The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

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Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Killer Reads

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Tanya Farrelly 2016

Tanya Farrelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © October 2016 ISBN: 9780008215101

Version: 2018-07-24

For Tom, whose kindness and generosity are boundless …

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Tanya Farrelly

About the Publisher

ONE

Oliver Molloy woke abruptly and felt the urgent need to get out of the house. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he tried to rid himself of the remnants of a particularly disturbing dream, but it refused to be obliterated, even after he’d turned on the dim overhead light.

It had been almost a month since he had seen her, but every time he closed his eyes she was there. He had begun to dread the night, the time when he was most susceptible to these visitations. Mercedes had become like a cataract, something he couldn’t see past, and it was only daylight that could dispel her presence and allow him to breathe normally again.

Oliver pulled on his heavy winter coat and wound a scarf round his neck. The scarf caught on his unshaven jaw, but it was unlikely that he would encounter anyone out walking in the hours before dawn. He eased the front door open. The street was quiet. A lone cat crossed the neighbours’ garden and leapt onto the wall between them. It looked at him, eyes luminous in the semi-darkness, and then opened its mouth and let out a silent cry. When he didn’t respond, it moved on.

Finally, a thaw had begun. For three weeks the city had been held captive by an unprecedented freeze. A layer of ice still covered the canal, but already it had thinned at the edges to reveal the murky water beneath. It trickled slowly from among the reeds as the willows wept at the water’s edge and stained the ice grey. The cold crept through his leather shoes and he hurried his step to improve his circulation. Coming towards him, dressed in a grey tracksuit, breath streaming in the icy air, was a jogger. The man nodded an acknowledgement as he passed. Oliver dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets and marched on.

By the time he reached the last lock before the main road, the point at which he normally turned back for home, the sky had begun to lighten. He stepped onto the lock, crossed halfway and looked back along the canal in the direction of home. In the time that they had been together, he had never dreamt of Mercedes. Now, she wouldn’t leave him alone, and every dream was an attack, a vicious recrimination. The dream from which he’d woken that morning had been the most disturbing yet. With one hand on her hip, she’d stood there, body jutting slightly forward as she told him that he was nothing without her. She’d called him a fake, said that it wouldn’t take long for people to see right through him. Then she’d pointed to him and laughed, and when he looked down his body was transparent. There was nothing but a watery outline that showed where it used to be. Inside was hollow, bereft of organs; he was nothing – just like she said he was.

He shuddered and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. He walked down the opposite side of the lock and gazed into the water. There were no swans near the bridge where they usually gathered, waiting for the students from the nearby college to throw them crusts from leftover sandwiches. He supposed they’d return now that the thaw had come.

As he stood staring into the water, he became aware of something caught beyond the reeds. It looked like an old coat; something that may have been discarded before the freeze came. He stared harder, eyes straining in the half-light, and then he saw something glint among the bulrushes. Gingerly, he stepped down the bank. The mud was frozen beneath his feet and he edged closer to the water, crouching as near as he dared to peer between the rushes. Where the ice had melted a man’s hand rested above the water, fingers blue-white. On the second finger a gold wedding band caught the first light.

Hastily, Oliver retreated from the water’s edge. He could go home, try to forget that he had ever seen the body beneath the ice. He didn’t want to phone the guards; it was the kind of attention that he would rather avoid, but then there was the jogger. If he didn’t report the body, somebody else would. Could he risk the man coming forward, saying that he’d seen him by the canal? Even as the thought went through his mind, he found himself dialling the number for emergency services. He couldn’t ignore his civic duty, and so he waited with the dead man for help to arrive.

They took their time in coming. He guessed there was no hurry for a man whose life had already ended. He moved down the bank again and stared into the water. The body was face down, arms raised above the head as though making a plea for help. The fingers had stiffened into position and looked as though they might snap, like dead wood, if he were to touch them. Had the man fallen into the icy water and been unable to get out – or had it been an intentional act? Oliver couldn’t fathom why anyone would do such a thing; there were easier ways to end it. Of course there was a third option, one that made him uneasy just waiting in the place where it may have happened. The man could have been murdered and his body dumped in the water. It wouldn’t have been the first gangland killing in the area and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It made him glad he’d opted to practise family rather than criminal law. The former had its share of malevolence, but as a rule it didn’t involve bloodshed.

