But there was a difference between that kind of violence and the slow systematic brutality that so many men meted out. Or so he reasoned. Of course, when he thought about all the domestics he had been called to, usually by mothers or next-door neighbours who couldn’t stand the uproar any longer, it was nigh impossible to separate the rage from the sadism. The penis used as a weapon, like the fist or the boot. But none of the men they had in their files had ever shown quite the level of calculated brutality as the guy who had killed Mary Mitchell.
‘So tell me, boss, what else did she say? Did she tell you anything about the girl?’
McLoughlin shrugged. ‘Not really. She was absolutely certain that she didn’t have a boyfriend. That she wasn’t seeing anyone special.’
‘That’s what those kids said. The ones she was with that night.’
McLoughlin had read their statements and compared them with the statements the Dun Laoghaire police had taken when Mary was still officially a missing person. There were virtually no discrepancies. One girl said Mary had been drinking Malibu and pineapple. Another that it was the new alcoholic lemonade. The boy, Gary Palmer, said it was after eleven when she left the bar. The girls all said it was a bit earlier, around five to. The only real difference in the statements was that in the second of the two, those taken after she was dead, they were less inclined to say that they liked her. A bit more honest now they knew she wasn’t coming back. It wasn’t that they had anything against her, that they said she was unfriendly or arrogant or unpleasant. They just seemed to think that she was a bit too introverted, hard to talk to, remote, as if she was thinking about something else. We thought, said the girl called Aoife, that it was because she was a foreigner. That was all.
He wondered about the mother and the daughter. He wondered about the father. A marine biologist, she had said. An orphan, brought up in a Barnardo’s home. Very talented. He was doing research into oyster production.
‘Dave,’ McLoughlin finished his pint, ‘get us another, and a whiskey chaser.’ He handed over a wad of notes, and gestured to the others to throw in their orders. A couple of them were leaving. Bertie Lynch and John Casey. They were going to do another round of questionnaires in the George’s Street area. And they’d keep on going back, daytime and night-time, until they got somewhere. Someone must have seen something. Finney had got the videotape from the TV shop and he’d made a couple more finds. The camera in the Central Bank had shown her standing on the steps between 23.05 and 23.20. And even better, the camera from the traffic lights by the Bank of Ireland showed a dark girl and a fair man in what looked like a black Mercedes.
He thought again of the photographs on the notice-board. The close-ups of her head had showed that her ears were pierced, the tiny holes clearly visible in the fleshy lobes. She had been wearing, according to her mother, silver earrings inset with paua shell in the shape of fish. They were, so her mother had said, her favourites. She remembered, she told him, Mary standing in front of the mirror in the hall fiddling with them just before she went out. She was wearing the earrings and a gold ring with a tiny diamond on the little finger of her right hand.
‘Where did she get it?’ he had asked.
‘From me, of course,’ her mother replied.
‘Was it an antique?’ he had continued.
She shrugged. ‘Depends what your definition of antique is. It was a piece of Edwardian costume jewellery. Not worth much.’
‘And where did you get it?’
She paused and said, ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘It could be important.’
‘It was a present from my father for my sixteenth birthday. It had belonged to his mother. But my fingers got too big, so I passed it on to Mary. And in case you want to know I also gave her the earrings for her last birthday.’
Both ring and earrings were missing. They were doing a check of the second-hand jewellers and pawnbrokers. So far nothing had come up.
Her bag was missing as well. Her friends had said she was carrying it when she left the bar. And her mother had confirmed that she always took it with her, no matter where she was going. It had been given to her by her favourite ballet teacher in Auckland. It was very heavy, brown leather, like an old-fashioned school-bag with two big straps and a buckle. She kept everything in it. Her ballet gear when she was going to class. Makeup, her address book, family photographs, her diary, bits and pieces of curiosities she’d picked up.
‘I was always telling her it was going to do dreadful things to her posture, wearing it the way she did, slung off one shoulder, but she just ignored me.’
‘And did she often ignore you?’
