Ask No Questions

by Claire Allan

  I wish I’d lifted my grey cardigan from the back of my chair before I came down here. It’s ugly and not at all my usual style, but it comes in very useful during long hours in the archive room. I suppose I could walk back to my desk and get it, but I’m happy to hide out away from everyone.

  I had a couple of glasses of wine last night and my head is the worse for it. I should know by now never to drink on a school night, and certainly never to drink cheap wine. The combination of the two is lethal, especially when faced with working my way through pages and pages of minute typeface, blurring against yellowing newsprint.

  Sighing, I rub my eyes and wish the lighting in the archive room was better. I stop flipping over pages when I see her face. Angelic. Gap-toothed. The picture is black and white, but I can see her hair was blonde, ringleted. Just as I remember it. There’s a clip holding it back from one side of her face. She’s in school uniform – the same school colours I wore myself – and it looks like it was taken by one of those official school photographers who charge an arm and a leg.

  The headline is stark: ‘Bring her Home.’ The subhead speaks of the hell the family of missing schoolgirl Kelly Doherty are going through. The byline is Ryan Murray’s. He’s since climbed the ranks to editor, but must have been only a junior reporter then. This would’ve been a huge story for him to cover.

  The Chronicle was published just twice a week in 1994, instead of daily like today. It was an era when local journalism bloomed. Circulation was high. Advertising was healthy. Competition was almost non-existent. The Chronicle was a flagship paper. Not like now, I think. The Internet has almost wiped us out. Why pay for news when you can get it for free?

  Looking at the date on the front page, I see that by the time this paper hit the counters in the newsagents, it would only have been a matter of hours before Kelly’s body was found. I shudder, an icy coldness running through me. I blink and it’s like I’m there again, on Halloween night.

  We were all dressed in our fairly basic costumes, throwing together whatever our parents could find to make us into a bunch of amateur monsters, vampires, witches and fairies. We were armed with plastic shopping bags, which we carried from door to door. This was before Halloween was Americanised. We didn’t say trick or treat – we would parrot in sing-song voices ‘Anything for Halloween?’ to our neighbours, and we would be rewarded with nuts and apples and grapes; if we were exceptionally lucky, we might get a lollipop.

  Then, bundled in our duffel coats, we’d move on to the next house and the process would begin again. We didn’t need parents to chaperone us then. It was a different time. We watched out for each other. Our neighbours looked out for us. The only thing to fear was the thought that our bags of loot could be ‘raided’ by the bigger boys from the next street – taking our collections and leaving us to go home empty-handed.

  That night, it was cold and wet. I remember my breath curling in soft white in front of me and the nip of the cold at the tips of my fingers, the strength of the wind catching the hood of my coat and pushing me backwards. I wished I’d worn my gloves and a hat – not that I would’ve admitted that to my mother. The smell of smoke from the coal fires in each home hung thick in the air.

  I remember, or at least I think I remember, seeing Kelly. Those curls. Her white dress. A star on a stick covered with tin foil to give it the appearance of a magic wand. She was running down the street, following her friends, laughing. Jumping in puddles as she went. I remember her waving at me. And I waved back. Or I think I did. Memory is a funny thing.

  I didn’t see her again after that until the day of her funeral, when I saw a little white coffin being carried into the chapel.

  I spend an hour making notes, snapping photos of the relevant pages on my phone and searching through boxes of negatives for the relevant original images from the time. By then the chill in the archive room has become too much and I need a coffee.

  I’m walking back to my desk, when the door to the editor’s office opens and I hear my name being called.

  ‘Ingrid,’ Ryan says from behind his desk as I walk in. ‘Sit down.’

  I take a seat for a minute or two while Ryan taps at his computer, sending emails or proofing pages or possibly just scanning Twitter. Anything to keep me waiting, to remind me that he is my boss. Eventually, he looks up.

  ‘You’ve been researching the Kelly Doherty anniversary story?’ he says.

