The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

by Tanya Farrelly

  ‘Mr Molloy, we have some news for you. Could you come down to the station?’

  Sweeney’s voice was clipped, staccato, and he wasn’t sure if he imagined it but he sounded almost upbeat.

  ‘Is it Mercedes?’ His mouth had gone suddenly dry. ‘Have you found her?’

  Sweeney ignored his question; he clearly didn’t believe in giving away information over the phone. ‘How soon can you get here?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll come right away.’

  He hadn’t even had a chance to take his coat off. He picked up his keys and headed back out in the rain. If they’d discovered it was Mercedes – if they’d identified her so fast, wouldn’t they have called to the house in person? Wouldn’t he be on his way to the station in the back of a patrol car rather than driving there willingly? Maybe it was nothing. Maybe there had been a sighting since the ad went up on that website and someone had mistaken some other woman for his wife. It happened all the time. People swore blind to a positive identification only for it to be proven untrue.

  That wouldn’t happen in his case. Nobody would see Mercedes in some crowded street. She wouldn’t be caught on CCTV in a big department store. She was gone. Her body had, according to the news story, already begun to decay. He didn’t like to think of that – maybe that’s what Sweeney had called him in for – he wanted him to take a look at the body, see if he could positively identify it as his wife. He shuddered at the idea. How could he ever look at her face again?

  When he pulled up outside the station, it was still raining hard. He sat gripping the wheel, delaying the moment. What was it Sweeney wanted from him? – Would he walk out of there a free man? He killed the engine, made a dash for the doors; one way or another he had to face whatever lay ahead.

  The desk was unmanned when he entered. He stood tapping his fingers on the counter. In a room in the back he could hear voices. A few minutes later the young garda that had been with Sweeney the first time they had paid him a visit appeared at the desk. From the blank look on his face he seemed not to remember who he was or why he was there.

  ‘Garda Sweeney’s expecting me.’

  The young garda made some noise that could have been an acknowledgement. Then he disappeared into the back room, presumably to locate Sweeney.

  Oliver looked around the station. There wasn’t even a seat for people waiting, not that he wanted to sit. He felt like pacing, but he didn’t want to appear nervous and so he stood with his hands in his coat pockets where no one would see the tremor that had crept into his fingers. He heard before he saw Sweeney’s bulk emerge from the innards of the station.

  ‘Mr Molloy, how are you?’

  ‘Have you found Mercedes?’ Have you found her body rotting in the earth?

  Sweeney didn’t answer right away. He simply led the way to a small room at the end of the corridor.

  ‘It seems your wife walked into a Garda station in Belfast and identified herself last night.’

  Impossible. Sweeney picked up a remote control and aimed it at a flat-screen television high on the wall opposite. He pressed a button and the screen turned blue. Oliver didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond. He waited, eyes fixed on the screen.

  Sweeney was no whizz with technology. He fumbled with the buttons and grunted in exasperation when he knocked off the wrong button and the blue screen turned to millions of scrambled pixels. He moved his arm and kept pressing until finally an image of a Garda station, not unlike the one they were now in, appeared on the screen. The camera was directed at the double glass doors. There was a timer in the corner of the screen that read 18.10.

  On screen, the door opened and a woman appeared. She made her way to the desk. Oliver leaned forward in his chair. Sweeney paused the shot and zoomed in on the woman who claimed to be Mercedes Hernandez. Oliver nodded. He was aware of Sweeney’s shrewd eyes assessing his reaction. In the close-up it was still difficult to differentiate. To the untrained eye, it would be almost impossible. She had changed her hair. It made her face look thinner, her mouth less full. He peered closely at the screen, and Sweeney pressed another button and the woman reached the counter, smiled at the young garda on duty and leaned forward at the desk. She reached into her bag then and pulled out what looked like a passport. She placed it on the desk for the garda to see. The woman on the screen was a modified version of Mercedes Hernandez. She had the same figure, and the same hairstyle and, if he hadn’t known that it wasn’t possible, she may even have fooled him. He wasn’t sure what she had done, and hadn’t even begun to fathom why she had done it, but Carmen Hernandez had almost metamorphosed into Mercedes.

