“Liz, I—” I stopped, not knowing what to say to her, and looked to Will for help.
“What did this guy do?” he asked Liz. “Exactly?”
“I think he’s following me,” she said.
Will raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because I always see him around.”
“Where?”
“Around here.”
“On campus?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Liz,” Will said, exasperated, “of course you do. He probably goes here.”
“No, no,” she said. “It’s not like that.” She let go of me and took a step down the stairs. “I’ll tell them. They’ll understand.”
* * * * *
Will was supposed to have a class afterward but skipped it, and he and I went back to his room.
“This is awful,” I said. We were lying on his bed. The rooms at Halls were so small, there was really nowhere else two people in it could be. “Do you think there’ll be more?”
“I hope not,” Will said. “But, yeah, probably. Unless they catch him.”
“What about what Liz said?”
A beat passed. “She’s your friend.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I don’t want to say bad things about her.”
I made the sign of the cross with my hand. “I grant you a pass.”
“Well …” Will sighed. His hand was on my back and he slipped it now, up under my T-shirt, and started gently, absent-mindedly, rubbing the small of the back. “Look, I think some people are getting off on this. They’re excited by it. They love that there’s this major news story going on right on their doorstep and they think it’s thrilling to have, you know, the Gardaí around, and all that. And I actually think that’s probably not that unusual a reaction. I mean, that’s why cars slow down when they’re passing a traffic accident, right? Or why people watch true-crime documentaries, or read books about Ted Bundy. This stuff is, in a weird way, exciting. Right?”
“You think that’s what Liz is?” I said. “Excited?”
“I think she wants more drama. She wants to think she has more of a direct connection to this. That guy? That night at the ball? He was a slip of a thing. A strong breeze would’ve blown him over. He’s not out there killing anyone. His worst crime is—maybe—having a bit of a crush on Liz. She’s just completely overreacting.” He sighed again, then leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. “You and her are so different. I really don’t see how you guys are friends.”
“You don’t like her, do you?”
“No,” Will said after a while.
* * * * *
Later, when I went back to my apartment, Claire was in the kitchen. In whispered tones, she told me that Liz had knocked on the door, crying, and was now curled up in my bed.
“What was wrong with her?”
Claire shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me. All she’d say was that she had to talk to you.”
I assumed that her talk with the Gardaí hadn’t gone well. I thought maybe they’d dismissed her out of hand, or maybe even admonished her for wasting their time. I wondered what Claire, having a lost a friend to this faceless killer, thought of Liz and her dramatics.
When I went into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, she turned over and said, “Why do you always choose him over me?”
Her eyes were puffy and red and in the silence after her question, she sniffed.
I didn’t know where this was going. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She lay back down and pulled a cushion into her chest. Sulkily, she said, “You know what it means.”
“He’s my boyfriend, Liz. I want to spend time with him.”
“I’m not talking about time.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“You believe him over me.”
Now I was confused. I waited for her to enlighten me.
“He says that guy isn’t following me, so you agree.”
“Liz, I thought that before he said it.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
I sighed. “What’s going on?” She didn’t answer. She started crying again. “Liz, come on. Talk to me.”
Muffled, because she said it into the cushion: “There’s no point.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“You don’t see what’s going on.”
“Tell me, then.”
“I shouldn’t have to. You should know. You should realize.”
I rolled my eyes.
I was tired. Physically tired, because to be on campus now was emotionally draining. Emotionally tired, because it had been a long few months with Liz. And I was also tired of taking the bait. I was tired of playing her game. I was tired of acting like her crazy moods, her toddler tantrums, were normal behavior.
I had had it.
I was done.
“Look, Liz,” I said, standing up, “I don’t have time for this fucking juvenile shit, okay? If you want to talk to me, talk to me. Otherwise, please, just fuck off.”
I walked out of the room without waiting to hear any response, slamming the door behind me, shaking from the anger of my own words.
And surprised by them.
alison, now
I went back to sleep for a while. By the time I woke up for a second time, the light coming in through the balcony doors had changed.
Immediately, I reached for my phone. There was no update from Malone, but there was a text message I’d missed earlier from my mother, asking where I was staying tonight and what my plans for the rest of the week were. Your father wants to see you! Come and stay here? The paparazzi are gone now. (Paparazzi?!) I replied saying I’d think about it. I couldn’t make any decisions until I knew how all this was going to pan out.
Something fluttered in my stomach at the idea that I might stay here again tonight.
I tried watching some TV, but couldn’t focus. I found myself reliving that feeling that had passed between Malone and I, basking in it, replaying it over and over in my mind as if, on repeated viewings, I might find something new in that two, three seconds. Thinking that I might just get through all this if I had someone who, every so often, made me feel a moment like that.
And then wondering if he had felt anything at all, other than a friendly consolation.