  I nod. ‘I have. And I’ve put the feelers out to see if Jamesy Harte will talk to us. He’s not come back to Derry, by all accounts, but I’ve been able to track down one of his cousins, who made positive noises. I’m sure as his campaign to clear his name grows, Harte’ll want to talk. Something about him … well, it never added up to me. It would be interesting to hear his side of things.’

  Ryan sits back and steeples his fingers together in an exaggerated ‘I’m thinking’ pose. ‘The thing is, Ingrid, I don’t think we want to be seen to be backing Jamesy Harte in any way. He was convicted and he served his time. The law says he was guilty and I think digging too deep into that … well, it won’t make us popular.’

  ‘It’s not like you to shy away from a big story,’ I tell him, and it’s true. It’s one of the reasons I have stayed at The Chronicle for so long – Ryan’s willingness to push for answers, no matter how uncomfortable the questions.

  ‘I’m not shying away from anything, Ingrid,’ he says, his tone harsh. ‘Cover the story by all means. A measured anniversary piece. But I don’t think we should be coming down on the side of a convicted child killer.’

  ‘Even if he claims he’s innocent? There’s a growing body of evidence …’ I begin. ‘I’ve only started to look into it, but there seems to be something in what Jamesy is saying. This could be huge. What if there has been a huge miscarriage of justice here, Ryan? Don’t we want to be on the right side of championing that?’

  The thought that a man might have spent the better part of two decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit – and one of the most heinous crimes a person could commit at that – makes my blood run cold. But it also fires up the journalist in me. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be at the very heart of a major story.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by him and all the do-gooders jumping on the “innocent man” bandwagon. I covered that story at the time, Ingrid. That murder was stomach-churning. You’re too young to remember. Too wet behind the ears. Believe me, Harte doesn’t deserve redemption. He doesn’t deserve to become a figure for the miscarriage-of-justice bleeding hearts to get their knickers in a knot over. We don’t give child killers voices.’

  I stay quiet. I don’t tell him that although I was young at the time, I probably have a more vivid memory of it all than he does. He wouldn’t listen anyway. When Ryan gets a bee in his bonnet about something, nothing on this earth will make him change his mind. If he doesn’t want an interview with Jamesy Harte, that’s one thing. But I’m not personally prepared to stop working on the story. It would kill me. Yes, I’ll give Ryan the hearts and flowers piece he wants, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do a bit of investigating in my own time.

  ‘Stick to a colour piece, Ingrid,’ Ryan says, cutting through my thoughts. ‘Use some of the old pictures. Talk about the sense of shock. Go easy on this one. Your “bull in a china shop” approach won’t get you very far here.’

  Funnily enough, he has never objected to my ‘bull in a china shop’ approach before – not when it was getting him exclusives and sending his sales, as well as his website click rate, soaring.

  ‘Okay, boss,’ I say, trying to hide my annoyance but not managing to do so.

  ‘I mean it, Ingrid. Or I can assign someone else to it if you think you can’t follow instructions.’

  I tell Ryan what he needs to hear. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of him, even if I don’t agree with his stance. He’s been in this game a lot longer than I have. Then again, maybe that’s his problem – he’s been doing this job so long he has lost his fire for i
t. That burning desire to tell the story and fuck the consequences has been extinguished by bonuses, promises of early retirement and a nice leaving package from the company if he doesn’t rock the boat.

  Me? I’m not opposed to a bit of boat-rocking every now and again.

  Chapter Three

  Ingrid

  I’m the last to leave the office. That’s not unusual. Ryan went home an hour ago. The rest of my colleagues left a good hour or more before that.

  ‘Do you not have a home to go to?’ he asked me, his earlier terseness forgotten, as he slipped into his coat and pulled his scarf around his neck.

  He asks me that question every night. And every night I tell him I work better here. When I’m alone. When there are no distractions.

