Blinding Lies

by Amy Cronin

  Anna read the dates of birth of Natalie’s twin daughters, Rachel and Rhea. They were just three years old. If Natalie and Kate had only moved to Cork in 2014, then Natalie must have fallen pregnant with the twins almost immediately after meeting David Gallagher. And then her life was bound to a vicious criminal forever. A man who grew increasingly violent towards his partner, who threatened his children. The word motive plagued Anna – both Kate and Natalie had plenty of reasons to want David Gallagher dead. But only one of them was still in the city when he was shot.

  There was little progress being made on the case – the job book items that were completed had yielded little else of value. There was no sign of Kate Crowley in the city or suburbs near her home. Door-to-door searches had yielded no new information. Tom and Mae Gallagher were putting pressure on the Gardaí to release David Gallagher to them for burial – but the State Pathologist had yet to complete her work. She was waiting on toxicology reports to be finalised, but some results were back that confirmed that David Gallagher had cocaine in his system at the time of his death. The pathologist had indicated that David Gallagher’s body showed signs of a violent assault prior to his death, which was consistent with blood and other evidence of a fight at the property. The mystery of what had happened in Kate’s house grew deeper.

  With a shudder, Anna read that Detective Taylor had been informed by one of her contacts that Tom Gallagher had offered a reward to anyone who delivered Kate to him – and more cash if she was delivered alive.

  With a heavy sigh Anna printed out her completed work and added it to the file, then made her way to the incident room. The door was partially open, and voices were raised inside. She recognised them as belonging to Chief Superintendent Janet McCarthy and Elise Taylor.

  “You can’t be serious!? Two is not enough!”

  “I’ve explained my position and I’m not going over it again, Detective!”

  As Anna hovered in the doorway, Janet McCarthy exited the room and stepped around her. Her face dark and brooding, she stormed away from the incident room.

  Anna rapped gently on the door.

  “What is it?” Elise barked.

  Anna closed her eyes briefly; the tension in this building was a physical force, pulsing around everyone like a predator ready to pounce. It was wearing her out.

  She stepped into the room and walked towards the detective. “The notes you left on my desk are typed up, I’ll leave them here.”

  Elise didn’t acknowledge her presence – she was sitting hunched, scrolling through crime-scene photographs, completely engrossed in the macabre images.

  Anna hesitated, momentarily transfixed. She knew she should leave – the detective appeared to be in a foul mood and Anna had plenty of work waiting for her – but she couldn’t take her eyes off Elise’s screen. David Gallagher was lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing in particular. His mouth was slack, his skin ghostly white. A black stain at his neck – dried blood, she presumed – showed where the bullet had struck him.

  “Do you want something?”

  Elise spoke with such venom that Anna was taken aback. Elise ran her fingers through her short blonde bob and looked at her.

  “Sorry,” she said then, grimacing. “It’s a tough case.” She looked at the folder of notes. “Thanks for that.”

  Anna nodded. “Sure, no problem. Listen … I …” she hesitated, unsure whether she should go on.

  Elise’s contrition was over; she stared at Anna, impatiently waiting, her mouth a thin line.

  “I know Kate and Natalie Crowley,” Anna said in a rush, “From primary school. I haven’t seen them since then. It’s just … Kate doesn’t seem the type to kill someone. It must surely be self-defence? And the report from the pathologist said David Gallagher suffered a violent assault – she could hardly have done that. There must have been someone else in the house.”

  Elise’s threw her hands up in exasperation.

  “Who the hell knows? Witnesses only put two people at the property, Kate and David. There are two sets of fingerprints on the gun – Gallagher’s and an unknown other. Those prints are all over the house, so we believe they are Kate Crowley’s. All the evidence points to her as the shooter. Her sister had left the country by then. And God knows both Crowley sisters had plenty of reasons to want him dead!”

  Elise stood up, picking up her empty coffee cup. She passed Anna her card.