  ‘Is that your wife?’

  Oliver nodded.

  ‘Beats me why a man would want to cheat on a woman like that.’ Sweeney shook his big head and turned off the television.

  ‘Sometimes we don’t know our luck,’ Oliver said.

  Sweeney ignored him. ‘We tried to get in touch with her sister, but her phone seems to be powered off. Maybe she’s out of the country?’

  Oliver nodded. ‘She went to Spain to see if she could find out anything from friends there. I’ll try to get in touch with her. What do I do now?’ he asked.

  Sweeney looked at him and shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just wait for her to cool off I guess. Whether she decides to get in touch with you is her decision. Nothing much you can do once a woman’s made up her mind.’

  Oliver looked at Sweeney, at his almost wistful expression, and wondered what lay behind the words of advice that he hadn’t asked for. ‘I meant do I have to sign something or …?’

  Sweeney shook his head. ‘No. You’ve confirmed that it’s Ms Hernandez. That’s all we need to close the case.’

  Ms Hernandez. Mercedes had never changed her name. It was the name on all her official documents, the name on her passport, which Carmen had obviously taken from among her things when she’d been in the house. He wondered when she’d had an opportunity to do it; maybe on that first night when he had arrived to find her in the living room. What else had she seen as she’d gone through Mercedes’s documents? What else had she stolen?

  Oliver looked at his watch. It wasn’t yet ten. He wanted to go round to the flat to talk to Carmen. He got into the car, drove out of the car park and veered left for the city. Carmen had ended the search for Mercedes, but why? Had she finally decided that the best thing was to remove Mercedes from the picture? A myriad of thoughts spun round his head as he made his way across the city towards Carmen’s flat, wondering if she’d returned yet from Belfast.

  When he arrived a girl with a stroller was struggling in the door of the apartment block. He hurried to hold the door open for her and then took the opportunity of slipping into the dimly lit hallway without having to alert Carmen to his arrival. As he climbed the stairs to her apartment, he wondered if she had stayed in Belfast.

  She must have known that he’d have seen the footage by now. He wondered what kind of reaction she expected. She had no guarantee that he wouldn’t tell the police that the woman caught on CCTV was not Mercedes. The thought had occurred to him as he’d sat in the interview room with Sweeney. If he’d told Sweeney there and then that it was Carmen, he could have had her arrested for impersonation, for perverting the course of justice and who knew what other crime. Carmen had put herself in the firing line, but she had done it for him. That was the thought that had been going through his mind since he’d seen the tape. It had curtailed any thought he might have had of trying to fit Carmen up for Mercedes’s disappearance, for her murder. He didn’t want to think of it as that. It wasn’t murder. At most it was manslaughter. Slaughter – he hated that word. He hadn’t slaughtered anyone. Slaughter suggested bloodshed and violence, and that was not what it had been. What it had been was an accident, and he had to put it out of his mind.

  He paused outside Carmen’s door and listened for any sound within. He thought he could hear voices – a radio, perhaps – but he wasn’t sure. It might have been coming from another flat. He rapped on th
e door with his fist. The wood rattled under his knuckles, and the voices died. He tried again, put his mouth close to the keyhole and called her name.

  ‘It’s me,’ he added.

  The last was redundant. He knew that. She would know his voice, know that he would be round to ask her why she had done what she did, what she hoped to gain from it; though he thought he already knew the answer to that and it made his pulse quicken.

  At last he heard a noise, saw a movement beyond the glass, and knew that she was there. The form grew. He knew it was Carmen, knew from the way she walked, the sway of her body even through the thick glass. Suddenly the door opened and she stood before him. Despite seeing the video footage, he hadn’t been expecting her to look the way she did. She stood back, and he stepped into the hallway where they stood facing each other, saying nothing. He felt the nausea that accompanied episodes of panic seize him and he tried to swallow it back. He could see how she had tricked the authorities into thinking she was Mercedes. The likeness was stronger than he’d imagined it would be now that she was standing before him.

