Rewind

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  ‘How familiar were you with the interior of the cottages?’

  ‘I did a bit of work on them,’ Richard said, ‘when they were being built.’

  ‘What work, specifically?’

  ‘Oh just, you know’ – Richard waved a hand – ‘whatever was going. Day labourer, you could say. But I was inside for the second fix. I know what they look like. I could identify the bedroom from the video, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Where were you when you saw Andrew watching the video?’

  ‘At the window. Outside.’

  ‘Front or back?’

  ‘Back.’

  Seanie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I just like to walk around up there, okay?’ Richard said. ‘Is that a crime?’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Reilly said flatly. ‘Trespassing.’

  ‘Charge me with it then.’

  ‘I just might.’

  Richard threw the detective a filthy look. Big man on campus, was he, yeah? Swinging your dick around, Dick? He might want to try being polite or Richard might let a few pertinent details fall right out of his head.

  ‘You like to walk around down by the beach, too?’ Seanie asked.

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  O’Reilly snorted. ‘At this time of year?’

  ‘We must be made of hardier stuff down here, Detective.’

  ‘Tell us how you found the body.’

  Richard shrugged. ‘I was just walking along, and I saw something up ahead. I went to look. It was her. I don’t have a mobile phone so I went to get help. I saw a person in the car park, standing by their car. It was the reporter. I told her and she raised the alarm.’

  ‘You were walking along,’ O’Reilly said. ‘In the beach, in the dark, in the freezing cold, across rock pools—’

  ‘I never walked on the rock pools. I saw the body from a distance.’

  ‘Then how did you know it was her? Audrey Coughlan said you identified her. You said, “I know she’s dead because I just found her body.”’

  ‘Who else would it have been?’ Richard scoffed. ‘Did we have two murders this week?’

  ‘How did you know she was dead?’

  This, Richard didn’t answer immediately – because he had known as early as the morning after that Andrew had killed that woman. It was obvious. She had disappeared, Richard hadn’t seen her leave – and, when he asked around in the village, no one else had either, even though she was known to have not brought a car – and Andrew had spent nearly the whole day inside Cottage No. 6, cleaning furiously. Richard had thought it might be wise to keep an eye on the boy. Which is what he was doing when, in the middle of the next night, he saw Andrew hoisting something large and heavy out of his cottage into the boot of his car.

  Richard said, ‘She just looked it. The colour of the skin, perhaps.’

  ‘Right, right,’ O’Reilly said. ‘The colour of her skin, even though it was dark and you were nowhere near the body because you didn’t walk on to the rock pools. Got it. And then you decided that the best course of action was to go up to the car park, find a woman half your age, frighten the life out of her by approaching her in the dark, chat for a bit and then entice her down to a crime scene so she could be traumatised by that, too?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘She’s a reporter, isn’t she? I was doing her a favour. Handing her a scoop.’

  ‘How much time passed between you finding the body and you approaching Audrey Coughlan in the car park?’

  ‘Minutes. I left the beach as soon as I saw the body.’

  ‘That’s quite the coincidence, isn’t it? That she was there?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Reilly said, nodding, as if talking to a child. ‘Yes, it is.’ He paused. ‘You like having your name in the paper, don’t you, Richard?’

  ‘Is my name in the paper, Detective?’

  O’Reilly smiled coldly. ‘It might be, yet.’

  Richard returned the smile. ‘You know, for Good Cop, Bad Cop to work, I think perhaps you’re supposed to be a bit more subtle than this.’

  ‘Orla Sheridan,’ Seanie said. ‘You told her that you’d never met Natalie.’

  ‘I would never tell her anything. That café may as well be on Fleet Street.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t come and tell me about the camera and your suspicions long before now. And I really don’t understand why you didn’t do that as soon as you heard that a previous guest of the cottages was missing.’ Seanie paused. ‘Can you explain that, Richard?’

  Richard shifted in his seat.

  ‘Could it be,’ O’Reilly continued, ‘because you don’t like talking to the police? Could it be because you’ve been in trouble with the law? That you are in trouble, for something else, somewhere else?’

  _________

  Good Cop, Bad Cop were right – in some ways. Richard hadn’t gone to them because he distrusted the police and he was loathe to do their job for them. Come and ask him questions, okay. He’ll answer them. But expect him to go to them to report something they’d no idea had even happened? Now that was just laziness.

  Furthermore, he knew that Natalie hadn’t liked him. That little stuck-up bitch thought she was too good to even talk to him. And with the world the way it was, she could’ve recounted the story of their meeting to anyone, with God knows how many embellishments, maybe even put it online – and you know what that place was like now, the lit torches of the Outrage Brigade just lying in wait for fresh flesh – and done God knows what to a man’s reputation. He’d only been trying to have a polite conversation with her, for God’s sake. And the thing at the window – well, that was just a misunderstanding. But if she’d said that, if she’d complained about him, wrote about him online, no doubt the keyboard warriors would get to work, investigating and searching and uncovering, running checks. Joining dots that hadn’t been joined in a decade, following a trail that led to a different name and a long-ago crime. Not one of this nature, but still. Richard, as he called himself these days, was happy where he was. Being who he was.

