After he drank the water down, Mike seemed to come back to life.
‘That woman,’ he said. ‘With the black glasses. Did you see her leave just now?’
‘Yes. Is she a friend of Natalie’s or …?’
Mike shook his head, no.
Then he said, ‘She was following her.’
Again, Audrey thought he meant the guard. That the guard had left because she was following that woman, but that didn’t make any—
‘She was following Natalie. Before she … Until she—’ His voice broke. ‘And I didn’t believe her.’ Tears now, glistening in his eyes. ‘I didn’t believe her.’
He dropped his head.
Audrey felt a tingle drop down her spine.
‘Mike,’ she said gently, ‘can you tell me why you think that? Why you think that woman was following Natalie?’
He sniffed, wiped at his face. ‘Natalie told me a woman with blonde hair and black glasses – thick frames – was following her. She’d seen her in … I think three places, over a couple of weeks.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t believe her.’
‘Is that what Natalie was upset about? Before she left?’
Mike nodded miserably.
‘Shanamore,’ Audrey said. ‘Did Natalie tell you why she was asking about that?’
‘No,’ Mike said. ‘Not at the time. But when I came home that night, the Visa bill was in the post, and I just had a quick look at it, like I normally do, and I saw “Shanamore Cottage” … There was this big charge, six hundred euro and something. I didn’t understand but I presumed that must have had something to do with why Natalie asked me about it, so I left it’ – he pointed at the noticeboard, although there was no sign of the bill there now – ‘up there. I was going to ask her when she came back. But she’ – his voice cracked – ‘didn’t.’
‘So who was the woman? Why was she following Natalie?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘I don’t know her. But she … she acted like I did, even though I don’t think I’ve ever met her before in my life. There’s something wrong with her—’ He stopped, seeing Audrey’s expression. ‘What? What is it?’
‘I saw her too. The first time I came here. Two days ago. She was leaving just as I was arriving, just like this time.’
Mike’s eyes widened. ‘What? That was—’
‘The morning of the break-in, yeah.’ Audrey’s blood was fizzing with adrenalin. She took a breath. ‘Mike, there’s something else. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but … I’ve seen the video. Have they told you about the video?’
He swallowed hard, nodded.
‘Well,’ Audrey continued, ‘I don’t think the person who … I don’t think the person who attacked Natalie was a man.’
He stood up abruptly and pushed back his chair, stepped back from the table, from Audrey, moving away as if she’d just revealed she was contagious.
‘Are you saying—’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Were there only two guards here? I think we should ring them.’
He nodded again. It seemed like he couldn’t speak.
Audrey got out her phone and dialled the number O’Reilly had given her. She’d put it in as a contact on the way up from Shanamore so she’d know when she was getting an angry ‘Why the hell did you delay your statement appointment?’ call without having to actually answer it. It was a mobile. She assumed his own.
Mike leaned against the wall. He looked like he was being held together only by his clothes.
The call rang once, twice.
Then, suddenly, Mike’s face changed.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed. ‘I have met her. She was standing behind a desk…’ He put his hands to his mouth, then covered his eyes with them. ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my God.’
In Audrey’s ear, a click signalled the call had been picked up.
‘Yes?’ O’Reilly’s voice said.
‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Audrey. I’m with Mike in Sandymount. You need to get your people here. Now.’
REWIND TO BEGIN
By Audrey Coughlan
Last November, the body of Irish Instagram star Natalie O’Connor washed up on a Cork beach the same day a graphic video of her murder was sent anonymously to media outlets. The investigation into her death would uncover not only the culprit, but the twisted crimes of a man Natalie barely knew and a woman she had never formally met. Yet many mysteries still remain. As murderer Jennifer Blake marks the first weekend of her life sentence and her accomplice, Andrew Gallagher, waits to hear the details of his, we share an extract from reporter Audrey Coughlan’s upcoming book, The Follower, which promises to be the definitive account of the strange and tragic case that has captivated this nation – and shaken our Instagram generation to their core …
The nameplate of Belleview House, built in pitted red brick in Donnybrook in 1981, tells two lies. It is not a house and, if it offers any attractive views, I spied none of them from its top floor. It is, in reality, a block of flats and not a particularly attractive one. The units inside are studios if we’re being generous, bedsits if we’re not.
