The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  And I hoped that, by then, I’d have come up with something.

  There was a thin gap between the curtains and for the next hour, I watched the sky brighten from a dull gray to a bright blue. Then I got up and pulled the curtains back for the full view.

  This stretch of canal could be incredibly picturesque, especially on a cold spring morning that came with clear skies and a chilly sun, like this one. The water was almost level with the road. There was nothing between it and the paths on its banks except for some muddy grass, a negligible incline, and, here and there, clusters of thick, waist-high reeds. Over the tops of the trees I could see the boxy, boring office blocks that lined the canal on the opposite side.

  The waters of the canal were so still the surface looked like glass. You could walk right in. Fall right in, if you were drunk and it was dark. There were some obstacles in other parts of it—you might meet a low wall or a sporadic stretch of iron railings—but here and for the most part, there were no barriers at all. When Liz and I had been searching for somewhere to live during those panicked few days before a room in Halls opened up, my mother had cited this as reason enough not to live anywhere near here. She was convinced she’d be getting a call from the guards to say I’d been pulled out of it in the early hours of a Sunday morning after drunkenly falling in.

  But as it turned out it hadn’t been me.

  Or an accident.

  I showered, dried my hair, and sent an email to Suncamp HR explaining that I had a family emergency and wouldn’t be in today or, in all likelihood, tomorrow either. I promised to keep them updated. For a second I thought about what would go on in my absence, what wouldn’t get done, the answers that would be delayed, but then I pushed those thoughts away. I couldn’t even begin to worry about work now. In the scheme of things, it just didn’t matter.

  I rifled through my case looking for something clean, but nothing was. I couldn’t face putting back on anything I’d worn yesterday, or the clothes I’d traveled in the day before. I settled for my pajama top, which, if you didn’t study it too closely, might pass as a gray T-shirt. I wondered if there was anything left of mine at my parents’ house that I could fit into.

  My parents.

  At the thought of seeing them here, in Dublin, the cup of instant coffee I’d assembled from the amenities tray started to work its way back up my throat.

  We didn’t talk about Will, ever. In our family I’d gone to secondary school and done my Leaving Cert, and then gone to college in Den Haag. It was as if the year in between had been wiped from our collective memories. And as if the girl I’d been best friends with my first day at primary school, the girl who had featured in every obsessive phase (tap-dancing, Backstreet Boys, The O.C.) and every milestone, who spent more time at our house than anyone outside of our immediate family, had merely moved away somewhere. We didn’t talk about her either.

  But now I was here, back in Dublin, because the Gardaí had brought me back to talk to Will, and I’d be knocking on Mam and Dad’s door in the hope that somewhere in their garage was a picture from ten years ago that, unbeknownst to me at the time, had captured a man who, maybe, was out there killing young women right now in exactly the same way Will had killed Liz and four other innocent girls.

  The subject could hardly be avoided under such circumstances. We were good with the whole denial thing, but we weren’t that good.

  In the car on the drive back to my hotel last night, I’d given Malone the highlights of what Will had said. That he thought the CCTV man looked familiar and suspected he’d crossed paths with him during his St. John’s days. I’d also told him about Will’s idea of checking the photos and we’d arranged that Malone would collect me from the hotel at eleven this morning and drive me out to my parents’ house.

  I also told him that I thought I’d seen the man somewhere, and that just that morning, I’d seen a similar man wearing a red baseball cap sitting on the opposite bank of the canal, looking up at the hotel. I stressed that I couldn’t make out much about him from that distance, and that I was aware more than one man in Dublin City was likely to own a red baseball cap.

  But still. It felt like too much of a coincidence.

  Malone said he’d check the area’s security cameras to see if any of them had picked up this man, to see if we could determine if Bench Man and CCTV Man were one and the same.

  I really didn’t want them to be. It would make my open hotel-room door yesterday more than just a mechanical malfunction.

  I went back to the window. The scene outside had changed dramatically in the last half hour. Earlier there’d been only a handful of people walking along the canal. Now there were herds of office workers hurrying past while cyclists carefully navigated the clogged cycle lane running parallel to the path. Nearly everyone was moving in the same direction: from my left to my right, i.e. from the nearest Luas station to the tech companies in Grand Canal Dock. There were so many of them that the scene had an unnaturalness to it, as if they were all extras on a movie set, following directions. Dublin rush hour presents The Truman Show.

  But crowds were good. A person could go unseen in them.

  And I desperately wanted to go outside and not be seen.

  Since Saturday afternoon I’d spent my time in a car, a plane, another car, a psychiatric hospital, and holed up in this stuffy hotel room. I wasn’t interested in strolling down memory lane, but I could do with a stroll in the fresh air. I believed Malone when he said that no one would recognize me or even remember who I was, that so much time had passed, people barely remembered the victims anymore, let alone the killer’s college girlfriend. Plus, now there was no point worrying that someone who knew my parents would see me and tell them I was here—there was nowhere in Ireland you could go where that wasn’t a fear—because I was going to be telling them that myself in a few hours’ time.

  So I went outside.

  The instant I felt the sun on my face, I felt like I’d made the right decision.

