I Saw You

by Julie Parsons

  Margaret watched the butterfly until she could see it no longer, then gazed at the grave.

  ‘So,’ she said, her voice low, ‘we meet again. I never thought I’d come back here. I never wanted to see you, to be reminded of what you did to my daughter. I wanted you to suffer as she suffered. To die with the same pain she had. To feel her terror. When you beat her, when you raped her, when you made her feel worthless and dirty. I wanted all that for you and I succeeded. But now I’ve realized what else I did. I’ve tied myself to you for ever. My every waking minute, my every minute asleep is filled with thoughts of you and of what I did. And I can no longer bear it. I have not come here to make my peace. I do not forgive you. I am as filled with hatred as ever. But now I must think of myself and of my own future. I must atone for my sin. Do you hear me? Do you hear me down there beneath the earth? Because that’s where you are, in the remains of a wooden box, a collection of bones, all that’s left. Do you hear me, Jimmy?’

  Suddenly she was conscious that she was not alone. A group of mourners were standing near a large well-kept grave. They carried bunches of flowers and they were smartly dressed. A priest stood with them. He walked towards her and smiled in a reassuring way. She picked up her bag.

  ‘Are you all right?’ His tone was professionally sympathetic.

  Margaret nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you just looked a bit . . . distressed.’

  ‘Well,’ she tried to smile, ‘this is a place of distress, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is. Look,’ he said, ‘we’re here to remember a beloved daughter who died tragically a year ago. Perhaps you would like to join in our prayers. Perhaps it would help you too.’

  ‘No.’ Margaret’s voice was firm. ‘Thank you, but no. I’m going now. I’ve done all I can here.’ She turned away. Behind her she could hear the murmur of voices, random at first then acquiring the pattern, the rhythm, the structure and coherence of the Rosary.

  ‘The Lord be with thee,’ she whispered, as she walked through the gates and out on to the road.

  Another day had passed. The half-moon was high above her. It had been so strange when Vanessa spoke about Michael McLoughlin. Of course he would be of retiring age now. She couldn’t imagine what he would do without his job. It had seemed so much a part of his life. But maybe she was wrong. After all, what did she know? What did she know about anything or anyone any longer? She closed her eyes. But she saw. Jimmy Fitzsimons. His eyes wide and terrified. His frantic struggles. His body, as it would have been when it was found. And his grave. Neglected. Untended. Unmarked.

  FIFTEEN

  The door swung open at his touch. McLoughlin stepped tentatively into the narrow hall. He glanced to the left into the sitting room. The coffee-table was strewn with photographs.

  ‘Hallo,’ he called. The music was loud, almost deafening. He crossed to the CD-player on the shelf. There were no obvious buttons on the high-tech panel, and no sign of a remote control either. He recognized the music. It was from Dido by Purcell, Kathleen Ferrier’s voice. ‘“When I am laid in earth,”’ she sang. It was beautiful, exquisite even, but loud, far too loud.

  He walked quickly into the kitchen and peered through the glass doors on to the small patio. There was no one in sight. He moved back towards the stairs and began to climb them.

  ‘Hallo,’ he called again. ‘Is anyone up there?’

  He reached the upper landing and stopped. He turned towards Marina’s bedroom and moved to the door. He could see a pair of legs crossed at the ankle. They were shoeless. He took a step closer. The legs were clad in cream-coloured cords. Another step. Now he could see a brown leather belt into which a denim shirt was tucked. Then he was in the room. A man was lying on the bed. His arms were folded behind his head. He swivelled his eyes to look at McLoughlin. Tears were wetting his cheeks. He made no move to brush them away.

  ‘Hallo,’ McLoughlin said. The man did not respond. McLoughlin cleared his throat and continued, ‘Hi, my name’s Michael McLoughlin. I’m a friend of Sally Spencer. She asked me to look in on Marina’s house.’

  There was still no response from the man on the bed. There was a moment’s silence as the music stopped, and then it began again.

  ‘“When I am laid, am laid in earth . . .”’ Kathleen Ferrier’s voice floated up the stairs.

  ‘And you are?’ McLoughlin raised his own voice.

