Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  Mam and Dad

  He’s too strong now. But the academy wouldn’t like him so much if they knew.

  Sorry I wasn’t brave enough. Sorry for everything.

  Love

  Deirdre xx

  ‘You see now who it is,’ Sean said.

  I didn’t, but said nothing. The way he was, he mightn’t have heard me anyway.

  ‘The nominations in January must have been the final straw for her,’ he continued. ‘It was the day following the announcement, on the 29th of January, that she left that note in her room and went to the river. Though at least she wasn’t around to see him winning, and the press coverage. All that glory, after what he did to my daughter. After what he did to my girl. I didn’t know what the note meant until he won, when I heard his acceptance speech. He was everywhere on the telly and radio for weeks and the clip from the speech was played over and over again and eventually I realised what Deirdre meant by the academy. If he hadn’t won, I might never have copped on.’

  I had an inkling now who Sean was talking about, but it was so unimaginable, so unspeakable, that I needed to hear it from him.

  ‘Can you say his name, Sean? Can you say the name of the man you think it is?’

  ‘I don’t think. I know. It was Jeremy Gill,’ he said.

  Biting my lip, I laid my pen on the table and sat back in my seat. Jeremy Gill, the most successful film-maker Ireland had ever produced, was an icon, a national hero. There were a few critically acclaimed Irish film directors, and one or two Oscars here and there, but he was in a different league, a Spielberg kind of league. Gill’s films made hundreds of millions of dollars. And they weren’t just popular, they were good. Last March, Seeing Things had won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. After all that, and the viral BBC chat show appearance, and the hour-long stateside television special, and the round of homecoming radio and TV interviews, and the front page newspaper and magazine photos, everyone in Ireland knew who he was. The pool of A-list celebrities is small in Ireland, and Gill was that rare thing: an enormous talent, and a massive international commercial success, who retained an appetite for frequent appearances on Irish TV and radio. People liked that he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. People liked Gill. I liked him.

  I had been holding my breath. I sat forward again and wrote ‘J Gill?’ in my notebook, though it wasn’t a name I was likely to forget, and drew a box around it. Then I asked if I could photograph the suicide note with my phone. Sean blanched, but agreed. When I had finished, I gave back the note and fixed my eyes on him.

  ‘That’s some allegation, Sean Carney,’ I said. ‘Can you back it up?’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’ he asked, too loudly.

  ‘Shhh, keep your voice down, we’re in a public place and we have to be careful. Only for the weather, we wouldn’t be having this conversation here at all. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I don’t know enough to say anything at this stage. But I need you to explain why you believe it’s him, and what the emergency is.’

  ‘Well, her note, for one thing. Deirdre wrote about the academy, and all he was doing after he got the Oscars was thanking the academy, in his acceptance speech and on every chat show after. The academy this and the academy that.’

  ‘You think she was talking about the Academy of Motion Pictures. But, from what you tell me, Deirdre was dead a couple of months before he won.’

  ‘Yes. But, like I said, she knew about the nominations – it was the day after they were announced that she left us.’

  ‘Right. And you’re convinced it was the Academy Deirdre was talking about. Not a school of some kind, even a stage school?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No? Okay, I get that, But, Sean, you’ve told me nothing about how she might have met him, let alone anything else.’

  ‘I know, I know. I haven’t that much to go on. But it all goes back to the film stuff she did. You know how in Transition Year they’re encouraged to branch out and choose projects to work on that they’re interested in as a future career, before they start working for the Leaving Cert and all that. Deirdre chose films, film studies, that sort of thing, and got into the Film Festival doing work experience. The festival was held in October back then. I know she was involved in helping them to choose short films for something to do with the schools’ part of the festival – she was coming home with stacks of videos to watch. And she was raving about a short film by a fella from Dublin called, well, it was him, Gill …’

  He picked up his whiskey glass, but didn’t drink from it, and put it back down.

