Noah: What do you think happened to Nessa that night?
Maria: Do I believe Henry Kinsella did it, is that what you’re asking? Well, he had more reason than most, didn’t he?
Noah: Because of the affair?
Maria: Not just that. I’m talking about the reason Nessa went to the Kinsellas’ house that night. What she was going there to tell Henry.
Noah: What was she going to tell him?
Maria: Nessa said she was pregnant. And it was Henry Kinsella’s child.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Keelin’s life would forever be broken up into two halves: before that night and afterwards. That was the barometer by which she measured the passing of time now, by how many days, weeks, months had passed since Nessa Crowley’s body was found face down in their garden. Six weeks later, the State Pathologist would declare what everyone on the island had secretly been thinking all along, that this wasn’t an accident – Nessa Crowley had been killed. The garda inquiries officially became a murder investigation, Henry Kinsella the prime suspect. The guards were preparing the Book of Evidence, compiling their no doubt compelling reasons why Henry ought to be prosecuted, and that time should have been a period of relative calm for the Kinsellas, a lull in which they could lie low until the DPP made her final decision, but Henry had different ideas. You did what? Keelin demanded when she discovered her husband had given an impromptu interview to a journalist, a young woman chancing her arm by turning up on the doorstop of Hawthorn House, saying she’d heard a few rumours and wanted to give Henry the chance to tell his side of the story. He invited the woman in for tea and answered all her questions, saying yes, he was the main suspect in the Misty Hill murder, but he was an innocent man. This was a miscarriage of justice, but he believed in the integrity of the Irish legal system and he knew his name would be cleared in good time. Once Henry had outed himself like this, and on the record too, the media had carte blanche to use his name in connection with the case, printing his photo, and Keelin’s too, robbing them of the anonymity they would have been afforded until Henry was formally charged. What were you thinking? she asked him, but she already knew. She had searched for the journalist’s name online, a Fionnuala Cronin of the Irish Daily, shaking her head when she came across a photograph of an attractive brunette in her early twenties. Henry never could resist an opportunity to talk about himself to a pretty girl. After that, it was months of fielding endless phone calls, trapped in the house when other journalists began to arrive on the island, giving a curt ‘no comment’ when she had to push past them to take her daughter to school.
She remembered so clearly the day their solicitor delivered the news that the Director of Public Prosecutions had decided the case against Henry Kinsella wasn’t substantial enough to convict him beyond reasonable doubt. They were in a bright, airy suite of a Kinsella Hotel on the banks of the River Lee in Cork, where they’d spent the last week awaiting this very phone call. They were alone. Keelin hadn’t wanted her daughter to see any of this; Evie was anxious enough as it was, constantly on the verge of tears, jumping out of her skin whenever she heard a loud noise. A grind school in the city had agreed to allow Alex to repeat his Leaving Cert there for he hadn’t been able to sit his exams the previous June, so ruined with grief was he after everything that had happened. My Nessa? And Henry? Alex had said when he heard about the affair, going mute once more, as he’d done when his grandmother died. But there was no suggestion of a psychologist this time. Therapy would require Alex to tell the truth, and none of them were allowed that luxury now. ‘It’s done, there’s no case against me,’ Henry said when he hung up the phone with the solicitor. ‘It’s time for us to go home, Keelin.’ She asked him to arrange for the Misty Hill helicopter to pick them up in Cork but no, Henry wanted to drive to Baltimore and set sail to Rún. Like old times, he said. It was early February, almost a year after Nessa Crowley’s death, and the cold air was merciless when she opened the car door at the pier. She tucked her hair under her hat, pulling her scarf over her face, as much to disguise herself as to protect her skin from the stinging wind, but Henry took no such precautions. ‘Just me and the wife,’ he said, handing cash to the teenage boy who was collecting fares. The boy paled, looking around him for assistance, unsure of what to do – should he allow the Kinsellas onto the boat? What was the right course of action? – ‘Is there a problem here?’ Henry asked, and the boy panicked, stepped aside and let them pass. When the boat docked, the boy jumping onto the pier to throw the thick, twisted rope around a rusting bollard, Henry walked ahead of his wife, carrying their suitcases. There was a hand on Keelin’s elbow, yanking her back. It was Niamh Murphy, her pink scalp visible through her thinning hair. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself coming back here,’ she hissed. ‘After what your husband did to that poor girl.’
