Death at Whitewater Church Read online

  MY ANXIETY LEVELS ratcheted up a little more with every mile of the journey to Dublin. By the time I was half an hour away from my parents’ house, it was all I could do to keep the car on the road, traveling in the same direction. I came very close on a couple of occasions to turning around and driving the whole way back up to Inishowen, four hours or not.

  But I kept going. By two o’clock I had reached the walls of the Phoenix Park, and shortly afterwards I drove in through the narrow gate of my parents’ 1940s semi-detached in Chapelizod, the house I had grown up in. I pulled in behind their car, or at least what I presumed was their car. It was the only one there.

  There was no opportunity to calm my thoughts before my mother came running out, as she always did. Some things don’t change. We gave each other an awkward hug. She opened with her usual line, which hadn’t changed in two years either.

  “You made good time.”

  I provided the predicted response. “I did. Very little traffic on a Saturday.”

  Playing it safe. We can pretend that everything is normal if we just say our lines. So this was how it was going to be. Maybe it was for the best. Taking my bag out of the car, I followed her inside.

  I took off my coat and scarf and looked around me. I saw the same old kitchen cabinets, the same electric cooker with the ring on the left-hand side at the back that I had no memory of ever working, the same dim lighting. But the room didn’t have the warmth it used to have. I supposed that was understandable.

  My mother stood there for a second as if unsure what to do next. Her expression of discomfort was temporarily relieved when she took my coat and scarf and disappeared with them into the back kitchen. Through the open door I could see the row of hangers with their stacks of coats. Coats that couldn’t possibly all belong to the two people who now lived in the house. I knew there were still coats on those hangers that had belonged to us when we were children. Faye and me.

  My mother reemerged and closed the door behind her.

  “You got rid of the solid fuel,” I said.

  “Oh, yes. The old Stanley. It was getting too much for us, dragging in fuel every day to heat the place. We have oil-fired central heating now. Much easier. And much cleaner.”

  Clean had always been important to my mother. She swiped your cup and plate out from under you to wash it before you were finished eating.

  “Great. I’m sure you’re thrilled with it.”

  She nodded.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “Good. Better. He’s a bit grumpy though, not being able to swim.”

  I smiled. “I bet.”

  “He’s in the sitting room. Do you want to see him?”

  “Of course.”

  “You go on in and I’ll put the kettle on. I’ll join you in a minute with the tea.”

  My father was lying on the couch, his head propped up on pillows and his leg raised on a footstool. It was in plaster. A set of crutches rested against an armchair beside him. The television was on with the volume turned down and he looked up at the sound of the door. His face broke into a smile when he saw me, and a surge of emotion made me fear tears.

  “That looks nasty,” I said in a choked voice.

  I sat in the armchair beside him. There were lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him. For some reason I hadn’t expected him to have aged. Stupid really. I hadn’t seen him in two years. But my mother looked the same and I had thought he would, too.

  “Ah, sure I’m an eejit. It was my own fault. What am I doing climbing ladders at my age?”

  I smiled. “Well, I did think that you could have got someone in to do the job for you. Most people do that, surely?”

  “I like to keep busy.” He gave me a wry look. “Still, if it managed to get you down here to see us, maybe it was worth it, eh?”

  I looked down.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I thought it would be easier on you and Mum if you didn’t see me for a while, but maybe I was being easier on myself. And then the time just passed.” My words came tumbling out.

  “Hush now, let’s not talk about it. We have all weekend.” He looked up at me anxiously. “You are staying for the weekend, aren’t you? You’re not going to take off again any minute?”

  “No, Dad,” I promised him with another smile. “I’m here till tomorrow evening.”

  “You can’t stay till Monday?”

  “Sorry. Work calls. Can’t do anything about that, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh well, that’ll have to do, then. Here comes your mother with the tea.”

  I stood up to clear a space on the coffee table for the tray of tea, sandwiches, and cakes my mother had managed to whip up. I suspected she had been baking all morning.

  “Looks great, Mum.”

  I gathered up the newspapers that were strewn across the table and couch and went to put them on the dining table. As I walked past the piano, saying some nonsense about how hungry I was, my eyes fell on the old school photograph in the wooden frame on top and my voice faded. Two little girls with curly brown hair sitting at a desk with an atlas open in front of them. Totally posed. I remembered the teacher dragging a wire brush through our unruly tangles before the picture was taken. I remembered how it hurt. Looking at the picture now, I could see it hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. Faye and me, two bushy-headed little kids, one much prettier than the other …

  The room had gone silent. Both parents were looking up at me, two old faces full of concern. Guilt hit me like a ten-ton truck.

  “It’s okay, sit down and have something to eat,” my mother said gently.

  * * *

  The evening continued as if nothing were wrong, as if the years hadn’t passed, as if I had been there the previous weekend, as if I were their only child and always had been. Perhaps they thought that was what I needed. They were parents; they put their children’s needs before their own, always and forever. Faye was everywhere in that house. Not only in her photographs, and there were plenty of those dotted about the living room and hallway. Her presence showed that what they probably needed was to talk about her. But they did what they thought I needed. And I, coward to the end, let them.

