The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  On one side of the table, with his back to the camera, was a man in a blue shirt with patches of gray hair only partially obscuring the sheen of a bald head: Detective Shaw.

  Sitting across from him, hunched over: Will.

  My Will. I even recognized the T-shirt he was wearing. I’d slept in it, once upon a time.

  Another man was sitting beside Shaw, but only his legs were visible in the shot.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  “That’ll be Detective Inspector Gerald Moynihan. He sat in, but it’s Shaw who conducted the interrogation.”

  “There’s no solicitor?”

  “Before 2014, solicitors weren’t in Garda interviews under Irish law. As far as I know Will came in voluntarily at first, anyway. A casual chat. After a few hours the tone changed and he asked for a solicitor. But he and the solicitor would have met privately. The solicitor could advise Will about the interview, but when the interview itself began, the solicitor would’ve had to leave the room.”

  “Even though he was only nineteen?”

  Malone nodded. “Nineteen is still an adult.”

  Large figures appeared floating in the middle of the screen: 11:23.

  “They show a series of clips,” Malone explained, “in chronological order, and they’ve time-stamped each one. I think their point is, look at this nice guy, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, you’d have no qualms about him if you met him on the street, but watch as he eventually breaks down and confesses to his horrible crimes. This is right at the beginning.”

  The audio was mumbled, barely coherent in places, but captions accompanied it at the bottom of the screen.

  Shaw: Where did you meet your girlfriend?

  Hurley: She’s in St. John’s too, but the first time we had a conversation was in a club.

  Shaw: What did you do, buy her a drink?

  Hurley: This creepy guy was annoying her. I went over and pretended to be her boyfriend to make him go away.

  Shaw: That was very gentlemanly of you.

  On screen, Will laughed easily, smiled.

  Hurley: That’s what she thought, too.

  Malone glanced at me and I could feel my cheeks start to color.

  “I didn’t realize the entire nation had been treated to that story,” I said. “How wonderful.”

  “Don’t worry. They bleeped out your name.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that any half-arsed Google-user could find it pretty quick.

  The presenter reappeared, this time walking across the front lawn of St. John’s, and Malone quickly skipped ahead to the next interview shot.

  Will looked to have slouched a bit more in his chair but other than that, his demeanor hadn’t changed.

  13:25

  Shaw: You live on campus. You must be coming and going by the canal all the time. You and your girlfriend. She lives on campus too, right? *****?

  Hurley: Yes.

  Shaw: You ever see anything unusual around there, Will? Anything that might assist this investigation?

  Hurley: No.

  Shaw: What about on the nights of the murders?

  Hurley: I don’t know when they were.

  Shaw: You don’t watch the news?

  Hurley: I mean, I don’t remember those nights specifically. I couldn’t tell you where I was. But ***** and I have only spent a handful of nights apart since October. More than likely I was with her.

  Shaw: But you must remember the night Liz died.

  Hurley: Of course, yeah. I knew her. She was *****’s best friend. I meant the others.

  Shaw: So you know where you were?

  Hurley: With *****. We went to a bar, then she stayed over in my room.

  “He starts off with Liz,” Malone said, speeding forward again, “because Will knew her. So Shaw is thinking, that’s the one where it’ll be the most difficult for Will to keep himself detached from what he did. For Will to be able to lie about it. The others, they were practically strangers to him, but with Liz—his girlfriend’s best friend, his friend—there might be a way in there. A crack in the armor Shaw can try to pry open.”

  14:05

  Shaw: ***** spent the whole night with you? When you woke up, she was there?

  Hurley: Yes.

  Shaw: On the night Liz died?

  Hurley: Yes.

  Shaw: What time did you guys wake up?

  Hurley: I don’t know.

  Shaw: Was it bright outside?

  Hurley: Yes.

  Shaw: Could you estimate a time?

  Hurley: I don’t know. Maybe eight o’clock? That would be a guess, though.

  Shaw: Did you set an alarm?

  Hurley: No. I don’t think so.

  Shaw: What time did you go to sleep?

  Hurley: We didn’t bother going onto the club so around eleven maybe?

  Shaw: If we asked ***** where she was that night, what would she say?

  Hurley: The same. That’s where she was.

  Shaw: You know I’m not sure she would.

  Hurley: I don’t understand.

  Shaw: According to campus security, she accessed the door of her apartment at St. John’s Halls at 1:35 a.m. She met a friend of hers in the stairwell as she was leaving around eight the next morning. So she didn’t spend the night with you, did she? She went back to her own room at 1:35 a.m.

  On the screen Will frowned, confused.

  Shaw: What do you have to say to that?

  Hurley: I don’t know. I was sure she did. When I woke up, she was there.

  Shaw: In the bed with you?

  Hurley: No, she was already dressed.

  Shaw: Let’s move on to Lauren Murphy. You knew her too, right?

  Hurley: Sort of. Not very well.

  Shaw: But you’d been out with her a few times?

  Hurley: As part of a group, yeah. I’m not sure I ever really talked to her, though.

  Shaw: Did you ever follow her home, Will?

  Hurley: What? No. Of course not.