The letting agent who shows me around one of them – available to rent for ‘just’ €1,350 per month – doesn’t use those terms, however. He says things like light-filled and intelligently proportioned and, for reasons I don’t quite understand, Scandinavian living. His megawatt smile only dims when I enquire after the water tank on the roof. A former tenant, I explain, has filled me in: back when he lived here, not that long ago, the water supply would cease without notice at least once a month, leaving him and his fellow tenants with no working taps, no heating and no showers.
That former tenant is Michael Kerr and, as unlikely as it may seem, Belleview House’s water tank is the reason his wife, Irish Instagram star Natalie O’Connor, is dead.
I first set foot in Shanamore in November 2018, one day before Natalie’s body washed up on the stretch of beach the locals call the Far Strand, and about one week after she herself had arrived there for the first time. We both stayed in the same place: Shanamore Cottages, a small U-shaped arrangement of six holiday homes, built originally to sell as private homes. We both stayed in Cottage No. 6, the house directly opposite Cottage No. 1, where Andrew Gallagher, the manager, lived and greeted his newly arrived guests. We both slept in the king-sized bed in No. 6’s only bedroom but only Natalie died in it. I saw this happen, after the fact, via a computer screen. Unbeknownst to both of us there was a camera hidden in that room, concealed in an alarm clock sat atop a chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. It was gone before I arrived, dumped along with Natalie’s lifeless body. I suspect the same person who killed her sent me the video it captured.
I had written about Natalie’s disappearance for ThePaper.ie and then followed a report from one of her many thousands of Instagram followers that claimed Natalie had been in Shanamore since. I had two questions: had Natalie really been there and why had she gone there at all? It was easy to answer the first one. She had indeed gone there; spoken to various people; had a coffee in The Kiln, the local design store; and walked on the beach. The second was harder to answer and that answer, when I eventually pieced it together, was confusing and complex.
But the short version is this: she was lured there.
_________
Andrew Gallagher does not look thirty-something. The first time I met him – shortly after Natalie did for the first time – he was pale and lanky, wearing oversized clothes and sporting longish, floppy hair. He seemed innocent, perhaps even naïve. He didn’t seem at all suited to a job in hospitality. What I didn’t know at the time – what, it seemed, almost no one knew – was that Andrew had a sexual preference for very young girls and, on regular trips to cities like Cork and Dublin, he would satisfy it. His victims, the youngest of which was three days past her twelfth birthday, nearly all first encountered him online, via a video game or social media app. He was careful to conceal his identity and left these girls with very little in the way of concrete detail to repo
rt to authorities. When one of them found the courage to tell her mother, almost as soon as she had returned home, she could only give a physical description. The accounts on which he’d contacted her had already been deleted and the ‘hotel’ where they’d stayed never checked IDs and had no cameras inside or out.
But someone was watching him. In the summer of 2018, Andrew Gallagher travelled to Sycamore House in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, a somewhat grubby bed and breakfast based in a converted Georgian townhouse (now closed) that had enticed guests with its postcode but made no effort to impress them with the reality. The young girl he took there has never been identified but what he did to her was captured in horrifically high definition by a camera concealed in the room. A week after he’d returned home to Shanamore, Andrew received a copy of the footage via email along with instructions that, in order to avoid the video’s public dissemination, he should begin capturing similar footage of his guests. He was to send ‘fresh’ footage at least once a week to his anonymous blackmailers, the crying woman on the other end of the telephone explained. She didn’t give her name but she claimed that she, too, had been videoed doing something similarly shameful and this was how she was supposed to avoid its release. Andrew did as he was told.