  There was a cluster of people, maybe four or five, right outside the hotel’s entrance. I didn’t turn to look at them, but they weren’t talking to each other and I smelled smoke, so I presumed it was just the breakfast-time rush in the designated smoking area.

  Instead, I turned right, toward St. John’s, but with a plan to turn off into Baggot Street Upper. There were plenty of cafés there, it was only a couple of minutes’ walk away and I’d be going in the same direction as the herd. If I spotted anyone who looked like the man in the red baseball cap, I could just duck in somewhere and call Malone. I figured that with so many people around, I’d be fine either way. I’d avoid going any further, any closer to St. John’s.

  Turns out, I didn’t even have to go as far as the turn onto Baggot Street. There was a coffee shop before the corner. I ordered a large latte and took it to one of two tables just outside, grabbing one of the complimentary newspapers that had been piled on a counter inside out with me. I didn’t plan to read it; it was going to be a prop more than anything. But just as I sat down, one of the headlines on the front page caught my eye: gardaí arrange canal—

  I unfolded the paper, laid it flat on the table. gardaí arrange canal killer date. Underneath the headline was a picture of me.

  Serial killer Will Hurley’s former girlfriend, Alison Smith (29), leaves a hotel on Mespil Road yesterday, en route to a private meeting with him at the Central Psychiatric Hospital in Dundrum. Sources say this is related to the Garda investigation into the deaths of students Louise Farrington and Jennifer Madden earlier this year. For more, see page 2.

  I quickly folded the paper up again and turned it over. My hands were shaking.

  I hadn’t noticed anyone outside the hotel yesterday morning. It had only taken seconds to walk from the door to Malone’s car. But there must have been someone there, and with a camera. How did they know? How did they know I was there and where I was going? And wh
ere were those people now?

  I felt dizzy and sick.

  Someone had sat down at the other table. An older woman, wearing brightly colored Nikes under her skirt-suit. She’d got a paper too. She was reading it right now. Looking at that front page.

  She looked up at the canal, then turned to look down the street.

  Yes, that hotel right there. Yes, that very one.

  Please don’t look this way.

  I looked exactly as I did in that picture. I was even wearing the same black leather jacket.

  I had to go.

  I took my coffee and stepped onto the street, turned in the direction of the hotel and—

  A blonde woman was walking right toward me. Looking straight at me. Smiling.

  “Alison,” she said warmly, as if we knew each other. She turned and signaled at someone over her shoulder, and when I looked I saw a man with an expensive-looking camera hurrying to catch up with her. “Do you have a minute to chat?”

  I put my head down, kept going. I had to get to the hotel.

  “How is Will?” She’d stepped right in front of me, blocking my way. The path was busy with pedestrians and some of them were starting to turn and look. “What does he know that could help the Gardaí?”

  I didn’t know what to do now. I had my phone and I could call Malone, but what did I do until he got here?

  I stepped around her, started forward again.

  But then I saw, further up the street, what was outside the hotel: two men, chatting to each other with cameras slung over their shoulders and, just pulling into the car park, a satellite truck with a news station’s logo stenciled on the side.

  Plus as every second passed, someone else turned to look.

  I don’t, as a rule, run. My legs have no muscle memory of exactly how to and burn ferociously whenever I must, like when the train is leaving in thirty seconds and I’m still at the turnstiles. And running down a busy footpath filled with pedestrians while holding a coffee is the type of activity that draws the very kind of attention I was trying to avoid.

  But what choice did I have?

  I’m not saying it was the best idea. It wasn’t an idea, not really. I didn’t think about it at all. I just did it.

  I turned in the opposite direction and ran.

  alison, now

  I’d never been to my parents’ house in Bray, but I’d seen pictures. It was a neat, two-story terraced house tucked away on a quiet street a couple of blocks from the seafront, painted pale blue and almost completely obscured by the gnarled branches of an old oak tree in the front garden. My mother had explained that they spent most of their time in the conservatory-style extension to the rear, so the shadow of the tree across the front of the house didn’t bother them and offered some privacy to boot.

  Standing underneath the branches of that tree now, halfway up my parents’ garden path, I felt sweaty and shivery. Back in the city center, I’d run for about a block before turning around to check that no one was following me. No one was. But I couldn’t go back to the hotel, and I didn’t want to have to wait on the street for Malone to come get me. So I kept going, all the way to the nearest DART station, where I’d boarded a southbound commuter train, put my head down and put my parents’ address into Google Maps. I’d only looked up once, in response to the group of German tourists in the seats opposite the aisle to me murmuring “Ah!” as the full sweep of Killiney bay suddenly came into view below us, almost a rival for the French Riviera in sunny weather like this.

  Almost.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The front door to the house had opened and my mother was coming toward me now, hurrying down the uneven concrete slabs that formed the path, one hand holding a mobile phone to her ear and the other waving at me frantically. The cashmere cardigan she was wearing floated like a cape behind her. “She’s here, Jackie. At the gate! No, now.” To me. “Alison, what in the name of …?” Back into the phone: “I don’t know, I’ll find out. Yeah … Yeah … Look, I’ll call you back, okay? I’ll call you back.” To me again, “What in the name of God are you doing here? What’s going on? How did you get here? Why didn’t you call us?”

