Darkest Truth

by Catherine Kirwan

  ‘You’re talking about adult women in all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not always.’

  ‘No.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘His real passion was for schoolgirls. He liked them young. Not too young, either. He was quite specific about it. After puberty, but before they got to seventeen. Sweet sixteen, even sweeter fifteen, he used to say.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  But I was remembering how he’d used that word with Carmel, the girl in the green uniform, at the workshop in Cork on Wednesday. When she’d confirmed her age, he had said ‘sweet’. He had said it a second time. I felt sick at the thought of what might have happened if I hadn’t intervened, but I had to continue.

  ‘Please go on,’ I said. ‘About his specific interest.’

  ‘Well, yeah. He had a real thing, a detailed fantasy. He said that all women were bitches but that if he could get a girl at the right age, the right kind of girl, if she showed potential and if she measured up, she would be a fitting mate for him. He actually used that word. Mate.’

  ‘Apart from Rhona, were you aware of other underage girls?’

  ‘Not aware, as such, but I had my suspicions. I don’t want to give a name. It wouldn’t be fair on them, to tag them as a victim or whatever when they may not want that.’

  ‘Gill told you about Rhona, not about anyone else?’

  ‘No. I didn’t know anything about that girl from Cork you mentioned. I think he knew from my reaction to what he told me about Rhona that I wasn’t that comfortable with it.’

  ‘You were okay about all the adult women, just not the younger ones?’

  ‘Kind of that, yes. Though, I was starting to get uncomfortable about the women as well. Maybe I’d always been uncomfortable about it. I think I was beginning to see that maybe there was undue influence, maybe not quite full consent.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I do. It probably sounds odd to you, that I was only starting to realise it then?’

  ‘A bit odd, I suppose, all right.’

  Bile rose from my belly and my throat burned.

  ‘Yes,’ Dalton said. ‘But Gill has this power over people. I don’t know if you noticed. He brings people with him, like a boat with shoals of fish and dolphins following. Everyone’s too busy watching Jeremy, trying to see if they’re in or out of favour with him, to notice what he’s doing, to have the distance to make a judgement call on it.’

  Reluctantly, I had to admit to myself that I knew what Dalton meant. I recalled my meeting with Gill in the Opera House, and how I had felt when he’d moved on from me. And the audience. How they had been mesmerised. It was easy to condemn Dalton for his inaction, and condemn him I did, but with Gill, everything was complicated and ambiguous.

  ‘I have some idea what you mean,’ I said. ‘But you said that you had suspicions?’

  ‘I did say that, didn’t I? Yes, you could say I had suspicions. I don’t know where to begin. Another Bad Day at the Office opened a lot of doors. We both went to the Oscar ceremony. Jeremy was totally focused on that. Win or lose, it was about where it could get him next. The nomination wasn’t an end in itself, like it would be for some people. He kept saying to me that it was small potatoes, it was about what it could lead to. He had his eye on the future, not the past, he said. Used the trip to Hollywood to set up meetings, make contacts, sell himself, and his next project. Which just happened to be a feature that I’d co-written with him, so I got brought along to all the studio meetings and played my part. But I was kind of along for the ride. Jeremy was the engine of it all. So – he got money to make his first feature Giveaway, a small caper movie. Smart, pacy, funny. It was a good script – but it was the direction that lifted it above the ordinary. I wasn’t under any illusions. You’ve seen it, right? Giveaway did well – made its money back, and then some. Won lots of critical acclaim and the audience prize at Toronto. New is good in Hollywood. They’re always looking for the next big thing. Jeremy got a lot of money for his second feature, 59 Seconds. Another co-write credit for me, though I wrote most of it, in fact. Actually, I’d intended it to be a novel but Jeremy persuaded me to make a script of it instead. So, em, shooting started …’

  ‘And your suspicions?’

  ‘Yes. This is where it gets more awkward because it involves an individual I don’t want to name.’

  ‘A young girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s no young girl in the film, though.’

  ‘No. But 59 Seconds was a full production, not low budget. Not the highest budget either, but there was studio backing, plenty of money. So, of course, Jeremy had a Winnebago. I suspected that he used it for … no, it was more than a suspicion. I knew that he took women there for sex. We were on location, multiple locations. The story had been set in Ireland originally, but we adapted it for the States. It was better, actually. More convincing. We filmed in and around Boston, New England, upstate New York. Wherever we went, Jeremy used to make a big deal of going to visit the local diner. And the school. Wanting to give back, he said. I knew there was probably more to it but I didn’t … well, I didn’t do anything about it.’

  ‘But you had your suspicions, you said.’

