Where She Lies

by Michael Scanlon

  Beck nodded, and just as she reached for her phone, it rang. She picked it up, ‘Hello… Yes. That’s correct. He’s right here.’ She passed the phone to Beck. ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Hello… Yes, it is. Hello, Debra Anne. Thank you, we’ve been waiting on those… I don’t need to know the technical details, just the results, please.’

  Claire watched Beck carefully. She could see his expression changing.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, putting the phone down, staring at Claire.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a match,’ he said. ‘It’s him.’

  Forty-Eight

  Nigel McBride had taken to biting his fingernails again. Karen watched her husband’s reflection in the kitchen window while she cleared the debris from the lunch plates into the sink food-waste grinder.

  ‘Want tea?’ she asked, false cheeriness in her tone.

  He appeared not to have heard, so she asked again. But then he answered, quick as a boxer’s jab, and just as painful, more of a shout: ‘No.’

  She picked up a fork and threw it into the sink. He looked at her, pushing back his stool as he stood.

  ‘I’m going back to work, at least I’ll get some fucking peace.’

  She wanted to shout back, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. So she said, as calmly as she could, ‘This isn’t easy on anyone, you know, especially Melanie. Tanya was her best friend, for God’s sake. Did you ever think of that? And it was me who went to the school on Monday. Me. It’s always me. Why don’t you go and talk to your daughter? Why don’t you go and do that? Instead of running off to get’ – she was unable to hide the contempt in her voice – ‘“a little fucking peace”.’

  He mumbled something under his breath; it sounded like ‘bitch’. She said nothing, just stood there, watching him as he left the room, his angry footsteps fading along the marble hallway. There was a pause – she knew he was putting on his coat – then the front door slammed shut.

  Karen leaned against the sink, the strength draining from her body. She buried her face in her hands, trying her best not to cry. She didn’t want to cry. Not for him. Never again. She wondered once more why she was still with this man. For the kids was the answer, the same as it was for everybody else who’d married a bastard, she supposed. But why had she bothered in the first place? She had had no interest, she’d had to make herself interested. For what? For what Johnny McBride’s son could give her: the big house, the big car, the ability to walk down the street with a swagger. To be someone. The big fish in the small pond. Ah, Jesus.

  ‘Any dessert, Mum?’

  The question irritated her. It irritated her that her son had become obese. Was his only comfort to be found in food? It was one thing for her to suffer, but must she inflict it on her children, too? Guilt softened her tone.

  ‘There’s frozen éclairs in the fridge, sweetheart. But they’ll take too long to thaw out.’

  ‘No they won’t, Mum. Ever heard of a microwave?’

  ‘That’s disgusting. They’ll just turn to goo.’

  ‘That’s okay. I like goo.’

  She thought about that, an éclair turning to disgusting goo, her obese son slurping it up. What kind of a mother was she? She started to sob, a little at first, and then her whole body shook as she lost all control and it consumed her. In that moment she hated herself, because she knew she should be crying for Tanya. But she wasn’t. She was crying for herself.

  Forty-Nine

  Nigel pressed the starter button and the Audi growled to life. He drove quickly down the driveway to the electronic gates, pressed the onboard remote and waited while they slowly swung open. He drove out onto the road, turned left, heading into Cross Beg.

  The loud shrill of his telephone via Bluetooth, the sound reverberating through the car. He wanted to ignore it, but pressed the answer button on the steering wheel console anyway. Convinced it was Karen, he barked, ‘What?’

  She didn’t answer. What was it with that woman?

  His finger toyed with the button that would end the call. He changed into sixth gear. One of the new electronic speed signs on the approach to the primary school up ahead flashed his speed in red: sixty-two, beside it the legal speed limit of thirty on permanent green display. He eased his foot off the accelerator pedal.

  The voice on the other end of the line spoke. One he didn’t recognise. The voice of a male.

  ‘Nigel McBride,’ it said.

  ‘Yeees.’

  ‘Pull over, McBride. We’ll try and keep this as low-key as possible.’

