by Karen Perry
‘He loved you,’ she replies, referring to Luke in the past tense. ‘There was another I found. Not on the wall, but here, on the desk. Taken that same summer, but it had Katie in it.’
‘Katie Walsh?’
‘Yes. I gave it to her.’
I’m so tired, I have difficulty focusing. I can hardly grasp what she is saying. ‘You gave it to Katie?’
‘She was here yesterday. Or was it the day before? It’s been so hard to keep track of time since it happened.’
She’s unsettled, worried and upset. But she gives off something else too, something that suggests she knows more than she’s letting on. Or am I dreaming? I’m jet-lagged, dazed by being in Dublin. My surroundings are familiar yet odd; it’s as if I’m remembering something I dreamed, not something that actually happened.
‘She asked me whether Luke could have done this.’
This quiet room, the mess all tidied and cleaned away, retains a shadow of the violence that was done to it. And when I think of my brother, brought to such a state of anguish that he could inflict it, I feel weak with sadness and fear.
‘He was having one of his turns,’ she says softly. ‘You know how he can get … It’s like a shadow comes over him and all his confidence falls away. The light goes out in his eyes and he’s somehow vacant.’
‘I know what you mean, but I haven’t seen him in so long …’
‘Only last month he was out late at a meeting. Afterwards, he had too much to drink and when he got home he couldn’t get the key in the lock so he punched through the glass of the front door. I took him to the hospital and he stayed in for monitoring … He was shaken, Nick.’
‘But had anything happened lately? Anything that might have triggered it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘He’s been under some pressure with the business, but –’ She breaks off.
I sense she’s holding something back. ‘What is it?’ I ask gently.
‘It only ever happens when something from the past comes up … You know what I mean, Nick. That’s the only time he’s vulnerable.’
I feel the closeness of the room around me, but say nothing.
‘Nick,’ she says. ‘What did happen back in Kenya?’
I try to imagine what Luke might or might not have told her. How he might have hinted at what had happened, alluded to it or even made some drunken, confused confession. But I don’t know what. How could I?
Julia loses patience. ‘Your wife is waiting,’ she says, her voice flat and stern. ‘You should go.’
5. Katie
‘It’s not that it’s bad,’ Reilly says hesitantly. ‘It’s just not really enough. There isn’t anything new here.’
He seems tired this morning, a little crumpled, bruised from the editorial meeting he’s just come from. The editor, a notorious exploder, doesn’t pull any punches and it’s not the first time Reilly’s been on the receiving end of his verbal abuse. Still, I feel bad that he’s had to take a bullet on my behalf.
‘Was it awful?’ I ask.
‘Not the worst.’
‘Give it to me straight, Reilly. What did he say?’
He sighs and leans against my desk. ‘That it’s dull and ponderous and it reads like an obit for the fucking FT. That most of it could have been gleaned from Wikipedia.’ His eyes pass over me, searching for signs of distress.
I raise my eyebrows, lean back in my chair and exhale. ‘Wow.’
‘Don’t take it to heart, Katie.’
‘An obit for the FT?’
It strikes a note of fear in me. I hadn’t intended to make it sound as if Luke is dead. For the first time since this began, the dark sliver of that possibility opens before me.
The post-boy is doing the rounds with his trolley and stops to drop some letters on my desk, glancing at me and Reilly, then moving on. My face is burning, the sting of those words bringing the blood rushing to my cheeks. I lean forward, pluck a small package from the pile and turn it over in my hands.
‘Could you go back to Julia Yates? See if she’d open up to you a bit more?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘And you’re sure there’s nothing else from her interview? Nothing at all?’
Instantly my mind goes to the photograph – Luke, Nick and I sitting under the African sun, just before it all changed. It’s been hovering in my consciousness since Julia gave it to me, questions like bees buzzing at the back of my mind. Why had he kept that picture of us? Leaving it there to be found, what message had he meant to convey? I can feel Reilly’s eyes on me, something in me inclining towards his wisdom and intelligence, and I almost tell him. But the urge passes, overtaken by the dominant voice inside my head that insists I suppress it, keep a lid on it. Words shoot up painfully from the past: Don’t tell anyone.
