Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  Might she have been talking about Joey?

  I had taken a few steps forward with my investigation into Gill, but this was a giant step back. Impulsive, brute-strong, and with a proven disregard for the law: if you were casting a violent rapist in a TV crime drama, it would be hard to look beyond Joey O’Connor. He had loved Deirdre, was crazy about her, Jessica had said, but the flip side of love is hate: for proof, sit and listen to the proceedings in any courtroom anywhere any day of the week.

  And what about Jessica? What if she had known more than she’d said? Had she been jealous of Deirdre’s relationship with Joey? Why hadn’t she told me about Joey’s convictions? She must have known. What if he had sought comfort with her after Deirdre had rejected him? Might Jessica have been protecting Joey by pretending to dislike him?

  None of it felt right, but in the end the only reason I could come up with for eliminating Joey as a suspect was that I wanted Gill to be the guilty one.

  It was another night of broken sleep, my sense of unease about Joey and my concerns in advance of Jeremy Gill’s imminent arrival in Cork made worse by the fact that Davy wasn’t replying to my messages. I had sent him two texts during the day. My iPhone told me he’d read them. But he hadn’t replied.

  By 3a.m. I had had enough. I deleted the conversation from my messages and put my phone upstairs in the living room, on silent. Back in bed, when I wasn’t thinking about Davy, Deirdre went around and around in my head, along with the old voices, and the blurred pictures I’d failed to delete.

  Her coming to collect me for a visit, coming in a taxi, her at the gate, Doreen walking me out to her, us getting the smell.

  ‘I don’t think Mum’s well enough to take you out today, Finn. Go back in while we have a chat.’

  Me watching from the door.

  Her shouting.

  ‘I am not drunk, how dare you, give me my child!’

  Doreen closing the door on her.

  Her hammering on the wood, her face peering through the bubble glass.

  Her, and not her.

  The noise, that’s what I remember most.

  Breaking glass.

  Shouting.

  Crying.

  The quiet with Jim and Doreen.

  Me starting to call him Dad.

  Me starting to call her Mam.

  Me wishing it was true.

  Me wishing something bad.

  14

  I got up at six and, with massive effort, went to my study without checking my phone to see if Davy had messaged me. I reread the information I’d logged the night before, concentrating on Joey O’Connor. He had said that Deirdre had told him there was someone else and that, if she had had an ongoing relationship, he would have known. I realised that I should have asked how he would have known. If he’d talk to me again, what he had to say might help my case against Gill. But I’d be a fool if I allowed myself to forget that Joey was a suspect too.

  And I’d be late if I didn’t hurry. This case consumed time like nothing I’d done before. I raced up the two flights of stairs from my study to the kitchen, grabbed an apple from the bowl to munch on the way, shoved a Glenisk yoghurt in my handbag and ran back down one flight and into my bedroom. One of the advantages of being a solicitor is the uniform-like dress code, which is boring, but takes all the effort out of weekday dressing. I grabbed one of my black skirt suits and one of my many white shirts and, with a slick of red lipstick, I was out the door – unshowered, admittedly, and wearing no earrings.

  I was in my office fifteen minutes later, just before nine, dead on my feet, distracted as hell, but ready for work. When I’d checked my phone. I did. Still no message from Davy.

  ‘Fuckfuckfuck,’ I said, and threw the phone in a drawer.

  A groaning inbox, and a list of missed calls from the previous day meant that I barely greeted Tina when she came in with the post.

  ‘Talk later,’ I mouthed, on hold at CIE Legal and simultaneously rereading a medical report on the eighteen-year-old son of an important client of Gabriel McGrath’s who had been knocked off his bike when he’d either wobbled into the path of the 214 bus or been the victim of a sudden swerve, depending on whether you believed the bus driver or the plaintiff. It was a good sign that the defendants were the ones who had rung me, a signal that they wanted to set up negotiations. Settlements meant fees. It would be a long time before the Carney case got anywhere, if it ever did. Meanwhile, Gabriel and the other partners expected me to pay my way in the firm. And the pressure on me was bound to increase after I told them about the Carney case.

