Ask No Questions

by Claire Allan

  I suck in a breath. ‘No, Jamesy. It’s not for The Chronicle. It’s for the other papers I told you about. Maybe even a book.’

  I hear him suck air in through his teeth. ‘A book? About me?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I mean, I have to run it past my editor and all, but we could start to chat.’

  ‘You won’t tell people I’m a monster,’ he says. ‘I’m not a monster. You have to believe me. I can’t talk to you if you don’t believe me.’ There is a childish pleading quality to his voice now.

  ‘I just want to hear your side of the story, Jamesy. So I can tell it to people. Don’t you think it’s time you had a voice in all this?’ I purposely don’t tell him whether or not I believe him – because the truth is, I’m not sure where I stand.

  But I won’t break the third rule of journalism – flatter and cajole your subjects. Make them feel they are in control of the narrative.

  ‘I do, I really do,’ he answers.

  ‘Then can we arrange to meet? Talk about this face to face?’

  He pauses for a second. ‘Well, I’m not in Derry,’ he says. ‘I’ve never gone back there. Not when I got out eight years ago, and not since. And sure, there’s nothing for me to go back to anyway. Mammy’s long gone. The house passed on to someone else. Derry forgot about me,’ he says.

  I hear him sniff, wonder if he’s crying.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  He pauses, clears his throat. ‘Ingrid,’ he says, ‘can I really trust you? Because if the people here knew what they said I did, I think they might try to hurt me. Or if people from Derry knew where I was … I’m scared, you know. I know there’s a price on my head.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ I tell him. For the most part I mean it, certainly when it comes to his location anyway.

  He shares his address with me; a small seaside town on the Antrim coast. The kind of place flooded with children in the summer looking to play on the beach or at the amusements. It strikes me as an odd choice for him, but then again, if he is as innocent as he says he is, why would it matter if there are children running around all over the place? He’s no threat to them.

  I arrange to meet him at the weekend. Outside normal working hours. I want to keep this from Ryan as much as possible.

  When I hang up, the details scrawled into my notepad, I punch the air. I’ve got him and I’ve got the story. I push away the niggle of fear – my nerves at the thought of coming face to face with the man we’d come to think of as the bogeyman who’d stolen our childhood innocence from us.

  Chapter Four

  Ingrid

  Thursday, 17 October 2019

  It’s a brisk morning. The sun is high in the sky and if this had been three months earlier, there’s every chance it would have been a scorcher of a day. But it’s not. It’s heading towards the end of October and in the last couple of weeks the temperatures have taken a marked dip. This morning is the first time this autumn that I have noticed my breath rise like steam in clouds in front of me. The first time I’ve noticed the dew on the grass now has a sparkle of frost to it.

  I’ve parked the car on Broadway, in the Creggan Estate. It’s much less glamorous than its New York namesake, but it’s the council estate where I grew up and even though my father has passed away, and my mother has long since moved, it always feels a little like coming home to be here. I sit in my car and look around. It hasn’t changed all that much. Most of the houses now have white uPVC double glazing. There are more cars on the street, satellite TV dishes decorating the skyline. But apart from that, it looks much as it did twenty-five years ago. Rows of uniform terraced houses, tidy gardens to the front.

  I’ve come here just to look around. To walk the same streets again. To try to ground myself in this place that I rarely return to. I want to make sure I’m remembering the geography correctly. I wonder if many of our old neighbours are still here, or have a whole new generation of families moved in and started their lives?

  Although, no doubt, there will be less children running around the streets than when I was little. Children don’t play out any more. Not in the way we used to.

  I put on my gloves and get out of the car, pulling up the collar of my coat to keep my neck warm. I retrace the steps that were once so familiar to me until I find myself standing outside what used to be Jamesy Harte’s house. The garden he had once been so proud of has been paved over. A few wilting pots of flowers, long past their summer bloom, sit beneath the window. A blue wheelie bin, emptied of its contents, waits to be taken back through the house to the back garden.