  ‘What have you done?’ he said.

  Carmen smiled and shrugged. Her smile was not the smile of Mercedes. There were differences still, but only those who had known them intimately would recognize the inconsistencies that made it possible to tell them apart.

  Carmen turned and walked into the living room. Oliver followed, watching the sway of her hips and feeling the blood course through him.

  ‘It’s better this way, no?’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Everyone.’

  ‘What if Mercedes comes back?’

  ‘She’s gone. She’s not coming back, Oliver. You know that.’

  Her dark eyes looked directly into his, and he knew that she knew. And that it didn’t make a difference.

  He put a hand to her face, traced the outline of her lips.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Spain. First I went to see my mother. I told her about Mercedes, what I’d done. I said that she’d come back, that you and she would probably work things out. On the way back I used Mercedes’s passport, and I knew that it had worked – that I looked just like her.’

  ‘Carmen—’

  ‘No. From now on you must call me Mercedes.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘I did it for you. That girl, I know she didn’t mean anything, but you and me – we’re the same.’

  Oliver thought of Joanna. She’d have met Vince Arnold by now. He felt a pang of regret about her. Now that Carmen had claimed to be Mercedes, the information Joanna could give the police about Belfast meant nothing. But Carmen was right, they were the same. He looked at her, and realized that he loved her madness. She would do anything for him, anything to get what she wanted. He knew the danger involved, but he decided that he was willing to risk it. Carmen had saved him. The only way he was going down was if she decided to do it. In a way she had him under her power, and he respected her for that. If Carmen took him down, he would take her with him. She was complicit in his crime. And he no longer had to feel alone with his guilt.

  She didn’t ask him what had happened that night. Maybe she didn’t want to hear it put into words. It was easier to be with him this way. He would never tell her, he decided. Let her assume what she wanted. A confession would never come from his lips, no matter what the nights brought.

  He put his hand beneath Carmen’s chin and turned her head from side to side. She had had her lips reduced, her teeth straightened. She was more beautiful, not the imperfect version of her sister that she used to be. Carmen had wanted to be Mercedes and now she was. He wondered if it would make a difference to her, or if she’d regret it in time.

  Carmen took his hand and drew him nearer. She kissed him and her lips felt the same. Her mouth was hot and tasted of cigarettes. She pressed her treacherous body against his, and he knew why it was that he couldn’t get her out of his head. It was her unpredictability, her almost masculine aggression that he loved, that drew him to her. Carmen would never be Mercedes. She was bolder. She was the kind of woman that saw what she wanted and took it.

  As she led him to the bedroom, he’d forgotten about Joanna. Mercedes was the name he uttered when they made love. If she were to become Mercedes, they had better start now. In the future there would be no room for mistakes.

  FIFTY

  Joanna couldn’t sleep. She lay there thinking about Vince Arnold, and about Oliver’s wife having turned up in a police station in Belfast, until she thought she’d go mad. At about three in the morning she got up, unable to lie there any longer, and went down to the darkroom. She took down the picture of Carmen Hernandez to look at it again. Tangled dark hair – slim figure. How much engineering would it take to turn herself into her sister? Not much, going by those earlier pictures when they were so much alike.

  She went online to see if any more details had been released about the woman they’d found in the Dublin mountains, but she found the same scant information. More would follow, she supposed, if nobody claimed to know who she might be. The Hernandez case was closed. Would the police have any reasons to DNA match it to Mercedes? She doubted it; they seemed satisfied that the woman that had turned up in the station was Oliver Molloy’s wife. But what of Carmen? If Joanna was right and it was actually Carmen who was impersonating her sister, then the old Carmen was gone for good. Her family, her parents would want to know where she’d gone, wouldn’t they? Her friends in Spain would surely report her missing if she simply vanished – unless Carmen managed to keep up the difficult, not to mention risky, task of playing the role of both Hernandez sisters. No, that would never work. Whatever she’d done to herself was, most likely, irreversible.