  Sometimes he tries to distract me before he leaves. He leaves his office with a wolfish smile on his face and I know immediately what’s on his mind. He’s an attractive man. Older than me, of course. In his mid-fifties, but he looks after himself. Dresses well. He’s well groomed; tanned and toned, but not too much. He’s not vain. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Piercing – that’s how I’d describe them. When he turns on the charm, I find him impossible to resist, even if most of the time he enrages me with his arrogance. Some would say we have a love–hate kind of an arrangement. But it’s more complicated than that. I wouldn’t say that I loved him, and yet I find myself drawn to him anyway. I’m pretty sure he feels the same.

  He wasn’t in a predatory mood tonight, though. ‘I’ll have to talk to HR about this,’ he said, which is a threat he makes at least once a week. He always follows it with waffle about ‘lone working protocol’ as if, as reporters, we aren’t dispatched to talk to dodgy people in dodgy places on our own all the time.

  I didn’t argue with him. I just rolled my eyes. Nodded. Told him I’d see him in the morning.

  As soon as he left, I looked at the negatives I’d retrieved from the archive room earlier. They were from pictures of the funeral. Pictures of Kelly Doherty’s grieving family. Pictures of me and my school friends standing, shivering in the cold, as a guard of honour outside of the chapel. Thankfully, I seem to be hidden behind one of my classmates, the top of my head just about in view, but that doesn’t stop me from remembering the day. The wind was icy-cold, whipping around our legs. School uniforms – skirts and knee-high white socks – were not enough to protect bare legs from the cold. I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered together, giving me a headache.

  I remember the sense that this was something very, very important. Our teacher had told us we weren’t to show her up. We were to be on our very best behaviour and if we were, we would get no homework for a full week and we could go home with our mammies and daddies after the Mass. I remember the sense of solemnity about the whole thing.

  But I also remember the fear. This was our friend. And she was dead and in a box – and we didn’t, none of us, quite understand it.

  And then I saw Kelly’s mammy and daddy crying. Her mum roaring with grief, like nothing I’d ever heard before. The grief of a mother who had lost her child. It haunts me still, even though I’m the least maternal person in the world. Maybe that’s why I’m the least maternal person in the world. Much too scared ever to risk experiencing pain like that. I remember there were people holding her up, helping her to walk into the chapel while she was bent double with the pain of her loss. I couldn’t look away, even though I couldn’t bear what I was seeing.

  I remember I saw my mother crying. And my teachers. And the neighbours. And my friends. I remember my own lip trembling but being determined not to cry. Not even one little bit. Even though I was sad and scared and it all felt very grown up.

  I remember thinking if only Kelly had been with us that night. With our gang. None of this would have happened. I was ten years old and riddled with guilt. We were the older kids on the street. We should have watched out for her more, but she had her own friends. I couldn’t even start to imagine what they were feeling.

  I slip another strip of negatives into the old scanner, watch the full images appear on screen and study them. It’s all, more or less, as I remember. I look at the crowd. A sea of heads bowed in procession outside St Mary’s Chapel. I see a face I think I recognise. Head up, looking directly at the cortege. I zoom in closer, only to have the image pixelate and blur. But I’m sure, or as sure as I can be, that it is Jamesy Harte. He looks just as I remember him – younger maybe. I know I’m older now than he was when he went to prison. He doesn’t look like a killer, but then again, what does a killer look like?

  I save the file on to my computer. Then I email it to myself, just to make sure I have a second copy.

  I work until my eyes threaten to jump out of my head and go home on their own. Only then do I switch off, lock up just as Ryan reminded me and leave for home, stopping at Sainsbury’s to pick up some sort of ready meal on the way. And a bottle of wine – for the fridge, of course. I promise myself I’ll do more work after I’ve showered and eaten, but I find my eyes drooping as I sit on my bed and towel my hair. I lie back on my pillow, vow I’ll just rest my eyes for five minutes, but I can already feel myself drifting off. The world is swimming somewhere between reality and my imagination.

  It takes a minute then for me to realise that the sound I hear is not the siren of an approaching police car in my dream, but the ringing of my phone. Head fuzzy, eyes heavy, I reach out and answer, muttering a garbled hello.

