The Doll's House (4 page)

‘Come on, Susie,’ he whispered. ‘Time to go home.’ It was like picking candy from an opened bag.

It had been a long week. Kate was already regretting staying up late. There would be an early start in the morning, with Charlie, her five-year-old son, who was now asleep in his bedroom, wearing his new Power Ranger T-shirt. The one sent over by his dad in Birmingham. In some ways Kate was relieved Declan was still working away from home. She had thought she would miss him more than she did. Four weeks of his three-month stint setting up a company division in Birmingham had already gone by, and from a distance there had been less opportunity for them to snipe at one another – when he was at home, they bickered constantly. The only one missing Declan was Charlie. He had started to wet the bed again, and none of Kate’s efforts to help him feel more secure had made a blind bit of difference. Tomorrow he was due to spend time with his friend, Shane. Perhaps that would take his mind off his dad.

Kate was still thinking about her earlier conversation with Imogen Willis. Imogen found it hard to trust people. Recalling what she thought had happened to the family dog had unearthed far more than the perceived memory. It had highlighted some of the reasons for her current distress. If Kate was correct, and Imogen had previously disassociated from events because of trauma, she was a girl who could no longer trust her memory, or people in her life, even those closest to her. Whenever others contradicted her fragmented recalls, they became untrustworthy. In essence, she was being forced to decide whom to trust, herself or them, and instinct told her everyone else was lying.

Switching off the lamps in the living room, Kate thought how
lonely Imogen must feel to be somewhere that trust was no longer an option, where her mind kept contradicting the truth. But what if the information Imogen remembered had been correct? Even people with prolonged patterns of disassociation could recall factual events a long time afterwards. There had been only one family session with Imogen’s closest relatives, her mother, father, and sister. Perhaps it was time for Kate to set up another.

Witnessing Imogen’s vulnerability today had brought up Kate’s own memories. She had thought again about the murdered schoolgirls, Caroline Devine and Amelia Spain, the last investigation in which she had teamed up with DI O’Connor. Her years spent in the UK working in criminal psychology had taught her a great deal about the way the mind functioned, and the many different directions it could operate from. She had not expected the double murder to prompt her own childhood memories to surface, but it had, and in so doing, it had complicated the investigation, bringing things far too close to home. Kate was determined that wouldn’t happen again.

In the alleyway, the only sound Stevie heard was that of his breathing as he thrust himself forward, shoving himself further inside young Susie. She was completely out of it. He pulled her legs apart, holding her up against the wall. The girl’s head sagged, flopping forward as if her neck was partially severed, like a rag doll. She was tiny, light. With his jeans and boxers halfway down his legs, he jerked forward again. Minor moans from Susie, begging him to stop, were a waste of time. He yanked her head back against the wall, grabbing her hair, her eyes bulging from their sockets. She gave him that look – stretched eyes, strained as if they might somehow push him away. He had seen it before. The look of fear, the look telling him that whatever control they’d thought they had was well gone. He shouted, ‘Fuck,’ into her ear as he came off inside her.

Afterwards, the alley was quiet. Like a television set with the sound turned down. Straightening his clothes, Stevie noticed the empty beer cans and cigarette butts around his feet. Urine stains of some other fucker’s piss drained in tiny streams down the wall. Stevie used the girl’s skirt to wipe himself. He thought he saw tears. It was time to get out of there. Susie was a crumpled mess, motionless and silent, her heavy black mascara and eyeliner trailing down her cheeks. The light from the streetlamp at the top of the alley stretched out, like a giant tongue. He caught a glimpse of someone in the shadows, a guy lighting a cigarette, his puffs of smoke billowing sideways, before he turned away again, minding his own business.

‘Fix yourself. Come on, will ya?’ was all Stevie said to the girl.

He thought about tossing little Susie out onto the main road, excess
baggage and all that, but fuck it, she was only young. Once in the mayhem of the busy streets, with other drunks filling the pavements, there were as many taxis as there were eejits. It was easy to shove Susie into one. No doubt tomorrow morning everything would be a blur to her. If not, then maybe she’d pick up a dose of the morning-after pill. He didn’t give a fuck either way.

