by Laura Elliot
Had Davina made the same connection? Julie suspected she had but she was afraid to ask. Their time for sharing secrets was long past. That she managed to speak afterwards and give her keynote address was a credit to her steely determination. Like Julie, she must have been confident that nothing would ever be proved against either of their husbands.
Julie thought back to the time she had met Adele outside her husband’s office. She should have guessed then. Marianne’s daughter… that explained the rage on her face, her lips drawn back from her teeth, a metallic glitter in her brown eyes. She had reminded Julie of the Furies; goddesses of vengeance, seeking the destruction of men.
This would be the last time she would stand in his house. Since she had left, Liam had phoned her every day. He wanted forgiveness. In return, he would sell Holywell and seek counselling to manage the unresolved issues he had about his mother and the strange path she had chosen. Julie had listened to him with a chilled detachment and gave him the same answer each time.
She stopped at the door of the living room, swamped by the memory of their last encounter. Now, like then, papers were strewn across the table. They would not be from the safe; everything incriminating had probably been burned or shredded – but he would discover that there was no such thing as a clean trail.
On the night she left Holywell, she had left a message for her husband. It contained photographed details of an off-shore account she had discovered at the back of the safe. One of many, she said, and all with Gloria’s signature. She had warned him that if he approached her again, she would deliver the information she had acquired personally to the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau. Such a weapon was mightier than any fist.
She picked up a letter he had tossed onto an armchair. Her eyes watered as soon as she looked at the cramped words written across three sheets of paper. This was a warning sign that she must not strain her eyes. The ophthalmologist she had consulted had said she’d narrowly missed losing the sight in one of them. She put on the patch she had been advised to wear over the most seriously damaged eye and checked the pages. It was a photocopy of a letter, she realised, and it had been sent to Adele Foyle.
Her incredulity grew as she read it. The man who wrote it was a hoarder of secrets but, then, who wasn’t? She stared at two photographs. A scene from hell, she thought, as she tried to unscramble the images. It took her a moment to recognise Jack Bale in the midst of the conflagration. Liam’s computer was still on. She could tell by the screen that he had been listening to a recording, which, she realised on closer examination, was on a USB key that he had inserted into the computer.
He would be back soon. She still felt the impact of his foot and his fist branding her. Whatever was going on between her husband and this man, Malachi Norris, it had nothing to do with her.
She drove back to the Loyvale Hotel, passing Hillcrest on the way. Davina must be relieved that there were no longer any bouquets of flowers or message of condolences heaped outside it. As always, Hillcrest stood out from the other houses, the evening sun gleaming on its mellow thatch, the garden in full bloom. The by-election would take place in two days. A tight race, according to the polls. The conference and its heady revelations had increased Davina’s popularity, but she must be clinging to sanity by her fingertips, Julie thought.
Inside the hotel, she unpacked her case. She had transferred her clients to other counsellors in the practice and spoken to Valerie, her partner, about taking a leave of absence from the clinic. She had booked her flight to Provence and would travel there after the tests on her eyes were concluded. Chasing butterflies was preferable any day to living in a golden cage.
She ordered food and coffee up to her room and tried to forget about the letter. Liam would be home by now. Would he be aware that she had been to Holywell in his absence? Her tenure there had left hardly a dent on Gloria’s dominant presence. She took her coffee outside to the balcony. Hard to tell at this distance who was fishing today, but she recognised the bulky figure of Jack Bale walking away from the river. Clouds were gathering. Dark grey and ominous, they covered the sun and dulled the ripples into a sullen roll.
63 Davina
Leaves fluttered before her face as Davina left her car. No need to lock it. Only two cars were parked by this humpbacked bridge with its crumbling walls and overhanging trees. It had started to rain shortly after she left Hillcrest. A difficult night for her canvassers and she should be out there with them instead of trying to appease Jack Bale, whose demands had become impossible to ignore.
