by Alex Barclay
‘Will we just go to bed ourselves? Like – is Edie OK? Or has it all gone to shit and we’re here like gobshites?’
‘Well – we’ve two options,’ said Laura. ‘Go out and look for everyone or go to bed.’
‘There’s actually a third – both,’ said Murph. ‘Where was Edie going earlier – wasn’t she going to check Terry’s van for his mobile – did she find that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Laura. ‘She came in with a notebook and looked like she was about to launch into some drama about that, but then Val was there.’
‘And did she say anything to you about it when Val was gone?’
‘I wasn’t talking to her,’ said Laura. ‘She brought it into the hall when she was letting Val out.’
‘So,’ said Murph, ‘in between Val leaving and Edie losing it, she was talking to Patrick and Johnny and they both said she seemed fine. They said nothing about the notebook and they didn’t come in with it. So … the only thing that didn’t change in all that time was: the notebook. Chances are that was the thing she told Johnny she was dropping down to the office.’
Laura was nodding at him, impressed.
Murph pointed to himself. ‘Sure, locked. SHER … LOCKED.’
‘I got it,’ said Laura, ‘but thanks.’
‘You did not,’ said Murph. He stood up. ‘So, here’s what we’re going to do. Go to the office and get the keys to our rooms. If there’s a notebook on the desk, we nose into it and if we lose our minds, we’ll know that’s what happened. If there’s no notebook, then, let’s face it, that means nothing, because she could have locked it in a drawer. Either way, we have our room keys. Then we walk to our suites—’
‘Via the chapel?’ said Laura. ‘She could have gone there to—’
‘Search a dead body for a phone?’ said Murph. ‘Edie?’
‘I’d say set aside whatever notions you have of who Edie is right now,’ said Laura, ‘because whoever I bumped into in the hall was not Edie.’
Patrick stood at the top of the jetty steps, the wind whipping around him, rain pouring down. Behind him, weighted down by a rock, was a sheet of tarpaulin with the fold of a high-vis jacket sticking out of it. Terry’s body was on the ground, his head at Patrick’s boots, the rest lying down the top five steps of the jetty. Johnny was on the eighth step down, gripping the metal handrail with one hand, using the back of the other hand to wipe his mouth. His jacket and boots were flecked with vomit.
‘Let’s try that again,’ said Patrick.
Johnny let out a breath, then nodded.
‘Be. Careful,’ said Patrick.
‘Can we not just push him through the gap in the railing posts?’ said Johnny.
‘I told you,’ said Patrick, ‘there’s no guarantee he’ll fall clear. You don’t want him sprawled on the rocks ten feet down while the coastguard helicopter is out searching for the kind of fuckwit who goes near exposed coastal areas in a fucking storm.’ He smiled.
Johnny glanced down at the rocks.
‘Right,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve got the heavy end of him. All you need to do is grab his ankles. I’ll lift my end, you do yours and as soon as we’ve got the handrail under him, wedge it up under your armpit, lean into it, get the boot down solid and we swing him out – job done.’
Johnny looked down at the steps and back up at Patrick, his eyes flickering with fear.
‘Jesus – you’re petrified,’ said Patrick. ‘Look, the only time you won’t be holding on to that handrail is when you’re holding on to his ankles. But I’ve got the rest of him, and I’m on solid ground up here. So picture Terry as the safety rope between us. Making himself useful.’
Johnny frowned.
Patrick glanced towards the inn, and back at Johnny. ‘Come on.’
Johnny took a breath.
Patrick lifted his end of the body. Johnny reached down with his left hand and took Terry’s left ankle. ‘Good man,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve got you.’ He rolled his eyes as Johnny bent down, took his right hand off the handrail and grabbed Terry’s other ankle. He let out a breath.
‘On three – lift,’ said Patrick. ‘One … two … three.’ They lifted the body. Johnny swayed back momentarily, locking his panicked eyes on Patrick’s. Patrick shifted his arms up higher under Terry’s armpits, gripped him tighter against his chest.
