The Ruin

by Dervla McTiernan

  The camera was focused on the area immediately outside the shop’s door and window – most of the image was filled with a stretch of footpath – but the angle allowed Aisling a view of the faces of the passers-by. She watched people in groups of twos and threes, walking in either direction. Most of them were young. The picture was unbelievably clear, and Aisling could see faces laughing, talking, even arguing as they passed, oblivious, under the camera.

  ‘I have footage showing three of the four approaches to the bridge. I’ve watched two hours of film from 10.30 p.m. to 12.30 a.m., that is, the hour before and after the phone call was made. There’s nothing. I couldn’t see anyone who looks like Jack. You should look at everything too, of course. I don’t think I could have missed him, but it would be better if we could say that you checked the videos. I can give it all to you on a stick. Anyway, if you keep watching, the videos show the gardaí arriving and leaving.’

  Maude clicked a button and the screen split in two. Aisling watched as on one side of the picture, two police cars rushed in and out of view, and on the other a group of three people turned and looked back in the direction of the bridge – a reaction to the police sirens maybe? There was no sound, but it seemed like Maude had synced the videos perfectly.

  ‘Do you remember Rodgers said there were two couples on the bridge, coming from Dominick Street? From the Roisín Dubh?’ Maude didn’t wait for a reply but clicked again and the screen shifted. ‘Look, you can see them arriving. And here.’ Another click. ‘That’s the single guy he mentioned, coming from the other direction.’

  She sat back and looked up. ‘Jack is not there, Aisling. There’s no sign of him. And where’s the guy who made the supposed phone call? No sign of him at all.’

  On the screen the video came to an end, and another automatically started, showing the street again, this time from the other side.

  ‘How on earth did you get all this?’

  Maude shrugged. ‘I started looking for cameras. The newsagents had one. The bank across the road had one over the ATM. And the Bridge Mills had one. There were others further up and down the streets and they’re useful too but not as close to the bridge.’

  ‘So, what, you just asked and they handed them over?’

  ‘Some of them did. The newsagent’s. The girl there was very helpful. Iraqi girl. Her parents were asylum seekers. Came over after the coup. Her brother owns the place but he was away. She had to call him to find out how to make a copy of the footage for me.’ Maude was shaking her head again.

  ‘Maude. What?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes. Well, the newsagent girl gave me her footage, which was encouraging. The bank was a bit more challenging but I got there in the end, and the Bridge Mills uses a security firm. The guy there was happy enough to give me a copy of their film for a few quid.’

  ‘Christ almighty. I can’t believe this.’ Aisling pressed the palms of her hands into her face. She sat like that for what felt like a long time. She felt nauseous. The room was too hot. She needed to take off her jumper.

  Maude leaned towards Aisling across the table. Her hair fell around her face again as she spoke. It made her look younger. ‘Aisling, he’s not there. There’s just no way it happened the way they say.’ She clicked a button on her laptop and replayed the video. They both watched the faces. Happy couples holding hands. Three girls, who looked like they were shivering, walked with arms linked, one of them holding out an arm to hail a taxi as they walked. A group of students, probably a bit the worse for wear, looked like they were singing a song as they walked out of the frame.

  Aisling felt herself shaking. She clasped both hands together, and pressed her feet into the carpet. Maude was looking at her. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  Aisling wanted to say that she wasn’t okay. That she didn’t know how she felt about anything except that she knew she’d fucked up. Jack had been hers, she’d loved him with everything she had, had known him better than anyone else, and yet she’d believed the story the police gave her with barely a question raised. She felt shame that she’d believed the suicide story. Relief that it wasn’t true. Release from the guilt she’d felt at failing him so badly – at missing signs she now thought hadn’t been there to miss. Anger, because he was still dead, and she was still alone.

  ‘How could I have been so fucking stupid?’

