The body was heavier than he’d thought it would be. How could one so young and thin weigh so much?
He dragged her to the opening and shoved her down into the depths with the sole of his boot. Unwrapping the tools he needed from the hessian cloth, he deposited them in the rucksack and hauled it onto his back, then lowered himself down after her.
Hauling her along the ground until he reached the area he wanted, he positioned her upright so that her dead eyes could see him work. It took some time, but when he was finished, he didn’t get the feeling of accomplishment he’d thought he’d have. But no one would ever see her. Not down here.
Walking backwards, he made his way like a hunchback, sweeping away all indications that anyone had been here with a small brush he’d had in the bag. Squeaks and swishes accompanied his movement. Down here it was like another world. He felt safe and free. He didn’t want to leave. At this moment he felt he could go back there and lie down on the earth, close his eyes and join her in her final resting place. A black hole for a bitch who had rejected him.
He slogged on, untangling his jacket as it snagged on a jutting rock. The climb upwards was more difficult than his descent had been. He clutched the protrusions on the wall and heaved himself up and out. Sliding the covering back over the hole, he made sure there were no visible clues left behind. A quick glance around told him no one had seen him.
Back at the car, he threw the rucksack into the boot. The temperature had dropped in recent days and winter was biting on the horizon like a ravenous dog. He didn’t like winter. Or the cold. No, he much preferred the long summer nights when he could wander around for hours; when the moon appeared in a sky full of stars and he could howl like a wolf in heat if he had a mind to.
He felt the first drops of rain and jumped into the car before the black clouds burst. He had done the job. All would be well now. He was safe.
It wasn’t until the next day that he discovered his nightmare had only just begun.
Conor Dowling stood outside the gates of Mountjoy Prison and breathed in the city air. It was the same air he had breathed inside the walls for the last ten years, but somehow it seemed fresher out here. Free. He blew out a long breath, shouldered the bag that held his meagre possessions and took his second step to freedom. Alone.
There was no one waiting to pick him up. No reporters even. But he hadn’t expected any. Once he’d been found guilty and consigned to spend the best part of his life, his twenties, behind the grey walls of the prison, his story had gone so cold it had merged with the snow of time.
He listened to the city sounds as he walked away, one foot in front of the other, without a backward glance.
Back in Ragmullin, Conor stared from across the road at the terraced house. It hadn’t changed at all in the last ten years. It appeared the grass hadn’t even been cut. It was still early morning as he crossed the road and opened the creaking gate hanging on one hinge. He didn’t have a key, so he raised his hand to knock on the door. It was his own home, and here he was, like a stranger. Lowering his hand, he moved to the front window. The reflection of a stranger stared back at him.
At thirty-five, he was tall and skinny, with a head of uneven stubble. Gone was the shoulder-length hair his mother had called high-maintenance. When he was fourteen, she’d gifted him a second-hand battery-powered razor, which he’d become fascinated with, and along with shaving his head, he had taken to shaving his body hair. That was what he wanted to do again now. His fingers itched to find a razor and feel the sharpness run down his chest and legs. To free his skin of fuzz.
He moved back to the front door. Tried the latch. It opened. He put one foot on the worn laminate floor inside, and then the other. The familiar smell was the first thing to bring back memories.
The pungent odour of bacon and cabbage, along with stale grease, wrapped around him. How could that be? Conor knew his mother had been the recipient of Meals on Wheels for at least the last four years. His friend Tony Keegan had told him that. Some friend, Conor thought. At least he visited him in prison every couple of months. But Conor had the feeling he only did that to check that he was still safely inside. His mother had never visited him.
He opened the door to the living room, expecting it to be empty. Gulping down a deep breath of the fetid air, he saw his mother sitting in a faded, well-worn armchair. She looked taller than he remembered, but then he noticed that the legs of the chair were propped up on slats of timber.
Vera Dowling was only sixty-five years old, but she was eaten up with rheumatoid arthritis, which gave her the appearance of a woman at least twenty years older. Standing behind her, he noticed her lumpy hands crooked around the arms of the chair. Slowly she turned.
