by Andrea Mara
“You’re a great woman for the books, Marianne,” Bert said, nodding towards the label on the package. “What are they this time – Agatha Christie?”
“An old Julia Land murder mystery, and a new Kate Atkinson. I have a ticket to see Julia Land being interviewed next week, so I need a refresher.”
“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t this week or it’d have been cancelled along with everything else. Country’s gone mad for cancelling things,” he said with a back-in-my-day shake of the head. “But, look, you made it through the snow in one piece, that’s something.”
“I sure did. What, were you expecting to find me frozen solid on my living-room floor?” I laughed.
He tilted his head to one side, and lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t laugh – it can happen, you know.”
“Ah, I know, but things aren’t that bad yet. Still a bit of oil in the radiators.”
“Remember that poor fella in Ramolin?” he went on. “Froze to death that time and nobody found him till three days later.”
I vaguely remembered the details and couldn’t help wondering why Bert thought this was a good time and place to bring it up.
“Well, we’re out the other side of it now anyway,” I said.
“Oh, that won’t be the end of it,” he replied, touching the side of his nose. “Watch this space. More snow on the way before the end of the month.”
“Really?”
“Don’t worry, Marianne – if you don’t answer my knock some morning, I’ll make sure to check you’re okay.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious, but either way it was oddly reassuring. Because, realistically, if something happened to me, how would anyone know?
CHAPTER 23
2006
“Let it go, Ray,” I said, staring at the scratch on the otherwise pristine dark-green paintwork. “It’s a tiny mark, barely noticeable, and you don’t know for sure he did it.”
Ray reached out and rubbed the car, as though it were a pet dog who’d been injured.
“Of course he did it. Who else would?”
We were parked outside Delaneys’ and had gone in for a bite to eat. I couldn’t say for sure that the scratch wasn’t there before we went in, but Ray was adamant.
“I saw him down the street when we were going into the pub – that dumb black hat of his stands out a mile. Think about how easy it would be for him to stick a key in the paintwork as he walked past.”
“But that’s just it – think how easy it would be for anyone to do it, by accident or on purpose. You have no way to prove it was him, so let it go. You blocked his planning permission, and if he has keyed your car, maybe you’re even again and we can all move on. Right?”
He turned to face me.
“Are you saying that’s fair? To illegally damage a car in return for an entirely legal planning-permission objection?”
“No,” I said, my hand on his arm. “It’s not. But sometimes it’s not about whether it’s strictly legal or not – if you can do it just to get at someone, rather than for more genuine reasons, does it matter that it’s within the law?”
He pulled away from me, his eyes suddenly cold.
“Ray, honestly,” I said, my voice softer now, “it’s tiny – it’s not worth tackling him – he’ll just deny it anyway and then you’ll feel worse.”
He shook his head, and I couldn’t tell if it was in resignation or opposition, but he got into the car and we drove home without discussing it again.
The following Friday, when I arrived back from work in Dublin, we dropped into Delaneys’ for a pre-dinner drink, where John was behind the bar.
“Did you hear what happened up at Alan’s?” John said, pouring two glasses of wine.
I stiffened and looked over at Ray, but his face was impassive.
“Someone left the henhouse door open,” John went on, “and a fox got in – every one of his hens was killed. Jamie was in earlier, said he found them this morning. Blood and bits everywhere. Carnage.”
I sat on my bar stool, my hand wrapped around the stem of my wineglass, unable to look at Ray.
“That’s terrible,” he was saying to John. “Nature can be so cruel.”
John moved to the other side of the bar to serve Mick O’Shea, and I turned to Ray.
“Please, please, tell me you didn’t do this,” I whispered.
His eyes widened. “Jesus, Marianne, of course I didn’t! You honestly think I would do that?”
I shook my head. “Shit, sorry, of course not. I just got a fright – I know you were pissed off about the car last week.”
“Well, sure. But this is a whole other level.” His green eyes searched my face. “You trust me, right?”
I touched his knee. “Of course I trust you. But, God, poor Alan.”
“Poor Alan,” Ray snorted, taking a swallow of wine. “He shouldn’t have left the henhouse open, I guess. Outfoxed, right?”
“Ray, it’s not funny. That’s his livelihood. And the poor chicks . . .”
He laughed. “Now tell me this, are you the same young lady who ordered roast chicken in the hotel last Sunday?”
I shook my head. It wasn’t the same thing at all, but I didn’t want to keep talking about it.
“How’s the book going?”
“Good, I got lots done this week. My agent called on Wednesday to ask when I’ll have some chapters over to her but I want to wait until I’m finished the first draft this time. Surprise her.” He grinned. “How was your week in the big bright lights of Dublin city?”
“Oh, very exciting,” I said, “I cleaned my apartment on Monday night and watched Desperate Housewives on Tuesday. Living the dream.” I took a sip of my wine. “Oh, actually, I went to see a film on Thursday – two of the gang from work talked me into it. It’s called –”
“Who from work did you go with?” he interrupted.
“Fiona and Anne-Marie, you don’t know them. Anyway, it’s called When a Stranger Calls. It’s this film about a girl who’s babysitting and gets these creepy phone calls and then the phone calls are traced and they’re coming from inside the house. So freaky.”