  The man looked at him. ‘Sally told me about you,’ he said in a whisper. ‘She thinks you’re going to tell her that Marina didn’t take her own life. She thinks you’re going to find out that something else happened to Marina, that she didn’t want to die.’ He sat up and wiped his face with the back of his hand. For a moment he reminded McLoughlin of a small child woken in the night by a bad dream. He swung his legs off the bed. They dangled, the tips of his toes resting on the wooden floor. ‘But you won’t. Marina wanted to die. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her she had plenty to live for. I loved her. I told her how much I loved her. But my love wasn’t enough to keep the demons at bay.’

  ‘And you are?’ McLoughlin repeated the question.

  ‘You know me. We met earlier today. Don’t you remember?’ The man’s face wore an expression of affront. McLoughlin tried to think. Earlier? What had he done earlier?

  ‘At Gwen Simpson’s.’

  He was waiting outside on the step, the door opened and a man was putting on a motorbike helmet.

  ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry.’ McLoughlin smiled in what he hoped was a conciliatory manner. ‘It was your helmet. I didn’t see you properly. So, you must be Mark Porter, am I right?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll have heard of me – if you’re trying to find out what happened to Marina, that is. In fact, I was going to phone you.’ He stood up. He was very small. His head barely skimmed McLoughlin’s chest. He slipped his feet into a pair of white runners and bent over to lace them. His shiny brown hair flopped forward. McLoughlin could see the small boy with the new shoes. He straightened up.

  ‘Do you think you could turn the music down a bit?’ McLoughlin moved through the door. ‘It’s lovely, but a bit hard on the hearing at that volume.’

  ‘Sure.’ Mark Porter squeezed past him and headed for the stairs. All trace of tears was gone. ‘Marina loved it. She used to listen to it all the time. She always said she wanted it played at her funeral.’

  ‘That was a bit morbid, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ He sounded irritated. ‘I know lots of people who like to think ahead. Sensible, it seems to me. And it was lucky she told me.’ He stopped. He was smiling broadly now. His face, with its freckles and round bright eyes, reminded McLoughlin of a character from one of the comics he had read when he was a kid. ‘Her mother would never have had the imagination to do what Marina wanted.’

  He ran down the stairs. His head and shiny hair disappeared from view. McLoughlin glanced back into the bedroom. The bed was rumpled and he noticed that the wardrobe’s mirrored door wasn’t completely closed. He went in, pulled it back and looked inside. One of the inner drawers was half open. Some of Marina’s underwear was poking out. McLoughlin pushed it back inside and closed the drawer. He slid the door over, then bent down and felt around the edge of the bed. His fingers touched something soft and silky. He pulled it out. It was a pair of black pants. They were trimmed with red lace and a red rose was embroidered across the crotch. He bent down and held them under the bedside lamp. He could see a trace of something white, slightly crusty.

  ‘Ugh.’ The sound was involuntary. He straightened up. He held the pants gingerly with his fingertips, turned them inside out and folded them. Then he slipped them into his pocket. He lifted the duvet. The bottom sheet, a bright sea blue, was stained in a number of places with the same silvery sheen. Snail’s tracks, he thought, the unmistakable ooze. He flipped the duvet in the air, shook it, then laid it on the bed. The room was neat and tidy now, the way he was sure she would have wanted it.

&n
bsp; ‘Mr McLoughlin, are you coming? There’s something I want to show you.’ Mark Porter’s peremptory tone floated up towards him. McLoughlin wondered about his accent. It was virtually BBC English, barely a trace of the Dublin in which he lived.

  ‘OK, I’m on my way. Just need to use the toilet. Won’t be a minute.’ He stepped quickly into the bathroom. The room was tiled from floor to ceiling. It had the usual fittings. Bath, with shower. Washbasin, lavatory. Mirrored cabinet. And, above, a circular globe with a pull cord, and beside it a ventilation fan. He put down the toilet seat and climbed on to it. He steadied himself with one hand and with the other reached up to the light. He unscrewed the shade and pulled it away. It looked all right, dusty, but untouched. He put it back, then stretched towards the fan. There should have been four screws holding it in place, but one was missing. He reached up and felt the space with his finger. No problem to take out the screw and replace it with a tiny camera. No problem at all. He could imagine. Marina opened the envelope. She saw the photos. She knew where they had been taken. She stood on the toilet seat. She did what he had. She unscrewed the light. Then she saw the fan. She checked the screws. She found the camera. She stamped on it. Broke it. She smashed it to pieces. The same way her privacy had been smashed, her sense of security. Or perhaps . . . He got down off the toilet seat. He looked in the mirror. He opened the door. She didn’t find it. But whoever put it there came back after he had got what he wanted and removed it. But he couldn’t be bothered to replace the screw. McLoughlin flushed the toilet vigorously. Then he walked downstairs.

