The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

by Tanya Farrelly

  Suddenly, Joanna saw movement: a figure, hunched against the rain. Instinctively, she shrank back into the doorway. No, it wasn’t him, not Oliver – too short to be Oliver. As the figure grew closer, there was something familiar in its gait. Joanna pulled up the hood of her coat – but the person wasn’t coming towards the pub; they were heading for the marina, for the barges. Long black coat, boots, a white woollen hat with a large bauble on top. Her mother passed not thirty metres away and failed to notice her secreted in the doorway. Paralyzed, for a moment, by surprise and indecision, Joanna let her go. It was true then, was it? Vince on the boat all this time – Vince, not Patrick, who her mother planned to abscond with. Unless … could Oliver have somehow orchestrated her mother being here?

  Fear made her spring into action. Her mother was not far off the marina by now, and Joanna set off after her, running as quickly as she could. At the sound of the running footsteps behind her, she turned, startled. Joanna caught up with her, breathless.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘About Vince, the whole set-up. I know.’

  Her mother stared at her. ‘What? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Is it true? Is he there?’ Joanna pointed towards the marina.

  Her mother cast about her, looking for something to say, but she was out of excuses. She nodded. ‘How did you find out? Was it Patrick?’

  Joanna glanced round. ‘No. I’ll explain, but not now. We have to move. It’s not safe here. Which one is it?’

  She followed her mother to the barge – so distracted by thoughts that Oliver might be lurking somewhere ready to spring that she didn’t have time to consider the fact that she was about to meet her father.

  Carefully, her mother stepped onto the deck. It was in darkness save for a shred of light that showed through a small gap in a curtain. Her mother put out a hand and helped Joanna aboard, and then gave a knock – a soft rat-tat-tat on the cabin door. Joanna heard a noise – a key turning – and she almost knocked Vince Arnold off his feet in her hurry to get inside.

  ‘What—?’ In his panic, he’d reached for some kind of metal bar.

  ‘Vince – stop. It’s Joanna. She …’

  Joanna had locked the door on the inside. She looked at the man in front of her and spoke in a hurry. ‘You have to get out of here. It’s not safe.’

  ‘We know that. It’s just another few days, until everything’s died down, until everything’s ready,’ her mother said.

  But the man had heard the panic in her voice. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  Joanna stammered – awareness finally hitting her that the grey-bearded man in front of her was her father. ‘I’m not the only one who knows.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Oliver. Patrick knows him. I know something about him – something really bad, but he’s said if I tell the police he’ll report you. You have to get out of here as soon as it can be arranged. Otherwise, he’ll walk.’

  ‘But he can’t go to the police right away – he knows that you have this, this information about him?’ Vince ran a hand through his thinning hair. His voice was soft, almost identical to how his brother spoke.

  ‘Well, yes, but it’s not just that … I’m afraid of what he might do.’

  Her mother interrupted. ‘This is the man you’ve been seeing, the solicitor? What’s he done?’

  There was no point in keeping anything back now; they had to know the danger they were in, all of them. ‘I think he killed his wife. And if he did, there’s every chance he’ll want me out of the way.’

  Vince Arnold didn’t hesitate. He took out his phone – the phone, Joanna guessed, and made a call.

  ‘Yeah, look something’s happened; you’ll have to get over here – and make it quick.’ He looked at Angela. ‘Patrick’s coming back. We’ll think of something,’ he said.

  She bit her lip and looked at Joanna. The three of them suddenly alone together.

  ‘So, you’ve been here all along?’ Joanna said, softly.

  Vince nodded, avoiding her eye. ‘There were some very dangerous people … I had to.’

  ‘Does Rachel know?’

  ‘No – and don’t you go telling her,’ Angela said.

  Joanna looked at her – then at Vince – anger replacing her fear. ‘When did this start? Had you no intention of ever telling me? Were you just going to go to Milan and disappear, pretend you were dead too?’ Reproach, she was due that much.