  ‘She kept talking about him, about how he was definitely going to win a prize. And he did – he won three. It meant nothing to me, but our Deirdre was over the moon about it. She said it was the first time someone had won the audience award, the best Irish and the best International short film. And, if you remember, he was nominated for the best short film in the Oscars after – he didn’t win, but it got him noticed.’

  I remembered. Fifteen years ago I was twenty-two, working as a trainee solicitor by day. What Sean didn’t know was that I was also working for the festival as a volunteer, evenings and at the weekend, in return for a season ticket. I didn’t meet Jeremy Gill, though. Never even saw him, except on stage. And Sean seemed to have no evidence that Deirdre had met him either. The probability was that she hadn’t. Even in 1998, Cork Film Festival was careful to ensure that schoolkids in on work experience or attending the education programme screenings were well chaperoned, by their own teachers usually, and that they’d gone home long before the late nights in the Festival Club at Cork Opera House.

  ‘Sean, along with thousands of others, Deirdre and Jeremy Gill were both at the same film festival. But, in all likelihood, they never even met.’

  ‘They met, they had to have met. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He was a man of the world by then, working in Dublin, and the short films were a sideline for him.’

  ‘He was in advertising, very successfully, as far as I know,’ I said. ‘But …’

  ‘He was about thirty or more when he made the short film that got him on the road to where he is now. I can’t remember the name of it.’

  ‘Another Bad Day at the Office,’ I said. ‘And you think they met because …?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sean said. ‘I don’t know how they met, all right? I just know that my wife Ann took Deirdre and her friend, Jessica Murphy from her class at school, to the closing night at the Opera House, the prize-giving and the closing film.’

  He pointed at my notebook. I wrote down Jessica’s name and other scant details. Cork Film Festival. 1998. Short films. School/education prog. Oscar noms. January. Deirdre Carney. 29th Jan 2013. Suicide.

  ‘She must have met Gill during the festival or in the Opera House, maybe even on the stairs, or something,’ Sean said. ‘Ann remembers that she went to the toilet at one stage on her own. Ann didn’t think to go with her, thought she was safe. You’d think at fifteen, in a public place like that …’

  ‘So are you saying that something happened that night?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no, I don’t think so. But some time during the festival, either that night or some other time, he saw her, targeted her. He was way too clever to do anything then – but he met her afterwards. Trust me. She changed after the festival, got more distant from us, and from her school pals. Was growing up, we thought … And then we knew that something serious had happened. Ann first. And the blood … on the sheets … and the bruises. That was the 12th of December 1998, nearly two months after the festival, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. A Saturday night, Sunday, it was, when Ann … But we never knew who it was.’

  Sean stopped.

  ‘She never said. Never would. But I know now. I know it was him.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘And the emergency?’

  ‘It’s what I read in the Echo today. That he’s coming back to Cork, next week. For the Film Festiv
al,’ Sean said. ‘I want to make sure the bastard doesn’t do it again.’

  2

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Sean asked.

  It was tenuous, at very best, is what I thought. Sean had a broken heart and was searching for answers: the ‘emergency’ was no more than a poignant attempt to atone for not being able to save his daughter. I had seen it before, relatives replaying the incomprehensible so often that insignificant occurrences garnered meanings invisible to outsiders. And, after a while, two and two no longer added up to four. I knew that what Sean was suggesting could have happened. Anything was possible. But, with a deceased complainant, and no evidence whatsoever, this allegation looked like a non-starter in every way.

  And now wasn’t the time to tell Sean any of that. His only daughter was dead by suicide. He had to wake up to that knowledge, and to her absence, every single day. I couldn’t reject him straight away, not after the effort he’d made to find me, though I knew that there was little or nothing I could do.

  But I could respect him, and respecting him meant giving what he had told me the time and the consideration it deserved. I would send him home to his wife and, later, when he was rested, I’d let him down gently. There would be no need to mention the probability that Jeremy Gill was completely innocent. I reckoned that, deep down, Sean knew that already.

