Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

‘I was better off in jail,’ Conor muttered to himself as he stuffed his mother’s soiled clothing into the washing machine. At least inside there’d been a full laundry service. He put the morning’s wash into the dryer and hoped it worked properly or he’d have nothing to wear to work tomorrow.

‘What did you say?’ came the voice from the living room.

Nothing wrong with her ears. Not a thing. Even though she played the martyr and liked him to think she was losing her hearing as well as her marbles.

He didn’t answer. Let her think he hadn’t heard. It had been a long, miserable day and he wanted to crawl into his own bed without having to make up hers. But she was putting a roof over his head, as she’d told him a million times since his release, and he was expected to do bits and pieces around the house. He set the machine to a quick wash and opened the refrigerator. She had to have warm milk every night.

‘Oh no,’ he said to the bare door of the appliance.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ve to go out to get milk. We’ve none left.’ He shut the door and grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair before going to the living room door. ‘Have you got any change?’

‘Why didn’t you make sure we had enough? It’s your responsibility now that I’m giving you a place to stay. You need to pull your weight. I …’

He tuned her out. Saw her purse on the mantelpiece. Took out a five-euro note.

‘I want that back when you get paid,’ she said.

‘Sure.’ He buttoned his jacket. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘It’s raining out. I can hear the wind …’

She was still talking when he pulled the front door shut behind him. He had no idea how much longer he could stick this life. It had been better in jail. And that had been total shit.

Katie whispered a kiss on Louis’ head and turned on the dim night light. He sucked hungrily on his bottle and she smiled. He was such a good baby really. Not a baby any more, she thought, as she recalled his first steps two days after he turned one.

She wondered what her life would have been like if Jason hadn’t been murdered. These days she found it hard to remember Louis’ dad. The only photos she had of him had been lost when she’d upgraded her phone. But she told Louis all about him. Made most of it up, if she wanted to be totally honest. She’d only been with Jason a few short months when he’d been killed. He hadn’t even known she was pregnant. But she’d kept the baby and never regretted her decision.

She thumbed the curtains apart and looked out. The dark evenings gave her goose bumps, and she hoped Louis was warm enough in his sleeping-bag and fleece blanket his grandad had sent from New York. The wind was rising and leaves whistled down to the ground from increasingly bare branches. She liked the new estate. It was quiet. Maybe too quiet. If it wasn’t for the wind, she’d describe it as deathly silent. Rain began to spill in diagonal sheets, sweeping the leaves down the road. Shadows danced in the rain and she turned away.

The sucking ceased, so Katie took the bottle from her now sleeping son. A finger of fear traced a line down the nape of her neck. She rushed back to the window and looked out. Was that a shadow she’d seen behind the wall across the road? Someone crouching at the entrance to the laneway that led to the rear of St Catherine’s retirement home? But there was no one there now. Why had she felt fear? As she turned back to watch her son, she remembered that she’d sensed the same feeling yesterday in the shop. Should she tell her mother? Good God, no. Lottie would go into detective mode and put a clamp on her freedom, even if she was only imagining things.

Pulling up the old chair she’d brought from her granny’s house, Katie sat down, drew her legs beneath her and snuggled under a blanket. She suspected that tonight she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed. She had to keep watch over her son. Because she was convinced that someone else had been keeping watch over her. And not in a good way.

Sipping a pint at the bar in the Parkland Hotel lounge, Tony Keegan was trying to ignore the wedding crowd singing loudly on the opposite side of the room. Stilettos and bling usually excited the hell out of him. Girls with caked-on make-up, mascara so thick it looked like ink, and fake-tanned legs hovered around encroaching on his thoughts. Despite trying to be oblivious, he couldn’t help the hard-on giving him an ache in his groin. His hair was still damp from the rain. It was a curse of a night to be out. He should feel pity for the anonymous bride who had to brave the downpour on her wedding day, but fuck her and her fairy-tale ideas. This was real life, where there were no happy endings. Not that he’d seen so far.

The pint tasted bitter. Probably dredged from the end of the barrel. He should send it back, but the girl behind the bar was already struggling with the crowd. She had good legs, natural. No fake tan for her. He found himself wondering if she had been to Spain on her holidays. That would be a nice escape. If he had the money. Which he hadn’t. And now Conor was back.

He took a gulp of the putrid beer and let out a loud belch. Awful. He raised a hand to summon the girl, but she either didn’t see it or just plain ignored him. She knew who the good tippers were. Not him. Clever girl. Didn’t change the fact that he still had to drink a pint of slop.

He drained his glass and stood. Despite the rain outside, he knew he would feel better out there.

Gathering his change into his pocket, he heaved on his coat and trudged a lonely trek through the merry crowd. He couldn’t escape quickly enough.

Cyril Gill poured a double whiskey from the decanter and stood looking out the window of his million-euro dream house. Just when business was going so well, despite the delay with his current project, that thorn in his side was back in Ragmullin. Along with him, the only other person who could make trouble for Cyril was his own daughter Louise.

He swallowed his drink and poured another. He was used to getting his own way, but when it came to family, his hands were tied. Leaning his head against the cool glass of the window, he tried to think of a way out. One thing he knew for sure, he had to do something, and quickly.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

‘I thought we agreed we would not be in contact. It’s too easy to track our?—’

‘It’s Amy. She’s dead. Some bastard murdered her. What are you going to do about that? Tell me! What the hell are you going to do about it?’

‘Jesus, back up there. Amy? Dead? What the?—’

Richard Whyte hung up.

