by LJ Ross
You couldn’t win them all.
Sitting in the little ‘Family and Friends’ room at Ballyfinny Garda Station, with its stale air and peeling paint, Gregory had called upon some advice he’d once received from a murder detective in the North of England; a man by the name of Ryan, who dealt with the worst of humanity every day and seemed to wake up each morning still thinking the best of the world and those who inhabited it.
“Follow your conscience,” Ryan had told him. “Never tell the family any lies, but don’t rob them of hope, either. Hope’s sometimes all there is.”
Now, as he stood in front of the Murder Wall, he wondered when Claire Kelly’s killer had lost all hope. When had the connection between them and the rest of society broken down so irretrievably that killing one of its number seemed the best way to expel the darkness they harboured inside?
Was it hate that had driven them to it, or a crooked form of love?
He knew that the staging of her body was significant. It had been, from the very beginning. But did it speak of love or of hatred—even jealousy?
Perhaps, as with so many of his patients, there was no ‘clever’ reason to it. They’d simply had the will and the drive to kill, and nobody would ever understand why.
Gregory shook his head at that.
His every instinct as a clinician told him there was a reason behind the killer’s choice; something important and, at present, known only to them. The Garda had taken his advice and, over the coming days, they’d agreed to re-evaluate the movements of the town residents. They would begin with those in Claire’s inner circle, moving gradually out to those she seldom had any dealings with, in order to narrow the pool of potential suspects with means and opportunity. He had his own list, tucked away in his jacket pocket, and it would be interesting to see if it matched the one the Garda produced.
After all, his list contained the names of two of their number. Neither Niall nor Connor Byrne had provided statements for the file, and nobody had pressed them on it.
But he would.
“I meant to ask,” he said, turning to Niall. “With the divisional office being based in Castlebar, what made you stay living here in Ballyfinny?”
Niall was hunched over his computer, but he looked up and leaned back in his chair, stretching his hands above his head to ease the kinks in his back.
“It’s home,” he explained, getting up to wander across the room, where an old-style coffee machine churned out caffeinated sludge. “We grew up here. My Ma has Declan most Fridays and she sees plenty of us through the week, so she’d miss that. Family’s important to her.”
He gestured with an empty coffee cup and Gregory nodded.
“Thanks.”
Niall started up the coffee machine, which made a sound not dissimilar to a spacecraft taking off, then leaned back against the counter to wait.
“Emma’s family is here too,” he continued. “I should say, her mum is. Her dad passed away not long ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Gregory said, automatically.
“Cancer,” Niall pulled a face. “It hit her mum hard, so Emma goes over to visit whenever she can to help out around the house and all that. Her Ma’s not like mine; Maggie Byrne can handle most things— and has done, over the years.”
Gregory could have played dumb, but he preferred to be direct.
“I was sorry to hear about what happened to your father,” he said.
Niall battled the usual feeling of impotent rage that washed over him every time he thought of it, then the coffee machine let out an ear-piercing beep to signal its cycle had ended. He poured brownish water into two mugs, one bearing a faded Leprechaun, the other a map of the lough and an emblem of a four-leaf clover.
“Here,” he said, handing the one with the Leprechaun to Gregory. “Maybe it’ll bring us luck.”
Gregory took a sip, then winced.
“Yeah, it’s not exactly Columbia’s finest,” Niall chuckled. “But it does the job.”
“Who does the job?” Connor asked, as he stepped back into the Major Incident Room with a file tucked under his arm.
“This does,” Niall said, raising his cup. “The Doc and I were talking about why I stayed in Ballyfinny. Truth is, Emma and I never should have left Dublin. We were happy there, when I was at the NBCI and she was doing her teacher training.”
“Ah, now,” Connor said, dropping the file on his desk. “You’re both country folk. You’d have missed these hills, all the way over in Dublin, surrounded by all the traffic and strife of the city.”
Niall stared into the bottom of his cup.
“Maybe,” he muttered.
Gregory watched their byplay and, armed with his newfound knowledge of their family history, realised that it was their mannerisms, not their looks, that were so similar.
He took a fortifying sip from his cup, then grasped the nettle.
“When I was going through the statements in the file, I noticed yours were missing,” he said, smiling at both of them. “Can I have a copy of each, please?”
The brothers looked at each other, then at him.
“You think one of us would do that, Doc?” Connor was affronted.
“He’s covering all the bases,” Niall said. “As we should have done. It’s not personal, Con.”
He turned to Gregory.
“It’s a shock to have the shoe on the other foot, that’s all,” he said, easily enough. “I’ll type up a statement for you tonight, but I’ll tell you here and now: on the Saturday Claire Kelly died, I was at home all morning. Emma went to collect Declan from Ma’s house, and the two of them were home by eleven.”
Gregory turned to Connor and waited.
“I don’t believe this,” the man muttered, then held up his hands. “Fine, fine. I was right here, on duty at the station.”
