The Sleeper Lies

by Andrea Mara

  The Blackwood Strangler, as he’s become known in the media, has a number of trademarks – the surveillance of his victims’ homes in the days before he attacks, and a preference for single-storey houses. But sources suggest there are some lesser-known trademarks too that have been withheld by police. At some of his crime scenes, markings such as crosses and drawings have been found, as well as footprints in the victims’ gardens, with deeper indentations under windows, as though the killer stood outside to watch before attacking.

  I knew all this – but I’d forgotten about the footprints under the windows. I glanced over at my own living-room window. The curtains were drawn against the dark outside and all the doors and windows were locked – I’d checked a thousand times before sitting down. The red weather alert was promising a storm, and a nationwide curfew had been in place since late afternoon – surely he wouldn’t be out tonight? But suddenly the house I loved and the solitude I valued so much were tainted.

  In the Armchair Detective group, I shared the article I’d just read, and asked the others if they’d seen much about footprints under windows. Anne, who had an eye for detail and a strong pedantic streak, was quick to point out that it was an old article – I know,I replied,but I’d forgotten about the footprints until now, and I’m wondering if they were present in just a few cases or maybe all of them?

  Cheryl said she thought she’d seen them mentioned since and went off to google.

  I suppose since we know he always stalked his victims, the shoeprints are seen as a given and not mentioned in every article? Judith typed.

  Good point. I toyed with the idea of telling them about my own footprint experience and the face at the window but stopped short of doing so. It would sound like I thought the actual Blackwood Strangler had decided to abandon his UK hunting ground and chase down an armchair detective in Ireland. Taking my interest in web sleuthing just a little too far.

  Ray could never understand my fascination with true crime. Why do you read this stuff? he used to say, wrinkling his nose. But then, there was a lot Ray didn’t understand about me, and so much more I didn’t know about him. Until it was too late.

  CHAPTER 7

  2005

  Ray and I met under a cloud you might say – at my dad’s funeral – and perhaps that should have been an omen. I’d been standing in the function room for an hour, shaking hands and wishing for escape, as another tear-stained face zeroed in on me. Before I could work out who it was, I was pulled into a woolly hug by a vaguely familiar woman in her eighties.

  “Your dad was so good to me, Marianne, always checking in on me especially in the winter months. If I can return the favour in any way, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  I nodded and smiled and saw the look cross her face – the same look I’d been seeing all morning. They were searching for tangible grief, and I was coming up short. I was numb. The last three days had been a flurry of grotesque activity – the knock at the apartment door late on Tuesday night, the two gardaí, hats in hand, their faces telling me nothing good was coming. The suggestion to sit. The story unfolding. A late-night walk by the lake. Slippery rocks. Deeper than anyone realised, they said. And just like that, on a normal Tuesday night, he was dead.

  And then we did what we do best in Ireland – people I hadn’t seen in years appeared out of nowhere with offers of help. Help calling the funeral home, arranging the readings, meeting the priest. I’d been gone from Carrickderg for five years by then, and had lost touch with almost everyone in my bid to escape. But it didn’t matter to any of them – they came in droves. At twenty-two, I had no idea how to organise a funeral but they did it all, and the flurry of activity carried me through, insulating me from the raw grief that threatened to invade through even the smallest chink and swallow me whole.

  There was no question about where – my dad had lived in Carrickderg all his life, and he’d be buried there too, in the tiny graveyard beside the church. The “afters” – a reception with food and drinks and black-clad locals – was in the Carrickderg Arms, and for an hour now I’d been standing in the function room, enveloped in hugs and other people’s tears.

  The woman moved on and a man in his fifties took her place. The local butcher as far as I recalled, though everything was vague and swimming.

  “What will you do, Marianne?” he was asking. “With the house, I mean. You won’t sell it, will you?”

  That was what they all wanted to know. You won’t sell it surely? That house has been in your family for generations.

