Blink

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘So why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘I was going to, but Melissa said someone had sent it to her. Nobody believed her. Then, when she died, there didn’t seem any point.’

  ‘Who did she blame? Who sent it to Melissa?’ Sexton asks intently.

  ‘She was being a bitch,’ Darren blurts. ‘It’s what Melissa did. It was kind of her default setting. She said she sent it to Lucy to show her that she was a victim too.’

  ‘In that case, Melissa must have accused someone of sending it to her,’ Sexton says, as Darren’s father looks on in disbelief. ‘Who was that person?’

  Darren sighs. ‘Rob Reddan – Amy’s dad. But she had it in for him. She’d already sent these photographs of him to Amy.’

  ‘Photographs?’ Sexton asks.

  ‘You know … dodgy ones …’

  ‘Explain,’ Brendan states.

  Darren sighs. ‘Look, if you must know, Melissa’s mum was seeing Amy’s dad, Rob, on the QT.’

  ‘Really?’ Brendan asks.

  ‘What?’ Sexton asks slowly.

  ‘Melissa found these photos on her mum’s phone of Rob … you know?’ Sexton’s eyebrows go up. He shoots an apologetic look at Brendan, whose curiosity saves him the bother of probing.

  ‘Do you mean Rob Reddan was naked?’ Brendan asks.

  ‘Yeah, naked, and the rest,’ Darren says. ‘Melissa discovered Amy’s dad was a pervert, so she sent them to Amy to let her know: “By the way, your dad’s a freak.” The pictures totally grossed Amy out. She asked her dad about them, and he apologized, said he was seeing Melissa’s mum on the side, and not to tell Melissa, as it was all top secret.’

  ‘Did Amy send them to you, or anyone else?’ Sexton asks.

  ‘Nope, they weren’t the kind of family snap you shared on Facebook.’

  ‘So, no copies.’ Sexton is thinking aloud. ‘And then Amy died. And then Melissa sent the video clip to Lucy and blamed Rob?’ Sexton clarifies.

  ‘Yeah, but Lucy didn’t believe her either.’

  Sexton pats his jacket pocket for the card Rob Reddan gave him in the gym hall on Tuesday, and takes it out. ‘Can you get your laptop now? Is this the number Melissa said she got it from? Can you check?’

  ‘I don’t need to, that’s it all right. Fuck. It really was Rob.’

  54

  Melissa’s mother, Marie, looks shocked when she opens the door. Sexton realizes how bad he looks – panting, wild-eyed with adrenaline, sweat patches soaking his armpits – but from the look on her face he knows it’s not his appearance she’s reacting to. She knows he knows.

  He watches Marie closely as he puts the extramarital affair to her, trying to nail down the last details before he goes to her boyfriend’s house. She doesn’t react at all, not so much as a flicker. He feels betrayed himself. Her performance is Oscar-winning. So, he puts it to her that they both know what’s going on:

  ‘Are you sure there isn’t something more you want to tell me, Marie? Something you want to get off your conscience? Something gnawing away at your insides because of what has happened to your daughter? Let’s remind ourselves of that, shall we? The daughter you brought into the world, your only child, the one who went to a wood on her own and died alone. Melissa.’

  The look on her frightened face changes to horror and as quickly again to something hard. Sexton recognizes this face from countless interviews, when the interviewee starts feeling sorry for themselves and the survival instinct kicks in. Marie is calculating what’s best for her at this point. She’s not thinking about her daughter lying cold in the grave. It’s too late for her. She’s thinking about herself and how she can extract herself from the whole pile of shit she’s now in.

  ‘He used to say all women want this – sure, that’s why Fifty Shades of Grey sold millions,’ she says, tears springing from her eyes.

  ‘Who used to say that?’ Sexton presses.

  ‘Rob, before he’d tie me up.’

  ‘Did he ever talk to you about Melissa?’

  She looks up in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your daughter and his daughter didn’t get on. It must have been strange that the two of you, on the other hand, got on so well.’