  Maude shook her head slowly, but didn’t say anything. She looked down for a long moment and took another sip from her wine glass, then closed the laptop. Aisling stood up and walked back to the window, pressed her forehead to the cool glass, and closed her eyes for a long moment. Jack. Oh Jack.

  Maude spoke from behind her. ‘You should know that this doesn’t prove anything for sure. One side of the street only has a camera at one end, so strictly speaking it is possible that Jack could have entered that end, and that the guy who made the call could have come in and left the same way.’

  Aisling turned to face Maude, pulled a face and gestured towards the computer. ‘There’s no way,’ she said. ‘There’s no time. The police can’t ignore this. They’ll have to open an investigation.’

  But Maude was shaking her head. ‘I already brought this to them. This afternoon. As far as they’re concerned this changes nothing.’

  It was like Maude had hit her. She was ten steps behind, and reeling. She felt slow and stupid. Since Jack’s death she had been in a bad dream, and she wanted desperately to wake up.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘I saw Rodgers. He didn’t say very much, just took copies of the videos. He called me an hour later to say he’d looked them over, that they proved nothing, and Jack probably jumped from one of the other bridges and the guy who made the call got the name wrong.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Maude said hurriedly. ‘I mean, I don’t know if there are cameras, but we could look into it. I’m just trying to tell you that the police are not on our side. That guy, Rodgers. He’s the kind who gets an idea in his head and won’t let go. It’s all about him and his ego and he’s not likely to turn around and acknowledge that he was probably wrong. We’re going to have to push hard. This footage is a beginning, but we’ll need as much evidence as we can to contradict their conclusions, and we have to be willing to stir things up. Go to the media maybe, if we can make the story sound compelling enough.’

  Aisling nodded slowly. ‘You think it was definitely a fake call then? Not a mistake?’

  ‘Who makes a mistake about someone jumping into the river on the same night that a body is found in it? No way.’

  ‘I know it’s unlikely.’ Ludicrous even, when it was put like that. ‘But, you’re saying, I mean – the alternative is that someone killed him. Murdered him.’

  Maude was watching her carefully, and Aisling, aware that her hands were still shaking, tucked them under her arms.

  ‘I don’t know, Aisling,’ Maude said. ‘You were his partner. Is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all in Jack’s life that could lead to something like that?’ As she spoke she stood and walked to the bed, picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Soup all right?’

  ‘I . . . I’m not hungry,’ Aisling said, automatically.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ Maude said. ‘Like you might faint. Your call, but it might be better to eat.’

  She waited for Aisling’s nod, then placed an order for two. There was an assurance about Maude that made Aisling feel graceless, like an awkward schoolgirl playing at grownups.

  They talked about Jack while they waited. Not in a catching up sort of a way, but a conversation about his typical movements, who his friends were, where he worked, what sort of work he did. Aisling was conscious that she was volunteering less and less as time wore on, until the conversation deteriorated into a question and answer session that made her feel like she was being interrogated, and was making a shoddy witness.

  The food arrived and the smell made her stomach clench in sudden hunger. She wasn’t eating en
ough. Maude cleared the laptop and papers from the table and set out the bowls, glasses and cutlery. She handed Aisling a napkin, put one in her own lap, and they ate in uncomfortable silence. The soup was exactly what Aisling needed. She felt her stomach settle, and her energy return.

  When they’d finished, Maude set her bowl aside and waited.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you asked,’ said Aisling. ‘About Jack. About whether there was anything in his life that could have brought him into contact with someone who would hurt him.’ She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘There’s nothing. I can’t think of anything. I mean, I’m not saying that Jack was perfect. No one is perfect. But he was just Jack. Just an ordinary guy.’ Jack was a civil engineer, for God’s sake; he designed roads and bridges. He liked to be outside, loved to hike and climb. She could think of at least four other guys in their social circle alone that could fit that broad description. ‘He never got into any kind of trouble. Neither one of us did drugs. Jack didn’t even drink.’

