by Claire Allan
‘It’s Julie. You should answer. I imagine she needs you a lot right now.’
I knew he was right, so I answered to hear her, almost hysterical, on the other end of the line.
‘Rachel, have you seen the news? Brendan showed me. It’s in the paper … It says that someone slit Clare’s throat so deep they almost cut her head off …’
At that I could hear her start to hyperventilate.
‘Rachel …’ she gulped. ‘Is … that … true? Did someone do that? Is that what … happened? Rachel!’
I listened as my friend retched and vomited on the other end of the phone. The taste of bile was in my own mouth. Instinctively, I put my hand to my throat. I didn’t even have to try to imagine the horror – an image was there in my head. Clare gasping for breath. A knife. Jesus Christ! This man was an animal.
‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes,’ I stuttered, hanging up. ‘I have to go,’ I told Michael. ‘Some newspaper has printed horrific details of what happened to Clare. I’ve no idea if it’s true. Jesus! I hope it’s not true. Julie’s beside herself.’
‘I understand,’ Michael said, standing up. ‘You have to go. This has to come first for now. Look, maybe we should just take a break. I don’t mean stop altogether, but just put it all on pause until this settles. I need you, but others need you more.’
I blinked at him, trying to comprehend what was happening. Was he calling a halt to whatever this was because I was going to help my hysterical friend? Because I was choosing her need over his? He looked away from me and I asked myself had he just been lying to me all along – broken phones and battered laptops, and never feeling like this about anyone else, but let’s just hit the pause button? I didn’t need this game-playing. Or whatever it was.
I didn’t trust myself to respond, so I simply grabbed my keys and walked out of the back door, leaving it swinging behind me.
If he called after me, I didn’t hear him. All I could hear was my blood rushing through my body and the echoes of Julie’s hysteria as she relayed to me what she’d read.
Chapter Eighteen
Elizabeth
It was Constable King and a male colleague who arrived at my door and not DI Bradley as I’d hoped.
‘Mrs O’Loughlin,’ she said, taking off her hat to reveal a short pixie haircut before reaching out to shake my hand. ‘I hear you’ve had a bit of trouble. This is my colleague, Constable Mark Black. Can we come in?’
I nodded and led them through to the kitchen, where the funereal bow and flowers were sitting on the kitchen table, mocking me. The card that stated that my deceased daughter sent her love was beside them.
Both officers looked at the items before Constable Black produced an evidence bag in which to take them away.
‘This must be very distressing for you,’ Constable King said. ‘And you noticed this first thing this morning?’
‘When I was taking the dog for a walk, yes,’ I said. ‘It was tied to the gate down at the road’s edge.’
‘And you hadn’t been aware of anyone around the house at all during the night? Had you had any visitors at all?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I heard nothing and saw nothing. That bloody security light is out. I keep meaning to get it fixed. But, no, I saw nothing. Not until this morning. I thought it was just a black plastic bag blown onto the railings.’
‘And do you have any idea who might have done this, or why?’ she asked, her pen poised above her notebook ready to write.
I shook my head again. My arm ached. My right hand was still throbbing after pulling the flowers from the gate. I’d cleaned it up the best I could, dressed the cuts. I must have looked a right sight – two dodgy arms? That was all I needed. I was more useless than ever before.
‘No. I don’t understand why anyone would be so cruel.’
‘When you called this in, you told our dispatcher the items had special significance. That you believe the Laura mentioned in the note is your late daughter. What of the other items?’
‘The arrangement is identical to the one we hung on the gate at Laura’s wake,’ I said, trying to push memories of that awful week out of my head.
I didn’t have the mental energy to allow my brain to go there – to relive those horrors – just then.
