In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  Caught up as we were in the excitement of planning our weekend away, I drank a little too much. Ellie did too. Can you blame us? We were young, excitable, caught up in the fury of things, the romance of stealing away.

  ‘I love you, you know that, right?’ It was the first time I had mentioned the ‘L’ word to her. I put it out there first. For a heart stopping moment an awkward, gaudy pause hung between us. My heart hammered hollow in my chest, banging out a muffled thud in my inner ear.

  ‘I know you do, Gabriel,’ Ellie replied as a smile brightened her eyes. ‘And I love you too. More than you could ever know.’

  What’s the old saying? ‘In vino, veritas.’ Drunk, excited, tactless. I don’t know why I said it, maybe one, maybe all three, but I said it nonetheless.

  ‘I know you do, Sweetheart. Look what you did for me.’ Her smile dissipated in an instant. Anger darkened her eyes, her hand, which until that instant had been resting on mine, was whipped away as though I were a poison to her.

  ‘What would you say something like that for?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Well, I did, I just didn’t mean for it to come out like that.’

  ‘Jesus, Gabriel. Just when I thought we were able to put that behind us…’

  ‘I know, I know, I’m so sorry. Really, I am. I just meant…’

  ‘Why did you have to go and bring that up? We were having a nice night for God’s sake and then you go and drop that in my lap. You know I’ve been struggling with that. Every bloody day I struggle with it. And you go and drop it on me as though it’s some fancy compliment.’

  ‘Ellie,’ I said as I took her hand back into mine, ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry, really, I am. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. It was a stupid thing to say. I know how hard it’s been for you, really I do.’

  ‘Well then, don’t bring it up again, alright? I’ve done enough talking about it in the last few weeks to do me a life time…’

  ‘What?’ A wave of panic washed over me.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody dramatic! I haven’t told him what we did, just that I was struggling with something.’

  ‘Who? Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘Father Jessop, of course, I’d hardly go to my GP for forgiveness now, would I? Jesus, Gabriel, calm down. It’s okay, I haven’t even given him a hint as to what was bothering me, just that…’

  ‘Just what? Jesus Christ, Ellie, I don’t fucking believe this!’

  ‘Don’t swear at me, Gabriel. I don’t like it, and keep your voice down will you, people are looking at us.’

  ‘What have you told him? Why did you even bother going to him? You could have talked to me if you wanted to get things off your chest, for God’s sake, Ellie.’

  ‘No offense, Gabriel, but I’m sick of talking to you about it. Besides, all you do when I do talk to you is tell me that everything will be grand and that Dan Maguire deserved his comeuppance for what he was going to do to you and me. But you can’t offer forgiveness and that’s what I crave, that’s what I need if I’m ever to get on with my life…’

  ‘Ellie,’ I said as I turned her by the shoulders to face me, ‘How long have you been talking to Jessop about this and what exactly have you told him?’

  ‘Gabriel, for God’s sake, you’re being overdramatic. I haven’t told him anything yet, no details. Just that we did a bad thing and that I have been feeling really bad about it and that I want absolution so that I can move on.’

  ‘We? You told him about me, that I was involved with it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure everyone knows that we’re together anyway. He’d have figured it out on his own I’ll bet.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ellie. I don’t believe this! That man hates me, hates my guts for God’s sake! What have you done? He’ll come after me with this he will, I swear it to you! He’s been waiting for nine years with me in his sights and you’ve just painted a bull’s eye across my fucking heart for Jesus’ sake!’

  ‘Gabriel,’ she said as he brushed my hands from her shoulders, ‘Stop swearing and lower your voice will you.’

  I took a few deep breaths and tried as best I could to calm myself. Then with a measured timbre in my voice, my hands clamped together on my lap I did my best to stay calm as I asked her another question.

  ‘Have you given him any hint as to what we did? Does he have any clue as to what this, “bad thing” might be?’

  ‘No! I’m not that stupid as to tell him something like that outside the seal of confession.’

  ‘Oh, good. Wait, what?’

  ‘It’s kind of like he’s been counselling me, and it’s been working well. Surely you’ve seen that I’m getting better now, I’m happier in myself. All I’ve been doing is talking to Father Jessop about how I feel about what we did, not what we actually did. I don’t have to tell him about that until we’re actually in the confessional and no matter what I tell him in there he can’t talk about it, no matter what it is, he can’t tell another soul, it’s Church Law…’

  ‘Church Law? He wouldn’t give a damn about Church Law if it meant he had a chance to get back at me, Jesus Christ, Ellie, how could you be so stupid?’

  ‘Stop it, Gabriel. Don’t talk to me like that, I don’t appreciate being spoken to like a child, I’m..’

  ‘Why, Ellie? Why did you go to him?’

  ‘You might be doing alright with dealing with this, Gabriel, but I’m not. Not by a long way and I needed help, I needed…’

  ‘What? You needed what?’

