The Liar’s Daughter (ARC)

by Claire Allan

  He just had a compulsion.

  My stomach turned. ‘Just a compulsion’? Just who had he

  hurt? Had he hurt my Heidi? Was that why she seemed broken

  when she was around him? It would explain so much. How

  vulnerable she could be. How it had taken her a long time to

  start a physical relationship with me. My poor Heidi. And who

  else? Ciara? Unknown girls. Young girls. Just how young?

  My mind flitted to my daughter. My innocent, beautiful

  daughter. Had he ever been alone with her? Had he changed

  her? I almost couldn’t breathe for thinking about it. I knew he

  had held her. I knew there were pictures of him, smiling at the

  camera. His creepy grin. And my child.

  Something in me snapped as I closed his diary and looked at him

  there, the mouth slack, minute foamy bubbles formed on his lips.

  I made a decision then, you see. I could’ve saved him, maybe.

  I could’ve called for help, but I didn’t. I sat and watched as those short, gasping breaths drew further and further apart, the odd

  gurgle growing quieter. I sat and wished he was at least conscious so I could tell him what a bastard he was. I hoped he knew he

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  was dying. That he felt the struggle for every one of those short, shallow breaths. I hoped he felt fear. I hoped he felt pain. I hoped he knew I was there beside him, but there was no way I was

  going to help him. I hoped he felt as powerless as his victims

  had. Joe McKee, man of the people. Disgusting paedophile.

  I waited until he was silent. Until there was no hope for him.

  I let him die.

  The enormity of my actions, or my lack of action, hit me

  quickly. I was shocked, horrified at myself. Yes, he deserved to

  die, but was I now just as bad as him? Was I now a killer?

  I lifted the diary and slipped it into the drawer of his locker.

  I’d deal with it later. Once I figured out how to talk to Heidi

  about it all. If she told me what I was now sure was true, if

  she confirmed what he had done, I could maybe find some

  way to justify it to myself. To live with it.

  Of course when I went back to the diary the next day, it

  was gone. Funeral arrangements were being made and I got

  swept up in it all. I tried to find the right time to tell Heidi,

  but is there ever a right time?

  Then the police said it was murder and the crushing reality

  of the situation swept over me. I vowed I’d tell them the truth

  and I tried, I really tried, to find the courage to tell them. But then when they said he had been suffocated, I’d almost been

  sick. If I spoke up then, told them no, that he’d taken ill, and

  I’d just not called for help, they’d have no reason to believe me.

  Especially as I’d said nothing before.

  They mentioned unexplained injuries and bruising, further

  test results from the postmortem. Things I knew I hadn’t done,

  but I’d gone too far then and I was too scared to speak up.

  Heidi was unravelling. I couldn’t make her life harder. And yes,

  I was a coward, too. I was scared of prison. I was scared of

  losing Heidi and Lily. I was scared that all anyone would see

  me as from now until the day I died was a cold-blooded killer.

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  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Ciara

  Now

  I’m digging around upstairs trying to find my father’s diary,

  where I made him admit his crimes, when I hear Heidi call

  my name. She sounds almost hysterical, so I abandon my search

  and run the stairs to find her pacing the living room.

  Heidi is shaking her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re not making

  any sense, Alex. Why would you say that?’

  ‘Say what?’ I ask.

  Alex looks at me, his face pale. ‘I did it,’ he says. ‘It was me.’

  I feel dizzy, then I look at him again. Alex. Gentle, quiet Alex.

  I’m supposed to believe he was a killer? It just doesn’t ring true.

  He speaks, tells me his story, and I try to absorb what he has

  said. He sat and watched Joe die. He could have, maybe, helped

  and he didn’t.

  ‘But you didn’t kill him?’ Heidi says. ‘You didn’t kill him. He

  was just sick and he passed away, and that means no one is guilty.’

  ‘But I didn’t get help,’ Alex says and he looks wretched. ‘I

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  was so angry. I’d read those words and I was so enraged. I’d wanted to kill him. I was happy to watch him die. I never

  thought it would end up like this. All this hurt and pain and

  a murder investigation, and the further it went, the less I felt I could speak up.’

  I’m stunned. It seems Alex, who I’d written off as wet and

  pathetic, had a backbone, after all. He’d watched my father die.

  But at the same time, he didn’t have enough of a backbone to

  speak up about what really happened and to save us all from

  the nightmare we’ve been going through over the last few days.

  The topic of ever over-the-garden-fence conversation in Derry,

  police interviews, newspaper reports, existing together in a

  virtual ticking time bomb of tension.

  ‘I want to talk to the police now,’ he says, nodding. ‘This has

  all gone too far. I can’t run from it any more, Heidi. None of

  us can. We have to be honest. We can’t keep going on like this.

  None of us can,’ and he glances in my direction.