  So he had held back. Waited. Watched. Then the girl was dead; she couldn’t say anything about him. And he had just happened upon the body – that was true. But he didn’t call the Gardaí. He’d waited, thinking. There were reporters swarming around the cottages. What if he alerted one of them, instead? Then he’d gone up to the car park and found that Audrey girl, just standing there, practically wrapped up in a bow.

  But now Richard was wondering if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he should’ve just ignored it. Walked on. Let someone else find the girl and call it in.

  He was realising that he needed to extricate himself from this whole situation before anyone took the time to look too closely at Richard Flynn.

  He especially needed to get out of this room, to end this interview. It wasn’t quite the casual chat he’d been led to expect.

  So when Sergeant Seanie fixed him with a dead-on look in the eyes and said, ‘Is there anything else you can tell us that could help our investigation?’ Richard opened his mouth and lied for the first time:

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The second:

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one saw Natalie alive after Tuesday afternoon,’ Seanie said. ‘And from his initial assessment, the pathologist thinks she died not long after that. So tell us, Richard: where were you Tuesday evening?’

  Richard wanted to scoff and say how preposterous the implication was, but he said, ‘In Murphy’s.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Closing.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I walked home and went to bed.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. But I had my phone with me. You can track those things now, can’t you? I was nowhere near the cottages that night.’ He folded his arms to display his confidence. ‘You can check.’

  ‘You think Andrew did this,’ O’Reilly said.
/>
  ‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘I don’t see how any thinking person could come to a different conclusion.’

  O’Reilly snorted, presumably at the phrase thinking person.

  ‘Do you recall,’ Seanie asked, ‘ever seeing anyone else up at the cottages? Shortly before Natalie arrived or at any point after she did?’

  Richard let a beat pass.

  Because here it was, now. The big one.

  The third lie:

  ‘No.’

  But he had.

  He hadn’t gone to the cottages the night Natalie died, but he had the night before. Her first night there. And he had seen the figure in the window. The bedroom window. Not Natalie’s, but Andrew’s. She was standing in a darkened room, looking across the complex into the bedroom where Natalie had just flicked on the lights.

  The woman.

  From where Richard had been standing – or hiding – around the side of Cottage No. 5, he could see Andrew too: standing in the living room, looking up towards the ceiling, and then calling out something, calling out to her.

  Natalie had drawn her curtains. He’d watched as this woman had joined Andrew downstairs. They’d talked for several minutes. It was hard to tell from that distance, but Richard got the impression that Andrew was upset, and that the woman was reassuring him.

  But he wasn’t going to say that now.

  Not to Laurel and Hardy here. They liked Andrew for this anyway, he could see it. And he liked Andrew for it too.

  That boy was a pervert and he needed to go away. Let them take him. Let this all be over. Let Richard – Richard – go back to being that without the threat of being exposed as someone else.

  He might even get the job that little shit had stolen out from under him, if there even was a job after all this, because who was going to want to stay in those godforsaken cottages now?

  ‘Okay, then,’ Seanie said, sliding back his chair. ‘In that case, I think that’s it.’

  Andrew had no idea how much time had passed since they’d put him in the cell. It didn’t look like it did on TV; there were no sliding bars. The door was solid steel. Inside there was a little seat made out of concrete and a thin mattress covered in a kind of plastic that clearly could be wiped clean, like everything in those soft-play areas for children. There was a hole in the ground which he thought might be the toilet. There were no windows and the fluorescent light made his eyes sting. The only other thing in the room besides him was all that was left of his dinner: a crumpled McDonald’s bag and an empty cup of Coke. He thought it might be very late now, maybe eleven or even later.

  They’d brought him to Midleton Garda Station, he remembered that much. He’d assumed he was here because Shanamore Garda Station was too small, or maybe it was just easier to get him out of the village, out of the scrum of reporters and onlookers and nosy neighbours, and bring him to a proper station in an actual town instead.

  The bolt in the door slid open and a Garda in a uniform beckoned him out. Directed him down the hall. Into yet another windowless room.

  This one was different, but desolate in a similar way. There was a glossy-topped table, fake wood effect, the kind they had in school. A black leather chair fixed to the floor; he was sitting in it. Two more chairs on the opposite side, awaiting, he assumed, his interrogators. An old, stained brown carpet and crumbs stuck on it. Pockmarked ceiling tiles, square. Plain walls with nothing on them except for chipped magnolia paint. A little black machine with buttons. A black fish-eye mounted in the furthest corner of the room which Andrew thought must be a camera.

  The camera.

  He wondered if they’d found that yet.

  He’d driven to Ballycotton, walked a little along the cliffs there and flung it into the sea. The following evening he’d done the same thing with the little hard drive he’d been supplied with.

  He wondered if anyone had spoken to his mother. The silver lining, if there was one, was that the woman was well past understanding any such thing now.

  Footsteps outside the door, the low murmur of voices.