Johnny swayed sideways. ‘Jesus Christ! Are we fucking mad?’ He swayed backwards again.
‘To answer your question,’ said Patrick. ‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘I am fucking your wife.’
Johnny’s eyes widened, his legs buckled. Patrick started to swing Terry’s body from side to side. Then he dropped him. Johnny fell backwards, releasing his grip, cracking his head hard on the jetty steps, sliding down further, cracking it again, coming to a momentary stop, before Terry’s body shunted him further again.
Patrick took a firm grip on the handrail and took solid, careful steps down to where Johnny lay, lifeless, a huge pool of blood under his head. His right arm was loose at his side, his palm up. Patrick glanced at the handrail.
‘Not sure you had a pretty good handle on it,’ said Patrick.
Terry’s body had flipped on to Johnny’s lower legs, and lay sideways across them. Patrick crouched down and pushed each body through the gap between the railing posts, watching, each time, as they plunged down the sheer cliff face into the sea.
Patrick jogged up to the top of the steps and looked up. Clare was looking away from him, her eyes wide, her hand over her mouth. She turned to run.
Patrick lunged.
43
Clare landed hard, the breath punched from her as her chest struck a mound in the grass. Patrick rolled her over and dragged her to her feet. He tried to yank her arms behind her back.
‘They’re too short,’ he said. ‘They’re freakish.’ He grabbed her, instead, by the upper arm and hauled her across the grass to the chapel as she struggled to breathe. He locked her into the pitch-black sacristy, then ran back to retrieve the tarpaulin. He picked up the rock on top of it, paused, then put it back, wrapping it up in the tarpaulin instead. When he walked back into the sacristy, he put it down on the floor, turned on the torch and shone it around the room until he found Clare, standing with her back to the wall, her hands flat against it.
‘I suppose there wasn’t much you could do,’ said Patrick. ‘The darkness is absolute.’ He paused. ‘I remember Father Owens saying to me once, in confession … I told him that sometimes I hear the voices of angels, and he said, “Who are the angels that speak to you, Patrick?” And I said, “The dark ones, Father. Only ever the dark ones.”’ He smiled.
‘And what did he say to that?’ said Clare.
‘You always have to know everything,’ said Patrick. ‘There is no bad time for Clare to have an unsatisfied curiosity. He said to me, “Go way outta that, Patrick. Do you think I don’t know what day it is today?” And we had a laugh about it.’ Patrick flashed a smile, then levelled Clare with a dead stare. ‘It was Hallowe’en,’ he said.
Clare started to scramble towards the door.
‘Stop!’ He held up a hand. ‘I’m thinking, here.’ said Patrick. ‘Nothing is decided. So sit down and relax.’ He pointed to an upturned crate.
Clare kept edging along the wall towards the door.
Patrick gave her a patient look. ‘Clare. I’m a foot taller than you, I take steroids, I work out every day. I’m fit. So … just let me think.’
Clare sat down on the crate. Patrick walked around, shining his torch across all the surfaces. ‘I watched you tonight,’ he said. ‘Nailing everyone. You were vicious. Do you even know you’re doing it? You’re like one of those glow sticks that the kids have – you have a SNAP point and this anger comes out, like a poisonous gas. Do you know how angry you are?’
Clare stared straight ahead. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Patrick. And I don’t want to listen.’
Patrick laughed out loud. ‘Brilliant!’ He looked at her. ‘You know everyone else. You pull out what�
�s hidden in the folds of their shame and bring it under your glow-stick glow for all the world to see. Because if everyone’s looking over there, then no one’s looking over here.’ He pointed to her.
‘I didn’t know you,’ said Clare.
Patrick frowned.
‘Tonight,’ said Clare. ‘I didn’t know you.’
‘You did,’ said Patrick, ‘but I’m the matching childhood shame you can’t face. You erased my history of shame but, really, what you were doing was erasing your own. You and me were in a silent agreement to see ourselves only as the wild adult successes we now are. But’ – he held up a finger – ‘by erasing my shame, you erased the thing that “may” have caused some damage … that may have caused the unease? You did get a bad feeling about me, earlier. You can tell me now. Especially now that you know you were right.’