  ‘Forgiveness, absolution. Otherwise I’ll…’

  ‘Forgiveness? Jesus Christ, Ellie, you and your damned Catholic guilt…’ I slammed my fist on the top of the bar. Heads turned, conversations stopped.

  ‘How dare you!’ she shrieked as she stood up and doused her drink over me before storming out of the pub leaving me to face the stares and grins of everyone in the bar. I didn’t bother to go after her. It would have only made a bad situation even worse. I went to the toilets and cleaned myself up as best I could. When I left The Stoop a few minutes later there was no sign of Ellie to be seen. I went next door to Murphy’s and bought myself a shoulder of vodka and a packet of smokes. An hour later without having given it a single thought I found myself sitting on the cool grass in The Dell, bemoaning Ellie’s stupidity and mourning for what I was sure were the last days of my freedom. If Earl Jessop was to learn about what we had done that night in the woods down in Carneydonnagh, I was a dead man walking.

  22

  The drive from home to the police station normally took just a few minutes, but that bright May morning it seemed to take an eternity. My head was thumping as a result of my Grandfather’s punches. My right eye was beginning to swell out and there was a crust of blood and snot caked around my nose and mouth. Our town rushed by in a blurred kaleidoscope of colour and shadow making my eyes hurt and my brain swim. Tom Curran sat beside me in the back of the squad car, he was talking to me but his voice was far away and muffled. I was in a state of shock. So much was happening and in so short a time. Ellie was dead. I had known it, known it for sure, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I had hoped against hope that she would turn up alive somewhere. It was the only straw to which I could cling. There had always been that sliver of hope that this was nothing more than a long and terrible dream and that sooner or later Ellie would waltz back into town and the nightmare would end. It wasn’t to be. They had found her washed up on The Barrow Strand. Granddad had beaten me to a pulp. Two shocks. One to the mind, one to the body. The world spun around me and I thought I’d be sick.

  Tom Curran helped me out of the car. He held onto my arm, more out of compassion for a poorly man than to counter the risk that I might try to run. My hands weren’t in cuffs which I took as a good sign. He shepherded me from the car and down a path which lead around to the side of the station. As we reached the door a bolt of pain exploded at the back of my head. I slumped to my knees, the blow taking Curran as much by surprise as it did me. He co
uldn’t hold my weight when my legs gave out and came down with me. When he pulled me back to my feet I saw the rock. Staggering through the station doors I managed one quick glance over my shoulder, enough time to see the other Garda rush towards Joe Brandon. He was standing by the station wall taking aim with another rock. The door slammed shut behind us deadening Joe’s angry shouts. This was bad. They were blaming me. The police might not yet be in a position to do so, but Ellie’s family and certainly the rest of Crannstonbarrow were too, there was no doubting that.

  ‘Right, let’s go over all of this just one more time.’

  I was sitting in a small room toward the back of the station. Tom Curran was sat on a chair by the door. The policeman asking the questions was on the other side of the table facing me. I didn’t know him, I’d never seen him before.

  ‘I feel I’ve been very clear on every detail. Why do we need to go through it all again?’

  ‘I’m a very pedantic man, Gabriel. Let’s just say I relish the detail. Now, let’s go back to Thursday night down in The Stoop. What happened there?’

  ‘I told you, we had an argument.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Why does that even matter? We had a row, so what?’

  ‘Oh it matters alright,’ he said with a wry smile.

  ‘We had a row. Every couple does.’

  ‘Indeed they do, Gabriel. But after most couples row, one half of said couple isn’t found dead on a beach, so you might appreciate my inquisitiveness. Now, quit it with the attitude and just answer the fucking question!’

  ‘I don’t know! It was just a row, we had a few drinks on us.’

  “You and your damned Catholic guilt.” ‘What did you mean by that?’

  ‘What?’ This was new to me. He hadn’t mentioned it on the first run of questions.

  ‘According to a number of witnesses from the bar, that was the last thing you said to Ellie before she tossed her drink all over you and stormed out. Now, that doesn’t sound like an argument over nothing to me. So, what were you two fighting over?’

  My mind was blank. I couldn’t give him an answer. Well, I could tell him the truth but that would only dig the hole I had found myself in even deeper. I was starting to panic. I hadn’t killed Ellie, I hadn’t laid a finger on her, but I was wrapped up tightly in the death of Dan Maguire and one slip, one lose word or phrase and I was sure to hang myself. A sharp rap on the door brought a welcome reprieve from the questions. Tom Curran opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. A moment later he stuck his head back into the room and called the other policeman out.

  The questioning resumed a couple of minutes later with a newfound intensity.

  ‘Ellie was struggling with a crisis of conscience. Did that have anything to do her, “damned Catholic guilt”, well, did it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it’s about time you stopped playing the innocent gobshite, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Tom Curran stepped back into the room and as he squeezed the door closed I caught sight of him. Jessop was standing out in the hall, that scurrilous grin of his plastered across his face. I wasn’t surprised to discover that he had wasted no time, none at all. He had been pressing Ellie hard to get at what was troubling her so much, now, he would never know. That didn’t matter so much anymore, all he’d had to say was that he had been counselling the deceased through a difficult time. Something she and I had done had been bothering her, it had deeply disturbed her, and now she was dead. Tie that in with what I had said in The Stoop about her Catholic guilt and the finger of blame pointed squarely at me.

