‘Since when have you been so concerned with police ethics?’ I say, bristling.
He picks up a napkin with the other hand, a grease-stained white flag. ‘Hey look, work away, Detective. I mean, what would I know? But if memory serves me right, Jacqui had a few words with the Guards at the time.’
I stare at him, blankly, pretend I don’t get the point.
‘Well, that’ll be on some system somewhere, surely?’
Top marks.
‘Tell you what, Dad, how about you let me worry about that? And anyway, she was killed on Monday night, thirty-five years old and a long way from Mulderrin. I doubt there’s a connection.’
I’m about five bottles of wine, sixty sleepless nights and seven hundred dark thoughts away from knowing whether I believe that or not.
Dad seems to take it at face value.
‘God, that Mulderrin holiday, that takes me back,’ he says, forearms on the table, all slumpy and relaxed now. ‘Good-looking kid, weren’t she, the Doyle girl. Jacqui will remember her, I bet.’
I remember her, Dad. I remember every little lie you told too.
‘Do you know what I remember about that holiday?’ I tell him. ‘You disappearing all the time. Mum putting me to bed every single night so I never got a story.’
‘Christ, and you reckon Noel knows how to hold a grudge!’ His laugh is short, sharp and hard. ‘Aw poor little Catrina. Do you want me to read The Three Little Pigs to you now? Make up for it, like?’
I refrain from ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Convey it with a death-stare instead.
‘Do you know what I remember about that holiday?’ he says. I switch the stare to ‘impassive’ but I’m ravenous for what he’ll say next. ‘I remember you didn’t want to go. Got yourself in a bit of a state about it. We were taking you out of school a few days early and you were stressing your class rabbit wouldn’t get fed. And you were worried about Reg. Do you remember Reg?’
I remember Reg. One of the pub’s regulars and a lovely old man. He lost his wife to cancer and his dog to the number seventy-three bus in the space of three weeks but he rarely lacked a smile or a poorly executed joke.
I say nothing though, just nod.
‘So I said you shouldn’t worry so much about everything – Reg and Bugs-fucking-Bunny would be fine, but that it was lovely you were such a thoughtful little girl and that I was proud of you.’ My face feels hot. I press my lips together, blink three times. ‘And you were, back then. You were such a little belter. So kind. A bit on the lively side sometimes, but never naughty, not like Jacqui, and well .?.?.’ He leaves Noel’s name hanging. ‘I mean, I know parents aren’t supposed to have favourites, but there was never any contest. What happened, Cat? Why are you so determined to be miserable?’
‘I’m not. Why are you so determined to convince yourself you’re happy? Is that what the Jag and your women and this stupid place does? Makes you forget that life’s essentially shit?’
He reaches for my hand, managing to graze the tips of my fingers before I snatch it away. ‘I know I’m not happy, Cat. How can I be? “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.” Ever heard that saying?’
My eyes prickle and I know I’m going to cry, or capitulate, if I don’t shift the tone of this conversation and do something drastic.
I pull the pin out of the grenade.
‘Did you sleep with Maryanne Doyle?’
He shifts. The light throws a shadow across his face and I lose his eyes for a crucial second. When they reappear, I swear he looks different. There’s an icy serenity about him. About as far away from sucker-punched as an accused man can be.
‘Well, did you? It’s not a trick question, Dad. It’s not multiple choice.’
‘Are we really going to do this?’ He almost sounds amused – like he’s heard the corniest joke ever for the hundredth time but still can’t help smirking. ‘I mean, don’t you ever get bored of this, Cat?’
Bored, no. Bone-weary, yes.
‘So tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m crazy, like you always do.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “crazy”.’
He hasn’t in fairness. ‘Maddening’, ‘antagonistic’, and on one occasion, ‘pure poison’, but never crazy.
‘I notice you haven’t used the word “no” either.’ My voice is shaky. I’ve been shackled to this narrative since I still had my milk-teeth but now that I’ve said it – now that it’s out there – it sounds fantastical, or at the very least, flimsy. ‘Say it, Dad,’ I urge him. ‘If you didn’t sleep with Maryanne Doyle, say “no”. Just answer the question.’
‘No.’ His eyes flare as icy serenity gives way to quiet fury. ‘No, I didn’t sleep with Maryanne Doyle. Just like I didn’t sleep with your Auntie Brona. Or Katy Keilty’s mum. Or your Irish dancing teacher. Or Cathy Hammond from the Flag. Or basically half the women you seem to think I did.’
Half? I very much doubt that. I’ll admit I was never one to discriminate when it came to accusing him – Auntie Brona still makes me boil with shame – but I know I was right about a lot of them. Just not the rank outsiders he’s been clever enough to name.
I steady my voice. ‘Then why did you lie about knowing .?.?.’
He grabs my hands across the table. ‘Enough, Catrina.’ I open my mouth but he puts a finger up to halt me. Another to my lips, shushing me. ‘I mean it now. Enough.’
Strong, calm, commanding. As if pacifying an angry dog.
But I won’t be pacified, not yet. ‘Because you did know her. We picked her up .?.?.’
He jerks his hand up and catches me by the jaw. It doesn’t hurt but the grip is tight and it stops me speaking. My skin hums underneath. To the rest of the bar it probably looks playful.
‘Is this ever going to end, Catrina? All this bullshit? You’d think you’d never put a foot wrong in your life. Can’t you accept that everyone has’ – he chooses his word carefully – ‘failings?’
‘Failings,’ I sneer. ‘MOTs fail. People make bad decisions, there’s a difference.’
He triggers the ‘M’ word. ‘Mum always forgave me, why can’t you? God knows you always followed her lead on everything else.’
Deliverance comes in the form of beautiful Xavier, incensed, and I mean Spanish incensed, about some woman claiming she gave him a twenty when he knows she gave him a ten. Dad stands up heavily, walks over to the bar, hands out, chin high, all ready to sort out the obvious misunderstanding, using nothing other than that iridescent smile and a touch of the McBride charm.
I pick up my bag and leave.
*
I should have told Dad that this isn’t about Mum. It’s not about forgiveness. It’s not about sleazy affairs or bunk-ups in the bar. It’s not about Katy Kielty’s mum or sexy students pulling pints.
It’s about murder.
It’s about the lie – the litany of lies – he told about Maryanne Doyle eighteen years ago and the fact she’s turned up dead just a short walk from his door.
But fear muzzled me, far more than his clasp on my jaw ever could. The fear of what he might unload if I kept pushing and the fear of losing him forever if I’m wrong.
Because what if he’s not who I think he is? I can’t ignore the fact I’ve spent most of my life, not exactly sure in the belief, but certainly toying with – then blocking out – the idea that Dad might have killed Maryanne Doyle in 1998. Now that’s been proved impossible, can I trust my own instincts any more than I mistrust him?
Because what if he’s not a Bad Man? What if he’s just a liar. A womaniser. A run-of-the-mill arsehole. Just an ageing matinee idol with a moody, over-inked girlfriend and a complicated TV system he can’t work out.
What if I’ve spent the past eighteen years tormenting him – tormenting myself – for what amounts to nothing more than a few grubby white lies.
9