Ask No Questions

by Claire Allan

  ‘Well, so have you, young Devlin. All grown up now.’

  He speaks in the same slow way he did on the phone. As if the words are struggling to come from his mouth. I can see his knuckles are white as he lifts his teacup, tension evident in his grasp.

  ‘Well, it’s been a long time,’ I tell him.

  ‘It most certainly has,’ he says wistfully. ‘Too long. Sure, it was another life. It’s like I was a different person then you know. Before …’ He speaks with sincerity, his eyes misty with emotion.

  ‘You been here long?’

  ‘Coupla years,’ he says with a shrug. ‘When I got out, they found me a place in Ballymena, but it wasn’t for me. I didn’t like it, so my social worker, you know, she helped me find a place here. It’s not much, but at least it’s near the water. I always liked the water.’

  An image of Kelly’s broken body lying on the banks of the reservoir comes into my head. I push it away.

  ‘There was never any question of me going back to Derry,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing for me there. It’s not home, you know. It stopped being home a long time ago. Then when Mammy died …’

  A tear, followed by another, rolls down his cheek. He brushes it away as if he is ashamed of it. It strikes me that shame seems to hang over him like a cloud. It lines his face. It spills out of his mouth with his words. Shame, for something he said he didn’t do. Shame that so many people have piled on top of him. Me included.

  ‘It broke her heart, you know. Me going to jail. The things they said about me. The things they said I’d done. How does a mother get over that?’

  I set my phone to record as subtly as I can. He glances at it, looks up at me as if he is realising for the first time that this is an interview and not just two people chatting.

  He takes a deep breath.

  ‘She wouldn’t visit me in prison. Did you know that? Said she wouldn’t be able for seeing her son behind bars. She’d rather not see me at all. I think she was worried if she did come, well, some people wouldn’t like that. She’d be run out of town. My poor mammy. She didn’t ask for any of this.’ His eyes, bloodshot, tired, blink at me. ‘The last time I saw her was at the sentencing. The last time I got a hug from my mother …’

  He sips from his tea, looks out of the window, past the thick drops of moisture running down the inner panes. He doesn’t finish his sentence. He’s lost to the memory playing out in his head.

  ‘But you spoke to her? Or wrote?’

  ‘I’m not one for writing. Not much. Not like you, Ingrid. You’ve a gift for it. I get muddled up too easily. They told me in prison, you know, they told me I’ve dyslexia.’ He breaks the word down into syllables. ‘Die-slex-ee-ah.’ As if it required herculean effort to remember it and say it correctly. ‘We spoke on the phone. Sometimes. But it upset her, ye know. And then that would upset me – and there’s no lonelier place in the world to be than back in your cell worrying about someone outside being in bits over you.’

  ‘Did she stand by you? Believe you?’

  ‘That I didn’t do it? Honestly? I don’t know. She said she believed me, but she would ask, you know. The odd time. Ask if I had anything to get off my conscience. If I wanted to go to confession. I never liked confession,’ he said, his eyes focusing on mine. A dull grey matching his pallor. ‘Too claustrophobic. Too small and too dark – those confessionals. Felt like climbing into a coffin.’ He shudders. ‘I don’t like small spaces. I never did. I like to be outside.’

  He pauses and I don’t speak, waiting for him to collect his thoughts and continue.

  ‘Anyway, there was a part of her that must have thought I did it. Or else she wouldn’t have kept asking.’ The sadness radiates from him.

  ‘Sometimes I wondered if I lied and told her it was me, after all, if I went to confession and lied to the priest, too, it would’ve been easier. She’d have found it in her heart to forgive me if she thought God had forgiven me. And sure, I could always confess then tell the priest I’d also sinned by lying. I’d get round it that way.’

  He shrugs, wraps his hands around his mug of tea and looks out of the window. His logic makes me sad to my very core.

  ‘Why now?’ I ask him and he looks back at me, confused. ‘You’re declaring your innocence now. Why?’