‘Forget-me-nots were Laura’s favourite flowers. Her eyes were the same colour …’
Constable King nodded sympathetically while Constable Black sat at the table and looked on. I wondered what they made of me – this lonely older woman, living out here on my own. I wanted to tell them that it wasn’t always that way. This used to be a happy home. I’d had a husband who loved me until the day and hour a heart attack took him from me. A daughter … a son …
A mobile phone rang and Constable Black lifted his from his pocket, said he had to answer it and walked out of the back door into the yard.
‘Has anything of this nature happened before? At any time following Laura’s death?’
I shook my head. ‘Do you think it has something to do with that poor girl’s murder?’ I asked. ‘DI Bradley said I wasn’t in any danger, that no one knew I was with her when she died and that I’d heard her last words.’
‘We’ve no reason to believe that at the moment,’ Constable King said, ‘but it’s one of the lines of inquiry we’ll be looking at.’
I felt uneasy. Vulnerable.
‘Try not to worry too much,’ Constable King said. ‘It could be someone with a very warped sense of humour, but rest assured that we’re taking this very seriously and we’ll act accordingly, putting on extra patrols in this area. I’ll talk to the DI, see what he thinks.’
Constable Black walked back in, his tall frame almost filling the doorway. He looked at me first before walking to his colleague.
‘The boss wants us to check out the crime scene again,’ he said. ‘They’ve had reports of an unusual floral arrangement left on the ground.’
He looked nervous, as if there was something he was holding back, but I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t even need to ask about the unusual floral arrangement, especially when his eyes darted to the evidence bag on the table and then back to Constable King.
‘I wonder, Mrs O’Loughlin, do you have anyone who could come and stay with you, or is there somewhere you’d feel comfortable going to stay just until all this blows over? It might make you feel a little more secure,’ Constable King said.
‘You think it’s someone connected to that poor woman’s death, don’t you?’ I asked, my chest feeling tighter.
‘We can’t say that at the moment,’ she said. ‘But it certainly won’t hurt to be more vigilant until we rule that out entirely. And maybe get that security light fixed.’
I didn’t want to feel scared in my home any more. I didn’t want to step away from the quiet and easy routine I had for myself here. It was far from perfect and I’d had to work hard to get used to living alone, but it was my home and for all its faults, I loved it. It held a lot of difficult memories, of course, but also so many happy ones.
Pictures hung on the walls of more innocent, happier times. They reminded me that I hadn’t always got it so wrong. We’d been happy. Our family unit had been untouchable back then. I couldn’t imagine walking away from this place, but nor could I deny I was scared or that I’d feel better if I wasn’t alone. The problem was, I didn’t exactly have a queue of people waiting to come and stay with me. Selling it to them on the basis that a killer might have left me a creepy note, never mind the fact that the house was in growing need of repair, would be a hard task.
Constable King must have seen the look on my face.
‘I’m going to speak to DI Bradley about this as soon as I get back to base and we’ll see what we can do to offer you all the support you need.’
I smiled, grateful for her kindness.
‘How long ago did your daughter pass away?’ she asked.
‘Two years ago,’ I said. ‘Still feels like yesterday in some ways and in others it feels like it’s been
decades since I saw her.’
‘I’m very sorry. It must be terribly hard. It’s true what they say that no parent should have to bury a child. May I ask, had she been ill?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m surprised you aren’t aware of her case, or you weren’t made aware. No, it wasn’t an illness as such. She took her own life.’
Constable King couldn’t quite hide the look of shock from her face.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. That must be very difficult.’
‘It is,’ I said, knowing that ‘very difficult’ was a massive understatement.
It came out of nowhere. Or at least I think it seemed to. There were none of the signs. She hadn’t sat down and told me she was feeling particularly depressed or that she wanted to harm herself. She didn’t seem demotivated. She hadn’t given away possessions. It had never felt like she was saying goodbye. She’d had her problems over the years, of course. We’d worked hard – supported her through CBT and NLP and group therapy. I thought she was okay. I thought she’d beaten it. Finally.
