Hidden

by Derick Parsons

  The problem with people like Trev –and her, if she were honest- was that they spent so much of their time discussing problems that eventually it became inconceivable to them not to discuss every event, every facet of a person’s life. And while no one knew better than Kate that repression of negative emotions could be harmful, she had also learned that sometimes it was necessary, and perhaps healthier, just to be alone for a while, to absorb traumas and deal with them privately and quietly. The talking could come later, after the wounds had been licked clean.

  She sat into the car beside Peter and gave him a small smile, ‘Let’s go.’ The Gardai had arrived swiftly the night before, and had instantly taken the unconscious Michael into custody. Unfortunately they had also sealed off his apartment and had refused to let her retrieve her handbag, which of course contained her keys. Luckily she had long since memorised Peter’s UK mobile number, and a second call on the shocked but extremely obliging reporter’s phone had brought him round within minutes. He had accompanied her to the police station and sat with her all night while she answered the endless questions, simply holding her hand without saying a word and thereby providing unspeakable comfort. The police hadn’t wanted him there, of course, but she had told them that she wasn’t talking if they made him leave, and would instead wait till the next day, until her lawyer was present.

  The only jarring note had been when they left the Garda station; he had wanted to bring her straight home, while she had insisted on coming out to see Grainne. Letting the girl know that she was finally safe was far more important than sleep, however tired she might be. And she was tired; unspeakably so. But she thought that she could now sleep peacefully.

  She sank back into the leather seat and shut her eyes, letting Peter whisk her home down the motorway; commitment-phobic or not it was nice, and useful, to have him around. In fact, if he ever recovered from his anger over her fling with Michael, she might just ask him to stick around permanently. She shivered as they entered the bottom of her street and parked in front of her building; never mind Peter, would she ever recover from her liaison with that monster? Would she ever feel clean again? To say nothing of feeling used.

  After cautiously checking that there were no reporters about –though it was a certainty that almost every reporter in Ireland was camped outside Store Street Garda station just then- they made their way down the steps to Kate’s front door.

  ‘Okay, then, maestro,’ she said with a tired smile, ‘Show me your plan for getting me into my flat with no key.’

  He winked at her and said confidently, ‘Watch and learn, kid, watch and learn!’ He slipped a credit card in the door jamb down towards the catch, then when it hit metal he simultaneously hit the door with one massive shoulder. The catch burst the receiver off the frame with a splintering crash and the door flew inward, causing Kate to slap him hard on the other shoulder.

  ‘You big buffoon, you broke the bloody door!’ she said accusingly, though secretly more amused than angry, ‘I thought you knew what you were doing?’

  He gave her an embarrassed grin and shrugged, ‘So did I. Not to worry, I can fix the lock in a jiff. You put the kettle on and I’ll nip down to the nearest Woodies.’ Perfectly naturally, without thinking, he leaned forward and gave her a goodbye peck on the lips.

  Kate stood frozen in the doorway, her heart pounding, as he made his way back up the steps to his car. Had he forgiven her? Was there hope for them yet? There’s nothing to forgive, the little voice in her mind told her. She went into the flat and on into the kitchen to put the kettle on, thinking without humour of Ross in Friends shouting, “We were on a BREAK!”

  And so we were, she told herself. But she knew that she still needed his forgiveness. For the pain she had inflicted on him, and for doing her best to destroy their relationship, the best thing she had ever had in her whole fearful, tainted, unhappy life.

  The phone rang and she picked up the kitchen extension, wondering idly if she’d ever get her mobile back from the police. Praying it was not a reporter she said guardedly, ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Kate, Inspector Mullins here. I thought you might like to know that Riordan’s awake, so we won’t be charging you with murder after all.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ she replied dryly. In fact it had occurred to her that it might be better all round if he never woke up, but even so she was still almost overwhelmed with relief to find that she was not a killer. ‘I suppose he’s denying everything?’

