Eager to Please

by Julie Parsons

  And he was left, reaching for the key that hung on a ring by the door. But now there was no key. And the door was locked, and although he flung his weight against the panes of shatter-proof glass it would not budge. So with a cry of rage he turned on his heel and rushed for the front door and out on to the gravel of the drive, howling now louder than the dog tied up in the garage.

  ‘Come back, you bitch, come back. I know you’re here. I know you can’t get away. Come here so I can see you.’

  He began to run, around by the side of the house towards the vegetable garden, his feet slipping and sliding on the grass covered now with a heavy dew. Pulling out the spade that stood where the gardener had left it, imbedded in the heavy fertile soil, hefting it in his hand, feeling its weight, running his hand quickly across the metal blade polished by use. Then stopping, standing completely still and listening, listening. Hearing the dog’s howls, a car changing gear as it ground its way up the hill from the beach. His breath slowing as he calmed himself. Further away he heard the sea on the rocks, the wind in the pine trees, and saw a bobbing light over in the corner where the old polytunnel was, where the kids played hide-and-seek.

  Come, Daddy, come and play with us. Count to twenty backwards, then find us, find us.

  He watched the light as it moved around the garden, then began to follow it, swinging the spade, feeling its heaviness drag his arm down. And then the light was gone and he heard the bang of the shed door as he ran towards it, crashing through the row of blackcurrant bushes, smashing them out of his way with the spade, reaching the shed, calling out her name as he blundered inside it. Tripping over a pile of plastic plant pots. Turning back to the garden, seeing the light again, this time up in the oak tree by the gate, where he had built the tree house for Jonathan for his seventh birthday. The light swung to and fro, high in the branches. But as he rushed towards it he saw the slight figure jump down just yards away from him. And the light go off. And darkness again.

  He felt like screaming out with anger and frustration. He thought he knew his garden, every bush and tree, every secret place, but somehow she was making it all seem so unfamiliar, so difficult to find his way through. He turned back towards the house. The dog had stopped barking. But there was another noise now, coming from the garage. The clanging of metal on metal. This time he moved more cautiously. Slow steps forward. Then stopping to listen. It sounded like a lump hammer, hitting the metal vice. When he reached the open door he stopped. It was dark and silent now. He put his hand on the light switch. He clicked it on. Nothing happened. He clicked it up and down. Still nothing. He stepped forward cautiously. The dog was no longer in its place by its basket in the corner. But there was something else moving on the other side, near the bench where he kept his tools. He heard his voice being called, softly, ‘Daniel, Daniel.’

  He walked forward. His feet felt hard concrete underneath them. And then he was falling, down into the inspection pit. Landing awkwardly, one ankle collapsing beneath him. Pain shooting up his leg. Toppling over into the mess of spilt oil. Screaming again, ‘You fucking bitch, when I get you I’ll kill you!’

  Dragging himself out, struggling to the door again, leaning on the spade, his leg weak beneath him. Out on to the gravel in front of the house, and suddenly there was a blare of music. And he turned and saw the curtains drawn back, the French windows open, and the same slight figure standing, looking out towards him. He began to run as fast as his damaged ankle would allow, swinging the spade, remembering the dull thump as the rats’ bodies were flattened against the earth. He lurched up and on to the terrace and into the house, through the living room into the hall, the front door standing wide open. Heard her voice again, calling out to him.

  ‘Daniel, Daniel, I’m going upstairs. Can you catch me? Can you find me?’

  And remembered suddenly the Garda car parked as always just outside the tall wrought-iron gates. And the dark shapes of the two men inside, and a glow from a cigarette as he rushed towards them, shouting, ‘She’s here, she’s here. I told you, didn’t I? I told you she wasn’t dead. She’s here. Come on, come in and find her!’

  Dragging open the door, half pulling the driver from behind the wheel, rushing before them as they walked towards the house. Shouting, ‘I told you I was telling the truth all along. She is here. I’ve just seen her!’

  Screaming at them, ‘Search for her. Find her. She’s here. She’s upstairs. Go on, go up. I saw her there!’