This was why, when a faceless killer entered Cottage No. 6 on the night of 6 November, 2018, and murdered Natalie O’Connor in her bed, someone was watching – or, at least, something. A lifeless black marble in the dark. A lens.
_________
Richard Flynn said he did various things – he was a painter, a handyman, a labourer – but what he did the most was lie. His name wasn’t Richard at all, but Martin, and although Flynn was his last name, officially it came with an ‘O’. He’d fled London in 2001 after a series of ATM robberies left a red-hot trail leading police to his door. He changed his name midway across the Irish Sea and settled in the sleepy seaside village of Shanamore, where locals were unimpressed by his unkempt appearance, lack of personal hygiene and – if you were a local female – failure to observe the concept of personal space.
In the autumn of 2008, Flynn was on the verge of leaving Shanamore. He was sick of the cold, hard winters and the lack of paying work. Then, over a pint in one of the local pubs, Murphy’s, he heard of an opportunity: the new housing estate ‘up the lane’ had failed to sell a single home and was being rebranded as a holiday village. The developer was looking for someone to manage the place, and although the pay was minimal the role would be live-in and come with one of the cottages, rent-free. Richard thought it was the answer to all his problems and set out to secure the job, going so far as to invest in a suit (from a charity shop) and cut his hair. But someone else wanted it too: the son of the family who had owned the land. He was younger (‘and cleaner’ one of the locals would later say) and much more suited, it was thought, to the role. Andrew Gallagher became the manager of Shanamore Cottages, leaving Richard out in the cold, still.
Richard took this as a personal slight and began to nurture a grudge which, a decade later, would inadvertently help solve a murder. He was obsessed with assessing Andrew’s effectiveness in the job he felt he could’ve done better and, as a result, spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around Shanamore Cottages. Andrew, while wary of him, was thought to be too intimidated by the older man to risk a confrontation and so never asked him to leave, even when some of the guests complained that they’d found him loitering outside their windows or relaxing on their patios.
Richard was there the night Natalie O’Connor arrived at the cottages and he, by chance, witnessed a strange thing. Andrew had a visitor, an older woman, who had parked her car, not in the complex, but in the abandoned building site next door.
He wondered what she was doing there.
He wondered why she didn’t want to be seen.
_________
Andrew Gallagher and Richard Flynn were, understandably, prime suspects in the murder of Natalie O’Connor. Andrew quickly admitted to having removed the body and cleaned the scene, and Richard was the first to happen upon the body when it washed ashore.
I was the second. Richard had had no phone with which to raise the alarm, had gone to get help and found me. I had parked nearby to watch a video I had just been sent, anonymously, via email: the video of Natalie’s murder. When I watched it again hours later with another journalist, we both agreed: the figure on screen was not Andrew or Richard. We weren’t even sure it was a man.
Natalie had been lured to Shanamore, but how, and by whom? Was it the same woman who had murdered her? What was the motive? Was it someone she knew? Those first twenty-four hours I spent in Shanamore I spent following, sometimes unknowingly, in Natalie O’Connor’s footsteps. I stayed in the same cottage. I went to the same café. I walked along the same stretch of beach.
I was going forwards, I thought, into this investigation. But what I’ve come to realise in the months since – the months I’ve spent immersed in this case – is that the truth is behind me. To get it, you must go back. You must rewind all the way to a warm night in April 2018 when Mike Kerr returned to the apartment he was sharing with his then-fiancée, Natalie, flushed and sweaty from a day at work followed by an hour at the gym, and discovered that, yet again, Belleview House’s water was out.
Natalie was away in London for the night on a work-related trip. Mike had an important meeting in the morning and, if past incidents were anything to go by, the water might not even be running again by then. He later described to me how he stood in the kitchen, considering his options: take a chance and stay there, go back to the gym and shower, stay with a friend. He eventually decided all three options had annoying downsides and elected instead to check into a chain hotel on Burlington Road, less than a five-minute drive away.