  It was almost noon before I realised that I hadn’t eaten my yoghurt, warm now, but I ate it anyway. Then I rang Tina and asked her to bring up coffee for both of us. I had already forwarded her my updated notes for saving to the office case management system. I guessed that Tina would have read them and that she would have an opinion on Joey O’Connor.

  ‘The way I see it, Finn,’ Tina said. ‘Either Jeremy Gill did it or we have nothing. The only reason we’re doing this loopy case is because the dad thinks it’s Jeremy. He never mentioned Joey to you. Never asked you to go near him. Now, have a Jaffa Cake, it’s the best brain food there is.’

  I took the biscuit and ate it in two bites. Tina had a point. I had to bear Joey in mind, and any other signs of Gill’s possible innocence. But surely I wasn’t obliged to give equal weight to every lead? Sean had come to me with his concerns about Gill, and Gill alone.

  ‘I wish I’d had you to talk to at four o’clock this morning,’ I said. ‘I was tossing and turning half the night trying to sort it out in my head. Though if you’d met Joey …’

  ‘I don’t have to meet him,’ Tina said. ‘He sounds like a complete langer altogether.’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  I was waiting by the bike stand on Emmett Place when Marie Wade emerged at three minutes past one. I had called her at work at the Opera House accounts department. She had agreed to meet me at lunchtime: she took a stroll every day and had said I was welcome to tag along.

  ‘Now I remember,’ Marie said. ‘I couldn’t put a face to the name on the phone earlier. You all set to go?’

  ‘Ready when you are.’

  The North Face waterproof jacket and serious walking shoes should have been a portent. She took off at speed over the Christy Ring Bridge, but it was only when we got to the top of Coburg Street that the full horror of her lunchtime regimen became apparent: repeated trips up and down Patrick’s Hill, Cork’s meanest slope. Though the view made it a worthwhile slog any time, that wasn’t why Marie did it.

  ‘I’m going skiing in January,’ she said. ‘I go every year. This is great for the muscles.’

  At the top, with the green of Bell’s Field dipping towards Blackpool, and the houses heaped to the summit of the hill opposite, and Cork’s shabby magnificence laid out before us, she paused long enough to examine the photo of Daniel O’Brien I had saved to my phone.

  ‘I remember him,’ Marie said, as she started the descent. ‘Nice guy.’

  ‘So I hear,’ I said. ‘Any word from him after he left?’

  ‘Not a sausage. I didn’t know him all that well – I was only in for a few weeks managing the volunteers. He was fun to be around but we weren’t super-pally.’

  ‘Was he from Cork, do you know?’

  ‘Let me think,’ Marie said.

  ‘No,’ she said after long while. ‘Not Cork. I think he was from County Clare. Is it important for you to find out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It might or might not be. If you remember anything else, will you let me know?’

  ‘Of course I will. Ready for the next one?’

  We were at the bottom.

  ‘I might forgo that, I think.’

  ‘You should give it a go some other day,’ Marie said. ‘You’d be surprised how quickly you’d get into it.’

  Yeah, I thought as, five minutes later, I sat slurping a latte in the window of Cork Coffee Roasters, I’d be tr
uly amazed. Even Davy had never tried to make me take on Patrick’s Hill.

  Back at the office, I had enough time to try Lorcan Lucey’s number again before the Carneys arrived for their appointment. There was a possibility that he hadn’t heard the first voicemail. Whether he had or not, he hadn’t bothered to call back. I left a second message and phoned the Philosophy Department at UCC. The department administrator, Noreen, told me that Dr Lucey was at lectures all afternoon and that she’d pass on that I was looking for him, though she didn’t know when she’d see him and couldn’t possibly say when he’d be in his office. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or being evasive.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ I said. ‘I have a visitor coming to stay from the Philosophy Department in Bangalore University and I know that he’s keen to attend some lectures in UCC. He mentioned Dr Lucey’s work in particular. I’m not sure what it’s about but he was talking about an exchange programme and foreign students or something like that.’

  ‘Oh. That sounds important.’

