“God.” I shook my head. “It just seems so … So ordinary, or something? That’s not the right word, but … I don’t know. I just thought—”
“There’d be more to it? Like he’d have special powers or something?”
“I couldn’t understand how he was doing this, how he was getting away with it.”
“All he had was access. Access and something very, very wrong with his moral code.”
I asked if Will had known him.
“We’re still trying to ascertain that but it doesn’t seem like it, no.”
“So you don’t think … that he was involved in some way?” “It doesn’t look like it, no. Remember how I said there were other prints on the folder they found in Will’s locker? Preliminary testing suggests they were Conway’s.”
“But they could’ve been working together.”
“Really, Alison, there’s absolutely no evidence to support that. I think they’ll be dropping all charges against him. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“The blood under the desk …?”
“Conway was living in Halls himself at the time. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he could’ve planted that there. Or,” Malone shifted his weight, “that someone else might have, someone who wanted to make sure they had enough to convince the DPP to accept Will’s guilty plea, and close the case. But, ah, that’s just a theory, and not one you heard from me.”
“How did this happen?” Tears were stinging my eyes. “How did this happen to Will?”
“I think Conway probably felt the net was closing in, saw that Will had been brought in, and spied an opportunity. He went about making sure then that the investigation stopped at him.”
“What does Shaw say about the confession?”
“What can he say?” Malone shrugged. “I feel a bit sorry for him, to be honest. We’ve just caught a man who murdered eight young women, but all the press are going to be interested in is how he made a mistake the first time around.”
“Why did he do it?” I asked. “Conway, I mean.”
“He seemed to think he was helping women avoid the clutches of men who would do them harm. They found a half-finished manuscript on his computer, a kind of personal safety guide for women.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. Look, I’m sure it made perfect sense to him.”
“And then, what? He went home to twiddle his thumbs for ten years until suddenly he felt the urge to do it all over again?”
“The documentary I showed you? With the tapes of Will’s confession? He had that recorded on his Sky box. It’d been viewed.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You think that set him off?”
“I think maybe he thought it was time for more cautionary tales. The theme of it was that everyone had forgotten about the Canal Killer case, after all.”
“Was he the man that attacked Heather Buckley, then?”
“We don’t know.” Malone shrugged. “All she really remembers is his height, which fits. We might find something on her at Doolyn Gardens yet but unless we do, we can’t know for sure.”
“What about Daniel?”
“As you suspected, all he was doing was collecting information for his blog. And continuing his crusade to free Will. He did admit leaving a copy of the letter in your hotel room. He said he was going to slip it under the door but that when he got there, the door was open, so he slipped it into your case instead. For safe-keeping, he said.”
“How did he know I was there?”
“He had a source on the inside. A friend of his from college now works as a civilian administrator in the Phoenix Park. She got wind of your trip to Dublin and passed the information on. She’s been let go, needless to say.”
“What made Daniel think Will was innocent?”
“The same thing that made me think it, I guess. Not all the pieces fit.”
“Where did he get the letter?”
“He tracked down someone who’d worked on the staff of the newspaper when it came in, an old college friend of his. They had a scan of it stored on an old computer.”
“And Conway really sent that?”
“We don’t know, but we think so.” Malone turned to look over his shoulder. “I think maybe that’s enough questions for now. I really should go get the doc—”
“What about Amy? Did they find her?”
Malone nodded. But I could tell by his face the news wasn’t good.
I asked where.
“In a house R&P Estate Agents were selling,” he said. “In the shed.”
“Shit.”
“How did you figure it out?” Malone asked. “That the guy we spoke to was Conway?”
I explained about the phone number impression, Googling it.
He smiled. “You’d make a good detective, you know that?”
“Hardly.” I yawned. “I only realized it when he was already in the next room.”
Malone reached over and took my good hand in his, squeezed it. “I’m sorry for leaving you there,” he said. “Once it got dark, it occurred to me that you were out in the middle of nowhere, all alone, so I sent a uniform to sit outside. But by then it was too late. When I saw your text—”
“What happens now?” I didn’t want to talk about that. “Does Will get out?”
“It’ll take some time for the machinery of the courts to do their business but, yeah, ultimately he will. And then he’ll probably seek some kind of compensation deal. I know I would.” Malone frowned at me. “I think I’m going to leave you to go back to sleep.”
“Yeah,” I said. My lids were getting heavy. “Okay.”
“Oh, and your friend Sal? She called me. Got my number off your mother, apparently.”
“Sal called you?”
“She’s on her way here. Her flight gets in at five.”
I smiled. Good old Sal. “Have you talked to Will?”
“I haven’t,” Malone said, “but I think someone has.”
“So he knows?”