That poor girl. That poor family. That’s what everyone kept saying. Things like this didn’t happen here, not on Inisrún, not to people like them. It was inconceivable and yet somehow, it was true. One of the Crowley Girls had been murdered, and the man responsible was back on the island, refusing to leave.
‘Sorry,’ said Tadgh, the man who drove the island taxi. ‘There’s no room.’ Keelin peered through the windscreen into the half-empty minivan but she said nothing. ‘Are you sure?’ Henry asked, taking a leather wallet out of his pocket and tucking two fifty-euro notes into the man’s palm. The taxi driver didn’t even check to see the amount. ‘I don’t want your money,’ he said, tossing it at Henry, his lip curling in disgust. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Keelin said, her hand on her husband’s chest, reminding him to stay calm. ‘Let’s go.’ They walked up the boreen together, dragging their suitcases behind them. It had begun to rain and by the time they reached Hawthorn House, their clothes were drenched through, Keelin’s socks squelching in her low-heeled boots. Johanna was waiting for them; she had the heating on, she said, Evie was upstairs taking a nap, and there was a smell of something delicious wafting from the kitchen, cinnamon and sugar, bringing back memories of lazy afternoons spent in the Stein cottage. ‘You’re frozen,’ Jo said as she hugged Keelin, refusing to look at Henry. ‘What were you doing, walking in a downpour like this? Was Tadgh the Taxi not running today?’
Keelin was too miserable to reply, so she just clasped her friend’s hands. (They’ll hate you for this, she had said when Johanna offered to take a week off work and mind Evie while they were in the city, awaiting the DPP’s decision. I’ll survive, her friend had replied. And I’m not doing this for him, I’m doing it for you. You’re the one I care about.) She embraced Jo at the front door, urging her to take one of Henry’s golfing umbrellas for the walk back to her parents’ house. She waved Jo off, holding it together until her friend was out of sight, before she sank to the ground, weeping. ‘Please, darling,’ Henry urged her. ‘Evie can’t see you like this; she’ll be frightened. Everything has to go back to normal now.’
But none of this is normal, she wanted to say, and it was only going to get worse. It must have been the guards who leaked that information to the papers, Henry would insist later. Who else could it have been? The decision not to prosecute him left the media free to say whatever they wanted, now there was no trial to jeopardise. There were breathless editorials about the ‘evidence’, the scratches on Henry’s face, the bonfire that had been lit, the fact he and Keelin were nowhere to be found when the young woman had died. A friend of the victim had disclosed details of Nessa and Henry’s ‘inappropriate’ relationship to the guards, with anonymous sources claiming Henry Kinsella had been afraid Nessa was going to tell his wife about the affair and he was determined to shut her up any way he could. The tabloids’ headlines were screaming: ‘Naive Nessa’ and the ‘Kinky Kinsellas’, how the ‘Perverted Pair’ had lured the innocent young girl into their ‘Millionaires’ Sex Lair’, detailing the hardcore pornography that had allegedly been found in their bedroom, the sex toys and BDSM equipment. In every article, Henry’s n
et worth was referenced, the cost of Keelin’s designer handbags highlighted, photos of their ‘sumptuous home’ used to further enrage the Irish public. Phone records were referenced, how the guards discovered her husband had spent hours talking to Nessa in the months before her death, thousands of text messages exchanged. And then, finally, they talked about the deleted photograph which was recovered from Henry Kinsella’s computer by IT experts. A picture of a naked young woman with blonde hair and long legs and a swallow tattoo on her ribcage. It was deliciously salacious and yet, even with this wealth of material at their disposal, it was still Keelin herself who garnered the most column inches.
