Authors: Julie Parsons
‘It’s easier,’ Donnelly said, after the third interruption. ‘It’s much easier and quicker for us all if you wouldn’t mind just concentrating on the issue at
hand.’
‘And,’ he had asked, ‘what exactly is that?’
Donnelly had said they were worried about Rachel Beckett’s safety. They were concerned about her state of mind. Apparently, she had had a very difficult meeting with her daughter some
weeks ago, and there was some fear that she may have wanted to hurt herself. Do herself some kind of damage. So they were trying to find out as much as they could about her behaviour recently.
Hence their visit to him.
‘But surely this isn’t a matter for the guards, is it?’ He had tried to make his voice as neutral as possible.
‘Well,’ Donnelly rubbed the palm of his hand over the soft black leather of the couch, ‘strictly speaking it isn’t, but our colleagues in the probation service are very
concerned, and of course if she has done a runner or something like that then it’s a matter for us. So we’re trying to narrow down the possibilities. Anyway . . .’ Again the hand
gently caressing, the fingers pressing into the fine-grained skin. ‘Anyway, according to the other tenants in the house in Clarinda Park, a man answering your description visited her in her
flat there on a number of occasions. And on one occasion, apparently . . .’ And here he consulted his notebook. ‘Yes, that’s right. The kid from the flat below said that he heard
what he described as one hell of a row, so noisy that he actually went upstairs to intervene. Would he be right about that?’
He felt suddenly nervous, the skin in his armpits began to prickle with apprehension. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, I’d say. I was kind of
upset about her being at the party, and I was very upset that she’d lied to my wife about who she was. I just thought it would have been better if she’d been straight with Ursula. I
didn’t like the feeling that she’d made a fool of her. After all, Ursula was just trying to be kind.’
‘So you had words?’
He shrugged and took a sip of water from the glass on his desk. ‘I suppose I was a bit louder than I needed to be. That was all.’
‘I see.’ Again the palm slid over the smooth black leather. ‘And then there was at least one occasion after that when one of the other tenants, who’s on the same floor as
Rachel and has the bedsit at the front, looking out over the square, said that she heard sounds that were distinctly those of what could be called “love-making”. What do you say to
that?’
Daniel shrugged again and again sipped from the glass.
‘What’s it got to do with me? Who’s to know what Rachel’s been getting up to since she left prison?’
‘So.’ A pause, and the hand again, pale against the dark leather. ‘So the fact that the tenant in the bedsit at the front of the house says she saw a van parked outside, with
the words Beckett Securities painted on the side, that wouldn’t be significant. No?’
Daniel shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other, resting his right ankle on his left knee. His brown leather shoes were dusty. They needed polishing. They were too good to wear to
work, he thought. All the mucky places he had to visit every day. The building sites, the factory premises, the industrial estates on the outskirts of the city. Ursula was right. She was always
telling him he should stick to runners, that he’d ruin his good shoes like this. But he liked to wear leather on his feet. There was something about the look of rubber and canvas that made
him feel stupid, inadequate, helpless, that reminded him of his teenage years, when he was always in trouble and at a loss, always out of control.
‘Look, this is all a bit “so what” really, isn’t it? So I gave her a bit of affection, a bit of comfort. She wanted it. She asked me. And I could hardly refuse her. I
could see how lonely she was.’
Donnelly stood up. ‘Right, Mr Beckett, I see. She’s the woman who had been convicted of murdering your brother. You have just discovered that she has told lies to your wife about her
identity, and yet you felt like doing her a favour, being nice to her. I have to say it seems a bit odd to me. But then,’ he put his notebook away in his jacket pocket and gestured to the
younger man, Sweeney, who was still lolling back into the cushions on the sofa, ‘as I always say, there’s nowt as odd as you know what.’