  From the garden wall I can see all around me. I picture how he would have been able to watch us as we walked home from school in a pack, small groups of us drifting off at each street that broke off from Broadway. He would’ve had a clear view all the way up to St Mary’s Chapel from his preferred spot.

  Do I think he was being predatory when he stood watching us? Chatting to those of us who passed him? I know I didn’t at the time. I think of the sad, scared man I spoke to last night. Something about it feels off to me, but God knows I’ve been taken in by protestations of innocence before.

  Digging my hands deeper into my pockets, I start to walk up towards the chapel. A slow movie of my childhood memories is playing in my head as I do so.

  I can see the garden we used to hide in during our more adventurous games of hide-and-seek. Can see the low wall I sat on making daisy chains while waiting for my friends to finish their dinner. Those were such innocent times.

  I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I almost don’t hear someone call my name. A male voice, low, gravelly – as if fighting off a cold or a cough – breaks through my reverie and grabs my attention. I look up, see a tall figure maybe fifteen feet away from me. A black beanie hat pulled down on a weather-worn face, a dark beard that needs trimming. A bulky khaki coat, dark blue jeans. Hands, like mine, buried in his pockets, shoulders hunched. A pair of once white trainers, now scuffed and grey, on his feet. He could be any age from twenty-five to forty-five. I can’t quite tell, but he is looking at me, and he definitely knows who I am.

  ‘Are you too good to say hello to me now?’ I hear him say.

  There’s a cheekiness to his voice and I look closer until something about him becomes familiar to me.

  ‘Niall?’ I ask.

  He laughs, which ends in a coughing fit that causes him to fold over onto himself, his hand covering his mouth until he catches his breath. ‘You’re almost right. To be fair, it’s a fifty-fifty chance.’

  ‘Declan,’ I say, and I know that I’m right. I’m talking to one of the Heaney twins. They sat three rows back from me in primary school and liked to pull at my plaited hair and steal my fruit for break. But they were actually funny and sound and let me join in their games back in the street.

  ‘You’ve got me!’ he confirms. ‘I have to say it, Ingrid. You’re looking well. I like the blonde hair! The years have definitely been kinder to you than they have been to me.’

  I don’t think it’s arrogant that I agree. Up close Declan looks much older than our thirty-five years. I don’t say that though. I simply shake my head. ‘Not at all,’ I lie.

  ‘Ah now, I’m here like death warmed up,’ he says, the thick lines of crow’s feet etched into the side of his face, his cheeks and nose ruddy, showing the signs of someone who enjoys a drink too often. ‘And you’re all glam in your fancy coat and your swish haircut. I always thought ye’d do well in life,’ he says, sniffing loudly, accompanied by a wet rattling sound, which makes my stomach turn ever so slightly. ‘You still writing for the paper? Writing those books of yours?’

  I nod. ‘And yourself?’ I ask him.

  ‘Ah, well, I’m what you would call in between jobs at the moment. On a career break, so to speak.’

  He laughs, but there’s a hollowness to it.

  ‘And Niall, how’s he?’

  ‘Ah! the prodigal son. He’s doing the very best,’ Declan says, and I think I hear a h
int of bitterness in his voice. ‘Teaching in some fancy primary school up near Belfast. Deputy Head, don’t you know.’ He adopts a faux posh voice. ‘Doesn’t come back here as often as he should, according to our ma, anyway.’

  ‘That’s great that he’s doing well,’ I offer.

  ‘Aye, I suppose it is,’ Declan says, but there’s a coldness in his eyes that I can’t ignore. ‘Anyway, what brings you up this way? Out on a big story? Is there scandal brewing?’

  ‘Actually, I’m just doing a wee bit of research. The paper wants me to do an anniversary piece on Kelly’s murder.’

  He looks down at his feet. Shifts uncomfortably. ‘Christ,’ he mutters under his breath. ‘Hard to believe it’s twenty-five years.’ He takes one of his bearlike hands from his pockets, rubs at his bearded chin. ‘Christ,’ he mutters again. ‘Awful time. All of it.’