  Watching the two men go into the hall, up the stairs, as he waited for a moment outside, breathing great gulps of air with relief, smelling the coconut sweetness of the gorse on the hillsides around them rising up into the night air. As he turned towards the lighted doorway and saw again the small figure standing there and the policemen on either side, holding each of her arms. Shouted out with joy and relief. Now they would believe him. Now he would be freed from this nightmare. Now he could have back the life he had lost. As he stumbled towards them. Then stopped, a look of amazement, then horror spreading across his face. As the guard stepped towards him and put his hand on his arm, and said, ‘Can you explain this to us, Mr Beckett? Can you explain why this young woman was locked up in your attic? Can you explain her injuries to us?’

  As she turned towards him and he saw, the cropped dark hair, the pale face, the bruised cheekbones and eye socket, the arm that she cradled protectively against her body, the torn and dirty black jeans. The smell of urine and vomit. The sound of her sobs as she cried out to them, ‘He wouldn’t let me go. He made me go with him. I was so scared. I thought he was going to kill me!’

  The sound then of the spade as it clattered to the floor. He looked down at it, saw the remnants of the soil from the garden falling off on to the pale rug. Ursula would never forgive him for making such a mess. He bent down to pick it up. And for a moment, as he felt its weight in his hand, he thought of what he could do with it. The way it could come crashing down on the girl’s skull, cutting off in mid-sentence her accusations, her complaints. And then he could use it on the guard, wiping that look of satisfaction from his smug, round face. Make him scream out with pain and terror. Leave him lying bleeding on the floor, humiliated, hurt. Damaged beyond all repair. And he weighed it all up as he swung the spade up and down, down and up, feeling it heavy in his hand, feeling the tick-tock of its pendulum arc. Until, suddenly, his arms were grabbed from behind, the spade was pulled from his grasp, and he could feel the sharp bite of the handcuffs as his wrists were locked together. And he was being half dragged, half pushed out of the door, up the drive and into the car.

  A face appeared at the window beside him, and Jack Donnelly bent down and smiled.

  ‘Gotcha,’ he said, then banged the roof with his fist, a sharp angry sound, and stepped back as they began to make their stately progress up the hill. Away from the house, away from the sea, away from his freedom.

  THE END

  IT WAS A year later. It was Court Number Four again. The same court where Rachel Beckett had been convicted of the murder of her husband. And again it was packed to capacity. Spectators, journalists, guards, solicitors and barristers, and of course the jury, the witnesses and the accused. Daniel James Beckett, charged with the murder of Rachel Beckett and the false imprisonment and attempted murder of Amy Beckett. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The State’s case in the lesser counts of false imprisonment and attempted murder was strong, watertight it could be said. But there were still some doubts about the viability of the charge of murder. Rachel Beckett’s body had never been found. Speculation had been endless. Precedents were raked over. There was the case of Michal Onufrejczyk, a Pole, who was convicted in Glamorganshire Assizes back in 1955 of the murder of a Mr Sykut, despite the fact that neither the body nor any trace of the body had been found and the prisoner had made no confession of any participation in the crime. He was sentenced to death. More recently there was the case of the British army undercover officer, Captain Robert Nairac, who went missing in the 1970s in S
outh Armagh. His body had also never been found, but eventually in 1977 one Liam Townson was convicted of his murder. And ten years or so ago the tragic case of Helen McCourt in Liverpool. Again, no body but bloodstained clothing and a piece of rope, also bloodstained, found in the boot of the accused barman’s car were enough to convict him of her killing.

  Jack sat and watched the proceedings. He stood in the witness box, took the oath, gave his evidence. He listened to Beckett’s denials. His protestations of innocence, his account of the appearance of Rachel Beckett that night at his house, an account which had never been corroborated. The guards who had gone into the house had seen no one except the girl, Amy. They heard her screams and cries for help. They broke down the locked door and found her in a dreadful state on the floor. Head injuries, internal injuries, shocked, hysterical, slipping in and out of consciousness. And in no doubt that Beckett would be back. To finish what he had begun.