  They sat in the sitting room. Porter had gone into the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine. He busied himself with corkscrew and glasses. He had apologized for the lack of something to eat.

  ‘Nibbles,’ he said, a number of times. ‘So nice to have a few nibbles.’

  Marina always had lovely nibbles, he told McLoughlin. It was because she’d lived in so many interesting places around the world. She’d been in Algeria for a while and then she’d moved to Kenya and then she’d gone to Mexico and then to the States. She was such a good cook.

  ‘You knew her well?’ McLoughlin sipped his wine cautiously. He tried not to stare at Porter. It wasn’t so much that he was small. It was more that his body was completely out of proportion. His head and shoulders were much bigger than his legs. His upper body was well developed, as if he lifted weights. His biceps bulged through his cotton shirt. But his face was round and plump, his hips tiny and his legs hardly big enough to carry him.

  ‘Very well.’ Porter gulped from his glass. ‘We were very close. She told me everything.’ His eyes glistened. ‘I miss her very much.’ He leaned forward and stirred the pile of photographs with his small hands. ‘I thought you’d like to see this.’ He handed McLoughlin a large black-and-white picture. ‘See?’ He stabbed at it with a plump finger. ‘We went to the same school. The Lodge, in Ticknock. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.’ He looked at him for confirmation. McLoughlin nodded politely. ‘See? There’s me, and standing behind me is Marina.’

  The pupils were ranged in tiers. Boys and girls wearing identical white shirts with ties with a diagonal stripe and a dark sweater. Seated in the front was a row of adults. Teachers, McLoughlin assumed. He cast his eyes over the group. There must have been about two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty altogether. They were a good-looking lot. Even though the photograph was faded and creased in places, the teenagers’ clear skin, shiny hair and eyes were immediately apparent. Like thoroughbred racehorses, McLoughlin thought. Pampered and nurtured. Bred for strong bones and fine configuration.

  ‘Yes.’ He put the photograph back on the table. ‘I heard you and she went to school together. A number of people have told me. But I also heard,’ he put his glass on the floor, ‘in fact just this evening before I came here, that Marina wasn’t very nice to you. That she and some of the other pupils caused you a lot of pain. Am I right?’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Porter’s tone was a mixture of anger and outrage.

  ‘A woman called Poppy Atkinson.’

  ‘Oh, Poppy, for God’s sake,’ Porter said dismissively. ‘The ugly sister, that was what we called her. What would Poppy know about anything?’

  McLoughlin shrugged. ‘Well, I think she knows quite a lot, Mark. Now, I’ll grant you she was upset. You’ve heard about her sister, I presume.’

  ‘Rosie? Yes, poor Rosie. I wasn’t surprised. She was very unhappy with her husband. He’s a bad type. Too much money. New money, you know what I mean?’

  Not really, McLoughlin wanted to say. But he smiled. ‘Be that as it may, the situation as Poppy described it, in relation to the, um, bullying you experienced, sounded horrific. She told me that you . . .’

  Mark touched his neck. One finger slipped beneath his shirt collar. He swivelled in his chair. His face took on a rictus that McLoughlin had seen many times before. On the faces of the dead. ‘Look I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you,’ he began.

  ‘Upset me? You’re not upsetting me,’ Porter shrilled. ‘It was an accident, that was all. A silly accident. I was trying to see if I could do a Tarzan. I’d made some rope out of creepers I found in the woods. And I wanted to see if my plaiting would stand up to my weight. It was an accident, that’s all.’ He tugged at his shirt collar, twisted awkwardly and McLoughlin saw the rough redness of the scar that encircled his throat.

  ‘It wasn’t just Marina, though, was it, Mark? It was Rosie and – who were the others involved? Poppy mentioned a couple of names. Someone called Ben, a Gilly and Sophie?’