Sweeney stood up, a wide grin on his face, and together they walked towards the door. Donnelly paused and turned back towards him. ‘It was terrible that whole business, wasn’t it? I
remember your brother well. He was a great guy. You were questioned too, about the murder, I seem to remember. She tried to lay the blame on you, didn’t she? You must have been very angry
about that, very, very angry. Anyway, not to worry, I’m sure she’ll show up somewhere. We’ll let you know what happens. We’ll keep in touch.’
He had brought Rachel here too. She had lain on the sofa where the two guards had been sitting, while he finished off some work at his desk. They had drunk cold beers that she had fetched from
the small fridge in his secretary’s office. She had fallen asleep and he had watched her, remembering as he read through the invoices and signed the pile of letters that his secretary had
left how she had helped him that summer all those years ago to make sense of everything that until then had been senseless. How she talked to him about books, ideas. Asked him questions, made him
think. Argued with him, challenged him. Told him he should go back to school and pick up where he had left off when he got into trouble. Told him he was as clever as everyone else. That he could
make something of his life, that he didn’t have to spend it any longer in his brother’s shadow. If I had you all to myself I could, he had thought then. And when she had thrown him
away, gone back to Martin, he had felt that new world she had shown him fade and die. Until that night when Martin had lain bleeding on the floor and he had felt the gun in his hands.
He watched her as she slept, lifting his head from the paperwork and files spread over the desktop. Checking the computer screen, analysing flow charts and spreadsheets. Still fascinated that it
was he, the stupid one of the family, who was running the show, calling the shots, the boss. She was beautiful, he thought, more so when her eyes were closed, when he didn’t have to look at
her expression, always guarded, watchful, ill at ease. And when he had put the last letter in its envelope and dropped it into the out-tray, he went over and lay down beside her, cradling her in
his arms, waiting until she woke.
The politeness. He remembered it from the time before. When he had been asked to come into the station, ‘Just to make a statement, you understand?’ And his father had come with him.
On first-name terms with every single guard he met, from the newest recruit to the chief superintendent, who came out of his office to exchange pleasantries, to compare golf scores. Then the
politeness had stayed. They had believed him and the alibi that his mother had given him.
‘It’s a messy business,’ the chief super had said to his father. ‘I’m sure you understand we have to check this out. She’s made accusations, allegations about
the lad. We have to follow them up.’ And his father had allowed himself to be reassured, then offered to meet for a pint, later on that day, or perhaps a game of golf at the weekend.
That time, he seemed to remember, he had been taken into a room which was close to the front desk. With windows and posters about neighbourhood watch and crime prevention on the walls. This time
the room where they brought him was at the far end of the building. It stank. It had no windows or posters. And there was no politeness there either.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘what this is all about. What you’ve been doing to me over the last few weeks. First of all you start harassing my wife, needlessly
upsetting her by telling her things about my past which are my business and only my business. Then you start watching me, following me, going around all my sites, questioning my staff. Then you
show up at my house again, asking me the same old questions over and over although I’ve already told you everything I know.’
‘And not told us everything you know, isn’t that the point, Dan? I’ve asked you repeatedly about where you might have gone with Rachel Beckett and you didn’t tell us
about the trip you made with her on your boat. A lot of people saw you that day. They saw the two of you down at the pier. They saw you get into the dinghy and head off with her. But no one saw you
come back. So why don’t you just get it all off your chest? Tell us what happened.’
He looked around the small stuffy room. There was Donnelly and Sweeney and an unnamed, uniformed guard standing in the corner. Every now and then there would be a knock at the door and someone
else would come in to whisper in Donnelly’s ear or pass him a note. Donnelly would smile or frown, consult with Sweeney in another whisper. It was all play-acting, Daniel knew. He’d
heard his father talk about interrogations often enough in the past to know what was smoke and what was fire. But he wasn’t taking any chances.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough. I want my solicitor. I know what my rights are. I told you to phone him. I told you to get him here and I’m not saying another
word until you do. Do you understand?’
‘Fine, no problem.’ Donnelly nodded to Sweeney. ‘Go and see what’s holding the guy up, will you, and while you’re at it bring in all the evidence. We might as well
get started on that.’