  “My mobile number is on there if you think of anything important. But do me a favour – stay out of this. It’s a messy case, and just because you once played with the suspect as a child doesn’t mean you know her, OK? I appreciate you prioritising the work, but that’s where your involvement stays.”

  Elise’s hard stare left Anna in no doubt of what she was saying – butt out.

  The roads had thawed by the time Anna left work just after six o’clock, having stayed late to make up the hours lost that morning. Traffic was heavy. She felt exhausted by the time she reached home.

  Pulling into her housing estate, she thought of William Ryan’s words and began to scan the vehicles parked at the kerbs around her home. Her shoulders sagged in relief when she recognised all the parked vehicles – but, she reminded herself, it was Friday night. Who would be working at this hour?

  Pushing open her front door, Anna paused briefly – the house was quiet, and warm. No doors were open to let in the cold November air. Switching on the hall light, Anna reached out and dropped her keys into the key bowl, moved back into place last night. The keys clattered against the spare set she kept there. Anna laughed out loud into the empty hallway – her imagination had obviously been working on overdrive, and she was scaring herself needlessly! No-one had stolen her keys – she needed to relax.

  Anna thought of the text she had promised to send William Ryan and quickly typed it, feeling foolish.

  Putting a frozen chicken curry in the oven, she uncorked a bottle of red wine and set it on the kitchen counter to breathe while she lit the stove in the living room. A small archway separated the kitchen and living room, and soon the heat from the stove enveloped the space, offering a cosiness to the empty house.

  On Friday nights, she loved the ritual of settling on the armchair in front of the stove with an open bottle of wine, to wait for her best friend Vivian’s call. She and Vivian had been as close as sisters since childhood. She missed talking to her in person. Vivian had been living in Auckland for months now. A number of years ago she and her birth mother had got in touch, and Vivian had finally decided to visit her in New Zealand and spend some proper time together. Anna had no idea when Vivian planned to return home, and she missed her friend.

  As the orange flames danced and Anna sipped her wine, she rolled her shoulders, easing the tension held there. The curry was only halfway through heating. She pulled a book from her stacked bookshelf, hoping to distract herself from the facets of her job that were playing on her mind. She was thorough in her work, always ensuring every detail was collected and documented – now those details danced in her thoughts, jumping from one grim aspect to the other. She soon abandoned the novel, its romantic opening too light to hold her attention. She felt jumpy, alert to every sound.

  Putting the book back in its place, she pulled out the private investigator’s business card from her back pocket and tapped it against the stem of her wineglass. What could Mr. Lane find that the Gardaí had missed? Probably nothing, she knew. The investigation had been thorough. Two grown adults had crashed their car and disappeared after the fact. But they were her parents – she had to try.

  She decided that choosing a record to put on her father’s old record player would calm her. Soon the familiar sound of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major filled the living room. She leant her head back into the armchair and closed her eyes; her mother’s favourite music always brought her to a place of peace.

  The beeping of the oven drew her back to the present – she must have dozed off. Arranging her dinner on
the coffee table in front of her, she checked the time. It was just coming up to eight o’clock, and probably still too early for Vivian to call. She and Vivian had been as close as sisters since childhood. She missed talking to her in person.

  As she blew on a forkful of food, she thought of Kate and Natalie. Where were they? There had been four of them in their girl gang, four best friends: Anna, Kate, Natalie and Vivian. They had been firm friends until primary school was over and Kate and Natalie left for Dublin. Anna and Vivian had remained best friends. Anna hadn’t given Kate and Natalie much thought growing up; life had been busy, and at sixteen her whole world had changed. Now she couldn’t stop thinking about them. The Gallaghers … they sounded like monsters. Kate’s face was etched in Anna’s mind. She imagined the powerlessness she must have felt as David Gallagher had abused her sister. Had she killed him because of it? Was the girl she had known capable of killing anyone? It had to have been self-defence – to Anna it was the only thing that made sense.

