Laura Cassidy: Angel Kiss

My pumps smacked against the tarmac. I could feel the sharp loose pebbles digging into their flimsy soles. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I was so scared. I couldn’t let anything happen to Des. My mum really liked him. And he didn’t deserve this. He hadn’t done anything. I ran past the bungalows, down the hill, then past the guesthouse and across the street. There was no time to go to the hall. I had to get to Des.

I fumbled with the handle of the front door for several precious seconds before pulling myself up over the little gate between Des’s house and Mary’s shop. I hoisted myself over its steel bars. My anklebones cracked as they hit the ground on the other side. I dropped the bag and ran over to the back door. It was locked. The sick bastard had locked it.

‘ Hello! Hello! ’ I banged my fist against the glass, and I kicked the wooden panels, but nobody came to open it.

‘Hello! Open up! Open up!’ It was pointless. The window. Get in through the window. It was locked too. But the glass was single glazed. I had no choice. I had to do it. It didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel my fist slice through it. I couldn’t feel the shards slitting my skin. I grabbed the handle, pushed the window open and climbed in. I clambered up the stairs and pushed his bedroom door open. That’s when I saw him, slumped in the corner. His head hanging limply, his legs outstretched. Blood on his wrists. A Stanley knife lay on the ground.

‘Des! Des!’ He didn’t look up. His eyes were closed; his body was still. ‘ Wake up! Wake up! ’ His eyes opened for a second, but then they shut again. I ran into the hall and picked up the phone. I don’t remember dialling the number, but I must have done. A voice answered immediately.

‘What is your emergency?’

‘I need an ambulance. An attempted murder. He’s still alive but – OK. Number 16, Main Street, Avarna. OK. OK.’

I ran back into the bedroom, and knelt down beside him. I tore two strips from my dress, and wrapped them round his wrists. Des’s face was getting paler. His eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if they were ever going to open again.

Peter Mulvey was tracked down at Belfast Airport just a few hours later, waiting for a flight to Frankfurt. He was arrested and taken to the Garda station in Carrick-on-Shannon. Des lay in a hospital bed in the intensive care ward, his situation critical.

Mum, shocked by the news, sat on her bed in the caravan, very concerned and utterly confused. I needed to explain everything to her. So I started at the beginning. I told her all about the headaches and the bag and the doctor and the healer and Peter Mulvey and how I had been wrong about Des.

‘I always knew there was something special about you,’ she said, brushing my hair back behind my ear and tracing her finger across my freckle.

I wasn’t sure if you could call it special.

‘So you’re sure Des didn’t kill anybody?’ she said a few moments later.

‘Yes. I am one hundred per cent sure. You can trust me on this one, Mum. Peter killed Beth. Des didn’t kill anybody.’

‘You said you had a bad feeling about him though?’

‘I overheard him fighting with Chris at the fête, but Chris explained to me that he had overloaded one of the sockets at the funhouse. He was hungover and wasn’t really paying attention. Des just got angry because one of the kids could have got hurt. He even apologized to Chris for shouting at him.’

‘He’s never going to forgive me…’ she said, wiping tears from her cheeks. ‘He spends half his life being blamed for a crime he didn’t commit and then I come along and blame him too.’

‘He will forgive you,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t blame you. I know.’

Mum wanted to be by Des’s side at the hospital, so I went with her. I never used to drink coffee, but I drank it that day, a sweet cappuccino from the machine in the waiting room that tasted disgusting. I think that in times of extreme emotion you notice everything more. I noticed the hot coffee on my tongue, the feel of the hard plastic chair against the back of my knees and the smell of disinfectant on the floors. I didn’t like this heightened state. It reminded me too much of another day. That day six years ago when I’d watched my dad being buried. I tried not to let my mind go there. Des couldn’t die. Mum would be so upset. I kept thinking maybe if I’d been able to run a little faster, if I’d left the party earlier, if I’d solved the clues in time, then it would have been different. And if I hadn’t gone looking for answers in the first place Des wouldn’t have got hurt.

Mum was allowed into the ward, but I had to wait outside. I didn’t mind waiting. I liked it; I liked there being no news. I would have waited there forever, because that would mean he was definitely still alive. Every time Mum came down to check on me, I’d read her face for clues, and then feel a huge sense of relief when she’d say ‘No change’, and tell me to go home. After the fourth time that she told me to go, I went. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. The adrenalin that had been keeping me awake was gone. I got a taxi back to the caravan. Colin was waiting by the door.

‘I’m meant to be your sidekick!’ he shouted. I took out my keys and walked towards him, too exhausted to shout back.

‘You are,’ I said.

He gave me a big hug.

‘You didn’t tell me about the Beth and Jane connection. You didn’t tell me about Peter.’ He looked so upset.

‘I thought it was best to try to figure it out by myself. I’m sorry.’

‘You could have died!’

‘I’m sorry, Colin. I won’t ever keep anything from you again.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

Colin slept in Mum’s bed. I was so tired, yet I still found it hard to get to sleep. My mind was racing. And I kept checking my phone for news, even though I knew I had no coverage. I pulled the covers tightly around me, and eventually fell asleep to the sound of Colin’s breathing.

The next morning there was no change. Des was still in a critical condition. I wondered what that meant. Was he more likely to die than to pull through? I asked Mum if she thought he was going to be OK. I’d needed her to say yes. I needed the reassurance that everything was going to be OK. But all she could say was, ‘I don’t know.’

That evening Mum, Colin and I drove to Carrick to hand in Beth’s bag to the Gardai and make a statement. As I dropped it down on the counter I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. Like I was free. For now at least.

One year later, on 2 November, Peter Mulvey was charged with the rape and murder of Elizabeth Cullen. Shortly after I’d handed the bag into the Garda station, Gardai had tracked down Alf Meehan in his new home and questioned him. He said that the bag did not belong to him and that Peter Mulvey had once asked him to burn it. Alf Meehan had suffered from a fear of fire all his life, and so, rather than burning it, he had buried it in his back garden, along with all his other unwanted rubbish. Before he buried it, he took the money out of it, but was not interested in the library card, or the violin strings, or the hat, or the lipstick.

When he heard of Beth Cullen’s disappearance he had his suspicions. But he never said anything. Alf was a simple man, whom Peter Mulvey had a tight control over. Peter Mulvey was the only person who knew that it was Alf who had once stolen £25 from the church offertory. Peter was on a business trip when he heard that Alf was moving house. He sent him a threatening letter, just to make sure he didn’t say a word to anyone.

There was much speculation regarding the exact events of the day that Beth Cullen went missing. The night I handed in the bag I had a dream. In that dream I saw exactly what had happened.