The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  He feels sorry for her, in a way.

  But for himself, too, just as much.

  He’s failed to truly appreciate the waters of the canal until now. They do all the work. Absorb the body. Block the airways. Wash away the evidence. If no one notices the girl lying on the riverbed, the waters will even wait patiently for her insides to fill with gas and deliver her back to the surface, where it’s unlikely she’ll be missed a second time.

  He and Amy never made it to the canal.

  Nothing about last night went to plan.

  She wasn’t supposed to come home after work, that was the first thing. He had let himself in to find something of hers, something he could take. Something that she would see and know without doubt was hers, wonder what it was doing in a strange place, this proof that her private space had been infiltrated.

  It was his way of warning them: one last chance to save yourself. Realize something is badly wrong and do something about it. Tell someone. Don’t walk home alone like you may have planned. Call an authority.

  They never did. He’d yet to work out whether this was because they didn’t get the significance of seeing their possession somewhere it shouldn’t be, or because they were too embarrassed to do any of the things he hoped they would.

  So he’d been in Amy’s apartment at St. John’s. He’d chosen his item: a rainbow-colored dream catcher that Amy had hung off the end of her curtain rail. Half the time, he bet, it was obscured by the curtain itself, but that was perfect. It was the kind of thing she might not miss for a few days, but would instantly recognize as her own when she saw it somewhere else, somewhere wrong.

  He was just reaching for it when he heard the lock turn in the apartment’s main door.

  Amy was supposed to be at work, going straight out afterward. Her roommate was supposed to be out already. He’d spent a terrified, panicked second standing in the middle of Amy’s bedroom, paralyzed with indecision. What should he do?

  Make a run for it. He couldn’t, she’d see him.

  Get in the wardrobe. Too small and what would he do if she pulled open the door?

  Get under the bed. It was his only option. Maybe she was just picking something up that she’d forgotten and would leave again soon.

  She was supposed to go straight out after work. He’d even seen her take a tote bag with a change of clothes in it. The club had a drinks promotion on that night in an attempt to lure students out on a Sunday, the dregs of the weekend, when all their money was already spent and their livers were struggling to cope. The club had set up a Facebook event advertising it, and Amy had registered as attending. He was going to tail her for the evening and hope he’d get the chance to walk her home.

  Amy never walked home alone, but that didn’t mean she didn’t make other bad decisions. She’d demonstrated that, time and time again. Her life was all over the internet and he’d followed her nearly ten times now without her ever noticing—and in broad daylight. Clearly, she still needed his help and he needed hers. She would make a good example, serve her time as a cautionary tale.

  Like Louise had.

  Like Jennifer was currently doing.

  Reminders that not everyone was as nice a guy as him.

  Amy may not walk home alone, but she’d chat to the nice man who’d bought her a drink at the bar just at last call, tolerate his company when they both turned out to be walking home in the same direction, fail to notice as their pace slowed, as he maneuvered himself around her until he was on her right side, the dark waters of the canal of her left, watching for a gap in foot traffic, a break from passing cars.

  He was counting on it.

  But then, instead of going out, she’d clattered around the kitchen for a bit, showered and, inexplicably, got into bed.

  For a while he’d simply laid there, silently seething. His whole night, all his careful plans, had been ruined. But then, slowly, he’d realized something: Amy was doing what he wanted more than anything. In abruptly changing her routine, she was protecting herself.

  A slow pride smile had spread across his face.

  But then she’d woken up and saw him as he was trying to leave.

  Saw his face. He couldn’t have that.

  He did it there in the room, grabbing her by the shoulders as she jumped up from the bed and ramming her as hard as he could, face-first, into her wardrobe door, right where the sharp ridge of the steel handle was sticking out.

  He heard a sickening crack. Blood spurted from what was left of her nose. She went limp, the echo of her aborted scream hanging in the air.

  There was blood everywhere.

  That’s when he realized he hadn’t thought it through.

  Blood on the wardrobe door, brushstrokes in it from her hair as she’d slid down. Blood dripping from her nose and, he saw now, the wound in her head as well. The skin on her scalp had split dramatically and one ragged edge of it was hanging loose, flapping open, like wallpaper that had come unstuck. The blood was dropping onto the carpet, onto his clothes, onto her clothes. As he picked her up under the arms, he felt more blood falling onto his arms, spilling down over them, collecting in sticky pools in the cuffs of his shirt.

  Swallowing down panic, he forced himself to think methodically. He pulled a blanket from her bed, rolled her up in it and carried her into the bathroom, setting her down in the shower tray. She slumped, lifeless, against the tiled wall, but holding a finger directly under the mess of fragmented bone and blood that had been her nose, he detected a faint breath. He took off his shoes and placed them in the shower tray with her. Then he found a packet of antibacterial wipes on the floor under the toilet and retraced his steps with them, down the hall as far as the bedroom door, checking for drops of blood.

  He found none. The blanket had caught them all.

  On into the kitchen. There was a small bin by the fridge filled with pizza crusts, empty cans, and used teabags.

