Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

There was a silence.

He chewed on the rind of his bacon, then threw the leftovers down on the plate.

‘It was eleven years ago, it was one week before her sixteenth birthday.’ He took a moment to compose himself and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. ‘She was last seen by a witness in the car park of Donaghmede shopping centre telling that lad, Brian “Bingo” O’Connell, to leave her alone, a lad who was not her boyfriend but who was in fact her friend’s boyfriend. He’d developed a fascination with her and wouldn’t leave her alone. I told the gardaí all this the day she didn’t come home. I told them countless times but they kept insisting they had nothing on him. If it wasn’t for a cabbage farmer who came across her body they never would have found a thing. They kept barking up the wrong tree.’

‘More specifically, you,’ Kitty said.

‘They wouldn’t leave me alone, they just couldn’t get it out of their heads. The only person they fully investigated was me, and I was the only one with the slightest bit of information on the last place she was seen.’

‘Maybe that was why.’

‘My friend Brick was the guy in the car park. They were so obsessed with pinning it on me, they didn’t believe anything I told them.’

‘Don’t they always look to the family first?’

‘Not like that they don’t. Brick wasn’t exactly the most reliable of witnesses. He’d been in some trouble.’

Kitty supposed he didn’t get a nickname like ‘Brick’ for any good reason.

They were silent. Archie watched the woman again. She was wringing a tissue around her finger, spiralling it till it pushed the skin up between the tissue and then unwinding it again. The café was filling up and the chef was busy behind the counter cooking fry-ups on a hot plate. The food sizzled and the smell filled the small room. Kitty’s stomach churned and she reached for another grape.

‘What made them eventually stop looking at you?’

‘When they found the body.’

He was silent.

‘She was raped, you know,’ he said suddenly, and Kitty had a hard time swallowing her grape.

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘I wanted to keep that out of the papers. Give her a bit of dignity. Her body had been left out too long and there wasn’t enough evidence.’

‘And you’re sure it was that guy? Brian O’Connell.’

‘Bingo,’ he said firmly, confident as hell. ‘As sure as I live and breathe. I used to see him around and he’d give me a look, a look like he’d got away with it and he found it funny.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘I don’t blame you for what you did to him.’

‘I’d do it again if I could,’ Archie said straight away. ‘Only blessing is I didn’t kill him, because it means I could do it again if I wanted.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

He dropped the bravado. ‘I went far enough to see the fear in his eye and that was enough for me. I’ll remember that look for ever. Keep it right here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘That was for Rebecca.’

Kitty thought about his life since then, family man, life torn apart by a tragedy, suffering twice as a consequence.

‘You don’t live with your wife any more?’

He shook his head. ‘She moved to Manchester. She’s with a good man. She’s found a way to live again. She deserves it. It’s not right to be living with such anger. It’s unhealthy. It destroys things. Destroyed our marriage, my friendships. Needless to say my job wouldn’t take me back. Having a record doesn’t make you a desirable candidate for employment.’

Tell me about it, Kitty thought. ‘So you work at the chipper.’

‘And I’m a bouncer at a club around the corner. That’s why I end up here for breakfast most mornings.’ He looked at the woman again. ‘Have to make ends meet. Work as many jobs as I can. Build my life back up again, as much as I can.’

‘Any other jobs going?’ Kitty asked.

He gave her that amused look. ‘Nah. You’re not looking for a job. You’ve got one.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She thought about Pete and how the shit was really going to hit the fan after her supposed exposé in today’s paper.

‘Well, you make sure,’ he said, standing up. ‘Because you have a story to write. My story.’ And with that, he left with his rolled-up paper, leaving Kitty to ponder that, and pay the bill.

Archie left Kitty Logan at the Brick Alley Café and followed the woman who’d been sitting inside. As always she’d had a pot of tea and a fruit scone with butter and jam, stayed for twenty minutes and then left. She was like clockwork; every single morning that Archie had been there for the past nine months she had also been there. She never acknowledged his presence despite the fact they were always the first two people in the café. She would walk in looking for somebody else, not see anybody who was really there, sit and wait for the ghost of someone else, and then leave. Though he only ate in the café on weekends after night duty in the club, he had started going a few times during the week just to see if she was there and sure enough she was. Eight o’clock on the dot she would enter the café with the same expression.

He followed her down Wellington Quay, across the Halfpenny Bridge to Bachelor’s Walk, and watched her go into the Blessed Sacrament Church. He thought about following her, then changed his mind, not because it was inappropriate but because he couldn’t bring himself to go in there. Not in there. Not with what was going on with him.

He turned round and made his way back to his flat.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Colin Maguire’s sister, Deirdre, put a pot of tea down in front of him, with a blueberry muffin, his favourite. Anything to cheer him up, despite the fact the weight he was piling on was obvious. She just wanted to make him happy. Her poor baby brother had been through enough already and now that his wife, Simone, and the kids had moved out ‘for a break’, he needed her more than ever. Since the day it all happened he hadn’t shown any sign of anger. She was waiting for it to happen, she was waiting for the day that he would explode. She didn’t want to be here when it happened but she knew she would have to be. He didn’t have anybody else. Plenty who supported him were there to give him the thumbs up on the street, or a slap on the back in the pub, but they weren’t there for him, not really.

‘Thanks, Dee,’ he said gently, keeping an eye on the television.

‘No problem. Are you sure you don’t want to come out with us for lunch? It’s a nice carvery. Neil says they put the football on a big screen. The kids will be there and they’d love to see you.’

‘Nah. Thanks, though.’ He gave her a small smile. ‘I’ll just watch it here.’

Deirdre stood up and stretched, she looked out the window. ‘She’s there again.’

Colin didn’t need to ask who. He looked out the window briefly, seeing across the road to the green and beyond.

‘Did you know that already?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I’m not in the mood to run chasing after you across the green with a frying pan in your hand.’

‘Frying pan? I’d do a lot better than that, believe me,’ she fumed, hands on hips, looking out. ‘How many times is this? The second? Third?’

‘Fourth, I think.’

‘What the hell is she doing?’ She moved closer to the window to watch her.

‘Don’t, Dee, she’ll see you.’

‘I want her to bloody well see me. I don’t know what she’s planning but I swear to God I want to go out and deck her.’

‘Dee, stop.’ He said it so gently it made her drop her angry stance immediately. He was like their daddy: just didn’t seem to be able to have any anger in him at all. Too soft, too gentle, too ready to be there to listen to other people’s problems. That’s what had got him in this mess in the first place. He should have let that stupid schoolgirl go off home with whatever problems she had that day instead of trying to console her. She’d taken him up wrong, read into his kindness too much and he’d paid for her embarrassment.