by Claire Allan
‘I think I’d better go home,’ I said to Michael. ‘They’ll be starting to wonder where I am. And we really have to be careful.’ I nodded my head in the direction of the blue car.
Michael glanced at it.
‘Probably some pervert trying to see if he can watch some couple getting lucky,’ he said.
‘Still, I’d better go home,’ I told him, squeezing his hand.
He looked dejected but told me he understood. Told me to take care and to stay in touch. He added that he’d always be there for me, whenever I needed him. I just had to call.
I got out of his car and crossed to my own, glancing back at the blue car, which still had its engine running, the driver sitting in the front seat, watching.
Sunday, 10 June
Chapter Twenty-Four
Elizabeth
The police couldn’t do much about Ingrid Devlin’s threats to publish details of how Laura had died. They could get their press officer to appeal to her better nature, but DI Bradley said he wasn’t sure Ingrid Devlin had a better nature.
‘I’ve had dealings with her before,’ he’d told me, his face stony. ‘She’ll do anything – and step over anyone – to get a byline. We can ask, and we can definitely investigate who in our team is leaking information, but beyond that …’
He was apologetic, which was something, even if that something was woefully inadequate. The thought of Laura’s last moments, her death being spilled all over the papers, was incredibly painful. We’d managed to escape it at the time – the papers very sensitively reporting that a woman had died in tragic circumstances without revealing the gory details. I’d been so very grateful to them for that – not that I believed in covering up suicides, more that I wanted to protect her children from knowing just how horrific it had been.
I knew in time, when they were older, that they’d want to know more about their mother. But I wouldn’t always be around to explain, or to protect them. I didn’t want a Google search to lead them to a salacious report that didn’t reference the wonderful, caring person she was, or just how very much she’d loved them.
I supposed I should phone my son-in-law and warn him. I felt guilty that it was me who’d be bringing this trauma on them after all this time. Maybe if I did talk to Ingrid Devlin, maybe if she allowed me to talk off the record, it might stop her. But what would DI Bradley say to that? Would it hinder their investigation more?
When DI Bradley called me back to break the news that Ingrid and her editor were still planning to run with their story, I broke – told him I had to protect my family and that I’d talk to her.
‘We’d really prefer it if you didn’t. I know this is a lot to ask of you, but at this stage it could really make things difficult for us. If the information gets out about her last words, for example, or about the flowers you’ve all been sent, it could cause panic.’
‘The flowers we’ve all been sent?’ I asked. ‘Who are “we”?’
He went silent, clearly aware he’d said too much – spoken out of turn. I could hear him sigh. Imagined how exhausted he was, the public clamouring for progress on this case and nothing forthcoming.
‘A number of people have received similar arrangements to you, with cryptic notes attached. I can’t reveal any more information than that,’ he said dejectedly.
‘A number of people? Who are they? Do I know them?’
‘For operational reasons, that isn’t information I can reveal to you at this time,’ he parroted.
‘Are these people connected to my Laura? Those were her favourite flowers. Are they connected to Clare Taylor?’
‘Please, Mrs O’Loughlin, you know that I’d reveal information to you if I could. We’ll keep you informed of any developments as they occur and when they have relevance to you.’
I ended the call frustrated and angry. Who were these other people who’d received floral arrangements? What had their notes said? They were enough to give the police cause for concern. I didn’t like that.
It dawned on me that there was someone who seemed to have an inside source who was on the ball when it came to what was happening in the investigation. It was entirely possible Ingrid Devlin could tell me what DI Bradley wouldn’t, or couldn’t.
I had nothing to lose and my daughter’s reputation to protect, so I pulled the business card Ingrid had thrust at me out of the bin and looked at her phone number. I was going to call her.
I’d like to say she didn’t have a look of smugness about her when she sat down, but she did. It was subtle; something in the way she tilted her head and said: ‘I’m so glad you called.’ It was as if she’d never had even a moment’s doubt that I would, indeed, call. She spoke slowly, as if my age made me stupid.
Maybe it did. A sharper me would have called her out. I would have said: ‘Well, it’s not like you left me much choice, is it?’ But I wanted to keep her on side. If she had any information about any of this, from who’d sent the flowers and who else they’d been sent to, then I very much needed her to be on my side.
‘I think maybe we can help each other,’ I said, offering her a cup of tea.
She accepted and took out a notebook and pen, as well as her phone.
‘Do you mind if I record this interview as well? I always feel more comfortable when I can record. It means I can make eye contact with you more and I don’t have to have my head down over a notebook all the time.’ She smiled.
I agreed. ‘I’m only talking to you on the condition you leave my daughter out of this,’ I said. ‘We’ve been through enough. Her children don’t need to have what happened splashed all over the papers.’
Ingrid blinked her clear blue eyes at me and chewed on the end of her pen. ‘Well, the thing is, I wanted to talk to you about that.’
‘I’m sure you do, but it’s a no-go area for me.’
‘What if I told you that you weren’t the only person to receive flowers on Saturday? That they were all similar – all posies of forget-me-nots, all decorated with black ribbon. Cryptic messages.’