  And a plastic carrier bag.

  Back down the hall into the bathroom. He checked his watch. Still plenty of time. So long as the roommate didn’t change her plans, too. He put a hand on the back of Amy’s head, trying not to transfer more blood, and gently pulled her toward him.

  Then he fit the plastic bag over her head, pulled it down as far as it would go and tightly knotted the handles of it under her chin.

  Slid the shower door closed.

  Went back into the bedroom. Started the cleanup.

  He wasn’t worried about making the blood go away; he knew it was impossible now, really, to do that. He just didn’t want anyone to notice what had happened in there for a while. Give himself a day, maybe two. So he wiped down the wardrobe door. Blotted the carpet stain, moved some of the clothing debris pile over it, carefully arranging it so it appeared to be just as haphazard as the rest. All the used wipes went into a bin liner he’d pulled from the wastebasket in the bathroom.

  While he worked, he heard a faint knocking noise coming through the wall. Movement in the shower, it sounded like. He ignored it.

  A few minutes later, it stopped.

  In the moments after he smashed Amy’s skull into the wardrobe, he had no clue how he was going to extract her body from the apartment—from the apartment block, one of several, right in the middle of a well-lit college campus. But he trusted himself to think of something in due course and, by the time he had finished cleaning up, an idea had come to him.

  It was the bin in the kitchen that made him think of it.

  There were garbage bins, kept in a small enclosure outside, round the back. If he could get one of them up here without being challenged, he could get Amy out in it again. He’d use the fire exit at lobby level to avoid meeting other students coming and going through the front doors; he knew the warning sign about the fire exit being alarmed was just for show.

  So that’s what he did. Found an almost empty bin, brought it ups
tairs in the elevator, stuffed Amy into it. Wheeled her out again. Lifted the bin into the back seat of his car, lying it lengthways. He was worried about the weight of it, but he found that by lining it up with the door and then tipping the end of it up, he was able to slide it in without too much effort. Then he drove to the three-bed semi in Ranelagh, let himself in the side gate and wheeled Amy into the shed.

  It was nearing midnight by then. He didn’t have time to go home and shower, so he fetched his uniform from the boot of his car and changed into it before heading back to St. John’s to start his shift.

  Kevin was on, reading a lads’ magazine in the security booth. Lazy, incompetent Kevin who would be easy to blame if anyone came looking for footage later and found it wasn’t there.

  “Hey,” he said to him. “Time to clock off.”

  Kevin stood up, stretched. “Not a moment too soon, let me tell you. Not a moment too soon.”

  “Anything strange or startling?”

  “Nah.” Kevin yawned. “Sunday night, isn’t it? You on again tomorrow?”

  “I’m only part time. Not back again until Friday.”

  “Lucky you.” He collected his things. “Well, have a good night.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “You too.”

  He waited until he saw Kevin’s car drive past the camera mounted at the staff car park’s gates before he went into the security camera system and started searching for tonight’s recordings, deleting where necessary as he went. There’d been plenty of times over the last few months when’d regretted taking this job—three days a week he had to stay here, awake, all night and then go into R&P and pretend to be awake for eight hours more—but that night, he was glad of it.

  That still left Amy’s body, the one lying at his feet now in the shed. This was his listing; no one else from the agency would have reason to visit. The owner, however, might. He wasn’t sure how close by they lived. But if they happened to visit, they might see the shiny new padlock on the shed’s door and wonder why it was there. They might look inside.

  He’s inside now, poking around the shelves, lifting lids off boxes, picking through the tools hanging off nails on the back wall.

  Looking for something.

  Something sharp.

  alison, now

  When I opened my eyes the next morning the first thing I saw was another pair: large white ovals with little black dots floating in the middle, glowing in the near-darkness, staring at me.

  What the—

  Cartoon eyes. They were cartoon eyes, painted on a round little ball of blue that, now that my eyes were adjusting, I could see was supposed to be an owl. A plastic owl, with a little slot cut into his head. A pair of sunglasses were resting in the slot, their lenses at an angle over the eyes.

  It was a glasses holder, shaped like an owl. Malone’s owl-shaped glasses holder, to be specific. Sitting on his bedside table.

  And me, asleep in his bed.

  Well, not quite asleep. I’d spent most of the night lying awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all that had transpired yesterday: discovering the photo of CCTV Man among the photos from St. John’s, telling Will I’d corrected my statement about the night Liz had died, watching the videotape of his confession. And, of course, finding a copy of the letter a killer sent, potentially left in my hotel room by another one.

  Or maybe the same one.

  It was getting hard to keep everything straight.

  I didn’t know what to think anymore. The only thing I was sure of was that I’d welcome a holiday from thinking altogether.

  When my phone beeped with the alarm I’d set for seven, I quickly silenced it and strained to listen for any other sounds. There was only silence. Malone must still be asleep on the couch.

