Dark Mirrors (15 page)

“I’m sorry, Esmée, but this isn’t about that,” he interrupted.

Instinctively Esmée knew something was very wrong.

Garda Burke lowered her head to study her clasped hands while her colleague, clearing his throat, spoke.

“Esmée, we found his car parked at Cliff Walk this evening.”

Her stomach turned and her heart began to beat a little faster. She looked Maloney in the eye, concentrating on his words, trying to plot them in her head as he continued.

“Whose car?” she asked, knowing full well exactly who he meant.

“Philip’s car. We were called to the scene by a passing hill walker.”

“The scene?” she echoed, baffled by his terminology. What the hell was he talking about? A contorted look of confusion crossed her face as she looked from one police officer to the other, with Burke giving away her novice status by refusing to even look at her.

“The car appears to have been abandoned. There is no sign of him.”

“Stolen!” Esmée exclaimed. “Jesus, thank God for that!” The relief was audible in her voice as smiling she placed a reassuring hand over her own heart. “I thought you were going to tell me something dreadful had happened!” She felt Tom’s hand rest on her shoulder as he, on impulse, moved closer into the circle of the group.

“No, Esmée, you see, that’s it,” said Maloney. “We don’t actually think it was stolen.”

“What then?” she asked, irritated by her stirring panic and annoyed by their refusal to just spit out whatever it was they were on about.

Again, Maloney cleared his throat and putting all his experience into action leaned closer towards her, with compassion and sympathy in his eyes.

“We found this on the dashboard.”

He took a small blue-tinted envelope from his inside breast pocket and handed it to her.

Esmée
: her name was scrawled untidily across its front.

Looking at him while shaking her head in bewilderment, she took it slowly from his outstretched hand.

Pushing up the fold at the back of the envelope she extracted a single sheet of matching blue-lined writing paper, the kind she hadn’t seen in years and was surprised that they still made it – not the kind she would have guessed Philip to possess. It was folded sharply once across its middle. She opened it out, doubling back on the crease. Her hand covered her mouth while, drawing her eyes together in absolute confusion, she read, reread and tried to understand the words written in Philip’s familiar scrawl:

Esmée, I love you so much. I never meant to hurt you. I did it for us, for Matthew and my lovely Amy. Please remember that and forgive me. Philip.

She read it and reread it, wishing it to make some kind of sense. Looking first at Maloney, then Burke, then finally at her brother she sought some kind of mental assistance in understanding what exactly it was she was reading. Her head felt heavy, too heavy for her shoulders, with little black spots forming in front of her eyes, rotating faster and faster, randomly darting, blurring her vision, a snowstorm of confused thoughts, getting thicker and thicker, bouncing off her retina. Questions she couldn’t answer filled her consciousness.

Did it really mean what she thought it meant? The words pierced the backs of her eyes while the paper on which they were written scorched her
hands, sweat formed under her arms, beading on her brow . . . and what was that smell? The blinds came down and then there was black.

Chapter 12

They took her to the car, parked just as they described, in the car park at the beginning of Cliff Walk, where she and Philip had walked many times before. The sky was almost cloudless and the moon almost full, shining bright over the bay, providing a light glow over the night which was unusually cold for the time of year. A bitter wind chased through the exposed area to tussle with the small crowd that had gathered, like moths, attracted by the bright flashing lights of police cars. She wished she’d worn a jacket and fought hard to keep her hair in check.

The audience watched the unexpected side show with curiosity, as the exit of this pale and stunned woman through the rear door of the police car opened the next scene in the real-time drama. Usually these people came after dark for the spectacle of Dublin Bay’s dazzling illuminations. Some would kiss and cuddle, others just sit on the low wall to watch the amber lights of the city reflect and glisten against the pitch-black sea in the bay. A few of them now stared as the rumours and mumblings of a suicide filtered through, while others offered their opinion to anyone who would listen: urban myths belonging to the area accompanied by tales of bodies never found, the regularity of “this sort of thing” and the last poor soul to “go”.

Do what? Go where? What on earth were they talking about? What was Philip doing here anyway? Esmée asked herself, doing her best to ignore the intrusive, inquisitive spectators. There must be, had to be, some reasonable, logical, explanation. Things like this didn’t happen to normal people, normal people like her. A corridor of whispers formed in front of her, parting like the Red Sea to allow her to pass through to the end, a destination that loomed at the finish of the unofficial guard of honour. Her field of vision focused in on the car, gleaming, polished bright and silver. In the surrounding darkness the surreal spotlit vision intensified as she approached. The door was opened for her by some insignificant other. Pausing to swallow, she peered inside with Maloney by her side while Tom stood back, watching, hands clenched in the pockets of his suede jacket, willing his sister to be strong.

On the floor beneath the steering wheel and in front of the pedals Philip’s shoes lay perfectly positioned, side by side, with the artificial light from a reflected torch echoing back off their perfectly polished black leather. They looked as good as new but she knew they weren’t. As with his every other possession he always took great care of his shoes, polishing them before every use. And tucked neatly inside the left shoe were his black-and-grey Pringle socks. That meant, she deduced absurdly, as she looked around the pristine interior, that he must have been wearing either his black or grey woollen Ted Baker trousers. He was quite predictable that way, always coordinated: certain shoes with certain socks with certain trousers with certain shirts. He hated not “matching” and had often thrown tantrums when the right piece of his ensemble wasn’t fit for wearing. Esmée knew every item of his wardrobe and from these small clues could picture vividly how he might have looked as he had parked, exited and locked the car.

