by Alan Gorevan
“Why did you want to do that?” Joe asked when he came back downstairs.
It was baffling. The kid had his whole life ahead of him.
Christopher cried while he told them about the bullying, but Lisa cried even more. Her love for him was so strong, Joe could feel it radiating off her.
Joe didn’t know why Graham was there. He looked bored. If the decision had been up to Joe, he would have kicked Graham out, but this wasn’t his house. And Joe had seen three toothbrushes in the bathroom.
“What’s that kid’s name?” Joe said. “The bully?”
“John. John Kavanagh.”
Joe was aware of another bully with that surname. He didn’t know the man really, but there were rumours that his son was a real troublemaker. “I don’t suppose his dad is a Garda here in Donnybrook?”
Christopher’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”
“He’s not your boss, is he?” Lisa said.
“No,” Joe said. “No, he’s not.”
“Good.”
“He’s my boss’s boss. Superintendent Michael Kavanagh.”
Lisa shook her head. “Great. That’s just what we need.”
“His old man is supposed to be a nasty piece of work,” Joe said. “Anyway, I’ll talk to the kid.”
“Please don’t,” Christopher said. “That will only make things worse.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lisa sighed. “Joe, if you want to help, maybe you should just talk to the school principal. Leave the boy alone.”
“Sure,” Joe said. “I’ll do that tomorrow. It won’t be a problem, will it? I mean, the people at the school don’t know me.”
Christopher said, “I can tell them you’re – I can vouch for you.”
Lisa nodded. “If they still have doubts, they can call me.”
“Okay,” Joe said. He thought for a moment, then leaned forward in his chair. “Christopher, I think you need to talk to someone.”
The boy looked horror-struck. “You mean a psychiatrist?”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be. I just mean some kind of professional.”
Joe wasn’t expecting Christopher to get some miracle cure. But maybe it would help for him to talk to someone about his feelings, someone trained to not pass judgement.
“I’m not crazy,” Christopher said.
“Of course, you’re not. I didn’t mean that.”
“And I didn’t really want to die. I love you, Mum. I just – I felt so bad. I’m sorry.”
Lisa hugged Christopher so tightly, it practically counted as assault. “Don’t ever do that to me again. Promise me.”
“I promise. I’m sorry.”
“You’re alright. That’s the important thing.”
Joe reached across the table and took Lisa’s hand in his. Graham shot him daggers, but Joe didn’t much care. Especially not when Lisa seemed glad of the support. He held out his other hand to Christopher, who took it tentatively.
“It’s going to be alright,” Joe said. “You’re a teenager. You’re full of hormones that will make you crazy. It happens to everyone and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It won’t last forever.”
“Joe’s right,” Lisa said. “And you should talk to someone. I’ll find a doctor for you to see tomorrow.”
“I’m not going to a shrink.”
“You’re going, and you’re going tomorrow.”
“Listen to your mother,” Joe said.
Christopher hung his head, defeated.
Graham piped up. “Is seeing a shrink really going to do any good?”
“Why don’t you piss off back to wherever you live?” Joe said. He turned back to Lisa. “Tell me he hasn’t moved in.”
“Our living arrangements are none of your business,” Graham said.
“What do you do for a living, Graham?”
“I’m an artist.”
“Of course you are.”
“Oils.” Graham smiled at Lisa. She tried to return the look. “Lisa lets me use the shed outside as a studio. I’ve always known I had a creative talent, but I was never able to develop it before. I didn’t have the space to work. That’s all changed now. I’m sure I’ll start to sell some pictures soon. I can give you a tour of my work some time if you’re interested.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, fine. Not everyone appreciates art.”
“Is that your picture hanging in the hall? The piece-of-shit portrait of a naked girl?”
Graham sighed and shook his head, as if answering Joe would be beneath him.
Joe squeezed Christopher’s hand. Though it was time for him to leave, he didn’t want to go. He had to force himself.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Christopher.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll show you out,” Graham said, as everyone rose from the table.
Joe felt a fresh stab of irritation.
“Show yourself out. I want a word with Lisa.”
Lisa ruffled Christopher’s hair. “You go on up to bed,” she said. “I’ll be up in a minute to say goodnight.”
“Okay. Good night, Joe.”
“Night, Christopher.”
Graham pulled out a cigarette and a lighter and started for the back garden. It looked like he had no plans to go home. As he opened the back door, he smiled and waved Joe goodbye.
Chapter 43
Christopher plodded up the stairs and ducked into his bedroom, where he kicked off his runners. With all the stealth he could muster, he then sneaked back out onto the landing and hunkered down. The door to the kitchen was only open a crack and Christopher strained to hear what Joe and Mum were saying.
Mum had sent him to bed, saying she would be up to say goodnight. That hadn’t happened since Christopher was ten, but he couldn’t argue. He’d given her a scare. It was true what he’d said, though: he didn’t want to die.
The realisation of the pain he had caused her gave him a fresh bout of anguish.
He wondered if they would throw him into a mental hospital. Would they feed him drugs to make him less suicidal? His imagination began to run wild, but he soon realised that Joe and Mum weren’t talking about him at all. They were talking about some guy named Wall.
