When the Time Comes

by Adele O'Neill

  Sarah scanned the room. There were a lot of things that needed to be done, but she decided to start with a laundry basket that was overflowing with shoes. That was where Jenny would want her to start too. ‘Oh God!’ She cringed and lifted a nude patent leather shoe with its signature red sole from the top of heap and showed it to Jenny apologetically. ‘I take it then that you didn’t pack these?’ Sarah winced as she inspected the shoes for scuffmarks.

  ‘Josh must’ve thrown them all in like that, Abbie would have known that they weren’t just shoes.’ Jenny said.

  ‘You start pairing them up and I’ll look for their proper boxes to put them back into.’ Sarah knew how much Jenny loved her shoes. She had every length of heel in every conceivable colour with every possible design and she had always carefully selected when and where she would wear them so as not to cause them any damage. It was painfully ironic to see them carelessly tossed so haphazardly on top of each other. The leftovers of a life that Jenny once used to live.

  18.

  Trial Day 7

  Abbie Buckley

  ‘Because of one moment of human frailty, the full weight of the Irish legal system will bear down on Liam Buckley’s and his children’s future. The teenage children who have already been deprived of their mother have been present in court every day as they await the conclusion of the trial. The prosecution alleges that Mr Buckley did in fact murder his ex-wife on the night of June 3rd at their home address, the house that it appears Mr Buckley is now the sole beneficiary of. The same house that he happened to move back into one day before Jennifer Buckley was found dead. Throughout the case…’

  ‘Jesus Christ, do they ever stop?’ I say as I pass the reporter who is standing in front of the camera with the Central Criminal Court as her backdrop. I can hear her every word and I’m not even that close to where she is. We keep our heads down as we pass making sure we walk to the back of the camera so as not to be caught on screen. We’ve become used to the routine now, there’s the early morning handful of reporters who like to throw questions at Dad as he arrives. The gaggle of reporters for the papers and radio who stand at the back of the courtroom with their notebooks and digital voice recorders in their hands. And then there’s the TV crews that usually arrive at lunch time, hoping that there has been some explosion of evidence for them to get an exclusive on. It’s the reporter for the TV station that’s the loudest.

  ‘Imagine how lucky they’d be if we just happened to be walking by in the shot,’ Josh says. When we decided that we should tell Dad about the package and Josh’s note, we texted him that we were on our way back up, called the waiter over and told him that we had changed our minds about lunch and then gathered up our phones. It only took us seven minutes to get back up the road.

  ‘I know,’ I say as we bound up the steps, through the set of double doors and into the foyer of the court building. There are a handful of people hanging around but I don’t see Dad yet.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay with it?’ I ask Josh again and he nods.

  ‘It just needs to be discreet, it’s not for everyone to know, this doesn’t become a big thing or part of the trial or anything, okay?’ he says, more to reassure himself than for me.

  ‘We are only going to tell Dad and he’ll know what to do. He won’t embarrass you, Josh. But the package might be significant enough to help.’ I say.

  ‘Okay,’ he wrinkles his nose in discomfort.

  Louise and Alex are sitting to the side of the foyer, each with a takeaway cup of coffee in their hands. ‘Have you seen Dad?’ I ask as I approach them, Josh hovers closely behind me.

  ‘Not in the last few…’ she stops talking and looks over my shoulder at the group of people emerging from the corridor. It’s Dad, William, Greg and Kelly. Dad breaks away from the group to come and talk to us to the side. The rest of the group continue in a conversation.

  ‘I thought you guys were going for lunch?’ he says. ‘What’s the text about, what’s up?’

  ‘Eh,’ I look to Josh. ‘It might be nothing, but it might be something,’ I say.

  ‘Or might be nothing,’ Josh interjects.