  Jack watched the shock and anger around the courtroom when the girl Amy told what had happened to her. Said how he had convinced her that her mother was still alive. That the only thing that would bring her back was if she thought that Amy was at risk. Now he had forced her to stay with him in the house in Killiney. Refused to let her go. Then threatened her, said he would finish her off. He didn’t want me, she said. He just wanted to use me, and then when that didn’t work he wanted to get rid of me. After he had told me I was his daughter. Jack looked around him at the stunned faces in the courtroom. The silence was absolute as the girl told her story.

  He listened carefully to the prosecution’s summing-up. That Beckett had wanted to get rid of anything from his past that might embarrass him, that might upset or endanger his new life. That if he was ruthless enough to kidnap and attack his own daughter, then he was certainly ruthless enough to commit murder. He heard the forensic evidence detailed again. Bloodstains in the boat, a bloody knife with Beckett’s fingerprints on it. Blood on his clothes. Rachel’s clothes, stained and slashed, found in the plastic bag dumped in the sea. Testimony given of the angry encounter between Rachel and Beckett, and of her fear of him. He sat in the Round Hall and waited for the jury to decide. They took their time. The day passed. He spoke to Alison on the phone and to the girls.

  ‘We saw you on the telly,’ Rosa said, ‘on the news. Everyone at school saw you too. You’re famous, Daddy.’

  The jury were sequestered over night. He couldn’t decide whether it was a good sign or not. They had a lot to think about, so much evidence to sort through. He’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the jury room. And what if they failed to agree? He remembered it had nearly happened with Rachel’s trial. The jury had asked the judge for guidance. He had said he would accept a majority verdict and that was what he got. And what if this group of men and women failed to reach even that? The judge might declare a mistrial. And then they’d have to start all over again. Christ, he couldn’t bear the thought of it. And then word came. They were back. They had a verdict. Beckett was going down. For life.

  Afterwards he realized how tense and anxious he had been. His legs ached, his neck and shoulders were like planks of wood. It took all Alison’s skill and persuasion to untie the knots.

  ‘Let’s celebrate,’ he said to her.

  But the girls wanted to celebrate his new-found fame too.

  ‘Take us out, Daddy,’ Ruth demanded. ‘We want to go to a proper restaurant, not McDonald’s or Burger King, somewhere with waiters and candles. We’ve got something to show you.’

  The something was a Polaroid camera. Joan’s boyfriend had given it to them.

  ‘It’s so we’ll like him,’ Rosa said. ‘It’s a brime.’

  ‘Not a brime, you thicko.’ Ruth was quick to butt in. ‘A bribe. It’s a bribe.’

  He took them all to the Brasserie na Mara in Dun Laoghaire. It had waiters, candles, tablecloths, good food and plenty of wine. Ruth appointed herself chief photographer. Soon the table was covered with snaps.

  He woke in the middle of the night, his head pounding, his mouth dry. Alison had gone home. The girls still hadn’t accepted her staying with him over night. Soon, he promised, soon I’ll make them. Rosa was curled against his side. Ruth was snuggled into the sofa bed. She had left her photographs in a pile on the kitchen table. He drank glass after glass of water as he flicked through them. There was one in particular that he liked. Alison had taken it. Me and my girls, he thought as fondly as his hangover would allow. He picked it up and pinned it to the cork noticeboard above the fridge, beside the girls’ school timetable. He refilled his glass and looked at it. It reminded him. What was it? Suddenly he saw Judith Hill’s body, twisted in death and remembered the photographs that he had found that day in her mother’s studio. The room at the top of the house in the quiet, leafy suburb. He was still not completely sure who had killed her. Her mother had been so adamant that it wasn’t the girl’s father. After his death, and after the brother, Stephen, had gone crazy, he had wondered if it might have been him. But eventually when they got the DNA test back from Judith’s dead baby, it had matched neither father nor brother. He wished now that he was able to tell Elizabeth Hill that he knew what had happened to her daughter. He liked her. He felt for her. He knew how he would feel in her situation.

