The Sleeper Lies

by Andrea Mara

  Patrick’s dad was in the army? But wasn’t it Alan who was discharged from the army?

  Arrest for drunk and disorderly afterwards, suggestion he took discharge badly.

  But this is Alan’s story – Alan was in the army, at least according to Geraldine. And what about that photo I’d found – the burnt picture of Alan in an army uniform? I think back to the conversation with Geraldine at the side of the street, as we watched Patrick and Jamie talk and Alan look sullenly on. Had Geraldine been confused? My mind goes over it, trying to remember and make sense. She’d said he’d had a “rotten time of it” and had “turned out okay”. I picture us standing there, Geraldine lowering her voice, telling me about the army, nodding over at where Jamie and Patrick were talking.

  And then it hits me.

  She was never talking about Jamie. She never said his name. I just assumed that’s who she meant.

  He had a rotten time of it and turned out okay.

  She meant Patrick.

  Only he didn’t turn out okay.

  Dad died in unusual circs, Barry types, about 12 years ago, am still digging. U ok? Any sign of police?

  I reply: No but the snow isn’t helping.

  “Jesus, that snow is coming down heavy now – that’s going to slow the team from Wicklow,” Patrick is saying. “God, Marianne, this is all a lot for you to be dealing with – are you okay with me staying here till they get here? Only I can’t leave the body unattended.”

  “No problem.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You look pale.”

  I swallow, willing my voice to cooperate. “Yes, just still thinking about Ray.”

  “I can imagine. Why did you two break up?”

  I look over at him.

  “Sorry, that’s a bit intrusive, don’t answer if you’d rather not.”

  “No, that’s fine.” There’s an unmistakeable shake in my voice. “Ray and Alan had been at each other on and off for years and it came to a head when Ray published a book that all but named the fictional character as Alan Crowley.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “It’s what was in it. A suggestion that Alan – well, if you believe it’s based on Alan – was abusing his children.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Jamie think of it?”

  Jamie. Jesus, his dad is lying dead outside, and no doubt he’s still out looking for him. I look at my mobile on the coffee table. It’s worth a try. Not too quickly, not too slowly, I pick it up.

  “What are you doing?” Patrick asks.

  “I’m going to call Jamie about his dad – he could come up this way and find him lying there.”

  “No, don’t, Marianne. He’ll need to formally notified. It can’t come from you.” There’s an edge to his voice.

  “Right.” I put the phone down and bury my head in my laptop screen again.

  Barry has come back – another staccato message.

  I’ve got it. Dad in and out of trouble after army, couldn’t hold job, lost home. Died sleeping rough in freezing temperatures, in place called Ramolin. Inquest found had been living in farmhouse shed but asked to leave – died few nights later.

  Oh Jesus. I remember that story on the news at the time.

  I type: Where was farmhouse?

  He replies: Carrickderg. Farmer Alan Crowley. Maguire evicted by Crowley, not clear why.

  I know why.

  And now I know why Alan dumped a bag of old clothes in our garden after Ray reported him to the County Council. Deadman’s clothes. I know why Ray burned those clothes. Guilt he couldn’t or wouldn’t accept. I know who was in the charred photo of the couple with the baby. It was never Jamie with his parents. It was Patrick.

  And now I know why Ray and Alan are dead.

  Call police again, definitely in trouble. Please, Barry.

  Can you get out of there?he asks.

  I look over at Patrick who is drinking tea and watching me. His phone in his hand, mine on the coffee table. I think about Dad’s shotgun, down behind the couch. Patrick’s side of the couch, too far to reach from here. If I can find a reason to go to the kitchen, I can reach in and pull it out.

  “I’m just going to the bathroom,” I tell him, closing the laptop and standing up.

  He watches me as I walk around the coffee table. I need to get past him to go through to the kitchen and on to the bathroom. My breath is speeding up. I can’t slow it down. He’s going to know. Stay calm. Walk slowly. Don’t look at him. Keep going. Nearly at the kitchen door. Do I run or grab the gun? Does he know?