Cyril dropped the phone and the glass and raced up the stairs. ‘Louise! Louise! We have to talk. Now!’

Louise thought it safer to be away from the house at the moment. Huddled in her silver-coloured parka jacket, she rushed down the shingle driveway and out onto the road. It was dark. Of course it was. Her father had built this house in the middle of nowhere.

She hated living outside the town, and never having mastered the skill of driving, her red Mazda sports car continued to rust away in one of the four garages at the back of the house. More extravagance on her father’s part. Compensating? For what? She wondered about that as she made her way along the narrow path that edged the side of the road.

It was all her father’s fault again. Shouting and roaring up the stairs about Amy being dead. That couldn’t be true. She’d rushed past him, out into the night, without her phone or bag. She had to find out for herself. As the lights of approaching cars illuminated her route and then plunged her into darkness again, she had no fear for her safety. She’d lived in Ragmullin all her life. She knew the town inside out.

It couldn’t be true about Amy. Their relationship had suffered badly. Teenage friendships rarely survived into adulthood, Louise knew, but she also knew the two of them were intrinsically linked by their past.

The road once again became silvery grey with yet another car behind her. Head down, she continued to walk. But this car didn’t pass her. The light snaked alongside her and stopped. She kept walking. Almost there. Three minutes and the Parkland Hotel would be in view and lights would pave the way towards Amy’s house. Perhaps she should nip into the hotel. A hot whiskey with cloves stuck in a lemon would warm her up. She was beginning to feel the cold through the feathered layers of her jacket. And something else, too. A tinge of fear. That car hadn’t moved.

Quickening her steps, Louise was jogging when a hand gripped her arm and swung her round. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a groan accompanied the spatter of rain on the road.

‘Louise? I thought it was you. How are you doing?’

‘Oh God!’ She shuddered. ‘You terrified me. Don’t you know you shouldn’t creep up on a defenceless woman on a dark road.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth as she tried to disguise the terror thumping double beats in her heart.

‘Fancy a drink?’

He was insistent without sounding it. It was his body language. Head twisting and turning. Trying to see if anyone had noticed them? A tic at the edge of his mouth, and continuously sniffing. She needed to appear calm.

‘No thanks. I wanted some fresh air. Had to get out of the house. I’m fine. I love the rain.’

She extracted her arm and began to walk again. He kept pace.

‘Leave me alone.’ Brave words, but she was shaking all over now.

‘Ah, come on. A drink will warm you up.’

She stopped and swirled around. Drew back her hand and hit him. She surprised herself almost as much as she shocked him. His jaw slackened and his mouth hung open.

‘That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’

Seizing the opportunity while he was apparently stunned by her action, Louise turned and ran. Further into the darkness, where the road was empty.

The one thing she had feared had happened.

Her past had caught up with her.

All she could do was try to outrun it.

Megan Price took the last of the china ornaments out of the box she kept under the bed. He hadn’t found that when he’d ransacked the house for things he could sell. She took them out every night and cleaned them. Because these little figurines were precious. They were all she had left of long ago.

Lining them up on the mantelpiece she shifted them around until they were in the exact positions they should be in. The way he used to arrange them.

She caught her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace and rubbed a smudge from her brow with the yellow duster. Her father would have said she looked like death warmed up. And he’d have been right. If he was still alive.

As she brought her hand downwards, it clipped the corner of the porcelain shoe decorated with gold filigree, and before she could react, it had smashed on the bare floorboards.

She dropped to her knees and frantically tried to gather the pieces back into shape. Superglue might do it. But you’d still be able see the cracks. She crunched up the pieces into the palms of her hands. Felt the sharp edges cut her skin and let them fall away.

She needed air. She had to get out of the suffocating walls pulsing with memories, before her entire world fell apart.

He had stopped following her. She no longer heard the slap of feet on the path. Pausing to catch her breath, she chanced a look over her shoulder.

Darkness. Nothing. No one.

Louise exhaled and slowed to a brisk walk. Where had he come from? She wished she had her phone to call her dad to come pick her up. That had been an impetuous act, running out of the house. Like a petulant teenager. The one she used to be. The one she thought she had left behind ten years ago. The impressionable one. Yeah, she thought. She and Amy had a lot to answer for. Amy could not be dead.

Amy’s house was on a gated estate built by Louise’s father’s firm in an area where no one had ever envisaged houses being situated. It probably helped that Mr Whyte was on the council. She keyed in the entry code from a long-held memory, and as the gates swung open, she saw the convoy of cars parked on the road up near Amy’s house. Louise was rooted to the spot. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Her dad was right. Amy was dead.

She forced her feet to move and set off towards the house. No. She did not want to go in there. She wanted to go to someone who would comfort her. She turned back, edging between the closing gates before they banged shut.

Reaching the apartment block, she ran up the steps and pounded on the door. When it opened, she fell into the other girl’s arms.

‘Oh, Cristina,’ she sobbed.

‘What’s wrong, hon? You’re soaking wet. Come in. Come in.’

Louise allowed herself to be engulfed in a hug before stepping into the warmth of the apartment. As she did so, the door crashed open behind her and Cristina was thrown to the floor.

‘Hello, girls,’ a voice said.

Standing with her mouth wide open, her body convulsed with shivers, Louise only had eyes for the knife glinting in the gloved hand.

‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ The knife moved to the other hand.

Louise felt the prick of something sharp on the side of her neck. She tried to remain standing, but her entire body felt paralysed. Her legs gave way and she slumped against the wall. As her eyelids drooped, she heard Cristina scream.