I Saw You (6 page)

McLoughlin gave the gate a push. Just to make sure that the bolt was holding. Then he walked back down towards the house. He began to sing the same old Frank Sinatra song. He sang it, slowly,
softly, over and over again as he went around to the terrace. He picked up his glass, then gazed out over the lights of the city towards the dark of Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea beyond. The Kish
lighthouse flashed twice, then flashed again thirty seconds later. The Baily light to the north flashed once, then flashed again twenty seconds later. The West Pier light gave its three green
flashes every seven point five seconds. And the East Pier white light flashed twice every fifteen seconds. And the red Poolbeg light occulted twice every twenty seconds. He stood and watched the
lights repeat and repeat and repeat, then turned and went into the kitchen. He ran the glass under the cold tap and left it to dry. He closed the album and walked down the corridor to the bathroom.
He splashed water on his face and cleaned his teeth thoroughly. He’d phone Sally Spencer in the morning. He wanted to know more about the suicide note. He undressed and got into bed. The
words from the song ran round in his head and he hummed the tune. Then he lay on his side and slept.

The Kish light flashes twice, every thirty seconds. The Baily to the north is also white and flashes once every twenty seconds. The West Pier in Dun Laoghaire gives three green
flashes every seven point five seconds and the light on the East Pier is white and flashes twice every fifteen seconds. And the Poolbeg? The Poolbeg is occulted, red, twice, every twenty seconds.
‘Occulted’. Now that was a word she hadn’t thought of or used for years. In the context of lighthouses it meant that it was a constant light, but it darkened or
‘occulted’ at pre-determined intervals. Is that what I am now? she thought, as she stood at the front window and watched the lights from the lighthouses in the bay. I am occulted, I am
darkened by my acts. And how can I bring myself out into the light again?

She turned away. She opened the front door. It was still warm outside, but she shivered as she pulled on her jacket. She checked the pockets. Keys, purse, phone. She pulled the door closed
behind her and walked down the steps. She needed to fill her lungs with air. Breathe the saltiness of the sea deep inside her body. She wouldn’t be able to do it for much longer. She had to
make the most of it while she could. She walked quickly along the road and past the Martello tower. Then she ran down the stone ramp towards the sea.

McLoughlin stood outside the small terraced house just off Ranelagh Road. Marina Spencer had lived here for the last year and a half, so her mother said. He put the Chubb key
into the lock and tried to turn it. It resisted, and for a moment he thought it had jammed. He half turned it backwards, then tried again. This time it engaged fully and the barrels of the lock
clicked. He pulled out the key and selected the Yale from the bunch in his hand. He slotted it into place. It turned smoothly. He pushed the door and it opened, the hinges squeaking. The sound set
his teeth on edge. He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.

‘I’ll give you her keys.’ Sally Spencer had taken the bunch from a large brown leather bag. ‘These are for the house. This is the car. I suppose these
must be for her office. I don’t know about the rest.’ She held out the bag to him. ‘Maybe you should take this too. It’s got nearly all of Marina’s life in it.’
She shook it for effect. ‘Her passport, driving licence, purse, cards, phone. Bills to be paid, bills paid, shopping lists. Make-up bag, hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste. Letters, photos,
diary, you name it.’

‘Did the guards give it to you?’ McLoughlin hefted it in his hand.

‘Yes, eventually. After they’d finished with their tests.’

‘It wasn’t in the lake?’ He turned it over, noticed its scratches and blemishes.

‘No, it was found in the house. It was under a bed, apparently.’ Sally’s mouth trembled. ‘You will go there, won’t you? You’ll want to see exactly where she
was found.’

‘Yes, I will, but first things first. I want to see her computer. And tell me about the note. The suicide note. Where was it found?’

‘In the bag. But it wasn’t a note.’ Sally faced him again. ‘It was a scrap of paper, a few words.’

‘So you saw it? Was it handwritten?’

‘They showed it to me. Kind of. They had it in a plastic bag.’

‘An evidence bag?’

‘Yes, that’s right. An evidence bag. It wasn’t handwritten, it was typed. Well, computer-written, not typed, strictly speaking. And it didn’t ring true. It didn’t
sound like Marina.’

