Lar runs at the door and slams his shoulder against it. He’ll have a heart attack if he continues doing that. Amanda imagines him collapsing to the floor, grasping his chest as his heart crashes into stillness. What a solution that would be. No more trying to hold their shattered marriage together. No more yearning for… for what? Had she ever known what she wanted until Marcus came and turned her upside down?
She opens the door and waits for Lar to enter. His forehead is beaded with sweat, his complexion dangerously flushed. He has her father’s face, the flint in his eyes, brutality hardening his mouth. She holds herself steady, waits for the blow that will floor her.
He sinks to the edge of the bed and covers his face. The noise a man makes when he cries is ugly. It goes against his instincts, gushed from an internal reservoir with broken walls. She heard her father cry once. He was dying in a hospital ward and wanted his wife’s forgiveness. Nothing she or Rebecca said could persuade Imelda to visit him. Forgiveness was in her gift to give but she refused to allow him that relief. As her father wept, Amanda turned away, repulsed by an atonement that was only possible when his impending death had stripped his anger to the core.
‘Were you with him?’ Loud, racking sobs have withered the strong lines of Lar’s face. ‘Please don’t lie to me at this terrible time.’
She kneels before him, forces him to look at her. ‘I’m so sorry you had to be subjected to those lies. Yes, I was with Eric but it’s not what you think.’
‘You’ve no idea what I’m thinking,’ he answers, wearily.
‘Yes, I do. And I don’t blame you for being suspicious. I’ve been advising Eric, passing on the names of the sources I used when I was a crime reporter. He rang me that morning looking for confidential information about Billy Shroff. I was nervous discussing it over the phone and detoured to his place on my way to Howth—’
‘Get off your knees, Amanda.’ He has stopped abbreviating her name and the hard snap of vowels and consonants sound like a curse. When he pushes her away from him, his contemptuous expression disguises his pain. ‘There’s only one reason why you kneel before a man and it’s not to offer repentance.’
His unrelenting stare is petrifying but she finds the words to pacify him, dredges them from the depths of her heart, which is shredded but still capable of pumping all that is necessary to survive this ordeal. Gradually his set expression, so terse and judgemental, eases. Grief and dread have dazed him, dulled his usual sharpness. All that matters is Marcus… Marcus… Marcus, and it is the power of their son’s name that brings him back to her. Under normal circumstances, he would not tolerate such a betrayal, but there is no longer any normality in their lives. They are being tossed like flotsam from hour to hour, waiting for a call, a demand, a clue, anything to release them from this interminable wait. And so Lar stands and nods, puts his index finger to her lips to silence her torrent of lies. Their acceptance that their marriage has ended is an unspoken acknowledgement but, for now, they will be together for Marcus.
She will be penniless and unemployable. Lar will see to that. Amanda doesn’t fear beginning again but without Marcus it will be meaningless. Eric will move as far as possible from her husband’s clutches. The Shroffs he can handle. As a crime reporter, he accepts the risk of retaliation. But Lar Richardson is a different matter. Eric is right to fear him.
Lar drives to LR1 in the afternoon. The newsroom is floundering, unsure how to continue covering a story that has the owner and his erring wife at its centre. He is still at the meeting when the police come to Shearwater.
‘Unfortunately, there have been no new developments this morning.’ Sergeant Moran is quick to dampen Amanda’s expectations. She shakes her head when Mrs Morris offers to make coffee, and settles heavily into an armchair. Garda Browne remains standing, notebook and pen in hand. Amanda’s nervousness grows. They’ve arrived unannounced, claiming they have nothing new to tell her, yet there is something about the sergeant’s tone, a quickening that’s slight enough to be imagined; but Amanda is attuned to her every nuance and expression.
‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘An anonymous tip-off,’ Sergeant Moran replies.
‘Regarding Marcus?’
‘It’s too soon to know if our information has any credibility…’ The sergeant pauses then continues, ‘but we’re hopeful that with your cooperation—’
‘Of course you have my cooperation.’
‘Our enquiry is not related to Marcus, at least not at this juncture. Whether or not there is a link depends…’ Again, she pauses and Garda Browne, still standing, says, ‘It concerns the late Constance Lawson.’
Amanda draws back from a name that still has the power to quicken her heartbeat.
‘I don’t understand.’ She appeals directly to Sergeant Moran.
‘I know that Marcus is all you can think about right now but we have to check if this information has any validity.’ She sounds apologetic, sympathetic, even, which just fuels Amanda’s anxiety. ‘I need to know if you were receiving confidential information from anyone in Glenmoore Garda Station, the Garda Press Office, or any other member of An Garda Siochána at the time of Constance Lawson’s disappearance?’
The question impacts like a fist against her chin. That night in Hunter’s car. The two of them alone in the industrial estate. Planes flying low overhead and the suffocating sensation that came over her when she heard that Karl Lawson was not guilty – not guilty…
Garda Browne waits, pen poised in hand, to record her response, and Amanda feels it again; that same gagging feeling of being caught out in the wrong.
‘No. I certainly was not receiving that kind of information from anyone on the force.’ Deny, deny, deny. Hunter had drilled that one word into her when the investigation into their activities was taking place. That same advice must hold true now.
‘Our tip-off suggests otherwise,’ says Garda Browne.
‘Why would you pay attention to an anonymous tip-off?’
‘It could be malicious,’ Sergeant Moran admits, then continues, ‘but we have to investigate it, especially when it concerns you. It implies that during our search for that unfortunate young girl, you used confidential information known only to gardaí and reproduced it in Capital Eye.’
‘Correction, Sergeant Moran. I researched my facts, made phone calls, established what I believed to be the truth.’ Amanda holds herself steady, braced against the next blow. Fear is weakness. To show it is advantageous to the accuser. ‘As a reporter that was my duty. The information I used was in the public domain. It was simply a case of unearthing it. I didn’t need sources in the gardaí to help me.’