  ‘Is that Ingrid Devlin?’ a male voice asks.

  It’s deep, husky, as if its owner smokes thirty a day, but there’s also a nervous edge to it.

  ‘Yes. It is,’ I reply.

  ‘Good. Good,’ he says before he clears his throat. ‘This is Jamesy Harte. I heard you were looking to talk to me.’

  I’m immediately awake, reaching to my bedside table for a pen and the notebook I keep there just in case. First rule of journalism: never be beyond reaching distance of a notebook and pen. I’m surprised to find my hand is shaking. I take a deep breath. This is Jamesy Harte. Fucking Jamesy Harte! The man who changed everything. Who made monsters real.

  ‘I am, Mr Harte. Thanks for getting in touch. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so quickly.’

  Second rule of journalism: always be polite when first talking to a new source. Build a relationship of trust with them from the very beginning, even if they are suspected of being a very bad person.

  ‘No need to call me mister,’ he replies. ‘Jamesy will do. And if I’m right, you’re wee Ingrid Devlin from Creggan?’

  ‘Well, not so wee any more,’ I tell him. I’m about to remind him of my age, that I’m just a little older than Kelly Doherty would have been, but I think better of it. ‘But yes, you’ve a good memory. I am indeed from Creggan. Although my mum has moved away from Leenan Gardens now.’

  ‘There weren’t many wains called Ingrid around,’ he says, pausing to take a breath. ‘You remember a name like that.’

  There’s something in the timbre of his voice that makes me uncomfortable. The thought that he remembers me, maybe. That maybe it’s more than just my name. I shiver, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I can’t escape what he was convicted of.

  A memory of him comes to my mind. In the small front garden of the house he shared with his mother. He would be there every day, just in time for all of us walking home from school. He’d chat to us. Sometimes he gave us sweets. Sometimes we gave him some of ours.

  I heard grown-ups say there was ‘no harm in him’, but my mother warned me not to talk to him for too long. ‘You let Jamesy get on with his gardening and get yourself home to do your homework,’ she’d say.

  After he was arrested, of course everyone in the neighbourhood had something to say. They no longer thought there was no harm in him. ‘There was always something about him,’ they’d whisper to each other over hedges and fences, or gossip over shop counters. They didn’t think, or care, that we could hear them, too.

  I’d always thought he
was a nice man. At Halloween his mammy would make a batch of toffee apples and if you were really quick, you’d get one for your goody bag. It was Jamesy who would hand them out, grinning, at his front door, delighted to see our excited faces.

  I realise I’ve paused for a moment or two too long. I will myself to get it together. ‘Well, okay, Jamesy,’ I say. ‘I do want to talk to you. You know I work for The Chronicle now …’ I begin.

  ‘The Chronicle hasn’t been a friend to me,’ he says slowly.

  His voice is thick with sadness. I clear my throat. ‘I’m aware of that, Jamesy,’ I say. ‘But I also do a bit of freelance work, you know. Write for other papers. I’ve even written a couple of books. True crime stuff.’

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘I saw that one you wrote about that Grahame woman’s death. It was a good read. Awful business altogether.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, trying not to think about how that entire episode had complicated my life way too much. ‘The thing is, I’d love to help you tell your side of the story. I know you’re claiming you were set up.’

  ‘I was set up,’ he says. ‘I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do anything like that,’ he continues, his slow, deep voice losing its soft tone. ‘I didn’t deserve to go to prison. I never touched that wee girl, never mind did all those things they said. I’m not like that. I’m not a bad man. I wouldn’t ever do something like that. I wouldn’t do those things. Those dirty things. I never killed anyone. Not even a spider. Mammy would call me and I’d put them out the window. Those people, back then, the police and all, they just told lies, and made everyone believe they were telling the truth.’

  ‘I’ll help you tell your story if you let me,’ I say. ‘I’m looking into everything surrounding Kelly’s death. I’d like to meet you and talk to you about it.’

  ‘But it’s not for The Chronicle?’ he asks. ‘I don’t want anything to do with that paper.’