  ‘Well, we were in a small town called Winterville, in upstate New York. Near the Adirondacks. It was the town in the movie where the first bank robbery happened so we were there a while. Yeah, we were there too long. Jeremy was doing his ambassadorial stuff, talking to the mayor, visiting the high school, all that. But then he started bringing this one girl on set. She was fifteen, sixteen at most. I didn’t get involved. He was training her in as his assistant, he said. Giving her an opportunity. He met her parents, took them to dinner and … well, what I’m saying is that he wasn’t hiding anything. And, of course, he was busy, making a film, and we were going to be moving on. I didn’t think too much of it. Until, well, our last night in town I was in my room at the hotel, doing rewrites and I went for a walk and …’

  ‘You saw something?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw the light on in Jeremy’s trailer. We were having an early start the following day, some dawn shots in the town and then moving out, heading to the next location, so when I saw the light I was surprised but I thought it was typical workaholic Jeremy stuff. I went over to the trailer and just walked straight in, to say hello. Or, I don’t know, maybe I knew, maybe some part of me knew.’

  At this, Dalton paused, sighed, rubbed his hands over his face in a scrubbing motion, then clasped them together in front of his chest, like a schoolboy preparing for first confession.

  ‘Christopher, what did you see?’

  ‘I saw Jeremy having sex with someone. I couldn’t see her face. He was on top of her. He was being rough, yeah I think anyone would say that. But she wasn’t making a sound. He didn’t hear me, not then. I saw, I saw a half-empty bottle of vodka. And a Tropicana carton. And I saw a bag. It was the same bag the girl used to carry around all the time.’

  ‘The schoolgirl, his assistant?’

  ‘Yeah. It was a patchwork kind of thing, looked home-made. I recognised it.’

  ‘And you think it was her.’

  ‘I do. But I didn’t stay long enough to find out for sure. And I thought there was a chance she had left it there earlier, that it hadn’t been her he was with when I saw …’

  ‘But you suspected?’

  ‘Yes, I suspected it was her. I said as much to him the next day, when we were finished shooting. He asked me to drive with him to the next location. I agreed so that I would have the chance to talk to him about it.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he knew there had been somebody, that he’d heard the door closing, that he’d wondered if it was me. And he said it was voluntary, that she’d wanted it.’

  ‘But at her age, she couldn’t have consented. It would have been statutory rape, whatever her wishes. And if s
he was drunk, if he got her drunk, that’s even worse.’

  ‘I know that. I said that to him.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said that I was all righteous now but that I’d done nothing about it when I could have. And that if he was having sex with an underage girl, that my behaviour made me an accessory. And he said that, if I said anything, she would deny it. And that he would too. He said she was the one who came on to him, she had suggested it, had come to his trailer after everyone else had gone. And if I said anything, that an allegation like that would ruin her reputation, even if it was shown to be false. And it would be. They’d both make sure of it. And it’s always the girl who suffers most in these kinds of situations. Mud sticks, he said. He said that, if I spoke out, I would destroy her life. He said a lot more than that, too. And I thought about it, and in the end I decided to keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘He gave you a percentage of the film’s takings, didn’t he?’

  ‘I never asked for it. I know what you think. But I didn’t ask for it. He gave it to me. You think it was hush money, but it wasn’t. I had already decided not to talk before he gave it to me. So I don’t see it that way. It wasn’t related. But I knew I couldn’t work with him again. There was no way I could. From that moment, it was over between us.’

  But you kept taking the money.

  I waited until I could speak calmly. There was more information to come, and I didn’t want to mess up my chances of getting it.

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it can’t have been easy to revisit after all this time. But what I can’t understand is, you’ve described a pattern of exploitative and criminal behaviour that Gill engaged in consistently over many years. With so many girls and women involved, how did he keep it a secret all this time?’

  ‘He didn’t. Everyone knew, everyone in the film business, they all knew what he was like. It was common knowledge. It is common knowledge,’ Christopher Dalton said. ‘Don’t you get it? The biggest secrets are the ones everyone knows.’

  30

  I stood in the bay window. Outside, the sand stretched for mile after empty mile, and the tide ebbed silently. Behind, on Dalton’s writing desk, lay the sprawl of notes I had made of my meeting with him. I had expected to feel better, had hoped for a sense of achievement now that the truth had crawled its way to the surface. Instead, I felt like screaming. Dalton had confirmed that I was right about Gill. But the truth had come too late. Too late for Deirdre. Too late for Rhona. Too late for the nameless girl from New York State.

  Now, I awaited Dalton’s decision. Unbelievably, the weasel was procrastinating still, in another room with his wife and his solicitor, mulling over how and when to make his disclosures about Gill, if ever. Dalton had known about Gill for twenty years. Now that he was finally thinking about speaking up, I had told him he needed independent legal advice, and that he had a duty to report Gill to the Gardaí, but he could do so in a way that minimised his own exposure. He had every entitlement to exercise the privilege against self-incrimination but, as far as I was concerned, he had to talk, and talk fast. Most of what he knew was background information and hearsay evidence that would be inadmissible in court. But it was no less valuable for all that. Corroborating what I already knew, it gave Gill a credible motive for murder.