  ‘It might be, Noreen. You’d be the expert on that kind of thing. I’m just thinking, I wonder would it be possible for you to email me Dr Lucey’s timetable? It would make everything a lot easier, less hassle, and we could leave them both to their own devices.’

  In less than a minute, the timetable was sitting in my inbox. Lucrative foreign students opened doors at UCC, and at all the universities, but I was shocked at how easily the lie had come to me.

  By the time the Carneys had produced their identification documents and proofs of address and had signed the client contracts and the various authorisations that I needed so that I could get Deirdre’s medical records, most of an hour had gone by. They looked exhausted and I had started to sweat. Yes, Sean had initiated the complaint against Gill. Yes, he had told me that Deirdre was my sister. But I knew that he and Ann were going through this rigmarole because of me. Whether I hoped to forge a permanent connection with Deirdre or whether it was something else that was driving me, I had invented a civil case that no reasonable lawyer would have pursued. If it ended up being a wild goose chase, which it well might, I was afraid of what that might do to them.

  But I was even more afraid of them changing their minds about pursuing the case, and of what that might do to me. Catching Gill, avenging Deirdre’s death, was starting to feel like the most important thing I might ever do.

  And if I failed? I couldn’t bear to think about it.

  ‘We’ll be looking forward to a progress report,’ Sean said.

  I won’t have news for a long time. Maybe never.

  ‘It’s going to take a bit of time, Sean,’ I said. ‘It might be a little while before I have anything major to say.’

  ‘Of course it will, love,’ Ann said.

  ‘I had a good chat with Jessica, though,’ I said. ‘She was helpful. And I visited Deirdre’s old school and met Aifric and Colm O’Donnell the art teacher.’

  ‘Did you meet the boss?’

  ‘Eoghan MacGiolla, the headmaster?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Sean said.

  ‘Yes. He told me he wasn’t working in the school when Deirdre was a pupil.’

  ‘No,’ Sean said. ‘But he was a neighbour. Used to live in Lee Valley Park. He knew Deirdre her whole life and then he got the big job in St Finbarr’s School and moved to Maryborough Heights and he couldn’t find one couple of hours in his day to come to her funeral.’

  ‘What has that to do with anything?’ Ann said. ‘Finn, Sean spends his time finding people to give out about and it does him no good.’

  I was only half listening to Ann. I’d have to check my notes but I was nearly sure Eoghan MacGiolla had led me to believe that he had never met Deirdre. He told me that he didn’t know her parents either. Though maybe I had it wrong? Either way, there was no point mentioning it now. By agreement, I put a reminder in my diary to call the Carneys for an appointment to come and see me in two weeks. Meanwhile, if anything urgent cropped up requiring their input, I would contact them immediately.

  ‘Before you go, there’s one last thing,’ I said. ‘It’s not to do with the case itself, it’s just that by its nature this is a situation where the Gardaí have a lot of expertise and, even though no prosecution is possible, I think it might help if I showed the file to a detective Garda I know well, and trust. Her name is Sadie O’Riordan, from Coughlan’s Quay Garda Station. She was in my law class at UCC, actually. Would you authorise me to talk to her about the case?’

  ‘I talked to the cops and it was a complete waste of time,’ Sean said.

  ‘Do if it helps,’ Ann said, giving Sean a poke in the arm. ‘Don’t mind this fella.’

  ‘Oh sure if the boss says yes, then who am I to question?’ Sean said. ‘Good luck.’

  I’d need luck, and plenty of it, if I was to earn the trust the Carneys had placed in me. For a while after they had gone, I stared out my window at the darkening sky, my stomach swirling. By now, Jeremy Gill had arrived in town. He might even have reached City Hall. Soon, he’d be making his way to Cork Opera House.

  And I would be there to welcome him.

  15

  If I craned my neck, I could see the spot where Deirdre had stepped into the biting January waters of the Lee’s North Channel. I was standing in the bay window on the top floor of the Opera House, high above the river where my sister had floated on the way to being dead, her suicide a tragic mirroring of her own history. Our mother had gone with the river too, though Deirdre had known nothing of that, and I had never looked beyond what little my mam had told me, had never sought out the inquest records or Garda reports, had never investigated what the newspapers had said, had tried to suppress all of it.