  Thanks to a lack of sleep, every limb felt weighted down, my head foggy, my stomach hollow and unsettled. After discovering the letter last night, I’d sat mostly in stunned silence while Malone tried to take my mind off things with some humorless comedy film and what was cold, greasy pizza by the time we got around to opening the box.

  He’d never seen the letter before.

  “I’d heard about it,” he’d told me, “but there’s no copy of it in Garda files. The original was lost, I thought.”

  “Then where did this come from?”

  “I’d say the source is someone who worked on the paper back then. They could’ve made copies. They more than likely did. But as to who put this in your suitcase, and how they got it, that I don’t know. I can have it checked for prints, but prints are no use unless you have a set to check them against, so …”

  “Why give this letter to me?”

  Malone had shrugged his shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine. Because you’ve been seeing Will? Because you’ll tell him about it?”

  “He’s the one who first mentioned it to me.”

  Malone raised an eyebrow. “How did he know about it?”

  “He said some other patient told him. He’d read about it online.”

  I’d pretended to watch the film then and mechanically chewed a few bites of pizza without actually tasting it. By the time the credits rolled, my eyelids were heavy with a longing for sleep and the thought of going back outside, into the dark and the cold, and driving all the way to Bray only made me feel even more exhausted. I didn’t argue when Malone suggested I stay in his place for the night, or give my mother a chance to argue with me when I told her that’s what I was doing. I sent her a text saying I was staying somewhere in town, that it was too late to drive out to Bray and that I’d call her in the morning. But then, having crawled gratefully into the warm softness of Malone’s bed five minutes later, sleep suddenly proved elusive.

  After I dressed, I sat on the bed and listened again for signs of life. I didn’t want to wake Malone, which I’d probably do the second I opened the bedroom door. The couch was right outside it. I’d let him get up first, even though I so desperately wanted a cup of coffee I could almost smell it, like some kind of olfactory mirage in the middle of a decaffeinated desert.

  Except …

  Was I actually smelling it?

  I heard it then: the tiniest little tinkle of steel against ceramic. A teaspoon in a cup. While I’d been sitting here waiting to hear Malone up and about so I wouldn’t disturb him, he’d been up and about as quietly as he could be so as not to disturb me.

  I found him in the kitchen setting two large mugs of steaming coffee on the breakfast bar, the kitchen’s only border with the living room. A half-empty cafetière was sitting on the countertop, an inch of coffee left in it, sodden black grounds packed tight at its base.

  “Morning.” He pushed one of the mugs toward me. “I was just about to knock on the door. Did you sleep?”

  “No,” I said, “not really.”

  “But you were so tired.”

  “Yeah, well. My brain didn’t care.”

  As I mixed sugar and milk into my cup, I noticed that Malone was wearing a dark shirt that seemed to be specked with raindrops. “Were you outside already?”

  He lifted a brown paper bag off the countertop. “Foraging for croissants.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.” I hoped my stomach wouldn’t rumble a contradiction. After only a couple of bites of that pizza yesterday evening, I was starving.

  “No, I really did,” Malone said. “Otherwise your breakfast options would’ve been a jar of slicked gherkins or a tube of tomato purée. Or a combination of those two things. As for that”—he pointed at the cafetière—“I had to YouTube how to use it. Normally, I just chuck a spoon of Nescafé in the general direction of boiling water and hope for the best.”

  “Well, I appreciate it. The coffee, especially.”

  “Come on, then,” Malone said. “Bring your cup.”

  He crossed the living room to the sliding doors that led out onto the ba
lcony, nudging them open with an elbow. I followed. The balcony was small, only big enough for a café-style set of a chrome table and two chairs, and the room to walk sideways, crab-like, around them. Directly above it hung the underside of the balcony of the apartment on the floor above. But this also meant it was sheltered from the weather; the table and chairs were dry even though the railing was splattered with raindrops.

  We set our cups on the table and sat down.

  I looked through the gaps in the railing at the overgrown green, glistening with dew, then lifted my eyes to take in the fenced-off row of half-finished houses, then—

  “Oh, wow.”

  Beyond the houses, in the far distance, was a mountain range. Green hills rolled unevenly across the horizon: rounded peaks, wide valleys. In places, stark, bare rock poked through. Off-white clouds, heavy with rain, hung low in the sky above them, casting enormous shadows that moved as I watched.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Malone said. “I bring my Nescafé water out here every morning. If you sit just right, you have a great view.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s wonderful.”

  There was no noise at all. No other people, no traffic, not even birdsong. The air was fresh and cool and although the weather was gray and wet, there was something fantastically impressive about the view from Malone’s balcony. It was a reminder that even with all that was going on, even the mess that lay around us, life was bigger than this mess. I was. The view soothed me. I sank down into my chair, letting my muscles relax. Breathed in the smell of my coffee, took a sip and savored the buzzy caffeine hit. Told myself it was a normal morning.

  Just a normal Tuesday morning. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to see here.

  The doorbell rang.

  It wasn’t even eight. Malone was already getting up out of his seat. He didn’t seem at all surprised that someone had called around this early in the morning.