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Chapter 37
Monday, June 6, 2016
WHEN I FINALLY WAKE UP, the sun is a bright knife through the gap in the curtains. I sit up for a minute. It’s eleven already.
Monday. Niamh’s been gone for sixteen days.
Sixteen. June Talbot was killed between days twelve and fourteen. On day sixteen, Teresa McKenny was already dead too.
I remember last night in a rush of pain. When I turn on my phone, there are three missed calls from Conor.
I shower and dress and start walking toward Ringsend and the canal. I check my phone again, almost call, then don’t.
Did you know about him and your cousin?
I try to think of explanations.
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Why didn’t he tell me? I asked him, straight out. He said no.
Did you know?
I walk down Erne Street to Lime Street and then I’m on the quays.
I’m nauseous, sick. I think I’m going to throw up and I put my head down just in case. The Liffey runs dark and silent, swirling around unseen obstacles beneath the surface.
A few minutes later I stand up and look out over the river. Then I dial. He answers after one ring.
“Maggie? I’m so sorry about last night. Can we chat? Where are you right now?”
“I’m around the corner from the Ferryman,” I tell him.
There’s a longish silence and then he says, “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
I order myself a Guinness and I’m sitting at a corner table when he comes rushing in. I can’t look at him but I can’t not look at him. He looks terrible, his eyes lined, his shirt wrinkled. He smells like cigarette smoke.
“Maggie,” he says. “Look at me. Bláithín was angry.”
“What was she talking about? Was there something between you and Erin? I don’t care if there was.” Liar. “But you lied to the Guards. You’re going to have to talk to them.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “I know it, but let me tell you first.”
I take a long drink of my Guinness. The pub is quiet, chilled. It still smells of cleaning stuff. I know this moment of the day, when you’re still on top of things, when the bar’s fresh and new and under control. The familiarity steadies me. “Okay.”
He puts his face in his hands for a moment and then he looks up at me. “It’s hard to explain. It’s so long ago and some of it I only know now, but here’s what happened. I had class all day. Bláithín had slept at my flat the night before so I guess she was there when, well ... I guess I should back up and ... I came home around four or five and Bláithín was there. I knew something was wrong immediately. She has this way of ... She just goes absolutely silent and cold when she’s mad and I knew she was mad. But we were ... Jaysus, we were just kids. Our communication skills were pretty shite.” He breaks off and smiles at me. I don’t smile back and he keeps going. “She wouldn’t say a word. I sort of hovered around her for a bit, asking what was wrong and she just kept saying, ‘You know. You know what’s wrong.’ It was madness. I look back now and I wish I could say, ‘Run for your life, lad!’ But there were ... I felt like it was my fault and to be fair, I could be right moody myself. So I left her alone.
“I was getting ready for work and I went to get my coat out of the press in the hall and then I knew why she was mad. Erin’s leather jacket was hanging there. I recognized it immediately. I didn’t know how long it had been there because I hadn’t gone in the press for a while. But I saw it. I knew it was hers immediately. I didn’t say a word.”
I watch him for a moment, waiting for him to say it. He doesn’t.
“You thought she’d left it there when she was at your flat another time.”
“Yeah. It’s ... Bláithín was in France one weekend visiting her family and a group of us from the café went out and Erin got langered. I was worried about her and I brought her home with me. She slept on the couch. There was nothing ... nothing happened. But given the way Bláithín had gone crazy the night Erin went out dancing with us, I just decided not to tell her. When I saw the jacket, I assumed that Erin had left it that night.”
“When was that? When she stayed over?”
“A couple of weeks before she went missing.”
“So, what happened?” I watch him. He’s not meeting my eyes and he’s tearing a napkin into tiny pieces while he talks.
“She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We were going down to her parents’ holiday house that weekend and we did and we just ... went back to the way things had been. And then Erin didn’t show up for work and I went to the flat and, well, you know the rest.”
“What happened to the jacket?”
He sighs. He still can’t look at me. “I panicked. The first interview with the Guards was really scary. They thought I knew something. They were sure I had a romantic interest in her. If they searched my flat and found the jacket ... I shoved it in my rucksack and took it into college. I stayed at the library late one night and then I went into the bathroom and put it down in the bottom of the bin.”
I stare at him for a second. I think I believe him, but I don’t know what to say.
He finally meets my eyes. “I’m sorry. I know it’s ...”
“You’re going to have to tell the Guards,” I tell him. “They’ll have to bring you in and interview you and everything. That was evidence. Conor, this is ...”
“I know, I know.” There’s something more, though. I wait. “The thing is ... I always wondered if she had left it. The more I thought about it, the more I became sure that it hadn’t been in the press. I wondered if ... I don’t know. It was a little thing that was between me and Bláithín, all those years. Sometimes I wondered about Bláithín, if she’d actually stolen it or if she knew something ...
“A couple years ago, things were really bad. It wasn’t too long before we split up, maybe a year. We had been going to a counselor and it just shook all kinds of things loose. In a good way, I suppose, but we were fighting all the time. And one night she said, ‘You’ve never loved me. You’ve always loved that American girl. She even came here. She sat right on your couch and she pretended there was nothing between the two of you. She left her jacket and you never said a word!’”
He looks down at the table for a long moment before he goes on. “And I saw it. How the jacket got there. Bláithín told me that Erin had come to the flat, looking for me. She said she was upset and she came in and asked to use the toilet and that was when she must have taken off her jacket and left it in the bathroom.”
“When did she come to the flat?” I demand. “What day did she come to the flat?”
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