  I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t imagine selling but there was no way I could leave my city-centre apartment and come back here – not a chance. I’d worked so hard to get the apartment, in Dublin’s insane rental market, and I wasn’t about to walk away.

  “You could always live in it and commute to Dublin, couldn’t you?” the butcher was saying. “Where is it you work again?”

  “Grand Canal Dock, near the city centre,” I said mechanically. “A bit far for commuting from Carrickderg.”

  “Doesn’t that fella who moved out here last year commute – yer man who lives out on the Ramolin Road? In and out of Dublin every day, only a bit over an hour if you leave early enough. You’d be grand!”

  I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for me to make life-changing decisions over weak coffee in a hotel function room, or if he was just making small talk. He was joined by a tiny woman with a birdlike face – his wife, if I remembered correctly – and she caught a mixed-up version of what he said.

  “Ah no, that fella out on the Ramolin Road wouldn’t be suitable for Marianne at all. He’s a bit of a loner – she needs someone who’s a bit of craic.”

  “What are you on about? We’re not matchmaking, we’re talking about Marianne moving back here!” said her husband.

  “Oh, you’re going to move home! That’ll be lovely for you. It’s what your dad would have wanted.”

  “Oh no, I haven’t made any decisions yet. I have an apartment in Dublin really near my work – I don’t want to give that up . . .”

  “But sure you must feel awfully smothered there – the traffic and the noise and everyone living on top of each other. Much better out here where you’d be left in peace.”

  I smiled at that, but the irony was lost on her. “We’ll see. Now, sorry, I’ve just spotted someone I need to talk to over there . . .”

  They nodded their goodbyes as I slipped past them towards the other side of the function room and the open doors to the hotel garden. Darting through, I stood outside, taking in the fresh June air and the rolling green gardens of the Carrickderg Arms. At the end of the garden, an empty wrought-iron bench sat by a small fountain. I watched the water spray high into the blue sky as I made my way down to the bench, and it was there, just minutes later, that we first met. The start of everything.

  He sat beside me, jolting me from my fixation on the spray. Turning to smile, I tried to work out who he was. I’d spent the whole morning putting names on faces, but this time I drew a blank. He was mid-thirties, I reckoned, younger than most of the funeral goers, but at least a decade older than me. His dark-brown hair was flecked with grey but only just, and he was – to use an old-fashioned word – handsome in the truest sense. He was tanned and outdoorsy and tall – his long legs stretched across the grass much further than mine – and his green eyes studied me with interest but none of the pity I’d seen over and over that morning.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said, his accent unmistakably American, and then it clicked – he wasn’t at the funeral at all. “Are you from around here?”

  “I am. How about you?”

  “I’m here for work – a working vacation, I guess you’d call it. I’m writing a novel set in Ireland, and I figured I needed to come here myself to do it properly. I’m Ray, by the way.” He reached out a hand to shake mine.

  “I’m Marianne. So you’re an author? What are the names of your books – maybe I’ve read them?”

&
nbsp; He smiled. “Only if you found them in the darkest, dustiest corner of your library. They’re not exactly on the bestseller lists. What kind of books do you like?”

  “Crime mostly,” I told him, “I’ve been reading crime since I discovered The Famous Five, and devouring mysteries ever since.”

  “You’d hate my books so,” he said with a grin. “No detectives, no police, though plenty of angst and death. Mostly people throwing themselves off cliffs because of unrequited love or an inability to write a perfect poem – that kind of thing.” His eyes twinkled, and I decided I liked this self-deprecating author from America.

  We talked, sitting on that sunny bench – I told him about my dad and the funeral and a little about my mother too, and he told me about his ex-wife and his seaside home in Cape May, New Jersey. When it was time go back inside, without stopping to think I invited him to join us for a drink. I don’t know if it was because I was enjoying the conversation, or because he had no link to Carrickderg and my dad but, either way, I was glad when he said yes and walked me back inside.

  The crowd had grown – people who worked locally coming in to pay lunchtime respects.