  ‘I always said I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘But I’m tired of people believing I did. I thought, maybe, it would be easier when I got out. Well, I’m out eight years and it’s no easier. I’m tired of hiding and being scared. I’m tired of taking the blame for it. This anniversary – it made me think and then I was contacted by that human rights group. They had heard about my case. Looked into it. Said there were problems with the conviction.’

  ‘What problems?’ I raise one eyebrow.

  ‘You’d need to talk to them. I get confused in the details,’ he says, ‘but it made me think, things have changed since then. If the police looked at it again, they might find something now that they didn’t then. All that fancy DNA stuff or something. They might ask questions. Why would I have done it? I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t do that to a wee girl. What he did. That monster. I’m not a monster.’

  His voice is shaking with emotion. He has put his mug down and is wringing his hands. I can feel his legs jiggling nervously under the table.

  He takes a deep breath. ‘I know I don’t have brains, you know. I’m not smart. And I’m a wee bit different. I never fitted in. It was just so easy for them to blame me for it all, wasn’t it? As soon as they knew I had been out on Halloween night – that I’d no alibi – they just decided it was me and that was that.’

  ‘Where did you go on Halloween night?’ I ask, knowing that this was one of the key factors in the prosecution’s case.

  Jamesy Harte liked to be outside, but he rarely left the safety of his front garden. Mass on Sundays, maybe. A walk with his mother into town. But he was a loner. He didn’t go out with friends.

  He fidgets in his seat. ‘I told everyone where I was,’ he sighs. ‘But no one believes me. I liked the costumes. I just wanted to see more of them, so I went for a walk up and down the streets. Up Greenwalk and down Broadway. I wasn’t even gone very long. Maybe fifteen minutes. But Mammy was asleep when I got back and she couldn’t back me up.’

  ‘And what about her wand?’ I ask him and he pauses. ‘They found it in your house, didn’t they? Her wand from that night. And a bobble from her hair. One of her dolls.’

  ‘I didn’t take them,’ he says, sitting up straight, his voice tight and angry now. ‘I knew nothing about them. I’ve no idea how all that ended up in my house. Someone must’ve put them there,’ he sniffs. ‘Someone set me up.’

  That was the substantial evidence, you see. That he couldn’t get away from. The wand – the simple little accessory covered in tinfoil that Kelly had carried around with her, a bobble from her blonde hair, a Barbie doll – they had been found in his house. His fingerprints had been found on both the doll and the wand – which he said were there from when he had found and picked them up, from behind the sofa.

  With that, his lack of alibi and testimony that he used to stand outside his house and wait to talk to school children every day, that some thought he had an unhealthy interest in some of us, the jury had found him guilty.

  ‘Who would have done that?’ I ask. ‘How?’

  I shake away my growing feelings of pity for this poor creature in front of me. Her stuff was found in his house. His house that he rarely left. It seemed impossible that they could’ve been planted there.

  ‘I don’t know!’ His voice is loud and thick with emotion.

  The family across the café stop chatting and look at us. Jamesy drops his head in his hands.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says again, quieter. ‘I’ve spent twenty-five years trying to work that out. Seventeen of those years in a prison cell. You can do a lot of thinking in a prison cell.

  ‘I should have fought harder at the time. But I trusted them, the police and the lawyers
. The policeman, he said to me, he said, “If you did nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to worry about.” And I thought, sure I didn’t do it. I can’t get into trouble if I didn’t do it. I kept telling myself that. But that policeman told lies, didn’t he? Because I did get into trouble.’

  Jamesy rubs at his temples, pressing the pads of his thumbs into the soft flesh. I can feel the stress radiating off him in waves. I glance around and the waitress is eyeing us suspiciously. The family are whispering among themselves and shooting furtive glances our way.

  I reach my hand across the table and place it gently on Jamesy’s arm. He looks at me and his sadness washes over me. This man is broken. I see his truth in his eyes and I want to believe he is telling me the truth.

  ‘How about we go for a wee walk?’ I say to him. ‘Free up this table for other people.’

