Last Kiss (35 page)

Mark Lynch went quiet.

‘What is it?’ Kate asked, seeing the look on his face.

‘He says Sandra’s full name is Cassandra.’

‘The tag name – Cassie is short for Cassandra, Cassie4Casanova. It’s the link – why didn’t any of us think of it before?’

‘I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care.’ Kate sensed heightened determination driving him now. ‘O’Connor, pull in Alice Thompson and press whatever buttons you need to but get her talking. It turns out her friend had sex with Alice’s daddy when she was a teenager, not exactly something a good friend should do.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘As far as Alice Thompson is concerned, we are.’

‘What about Edgar and Sandra Regan?’

‘We’ll hold off on them for now, O’Connor. When we bring them in, I want to be able to hit them hard.’

‘You’re taking a risk waiting. I’d discuss that with Kate if I were you.’

‘Well, you’re not me. Get talking to the Thompson woman and let me know as soon as you have anything.’ Hanging up, he handed the phone to Kate. ‘I guess you got the gist of that?’

‘Thomas, Cynthia and Ellen Connolly are all unaccounted for?’

‘Exactly.’ He stared ahead of him.

‘There’s one other thing we can be certain of, Mark.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If Sandra is connected to her grandparents’ disappearance, we can at least assume she isn’t responsible for the disappearance of her mother.’

‘As you said yourself, Kate, secrets have their own complicated path, and you’re not always sure who’s keeping them from you.’

‘You’ll be questioning Sandra and Edgar, I assume.’

‘Not yet. We’ve a link with the name, but not a hell of a lot else.’ He stood up. ‘Come on. Let’s get this conversation with Lily Bright out of the way.’

‘I guess we won’t be eating these,’ Kate said, as the barman placed the toasted sandwiches on the table.

‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost my appetite.’

I’VE SET UP the studio for another self-portrait before Edgar comes back. I know I won’t be returning here. There’s no need for Sandra any more – my lesser self. I’ve always known of her existence, even though she has been unaware of mine. She has made limited attempts at keeping a diary, but half pictures are never any good. The reason I’ve seen more than her is because I’m prepared to face the dark. Cowards are best taken out of their misery.

Remember the road through the woods that can’t be seen, hidden by time past, disguised? I still see it, every evil twist and turn of it. It’s etched onto my wall of memory, which is why
I’m
the keeper, not her.

It’s time to phone Alice.

‘Alice,’ I say, fretful, like Sandra might be, ‘I need you to do something for me.’

‘What?’

I’m not surprised she doesn’t sound like her usual cool self. ‘I need you to pick another card.’

‘Sandra, we’re not children now. This is nonsense.’ Her words drift into anger.

‘Humour me,’ I reply, trying not to sound patronising. ‘Remember how we used to take turns?’

‘You know the police have been asking questions?’

‘Don’t worry about them. Pick the card.’

‘Sandra …’

‘Don’t have me ask you again. Even if you don’t want to play the game, I still do.’

‘Thirteen from the top,’ she says, then lets out an exasperated sigh. ‘Sandra, you must know you need help.’

‘Edgar is going to give me all the help I require.’

‘Good. That’s good.’

‘Oh, and, Alice …’

‘Yes?’

‘I meant what I said earlier, I am going back to the woods.’

‘I told you, that’s futile.’

‘You never understood, Alice, did you?’

‘I understood it was a game.’

‘It was more than a game.’

I hang up the phone, spreading the Tarot cards out like a fan on the floor, picking the one that’s thirteen from the top. I’m satisfied with the result. It’s the Death card again. The one I
picked when the witch and her huntsman died. Some might find the black skeleton ominous, surrounded by the dead and dying. They fail to understand the importance of the sickle he carries in his hand, emblazoned with the white flower from the crashing towers of the moon, the sun rising behind. It’s the ending of a cycle. The spread makes sense now. We’re back to the beginning, ready to renew.

