Dark Mirrors

by Siobhain Bunni

  “I think so, but I . . .” She couldn’t finish, feeling ridiculous and small.

  “My goodness, you’re really bringing it back today!”

  “I’m sorry . . . I shouldn’t have asked . . .”

  “Don’t be.” Julie shrugged, taking a resigned breath. “Robert . . . was a prick. There is no other word for him.”

  The absurdity of hearing such a word come out of her proper mouth was a little surprising and Esmée felt her pulse quicken at the malice that packaged it. There and then Esmée knew she had opened the floodgates.

  Julie leaned forward, her hands clasped as if in prayer on her lap. She took a deep bracing breath and retold her story.

  “It was supposed to be a special evening. I had it all planned. I put Harry to bed a little earlier than usual and had an incredible dinner prepared. I remember thinking to myself at the time that this was going to fix everything.” She paused for a moment and closed her eyes, taking herself back to the night before the kidnap. “He was late home and in a foul mood. I should have known something was up. He was so cross, so nasty. We almost didn’t sit down to eat, but I had put so much effort into it and besides I knew if we didn’t there would be more trouble. I refused to let him ruin it for me, for us both.” Her eyes opened and she expelled an apologetic sigh. “Robert had a bit of a nasty streak. He’d lash out sometimes and, well, that night I just wanted everything to be perfect.” She smiled tritely at Esmée, embarrassed by her own naïvety, in hindsight. “So we sat down and I told him.” She took a reinforcing breath as she recalled. “I told him about Beth.”

  “Beth?”

  “Yeah, I’d done a test that morning and it came out positive. I was pregnant. Just three weeks to be exact.” She smiled tenderly at the thought. “It was a complete surprise, an accident even. So that night I told him. I genuinely thought he’d be delighted. He’d always said he wanted us to try again. But he didn’t say a word. Nothing. Not even an expletive. He just got up and left. I was sure he’d woken Harry with the slam of the door but I just sat there, unable to move.” Her breathing was steady but her tone subdued as she shrugged at the memory. “I was sure he’d be happy. I was sure it would change things. He’d been so distracted. I could do nothing right. And poor Harry . . .” She shook her head, her voice filled with regret and sadness, letting her sentence go rather than recall just how Robert vented his anger on Harry, the deficiency of words speaking volumes. “This was the side of Robert no one knew. It wasn’t important to the case, they said, but it was, is, important to us. I think it helps explain him: how he was. I like to think that somewhere deep down,” she held her gripped fist to her chest with a noble, hopeful smile, “that he did love us. I think . . . it was just that he was ill . . . Well, that’s what I’ve said to the kids anyway. Gambling does that, they say.” Her tone was matter of fact. “We never knew, of course, about the gambling . . . not until it came out in court.”

  Esmée’s skin prickled as she listened, a perceptible sense of foreboding swelling as Julie, layer by layer, unwrapped her story.

  “To be honest, I was actually relieved when it came out – I always thought it was me!” She nearly laughed. “I always thought that I’d done something wrong and I tried extraordinarily hard to make it right. But it wasn’t me at all. It was just him. All along. Plain and simple.” She stopped and shrugged, her hands open to Esmée, imploring her to understand.

  And she did. Esmée knew full well, or was beginning to anyway: the parallel behaviour of inadequate feelings, unexplained outbursts and emotional torture . . . Jesus, this could have been her life Julie was describing.

  They both brooded in silence for a while, acutely aware of the part of the tale still to come.

  “He’d only been gone about half an hour – I was still sitting at the table – sobbing if memory serves me correctly,” Julie continued. “Then they rammed into my house and came straight at me in the kitchen. I had no idea where Rob was, only that he wasn’t there. For some reason I screamed for him, hoping he wasn’t far away, but he never came. They had me by the hair and someone knocked me at the back of my knees. Jesus, it was sore!” She winced at the memory. “Pain like I have never experienced before. I actually thought they had cut into my skin it hurt so much. I was crying and crying and crying.”

