Ask No Questions

by Claire Allan

  Niall’s skin pales further in front of my eyes.

  ‘So, do you think he was behind what happened last night at the Dohertys’?’ he asks, wide-eyed.

  I shake my head. ‘No. It doesn’t add up. I don’t think he’d have been capable of arranging something like that. And he sounded too upset, too angry, when he called me.’

  Niall pauses. ‘So, how do you know the body on the tracks is his? They haven’t named anyone on the news. It might be someone else.’

  ‘I have a source in the PSNI and he’s very reliable. He confirmed it to me.’

  Niall nods, pinches the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Niall,’ I say and take a breath. ‘My source told me foul play is suspected.’

  Niall just stares at me, blinking occasionally. ‘Murder?’ he eventually asks.

  ‘That’s the approach the police are taking. I imagine there will be a press conference about it soon enough.’

  Niall exhales slowly, rubs at his eyes. His leg jiggles up and down as if he is filled with nervous energy. He takes a breath and looks directly at me.

  ‘Well, I hope right now Jamesy Harte is rotting in hell. Where he belongs.’

  I let his words hang in the air for a moment or two.

  ‘So, you definitely don’t share Declan’s conviction that Jamesy was set up?’

  Niall laughs, a short, sharp burst. ‘No, I absolutely don’t share my brother’s view on that. Jamesy was always creeping around us kids. There was always something not quite right about him. I know you felt it, too. None of us would talk to him when we were on our own. Our parents wouldn’t let us. You remember that?’

  I nod, but it’s only the vaguest of memories. Everything from then has become blended together, an amalgamation, I assume, of what actually happened, and what I’ve read and heard since. Our memories are strange creatures, so easily distorted and manipulated.

  I barely register he is still speaking, tuning back in only to hear, ‘Her things were found in his house. There’s no reasonable excuse for that. I don’t know what other proof you need.’

  Niall shakes his head. ‘Ingrid, if you’d seen what I did, on the banks of the reservoir that day, you wouldn’t feel one iota of sorrow for that man. It took me years to be able to close my eyes and not see her lying there. I was just a child myself. No child should have to see that.’

  His voice is trembling, so I reach out and take his hand. I expect him to pull it away, for some reason. I’m not even sure why. But he doesn’t move and that comforts me. We were all so young. We’ve all carried this with us for so long now. But Niall and Declan have carried it more than most.

  ‘Would you like me to show you where she was found?’ he asks after a few minutes of not quite comfortable silence.

  I turn my head swiftly to him. ‘It was up at the reservoir. I know that.’

  ‘But you don’t know where exactly. I know none of us were ever allowed up there again. Not for a long time, anyway. The Dohertys, they didn’t want people knowing the exact spot. They didn’t want it being made a shrine. Said that wasn’t how she was to be remembered.

  ‘I wanted to leave flowers there, but my ma said no. But it might help you,’ he says, nodding towards my research on the wall. ‘For your book. It might help you get a sense of it. Properly. It hasn’t changed that much over the years. Surprisingly. A lot up there has changed, but not that spot.

  ‘I go there still, the odd time. I used to go more. I get a comfort of sorts from it. I suppose that makes me sound a bit weird.’ There’s that stiff, brittle laugh again.

  ‘I suppose we all do what we need to do to get through it,’ I say. ‘Maybe it would do me good to see it. Give me a better sense of things.’

  ‘Do you ever feel guilty about it?’ he asks.

  ‘About Kelly’s death? Yes. Don’t we all?’

  That’s what makes this all so emotional for me. It could have been me, or any of one of us out playing and collecting apples and nuts that night.

  I had been wearing a white dress, too. It wasn’t a first communion dress. I was too old for mine to have fitted me even if I had wanted to wear it. I think it was a summer dress. And a tinsel crown. A star on a stick, wrapped in tinfoil, just like the one Kelly had.