‘Today’s the day, is it?’
Her voice had once been sharp and strong. It was still sharp, Conor conceded, but no longer strong.
‘Yeah, Mam. I’m home.’
‘I hope you weren’t expecting a party with balloons and flags. Not my scene at all.’
‘I wasn’t expecting anything.’
Still he stood behind her chair. He’d faced up to the most dangerous criminals in jail, and here he was like a schoolboy frightened of the class bully.
‘Come round here where I can see you, lad.’
He didn’t want to face her, but eventually he shunted the message from his brain to his feet and moved to stand in front of her.
‘Did they not feed you in that place?’ She raised a swollen hand; scrabbled around the side of the chair and found her walking stick. Holding it like a sword, she pointed it at him, jabbing his chest. ‘Bones, that’s all you are. Now that you’re back, you can start cooking for me and for yourself. You can cancel that plastic food, too.’
Taking a step backwards, out of range of the stick, he said, ‘Plastic food?’
‘Whatever about the wheels, I wouldn’t call them meals. Only old Mrs Tone going around with her arms full of plastic tubs, and by the time she gets to me, it’s cold. How do they expect these knobbly fingers to turn the dial on the microwave?’
Conor was about to say she could have got a new digital model, but he stopped himself. His mother was displaying all the signs of the bully he remembered from his childhood; there was no way he would win this or any other argument. It was as if the last ten years had just folded into themselves and absolutely nothing in this house had changed. But he had.
Rubbing his hand over his head, he felt the beginning of bristles sprouting and itched to get upstairs to his razor, if it was still there. He guessed it probably was; the living room looked as though his mother had slept downstairs for years. Then a thought struck him. They only had an upstairs bathroom and toilet. How did she …? His eye was drawn to the bag of urine nestled between her veined legs.
‘I’m glad you’re home, son,’ she said, stretching out her hand. He stuffed his own resolutely into his jeans pockets. ‘You can cook for me. Did they teach you new recipes in … in there?’
Shrugging his shoulders, Conor walked to the window and stared out through the dirt and grime. He rubbed a hand on the glass and it stuck to the grease lining the inside of the pane. Where the hell did she think he’d been? Cookery school?
‘I’m going to have a wash,’ he said, and turned to leave. She shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. Goose bumps erupted on his flesh as he tried to shuffle away. Still she held firm.
‘I know what you did, Conor. I know. So you’d better treat me right.’
As the knobbly hand fell away, Conor rushed from the room, almost tripping over the holdall he’d dropped in the hall. In the kitchen, he glanced briefly at the mess, at the commode she’d once used, standing in the corner beside an overflowing rubbish bin. The odours infested his nostrils, and old memories threatened to drown him, like a biblical flood.
To distract himself, he stared out through the small window. And there it was. Still standing. His shed, his place of escape, his refuge from reality, rising like a castle in the midst of reedy grass and discarded furniture.
But what was that? He leaned over the sink, full of plastic food containers, and tried to see more clearly. No use. He opened the back door and stepped out into the garden, where the flattened grass made a pathway to the shed door. No, he hadn’t been mistaken. The lock on the door was hanging open.
‘Mam! Who the hell has been in my shed?’
Conor stood amongst the chaos of the shed that had once been his haven. His tools looked okay, though they were not in the correct order. Not on the right shelves. Not laid out the way he had left them. He shook himself. It was so long ago, maybe he was imagining it. But he wasn’t imagining the padlock in his hand. Someone had been in here.
He’d begun by making little wooden dolls for craft fairs. He felt a flush creep up his pale cheeks as he remembered how he’d started that, aged thirteen, not long after his father had left. Went to work one morning without a goodbye. Only when he didn’t return home did they discover he’d taken a small case with his few possessions. A lifetime ago, but Conor recalled it like it was yesterday. Abandoned by his father and left to his mother’s wrath.
The prospect of spending the rest of his life with his mother was decidedly more chilling than the memory of the years he had spent in jail. He reminded himself miserably that she was only sixty-five, so the odds of her croaking any time soon were remote. Not of her own accord, in any case.
