Last Kiss (33 page)

‘Who’s doing the asking?’ he bellowed.

They followed Lyons into the makeshift kitchen.

‘I’m Detective Mark Lynch, and this is Dr Kate Pearson.’

‘What do you want with me?’

‘We need to talk to you about two of your ex-pupils,’ Lynch continued.

The old man let out a sigh. ‘Which two?’

‘Alice Thompson and Sandra Regan – you would have known Sandra by her maiden name of Connolly.’

Kate thought she detected sadness in the old man’s eyes. He remembered them, all right.

‘That was a long time ago.’ He pulled out the one chair at the table, sat down and folded his arms.

‘Maybe so,’ Lynch replied, ‘but it’s important that you tell us what you know of them.’

‘I know an awful lot. I’m an old man, and I’ve acquired a great deal of knowledge over the years … but wisdom is far greater than knowledge. It took me a while to learn that.’ His eyes were fixed on Lynch.

‘Barry … is it okay to call you Barry?’ Kate ventured.

‘That’s my name, isn’t it?’

‘Barry, you knew both girls from the age of four, is that right?’

‘That’s correct, and I taught them for two years running, between the ages of six and seven.’

‘You’ve a very good memory.’ She smiled. ‘Can you tell us if they were happy girls?’ She walked over to the table, squatting on the wood chippings, in the absence of any other seating.

‘The two of them were close, I can tell you that.’ He pointed to the window opposite, looking out to the forest. ‘They were always playing out there, more at home in the woods than anywhere else.’

‘Were they intelligent? Were they talkative?’

‘They were extremely intelligent, Sandra particularly so. Mathematically, they were each beyond their years. That’s always a good indicator of IQ. Sandra was the quieter of the two.’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes I wondered if she was taking the information in at all, but she always did well in the end-of-term tests. I guess being quiet doesn’t mean you’re not listening.’

‘What about the girls’ parents?’ Kate watched for his reaction. This time his eyes looked angry.

‘I didn’t teach the parents, only the children.’ His tone was notably hostile too.

Kate let it go. ‘What you said about them being more at home in the woods than anywhere else, did you think they were running away from something, or someone?’

For the first time, he unfolded his arms, tapping the table with the fingers of his right hand. ‘Sandra’s mother – or, rather, her grandmother – was a cold fish. Her harshness came from somewhere rotten.’ He emphasised the last word. ‘I doubt the child was ever hugged or praised, or received a kind word from that woman. Alice’s mother was a drinker. Her parents led a
somewhat bohemian lifestyle. Most folks around here put them down as eccentric, but it was borderline abandonment, if you ask me. The girls learned to fend for themselves. Although they were different, they were equally desperate. I guess desperation and fear can make the strangest partnerships.’

‘Did you report either set of parents to Social Services?’ Lynch asked flatly.

Barry Lyons gave him another sharp look. ‘A lot has changed in this country in thirty years. When those two girls were children, an alcoholic mother was tolerated, and an unloving one was far too common. They were fed, dressed and sent to school. They got on with their education. That was enough for folk not to meddle. As I said, I had a lot of knowledge, but not so much wisdom …’ He trailed off.

Kate wasn’t sure how her next question would go down, but decided to forge ahead. ‘Did you ever think that either of the girls had been abused?’

Instead of the hostile look he had given Lynch, sadness was again etched across his face. ‘Yes,’ he replied, breathing deeply. ‘I’ve thought about that over the years, and not only in relation to those two girls. Back then, we only ever saw what we wanted to see. As I said, it was a different time.’ His voice rose. ‘Some people think it was a time of innocence,’ he spat on the floor, ‘but it wasn’t. Ignorance, selective or otherwise, was the mantra of the day.’

‘You said they were always in the woods.’ Kate needed him to stay on-side. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Even before I retired, I found the woods a place of solace. I would be out walking, and at varying times I’d come across the
girls. They would be up to some childhood mischief or other. Later, before they moved to secondary school, I saw them less, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.’

‘Did they hang out anywhere in particular?’

‘They had a few favourite spots. I would often catch the two of them smoking, or lighting fires to stay out late at night.’ His voice lowered again, as he looked out towards the forest. ‘There was something almost bewitching about them.’

‘How do you mean?’ Lynch asked, leaning against the back door.

‘Although they were physically different, you could tell they had a certain quality that would attract others, especially men. The last time I saw them together in the woods was a month before they moved to secondary.’

‘That last day,’ Kate asked, ‘what were they doing?’

He didn’t answer immediately, looking away from the forest to the floor where Kate sat. ‘As far as I remember, they were messing around with cards, not your regular kind but those Tarot cards, the cards of the devil. I had seen them with them before, but there was something different that afternoon.’

‘What?’ Lynch pushed.

‘It was the concentration on their young faces, their enthusiastic glances to each other, almost as if they believed the cards had answers. I remember …’ he scratched his head ‘… they had this large red cloth laid out on a flat boulder. There was a fire crackling to their side, as they each took a turn picking a card from the deck and turning it upwards. They looked at one another almost as if there was no need for words.’

‘Did you approach them?’ Kate asked, keeping her tone gentle.

‘No, but I kept watching. Something stopped me going over. I can’t be sure what, but I do know that at one point one of them looked at me. Maybe she heard something, but either way, they stood up, gathering the cards. Then they picked up the red cloth, each of them holding a side. The wind bellied the cloth as they ran. It was like …’

‘Like what?’ Kate asked.

‘Both of them were so slight,’ he whispered. ‘The further they moved away from me, their bodies got more lost among the trees, the red cloth looking as if it was flying magically within the green of the forest, as if somehow I’d been put under a spell.’

‘THAT GUY WAS a right crackpot, wasn’t he?’ Lynch turned the key in the ignition.

