by C K Williams
Kate leaves the town through suburbia, past more churches than I have seen anywhere else in my life except maybe Adelaide in Australia, and drives east into the mountains.
When she is out again on an open narrow road, hedges and trees rising to our left and right, the snow lying thick on the meadows where the sheep would be grazing, that is when she speaks up: “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” she insists.
“I get it.”
Kate glances at me. “Just because you’re empathetic doesn’t mean I get to behave like a dick.”
I look back at her. There is a small smile curling up the corner of her mouth, even with all the lines of exhaustion marring her face. I smile back. Kate and I have always been excruciatingly honest with each other. I couldn’t be friends with someone who wasn’t. When you run an ad agency, you learn to crave candour.
Her expression softens. Her shoulders soften. Kate softens into that smile of mine, and I turn back to her shoes. “There,” I say. “Good as new.”
“Did you have a good flight?” Kate asks.
“Oh, is that right?” I ask, straightening the laces. “We’re going to talk about my flight?”
“Has Ryanair started introducing stand-up tickets yet? Did you have to hold onto a railing at taxi, take-off and landing?”
“I flew easyJet,” I say. “You’ve got to give these a polish, Kate, they look ludicrous.”
“You are just jealous because my shoes are smarter than yours.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“My shoes aren’t an appropriate subject for conversation, then?”
“Yes, because it will allow me to transition very elegantly into what I really want to talk about.” I put her shoes down next to my feet, then turn to her. “How are you?”
“Wretched,” Kate says, her knuckles white around the steering wheel.
I hesitate. I want to touch the back of her hand, just for a moment, watch how she relaxes her fingers. “Why did they suspect you, Kate?” I ask instead, clutching my hands together in my lap, now that we are in the safety of the car and driving ever deeper into the mountains.
“There were bloody clothes at my house. Of Alice Walsh’s. She had gone through a… a medical procedure a few days ago. There were complications and she came to me for help, after hours, because she did not want her parents to know. That is why the clothes were there.”
I stare at her.
Kate keeps looking straight ahead.
“Fuck,” I say.
“Can we get drunk, Jan?” she asks, still staring at the road. “Can we get drunk and make carrot cake and black bacon and potato farls, and then can I break down crying, because I am so bloody scared?”
“Yes,” I say.
20:01
“Aren’t you going to ask me?”
Kate is looking at me in that way of hers as she asks, slurring her words a little. That way she has, where she’s trying to look not into your eyes but right into your brain, your mind, your soul, should there be such a thing.
“Am I going to ask you what?” I ask, not sounding significantly more articulate than her. We are both on her sofa, my legs curled up under hers; we’re older now than we were when we met, but our friendship hasn’t changed, all brutal honesty and casual touching.
There’s just something I haven’t told her yet. Something she doesn’t know about me.
Kate gestures with her glass. Fortunately, her Irish coffee does not spill. She’s still in her suit after all, even though she has taken off the jacket and rolled up her shirtsleeves, while I am very comfortable in my pair of faded jeans and grey wool sweater. Her arms are thin and shaking, and her voice is loud and boisterous, like a fist in my face. “Aren’t you going to ask if it was me?”
I pretend to think about it. Then I take another careless sip of my gin and tonic. “No.”
She makes a face. She almost seems disappointed. I hide my smile behind the rim of my glass.
Then I realise that my drink is transparent.
“Why not?” Kate asks. There is a tremor to her voice, a wary vulnerability and unguarded hope that very nearly breaks my heart. “They seemed to have reason enough to suspect me.”
“Do you want me to suspect you?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”
“Good. Because I would like to ask you a different question. Two, actually. Did the police believe what you told them about the bloody clothes?”
She rubs her eyes. She never wears make-up. The suits are her only extravagance. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I would, to be honest.”
She looks at me. Then she looks to the side. “What’s the second question?”
“Have they taken anyone else in?”
“I wouldn’t know. Why?”
“You did not do it,” I say. “But Alice Walsh is dead. So who did it?”
Kate shivers. The ball of her foot is digging into my leg. I want to reach down, rub the soles of her feet. Instead I reach for the last slice of carrot cake sitting on the coffee table. Right there, next to the bowl of chips, sits the pan containing the veggie sausages that we served still sizzling, and most importantly, the potato bread. Whenever I come back here, all I want to eat is potato bread. You can’t find it anywhere else, not like this.
“Jan, you should have seen her,” she says quietly. “I can’t imagine that anyone could have done such a thing.”
“It is usually a partner or ex-partner or close family member, when the victim is a woman,” I say. My sister’s a detective. She’d be a much bigger help to Kate now, I can’t help but think.
She shakes her head. “No one in Annacairn… I just… I don’t believe…”
She peters out. Then she looks back up at me: “And yet, somebody did.”
That is when her doorbell rings.
Kate’s eyes flicker to the sitting-room door. She’s struggling to speak. There is an expression on her face that I cannot interpret, so rarely have I seen it there. “Can you…”
She stops herself.