Running a finger over the woodturner, he stepped back in shock. There was something missing. One of his tools. The one he’d moved on to when he’d got fed up with working with wood. There was only one other person who knew how to use his tools. And it wasn’t his mother.
Lottie Parker was excited at having a home of her own after living in her mother’s cramped house since mid February. Being a detective inspector in the town of Ragmullin brought its fair share of dangers. During one recent case, her house had been burned down. Though it had been ruled accidental, she still wasn’t convinced.
‘You could at least smile,’ Mark Boyd said as he struggled with an IKEA flat-pack box wider and taller than the door space. ‘And get Sean to give me a hand.’
‘He’s gone for a ride. And that’s your fault. Buying him a new racing bike.’
‘At least it gets him out of his room. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Sure, but we could do with an extra pair of hands right now.’
She gripped one end of the box and began to shimmy it in through the front door with Boyd huffing and puffing on the outside. Sean, her fifteen-year-old son, was becoming more of an enigma with each passing day. He had succumbed to another bout of depression a few months ago, and only when Boyd arrived with the sparkling new bicycle had his eyes shed their deep darkness.
Boyd stopped moving the carton.
‘What?’ she said. He was looking at her over the angles of the now crunched cardboard.
‘This is the right thing to do, Lottie. You know that. But you have to accept that everything you had in your old house is gone. This is an opportunity to start over. Leave the ghosts of the past blowing in the ashes.’
She shook her head, surprised to find that tears were gathering. She sniffed them away. Boyd was her detective sergeant and a good friend. ‘This isn’t going to work.’
‘Of course it will. Just give yourself time to get settled.’
‘I mean this goddam carton. We’ll have to open it up outside and bring the stuff in bit by bit.’
‘What’s in it anyway?’
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
Boyd let out a loud laugh, and Lottie couldn’t help it. She had to laugh too.
As it turned out, it was a bookcase that had been in the box. Now Boyd was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sitting room, instructions in one hand and a handful of screws in the other, and slats of timber everywhere.
Lottie switched on her new red kettle and got two mugs from the cupboard. Maybe Boyd was right, she thought. She had to admit that he knew her better than she knew herself sometimes. They had been going through a good patch over the last few months. He was a loyal friend. More than a friend at times, if she wanted to be totally honest with herself.
Her hand stalled on a jar of coffee as she realised the truth. Boyd was her only friend. What kept him around? He’d got his divorce from his wife, Jackie. He seemed content. But she knew he wanted more of a commitment from her. Of that she was certain. She couldn’t give him any more, though. Not now. Not yet. She’d lost her husband Adam to cancer five years ago, and ever since she had struggled with grief, widowhood and raising her children.
The house was going to be full of life soon. Her twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie with her baby son Louis, seventeen-year-old Chloe and Sean were due to move in tomorrow. They’d already snapped up the bedrooms they wanted, without any major rows, and most of their clothes were now hanging in newly painted wardrobes. She wondered how Rose, her mother, would cope with an empty house. She smiled. Rose would probably be delighted to have her own space back, after the long months of them all living there like transient gypsies.
‘I think there’s a screw missing,’ Boyd shouted from the other room.
‘I knew that about you a long time ago.’ Lottie smiled and started to make the coffee. Maybe it was time to leave Adam’s ghost resting among the ashes of her burned-out house. Maybe.
Tony Keegan opened the door and felt his jaw drop as he tilted his head to one side.
His one-time best friend, Conor Dowling, was standing on the doorstep. Shit. He gathered his wits quickly and arranged his face into a forced smile.
‘Hello, bud. Didn’t know you were out.’
‘You’d have tidied up a bit better and locked the door if you’d realised, is that it?’
‘What are you on about?’ But Tony knew all too well what Conor was referring to. ‘Thought you had another year to serve.’
‘See what thought did to that numbskull brain of yours.’
Tony felt himself being slapped back against the hall wall as Conor pushed past him.
‘Home alone?’ Conor asked.