  Heidi looks as if she’s trapped in the glare of oncoming

  headlights. Except the headlights are coming from all directions

  and no matter where she turns, where any of us turn, there is

  no way out of this. She is shaking her head.

  ‘But you didn’t do anything wrong, not really wrong. He

  was very ill. He was dying. We don’t have to tell the police.

  There is no way they could ever know. We just keep it quiet.

  It might go away.’

  She is pleading with him and she looks at me and I see

  desperation in her eyes.

  Alex shakes his head, defeated. ‘It would always haunt me.

  The guilt. It’s already destroying me, Heidi. Whatever happens,

  I have to tell the police. I’ll not be able to live with myself if I don’t.’

  Heidi is crying. Silent tears running in rivulets down her

  cheeks. They both look so broken and I think of the little baby

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  upstairs, the baby who curled her hand around my fingers not that long ago. Who trusted me to rock her back and forth. Those

  big, innocent eyes that had looked at me with such trust. And

  I realise that no one is really guilty here at all. Except for Joe.

  And Joe, now dead and buried, holds the key to this all.

  ‘It was his diary that I was looking for,’ I interject. ‘The one

  Alex saw. It will help back up Alex’s story, won’t it? It’s not

  where I left it, but it has to be here somewhere. We just have

  to keep looking.’

  ‘Then we’ll do just that, we’ll keep
looking,’ Heidi says,

  squeezing Alex’s hands tightly.

  She stands up and starts sorting through the drawers in the

  sideboard in the living room – pulling out old paperwork and

  shuffling through it. My father was nothing if not fastidious

  with his affairs and it soon becomes obvious there’s no diary

  of any kind hidden in the back of a drawer or under mounds

  of old bank statements.

  I look in the drawer of the console table in the hall. Again,

  there is nothing of note. It’s neat and organised. A book of

  stamps. Some pens held together with an elastic band. A packet

  of envelopes and a small address book, in which Dad had

  painstakingly written the names of his friends and colleagues

  in block capitals and always in black ink.

  We both go together to the bedroom. I double-check the

  wardrobe, as does Heidi.

  ‘It was there,’ she says, pointing to the far left corner of the

  wardrobe, which is now just an empty shelf. ‘That is where you

  put it. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, but I looked and it’s definitely not there any more. She

  pulls aside the rail of pressed shirts and trousers and looks down at the floor of the wardrobe. ‘They’re all gone,’ she says, looking up at me.

  ‘All what?’

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  ‘All his diaries and notebooks. He kept them there, in shoe-boxes. A diary for every year. There were at least twenty of

  them here.’

  ‘Would the police have taken them?’ I ask. ‘Those SOCO

  guys were quite thorough. It’s the only logical explanation.’

  It strikes me that Heidi was able to open the wardrobe door

  without using a key – a key I knew I had. I run my finger to

  the lock, noticing that it has been broken.

  ‘Someone’s been in here. They used force,’ I tell her, pointing

  to the door.

  ‘Would the police have busted a lock? They left everything

  else just as it was,’ Heidi says.

  I shrug. I only know what I see in front of me.

  ‘And if they had the diaries, and he’d written his confession

  of sorts, wouldn’t they have found it? DI Bradley seems very

  thorough.’

  ‘I don’t know, Heidi.’

  I can hear a harsh, frustrated tone to my voice. I was just

  angry that it was gone. I wanted to have proof. I wanted to

  have his apology to look at. It was the only thing I wanted

  from that man.

  She winces at my tone and I apologise. Sincerely. Explain

  that I’m stressed. She nods. She understands. She feels it too.

  ‘I’ll call DI Bradley,’ I tell her. ‘Ask him outright. Tell him

  where to look if he has the diary to see what Joe wrote.’

  ‘You’re okay about all of this – what he did – becoming

  public?’ Heidi asks.

  I see the worry, the fear in her eyes.

  ‘I’m not okay with it,’ I tell her truthfully, ‘but it’s the right thing to do. For me. For you and for Alex. We’ve nothing to

  be ashamed of, Heidi. We never asked to be abused.’

  Her bottom lip is trembling and I watch tears spill over from

  her eyes and run down her cheeks.

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  I reach out my hand to her, a gesture that would have seemed insane just an hour ago, and to my surprise she reaches back.

  ‘My phone’s downstairs. Let’s go phone DI Bradley and get

  this all sorted once and for all.’

  ‘But what about all their evidence? Injuries and suffocation

  and whatever? Won’t they say Alex is lying?’

  She looks frightened. Vulnerable. I feel so very sorry for her.

  Her life has been lacking in any real security for so long.

  I wish I could reassure her but I can’t. I can only give her

  hand a squeeze.

  ‘We have to trust that the truth will be enough. Something

  else must’ve happened to make him take so ill.’