  He was immediately struck by the cold authority in the voice, and his being addressed simply as ‘McBride’.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re right behind you.’

  He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The garda car was almost on his bumper. He could see the faces of the two guards staring back at him from the front, looking right into his eyes. The blue lights flashed intermittently without sound. It felt as though an invisible horse had careered onto its forequarters and kicked him in the stomach. He opened and closed his mouth in quick succession, like a fish gulping for oxygen. His foot was off the accelerator, the car slowing, freewheeling. The Audi bounced against a kerb, jolting him. Nigel realised he wasn’t breathing. He gulped for air again, a dry, croaking noise coming from his throat as he sucked it in. He felt woozy, like he was about to faint. He stomped on the brake pedal and the tyres squealed, digging into the tarmac. He was in the middle of the road now. In his head he could hear a voice, his own voice, screaming, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, as the door opened and they hauled him from the car.

  ‘What took you so long, McBride?’ one of them said. ‘Fucking us around, are ya?’

  Fifty

  ‘You should have told me,’ O’Reilly shouted. ‘And aren’t you supposed to be in Dublin anyway?’

  Beck shifted in his seat, suppressing the impulse to do the same, to tell this moron to go fuck himself.

  They had been summoned to Superintendent Wilde’s office, who now sat behind his desk, O’Reilly next to him.

  ‘Whose idea was it…?’ O’Reilly growled.

  ‘Take it easy, Gerry,’ Superintendent Wilde said. ‘That’s not going to help…’

  ‘… to collect samples for…’ O’Reilly continued.

  ‘Can you shut up? Jesus. Please.’ Wilde pinched the bridge of his nose with an index and forefinger. He exhaled a long, loud breath. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said. ‘Okay, okay.’

  O’Reilly opened his mouth to say something.

  ‘Gerry, please,’ Wilde said. ‘Yes, yes, they should have told you, should have told me… Anyway, I would never have thought it. Him.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Beck said.

  ‘What the fuck…’ O’Reilly forced the volume down. ‘He’s a close friend of mine. I’ve known that man for over twenty-five years.’

  ‘Explain it to me, Beck,’ Wilde said. ‘Explain it. What?’

  ‘I can’t. The evidence is pointing his way. I was left with no alternative. It was made clear to me that he was not to be brought in without evidence. I got evidence.’

  ‘You certainly did,’ Wilde said. ‘I won’t go into the dubious legality of it here. By the way, I know him too. Everybody does.’

  Beck felt a pain begin to press in along the sides of his head. He looked at O’Reilly, and said slowly, clearly, ‘Listen to you. Instead of asking me questions, you should be answering them. From what I can see, you want a result – you don’t care how you get it, just so long as you do. Samples weren’t taken from Ned’s body for comparisons, were they? No, so you were quite happy to have him blamed. Only someone who had got away with that in the past would think they could get away with it again now. So, please, don’t growl at me or Detective Somers. Look in the mirror. Look at yourself.’

  ‘Here…’ O’Reilly began, getting to his feet, his fists clenched into tight balls by his sides. ‘Think you can give me a sermon…?’

  ‘Si
t down, Gerry,’ Wilde said. ‘Beck, have you officially interviewed him yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’d like to interview him,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Let me do it.’

  ‘You know him too well, Gerry, no, it might be a conflict.’

  ‘I know everything that happens in this town,’ O’Reilly said. ‘This will ruin the man. Cross Beg will turn its back on him.’

  Wilde looked at O’Reilly, an unexpected tone in his voice: ‘You should have thought of that yourself then, shouldn’t you?’

  O’Reilly said nothing. His eyes narrowed as he stared at Wilde.

  Wilde turned to Beck and Claire, indicated with his finger for them to leave.

  ‘What was that about?’ Beck asked when they were in the corridor outside.

  ‘I think…’ Claire began, and waited until they were at the end before continuing. ‘O’Reilly is no angel himself. There was a rumour.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I didn’t mention it before now because I don’t do rumours, generally.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There was a rumour…’

  ‘Jesus, Claire, there was a rumour. I get that part.’