‘That’s none of your business, Inspector. None of your business at all.’
She didn’t realize. He could see. She still hadn’t taken it in. Everything was his business now. Every detail and nuance of her life. Except that it wasn’t ‘her’ life any more. It was their life. Collectively. And part of him. And would be until all this was over.
He looked around, aware suddenly that the pub was half empty. Finney had dumped the glasses and a pile of change on the table. He was standing up, fiddling with his car keys.
‘I’m off, boss. Things to do.’
‘Are you not joining me?’
‘No, not now.’
‘Hot date, eh?’
Finney grinned, his white teeth showing, suddenly predatory.
‘Ah, go on, see you tomorrow.’
McLoughlin sat down again, the pint in his hand, the glass of whiskey beside it. Thinking time, that was what he needed. Thinking time and drinking time, and for him the two always went together.
16
The rose trailed down the graveyard’s crumbling stone wall. Margaret lifted a branch, studded with thorns. The flowers were of the creamiest pink. She pulled a bloom towards her and prised open the petals to reveal its golden heart. Scent as sweet as strawberries with a hint of lemon filled her nostrils. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes as the petals brushed against her cheek. As she let go and stepped back they dropped in a soft fall, like pink-tinted snowflakes.
Behind her Catherine stood, still, silent, gazing around, lost.
‘Can you remember, Mother, where Daddy is buried?’ Margaret took her hand.
She had seemed much more lucid earlier. She had slept, had some clear soup for lunch, and taken her pills without any protest.
‘Would you like that, to go to the graveyard? You could show me Daddy’s grave. and we could see where Mary will be buried. Will we do that, Mother?’
And Catherine had nodded and smiled. She had allowed Margaret to dress her, and brush her hair. It was such a warm day that Margaret had persuaded her to wear a dress, a pretty print with big white buttons all the way down the front. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll bring your shawl in case it gets cold.
The caretaker had shown them his map and pointed out the corner where he thought they might find John’s grave. He had warned them to watch their step, looking them up and down, his glance resting a fraction too long on Margaret’s bare legs. Vandals, he said, had done some terrible things here. He didn’t want to upset her, but she should stick to the main path. She had thanked him, pressing some money into his hand. He watched them walk away, the old woman, her eyes vacant, her body frail and feeble, and the younger woman, thin, but strong, who looked at him with grey eyes, like her mother’s, her skirt moving against her legs. As he lifted his hand to take the cigarette out of his mouth he smelt the scent of lavender from her skin.
The cemetery was overgrown and neglected. Long grass swayed and swooned over slabs of stone and marble. The white of cow parsley, the pink of willow-herb and the astringent splash of ragwort made it look like a country meadow, interspersed with strange outcrops of rock. Outside the walls the traffic hummed like a large spinning top. Inside the only sound Margaret could hear was her heart beating rhythmically and the cackle of an aggravated magpie, which danced stiff-legged from branch to branch in front of them.
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br /> They turned to the left at the end of the main path. On either side were large tombs and monuments, interspersed with yew trees, whose formal conical shape had long been abandoned. A stone angel stood on top of a sarcophagus decorated with stone rosettes. His wings were unfurled, ready to fly. In one hand he held a sword. In the other a shield. His hair curled softly around his face, but his nose was chipped. Such a pity, Margaret thought. It made him look like an illustration from one of her medical books showing the effect of syphilis on the nasal cartilage. Her father would have laughed at the association. Suddenly she missed him so much that she felt breathless, a pain circling her heart.
She stopped to look at the tomb. It was covered with faded inscriptions. She traced the worn lettering with her fingertips. The family name was Purefoy. All seven children and their parents had died within fifteen years of each other. The youngest, named only ‘baby boy’, had died on the same day as his mother, whose dates of birth and death made her barely thirty-three. What a waste, she thought. These days antibiotics would probably have saved the lot.