  She didn’t bother to hide the distress in her eyes, but swathed in an eerie sense of calm it spoke volumes about her anguish and what she had to do to conquer it and be able to talk about it this way.

  She described how she fell to the floor and took kicks to her stomach, how they slapped her across her head as she struggled and cowered to escape them. They kicked her tummy: her unborn baby. They broke her down till she was silent.

  “They wrapped this horrible tape around my mouth – it tasted like petrol – and put a cloth blindfold over my eyes. I must have looked a sight wriggling on the floor. I knew they were going upstairs . . . to Harry . . . I had to try . . . I tried to scream but my lips were stuck to the bloody tape. It tore layers off me . . . I couldn’t see . . .” She heaved a breath to calm her emotions and quell her tears. “They tied Harry’s legs and arms and wrapped a scarf around his little head to cover his eyes too. I could hear him cry. He called for me and his daddy . . .” She brought her hand unconsciously to her head and rubbed it slowly across her crown. “Then Rob shouted out for them to stop, but I couldn’t see him. There was blood in my eyes and I couldn’t see. I tried to scream, but sure that was a waste of effort. So I just cried.”

  Esmée didn’t interrupt the silent interlude but let it rest between them, affording Julie the time to settle. She had no words adequate to offer even a small consolation for her ordeal.

  “They kept us there for hours. They were so quiet. They didn’t speak a word, not even to each other. I could hear them move, their clothes and footsteps, but not a word. I prayed for it all to be over, for sleep to come but it didn’t. My eyes hurt and my belly, well . . . I thought she was dead.” Instinctively she placed a hand on her tummy. “I lost track of time, but when it started to get bright I heard another man join them – clearly the boss – Brady. Immediately after that they left. Rob too. He tried to tell me later that they had taken him by the neck and forced him to drive to the bank and, well . . . I believed him. It never crossed my mind, not even for a moment that he could have been part of it. I didn’t think he could ever be that cruel. But I was wrong and, well, you know what happened next.” She looked apologetically towards Esmée. “I thought I was on my own but when I tried to pull the straps off my wrists I got a thump. Stay calm, I told myself, stay calm. Rob will be back any time now to get us. But after about an hour we were put into a car. They drove us about a half hour then we stopped. They left us there, Harry and me, on the side of the road.”

  “My God, Julie, I . . . I don’t know what to say . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry? What are you sorry for? You did nothing.”

  She wasn’t accepting any sympathy. It was as if her pain was propping her up and propelling her forwards. The pain was her saviour: it meant she never had to feel guilty about the hate she felt. Her pain was her medicine.

  “Do you know, in all this . . .” she swept her arm in an all-encompassing gesture, “what the hard part was? Is?”

  Esmée shook her head.

  “It’s knowing that he was there all along. He watched it all. In the house. Robert Toner,” she stated powerfully, her anguish replaced by disgust, “had followed the thugs into our home and watched as we, his wife and unborn child were kicked to the groundfloor, bound and gagged. He stood and listened to his son cry out helplessly for him. Watched as our little boy struggled and whimpered in terror . . . And. He. Did. Nothing.”

  This was her closing statement for the prosecution. She was giving him the conviction he deserved but never got. He had been part of it all. Part of the whole deceitful scam. He played a part in both the planning and execution of the entire debacle and then offered up his own family as his
alibi. To save his skin. The compulsive gambler in Robert Toner made him do things any good person wouldn’t dream of, that’s what they said in his defence. Robert Toner, they purported, was a sick man, a weak man. This along with misplaced compassion and a draw on his feeble scruples led them to morph him into a willing informant. They offered him protection and a new life, contending that giving up the gang and their leader was the smart thing to do. So easily convinced. So eager to save himself. So weak.

  Brady had been the unfortunate winner of Robert’s losing hand on a fateful night in the 8 of Clubs. That’s, so the court was told, how they first became acquainted. Brady offered sympathetic terms while Robert tumbled deeper and deeper into Brady’s debt. He was easy prey: a man with even less luck than talent and substantially less sense again. Robert was hooked and all Brady had to do was reel him in. The payback was The Job. It seemed so easy: a real wipe-the-slate opportunity.