‘There’s nothing,’ I say, turning the padded envelope over in my hands.
‘What about your man at the gates?’
‘I dunno. Security, doorman, whatever.’
‘He didn’t look very Downton Abbey to me. Anything worth exploring there?’
I don’t try to hide my disgust and he smiles, saying: ‘I know, I know. You don’t need to say it.’
We’ve had this argument before, about the risks involved in slipping into murky tabloid territory in a bid to sell newspapers. It kills me because Reilly has such integrity that I can’t bear to watch his ideals being compromised. He’s giving me the company line now in his softly reasoned tones: circulation, sales figures, blah, blah, blah. I’m half listening to him as I examine the package in my hands, my thumb hooking under the flap. The competition of the tabloids, he’s saying, and of the internet, of every twenty-four-hour rolling news agency. And how else are we supposed to survive when anyone with a Twitter account can write the news?
‘You may not like it, Katie, but scandal sells. We can’t afford to sit in our ivory towers.’
But I don’t say anything.
I’m staring hard at the open envelope in my hands. It’s small enough – no bigger than A4 – manila in colour and padded. My details have been scrawled in blue marker. English stamps, but I can’t make out the postmark.
‘What is it?’ Reilly asks, as I slide the contents out onto the desk.
For a moment, neither of us says anything. We just look at it. A sparrow, perhaps, or some other small bird. Ornithology is not one of my strong suits. There is something tender about the way it lies so small and still – even without touching it, you can sense the silky softness of its feathers, a flare of orange at its throat. Tender, apart from the angle of its neck – a sharp break, blood on the feathers from a deep gash that has almost taken the head clean off.
‘Jesus,’ Reilly says.
Still I can’t speak.
He’s on his feet now, shouting for Janice, and the pitch of his voice betrays his alarm, so that heads pop up from other desks, interest stirred. His secretary comes running.
‘Get onto the guards,’ he tells her.
‘Oh, my God,’ she says, spotting the dead bird, her hand going to her mouth.
‘Reilly, there’s no need for that,’ I say quietly, still reeling.
‘It was sent to you here at the paper, Katie. We have to take it seriously.’
‘It’s probably just some crank.’
‘Course it is, but we still have to deal with it properly,’ he says. ‘Is there anything else? A note?’
‘No.’
‘And the postmark?’ He picks up the envelope, squints at it.
‘Smudged.’
‘Brilliant.’ He lets out a sigh, apprehension coming off him in waves. When he reaches out and I feel the weight of his hand steady on my shoulder, I swear it’s all I can do not to burst into tears. The bird lies in front of me, a grim message. But what meaning is it supposed to convey? And why have I been singled out? Something comes to me then – a sound tunnelling up through memory: the beating of wings against the bars of a cage. Afternoon sunlight reaching the veranda, a heavy burden of bo
ugainvillaea blossoms hanging down. On the lawn a revolving sprinkler sending out jets of water in hoops and swirls. The flutter and twitter of those sparrows in their cage.
No, I tell myself. It couldn’t be that. It’s not possible – nobody knows … Mentally I shake myself to shrug off the memory. Still, the strangeness of the past few days presses down on me. I pull my hands away from the desk, tuck them under my thighs so that Reilly can’t see them trembling.
‘Listen, don’t let it get to you,’ he says quietly. ‘This happens to everyone once in a while. You’d be amazed at the kind of cretins out there with time on their hands, fucking idiots with no imagination who think it’ll be great gas to send something ghoulish to a journalist, put the frighteners on her.’
‘You’re lucky it’s just a bird,’ Janice adds. ‘Kieran Fox was sent a turd.’