The rose had caught her attention. As she picked her way towards it her foot hit something hard and angular. She hesitated for a moment then bent down and scrabbled in the grass. She held in her hand a wrought-iron wreath, acanthus and laurel, tributes for a hero. Further down the path a newly dug grave was a raw gash of colour, the heaped earth covered with wreaths of carnations and lilies. One spelt out the word ‘Mam’ in pink and white. She tried not to think of what lay beneath but the images came unbidden.
‘Help me, help me, please.’
Margaret turned quickly. Catherine was standing with both hands to her face, terror written in her hunched shoulders. A marmalade cat, dishevelled, neglected, his coat staring and matted, was in front of her on the path, seated, unmoving. He miaowed, a long desolate sob, then as Margaret clapped her hands and shouted he slunk behind a tussock of dry grass.
Margaret took her mother’s hand and led her on, in the direction the caretaker had suggested. They walked slowly, stopping from time to time to check the names inscribed on the headstones.
‘I know this place.’ Catherine looked at her, lucid again. ‘I remember.’
John’s grave was at the end of a row. His headstone was a large slab of white marble. John Patrick McKenna, 1910– 1990 it said, and below, Beloved husband of Catherine. Rest in Peace in the Arms of the Lord. Beside him were the graves of his parents, Margaret and Thomas, and his two brothers, Michael and Eamonn. A large evergreen oak spread its dark green branches over the graves. It was cool and dark here. A small breeze kicked up a miniature tornado of dust, and stirred Catherine’s thinning hair. Nearby a blackbird, perched in a crabbed weeping wych elm, sang.
‘Do you hear that, Maggie?’ John pointed to the bird. ‘He’s practising. He’s doing his scales. He must be giving a big concert tonight in the blackbirds’ favourite theatre. They’ll all be there, the spotty thrushes, the bossy sparrows, the crows in their best suits, and even the tiny little wren who never has anything decent to wear.’
‘Can we go too, Daddy?’
‘No, I don’t think so. We’re too big and fat to fit in. But if we keep very still we’ll hear all the best bits right where we are.’
She couldn’t remember why they had come here. But she remembered that they had brought flowers, a bunch of red roses. It had begun to rain. Slowly, first little spatterings of water, then big drops that made dark patches on her white blouse. John took off his jacket and held it over his head. He pulled her in underneath close by his side. The grass had just been cut, and was lying in loose cocks everywhere. She wanted to run and kick her feet through the piles, the way she would have done at home, but it didn’t seem right, not here, with all the dead people lying just under the ground.
‘What does it feel like to be dead, Daddy?’ she asked.
‘Oh, sort of tired, sleepy. Like when you’ve been down on the beach all day, swimming, and you come home and have your tea and then I make you a big cup of cocoa and when you get into bed I come to read you a story. And you can’t keep your eyes open. That’s what it feels like to be dead. But, of course,’ he stopped and looked down at her, ‘of course, I don’t really know. Because guess what?’
‘What?’
‘I’m not dead,’ and he pulled away from her, twirling around, miming an umbrella above his head, and began to dance up the path.
‘Mother.’
‘Yes?’
‘Were you with Daddy when he died?’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Did he say anything about me?’
‘It was very sudden. He just collapsed, at home, after dinner. He was lucky, he didn’t have pain.’ And she began to cry, little girl’s tears dropping down her cheeks.
Margaret put her arm around Catherine’s thin shoulders and drew her close. She kissed the top of her head, and stroked one frail arm as they walked slowly back to the car. She had stopped blaming her for her indifference, her coldness, her lack of love. Her father had been forty when she was born. Her mother was thirty. Catherine had told her once, in a fit of rage, that she had never wanted her. I would, she screamed, have got rid of you if I could. But there was no way. There was no doctor here who would do it. I tried, I truly tried. There was one man I went to. I offered him money. But he said no. I made myself sick having you. I hated the sight of my body, fat, swollen, ugly. And it was worse when you were born. I watched the way you took your father’s love from me. You took his gaze from me too. I watched him when you came into a room. His eyes followed you everywhere.