  “He used us,” Julie uttered, quite matter of fact. “Risked his own family. He didn’t give a monkey’s about us, couldn’t have cared less. Even when I told him we weren’t going into the witness protection programme, he actually seemed relieved, didn’t so much as try to change my mind. Yes. Robert Toner is a prick and if I never saw him again it would be too soon.” She swiped imaginary filth from her palms in finality. Her job was done.

  “So where is he now?” Esmée asked again, shutting down the guilt pangs that chastised her for asking the question she had come all this way for.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Really? He just left after the verdict?”

  “Yep.”

  “And he never made any contact, not even a phone call?”

  “No. Not once. Anyway the programme won’t allow it – either way. He left and we stayed and I haven’t heard anything since. Why so interested in him anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” Esmée shrugged. “A morbid curiosity, I suppose.”

  Harry returned to the kitchen and the conversation ended.

  “Harry,” Julie said, “this is Esmée. Her father was the garda who was murdered in the raid.”

  Her use of words intrigued Esmée further.

  Harry took a firm grip of Esmée’s extended hand and nodded politely in recognition.

  “Good to meet you,” Esmée said, feeling the ridiculous urge to comment on how much he’d grown.

  Again he just nodded.

  It was time to leave. Esmée made her excuses and left. She needed to be alone.

  She got back into her car and sat, unable to gather herself together sufficiently to drive. She had known most but not all of the story – it had been fairly well reported at the time. But the parts that Julie had kept private and the bits that she didn’t know at all were the parts Esmée was most interested in. That and the fact that while telling it Julie hadn’t so much as shed a single tear. Was that acceptance or anger? Or both?

  As she searched the depths of her own pain she concluded that what offended her most was the ignorance: how could Julie have been so blind, so naïve? How could she have been duped so easily? How could she, Esmée, also have been fooled so easily? How could she have allowed herself be manipulated like that?

  Deep in thought, she removed the envelope that Maloney had given her the day before from her bag and took out one of three large prints. She hadn’t believed him at first and if it hadn’t been for Tom she’d have physically removed him from the house herself. But here, having seen the boy, now a handsome young man, for herself, having shook his hand and looked straight into those soulful green eyes there was no denying it. Harry was Philip’s mirror image: he was his son. And Philip Myers was Robert Toner.

  In fact Robert Toner became Colin Jakes before he was ever Philip Myers. That was the identity they gave him when they relocated him to South Africa thirteen years previously. He was set up in a bungalow with cash, a job and a whole new life: that was all part of the deal. As far as the authorities knew right up until they recovered the car at the cliff, Colin Jakes was still living in Pretoria so this discovery was a significant surprise to the security services. They too had questions unanswered, like how had he managed to change his name again? From where did he get his papers? When had he returned to Dublin and what had he been up to since then?

  But for Esmée, with her connection to her husband established years before they had ever even met, the questions this revelation prompted were more of the emotional kind. Did Philip know who she was when they first met? Obviously, he must have. How did it not freak him out? Why had he never come clean to her? How did he never say? They were supposed to be soul mates. Did she even know who he was? Philip. Colin. Robert. Were they all the same? Impossible. They were all different: they had to be. In her head she imagined a wholly romantic version of circumstances and events that allowed their relationship to blossom without it being a weird and bizarre perversion of nature.

  But sitting in the car, looking at the three pictures, the faces all looked the same, but they had three different stories. Her eyes were drawn to Philip. She let her fingers trace the outline of his face and the swell of his mouth. She didn’t know him at all. And she felt exposed, like she was seeing him for the first time, but first impressions are inevitably deceptive and like dark mirrors they never reveal the truth.