An escaped prisoner?
Christopher wondered if he’d heard correctly. What did an escaped prisoner have to do with them? Wait, was that Barry Wall? Christopher had heard of him.
“I’m sure you’re not in any danger,” Joe said. “But just take extra care. We have reason to believe that Wall has a grudge against various people, including me.”
“How worried should I be?”
“You shouldn’t be at all worried. Like I say, he may have been killed in the explosion. We need to wait for the DNA testing. Even if he’s alive, I don’t expect him to target you, but I just wanted to let you know.”
Mum asked something about protection, which made Joe snort.
“Anyway, I should go,” Joe said.
Christopher scooted up to the top of the stairs as Joe and Mum came out into the hall. He kept out of sight. Even without seeing it, Christopher could tell that the goodbye was awkward. He found it hard to picture them ever being a couple.
Once the door had closed, Christopher waited until Mum went into the sitting room. Then he sneaked back downstairs and made his way into the kitchen. A quick look out the window confirmed that Graham was still outside.
Christopher made his way over to the knife block. He was glad that Mum was so obsessed with quality. These knives were the sharpest ones Christopher had ever touched. There were five in the set, all different sizes. They had razor sharp blades and bright orange handles. He tried to figure out which one to take. The big one looked too large for his schoolbag, and the smallest one didn’t look threatening enough.
Christopher took the middle-sized knife. He figured the blade was probably fifteen centimetres long. He hurried back upstairs with it, being careful not to trip and impale himself. That would rea
lly be too much for Mum.
He made his way back to his bedroom. Unzipping his schoolbag, he hid the knife inside his history book.
Christopher needed to protect himself. He wasn’t going to let anyone bully him anymore, whether it was John Kavanagh or an escaped criminal. With a knife, he’d be able to defend himself.
He got into bed and lay there, waiting for Mum to kiss him goodnight.
Chapter 44
Joe’s stomach churned as he walked to the end of Lisa’s driveway. He hoped Christopher wouldn’t do any other stupid stuff. Joe would talk to the principal in the morning and do whatever he had to in order to sort out the bullying situation.
But other things were playing on his mind too – like Barry Wall.
Joe had put him to one side while he dealt with Christopher. Now Wall came back into focus.
He got behind the wheel of his Honda and pointed the car towards home, which was a second-floor apartment in a big old house, just off the main street in Rathmines. Rathmines was more affordable than Donnybrook, and Joe had been lucky to find a place to live there the previous summer, when he had decided to stay in Dublin.
The building contained eight other units, but Joe met no one as he passed his bicycle in the hall, and made his way up the stairs to his door. His apartment was spartan. Joe had filled the bookshelf inside the door with some non-fiction paperbacks and put his aloe vera plant on top. That was about all he had done with the place since moving in. Not that there was a lot of room to do anything.
The place consisted of a small sitting room, leading through an open doorway to a kitchen. The bedroom was next to that. Joe had always been a lousy sleeper. At night, he often lay in bed listening to the hum of the fridge on the other side of the bedroom wall. For variety, he sometimes came out and sprawled on the couch in the sitting room, where he could bathe in the glow of the street light outside, as he waited for dawn.
Once Joe got inside, he stripped and showered. Under the hot water was where he did a lot of his best thinking, so he didn’t rush. Afterwards, he towelled himself off, then slumped on the couch.
He opened up his laptop and typed Graham Lee’s name into Google. He didn’t find anything about Lisa’s new boyfriend, as an artist or otherwise. No website. He wondered about Graham’s history. Did he have a criminal record? Joe wanted to check. Technically, he was not supposed to use the Pulse database for personal reasons, but someone had to protect Lisa and Christopher. He decided to look into it the next day.
He closed the laptop and sat for a minute. If he went to bed, he knew he’d just lie awake thinking, after all that had happened during the day. It was pointless.
He thought about Barry Wall again.
If Wall had blown himself up, it would certainly make life a lot easier for Joe. But the optimism he’d felt when he rang O’Carroll and told him about the explosion had faded while he was at Lisa’s house, and faded even more since he got home. Something about it just felt too neat.
Imagine if Wall was alive. What would he do? What would Joe do if he was Wall?
I’m fresh out of jail. The guy who killed my wife is out there. He’s never explained what happened, never revealed where her body is. The cops think I’m dead so I have time…
Would he really go to the airport, like O’Carroll thought?
If it was Joe, he’d want to go and beat Aidan Donnelly fifty shades of purple. He’d want to find out what had really happened to Valentina.
Joe had been so busy during the day, his attention divided between Boyle, Barrett, Lisa, Christopher, and Wall, that this was the first time he’d managed to clear his head and think. The more he thought about it, the surer he felt that the explosion was a distraction. If that was the case, then Wall would want to use this time to accomplish his task: getting Aidan Donnelly and making him talk.
Joe grabbed his car keys, slipped his shoes on, and went out into the night. He still remembered where Aidan Donnelly lived.
He hoped he wasn’t too late.