“They told him this morning.”
I thought of Will’s last ten years, how awful they must have been for him. How hopeless he must have felt.
And Liz. Poor Liz.
When, in the dark shadows of my imagination, it had been Will who’d taken her life, I saw her confused, maybe realizing too late, maybe not getting a chance to realize at all. But with a stranger …
She must have been terrified.
All these years, when I’d thought of Liz, it was always like there was something between my memories of her and my grief that she was gone. A wall. A pane of glass. Because, yes, we’d been friends all those years, but by the time we arrived in St. John’s I wasn’t even sure I liked her anymore. The last things I’d said to her … They didn’t bear thinking about. Stupid, teenage, immature things—forever frozen in time because of what had happened next. But worse than that, I was the reason she was dead. Because if I’d never met Will, he’d never have met her, and she wouldn’t have—I stopped, pulled myself back from that particular edge. It was too much to feel, to much to let in. Grieving for Liz would come with a guilt that would, I’d always feared, overwhelm me.
But now I knew it wasn’t Will who’d killed her, but Brian Conway. I didn’t remember him from all those years ago, from the day we’d viewed the flat in Doolyn Gardens, but in my mind’s eye I inserted his face from yesterday, from last night, into the vague scenes I could recall from that September day all those years ago.
And my heart broke open.
For Liz. For all the life she’d missed out on. For the nineteen-year-old girl she’d always be.
I started to cry.
“It’s over,” Malone said. “It’s over.”
He was still holding my hand. He leaned over the bed now, brought it up to his lips and kissed
it gently.
alison, now
“Are you sure about this?”
My mother and I were sitting at her kitchen table, having breakfast, and she was asking me that question for the umpteenth time. The entire space was filled with glorious early morning spring sun and she’d laid on such a spread that I felt like I was in a hotel. Freshly cut fruit, pastries, poached eggs on toast. I was on my second cup of coffee, the same kind I enjoyed while I was at home—because, while I’d been in hospital, Mam had made polite enquiries of Sal, our current houseguest and her new best friend, and had gone out and bought the same machine. This was on top of the gorgeous guest room I’d been installed in, with some carefully chosen—read: innocuous—things from the boxes in the back bedroom put on the shelves to make it feel like mine, and the little wardrobe of clothes and bag of toiletries she’d gone out and bought me as well.
Sal had been put up in the room next door. I’d convinced my father to take her to Powerscourt Estate today just so she could say she’d seen something of Ireland while she was here, and because it meant there’d be two fewer concerned faces staring at me all day.
Mam had refused to go in case I experienced an only-one-good-hand emergency while in the house by myself.
“Yes,” I said. “Still sure. No change since you asked me three minutes ago.”
“But can’t you wait? You’re only out of hospital a few days, and he’s only just—”
“I want to get it over with it, Mam. Okay?”
“But why do you have to do it at all?”
“Because I didn’t the last time. I just ran off—and look where that got me. No, this time, I want to see him. I have to apologize—”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“I need to.”
My mother turned her coffee cup with the tips of fingers. “They showed it on the news last night.”
“What?”
“The house.” She shook her head. “You should’ve seen what was coming out of it, Alison. Bags and bags and bags. He must have been a right hoarder. But we didn’t see anything like that when we were there, did we? I don’t remember seeing anything in the halls.”
“He probably just kept the hallway, the stairs—and the attic apartment—clear. It’s a good thing, though, Mam. That he kept everything. Malone said that that will help.”
“Ah, yes.” My mother grinned. “Malone.”
“What?”
“Can’t you call him Michael?”
I rolled my eyes.
The doorbell rang.
“That’ll be him,” I said, getting up. “I’ll see you later.”
“Is he not coming in?”
“No, we have to get going.”
“Will you bring him in later?”
“Later?”
“When he drops you back.”
“What for?”
“So I can say hi.”
“Absolutely not.”
I got up to go, then turned back to my mother. I reached down and hugged her from behind, kissing her cheek. It was soft and delicate and smelled of soap.
“Thanks, Mam,” I said. “For everything. And I’m sorry about … About everything else.”
She reached up and squeezed my good arm.
“You better go.” Her voice was tight. “Don’t keep him waiting out there. That fella out there in the Jeep will only be snapping more pictures.” She touched her hair, checking it. “I’m going to have to get my roots done if those photographers don’t feck off soon.”
When I went outside, Malone had got back into his car.
I sat into the passenger seat and turned to him. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” he said, returning my smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay. Tired.”
“You don’t have to do this. We could put it off. He won’t be going anywhere for a couple of weeks at least.”
“No, no. I want to get it over with.”