  ‘I’ll need to do a bit of thinking about this,’ I said. ‘Give me your home and mobile numbers and I’ll give you a ring to arrange a meeting as soon as I know more. One thing I forgot to ask, does your wife – Ann is it? Does she know you’re here?’

  ‘She does, but she thinks that there’s nothing you can do. She thinks I’m only upsetting myself more. She says that whatever I do, I can’t bring her back.’

  Sean paused.

  ‘I know that too,’ he said.

  I couldn’t think what to say in response, so I asked him for his phone number again. Then I shepherded him out the door, checking how he was getting home, and was he all right. Goodbyes take a long time in Cork.

  I walked up the hill and into the gale, though at least the rain had lightened. A few minutes later I turned off the wind tunnel street into a sheltered lane lined with with tiny cottages. At the end of the lane stood a high stone wall with a dark grey door. My door. Inside, there was a yard with a narrow path to a second door, and inside that, a winding staircase that emerged in an open loft with an oak floor and views on all sides. Whenever I hear myself complaining, I remember this place, a contemporary tower house, midway between Elizabeth Fort and Cat Fort. I had bought the small vacant site and gone through the exhausting design, planning and building process, having seen the potential of the old stone wall and the privacy it afforded. Almost landlocked, with pedestrian access only, even at the height of the Celtic Tiger, Ireland’s doomed property bubble, the site had had had limited appeal. Nevertheless, on my income, I couldn’t have afforded the purchase and build except for the questionable banking practices of the Tiger times, where the normal salary multiplier was a tiresome detail, easily overcome by obligingly inventive bankers and brokers. So it had been, and so it was no longer. Now, my mortgage was a stretch, but doable, and I still had my safe place, even after the carnage of the crash. I was grateful for it every day.

  And ‘Rapunzel’ always was my favourite fairy story.

  I hung my coat on the bannister to dry, and kicked off my shoes. I unzipped my damp skirt and hung it beside the coat, but my tights were beyond saving. I rolled them down over my thighs and calves, packed them into a soggy ball, and threw them down the stairs. They landed on the stone floor below, close enough to the door to remind me to bin them the next day. I propped my shoes at each side of the top step, letting them take their chances. Another night, I might have stuffed them with paper and massaged them back to health.

  I crossed the room slowly, using only the yellow glow of the city to light my way. I took down Pieces of the Sky, moved the needle to track 4, and lay down on the sofa, pulling my burnt orange and buttermilk Foxford wool blanket over me.

  When ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ finished, I let the album play on, Emmylou’s voice pure and clear like a cooling balm.

  After a time, I stood, and switched on a lamp. I took out the photo that Sean Carney had given me, laid it on the kitchen worktop and glanced at it, quickly at first. Deirdre had dark hair and brows, pale skin, red lips and lively, mischievous eyes. Sean had said that we looked alike. I could see what he meant: her colouring, her hair, her blue eyes were the same general area as me, except Deirdre was stunning.

  And now she was dead. And that was a tragedy. And there was nothing I, or her parents, or anyone else could do about it.

  Though there was food in the fridge, my appetite had disappeared around the time Sean Carney had mentioned his daughter’s body washing up in Blackrock. But as I filled the kettle, and willed myself to nibble at a snack of cheese and oatcakes, I kept coming back to look at the photo, wondering how long it would take before I went downstairs, to where I knew there was a stack of old Film Festival catalogues.

  Ten minutes later, I was crawling on the floor of my study, trying to find 1998. And there it was. I ran my finger through the index and turned to here: Another Bad Day at the Office, a twenty-four-minute short film by Jeremy Gill. Also produced by Jeremy Gill and a production company called Gill/Direct Productions. Seemed like a one-man show.