  Shaw: Maybe follow is the wrong term. Did you ever walk her home? Or walk behind her to check she got there safely without her knowing?

  Hurley: No.

  Shaw: You sure about that?

  Hurley: One hundred per cent.

  Shaw: So if we asked her friends, they wouldn’t tell us that they frequently saw you following Lauren across campus, watching her from across the classroom, somehow always ending up in the same bar, the same club, the same spot?

  Hurley: If they did they’d be lying. They’re insane if they’re saying that. Are they saying that? They must be mixing me up with someone else.

  “Were her friends saying that?” I asked.

  Malone shook his head. “Listen to how Shaw phrased it. “So if we asked her friends …” He hasn’t asked them. He’s just trying to convince Will that he has, that he already knows what’s gone on. Shaw’s whole thing is, ‘I already know the truth. All I’ve to do is sit here until you confirm it for me.’”

  “Can he do that?”

  Malone started speeding ahead again. “That’s the whole aim of the game, Alison. We can’t go into interrogations with the attitude that the subject is innocent and we just want to double-check. We’re there to get what we need. And notice that this doesn’t even occur to Will. After all, it’s not supposed to. His reaction is to explain away the fact that the friends have said that. Will asked for a solicitor after this. They talked for an hour before the interview resumed. You can see how he’s changed. He’s realized this isn’t a friendly chat. He knows he’s in trouble.”

  Indeed, in the next section of video, Will was very different. He wasn’t as animated and he wasn’t answering Shaw’s questions as quickly. He looked tired to me.

  17:05

&
nbsp; Shaw: We know what happened that night. We already know. We know everything. We know all the details, the exact sequence of events, who was where, who did what, when. All we need is for you to confirm for us. We’re just trying to help you out here, Will. You help us, we help you. You want to see your parents, right? You asked for your dad? We can bring them in. But first we need to hear some truth from you.

  Hurley: I’m not the Canal Killer. This is crazy.

  Shaw: How did you get them in the water, Will? How did you get them in without them making any noise? That’s the bit I can’t figure out. Just tell us the truth and we can get you out of this room, Will. Come on, now. You’ll feel better. Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll say what I think happened, and you just confirm yay or nay, okay? That might be easier for you. I know this is hard.

  Hurley: I didn’t do anything.

  Shaw: Will, we know what happened. I’ve told you this. Just tell us what happened. Let’s work backward. Let’s start with Liz.

  “This kind of thing went on for hours,” Malone said, fast-forwarding. “Look at the time stamp on the next clip.”

  21:15

  Shaw: You can’t get out of this, do you understand me? We’ve collected evidence against you. We know exactly what happened. We just need to hear it from you. Look, Will, we all make mistakes. Things happen in the heat of the moment. Nobody’s perfect. Maybe you didn’t mean to hurt those girls. But if you don’t tell us what happened, we can’t help you here. Cooperation is key, Will. Come on now. Help us help you.

  The figures on screen morphed into slightly different positions: some footage had been skipped over, edited out. Now, Will seemed to have caved in on himself, shoulders hunched forward, head dropping.

  Hurley: [inaudible]

  Shaw: Okay what?

  Hurley: [inaudible]

  Shaw: Say again?

  Hurley: I did it.

  Shaw: What?

  Hurley: Liz.

  Will wiped at his face with the back of his hand. He’d started to cry.

  Shaw: I need more than that, Will. I’m going to need specifics. You’re doing so well. Can we go a little bit further? Can you give me specifics? Let’s work backward. Most recent first. What can you tell us? What about Liz?

  Hurley: She fell in the water.

  Shaw: Fell? I don’t think she fell, Will.

  Hurley: [inaudible]

  Shaw: It wasn’t an accident. You put her there.

  Hurley: I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.

  Shaw: What happened before she went in?

  Hurley: I don’t remember.

  Shaw: Come on, Will. We both know that’s not true.

  Hurley: [inaudible]

  Shaw: You had an argument, okay. And then what?

  Hurley: I pushed her in.

  Shaw: What happened before that?

  Hurley: Before the argument?

  Shaw: After the argument but before she went into the water.

  Hurley: I don’t know.

  Shaw: You don’t know? Come on now, Will. We’re making progress. Don’t go backward on me.

  Hurley: I hit her.

  Shaw: You hit her.

  Hurley: I don’t remember with what.

  Shaw: That’s okay. We’ll come back to it. For now, though, I want to move onto Lauren.

  “Turn it off,” I said. “I can’t … Just turn it off.”

  Malone pointed the remote at the screen and it went black. “That’s practically all of it, anyway. Of what they included in the show, at least.”

  “I thought I was going to be convinced after this.” I flopped back against the sofa cushions, deflated. “There’s no smoking gun here. Yeah, okay, they bullied him a bit. They kept at him for hours. But I think that’s probably okay when five teenage girls have been dragged dead out of the canal.”

  “No,” Malone said, “there’s no smoking gun.” He tapped the laptop’s keys. “But there is this. Listen.”

  From his computer’s speakers came the audio of the last few seconds of the clip. Without the benefit of reading the captions, I had to concentrate purely on what was said.