“Oh, that’s an urban legend that used to go around when we were kids – supposedly happened to a girl one town over. It’s not an original story.”
I sipped again, feeling unmistakably put in my place.
“Well, yes, but nothing is original, is it? We just tell the same legends and stories in different guises?”
For a beat, Ray looked affronted, and I wondered if he thought it was a dig at his chosen career. Then he smiled again.
“How’s work?”
I filled him in, and he managed to look interested almost all of the way through.
“You know, exciting as all that is,” he smiled, “some day I’m going to whisk you away from the bright lights of Dublin, put a gold band on your finger, and keep you here in the countryside as my muse. I’ll fill your bath with champagne, bring you fresh croissants for breakfast every morning, and you’ll never have to press a key on a keyboard again. Are you in?”
“I’d rather drink the champagne than bathe in it, but the rest of it sounds glorious.”
“Then let’s do that,” Ray said, and I didn’t know what he meant until he asked John for a bottle of champagne, slipped a small gold ring out of his pocket and on to my finger, and toasted Marianne McShane, his wife and muse.
That was Ray all over – grand gestures and small surprises, and I was swept up in it. At twenty-three I wasn’t ready to get married, and I don’t know that we were actually engaged, but it was such a Ray thing to do and I loved it.
From then on, we acted as though we were married – a kind of inside joke for just the two of us. I wore the gold band on my ring finger, he signed us into hotels as Mr and Mrs Sedgwick, and when we went to events with publishers and authors in Dublin, he introduced me as his wife.
The authors and publishers didn’t bat an eyelid – I have no idea if they knew we weren’t reall
y married, and I imagine nobody cared. But in Carrickderg it generated some subtle and not so subtle inquiries. Mrs O’Shea from the Post Office asked if she should buy a hat or if she’d already missed the wedding. Geraldine from the Garda station was more direct, asking were we engaged or actually married? “What’s the difference really?” Ray said to her. “It’s just a piece of paper.” Mrs Townsend who used to look after me when I was in school hugged me and said she hoped I was happy, and I had to stop to think about it but I decided I was. For the first time since losing my dad, I was starting to feel good again.
June came, the anniversary of my dad’s death and our first encounter. We marked it a week later with a dinner in Dublin, then splashed out on a taxi back to Carrickderg, and a late night with red wine when we got in.
I was groggy when I opened the living-room curtains the following morning, and at first I couldn’t make out what I was seeing. When I did, I nearly threw up. Lying across the mat at the front door was a dead fox.
“Ray!” I yelled, and he came stumbling out of our room, misshapen and blurry after our late night.
I pointed through the window.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, opening the front door.
The fox looked like it had been shot. Its eyes were open and glazed, its fur matted and rust-red with blood.
“Alan. That motherfucker couldn’t let it go,” Ray said, staring at the fox.
“Ray, don’t start. It might not have been him . . .”
But even as I said it, I knew it was Alan. And I knew why.
“You left the henhouse open that time, didn’t you?” I said after a moment.
He closed the front door and ran his hand through his hair. “How the hell do you get rid of a dead fox? Do you have animal control here?” he said, ignoring my question.
“I have no idea about animal control . . . Actually, I remember once years and years ago my dad found a dead fox at the end of the back garden.”
“And what did he do?”
“God – I’m nearly sure he asked Alan what to do, and Alan took care of it.”
A smile spread across Ray’s face. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Play dumb, ask him if he’ll help us get rid of it, and we kill two birds with one stone.”
“What do you mean?”
“We get rid of the fox, and we leave Alan thinking we don’t know it was him – so he won’t expect us to get back at him.” A shadow crossed his face, the smile suddenly gone. “He’ll never see us coming.”
CHAPTER 24
It was a black-tie ball just before Christmas that started it all, a sequence of events kicked off by a mission so innocuous in hindsight – the search for something long and sparkly to wear to the Shelbourne Hotel, to a charity event, with eye-watering prices, in a country still drunk on boom-time money.
I didn’t think I’d get away with my go-to black dress any longer, and was gearing up for the chore of shopping when I remembered Hanne’s dresses in the attic. Could I? Would it be weird? Maybe they wouldn’t fit anyway, I figured, as I pulled down the attic ladder.
The box was where I’d left it a year and a half earlier, at the back of the attic. The blue dress and the green dress were at the top of the pile, and the silver dress underneath. I left the silver one behind – beautiful, but definitely not me. I pulled the other two out and made my way back towards the ladder. That’s when I spotted it – the USA biscuit tin I’d left beside the hatch the last time I was up. I leaned out and dropped the dresses gently to the couch below, picked up the tin, and climbed down.
My plan was to try on the dresses while Ray was out and have one ready to show him on his return, but instead I was drawn to the old biscuit tin.