  ‘You remember last year, thereabouts, a report in the Sunday Globe?’

  ‘The Sunday Globe,’ Beck said, adding with a hint of sarcasm, ‘It must be true.’

  ‘An insider’s report on the swingers scene in Dublin, accompanied by photos from a party, a thin black strip across the eyes of the partygoers to protect identities. Who can resist a photo like that on the front cover of a Sunday newspaper, eh?’

  ‘I don’t remember it,’ Beck said.

  ‘It referred to a mid-ranking member of An Garda Síochána. The rumour was the mid-ranking member was O’Reilly. Couldn’t be proven, of course.’

  ‘And could be a complete lie, too, I’ll give him that. Actually, I do remember gossip about it. I didn’t pay it any heed. In Dublin I had other things to worry about.’

  ‘There’s also another rumour.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That he was having an affair with Nigel McBride’s wife. That they all – the three of them, the McBrides and O’Reilly – liked to attend, ahem, parties.’

  Beck grinned. ‘You’re kidding me? No, you’re not, are you?’

  ‘No, Beck, I’m not.’

  Fifty-One

  McBride sat sideways in his chair, leaning on the table with his elbow, running his other hand through his jet-black hair. Designer stubble sprinkled a chin that had a prominent dimple at its centre, his skin was sallow and his green eyes flecked with yellow. They said that when the Spanish Armada sank off the west coast of Ireland some survivors remained whose forebears looked like McBride did now. Many people, sallow-skinned and black-haired, could be seen walking the streets of Galway city today who would not look out of place on the calles of Madrid, Seville or León.

  McBride looked nervous, Beck noticed, even if he was trying his best to hide it. Beck said nothing, wanting to see how McBride reacted to silence.

  But Claire spoke. She said casually, trying to avoid any discomfort this silence generated, when Beck was trying to exploit it, ‘We need to ask you a few questions, Mr McBride.’

  He smiled, a forced smile, the corners of his mouth turning up, the lines creasing along the sides of his eyes, but Beck could see the strain underneath. ‘What?’ McBride said. ‘You’re staring at me.’

  ‘Me?’ Beck said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘What is this about?’ McBride asked, like he had better things to do; a parry, Beck knew. He was trying to sidestep.

  So that’s the way he wants to play it, Beck thought. ‘Where were you,’ Beck asked, ‘last Sunday evening?’

  Beck watched McBride carefully. Despite his swarthy complexion, he seemed to have gone suddenly very pale. In the couple of seconds it took for him to speak, Beck knew the man was deciding whether or not to tell the truth. And Beck could tell even before he spoke that he had decided on a little of both, in the way he leaned forward, placed his other elbow on the table and buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Oh God,’ he whimpered. ‘Oh God, oh God.’ He rubbed his eyes and Beck could hear the squelching sound they made. When he took them away again his eyes were red and moist. His skin seemed to hang from his face and he looked old and grey, as if he was allowing them to see him now, as he really was, without the mask. Those eyes looked at Beck, hollow and scared.

  ‘Is there something you need to tell us?’ Beck prompted.

  ‘This got all out of hand,’ McBride began, his arms on the desk now, his head lowered. ‘I mean, oh Christ, it all got completely out of hand.’

  Beck glanced at Claire, held her gaze. She understood. Neither of them spoke.

  ‘Tanya is a friend of my daughter’s,’ McBride continued after a pause. ‘You know that, don’t you? You spoke to her at the school.’ He raised his head and looked at the ceiling, said, ‘Oh God, this is a nightmare.’

  ‘For you, that is,’ Claire said. ‘Meanwhile, Tanya is dead.’

  ‘Did you kill her?’ Beck asked simply, leaning forward so that mere inches separated his face from McBride’s.

  ‘No,’ McBride answered immediately, looking at Beck, staring into his eyes. ‘I swear to God. I did not kill Tanya. I wouldn’t do such a thing. Tanya. I… I really liked her.’

  ‘Spare me the bullshit,’ Claire said. ‘She was a kid. A kid!’

