I know who her killer is. I’ve seen his face in here many times, it comes back to me in fleeting pieces of memory. I see him talking to Amy, although I can’t be sure the face I remember is true or imagined. He laughs at me before I go to sleep. He tells me he has Amy instead of me. Looking at my copybook, I hold the pen tightly, like I want to crush it, feeling the sweat build up in my palm. There are so many things I remember about that summer and yet even now there are parts I still struggle with. It’s hard to get it right. It’s like looking for the story behind the story, catching shadows you missed first time around. Things you didn’t realise were important – a look Amy might have given, words dismissed without really listening because you believed them trivial – have now become weighted down with significance and meaning.
The memories are circling inside my head. Ever since I wrote those three words in the copybook, the voices are going around and around, like a carousel moving too fast. All I can catch is the fusion of coloured lights, words jumbled into their repeated rhythms, unable to be slowed down and deciphered.
I realised something this morning, something I should have realised long ago. It’s just me now. Since Amy, it has always been just me. What I need to do is think, to remember anything that could make a difference. Doing nothing is no longer an option, even though I’m not completely sure why that is the case.
My hand is shaking on the page as I try to remember. I see the dirt road, the one off the main pathway to the beach. I walked it one of the days with Amy. She wanted to show it to me. I remember hearing people’s voices from the beach, but I couldn’t see them. They seemed distant, the sand dunes on our right blocking out the view. On the left, there were flattened fields with bales of rolled-up hay and on either side of the path, the wild grasses. Amy pulled some up and made a pretend fan.
We walked along the road until the sand dunes disappeared and the hay fields went out of view, and we saw the woodlands. The clearing wasn’t far, just past some trees with blossoms of white sprays. I didn’t know what kind of trees they were, but Amy knew, she said they were elderberry, that they bloom with white flowers, but after summer red berries grow, berries the colour of cherries. She’d explored the path before with him. I paid no mind to her.
When she asked me to walk farther, I told her I was tired. I wasn’t tired. All I wanted was to go back. Amy was so keen to show me something. What was it? It was something about a hideout. What else can I remember? Every detail is important.
I start to write it all down, beginning with the elderberry trees, and our last walk at the back of the sand dunes.
Gorey Garda Station
Monday, 10 October 2011, 1.45 p.m.
THE LAST TIME OLLIE GILMARTIN HAD SPOKEN TO Garda Damian Murray had been four months earlier. Some busybody made noises about a bit of alleged poaching, and Garda Murray had called him in for a little chat. He’d been nice enough about it – just laying out the lie of the land, so to speak. Ollie had time for the man, thought him a fair copper, so he was relieved to see him behind the front desk when he walked into the station.
‘You sure about these registration details, Ollie?’
‘What kind of a question is that? Of course I’m sure.’
‘Just asking before I ring it in. Don’t want to be sending the boys in Dublin on a wild goose chase, do we?’
Ollie winced at the reference to poultry. ‘I’m absolutely sure. It was off the road for a while, but he started to drive it again lately.’
‘And you say Steve Hughes has a photograph that might be helpful.’
‘Could be, is all I’m saying.’
‘And how do you reckon our Mr Hughes came upon this photograph?’
‘You’ll have to ask him that. I’m only saying what I know.’
‘Right, hang on so, Ollie. I’ll ring in this registration number, then you can give me Steve Hughes’ mobile and we’ll all have a chat.’
‘Always happy to oblige.’
‘Indeed.’ Murray grunted before leaving Ollie alone in the room.
Ollie tried Steve again. This time he got an answer. ‘Where are you, you bastard?’
‘Steady on, Ollie. I’m a busy man, you know.’
‘Yeah, right. You still got that photograph?’
‘Was planning on putting it back later.’
‘Well don’t bother. I’m at Gorey station. Murray will be ringing you in a minute.’
‘What the fuck for?’
‘That photograph. He’ll need to see it. I’ve given him the registration number of the Carina. Those murders in Dublin, the ones with the two girls, they think the killer might have driven the same type of car.’
There was a silence as Steve Hughes obviously tried to grasp what Ollie was saying to him. ‘Are you for fucking real?’
‘No, I’m making it up. Of course I’m for fucking real. Murray’s on his way back. When he phones, act surprised.’
‘That’ll be easy.’
Incident Room, Tallaght Garda Station
Monday, 10 October 2011, 2.00 p.m.
‘O’CONNOR, MAKE YOUR WAY OUT OF THAT GLASS house of yours, something’s raised its head, and it might be worth looking at.’
When Donoghue thought something was worth looking at, it usually was. As the bookman, he was forever on the lookout for connections. O’Connor wondered if the stories he’d heard about him were true. According to some of the others, Donoghue could crack a crime in a novel within the first twenty pages. Apparently it was something of an obsession with him. True or not, in real life he was not a man to be messed with.’
‘Skipper.’
‘Sit down, O’Connor.’