  Chapter 18

  Day 62 and still no body. The initial suggestion by her mother that they should move back into Woodland Drive was quickly rejected. The house represented something obscene. Esmée felt violated. Like the last ten years of her life were nothing short of a lie. Had it not been for the existence of Matthew and Amy she would have been forgiven for branding them a horrible nightmare. Philip was not only a stranger but a psychological stalker: he had deceived her in such an intimate, convincing and fundamental way there was no way for her to even begin to understand or rationalise what had happened to her. What he had done to her.

  “It’s a kind of ‘traumatic bonding’,” the Garda counsellor attempted to reason, “It’s connected to what’s known as the Stockholm Syndrome where the victim develops strong feelings for the aggressor. It’s a kind of defence mechanism . . .”

  “But I’m the victim here!” Esmée protested.

  “Yes, that’s true, but with Robert –”

  “Philip,” Esmée corrected.

  “Sorry. Yes, Philip,” she replied, lowering her eyes in recognition of her blunder. “But here I’m assuming that Philip may have felt some manner of guilt towards you and your family and it’s this apparent guilt that re-structures the argument slightly.”

  “What? That he’s the victim?”

  “Well, in a kind of roundabout way: in his own head, yes, he thought he was the victim. You held all the power. He probably felt like he was as much a victim as you.”

  “Are you for real? Do they actually pay you to say this crap? He’s the victim? What, like I asked for this? Like I wanted him to do this to me. He found me. He chased me. I didn’t know any of it so how dare you sit there with your little notebook and make me feel like this was my fault!”

  “Mrs Myers –”

  “Oh for God’s sake, this is farcical!” Esmée snapped and standing up gathered her coat, bag and umbrella to leave. “There is no Mrs Myers. He wasn’t real. It’s not my name. I am Esmée Gill. Always was and still am. If you haven’t managed to grasp that, then, well . . . I’m done here.”

  “Please, Esmée, you’ve misunderstood. Of course this isn’t your doing. You can’t be blamed. I’m only trying to explain from Rob’s – eh, Philip’s point of view – what he may have been thinking. I’m here to help you understand.”

  Esmée stopped in her tracks and turned back to the now standing counsellor. “Thanks but I don’t think I need to hear this. I understand what has happened and no amount of ‘psychological spin’ can make this all right. I appreciate you’re trying to help, just doing your job and all that, but this is too soon. I don’t want to . . . I can’t think of him as a victim.”

  She left the
warm, mellow office standing tall, bolstered by her anger. She and Julie now had something else in common: they would both use rage as a mechanism to survive. Stepping into the grey wet day she didn’t bother with her umbrella, liking the cold wet drops of rain and their cooling effect on her burning cheeks. What was happening to her? Why was this happening? She felt like such a fool. She had fallen in love with him and for years had given him everything: her whole self.

  She shared with him everything she held dear. He had seen her at her best and her worst and she had been happy to share those vulnerable moments with him because she trusted him: loved him and thought he loved her. But really, how could he? How could he have made himself fall in love with her? Just like that? He sought her out. He made it happen. True love is supposed to be all about serendipity. Destiny. It’s supposed to ‘just happen’. You can’t force it. Their love, if it even existed at all, was synthetic. Unnatural.

  Lizzie was waiting for her when she got home. Recognising the dark mood, she allowed her sister to smoulder in silence, handing her a mug of tea. The two women sat in silence, each lost in the detail of the family woes.

  The vibration of Esmée’s phone ruptured the reverie. Jack’s name flashed white on the screen. She sighed: did she really want to speak to her husband’s colleague? She answered.

  “Hi, Jack.”

  “Esmée . . .” He sounded uncomfortable.

  In no mood for small talk Esmée pitched straight in. “What can I do for you?”

  “I promised I’d look into things for you.”

  “You’re very good,” Esmée responded. She was tired and cross and sure this was just another wasted courtesy ‘found nothing’ call.

  “Well, I thought I’d better give you the heads-up,” he continued.

  The resting demons of dread in the pit of Esmée’s stomach woke instantly and lurched upwards: he had something. She sat upright in the chair.