliating in some way,’ said Val. ‘Nothing physical – property damage. That’s why it occurred to me.’
Edie laughed, and glanced at Johnny. ‘Did we pay them for the toadstools?’
Johnny laughed.
‘Well, if you hear anything,’ said Val. ‘Or if Dylan says anything. You know kids. They won’t say anything to me.’
‘Of course,’ said Edie.
‘So,’ said Val, ‘is there anything I can do?’ She looked at Edie. ‘The electricity. Anything you need?’
‘No, no,’ said Edie. ‘Not at this hour. We’re headed to bed.’
‘Right so,’ said Val. She looked up at the clock. ‘I better get a move on.’
The door pushed open, and Murph and Patrick arrived back in, red-faced, with a basket of logs.
‘Mission accomplished,’ said Murph.
Val stood up.
‘Are you off?’ said Murph.
She nodded. ‘I am. Settle in there by the fire, lads. Warm yourselves up.’
Edie stood. ‘Let me walk you out.’
‘Stay where you are,’ said Val.
‘Oh, she won’t have that!’ said Murph.
Edie laughed. She held the door open for Val. Val paused in the doorway. ‘Goodnight, now,’ she said.
‘Goodnight!’ said Murph. ‘Safe home.’
Murph slumped down in a chair by the fire and whispered, ‘What the fuck was that about?’
Laura hissed a shush at him.
‘I need to know,’ said Murph, ‘there’s no dog involved …’
‘No,’ said Johnny. ‘Dylan’s staying over with them – that was all. She couldn’t ring.’
‘What did you do with … the …’ said Johnny.
‘Propped him up in the squad car with a pair of shades,’ said Murph. ‘Weekend at Johnny’s.’ He sat forward, stabbed a finger at them, and spoke in a loud whisper. ‘Lads, you’re going to have to unmute your fucking laughter here. Because she’s still in the hall, and unless it’s a silent fucking retreat we’re at, I think we’ve all gone a little too quiet.’ Everyone exchanged glances.
‘“HOW DO YOU DO, YOUNG WILLY MCBRIDE?”’ Murph started to sing as he rose from his seat and walked over to the fire. ‘“DO YOU MIND IF I SIT HERE DOWN BY YOUR GRAVESIDE?”’ He mouthed, ‘Too soon?’
They all started laughing.
‘“AND REST FOR A WHIIILE ’NEATH THE WARM SUMMER SUN …”’ He mouthed, ‘Is she still here?’ “I’VE BEEN WALKIN’ ALL DAY AND I’M NEARLY DONE.”’
Val stood at the front door. She tilted her head towards the room. ‘Is that Patrick now? He got up in the end.’
Edie smiled. ‘No – that’s Murph. If someone refuses to sing, he gets up and sings their song.’
‘No wonder no one sings,’ said Val. ‘He’s got some voice.’
Edie laughed. ‘I know. You don’t expect it. He calls himself Murphé. Like Bublé.’
Val laughed. ‘I’d say he’s great craic.’
‘He is,’ said Edie.
Val looked at her. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yes!’ said Edie. ‘Of course! Why?’ She paused. ‘I mean – I’ve had a few too many, but …’
‘And poor Helen couldn’t last the distance,’ said Val. ‘We were in Mac’s for an early birthday drink last week and she was fading by nine, the poor divil. What time did she head away?’
Edie went very still. ‘Oh, no – she’s here. She’s staying over.’
‘She’ll hardly sleep through that racket,’ said Val.
‘No, no – she’s … out in one of the suites.’
‘She won’t hear a thing out there,’ said Val. She paused. ‘And what would happen now if she had a fall – with the power cut?’
‘Oh, a back-up battery kicks in for the emergency card,’ said Edie. ‘Don’t worry – we haven’t abandoned her.’
Edie leaned an ear towards the room. ‘Oh, God. Murph’s on to “Patricia the Stripper”.’
‘That’s my cue,’ said Val.
‘That’s everybody’s cue,’ said Edie. She opened the front door and a wind whipped through. ‘Well, thanks for having Dylan, and coming all the way out in this.’
‘Not a bother,’ said Val. ‘Enjoy the rest of it!’
Edie closed the door and rested her forehead against it. The door to the bar opened, and Patrick came out into the hallway. Edie turned around and slumped back against the door. She let out a long breath.
‘We could have done without that,’ said Patrick.
‘Honestly,’ said Edie.
There was a hammering at the door behind her. She jumped, her eyes wide. Patrick made a face, pointed towards the men’s room, and strode across the hall.
Edie turned around and pulled open the door.
‘Sorry,’ said Val. ‘I remembered – Langerwell. Why it was familiar. There’s a Langerwell the owner of the acre between our two places. I checked the land registry when I was buying ours.’
Edie frowned. ‘What?’
Val nodded. ‘There can’t be too many of those about – a name like that. You should ask your friend – Patrick, is it?’
‘I will,’ said Edie. She closed the door after Val, started to walk towards the bar, then paused, and headed for the basement.
