Danny didn’t respond, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him.
‘And he was unfaithful to Mum too, over and over and over again. He’d stay away night after night, shagging other women, and then he’d come home and brag about it, tell her a good lookin’ fella like him didn’t have to settle for a frumpy little woman like her, he could have anyone he liked. She was there to cook and clean and iron his clothes, nothing much more than that. I can remember maybe three or four times in my whole childhood that they went out together for a dinner or a party. It was toxic, the worst possible atmosphere to grow up in. I spent years being afraid, waiting for the next blow, the next fist in the stomach, the next row.’
‘Shit, Danny.’
He was staring into space now, his eyes glazed, as if watching his childhood play out in front of him, and I had a sudden urge to cross the room and take him in my arms, to comfort him, to take some of the pain away. Then I remembered what he’d done to me, and my heart hardened again.
Unfaithful? Over and over again? Like father, like son, I thought bitterly, and I stayed where I was. The sooner it was over, the sooner I could get him out of there.
‘It went on for years, Gemma. And you know what the worst thing was? We put up with it, both of us. Me and mum. When Liam was born – and God knows how that happened, but I don’t want to think about that – I felt sick for weeks, sick scared that Dad would move onto him next. But he never did. I never knew why, but he never did. Liam was special, in more ways than one, and the fact that my father never laid a hand on him in anger is the one redeeming feature of his whole sick, twisted life. But he carried on, same old same old, with me and Mum, and we carried on putting up with it. And to this day I don’t really know why, you know? It was like he had this … this power over us. We never told anyone, we never reported him. We blamed our injuries on accidents, on falls, if anyone ever asked, though God knows why anyone believed us, we’d need to have been falling over every second day to account for the number of bruises we both had all the time. Maybe it was partly because we were ashamed I suppose, ashamed of what our lives were like when all around us everyone else seemed normal, happy. But mostly, we were scared. Scared of him, scared of what he’d do to us if we fought back, if we stood up to him. We let him carry on, and we did nothing. We did absolutely feckin’ nothing.’
He punched the table, hard, his face flushing with anger, and another wave of sympathy rushed over me. Poor Danny, I thought. And poor Bridget too, still so angry at everyone and everything. What a life she must have lived.
Danny was still talking, engrossed in his story.
‘I left as soon as I could, when I was eighteen and went off to university. But even then, even though I was big and strong enough by then to fight back, to defend my mother against him too, I still didn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to. It was as if after a lifetime of it, he had this … this hold, over both of us. We never fought back, we never told. Well, except Quinn.’
He paused for a moment, rubbing a hand across his face.
‘He didn’t know all of it, not how constant it was, how bad it was, not back in those days. He knows more now. But he walked in one day, came round unexpectedly, when Dad was laying into Mum, and I’ll never forget his face, Gemma. I’ll never forget how shocked he was when he saw the blood, saw how viciously Dad was punching her. Dad didn’t know he was there, which was probably lucky for him, and I begged him not to tell anyone, told him Dad would kill him and us if he did. And so he kept the secret. He’s had my back ever since we were kids, that lad. I looked after him too, you know? He probably wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for me, but that’s a story for another day. But he’d do anything for me, Quinn. Always would. Still would.’
I know that story, I thought. And that’s why Quinn lied through his teeth to the police about me. You saved his life, and he’d have done anything to protect you.
The bitterness was back. Why was he telling me all this? Yes, it was awful, horrendous. But all this was in the past. He’d moved on, made a new life for himself in London. What did this have to do with anything now?
