Groaning inwardly, I stood up to shake his hand and exchange hellos.
“Drink?” Sal asked him. “What’ll you have?”
Stephen looked to my glass, then to me, and I shook my head as much as I could before Sal would see.
“How about a beer?” he said.
A South Dublin accent. Our age, as far as I could tell. Thirtyish. And if he worked with Dirk at the software company, that meant he likely had a college degree …
I knew where this was going.
I had to concentrate on keeping a pleasant expression on my face.
“You won’t have one of those?” Sal pointed at my glass. “It’s a Black Velvet. They’re delicious.”
“I, ah, I don’t drink Guinness,” Stephen said. “That’s why I had to leave Ireland, actually. They found that out.”
I forced a laugh. Sal’s smile faltered, because although neither Stephen nor I knew this yet, her main was Guinness stew.
They settled on a Heineken and Sal left to fetch it, leaving Stephen and I to have the standard So, You’ve Just Met a Fellow Irish Person Abroad talk. He confirmed my suspicion that he was from South Dublin, told me he’d spent the last three years in Abu Dhabi and that, this time around, he was trying to avoid repeating what he’d done out there: so assimilated himself within the Irish ex-pat gang that he’d ended up playing GAA every weekend and only ever drinking in an Irish pub that could’ve been called Six Degrees of Stephen’s School Friends. I told him I was from Cork, that I’d been in the Netherlands nearly ten years, that I worked in Ops Management for a travel company, and that Sal and I had met in the laundry room of our student accommodation in Den Hague. We’d recognized the confused look on each other’s faces as a shared inability to process the instructions posted above the machines, and been friends ever since.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Stephen said, “but the guys at work were saying ‘den hag’ for three days before I realized that meant the Hague.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry about it. When I first got here, I thought Albert Heijn was a politician.” Stephen raised his eyebrows. “It’s a chain of supermarkets,” I explained. “The supermarket I was going to, on a regular basis, for at least a month before I put two and two together. Dutch sounds nothing like it looks, half the time. To us, anyway. That’s the problem.”
“Do you speak it?”
“A little. Very little. Nowhere near as much as I should. Everyone speaks English here, so you get lazy. And Suncamp is a British company. It’s all English at work.”
“Did you go to college here then or …?”
“I went here.” I took another sip of my drink, forgetting that it tasted like something they make you drink in a hospital before they scan your intestines. He hadn’t spoken by the time I’d forced a swallow, so I asked, “Where did you go?” even though I had already guessed the answer and I didn’t want to hear it said out loud, didn’t want to hear those three bloody words—
“St. John’s College.”
All I could do in response was make a hmm noise.
“I could walk there from my parents’ house,” Stephen said, “and both of them went there, so I really didn’t have a choice.”
I fixed my eyes on my glass. “What did you study?”
“Biomedical science.” He paused. “Class of 2009.”
I did the sums: he’d have been in his third year back then. But I didn’t need to do them. That tone he’d used, an odd mix of pride and solemnness. The dramatic pause. The fact alone that he’d felt the need to tell me when he’d graduated.
It all added up to: Yes, I was there then. I was there when it happened.
“Do you get back home much?” he asked me.
“Sorry,” I said, standing up, “but while I have the chance, I’m going to find a potted plant to dump the rest of this concoction in. Back in a sec.”
And that was it. The swift and sudden end of Sal’s dream that Stephen could be the man for me coming before she’d even returned with his drink.
I’d never be able to tell her why.
Not the real reason, anyway.
For the rest of the evening (through three courses, goody-bags consisting of packets of Tayto and Dairy Milk bars, and an hour’s worth of Father Ted YouTube clips because trying to describe it to our mainland-Europe diners wasn’t getting us anywhere), I concentrated on enjoying myself, thankful that Sal’s never-ending hostess duties prevented her from grabbing me for a sidebar.
She did it via WhatsApp the next morning instead.
What happened with Stephen? I brought him for you and you barely spoke to him! Since I know you’re going to give me some I’m-concentrating-on-my-career BS now and I’M going to have to give YOU the Cat Lady talk again, I’ve just saved us both the bother and given him your number. He was STARING at you all night (not in a serial killer way). In other news, am DYING. May actually already be dead. Haven’t even gone into the kitchen yet. Too afraid. Sent D out for caffeine and grease. Was good, though, right? Send proof of life. X
I read it at my kitchen table, nursing my second cup of black coffee while my stomach gurgled and ached, protesting at last night’s abuse.
So Sal had given Stephen my number. How in absolutely no way surprising. When it came to such stunts, the girl had priors. I wasn’t annoyed, but I feared Sal would be soon. Because if Stephen did call or text, I’d just deploy my usual, terminally single strategy: say I was busy until next week, cancel those plans last minute and then repeat as required until he got annoyed and gave up. It wasn’t a great plan, but it beat having to tell him—or Sal—the truth further down the line.