She had been so scared that she would feel that way about Mary, her own daughter. That she would resent her, hate her, be jealous. That she would feel she was a parasite, feeding off her own life’s blood. And it was such a relief that it wasn’t like that when she was born. It was love, pure and simple and unqualified. She had told Mary that there were no ‘buts’, no ‘maybes’ in her love. No matter what. Mary had just laughed and kissed her, and buried her head in the hollow of her shoulder. Silly Mummy, how else could it be? she had said. And Margaret was so grateful that her daughter would never know the terror of the other way.
Beside her the old woman was still sobbing. ‘I want to go home,’ she cried. And Margaret soothed her, and shushed her, and tucked her into the car, wrapping the soft shawl around her arms as if she was swaddling a baby. And didn’t look at the other car, the one with the silvered windows, that was parked beside them. And didn’t notice the man sitting, reading a book, resting it against the steering wheel. The man with the fair hair who lifted his eyes as they came through the gate, and watched behind his dark glasses.
17
The address book lay on the passenger seat beside him. He picked it up and looked at the cover. Flowers, fruit, foliage and birds entwined in a repeating pattern of muted blues, reds, ochres, dark greens. Thrushes with sharply defined speckles of colour on their breasts held strawberries in their beaks. He turned it over. The blurb on the back said, ‘Strawberry Thief, Chintz 1883, designed by William Morris’. Jimmy knew he recognized it. He remembered his mother’s hands, holding a tapestry needle, clumsily stabbing at the canvas. The pattern book with all the William Morris drawings lay on the hearthrug with the bag of brilliantly coloured wools. Soon abandoned like so many of her crazes. Passed on to Molly to take to school for her craft classes.
He sat in the car and turned over the pages. Every letter had its corresponding flower decoration. Acanthus, Bachelor’s Buttons, Columbines, Daisies, each one prettier than the one before. Childlike writing straggled over and under the narrow lines. On the page for M, written in adult script was ‘Catherine McKenna, where Margaret and Mary Mitchell are staying in Ireland’, and an address and telephone number. And under that again, in the writing he now knew to be Mary’s, ‘Our home from home, until we go home again, boo hoo.’
He looked at his watch. He was parked outside the Shelbourne Hotel. His passengers today were a wealthy American cou
ple. He was to take them shopping, then drive out to Wicklow, through Avondale, up through the Vale of Clara to Glendalough, then home by Powerscourt Waterfall, in time for dinner at Patrick Guilbaud’s. He had a cool box packed in the boot, with a couple of bottles of champagne, and brown bread, smoked salmon, picnic bits and pieces. He looked at his watch. He had been booked for 10 a.m. sharp. It was now 10.22. He shifted uncomfortably on the leather front seat. Sunlight bounced off the car’s polished bonnet. The air was heavy with petrol fumes from the traffic, which flowed and stopped, flowed and stopped, around Stephen’s Green and down Baggot Street. Already it was very hot. The weather forecast had said maximum temperatures of twenty-four degrees, and it must be close to that now.
He was wearing his full uniform. Crisp white shirt, dark jacket and trousers, and peaked cap. He had got up half an hour earlier this morning to get it all ready, standing in his underpants in his little kitchen, ironing his shirt, then pressing the creases in his trousers with a damp cloth. Nice smell, the steam rising from the material, reminded him of freshly baked bread from the oven.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then pushed the buttons on his radio, flicking from station to station. He had heard the news a couple of times this morning. Nothing more about Mary. In one way he was pleased, in another disappointed. It had been such a strange feeling when he had heard the news items about her, and seen her photograph all over the papers. His first reaction was that it was an intrusion, a violation, of his privacy, and hers. And then as he had listened to the speculation about who might have done this ‘terrible crime’ he felt a certain sense of satisfaction. There was excitement in the voices of the reporters. He watched them on television, listened to them on the radio. Some of them were young, his age, but they wouldn’t have been able to do what he had done.
Mary, Mary Page 8