  ‘I sometimes wonder if we could have done more to protect her. She was younger. Maybe we should’ve watched over her more. Kept a closer eye on her. Isn’t that what community is all about? So yes, I do feel guilty. I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling that way.’

  ‘But, Ingrid, we were only children ourselves. We can’t carry the weight of that around forever. It’s enough that her life was destroyed.’

  He stands up, walks back to the wall and runs his fingers down through the index cards again. He seems unduly agitated by the news.

  ‘This really is fascinating, Ingrid. You have everything here,’ he says, his tone falsely bright.

  ‘Not quite everything,’ I say.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ he says. ‘But I suppose once news spreads about Jamesy, you’ll know more. God, I hope they’re not thinking of bringing him back here to bury. People will be lining up to dance on his grave.’

  I look at him, shocked at his words.

  ‘They will, Ingrid. He doesn’t deserve to be allowed to rest in peace.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Ingrid

  Sunday, 27 October 2019

  I can hear the rain battering off my window when I wake. The wind is howling, a vague hint of the banshee about it. I remember being terrified of that mythical Irish creature when I was small. It was one of the kids on the street, possibly even Niall or Declan, who first regaled us with stories of the wail of the banshee – a creature whose cry, carried on the wind, heralded a death.

  The first time I’d watched the Disney movie Darby O’Gill and the Little People I had been frozen to the spot with fear by the appearance of the ghostly woman, ordering Darby to his demise.

  ‘You hear her, like a really loud wind in a storm, it means someone you love is going to die,’ I’d been told, and I’d lived in fear of every stormy day, every whistle of wind through the trees. How loud was loud enough to be the banshee? For a long time, I ran for cover every time I heard the wind roar.

  The night Kelly died, the air was still.

  I get up, pull open my bedroom curtains just as a fresh squall of rain and hail batters the window, startling me. It may be daytime, but it is still dull and grey outside. The kind of day that looks as if night could call at any second without any regard of the actual time. Cold radiates through the windowpanes, even though they are double-glazed. I shiver and close the curtains again.

  I climb back under my duvet, reach for my phone and log in to social media. The word, it seems, is out. The death on the railway line is officially now a murder inquiry and the police have identified the victim as Jamesy Harte.

  Ryan, or someone in The Chronicle, put the story live on the website at 7 a.m. and has shared it on Facebook. Even though it’s still early on a Sunday morning, a steady stream of comments have started to flood in. There is something so incredibly inhuman and cold about the number of people responding simply by clicking a Facebook emoji. The laughing-crying smiley face seems to be getting the most mileage.

  The comments are filled with vitriol and triumphalism.

  Make whoever did this first minister in Stormont. That’s how you deal with paedos.

  Won’t be missed. Shoulda been strung up years ago.

  Ha-ha! Hope he felt every second of it. Dirty bastard.

  Thoughts and prayers with the Doherty family today – shame they had to wait twenty-five years for proper justice.

  Yeeeooo! Best news I’ve heard all year.

  Life should mean life. He never should’ve got out of jail.

  May Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary have mercy on his soul, and the souls of those who did this.

  – Mercy? He never offered wee Kelly any mercy. I hope he’s burning in hell right now.


  Public holiday to celebrate the news? We should start a petition!

  – Wise up, you balloon! You only want the day off work after Halloween to nurse your hangover!

  – Nothing wrong wi’ that! Best holiday of the year! Cannae wait!

  The comments are exactly what I’d expect from any social media response. People seem to feel able to say anything and everything.

  I click out of Facebook and force myself to get up. For my sins, I have agreed to meet Niall Heaney up at the reservoir so he can show me the exact spot where Kelly was found.

  I pull jeans and a soft cream jumper from my wardrobe, and contemplate whether or not to wear wellies. It will be a muddy mess up there no doubt, so it would probably be advisable. I put on my ordinary boots for now, knowing I’ve a pair of Hunter wellies in the boot of my car. I’d been caught too many times trudging through fields or flooded areas in heels while out covering news stories not to invest in a pair.