  ‘The doctors won’t let us speak to him until this afternoon,’ came the reply, ‘and you can bet he’ll have a whole team of lawyers around him when we do interview him. Believe me, we’re not expecting a confession anytime soon. Which leaves us with a problem.’

  Kate pricked up her ears, ‘What problem?’

  ‘Proof that he committed any crime.’

  ‘What?’ exploded Kate down the phone, her eyes bulging in disbelief, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Calm down,’ replied Mullins, ‘We’ve got him for the underage porn on his computer, no problem. But since the girls are all clearly teenagers we’re going to have a hard job proving they aren’t simply very young-looking eighteen-year-olds. We’re going to have to try and track them down and prove they’re underage. I’m sure we will, eventually, get him on at least one or two counts but the unpalatable fact is that his sentence won’t be as severe as it would be if the girls involved were pre-pubescent. And that’s not all. The pictures, that email you opened last night, came from another powerful politician, and he’s going to be pushing to have this whole thing dropped, to save his own neck.’

  ‘But…’ Kate stopped, speechless.

  ‘Obviously we’re looking for evidence that he stabbed Sean, and that scumbag Shiels, but we’ve nothing yet, and if we don’t turn up something soon he could literally get away with murder.’

  Kate’s mouth was hanging open but nothing was coming out. At last she managed, ‘I can’t believe it!’ Her mind was churning furiously and she blurted, ‘What about his dead wife? I’m sure he started that fire and killed her too!’

  ‘Well, we’re sure he didn’t,’ came the implacable reply, ‘As the dead woman’s spouse we naturally investigated him at the time and he’s clean. He might have hired someone else, possibly even our old friend Shiels, but he certainly didn’t do it in person. The night of the fire he was guest of honour at a dinner in his club, under the gaze of nearly a hundred other guests.’

  ‘Christ!’ spat Kate in disbelief.

  ‘Indeed,’ replied Mullins in his dry tone, ‘And if it was Shiels he got to start the fire in his house, that’s another dead end. Literally. Er, there is a point to my telling you all this highly confidential information.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Kate wearily, her mind numb from these latest shocks, ‘What point?’

  ‘In your statement,’ the policeman said slowly, ‘you claimed you hurt your face running into the kitchen door. Are you quite sure that Riordan didn’t hit you, or push you into the door?’

  Kate made no reply and eventually the policeman said, ‘Because if he assaulted you it might give us more leverage when it comes to squeezing a confession out of him, and at the worst we could hold him longer while we look for evidence of his greater crimes.’

  Kate rubbed at her forehead, ‘I’m too tired to think straight but my first reaction is to say no. I don’t want to lie, even to keep that scumbag locked up.’

  There was another long silence before Mullins said, ‘No one has asked you to lie, Miss Bennett, we just want to be certain we have your statement right.’ There was another, shorter pause before he added, ‘It might be the difference between him staying locked up and getting out on bail, you know. Might even be the difference between him confessing and denying everything. And what do you think he was going to do to you last night if he had caught you? Give you a kiss?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ replied Kate wearily, ‘Can I sleep on it?’

  There was anot
her long silence and then he said, ‘Well, don’t sleep too long. We need to move quickly if we’re to pull your statement before his lawyers get involved.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Kate unwillingly, ‘but it goes against the grain.’ She hung up and put her head against the cool, tiled wall. Why is nothing ever simple in my life?

  She heard the broken front door creak open, and footsteps in the hall, and turned to face the kitchen door, calling out ‘Pete, that you?’

  The kitchen door swung open, revealing a man standing in the hallway. It was not Peter. It was a tall figure dressed in black, with a long knife in one hand. The same knife he had carried in Trinity, and had stabbed Sean Morrison with. But this time he had no Balaclava on and she recognised his face. It was Josh Guilfoyle, Grainne’s uncle.

  Kate goggled at him in disbelief, then bit her lip as the penny dropped. And she said dully, beyond emotion, ‘I’m such a fool. Michael told me himself, told me he was computer illiterate. He could never have set up that little postman figure delivering the email. Your email.’