  ‘Or someone else hurt him first,’ Heidi says.

  But I can’t help but feel she is grasping at straws. I suppose

  I’d do the same if it was Stella in the frame.

  Unable to speak, I just shrug at Heidi and lead her downstairs.

  The first step is to call DI Bradley, I think. Get him to come

  here.

  We go back downstairs to fetch my phone. Alex is still in

  the living room, his head in his hands. He looks up at us

  expectantly, sags again when Heidi shakes her head.

  ‘Alex, we’re going to call DI Bradley now. We’re going to

  tell him everything,’ I say as calmly as I can.

  He nods and Heidi sits beside him and holds him to her as

  he cries.

  I pick up the phone and call the number DI Bradley had

  given me.

  This is all such a mess.

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  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Heidi

  Now

  I gave up believing in God a long time ago. Probably around

  the time my mother died. I couldn’t understand how any god,

  who my teachers described to me as loving and caring, would

  take a mammy away from their only child. And if that is hard

  to get to my head around, I sure as hell can’t understand how

  any god would let what is going to happen next happen.

  Nonetheless, sitting in the living room of my childhood home,

  holding hands with my husband and waiting for the police to

  arrive, I can’t help but offer up a silent prayer.

  Please, I beg, just please make this nightmare end. Alex is not

  a bad man. Alex doesn’t have it in him to be a bad man. ‘Please,

  God,’ I beg, ‘don’t take someone else I love from me.’

  Ciara is restless. She is pacing up and down the living room,

  chewing on her thumbnail. It’s doing nothing to soothe my

  nerves. She’s looking a little manic again. Then again, I’m feeling a little manic myself right now. She jumps with every noise.

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  Alex is silent, but he is wringing his hands. The only person daring to make a sound is Lily, who has started to fuss as if the

  tension is nipping at her, too.

  I jump when I hear a car pull up, and again when I hear

  the car doors slam.

  ‘It’s DC King and DC Black,’ Ciara says as if it could be

  anyone else. ‘I’ll let them in,’ she says and I turn to Alex, tell him I love him and we’ll get through this. That he did nothing

  wrong and they’re bound to find that out in time. The coroner

  has made a mistake. Something was very wrong with Joe when

  he died and yes, Alex was there, but he didn’t kill him. Not

  calling for help is not the same as killing someone.

  He squeezes my hand back and tells me he loves me too,

  and that he’s sorry.

  That’s all we have time for before the two police officers

  come into the room, followed by Ciara.

  ‘Alex, Heidi,’ DC King says, nodding her head in greeting.

  ‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ DC King asks.

  ‘Not at all,’ I say, and I c
an hear the tremor in my voice.

  I can feel a panic attack threaten. This is worse than anything

  I could’ve imagined.

  DC Black is the next to speak.

  ‘You’ve asked us to come here because you say you have

  more information for us about what happened here on the

  night Joe died.’

  Alex coughs, a little nervous splutter. ‘Erm, I need a glass of

  water,’ he says and Ciara says she’ll fetch one. ‘My mouth is very dry,’ he explains. ‘Really it’s me who wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘It’s okay, Alex. Take your time,’ DC King says.

  I like her. She’s friendly. A gentle soul. I don’t know how

  long she’ll stay friendly or gentle for, though.

  ‘Should we maybe get a solicitor?’ I ask Alex suddenly. I’m

  nervous about how this will go down.

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  Alex shakes his head. ‘I’ve nothing to hide. Not any more.’

  I can’t help but think of all the things that have been hidden.

  If I’d told him before now, on my own terms, would I have

  had the strength to break contact with Joe altogether? Would

  this even have happened? Oh God, it hurts that this is my fault.

  I’ll never forgive myself.

  DC King speaks. ‘If you think that a solicitor would help,

  then by all means, we can arrange one or you can call a solic-

  itor of your choosing. If you decide to proceed without one,

  you can request one at any stage, if what you’re going to tell

  us is that serious,’ she says. ‘You may want to continue this

  conversation down at the station. Just so we make sure it’s all

  recorded properly. We will have to caution you, which isn’t to

  say we’ll charge you without anything.’ She pauses. ‘Do you

  think it’s that kind of information, Alex?’ she asks.

  I can’t stop the tears from falling.

  ‘I think it might be,’ he says slowly. ‘I know I should’ve told

  you this before. I was scared. I’m sorry. I was with Joe when

  he died. It was me.’

  I see DC Black sit up and take notice. There’s something

  about him that reminds me of an overeager watchdog. DC

  King shows more subtlety in her responses.

  ‘Okay,’ she says softly before launching into an official caution.

  Words I’ve heard a thousand times on the TV but never

  dreamed I would hear in real life:

  ‘You do not have to say anything but it may harm your