  Sergeant Seanie entered, followed by another, bigger, taller Garda he didn’t know but who he’d seen earlier, back at the cottages, when he was getting arrested. The two men nodded to the uniformed Garda who’d brought him from the cells; he nodded back then left.

  They sat down opposite him. Andrew remained slumped in his seat, eyes fixed on the floor.

  Seanie had carried in a small laptop which he put on the table in front of him.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Steven O’Reilly,’ the bigger man said, ‘and, as you know, this is Sergeant Sean Flynn. We’d like to ask you a few questions …’

  Andrew tuned out whatever O’Reilly said after that because he was watching Seanie load CDs into the little black machine. They were going to record what he said. Audio and – he looked up at the camera – maybe video too.

  ‘I need you to actually say yes,’ O’Reilly said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s been explained to you that you have a right for a solicitor to be in here, but you have waived that right at this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two Gardaí exchanged a glance, which made Andrew wonder if that was really the right thing to say.

  Maybe he should ask for a solicitor. They’d told him he was entitled to one but that, it being the middle of the night, it would delay things. He just wanted to get this over with. And what was a solicitor going to do for him anyway? It wasn’t like he was going to be walking out of here a free man. He’d been caught.

  The question was, what for?

  O’Reilly had brought a pad of paper and a pen in with him and he poised over it now, ready to write something down.

  ‘You are the manager of Shanamore Cottages, Andrew,’ he said. ‘Am I correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And last week you had a guest named Natalie O’Connor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she make a booking in advance?’

  ‘That morning, she made it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘On the phone.’

  ‘Is that the normal method?’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘Sometimes people do that, yeah. Usually, it’s the last-minute people.’

  ‘What exactly did she say?’

  ‘That she needed a room for the night. She told me her name was Marie. Marie Kerr.’

  The two Gardaí exchanged another glance.

  ‘When did you learn her real name?’ O’Reilly asked.

  Andrew didn’t answer right away. What was the right thing to say? He didn’t have time to speed back through his memories of Natalie’s stay to figure out if he could get away with this lie and he was so tired …

  The two men across the table were staring at him intently. He had to say something. He went with, ‘From the news. I don’t remember exactly when.’ A pause. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Did she provide you with credit card information on that call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she ever?’

  ‘No. I usually do that on check-out. And I had no other guests. If she didn’t arrive, it wasn’t like I was going to lose business.’

  ‘But you didn’t take it from her when she arrived either?’ O’Reilly raised an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t that be standard practice, in case they drive off during the night?’

  ‘I didn’t think that was going to happen. I just … This time of the year … It’s quiet, you know.’ Andrew shrugged. ‘It was fine.’

  ‘Were you aware that Natalie’s husband had a charge from Shanamore Cottages on his credit card from a fortnight or so before?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean, not then. But I am now.’ He pointed at Seanie. ‘He told me about it.’

  ‘And your explanation for that is …?’

  Andrew hesitated. ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘You’d agree it’s an astronomical coincidence, though, right? If it’s just an error. His card gets charged, she arrives …’

  Andrew said
nothing.

  ‘What time did she arrive, that day?’ O’Reilly asked.

  ‘Late that afternoon. It was just dark.’

  ‘So, what? Five, six p.m.?’

  ‘Around that, yeah.’

  ‘And you put her in Cottage Number Six.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why that one in particular?’

  ‘It’s just easier to use the same one in the off-season when you only have one guest at a time. And more economical. I can close down the other ones until spring. Not worry about cleaning them, or whatever.’

  Technically, that wasn’t a lie.

  ‘Is there a difference,’ Seanie said, ‘between that one and the others?’

  ‘No,’ Andrew said after a beat. ‘All the cottages are identical.’

  O’Reilly’s mouth twisted with satisfaction. That must have been the wrong answer.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘my colleague is going to play you a video. Please watch it carefully.’

  A video.

  Andrew’s stomach dropped like a stone.

  ‘Are you all right, Andrew?’ O’Reilly’s eyes had strayed to Andrew’s hairline, where he could feel beads of sweat forming. His chest felt like it was growing smaller and smaller, trapped in a vice.

  Andrew nodded. He didn’t dare speak.

  Seanie lifted the lid on the laptop and turned it around so Andrew could see it. A video was queued up already to play.

  A still of the bedroom in Cottage No. 6.

  Relief flooded Andrew’s body. He let his shoulders sag.

  Not that video, then. Maybe they didn’t have that. Maybe she hadn’t sent it to them at all.

  Maybe he could get out of here yet.

  ‘This was recorded in the bedroom of Cottage Number Six,’ O’Reilly said, pointing at the screen where, now, a figure clad all in black was violently murdering Natalie O’Connor. ‘Right? That’s Natalie O’Connor there, in the bed.’

  But now that the wave of relief had receded, Andrew was confused. Where had they got this video? He’d never sent it anywhere. It had been saved to his laptop, which was in the sea somewhere off Ballycotton Bay.

  Had she sent it to them?

  If she had, then where did she get it? He’d never sent her this one. He hadn’t had time to.