‘I want you to hear me loud and clear,’ he said when she slid into the passenger seat beside him. ‘If you as much as mention this farce of an investigation ever again, I’ve enough information to wipe the Lewis name off the political map forever. As for your husband and his shallow promises, if I go down, he’s coming with me, every inch of the way.’ No greeting, no preamble, just the threat, and, as he intended, it sent a tremor through her.
‘Jack, you have to understand, we were put in an impossible position by that Shannon bitch. It was the last thing either of us wanted to promise. You have to trust us. All this will fade after the by-election. We’ll make certain it does.’
‘You bet your sweet life you will. The file I have on your husband and his dearly departed father is impressive. Weighty, if you get my meaning. I’ve always believed the past can come back and bite you in the arse if you’re not prepared to bite it first. So, it’s all there in hard copy. You can keep your laptops and USB keys. Fat lot of good it did Adele Foyle, as you well know.’
‘I’d nothing to do with that attack on her.’
‘Oh, aye, there’s none so blind as those who will not see.’
‘Don’t start, Jack. You’ve closed your eyes to enough over the years.’
‘Three blind mice, eh. You’re right, I closed my eyes to Keith and that Thornton creep and the other little—’
He tensed as headlights swept over the car. The blur of rain on the windscreen added to the glare. A couple seeking privacy under the rain-drenched trees, perhaps, Davina thought. Why else would anyone come to this forgotten wilderness… unless there were shady dealings afoot. She thought of Marianne Mooney’s daughter. To think she had been lying since she arrived at Hillcrest with her innocent smiles and loaded questions that must never be answered. She thought of Grad Wheeler and Bob Molloy, both dead, and was filled with a sudden, overwhelming trepidation. Her antennae, supercharged. Davina held her hands to her eyes, dazzled until the lights were switched off. The driver had reversed and parked directly in front of Jack’s car.
He lowered the window. Rain swept into the car and the wind tossed her hair before her eyes.
An interior light in the other car switched on as the door was opened.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Jack roared.
A figure emerged, or so Davina thought, but the blurred shape she glimpsed was lost in darkness when the car door was slammed closed. A hand appeared at the open window. Davina cringed against the passenger door as the hand was raised, as if in benediction, before Jack’s outraged face. He was muttering expletives as he struggled with his seat belt when the trigger was pulled. A split second, that was all it took, an instant that could have been imagined except that Davina’s ears were humming, her eyes rivetted to Jack as he slumped forward over the steering wheel.
The horn blared, like a banshee wailing a warning at death, and the figure at the window bent to look beyond Jack’s slumped body towards Davina. His face was a pale moon shining and the plea that came to her lips was barely uttered before he was gone. She watched the light come on as he entered his car. Jogging pants and a loose sweater, a baseball cap low over his forehead, that was all she could register. His headlights flared again but this time he was moving away from her, driving too fast along the rutted road.
She had blood on her face and clothes. Splatters that she would never be able to wash away, ingrained forever on her psyche. Jack was dead. A bullet throu
gh his forehead. She was unable to see his expression. No need to guess. She knew that when he was examined by someone else it would be one of surprise. Instant death: she could understand its lure. Leaning forward, she removed the ring of keys that were attached to a loop on his belt and shoved them into her jacket pocket. In the glove compartment, she found a packet of wet wipes. Working fast, she cleaned every surface she could have touched, then opened the car door.
‘Goodbye, Jack,’ she said and closed it quietly behind her. The horn was still blaring as she drove away. Even when she was out of earshot, she believed she could hear its plaintive wailing inside her head.
She parked outside Loyvale Crescent and ran to his house. No time to lose. Her nerves could not fail her at this point. Once inside, she closed the blinds and found a torch in his utility room. Keeping the beam low, she moved through each room until she found a filing cabinet in his bedroom. The cabinet was locked but one of the small keys on the ring opened it. Each file had a name. Keith’s file was next to his father’s. Jack was right. They both had weight. Her own was lighter but he had left space for it to be filled. Some people sucked up all the air around them but that never became apparent until they were dead. Only then, did breathing become a freer experience.