Kate waited while he reversed the car, the tyres getting stuck in the mud, before accelerating forward. Then she said, ‘He’s cut himself off from reality, Mark, but Barry Lyons didn’t spend his adult life working with children not to recognise a strong bond, and the Tarot cards are another concrete link. Whatever partnership was struck up between Alice and Sandra, it was strong, and friendships formed during this critical stage in development are unlike those formed in later life.’

‘The Tarot cards are a link, but so far, Kate, everything we have is circumstantial.’

‘The background story fits – potential abuse, two young girls allowed to roam the forest alone, questionable family structures, each of them in Paris at the time of Pierre Laurent’s murder, no definitive knowledge of their whereabouts when Michele Pinzini was killed, and what we got from Barry Lyons about the Tarot means both girls at least experimented with darker themes. People turn to the occult and the Tarot when other forms of belief fail them.’

‘You’re talking conventional religion?’

‘You saw St Kevin’s Church on the drive to Barry Lyons’s place. It had almost a fairy-tale setting, but in the past, like many similar structures, it was a formidable force in community life. It doesn’t sound to me like the community did very much for either Sandra or Alice.’

‘Let’s call to Billy Meagher, the retired postman, next. His house is closest. We should be there in five minutes.’

Kate opened her holdall and pulled out the case file, flicking through her notes.

‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.

‘It’s something Sandra said about Pierre Laurent’s face. She said it reminded her of her father’s, that he had the same eyes, full of love.’

‘So?’

‘We already know Sandra Connolly never knew her father.’

‘She could have been talking about the grandfather, the surrogate replacement.’

‘Or she could have imagined someone else to be her father, a fantasy figure, an image she clung to when there was little else.’

As they pulled into the centre of town, Lynch’s phone rang. ‘Hold on a second, Kate. I need to take this. It’s the chief super.’

Kate listened to his side of the conversation.

‘Hi, Boss, what’s up? … Yeah, we’re making progress. We’ve spoken to the ex-principal of the national school. He’s confirmed what we got from James Gammon about questionable family set-ups and the two girls being close. It seems they practically reared themselves. We’ve also established a link with the Tarot cards. Dr Pearson thinks it’s important … I don’t think that’s necessary, Boss. I’ve plenty on the team who can take care of that.’

Kate watched Lynch’s expression change from upbeat to defensive, then to annoyance. Whatever the chief super was suggesting, it wasn’t something he favoured.

‘Well?’ she asked, when he finished the call.

He took a deep breath, locking the steering wheel with unnecessary force. ‘He’s bringing O’Connor back in.’

‘How come?’ Kate kept her voice deadpan.

‘The chief super wants him to take over the enquiries into Alice Thompson’s parents and Sandra Regan’s grandparents. He also wants him to find Sandra’s natural mother. He’s of the mind that O’Connor is very good at finding missing needles in haystacks. He’s officially back on the team, but with instructions to keep a low profile.’

Lynch stepped out of the car and slammed the door. Kate decided to let it go, but wondered for the first time, if, perhaps, Mark Lynch might have been the one to leak the story to the press.

GOOD OLD EDGAR wants to tell the police. He thinks it’s the best way forward. He wants poor, stupid, pathetic Sandra to get help, to become the woman he fell in love with. If he wasn’t so blind, some might think him loyal. People with tunnel vision are ill-equipped to understand their own reality, let alone someone else’s. I can’t let him go to the police. It would ruin everything.

I don’t despise him, but life is transient, in the same way that photographic images fade over time, becoming fugitives of what went before.

The silence of the studio is soothing, with him off on his little errand. He says he’s doing all this for the best, but do you think
that if the police hadn’t ruffled him, he would have kept quiet? I dare say he would. People always do things for a reason. He’s looking for a way to ease the terrible burden he’s carrying. I don’t care any more. Alice brushed me off earlier when I mentioned going back to the woods. I will phone her again, knowing I can make her listen. It’s time for us to talk straight to one another. There will be no more hiding behind lies.

BILLY MEAGHER’S HOUSE was in the centre of town. The street sloped down towards a row of shops, a grocer’s, a newsagent’s, a hair salon, and one of half a dozen local pubs. Each house was pebble-dashed to the front and painted a different colour. The ex-postman’s house was a watery shade of blue. Lynch had phoned ahead, so that by the time they arrived, the kettle was boiled and a plate of assorted biscuits lay on the kitchen table. From Lynch’s face, he wasn’t in the mood for tea after his conversation with the chief super.

‘You’ll both have a cuppa, then?’ Billy asked, more as a statement than a question.

Kate figured she would have to supply the goodwill for both
of them. Lynch took his cue from her: despite his bad mood, he knew he’d get nothing out of Billy Meagher if the ritual of tea-sharing was declined.

‘Are you retired long?’ Kate asked.

‘A couple of years – I got out when the going was good. The country’s going downhill, there’s nothing surer.’

‘You live alone, then?’

‘I do, Miss. It suits me well. Only me and Rocky here.’ He leaned down to pat a collie’s head. ‘Rocky’s nearly as old as myself, if you count his time in dog years. Great company, though – I’d be lost without him.’

Lynch put down his tea. ‘Billy, we’re hoping you can tell us about the Thompson and Connolly families, especially Alice and Sandra.’

‘Yeah, I knew them. What do you want to know?’

‘Anything you can tell us.’

‘They lived here, they left, and most people were glad to see them go.’

‘Why?’ Lynch gulped some tea.

‘Some folk are queer. None of them were friendly, like. It’s a tight community, this.’

‘Can you be more specific?’ The edge in Lynch’s voice revealed his tetchiness.

‘What Mark is getting at, Billy,’ Kate added, ‘is that you must have seen your fair share of odd stuff over the years. I’d say you’re a very observant man.’