The Doll's House

It’s Emma’s hair I notice first, even before I see her eyes. She’s halfway down the box with the broken toys. Reaching in, I touch her porcelain face, running my fingers down the jagged crack. Again a sense of foreboding builds inside me. Her eyes look back at me. I see kindness. I sit below the old dartboard, trying to remember.

I’m trying to remember hiding in the attic, or the memory from the doll’s house, when Mum and Dad were arguing and I heard the doorbell. I had felt fear, not understanding why the man I now know to have been Keith Jenkins was there. Uncle Jimmy was in the doll’s house too.

I must look mad, a grown woman holding a doll.

I thought this room would have answers, but it doesn’t. I listen for Dominic downstairs, but hear nothing. I’m about to give up when something comes back to me. It has nothing to do with Mum or Dad, or their arguments. It’s the sound of boyhood whispers, Dominic, Martin and Stevie, talking in low voices. There are other voices too, adult ones. Suddenly I need to get out of this room. I jump up too fast from my hunkered position and feel woozy. I don’t bother to dust myself down, running towards the door, the whispering getting louder, the voices more powerful. I reach for the latch. It’s stuck. It doesn’t want to budge. I feel like that scared little girl again, wanting to run away, to go somewhere to cry, somewhere she can be safe.

When the latch opens, I fall out into the bright walls of Dominic’s old bedroom, pulling the door behind me. I rush down the stairs, not stopping until I reach the landing.

Dominic is waiting for me, leaning against the door of our parents’ room. I can’t read his face.

‘Find what you were looking for?’ His voice sounds uncaring.

‘Not exactly,’ I hear myself say. I realise I’m still holding Emma and feel embarrassed, but I regain eye contact with Dominic. ‘You cleared out your bedroom, but you didn’t do the attic.’

‘Not yet.’

My next words surprise me, because it is as if someone else is doing the talking: ‘Keith Jenkins.’

‘What about him?’

‘He loved Mum, didn’t he?’

Dominic looks unperturbed. He waits the longest time before answering. ‘Keith Jenkins wasn’t the only man who liked our mother.’

I’m taken aback, but not because of his words: it’s because of my reaction to them.





Incident Room, Harcourt Street Police Station


O’Connor knew he needed to be firing on all cylinders if Chief Superintendent Butler was to stay off his back. They now had two deaths on their hands, an established MO, both Jenkins’s and Deborah Gahan’s house under twenty-four-hour police protection, and still no clear idea as to who the killer was. Or why the hell he was doing it.

Kate talking about more players being involved, and different motivations overlapping each other, wasn’t exactly cheering him up either. The likelihood of something else unforeseen going down was increasing. Which he didn’t like one bloody bit.

The mood in the incident room was sombre. Every man and woman present knew Butler was about to unload his frustration. Nobody wanted to be in the firing line. O’Connor may have been the SIO, and more likely to get it head on, but Butler wasn’t always selective in his choice of individual to suffer his wrath. The session at Harcourt Street kicked off with a general attack by Butler for the benefit of every single member of the force huddled in the packed room. Even Matthews, the bookman, was keeping his mouth shut as the chief superintendent let off steam.

‘He’s some bloody piece of work, putting a guy in the canal when he’s already dead.’ Butler stood up from the top table. The sound of his chair scraping backwards across the floor was the only noise other than his voice. He turned to look behind him at the large white incident-room board, while O’Connor, Matthews and Dr Martha Smyth, from the forensics team, remained seated. Everyone present knew to let Butler’s last comment go unanswered. He would let them know when he was ready to hear them talk.

‘I’m not happy, people, not one bit happy. The media love this blasted story, first Jenkins with his superstar status and now a bloody down-and-out. But I don’t love it. I’m far from loving it. Jenkins took his dip in the early hours of Saturday morning, and I don’t need to remind you all that it’s now bloody Wednesday.’ Butler paused, his silence an indicator that he was about to pounce again. ‘Is Morrison sure Gahan was dead going into the water?’ His question was directed at O’Connor.

‘Completely sure, boss.’ O’Connor hoped his positive affirmation of Butler’s ranked superiority might ease the line of questioning. ‘Heart failure brought on by the knife attack. There’s no evidence of diatoms in the bloodstream, or pressure trauma in the sinuses or lungs, or any haemorrhaging in the sinuses as Morrison would have expected with a drowning. Nor is there debris from the water, which Jimmy Gahan would have sucked in, trying to breathe,’ O’Connor coughed, ‘had he been still alive.’