  I was regretting this already.

  “Hi, Mam,” I said.

  The phone slipped into a pocket, she grabbed both my hands with hers. “Jackie just rang to say she saw you on the front of one of the papers and then she says to me, ‘No, you don’t understand, she’s here, she’s in Dublin,’ and I said—”

  “Mam,” I said, “take a breath. Please.”

  “I just want to know what’s going on, Alison. Why didn’t you tell us you were coming to Dublin? Where did they get that picture of you? Did you know you were going to be on it?”

  “Let’s go inside.” The street seemed deserted, but this could be a valley of squinting windows. “Come on.”

  As my mother walked ahead of me, muttering the names of Catholic saints under her breath, I had a moment to take her in. She looked well, wearing a neat, tailored pair of wool trousers and a silk shirt with a bright pattern. The thin cardigan she was wearing over it looked expensive, designed more for style than for warmth. Her mousy-brown hair was no longer streaked gray but highlighted with flattering white-blonde tones, and she was wearing costume jewelry. A new habit, as far as I knew.

  “You’re all dressed up,” I said.

  “Hardly.” My mother made a scoffing noise. “I was just going to Dun Laoghaire for a look around the shops. Before Jackie called and nearly gave me a stroke.”

  “And then you immediately ran outside like a crazy person?”

  At the threshold, my mother turned around to make a face at me. “Don’t be silly. I was looking out the window and I saw you coming in the gate.”

  Inside the house, I was a bit taken aback. Pristine checkered tiles in the hall, a glimpse of a cozy living room that looked like a page torn from a Laura Ashley catalog, through a door into the sudden space and bright light of a mammoth extension that seemed to stretch out as far as the entire footprint of the original house and then half as much again. A radio was playing traditional Irish music at low volume somewhere in the house.

  Our family home in Cork had been poky and dark, a mishmash of furniture my parents had bought on impulse during sales. Previously, my mother’s idea of decoration had been the matching cushions that came free with the couch they’d picked in some hangar-sized furniture store off a motorway roundabout.

  “It’s lovely,” I said. “Did you do this all by yourself?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said dismissively, waving a hand. “What’s going on?” My mother was finally a bit calmer now and, I think, really seeing me for the first time since I’d arrived. “Your hair,” she said, peering at it. “Did you change it?”

  “No, I just didn’t do it this morning.” I hastily tucked a few strands behind my ears.

  “Here, give me your jacket.”

  It was off before I realized I was wearing my pajama top underneath.

  “I had to pack quickly,” I explained when I saw her frowning at it. “I didn’t bring enough tops. Actually, are there any of my old clothes here? I could do with grabbing something.”

  “Where’s all your stuff? Your suitcase?”

  “Back at the hotel.”

  “The hotel? But surely you can stay here.”

  “No, I …” She wasn’t going to like this, and I couldn’t blame her. “The hotel where I’ve been staying, Mam. Since Saturday.”

  Her face fell. “You’ve been here since Saturday?”

  I suggested we sit down. The extension was divided into three defined spaces: kitchen, dining, an area with a TV and couches. I followed my mother to the dining table. She sat at one end of it, I sat beside her. There was a little pile of ceramic coasters sitting in the middle of it that I remembered her buying at a crafts market in Delft, and a half-
drunk cup of tea.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked. “Is he here?”

  “Your father is somewhere between here and Killarney.” She stood up again so she could get her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll call him. He only left a couple of hours ago and I think they were stopping for breakfast so—”

  “Mam,” I said, reaching to take the phone off her, “don’t. There’s no need.”

  “Do you think he’s going to want to play a round of golf when he sees your face on the front of all the papers? He’s coming back anyway. We might as well save him the petrol.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Can you just sit down?”

  Now she rolled her eyes, but did what I’d asked.

  “Look,” I said, “this isn’t a big deal. There’s no need to freak out. But …” I gave her the highlights reel: Malone and Shaw knocking on my door, the new murders, and me going to talk to Will.

  “Jesus,” she said when I’d finished.

  “Mam, listen. This is all private, okay? You can’t repeat any of it to anyone.”

  “Jackie says it’s all over the papers.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to go around offering confirmations. There were reporters at the hotel this morning. And more photographers. If they find out I’m here …” I sighed. “Look, if anyone knocks on the door or rings your phone or puts a note through the letterbox, just ignore it, okay? Just ignore it.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Alison.”

  “But you think you have to be polite. You don’t.”

  “Well, I can’t not answer the door, now, can I?”

  I looked at her incredulously.

  “What?” she said.

  “Mam, that’s exactly my point.”

  “But what if it’s one of the neighbors?”

  “You shouldn’t be talking to them either.”

  “Alison”—another eye-roll—“in all fairness—”

  “I mean about this. Don’t talk to anyone about it. Anyone at all. And since I know what you’re like, that means not talking to anyone, full stop. They’ll all get on fine not knowing what color knickers I’ve on for the next few days.”