  ‘I want you to tell me exactly what happened that night,’ Beck said, sitting back.

  McBride looked down slowly at his hands, then up again at Beck.

  ‘There’d been a rugby match. Cross Beg Trampers against Galway Natives. It’d rained for the entire game. I was drenched. So I had to go home to change. I didn’t want to go home, because that would mean explaining why I had to go back out again.’ He paused. ‘I had to go back out again. I was meeting Tanya.’

  Beck nodded.

  ‘So I told my wife I was meeting friends in O’Callaghan’s, and in case she asked around to find out whether or not I’d really been there, I went to the pub and spent about an hour in company.’

  Beck asked, ‘You said your wife might ask around. Why? Was she suspicious of you?’

  McBride nodded. ‘It was mutual.’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  ‘What can I say? We’ve both been unfaithful to one another in the past. The problem is, we married too young. Karen, my wife, became pregnant while we were both in our final year at secondary school.’ He glanced at Claire. ‘You’ve been in Cross Beg long enough. No doubt you’ve heard the rumours. About me, that is. About us.’

  ‘It’s irrelevant,’ Beck said. ‘You were saying…’

  ‘I was saying,’ McBride went on, his voice low. ‘O’Callaghan’s was packed, I slipped away sometime after ten o’clock. I drove to Cool Wood. I was late, and…’

  ‘Stop right there,’ Beck said. ‘You say you drove to Cool Wood. There were no tyre marks in the car park. An Audi car, partial reg matching yours, was observed on CCTV driving towards Cool Wood, but it didn’t pass until well over an hour and a half later. Can you explain that?’

  ‘I parked the car in the outhouse of the Richardsons’ old place, it’s an empty property on my sale list. I had to walk along the road from there to get to the wood, so I ran. I didn’t want anyone to see me.’

  ‘Why the wood?’ Claire asked. ‘If the property was empty, you could have gone there.’

  McBride sat back in his chair, folded his arms. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘It seems like an obvious question to me,’ Claire said.

  ‘Because,’ McBride said, ‘the forest is something separate, distinct, distant, it’s not a part of my life. The property was, is, part of my life, it’s my job. I didn’t want any overlap between the two. The truth was…’ McBride suddenly fell silent.

  ‘The truth was,’ Beck prodded, not allowing him any time to think a
bout it.

  ‘I’d had enough of Tanya. The novelty had worn off. The reality had set in. Here was this teenage girl desperate for a fairy-tale romance, pestering me to leave my family, telling me she wanted to have my babies. It was crazy. I wanted out. No, I didn’t want to meet her anywhere except in the wood. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to kill her, or that I did kill her.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Claire said under her breath. ‘Did you take pictures of her, by the way? Do you have pictures in your possession of her now? You know what pictures I mean.’

  McBride looked away, pursed his lips.

  ‘Listen,’ Beck said, ‘I appreciate your honesty so far. Really. Forget about the pictures for now, okay? So, you parked your car at the Richardsons’ old place. You ran to Cool Wood. What then?’

  ‘She was waiting for me. I’d wondered if she would. I was over an hour late, after all. A part of me hoped she wouldn’t be there. But she was. She’d waited. In the woods. Alone.’ He looked at Claire. ‘I felt like a right bastard, if that makes you feel any better. She was angry with me, really angry. I knew I had to end it. I just had to.’

  ‘And did you?’ Claire asked.

  McBride looked away again. ‘No. I decided not to, not that night. I’d let it cool for a while first, make it easier on her.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Claire muttered.

  ‘Continue,’ Beck said.

  ‘She didn’t want me to leave when I was getting ready to go. She clung to me. So we just lay there, together, for a while.’

  ‘On what?’ Beck said. ‘When you say you lay there. What did you lie on?’

  ‘A tarpaulin. I kept it in the hollow of a tree.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit cold, uncomfortable?’

  ‘We used our’ – McBride dropped his eyes – ‘jackets.’

  ‘Is that tarpaulin still there?’ It was Beck.

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘We may need you to show us, later.’

  McBride nodded.

  ‘Go on,’ Beck said.