And then feeling guilty that I was thinking this while Will’s life, or at least how he’d spend the rest of it, hung in the balance.
While Amy was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.
While Daniel was in a room being accused of something he probably didn’t do.
I walked around the apartment, opening doors, peering into cupboards and wardrobes. I discovered a washer/dryer hidden in a closet next to the bathroom and decided to wash the few items of clothes I had with me. I rinsed out the cafetière and mugs we’d used this morning, and found the bag of croissants Malone had gone out and got still sitting on the counter, untouched. I had one with a fresh cup of coffee.
By then it was approaching seven o’clock and the sun was slipping down behind the mountains. I wrapped up in my scarf and jacket and took a second cup of coffee out onto the balcony, and sat there watching the sky until full darkness came.
In the distance, the mountain range was no longer visible; it had merged with the black sky. The only clues that it was there at all was the absence of stars in its silhouette, and a single red, flashing light that flickered atop one of its peaks. There must be a mobile phone mast or something up there. After a while I realized why it felt so dark out, even though it wasn’t that late in the day: no streetlights. They were there, I noticed, but they weren’t turned on.
Only a few yellow windows burned elsewhere in the estate. While I was on the balcony
, two cars pulled into the spaces down below, half an hour apart—and that was it. A few minutes later the shrill of Malone’s buzzer cut through the air, making me jump. This was followed by quieter versions of it, a cascade of them, as if whoever was trying to get in had pressed each buzzer downstairs, indiscriminately, in turn. Then they stopped abruptly; someone had let them in. There was no one around—no one walking a dog or getting a run in. Probably because it was simply too dark to be safe. Across the way, the empty windows of the unfinished houses gaped like toothless mouths.
I started to shiver. The temperature was dropping fast. I put my hands in my jacket pockets and felt something crumpled up in one of them: the note the neighbor had given us with the phone number on it.
It was a plain piece of white paper, perfectly square, like a sheet from a memo block. Angling it to catch the light spilling out onto the balcony from the living room, I studied the writing to see if a mistake had been made anywhere, if the neighbor had just taken down the number wrong. There was none that I could see.
I did, however, see something else: an impression in the paper.
I went back inside and examined it under the ceiling light. Numbers were carved into the paper, like someone had pressed down hard while handwriting them on the sheet that had been on top of the one I held in my hand. If it was from a memo-block, that would make sense.
Out of curiosity, I rifled through Malone’s kitchen drawers until I found a pencil, and then ran the lead of it back and forth over the impression in broad strokes. Slowly but surely, the numbers appeared. Oddly, it was the same number the neighbor had given us—except for the last number. Here, the number ended in a nine instead of a one.
I stood in the middle of the living room, holding the piece of paper, frowning at it.
On one hand, this was No. 23’s neighbor. It didn’t matter what phone number he had last scribbled down. On the other, wasn’t it strange that the last number he’d scribbled down had been so similar to the one No. 23 had given him?
Maybe someone else had asked him for it recently, and this was proof he’d given us the wrong number, off by one digit.
I picked up my phone and unlocked the screen, but then I thought better of dialing the number from it. They’d be able to see mine then. I looked around the apartment, but it didn’t look as if Malone had a landline. I even considered calling Harcourt Terrace station for a second, asking for Garda Cusack and telling her that I’d found the actual phone number for the tenant at No. 23.
But was that what this was? It could be a waste of time. She wasn’t my biggest fan. No need to confirm for her that she was right the first time.
Ultimately, I decided to just wait until I could tell Malone about it in person.
I locked the balcony doors, then double-checked that the front door to the apartment was secure too. I’d seen a stack of old paperbacks in Malone’s bedroom, including a couple of tech-thrillers I thought might keep me mildly entertained. I figured I’d take a shower, climb into bed, and read until I could fall asleep.
It was while I was in the shower, in the en suite, that I first heard the noise: a muffled bang, like a cupboard door closing.
I hit the button reflexively, stopping the flow of water. Held my breath. Listened.
I couldn’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart, which suddenly sounded thunderous. There was only silence and, somewhere beyond that, the very, very faint vibration of the washing machine. So nothing at all, really, but then, because I was straining so hard to hear something, the low-frequency thrum of the absence of sound.
Something had probably just fallen over. Or it could be coming from next door. Or, you know, you might have just imagined the whole thing, because you’ve spent the weekend trying to find a serial killer and it’s left you a little bit jumpy.
I turned the water back on, but my ability to relax had vanished. I just kept listening out for another sound. In the end I gave up and got out. I’d been in there five minutes, maximum.
Malone hadn’t been expecting guests and although the towel hanging over the shower door was dry, I wasn’t 100 percent certain it was clean. I didn’t want to go snooping, so I lightly dried myself with it and quickly put on what served as my pajamas: a ripped pair of yoga pants and an old T-shirt. Put back on my glasses. My hair was sopping wet at the ends, steadily dripping onto my shoulders. I put the towel back where it’d been and went to check on my clothes in the machine. Another five minutes to go before the cycle would be complete.