‘And so he kept the secret too, as I said.’ Danny was saying. ‘We all kept the secret. I’d got so used to hiding it, as a kid, it became second nature. And when I grew up, and moved over here, there didn’t seem any point in telling anyone about it at all, so I never did. Except it was still there, inside, you know? A lot of the time I could forget about it, but it never really goes away, something like that. And I suppose it … it festered. The knowledge that I could have done something to stop him, and I didn’t … as the years passed, I began to hate myself for that. And I mean really, really hate myself. So much so that it started to … to consume me, Gemma. I thought about it all the time, the shame, the guilt … even if I’d let him do that to me, why had I let him do it to her, to my mother? Why didn’t I protect her, when I was old enough to fight him back? Was I that much of a coward? I was, and she knew it too. She knew I was a coward, and she hated me for it as well. She still hates me. She’s never forgiven me for the way I let her down.’
I thought back to how Bridget had reacted to Danny’s disappearance, how disinterested she’d seemed, and then to how she’d been with him on our visit; his pathetic eagerness to please his mother, and the coldness of her response. He was right, she’d never forgiven him, I thought, and my heart, already rent in two, shattered a little bit more for both of them, these two broken people, who needed each other so desperately but, for whatever reason, couldn’t find a way to help each other through their living hell.
‘I was always told I was the spitting image of my father,’ Danny was saying. ‘Even you said that, when you met him, remember?’
I gave a small nod, remembering. Donal had indeed been an older, greyer-haired version of Danny.
‘But that used to make me feel sick, when people said that. I’d think: “No. NO! I’m nothing like him, I’m nothing like that bastard”. And then … then, Gemma, I started to realize that I was. I was like him.’
I stared at him.
‘What do you mean?’ Danny had never been violent. I couldn’t even imagine him hitting a woman, or anyone come to that.
‘Not the violence,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘But … the other stuff. The women, the shagging around. Even from the first time I found myself a girlfriend, I couldn’t settle for more than a couple of weeks. Always looking, always on the prowl for the next one. And I knew I’d got that from him, Gemma. I was like him, and I hated him for that, so much. But I hated myself more. And then … well, then I met you, and I thought, finally. Finally. I loved you, Gemma, and I knew you loved me, and I thought, this is it, this one’s different. This one, I’m going to marry, and I’m never going to stray, and I won’t be like him, not anymore. It’s over, and I’m going to win.’
He banged a fist on the table again, hard, and something flashed in his eyes, and as if in response I felt a hot spark of anger.
‘Except you didn’t, did you? You didn’t win, Danny. Because you carried on, didn’t you? You married me, but you still carried on. You even joined a dating website when you were married to me, for fuck’s sake.’
His eyes met mine, and his shoulders slumped.
‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I tried. I tried so bloody hard. But it was like a sickness, Gemma. An addiction. Out of my control. I just couldn’t do it. It was only now and again, after we got married, I promise, only the very odd time. But I couldn’t … I just couldn’t stop. And I’m so, so sorry about that. You’ll never know how sorry I am.’
I exhaled heavily, shaking my head. What did any of it matter now?
‘Look, why are you telling me all this? What does any of it have to do—?’
He held up a hand.
‘Please. I’m nearly there. You’ll understand when I … anyway, as the time passed I got more and more angry. The hatred, for him and for myself, for what he’d made me … it was like a living thing, Gem. It was eatin
g me alive. All I could think of was why didn’t I do something, why didn’t I stop him? I even dreamed about him, dreamed about going back to Ireland and finally doing what I should have done all those years ago, finally giving him the punishment he deserved. And then … and then …’
He swallowed, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him.
‘And then he died. And it was too late.’
There was a long silence. I stood watching him, waiting, and unexpectedly, I felt a little surge of guilt. My husband had been in so much pain, so much torment. How had I not known, how had I not noticed? All of those times, after Donal died, when Danny would go off on his own, disappear for hours. It was so much worse than I had thought, grief of a totally different kind, I suddenly realized. Not grief because he loved his father, grief because he hated him. Grief because he despised the man so much, and wanted revenge, and grief because he’d lost the chance, forever. If only I’d known, if only I’d realized back then, maybe I could have helped him, maybe we could have avoided …
‘And then one day, something weird happened.’
He was talking again.