She’d appeared to be stable when it happened. I’d actually thought she was finally beating it all, that she’d put her demons to rest once and for all, and that she was moving onwards and upwards. It had been months, if not more, since she’d spoken to me about low moods. She’d seemed happier than she’d ever been.
Of course, I was told afterwards that I’d been blind to her moods. That it was easier for me to think she was okay. Those words hurt. They were so unforgivable that they took what was left of my family and tore it utterly asunder.
As far as I was aware, one day I’d had my daughter, sitting with her two children in my kitchen, talking about any old nonsense – Christmas, school shoes, what we’d watched on TV the night before – and the following night she was gone.
Her husband had come home to find the two children sitting in front of the TV. There was no sign of Laura. The children, Ava and Max, were only seven and nine. She wouldn’t have left them on their own. She never did before. They told their daddy that Mummy had gone to the shops and she’d left him a note in the kitchen.
He’d imagined she’d be home soon. The shop was a five-minute drive. Even given heavy traffic and queues at the checkout, he’d figured she’d be back any minute. So he busied himself fixing his dinner and looking after the kids, and all but forgot about Laura’s note.
But the minutes ticked on.
‘How long ago did Mummy go?’ he asked the kids.
They shrugged. Her eldest, my granddaughter, Ava, told her daddy it was ‘just after we finished homework’, adding, ‘she’s been gone a long time, Daddy, hasn’t she?’
That’s when he went into the kitchen and opened the note. He admitted to me after that he thought it might have been a Dear John. Although she hadn’t said anything to me, he’d said they’d been having a few problems. She’d seemed cold and distant. He’d wondered if she was having an affair.
My Laura would never have had an affair.
He couldn’t take in the words he was reading at first, he told me. They didn’t make any sense. The writing didn’t even look like hers. There was something off about it. ‘Too jaggy,’ he’d said. ‘There were rips across the paper, as if she’d scrawled really heavily,’ he’d said. His brain couldn’t process what he was reading. She was sorry. She’d had no choice. She didn’t want to hurt the children any more. She didn’t want to risk them growing up to become how she was. Weak. Stupid. Ugly.
My Laura was none of those things.
She’d never been any of those things.
She’d wished she’d had the courage to do this a long time ago, but she’d been too cowardly. And she’d wanted to see if she could change. If she could fix things. Become likeable and loveable.
How that broke me. My darling, darling Laura was always likeable and she was the most loveable creature who’d ever roamed the Earth. My life had been completed the day she was first placed in my arms – the love I felt for her was the purest, most powerful force in the world. I thought I’d known love with Aaron, had worried through my pregnancy that I wouldn’t find enough extra love for a new baby, but when she was here, it was almost as if my heart grew. I had love enough for both of them. But she was the icing on the cake and I adored her, perhaps even more than I had Aaron. As he’d grown, connected with his father, I’d been left out of their games. But Laura, she was my girl. My best friend. My everything.
But it hadn’t been enough to save her.
‘Tell my mum that I love her and she’s not to blame herself. There’s nothing she could have done to fix me,’ the letter had read, and I was angry then. She should have given me the chance. She should have let me try to fix her. Not that I ever thought she needed fixing. To me, she was perfection.
She’d left instructions. Told him to call the police. Told him not to go after her himself. She’d told him where she’d be. She’d asked him to forgive her. She’d asked him to tell the children she’d got sick and died. ‘It’s the truth, after all,’ she’d written. ‘A part of me has always been sick.’
He’d called the police. He did go after her. He’d bundled the kids into the neighbour’s house and he drove as fast as traffic would allow until he’d reached the place she said she’d be. He drove his car as far as he could, not overly familiar with the site, and then he’d run in the dark and the rain, the torch on his phone guiding the way, trying to find her. He could hear the sirens of the police and ambulance approach, but on he ran.
Until he found her. But she was gone.
It was too late. There was nothing anyone could have done to fix her then.