  ‘What is it?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Well, we were just thinking about what you said before we left about the sodium pentobarbital and where it came from or how it got into the house.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And you said that if we knew where it came from that it might help your case.’ Kelly moves towards us when he hears us talking to Dad. I look at Josh who nods at me to continue. ‘And I was going back over all the questions that the Gardaí had asked about packages when Mum had died. And then I was thinking about how there was no trace of how it got into the house or where Mum got it from.’ Alex and Louise have approached now too. I look up to see Kelly throw a look towards Louise.

  ‘No, there isn’t.’ Louise confirms. ‘There is no trace. I’ve seen all the recorded evidence, we’ve been over the forensic file with a fine-tooth comb, there was never any mention of a package or delivery of any sort, or of a bottle or ampoule that the drug would have been in before it was put into that syringe.’

  ‘And then, Josh and I were talking about something completely different…’ I look down at the floor, trying my best not to be so obvious about what Josh would prefer me not to say. ‘And then I thought of something.’

  ‘What?’ Kelly says.

  ‘What if there was a delivery to a different address in Mum’s name?’

  ‘Was there a delivery to a different address in your Mum’s name?’ Kelly asks.

  ‘There was,’ I say. ‘And the delivery was dated two days before Mum died.’

  Josh tips me on the hand and I look up at him. There’s a discomfort etched on his face and I nod to him to say that it will be okay.

  ‘There was,’ Josh says and the group chatter disappears instantly. He dips his head and reaches into his jeans pocket for his phone. ‘I have a photograph of the package right here.’

  ‘You do?’ Louise is the first with her hand out waiting to see what he has to show her while Josh scrolls through his camera roll.

  ‘Where was the package, what address?’ Kelly asks, his pen and notebook at the ready to write it down. Josh shuffles from side to side and Kelly takes out his pen to write it down.

  ‘College Grove,’ Louise answers, glancing briefly at Josh. ‘8 College Grove.’ She says to Kelly before she hands him the phone. She waits quietly while he reads the note and when he’s finished, she takes the phone from him and hands it to Dad. They exchange a look waiting for the realisation to dawn on Dad.

  ‘Were you there…’ Kelly says, glancing at Dad, who steps closer to Josh and places his arm around him supportively. ‘…At Sarah Barry’s house, when this package arrived?’

  ‘I was there the evening it was delivered… and it was still there on the Saturday morning when I left.’ He inhales and swallows waiting for Dad to comment and when he doesn’t he moves one inch closer to me. I tap his leg with the back of my hand and we all wait in silence while Louise and Kelly come up with a plan.

  ‘How old are you?’ Louise asks.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Josh answers, mortified. ‘I’m eighteen.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s okay to use it,’ Kelly asks, looking at Josh first and then at Dad.

  ‘We don’t have to if you don’t want,’ Dad says to Josh while Kelly stands waiting for an answer.

  ‘No, I want you to use it,’ Josh says, his cheeks bright red. ‘If she had something to do with this,’ he points around the courtroom. ‘With Mum’s death, I want to know… I don’t care that everyone knows what happened.’

  ‘If she had something to do with it, don’t worry Josh, we’ll find out.’ Louise says. ‘But I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, it may be the case that it was just perfume, like the label says and, technically, on the face of it, she hasn’t done anything wrong.’ She raises her eyebrows to show that she doesn’t necessarily agree with what she’s just said. ‘We’ll check
it out.’ She nods to Alex and within seconds she and Kelly are already leaving through the front doors.

  19.

  Trial Day 7

  Louise Kennedy

  She was sitting at her desk when I found her earlier, her pen poised over documents on her desk, her head bowed studiously as she analysed them. Kelly, much to his frustration, had waited in the car while two uniformed Gardaí met me at her building, so that I would have backup should the need arise. As soon as I got confirmation that the search warrant had been granted I had made my way inside. Her secretary had shown me into her office and Sarah had greeted me as though my being in her office with two uniformed Gardaí was no surprise. And when I told her I was there to bring her in for questioning, and that there was a search warrant issued for her premises, that didn’t faze her either. She turned off her computer, closed over her the file she was working on and pressed the intercom to her secretary outside. After she had instructed her to go home for the day, making sure anyone else in the building did too, she asked me to explain what the questioning would be about. When I told her that we had reason to believe that she was involved in the murder of Jennifer Buckley, she didn’t even react and in the four hours that we’ve been back at the station, she has barely said a word.