  I turn and risk a glance.

  We lock eyes.

  He knows.

  CHAPTER 69

  In that split second, the decision is made. I duck and reach to grab the gun from behind the couch, and stumble into the kitchen.

  Patrick appears in the doorway.

  “Oh Marianne, don’t kid yourself. You don’t know how to use it.”

  “I do. My dad taught me.”

  “I can see it in the shake of your hand and the frightened-rabbit look in your eyes. You’re not even holding it right.” He smiles calmly, looking nothing like the lost, scared boy he was a few minutes ago.

  “What do you want? Why are you doing this? I had nothing to do with what happened to your dad.”

  “But you did, Marianne – your name is on the complaint to the County Council – there’s no point in lying about it now.”

  “It wasn’t me. He used my name, but it wasn’t me.”

  Patrick shakes his head. “Easy to say now Ray is dead, isn’t it? But it’s there in black and white in the records.” He pauses, licks his lips. “I was twelve. Can you imagine what that was like? My dad, dead in a ditch. My mother, crying and wailing and blaming herself for kicking him out, before she lost it completely. I got taken into care then. Do you have any idea what that was like? And I blamed them, blamed my parents for being weak, for leaving me to fend for myself. A twelve-year-old boy, lost and alone in the world, betrayed by his mother and father. Hansel with no Gretel.” He grins. “Did you like that touch? Did you enjoy trying to guess what it meant?” His face changes again. “Then I found out it wasn’t really my parents’ fault at all. It was you and Alan and Ray. Your fucking stupid feud and your fucking stupid complaints to the Council.” A cold smile flashes across his face. “Poor old Ray. I don’t think he understood a word I said to him last night. And Alan had no idea either.”

  He takes a step towards me. I take one step back, still pointing the gun at him.

  I force myself to speak. “Your dad, Alan, and Ray are all dead.” It comes out in a hoarse whisper. “Isn’t that enough death?”

  “I thought it might be. I thought when I walked away from the hotel last night that I’d feel it was over. That there was justice. But I just felt empty.”

  “Because killing isn’t the answer,” I whispered.

  “Ah, wouldn’t it be nice for you if that was why? But no, that’s not it, Marianne. It was too quick. Too easy. Ray didn’t even take in what I was saying. I should have made him listen, made it last longer. If I wasn’t worried about hotel staff hearing me, I could have started with a shot to the knee. Then one to the hand. Slow and painful, like it was for my dad, lying in the ditch, freezing to death, limb by limb.” He takes another step towards me. “I should have done it somewhere like this, where there’s no-one to hear. Where there’s time to play, all night long. To take things slowly.” He grins. “You’ve been sitting here petrified since the shot went off, haven’t you?”

  I can’t speak. I think I’m going to throw up. The barrel of the gun is just inches from his chest. He’s not afraid. He knows I can’t use it. Can I?

  In a flash, he reaches and grabs the barrel. I shove it forward at the same time and run for the back door. The key turns and I pull it open, running into the snow, darting for the undergrowth at the side of the garden. I can hear Patrick coming out of the house, calling my name. There’s nothin
g frantic, nothing panicked about it, and that scares me more than anything. We both know a barefoot woman is no match for a man with a gun.

  Crashing through trees, I reach the wall at the end of the garden. Is there something I can stand on to get up and over? Stone slabs have fallen off the top of the wall but they won’t give me the height I need.

  And there’s no time.

  Behind me, Patrick’s approach is steady, not rushed. He’s still calling my name. There is no way out. Jesus Christ, this is not how it ends. Frantic, my eyes scan left and right and then I see it.

  The den.

  Against the wall, in the furthest corner of the undergrowth, hard to make out in the dark, but still there. I drop to my hands and knees and lift the branches that hide the opening. I slither through and pull the branches down again. The old tin roof has rusted through in places and our once clear floor is covered in leaves and muck, but there’s room enough for me to hunker down. And stay out of sight.