  ‘You have to think harder, Aisling. There must have been something.’

  ‘I can’t make something up. People liked Jack. He never got into any kind of trouble.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘In the morning. I had worked a night shift. We had breakfast together, then I went to bed. When I woke up, he was gone. We were supposed to have dinner together that evening, but Jack never came home. And the next morning the gardaí showed up at our door.’

  ‘But you talked at breakfast.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  Aisling rubbed her forehead with her hands. ‘We talked about the pregnancy. About our options. That’s all. Then I went to bed.’ Her tone told Maude to let it go. That conversation was private, and anyway, there was nothing in it that could have gotten Jack killed. Not if he hadn’t done it himself.

  ‘Aisling, there must be something else.’ Maude was leaning forward now, dark eyes gleaming. She was so intense; her energy almost frenetic.

  Aisling pushed her chair away from the table. ‘I can’t tell you something I don’t know. Honestly, I can’t imagine that there is anything to tell. Maybe it was just an accident; the phone call a prank that was just a coincidence. Maybe Jack did drink that night, maybe he fell into the river. We’re never going to know, and even if we did know, it’s not going to bring him back.’ She forced back tears she didn’t want to shed. ‘Jack is dead, Maude, and nothing you or I do now will change that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Maude. She sat back. Her energy didn’t dissipate. If anything, she seemed to gather it back in, to control it and to refocus herself. ‘You might be able to live with that, but I can’t.’

  They sat in silence, the moments ticking by.

  ‘What about his messages?’ Maude asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Did the police trace Jack’s calls? His messages? If he had an arrangement to meet someone that day, something he hadn’t told you about, maybe they called each other.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ It hadn’t occurred to her to ask.

  ‘We need to follow up on that. And if they haven’t done it, maybe the telephone company will release them to you, as his next of kin?’

  ‘Do they do that? Am I even his next of kin? We weren’t married. Maybe they’d consider his parents.’ Aisling couldn’t see a phone company releasing someone’s private messages to their bereaved parents, even a wife. Surely there’d be privacy considerations. And if they did release to next of kin, Maude could probably get them more easily than she could. The thought of Maude reading through Jack’s messages made her distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Don’t you think this is something for the police?’ She raised her hands in a warding off gesture. ‘I don’t mean that Rodgers guy, obviously. But there are other police officers. They’re not all incompetent, surely.’

  Maude shrugged. ‘The gardaí have made their minds up about Jack. They won’t do anything. They’re just the same as social workers. If you push them, they’ll go through the motions, file some forms, push some paper. They’ll waste your time. They won’t waste mine.’

  Aisling sat in silence for a moment, unsure what was left to say. ‘Of course I want to help,’ she said in the end. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help. I’m just not sure . . .’ She picked up her coat.

  ‘You’re a doctor. You must have connections at the coroner’s office. Can you get the postmortem results?’ There was an unspoken at least in that sentence, and a hint of coldness, of distance, in Maude’s gaze.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Aisling. For Jack. Though she couldn’t see what it would achieve. It would be a distraction from her grief, and from the decision she now had to make alone.

  Tuesday 26 March 2013

  CHAPTER TEN

  By the following morning Cormac had decided to attack the Blake case. If there was an agenda within the gardaí, he didn’t need to know what it was, at least not for now. He would work this case the way he would any other – follow the evidence wherever it led him.

  He started with the case file, and was amused and a little embarrassed to read his own preliminary reports, written as a twenty-year-old rookie in 1993. Reading them with the benefit of two decades’ experience, he could see his uncertainty all over the page. Everything was couched in possibilities and maybes, and his recommendation that a further investigation be carried out was tentative at best. Unfortunately, there was as little to work with as he had expected. The file contained only his report from the night he’d found the kids and Hilaria Blake’s body, the postmortem report, and interviews that were carried out with the neighbours and at the children’s schools.