Closing the front door, Tony followed the tall, skinny figure into the kitchen. A lot had happened in the last ten years that Conor didn’t know about. And Tony wasn’t at all sure he should tell him.
Conor had opened the fridge and was bent over, hands inside, pulling out packets of cheese and ham.
‘Got any bread? I’m starving.’ He slammed the fridge shut with his booted foot and stacked the food on the table.
Before Tony could move an inch, Conor had found the bread and taken a knife from the drawer. He flicked the lid off a tub of Flora and began spreading, slamming cheese on the thick buttered slices. When he seemed happy with his work, he kicked out a chair, sat down and began to eat.
Tony didn’t know what to do, so he sat down too. ‘Good behaviour, was it?’ he said.
‘No. I sliced the governor’s throat and escaped.’ Conor laughed, his mouth wide open, cheese and bread stuck to his teeth.
‘Don’t be messing with me.’ Tony noticed that his friend’s eyes were not laughing, so he picked up a crust from the table and began to chew. When he could no longer hold Conor’s cold stare, he dropped his gaze to his buttery fingers.
‘Messing?’ Still Conor wasn’t laughing. ‘Thought you knew me better than that.’
Tony glanced up cautiously and almost recoiled at the hardness of Conor’s eyes boring into him. He knew instantly that his friend had changed. Prison would do that to you, he supposed. Not that he’d ever been inside himself. He’d cleaned up his act after Conor had been convicted. Now that he was out, he’d have to be wary once again, and watch his back.
‘You’re my friend, Conor. Course I know you.’ He put down the half-eaten crust. ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’
He held his breath as Conor wiped his hands on the white lace tablecloth. For God’s sake! It was the good one. The cloth his gran had brought home for his mother from Spain, like a million years ago. And now Mam, Dad and Gran were all pushing up daisies. So it shouldn’t matter. But it did.
Sniffing loudly, Conor said, ‘I have plans. But first you have to tell me why you were putting your mucky paws all over my workshop.’
‘What workshop?’
‘My shed. In my garden.’
‘It’s your mother’s garden.’
The hand grabbed the collar of Tony’s T-shirt before he could defend himself. He was dragged across the table, clutching at the Spanish heirloom as butter, bread and knife hit the floor.
‘Tony, don’t act like a dimwit with me. What were you doing in my workshop?’
‘I … I …’
‘What?’
‘C-can’t b-breathe.’
As Conor let go and pushed him away, Tony tried to come up with a decent excuse, but nothing was anywhere near as good as the truth, and he definitely couldn’t tell him that.
Swallowing loudly, he ran his hand over his throbbing throat and coughed. ‘I was bored, so I asked your mother if I could do some work in your shed … your workshop. She said she didn’t mind. Just asked me to put something in the microwave for her and take out the bins and stuff.’
‘What work?’
‘You know, trying to make things, the way you used to do. But I’m useless at it. I was only fiddling around.’
‘Well there are some tools missing.’
‘I took nothing.’
‘You didn’t lock the place.’
Digging his greasy hand into his jeans, Tony said, ‘Sorry. I must have left in a hurry.’
‘Nothing in this world could make you hurry.’
He felt his flabby cheeks flush, and put a self-conscious hand on his protruding belly, trying unsuccessfully to hold it in. Smiling weakly, he changed the subject in an attempt to mollify his friend. ‘I’m glad you’re back, Conor.’
Conor was already out in the hallway. ‘I’m not one bit glad to be back.’
‘See you later then? Maybe?’
But Tony was talking to the slammed door.
The Parker family sat around their new table, in their new kitchen, in their new house. Lottie was determined that this was to be a fresh start to family life. She promised herself that she was going to be a better mother. Fingers crossed. But sitting down with her children was proving to be strained and uncomfortable. Maybe she had let things get out of hand. Or maybe they had all just become too used to living with their gran. She wasn’t sure what to do.