‘What did it sound like? What did it say?’ McLoughlin tried to modify his voice so she wouldn’t feel he was interrogating her.

She shrugged. ‘Something about her begging me for forgiveness. How if I couldn’t forgive her now maybe in the next.’

‘The next?’

‘Just the next. They seemed to think she meant the next life. But it’s ridiculous. Marina was the most thoroughgoing atheist I ever met. She wasn’t an agnostic. She had no
doubt. She did not believe in an afterlife. We talked about it often. Even when her father died, when she was six, and I tried to soften it by telling her he was with God and the angels. Even then
she looked at me as if I was mad. Marina was many things but she wasn’t a hypocrite.’

McLoughlin didn’t respond. There was no point in hurting her any more. But he remembered the many lectures about suicide he’d sat through. There was a standard form of suicide note.
It was common to ask for forgiveness. It was usual to refer to the life to come. The frame of mind, the mental state, whatever you wanted to call it, that allowed the idea of suicide to take hold
changed the person in the most fundamental way.

‘You know, Sally, I’ve said I’ll look into this. I don’t have too much time. I’m supposed to be heading off to France in a week or so. But I have to say to you
again, if the guards think Marina killed herself, then you can be sure she did. They don’t make decisions like that on a whim.’

‘I know, I know, I know all that.’ Her anger and impatience were making McLoughlin nervous. ‘I know the state pathologist did the post-mortem. I know he said that it was
consistent with accidental death or suicide. I know all that. I just don’t believe it. Look,’ she held up her hands, ‘consider this. The week after Marina supposedly killed
herself I got a call from one of her neighbours. A delivery-man was at the door. He had a new fridge-freezer that she’d ordered three days before she died. Now, explain that to me. If you
were suicidal would you be ordering fridges? Would you?’ She was shouting now. Repeating the words over and over again.

He waited for her to finish. Then he picked up the bag. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

The little dog stood up and wagged its tail expectantly. Its brown, button-shaped eyes looked towards its lead hanging from a hook behind the door. Sally grasped its collar. She nodded dumbly in
McLoughlin’s direction and sank back down on the sofa. He could see she was exhausted. She’d had enough for one day. He reckoned she’d be asleep before he’d driven down the
lane and out on to the main road. Sleep was good. Sleep was healing. And as for the new fridge-freezer, he’d heard variations on that story many times. New sofas ordered. Holidays booked.
Tickets to see the Rolling Stones in Rio. They were all part of the terrible mystery of suicide.

The fridge-freezer was jammed into the small entrance hall. It was still in all its polystyrene packing. McLoughlin didn’t know much about white goods, but this was an
expensive brand. Stainless steel. A classy number. He pushed past and into the sunny, open-plan kitchen. It was all classy. Lots more stainless steel. A rail suspended from the ceiling with pots
hanging from it. There were the usual touches of the twenty-first century. Eye-level oven, ceramic hob, island with a round stainless-steel bowl and a tap curved like a tightly held archer’s
bow. A glass door gave on to a small decked patio. There was a key in the lock. He turned it and stepped outside. It was a real sun-trap. Mica sparkled in the granite garden walls and heat radiated
up from the faded wood. There were herbs planted in large terracotta pots. A miniature bay tree, and the feathery fronds of bronze fennel. Oregano and thyme. A large fragrant rosemary bush, and a
few smaller pots with the pink tufted flowers of chives, and a couple of mint varieties. He reached down and checked the soil. It felt cool and damp. Someone must be coming in to water, he thought.
He glanced around. The patio was overlooked on all sides, but there was no sign of life in any of the windows.

He moved back inside and locked the kitchen door. He walked towards the front of the house and into the sitting room. It was simply furnished with a wooden floor and a black leather sofa. Above
the small cast-iron fireplace a large abstract painting glowed in reds, oranges and yellows. The coffee-table had a pile of glossy magazines. McLoughlin sat down. The sofa cushions gave way beneath
his bulk with a gentle sigh. He flicked through the magazines. Some had pages marked, notes scribbled in pencil in the margins, and one had scraps of different-coloured fabrics pinned to an article
about a new range of paint colours. He replaced the magazines in a neat pile. There were no books, no photographs, nothing personal in this room. It was clean and tidy, like the kitchen, but it
could have belonged to anyone.