‘I’d tell you I already knew about that and it doesn’t change anything.’
‘I think it does,’ she said. ‘And, Mrs O’Loughlin, while I appreciate this is very difficult for you and you have my abject sympathy, I think the police are letting the investigation down by keeping the information they have silent. People need to know what they’re dealing with. You’ve a right to know what’s really going on.’
I couldn’t deny it – she’d piqued my curiosity. I felt the weight of anxiety that had been hanging over me these last few days grow even heavier. Whatever she was going to tell me, it wasn’t going to be pleasant, but I felt I needed to know it all the same.
‘And you know, do you? All that’s really going on?’
‘I have sources,’ she said, her expression serious. ‘I’m not at liberty to reveal who they are, of course, but they’re reliable and I have no reason to doubt them. But if you really do doubt me, I can show you that at least some of what I’m about to tell you is very easily accessible online.’
I raised an eyebrow. Ingrid put down her pen and sat back in her seat.
‘Four other arrangements similar to yours were delivered on Saturday morning,’ she said. ‘One was left at the roadside, at the spot where you found Clare Taylor.’
I felt a shiver run up my spine.
‘Two others were delivered to friends of Clare Taylor. The fourth to the Taylor family at their home address. My source hasn’t been able to tell me the exact contents of the messages they received, but they were suspect enough in nature that the police seized both the arrangements and the cards and have been running forensic tests on them – trying to find fingerprints, et cetera.
‘They believe these might be messages from the person responsible for Clare’s death. They’ve not ruled out that this monster may strike again, Elizabeth, which is why I think it’s unconscionable that the police aren’t warning people about them’
Clare’s last words ran thr
ough my head again: ‘Warn them’. I shivered. What Ingrid was telling me was ringing true and that scared me, but not all of it made sense. Why involve my daughter? Unless that was intended as a threat towards me? Was I in danger, too? I felt myself tense.
‘It makes no sense, though, to involve Laura in this. Is that supposed to be a threat to me? I don’t understand.’
‘It could be that it’s some sort of muted threat to you, but I think that’s overlooking a more obvious link to Laura.’
‘Which is?’
‘Well, how about you tell me Clare’s last words first?’ she said, raising her eyebrow again and brushing her hair behind her ear.
This was a game to her and she had me in a position where I couldn’t back out. I needed to know.
She started to speak before I did.
‘Look, I know you think I’m the enemy here, but I’m not. Really, I’m on your side, and the side of getting the truth out there. I can help you to control what information does get out about Laura and her tragic death, and you must believe me when I tell you that this information is going to come out, one way or another; whether or not you speak to me. And that’s not meant as a threat – not at all. You do know that Clare Taylor knew your daughter, don’t you? And the other two women who received flowers yesterday? They went to school together. I went to the same school, but a few years after, of course.’
I blinked. I didn’t know. Yes, Laura had mentioned a Clare, but there were so many of them in her year group. There was no way I could have made that link.
‘I knew there were Clares in her year. It was a very popular name at the time,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think Laura had any friends by that name.’
‘They were in the same class,’ Ingrid said. ‘As were the other two girls who received flowers yesterday. Rachel McCay and Julie Diver, as they were then. Clare, Rachel and Julie were best friends – they still are, or were.’
I remembered, vaguely, those names when grouped together. Laura had never really been one to talk about her school friends. She was quiet, shy. Had preferred to stay at home with her family than to go into town with friends each weekend. Occasionally she brought a friend home for tea, but I was pretty sure she’d never brought a Clare, or a Rachel or a Julie home. I was pretty sure they hadn’t been in her peer group – not that she’d kept much of a peer group. She’d always been happier lost in a book or trailing around after her father down in the fields, before Paddy had to admit farming was no longer profitable for us.
I’d always been proud of her that she never felt the need to conform to what the other girls were doing. She didn’t show much of an interest in make-up. Wasn’t one for wanting to go to discos. I never had to worry about her being found drunk on the city walls or outside The Venue on a Saturday night. It had made my life so much easier. Maybe I should have worried more, but she was my ‘easy’ child. And it was easy for me to let her slip through the net – my attentions being dominated by her infinitely more gregarious brother.
‘Elizabeth,’ Ingrid said, bringing me back to myself. ‘Do you remember Clare from then? Or the other girls?’
‘I can’t say that I do.’
‘My source in the police seems to think there may be some link between Laura’s death and Clare Taylor’s murder,’ Ingrid said.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I replied. I could feel my anxiety growing. My sense of claustrophobia at where this conversation was going. I don’t think I’d ever heard anything quite so absurd in my life before. ‘Laura died two years ago. She wasn’t murdered. She took her own life, you know that, Ingrid. What link could there be?’
‘That was the part of the puzzle I was hoping you could help me fill in on,’ Ingrid said. ‘You didn’t recognise Clare as she lay on the roadside? She didn’t say anything that might give us a clue?’