  Geraldine from the Garda Station moved towards me, balancing a cup of tea on a saucer.

  “Did you see who’s here?” she said, nodding towards the bar.

  I looked over just as Alan Crowley glanced up from his pint and caught my eye. He nodded briefly, and turned back to someone beside him. Was it Jamie? I craned my neck.

  “Yeah, that’s Jamie beside him,” Geraldine said, reading my mind. “I hope there won’t be any trouble . . . you know what Alan’s like after a few pints.” She turned to Ray who was hovering behind me and stuck out her hand. “Geraldine Breen, local Garda Sergeant,” she said, waiting for him to respond in kind. I don’t know if it was police instinct or pure nosiness, but Geraldine always wanted to know who was who and what was where.

  “Ray Sedgwick,” he replied, shaking her hand, and offering nothing further.

  “You’re not from around here then?” Geraldine went on, looking up at him – he was about a foot taller than her. Ray repeated his story as she nodded along, pushing her flyaway hair behind her ear. We had plenty of tourists in Carrickderg, but not so many handsome American authors.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alan get up. Jamie glanced over, and put a hand on his father’s arm.

  “Oh, now, what’s going on here?” Geraldine said, under her breath.

  Alan started to make his way towards us, with Jamie trailing behind looking anxious.

  “Do you want me to deal with him?” Geraldine whispered to me. “He’s had a fair skinful at this stage.”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer – Alan was standing in front of me, hat in hand.

  “Marianne, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, his words following a cloud of Guinness breath.

  “Thank you,” I said, hoping that would be it.

  “Even if your da and myself didn’t always see eye to eye,” he continued, slurring the last words, “there was never any ill-will towards you. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. Jamie hovered behind, eyes on me.

  “What Jamie did back then, that was the kind of stupid thing kids do – it wasn’t his fault.”

  I nodded again.

  “Da, leave it,” Jamie said, eyes down now, one hand on his dad’s arm.

  “I just want to tell her there’s no hard feelings. Marianne’s our neighbour again, and we need a clean slate. Isn’t that right, Marianne?”

  I nodded a third time, willing him to go away.

  “Are you moving back?” Jamie asked, looking up again.

  “I don’t know, but I’ll be there for the next few days anyway, to organise my dad’s stuff.”

  “And Hanne’s too,” Alan said. “It’s like a shrine to her still, the priest was saying. Can’t be a healthy way to live.”

  “Da, stop, that’s enough.”

  “I’m only telling the truth,” Alan said, lurching forward to shake my hand. “We’ll see you soon, no doubt.”

  He turned and went back to his pint, followed by an apologetic-looking Jamie.

  “What was all that about?” Ray asked, when they were out of earshot.

  I opened my mouth to answer but couldn’t work out where to start.

  Geraldine jumped to the rescue. “Let’s just say Alan spoke about something ten years ago that should never have been discussed publicly, much less with his twelve-year-old son, and in his clumsy attempt to make amends he’s only gone and done exactly the same thing again.” She shook her head. “That man is a fool and his son is no better.”

  As I stared after Alan and Jamie, I wondered about that – would it have been preferable if they’d never said a word? For my dad, undoubtedly. But for me? That part wasn’t clear at all.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ray was only supposed to spend three weeks in Carrickderg but, in the end, it was three years. It started as these things often do – slow and fast all at once. As I said my goodbyes to the last lingering mourners at the funeral, Ray touched my elbow and asked if I’d like to have coffee sometime. I think that’s why I said yes – it was so unobtrusive. If he’d used the word “date”, I’d have said no, not at my own father’s funeral. But coffee was casual. And so I said yes. Then back I went in my clapped-out old car, navigating the winding roads to the cottage.

  Inside, it was cool and dark, at odds with the bright June sunlight. My dad was everywhere – his cup, half-full of cold tea, sat on the coffee table, beside his copy of the Irish Times. Tuesday’s copy. Half-read. My throat tightened and I closed my eyes to stem the tears. Too much to do.