She left his bungalow as silently as she had entered it. Back in her car, she drove through the village and out past Rachel Darcy’s town house. The lights were on. She caught a glimpse of Rachel as she pulled the curtains closed. Her compassionate leave was over. Life moves on. Soon, she would receive a call to duty. Another shooting. Would she have flashbacks to the night her husband was shot? Was that what Davina could expect? Adele Foyle had spoken about flashbacks. Three blind mice… footsteps on the stairs… a gun pressed against— Davina shuddered away from the image. Such violence, but Adele had brought it with her, stirring ghosts and bringing the past back to life. Her head ached as she parked her car beside a security bollard and ran to the river’s edge. Jack Bale’s keys fell silently into the water. The ripples spread outwards, a circle within a widening circle that would eventually spend itself and be still.
64 Julie
When darkness fell, Julie was no longer able to ignore the uneasiness she had been feeling since she read Malachi Norris’s letter. She had expected Liam to ring after he returned from the leisure centre and when darkness fell without word from him, she broke the promise she had made to herself, and rang him. When he did not answer she left a message on his voicemail. ‘Liam, ring me as soon as you get this message. It’s important.’
After an hour had passed and she hadn’t heard from him, she tried him again. ‘Ring me, Liam. It’s about Stephanie.’
Silence, except for the slash of rain against the window. How much time had passed since he read that letter? Julie was unable to settle, unsure what action she should take but increasingly conscious that something was wrong. He was never more than a few minutes away from his voicemail and, on hearing Stephanie’s name, he should have been in touch with her immediately.
The traffic was light as she drove back through the village. Outside the Flowing Loy, a group of bedraggled canvassers stood under umbrellas and handed out leaflets to the customers entering and leaving the pub. Recognising Davina among them, Julie pulled in at the side of the road and beeped the horn.
‘I’m looking for Liam,’ she said when Davina approached the car. ‘Have you seen him anywhere?’
‘No, I haven’t.’ Davina stretched out her hand and touched Julie’s cheek. ‘Don’t forget, Julie. I need your Number One.’ Her eyes, illuminated by street lights, glowed. Julie sensed an excitement about her. A radiance, that was what it seemed like, but Julie was unable to name the emotion that flickered over Davina’s face as she shoved an election leaflet at her and returned to her supporters.
Loyvale Crescent was a quiet road of bungalows behind high privet hedges. Julie rang the doorbell and knocked on the windows. Jack Bale was not at home. She walked around to the back of the house and turned the door handle. All locked and secured against intruders.
The local radio station was playing late-night easy-listening music. Suddenly, a voice interrupted the programme to announce a news flash. A body had been located in a car close to the Little Loy bridge. A shooting. Foul play was suspected. No name would be released until family members had been notified. The body was that of an elderly man, well known in his local community. The newsreader’s tone suggested he was straining to say more but was confined to just those few, impersonal details.
Julie’s hands were slippery with sweat as she drove towards Holywell. Once, she almost lost control of the steering wheel. When she entered the living room, everything was exactly the same as it had been earlier. She placed the letter and photographs under her arm and removed the USB key from Liam’s computer. She hurried back to her car. This mausoleum held bones and she would hear them rattle if she stayed any longer.
In her hotel room she watched the late-night news. Cameras poked through the branches of weeping trees and focused on an isolated car where, pending further investigations, the body of Jack Bale still lay.
An hour later Rachel arrived at the hotel. She was in uniform and accompanied by a younger guard, who introduced herself as Garda Roberts. Her expression was grave and sympathetic when she greeted Julie. She was young, still inexperienced, and her mouth had yet to turn steely when she was the bearer of tragic news.
Had her husband been taken from the river, Julie wondered? Or cut down from a tree? The river, Rachel told her, gently. He had been discovered by a homeless man who hung out on the riverbank. She must come with them to identify his body.