Finally, the garda car turned over the bridge. It travelled slowly, lights off. Oliver walked to the edge of the road and raised a hand for their attention, guessing that his black coat would not stand out against the grey morning light. The car pulled up and two men stepped out. The first was an overweight man in his fifties who walked with a surprisingly swift step. The other, a young officer who looked like he was fresh out of Templemore training school, walked closely behind.

‘Mr Molloy? Garda Sweeney and Garda Regan. You reported a body in the water?’

Oliver nodded and gestured towards the canal. ‘It’s just beyond the rushes, trapped under the ice. You can see a hand above the surface.’

Oliver stepped back and the two guards moved closer to the canal. The older man nodded like he’d seen it all before. ‘We’ll just take a statement from you if that’s all right,’ he said.

The young garda asked Oliver questions as Sweeney stood looking into the distance beyond the bridge. A few minutes later, the sound of a motor drowned out Garda Regan’s voice. Both he and Oliver turned to watch as a dinghy appeared from beneath the bridge cutting a swathe through the thin ice. The crew of three men cut the motor and let the dinghy drift close to where the body was. Oliver watched, half concentrating on giving Regan his personal details, as the men broke the remaining ice and pulled the body from the water. They did it in such a way that Oliver didn’t see the man’s face and the corpse, murky water flowing from his sodden coat, disappeared onto the surface of the boat.

‘There’s a wallet,’ one of the crew shouted across to Sweeney. ‘Credit cards say Vincent Arnold. We’ll run a check from the station, see if it matches any missing persons report.’

‘Good enough,’ Sweeney nodded.

‘It’. Oliver wondered whether it referred to the body or the name on the card. Did such exposure render you indifferent to death? He’d once heard an undertaker use such a term and had been appalled by the callousness of the word. Death was a business, something that had to be dealt with cleared away.

An image of Mercedes appeared in his mind; her body limp as he’d held her for the last time. He’d been surprised at how long she’d stayed warm – so that it had taken him hours to accept that she was really dead. He’d tried to close her parted lips, but they refused to meet. At any moment, he thought, they might have started to move, to form words between tongue and teeth.

The dinghy was moving off now. Sweeney’s narrowed blue eyes appraised him as he tried to rid himself of thoughts of his wife. He shifted and gestured towards the canal. ‘I suppose you see this kind of thing all the time,’ he said.

Sweeney shrugged and squinted at the morning light. ‘Tell me, do you usually go out walking this early in the morning, Mr Molloy?’ he asked.

Oliver returned his gaze. ‘Only when I can’t sleep,’ he said.

Sweeney nodded and heaved his bulk into the passenger seat of the car where Regan was already waiting. Oliver turned in the direction of home. The garda car passed him and he raised a hand, but neither of the guards acknowledged him. He dug his hands deeper in his coat pockets, quickened his step against the cold, and found himself hoping that he wouldn’t have reason to encounter either Sweeney or his colleague again.

TWO

Joanna sat on the floor surrounded by photographs and eyed each one critically. The college exhibition was to take place in a month’s time, but she had been working on the collection all semester and felt that she’d taken enough shots to put together an impressive composition. The collection consisted of a series of black-and-white shots depicting brides in various guises. Joanna had picked up a wedding dress second-hand. She’d liked the slightly worn look of it, the way the lace trimming had frayed at the edges. She had wondered as she fingered the silk who had owned it, and why she’d decided to give the dress to a charity shop.

The brides stared up at her as she arranged and discarded the pictures. She picked up her favourite, an angular shot of a young woman in a bridal dress sitting on the window ledge of an empty room. The girl’s reflection had been caught in the glass, her wistful expression captured perfectly in the lens. Beneath the window, a battered suitcase anticipated the girl’s departure.