  As I get ready, I think of Niall. How he had stayed at my flat for more than an hour. He’d declined a glass of wine, opting for tea. He’d sat on the opposite end of the sofa to me as we spoke. Every now and then he’d made a flirty comment, but I think we both knew it wasn’t the time for flirting. There would probably never be a time for flirting between us. Being tied together by the murder of a school friend isn’t, perhaps, the best start to any potential relationship.

  My phone beeps just as I’m searching for my thermal gloves and part of me hopes Niall has seen the weather, thought better of things and is cancelling our meeting.

  While it is indeed from Niall, he has no notion of calling things off.

  I’ll pick up two coffees on the way and see you at the top entrance to the country park in about half an hour. A cappuccino for you?

  I reply that I’ll see him there, then I click onto my Facebook account just to check the comments under The Chronicle story one last time.

  One comment seems to be getting a lot of attention. I look closely, see the name of the poster, and my stomach sinks so fast I fear I might pass out.

  I did it. It’s Halloween – the best time for haunting people. Jamesy was first and he deserved it. But I’m not done yet. Who will be next? When I come for you, you can’t say you weren’t warned, Devlin!

  The comment is posted by someone using the name of Kelly Doherty, the profile picture the same image we have all seen a hundred times of her in her first communion dress. I sit on the edge of my bed and read the message again, my head spinning.

  I click on the profile, to see it doesn’t offer much information. There are no friends attached to it. Only two items are shared on the user’s timeline and one is a link to The Chronicle story about Jamesy. The second is a link to the fairly dry press release about the attack on Liam Doherty. The user has commented on that one with ‘Daddy needs to keep his mouth shut’ and a laughing face emoji.

  I screenshot it, intending to contact DS King later. Then I click back to The Chronicle page and read the comment again, and the replies below it.

  Some people are telling the poster they are sick. Some are laughing as if it’s all a great joke. Some warning that the cops will be able to find out who they are and will be rapping on their door before long. It isn’t long before I reach the inevitable comments stating that I’m a horrible person and a scumbag. I’m too big for my boots. I think I am somebody important. I give all journalists a bad name.

  I see a second comment from ‘Kelly’, posted just twenty minutes ago.

  Ingrid Devlin met with Jamesy Harte last week. Don’t believe her when she says she cares about the Doherty family. She was on that monster’s side. Anything to make a few quid in one of her trashy books. She’s a bitch.

  There may not be people at my door with pitchforks and lanterns, but the social media equivalent is building strongly. I report the comments. Report the user. Part of me wants to call Ryan and tell him to lock comments on the Facebook page to stop this from going any further, but I know he will be loving it. I can imagine him laughing at the folk posting the GIFs of Michael Jackson eating popcorn, saying they’re ‘only here for the comments’.

  All attention is good attention in Ryan Murray’s eyes and if the blame is landing on my doorstep and not directly at that of The Chronicle then all the better. I might have thought the same myself in the past. That it is all part of the game – if people are commenting, even if they are angry, then people are reading.

  For a bleak minute or two I actually wonder if he has planted the comment himself. He is, after all, one of only a handful of people who know I met Jamesy and somehow, I don’t see DI Bradley or DS King as Internet trolls.

  I’m supposed to be meeting Niall Heaney and I don’t want to keep him waiting. I can pretend, as I wrap my scarf around my neck and throw my phone into my bag, that this is just like any other story I’ve covered. I’m going to do some research. That is all. I won’t be alone. Niall will be with me. I will be fine.

  I know I will be fine.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Declan

  The light on the electric box is flashing again. Declan has been doing his best to leave the heating off as much as possible, but it has been bitterly cold. Much colder than it normally is at this time of year. He hopes it warms up, or at least stays dry, on Thursday for the big Halloween parade.