  And it comes back to me. He, and Niall, were the ones who found her.

  ‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ I tell him.

  He looks up. ‘Why? You didn’t kill her,’ he says with a shrug, his eyes darting to Jamesy Harte’s old house.

  ‘But I forgot there, for a moment. I forgot that it was you who found her.’

  I watch him for a reaction. Watch to see if he looks open to talking about it more. I can usually get people to talk about things, but this is different. These are people I know, or knew. This was my childhood.

  ‘Aye, well. You’re lucky to forget,’ he says. ‘I wish I could.’

  I remind myself to tread softly.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask him and his eyes widen. ‘I don’t necessarily mean for the paper or anything. But sometimes talking helps, and I remember what it was like back then. How awful it was. All the grown-ups losing the run of themselves. We weren’t allowed out past the door for months.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to leave the house for months,’ he says and he looks again towards Jamesy’s old house. ‘It messed me up, Ingrid, ye know.’

  I remember that he changed overnight. He wasn’t the boisterous messer he had been. He became withdrawn. Sullen. A meanness in him emerged that had never been there before. In hindsight, I could hardly blame him.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I tell him, but I can. I’m blessed or cursed with a very vivid imagination and working this job has opened my eyes to a lot of the darker elements in the world. I’ve seen and heard things that I will never be able to forget, no matter how hard I try. ‘Look, why don’t we get a cup of tea?’ I say to him. ‘It’s freezing out today and I’m not exactly dying to get back to the office. We can have a chat. I’ll even buy the tea.’

  He looks at me and smiles a weak, watery smile. I wonder what his life has become. This man with the sad eyes who is ‘in between jobs’ while his twin brother excels.

  ‘A cup of tea would be nice, Ingrid,’ he says. ‘Throw in a sausage roll or two and it’s a done deal.’

  I smile, wrap my arm through his and lead him to my car so we can drive the short distance to the café at the Rath Mor Centre. It’s only as I spend more time with him that I realise his clothes have definitely seen better days. He’s really just skin and bone, and there’s a shake in his hands that doesn’t go away.

  Chapter Five

  Declan

  3 November 1994

  His ma had hit Declan square around the head before pulling him into the tightest of hugs. The slap, he knew, was because he’d not come straight home after school. The hug, because she knew what he had just seen and she could see he was traumatised.

  Not that he was crying. He had stopped crying by then. He had stopped almost everything except breathing. He couldn’t speak. No words would come out. He wasn’t even thinking in words now, just images. Just sensations. How his stomach had fallen through his boots when he saw the stick sliding into the soft grey matter of Kelly Doherty’s brain.

  Niall was talking, though. Telling her. Telling everyone what he saw. What he did. ‘But she was dead already, Mammy. I didn’t kill her!’

  Declan had run to find the search party once his stomach was completely empty of all its contents. He’d run, crying, his tears mixing with snot and spit as he shouted as loud as he could for help. Mortified in his piss-stained trousers, his own vomit down the front of his duffel coat. He tried to be brave, but he couldn’t. He could only scream until he was heard and then he led the men back to the water’s edge. He’d prayed all the way back that he was wrong and it wasn’t Kelly. It was just a pile of rubbish and the figure he had seen had been a product of his vivid imagination. But it wasn’t. It was all too real.

  And it was worse than he could’ve imagined. Kelly’s da arrived and could not be held back. He was roaring like a wounded animal and lashing out at anyone who tried to stop him. He was up to his knees in the water and he hauled Kelly towards him, turning her over, pushing the tendrils of her hair away from her face so that he could see her. Her face. Blue. Grey. Black in places. Her lips were black. Declan remembered that. Her eyes glassy, open. Like those of the fish he saw on the counter at Stewarts Supermarket. She looked funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha, he had thought to himself – the phrase his own da would use popping into his head.

  But funny wasn’t the right word. Or peculiar. Maybe just wrong. She looked wrong.