Could a woman really enjoy that kind of depraved sex life? One would have to wonder if Keelin Kinsella was simply desperate to keep her man – it hasn’t escaped our notice that he was attractive, and only becoming more so with age. But if that was the case, why did Mrs Kinsella allow a woman so much younger than she into her home? Why place temptation in her husband’s path? Surely Mrs Kinsella could have guessed that something like this would happen. But the biggest mystery of all is this – why, after this public humiliation, has Keelin Kinsella stayed with her husband? Standing by your man à la Tammy Wynette is all very well, but when he’s been accused of murder?
Henry wanted to sue the newspapers for defamation and invasion of privacy, and perhaps he should sue the guards too, for leaking the information in the first place, but Keelin persuaded him that was a terrible idea. Who knew what else they would find, given half a chance? They had enough on their plate trying to keep this mess hidden from Evie, and worrying about what seemed to be her son’s inevitable nervous breakdown. She couldn’t deal with much more.
That was when the phone began to ring.
‘Hello?’ she said as she answered the landline. ‘Hello?’ There was a muffled not-quite silence at the other end of the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said again, but there was still no reply, so she hung up.
The phone rang again and the phone rang again and the phone rang again and the phone rang again. Evie, staring up at her with troubled eyes, asking who it was. No one, Keelin told her daughter. It’s just a wrong number. Nothing to worry about, pet.
‘Hello?’ she said, answering the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello?’
‘Who is this?’
And then, finally, a voice. Telling Keelin to leave this island and to take her murdering bastard of a husband with her. There was no place for the Kinsellas on Inisrún any more. Kids, Henry said, ignore them. But she thought she recognised the voice, the rhythm of the language had a familiar cadence, like a piece of music she had heard years ago and could not remember the name of now. She was haunted by that, the half knowing of this person who hated her so much. Maybe if she closed her eyes and listened more closely, she could solve the mystery of the phantom phone calls. But she didn’t do that. She didn’t want to know.
After putting her daughter to bed and sending Alex yet another unanswered text, Keelin lay awake in bed, Henry snuffling gently beside her, the sheets pulled up to his chin; she marvelled at how serene he looked. It was then she heard a knocking at the front door; a fist against wood. One, two, three. It heralds death, she explained to her husband when Evie left for school the next morning. My mam heard the knocks the night before Daddy died. We’ve had enough death in this house, he said. Just forget it, Keelin.
She tried to forget it, but each night she heard the knocking, and each day the phone calls came. She and Evie looking at one another, the colour draining from the little girl’s face, her fingers curling tightly around her crayons. I’m scared, Mummy, she said, staring down at the table. Make it stop.
Henry took matters into his own hands and cancelled the Eircom account. Who needs a house phone in this day and age? he said. The mast had been erected by then, the service was good, they even had Wi-Fi on the island now. They would just use their mobiles from now on, he said brightly.
Keelin tried to forget it, but the emails were pinging into her inbox every day, telling her she was fat, she was ugly, she was an unfit mother and her children should be taken away from her. Henry asked her to hand over her passwords so he could delete any unsolicited emails before she had a chance to read them. I hate seeing you so upset, he said. But what did it matter if he did that, when the postman arrived every lunchtime, unable to fit all the mail into their letter box? Hundreds and hundreds of envelopes, the postmarks from all over the country but the words were the same, declaring them murderers, perverts, monsters. The photo of Keelin and Nessa from the party cut out of newspapers, with captions written in red ink in the margins, pointing out in precise detail Keelin’s physical shortcomings in comparison with the Crowley Girl, how much prettier, thinner, younger Nessa had been. It should have been you who died, one person wrote.
Henry came home one day to find his wife sitting in the hall, surrounded by piles of post. He went into the kitchen, she could hear him riffling through the drawers, and he returned with a black plastic bag. Evie mustn’t see any of this, he said and he picked up fistfuls of letters and stuffed them into the refuse sack. When he was finished, he sat beside her, the two of them with their backs to the door, legs stretched out before them. We can’t leave this island, not now, Henry said. You have to try. For me. For us.
She did her best. In front of her daughter, she tried to behave as if nothing had changed. She phoned her son every evening, asking about his studies, how he was settling into his new apartment near the grind school, checking that he was taking his meds. Alex, you know— she said at the end of the day’s call, and each time he cut across her. Yes, Mam, he said. I know. I won’t say anything.