  ‘So,’ resumed my interrogator, ‘Are you going to tell me what you and Ellie might have done to cause her so much upset?’

  ‘What? You think we held a terrible secret, so terrible that I felt compelled to kill her just to keep her from telling that kiddy-fiddler out in the hall there? No, you’re miles off, sorry, mate.’

  ‘Here, less of that kind of talk now. Father Jessop is only here to help. He says that Ellie was a deeply troubled young woman and he is of the opinion that you were the root of that trouble. He’s here only to do his civic and moral duty, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop trying to deflect attention from yourself by casting aspersions on an upstanding member of our community. Now, I’ll ask you once more, and I want an answer this time! What were you arguing about?’

  My mind was racing, I had to watch every word I said or I might be liable to trip myself up and land myself in Mountjoy. Innocent or not, they were looking for something, anything I might say that would help them to pin Ellie’s death on me. We were in The Stoop. We’d argued about Ellie bringing Jessop into the loop on the whole Dan Maguire thing. She’d stormed out. Before that. What was before that? The weekend away. The hotel brochures. That was it, that’s what would get me out.

  ‘Sex,’ I said. ‘We were arguing about sex.’

  ‘What?’ said the interrogator. ‘How do you argue about sex? What does that mean?’

  ‘We’d slept together a few months back. Consensual of course, before you ask! I liked it, we did it a few more times. Ellie liked it too, but she struggled with her feelings about it after a time. I suppose you could say it was that, “damn Catholic guilt”, of hers which was plaguing her. That’s it, that’s the truth of it. I’d been pushing her to go on a weekend away, I wanted something more than a quickie in her mother’s house when the family were out, something with more class than a sordid tryst down a back lane after a few drinks on a Friday night. I’d asked her to pick up some brochure’s in the city on Thursday afternoon, I wanted to take her away but she wasn’t too keen. She said that we should stop doing it, that if I was serious about her I could prove it by waiting until we got married. I was drunk, I got angry and, well, you know the rest…’

  ‘And that’s it?’ asked my interrogator, his face growing pale as he struggled to hide his disappointment. To further drive the wedge between me and a prison sentence I kept going.

  ‘In fact, if I remember right, she didn’t take the brochures after she doused me with that drink and I certainly didn’t either. I was too embarrassed, too upset to think about them after she’d left. I’m sure if you gave Jack Troy in The Stoop a call he’d be able to tell you that he cleaned them off of the bar after we’d left. They’d be soaking now of course, what with a pint of stout going over most of them, but still…’

  ‘Think you’re pretty fucking smart, don’t you, boy.’

  ‘No, Sir. Not at all. I’m not trying to be, I’m sorry if it’s coming across to you like that, it’s not my intent. I just want to be crystal clear on the facts, Sir. That’s all.’

  ‘So, tell me, where did you go after you left the bar?’

  ‘Like I already told you, I went next door to Murphy’s and bought some vodka and cigarettes. I walked out along Darkin Road, that’s where I met John Traynor, have you called him yet?’

  ‘Did you speak with him?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve told you all of this already, why are we going through all of this again?’

  ‘Just want to be clear on the details, that’s all. Now, you say you spoke with John Traynor. How did that go?’

  ‘He’d been up to the top of Crook’s Hill, he’d been tossing a few of his racing pigeons. He was driving home, he saw me all the way out there and he pulled over to offer me a lift back into town.’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘I don’t know? About half eight or so, around about then…’

  It was getting harder for him to hide his frustration. Things weren’t going according to how he had thought they would, and that could only be good for me. He looked over to Tom Curran who shook his head and then left the room in silence. He was followed shortly thereafter my by interrogator, whose name I never learned. They left me for a good hour or so, alone with my thoughts. I honestly believed that they might have been watching me, waiting for a sig
n of guilt to betray itself. They could have watched for eternity, I hadn’t killed Ellie, I never laid a finger on her, but still, I did nothing which might have been misinterpreted as guilt. I sat in silence and I thought of my sweetheart. I thought of how much I loved her, how much I was going to miss her. The tears followed shortly after they left me alone in that room.

  ‘Right, Gabriel. You’re free to go.’ Tom Curran stood in the door of the interrogation room.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. For now in any case. We might need to talk to you again over the next couple of days if anything needs clearing up, but I don’t think that will be necessary. Jack Troy pulled those brochures from his bins a half hour ago. John Traynor confirmed that he was speaking to you at twenty to nine out on the Darkin Road and we already knew that Bridie McConnville had seen Ellie sitting alone down by the edge of the harbour bridge at the same time. That’s where we think she went in. If she’d had as much to drink as you and Jack Troy say she did, it was a dangerous place to sit. Into the river first, then out to sea. The post mortem will tell us more.’