  And this time, when Will said, “I hit her,” I heard something slightly different: a question instead of a statement.

  I hit her?

  “He’s guessing,” Malone said. “Will’s guessing what Shaw wants him to say, because he wants out. And here’s the thing: how the girls got their head injuries was kept out of the press. We knew it was from an impact with concrete but we held that back for verification purposes. The Canal Killer was knocking them unconscious by knocking them down to the ground. But Will couldn’t have known this. All he knew was that they had head injuries, so he assumed—like, I think, most people would—that those injuries were inflicted with a weapon of some kind. And Shaw, sensing that Will was going to contradict this, quickly redirected him.”

  Malone played the audio once more.

  “I hit her?

  “You hit her.

  “I don’t remember with what.

  “That’s okay. We’ll come back to it. For now, though, I want to move onto Lauren.

  “But why?” I said, throwing up my hands. “Why, why, why would anyone ever confess to a murder they hadn’t committed? I just don’t get that.”

  Malone shrugged. “It happens all the time. The subjects are tired, stressed, young usually, and they have someone trained in interrogation telling them they know what happened, they know they committed this murder—”

  The doorbell went. The pizza had arrived.

  “I might just wash my hands,” I said as Malone stood up to answer the front door. While he was paying the pizza guy, I collected my suitcase and took it with me into the bathroom down the hall.

  It occurred to me that someone—Garda Cusack?—would’ve had to pack for me. When I’d left the hotel that morning I’d thought I was just going out for coffee and had left stuff strewn about the room. A quick check confirmed that everything was present and accounted for, although an eyeshadow pallet had broken and dusted glittery specks everywhere.

  I pulled out some makeup wipes and did my best to clean up the mess on my face made by my latest mortifying crying episode. I sprayed some deodorant and washed my hands. I took off my heavy sweater and folded it away inside the case and it was then, when I was zipping it back up, that I saw it: the small pocket at the front of the case, on the outside of the lid, was open.

  I never used it, because I thought it was the quickest way to get something stolen from you. Anyone could reach a hand in there while you were trailing your case behind you and grab a passport or a phone. But now the zip was gaping open, and I knew I hadn’t done it, so I reached my hand in and swept it back and forth inside the pocket, thinking Cusack had chucked something in there.

  I felt a sting and jerked my hand out, seeing a thin slice in the skin on the tip of my index finger: a paper cut. Sucking on it, I pulled out what had caused the injury with my other hand.

  A fresh sheet of A4 printer paper, folded in half.

  I unfolded it, rotated it.

  Stared at it, confused.

  It was a photocopy of a short typewritten letter. There was no date in the letter itself, but a stamp in the top right-hand corner said it had been received at some unnamed place on April 17, 2007.

  Sir—

  Congratulations on your article of 14 April last, “Privacy is the Best Protection.” I’m glad to see that someone understands what this is all about. They’re looking FOR me instead of AT them. If they’d been more careful, I wouldn’t have had to get involved at all. Keep up the good work.

  CK

  The letter Will had mentioned that that other patient had told him about. The one the killer had supposedly sent to the St. John’s News, the college’s student newspaper. This must be it.

&n
bsp; But why was it in my suitcase?

  My first thought was that Cusack had put it there, because she’d packed up my stuff. But that made no sense.

  My second thought was my open hotel-room door.

  I’d convinced myself that it was a side effect of a dead lock battery, and the fact that nothing had been disturbed backed me up. But what if it nothing looked disturbed only because nothing had been taken? What if someone had come inside to leave something there instead?

  My third thought was of the man on the bench outside the hotel, the one I thought was the same guy in the red baseball cap captured on CCTV cameras in and around the canal of late, who was definitely also the unidentified guy I’d gone to a club with at least once back when all this had began.

  Had the killer been in my hotel room?

  Did he leave this for me?

  This is his first dead body.

  He stands in the shed with his arms folded across his chest, regarding the garbage bin like a foe. He knows better than to use the internet to search for help with something like this. He read a couple of books a few years back on the subject, but he can’t recall any hard facts from them now and he doesn’t want to leave her here, alone, while he drives home and gets them.

  He’s just going to have to figure this one out.

  He’s glad he slept; his headache had dissipated. Another benefit is that the afternoon and early evening have passed and darkness has fallen. He can leave the shed door cracked open while he works. He needs to because something—a rodent, maybe?—has crawled into some nook or cranny and died there, judging by the smell. A sweet, putrid smell with a sting in it that reaches right to the back of your throat.

  Amy doesn’t smell. Not yet. There is a whiff of household rubbish when he opens the bin, but that’s not from her.

  When he upends it, she slides out onto the floor like one giant lump of limb, holding her shape: legs bent, knees pulled up to her chest, arms tucked in front of her, head at an angle. He’s taken aback to see that she’s already stiff with death. He didn’t think that would happen for hours yet. Lying on the floor, her pose is wholly unnatural, and it unnerves him. He finds himself looking around her rather than at her. Her eyes are wide open and have turned cloudy and faintly blue and the blood on her face and neck has dried and flaked, and started to turn brown.