Алекс Баркли - I Confess

‘And you loved him too,’ said Patrick.

Helen nodded. ‘I did. I always did.’

‘Except, according to Edie, you were too busy thinking you deserved nothing better than that prick who left you. And she could never figure that out, how someone as gorgeous as you, could settle for so little.’

Helen cried harder.

‘Unfortunately, Murph is not brave,’ said Patrick.

Behind him, Murph reached for the candlestick, and took it in both hands.

Patrick frowned. He inhaled deeply through his nose.

Behind him, Murph took a silent step forward, the candlestick raised.

‘What is that smell?’ said Patrick.

‘Fire,’ said Murph, swinging the candlestick down, slamming it hard against Patrick’s temple. ‘Fire, you prick.’

Sergeant Val James sat at her desk in the garda station, her mobile phone beside her, her computer open on PULSE — the garda’s database. She entered a car registration number and got a hit on the registered owner: PATRICK LYNCH. She clicked on the Driver’s Licence Insurance Production Record — a record of when any person driving the car had been asked to produce their driver’s licence and insurance to a guard. There were two names listed for incidents in the previous year. She clicked on the first one: GRAHAM LANGERWELL who had been pulled over for speeding in Dublin the previous January. She clicked on his production record. On 20 March 2006, he had been caught speeding in a rental car in Kealkill, 50 kilometres east of Castletownbere.

Val fired up her laptop and opened a folder called House Sale, and clicked on a pdf. There was a coastal map that included Pilgrim Point. A small site next to it was shaded in grey. An arrow was drawn from it to the handwritten words:

Val grabbed her phone, scrolled to SUSAN and texted her.

Are you out taxi driving too?

She added an eye-roll emoji and hit SEND. Her phone rang.

‘Aren’t we some fools?’ said Susan.

‘I’m here half an hour in the station waiting for him,’ said Val. ‘And it’ll be, “Oh, the battery died, Mam”.’

‘Well,’ said Susan, ‘I can tell you there’s nothing wrong with his battery. I know exactly where your son is, because I get all the goss.’

‘Are your lot home?’ said Val.

‘They are,’ said Susan, ‘that’s why I rang. Cian’s after taking the bus out to Ardgroom. He got fed up waiting for you, but according to the lads, he’s got his eye on some young one out that way and he hopped in for the spin.’

‘I’ll kill him,’ said Val. ‘Are they long gone? Did he forget he was to come to the station or what?’

‘He must have,’ said Susan. ‘But they’re not long gone. Hold on — one of the lads is shouting at me here. So — they reckon three lads are being dropped off in Urhan, two more in Eyeries, another lad in Kilcatherine—’

‘The pup!’ said Val. ‘I’m not waiting up half the night for him to get a tour of Beara. Hopefully, I’ll catch him on the road.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I was actually texting to ask you a question on the QT. This is going back a few years now, before I was ever here. But did you, by any chance, handle the will for a transfer of one acre of land out at Pilgrim Point — it would have been Sister Consolata’s will, and she died in 2006.’

‘I did,’ said Susan.

‘I obviously looked into the land around ours when we were buying the place,’ said Val, ‘but I only got as far as the registered owner — Langerwell Holdings. I didn’t take much notice. Do you know was there a beneficial owner?’

‘What’s this all about?’ said Susan.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Val.

‘Okaaay,’ said Susan. ‘Yes. It was Patrick Lynch. He’s from here — he used to work up above at the convent, so did his mother. So I suppose this was a token of Consolata’s gratitude. Mind you, someone else was telling me the connection was Patrick’s father — Consolata knew him from Cork city when she was starting out — some delinquent teen she’d been dealing with as part of her ministry or whatever you call that. Apparently, she brought him with her when she moved down here, got him into the industrial school to straighten him out.’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure how much good it did him. I know the wife kicked him out.’

‘So maybe it was a token of guilt,’ said Val.

Susan laughed. ‘Consolata? Guilt? Easy to know you’re not from around these parts.’

Pilgrim Point

30 July 1983

The Night of the Rape

Sister Consolata stood in the darkness of the convent laundry room, jaw clenched, lips tight like a pulled seam. Daniel Lynch stood opposite her, his eyes wild, his body trembling. He was wearing a grey T-shirt and jeans that were stained in blood that had been taken and lost in so many ways; pouring from deep wounds, cast from the blade of a knife, flicked from the broken bubbles of saliva it had mixed with, smeared then by tiny, clawing, desperate hands.

The buckle on his brown leather belt hung loose, jangling as his hips rocked. The top button of his jeans was open, and a small yellowy twist of his underpants was wedged into the V of his open fly.

‘You watched her dance, didn’t you?’ said Sister Consolata.

A frown flickered on Daniel’s face.

‘You watched her,’ said Sister Consolata, lifting her arms, and flapping them twice like a bird captured in slow motion, moving her hips in the same way; once, twice. ‘You WATCHED her,’ she roared. ‘You WATCHED her.’

Daniel opened his mouth to say ‘No’.

‘And you WANTED her,’ said Sister Consolata, each word snapping like a whip. ‘Same as you want all the girls who move in the sunlight the way you want them to move in the dark.’

Daniel’s eyes moved like trapped flies.

‘How do you think it feels?’ said Sister Consolata.

Daniel ground his entwined fingers against each other, his elbows moving in and out against his sides.

‘How do you think it FEELS?’ she roared.

‘Sore,’ he said. ‘Sore, Sister.’

‘For me!’ she screamed, slamming her fist against her chest. ‘For me!’

The trapped flies stilled, drawn to the only light in the room; the white band of her black veil.

Sister Consolata glared at him. ‘And I the one brought you here, trailing the smell of a hundred foster homes behind you.’

Daniel pulled his hands from their grip.

Sister Consolata looked down at his left hand. ‘And he’s still wearing a wedding ring on his finger! You’ve some cheek, and you kicked out of the house years ago. And that poor child, pining for you like a dog at a window. So, you can swear to me now, on your son’s life, that you won’t come next, nigh, or near this town again?’

‘I swear on Patrick’s life that I won’t come next, nigh, or near this town again.’

‘And if I have to look them in the eye myself, and tell them you’ve died, I will.’ Her eye was caught, and she looked down, pointing to his jacket pocket.

‘What’s that?’ she said. ‘Give that to me.’

‘No, Sister.’

She looked at him, incredulous.

‘I can’t, Sister. You don’t want to—’

‘Give it to me!’ She lunged forward, grabbing the corner of fabric, whipping it free from his pocket. A key came with it, landing with a light, metallic clank but Sister Consolata was focused on the fabric, straightening it out in her hands, seeing the shape of it, like a triangle, and it had a waistband with a little bow on it, and two holes for the legs, and it was so small. She looked up at him, her face lit with anger.

‘You fool!’ she hissed. ‘You fool!’ She threw the underwear at his feet. ‘Put that back! Put it back in your pocket!’ She glanced around. ‘We need to... we need to...’