by C K Williams
She laughs even harder. “He just wanted to get me to come home with him, didn’t he?”
“No, I am sure he was truly worried about you,” I say determinedly. “Just like Sean.”
“Don’t do the voice,” Kate says, but she is grinning, and it is too late to stop me, anyway.
“You shouldn’t be on your own, Kate, you shouldn’t, no no, you need someone to protect you. You need me. I’m a riot police officer. I control riots. And murderers. And your every move!”
I can see she has almost given in to bursting out laughing. Instead, she raises a challenging eyebrow at me: “And what about you, Mister I’m-staying-with-her?”
“I’m staying with you. It’s just the truth!”
“Well, would you have let me go home alone if you hadn’t been?”
I furrow my brow, staring at her. “It isn’t up to me what you do, Kate.”
That puts a smile on her face. “Well, I’m glad you are here, anyway.”
I relax into the seat, take my eyes off the road. Instead I look at her. “Are you worried?” I ask her quietly. “About your safety? Is that why you called me?”
“I don’t want to be,” Kate answers. Her eyes are still fixed to the road. There is something in her eyes. Something haunted. “But I am.”
“Turn right here,” I say, following a sudden impulse.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says automatically, but her foot has already moved, the car slowing down, her hands hitting the indicator.
“Let’s go to Spelga Dam.”
“It’ll be dark and cold.”
“There will be stars.”
She glances at me, contrary even as she turns. “Want to give them fodder for their gossip?”
But she goes past her house in the small wood on our left, and keeps going further into the mountains, further up Moyad Road. The slopes of the mountains are rising on our left and our right, black masses in the dark of night.
22:31
The stars are clear and bright in the sky. We sit in the car in the parking lot just in front of Spelga Dam, watching the black water of the lake spread out in front of us through the windshield. There is a bench on the left side of the parking lot, right by its shore, where we have often sat whenever I come over in the summer. It has been covered in plastic foil, tied firmly with orange rubber bands, to protect the wood against the winter. The snow lies thick on the ground. Usually, it doesn’t stay. Not for this long, anyway, and only very high up.
I know this place well. So well that it feels like home. On the other side of the water is the Magic Hill, where we have spent at least as much time as on the bench; it’s a small stretch of road, and when you put the car into neutral, it will start reversing up the hill, all on its own.
The fairies push it up the hill. That is what everyone says around here.
I am from a post-industrialised mining town with an unemployment rate of 20 per cent. We don’t have Fairy Hills.
All the happier are my memories of coming here with Kate. Of the Magic Hill and the Silent Valley and this parking lot with the picnic tables, transformed with the money of the European Union Regional Development Fund, the same money that has been paying for the campaign for the Mourne Mountains to become the first National Park in Northern Ireland. I always joked about it. My tax money, refurbishing your private national park in Northern Ireland.
The water is impossibly black, lying calm and dark in front of us. And above it, there are the stars.
“Do you know how many fond memories I have of just sitting next to you in this car?” I ask her softly.
Kate is looking at the stars. Her eyes are glistening. She nods.
“The police will catch whoever did this,” I tell her quietly but firmly.
She nods. “Oh, I know. After all, you have to have faith in the system, right? Otherwise you become a conspiracy theorist. I am not a conspiracy theorist.” She smiles. Trying to make a joke even as her voice cracks. “Vapour trails really are used by governments to keep us docile; I’m just saying it how it is.”
“Shh,” I say, shifting closer, so that my shoulder is brushing up against hers.
“Sorry for this mess,” she adds, still trying to laugh.
“It’s not your fault,” I say firmly.
“It was me who called you.”
“I forbid you to beat yourself up about this,” I say, not brooking any arguments. “I am glad to be here. And I will be even gladder to finish off that bottle of gin once we get back to yours.”
“Shouldn’t be driving, probably, should I?” she asks.
“No, you fucking shouldn’t, but you never listen to me,” I say.
Kate laughs. A real one this time. “Can’t believe I’m smiling,” she says. And her voice changes again. “When I found her, I thought I’d never smile again.”
I lean in even closer. “The dead would prefer us to smile.”
“We can’t know that.”
“Believe my lies,” I say.
“Gladly,” Kate says.
And in the dark of the car, she leans her head against my shoulder. In the dark and silence, she starts crying.
23:39
It is pitch black when we return to her house, the headlights cutting through the darkness like pale ghosts. We are both laughing when we get out of the car, about something stupid, something we are laughing at not because it’s funny but because we’re tired, and that is a good enough reason. And when I glance at Kate as we go in and see her smile at me and hear that she is humming softly, it gives me hope that she will come out of this whole.
So we enter, her humming and me smiling and each leaning into the other, shoulders brushing, both swaying.
“You, cups,” Kate says as she stumbles towards the sitting room.
“Tumblers?” I suggest as I toe off my shoes, attempting to save at least a shred of our dignity, but all I hear in response from the sitting room is an indignant “if you don’t hurry up I’ll have it out of the fucking flower vase.”