  He read the postmortem carefully. In the pathologist’s opinion, which was heavily couched with provisos, Hilaria Blake had not been a habitual heroin user. Testing had been less advanced in the nineties of course, and hair analysis, which would have answered the question conclusively, would have been too expensive. Hilaria Blake had had advanced liver cirrhosis, and severe alcoholic hepatitis, but she had not been a heroin addict. She was jaundiced, had fluid build-up in her abdomen and legs. The marks he had seen on her arms had not been track marks, but almost certainly self-inflicted scratches. Cirrhosis had led to an increased level of bile in her body, which would have made her skin intensely itchy. The pathologist was very clear on one thing – Hilaria Blake had had end-stage liver disease. It would have killed her, if the heroin hadn’t got there first.

  Heroin overdoses were rare in 1993. The Blakes’ house was less than a mile from Kilmore village, which had no known drug problem, and even in 1993 heroin was not a commonly used drug outside of Dublin and parts of Limerick. How had Hilaria Blake, an alcoholic, bedbound with advanced liver disease, procured just enough heroin to kill herself?

  Interviews in the village had not provided an answer. Hilaria had not been seen at the local pub or off-licence in a year and a half, or longer. Maude was known to shop at the local convenience place for food, but made no attempt to buy alcohol. In those days the fact that she was underage wouldn’t necessarily have prevented a sale. She wouldn’t have been the first child sent to the village to buy a bottle of whiskey and bring it home to a parent. But the off-licence owner had been adamant that he wouldn’t have sold to her if she had asked, and she never did. Cormac had spoken to him himself, and had believed him. The village knew that Hilaria was a drunk, and they seemed to see Maude as a good, hardworking girl. They did nothing to help her, as far as Cormac could determine, but they drew a line at supplying the alcohol that was the root of the problem.

  He wondered if that minor act of civic responsibility had been a village-wide sop. Something that freed them from the obligation to take any meaningful action to help the children. They wouldn’t sell the family alcohol, and every now and again a teacher would make a token effort to get Maude to school. Other than that the family was totally isolated. The only person known to spend time with the family was a local religious do-gooder, a woma
n who was not terribly popular, but was hardly likely to be a supplier of alcohol or heroin.

  When Cormac had tentatively raised his concerns with his boss he had been ignored. There had been no desire to investigate the death of a woman who was widely known to be an alcoholic who abused her children. Having seen the results of her abuse on poor Jack Blake’s little body, Cormac himself had little sympathy for the woman, but the hypocrisy of it galled him. Now, twenty years later, the obvious questions were still unanswered.

  He turned to the statements from the schools. They’d interviewed the principal of the primary school and Jack’s teacher, and the statements were consistent. Jack had been in junior infants, and had only been at the school for a couple of months. Jack’s mother never came to the school; his sister dropped him off every morning and collected him at the end of the day. Although he had a reasonable lunch with him most days, and he was generally clean and tidy, his teacher at the time had suspected that his mother was negligent. She’d seen a bruise on his wrist once, and another on his cheek, and had called social services. She’d heard nothing from them and had expected nothing. Similar bruises on Maude had been reported more than once, and as far as the school was aware, nothing had been done. The principal of the secondary school had said that Maude had a very poor attendance record, and a report had also been made to social services about her continual absences. Again, nothing more had been heard and Maude had continued to miss school until she turned fifteen, when she’d stopped attending entirely. Some of her teachers had said she was a bright girl, but she wasn’t a mixer, and seemed to have few friends. Hilaria Blake had been seen by the school only at Maude’s enrolment meeting, and never after that.

  There was nothing in the file to help him. He flicked through again, from the beginning to the end. Nothing from the social workers. Hadn’t he requested the file? He thought back. Yes. He was sure he had, but he couldn’t remember it coming in. He hadn’t had long with the case – within a few weeks of Hilaria’s death he’d been told to close it and move on. Cormac made a note to request the file again now.