But they were fully booked for the night. The staff on reception suggested he try Sycamore House, a nearby bed and breakfast. Mike remembers it as being slightly rundown, but he got what he needed: a bed for the night and running water. The following morning, his meeting went well. He was on his way to the airport to collect Natalie when he realised he’d left his phone charger behind him at Sycamore House.
When Mike called the number on the website, he connected with someone who spoke English with a Polish accent and said he was at the reception desk. The proprietor herself, he explained, dealt with Lost & Found, for security reasons. Would he like her mobile number? He could call her on that. Mike said yes and called the number as soon as he’d hung up, before he could forget it. When he heard the woman’s voice, he realised it was the same woman who’d checked him into his room the night before. Jennifer, her name-tag had read.
Mike returned to Sycamore House later that evening to collect his charger. He was in and out within the space of a minute, he thinks, and cannot remember any specific detail of this second visit. It’s likely, however, that Jennifer Blake remembers it well. She had been, according to court-ordered psychological reports submitted during her trial, attracted to Mike instantly and had, that day, stored his number in her phone alongside his professional headshot, which she’d taken from his employer’s website.
What started in Sycamore House was an obsession, a fantasy in which, her therapist says, Jennifer came to fully believe. In her mind, she and Mike had embarked on an illicit affair. They were in love, he with her as much as she with him.
The only problem was that they couldn’t be together openly until his wife, Natalie, was out of the way.
_________
The Follower will be published by Henry Books early next year
Irish Times Weekend Review, 31 August, 2019
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not be in your hands were it not for three wonder women: Jane Gregory, Sara O’Keeffe and Susannah Hamilton. I might never have made it to Book 3 without the friendship/support/gin-infused therapy of Hazel Gaynor and Carmel Harrington; getting to know you two has been one of the highlights of my writing life. Special thanks to everyone at David Higham & Associates, Corvus/Atlantic Bo
oks and Blackstone Publishing, and to all the wonderful booksellers, bloggers, readers, reviewers and authors who have so generously supported me and my work. Thanks to Casey King – Garda procedure consultant extraordinaire – Erin Mitchell for sending me the BEST text messages and Andrea Summers for pointing out the PostSecret that gave me the initial idea for this book. Sheena Lambert: that cacophony was just for you – enjoy! Barry O’Connell: I told you I’d get your name in here. Sheelagh and Iain: you’re BY FAR my favourite disembodied voices from far away.
Thanks also to Mum, Dad, John and Claire. They really didn’t have anything to do with me writing this book specifically but I get the feeling they wouldn’t be too impressed if they got to the end of this page and didn’t see their names here, so …
And thank you, for reading!
Praise for Catherine Ryan Howard’s The Liar’s Girl
‘Gripping’ Elizabeth Haynes
‘A clever and intriguing tale.’ Liz Nugent
‘A killer premise that 100% delivers.’ Caz Frear
‘Dark, yes, but tender too. The Liar’s Girl is tightly plotted and crackles with suspense.’ Ali Land
‘An absolute belter of a book!’ Gillian McAllister
‘Expertly plotted, with a series of stunning twists.’ Daily Mail
‘Slick, smart and stylish suspense.’ Holly Seddon
‘Absolutely fantastic.’ Jenny Blackhurst
‘The Liar’s Girl is a tightly structured, highly suspenseful follow-up to Howard’s excellent CWA Dagger-nominated debut, Distress Signals.’ Irish Times
‘Heartstoppingly brilliant … An extraordinary talent.’ Jane Casey
‘Incredibly pacey.’ Sinéad Crowley
‘Astonishingly good.’ Jo Spain
‘[A] sharp and modern thriller, cleverly plotted and completely immersive … Magnificently murky.’ Sunday Independent
‘The Liar’s Girl is brilliant. It’s even better than the Dagger-nominated Distress Signals and that’s saying something!’ Michelle Davies
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