‘No ….’
‘You understand?’
‘I do.’
‘I should wait, perhaps, but I can’t.’ His speaking out her first name had made him instantly light-headed. ‘I don’t want you thinking I’m impatient. I’m a patient man, Gloria, but these are exceptional circumstances, you’d agree?’
‘Well – ’
He didn’t let her finish. ‘I must seize this opportunity.’
‘Seize? In what way?’
‘I want to ask now if you are interested?’
‘In?’
‘Will you take a chance on me … with me?’ he corrected. He moved closer to her in the brief silence that followed, and tried to encourage a positive response by re-locking eyes with her. He was dancing lightly on his feet. He was having a rush of confidence.
He wanted to reach out and take her hands and squeeze them, but he restrained himself. After all, there was the plaster-cast to consider. ‘Is it too much to ask? I don’t think it’s too much.’
The muscles tightened around Gloria’s lips. Her gaze shifted to the corner of the room.
He went ahead. ‘Are you shocked? Of course you are. Please don’t answer just yet.’
‘I’m not shocked. Thank you, Jarleth. We’ll talk.’
‘I’m going to go now.’
‘That would be best.’
Though she attached no real significance to it, she had intended to tell Barrett about Virginia Coates calling, just to be thorough. However, his advances threw her. She would ring him when he was behind his desk. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek to prevent his lurching. ‘Good night.’
‘Good night, Gloria. And thank you.’
Barrett left the apartment in a hurry. Gloria raised her plaster-cast in the air and took herself to the window to watch her detective scurry down the street. She had been thanked for cooperating. It was only now that she remembered she had seen Barrett in the courts. Giving evidence in a Traveller case. He was still in uniform. He was finding it difficult under cross-examination, she recalled, constantly having to refer to his notebook.
Didn’t he see here that she was heartbroken?
He did not, though he must have queried it in his notebook.
26
It was late again when Gloria came out of her apartment building and stood on the pavement looking left and right. There was a new balance to be struck with the soles of her walking shoes now that her arm was bound and parcelled. She tested the distribution of weight with a roll of her hips. She rolled one shoulder, then the other. That brought on what felt like a deep thrombotic pain – she imagined the two parts of the broken bone rubbing together like tectonic plates – but it quickly subsided when straightened her spine.
She fully intended to set off on the pavement: east or west, she didn’t know which. She was distracted by the scene across the street. There were painters and decorators at work in the café. She could see them through the shutters. There were two of them slapping paint on the walls at an impressive rate. That was good, wasn’t it: change?
She stepped to the curb and watched. For no particular reason she stood with her toes extending beyond the edge. She noted that the painters’ white van had a slow puncture, rear wheel, left-hand side. She was sure they knew.
When she saw a taxi approaching, she put her hand out.
‘Where to?’
‘Howth.’
The driver indicated, made a U-turn. ‘Howth it is.’
Gloria took her phone out and dialled Tom’s number. Tom could see who was calling from his display. Gloria.
‘Sorry to ring so late. I’m coming over. Is that all right?’ She had never been so brazen, not even with her husband. What do you make of this, Richard, my love? The situation is workable, you’d say. Good to follow through. And how brave you are: all sweaty, no make-up, wearing only duds.
‘Oh yes, Gloria. Please do come over. I’m up. I’m wide awake.’
‘Good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
The taxi-driver shook his head. Even with the road clear it would take at least thirty-five minutes. He knew his fare was on a mission – illicit, he thought. Knew she didn’t want to talk. Lust was a fine thing. He went heavy on the accelerator pedal. Gloria sat back in the seat and made her limbs go limp. She gazed out the window at the streetlights floating upstream. She let her head empty.
‘Good God, Gloria, what did you do to yourself?’ Tom brayed when he flung open the door.
‘Broke it.’ She felt foolish and proud. ‘You’re not to mind it.’
‘Of course I mind it. What on earth did you do?’ She gave him a brief and unflattering account of what she had done. Passing across the threshold of the house that was about to be repossessed felt warm and inviting. Tom was looking older and more battered tonight. That was reassuring. Furthermore, he was overwhelmed, in a weary sort of way. Gloria kissed him. ‘Do you think we could manage?’
They formally thanked each other for the sex they had. Thank you, Gloria. Thank you, Tom. There was no embarrassment, and no immediate regret. The milk in the fridge was sour. Strong black coffee suited both of them. It seemed to go with a slowmoving, uncluttered morning, which they began very early.
‘You’re anxious to go?’ he asked – out of politeness, really.
‘I’m already gone,’ she replied.
This kind of calm panic was a rare thing in both their lives, and was thrilling. Neither questioned their own actions. They avoided speculating about further intimate encounters. That was for when they were alone and reviewing their separate desires.
‘I’ll give you a lift.’
She turned the offer down flat. ‘I’ll walk a little.’
‘More walking.’ He smiled.
‘I want the air.’
He was going to offer to walk with her, any distance, but thought better of it. He was keen to show he was listening. ‘More coffee?’
She kissed him so firmly on the lips that it made him reach around her waist and pull her in to him fiercely.
‘I’m gone,’ she whispered over his shoulder. Coupling and uncoupling: could it really be this clean and emphatic? She was getting away with it; that was the feeling, but the test didn’t apply.
Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Gloria.