  Guilfoyle nodded, a sneer that was almost a snarl marring his handsome features, ‘And Michael will tell them whose computer it is when wakes up. It won’t be hard to prove. My apartment, my computer, my email address. It’ll all come out soon enough. Because of you, you nosy, interfering bitch. Snooping through my private possessions, prying into my family. I’ve got a false passport, thanks to a friend in high places, and I’m going to run for it. But not till I’ve settled the score with you.’

  Kate’s mouth was dry as dust with gut-wrenching fear but she knew she had to stall him so she croaked, ‘And it was you who abused Grainne, not Michael. And you killed your sister too, didn’t you? Because she found out what you had done to Grainne.’

  ‘What Grainne and I had done together,’ he corrected her, ‘She was always a slut, even at fourteen. When I came home from Australia she was always hanging around me, couldn’t get enough of me. She wanted it, and she got it.’ He sneered at her revolted expression and snapped, ‘You’re no one to judge me! I might like young girls but not children, not like your precious father. Or do you flatter yourself it was only you he wanted?’ He took a step forward, into the kitchen, and continued, ‘Grainne told her about us, and Therese rang me, in tears, raving and screaming down the phone. Drunk, of course. She wanted me jailed. I put her straight on a few things.’

  He grinned suddenly, shocking her by looking so normal, so ordinary. And he said, ‘Therese was always a burden to Michael, though he never complained, and when he entered politics she became a positive liability. Which made her drink all the more. So I gave her a choice. Expose me and cause a scandal and I’d ruin Michael’s dreams of a career in politics. Or keep her mouth shut, whereupon I’d blackmail my politician friend to make sure that her husband’s ambitions were fulfilled. And quickly.’ He shrugged, ‘She knew there was no real proof against me except Grainne’s word so she agreed. She didn’t want the family name dragged into the mud any more than I did, you see. Besides, the firm I work for had landed a five-year contract in Cork, so none of them would have to see me again.’

  ‘Michael never knew?’

  He shook his head, ‘Therese forced Grainne to keep her mouth shut, though I don’t know how, what she said to her. The little slut went completely off the rails and started drinking and taking drugs but as long as she kept her mouth shut I didn’t care.’

  ‘But Therese did?’ said Kate softly.

  He nodded and took a seemingly casual step toward her, ‘Correct. Guilt ate away at her. You see, she always hated Grainne, right from her birth. And that only made the guilt worse.’ He shrugged again, and said bitterly, ‘Then Grainne cleaned up her act.’ Incredibly, he seemed to feel hard done by. ‘Michael got me to pay off Jimmy Shiels, to leave her alone, and she went into rehab. Michael didn’t want to dirty his hands, and his reputation, by consorting with the likes of Jimmy in person so he asked me to do it. When Grainne came out of rehab she went to her mother and said she wanted to report me to the police. Wanted to wipe the past clean and start over.’

  He blinked, his gaze inward and long ago as he said, ‘I was in Cork when Therese rang me, pissed, telling me I was going to be exposed. Jailed. She seemed delighted but she might have listened to reason eventually, but Grainne wouldn’t.’ He shook his head, seeming genuinely puzzled, ‘The little bitch wanted to see me suffer, wanted to ruin me. Obviously I couldn’t let her talk. I drove up from Cork but I was clever; I left my mobile behind. They can track you that way, you know. I bought some drugs from Jimmy and went to the house. Therese was out of it, never woke up at all, even after the fire started, but Grainne put up a fight. Not that it did her much good after I injected her with the speedball. I doused the place in petrol and legged it back to Cork.’