  Her mother put a hand up to silence whatever Vince was about to say.

  ‘We were going to tell you,’ she said. ‘But not yet. There was the inheritance money; I’d have had to explain it – but we couldn’t tell you everything until Vince was safely out of the country, until we were settled in Italy and he had a new identity.’

  ‘And in the meantime, I’d have thought that my father was dead?’

  ‘It was the only way,’ Vince said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Joanna sat down, trying to work everything out – all the mysteries, the subterfuge of the last few weeks, only to end like this. ‘There was a body – Patrick identified it as you …’ Fear’s cold fingers creeping round her insides as she said it.

  Vince looked at Angela. ‘A homeless man,’ he said. ‘Died in the freeze.’

  ‘Jesus. And nobody knows – he’s buried in your grave … Where? Where did you find him?’

  ‘It sounds too fantastical to be true, but it’s what gave us the idea. The garden shed – I went out one morning, found that the lock had been tampered with. The man had crept in out of the cold – minus twelve degrees that night …’

  ‘Didn’t Rachel know?’

  ‘She never went out there. I called Patrick; it was him that thought of it. I’d been talking about disappearing but a body … if there was a body … he could identify it; the insurance money wouldn’t be stuck in limbo.’

  ‘So you took the body – the man – and dumped him in the canal?’

  Vince nodded. ‘We didn’t do it immediately. I had to disappear first, then Patrick came to take care of things. I put a new lock on the shed, left the keys for him. We made a patch in the ice – we’d put my coat on the body, my wallet in the pocket, so that they’d contact Rachel without any DNA being done. We knew the freeze was to last until the end of the week – that within hours the ice would have formed again, covered him over. It would look like an accident, like I’d slipped and fallen into the water.’

  ‘Christ. Had you no conscience? How do you know that man hadn’t a family, a wife out looking for him? And Rachel, what about Rachel?’

  ‘Rachel and I … I’d met your mother again, and the feelings were still there.’ He took Angela’s hand, she looked at Joanna, eyes pleading. ‘This was our chance to make it work, and she won’t know it, but it’s better for Rachel this way. I put her in danger – got myself in a situation I couldn’t get out of – they were calling the house, making threats.’

  ‘And what’s to stop them from doing that still? With you dead, they can be sure that she’s about to come into some kind of inheritance. What makes you think they won’t go after her for the money?’

  Vince shook his head. ‘We’ve seen to that. Patrick’s going to pay them off with Rachel’s share of the money. She was happy to do it, to live in peace. It just about covers what’s owed.’

  ‘And you’re happy to do that, leave your wife with nothing?’

  Vince looked away. ‘Rachel will be okay; her family will see her right.’

  Joanna took a step closer to her father forcing him to look at her. ‘You don’t care who you implicate, do you? You don’t care about putting us in danger … about …’

  ‘I won’t, I swear it.’ He gave her a long, penetrating look – a look that said ‘you can trust me’; the look he was probably used to giving her mother but would hold no weight with her.

  ‘But you already have, don’t you see that? My mother is complicit in your crime – if you’re found out, we’ll all go down. If Oliver—’

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nbsp; ‘You’re the one who brought him into it’. Her mother snapped, fear making her forget who was really in the wrong.

  Joanna was about to make a sharp retort when they heard a noise outside, and the same rat-tat-tat her mother had tapped out on the door. Vince Arnold moved to open it.

  ‘Well, well,’ Patrick said when he saw Joanna. ‘Is this what all the panic was about?’

  ‘Not quite. Tell him, Joanna.’

  Joanna looked at Patrick – apart from the beard, the two brothers really were alike.

  ‘Oliver knows,’ she said. ‘You have to get him out of here.’

  ‘Oliver? What’s he doing sticking his nose in for – ah, I get it – you two are involved, aren’t you? I knew he wouldn’t let that chance pass him by. What about the wife, does she know?’

