Алекс Баркли - I Confess

Patrick took a firm grip on the handrail and took solid, careful steps down to where Johnny lay, lifeless, a huge pool of blood under his head. His right arm was loose at his side, his palm up. Patrick glanced at the handrail.

‘Not sure you had a pretty good handle on it,’ said Patrick.

Terry’s body had flipped on to Johnny’s lower legs, and lay sideways across them. Patrick crouched down and pushed each body through the gap between the railing posts, watching, each time, as they plunged down the sheer cliff face into the sea.

Patrick jogged up to the top of the steps and looked up. Clare was looking away from him, her eyes wide, her hand over her mouth. She turned to run.

Patrick lunged.

Clare landed hard, the breath punched from her as her chest struck a mound in the grass. Patrick rolled her over and dragged her to her feet. He tried to yank her arms behind her back.

‘They’re too short,’ he said. ‘They’re freakish.’ He grabbed her, instead, by the upper arm and hauled her across the grass to the chapel as she struggled to breathe. He locked her into the pitch-black sacristy, then ran back to retrieve the tarpaulin. He picked up the rock on top of it, paused, then put it back, wrapping it up in the tarpaulin instead. When he walked back into the sacristy, he put it down on the floor, turned on the torch and shone it around the room until he found Clare, standing with her back to the wall, her hands flat against it.

‘I suppose there wasn’t much you could do,’ said Patrick. ‘The darkness is absolute.’ He paused. ‘I remember Father Owens saying to me once, in confession... I told him that sometimes I hear the voices of angels, and he said, “Who are the angels that speak to you, Patrick?” And I said, “The dark ones, Father. Only ever the dark ones.”’ He smiled.

‘And what did he say to that?’ said Clare.

‘You always have to know everything,’ said Patrick. ‘There is no bad time for Clare to have an unsatisfied curiosity. He said to me, “Go way outta that, Patrick. Do you think I don’t know what day it is today?” And we had a laugh about it.’ Patrick flashed a smile, then levelled Clare with a dead stare. ‘It was Hallowe’en,’ he said.

Clare started to scramble towards the door.

‘Stop!’ He held up a hand. ‘I’m thinking, here.’ said Patrick. ‘Nothing is decided. So sit down and relax.’ He pointed to an upturned crate.

Clare kept edging along the wall towards the door.

Patrick gave her a patient look. ‘Clare. I’m a foot taller than you, I take steroids, I work out every day. I’m fit. So... just let me think.’

Clare sat down on the crate. Patrick walked around, shining his torch across all the surfaces. ‘I watched you tonight,’ he said. ‘Nailing everyone. You were vicious. Do you even know you’re doing it? You’re like one of those glow sticks that the kids have — you have a SNAP point and this anger comes out, like a poisonous gas. Do you know how angry you are?’

Clare stared straight ahead. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Patrick. And I don’t want to listen.’

Patrick laughed out loud. ‘Brilliant!’ He looked at her. ‘You know everyone else. You pull out what’s hidden in the folds of their shame and bring it under your glow-stick glow for all the world to see. Because if everyone’s looking over there, then no one’s looking over here.’ He pointed to her.

‘I didn’t know you,’ said Clare.

Patrick frowned.

‘Tonight,’ said Clare. ‘I didn’t know you.’

‘You did,’ said Patrick, ‘but I’m the matching childhood shame you can’t face. You erased my history of shame but, really, what you were doing was erasing your own. You and me were in a silent agreement to see ourselves only as the wild adult successes we now are. But’ — he held up a finger — ‘by erasing my shame, you erased the thing that “may” have caused some damage... that may have caused the unease? You did get a bad feeling about me, earlier. You can tell me now. Especially now that you know you were right.’

‘Where is this going?’ said Clare.

Patrick moved the beam of the torch in increasingly aimless swipes, then stopped. ‘No one ever tells you...’ He let out a breath. ‘I don’t feel like killing you. You can be not in the mood for killing someone.’ He shook his head. ‘Where did you come out of, earlier?’

‘I was going to my room,’ said Clare. ‘I saw you and Johnny carrying the body.’

‘Were you coming over to say thank you? The less evidence, the less chance of your life imploding, and no further wrath of Laura if we took care of it. Or was it your usual? You couldn’t not know. There’s no loop Clare can be left out of.’

He looked down at the torch, twisted it, lowered the light. He walked over to Clare and set it down on the crate a few inches from her, the beam facing upwards, diffusing warm light.

‘I know I gave you a terrible fright in the library,’ said Patrick. ‘And I am genuinely sorry about that.’

Clare frowned. ‘You weren’t in the library.’

‘What?’ said Patrick.

‘You weren’t in the library when I was there.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘When?’ said Clare.

Patrick’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t remember.’

‘Remember what?’ said Clare.

Patrick shook his head. ‘I envy you.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘It was a seminal moment,’ said Patrick.

Clare frowned.

‘Not in a good way,’ said Patrick. ‘And you’ve...’ He mimed the flick of a switch.

‘For God’s sake,’ said Clare, ‘speak English.’

‘You walked in on me...’ said Patrick. He shook his head. ‘I can barely say it... but bear with me because I know what happened now — you walked in on me jerking off in the library. I came — by accident I have to say — and you promised you wouldn’t tell on me.’

He studied Clare, her drifted gaze, her skin glowing red in the light.

‘You look so young,’ he said. ‘You have almost no lines.’ He paused. ‘I’d say if you were turned inside out, though, the surface would be ravaged.’ He tilted his head. ‘And you meant it when you said you wouldn’t tell.’

Clare nodded.

‘Until Belle Mademoiselle Autin tumbled upon you and you saw your chance. To have her comforting arm around you. To rest your head against her, to be close enough to smell that lavender soap, maybe to accidentally feel your cheek against her chest, to see if you could raise goosebumps on that exotic skin the way she rose them on the skin you wanted to jump out of.’

Clare didn’t reply.

‘No wonder you hate victims,’ said Patrick. ‘It wasn’t what happened in the library that you wanted to block out — that was awkward, but the shame was all mine. You blocked out what happened in the library because it was all entwined in what happened next, because you chose to be a victim, because you broke a promise in the hope of a cheap thrill. And I don’t know after that. Did it happen? Between you confessing to Mademoiselle Autin the horror of what Patrick Lynch did to you in the library and Mademoiselle running to Sister Consolata to tell her and Sister Consolata firing me — somewhere in there — did you get what you wanted?’ He waited. ‘I really want to know the answer. I hope you did. Because what Consolata said to me when she was firing me, what she told me about my father... it set me off on some downward spiral. And next thing you know, it’s Hallowe’en. And we know what happened that night.’

Clare’s head whipped around to him, her eyes wide.

‘Fucking answer me!’ said Patrick.

Clare gave a brief, short nod.

‘As perfunctory as that?’ said Patrick.