  He looked at Kate with utterly unfathomable eyes, ‘Even then I was clever. When I got there I smashed one of my car windows and called the police. They never even came out and spoke to me, but the important thing was that the report was logged into their system. And the call was logged on my mobile, from Cork.’ He shrugged, ‘I was just unlucky. I gave that little slut enough dope to kill a fucking horse and she somehow survived. I think that dumb mutt of a dog must have tried to play Lassie and drag her from the house, but all he succeeded in doing was to bite her leg. But the pain must have woken her up and she got out before the whole place went up. I nearly went out of my mind worrying about what she’d tell the police. That was when I got the false passport, but I didn’t want to run, to give up my entire life unless I had to. The investigators questioned me, of course, but they believed my story. For the moment. But there was worse to come. About a week after the fire I got a speeding ticket sent to my flat. A ticket with the time and date of the fire on it, and a picture of me driving on the motorway near Foxrock when I was supposedly in Cork.’ He shrugged, ‘I knew that if the police investigated me in any depth it was all over, what with the lies I told the Cork police as my alibi.’ He looked at her with angry eyes, ‘You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve suffered, wondering what that little tramp was saying about me. That’s why I wanted your case, to read her file. To see if I was safe or if there’d have to be another fire.’

  Kate’s voice was rusty as she croaked hoarsely, ‘Why did you kill Jimmy?’

  ‘He recognised my voice on the phone when I hired him,’ came the prompt reply, ‘He was the only person I knew who’d carry out a burglary for money, but when he realised who I was he upped the ante. I would have paid but he knew it was Grainne’s file I wanted and he would have put it all together, given time. He was the one who sold me the drugs the night of the fire, after all. The first fire, that is; Grainne got lucky a second time the other night, in the hospital. If her room hadn’t been locked I could have used this.’ He hefted the knife in his hasnd and looked at her with eyes that were just empty black holes, ‘Jimmy forced me to kill him. But the file wasn’t in his flat; I took his keys and checked. I knew where he lived from the time I paid him off, see? So I was back to square one. That’s why I went to your office in Trinity. I never meant to stab that copper. I thought your office would be empty at that time of night. I just wanted a look at that file, to see if I needed to flee the country of if I was safe.’

  He shrugged again, ‘I should have just run away. I’ll have to now anyway.’ His vacant gaze coalesced into a hate-filled glare, ‘Because of you. Because of one nosy, interfering bitch who couldn’t mind her own business. I have to sacrifice my whole life, everything I’ve built up, but I’ll send you to hell before I go!’

  ‘She can meet you there, then,’ said a deep voice from the hall as Peter’s massive frame loomed up in the doorway, ‘Because you’ll be following her straight down.’

  Guilfoyle slowly pivoted towards the open door, the gleaming point of his knife rising. Kate froze in horror, feeling the old, hateful weakness rising inside her and making her want to curl up into a defenceless ball. But she forced her terr
or away. I’m not a scared child anymore, she thought, I don’t have to just accept shit from anyone any more. Not from my father, not from ANYONE! And she grabbed the kettle from the counter and flung the boiling water into the killer’s face.

  Guilfoyle screamed and dropped his knife, his hands clutching at his scalded face, and Peter stepped forward swiftly and hammered a giant fist into his face. The killer crashed into the wall before falling to the floor, already unconscious, and Peter dropped on top of him. He flipped him over and knelt on his back before glancing up at Kate and saying urgently, ‘Ring the police, quick. And an ambulance. His head hit the wall a fearful crack.’ Incredibly, though his voice was hoarse and his breathing ragged from the adrenaline pumping through his system, he managed a smile, ‘And thank you; that knife was aimed right at my belly.’

  ‘Your second favourite organ,’ uttered Kate through frozen lips. Her attempt at humour soon faltered, and she burst into tears, but she rang the police first.

  It was some hours before the police finally left and Kate and Peter were alone in the flat once again, with Kate preparing to visit Grainne and offer her an apology for getting everything so badly wrong. To confess what a fool she’d been, and assure her that her real abuser was –finally- safely incarcerated. Forever. And to try and repair any damage her mistake might have done to their fledgling relationship. Kate owed Michael an apology too, a big one, but she couldn’t bring herself to worry about him now; she could deal with that later. Grainne’s peace of mind and recovery was infinitely more important. She got her spare car keys from her bedside locker and made her way to the front door, where Peter was finally getting round to repairing the broken lock.