  Porter leaped to his feet. ‘I want you to go now,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any longer. It has nothing to do with you or anyone else. They didn’t bully me. I don’t know why people keep on saying they did. We were just having a bit of fun, that was all. It was a bit of fun.’ He walked past McLoughlin and into the hall. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Hold on a minute. There’s no need to be like that.’ McLoughlin stood. He picked up the photograph again. Marina smiled at him. Her wide, generous smile. Mark was directly in front of her. He looked very small in comparison with the others on either side. The expression on his face was one of sadness. He had been a lonely little boy.

  ‘I’ll take that, thank you very much.’ Mark snatched the picture from him. ‘I’ve told you to get out. Before I have to put you out.’

  ‘Hang on, just hang on.’ McLoughlin raised his hands. ‘I’m not so sure what your business is here. Sally Spencer asked me to call in and check out the house. I’m doing what she asked. And, for that matter, I’m not so sure she’d want you here.’

  Porter’s face hardened and he took a step towards McLoughlin. His fists were bunched in tight balls. He dragged open the front door. McLoughlin stepped backwards and stumbled through it. He thought for a moment he would fall. He put one hand down to the path to steady himself, then stood.

  ‘How dare you?’ Porter screamed. ‘How dare you question me? Marina was my beloved. Get out of here and leave me alone.’

  McLoughlin opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. He hurried towards the front gate. As he got into the car he looked back at the small figure standing in the doorway. Poor bloke, he thought. A lot of baggage on those shoulders. No wonder he lifts weights. Must be the only way to carry that load.

  It was nearly one o’clock by the time he got home. He walked through the dark house, too tired to put on any lights. He cleaned his teeth and stripped off his clothes in the bathroom, felt his way into the bedroom. He pulled back the duvet and sank down on to the cool bottom sheet. It had been a long day. He closed his eyes and turned over on to his stomach, punching the pillow into shape beneath him. Sleep came quickly.

  And all too quickly left him again. Something had woken him. He sat up slowly. He had been dreaming. He couldn’t remember exactly what about, but Mark Porter had been in it somewhere. He had unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down. The scar around his neck shone brightly. Look, he said, look what
I can do. He began to unzip the scar, drawing an index finger and thumb slowly from left to right. Look, look at me, he said, his voice high-pitched and child-like. He put his hands over his ears and began to lift. His head separated itself from his trunk. The cut was smooth. A small dribble of blood trickled down on to his chest. He placed his severed head on the floor beside him. Now, he said, his mouth opening and closing like a ventriloquist’s dummy, now, look at me. Aren’t I clever? And he laughed with a manic, high-pitched shriek.

  It was the shriek that must have woken him. McLoughlin sat back against the headboard. He was sweating and his mouth was foul and dry. He got up and walked through the house into the kitchen. He filled a pint glass with water and gulped it down. It tasted metallic. Reminded him of blood. He spat into the basin, rinsed the glass and filled it again. He walked back into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa. And saw the lights of a car track across the wall. Headlights, bright and undipped. They stopped, illuminating the room so McLoughlin was suddenly aware that he was naked and the curtains were open. He swivelled around, reluctant to stand and tried to see who was outside. But the lights were too bright. And as he got up, holding a cushion over his genitals, the lights slid towards the hall, then disappeared so the room was dark.

  He went into the bathroom and pulled his robe from the back of the door. He wrapped it around himself and walked back into the sitting room. He sat at the desk and gently touched the computer’s keyboard. It purred and sighed like a small friendly mammal. He clicked on the icon for Google and entered the words ‘The Lodge, school, Dublin’. He hit the enter button and waited. Seconds later he was scanning the school’s official website. He opened the home page. There was a link to the archive. He followed the instructions. He selected the year, 1987. He sat back and waited. And there, on the screen, was the photograph that Mark Porter had shown him. He used the zoom button to scan the individual faces. Marina was easy to find. And so was Porter. And there was Poppy. They had called her the ugly sister. He could see why. She was scowling at the camera. Her face was round and heavy. Her hair was pulled back in two thick plaits and black-rimmed glasses obscured her eyes. The girl standing next to her couldn’t have been more different. Her face was round too, but pretty and dimpled. She was laughing, happy and carefree.