Only We Know (6 page)

‘Do you think he’s dead,
Reilly?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Murder?’

He shrugs. ‘There was a rumour about
him some years back, that he smashed up a hotel room.’

‘I never heard it.’

‘It was hushed
up.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Nothing, really. The guy got drunk,
went a bit berserk and totted up a massive bill.’

‘Was anyone else involved?’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re saying he has a
self-destructive streak?’

‘What do I know, Katie? Often these
things amount to nothing. They were at a party, right? So maybe the wife went to bed and
he fell over and smashed a glass coffee-table or what-not, gave himself a nasty gash in
the process but was so drunk he barely felt it, then decided in the wisdom of his
inebriation that he’d be best off taking himself elsewhere before herself woke up
and saw the mess. He could at this very moment be happily bleeding out on the floor of
some whorehouse in the city.’

‘Perhaps,’ I say flatly, staring
out the window.

It’s been a while since I’ve
been out in this neck of the woods, and the place feels kind of sleepy this morning as
the car noses around sharp bends through narrow streets. A misty drizzle is coming in
off the bay although there is a little heat still in the air, making it muggy and close.
I take in the tall walls and heavy gates with intercoms that line both sides of the
road, the houses tucked away from prying eyes. The place seems so snug and safe, that it
seems hard to imagine any kind of violence happening behind the closed doors – no
domestic nightmares, no fists raised, no black dogs rubbing against walls done in
expensive paint.

Reilly pulls up outside the house where a
small scrum has formed. I can pick out at least three hacks I recognize.
Magnolias in full bloom flank the gate, and behind it, a
short distance from the road, sits a glass and concrete monstrosity. Massive windows,
black frames around reflective glass, white walls dazzling, despite the grey
weather.

‘No sign of the weeping widow
then,’ Reilly says, peering out through the windscreen.

For a moment, we stare up at the mansion,
and for the first time since this started, I think about the scene inside that house:
the plush carpet splattered with blood, the broken glass, the terror …

‘You all set?’

I nod, but the truth is I feel like shit.
Coffee has made my stomach churn and my eyes are dry from lack of sleep. The thought of
violence has left me feeling queasy.

‘Thanks for the lift, Reilly,’ I
say, leaning across to plant a kiss on his bristly cheek before collecting myself into
some semblance of professionalism and sliding out of the seat.

I join the others at the gate, where a burly
guy with a neck like a rhino’s is holding up his hands and imploring those
gathered there to disband and give Mrs Yates some privacy. He has broad shoulders and a
cool-eyed, strong-jawed appearance. Dealing with all the pestering queries looks like a
penance to him. The questions are all the same:
Has Luke Yates been found yet?
What’s the story with his missus? Is it true the place is awash with
blood?
(This from the tabloid hack, always on the sniff for gore.) After a
while, he stops answering, closes the gate behind him and withdraws to the house. The
rain gets heavier, and some of the rubberneckers peel away, the hacks too. I’m
considering whether it’s worth my while to knock on the doors of
the neighbouring fortresses in search of anything worth
printing, but the high walls bristling with security cameras tell me to save my shoe
leather.

Reilly has gone, so the logical thing is to
catch a train back into the city, yet I feel the desire to linger for a while. I walk
through the rain to the strip of beach that runs along the backs of the houses. I have
no hood, no umbrella, but the rain is not heavy and the air is warm, and the quiet hush
of the sea calms me, settling my troubled mind.

The weather was much like this the last time
I saw Nick, a year ago. A grey day in Dublin, a crowd of mourners spilling out of a
church, flecks of rain falling. Luke and Julia were standing on the church steps to
greet us as if it was their wedding we’d just attended, not Sally’s funeral.
And there was Nick, some way off, standing with his hands in his pockets next to the
hearse, listening to the conversation of an older man I didn’t recognize. There
was something so forlorn about him, but when I stepped towards him and he raised his
head, he looked at me as if I was someone he didn’t know who had just walked in on
something private. I stopped, and something about his expression changed, a warning
sharpening his stare that seemed to say,
Not now, not here, with all these people
around us
. So I turned away, feeling let down and somehow ashamed, which was
stupid, I know, given the circumstances – his adored mother was lying dead in the
hearse, after all. ‘You’ll come to the grave?’ Luke had said, clasping
my hand in both of his. ‘And back to the house afterwards?’ But after the
look Nick had given me, I couldn’t. Too cowardly to face him.