Stevie could have gone back to Neary’s. The bouncers would have let him in. But right then he was glad of the long walk back to his flat, giving his head time to clear. He could hear the waves bashing onto the shoreline along Sandymount strand. The road was empty except for him and one other important night-walker.

He would have recognised Clodagh Hamilton anywhere. Stevie had seen her before, but had kept his distance. Tonight he did so again. In Dublin, familiar faces had a habit of reappearing, especially when their owners lived in close proximity to one another.

She had felt like a ghost from his past, with her wild ginger hair. Tonight, her hair was partly tucked beneath her coat collar. As she sheltered herself from the chill, the full moon of a clear sky looked down on the two of them, hovering like a large white ball.

It’s just me and him now in our own personal cocoon, two lone men. And somehow I can’t shake the notion that I always knew this moment would come. A glimpse of destiny set in the darkness of your mind, taking hold long before you quantify its existence. He was always a slimy bastard, deep down or any other way you’d think about him. A leopard can’t change its spots, or can’t be bothered. I’ll leave that judgement to others. I made up my own mind a long time ago. There are some things you know in the gut from the very beginning. It wasn’t only that false smile of his, plastered across his face, like a George Clooney lookalike, or his inclination to talk too much. It was more the way he managed to win people over, those who should have known better, and those without the wherewithal to see past the veneer. Until, that is, they became one of the unlucky ones, and saw him for the mother-fucker he really was.

The wild grasses on the canal bank are wavering, and so too is my train of thought, wild and unknowing. As if this whole thing is bigger than me now and, like the tall grasses, I’m trying to make sense of it within some erroneous dance. My mood keeps changing, a swinging pendulum, sharp at the edge, cutting away at me. At times it all seems crystal clear. At other times things get mixed up. Until the anger takes hold.

There isn’t a sinner out walking now. I roll down the car window, gasping at the chill outside. A mist has built up on the glass, and I see my younger self silently fingering the word ‘scream’ on a fogged bathroom mirror. The cold air cuts into my thoughts, cold and crisp, like an awakening. It’s moved faster than I thought, swift, clear, sometimes without doubt, and now almost too easy.

His head is bent in the passenger seat. I can no longer see his eyes, but the blood is oozing from his chest. He lost consciousness with the final thrust of the knife. Perhaps better that way. The fucker always talked too much.

It’s time, and every part of me knows it.

I stare at the windows of homes dotted along either side of the canal. They, too, are closed off, just like me and my silent passenger. Without thinking, I look up at the sky. I imagine driving off a cliff edge, ending it all. But that would be too easy. That would be the action of a coward. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a coward. I have a job to do, a clear, definitive pathway of unfinished business, a stain that cannot be removed until every part and everyone involved, including dearest Clodagh, is history.

I feel my mind drift again, taking in this oasis of calm within the madness. Some of the stars are now fading, holding on for their last moments before going into hiding again. People in this city seldom look up at the sky. They see the streets as the beginning and end of everything. But the stars are there for a reason, and I’m not talking rubbish about guiding us. I’m talking the whole bloody universe out there, far bigger than we know, and right about now I’m also thinking, I hope someone bigger than me knows that what I’m about to do should have been done a long time back. It was destined from the moment I first saw that gleaming set of pearly whites.

A couple of hours ago, I had stood watching him. Part of me wondered why he didn’t know what I was about to do. Why nobody knew. The thought had felt huge, pressing. Surely people should know these things.

I had felt the adrenalin rise, my heart beating fast, remembering the swift movement of the panther – his silent shadow as he stalks his prey. My eyes locked in that same fixed stare, as my blood curled, knife in hand and foot to ground, an ancient soundless lethal shift, the call of the wild, moved me closer as I waited for my time to pounce.