They had served a number of search warrants on him. For his house, his office, his boat. Ursula had barely spoken to him for days now. The atmosphere in the house was poisonous. In vain, he had
tried to tell her there was nothing to find, there could be nothing to find. Rachel Beckett was alive. He knew that.
‘But what I can’t understand,’ she kept on saying to him, ‘is what you were doing with her. Why did you see her again after that night at the party? I just don’t
understand it. I don’t understand what was going on between the two of you.’
He had been present when they made their searches. He had seen the objects they had removed. Slipped in underneath the low double bed where he and Rachel had slept, where he and Ursula slept
every night, they had found a pair of homemade earrings. Coloured beads on wire. They had found a button underneath the cushions on the sofa that matched, they said, one from a jacket of
Rachel’s. They had taken fingerprints from door handles and tabletops. And they had found in the remains of a bonfire of leaves and garden rubbish, down by the path to the cliff, a charred
leather handbag with a matching wallet and a small pocket diary, with a number of entries in Rachel’s handwriting. From his car they had picked hairs and fibres and found more fingerprints.
And in the boot, in the canvas duffel bag in which he kept his sailing gear, they had found his jacket, dark brown smears all down the front. But it was what they had found in the boat that most
worried him.
‘Explain that to us now, Dan. Your solicitor is here, present. He will, I’m sure, make certain that you don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want to. But you do have to
give us an explanation for this.’
Donnelly held up a clear plastic bag. Inside was a knife.
‘So, Dan, tell us again what happened that Sunday when you and Rachel Beckett went out on your boat.’
The trap was being sprung. He thought of the rats he had seen his men and their dogs chasing on building sites for a bit of sport. He had watched the rats slither through impossibly tiny holes,
flattening themselves to slide underneath stones, behind brick walls, jumping heights that might be eight, nine, ten times their own size. And then the moment of triumph when one of the dogs would
seize the struggling rodent in its teeth. The sound of its frenzied screams made him cringe. He listened to the shrieks that were almost human in their pitch and intensity. And finally he would
hear the dull sound as spade or shovel would flatten the animal against the ground. He thought of Rachel that day on the boat. She was wearing sunglasses, he remembered. They suited her, hid the
tiredness of her eyes, made her look younger. He commented to her that they were expensive.
Where did you get them?
he asked.
She smiled, her mouth opening, so her teeth peeped through her lips.
A secret admirer
, she said, then stretched herself out on the long seat on one side of the cockpit.
It was perfect sailing weather when they left the harbour. A south-easterly force four carrying them on a broad reach across Dublin Bay, past Howth, and onwards. He had forgotten what a good
sailor Rachel was. She had an intuitive understanding of wind and wave. She moved with the boat, her balance perfect. As nimble as she had been years ago, although not as strong, he noticed, her
hands soft and tender. But there were winches on this boat, so strength wasn’t such an issue. It was a good solid wooden sloop. Bermudan rig. Thirty feet in length over all, with one cabin
below, a tiny galley and a toilet aft.
How far are we going?
she had asked him.
And in reply he had said,
How far would you like to go?
And she had laughed and held one hand over her eyes, in an exaggerated ship’s captain pose and replied,
As far as the eye can see
.
Time was a different commodity at sea. He had always noticed that. It was only his hunger that made him think of how long they had been out there,
Hey, Rachel, you promised me food. I’m
starving. What’ll it be?
He could hear her singing to herself down below. Her voice was tuneless. He looked around him. There weren’t so many other boats out today, despite the holiday and the weather. It was very
quiet here. Very beautiful. Very lonely. He rested the tiller against his thigh, feeling the boat driving forward under the pressure of the wind. He closed his eyes and for a moment he drifted
off.
He heard her voice. Saw her face looking up at him through the hatch.
Dan, do you have a knife? I forgot to bring one.
Tool box, watch out, it’s very sharp.
Turned his face up to the sun. Contentment, practically happiness. Then heard a cry. Sudden fear in her voice.