Which explains nothing. My face tells him as much.
He pulls in a bit closer, every bit the cosy raconteur with the juicy anecdote, not the man teetering on the edge of ‘suspect’. ‘So I said exactly what your mum told me to say, right. “Stay away from Jacqui or we’ll tell the Guards about your dirty little habit.”’ He pauses, gives me a look that I can’t quite read. ‘And then she – Maryanne – says, “Well maybe you should stay away from Tina McGinn, or I’ll tell your wife about your dirty little habit.”’
I’ll process that anger later. ‘Right, so she was blackmailing you?’
He flicks a hand, dismissive. ‘Well, she was trying, bless her, but there was absolutely nothing going on between me and Tina McGinn and she knew it. She was just a barmaid in Grogan’s who’d flirt with her own shadow and she must have seen us having the craic a few times. Tina knew your mum, for God’s sake, it was all bullshit.’ My face says ‘yeah yeah’ but I keep it buttoned. ‘So anyway, I said to Maryanne, “You can put an announcement in the parish newsletter for all I care, darling, just stay away from my daughter, OK.” Best thing you can do with people like her, just call their bluff.’ Another pause. ‘And that was that, really. She piped down after that.’
He grinds out his cigarette. Story concluded.
And they all lived miserably ever after.
I feel like I’m floundering, losing leverage. I need to pull myself up, draw myself back level but I can’t find anything to hook on to. Plausible lie after plausible lie, Dad’s dismantling everything I’ve ever believed, and even if I don’t believe half of what he’s telling me, there isn’t a lot I can say. The only two people who can contradict him are dead.
And so I ask the unthinkable.
‘Where were you last Monday night, Dad?’
His head jerks back, utter confusion. ‘What?’
‘The night Maryanne was killed. Jacqui said you were supposed to be staying at hers but that you cancelled and that’s really unlike you. She reckons she couldn’t get hold of you all evening as well, your phone was off.’ I swallow quickly, keep going. ‘So what came up, Dad? What was so life-or-death that you couldn’t put your “precious” kids first?’’
Confusion contorts into anger. Panic and anger. ‘Where are you going with this?’
I lean back, lengthening the distance between us. ‘I’ll tell you exactly where I’m going. A girl blackmails you, threatens you, whatever you want to call it. She goes missing, you lie about knowing her to the Guards, and then eighteen years later she turns up dead, less than five minutes from your door and around the same time that you go inexplicably off-the-radar.’
I’m going with conspiracy over coincidence. Sod Parnell and his ‘rare breed’.
‘Did you hurt her, Dad?’
The words burst out of me, flailing and unfettered, and in that moment I know it’s over. Any hopes for the future, all nostalgia for the past, obliterated with one unutterable accusation.
‘What the fuck is this?’ His face slowly twists in pure undiluted disgust. ‘I mean, who the fuck are you?’ He bangs the side of his head. ‘You’re not right up here, sweetheart. Your mind’s diseased. You’re a disease.’
It takes a second to realise I’m crying.
When I was little, Dad used to say he’d rather go blind than see his baby girl cry. No sooner would my knee hit the concrete or my dummy hit the floor than he was scooping me up, making it all better, stemming the flow with kisses and wild promises.
I want him to stem the flow now. To make it all better with just one rock solid alibi.
‘Just tell me where you were.’ I press my fingers into my eyes. ‘Tell me where you were last Monday night and I’ll stop all this, I promise. We can start again. Have a proper relationship. No more fighting .?.?.’
Something flickers in his eyes, something like longing. But it’s just that; a mere flicker.
‘I’ll tell you nothing. I don’t answer to you, Catrina, remember that.’
I blink hard. ‘As a daughter, maybe not. But as a police officer, you should really think about it.’
His eyes flash dark, almost black. ‘And unless you’re arresting me, you should really think about getting out of my fucking house.’
20
‘Did you have a nice Christmas?’ she asks.
I wonder what a nice Christmas means to Dr Allen. A houseful of emotionally balanced relatives, effortlessly adapting to the radical shifts in daily routine with humour and good grace? Friends happily discussing their feelings between courses, sipping moderate and responsible amounts of alcohol and only eating until they’re satisfactorily full?
I attempt a smile. ‘Not bad, thanks. You?’
Her nose wrinkles. ‘Oh, quiet,’ she says, softly. ‘Peaceful.’
Which sounds just peachy but could be her way of saying it was bitterly lonely and crushingly dull. We all have our own stories to frame.
I’d had an OK Boxing Day, all things considered. An empty house. Curtains closed. Heating cranked up to Caribbean setting. Just me, chocolate and enough weed to guarantee a twenty-four-hour moratorium on dark feelings. I’d switched my phone off after Jacqui’s third call. Ignored the front door when it buzzed sometime in the late afternoon. Didn’t even peer out to see who it was. The only contact I’d attempted with the outside world all day was to try Saskia French’s phone again but got no joy there. A fairly joyless day all round, I suppose, but as Dr Allen said it was ‘quiet’. ‘Peaceful’.
‘You’re off somewhere?’ says Dr Allen, looking at my wheelie case. ‘A short break before the New Year?’
‘No, no, it’s work.’ I spot an escape hatch. ‘Actually, is it OK if we finish a bit early today, I’m cutting it fine for my flight as it is.’
‘Of course. What time’s a bit early?’
I push my luck. ‘In about ten minutes?’
She arches an eyebrow, writes something down quickly. It can’t be more than one word.
Liar?
Futile?
Stoned?
She puts the pad to one side, it wobbles precariously on the arm of the chair and I will it to fall off. A burst of activity to liven up the routine.
‘So’ – she looks at me hopefully – ‘things must be going well if you’re being sent off on international assignments.’
‘Yeah, or you could look at it another way. Steele’s sending me off on pointless day-trips to keep me out of the way.’
A tilt of the head. ‘Is it pointless?’
I shrug. ‘It’s background stuff. And when we’ve got a possible suspect coming into view – someone I identified – it just feels a bit lower-league, that’s all.’
She lifts her hands, palms forward. ‘Well, clearly I don’t know the ins and outs of the case but I think it means she trusts you to operate alone, and that’s a good thing.’
‘It means she trusts me to keep my passport up to date, that’s about all.’
‘Come on, is that really what you think?
My head’s still a bit woolly from the weed and I haven’t got the sharpness to fight. ‘No, probably not,’ I concede with a sigh. ‘Anyway, I’m only going to Ireland, is that classed as international?’
She smiles. ‘Your family’s Irish, aren’t they?’
‘My mum. She was from the west coast.’
‘A beautiful place, I hear.’ Eyes slanted. ‘You said she “was”.’
‘Yeah, she died a few years ago. Actually, it was five years ago. Is that still considered “a few years”?’ Feels like yesterday to me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Cat. There’s never a good time to lose a parent, of course, but you were, what?’
‘Twenty-one. The year before I joined the Met.’
She shuffles in her chair, instantly piqued. ‘Are those two things connected?’
Oh, on so many levels that I can’t even go there. Craving a new family, a new sense of belonging when the only person I felt I ever belonged to had gone. Finally having the freedom to totally fuck with Dad’s head, now that I didn’t have to worry about Mum’s censure.