  ‘No, he never talked about Melissa,’ she snaps.

  ‘Do you think his interest in you had anything to do with Melissa?’ Sexton can see the question is torturing her, but he also senses how close he is to cracking the case.

  Her face turns red with anger. ‘You mean was he using me to get to my daughter? Did he ever say her name when he was fucking me?’

  ‘Did he? Melissa had lewd photos of him on her phone.’

  ‘No. No. No. She got them from my phone. They were for me. Rob wanted me for my sake. Don’t you listen?’

  ‘That’s right, I forgot, he wanted to hurt you for your sake.’

  She starts to sob silently.

  ‘He sent Melissa a video showing her how to kill herself.’

  Marie shakes her head in disbelief. Her face contorts. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That’s what Melissa told people.’

  ‘She was wrong. Rob wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Where did you meet to have … relations?’

  ‘Why? What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘If it was a hotel, I can check with the staff if they ever saw Melissa go there with him.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Melissa was not seeing Rob. I told you. Anyway, we never went to a hotel. We went to this log cabin he has.’

  ‘A log cabin?’ The hackles on Sexton’s neck are on end. He’s picturing the images on the suicide video Bert has. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What was the address?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. He’d blindfold me on the way there and back, again say this is what women want.’

  ‘Here’s what I can’t understand,’ Sexton says. ‘Why would you want to go somewhere voluntarily with a man who has blindfolded you and intends to hurt you?’

  ‘Because, at least he was willing to touch me. Not like Martin. At least if I was sore because of Rob, it meant I wasn’t invisible. We met in a queue at a parent–teacher meeting. I knew he was on his own. Melissa had mentioned Amy’s mum doing a flit. I knew Rob was flirting with me. I liked it. I was so sick of feeling I repulsed Martin.’

  ‘Is it over?’

  ‘Yes, a couple of months now. He broke it off after Amy died, said he couldn’t go on.’

  ‘Because you have a husband?’

  ‘Because Amy caught us, together, in the cabin. Came in on us one night. I don’t know how she found us, or how she got there. I pictured where we were going in my head, got to a point where I was pretty sure I knew where it must be. I even drove the roads I thought he’d taken afterwards by myself, but I couldn’t find the hut, so I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘And where did you end up?’

  She stares at Sexton as if she’s just seen a ghost. ‘The woods. Where the girls went. Amy and Melissa. The kids are calling it Amy’s Wood, and Everlasting, but it’s Boley, near Enniskerry. Rob had said nobody else knew about it, but Amy walked in. I will take the way she looked at us to the grave with me. Rob was doing one of his … things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I can’t say it.’ She breaks down. ‘He couldn’t get hard unless I was in pain. Get it now?’

  55

  ‘What was Rob like to me?’ Amy’s mother, Susan, repeats down the phone as Sexton watches Rob Reddan’s house from his car, which is parked outside. Sexton is doing some last information-gathering. McConigle is on her way now with a team. She’s told Sexton to wait until they get there, but he doesn’t have that much self-control.

  ‘Cold as a stone. Rob was abused as a kid; he’s incapable of intimacy. He associates it with what happened to him when he was little.’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  She laughs bitterly. ‘We were never married, but we lived
together for ten years. I woke up every morning of every day for most of them and went to bed at night plotting my escape. But I couldn’t leave my little girl. Then one day it occurred to me that if I stayed, he’d probably kill me, and my daughter would lose her mother anyway. Ironic, isn’t it? That she’s the one who’s gone.’ She starts to cry.

  Sexton watches the curtains twitch in an upstairs bedroom, sees Rob Reddan clock his car outside. He climbs out of the car and starts to walk towards the house. ‘Why did you say you thought he might kill you, or the other way around, if you stayed? Did he have a history of violence?’

  ‘No, he never hit me. But … it’s hard to explain … there was just a look in his eye when he lost it. Like he hated me. Like he could have hurt me. It sounds mad now. But he had the worst temper I’ve ever seen.’