He stood up and went back out into the hall. He climbed the steep stairs. Ahead was a bathroom, as smart and stylish as the kitchen. Next door was a small bedroom. A large bed took up most of
the space and the rest was filled with a mirrored wall of fitted cupboards. McLoughlin slid back the door. Clothes hung from a rail. Beneath them shoes were neatly stacked. A long row of drawers
contained underwear, T-shirts, sweaters and a collection of scarves and gloves. Everything was neat and orderly. He searched through the clothes, feeling inside pockets. But there was nothing of
any consequence. A couple of scrunched-up tissues. A bus ticket. A few coins. He slid back the mirrored door. He scrutinized himself. He needed a haircut. He didn’t like to let his hair get
too long on top. It made him look as if he was trying to cover up his gradually increasing baldness.

He walked out of the bedroom and through the other door on the landing. Now, this was more like it, he thought. A workroom or study. A desk covered with papers, books, and a couple of mugs, the
dried-out dregs of coffee staining them inside. And, in pride of place, a large Apple screen. He sat at the desk. He reached for the power button and pressed it firmly. He waited for the hum, the
familiar clicks and purrs and the machine’s gradual return to life. The walls of this room were covered with pictures, some torn from magazines, others photographs. There was a collage of
family snaps. He recognized a young Sally, petite and blonde with a turned-up nose and very blue eyes, and a child who was obviously Marina. And a handsome man, with Marina’s eyes and
cheekbones and her wide smile. What was it Sally had said? That Marina was six when her father died? They looked so happy together. But McLoughlin knew to be sceptical. How many family photos show
anything other than the good days? he wondered. In all the houses he’d visited he couldn’t remember ever coming across a family photograph that showed anything less than happiness. It
was as if the camera acted as a tool of transformation, an alchemy for converting misery to joy, despair to hope.

He leaned closer to the wall and examined the photographs more carefully. They showed different scenes from around the same period. Marina seemed to be three or so. Her brother was a baby. The
photos had been taken in different locations – a garden, somewhere by the sea, and others on a boat. She was variously holding the tiller, hauling on a sheet, and there were a couple in which
she and her brother were sitting on the bow, their legs trailing over the side. In all of them she was wearing a life-jacket, one of the old-fashioned uncomfortable types with a stiff collar that
supported the neck and head.

He turned away from the wall and pulled open the desk drawers. They were crammed with notebooks, sketchbooks, boxes of charcoal and pastels, all kinds of pens and pencils and small bottles of
coloured inks. He was rummaging through them as the computer screen brightened and came to life. The blue Apple background was covered with folders. They all seemed to be work-related. He opened
them in turn. Drawings and photographs, estimates, records of work completed, copies of invoices. She was doing well. Making money. He closed the files and scanned the folders again. One had the
title ‘my stuff’. He clicked it open. It contained five emails. He opened them, one after another. The sender names looked like the senders of Spam. Made-up user-names. Each had nothing
in the subject line. He read down through them. Each had just one sentence. ‘I SAW YOU’. The three words were in huge capital letters. He read them out loud: ‘I saw you.’
That was all. Three words. Nothing more. He opened the other folders again. Quickly, but systematically, working through the files. But there was nothing else that wasn’t work-related. He sat
back on the chair, then pressed the ‘print’ icon. The emails slid on to the floor. He picked them up, folded them in half, then in half again, and put them into his inside pocket. He
closed the computer down and switched it off. He was hungry. It must be nearly lunchtime. He walked downstairs and opened the front door. He stepped out into the sunshine and reached into his
pocket for the bunch of keys.

He walked away from the house. Somehow his appetite had disappeared. He pulled out his phone and flicked down through the names. He pressed the call button.

‘Hi, Johnny. How’s the voice? Better than the head, I hope.’ He paused. ‘Listen, can you do something for me? Marina Spencer – do you remember the name? Can I call
in this afternoon? You owe me a favour after your performance the other night and I’m coming to collect. See you later.’

Johnny would sort it out. Separate the dross from the pure gold. Sieve out the speculation and leave the facts for all to see. So there could be no doubt when he faced Marina’s mother
again. There could be no doubt at all.