  ‘She’s missing – I think he did something to her – he practically admitted it. And now he’s blackmailing me – saying if I go to the guards about him, he’ll report all of you.’

  ‘How did he find out? Did you tell him?’

  ‘No – he told me.’ Joanna turned to her mother. ‘You wouldn’t tell me what was going on. I found the phone – your old phone – and had Oliver ping the number you’d been calling. It gave him the location of the barge. That was before I knew anything about his wife being missing. He was here tonight spying on you.’

  ‘Whoa – back up a minute. What are you saying? What exactly do you have on Ollie?’

  Joanna took a breath – she felt dizzy with it all. ‘We went to Belfast, Oliver and me. While we were there he used his wife’s debit card. I know because I saw her statement at the house. When I asked him about it, he got really annoyed – then he pretended to have met her in Belfast – but I discovered her profile on a website for missing persons. He’s killed her. I’m sure of it – that’s why he’s trying to prevent me from telling the guards about him being in Belfast. He went there to leave a trail, make it look as though she’d been there when she disappeared.

  ‘Jesus. Ollie – a killer? Maybe you’re getting a bit carried away here—’

  ‘Why else would he care if I said anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. But look, whatever about Oliver, I think it’s time we got you out of here.’ Patrick had turned to Vince. ‘I’ll check flights – whatever flight is going out in the next two hours, you’re on it. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to Milan or not. You can use my passport, just in case – then send it back to me. I’ll give you enough cash to get you through the week. Your documents should be ready by then. And I’ll join you.’

  Patrick booked Vince onto the last flight to London. He would travel on to Milan – to Patrick’s apartment – on the first flight the following morning. It was decided that Vince would leave alone. He borrowed Patrick’s coat and scarf, and put on a cap to hide his face. They didn’t know if the boat was being watched: if Oliver was still out there he might phone the police with an anonymous tip-off. Without that threat over Vince there was nothing to ensure Joanna’s silence. Patrick gave him the keys to the four-by-four he’d hired; he could leave it at the airport, hide the keys some place and call him from a public phone to tell him where they were. Vince would leave the mobile phone on the barge – Oliver had already had it traced once, it would be easy to do it again.

  Joanna and her mother left shortly after Vince had departed.

  Her mother began to speak. ‘So now you know why I couldn’t say anything. I’m so sorry, Joanna, I …’

  Joanna cast her eyes round the marina. ‘Sssh. Not here. Somebody might be listening.’

  They walked in silence the rest of the way to the car.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joanna … it was never meant to turn out like that; if Rachel Arnold hadn’t turned up at the house that night …’ Her mother turned to her as she put on her seatbelt.

  Joanna looked at her. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

  Angela nodded, eyes teared over.

  ‘And what if he’s caught? If someone recognizes him in Milan? It could happen. The world is pretty small.’

  ‘We’ll take our chance. You won’t say anything, will you, to anyone?’

  Joanna had started the car. ‘What and have you locked up?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m doing this for you, not for him. You might have fallen for his charm but you needn’t expect me to – nothing changes the fact that for the past twenty-six years he failed to recognize that he even had a daughter.’

  ‘I know that. I hope you’ll give him a chance though, in time – if only for me.’

  For the next two hours Joanna watched the clock. Vince Arnold’s flight to London was scheduled to depart at a quarter to ten. He’d have touched down in Luton at half past and would be safely out of the jurisdiction. All he had to do was keep out of sight, in so far as he could, until he reached Milan.

  It was approaching midnight when Joanna stole from the house, got in the car and made her way to the police station. With her father safely out of the country, there was nothing to stop her from reporting Oliver. He had no proof that Vince was alive. The only thing she had to fear was for her own safety, and she’d take that chance and hope they brought him in before he could come anywhere near her.

  There was no one at the desk when she arrived. She stood there going over what it was she wanted to say. Five minutes passed. She could hear voices in an office somewhere beyond the desk. Then laughter.