So much for dignity.
I make my way into the kitchen, lights still turned off. I’d know where to go in this house with my eyes closed. I push the kitchen door open and step inside. Fumble for the next best set of glasses, which I decide is the two tumblers I’d put into the sink before we left for the vigil.
I pick them back up in the dark, throw my coat over the back of a kitchen chair, then return to the sitting room.
We drink some more. We talk. About anything but a woman cut into pieces and her bloody clothes in Kate’s possession. We watch an episode of Broadchurch, because we are both fans, until I realise this might not be too grand of an idea, so I yawn. And so does Kate.
“Let’s go to bed,” I suggest. “Things will look different in the morning.”
So I return the tumblers and the booze to the kitchen. Kate calls out for me from the sitting room, moving into the hall: “I’m still re-doing the guest room. You don’t mind sharing, do you?”
“When have I ever?” I call back. Then yawn again. I crack all the bones in my hands and pop my back, then I shuffle out of the kitchen and into the hall. She peeks her head out of the bathroom and throws a towel at me.
“Mind if I’m the first in the bathroom?” she asks.
“I don’t think that I can stop you,” I say.
“You know,” she says, “I’m actually too tired to think up a witty parry. Be out in a second.”
She closes the bathroom door as I make for the bedroom.
It is when I walk past the front door that I step on something.
It is flat, and thin. It feels like a letter, or a piece of paper. We must have not realised it was there when we came in just now, trampling across it still wearing our shoes.
Automatically, I bend down to pick it up.
My fingertips stop just as they come into contact with the paper. It is thick. It is cool. It is heavy.
That is when it occurs to me.
That this is not likely
to be a regular mail delivery.
Evidence #10559
Anonymous letter
Found between 23:30–23:50 by Jannis Loose
in the house of Kate O’Leary (suspect)
Slip of thin paper (Post-it?); letters printed
The one who sins is the one who will die.
Day 2
Thursday 3rd January 2019
Evidence #10561
Notice put up at library cart (anonymously)
also found at entrance to graveyard + church doors + church windows + various letterboxes + COOP front doors + COOP notice board
NEIGHBOURHOOD PROTECTION
* * *
PROTECT YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD
At Neighbourhood Protection we believe in partnership between the local communities and the police (Policing and Community Safety Partnerships (PCSPs)). We help you protect YOURSELF, we help you protect YOUR property, we help reduce YOUR fear of crime in YOUR community.
* * *
FIND OUT MORE...
Sean O’Doherty, Rostrevor Rd
[email protected]
* * *
Protect our neighbourhood!
PROTECT OUR WOMEN!!
07:45
The following morning, we are back in my rental and on our way to Ardmore Station in Newry. I’m driving this time, meadows and stone walls passing us left and right. In the spring, there will be wild daffodils growing everywhere and the yellow gorse in full bloom. It’s my favourite season in these mountains, when they become so very cheerful.
They are not cheerful right now. There are multiple signs as we drive into Newry announcing, “We buy houses FAST”. Beyond it another sign mounted on a trailer: “DANCE LESSONS NEWRY” with times and places posted in red letters below. Kate is calling her team from the passenger seat, to let her know that the practice cannot open today after the Christmas break as they had originally planned. The letter I found last night in her house is sitting in her lap, sealed carefully in a zip bag. It is only a thin slip of paper with black letters printed onto it.
The one who sins is the one who will die.
As I drive and she speaks to her assistant, I can feel that Kate is shaking. I wish it was with righteous fury. But one look at her face tells me that it is with fear. Fear she is trying to bury under fury. We pass by more signs, hand-painted, stuck to the streetlamps: “It is time to meet your maker”. As we come closer to the station, this is followed up by “Prepare to meet thy God”.
At Kate’s request, I drop her off at the station and then look for somewhere to park the car, finally settling for leaving it in the lot of the Tesco Extra. By the time I’ve made it to the station, Kate is already coming rushing back out, her face set in a grim expression. It can’t have been more than twenty minutes. She snatches the car keys from my hands.
“Don’t even think about it,” she says as I open my mouth to suggest that I should really be the one driving.
“You can’t keep taking it out on the rental,” I say.
“I can try.”
“It won’t help.”
“Well, neither will they.”
“Did they say that?”
“As good as. You know what happened the first time I received threats?” she says, barging on towards the car. “They said there was nothing they could do until there was something more. Actual physical violence, for example. They did look very apologetic, too.”
“You received threats?” I ask, angry with the police and shocked as I hurry to keep up with her. “When? And why are you only telling me now?”
“I wrote an op-ed for the Irish News when the Republic legalised abortion last year in May,” she says, fumbling with the keys as we reach the car, but too upset to work them properly. “Daring to tell the truth, namely that women in the North are already aborting with pills you can order online, but they then can’t legally go see a doctor for follow-up treatment, which some of them urgently need, and that it was time that the law recognised the reality and made it possible for women to seek medical help without the fear of prosecution.”