Dublin bay was placid, the air sharp, damp and pleasing to her. There was sunlight on the water, the crown of the headland, the top of the tree canopy in the park that came down to the seafront road. A shimmer came from the windscreen of a car on Bull Island, beyond the lagoon. The occupants were out walking the golf course, Gloria imagined, or were on the beach. The early-morning commuters still had a clear run into the city. The click and mock flat-tyre burr from the concrete road assaulted her ears and spurred her on.
Gloria was determined she would make her way home on foot. She lengthened her stride, then broke into a run. The running was unnecessary, exhilarating, and would soon be nauseous, but on she went. Super bag-lady stuff, were she not going back to her apartment to sit and think and plan who else she might bed, and shock poor dead Richard with her grieving.
There were barristers in chambers, and clerks of the court who had the eye for her. At least one judge. That crooked solicitor. There was the man in the fruit-and-veg market she had passed on her way to King’s Inns. What was it about him?
Gloria was planning to fit in in a non-conformist way, not jump into a dumpster. The tide was not yet fully in. On the stretch between the East Wall and Clontarf seafront. the silver shadow mudflats seemed to tremor in response to Gloria’s pounding feet. She called out to Richard, but he made no appearance. Where was his heart spray? Gone missing in her cleaning frenzy. She called again, but she was hopeful for something else. She didn’t know what. What was clear to her was that she had loved, and had been loved. She had shrunk to that part of a human being that cannot be reordered, amended or otherwise changed. Stripped down, bereft of answers, exhausted, she could build again from there. She saw that she would b
e free to spring forwards when her strength had returned, free to take her chances – which she vowed she would do.
She felt that if she spread her arms and made fairings of her fingertips, the wind would lift her, but there could be no proper arm-spreading for now. The bone-pain was back, now that she was swinging the bunched arm, and she hadn’t brought the painkillers she’d been given. In any case, she was sure that if she got airborne she would be blown off course. That was for another day.
But were she to be lifted up and carried across the far arm of the bay, she might have passed over Virginia Coates’ mothballed house in Killiney, where, unknown to her, a related scene was playing out. The obsessive John Miller was being confronted by his erstwhile lover. He had been camping in the house waiting for Virginia to return, and now he had his reward. The deluded and angry John would not accept that their stormy affair was over. She had it wrong, she’d see. He didn’t care about her new art-school lover. That could be ended in an instant. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – that would see him break with Virginia.
She told him she knew what he had done, and was sickened. He told her he deeply regretted his action, but no part of it could be undone. She got down on the living-room floor with him. Their rutting was hard, unaffectionate and soundless. It made Virginia weep for Richard Meadows and for herself. This was an end, she assured John. She could not live with a man who had committed such an act.
‘You’ll get away with this, I know,’ she declared softly. Those were her parting words. Strangely, they were meant to comfort.
27
Tom rang Gloria, but she didn’t answer. He left a message: would she come to Paris with him for a long weekend? They could slip away. He didn’t tell her, of course, but he’d gladly use the emergency cash that he kept hidden behind a loose skirting board. It was extraordinarily exciting to him, the prospect of spending the very last reserve, his flit-money, on himself and Gloria. What a way to hit the buffers. It was a proper fait accompli.
Gloria thought she might say yes. Repeat their assignation in Paris. Repeat their clean break. That was no less exciting.
John Miller drove his killer sports car to Donnybrook Garda Station, where he stopped directly outside the entrance, in a bus lane and on double yellow lines. He got out and walked into the desk sergeant in a trance. He made his confession, then went and sat in a corner until he was led to an interview room.
Detective Barrett was called, but at that moment he was on a hospital trolley being wheeled to theatre with acute appendicitis. Saved by the knife, Barrett was thinking, his eyes looking down along his body to where the surgeon would cut. Then, back on the job with fresh resolve. We make the world better piecemeal, he was thinking. That’s as good as it gets. He’d have another go at Gloria Meadows. It was the right thing to do. He’d get her father’s piano tuned, get her playing again, to lift herself up. In light of the remote possibility that he would not wake from his general anaesthetic, Jarleth Barrett was having a philosophical spurt.
The Richard Meadows case would be dealt with by another, more experienced detective, though that experience would not be needed.
In Donnybrook, a bus-horn sounded, but nobody came out to the car that had been left with the keys in the ignition and its engine running.
Despite prolonged and exhaustive police interviews, and sustained pressure from legal counsel, John Miller resolutely refused to offer any explanation for the killing of Richard Meadows. Nor would he give details as to the precise location of the deed. He would only admit to killing Richard Meadows by running him over, dumping the body and burning the car. Miller’s obsession with Virginia Coates, the absolute loyalty his love for her inspired, ensured that her name was not formally linked to his action. Barrett would later interview Virginia Coates and establish a connection between her and Miller. There was, however, no proof of her knowledge of the incident, and no evidence of her being complicit.
The case of Michael Tierney, knocked down and killed by a hit-and-run driver, would go unresolved.
Copyright
First published in 2020 by
Liberties Press
1 Terenure Place | Terenure | Dublin 6W | Ireland
www.libertiespress.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada by
Casemate IPM | 1950 Lawrence Rd | Havertown | Pennsylvania
19083 | USA
Tel: 001 610 853 9131
www.casemateipm.com
Copyright © Philip Davison, 2020
The author asserts his moral rights.
ISBN (print): 978–1–912589–11–1
ISBN (e-book): 978–1–912589–12–8
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
Cover design by Roudy Design
Printed in Dublin by Sprint Print
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or storage in any information or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher in writing.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters in this book and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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