I try not to think about what he saw, but it haunts me in the night. Just as the image of her in the morgue haunts me. She’d taken no chances. She’d hung herself from some old railings and she’d also slashed her wrists. She’d taken some time to die, the pathologist believed. Strangled. No quick break of her neck.
Her husband had tried to lift her, even though he knew it was too late. Police arrived to him covered in his wife’s blood, holding her up by the legs, screaming at her to come back.
I’d learned very quickly that it didn’t matter how much anyone screamed, Laura wasn’t coming back. I’d never see her again and I’d never really understand why my beautiful girl believed that she was so broken she no longer deserved a place in this world.
Chapter Nineteen
Rachel
I was still in some sort of shock about what had just happened with Michael when I arrived at Julie’s. At least, I thought with a grimace, it distracted in some small way from what Julie had told me on the phone. I noticed Brendan’s car wasn’t outside and the front door was ajar.
When I walked in she was sitting on the sofa, smoking. She looked as if she hadn’t slept since we’d left the Taylors. She was still in pyjamas, despite it having gone eleven, and her hair was tangled and knotted at the top of her head. There was a mug of tea sitting on the coffee table in front of her, but there was also a quarter bottle of vodka, with its distinctive red lid unscrewed, sitting beside a glass with ice.
Julie must have noticed me looking at it.
‘You don’t need to worry. I’m not turning into an alcoholic. The sweet tea just wasn’t working for the shock and I’m not sleeping. Are you sleeping? I just can’t and then this …’
The front pages of several newspapers were scattered all over the sofa, all open at different pages about the murder. On top was a tabloid paper, The Chronicle, splashed with pictures from Clare’s Facebook page with the headline ‘Police hunt “ripper” killer’ in red, the only slightly smaller subheading declaring ‘Woman “almost decapitated” in brutal Derry slaying’.
Julie jabbed at the page; I noticed her nail varnish was chipped, her hand shaking. She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked back at me.
‘Is it true? They wouldn’t have printed it if it wasn’t true, would they? I can’t … I can’t even think. She was alive for a while
after the attack. So it can’t be true. Oh, God, what if she wasn’t unconscious? What if she knew?’
Julie was almost manic, her words falling over each other. Her thoughts forming quicker than her words and rushing to get out.
‘Why would they say that? The police didn’t say that to us. Ronan didn’t say it. Who told the newspaper? It says “a source close to the investigation”,’ she read, her fingers still jabbing at the newsprint. ‘I always thought that meant it was a lie, but this is too serious. Why would they make her death so salacious? That same “source” said there was evidence she’d had sex on the night she was killed. Why would they print that? That’s nobody’s business. What’ll her parents think? Why won’t they leave her alone? Maybe I’ll ring this journalist and ask her. This Ingrid Devlin,’ she said, looking at the picture byline, ‘she might tell me.’
I realised I hadn’t spoken a single word, just listened to Julie rant and rave, crying as she recounted what she’d read and how she felt about it. I suppose the truth of it was that our friend didn’t just belong to us any more. She was a headline. A story. A victim. Would she always be looked at that way? Would how she died now define her more than everything she’d been to everyone in her life? Now, she’d be remembered as a victim first and foremost.
I glanced at the gaudy headline, the pictures of Clare, drink in hand and grinning at the camera. Painting her as some sort of party girl. Without even thinking about it, I swept the papers to the floor and trampled on them.
‘This is just shit to sell papers,’ I said to Julie. ‘It’s just shit.’
I sat down beside her, realising I was crying, too. Not hysterically like Julie but, nonetheless, my face was wet and I felt as if a knot of tension or grief or anger wanted to escape from my body in shuddering sobs.
‘Give me one of your cigarettes,’ I said to Julie.
It was enough to make her take a breath and look at me, her eyes narrowing.
‘You’ve not smoked since we were sixteen.’
‘I don’t care. It’s either a cigarette or the vodka and I’ve got to drive home to the kids, so the cigarette’s safer. Give me one.’