  Her features were bloated. Almost a caricature of what she once was. Her father took her hand, the same black and blue and grey and green. He remembered that. He’d always remember that. Just as he would remember how the tips of her fingers were bloodied, nails black. Her hands twisted and bruised. Her dress ripped. He saw her knickers. He was mortified at that. How he saw her knickers, how, even in the circumstances, he registered that it was something he wouldn’t normally see. Just like with everything else, though, he couldn’t look away.

  That would haunt him in the days, and weeks and months ahead. That he didn’t look away. Did that make him a pervert? Did that make him wrong?

  He couldn’t bring himself to talk about any of it. Not to Niall. Not to his ma or his da. Not to the policeman who sat on the good armchair and asked him questions while drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits.

  He’d just shrug his shoulders and shake his head. ‘I dunno,’ he’d mutter if pushed. But mostly he just wanted people to stop asking questions. What chance would he have to forget any of it if people kept going over the same old questions, time and time again?

  It started to make him angry.

  Chapter Six

  Ingrid

  Thursday, 17 October 2019

  ‘Ingrid!’ Ryan calls from the depths of his office, the door wide open to the newsroom.

  The tone of his voice is enough to let me know that he is in a shit mood. Dropping my bag at my desk, I grab my notebook, take a deep breath and plaster a fake confident smile on my face.

  ‘You called, boss?’ I say, sitting down opposite him, my tone light.

  ‘Were you up in Creggan this morning?’ he asks.

  I see no reason to lie. ‘Yes. I went for a walk around. Just to get a sense of the place again. See if any of the old neighbours are still around.’

  ‘And you got talking with Declan Heaney?’ His face is serious.

  ‘Jesus! Word doesn’t take long to spread around here, does it. Are you having me followed?’ I say, and I’m joking. Mostly.

  Ryan doesn’t reply, just keeps his expression neutral. Clearly, he is not in one of his more playful moods today.

  ‘But yes, I did get talking with Declan. I bumped into him when I was walking up Broadway. We went for a cup of tea and a chat. You know it was him and his brother who found Kelly’s body …’

  I think to the look on Declan’s face as I asked him how well he still remembered it. His eyes had glazed over a little. His face darkened as if he were watching some awful movie clip that only he could see.

  ‘You don’t ever forget something like that,’ he’d told me.

  ‘Declan Heaney doesn’t keep well,’ Ryan says, sitting back in hi
s chair and looking at me. ‘You know that, Ingrid. He’s fond of the drink and smokes. Likes to get himself in trouble. Scan our archives – you’ll see he was a frequent flyer in the courts a few years back.’

  ‘Well, I imagine I might be the same if I’d gone through the trauma he did at ten years old,’ I tell him. ‘But you’ve said yourself, it was a few years ago now, and it was petty stuff, wasn’t it?

  ‘Look, he’s an old school friend. We were in the same class and we used to pal around with each other when we were small. We chatted over tea and I bought him a couple of sausage rolls because he didn’t look like he’d had a decent meal in a couple of days. If you’re not happy about me taking the time out of my working day to help someone who clearly needed it, I’ll make up my hours this evening. Just like I always work over my hours anyway.’ I look directly at him, at how his blue eyes narrow.

  He rubs his chin.

  ‘You know I told you to go easy on this one. You’ve no need to go wandering the streets of Creggan looking for witnesses,’ he says. ‘You never know what you’re getting mixed up in with Declan.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for witnesses,’ I tell him. ‘I was just getting a sense of the place. How it’s changed over the years. You know, that famous “colour” you talk about. I was just doing my job.’

  ‘Your job is to follow the instructions given to you by your editor and bring me the copy I ask you to write. You don’t get to set the news agenda, Ingrid. That’s my job and you’d do well to remember that.’

  ‘As if I could forget,’ I tell him, my voice barely hiding my frustration. It’s not often Ryan pulls rank with me. He has always trusted my judgement and my methods. I don’t like feeling as if I’ve annoyed him. ‘And hopefully Kelly’s family will talk,’ I say. ‘I know it’s more than colour, but it’s an exclusive. They’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened.’