‘You can’t blame them entirely, Ben. You know, you’ve hardly been a model husband or father.’
‘I know, but here’s the thing… how do I step into the role that needs to be filled at this late stage…Angela bloody hates me.’
‘Ah, now, I’m sure that’s not true, “hate’s” a strong word.’ She shook her head, they’d both seen what hate could do to a person.
‘Okay, well she doesn’t like me. Actually, I have a feeling that while she wants me to step up to the plate in some ways, the more I do, the more she resents me being there.’
‘And Maureen?’
‘So far, she’s putting up with me. She knows that what lies ahead is inevitable, for now, mostly she’s doing okay, but the doctors have said the day will come when she’s going to need full-time care and you know Maureen, she may be a martyr but she’s determined not to be a burden.’ He was dreading it; the idea of Maureen, always such a tower of strength, becoming dependent and frightened. He’d seen dementia before; it haunted him, that look of fear it branded across people’s eyes. Maureen had never been afraid of anything in her life, but he knew, with certainty, that once the disease took her over everything in her world would shift, so life would become a routine of missing words, lost direction and then, most cruelly, depleting fluency until the woman he’d known for so long would disappear within herself.
‘Maybe, Slattery, you need her more than she needs you now.’ June said what he’d already known, but would never be brave enough to admit.
‘Oh, June, can’t I just have my pint in peace?’ He looked at her as she got up to leave, but they both knew she’d won. She’d said what had been burning between them – that warning that there wasn’t much time left if he wanted to make up for ground lost. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, draining his pint and leaving a couple of coins on the counter beside his empty glass. He barged past Tony Ahearn and a couple of youngsters that had only just made it into uniform in the last year or two.
‘Excuse us,’ Tony said sarcastically, and Slattery chose to ignore whatever snide remark he was likely to make behind his back as he barrelled down St Anthony Terrace.
There was a cold wind whipping up and driving in from the Atlantic, up the Shannon and right through to the quick of his bones. It forced him into a steady speed, although he had no definite destination in mind. The truth was the Ship Inn was becoming too crowded these days. A man couldn’t think when his drinking time was interrupted by do-gooders like June. She meant no wrong and, God knows, she’d saved his bacon enough times over the years to have earned the right to say her piece once in a while – but still, it wasn’t her words that gnawed at him now. It was something else, the notion behind them. There was no getting out of his responsibility to Maureen at this stage. It was not born out of the vows they’d taken all those years ago, neither was it out of love. Rather, Slattery knew, even if June didn’t, its seeds had been sown before they’d ever married.
The roots of responsibility towards Maureen had been planted that evening over four decades earlier when he had been called to a neighbour’s telephone and she’d vomited the terrible news that she’d just found Una – his sister. Older, glamorous, a little out of hand, but not so much that she wouldn’t settle, Una Slattery never got the chance. Maureen found her dead on a shaggy brown mat before the electric two-bar heater in the flat they shared. Slattery had been three years younger than the two girls; he’d watched them enviously make new lives in the city, earn their own money and come and go as they pleased. There’d be no more pleasing herself for Una after that, he’d thought as Maureen’s words had echoed across the telephone line. It turned out, there’d be no more pleasing any of them. After that, the guards had arrived at their front door, but Slattery had already told his father the terrible news. That simple phone call from Maureen to him had been the start of forging a relationship that had lasted, in its imperfection and disappointment, for over thirty years. And perhaps it was that unguarded comment made at the cemetery that had sent his thoughts into overdrive.
The fact was, he thought he knew everything about what had happened to Una – well, everything he needed to know if her murder could have been solved. Well now, that belief had been burst, as if Maureen had stuck a pin in the balloon of his understanding of that time. They say a drunken mind speaks a sober heart. Maureen, when he’d found her yesterday, had not been lucid, did the same thing stick? Had those words been shored up for decades between them and only spoken because her guard had been lifted recklessly by dementia? And what did it mean anyway – at this stage, so many years down the line, did it really make any difference in the end? He wasn’t sure.