  “Marianne, there’s nowhere to go. Believe me, I know your garden. I’ve visited you on so many nights, not just the times I left gifts for you.”

  He’s still about thirty feet away, but I can’t breathe in case he hears.

  “Did you like my gifts? Were you starting to solve the clues?”

  A pause. He stops speaking and I think he’s stopped moving. Then he starts again, the sound of crisp snow and twigs crunching getting louder.

  “That apple I left for you? That’s what my da resorted to eating when he was kicked out of Alan’s shed – apples that were meant for the pigs. You and Ray – you never stopped to think about the consequences of that report to the Council, did you? Too busy playing God. You didn’t give a shit about the collateral damage – that’s all my da was to you, collateral damage.”

  I didn’t know! I want to scream, as I huddle against the back wall of the den. But what does it matter, he doesn’t care who knew what back then – there’s no getting away from what I know now, about Alan and about Ray.

  “Playing God, and playing executioner. Because that’s what you did. When you put in that complaint, you signed my da’s death warrant.”

  The sound of his steps comes closer and moves away. He’s checking the other side of the undergrowth. Soon he’ll find the den. I need to do something. Behind me, I feel the tin where we used to keep the Blacklist notebook and biscuits and the torch. And scissors. Would they still be there? Fumbling, I prise off the lid and feel inside. My fingers close around the metal blades.

  “And now the roles are reversed,” comes Patrick’s voice.

  I hear bushes and branches rustling as he pokes. Nearer now.

  “I get to play hangman. Think of the tragic newspaper reports – me getting here just too late to save you from Alan, too late to stop him grabbing your shotgun and shooting you in the head. But at least I got him before he could hurt anyone else, right?”

  More rustling, closer now.

  “Poor old Alan. He was in to me twice in the station to say he was worried someone was on your property at night – asked me to keep an eye on you. That’s what he was doing tonight – checking on you, Marianne. And you, like a scuttling mouse, hiding from him.”

  He laughs. The rustling is closer.

  “And I want to thank you, Marianne, because you’ve made the last few weeks so enjoyable. All your little discoveries in Armchair Detectives, so easy to replicate. I’m going to miss being Judith. Maybe I’ll re-open her Facebook account and join the group again, to tell them the sad news of your murder. And Barry – he carries a torch for you, doesn’t he? I’m going to especially enjoy telling Barry.”

  His voice is right outside the den now and, as my eyes adjust, I can make out the shape of his legs. If he ducks down, he’ll find it. And me.

  “So sad, Marianne, and ironic. Murdered. Like mother, like daughter.”

  I have to get out of here. I crawl to the entrance of the den. He’s just inches away. I don’t dare breathe. Between us, nothing but overhanging twigs. I can’t do it. What if I miss? I have to try. I close my eyes, beg my mother to guide my hand, and plunge the scissors into the back of his leg.

  CHAPTER 70

  He roars and reaches to grab his leg, dropping the shotgun. He falls sideways, still clutching his leg. I have no idea how badly injured he is, but surely after the initial shock, he’ll be back on his feet. I crawl out, grab the shotgun, and stand up straight, taking a step back.

  “You bitch!” he roars.

  It’s hard to see but the moonlit snow casts some light – I can tell he’s still on the ground. Now he’s pulling himself to his feet and moving towards me. Fuck. I step back, but he’s faster, and suddenly he’s hurtling towards me, reaching. At the last second, I turn the shotgun and push the butt with everything I have into his face. I wait for a scream but hear only crunching bone. He stumbles back against a tree, then slips sideways onto the snow. Rolls over and is still. A crumpled, silent heap, face down in a mound of snow. I take three steps backwards, point the gun at him again and wait, but there is no movement.

  In the distance, I hear a siren, but I can’t tell how far away it is. Part of me wants to get back inside the house and lock all the doors, but then I’ll never know if he gets up again. If he’s coming for me. I need to wait here, to keep watch. To know if he’s dead or alive.

  Something clicks in my mind – something about my mother, about her death. Her drowning. And slowly I realise Patrick will drown. Or suffocate. Face down in the snow.