Despite our friendship, I know my betrayal has forged an invisible wedge between Alice and me. She never guessed. But then again, how could she know I wanted her father for myself? She has always been far too possessive of me, criticising all my relationships. That day in the woods, when I took him for myself, I returned later to the spot where we had made love. I stood in the high grasses, my shadow covering the ground on which he entered me, hard and wanting. His whimpering afterwards I took as a good sign.

Shadows are tricky things, you know. When you paint, you want to capture them, but depending on how long you’re standing there, the shadows move. If you catch them in a photograph, you trap them in that space. They’re forced to be still. I took the self-portrait of my shadow hovering above the high grasses using a Polaroid camera. Once it was solidified in time and space, the slut of a girl, with her red tartan skirt pulled up high, was left behind. I could move on.

I can hear Edgar returning. Everything is perfect now. This time the shadows will be multiplied. I have every mirror we possess in the studio, facing different directions, my reflection repeated in each one. The lights are angled well, creating a tapestry of form. Before he arrives, I hold the camera, smiling
beneath the lens, facing the largest mirror, seeing myself looking at me, capturing the many multiples of self.

‘Sandra, are you okay?’ I hear Edgar’s stifling words from the hallway.

‘I won’t be long, darling,’ I reply, clicking the button, before glancing at the Death card, strategically positioned on the floor, completing the perfect picture.

LILY BRIGHT WAS a fit and healthy woman, despite her advanced years. She had the kind of pep in her step, thought Kate, which had probably defined her throughout her adult life. Less than five feet tall, slight of frame, with permed white-grey hair, and a dress code that would have fitted well on a sixties cover of
Woman’s Way
, the ex-postmistress was the quintessential respectable spinster about town. To the front of her house, an old bicycle was parked, with a small wicker basket for groceries, and a note stuck to the letterbox, saying, ‘No junk mail’.

‘No tea for us,’ Lynch jumped in, as Lily went to fill the kettle.

‘Very well.’ She ushered them to seats at the kitchen table, which was covered with a polka-dot tablecloth in cream and luminous yellow. ‘I hear you want to talk to me about the Connolly family.’ Her voice was croaky, but clear.

‘News travels fast around here,’ Lynch replied, his words light-hearted and mildly condescending, almost as if Lily Bright’s eighty years warranted positive discrimination.

She picked up on it immediately. ‘There’s no need to patronise me. I’ve been using the telephone for more years than you’ve been on this earth.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘No need to apologise, just get on with asking your questions. I have a busy afternoon ahead of me.’

‘Very well, Lily. Why don’t you start by telling us what was unusual about the Connollys’ mail? I hear it caused you some bother.’

‘A nuisance it was, the two of them going off like that, and that insolent granddaughter of theirs wasn’t much help. I mean, at their age, you’d have imagined they’d look after things properly, paid the postal redirection fee, and I wouldn’t have been left to pick up the pieces.’

‘How did you pick up the pieces?’ Kate asked.

‘Well, I knew they weren’t in the town any more, and her ladyship, their granddaughter, said they wouldn’t be back. I mean, it wasn’t right that she was receiving their mail, and I told her that, yet she point-blank refused to sort it out.’

‘What happened then?’ Lynch adopted a no-nonsense tone.

‘The mail eventually stopped. I assume whoever was sending
it got the information about their new details, even though they were never shared with me.’

Kate could see the woman took this as an affront to her position as postmistress of the town. ‘Lily, you described Sandra Connolly as insolent. That seems at odds with the character description we’ve received from others.’

‘Well,’ Lily puckered her lips, ‘that might be because you’ve only talked to men.’

‘We’ve spoken to Billy Meagher and Barry Lyons,’ Kate told her.

‘Barry?’ Lily’s smile looked far too satisfied for Kate not to ask why.

‘You don’t trust Barry’s assessment, then?’

‘Let’s just say the two of them were friendly. I’m not one for spreading rumours, but I do believe in calling a spade a spade.’