‘Where is this going?’ said Clare.
Patrick moved the beam of the torch in increasingly aimless swipes, then stopped. ‘No one ever tells you …’ He let out a breath. ‘I don’t feel like killing you. You can be not in the mood for killing someone.’ He shook his head. ‘Where did you come out of, earlier?’
‘I was going to my room,’ said Clare. ‘I saw you and Johnny carrying the body.’
‘Were you coming over to say thank you? The less evidence, the less chance of your life imploding, and no further wrath of Laura if we took care of it. Or was it your usual? You couldn’t not know. There’s no loop Clare can be left out of.’
He looked down at the torch, twisted it, lowered the light. He walked over to Clare and set it down on the crate a few inches from her, the beam facing upwards, diffusing warm light.
‘I know I gave you a terrible fright in the library,’ said Patrick. ‘And I am genuinely sorry about that.’
Clare frowned. ‘You weren’t in the library.’
‘What?’ said Patrick.
‘You weren’t in the library when I was there.’
‘Not tonight.’
‘When?’ said Clare.
Patrick’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t remember.’
‘Remember what?’ said Clare.
Patrick shook his head. ‘I envy you.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘It was a seminal moment,’ said Patrick.
Clare frowned.
‘Not in a good way,’ said Patrick. ‘And you’ve …’ He mimed the flick of a switch.
‘For God’s sake,’ said Clare, ‘speak English.’
‘You walked in on me …’ said Patrick. He shook his head. ‘I can barely say it … but bear with me because I know what happened now – you walked in on me jerking off in the library. I came – by accident I have to say – and you promised you wouldn’t tell on me.’
He studied Clare, her drifted gaze, her skin glowing red in the light.
‘You look so young,’ he said. ‘You have almost no lines.’ He paused. ‘I’d say if you were turned inside out, though, the surface would be ravaged.’ He tilted his head. ‘And you meant it when you said you wouldn’t tell.’
Clare nodded.
‘Until Belle Mademoiselle Autin tumbled upon you and you saw your chance. To have her comforting arm around you. To rest your head against her, to be close enough to smell that lavender soap, maybe to accidentally feel your cheek against her chest, to see if you could raise goosebumps on that exotic skin the way she rose them on the skin you wanted to jump out of.’
Clare didn’t reply.
‘No wonder you hate victims,’ said Patrick. ‘It wasn’t what happened in the library that you wanted to block out – that was awkward, but the shame was all mine. You blocked out what happened in the library because it was all entwined in what happened next, because you chose to be a victim, because you broke a promise in the hope of a cheap thrill. And I don’t know after that. Did it happen? Between you confessing to Mademoiselle Autin the horror of what Patrick Lynch did to you in the library and Mademoiselle running to Sister Consolata to tell her and Sister Consolata firing me – somewhere in there – did you get what you wanted?’ He waited. ‘I really want to know the answer. I hope you did. Because what Consolata said to me when she was firing me, what she told me about my father … it set me off on some downward spiral. And next thing you know, it’s Hallowe’en. And we know what happened that night.’
Clare’s head whipped around to him, her eyes wide.
‘Fucking answer me!’ said Patrick.
Clare gave a brief, short nod.
‘As perfunctory as that?’ said Patrick.
Clare didn’t reply.
‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ said Patrick. ‘It was all going so well, your goody two shoes fit so perfectly—’
‘I hate that expression,’ said Clare.
‘Well, I hated “Smells”. Do you remember that? Calling me Smells? “Here’s Smells!” like you were happy to see me.’
‘No, I do not remember that,’ said Clare, ‘because we were children, which was a lifetime ago.’
Patrick nodded – long, slow nods. ‘And there was so much of that to tamp down with your goody two shoes.’
Clare’s eyes, briefly, narrowed.
‘You’re so irritated,’ said Patrick, smiling. ‘And do you know why? Because “irritated” is the socially acceptable face of “angry”. And do you know why you’re angry?’