Kate said nothing about having to change the sheets on Charlie’s bed, as he reluctantly allowed her to remove the Power Ranger T-shirt he’d worn the night before. Neither did she mention cleaning up the mess in the kitchen – a large pool of milk and cereal on the table and the floor. For now, the only important thing was Charlie feeling okay. She had had a broken night. Rising at dawn, she had already spent a couple of hours in her study at the back of the apartment, setting out her plans for the following week.

Once the mess was tidied up, Kate called to Charlie who, as on most other Saturday mornings, was watching cartoons in the living room. ‘Come on, Charlie. Shane and his mum will be here any minute.’

‘I don’t know where my clothes are.’ He didn’t take his eyes off the television.

‘They’re on the bed. Hop to it.’ Kate switched off the cartoons using the remote control.

‘Ah, Mum, don’t.’

‘I just did, Buster. Now, go before I get cross.’ She’d kept her tone gentle.

‘Bold Mum,’ Charlie snapped back, his lower lip stuck out.

‘Less of that, Charlie Cassidy.’

Kate hadn’t changed her surname after marrying Declan, but there was never any doubt as to which their son would have. Trying to keep her face straight, she called to him again, ‘I can see Shane’s mum parking her car – come on, hurry up.’

‘Is Shane with her?’

‘Of course he is, and they’ll be here in a second. Now come on!’

As Kate waved goodbye to Charlie from the front window of the apartment, an unexpected wave of loneliness swept over her. Suddenly the apartment was quiet again, without a living soul to talk to. Kate had made up her mind earlier to use this free time to go for a run, something she hadn’t done in ages. It was only as she walked out from the bedroom in her running gear that she noticed the orange flashing light on her answering machine. Tying her long black hair in a ponytail, she pressed the play button.

She had been expecting a call from Declan, knowing he would be upset to have missed Charlie. Instead, she heard police sirens roaring in the background and O’Connor’s voice filling the room. His message was blunt: ‘Middle-aged male, multiple stab wounds, found drowned in the canal. You have my number. Call me.’

O’Connor wasn’t one for social niceties, or unnecessary detail, but after what they had been through together in the Devine and Spain murders, a simple ‘Hello, Kate’ shouldn’t have been too much to ask. As she was thinking this, another thought crossed her mind. If O’Connor wanted her involved, this wasn’t going to be any ordinary investigation.

On her first attempt at ringing his mobile phone, she got ‘Please leave a message.’ Forgetting about her run, she switched on the television to check if anything important had hit the headlines. The story was already up on Sky News and, like all top news stories aimed at whetting the public’s appetite, it had the markings of one that would run and run.

According to the news reports, on the previous night the well-known television personality had waved goodbye to a group of downbeat Ireland supporters in Gogan’s pub after the soccer team’s crashing defeat against Germany. He had made his way to the Caldine Club on Kildare Street in Dublin’s city centre. Images posted on Facebook that morning of the last photographs of the TV personality’s life formed part of the news coverage. Men and women wearing the green jersey, who had managed to be the last of the many public faces
captured with the popular celebrity, had earned their place in the record books, not for what they had thought was Ireland’s historic defeat but because, unknown to them, they would be among the last to see the television personality alive.

Neither the popular TV host nor his long-running morning show was a favourite with Kate. Unknowns airing their dirty linen in public, being booed or cheered on by the audience, usually caused her to change channel. People with broken lives, willing to forfeit everything for their desperate few minutes of fame, made her want to cringe rather than empathise. Keith Jenkins was considered a man who pushed out cultural boundaries, asking questions others didn’t ask.

The ever-smiling Keith Jenkins could inspire drama in the most mediocre family circumstances – an estranged husband engaged in a love affair with his pigeons, an unmarried mother loving the father of her child despite his denials of parentage, a woman putting drink ahead of her grown-up children, all had danced as players in the nation’s most popular car-crash television programme,
Real People, Real Lives
. If the advertising campaigns promoting it were to be believed, it had found its way into the hearts and minds of a nation.

To Kate, he was now a murder victim and, like all murder victims, had a history that had led to the stabbing and dumping of his body in the murky waters of the Grand Canal.