I typed a quick reply, assuring Sal that I was indeed alive, thanking her for the party and promising I’d call her later. I didn’t mention Stephen at all.
I’d just pressed send when I heard the knock on the door.
I thought it was the postman with a parcel. Or that there was a new guy delivering my neighbor’s groceries, and he’d accidentally come to the wrong house. But huddled on my doorstep, heads dipped beneath the gutter’s narrow overhang in a futile attempt to shield themselves from that morning’s heavy rain, were two men about to introduce themselves as members of An Garda Síochána.
The younger one wasn’t much older than me. Tall, with a thick quiff of reddish-brown hair and a beard to match. Bright green eyes. Not unattractive. He pulled a small leather wallet from an inside pocket and flipped it open, revealing a gold Garda shield and an ID.
Garda Detective Michael Malone.
The other one I recognized, even though I’d only spent a few hours with him, one afternoon almost ten years ago. The sparse tufts of gray hair left on the sides of his head had been made thinner still by the rain, and patches of bald, pink scalp were shining through. He was turned away, eyes on something further down the road, hands stuck in his pockets.
Garda Detective Jerry Shaw.
“Alison Smith?” Malone asked.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “Is it …? Are my parents—”
“Everyone’s fine. Everything’s okay.” He glanced down the hall behind me. “Can we come in? There’s something we need to talk to you about. Should only take a few minutes.” He flashed a smile, but if he was going for reassurance he fell way short of the mark.
Two Irish detectives. Here at my door in Breda.
And one of them was Detective Jerry Shaw.
This could really only be about one thing, but I asked the question anyway.
“What’s this about?”
Shaw finally turned toward me. Our eyes met.
“Will,” he said.
alison, now
I led them down the hall, into the kitchen, suddenly conscious of my loose gray sweatpants and misshapen old T-shirt, the dregs of last night’s makeup smudged around my eyes. I’d hit my bed around four, just about managing to kick my
shoes off before I fell asleep. Turns out that after you’ve had five of them, Black Velvets don’t taste so bad after all.
While my back was turned to the detectives, I licked a finger and swiped underneath my eyes as discreetly as I could. I tucked my hair behind my ears and ran my tongue over my teeth. I hadn’t even brushed them yet.
I glanced down at my sweatshirt. No discernible stains. Good.
I pointed them to my kitchen table. My cup and phone were still sitting there, marking my spot. The detectives took the two seats across from it.
The pot of coffee I’d brewed half an hour before was still half-full. I offered some and both men gratefully accepted a cup. While I watched Shaw spoon a genuinely alarming amount of sugar into his, Malone started telling me about how they were both exhausted because they’d caught the dawn flight out of Dublin and then driven here from Schiphol in a hired car.
“Has he been released?” I asked. I’d interrupted a complaint about the lack of signage on local roads, but I just couldn’t wait any longer.
Shaw said, “No.”
This was the first word he’d spoken since he’d come inside.
My shoulders dropped. I’d been tense with this possibility ever since I’d pulled back the front door.
“He’s still in the CPH,” Malone said. “The Central Psychiatric Hospital. Although he is scheduled to be moved to Clover Hill next month.”
“The holiday’s finally over,” Shaw said.
“Clover Hill is a prison,” Malone explained. “It’ll be a big change for him.”
“Sorry if this is a stupid question,” I said, “but shouldn’t he be in prison already? Why is he in a hospital?”
“A psychiatric hospital,” Malone corrected. “It’s still secure, but he can receive treatment. At some point—very early on in his incarceration, I think—it was decided that his needs would be better served there.”
“He was getting treatment? What for?”
Shaw snorted. “For being a serial killer, love.”
Malone said to me, “Will was very young when he entered the system, and he was a … Well, let’s just say he was very much a unique prisoner. The Prison Service decided that the CPH was the best home for him. Until now, at least.”
“Why are you here?”
The two detectives exchanged a glance. Then Malone asked me if I kept up with the news at home.
“No,” I said. “To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you who’s Taoiseach.”
“Well,” Shaw said, “you’re not missing anything there, love, let me tell you.”
“What about your parents?” Malone pressed. “Might they mention things to you?”
“If you mean deaths in the parish and the year on next-door’s car, then yeah. As for actual news, no.” I looked from one to detective to the other. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s happened because obviously something has?”
“We found a body,” Shaw said. “In the Grand Canal. Nineteen-year-old girl. A student at St. John’s.”
His tone was so matter-of-fact that it took me a second to put the words together and process what he’d actually said. Malone turned to glare at his colleague but all he got in response was Shaw picking up his coffee and taking a grotesquely noisy slurp.
“What happened?” I asked. My mouth was suddenly bone dry. “What happened to her?”
“We’re still trying to—” Malone started.
“Stunned,” Shaw said, “it seems like. By a blow to the head. Probably went into the water unconscious then. Cause of death was drowning.”
A cold brick of dread settled in my stomach.