Chapter 45
Barry Wall stared out the windscreen of the Ford Transit van. Orange street lamps glowed along the narrow inner-city street. A block of flats loomed into view. It was an ugly place. Everything grey and cold and merciless. The place where a monster had been born. A killer. St. Stephen’s Green was only a few minutes’ walk away, but this was another world, far from the beautiful park and the luxury shopping of nearby Grafton Street.
Ken found a parking space and pulled in at the side of the road. Barry Wall oriented his gaze, looking up to the top floor, to the place where Aidan Donnelly lived.
Apartment 508.
Wall jumped out of the van. As he did so, two junkies were shambling down the footpath, a man and a woman.
“Got any change, bud?” the man said.
Ignoring him, Wall cracked his knuckles. His throat was dry. He was so close. An ambulance screamed past, sirens screeching, lights flashing.
Wall set off across the road.
“Wait,” Ken called.
“Hurry up, then.”
They bustled up the path, through a gap in the wall surrounding the complex, and headed towards the enclosed stairwell. It looked like a round tower stuck onto the side of the blocky building.
The stairwell smelled of piss and its walls were covered with graffiti. They passed a woman with two young kids, heading down the steps. She took a drag on her cigarette and looked at Wall out of colourless, dead eyes.
“We could have waited a little longer,” Ken said nervously, once they were past the woman.
“I couldn’t.”
“We might be seen.”
“You can go if you like. Wait in the van.”
“I didn’t mean that, Barry.”
They emerged on the fifth-floor landing. 508 was down the end of a long balcony which looked out onto the street. Ken took up a position on the left side of the door, Wall stood directly in front of it.
Ken looked around one more time and gave his brother a nod.
Clear.
Wall kicked the door in. It was made of light wood and secured by a single flimsy lock. Wall’s boot separated the metal from the wood.
He pushed the door open and went in fast.
Ken was right behind.
A sitting room lay inside the door, with a kitchen off to the side. Both areas were empty. At the back, two more doors. Both of them closed. A bedroom and a bathroom, Wall figured.
He stepped forward quickly, moving towards the room on the left first. The door opened when Wall pushed it. He found himself almost on top of a squalid-looking toilet. A shower stall stood next to it. No sign of Aidan Donnelly.
He backed out. Together, he and Ken approached the other door.
Twitching with adrenaline, Wall kicked open the door of the final room. The only possible place Donnelly could be hiding. The door swung in to reveal an empty bedroom.
Ken said, “He’s not home.”
“Shit,” Wall shouted, looking around, as if Donnelly might be hiding somewhere. He dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. Nothing there but dust. “Where is he?”
“We’ll get him later,” Ken said.
“No.”
“We have to.”
“We can wait here for him.”
“No,” Ken said. “We can’t. Someone will notice the damage to the front door. And if Aidan Donnelly comes home and sees that, he’s not going to come inside. He’ll walk away.”
Wall knew that was true, but he had psyched himself up to see Valentina’s killer and he wanted to do it now.
“Come on,” Ken urged. “We’ll get him. I swear we will. Just not now.”
Wall walked around the sitting room, looking for any clue about where Donnelly might be. There was nothing. Ken grabbed his arm.
“Okay, okay,” Wall said.
He let himself be dragged back out. Ken shut the door behind them, while Wall stepped over to the balcony and scanned the street below, hoping Donnelly would appear.
“Barry? Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Wall jogged to the stairwell and started down the steps after Ken. At the bottom, Ken stopped and pressed himself against the side wall.
A Honda was slowing down near a parking space four spaces up from Ken’s van, on the other side of the road.
“What is it?” Wall asked.
Ken held his brother back with an outstretched arm.
“Cops.”
“What?”
“Joe Byrne.”
Wall stepped forward. “I thought he wasn’t supposed to be here.”
“Well, he is.” Ken scowled.
“Let’s take him.”
“Are you crazy? That’s not the plan.”
“I don’t care about the plan.”
“We need to get him alone. There might be more of them around.”
Wall was irritated by his brother’s lack of enthusiasm. “I don’t see anyone.”
“His partner might be getting coffee. We need to go, while he’s distracted,” Ken said.
They sprinted past the low wall, out onto the footpath and over to the van. Wall pressed himself against the van and waited to see if they’d been seen. There was no shouting. No running. Nothing.
Ken unlocked the van. He got in and watched to make sure his brother did too. Wall got in, but he didn’t fasten his seat belt.
“We could take him,” Wall said again.
Ken shook his head. “He doesn’t know you’re alive.”
“Then why is he here?”
“He’s just suspicious. We don’t want to confirm it for him. We still have time to get Donnelly, while we’re under the radar, right?”
“Are we under the radar?” Wall gritted his teeth. “Check with your contact.”
Ken took out his phone and dialled the number. Wall listened as his brother and the contact exchanged a few words. Ken hung up. “It’s like I thought. The cops all think you’re dead. Byrne is off-duty.”
“What a bastard.”
Ken started the engine. “We’ll get him later. We’ll get both of them later.”
Wall nodded.
“That’s for sure,” he said.