  In his room, the bed was perfectly made, and his book, carefully bookmarked, sat on his bedside table. In the wardrobe, pressed trousers and ironed shirts hung side by side, polished shoes neatly below. His job in the hardware store in Carrickderg didn’t require such attention to sartorial detail, but that was my father – how you presented yourself was important, he’d always said. All intentions to go through his clothes disappeared in one gulp of grief when I opened his dresser drawer and saw my mother’s shirts neatly folded inside. More than twenty years had gone by and still, there they were, as though they’d been put there yesterday. I picked one up and smelled it, finding none of the mustiness I’d expected. Was he washing her clothes over the years? I swallowed and swiped at my eye.

  On top of the dresser sat their wedding photo. My mother, laughing and radiant and so other with her striking Danish colouring. My father, with a rosy flush in his pale cheeks, bright-blue eyes and a mop of dark-brown hair, still unable to believe this exotic foreigner had said yes to a quiet, unassuming Irishman who worked in a hardware store.

  Back in the sitting room, I lowered myself onto the small red couch, looking around as I did. Hanne was everywhere – her paintings on the walls, her photo on the shelf. Her books – a mix of Danish bestsellers and English-language art books – sat side by side with my dad’s history collection. The cups she’d bought on their honeymoon in West Cork, the candle from the daytrip to Bantry. I knew this only because my dad told me, another contribution to my made-up memories. She was a patchwork sewn from my father’s stories and the photos on his walls: this woman who up-ended his world, then broke his heart.

  As it happened, a week went by before the coffee with Ray – he’d taken my number but hadn’t phoned, and I was too busy sorting through my dad’s things to think about it. The call came on Friday morning as I was about to start clearing the attic. He suggested coffee that afternoon in the Wooden Spoon, Carrickderg’s one and only café. He needed a break from his typewriter, he said, and I wondered if he really used a typewriter. We agreed to meet at three, and I got back to climbing the rickety ladder to the attic, and he, presumably, got back to his typewriter.

  Inside the attic was musty and dark, the single light bulb casting an anaemic glow near the hatch. I crawled along the floorboards to start at the far end – I
hadn’t been up there in years and didn’t realise there would be quite so many boxes. What on earth had he been storing up here? I opened one and peered inside. Even in the low light, I could see it contained clothes – dresses, I realised, pulling one out. Hanne’s, presumably. My God, how much of her stuff did he keep? The dress was turquoise blue as far as I could make out, long and shimmery, with thin straps. A gown for a ball, not an attic. What was it for? As far as I knew, Hanne had come here after college, met my dad, and they’d married within months. They’d never lived anywhere else, and there weren’t a whole lot of black-tie balls in Carrickderg. I pulled out the next dress – a jade-green one, shorter than the first, and just as beautiful.

  Beneath that was a wooden jewellery box with a carving of a bird on the lid. Carefully, I opened it. Empty. There was a little drawer below the main compartment, with a hole where the handle should have been, but it was stuck closed. I shook the box. Something moved inside the drawer but there was no tell-tale clink – perhaps she’d taken her jewellery with her when she went home. Or perhaps she never had any – a box waiting in vain to be filled.

  Beneath the jewellery box was another dress – silver and sparkly and far too beautiful for the dusty attic. Maybe she’d brought it here from Denmark, hoping for a life that was different to the one she found.

  Inside the next box there were sketchbooks – charcoal drawings of unfamiliar faces, page after page. A slim, middle-aged man, with a high forehead and heavy brows and, further along, a woman of similar age, her hair and clothing changing from one page to the next, her mouth always set in a tight line. Wondering who they were, I put them to one side to take downstairs.

  Deep in the corner, where the attic roof met the floor, was a smaller box, an old USA biscuit tin. I carried it under the light bulb and prised off the lid. Inside, there were postcards, letters, coins, ticket stubs and airline boarding cards – future contents for a scrapbook maybe? I set it down beside the hatch, and went back to open more boxes.