  Joanna took the photo and looked at it again. She was right, she had to be. She’d been too late in getting to the police with the information about Belfast, but she had another idea. She would send a tip-off to the police, an anonymous letter telling them the identity of the woman. She’d send them the picture of Carmen that she’d taken through the window that night – tell them that all they had to do was do a DNA check against her sister, Mercedes, to find out for sure. DNA: Christ – why hadn’t she thought of it before – the brush; the one she’d taken from the bathroom in Oliver’s house was upstairs in a handbag. She hadn’t cleaned it and, apart from her own hair, there were long dark strands caught between the plastic bristles – Mercedes’s hair, maybe even Carmen’s. That would be enough, wouldn’t it? She’d heard that the DNA for siblings was an almost one hundred per cent match. If Oliver could walk free for Mercedes’s murder, she’d have him questioned about Carmen’s.

  She took the stairs two steps at a time, opened the wardrobe and took out the bag where she knew the hairbrush still lay. She’d meant to bring it back, but then she’d forgotten about it. Now she pulled it from the bag, held it beneath the light and pulled a few loose strands of her own auburn hair from it leaving the mass of dark hairs caught at the base of the bristles. She opened the drawer of her desk, pulled a writing pad and a jiffy envelope from it. She scribbled a quick note, saying that she had reason to believe that the woman’s body that had been found in Glencree was that of Carmen Hernandez, that the photo enclosed was taken at the house of Oliver Molloy three weeks before, and that the brush enclosed belonged to the deceased. She finished by saying that she believed that Oliver was responsible for the woman’s death. She folded the note, unsigned, and placed everything in the envelope. Then she scribbled a quick note and left it downstairs on the table in case her mother should wake to find her gone.

  Joanna pulled on her coat, took the envelope and stepped outside. An icy wind stirred the trees and she shivered, closed the door behind her and hurried to the car. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, not since Oliver had made that threat earlier at the dock. She locked the car doors and started the engine. She would post the envelope; she knew that
Oliver would guess as soon as the police had shown it to him that it was her who had taken it – but for now she’d remain anonymous. After the police had received the evidence, he could do nothing to her – not while he was being investigated for his sister-in-law’s murder. That was a risk he’d be far too clever to take.

  Joanna found herself turning the car in the direction of his house. She knew she wouldn’t see anything, but she felt compelled to look anyway. She slowed as she approached, parked on the opposite side of the road and turned off the lights. In the garden, his four-by-four was parked. The house was in darkness as it had been that first night when she’d seen Carmen Hernandez come out. And now, was she in there sharing his bed, pretending to be his wife? He had said it was what she’d always wanted. Was he foolish enough to think that her madness had saved him – rather than provided him with a short reprieve?

  Joanna pulled away from the kerb, turned on her headlights. She stopped again a couple of blocks away when she spotted a post-box at the side of the road. She stood there for a moment, looking round the deserted street, before she dropped it in and heard it hit the bottom of the near empty box. The letter would be picked up in the first post, but it wouldn’t reach the station until the following day. Vince Arnold would be in Milan by then, ready to begin his new life. Joanna thought of her father’s deceit, of the tramp that had died in the freeze, and how the Arnolds had used his body to fake her father’s death. If it weren’t for her mother, she’d have been willing to report Vince too, but as it was, she knew she couldn’t. She thought of Rachel Arnold, unwitting victim, as she was, to it all. When the insurance money came through, she’d return her half to Rachel, and hope that she could do some good with it. She wanted nothing to do with money got by such foul means. She wasn’t sure she could ever have anything to do with him – the father she’d wanted so desperately to know. Doing so now would mean being party to all that duplicity.