‘Kieran Fox is a turd,’ Reilly says brusquely. Then swiftly, before I have a chance to object, he plucks the bird from the desk and the queasiness rises to my throat. Without a word, he slots it into the envelope, taking possession of it. Janice has hurried away, and the hush that had briefly fallen over the office breaks up, phones ringing, movement entering the space.
‘You all right?’ Reilly asks me, and I nod quickly.
His hesitancy is back, but it’s something different now and I feel my cheeks grow hot again. I try to smile. ‘Really,’ I say. ‘I’m fine.’
I spend the next couple of hours trying to sex up my article, the words scattering like ash over the screen. A female guard comes. We sit in the canteen and I answer her questions.
Do you know who might have sent this? No.
Have you received similar threatening messages in the past? No.
Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against you?
I waver a little over the last one. In my profession, there are always people whose toes you’ve trodden on. But when she asks me if there was anything else I could think that might be significant – anything at all – it’s there again: the nudge of memory, that sound in my ears, the flapping of wings. I feel the tightening around my throat, the pinch of another notch. No, there’s nothing.
Something about this is making me deeply uneasy. And it’s not just the dead bird. It began with those photographs of a drowned girl, like some portent of doom, yet still I didn’t see it coming. But now Luke is missing and Nick is coming back and I can feel myself being sucked in. Nostalgia is creeping over me, the strings of the past drawing us together again, tightening around the three of us.
The guard’s visit leaves me feeling worse. Instead of reassuring me, her careful questioning seemed more like she was sticking her fingers into the wound and having a good poke around in it. Afterwards, I can’t sit still. I grab my things, leave the office, and pretty soon I’m driving out to the coast. The stale smell of the car rises up around me. It’s no triumph of modern engineering but I don’t really give a damn, and as I drive down the quays alongside the widening river, I ignore the detritus of paper coffee cups, old newspapers and other junk that furnish the back seat, as well as the straining sound the engine makes every time I change gear. The drive-time radio shows are kicking off and I flick through the stations, searching for news of Luke, but there’s nothing so I switch it off.
Before long, I draw the car into a space at Sandymount Strand, turn off the engine, and silence fills the air around me. I could have gone to a pub, but I can’t bear the thought of human contact right now – the noise and distraction. I want to sit alone in my car, watching the night coming on.
I know what has drawn me back here: Luke, of course. Less than a month ago, now, I had contacted him to arrange a meeting. He was still riding high on the wave of his successful Late Late Show appearance and I had been assigned to do a feature on him for the paper. I was reluctant, what with the whole freight of family history between us, yet something had snagged my interest – an itch I had to scratch.
My request must have seemed like a bolt from the blue. We had seen each other at Sally’s funeral, briefly, and on a couple of other occasions, Dublin being the size it is, but I always felt he was wary of me. However warm his greeting, I couldn’t escape the thought that, behind the friendly exterior, he was dying to be rid of me. So it came as a surprise when he responded warmly to my email, agreeing to meet me, and within his response, I read a degree of interest on his part in our becoming reacquainted. We arranged to meet for coffee in a hotel near Spencer Dock but, an hour beforehand, he rang to suggest we meet instead out at Sandymount Strand.
‘It’s such a beautiful morning,’ he had said, his voice confident and optimistic. ‘Let’s make the most of it.’
And I had found myself in the car park by the strand, a paper cup of coffee in each hand, leaning against my car and waiting for him to turn up. I was nervous in a way I couldn’t quite figure out, for what was there to be nervous of? As his car swung into the car park – a black Range Rover gleaming in the morning sun – I caught his eye and saw the grin already on his face, felt the jump of my nerves as I pushed myself away from my car and went to meet him.
‘Great minds,’ he said, coming towards me with two paper cups of coffee held aloft.
He leaned forward to kiss my cheek and we laughed while awkwardly holding our twin coffees.
‘Mine are from Dunne & Crescenzi,’ he said, glancing sceptically at the cups in my hands. ‘What about yours?’