“Well”—Malone reached into the back seat and grabbed a large, manila envelope with my name handwritten on it, handed it to me—“have a look at this. I think it might make things easier for you.”
“What is it?”
“Shaw’s under a lot of pressure to explain exactly what pointed to Will back then, so this was dug up. It’s the reason they made Will a suspect in the first place. Alison, it wasn’t because of you at all.”
alison, now
The car slowed, then turned left into the now familiar driveway, sloping uphill. There were the two concrete pillars, there were the metal gates. The spiky razor wire curling across the top of them glinted in the sun as they shuddered, then retracted, slowly opening up to let us in.
“I never want to see this place again,” I said.
Malone glanced at me. “You won’t, after this.”
He parked right outside the two-story concrete block that acted as a gateway to where Will was housed, even closer than we had the other times. He told me to stay where I was, then hurried around to open my door for me and help me out.
“It’s just my arm,” I protested.
But I let him help me in.
Alek was in the lobby. He turned toward us with a smile on his face that promptly slid off when he saw mine. “Alison!”
“I’m fine,” I said. I felt his eyes crawl over the bandage on the side of my head. They’d had to shave a small square of hair in order to put the stitches in, and strands of the hair they’d left behind had since got itself caught in the sticky parts of the bandage, and I couldn’t wash it because I couldn’t get it wet and—well, let’s just say I wasn’t going to be winning any beauty pageants anytime soon. “Really. It’s worse than it looks. How’s Will?”
Alek made a tut-tut noise. “It’s difficult. Two extremes, you know? He’s so relieved and happy that he’s getting out but …” He sighed. “Ten years is a long time. Especially these ten years, when he was so young.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So, do I have to go through the whole visitors screening extravaganza again?”
“No, we’re going to put you in the family room.”
“And we’re going to take the easy way there,” Malone said.
It turned out to be an elevator.
“I can actually walk,” I said to him as we waited for the car to arrive. “My legs are fine.”
“You need to take it easy.”
The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. As soon as the doors slid closed, he put an arm around my waist and I leaned in against him, resting. We moved apart just as the doors slid open again.
Down a short hallway, the family room was a smaller version of the visitors’ room I’d been in the last time. As we walked down the corridor to it, it was on our left, and we could see in through a bank of windows. The room was clearly intended to make children feel comfortable. There was a play mat, a box of toys and children’s books, and colorful paint on the wall.
Children coming in here, to this place, was the most depressing thing I could think of.
Will was sitting inside, hands resting on the table in front of him, but he didn’t react to our passing the window.
One-way glass, I thought.
Malone stopped me a few feet from the room’s only door and turned to me.
“Okay, well.” He squeezed my good arm. “Good luck, then. I’ll be right out here.”
I nodded at him and went inside. Alek was right behind us and the same security guard from last time was already there. They took up positions on opposite walls.
Will bolted upright in his chair when he saw me. “Ali? Jesus. Are you okay?”
I waved a hand. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Really.” I took the seat opposite him, wincing as I sat down. My muscles and ribs and back were only feeling worse as each day passed.
“I heard what happened,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry it happened to you.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
We both fell silent for a long moment.
“Honestly,” I said then, “I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“What can you say, Ali? What can anyone?”
“I just feel so …” I swallowed hard. “I feel like I could’ve done so much more. I should’ve.”
Will started shaking his head. “Don’t. You couldn’t have. Who were you? Who was I? We were just kids, Ali. We didn’t even understand what was happening to us. I know I didn’t. And what you went through, losing Liz and then seeing me … seeing me charged. I can’t even imagine it.”
“Will, please. Don’t make this even worse than it already is by worrying about what I went through. You’ve been in here ten years.”
“But I’m getting out.”
“You should never have been in here in the first place.”
“Look,” Will said, reaching across the table to take one of my hands. I let him. “Here’s the way I’m looking at it. It doesn’t matter what we do or what we say. We can’t change the past, not a thing about it. But we can decide what we do now, what we do tomorrow. So I say, let’s wipe the slate clean. Start again. That’s what I’m going to do.” He smiled. “Well, maybe not tomorrow, but whenever I do get out of here.”
“That’s easier said than done, Will.”
“But it’s worth doing, isn’t it? I mean, what’s the other option? Dwell in the past for the rest of our lives? Let what ruined us then ruin us for ever?”
I let go of his hand. “What happens now?”
“My solicitor is working on it. He says a couple of weeks.”
“You have a solicitor now?”
“I always did.”
“He didn’t want to help you before?”
“He had nothing to help me with. We needed new evidence.”
Silence bloomed again.
Then I said, “Have you seen him?”
Will nodded. “They showed me the picture from the estate agency website.”
“Did you recognize him?”
The Liar's Girl Page 30