Even if there was more to learn, he knew that extracting it from Maureen would be a job in itself, she was like a stone when it came to telling him things. He had believed that he had done that to her, over the years, her only method of retaliation was to keep whatever small secrets she had to herself. Honestly, it hadn’t bothered him, if anything he was glad of the respite from her constant chattering, but this was different. This was something she’d known from the very start and she hadn’t told anyone, not even the detectives running the investigation at the time.
He stood in a doorway for a moment, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, lit one quickly in spite of the growing bluster about him. He was in the mood for rain. He turned up towards the quays, enjoying the moist breeze on his face. It cleansed some of the grime from his thoughts. He crossed the road and stood for a while, finishing his smoke, then tipped the butt into the river, knowing that Iris would probably have a fit if she saw him do it.
It was funny that she should pop into his head now. He wondered if she’d given up on the files for the day, or if she’d spend another night poring over the case book before rushing home and freshening up the following morning. God, he could remember when he’d done that, it seemed a long time ago. Was it worth it? It had cost him his marriage, his family – any stamp of normality he might have hoped for. And then, it settled on him…
Maureen hadn’t known. She’d never known. Perhaps the psych boys would call it post-traumatic stress, but she’d never have lied or omitted a detail like that from the police. She just couldn’t have.
Those words that had haunted him since she’d uttered them earlier – it was the disease that was all – anything else was unthinkable. He looked down into the black water, cold and unforgiving. PTSD. The term blanketed across his thoughts for a moment, as if it reverberated with something much more recent. And then it clicked.
That first time they’d met with the Marshalls, something had hung in the air between the couple. Kit Marshall had believed his wife had cut all ties – or had he? All of a sudden, Slattery could see a small crack, a question they’d never asked and one that might just go some way to settling a few of the nerve endings that bristled with this case.
Twenty-Four
Eleanor saw it, or rather heard it, first. He ran through the woods, over and back, over and back. He would have trampled over her the second time if she hadn’t scampered up the leaning oak. She moved as quickly as she could, high up, over the track and watched, and then her eyes followed him keenly for as far as she could. She wasn’t sure if he was real or if she hadn’t quite woken from her sleep.
When she saw his face, she knew. It was a face wizened with survival; a muscular body ready to pounce on any prey weaker than he was. He was no different to Nate Hegarty – that same stench, that same iniquity and if he came across her she might not survive. She knew it now even more than she’d known it when she hid among the thick rhododendrons earlier. It was in his eyes.
When he moved away, she clambered down the tree, running feral through the woodlands, jumping over dead wood, ran and ran and then, when it was safe, she cowered, low to the ground. She backed away from the hollow. She saw all she needed to see, she’d stay out of his way. She crept as silently as she could, competing with the smaller animals who furrowed through the und
ergrowth for silent footsteps, undetectable amid the rustling sounds of the woods.
She dug deep in the pocket of her jog bottoms. The last tablet. She should take it now. She fished it into her grubby hand and slid it onto her tongue. She never liked taking tablets, but somehow, it wasn’t quite so bad when you were in charge of them yourself. If only she could make people understand that. Her heart had been pummelling against her rib cage for as long as she had been resting here; now her head was beginning to swim.
She imagined that she heard them, close by, the heavy feet on the forest floor; unmistakable. They were moving slowly, determinedly, catching her up. She thought she could hear the dogs, the calls. She pushed herself forward, her hands in fists below her, and the weight of her body increased by the wet that clung to every part of her. She stank of the days and nights she spent here. She didn't smell of talcum powder and disinfectant anymore.
She had to move fast. The river had put some space between her and the searchers, but could they be on either side by now? Her head felt clearer today, clearer than it had been in years, it was the lack of medication. She could think, she could see. Then she heard a familiar voice, somewhere closer than the other noises. ‘E-L-E-A-N-O-R.’ It called out her name and there was that quality, what was the word people used? Musical? Dangerous.