Finally, she manages to unlock the car. “You know, I keep forgetting that abortion is still illegal in Northern Ireland,” I say as we get in. “It always takes me right back to the 1950s.”
“You weren’t alive in the 1950s.”
“Spiritually,” I say.
“As long as you wear suspenders. Man, suspenders would look great on you.”
This is how I know Kate. Always falling back on humour to defuse a tense situation. And we’re both angry at the moment. She’s angry with the police, and I’m angry on her behalf.
“What sort of threats did you receive?” I ask.
Kate starts the engine. “You are a baby killer, I will put you in hell where you belong, RIP. Quoting here, of course.”
I squint at the road as she takes off, a little too fast if you ask me. “Not very consistent that. Rest in peace or rot in hell, what’s it going to be?”
She laughs grimly. “I should have returned that witty reply. If only the threat hadn’t been anonymous.”
“I did not know that that you had received death threats,” I say quietly. Kate, who doesn’t have an evil bone in her body.
“It was only a few,” she says, taking a sharp left turn with aplomb. “I showed it to the editor, of course. She said, honey, you should see my inbox. Rape threats, death threats, you name it, she’s got it. I told the police, but this still isn’t taken seriously, and you know what, as much as I’d like to blame the police, because old habits die hard, it’s actually the politicians that won’t legislate against online hatred and provide the necessary resources to law enforcement…”
She peters out. Eases up on the accelerator a little as well. I cannot quite hide my relief. “Do you often go on rage drives?” I ask as matter-of-factly as I can.
“Sometimes,” she answers, truthfully.
“They are dangerous, as I am sure you do not need me to point out.”
“So what? You’re dangerous. I’m dangerous. I kill babies, remember?”
I look at her with what I hope is an appropriately chiding expression. I am still angry. This won’t stand. They won’t help? Fine. Then I’ll have to.
“Show me the other threats. If the police won’t help, we should look into it. Make a list of everyone who’d have reason to threaten you.”
Kate nods. “Most of the threats were e-mails. I think I deleted those.”
“Anything on social media? Any mail? Anything indicating that somebody knew where you lived?”
“There were a couple of letters. They’re back at the house. I’ll show you.”
11:15
We are sitting on the floor in Kate’s sitting room, breakfasting on cold veggie sausages and potato bread. I have hooked my phone up to her speakers and put on what I like to call French electro hip hop and what she calls “your noise”. She has spread out the threatening letters on the coffee table. It is significantly more than “a couple”.
“So, just eleven weirdos who found out your address and sent you death threats,” I say, doing my utmost to stay calm. “Or one individual who’s really determined. Nothing to worry about, you’re perfectly right.”
She elbows me. It actually hurts. “What good would it do me to worry? What was I supposed to do, shut my trap and never say anything in public again?”
“Well, no, but this is vile stuff,” I say, rubbing my side. “That actually hurt, do you know that?”
“Well, getting called a cunt and a sinner hurt, too, but if I’d let it get to me, they’d have won, so I decided not to be scared of a few dickhead trolls.”
“Almost a dozen,” I say, staring at the letters. “Or, again, the same person.” The contents are fairly generic, as far as death threats go. To be exact, two of them are death threats, three are rape threats, and the remaining six hit the sweet spot of combining the two. Generic isn’t good. Generic means that any chance of tracing it to a particular individual, s
lim to start out with, is next to nothing. “Is there anything in these letters that struck you as particularly personal?” I ask her.
“I don’t know, maybe the one that wanted to repeatedly ram a sharpened wooden cross up my vagina?” she asks.
“I meant personal in the sense that you had the impression that the sender may know you. You personally,” I say, trying to stop my mind from conjuring up a mental image of what she’s just described. I don’t succeed. My insides are churning. I’m feeling nauseous. To imagine Kate like this, Kate of all people. She has always fought for those who are not given a voice, or proper medical care.
That she’d be threatened.
Kate looks back at the letters.
“Well,” she says, pointing at the fourth letter from the top, “I remember thinking back then that this one was a little odd. Different from the others.”
Both of us lean closer.
I shall take up your ridiculous scalpel and drive it right through the walls of your vagina, again and again, and then I shall cut your throat you cunt
“For fuck’s sake,” I say.
“Aye,” is all Kate says. I see her press her legs closer together.
“The scalpel may simply be a reference to your profession?”
“GPs do not have a lot of reason to use scalpels,” she points out.
“Which this stupid piece of shit may not have taken the time to think about,” I reply.
“I know,” she says. “It’s just that I keep a scalpel in the office. In the glass cabinet. The cabinet’s locked, of course, but the scalpel is pretty prominent. It’s the one Mum and Dad gave to me after I’d passed all my second MB exams. Bit premature that, but they were so proud. First person in the family to go to uni. It has my name engraved on it and everything, so I kept it. It may be a reference to that.”