“With anybody?”
Connor swore roundly.
“No, b’ Jesus, I was on my own—as I’ve a right to be, as a grown man.”
Gregory’s face remained impassive, and Connor shifted uncomfortably.
“There wasn’t anybody else on shift, if that’s what you mean. Before all this happened, Ballyfinny was just a quiet town. The worst we ever deal with is the odd bit of poaching or theft of farm machinery. It doesn’t take a squad of Garda officers to deal with that, so I was on my own.”
Niall turned to his brother with interest.
“Did you take any calls?” he asked.
Connor shook his head.
“There was only one call, that morning, and it came from Liam Kelly.”
Gregory thanked them both, and wondered if Niall Byrne would have the strength to check the phone records for incoming calls to Ballyfinny Garda Station.
He kept both men on his list, for now.
CHAPTER 17
As the day drew to a close, Gregory stood on the steps of the Ballyfinny Castle Hotel with his bag at his feet and looked out across the lough. It was Big Sky Country, he thought; the kind of place that reminded you of how small you were, in the grand scheme of things. In his case, he was just one man standing beneath a blazing sky knowing that, somewhere out there, another soul may be looking up and feeling the same insignificance.
He heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and spotted Maggie’s car approaching along the winding driveway. With impeccable timing, Seamus came out to greet his sister and to see him off, while Padraig materialised from somewhere within to snaffle his bag and load it into the boot of her car before he had time to say, ‘hands off’.
The hand was definitely quicker than the eye, in his case.
“Ready?” Maggie called out, and, with a final word of thanks to the general manager and his concierge, Gregory folded his long body into the passenger seat of her compact Fiat.
“Might’ve known you’d have a tiny car,” he complained, to make her laugh.
She let out one of her legendary hoots, then gunned the engine into life, swinging into an elaborate U-turn before heading off in the directio
n of the airport.
“Seamus hates it when I turn around in front of the hotel like that,” she said, wickedly. “It leaves indents in his perfect driveway.”
Gregory gave a lopsided smile, glad to see she hadn’t lost her sense of fun, despite everything.
It was a thirty-minute drive back to the airport but, rather than subjecting him to her favoured radio channel, Maggie fell into conversation.
“How’ve you found the trip?” she asked, and he smiled again.
What she really wanted to know was: how had he found them? Her people, her family and friends in the town.
He answered the unspoken question, to set her mind at ease.
“You couldn’t have prevented this,” he said, as the car swept through the thick woodland surrounding the hotel. “It could have happened to anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Maggie turned the car onto the main road, slowing to a snail’s pace as they were caught behind a slow-moving tractor whose driver was clearly in no rush to be anywhere fast.
“It plays on my mind—all times of the day, but especially at night,” she said. “I keep wondering whether there were signs I should have seen. Odd behaviour I should have noticed. There just wasn’t.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “The only person responsible for what happened to Claire Kelly was the person who took her life.”
Maggie was silent for a few minutes, until the tractor turned off the road and she was able to accelerate once more.
“I was thinking about what you said, the other night, about them being broken and needing help,” she continued. “Part of me hates to think that, because I don’t want to pity them, Alex. I don’t want to care about them, not after what they’ve done to Claire and her family.”
“That’s understandable,” he reassured her. “It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“I know. But I was thinking about how these killers, or rapists, or whatever they may be, usually have some awful trauma in their childhoods. Terrible experiences that shape them into these broken-down adults.”
Gregory nodded.
“There are various schools of thought,” he said. “But, as far as I’m concerned, killers are not born. They’re made. That doesn’t mean to say that everybody who suffers childhood trauma will grow up to be a killer. If that were true, half the known world would be locked up at Southmoor.”
She flipped on her lights as dusk began to fall, and the dashboard illuminated her profile, which was set in lines of worry.
“Seamus told you about what happened to Aiden,” she said, and her voice wobbled a bit. “It’s been over thirty years and it still hurts to think of it.”
Gregory broke with his own rules, put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a quick, supportive squeeze.
“Thanks,” she said, huskily. “I wasn’t at home, the night it happened. People didn’t have mobile phones back then, so the first I heard of it was when a knock came on my friend’s door. I was around there, laughing about some nonsense or other, while Aiden was dying with Niall there to see the whole thing.”
Gregory gave her a few moments to recover, then picked up the thread of conversation.
“You’re worried it’s affected him,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Niall suffered extreme childhood trauma, for which you’re blaming yourself—again—and you’re worrying…What do you worry about, Maggie?”
Her lips trembled in the reflected light of the dashboard, but she shook her head.
She would not bring herself to say it.
She would not even think it.
“I told you Niall and Emma are having some trouble at the moment,” she said. “They haven’t told me exactly why, and I don’t want to pry. All I know is, Niall’s drinking is getting worse. You saw what he was like, last night.”
Wisely, Gregory chose to remain silent.