  Sexton puts a hand on the garden gate and presses down the handle. ‘It can’t have been that bad, if you left Amy with him.’

  ‘Rob never touched, or hurt, Amy, in any way. If anything, it was the opposite – he idolized her. When she was born he was afraid to pick her up. He pretty much stayed that way around her all her life. He thought she was the most perfect thing, called her his angel. He told me he didn’t want any more children, because it would take away from the amount of time he devoted to her. The worst thing about it was he was barely able to show her any affection at all. He didn’t want to hug or cuddle her, because he associated that kind of contact with what had happened to him.’

  Sexton is standing at the front door. He puts his hand up to the bell.

  ‘Did you suspect him of having any involvement in what happened to Amy?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ Susan is shocked. ‘I hate him, but he wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘You didn’t come back for the funeral?’

  ‘You still don’t get it. He’s a whack job, a maniac. I was scared he blamed me for what happened and would have killed me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the Gardaí?’

  Susan gives a bitter laugh. ‘I’m talking to the wall. They couldn’t have protected me. Not from Rob.’

  The front door opens.

  56

  Rob Reddan doesn’t look the least bit surprised to see Sexton standing on his doorstep. He must have spotted the squad car earlier, but it’s rare to meet someone who doesn’t want to know, or isn’t prepared to fake wanting to know, what a policeman is doing on their doorstep. He stands back for Sexton to step in without saying a word, and then leads him in to a reception room off the hall, which is like a shrine to Amy. There are pictures of her everywhere, and a coffee table has a stack of photo albums that Sexton presumes are full of her too. Old homework copies written in a child’s spidery crawl sport the name Amy Reddan. The fireplace, and even the mantelpiece, bear a granite marble heart that belongs on a grave.

  ‘I thought you were going to ring,’ he says, and Sexton can hear the slight jeer in his voice. It was a tone that would have been better suited to a question like: ‘What took you so long to figure it out?’

  ‘Rob Reddan, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You have the right to remain silent …’

  ‘You’re arresting me?’

  ‘Yes, but first I have to get this caution out of the way … Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to a solicitor. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you.’ Sexton pauses. Rob doesn’t respond. ‘I should tell you that, in my experience, innocent people never want a brief,’ Sexton continues. ‘Don’t you have anything you want to say?’

  ‘I’m still waiting on the first question.’

  ‘Do you own a Taser, Rob?’

  Rob jerks back his head and slams it into Sexton’s. There is a loud crack and blood spurts from somewhere. Sexton reels and reaches for his nose, establishing that’s what’s bleeding and broken as Rob takes off. He follows through a veil of pain and dizziness, sprinting out on to the road after him.

  Sexton’s bulk makes it impossible for him to run far, and when he stops, panting for air and leaning over on his knees trying to draw a breath, he glances back over his shoulder at the open door, and then back at Rob, in the far distance, getting smaller.

  Blinking away the colour spots dancing in front of his eyes, Sexton turns and walks back to the house, pulling his phone from his pocket and dialling McConigle’s number. ‘Where are you?’ he says as the call connects. ‘He’s just bolted. He’s wearing a white shirt, jeans and a pair of runners.’

  He listens as McConigle begins to ask a question, then shouts: ‘There he is!’ The siren screeches to life, and the call goes dead.

  Inside, he bolts the door and calmly walks to the back one to do the same. Then he goes into each room; everything’s so neat he suspects that Rob suffers from OCD. He finds a room upstairs with an editing suite, but he goes first into the only bedroom that could have been Amy’s, as there’s a poster of Amy Winehouse on the wall.

  Sexton is presuming that if Rob is refusing to let his daughter go, if he has avenged himself on the people who persecuted her in life, it’s here he’ll have brought any trophies.

  He stands in the middle of the room and takes a pair of baby-blue plastic gloves out of his pocket, snapping them on. He starts pulling open the drawers of the dressing table, Amy’s bedside locker, and emptying the contents.