‘Shut up, Patrick,’ said Clare. ‘Just shut up.’
‘You are so angry,’ said Patrick, ‘because of all this sinning against—’
Clare slammed her fist down on the crate. ‘I don’t give a fuck about the Catholic Church!’ she said, gesturing around the room.
‘No, no,’ said Patrick, walking to the door. He picked up the rock and grabbed a corner of the tarpaulin, dragging it behind him as he made his way slowly back to her. He crouched down, spread it out at his feet and looked up at her. ‘Against the good girl your father wanted you to be. Against the good girl you promised him you would be. Against the good girl you thought you were. Against the good girl who died inside you and still festers there, stirring from her slumber every time her gut shifts, kicking out at every feeling like it’s a warm blanket when all she wants to do is stay cold.’
44
CLARE
Castletownbere
24 October 1988
Vin Brogan sat at the kitchen table, his shirt sleeves rolled up over the elbow, tight on his muscular arms. He was holding Clare’s homework journal far enough away that he could read it.
Clare stood in front of him, her heart pounding, her cheeks burning. She could smell the sweat soaking into her school shirt and through to her jumper. Her father glanced up at her with sad eyes or disappointed eyes – she was never sure. All she knew was that she had only ever remembered them as bright and lively but they had been sad for years and it was all her fault.
She thought it started after what happened to Jessie, because he thought it could happen to Clare too, and the thought that it could happen to her frightened him and he loved her so much. But that didn’t make sense when he grew more and more distant and it didn’t seem to matter how many A’s she got in her exams or how many awards or trophies or medals she won.
He used to compliment the fine head of hair that she used to fight with in the mirror, and the strong arms he had passed on to her that she used to wrap her hand around when she was on her own to see if her finger and thumb would ever meet and they never did. And then something changed and she thought it was because she was ugly now, that the changes that had happened to her body that she wasn’t ready for had made her ugly now and there was no way of hiding them or stopping them and you had to get up in the morning and walk to school with your spots roaring, and your hairy face and your hairy legs and your chest bursting from your jumper and your sweat pouring into it and that was why her father could barely look at her. Until she realized maybe it was the other reason now. Because he could read her like a book. She knew her mother noticed how distant her fat
her had got from all of them and even though she had never said anything, Clare knew her mother blamed her, she had to, but nobody was saying anything. Until now, Clare thought, her heart pounding. Until now.
Her father read aloud from the homework journal, ‘Dear Mr & Mrs Brogan, Today’s religion class was clearly not interesting enough to hold Clare’s attention. I suggest she keep her mind on her books, instead of mooning after boys (see note) and disrupting the whole class in the process. Regards, Sister Consolata.’
Her father unfolded the note. ‘I heart PATRICK,’ he announced. He frowned up at Clare. ‘Patrick?’ he said. ‘Patrick Lynch?’
Clare’s stomach turned. Tears welled in her eyes.
‘“Smells”?’ said her father. ‘Isn’t that what you used to call him years ago that your mother gave out to you about?’
Clare nodded.
Her father’s eyes narrowed and he looked down at the note again. She knew he was noticing that the first six letters were written in blue biro and the ‘K’ was written in black. Clare’s heart was beating so fast, it frightened her, quickening the beat further.
‘I had a word with a solicitor friend in Bantry,’ said her father. ‘And he’s going to take you on a Wednesday afternoon after school to do some office work, filing and the like.’
Clare’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
‘Pardon,’ said her father.
‘Pardon?’ said Clare.
‘Exactly that,’ he said. He picked up the newspaper, folded on the table, and shook it out.
Clare stood, motionless.
‘But what about my French grinds?’
‘Your French is excellent, so I’m told.’
They locked eyes. Tears fell from Clare’s and her father looked away.
‘But …’ said Clare. ‘I don’t want to work in a solicitor’s office—’
‘It’s not work,’ said her father. ‘It’s something to keep you occupied.’
‘I’m already occupied!’ said Clare.
He raised the newspaper and started to read. ‘I’ve already let the French one know.’
A stab of pain tore through Clare.