Sean was sitting with a sullen look pasted on his face. Chloe pushed her food around the plate with her fork, while Katie shovelled mashed potatoes into one-year-old Louis’ mouth. This should be a happy time, Lottie thought, but there was still something missing. She glanced up at the wall, devoid of paintings and photographs. The framed wedding photo, faded to sepia, that had always hung in the kitchen had perished in the fire, along with most of the other physical reminders of her dead husband. Boyd was right. She had to move on. But how was she to fill the void in her heart? Boyd had tried, but invariably she’d spurned him. Was that why there was still a corner of emptiness lodged there?
‘Mam? I asked you a question.’ Chloe pushed her plate to the centre of the table.
‘Sorry. I was miles away.’ Lottie shook her reminiscences out of her head and concentrated on her daughter.
‘As usual.’ Chloe kicked back her chair and stood.
‘What did you say?’
‘Oh, whatever.’
‘Chloe! I’m listening now.’
‘Can you babysit Louis for Katie at the weekend. We want to go to out.’
‘Where is out?’
‘Jomo’s. Please.’
‘The nightclub?’
‘Yeah.’ Chloe rolled her eyes as if her mother were a dinosaur.
‘You’re not old enough.’ Lottie wasn’t in the mood for a row. This was their first night in their new home. They should be happy. Shouldn’t they? But she knew that while the four walls surrounding them might be different, inside they all remained the same.
Chloe stood in the doorway, her fingers turning white. ‘Why do you continue to treat me like I’m twelve? I’ll be eighteen next month. Life is too short to worry about what age you have to be to get into a nightclub. Come on. Let me live.’
‘You have school. Exams. Study. You’re too young.’
‘You didn’t answer the question though,’ Katie piped up.
Damn, she’d forgotten the question. ‘What was it again?’
‘Can you babysit?’
Lottie glanced over at Louis and winked at him. Immediately the baby opened his mouth in a smile full of mashed potatoes. She sighed. ‘Let me see how work is set and I’ll let you know.’
‘They get to go everywhere,’ Sean said sulkily. ‘And I’m stuck here with you and a baby. Such a gross life.’
‘Sean?’ Lottie was speaking to air as her son left the kitchen.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Chloe said. ‘Teenage problems.’
‘And what are you? You’re still a teenager too.’
‘But I’m mature.’ Chloe straightened her back and followed her brother.
Katie dabbed at Louis’ mouth with a wet wipe and handed him over to Lottie. ‘Can you change him, Mam? I’ll go and talk to Sean.’
Alone with her grandson, Lottie eyed the mess on the table and the counter full of saucepans and dishes. She suddenly missed living at her mother’s. She’d never thought she’d feel that emotion. Not after everything that had happened in the last year.
‘What are we going to do with the lot of them?’ she asked Louis.
She was rewarded with a burp and a dirty nappy.
At twenty-five years old, Louise Gill felt she had been through her life twice. At times, she even felt like she was two people living in alternate states of mind. Her mother worried that she might be schizophrenic, but Louise had refused all medication. She didn’t want to live in a fugue state. She had to study, and she wanted to be normal.
She checked the notifications on her phone for possibly the tenth time since she’d woken up. Nothing of interest on Instagram and no new Snapchats. She hadn’t many friends, so that was normal. Putting the phone to one side, she pulled her laptop onto her knee.
The coffee shop she was sitting in had recently opened in an old bank building, and she loved the anteroom situated in what had once been a fireproof vault. The door was six inches thick, but these days it was perpetually open, having been cemented at an angle to the floor. Louise didn’t experience claustrophobia like some of her friends, who refused to join her in the dimly lit cavern. In here, she felt safe. Away from the world.
Her thesis was tough and she had to submit it in mid December. Criminal psychology was her favourite subject, and writing about miscarriages of justice had awakened memories deep within her psyche.
She had been right, hadn’t she? About seeing him running frantically that night. What age had she been? Fourteen. She was confident in the testimony she had given. Wasn’t she?