  If he’s not already dead. I creep closer, trying to see.

  I don’t know what a dead body looks like. I’ve seen them in coffins in tidy funeral homes, but not like this – not in this maybe-state, flat on the frozen ground.

  Dead. Or not dead, just waiting for me to come closer.

  One or the other.

  It’s still too dark to see, and I understand now that it’s always been too dark – for me, and for Hanne. Spinning blindly in the wind while other people pulled the strings.

  And I feel it even now, the snap of the string, pulling me forward. Towards the body.

  Dead. Or not dead.

  One or the other.

  My breath comes fast. Another step. A closer look.

  A movement. Slight, but enough.

  And I think about all of it, all of the deaths and all of the accidents and all of the pain. And it’s not dark anymore. I know what I need to do.

  I take another step forward, my heart in my mouth, and reach the barrel of the gun towards him. I push it against his shoulder, but it isn’t enough. Fuck it. I put down the gun, kneel on the snow, and reach to turn his head. No longer buried in snow.

  CHAPTER 71

  After

  The two of us sit together on the couch in my living room, while Geraldine makes tea. The ambulance has gone, taking Patrick under armed escort to hospital. A blanket covers me to my neck but still I shiver, cold to the bone, and I wonder if I’ll ever feel warm again. Beside me, Jamie sits poker-straight, clutching a brandy someone put in his hands.

  “It’s about forty years old,” I tell him after a while.

  “What?”

  “The brandy. I didn’t even know we had it.”

  Jamie nods but I don’t think he registered what I said.

  “Do you think he was coming to do something bad?” he asks. “Alan, I mean?”

  “No,” I say gently. “He was coming to check on me. He had his faults, but he’s not the bad guy in this.”

  Geraldine comes through with tea and sets it in front of us.

  “Marianne,” she says, perching on the edge of the armchair, “I don’t know what to say. Officially, I can’t say anything of course. So this is off the record, but I’m so, so sorry. If I’d had any idea . . .”

  “None of us had any idea. I was reporting things to him – the footprints, the chalk letter – and he was laughing up his sleeve at me the whole time because he’d done them himself. There’s no way you could have known.” />
  “Well,” she says, slumping back in the chair, “at the very least I could have taken you more seriously.”

  Instead of answering, I reach out over the blanket to pick up the tea and hug the cup in my hands.

  “Don’t they do background checks on guards?” Jamie asks.

  Geraldine sighs. “The fact that his father died in tragic circumstances wouldn’t have raised any flags, Jamie. He put in a request for an inter-divisional transfer from Bray to here, and nobody knew about the connection with the area. It just never came up.”

  “So he killed Ray,” I say, “and came here planning to kill me. Alan’s arrival wasn’t in the plan.”

  Geraldine looks at me. “Alan was the spanner in the works.”

  Jamie winces. I take his hand.

  “But so easy then to make it look like Alan killed me and Patrick killed Alan in self-defence or an attempt to save me.”

  “Yes.” That was all Geraldine was going to say about it.

  “Either way, I’d be dead, just like my mother.”

  Geraldine says nothing.

  Jamie squeezes my hand. “It’s over.”

  Of course, it wasn’t really over. There was Ray’s funeral in New Jersey and Alan’s funeral in Carrickderg, and Patrick’s trial. There was his refusal to admit he’d done anything wrong. There was the psychiatric assessment, as we waited, worrying he’d be treated as ill rather than guilty. There were the nightmares about Dina and Erik, their distorted faces and warped minds. There were the thoughts that wouldn’t go away – did Hanne know what was coming that night, when her mother held her under the water? What would have happened if my dad had stayed and listened, or if even one person had given her the help she needed? And was it all for nothing – all our locked doors and security systems and motion-sensor lights, all the avoiding strangers and white vans – if the monster is not the stranger outside, but the one we let in the door, the one inside the house? The mother, the father, the husband, the trusted friend, the pillar of the community in his reassuring uniform?