  And yet I had leapt at the chance to investigate Deirdre’s life and death. What would a psychotherapist say?

  ‘Are you thinking about jumping in?’

  I jolted, then turned around. It was Sarah-Jane Carey, the Film Festival PR.

  ‘They say it’s cleaned up since they did the main drainage, but I wouldn’t fancy a swim all the same, would you?’

  ‘Sarah-Jane, you gave me a fright! But hang on, I’m not in your way, am I?’

  The window, with clear northern light and the river in the background, was a popular location for PR photos.

  ‘Nah, calm down, you’re grand,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘It’s dark now and anyway we got great shots over at City Hall. Jeremy is a dream, honest to God. So obliging for the cameras. Total pro. But, hey, come on in, you’re here for the reception, right? I was just out at the loo. I was dying for a wee, hadn’t a second all day.’

  I was glad of Sarah-Jane’s company and stream-of-consciousness babble as we walked together into the bar. There were no more than fifty guests, a string quartet playing classical arrangements of movie themes and a selection of juices and sparkling wine instead of the usual Château de l’Opening plonk. Jeremy Gill was on the far side of the room, his back to me, deep in animated conversation with a woman I didn’t know who looked like she might be a commercial sponsor. She was dressed in the kind of ‘office to cocktail party’ outfit beloved of fashion features around Christmas: a black trouser suit with a red silky camisole and an enormous shiny pendant that she kept fiddling with.

  The atmosphere was charged, and everybody was either looking at Jeremy or deliberately not looking at him. I scanned the room, planning my route. At least the small size of the crowd increased my chances of getting to talk to him. And Alice was hovering close by so, if I went to talk to her, I’d be bound to get an introduction.

  I felt a tug at my sleeve.

  ‘Sorry, Sarah-Jane, I was miles away,’ I said. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘Just about the photos,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘I saw that you took some photos from the archive. I was a bit surprised, to be honest. I was wondering …’

  ‘Oh gosh, Sarah-Jane, I completely forgot to tell you and even worse, I forgot to bring them back. I have them in my office at work and I’ll drop them ba
ck to you tomorrow. It’s just that I’m a massive fan and I wanted a copy for my collection.’

  She didn’t believe my explanation, I could tell. If only I had returned the photos on Monday, as I had promised myself I would. But I saw that a gap had opened up near Jeremy Gill, and that he was walking in my direction, phone in hand. Tall, tanned and well built, with shoulder-length glossy too-black hair, he wore an open-necked white shirt and a dark blue suit. Even if he wasn’t famous, you wouldn’t miss him in a crowd: age and success agreed with him, and he was far better looking in real life than I had remembered, though I’d only seen him at a distance in 1998. A waiter passed, bearing a tray. Gill grabbed a glass of fizz without breaking his stride.

  ‘Sorry, Sarah-Jane. I’ll catch you later, okay?’

  I pinned on my biggest smile and walked up to him before he could get waylaid by anybody else.

  ‘Welcome to Cork, Mr Gill. I’m Finn Fitzpatrick from the Festival Board. We’re delighted to have you back.’

  ‘Wonderful. I’ve just been talking to the most boring woman in the world and I had to escape. Told her I had an important call to make. And I’ve lost my assistant. But you look like you know what’s happening. When do I go on?’

  ‘The film’s listed to start at seven so you’ll be on stage at about 7.05 or so, I reckon. You probably haven’t seen the huge crowds below, but it’ll take the staff a while to seat them.’

  ‘Ah, the great Irish public,’ Gill said, and laughed. ‘But, c’mere to me, I don’t know what they’re coming to see me for, do you? Anyway, what are the plans after that?’

  ‘Alice Chambers introduces you on stage and you say a few words about the film and then they’re taking you to Paradiso.’

  ‘Oh yeah, what’s that like?’ Gill asked. ‘I’m vegan now, I hope they know that.’

  ‘They do,’ I said. ‘It’s a really good place. But before you go I wonder would you sign something for me? I love all your films, going right back to the beginning. I was here in 1998 as a volunteer when you came to Cork with your first film.’