  He finished his glass of water, rinsed it and left it to drain, then turned back to the board again, and this time it was something else that he saw. A similar collection of school notices, timetables for swimming lessons, letters from the council about bin collections. And photographs. Polaroids. Another family group. A middle-aged woman with a good haircut and a bad figure. A man of similar age, with longish grey hair and a lined face. A son and a daughter, late teens, early twenties, and two small girls holding on to the parents’ knees. What was it Jenny Bradley had said? Judith had babysat for their younger kids. Next-door neighbours brought even closer together by the upset that had befallen them all. He wondered as he walked through the sitting room, bent down to kiss Ruth’s flushed cheek, tucked the quilt tightly around Rosa’s skinny little body. He wondered.

  He wondered again next morning if he was completely wasting his time. But he might as well do it anyway. He put in a search request.

  Surname: Bradley.

  First name: George.

  Address: 15 Plane Tree Parade, Rathmines.

  Then he went off viewing houses with Alison. She had finally got him to commit.

  ‘Come on, Jack. You put it off until the Beckett case was settled. Now it’s time. We need a place of our own. Don’t you agree?’ There was a moment’s silence. She spoke again. Her tone was blunt. ‘Well, if you don’t agree, I don’t, to be honest, see much future for us. I’m not going on like this.’ And for a moment he saw the Alison that Andy Bowen always talked about.

  It was afterwards, when they’d gone to a have a drink to discuss the relative merits of the three properties they had seen, that his phone rang. It was Sweeney.

  ‘You know that guy Bradley you were interested in? Well, here’s a bit of a surprise. He was part of an investigation into allegations of abuse, sixteen years or so ago, at a school where he taught maths and physics. Some of the girls complained about him and another bloke. It didn’t go far. In those days no one was interested. But Bradley left not long afterwards. That was when he got into computers. Set up his own business.’

  Jack went back to the office and got out the file. Read over all the statements. Jenny Bradley had been very clear about that weekend when Judith died. It was her birthday. Judith had brought her flowers. She had arrived just after lunch on that Saturday. She stayed for a couple of hours. They sat in the garden. They gossiped. Mrs Bradley said how lovely it was to have the old Judith back again, the way she had been before she got involved with those dreadful drugs.

  ‘Were you alone?’ he had asked. He looked to see what she had said.

  ‘Yes, we were. The children were all off doing other things and my husband was in his office. You know, at the end of the garden. We coul
d see him in the window. Judith was waving to him. I remember she leaned over and whispered in my ear. Let’s pretend, she said, that we’re talking about him. And she cupped her hand around my ear and we both had a good laugh.

  ‘And afterwards, what happened afterwards?’

  ‘Nothing of any consequence as far as I can remember. Judith went back home. She said she had some tidying up to do. I asked her if she’d like to have dinner with us, we were having a bit of a special one. For my birthday, you know. But she said no, she was going back to college that night. And that was the last I saw of her.’

  He looked at George Bradley’s statement. Bradley didn’t mention anything about seeing them in the garden. In fact he said he hadn’t seen Judith at all that day. He said he had been working all afternoon. A rush job.

  ‘Even though it was a Saturday and your wife’s birthday?’

  Bradley had made some kind of disparaging remark, how at Jenny’s age birthdays weren’t something you wanted to celebrate. And then said that his wife knew what it was that paid the bills, kept her world ticking over.

  Might as well go and see him. Nothing much else on the books at the moment. Might as well make the effort.

  He arrived first thing next morning. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He stood in the lane that ran behind all the houses and pressed the intercom on the modern steel door. The old stone of the original mews had been rendered and painted white and blocks of frosted glass had replaced the original windows. It all looked very sophisticated, trendy, up to the minute. There was building work going on next door where the Hill family had once kept their car, their bicycles, their gardening tools. He supposed the house had been sold. It was unlikely that Stephen would ever leave the secure hospital where he now lived.