“I’ve tried talking to him, but he tells me there’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Back then, in the eighties, things weren’t as developed as they are now. There were no counsellors and few child psychologists that people trusted. We saw it as a community problem; something we’d deal with, together.”
“And did you—deal with it, I mean?”
Maggie shook her head again.
“I did my best,” she said. “The family rallied around, and he was never without a friend to play with, but there were times…”
She trailed off, and Gregory frowned.
“What times, Maggie?”
“With animals,” she said, tremulously. “I got a dog for Niall and Connor to look after, when they were little. I found it poisoned in the back garden.”
Gregory spoke with extreme care.
“Are you sure it was Niall?”
Maggie opened her mouth, then shut it again.
“I-I always assumed. He spent the most time with it, so I thought—I thought it must have been him.”
“Boys who suffer abuse inside an orphanage are just as vulnerable as those who witness their father’s murder,” he said softly. “They’re also equally capable of healing, with the right kind of loving mother to guide them. Like I said, not everyone who has a difficult childhood grows up to be a killer, Maggie.”
She parked the car and rested her hands on the steering wheel. When she glanced across at him, there were tears in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, with feeling. “I think I owe you a consultation fee, after all that.”
“You owe me nothing,” he assured her, and reached for the door handle. “I’ll work on the profile this week and travel back next weekend. In the meantime, call me, if you need me.”
Or, if anything happens.
He poked his head back through the door, as an afterthought.
“Look after your family,” he said. “And don’t travel anywhere alone.”
If Maggie was frightened by the warning implicit in his words, she hid it behind a cheerful smile.
“Safe travels,” she said, and waited until his tall figure had disappeared into the airport terminal before starting the car again.
Motherly instinct, she supposed.
CHAPTER 18
The air smelled of iodine.
It was all around him; in his hair, crawling over his skin, and inside his mouth, like black smoke. He coughed and spluttered, his lungs bursting as he tried to find his way through the misty haze, to the fresh air beyond.
Alex ran mindlessly through empty streets, his footsteps clattering against the cobblestones, until he came to the edge of a steep bank. He tried to stop, but suddenly he was falling through the air, his body lurching forward as he plummeted through empty sky and into darkness.
There was a sickening crunch of flesh and bone as his body hit something hard and cold, but he felt no pain. Lifting himself onto his knees, Alex found he was inside Ballyfinny Abbey, at the foot of the altar. Above his head, a golden effigy of Jesus Christ was suspended, tears of blood weeping from his painted face and onto the floor, where it ran in small rivers towards where he kneeled.
When he looked up again, it was not the son of God who looked down upon him but a pale-faced woman with a gaping wound in her heart.
Alex scrambled away and turned to run, but found the path was blocked, and the doors barred.
Six children stood in a row in front of him, their skin almost translucent in the candlelight. The eldest boy held a small puppy in his hands, his serious young face stained with tears. A little girl in pink pyjamas clutched a teddy bear in her arms and held the hand of a little boy with bony arms and legs. Behind them, a shadow approached, dressed in a dark cassock.
“I am death,” it said. “Come with me, now.”
But it was not the priest.
It was Cathy Jones.
* * *
Alex woke in his own bed, on the south bank of the River Thames.
He’d chosen to live in the city centre because, no matter what the time of day or night, there would always be life outside his window.
A quick glance at the clock told him it was shortly after four a.m., so he rolled off the edge of the bed and walked to the window, throwing it open to the night air and the salty scent of the river. Comforting sound filtered into the room; a combination of late-night revelry and early-morning deliveries that made up the hum of city life.
Alex stood there for a long time resting his forearms on the window-ledge, letting the air cool his over-heated skin and calm his over-charged mind. He watched lights twinkling on the inky-black river and knew that, in another hour, they would be replaced by the dim glow of sunrise. His loft apartment was one of ten inside a renovated warehouse building from the Victorian era, in a popular, upmarket area of the south bank known as ‘Shad Thames’. There were countless restaurants, bars, theatres and art galleries, offering plenty of opportunity for a single man of means to meet people.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stepped foot inside any of them.
His friends were scarce and carefully-chosen; his work all-consuming. Romantic entanglements were a complication he generally avoided.
But he was no saint.
There had been women, in the past. Short-lived relationships that were more physical than anything else. There may be others in the future.
But there would never be a wife, or somebody to see him in moments of weakness, such as these. He’d made the decision many years ago never to entrust too much of himself into the hands of another, and there had been nobody to change his opinion on that score.
An image of a woman with long, red hair floated into his mind.
“I want her,” he admitted to himself. “But not at any cost.”
And the cost would be high, with that one. There were others to think of; children whose lives would be torn apart.
The answer was ‘no’.
And so, he would continue to live a half-life; a purgatory of emotional deadlock, where he would step into the hearts and minds of others without compromising his own.
Bill Douglas had once told him he was like a chameleon, with an uncanny knack for being able to fit into any new environment, so that those who lived there might think he was one of them.