  Declan will do what he always does and watch the fireworks from the top of Creggan. He has to keep busy on Halloween night. Every year he has found the day impossibly hard. He would hide away if he could, but he’s not good left alone with just his thoughts at this time of year. He has to be busy. Or drunk. Or preferably both. He might just get high, too. Obliterate his reality with whatever he can.

  He gets up – his thirst driving him from his bed to the kitchen of his one-bedroomed flat so he can fill a pint glass with water from the tap.

  He was smoking last night. The smell of grass still hangs in the air, the taste still in his mouth. He probably smoked more than he should’ve, and this stuff was strong. A couple of drags and he could feel himself slipping away to somewhere where he didn’t have to care about anything or anyone. It was a good place to be.

  He’d put on the radio, some dance music station that promised to play ‘all the hits of yesteryear’. Dance music from the Nineties and early Noughties had invaded his head. Songs from his childhood, his youth, his sneaking into nightclubs when he shouldn’t even have been out of the house. Watching Trainspotting when he was twelve in a mate’s house on a VHS and not really understanding it but knowing that everyone thought it was really cool. That was when drugs were bad.

  He’d tried to believe that, but despite the horrors of that movie, he still felt a glimmer of jealousy and longing when Ewan McGregor slipped into an unconscious state to the strains of ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed. It had seemed quite blissful to begin with. Imagine what it would be like to escape the horrors in your head … To disappear for just a while from this existence. His twelve-year-old brain took a while to realise that an overdose was being played out in front of his eyes.

  Not that Declan has tried hard drugs. Well, nothing more than a couple of Es when he was out as a teenager. Like so many before him and since, alcohol is his drug of choice. Grass is just the chaser. Or possibly it’s the other way around. He’s not fussy.

  He downs the pint of water as if he is taking on the lead role in the old black and white movie, Ice Cold in Alex and he feels better for it. He’ll get dressed and, despite the rain he can hear lashing outside, go down to his ma’s. Sunday dinner, again, will be eaten around the family table. If he is lucky, Niall will be on his way to Belfast soon and won’t be there to pass comment when his ma slips him the money for the electricity. Or to make any other snide remarks about what Ingrid Devlin does or doesn’t think of him.

  Of all the things in his life that disappoint him – and there are many, right now – he is most disappointed in her, he thinks as he brushes his teeth and drags a blunt razor over his face. He neve
r quite manages the fully clean-shaven look. The kind that Ingrid, it would seem, likes.

  Yes, he is disappointed in her. He’d tried to be fair. He’d tried to warn her. He thought she’d listened when he told her about Niall. He thought she’d been kind and interested in him. But she is just like all the others. Once Niall walked in with his patter and his big car and his gym body, Declan might as well have been a ghost. He’s just a shadow of what could’ve been.

  He slaps some aftershave on his face, feeling it sting as it catches a small nick, and he wipes the steam from the bathroom mirror. ‘Wise up, Declan,’ he tells himself. ‘That’ll teach you for having notions about yourself.’

  He pads back into the bedroom then digs through his chest of drawers to find clean socks. A thought enters his head. If he could prove to Ingrid that Niall isn’t all he seems, you know, really prove it, it might make a difference.

  He gets dressed as quick as he can, and not just because it’s cold, but because he has an idea. He grabs his coat, his keys, his wallet (for all the good it does him; there’s nothing in it but his electricity top-up card) and reaches for his phone – which he vaguely remembers leaving to charge in the living room. He’d switched it off last night before he started smoking. The last thing he wanted to do was get high and start messaging people to tell them exactly what he thought of them. And by people, he meant Ingrid.

  Declan doesn’t switch his phone on. He just slides it into his pocket, pulls on his hat and leaves his flat – a gust of wind sending a swirling mass of autumnal leaves dancing around his feet.

  It’s cold. But there’s a fire in his belly now. He knows exactly how he can show Ingrid just how wrong in the head Niall is. She won’t want anything to do with him when she sees what he has to show her.