The wind whips at my hair and I feel the
rain on my
face. My legs ache as I trudge
through the sand and I resolve to walk past the last house, then turn back, but before I
reach that point I see her.

A small figure perched on a rock, watching
me. Grey jeans and flip-flops, the hood of her parka pulled over her head, but I
recognize her and, for just an instant, I hesitate before approaching her. The wind
draws a thin line of cigarette smoke from her mouth, her eyes fixed on me as I get
close.

‘The vultures circle,’ she says,
her voice glacial.

‘Julia.’

‘Come to pick over the spoils, have
we?’

I stop a couple of metres from her and
choose my words carefully. ‘I came because I was concerned, and because I care
about Luke.’

‘Do you indeed?’ Her voice sharp
with sarcasm.

‘Okay. So we’re not exactly
close, but there was a time when we were children, our families …’ Something about
the way she is watching me makes my words dry up.

Her eyes narrow as she puts her cigarette to
her lips and inhales. ‘You and those boys.’ Her voice is dead flat but I
feel the spike of an accusation.

Her eyes flicker over me, cool and
assessing, and I can’t help feeling self-conscious. Even now in the grip of her
anguish, Julia Yates remains the same well-groomed, sophisticated woman she was two
nights ago in the Morrison. Her feet are partially buried in the pale sand, toenails
peeking out – a vibrant red to match her fingertips – and strands of ash-blonde hair
escape from beneath her hood. But there is a tightness about her face now, her mouth
pinched into a grim line, and her face looks raw.
Her glittering charm has taken flight, leaving a cool
creature with narrowed eyes laden with suspicion.

‘When I saw you just now coming up the
beach, I felt a sudden flash of disappointment,’ she tells me. ‘You see, I
thought perhaps Luke was with you.’

Her eyes are unblinking. ‘I saw the
two of you together. At the Morrison. I saw you on the terrace, Katie Walsh, taking the
night air, and holding hands with my husband.’

A beat. My mouth is dry. The statement sits
heavily between us. She brings the cigarette to her lips again, waits.

I want to tell her that it wasn’t what
she thinks it was – but how can I explain it? How can I describe how it feels to be
bound to another person by something so awful that you have to put distance between you?
Still, I’m drawn to him because he is the one person who knows …

‘Look, Julia. Whatever you saw, there
was nothing going on between us. It was nostalgia, that’s all. A childhood
affection …’

She frowns and shakes her head, dismissing
what I said. ‘Oh, I don’t care. Really. Right now, I couldn’t give a
damn. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’ she says, giving a burst of dry laughter.
‘I’m at the stage now where I would almost be happy to hear that he was off
with some other woman, rather than what I’m imagining.’

‘What do the guards think?’ I
ask.

‘A couple of them came from Forensics
to take samples – fingerprints, carpet fibres.’ She enunciates each word clearly
with almost a trace of bitterness, and beneath her cool veneer I’m surprised to
glimpse a bubbling fury. ‘As for the detectives, they’re remaining
tight-lipped. Giving me the usual spiel – they’re following a couple of lines of
enquiry, keeping an open mind, blah, blah,
blah. They come here with their questions – just like you, I suppose – and draw their
own conclusions. Only, they have the decency to call to the front of the house,’
she adds pointedly. ‘They don’t come prowling around the back.’

‘I didn’t expect to find you
here, Julia. I wanted to get some fresh air before heading back to the
office.’

‘How lucky to stumble across me,
then.’ She smiles up at me but it’s an angry grimace that fades quickly.
Dropping her head, she looks about her at the rocks among which she is sitting and, her
voice quieter now, somewhat subdued, she says: ‘This is where I come for a sneaky
cigarette.’

Her softened tone encourages me a little, so
I move closer and perch on a rock near her.