The note with the phone number was still on the kitchen counter.
It was killing me not to try the one I’d revealed, but I didn’t want to call it from my phone.
I drummed my fingers on the countertop, thinking. What could you do with a phone number, other than call it?
I went back down the hall and into Malone’s bedroom, picking up my phone off the bed. I pulled up the internet browser and copied the phone number into the search box.
The top result was for a profile for someone called Brian Conway, BSc (Hons) Prop Mgt & Val, HDip Mgt & Mkt, at R&P Estate Agents in Ballsbridge. I clicked on the link and the page loaded with a professional headshot of him, suited and smiling, next to a short bio, the phone number I’d just searched for and an email address, hosted on the R&P website.
What didn’t make any sense was the man in the accompanying photo.
It was the neighbor we’d spoken to earlier at Doolyn Gardens.
The man in the photo was the man who lived at No. 24.
I blinked at the screen for a five full seconds while the jigsaw pieces moved and slid and rotated—
The number pressed into the memo pad was Brian Conway’s number. Brian Conway was the man who lived at No. 24. So when we’d asked him for the man at No. 23’s phone number, he’d given us his own, but with one digit wrong. The last one.
The O’Rourkes in Co. Clare owned both houses, No. 23 and No. 24, but Conway complained about his neighbor driving down property prices. Why would he care, when he must rent?
Amy? You don’t look like an Amy.
And then suddenly—horrifically—everything clicked into place.
And then I heard the noise again.
A dull thud, coming from the kitchen. Before I could dismiss it, rationalize it, minimize it, I heard something else.
Footsteps.
Tentative, on a hardwood floor.
Someone creeping. Trying to be quiet.
I held my breath, listening.
And knew for absolute certain that elsewhere in this apartment, someone else was doing exactly the same thing.
We’d driven from Doolyn Gardens straight here, stopping only to buy drive-thru fast-food for lunch. We’d sat in Malone’s car outside the house for a couple of minutes before we’d driven away. We’d given Conway plenty of time to get into his own car and follow us here.
The fear was immediate and all-encompassing and overpowering, and for one interminable moment I thought it was going to totally overwhelm me and that I might just give in and pass out and die—
You will die if you don’t move.
I felt rooted to the spot. Fear had glued me there.
The bedroom was wide open.
Locked doors.
I had to put as many locked doors between me and him as I could. The bedroom and the bathroom were all I had.
Footsteps in the kitchen.
Coming this way.
Clutching my phone, I tiptoed to the open bedroom door—looking at the handle as I approached it, seeing yes! A lock!—and closed it as quickly and as quietly as I could and then shit, fumbling with the lock, my hands shaking, unable to turn it, the mechanism stiff or maybe even stuck.
And here was the fear, pushing itself up again, coming now, and I heard myself make a noise, a kind of “ah” sound, the kind you might make it you’d just burned your ha
nd off something hot.
The footsteps, louder now, crossing the living room, almost here.
Not caring about being quiet anymore.
Underneath my fingers, the lock finally turned.
I rushed into the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I didn’t know why I was trying to be quiet, it wasn’t rational; he knew I was here.
I was shaking now, every limb trembling uncontrollably, afraid to breathe, my chest burning with the strain.
I looked at the lock on the bathroom door. One of those locks where you turn a tiny switch in the middle of the handle. Flimsy and easy to override. A kick would break it.
I turned it anyway.
“Alison?”
The voice was muffled, his mouth right against the bedroom door and me hearing it through two of them, but it was so calm and normal, it sent the fear climbing up my throat and a trickle of warmth running down my leg.
I bit down on my lip, hard, tasting blood, in order to stop myself from screaming out.
“It’s just us,” he said. His tone was pleasant, friendly, upbeat. “Why don’t you come out of there so we can talk?”
I unlocked my phone. The page for Brian Conway on R&P’s website was still onscreen. Fingers shaking violently, I screenshot it and sent it to Malone with my third attempt at typing a word underneath it: hELp.
I couldn’t get out of this. Not out of the apartment. We were a floor up. I could maybe get out of the bedroom window but I couldn’t think now what it looked like and I didn’t have enough time to waste some of it trying to figure out how to open it, or which bit of it I had the best chance of getting through.
A sudden, loud bang against the bedroom door.
Quickly followed by another bang, and the sound of splintering wood.
No no no no no oh God no please.
A crash, something heavy and large clattering onto the floor. Footsteps now, striding across the bedroom floor. He was in.
A ferocious bang against the bathroom door. I watched it shake, shudder everywhere except the point where the lock mechanism touched the frame.
I began to feel strangely detached. Resigned. Another bang of body against the door and the lock would give way.
The Liar's Girl Page 27