  He nods, not questioning my desire to free up a table in a café that has only six customers in it, and at least eight other empty tables already.

  I pack up my stuff and watch as he shuffles back into his grey anorak. Everything about him is grey, bleak and diminished.

  Before we leave, he thanks the waitress.

  ‘Mammy said there’s no excuse for forgetting your manners,’ he tells me.

  I thank her, too, as she moves to wipe down our table, her eyes never leaving us.

  The rain is still falling as we walk up the promenade. It’s now a fine drizzle and actually, it feels good to be out in the open air. Jamesy stops and watches as the waves crash to the shore.

  ‘I love the beach,’ he says. ‘Any time of year. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  I think of all the years he missed this sight. Missed the rain and the tang of salt in the air.

  ‘Jamesy,’ I say. ‘Tell me about the people who are helping you now. The campaigners. Are they happy enough that you’re talking to me?’

  He smiles. ‘Well, no. They won’t be. They take on old cases, test the law or something. I can’t remember how they said it. You know what? Sometimes I feel like they talk at me and not to me. Does that make sense? A lot of people like to do that. Well, they – I can send you their details – they told me they’ll do the talking for me and I should stay quiet, but you’re different, aren’t you? I know you. We were sort of friends.’

  He smiles, a silly kind of a smile. There’s a childish glint to it and I’m reminded of how he was all those years ago. I think of how trusting he is now, telling me his story. I realise I have a responsibility to him to tell it fairly.

  I smile back at him. ‘We were,’ I tell him.

  ‘So, will you support me? Do you think you can get someone to publish my story?’ he asks, his expression painfully hopeful. ‘Will they tell people that I was set up?’

  I blink. I have to be truthful to him. By the sounds of it, enough people have already lied to him.

  ‘I can’t make any promises, but hopefully. I have a few ideas of who might use it, but you never know with these things. It’s controversial, you know. So, you have to be honest with me. You have to tell me the exact truth. We have to trust each other.’

  ‘I won’t fib,’ he says, lifting his hand in the Boy Scout salute. ‘Scout’s honour.’

  ‘And your campaigners,’ I add, wary that they probably have an agenda all of their own. ‘You’ve to tell them to trust me and that I know what I’m doing.’

  He nods enthusiastically. ‘I will. I promise I will, Ingrid.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘So, let’s get walking, find a quiet spot somewhere and we can start at the beginning.’

  He nods. ‘There’s another coffee shop just up the road a wee bit. We can get in out of the rain before we catch our death of cold.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I say and again he smiles, as if he’s delighted to have said the right thing.

  ‘Can I ask you something first?’ he says as we walk.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘I think I do,’ I say softly.

  He smiles, a genuine smile that stretches across his face, and claps his hands together. ‘That’s good, then,’ he says. ‘That’s really good.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Ingrid

  It’s dark as I get out of a taxi outside my apartment block and fumble in my bag for my keys. The wind is picking up and whistling through the trees, showering leaves and other detritus all over the street. It has started to rain and it’s that thick, heavy, icy-cold kind of a rain that stings when it lands on your skin. I’m almost tempted just to pour everything out of my bag onto the wet ground to find my keys quicker, but luckily my hand brushes against them and I pull them out.

  It’s only when I go to put them in the front door that I notice it’s already ajar.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I swear under my breath.

  I’ll have to leave another passive-aggressive note on the communal noticeboard in the hall about this. Surely it’s not that difficult to double-check that a door has actually closed tight behind you as you leave. They might as well issue an open invitation to burglars and street drinkers to come on in and make themselves at home. I’m cold and tired, and in no form for people who can’t perform the simplest of tasks. My mood worsens.

  I just want to be in my flat, under a hot shower, before slipping into warm pyjamas and pouring myself a glass of wine. I try to focus on that and not my annoyance at the open door as I climb the stairs to my flat, which just so happens to be on the top floor of the four-storey building. I only ever use the lift when I’m weighed down with shopping. The rest of the time I allow myself a smugness at choosing the healthy option. There’s a satisfying ache in my calf muscles as I reach the top of the stairs and turn down the corridor towards my own front door.