So, she ran away from the searchers. She ran from Curlew Hall. All the while she prayed that what she was running towards wasn’t a hundred times worse than what had come before. She had to keep running. Run to the death, she knew now.
Twenty-Five
Ahearn and two of the uniforms picked up Nate Hegarty just as he was returning with what was probably his main meal of the day from the local Chinese takeaway. No need to thank me, Ahearn had said smugly. In Iris’s mind, there wasn’t much worse than a couple of hours in a windowless room with Nate Hegarty belching onion and garlic breath across the table at her. They drew the short straw and ended up in the smallest of all the interview rooms. Busy night.
Iris had set about putting together a few choice shots of Rachel McDermott, all of them in death. The images were grim, the brutal attack knocking out the essence of all that would have made her familiar to Hegarty. If Hegarty was the killer and he didn’t already have nightmares, this would surely knock the stuffing out of him. Nate Hegarty was going to know that this was no fishing trip the minute he looked at these images. Iris included one particularly grisly photo, a post-mortem shot, just for effect.
When Hegarty arrived, he looked even younger than Iris remembered. A tatty dirty T-shirt covered his scrawny neglected body, and tracksuit bottoms that looked a few sizes too big only made him seem more adolescent. She shivered when she looked at him, but oddly he seemed oblivious to the cold weather outside.
‘Nate Hegarty, for the purpose of the tape’ – Iris barely nodded up at the camera behind her back –‘I’m cautioning you, that anything you say will be recorded and may be used in evidence. You have a right to…’ She pit-patted the caution, had said it too often to hear the words anymore. A lengthy prayer learned years ago, meaningless now.
‘I won’t be saying anything until ye get a solicitor for me, right?’ Hegarty, for his part, looked suitably jaded, he had believed they were finished with him last time. His stance held the truculence of a teenager. Deep down Iris cursed: they could be here a while.
‘Of course, Nate. The duty one okay or would you prefer to go private?’ Iris’s voice was smooth as velvet. She’d rattle him later, when they needed to.
‘I’ve nothin’ to hide, duty one will be just fine, thanks.’
Iris nodded to Ahearn. ‘I think we might catch John O’Boyle before he leaves, he was in interview room number one – with Tania.’ She watched as Hegarty flinched. They hadn’t actually picked up Tania Quirke, Hegarty’s girlfriend. Obviously, he didn’t know that and from his expression he didn’t like it.
‘So, what’s all this about anyway?’ he said sharply, his eyes darting from one to the other.
‘Just a friendly chat about Rachel McDermott to see if you might be able to tell us what happened the night she died.’
‘Friends don’t caution each other,’ Hegarty said gruffly.
‘No, but better to be safe than sorry, yeah?’ Tony Ahearn was doing affable and he was good at it, Iris noticed. She could see how he’d go down a treat with the powers that be.
‘Anyway, Tania told you already, I was with her that night– never left the flat all night.’
‘Hmm.’ Iris waited while Nate shifted in his chair.
‘Ye’re not going to pin this on me, if that’s what ye think.’ His voice had risen just slightly. It was enough to let Iris know he was becoming uncomfortable. He was hiding something and whether it had anything to do with Rachel McDermott was what they had to find out.
‘Word has it that you and Rachel fell out a while ago, something about money owed?’ Ahearn smiled across at the boy.
‘Well, word is wrong. Me and Rachel were mates, good mates. I’m gutted over what happened to her.’