‘Something so feckin’ weird, Gemma, that it seemed like fate, seemed like it was meant to happen. I’d just joined that dating site, Elite Hook Ups … I know, I know, and again, I’m so, so sorry. Anyway, I was flicking through profiles, trying to work out what to write for mine. And then I saw him.’
He paused again, looked at me, looked away.
‘Saw who?’
‘I saw a man who looked like Dad. Who looked just like him, when he was younger, when he was my age, when he was hitting us and beating us and whoring …’
His eyes had narrowed, his voice low and angry now.
‘… and suddenly, it was as if the sun had finally come out, and I knew what to do. I knew what I had to do, to make it all better. To make it all go away, finally. To heal myself. Except, of course …’
A small laugh, bitter and hoarse.
‘Except, ironically, that’s when it all started to go wrong.’
He paused, took a breath, and his eyes were suddenly bright and shiny with tears. A little ripple of unease ran through me.
‘What did? What went wrong, Danny?’
He was staring at me, clamping his lips together, looking at me with a sudden intensity, a slight frown on his face.
‘Tell me! Danny, please.’
There was a long silence, both of us motionless, him still sitting, back rigid, hands clasped in front of him on the table, me standing, leaning against the hard edge of the kitchen worktop, waiting, a cold creeping sensation sweeping up my spine.
‘Danny?’ My voice sounded too loud, too shrill.
He swallowed.
‘I started to kill them,’ he whispered.
Chapter 43
My stomach rolled. What?
‘You … what?’
What had he just said? I couldn’t have heard that properly, I thought. He couldn’t mean …
He was standing up now too, walking around the table, moving closer to me. He was still talking, talking faster and faster, the words spilling out of him.
‘I saw the first one on the app, like I said,’ he said, and his voice sounded hoarse. ‘I didn’t think the cops would work that bit out, you know, about the app. Thought I’d covered my tracks. They’re not as stupid as I thought. Anyway, I saw him, and I knew I had to meet him. This guy, his face … he looked like Dad, Gemma. And like me, of course, in retrospect, but isn’t it strange, how that never entered my head, at the time? I just saw Dad. I just saw my father’s face. And it was easy, so feckin’ easy. I just set up a fake female profile, picture of a beautiful woman, set up a date. Simple as that. It was the night of my stag do, so I went along early, before I was due to meet the others at the pub, you know? And as soon as I saw him, standing there at the spot we’d arranged to meet at in Richmond Park, all unsuspecting like …’
His eyes were glazed again, and a terrible fear was beginning to grip me.
No, Danny, please, please no.
‘There’d been a storm, branches down all over the place, and I just felt this rage, this anger, like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I just bent down and picked up this fallen branch and I just hit him, so hard, and … I just knew, straight away, that I’d killed him. It was that easy. And I stood there, and looked at him, looked at him for ages, and I just felt this wave of … of peace, and … and relief. It was like a release, you know? As if somehow the healing process had begun. I’d never felt like that, like I did in those few minutes, Gemma. It was as if I’d killed him, my father, the monster, the thing, the thing that had caused me so much pain. I know it sounds crazy, but … do you get it, Gemma? Do you understand?’
He moved a step closer, and I stood there frozen, my eyes wide, fixed on his face. Was this real? Had my husband really just told me he’d killed somebody? My brain didn’t seem to be working properly, and a strange numbness was beginning to spread through me, upwards from my toes, my legs rigid and heavy, my stomach contracting. I stared at him, and opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
Richmond Park? One of the London murders being linked to the Bristol cases had happened in Richmond Park, hadn’t it? Did that mean? … please, no …
‘I felt good, for a while.’
He was talking again, and his eyes had taken on a slightly wild look now, casting around the room, not looking at me.