‘I doubt her own mother would have recognised her how she lay on the roadside!’ I snapped. ‘The poor creature barely looked human, all bloodied and covered in mud. Those horrific wounds …’
I trailed off, aware of the flashing light on Ingrid’s phone, which indicated she was recording every word I’d said. Aware that those words, words that could break whatever was left of Clare Taylor’s mother, could appear in print. While she tried to keep her expression neutral, I could see the glint in Ingrid’s eyes. I was no journalist, but I’d spent enough time in their company to know what made for story gold.
I took a breath and started again. ‘No. I didn’t recognise her. I’m not sure I ever met Clare when she was at school with Laura. I may perhaps have seen her at a school event, a Mass or something, but it was a long time ago. She wasn’t one of my Laura’s friends. Nor were those other girls, Rachel and whatever you said the other girl was called.’
‘Julie. Julie Diver. She’s married now, of course. As is Rachel. Both mothers now, too.’
‘My Laura was a mother,’ I said sadly just as Clare’s last words chimed again in my head.
Was it Rachel and Julie she wanted to warn? Given the flowers, it was possible. I could feel a headache nip at my temples.
Ingrid just looked at me, waited for me to talk. I had to give her her dues, she was good at her job. She knew how to tease a story out of someone. She’d given me information the police hadn’t. She’d told me more than that kindly-faced DI Bradley with his ‘operational reasons’ for keeping me in the dark had done.
‘She told me to “warn them”,’ I muttered.
‘Sorry?’
Ingrid looked at me. I noticed her eyes widen just that little bit.
‘That’s what she said. Before she died. Those two words: “Warn them”. That was all. She was barely alive when I got to her. It was just too late. Her injuries …’
My mind drifted back to that roadside and the horrific sight that had greeted me that day. All that blood. So much blood. I wondered if that was what it had been like when they found Laura. Two girls, from the same class in school. Gone. Brutally taken. One by her own mind and one by someone deeply twisted.
I didn’t care then what Ingrid thought of me. I didn’t care about trying to play her at her own game. I simply broke down and cried, now fearing for the safety of those other two women and their children.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rachel
My back ached and my head was pounding when I woke. I remembered that I’d drunk the best part of a bottle of wine the previous night and my tolerance for alcohol was no longer anywhere near what it had been in my twenties. Or my thirties, for that matter.
I stretched and looked around. Felt the figure in the bed beside me move, turn over and flop one arm over my stomach. I revelled in the moment. The closeness. The sheer uncomplicated nature of how I felt for this person. My beautiful Molly. My innocent baby girl.
I remembered climbing in beside her the previous night – unable to face getting into bed beside Paul. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want to talk to him. I needed space to breathe. That space had ended up being about six inches on the edge of Molly’s bed as she starfished her way through the night, but the wine had ensured that I’d dropped off to sleep with little effort.
I replayed my conversation with Michael over and over in my head when I went home. His plea to run away. I thought of the figure in the blue car, cursed my stupidity for not writing down the registration number, then cursed myself again for being paranoid. Any number of cars could park there. It didn’t have to mean anything.
I’d poured myself a large glass of wine. The registration number had started with PFZ, the same as Paul’s, but I couldn’t remember the numbers. My head throbbed. I’d sat in the living room as Beth and Paul watched their programme about a curious place called the ‘The Upside Down’ on Stranger Things and part of me wondered if I’d passed through some sort of portal myself. My life was more upside down than the poor child on the screen.
Wouldn’t it be so simple if I could just run away? If I could forget I had a family, if I could stop my heart loving my childre
n. I could get away from this madness; from the disintegration of a relationship that had once been everything to me. From the dread every time my phone rang, or a message landed, or there was a knock on the door. More bad news. More horrific revelations.
Things would never be normal again. This wasn’t a short period of upheaval and upset after which we’d all slip back into our old routines. This was raw and pain-filled, and there was no escape for any of us.
Crying into my glass of wine, I thought about the Taylors. About Ronan and Jenny and how their marriage was struggling to cope with this unthinkable tragedy. I thought about Julie and how she seemed to be disappearing bit by bit in front of my eyes. I thought of Paul – of the Paul I once knew – of whom I’d been so very certain. It had been a long time since we’d laughed together, I realised.
I couldn’t pin all the blame on him. I was no innocent party. I’d allowed myself to start falling for another man. I’d allowed myself to sleep with another man. And I’d enjoyed every touch, every sensation, as I’d felt desired and wanted for the first time in years. Lying on the edge of Molly’s bed that Sunday morning, feeling her soft breath on my face, her mass of blonde curls tickling my cheek, I wondered what on earth would become of us all.
It felt as though Paul was watching me like a hawk all through that morning. No matter where I went, I felt his eyes on me. As I loaded the dishwasher and sorted through piles of washing, he took a seat at the kitchen island, poured himself a cup of coffee and continued his vigil.
He wasn’t reading the paper or even going through his phone, he was just sitting there, watching me as I separated the dark-coloured clothes from the lights. My head was still thumping. My stomach wasn’t feeling the best, either. I didn’t have the energy to engage him in conversation, so I just continued about my work.
‘What do you want me to do this week?’ he eventually asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said last night you wanted me to take the girls to Belfast. I said that wasn’t a good idea for a hundred different reasons, but we never actually decided what would happen. Did you speak to that policeman again? Get his advice?’