‘My contacts must be mistaken.’ Tony leafed through the pages that Iris had assembled in the file, laying each of the photographs out across the table. First to last, in ascending order of grotesqueness, this was hardly the Rachel that Nate would have remembered. ‘Terrible thing to happen, though.’ He waved a hand across each of the photos, gliding over Rachel’s face as though caressing it with his long, tapered fingers. He halted at the last snap, taken during the autopsy. Most of Rachel’s face had peeled away, her brain meaty and bloody to the left of her opened skull, waiting to be weighed, and then tossed back inside. Offal; dead, no good anymore. Tortured silence swathed the room, making their breathing resound loudly off the walls. Iris hoped Hegarty would want to end it, say something just to end it.
Eventually Nate Hegarty blew out a long breath. ‘I know what you’re trying to do here. I’m not stupid. You don’t have anything so you’re trying to find a patsy to stick it on. Well, that’s not me.’
‘That’s not how we operate,’ Iris said coolly. ‘Nate, it’s all very transparent here, everything is recorded. We’ve explained we only want to find the truth.’
‘I need a fag.’
‘You can’t smoke here.’
‘Fine, I need to get out of here so…’ He looked across at Iris; suddenly she was the bad guy, but she was okay with that. ‘Am I under arrest or what?’ His eyes darted nervously between Iris and Ahearn, and then behind them at the camera trained on his miserable face.
‘Of course, you’re not under arrest, Nate. Like we said, you’re just helping us with our enquiries, right?’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Do you know, I wouldn’t half murder a fag either,’ Tony Ahearn said conspiratorially, and they both headed off towards a narrow doorway that led into a yard filled with lost and found and the great abandoned.
Iris set off to look for John O’Boyle. The solicitor was a mild-mannered man, in his early sixties, completely at odds with the people he advocated for and yet respected and liked by all of them. Iris sent him in search of the two smokers.
‘He’s consulting with his brief,’ Ahearn said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, when he arrived back in the incident room. ‘Too good for scum like that, pity the days are gone when you could beat a decent confession out of rats like him.’ His coarseness caught Iris by surprise; she wouldn’t like to be working under this man. She decided the best approach was least said and all that, they could be waiting a while, so she went back to her desk.
The incident room was quiet, save for a few hangers on. The buzz that marked the beginning of an investigation had slowed to a low hum. Everyone was tired now. She opened her mailbox again, scrolled down through the messages. Her fingers shook as she opened the one from Rachel McDermott. The technical bureau were checking it out – gone now was the initial shock of seeing it sitting there. There was something eerie about seeing it sent from the girl in the glossy black-and-white photographs she’d j
ust spread out in front of Nate Hegarty. She read it for what felt like the twentieth time. The answer’s in that file, it will lead you to finding Rachel’s killer.
‘Locke?’ Ahearn called from across the room. He was standing in the doorway. ‘We’re on. They’ve just gone back into the interview room.’
Nate Hegarty looked more relaxed as he reclined in his seat beside John O’Boyle. The smell of nicotine reeked across the room and Iris thought she might throw up if he came any closer; now she really was thankful he hadn’t managed to eat that Chinese takeaway.
‘My client is prepared to make a formal statement in connection with the night on which Rachel McDermott died,’ said John.
‘Okay.’ Iris looked across at the sullen features opposite her.
‘I need to know if ye’ve spoken to Tania first.’
‘I’m afraid they don’t have to tell you that, Nate.’
‘No? I thought she said we were buddies.’ He pointed a stumpy thumb in Iris’s direction. ‘I want to know where I am with Tania before I say anything official like.’
‘We haven’t talked to her yet, Nate.’
‘Fine, I wasn’t with her that night. I told her I was working, then when Rachel died, well, she thought I was doing… family work.’
‘Go on, Nate.’ Iris looked at him. He was pathetic, still only a boy, really.
‘I’ve been having it off with a young wan from the estates.’ His head jerked towards the camera at his back. ‘She’ll tell you I was with her that night, but Tania…’
‘Wouldn’t be very happy?’ Tony Ahearn grinned, peas in a pod.
‘She’d have me bloody guts. Great girl, but she has a shocking temper on her.’
Why She Ran Page 19