Who would officially identify Jack Bale, Julie wondered? No wife or family to mourn him or give him an identity as he lay stretched out on a slab next to her husband. But first, she must ring Stephanie. She needed to protect her daughter. Stephanie would grieve for a father who had lost his footing on the riverbank and was swept to his death on the racing currents.
65 Davina
Rolling news. The gods of Chaos had been set loose and Reedstown had experienced two tragedies on one night. In the mortuary Julie, supported by Keith, officially identified her husband’s body. Davina stayed in the waiting room, awaiting their return. She had gone there directly from the Flowing Loy, where her canvassers had gathered for a drink before calling it a night. Keith’s frantic phone call had not surprised her. As soon as Julie had stopped her car and asked Davina if she had seen her husband, she had been waiting to another tragedy to break above her head. Far, far above her head. She was untouchable. Faces swam by her, voices too. No one noticed that when she spoke, she was on automatic. No one noticed the blood on her hands, on her face, her clothes. Clean as a new pin, her mother used to say when Davina was going to school, and she was just as clean now. She had to learn to ignore the blood. It was a figment of her imagination and, like all such figments, it could be controlled by rational thought.
That glance she had exchanged with Liam over Jack Bale’s slumped corpse. Would she ever be able to forget it? Such a pause… a time-standing-still instant that stretched way beyond the grasp of endurance as he decided whether she should live or die. He had made his decision and sought his own oblivion. Now, having survived that instant of indecision, Davina’s will to live was charged and powerful.
She rehearsed what she would say to the media about the sad and shocking events that had befallen Reedstown. An honoured former member of the police force struck down in the prime of his retirement. Shot by gangsters seeking revenge for his unstinting fight against the scourge of drugs. A successful businessman losing his life in a tragic accident. If she was elected, the first thing she would do was organise security barriers along the riverbank.
Julie was a ghastly shade of pale when she returned to the waiting room but her composure surprised Davina. Keith appeared to be on the verge of collapsing. So much information in those files. She had left him shredding them in Hillcrest while she joined the canvas. Not by a beat
would she change her plans. No breath of suspicion must ever touch her. Those files could have destroyed them, crushed Keith’s rising ambitions, and her own political career just as it was taking off. She had always known Jack Bale was a weasel but she had believed he was their weasel… until now.
Julie’s face had been a disaster after the beating. A map of violence. She was free from Liam now. Free from the shadow cast by Marianne Mooney, as Rachel was. The sergeant had been present at the mortuary, so straight and rigid in her uniform. Two down, one to go. The words came unbidden to Davina and were quickly banished. She checked her self-control, as she would her pulse. Nothing else mattered except putting one foot in front of the other, one word after another, one day to follow the one just gone.
She drove Julie to the Loyvale Hotel.
‘Have you told Stephanie?’ Keith asked as she was leaving the car.
‘Not yet,’ Julie replied. ‘It will break her heart when I tell her she has lost her father.’
Keith leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. What was he thinking? Did he realise how close he came to losing his wife? Did he realise Davina was the only person in the world he could trust?
Squad cars reached Hillcrest as darkness gave way to dawn. Doors opened and figures emerged, moving quietly but with purposeful steps towards the front door. For once, Keith’s winning smile failed to disarm the group of Gardai who entered the house. After a brief conversation, she and Keith were allowed to dress. Only then were handcuffs produced, two pairs, efficiently locked. It could have been a dream; all the elements were there: those dark intrusive shapes trampling through her immaculate rooms, disturbing her order, the shape of things to come. A dreadful mistake had been made. Heads would roll, she would make sure of that, but the guard with the stretched face, officialdom stamping her with authority, refused to blink. Keith’s smile had a stiff awfulness when he was warned about saying things that could later be used in evidence. What was it Jack used to say? Something about the past coming back to bite one’s arse. Crude but apt.