Murph was standing by the bar, pouring drinks. Clare stood at the window watching Val jog to her car. She drew the curtains across. Laura was sitting on her own at a table beside her.
‘You know something,’ said Johnny, looking over at Laura, ‘for all your talk of garda bonding, there was hardly a peep out of you.’ His tone was teasing. Laura scowled over at him. Johnny raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
‘I don’t think you’re going to want to hear why,’ said Laura.
Clare stood up. ‘I’m going to the ladies.’
‘She knows Laura is about to blow,’ said Murph.
Clare flashed a confirmation glance at Murph as she walked past.
‘She wants to stand outside splashing distance,’ said Murph.
Johnny laughed.
Murph looked over at Laura. Her head was turned away. ‘Well, whatever you’re about to say, there’s no point talking into the curtains. They’re half the reason we’re in this shit. Opening up like that …’
‘I swear to fuck,
’ said Laura, stabbing a finger at him, ‘I’ll murder you myself if you keep cracking fucking jokes.’
‘I’m nervous!’ said Murph.
‘Why can’t you just shit yourself in peace like a normal person?’
‘Because I don’t find shitting myself very peaceful,’ said Murph.
Johnny laughed.
‘Right!’ said Laura. ‘Do you want to know why I didn’t open my mouth?’
‘It was surprising,’ said Johnny, flashing a glance at Murph.
‘You’re a pair of pricks,’ said Laura.
Murph zipped his lip. Johnny laughed.
Laura exploded. ‘You thick fucks! The minute she walked in the door, she was clocking every fucking thing in the room. She was looking at the state of myself and Clare, she was looking at her in her fucking boots, she was looking at the pens on the table, the extra napkins, all the weird looks flying about the place … and no amount of shite out of you, Murph, was stopping her. And,’ she said, turning to Johnny, ‘she was looking at the size of your coked-up fucking eyeballs, wondering did you think she came down in the last shower – the one you would have left her standing outside in for the night if you weren’t stupid enough to leave the fucking front door wide open.’
34
Edie went into the office, went to the safe, unlocked it, and took out the pages she had put in earlier, setting them on the desk in front of the notebook. She looked at the one with no name on it, the one with the crooked mouth, and the little line underneath it, and the gaping head wound. She opened the notebook, and started flicking through it to try to find a page with the matching tear. She found it.
YOU FUCKING BOARDING SCHOOL PRICK!
YOU THINK YOU’RE THE BIG MAN!
FUCK. YOU. MY DICK IS BIGGER.
Her heart leapt. The crooked mouth. The line underneath it. It was Johnny, her crooked-smiled charmer with the scar on his chin. She thought of Terry trying to bring his fantasy to life tonight and Johnny retaliating. She shook the thought away. But boarding school? Why would Terry care about that now? And “click”?
She flicked through the notebook again and stopped, when she reached a page where all the heads with Xs for eyes now had stick-figure bodies – six, all surrounded by flames. Her heart plunged when she reached the next page: it was a diagram of the old dormitory at the convent: with the stick-figure people inside, and the containers of kerosene, and the title of the story Murph told that night: I Am the Ghost of the Manor. And underneath it, with arrows pointing to all the stick figures was:
I AM YOURS I AM YOURS I AM YOURS
She knew from the story that that meant manner of death and her stomach turned. Had Terry set the fire? How? Why?
She turned back to the pages with the disembodied heads, and, in a quick scan, she recognized Murph in one of them, Laura in another, Clare in another. She couldn’t find Helen, she couldn’t find Jessie, and she couldn’t find herself. Maybe Terry didn’t hate them. But she counted six stick figures in the dormitory, and there were six of them there on the night of the fire.
She locked the safe, then slid Patrick’s and Johnny’s pages into the notebook, and went upstairs with it. As she walked into the hallway, she bumped into Patrick.
‘How did that all go?’ he said. ‘With Val.’
Edie let out a breath. ‘OK – I think. But this is insane.’ She held up the notebook. ‘This is Terry’s, and it’s full of psychotic ramblings. Earlier – I didn’t tell anyone – I found these notes on the dining-room floor. He had it in for Johnny, he had it in for you. He wanted to bash Johnny’s head in, and he wanted to see you swinging from a rope.’
‘What?’ said Patrick.
Edie pulled the two loose pages from where they were sticking out of the notebook, and handed them to him. His eyes widened.
‘How well did you know Terry?’ said Edie.
‘Not well at all,’ said Patrick. ‘I mean – he did work on our house, but I took no notice.’
‘I don’t know what to do about this,’ said Edie. ‘I’m going to take another look at it, but … it’s vile. The idea that someone who is in and out of your house, in your life, your business, knows so much about you – had all this going through their head is terrifying.’
Patrick levelled her with a look. ‘Do not tell Johnny you have this. Don’t tell anyone.’
‘What?’ said Edie. ‘Why not?’
Patrick spoke gently. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but Johnny might already know about that notebook …’
Edie frowned. Patrick waited.