  Anna jumped and spilled wine on her blouse as she heard a noise at the glass sliding door in the kitchen. She listened – it was a banging sound, over and over, loud enough to penetrate the peace of the music. Setting down her glass, heart pounding, she stood and stepped quickly to her father’s record player. She switched it off and stood still by the hearth, listening, barely daring to breathe. There it was again, now a dull, repetitive thud. It must be a tree branch come loose, she tried to convince herself. On shaky steps she moved through the kitchen and, turning the light off, pulled aside the white curtain.

  Nothing. No tree branch hitting the glass. Peering out into the darkness, Anna could see nothing else, either. She exhaled the breath she had been holding and felt her shoulders relax. She double-checked the lock and went back to the living room. This time she opted to turn on the TV – Bach might be relaxing, but he did nothing to drown out nocturnal noises, nor quieten her wild imagination.

  ***

  Alex sat at his kitchen table with Samantha, his hands wrapped around a mug of tea. He had filled his wife in on his conversation with Anna from the night before. Samantha was, for once, not working overtime, and they had a chance to catch up on their week.

  Alex sat in worried agitation, fidgeting, his mind racing. Samantha had seen him like this before; especially when it came to the mystery of his parents’ disappearance. The ten-year anniversary of the event felt like a milestone approaching. She stood up and held out her hand.

  “Bed!” she said. “Adding exhaustion to worry won’t help.”

  Alex took her hand and rose wearily to his feet. He looked utterly drained.

  Samantha felt a rush of pity for him. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow. I don’t have to work this weekend.”

  Alex pulled her into his arms, finding comfort in her weight against his chest. “Thanks, Sam.”

  She wrapped her arms around his back, and they stayed in the embrace for a few minutes, then broke apart and moved toward the stairs, to bed.

  It was no surprise to Alex that he couldn’t sleep. He liked to feel in control of his life. Raking up his parents’ disappearance didn’t seem like a good idea to him and didn’t seem like a way to maintain control. He understood his need for order and routine, and for things to make sense. He had been a very young man, just twenty-five, when he lost both parents and took on full responsibility for his teenage sister. To say it had been difficult was a huge understatement.

  He hated to remember that day ten years ago, mostly because of the look on his sister’s face when he relayed the telephone call from the Guards. Anna had been sitting on the sofa in the living room, completely absorbed in Lord of the Flies, when Alex ended the call and, stumbling, made his way to the armchair beside her.

  Initially Anna had been too engrossed in her book to pay any attention to her brother. After a few moments, the silence from him drew her eyes up from the page, and registering his shocked expression she had put her book aside.

  “What’s wrong, Alex?”

  Alex often thought he should have softened the message somehow. She was only sixteen after all. The memory of how he had blurted out the news to Anna often caused him to cringe.

  “That was a Detective Molloy from the Garda Station in town. He said Mum and Dad’s car was found crashed on the motorway to Dublin. But there’s no sign of their bodies.”

  “Their bodies?” Anna had whispered.

  Alex shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “No sign of them at all, I mean. They are not in the car or nearby.”

  “Well, they must have gone for help!” Anna had said with the sure confidence of a teenager who has yet to see any bad in the world.

  “Yeah,” Alex had agreed, although he hadn’t felt any confidence. “That must be it.”

  But that wasn’t it. The hours rolled into days and the days into weeks, and there was still no sign of their parents. Anna spent her days on the sofa, reading, within arm’s reach of their telephone, expecting it to ring at any minute. School was forgotten – there was no way she could be expected to concentrate on her schoolwork, nor Alex on his accountancy exams. At night, Alex heard her sobs from her closed bedroom door across the hall from his. He mostly stood outside, unsure how to help her. Eventually, he realised all she needed was for him to be there, sitting on the bed beside her, his presence reassuring.

  When she was asleep, he often went and sat on their parents’ bed in their room downstairs, hoping for inspiration. Nothing made sense to him. He knew all the details of the case and had kept them to himself. If none of it made any sense to him, how could he explain it to his younger sister?