Inside, there were bits of paper of all sizes – it looked like a mix of tickets and postcards and letters. From the top of the pile, I lifted a postcard. One of those “Welcome to Ireland” cards with sheep and a green postbox on the front. On the other side, it was blank, waiting to be inscribed. By whom, I wondered – my mother? I put it down and took out the next piece of paper – a sequence of words that looked like a shopping list, but in another language. Danish as far as I could tell, though I had never learned any. Below that I found train-ticket stubs – a journey from Dublin to Cork, and the dates coincided with the trip my parents took after they got married. I put them aside, wondering if I should buy a scrapbook and do what my parents had perhaps intended to do with their souvenirs. Next I found a photo I had never seen before – my parents on a windy beach, both of them laughing. Who took the photo, I wondered? Looking at their faces, it was hard to believe they were only a few years from tragedy. Beneath the photo, I found a folded page of lined paper. Not sure if I was prying, I opened it – maybe it was another Danish shopping list. But this time it was in English – a letter, addressed to my dad.
Michael,
I am so sorry to do this to you and to the baby, but I know it is best for you and for her and for me.
I never meant for any of it to happen. I came to Ireland for all the best reasons but instead I found myself in a cage.
I can’t live the way I was living. I’m not the person I know. I need to escape from the cage. I’m back where I belong, and it won’t be a visit. I need to stay now. I trust that in time you’ll explain this to the child, and I hope you will eventually forgive me. I will understand if you can’t.
Yours,
Hanne
I sat back on the couch, the breath knocked out of me. She’d left him? And me – The baby – she never even used my name. What kind of mother walks away from her own child? My God, my poor dad, how had he coped – left alone with a baby and losing his wife?
I sat up again. Did he lose her – did she really die? A sick feeling spread through my stomach. Was all of it lies? It made no sense though. If she left us, he might say she’d died in her sleep, not that she’d been murdered. He couldn’t have been lying that night. Could he?
In a daze, I went into my dad’s old bedroom and switched on Ray’s computer. The monitor’s creaks and groans were loud in the quiet house, and I wondered for a moment if Ray would mind me using it. Part of me wanted to be done before he got back, mostly because I wasn’t ready to explain what I’d just found.
After what felt like forever, I managed to connect to the Internet, and opened a Google search page. I tried Hanne McShane first and waited while the incredibly slow Internet tried to churn out results. In the end, there were none, there was nobody called Hanne McShane. I tried Hanne Karlsen. This time, there were too many. Hanne Karlsen was not an uncommon name in Denmark it seemed. With a knot in my stomach, I tried “Hanne Karlsen” + “Murder”.
It seemed to take even longer this time, and as I waited I could hear Ray’s car coming up the driveway. It really didn’t matter if I was still searching when he came in, of course it didn’t, but somehow it did. I needed this to be mine before it was ours. As the first halting results flickered on to the screen, his car door opened and shut again. As story after story of Hanne Karlsen filled the space in front of me, his keys were jangling outside the bedroom window. And as he opened the front door and walked inside, I reached to switch off the monitor, but not before I’d seen what I was looking for.
Body found in Roskilde, Denmark: Fears of Serial Killer.
CHAPTER 25
That’s how it started. Slow, frustrating searches on Ray’s PC when he was out, until I eventually wrangled a laptop of my own from work. I learned the names of the other two Danish victims and got to know them while I got to know Hanne, in the morbid context of reading reports on her death. I discovered that she had been dead for a number of months by the time she was found, and her body had been unrecognisable, a victim of the elements and wildlife. They couldn’t establish time of death and although the autopsy suggested she drowned, there was nothing conclusive. It was eerily similar to the case of Maja Pedersen who was found just a few weeks before Hanne went missing, also drowned, washed up in the sea. The other victim, Frederikk
e Frandsen, was strangled, not drowned but, like Hanne, found in woodland. Police pointed out that her body was discovered in Odense, on a different island entirely from where Maja and Hanne were found, but the public and the media were sure there was a connection.
I found a photo of Hanne’s parents, and recognised them from the sketches I’d seen in the attic – two desperately sad faces stared out at me, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see them as my grandparents. I felt sorry for them, but disconnected too.
Hanne had been their only child, and in early newspaper reports their pleas for her safe return were heart-wrenching. Later, when her body was found, they retreated, begging for privacy in their grief. I searched under their names but found nothing new in the intervening years – I couldn’t tell if they were still alive, but hadn’t found any death notices either. It seemed the newspapers and public had respected their wishes and they’d been allowed to stay out of the spotlight.
In a weird way, as I looked at their faces, I felt like a relay baton was being passed to me.
Despite knowing that Hanne had been murdered, reading about it for the first time changed things. It made it real, it sparked something. I inhaled stories about the investigation and trawled the internet to find out more, looking for similar deaths, slipping to stories that were nothing like Hanne’s but impossible to ignore. I discovered cases in other Scandinavian countries and beyond, hopping from link to link, chasing virtual paths around Europe, and across to the United States. Some stories were familiar – Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer, the Yorkshire Ripper. But there were so many more I’d never heard of – literally hundreds and hundreds of unsolved murders and suspected serial killers all over the world. I started bookmarking stories that seemed connected, seeing tenuous patterns and links. The stories were horrifying but oddly compelling too, and I wondered at first if there was something wrong with me – how could I spend so much time reading up on these terrifying cases? I told nobody, not even Ray, at least at first.