  There were childhood snaps at the beach and poses in Irish dancing costumes. Many of the pictures included a slightly older, slightly less attractive version of the same kid standing beside her. Had I known at that stage, or had that come later? As I drank my tea, I noticed her graduation photograph. I certainly knew then that I couldn’t compete. Faye was undeniably beautiful, with long brown shiny hair she had learned to straighten, and that wild reckless expression, the laughing look of devilment in her face that meant she was ready to try anything. Those black eyes that men were unable to resist. Some of those men appeared in the pictures – with one notable exception.

  Later we watched a film on television, the three of us, around the fire. I think it was The Wedding Singer, though it passed in a bit of a blur. And at eleven my mother started to make noises about going to bed. Dad was sleeping on the couch until he was more mobile. I helped fold it out into a bed for him.

  As I walked along the landing towards my old childhood room, I passed Faye’s door. We used to be able to knock on the wall in between to each other, our own private Morse code. I got a jolt when I saw that the hand-painted tiles my father had brought back for us from some business trip abroad were still fixed to the doors. Sarah’s Room. Faye’s Room. Even then the cartoon depiction of an imaginary Faye was pretty in a long dress. Mine was a scruffy tomboy.

  My room hadn’t changed. I suspected Faye’s hadn’t either, but I hadn’t had the courage to go in there since her death. I unpacked my bag and toiletry bag and sat on the bed. Was this really any better than us not seeing each other? This artificiality?

  I finally managed to get to sleep about three and woke four hours later. At eight, I heard my mother on the landing, and got up.

  My father and mother were deep in conversation at the kitchen table w
ith a pot of tea and a mound of toast between them. My mother leaped to her feet when she noticed my presence in the doorway.

  “No need to stop talking because I come into the room.”

  “We weren’t – I mean, would you like some tea?”

  “Sit down, Mum. I’ll get it. I presume the cups are in the same place.”

  I found a cup and joined them at the table.

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  Dad opened his mouth as if he was about to say something. Mum cut him off with a look.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice slightly more high-pitched than usual.

  “What were you talking about?”

  “We were just saying …” my father said. My mother tried to interrupt, but he ignored her and carried on. “We were saying that there’s no need for you to feel guilty because of what happened to your sister, you know.”

  My stomach clenched.

  “Because you’re the one that’s left behind,” he continued.

  “Where’s this coming from, Dad?”

  He looked at my mother. “Your mother has made a new friend at her book club – she’s a counselor, and she said that sometimes happens when a sibling dies and another is left behind. We thought maybe that was why you didn’t like to visit.”

  “I don’t, Dad, honestly. It’s not that.”

  “And you can’t blame yourself for introducing that animal to Faye. We know you do, but you can’t have known what he was like. If you had, you wouldn’t have been so hurt when …”

  Dad’s voice trailed off. They looked at me with scrutinizing concern. I felt as if my head were about to explode.

  “I met the pathologist,” I blurted out. “In Inishowen.” Immediately I wished I could take it back.

  My father’s tone grew icy. “The woman who said that Faye was the author of her own misfortune?”

  “She didn’t exactly say that, Dad.”

  “She said she took drugs with him. Faye would never have taken drugs.”

  I knew for a fact that wasn’t true, but I couldn’t say it. I also knew the bastard I had introduced her to could have given her bloody rat poison.

  “That pathologist woman helped him get away with it,” my mother said quietly.

  “He didn’t get away with it, Mum. He got ten years.”

  “Ten years for murder. I thought it was supposed to be life for murder,” she muttered under her breath.

  “It was manslaughter, Mum, not murder.”

  I couldn’t believe I was having the same conversation again after eight years. I had lost count of the number of times I had explained this to my mother.

  “She’s dead and he killed her. That’s murder in my book,” she said stubbornly, staring into her teacup.

  I sighed. “It’s not quite as simple as that.”

  Her eyes welled. “And he had sex with her. When she was in that state. That’s rape.”

  “They couldn’t charge him with rape, Mum. There was no evidence of lack of consent.”

  “Only because she wasn’t there to give that evidence. And she wasn’t there because he killed her.”

  I couldn’t bear it. The same conversation. Either I told them the whole story, or I left. But I honestly didn’t think they could take the full truth. I’d be doing it for me, not them. A clearing of conscience. I stood up and went over to the bread bin on the pretense of making fresh toast I didn’t want. I stared at the old tiles on the wall above the sink. But the pretense was unbearable, too. I switched on the radio and the sound of Martha and the Vandellas filled the room.

  It was six o’clock by the time I reached the roundabout at Burt, about twenty miles from Glendara. The Sunday papers had helped bridge the gap between the morning’s painful conversation and my mother’s roast chicken lunch, and enabled us to revert to a fragile peace. I left immediately after lunch, feeling wired.

  It was turning into a thoroughly nasty night, with that bleak midwinter Sunday-evening feel about it, spitting rain and howling wind. There were few cars on the road. I set off up the hill towards the Station Inn in the direction of the coast road and Glendara. The Station Inn was a depressing-looking sight, long since closed down, boarded up and battered, having gone the same way as the railway in this part of Ireland.