  Michael and Helen Clarke’s BMW had been found crashed on the motorway to Dublin. There were skid marks that indicated the driver had braked hard and fast. There was blood on the dashboard, which DNA analysis had confirmed belonged to both of them. The passenger seatbelt had been cut with what appeared to be a sharp blade, perhaps a penknife. There were no belongings in the car – no handbag, coat, or driver’s licence. Which gave Alex hope. Surely, they had escaped the car accident, and had gone out onto the motorway, looking for help? There were some blood spots around the car, but no trail that gave any clue of which direction they might have taken. There were no witnesses to the accident, only the driver that had come on the scene of the crash and called the Gardaí, and he hadn’t seen any sign of the occupants of the BMW.

  The Gardaí searched every angle of the case. Every hospital in the country was quizzed to find out if any patients had been admitted showing injuries consistent with a car accident. Every outhouse and shed for two hundred kilometres were searched. News bulletins showed the Clarkes’ photos nightly. But the pair seemed to have vanished.

  Weeks turned into months and, before Alex really had time to catch his breath, months had turned into a year. Detective Molloy stayed in touch, updating Alex on the lack of progress every couple of weeks. After two years he called to the house, said he was retiring, and expressed his deep regret at not solving the mystery. Alex was gracious; he assured the detective that he knew he and his team had done their best. What more could he say?

  Anna was not so understanding. Her tears had dried, and her resolve had hardened. She had read enough mystery stories to know that there was always an explanation. Someone knew where her parents were, and what had happened to them. The Gardaí had just failed to figure it out. She had no answers – instead she had a growing hatred. She had no Bad Guy to blame for the gaping hole in her life – but she had Detective Molloy and his team to blame for incompetence, for what she perceived as disinterest. It didn’t make sense to her that her parents couldn’t be found; the enduring mystery burdened her at night and prevented sleep. It was all-consuming. The Missing Persons Bureau had encouraged them to do public appeals, which they had, but still nothing changed. The mystery endured.

  Somehow, ten years had passed since then. Alex embraced a different life. He had no choice. Anna eventually returned to school; Alex finished his exams and qualifie
d as an accountant. Neighbours helped when they could, the Pearsons in particular, but Alex was always aware that the responsibility for Anna lay with him now. He had accepted their parents were not coming home. And he had thought Anna had too.

  The hatred and anger in Anna that had worried Alex began to soften after she returned to her beloved Taekwon-Do. The martial art had been a bond between them and their father. Michael Clarke was a black belt and an advocate of the skillset. His training mate Jason had coached Alex and Anna too, and Michael had often practised manoeuvres and stances with them in their back garden. When Anna returned to the practice she rediscovered a calm way to channel her anger. It became a lifebuoy for her. She trained every day until she had finally reached black-belt level, and then kept training.

  Alex and Anna had grown closer in the last ten years than any other set of siblings he knew. It stood to reason – they had been through a shared trauma. Even though she was an adult, he still felt very much responsible for his sister. He knew she would hate that and would tell him there was no need. Anna was capable, a black belt, and well educated. Alex hadn’t been surprised when she told him she was going to work as Garda staff – he knew the order and logic of the job would appeal to her. Alex wondered if a part of Anna had hoped working for the Gardaí would lead her to answers.

  Alex tossed and turned all night. Sleep proved elusive, as it had so many nights in the last decade. There were things about his childhood that Anna had never been told, or if she had, she had never found them to be unusual. Their English parents had moved around the U.K. throughout Alex’s childhood, living in a variety of small towns. They had been a very private family, never making close friendships, never bonding with their neighbours. To Alex, it seemed his parents had deliberately kept themselves aloof, and at a distance. Michael had a variety of jobs, changing with every new town, and Helen kept to herself. Alex was nine years old when Anna was born; the Clarkes had moved to Ireland only the previous year, telling young Alex they wanted to make a fresh start. As a child he hadn’t questioned his parents; as an adult, he wondered why?