  ‘Sarah,’ I say again, but her eyes are closed, the small freckles across her nose magnified on her pale face and her once perfectly-groomed hair falling in stray strands over the side of her face. Every so often she lifts her hand to tuck them behind her ears. ‘If you’re not going to talk to me then I think I’ll talk to you, tell you what I’m thinking.’ I pause a moment and she opens her eyes to glare at me before she looks away again.

  ‘I think that a story is about to be written about Jennifer Buckley’s death and you are not going to like it.’ She shifts uneasily and clears her throat. ‘I think that once upon a time…’ I deliberately lower my voice making her strain to hear what I have to say. ‘There were two friends, the closest friends that could be.’

  ‘Detective Kennedy, where are you going with this?’ she says impatiently and I smile, encouraged that she has decided to speak.

  ‘I’m just trying to piece together all the facts and put them in order so that the correct story is told.’ I open the file in front of her, already it is a few pages thick. ‘So far, with the search of your house,’ I turn the pages inside the file, ‘and the search of your office premises,’ her eyes watch my hands as I flick through the pages, ‘I have the makings of a very interesting story. A story about two best friends.’

  ‘You have nothing, Detective, because there is nothing to be had.’

  ‘Nothing?’ I repeat and open back another page. ‘I have enough evidence here to put you away for the death of Jennifer Buckley.’

  ‘It’s speculation,’ she says. ‘If you had enough evidence, you’d have charged me by now.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I pause and dip inside an evidence box that I’ve placed beside me on the floor. ‘But while I speculate on evidence that my forensics team are working on as we speak, I’m giving you the chance to tell the story your way, the way you want it to be told.’

  ‘There is no story, this is ludicrous.’

  ‘Well then, just hear me out. While we’re waiting for the evidence to come in, I’ll tell you what I think happened based on evidence I already have and you can correct me, how about that?’ She doesn’t answer and sits back in the chair and crosses both her arms and her legs.

  ‘What if I told you I can place you at 26 Oakley Drive within ten minutes of Jenny Buckley’s death?’

  ‘I’d say your story’s over before it has even begun because that’s ludicrous. It’s a known fact that Liam Buckley was the last to see her alive.’

  ‘What if I said that up until this afternoon before I got my hands on certain pieces of evidence, I would have thought the same thing?’ Her mouth twitches and the lines in her forehead deepen as she waits for me to continue. But I don’t, I fall silent instead.

  ‘I’d say, “So what?”’ She says.

  I turn over another page in the file, this time a print of the photograph that I want her to see. ‘What if I told you that we are very interested in a particular package that we know for a fact was delivered to your house on the evening of Friday June 2nd 2018.’

  ‘A package?’ she sniffs. ‘You’d really want to be a little sharper than that.’ I unclip the photograph and twist it slowly on the table so that it’s facing her. I watch her as her eyes widen before she looks up at me.

  ‘That sharp enough for you.’ I squint my eyes and watch as she draws a deep breath. The photograph is the close-up of the label that was on Josh’s phone. ‘This is the label from the package that we are interested in.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And this is your signature?’ I show her a copy of the delivery manifest that we secured just a couple of hours ago.

  ‘It has your house address, Jennifer’s name, your signature on the delivery and your house is currently been combed through by forensics looking to establish what the contents might have been.’

  ‘That’s just crazy.’ Her eyes flicker from the photo to me.

  ‘It might very well be. There is every possibility that the package did in fact contain perfume like it says there.’ I point at the label that’s been magnified. ‘And there’s every chance that it contained sodium pentobarbital, the substance that killed Jenny Buckley… who knows, it’s amazing how detailed forensics can be. Even odours leave a trace on certain surfaces, especially if they were prepared near wood.’