THE FOREST FLOOR has seen it all, fury and attack, secrets and lies, sex, birth and death. Edgar thinks I’m bringing him to the woods because I need time to think. He isn’t totally wrong. He still believes he’s saving me, but he has no idea how many people I’ve killed, or that he will be next. I contemplate the serious look on his face as our car speeds along the road, him trying to make good time, not realising each forward movement takes us closer to the end game. It will be dark by the time we reach the old house. He has insisted on taking firewood, and heavy blankets to keep us warm, a quaint touch but it caused me to wonder.

I’ve always been fascinated by fire, even before I knew the
witch had burned Ellen. Flames are fierce and free, their rich colour tempting and dangerous. Have you ever heard the roar of a wild fire? The crackle, spit and power are intoxicating. I smile across at Edgar. He takes it as a reassuring sign.

I’ve decided I won’t tell him the why. He fell in love with two women, the vulnerable and soft Sandra, and the alluring, tempting Cassie. His pathetic desire to bring Sandra back is the most despicable betrayal of all.

The woods are not far now. Soon, I will be home.

AFTER TALKING WITH Lily Bright, Mark and Kate had no choice but to head back to Barry Lyons’s place. They had no guarantees he would be there. The late-afternoon sun blinded them, as Mark negotiated the narrow country roads.

‘I didn’t take Barry Lyons for a paedophile, Kate. I mean that’s what Lily Bright alluded to, wasn’t it?’

‘Me neither, but if Barry Lyons had a sexual relationship with Sandra, it’s all part of her behaviour pattern. The sex was a tool at her disposal, one she quickly learned worked well with men.’

‘I’ve sent a surveillance team to the Regans’ house, by the way.’

‘When did you do that?’

‘While I was waiting for you outside Lily Bright’s – what did you go back in to ask her?’

‘I wanted her opinion on Cynthia Connolly.’

‘And?’

‘Lily also knew Cynthia’s mother – like mother, like daughter, was how she described them, both hard and miserable. Cynthia’s mother died when she was five. She was brought up by her father. Some believed their relationship wasn’t healthy.’

‘Incest, you mean?’

‘That’s not all. She was pregnant when she married Thomas Connolly – another symptom of abuse, and not unusual for it to be handed down from one generation to the next.’

‘So Ellen, Sandra’s mother, was potentially the result of inbreeding.’

‘Who can say for sure? But Lily said there was always something not right about Ellen. The description she used was “soft in the head”.’

‘It could explain her disappearance?’

‘This case, Mark, is rife with cruelty, one act of badness loaded onto the back of another.’

He slowed the car as they neared the cabin.

‘Hold on a second,’ Kate said. ‘I want to check something before we go inside.’

‘What?’

‘I want to review the sketch of Pierre Laurent’s face again. Something’s still bothering me about it.’

She focused on the eyes in the abstract image of Pierre.

‘What is it?’ Lynch asked, turning off the engine.

‘I wasn’t sure, at least not at first.’

Both of them looked up, seeing Barry Lyons step out of the cabin, his hands on his forehead blocking the sun from his eyes.

‘Mark?’ she said, looking back at the sketch.

‘What?’

‘Look at the eyes. They belong to Barry Lyons.’

‘Right. Let’s get some answers.’

The look on the retired teacher’s face was of resignation rather than surprise.

‘We’ve a few more questions for you, Barry,’ Lynch said, loud and accusing.

‘Best come inside, so.’

All three of them walked into the tumbledown cabin. If anything, Kate thought, it looked even more dismal with the sun shooting in from outside.

They remained standing while Barry took the seat he had occupied a couple of hours earlier.

‘I don’t think you’ve been completely honest with us, Barry,’ Lynch continued, in the same tone he had used outside.

‘How’s that?’

‘We understand you were a lot closer to Sandra Connolly than you led us to believe.’

‘I never said I didn’t care for the girl.’