“What?” I ask, eager to do anything for her. Needing to be needed. It’s so easy, living life when you are needed.
“No, never mind.”
She makes to rise. I put my hand on her foot then. Her skin is cold under mine. “Kate.”
She closes her eyes for a moment.
“Would you go and open the door?” she asks, and she can’t look at me while she does, and then I know what that expression on her face is.
She is scared.
“Of course,” I say gently.
While I rise, while I leave the sitting room and go out into her hall and towards the front door, I cannot help but think that there is fuck all I could do if a murderer turned up at our door. I’m the creative head at an ad agency who hasn’t worked out properly in a long, long time.
It’s only when I have put my hand to the door handle that I realise my fingers are shaking. Kate rarely shows when she is scared. When she does, there is good reason to be.
It’s too late. I am already opening the door.
Coming face to face with a man I don’t know.
He is taller than me, which is not such a feat, albeit very thin. No belly on him, not like mine. There is something about my body that is soft, while he is all angles. He may be my age, a little younger perhaps, although it is difficult to tell. He is dressed in a black suit, wearing a clerical collar. Its white tab is almost blinding against the dark that lies outside the house, where you can see nothing but the outline of trees and hear nothing except the whisper of the wind sneaking through sharp branches and old granite stones.
“Good evening,” he says. His voice is soft. It rumbles. There is an accent. Scottish as far as I can tell. And yet, there is a hitch to it. Maybe he is surprised to see a strange man standing in Kate’s doorway. He certainly looks me up and down, before quickly focusing back on my face. “I am he
re to see Kate.”
“Let me just check if she’s… if she wants to… Let me just check with her,” I say. My tongue fumbles with the words. It always takes a couple of days, finding my way back into it, especially with strangers, back into the language I only ever speak when I am here, once or a twice a year when I come to see Kate, or to myself, alone in the flat or on the subway pretending to be on the phone, when I miss the taste and shape and sound of English too much. The ease with which it allows me to utter things I would never say out loud in German.
I return to Kate, who is still holding onto a chip. “It’s a priest,” I tell her, not bothering to hide my surprise, unlike him. As far as I am aware, Kate isn’t religious. At least not practising, much like myself.
“Oh,” she says, dropping the chip back into the bowl. Her neck is flushing.
I furrow my brow. The way she looks at all the food spread out on the table, the bottle of gin that sits half empty next to the ravaged cake. “Would you mind just straightening things up a little?” she asks, avoiding my gaze as she pulls down her sleeves, even doing up the buttons at the wrist.
“Worried what he’ll think of you, committing the sin of gluttony with me?” I ask, trying for a light tone of voice.
Her eyes find mine, just for a moment. “Maybe,” she says. Then she disappears into the hall.
I get the distinct impression that there is something she isn’t telling me.
I take the plates, bowls, bottles into the kitchen and start covering them up with a tea towel, which surely counts as straightening things. I cock my ears, trying to hear them talk in the hall.
“I’m sorry to be coming by at this hour,” the priest says. “I didn’t know you had a guest.”
“You know about Jannis,” Kate says.
“I just wanted to let you know that everyone is coming together at the church. For a vigil. For Alice. I wanted you to know that you’re very welcome there.”
“Am I?” I hear her ask. Hear the tension in her voice as I put our glasses into the sink, as quietly as humanly possible.
“Kate,” the priest replies. “Of course you are. Of course. It’s ludicrous, that the police… I want to make sure you know this. That’s why I want you to join us.”
There is a moment’s hesitation, then Kate speaks, and her voice sounds small: “I’m not sure, Dan.”
“Don’t be silly, Kate,” he says, just as quietly.
Then there are noises I cannot place. Maybe he is taking her into his arms.
And finally, Kate speaks up again.
“Yes. All right. I’ll be there.”
20:41
We’ve both technically had too much to drink to be driving. Kate says she’s feeling fine, however, and it is true, she hasn’t had as much as me. I would never do this at home, but here, the rules seem to be just a little different, and I’m strangely content to follow along.
“Have you known him long?” I ask when I’m back in the passenger seat of my rental, dressed in my warmest coat, and still my teeth feel like chattering.
“Daniel?” Kate replies, as if it wasn’t painfully obvious whom I was talking about.
“If that’s the name of the priest.”
“A few years,” she says, going for careless.
“In a religious capacity?” I try.
She laughs. “God, no.”
“How does he feel about your blasphemising?” I ask, not about to let her get away with her monosyllabic answers.
“That’s not a word,” she says, not looking at me. “And he doesn’t give a shit. He’s the same age as us, he’s not like the priests from our childhood.”
“What’s the right word?”
“What?” Finally, she glances at me.
“What is the right verb for blasphemising?” I ask.
“As a good Catholic girl, I’m happy to let you know it’s blaspheming.”