‘But then a few weeks after we got married, I went for a drink after work, and I just saw this guy, on the other side of the bar, and again, he looked a bit like Dad. He did, Gemma. Like it was my father, just sitting there, and I know, I know, there are a lot of guys around who look a bit like Dad, a bit like me, when you think about it … dark hair, dark eyebrows. But at the time, well, it was like fate, you know? I thought, here’s another one, sent to me. So I went over, and I said, “hey, are you my long-lost brother, look at us!” some bollocks like that, and we got chatting, and then he said he needed to get back home to his girlfriend, so I followed him. He got on the tube, I got on the tube … he’d left his car at Hounslow West tube station, parked in a nice dark corner, and even when I got there, watching him from the shadows, I wasn’t sure if it was going to happen again; I thought I might be able to control it that time, you know, but it was like the rage took me over, Gemma. It took me over. And so I grabbed something that was lying on the ground, I think it was a broken exhaust pipe, something like that, it was just there, and … well, the same thing again. The relief, the peace.’
‘The dead man,’ I whispered. My throat was beginning to constrict, and I wondered if soon I might not be able to breathe. Was this real? Was I really hearing this?
Danny laughed, then his face grew serious again.
‘The dead man,’ he said softly.
We looked at each other for a moment, then he took another step towards me. I could smell a faint odour, a mix of sweat and aftershave, sour and sweet. My mobile phone had started ringing again. Danny glanced towards the door to the hall, but the ringing stopped, the call going to voicemail. He looked back at me.
‘And then, nothing. I was OK. I felt better,’ he said. ‘I thought, that’s it. I’m OK, I’m over it, I can finally move on. Everything was good, for ages. I had you, we were planning our future, and everything was going to be OK. And somehow, I’d got away with it, too. Killing them, I mean. I hadn’t touched either of them, not with my hands, my body, so I knew there wouldn’t be any DNA or anything, and the two murder weapons … I’d got rid of those, stuck them in my backpack, chucked them away miles from where I’d used them. Even remembered to get rid of the app on the first one’s phone, and wiped all his emails so there’d be no evidence of any communication between us. Came in handy, having the job I do. It wasn’t hard. I had access to software to hide my own IP address, all that stuff. I won’t bore you with it, but I knew they’d never find me. But it didn’t last long, the peace. A few months later, it was back again, the an
ger, the hatred, and I knew I wasn’t done, Gemma. But I also knew that my luck couldn’t last, that one day soon it would run out. And I didn’t want to spend my life in prison, Gem. I couldn’t handle it. And so there was only one solution. To run. To disappear, and start a new life, with a new identity, away from it all. Away from what I’d done.’
His words were calm, but there was a crazed look in his eyes now.
‘I could have killed myself, that would have been one solution, of course,’ he said. ‘And I did consider that, briefly. But then I thought, what a waste. I have so much to give, Gemma. I thought, maybe I could go and work with victims of domestic violence somewhere, give something back, redeem myself … but I thought about you too, you know? I put money aside for you, lots of money, you would have been OK, for a while at least … I did think about you, you know that, don’t you? You know I loved you right? So, anyway, we moved to Bristol, and the plan was all coming together beautifully. My plan, to get away, as I already told you. Except then …’
I was starting to feel sick, my stomach lurching.
He sighed.
‘Well, then there were a couple of little blips. And I’m assuming you’ve guessed what those blips were, by now, haven’t you?’
The tone of his voice had changed suddenly, a manic edge creeping into it, and a shiver ran down my spine. He seemed to be waiting for me to reply, looking at me quizzically, as if he’d just asked me to solve a riddle. His dark eyes looked almost black, and his lips twitched as if he was about to laugh. I nodded, my hands gripping the edge of the worktop behind me, my head beginning to swim. I felt faint. Yes, I’d guessed. Of course I’d guessed.
‘The two Bristol murders. The two men who died on The Downs. You killed them, as well,’ I said, my voice barely audible. ‘You’re the serial killer.’
He did laugh then, throwing his head back, then stopped abruptly.
‘I suppose I am,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s what they’ll call me, isn’t it?’
The Perfect Couple Page 29