  I got up off the floor, rolled my chair into position, flicked on my desktop and did an online company search on Gill/Direct Productions. The company status was normal, which meant that he’d kept filing accounts and making annual returns on it all these years. The directors were listed as Jeremy Gill, and a trust company called ProGill Trust, which showed up, along with Gill, as director of a raft of other companies. I forced myself to stop after clicking through to the twentieth company. Searches like these are addictive but they eat time, and to no end, in this case. It was of zero consequence that Gill had a web of investment vehicles. That was how the film business worked. Applying for government incentives and taking advantage of tax avoidance schemes meant that there was usually at least one company for each project, and often more. The only slightly odd thing was there were no women listed anywhere on any of the documents. I googled details of his agent, lawyer and business managers: all male. And in the ‘About Us’ section of jeremygillproductions.com, there were no women listed either. Maybe Jeremy didn’t like working with women. Or maybe women didn’t like working with Jeremy. There was nothing much to any of it, but I opened a Sean Carney file on my desktop anyway and saved the results of the search into it.

  Next, I did a search of the Irish Examiner archive for Cork Film Festival 1998. I found a large colour shot of Jeremy, holding his three trophies. He was smiling, dark hair tied in a ponytail, brown eyes. I had forgotten about the teeth, the slightly crooked, slightly off-white Irish teeth, that he’d subsequently had fixed to Hollywood dayglo perfection. I reckoned they’d looked better before he’d shelled out for the replacements, but I was probably in a minority. I saved the photo and the accompanying article into the Carney file.

  Then, I read the Wikipedia entry on Gill. There was a piece about his education at UCD in the late 1970s, how he had been a classmate of the writer Christopher Dalton, who had scripted two of Gill’s early features, though they hadn’t worked together after that. Dalton had gone on to be a successful literary novelist. I had a quick read of his Wikipedia page. It looked like he hadn’t allowed any of his later works to be adapted as films. He might have had his fill: some liked the collaborative process of film-making, some didn’t.

  There were various references to Gill’s stellar career in advertising, working for Thomson AdGroup, and footnotes on a few of the campaigns he’d been involved in.

  But, in relation to his personal life, there was remarkably little. He had never married. A legendary workaholic bachelor, Gill was famous for taking his mammy to premieres. In fact, now that I thought about it, I had always assumed he was gay. I
copied the Wikipedia entry into my file and googled ‘Jeremy Gill gay’ but nothing of significance came up, except that, as with a lot of people in show business, there were unsubstantiated rumours about his sexuality. If anything, there seemed to be less about Gill than others. Maybe it didn’t matter as much if you were a gay director, maybe people were less interested. I googled ‘Jeremy Gill love life’. There were thousands of photos of him with myriad different actresses, and articles where they both protested that they were ‘just good friends’. Yet the ‘friendships’ seemed to last only as long as the films they were promoting and, even from a distance of 8,000 miles, or however far LA was from Cork, they looked like fake dates. And all of this information was utterly irrelevant to Deirdre Carney and her unfortunate life and death.

  Nevertheless, I went into IMDb and scrolled through Gill’s entry, refreshing my memory on his film-making history. He had made a lot of good films, across various genres, since his time in Cork in 1998, and I had seen all of them, mostly on the big screen.

  Though I hadn’t seen the prize-winning short film for years. I checked the credits and cast list on IMDb – no names I recognised, apart from Jeremy Gill. He had played the male lead himself, as well as directing, and had used various other unknown actors, I guessed, for budget reasons. They were probably people he worked with or friends of his. There was a teenage girl in it, too. According to IMDb, her name was Rhona Macbride. She was talented, from what I remembered, and I would’ve put money on her having a career as an actress but she hadn’t, or at least I hadn’t heard of her. She didn’t have a profile on IMDb, and showed up as a cast member on just that one film. I googled her. There were a few Rhona and Rona McBrides, and several Rhonda Macbrides, but no Rhona with that spelling of Macbride. She’d be over thirty by now. Maybe she’d married and taken her husband’s name.