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  A few minutes later, a garda appeared and asked gruffly what he could do for her.

  ‘I have some information about a missing woman: Mercedes Hernandez.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Her husband was in Belfast on the tenth of March; it’s the last date that Mercedes used her debit card – I … I have evidence.’ She took the statement from her bag, put it on the desk in front of him.’

  The garda looked confused.

  Joanna ploughed on. ‘I saw her name on a missing persons site – it said that she’s been missing since the beginning of March, but her husband was in Belfast on the tenth of March and claims to have seen her, so why would he report her missing?’

  The garda peered at the statement. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘I took it from their house. I’m … a friend of the husband. I was with him in Belfast.’

  ‘Wait there for a moment.’ The young guard disappeared in the back again.

  Joanna waited, she hadn’t made herself very clear. She was nervous. A few minutes later an older, heavy-set man appeared.

  ‘You have some information on the Hernandez case?’ he said.

  Joanna began again. ‘I have reason to believe that Oliver Molloy – her husband – has harmed her.’

  ‘Oh?’ He stared at her, sharp blue eyes curious.

  ‘I was in Belfast with Oliver Molloy on the tenth of March, the last date that Mercedes Hernandez’s bank card was used. I questioned him about it, and he claims that he met Mercedes there, but I’ve since seen that he reported his wife missing from the beginning of the month. I think he’s lying about having seen her in Belfast– and that he used the card to place her there.’

  The garda didn’t look too excited by her information. She showed him the statement. He didn’t say anything for a moment. The he folded it and handed it back to her.

  ‘I can see why you’re concerned, but Mercedes Hernandez has been found safe and well. In fact, she turned up in a police station in Belfast to identify herself just a number of hours ago.’

  ‘What? Are you sure?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry, I … I didn’t mean to waste your time.’

  Joanna left the station, dazed. Mercedes had turned up. So why had Oliver made that threat? It didn’t make any sense. ‘Tell the police about Belfast and I’ll tell them about Vince Arnold’, that was what he’d said – and now he could. She had nothing on him. But no – there was something – something that didn’t add up. If he’d met Mercedes in Belfast, if she
had used her card there, why would he care if the police knew about their trip? In fact, why hadn’t he told them about it himself – had them call off the search for a woman he’d reported missing?

  Joanna started the car, and the radio came on. She paid no attention to it, caught up in her thoughts, until she heard the newscaster’s announcement. ‘The body of a woman has been found in a wooded area near Glencree.’ Quickly she reached for the volume. The reporter described how a man out walking his dogs had come across the body, which had yet to be identified. All they could say for the moment was that the body was believed to be that of a woman in her early thirties. Joanna thought of the Hernandez sisters – and the physical similarity between them. Vince Arnold had used Patrick’s passport to get on the flight. Too risky, Patrick had said, to use his own. They bore a strong enough resemblance to get away with it. Was it possible that the woman Joanna had thought was Mercedes Hernandez had pulled a similar trick? With Carmen on side, maybe even an accomplice, Oliver could get away with it – unless there was, of course, something to link him to the woman who’d been found in Glencree.

  FORTY-NINE

  Oliver had seen Joanna running through the rain towards the marina. Then he’d turned and headed for home. They’d all be there now – on the barge. He could make a call and have the lot of them brought in, but he wouldn’t. In truth, the girl had been through enough. She wouldn’t do anything to put her family in jeopardy, whatever she thought about him.

  When he’d left the house, he’d forgotten to take his mobile. He picked it up to find that he had three missed calls, but he didn’t recognize the number. He was about to dial into the voicemail when it rang in his hand; the same number flashing up on the screen. The guards, probably the guards. He could just ignore it. But wouldn’t that be worse – a man desperate to find his wife not even picking up the phone? And besides, he couldn’t avoid it indefinitely, not if he wanted to make a plea of innocence.