  As I drove up the hill, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye in front of the old building. At first I thought I must have imagined it. The trees at the front of the inn were thrashing ferociously, like whirling dervishes; it was hard to see anything clearly. I peered in closer as I drove past and noticed two cars parked in the shadows under the trees in front of the boarded-up building.

  There was a figure standing by one of the cars – a woman, her dark hair flapping wildly about her face. She was talking to a man, gesticulating furiously. I wondered if I should stop; she looked as if she could be in trouble. I pulled in a little way ahead, killed the lights and the engine, and watched in my mirror. I couldn’t see the man’s face – he had his back to me. But the couple looked as if they were having a row. And then, all of a sudden, she was embracing him. I watched as she turned to open the driver’s door of one of the cars and the interior light came on. For a brief second I caught a glimpse of her face. It was Alison Kelly.

  What was she doing here? And who was the man? It didn’t look like Raymond Kelly, but I couldn’t be sure. The man stood there for a minute as if he expected Alison to change her mind about leaving and get back out of the car. But she didn’t. Eventually he climbed into the driver’s seat of the other car and they both drove off, heading in the direction of Buncrana. On impulse I turned the Mini around and set off after them.

  I followed the two cars for about a mile up the road, until we came to a crossroads. One car turned right and the other went straight on in the direction of Buncrana. I hesitated for a second and then followed the car heading to Buncrana.

  Ten minutes later we arrived in the town. I followed the car up the main street where it pulled in on the footpath outside Kelly’s bar. I stopped a few yards behind on the other side of the road and watched as Alison Kelly got out of the car and walked into the pub. I had chosen the wrong car to follow.

  Chapter 24

  I WOKE AT seven, my body stiff from the drive the night before. It was still dark outside so I reached over and turned on the radio and listened to the news for five minutes before dragging myself out of bed.

  I made it into the office by half eight, remembering, with no pleasure, that this morning involved facing the long-dreaded Law Society audit. Leah was already in, eyes glued to the computer.

  “Wow, you’ve beaten me in. I’m impressed,” I said.

  “I usually beat you in.”

  “True, but I’m not usually in by half past eight. What time is this guy coming?”

  “Not till this afternoon. He’s driving up from Dublin. Doing three practices up this part of the country this week, apparently.”

  “Good. That means he’ll be in a rush to move on, hopefully. What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. I have all the books ready. At least, I will have by the time he arrives. You just need to meet him and do that spot-check test on the files with him when he wants you to.”

  “Grand.”

  She looked up at me, chin resting on her hand. “I hear they dug up that kid from Derry’s coffin on Saturday morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was him that was found in the crypt in Whitewater?”

  “Yep.”

  “Weird.”

  “Mmm.”

  I started to tackle the stack of files on my desk. There were no interruptions for a full hour. At twenty to ten Leah buzzed me.

  “Eddie Kearney’s here. He wants to know if you can see him. He doesn’t have an appointment.”

  I groaned. He had probably picked up a whole raft of new drugs charges over the weekend.

  “All right,” I said. “Send him up.”

  He walked into the office with a swagger, mor
e exaggerated than usual. He wore a pair of jeans at least three sizes too big for him, which were dragged down to a dangerous level by hands that were rammed into the front pockets. His blond hair was sprayed and combed towards the right-hand side of his head, making him look as if he had been caught in a heavy wind. He leaned against the doorframe in a pose that came straight out of an episode of The Wire.

  “Yes, Eddie, what can I do for you?”

  He was chewing gum with his arms crossed.

  “I think this time, it’s what I can do for you,” he said.

  I wondered if he was aware that his pose had switched to OK Corral. I tried not to laugh.

  “Right,” I said slowly. “Why don’t you come in and have a seat and tell me what you mean.”

  He strutted over to the seat I offered him, the jeans travelling southwards ever so slightly with each step. I doubted he would be able to maintain the swagger if they landed down around his ankles. Luckily for both of us, he reached the seat in the nick of time.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “I want to do a deal.” More chewing.

  “A deal with whom?” I asked, though I knew what was coming.

  “The cops.”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Would you like to explain what you mean exactly?”

  “I want to get them charges dropped. In exchange for some information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Valuable information.”

  “What information, Eddie?” There was an edge to my voice. I was aware I sounded a bit like a schoolteacher. He picked up on it and responded accordingly, like a teenager in trouble. Sulkily.

  “I can’t tell you. Unless I know the charges are gonna be dropped.”

  I sighed. He had clearly picked up this idea during his weekend in Dublin, along with his new hairstyle. The Eddie Kearney I knew sure as hell hadn’t the gumption to come up with an idea like this on his own.

  “Well, I can’t advise you unless you tell me everything. I’m your solicitor, Eddie. Anything you tell me is in confidence.”

  He regarded me doubtfully. I said nothing for a few seconds.

  Eventually he cleared his throat. “All right. It’s about what happened last Tuesday night. To that Devitt fella. The drunk