  He spots a DVD with the name Melissa written on it sitting on a DVD player in the corner. He heads over to it and pushes it in, turning on the TV. The DVD won’t go in, there’s one jammed in there already, and when he presses eject, it slides out. It has the name Anna on it.

  His Perfect Day ringtone trills to life and Sexton answers, sandwiching the phone between his shoulder and his ear, and pushes the DVD back in and presses play.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ McConigle says.

  Sexton can hear Rob’s shouts of abuse down the line as he stares at the screen. He hits the pause button on the player, and his face changes to one of immense pity.

  Anna Eccles’s terrified face is frozen on the screen.

  He answers McConigle’s latest question: ‘Yeah, it’s definitely him.’

  57

  In custody, Rob Reddan shows no remorse, but in the face of the overwhelming evidence against him has begun to admit his crimes. The crucial question is how many of the twenty kids’ deaths he’s responsible for. Sexton – who has a plaster across the top of his nose and two black eyes – is glad McConigle didn’t argue that he should be the one to try to find out. For now, at least, she’s put aside the fact that he withheld evidence. If it weren’t for him, they’d never be at this point. She’s watching from behind double-sided glass, taking notes so they can build the case.

  ‘We have the tape you made of yourself showing kids how to take their own lives,’ Sexton says. ‘We know where you made it. We have the two tapes you made of Anna Eccles and Melissa Brockle, a girl I recall you described as a “poor mite” when we first met, you cynical bastard.’ Sexton studies him before going on: ‘There’s a team in your house right now collecting hair specimens, your fingerprints, fibres, sweat drops – every possible cross transfer of evidence is being tagged. Why?’

  ‘They may as well have killed my baby with their own bare hands.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who. Melissa Brockle.’

  ‘Why did you kill Anna Eccles?’

  ‘She left a horrible message about Amy’s song after she’d died, dishonouring her. She was trying to kill her all over again.’

  ‘What song?’

  ‘One Amy uploaded on YouTube.’

  ‘Jesus. How many others?’

  He shrugs. ‘I didn’t kill any of them. They did that themselves.’

  ‘Anna Eccles had marks on her neck from your Taser.’

  ‘I told you, that bitch taunted her in the grave Melissa put her in.’

  Sexton makes a fist which he pumps forward. ‘Didn’t stop you banging her mother, though, did it? How did Amy feel abou
t that? Was it the ultimate betrayal, you sleeping with her torturer’s daughter? Or did you kill your own daughter too?’

  Rob glares. ‘I didn’t know how bad it was until afterwards. I loved Amy. But after she found me in the wood, she couldn’t go on.’ Sobs rack through his frame.

  Sexton puts the DVD marked Melissa into the player, turns it on. Rob sobers up.

  The images are in dark greens and greys and blacks because of the glare of the camera’s night-light shade. The camera is jigging up and down because Rob is running, panting. A girl ahead is running. She trips and falls.

  ‘It’s too easy,’ Rob tells her on the tape. ‘Run.’

  The angle shifts as he climbs the ladder into a watch tower. His breathing quickens. Seconds later a shot rings out.

  ‘You hunted her?’

  ‘I wanted her to know what Amy must have felt like to be at the mercy of a pack of wolves. I wanted them scared, as my daughter was. I wanted them to know what it felt like for her to have the life squeezed out of her. So, yes, I shot at them, then I strung them up. I’m glad I did it. Just don’t ever accuse me of harming my daughter again. I loved Amy. I was away on business that night. You can check it out. Look, I know it’s all over for me. I’m prepared to cooperate, but if you accuse me of hurting Amy again, that’s the end of it, I won’t say another word. Yes, I killed Anna and I killed Melissa, because of what they did to my daughter. But not the others. The rest did it all by themselves.’

  ‘What about Lucy?’

  ‘I wasn’t interested in Lucy. She was good to my baby. I only got Melissa because she crashed the car.’

  Bile rises in Sexton’s throat. He swallows it back. ‘And the suicide video? Who did you send it to?’