‘We quit smoking, Luke and I. It was
our New Year’s resolution.’ Glancing down at the pack of Marlboro Lights in
her hand, she lets out a hollow laugh. ‘He’s better at it than I am. More
disciplined. So when I want to smoke, I come down here.’

‘He doesn’t know you
haven’t quit?’

Her eyes flash. ‘I can have my secrets
too.’

Something about the way she says it, guarded
yet provocative, pushes me to ask: ‘And Luke? Did he have secrets?’

She frowns again and turns towards the sea,
its grey-green flatness, so still and benign this morning. ‘I suppose. Luke is
quite protective of me. He likes to shield me from bad news. We have an old-fashioned
marriage, in that sense. Any problems he has, he likes to deal with them
himself.’

‘Were there
problems?’

She shrugs, biting her lip. ‘There are
debts. Business debts I’m not supposed to know about.’

‘And are the sums
significant?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose they
must be. Enough to keep Luke awake at night. And then there’s this thing with the
media, the publicity, Luke getting political … that night on
The
Late Late Show
… I thought it was a mistake.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s so nasty. Ruthless. And
once you step into that arena, they seek out every flaw, every misdemeanour.’

Her eyes meet mine and the cool facade slips
a little. I take out my own cigarettes and offer her one, then light up myself.

‘Julia, what happened that night,
after the party?’ I ask tentatively.

She looks as if she’s weighing up the
wisdom of speaking to me, but I can feel it in her: the temptation to talk. She takes a
deep breath, briefly closes her eyes, then begins, her voice low and steady, and I get
the feeling she has gone through this countless times in her head over the past
forty-eight hours.

‘We left the party around one and came
straight home. We were both a little drunk and Luke seemed distracted. Moody. But I
didn’t think too much of it. He can be like that sometimes, particularly after
social events. Sort of deflated, you know? I’ve learned that it’s best to
leave him alone when he’s like that. He said he needed to make a phone call so I
went upstairs to bed. I took a sleeping pill and was out cold until almost nine a.m.
When I woke, he wasn’t beside me and I could see he hadn’t slept
there.’

‘Were you
concerned?’

‘No. It’s not unusual. When he
gets like that, he kind of goes in on himself, needs to be alone. I assumed he’d
slept in the spare bedroom or fallen asleep in his study.’

‘Did you check on him?’

‘No. I figured he needed to sleep it
off. So I went for my run. It was only when I got home that I realized something was
wrong.’

‘How so?’

‘The spare bedroom was empty. His car
was still there, but I thought he might have taken the train into the office. I went to
ring him, but his phone was on the kitchen counter. That was when I went into the
study.’

She pauses, biting her lip. Her eyes are
fixed on some point in the middle distance and I try to imagine the horror of what
she’s seeing in her mind’s eye. When she speaks again, there’s a
ripple of distress in her words.

‘He loves that room, all the old
furniture in it. I call it his man-cave. He had all these photographs framed some years
ago and hung them on the wall behind his desk. And there’s a cabinet where he
keeps various things – awards, trophies, framed certificates and newspaper cuttings,
stuff relating to his work, objects of pride. When I stepped into that room I saw that
the cabinet was open, the entire contents strewn on the floor. And every single picture
on the wall was smashed to pieces.’

I watch her sucking in her breath, composing
herself, and I see for the first time how upset she is.

‘There was such anger in that room.
Such violence. Whoever had done it must have been deranged with fury. I saw all that
glass, those broken frames and lumps of
granite, and I felt afraid. And that was before I noticed the
blood.’

She closes her eyes, squeezing them shut as
if trying to block out the image. When she opens them again, she doesn’t look at
me. ‘Luke is … well, he’s more fragile than you’d think. He has a
vulnerable side.’

I think of Reilly’s story about the
hotel room, the destruction. ‘Could he have done it himself?’

‘He suffers from depression,’
she tells me in a flat voice. ‘Did you know that?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘He hides it well,’ Julia says.
‘And it’s intermittent. And never this bad. Never enough to suggest …’
she falters, but she’s said enough for me to understand.

‘Is it possible he did
this?’