Malone leaned forward. “We got a report last Saturday morning. A pair of joggers were passing under the Luas tracks at Charlemont when they spotted something in the water. It was the body of Jennifer Madden, nineteen. A student at St. John’s since September. She’d last been seen at a party in Rathmines the night before.”
The weekend before St. Patrick’s Day, then.
I said, “Could it just be a coincidence?”
Malone shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it, no. Jennifer … She, ah, isn’t the first. She’s the second. Louise Farrington was found in January, by Baggot Street Bridge. It looked like a tragic accident, at the time. But now with this second case … Well, the dates fit.”
“Why did you think the first one was an accident?”
Malone went to answer but Shaw cut in. “Because that’s what it looked like.”
“What’s important,” Malone said, shifting his weight, “is that we don’t think that anymore.”
“Someone’s copying him,” I said.
They both nodded. Shaw said, “Seems that way.”
I placed my palms flat on the table in front of me and willed the walls to slow and still.
Then I asked the detectives if they had any idea who.
“We’re following a number of leads,” Malone said. “One of them is the reason we’re here.”
I honestly had no clue what was coming next. I hadn’t lived in Ireland in nearly ten years. I hadn’t been in Dublin since the weekend of Will’s arrest. I wasn’t in touch with anyone from home except for my parents.
How had any lead led back to me?
“It seems,” Malone said, “that Will heard a news report about Jennifer the day after her body was found. According to a nurse on staff at the CPH at the time, Will became upset, and asked if he could make a call to the Gardaí. He said he needed to speak with us. We”—Malone indicated himself and Shaw—“went out there yesterday. To the CPH.”
“You’ve talked to him?” My mind was racing. How was he? How does he look? What did he say? Is he sorry? Did he tell you why? I had to concentrate in order to pluck a single coherent thought from the noise. “But he can’t know anything. He’s been inside, all this time. Unless … You don’t think …? You don’t think he was working with someone back then, do you? That there were two of them? And this is the other guy, back at it now? Is that a possibility?”
“Why would you ask us that?” Shaw was watching me closely. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”
I met his eyes. “I think I learned ten years ago that anything is possible.”
“But,” Malone said, “specifically.”
I looked to him. “I can’t say I remember anything that made me think that, no. But then I didn’t think that my boyfriend was a serial killer either.” I stopped to take a breath, to steady my voice. “What did Will say?”
I hadn’t said his name in so long the sound felt like a foreign object in my mouth, one with sharp edges that pressed painfully against the soft skin of my throat.
“Well,” Malone said, “that’s just it. When we met with him, Will told us he did have information that could potentially assist us, but that he wouldn’t tell it to us.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I looked from one man to the other. “Why would he bother telling you he knows something and then refuse to say what it is when you get there? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What I meant was,” Malone said, “he wouldn’t tell us.”
Shaw leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and mumbled something under his breath.
I thought I heard waste of time.
“Admittedly,” Malone said, “it’s unlikely that Will would have any valuable information. But that doesn’t change the fact that he does have a relevant role here, even if it’s one he hasn’t actively participated in. Our working theory is that this is a copycat. If that’s the case, by this time next week, we’ll have another dead college student on our hands. A third innocent victim, unless we catch this guy. And if we don’t do everything we can possibly can, if we don’t explore every last lead, however small or unlikely, then we will have that girl’s death not just on our hands but on our consciences, too.”
; He’d lost me.
I said, “I think I’ve missed a step ...?”
“We can’t force you to do this,” Malone said. “So we’re here to ask.”
“Ask me w—” I stopped, realizing.
No. No way. Absolutely not.
And then I said those words out loud.
“How about you have a think about it?” Malone said.
“I don’t need to.”
“If it’s the press you’re worried about, that won’t be an issue.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw a flash of a tabloid newspaper’s front page, one side taken up with a picture of me in cut-off shorts and a bikini top, taken on a girls’ holiday to Tenerife the summer before I’d started college. The other side was all headline. serial killer’s killer girl.
They got the photo from my Facebook page, which I’d only signed up for a couple of weeks before Will’s arrest. This was before the press copped on to the fact that people’s social media profiles were treasure troves of personal information just waiting to be mined, so it was far more likely that a friend I was connected with on the site had screenshot the photos and sold them.
“We’ll take steps to ensure that your involvement in this will be kept top secret,” Malone was saying. “We’ll get you in and out before anyone even knows you’re in Dublin.”
“No,” I said again.
“Well,” Shaw said, hoisting himself up out of his chair, “thanks for the coffee.” He looked at Malone with an expression that said he’d known all along it was going to go this way.
“Why don’t you take the day?” Malone said, standing up too. “Like I said, we can’t force you to do this. But we don’t know what he might say. It might be important. It might give us the break we need.” He took a business card from a pocket, placed it on the table. “We need to know no later than four this afternoon, Alison, so you can fly back with us tonight. If you say yes, you’ll be meeting with Will at the CPH first thing tomorrow morning. All the necessary arrangements are already in place.”
The Liar's Girl Page 2