  ‘So what? I had perfume delivered to my house. Jesus, it must be a crime to bypass House of Fraser and buy cheap perfume online.’

  ‘No, perfumes, even the cheap ones, are fine. It’s the ordering of sodium pentobarbital from the black market that’s the crime. Especially if it’s with the intent of ending someone’s life.’

  ‘This is just rubbish,’ she spits. ‘I don’t ever remember having that package delivered to my house.

  ‘You don’t?’ I point to the courier’s details. ‘We also have a team tracing through the courier’s records and checking how the delivery was paid for. You never know, when our financial team cross-reference all the details of your online purchases with the courier’s, maybe there’ll be a match. You know anything about that?’

  ‘No,’ she says, her voice withering by the second. ‘This is utter rubbish.’

  ‘Oh and we do know for a fact that you did receive this delivery.’ I unclip the next photo. ‘As you can see, it’s there sitting proudly on your hall table.’ I show her the photo, only this time it’s zoomed out and with Josh’s note clearly visible for her to see.

  ‘How on earth did you get this photo?’ her voice is louder now, more agitated than before.

  ‘Do you not recognise the name, the handwriting of your friend, Jennifer Buckley’s son?’ She doesn’t answer, but at this point I don’t expect her to. Then I pull out another photo so that I can compare. ‘This a picture of your hall table today, same angle, even the same vase.’ I smile sarcastically at her. ‘So all in all,’ I close the file and look at her, ‘I’d say we are in pretty good shape. Wouldn’t you?’ She drops her head into her hands.

  ‘So you see, I know have the makings of a very good story, I just have to wait for a few more pieces of the puzzle to come in and then I’ll piece it all together. But from where I’m standing, it’s looking pretty good.’ I push my chair back, stand up and scoop the file under my arm. ‘You see, the thing is, Sarah, why you did this, why you killed your best friend is immaterial to me, the story for me is just a sideshow, a distraction to the facts. It’s facts I’m interested in and I have everything I need. It’s you that needs the story.’

  ‘What do you mean, I need the story?’

  ‘You need a story to go with this, a reason behind why you did everything that you did. The media, as soon as you’re charged, will rip you apart… and the jury?’ I sniff loudly to exaggerate how lethal juries can be. �
��The jury will eat you alive if you don’t tell them why, if you don’t explain what drove you to do this, to kill your best friend.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Jenny, I didn’t kill my best friend.’

  ‘Well, that’s what the media are going to say, straightaway… it will be all over the news in the morning, hell, if we charge you it might even be on the nine o’clock news tonight. So if there is something else you want said, now’s your chance.’ I place my hand on the handle and glance back at her. ‘And wait until they get wind of you having an affair with your best friend’s son, they’ll crucify you, Sarah, even you know that.’

  ‘I didn’t have an affair.’ Her voice is louder now. ‘And anyway he was seventeen, perfectly legal.’

  ‘That very well may be, but you know as well as I do, the public are not going to see it that way. A forty-five-year-old career woman and a boy, seventeen years of age, the vulnerable son of a dying woman. I can see the headlines already.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Jenny.’ Her voice is softer now. She sticks her tongue out slightly and licks her lips. ‘I did for Jenny what any best friend would.’

  ‘What was that Sarah?’ I ask holding my breath my voice stretched.

  ‘I helped Jenny end her life, it was the only thing I could do for her. She was miserable, she was afraid that she’d wake up one day and that she would have passed the point of no return and she said to me that she wished…’ she swallowed and closed her eyes. Thick salty tears squeezed out and slid down her face. ‘She said that she wished that one day she would just wake up dead, just die in her sleep so that she didn’t have to live with the fear anymore.’ She dropped her head into her hands. ‘And I hated seeing her suffering every day.’

  ‘So you decided to do it for her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you injected the sodium pentobarbital into Jenny that night?’

  ‘Yes.’