Алекс Баркли - I Confess

‘Shhh!’ said Dylan, staring up at her, wide-eyed. ‘We’ll get caught.’

‘Sorr-ee,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I just... the power!’ She gestured around her. ‘It’s going to my head. You common penitent.’ She paused. ‘Or are you... penitent?’

‘That’s better,’ said Dylan. ‘I’ve got your levels.’ He hit the track pad, and a red dot appeared on screen. He nodded.

Mally started to speak:

‘You are listening to episode one of the true crime podcast: Girl Eleven, Girl Sixteen: The Jessie Crossan Story.

‘On July thirtieth, 1983, in the small fishing town of Castletownbere on the Beara Peninsula in Cork, an eleven-year-old girl put on her pyjamas, got into bed, and wrote in her diary about the wonderful day she had just had. It was the first Saturday of Regatta week — the high point of Beara’s social calendar — when the town is filled with people, the harbour is filled with boats, and the pier glows with the multicoloured lights of the funfair.

‘Jessie’s “Best Day of the Year” had begun at breakfast when she got to open an early birthday gift from her aunt in America. That afternoon, Jessie danced in a talent contest on the square. She didn’t win, but, in her heart, she did. She closed her diary, turned out the light, and went to sleep a happy girl. It was eight thirty p.m.

‘Three hours later, Jessie’s father was to walk into her room to discover his daughter’s almost lifeless body, lying on her now blood-soaked bed. Jessie had been beaten, raped, and stabbed multiple times. There were no signs of forced entry. And her rapist was never caught.

‘Though Jessie survived her horrific attack, she was not to live for much longer. Five years later — on Hallowe’en Night, 1988, Jessie lost her life in a fire that tore through a derelict building in the grounds of the Sisters of Good Grace Convent on nearby Pilgrim Point.

‘Jessie’s parents, devastated by their daughter’s rape, were already under strain, and their marriage did not survive the trauma of her death. Her mother moved away, never to return, and passed away in 2004. Jessie’s father, Kevin, remained in Beara. Where fathers in similar circumstances might hound detectives investigating the case, Kevin seemed to come to terms with the possibility that Jessie’s rapist would never be found. Some would say the fight drained out of him through the cracks in his broken heart. Others would say that it was not in Kevin’s interest for the guards to find the culprit. Sadly, it was under that cloud of suspicion Kevin Crossan lived until his passing in 2017.

‘It seemed there was no one left to fight for justice for Jessie. Until a new sergeant came to town. Known for her keen eye and her methodical approach to investigations, Valerie James was a newly promoted sergeant when she moved from Cork city with her family to start a new life in the close-knit community.

‘James inherited the Jessie Crossan rape case — a case long-since gone cold. With daughters of her own, James felt a particular resonance with the case and vowed that Jessie’s rapist would be brought to justice.

‘But conscious of being a stranger in a small town and with no local connections, this was a vow James shared with only her family and a small circle of trusted friends. If she were to solve this case, she would have to separate the facts — the physical evidence, forensic evidence, sworn statements — from the conjecture and rumour that, in a small town, can often be mistaken for the truth.

‘How do I know all this? I am Mally James. And the woman who made that vow is... my mother.’

Mally spread her arms, and bowed. She took a drink from her Diet Coke, and stretched her legs.

‘The acoustics are awesome,’ said Dylan. ‘It’s the insulation panels.’

‘Mally looked at him. ‘Stolen insulation panels, my child.’

‘Borrowed,’ said Dylan. ‘It’s not like we attached them to the walls.’

‘So,’ said Mally, ‘What do you think?’

‘The “How do I know all this?” is lame. So is the sentence about the cracks in the heart. And some of it is a tiny bit too dramatic.’

‘But it IS dramatic,’ said Mally. ‘And so sad. I feel like I know her now.’

‘That’s because you keep asking Mom about her. “Hey, Edie, love your make-up, so what about that dead friend...?”’

‘Dark,’ said Mally.

‘Plus, by the way, your mom obviously doesn’t trust my parents because they haven’t a clue — pun intended — about this vow she made.’

‘But I’m sure they want the guy to get caught too,’ said Mally, ‘so they’d be delighted Mam was being so secretive.’

‘Unlike her daughter,’ said Dylan. ‘She would go mental if she knew what you were up to.’

‘It’s a college assignment,’ said Mally. ‘It’s not like it’s a court case and I’m like emailing a link to the jurors. It’s only for my lecturer.’

‘Your journalist lecturer?’ said Dylan.

‘Ooh,’ said Mally, ‘I forgot that part. But I won’t do it if it’s not confidential obviously. But if I can do it, that means when Mam does solve the case, he’s going to be like pointing at me from the top of the class going, “This one breaks stories! First for her!”’

‘Or,’ said Dylan, ‘he’ll be “Mally James: Future Journalist Most Likely to Be Fired/Jailed/Shot because of Poor/Illegal/Both Journalistic Practices.”’

‘I’m literally on the pilot episode and you’re shooting me down. It’s not like I’m doing a whole series closely following the progress on the case.’

‘Oh my God — you totally are! Nosing through your mom’s files the whole time.’

‘I meant not following it “out loud” — like, in my assignment.’

‘Everything you said there was true,’ said Dylan. ‘Your mom would go nuts.’

‘Well, that’s the risk you take when you leave your curious daughter — I heard that too — when you leave your inquisitive daughter at your desk in the station while going to find your purse to give her money for her lunch.’

‘Yeah — what a bitch.’

‘And I haven’t nosed in a while. Which is killing me.’ She paused. ‘OK — can I read you the new developments bit? It’s not quite finished.’

‘Yes, but I’m not recording. We have to go.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Mally, checking her notes. ‘Right: the first new development is the kind that one usually sees in reverse: a missing box of evidence — which included items of Jessie’s clothing — reappeared. As DNA testing was not available to investigators in 1983, this has opened up the possibility that a DNA profile of Jessie’s attacker could be obtained.

‘The second development came from the same box of evidence — in the form of Jessie’s diary. A seemingly insignificant detail was discovered by Sergeant James in the last entry Jessie made — only hours before the rape. In it, Jessie mentioned three pairs of underpants sent to her as part of her birthday gift by her aunt in America. When Sergeant James went to check the items of clothing taken into evidence, she discovered that not only was the underwear not there, neither was there any record of them in the inventory of items taken away from Jessie’s bedroom that night: a pyjama top, matching shorts and a hair band. In Jessie’s mother’s statement at the time, she said it was Jessie’s habit to wear either a nightdress or a pyjama top and bottoms to bed, but that she did not wear underwear. To Sergeant James, this meant that this rapist may, perhaps, have taken away trophies from the scene.’

‘That is beyond creepy,’ said Dylan.

They heard a rattle at the chapel door.

‘Who’s that?’ said Mally.

‘How would I know?’ said Dylan. ‘Not my parents, anyway — there’s no way they’d be back from Cork yet.’