‘Oh, God,’ said Edie. ‘You mean … he could have confronted Terry—’
‘Well – maybe not,’ said Patrick. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In Terry’s van,’ said Edie. ‘It’s parked outside the chapel gate.’
‘Is that where you went?’ said Patrick.
Edie nodded.
‘Why didn’t you say that?’ said Patrick.
‘Because …’
‘Because you were already worried about Johnny,’ said Patrick.
Edie paused. ‘I feel so guilty. Please don’t say anything. I feel like … There’s no way Johnny’s capable of something like this. But you saw him tonight. He’s …’
Patrick nodded. He put his hand on her arm. ‘That’s why I’m telling you not to tell him you have this. If there is concrete evidence out there that Terry had ill intentions towards him, whoever has that evidence … might be in danger.’
Edie’s eyes widened. ‘There’s no way Johnny would lay a finger on me—’
‘No, no,’ said Patrick. ‘That came out wrong. In a way. I’m speaking as … an observer, OK? An observer of his behaviour tonight, specifically. Under very stressful circumstances. He doesn’t seem himself. You do agree with me on that.’
‘Yes,’ said Edie, ‘but I still don’t think—’
‘I’m just looking out for you,’ said Patrick. ‘How many times do we read about people who snap? The nicest guy in the world and he snaps. A family man, a pillar of the community … everyone is shocked. I am not saying that Johnny is that man. We still don’t know what happened tonight. But what I am saying is that I don’t want to be watching the news tomorrow night, thinking: If only I’d said something—’
Edie stared at him. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Oh my God. He wouldn’t. There’s no way. I know him. I understand what you’re saying—’
‘Do you want me to take the notebook?’ said Patrick. ‘What I was also trying to say was that, if the guards got hold of it, it would look like evidence against Johnny—’
‘Or you,’ said Edie. ‘When I saw these earlier, I nearly died. I was like, why you and Johnny? Just the two of you?’
The door to the conservatory opened and Johnny walked in. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Decompression,’ said Edie. She lowered the notebook to her side.
Johnny looked at her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Well – not really, obviously,’ said Edie. ‘After Val. Poor Patrick, getting landed with me.’
Johnny gave Patrick a wry smile. ‘You must be regretting the day you ran into Helen Maguire.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m just concerned that you’re all right. At the end of the day, yourself and Edes are the ones left to deal with it. The rest of us are heading back to our lives tomorrow.’ He paused. ‘Albeit, taking our consciences with us.’
Johnny and Edie exchanged glances.
‘Right,’ said Johnny, ‘well come on back in and we’ll figure out what we’re doing next.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Edie to both of them. ‘I’ll follow you in.’
Patrick hesitated. Edie flashed a look at him. ‘OK,’ he said.
‘I’ll be two minutes,’ said Edie. ‘I have to drop something to the office.’
She watched them leave, then walked a little way down the hallway, and opened the notebook again. She couldn’t figure out how everyone else seemed to be described, except for h
er, Jessie, and Helen. Maybe Terry didn’t hate them. He was kind to Helen for looking after his mother. And he still worked at the inn, even if he had a problem with Johnny.
She kept looking through the pages. And then she found out why there was no face drawn to represent her. It wasn’t because he didn’t hate her – it was because he hated her the most. And the pages were all stuck together. Bile rose in her throat as she cracked them apart.
Glued to the first page about her was a black-and-white clipping from the front page of the Southern Star – a photo of her standing on a stage in the square, waving to the crowd as the newly crowned Queen of the Sea. It was different to the one her mother kept framed on her sideboard – in this photo, Edie’s eyes were burned through with a match. Most of her teeth had been coloured in with a biro – tiny, repeated, contained strokes blackening each tooth. Drawn all around the photo were flames in thick yellow, orange, and red felt-tip pen. The caption had been cut off and glued above her photo:
EDIE KERR, 15,
Queen of the Sea at Beara’s
Festival of the Sea, 1988
And underneath the photo:
KERR-O-SENE KERR-O-SENE
KERR-O-SENE KERR-O-SENE
No one had ever mentioned anything sinister about Terry when they were growing up, no one had ever felt threatened by him. Edie didn’t even remember noticing him.
The next page said:
I WILL FUCK YOUR FACE.
I WILL HOLD YOU DOWN.
I WILL CHOKE YOU.
AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
UNTIL:
LIGHTS OUT.
A shiver ran up Edie’s spine. Was this why the lights had gone out tonight? Was that his plan? Did Johnny figure it out? But she had been alone with Terry so many times at the inn – if he wanted to do something to her, wouldn’t he have done it then?
She pulled Patrick’s page out again – with his name on it and HA HA HA HA HA and the dead eyes and the noose around his neck. At the back of the notebook, she found its corresponding diagonal tear. She read the page beside it. Her head started to spin. Her throat and heart felt like they were attached to the same cable and it was in freefall. She slammed the notebook shut, squeezed her eyes tight, sending pinpricks of silver bursting in the darkness. She only realized she had stopped breathing when her lungs grabbed for a breath too huge for her shut-down chest, and she gasped with such anguish it startled her. She opened the notebook again and read to the same page again.