  Except the motion-activated lighting, which should automatically switch on when I enter the corridor, doesn’t click on. I swear again. That’s another thing I’ll have to speak to the management committee about. Although I shouldn’t need to. I pay hefty enough fees for the upkeep of the communal spaces. I use the torch on my phone to illuminate the short distance to my front door which, I realise quickly, is ajar, too.

  Suddenly, the open front door and the banjaxed light don’t seem like mere inconveniences any more. A shiver runs down my spine and I feel my breath catch in my throat. I know I pulled the door shut on my way out. I’m fastidious about it. I always give it a little push afterwards, just to be sure. I freeze, not sure what to do. Do I push the door open, fumble for the light switch inside? Do I call the police? And tell them what? ‘My door is open, officer. Please come check my flat for me?’ I can only imagine their response – and that’s before considering how I haven’t always seen eye to eye with the police in this city. They’re not fans of me ‘sticking my nose in’ and I’m not a fan of their sweeping incompetence.

  Still, some incompetence might be better than no support at all around now. I try to quiet my breathing, to listen for any unfamiliar creaks. I don’t hear anything, but I keep my phone in my hand – unlocked – just in case. And my keys, too, in case I need to defend myself.

  Slowly I push open the door, reach my left hand towards the wall and find the light switch. To my utter relief, it comes on and floods the hall with brightness. At first glance nothing looks amiss. My bedroom door is closed, as I left it. The bathroom door is ajar, as is the door to the open-plan kitchen and living room. I cough, loudly. A cough that sounds just as fake as it is. I’m not sure why I do it. It’s unlikely an intruder will suddenly introduce him or herself on hearing it.

  I look down at my phone, wonder if it’s too late to call a friend – or ask someone to come over for a bit. I’m feeling edgy. First my car and now this? I can’t ring Trina. It’s gone nine and she’ll be settled down for the evening, probably a few glasses of wine down. Married life and parenthood have combined to make her predictable. Besides, I don’t want to embroil her in this.

  I edge my way into the living room, keeping my back
tight to the wall so no one can jump up from behind me. Switching on the light, I see the room is untouched and I wonder as I look around if I’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe I wasn’t so thorough pulling the door closed as I thought – and it does stick a bit.

  I feel brave enough to slip off my coat and hang it over the back of one of the two kitchen chairs. I don’t drop my keys or my phone, though. Not yet. And my heartbeat hasn’t slowed.

  I turn, walk out of the room, push open the bathroom door and pull the light cord. Everything is as it was here, too. Not a thing out of place. I’ve just my bedroom left to check and for some reason, before I even open the door, I have a feeling I’ll find something. A chill is creeping up my spine and my mouth is dry as I put my hand to the door handle and open it.

  I see the bed first. My crisp white bed linen now soaked in red. My stomach tightens, then threatens to turn. Then the wall catches my eye. The same red, streaked on my walls.

  There’s blood on your hands.

  I hear a door slam. My door? I don’t know. I can hardly think. I can’t breathe. I step back, push my back against the wall and look around me, my hands shaking. I’m trying to unlock my phone, to call for help while I’m not sure if I’m alone. Fear has rendered my fingers all but useless. I’m trembling too much to bring up my contacts list.

  Is someone here? Has someone left? And the red? Is it blood? It’s as dark as blood, I can see that. It’s running down the wall, over the fresh white paint. It’s spattered on my headboard. My heart is beating so fast I’m sure it might just jump out of my throat. I catch a hint of something on the air, a smell. Paint, I think. Could it be paint?

  Gingerly I reach out, try to touch the red liquid on my bed. It’s cold, thick. I bring my shaking hand to my face and sniff. I was right – it is paint – and I almost, almost sag with relief. But even though it might not be blood on the walls, and on my bed, there’s no doubt what the intention behind it is. And I can’t escape the fact that someone has been here. Someone knows where I live. Someone knows how to get into my house, into my bedroom. Someone wants to scare me.