She learned to ignore the stares, the sudden hush cutting through every room she walked into, as sharp as a scalpel, and the whispered conversations that would start as soon as she left. ‘That’s . . . you know, the . . . Yeah, she’s the wife . . .’ They said Keelin was afraid of Henry, and that was why she didn’t leave. They said she knew too much and she was petrified the man would kill her too if she opened her mouth. They said she didn’t want to give up the Kinsella money, she would never divorce Henry and risk losing access to his bank account. Some of them even said that maybe she had murdered Nessa Crowley herself, driven mad with jealousy, swinging for the beautiful young thing trying to steal her man.
Keelin wished she could tell them that they were wrong. They were wrong about all of it.
She lost her job in the women’s shelter soon after, years’ of study and training dismantled in one awkward, five-minute phone call. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to continue, her boss said gently. We have to think of the optics. You understand, don’t you, Keelin? And she said yes, of course she understood. There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing, reminding the other woman that Henry hadn’t been convicted of anything, he hadn’t even been charged in connection with the murder. Everyone had already made up their minds. She told her husband she didn’t mind about her sudden unemployment – the commute to the city had become too demanding anyway, she reassured him, and it was better that she concentrate her efforts on Evie and Alex now, they needed her. But she was lying. Keelin had constructed so much of her identity around her work, it had become the one thing she could point to and say, yes, I am a good person – and now it was lost to her. She didn’t know who she would be without it.
A Kinsella family meeting was called soon after as a matter of urgency. Jonathan and Olivia arriving to the island first, followed shortly by Charlie. Henry’s parents hadn’t been to Inisrún since news of the murder broke; they stayed in Scotland until the DPP’s decision was made – it wouldn’t look good for the Kinsella Group, they explained, and Keelin said, we have to think of the optics, I suppose, and Jonathan said yes, that’s it exactly, Keelin. At least one of you comprehends how dire the situation is. Before the family arrived, she lit the stove in the kitchen, arranging freshly baked butter cookies onto a china plate and brewing D
arjeeling tea in a ceramic pot, the way Olivia preferred. ‘Do you want to watch the Wizards of Waverly Place or Hannah Montana?’ she asked Evie as she turned on the television, anything to keep her daughter distracted until her grandparents had left again. The Kinsellas wouldn’t ask about Alex, they never did, and for once Keelin was glad of their ambivalence towards her son. How could she explain that his heart was broken and she wasn’t sure it would ever be possible to fix it, or him?
‘They’re here,’ Henry said as the door-bell rang. He wrapped his arms around her, his mouth close to hers. ‘It’s just you and me now, remember,’ he whispered. The doorbell rang again and she hurried to greet the visitors. Keelin took her in-laws’ coats with a ‘hello, good to see you, thank you for coming all this way’. She ushered them through to the warm kitchen, offering them tea and biscuits (‘I made them myself this morning!’ she said) but Jonathan waved her off in irritation. ‘I hardly think it’s the time for fucking baked goods,’ he said, and Olivia didn’t frown at him, the way she usually did when her husband cursed. Charlie refused to sit, standing by the door with his overcoat on, glowering at his brother. Keelin drew a stool towards the table and she stared at the plate of biscuits she had put so much effort into baking, her gaze following the swirls and folds of the creamy mixture, while Jonathan told Henry what a disgrace he was, how he had brought shame upon their good name, the damage he had done to the brand they’d spent decades creating. Her father-in-law slumped down onto one of the stools, and Keelin could see how tired he was. The man was in his seventies but he’d always seemed like he possessed infinite reserves of energy and would live forever. But now he looked old, depleted. It was a hard thing, she thought, being a parent. Loving another person that much weakened you, in a way. It made you vulnerable.
Olivia put a hand on her husband’s knee. She waited until the room was quiet before she spoke. ‘You will leave here,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. Not that she was used to anyone arguing with her, what Olivia Kinsella said was final in this family. ‘We will sell Misty Hill and the old house and you will sell this place too.’ She sniffed. ‘It was always too big anyway.’
After the Silence Page 27