‘Petrol station.’
‘Ah, Katie! Throw that muck away and take one of these!’ he said, in a voice that might have sounded brash and bullying were it not for the charm of his accompanying smile. And I, surprising myself, did just that, telling myself it was best to get on his good side if I wanted any information out of him but, really, that was a lame excuse, for it had always been that way between us – him giving the orders, setting the pace, and me reluctant to disappoint, not wanting to be the one to show resistance.
The tide was way out that morning, the brown sand skimmed and marbled and stretching for miles, occasional breezes blowing in little eddies over the hard surface, sending up brief clouds of dust. We walked together, Luke and I, out across the strand, past the Martello tower, veering south in the direction of Bray Head. The sky above us was a brittle blue. We drank our coffee and chatted, and it was surprising to me how quickly and easily we settled into a pattern of conversation. It was a knack he had, I realized, of putting people at their ease, the openness he had that made you feel you were an old friend with no barriers or secrets between you and him.
We talked at length of his business and its success. Two pubs, a restaurant and a half-share in a country house that was being converted into an exclusive weekend retreat – he had made a name for himself as one of a handful of entrepreneurs who were responsible for the transformation of the Dublin social scene, developing venues that were casually chic, modern enough but with a nod and a wink in the direction of the traditional Irish pub. There was no doubting Luke’s success, his Midas touch and innate understanding of what passed for ‘cool’. And when the crash came, he seemed to escape unscathed. Not everyone was as lucky. And when I put it to him that it was unusual he had managed to remain untouched by the downturn in a business that relied heavily on a thriving economy, he gave a belting laugh, then sent me a sideways look, saying: ‘Prudence, Katie. Prudence saved me.’
Snatched glances at him as we walked side by side showed him to have aged well. He was thirty-nine – two years older than me – and his sandy-brown hair was cut smartly, with only a peppering of grey at the temples. He wore jeans, Converse shoes and a green parka – casual clothes, but you knew they were expensive. There was something of the ageing Brit-pop star about Luke. His wedding ring appeared to be platinum and was the only flashy thing about him, if you could even call it that.
‘What about luck?’ I asked.
‘Luck?’
‘It could easily have gone the other way.’
He frowned then, a pinched line of confusion running between hi
s eyebrows.
‘If you consider the rest of your peers, other entrepreneurs in the pub and club scene, all of whom played a part in the regeneration of the economy –’ I listed a few ‘– they haven’t all been as fortunate as you. Some of them got badly burned.’
Young guns with a pioneering attitude that in hindsight seems like borderline gambling; borrowing heavily, they had pressed ahead, transforming Dublin from a dingy urban backwater, tired and neglected in the post-colonial years, into a vibrant, youthful city, pulsing with money and music, culture and excitement. Luke nodded, sanguine, as I spoke of some of those who had fallen.
‘Poor fuckers,’ he intoned. ‘They hadn’t a clue what was up the road waiting for them. Thought it was going to be champagne and oysters till Doomsday. They pushed it too far, took on too much. It was madness.’
‘Do you see them much now?’
He shrugged. ‘Mulvey, the odd time. Farrell’s a basket-case since he lost all his money, and the others have left the country.’
‘They must hate you,’ I said jokingly, but he glanced at me sideways and I felt his confidence slip.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because they’re in hock for millions, and you’re still afloat,’ I said, laughing at his expression. He seemed genuinely affronted.
‘I suppose.’
I asked him whether any of his peers had commented on his TV appearance, but he waved away the question, as if embarrassed by it.
‘I have to ask, Luke: was it planned, your speech that night?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Honestly, it wasn’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where it came from, what came over me.’
‘You seemed so passionate.’
‘I was livid! Christ, all that self-important bullshit the others were coming out with, the faffing around in the studio beforehand … It just got to me, and I kind of exploded. It was funny in a way, thinking back on it. My philanthropic side coming out.’