In the middle compartment of the walnut-veneered dashboard sat his wallet and keys. Esmée turned to Maloney who nodded, indicating it was okay to pick them up. She sat into the charcoal-grey leather seat, and picking up the wallet flicked the catch and opened it out. On the left side were his credit cards – Visa, American Express and MasterCard, they were all there. His bankcard was there too and inside the slim black pouch was stuffed a bundle, probably about three hundred euro-worth, of crisp, new, fresh-out-of-the-bank notes.

The keys were as they should be, on his personalised BMW key chain. She plucked each, one by one: the car key, the two front-door keys, the key to his study, the back-door key and one other she didn’t recognise – smaller than the rest it was more like the key to a bicycle lock or a petty-cash box. Reflectively she toyed with them, soothed by their jingle while she scanned the car’s interior.

“Where was the letter?” she asked, handing up both the full wallet and the keys to Maloney.

“It was sitting on the dashboard, just there.” He indicated with his finger to a point behind the steering wheel. Her eyes followed the trajectory and stared at the spot where she assumed it had sat and thought about what he had written. “I love you so much,” he had said but there was no goodbye.

“What do we do now?” she asked solemnly, extracting herself from the ‘scene’, finally ready to co-operate. “What happens next?”

Together they turned and walked back to the police car, blanking the news-hungry audience. She got into the back seat, supported by Tom who took hold of her hand and returned her weak grin with a concerned but encouraging smile.

Maloney sat into the front passenger seat and swivelling around to her asked, “You okay?” to which Esmée simply nodded. “We’ll take the car back to the station a little later on,” he told her as they pulled away past the small crowd and down the hill.

“What about Philip?” Esmée asked quietly, feeling Tom’s grip tighten around her hand.

“We’re not sure yet. It’s too dark for the full team to start out now, but we’ve put the coastguard on notice so they’ll head out first thing for the sea search – but the Search and Rescue helicopter will go out now and scan the cliffs, just in case . . .”

She nodded vacantly, assembling in her head the notion of what a sea and cliff-side search might involve. The idea of Philip out there, somewhere, cold, wet, alive or dead brought tears to her eyes and pierced her heart with an intensity that words couldn’t describe. And if, as everyone was suggesting and appeared to be obvious, he had taken his own life and committed his body, eternally, to the waves, he didn’t want to be found alive. Did he? But that wasn’t Philip’s style, she denied, refusing to accept the vision in her head as a possible reality.

“You’ve got this all wrong,” she announced as they reached the end of the hill, “This isn’t Philip. It’s not his way, he wouldn’t do this.” Urgently she turned to Tom, seeking some level of endorsement and when none came she laughed feebly. “You know he’s probably at home right now with his feet up watching the telly.”

“We checked, Esmée,” Maloney said. “He’s not there.” He watched her face in the rear-view, feeling her pain.

“Then we have to check again,” she insisted looking at both him and her brother, imploring them to have faith. If they believed then it might be true.

“You think he’s dead, don’t you?” she accused.

And because they did, neither answered, but Maloney wanted to help, wanted to stop the hurt, and nodding to the driver instructed with a pointed jerk of his head. “Let’s go to his house.” She needed to see for herself.

Their driver took the left instead of the right and headed to 12 Woodland Drive.

Appeased but fearful, Esmée sat back and held onto the handle above her head. “This is all my fault,” she whispered, hardly noticing the tears that spilled down her face as the darkness sped by outside the clear window.

It took just under fifteen minutes to get to the house which, just as Maloney had described, appeared dark and unoccupied. Their unmarked police car came to a halt at the edge of the kerb. Maloney turned and looked at her expectantly.

Reaching into her bag she hunted for her old house keys.

“I’ve left them!” she cried, frantically ransacking her bag.

“It’s okay,” Maloney soothed. “Look, I’ll use these.” He extracted Philip’s from his pocket.

“I’m not going in,” she declared suddenly. “I can’t.” She was afraid of the emptiness she might find.

Nodding patiently, he got out and for the second time that evening walked the short distance to the front door. Out of courtesy to the possible occupant he rang the bell and stood there waiting for what seemed to Esmée like an age. She sat in the car, counting the seconds, willing Philip to appear alive and well. When he didn’t Maloney turned briefly towards the car before inserting the key in the lock to enter the house. Tom got out and went in after him. She saw the lights go on in the sitting room and the familiar environment come to life. She could see them standing in the doorway and looking around the obviously empty
room and moments later they turned and the room once again fell into darkness. She couldn’t watch any more. Through closed eyes she could sense them investigate, imagined them going from room to room through the house, opening door after door, until eventually in almost perfect time she lifted her lids to see Maloney and Tom exit the house and lock the door behind them.

“Here,” Maloney said, getting into the car and handing her Philip’s keys, minus the car key. “You can hang on to these.”

She took them from him and held them in her hand, massaging the smallest unconsciously, staring out the window vacantly while making the short journey to the station. Her thoughts were completely empty but her heart was full of shame.

When they got there she and Tom were led through the quiet public office into a sparsely furnished garish-yellow interview room. It smelt old and dank with tattered posters on the wall promoting everything from cyclist safety to confidential crime lines. The fluorescent lights above their heads flickered while they waited patiently, reading the cheeky graffiti scratched onto the tabletop before them.

Garda Burke came into the room after a short while with two mugs of steaming milky tea on a tray, accompanied by chocolate-covered HobNobs. Before she left the room, Esmée asked what was going to happen next. Taking her hand from the door, Burke turned back into the room and sitting down she told Esmée that they would need to take a statement from her about the last time she saw Philip, about his behaviour and his general movements. She explained how they’d examine the car.

“Just routine procedure,” she assured her, saying that the rest depended on the results from the search. “Detective Sergeant Maloney will go through it all with you.” With that she rose and left the room, closing the door gently after her.

Esmée was tired and emotionally drained.