Joanna stood back and directed the head of the halogen lamp over the pictures scattered on the living room floor. There was a bride running down the street, her hair falling loose and her bouquet to the fore of the picture lying in a puddle on the ground. Another showed a bride walking in a narrow street with the battered suitcase. Her back was to the camera and she held her dress up with one hand to reveal a pair of Doc Martens on her feet as she walked the street slick with rain.

Joanna smiled. The girl in the photo was a good friend, and they’d had some fun during the shoot. The girl hadn’t modelled before, but her pale skin and slight frame had been exactly what Joanna had been looking for in a subject and she had finally persuaded her to do it. Joanna was just placing this photo next to the first when there was a knock at the door. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, which confirmed her suspicions. It was after eleven o’clock, too late for any caller. She turned out the halogen light, which she hoped had not been visible through the thick curtains, and made her way stealthily towards the window. Through a chink in the curtains, she peered out. The security light had clicked on. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual, next-door’s cat often set it off, but she couldn’t see anyone and, just as she’d begun to wonder if she’d imagined the sound, a pounding on the knocker confirmed the presence of the late-night visitor.

Joanna crossed the room, eased the door open and stepped into the hall. She listened for any sound upstairs, but heard none. The knocking had not woken her mother. Joanna pressed her eye to the spyhole, and saw a woman standing in the porch. She wasn’t anyone that Joanna had seen before, and she wondered, as the woman raised the knocker for a third time, if she had the wrong house. Exercising caution, she decided to find out.

‘Who is it?’ she called, mouth close to the door.

She watched as the woman at the other side paused, looking directly at the spyhole as though she too could see through to the glass, and finally spoke.

‘Angela?’ she said.

On hearing her mother’s name, Joanna decided that the woman was no threat. She removed the chain and opened the door so that they were standing opposite one another. Joanna gauged that the woman was about her mother’s age. She was quite tall and held herself in an almost regal manner.

‘I’m looking for Angela. This is Angela Lacey’s house?’

‘Yes, but I’m afraid my mother’s not here. Can I help you?’

The woman hesitated; clutching her handbag in one hand while the other remained in the pocket of her camel-coloured coat.

‘Do you know when she will return? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. I must speak to her … I know it’s late but …’

‘I’m sorry, but are you a friend of my mother?’

The woman smiled a strange smile. ‘A friend, no … I wouldn’t say that. Your mother knows … well, knew … my husband.’ She trailed off, eyes glistening.

‘Look, would you like to come in? She … she is here. It’s just that she’s in bed, but seeing as it’s important I can wake her.’

Joanna stepped back and the woman entered the warmth of the hall. Joanna showed her into the living room where her photographs were scattered on the floor. She saw the woman’s eyes dart around the room, taking everything in. They rested on the photos.

‘What’s your name?’ Joanna asked.

‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold. You can tell your mother it’s about Vince.’ She was busy plucking off one leather glove as she spoke. Joanna nodded and told her to sit down.

As she climbed the stairs Joanna wondered who Vince was, and how he was connected to her mother. When she’d reached the top of the stairs she turned on the light in the landing and eased open the door to her mother’s room. It was in darkness and she could hear her breathing heavily in sleep.

‘Mum.’ Gently, she touched her shoulder. Her mother stirred slightly and Joanna whispered to her again, louder this time.

‘What? What is it?’ Angela said, partially sitting up. Her voice was thick with sleep.

‘There’s a woman downstairs. She says she needs to talk to you about somebody called Vince?’

Joanna’s mother sat up suddenly and pushed the duvet from her. ‘Vince?’

‘Yes, her name’s Rachel something. She’s waiting in the living room. Do you know her?’

Angela ran a hand through her hair. ‘What time is it?’ she said.

‘After eleven … I didn’t know whether to answer or not … it’s so late and … do you know someone called Vince?’