  I heard the door open, and turned. It was Richard Hawthorne, Dalton’s solicitor. I had met the man for the first time an hour and a half ago, when he’d swept up to the house in a Mercedes the size of a flatbed truck. A third generation commercial lawyer in his late fifties, Hawthorne wore tasselled Italian loafers and a Hugh Grant Four Weddings-era floppy hairstyle. He was going to fit right in down at the Garda station.

  ‘Finn, thank you so much for your patience,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Well, I’ve told Christopher that he’s under no reporting obligation here, none at all.’

  ‘I’d have to disagree with you on that one, Richard.’

  Now wasn’t the time for the traditional ceremonial dance between opposing lawyers, where typical opening gambits required mutual disparagement of the other’s position.

  ‘Well, yes, indeed, I suppose there might be a moral argument to be made, and quite possibly even a legal one, but as it happens and in any event Christopher is most desirous of making a full and frank statement to the Gardaí. He is––’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ I said, cutting him off. ‘I’ll make the call,’

  I had already talked to Sadie O’Riordan and obtained from her the mobile number of the lead investigator in the Macbride murder. Sadie had said she would tell Detective Inspector Pat Lenihan to expect my call.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was any need to do this today, surely,’ Hawthorne said. ‘This has been extremely difficult for my client and his family. He needs time to––’

  I was out of what little patience I had left.

  ‘Time? More time? From what I understand, Jeremy Gill is leaving for LA, may even be gone already. I would have thought that your client has had quite enough time.’

  ‘I see. In the circumstances, perhaps you’re right. I’ll go and talk to him again.’

  Hours later, after Dalton had been interviewed and made a statement, and I had done the same, in a different interview room, I sat in DI Lenihan’s office trying to force down a tepid cup of tea.

  ‘Hope the tea’s all right,’ Lenihan said.

  ‘It is, if you like bogwater.’

  ‘It’s not Barry’s, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  ‘You’re a bit of a comedian, Miss Fitzpatrick,’ Lenihan said.

  He was trying to give the impression that we were settling in for a friendly chat that I knew would be no such thing. He would be watching my every move, and I knew it. Ostensibly welcoming of my input into the investigation, I sensed deep hostility from him. I had disliked him on sight. Clean-cut and handsome, with pale green eyes, freckles and a sulky mouth, Lenihan had the lithe strength and economy of movement that came from years spent on a hurling pitch. A Kilkenny man, he was young for a DI, which meant he had to be smart, but it was his ruthlessness and cunning that had won him early promotion, I reckoned. Lenihan needed the information about Jeremy Gill like a double yellow in an All-Ireland Final. Still, now that he had it, I knew he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, bury it and that whatever needed to be done would be, as clinically and efficiently as possible.

  ‘Actually, I was hoping to catch the last train home, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Might be,’ Lenihan said, but he could keep up the nice act for only so long. He sat up in his chair and ran his fingers through his short red curly hair.

  ‘Okay, let’s cut the crap. I don’t need to tell you that what you’ve brought here today isn’t going to win either of us any popularity contests.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And so fucking what. I didn’t join the guards to be popular. I think it gives us enough to interview Gill again. But we’ve talked to him before about Rhona’s murder, on your say-so, remember. And there’s the teensy-weensy little problem of his cast-iron alibi. So I know you want us to throw everything including the kitchen sink at Gill, but he’s only one of a number of investigative strands we’ll be pursuing.’

  ‘Go down your blind alleys if you want, Detective Inspector Lenihan. But Gill did it. You know that and I know that.’

  ‘I know no such thing. And neither do you. What are you saying – that Gill was at home eating his porridge with his mammy while a contract killer was out doing the needful for him on the mean streets of Dublin? The guy isn’t a fucking crime boss. He doesn’t have those kinds of contacts. Even if he did, planning a hit takes time. And you’re saying that Rhona Macbride only became a threat to him after his security guard saw you visiting her house. The same guy you say you saw in Cork the next day, which implies that he followed you down the night before, so that means he wouldn’t have been able to murder Rhona either. The fact is that Rhona Macbride was killed
only about twelve hours after you left her. How could Gill have had time to plan a murder in so short a time? And why was he worried, anyway? She’d kept quiet for fifteen, sixteen years. Why would he think she’d talk now?’

  ‘He couldn’t take the chance that she wouldn’t. And no, I don’t think it was his security guard who killed Rhona. You’re right, he was in Cork following me. And I don’t think Gill took out a contract. You’re right about that too. No, I think Gill did it himself. He used a weapon that he had to hand. He waited outside the only place he was halfway sure she’d be. He either knew she’d be leaving for work, or he banked on it and took a chance and waited for her. The guy is a film director. He’s used to orchestrating scenarios, and executing them. He knew to keep it simple. So that’s what he did. I know he killed her. You just have to break his alibi.’

  ‘Ah stop it, wouldya, you’ve been watching too much Miss Marple,’ Lenihan said. ‘Listen to me now. Go for your train, go home, stay home and we’ll take it from here. Leave it to the professionals.’