Kate slows down as the church comes into view. There is a long line of cars already parked on the side of the road, and she pulls up behind them. It’s a church from a time when there were more than a few dozen houses inhabited in Annacairn; built of sturdy grey stone, with three sharp towers and glass-stained windows which look black in the night and yellow and red during the day.
As soon as she has parked the car, we go out into the cold. Kate buries her hands in the pockets of her coat. It’s long and elegant and grey, definitely a little too light for a fresh winter evening with all the stars bright and cold in the sky.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask her.
“Nope,” she says.
“You sure? You can have my ja—”
“You worry too much,” she interrupts. “Pay me a compliment about my coat. It’s new and I’ve seen you look at it.”
And she is so right. We have a thing about clothes, she and I. “Style over substance, huh?” I ask her, tugging at her coat. She pulls it out of my grasp but manages to look a little pleased with herself. “But great fucking style, am I right?”
I nod, and we are both grinning as we walk through the gate and up to the church.
It is only when Kate pulls open the door that her face falls again.
20:55
Everyone seems to have come. Black shapes under the dark arches lit only by candles. Some kneeling, some sitting, some standing or pacing. At the very back stands a large group of sobbing teenagers, who I suppose are Alice Walsh’s classmates. It is only when we walk past them that they fall silent. The air is thick and unmoving. We walk up the aisle. Kate stares straight ahead. I glance at the pews. There are some faces I vaguely recognise; faces I may have once known but that have changed beyond recognition; faces that do not ring a bell at all. There is a decided lack of anyone under twenty, except for the teenagers at the back and two strangers sitting in the front pew, a young woman and a young man, roughly the same age as Alice Walsh. He is crying, she is holding him. He is in black skinny jeans and a matching sweater, the garment far too thin for this time of the year. She is wearing a black long skirt and an even longer scarf. She looks fierce. He does not.
“Alice’s parents aren’t here,” Kate mumbles, scanning the congregation as we approach the altar. I have to suppress the instinct to cross myself. Instead, I keep observing the congregation as we turn to the left and make for the devotional area. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe anger, maybe outrage, accusations, or even endless tears, grief waiting to turn into rage. But the young man and Alice Walsh’s classmates seem to be the only ones who are crying. All other displays of grief are curiously contained. And the teenagers at the back are almost too noisy now that they have started sobbing again.
There is something off about this. No one is quite capable of meeting our eyes, no one except Daniel, who comes rushing over when he spots us.
“Thank you for coming,” he says quietly, as if Kate was a perfect stranger. Now he’s trying a little too hard to be casual. He is trying so hard, in fact, that it suddenly occurs to me they might be sleeping with each other.
If he weren’t a priest, that is.
Another man comes up to join us. He was one of the group by the votive. A man in his early thirties, head shaved and eyes bright blue and dressed only in a sweater in spite of the cold. Sean O’Doherty, if I remember correctly. A policeman, I believe, though not a detective. CRC, maybe, crowd and riot control? I don’t believe that we’ve ever been properly introduced. I’ve only seen him from afar, when he was pointed out to me by Kate. A few years back, I suspected her to be a little smitten with him, but I don’t know if anything ever came of it.
“Kate,” Sean O’Doherty says sharply by way of greeting. “Did they treat you well in custody?” Not one to beat around the bush, it seems. “The Murder folks are a weird bunch.”
“They were all right,” Kate says. “Just doing their job.”
“Fucking wankers is what they are.”
“Sean,” Daniel says, a quiet admonishment.
Sean raises his eyebrows. “Tess and Elizab
eth are smoking, Father,” he points out, indicating the two women with a sharp movement of his head.
I look at them. I remember Tessa Adams well; she drove the only bus, on the days that it went, until she retired; she’s standing a little further down the wall, wearing her customary heavy boots and flimsy cardigan. Her mother, Elizabeth Adams, who I’ve never spoken to, is sitting in a pew with her legs crossed and a cigarette holder. She is an endlessly elegant lady in her early eighties, wearing a floor-length black dress and a few pearl necklaces and a ring with a bright green stone. From what Kate told me, she’s a unionist and spent the better part of the early Nineties refusing to speak to her son.
Her son, William O’Rawe, who is just now coming walking past us, his wife on his arm, both of them doing their utmost to ignore us. They had been standing with Father Daniel by the votive before. William O’Rawe is a tall man in his late fifties, highly attractive in a Robert Downey Junior kind of way, dark hair turned dashingly grey, a finely groomed beard and fashionable glasses. Next to him is Florence O’Rawe, with her wide brown eyes and long curly hair, who runs the library cart and wears floral dresses no matter the season. They are both staunch republicans. A deep rift runs through that family, from what I have gathered over the years. Even now, William O’Rawe seems to be walking over to his mother. He points at her cigarette, as vocal about his disapproval as Sean is.
“They need something to hold onto?” Daniel tries, watching Elizabeth Adams ignore her son and keep smoking.
“Did they tell you why they were taking you in?” Sean O’Doherty asks Kate. “They have to, you know they do, don’t you?”