Catching sight of her reflection on the screen, she realised her laptop had slipped into sleep mode. Just like her brain. Her eyes were hollow and dark-rimmed. The nightmares had returned. He had been released from jail. He was back in her town. Walking among people on the street. He could be in here now for all she knew. Her eyes flared wide. She couldn’t see their colour in the reflective screen, but they were dark brown, like her long hair, which she had never dyed. Her skin was sallow, with a sprinkling of freckles on her nose.
She had to concentrate. No point in going back to that disturbing time. Or was there? Recently the nightmares waking her at three in the morning had left her wrapped in soaking sheets with a raging fever. Her subconscious was telling her she had made a mistake all those years ago. Her conscious self told her she hadn’t. Which was correct?
A shadow dimmed the light in the doorway and she looked up. Her mouth formed a perfect O and pearls of perspiration dribbled down her spine. He was there, accusation flaring in his eyes as he stared at her. Then in an instant he was gone, and she shook her head. Had she imagined it? Had it been a vision from her subconscious mind? Her hands clutched the laptop tightly. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t talk.
She realised she’d been holding her breath. As she exhaled, her eyes filled and tears began to leak down her cheeks.
Louise Gill didn’t know what was real any more. She had to talk to Cristina.
Unwrapping herself from her lover’s arms, Louise went to search the refrigerator for something to drink. She felt safer with Cristina than anywhere else. The fact that her best friend was now her partner, was her secret. The two of them had debated long into the summer nights, often resulting in heated arguments, about ‘coming out’ to her parents. Louise was no longer the fourteen-year-old who had idolised the only man in her life. The man who had let her down so badly that she’d talked herself into believing that that was why she was attracted to a woman. Or maybe it was just that she loved Cristina more than anyone since she’d been fourteen years old. In any case, whatever the reason, she didn’t want to tell her father.
‘Why are you so on edge?’ Cristina’s voice followed her into the kitchen.
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ A can of Coke would have to do. Too early to drink the white wine that nestled in the door, condensation running down the bottle.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
Louise turned to see Cristina leaning naked against the door frame, smoke curling from the cigarette in her long-fingered hand. She looked like an exotic actress who had stepped from a 1930s movie set. Her black hair lay like a snake over one shoulder and her eyes were dark and inviting, displaying her Asian heritage. At four foot eleven, she was six inches smaller than Louise, but today she appeared taller.
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ Louise said, biting the inside of her lip.
A smile lit up Cristina’s face. ‘See. I was right. You are thinking of him.’
‘I don’t want to talk about Conor Dowling.’
Cristina’s hand caressed Louise’s arm. ‘Whether you do or not, I think you have to. Otherwise, sweetheart, it is going to eat you up inside.’
‘Leave it for now, okay?’ Louise took a drink of the Coke. ‘Maybe later.’
Cristina moved away, back into the bedroom. But her voice carried loud and clear to Louise’s ears. ‘You can’t keep everything for later. First of all you have to face up to Dowling, and then you need to tell your father about us. That arsehole needs to know the truth.’
Wind feathered up along Amy Whyte’s bare legs as she pulled hard on her cigarette before dropping it to the floor and grinding it out with the heel of her silver-glittered sandal. A drift of cold air swirled around her shoulders and she felt the first smattering of rain. Oh no! Her false tan would run down her legs. She wanted to go home. Now.
Looking around for Penny, she saw her laughing with a group of lads under the Perspex roof of the smoking shelter. How was she going to get her to leave? It was gone one o’clock and the nightclub was in full swing, but Amy was tired. Getting too old, she thought as she scanned the crowd of teenagers. It was supposed to be strictly over twenty-ones, but that rule was never adhered to.
She approached her friend. ‘Penny, are you coming?’
‘No, it’s just the way she’s standing,’ one of the men joked.
Typical of Ducky Reilly. He always had to be the smart one. Amy’s lips trembled with the cold and she couldn’t find a suitable reply in her vodka-soaked brain. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that last drink. Too late now, she told herself, and wished she had a warmer jacket.
‘Let’s have one more,’ Penny Brogan said, smiling coyly at Ducky while wrapping her blonde hair around her hand, her little finger sticking up in what looked to Amy like a sexual gesture. Pen. . .
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