Her mother stood in the middle of the room and cast about her. She picked up a blouse from the back of the bedroom chair and then put it down again. Joanna took her dressing gown from a hook on the bedroom door.

‘Here – put this on,’ she said.

Her mother slipped into the dressing gown and tightened the belt. She sat on the edge of the bed and stuck her feet in her slippers. ‘She’s in the living room?’

‘Yes. I had to invite her in. She looked kind of upset … and I couldn’t leave her on the doorstep … not like that.’

Her mother nodded, took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair again to flatten it. Joanna followed her from the room. Her mother paused at the top of the stairs and she almost walked into her.

‘Look, maybe you should stay here,’ her mother said.

Joanna hesitated. ‘Will you be all right? I mean … who is that woman? Why would she call so late?’

‘Just someone from the past … please, wait in your room, Joanna. I’ll explain everything later.’

Joanna nodded, but her mother didn’t look at her. With one hand on the banister and the other lifting the end of her robe she hurried down the stairs.

‘Rachel, you’ve rung me twice already. I’ve told you, I haven’t heard from him.’

‘I know. I’ve come to tell you … Vince, he’s … he’s dead.’ The woman’s voice wavered.

‘What … what do you mean? How could he?’

The living room door closed, and Joanna crept down the stairs in an effort to hear what followed.

‘They found him. This morning the guards came. They’d found his body in the canal, trapped beneath the ice. Some man out walking saw him.’

Joanna moved further down the stairs until she was almost in the hallway.

‘What happened? Did he fall in? Jesus, I … Did you see the body?’

‘No … Patrick went to identify him … he said it was better if I didn’t … the body had been in the water for at least a week, they said. It’s not how I want to remember him.’

Joanna listened, but she heard no comforting words from her mother. Instead there was silence, broken finally by the other woman. ‘That’s … that’s her isn’t it. That’s …’

‘Joanna, yes. My daughter.’ Ice in her mother’s voice. Then: ‘Why have you come here, Rachel?’

‘Because I thought you should know … because of her … it seems like the right thing, doesn’t it? I mean now that …’

‘Now that he’s gone, you mean? No, I don’t think it does. She need never have known, but you’ve decided to see to that, haven’t you? I think that’s why you’ve come here … to cause trouble … some kind of revenge, now that you don’t have Vince to stop you. My God … have you been saving it up all these years?’

Joanna descended the last few steps of the stairs. She had never heard her mother so angry. She wanted to intervene, to know who the woman was, and why the death of this man should concern her. She stood in the hallway and stared at the living room door, reluctant, yet willing herself to open it.

‘How could this possibly be revenge?’ Rachel Arnold said. ‘He’s dead, Angela. Don’t you get it? If you must know, then yes, there is a reason why I’ve come. It’s because of this … it was among his things and there’s only one place he could have got it.’

‘I don’t know anything about it.’

The woman said something else, but Joanna didn’t hear. There was silence then for a few minutes. Joanna wondered what they were doing, her mother and the woman. Were they carefully avoiding each other’s eyes? Was the woman wishing she’d never come?

‘What’s this?’ she heard the woman ask.

‘They’re Joanna’s. She studies photography. She’s putting a collection together for an exhibition.’

‘They’re good, very good. Did you encourage her?’

‘No. Must be in the blood, mustn’t it?’

‘Will you tell her?’ the woman said.

‘I don’t have much choice now, do I? If I know Joanna, she’s probably already heard half the conversation.’

Joanna moved back from the door and furtively made her way up the stairs. She was trying to understand what she’d heard. She had a feeling that she knew who Vince was, but she needed to hear her mother say it. She sat on the top step of the stairs and waited to hear the living room door open. She wanted to listen to the rest of the conversation, but she didn’t dare. It was unlikely that the two women had much more to discuss now that the woman had said what she’d come to say.

When the door eventually did open, Joanna withdrew into the shadows of the landing. Her mother spoke in a low voice as the woman stepped into the cold night.

‘I’m sure you wish I hadn’t come,’ the woman said.