The Girl Behind the Lens
TANYA FARRELLY

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

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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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: 2020-01-23

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.

‘Too late for that now, isn’t it?’

‘He’s being released tomorrow. The funeral’s on Tuesday if you want to tell her … I don’t expect you to come.’

‘No, I’m sure you’d rather I didn’t.’

The woman said nothing to deny it, and the next sound Joanna heard was the woman’s shoes on the tarmac before her mother closed the front door. Joanna waited for her to call her, to say something, to explain, but there was silence from downstairs and when she looked down through the banisters, the hall was empty.

Slowly, she descended the stairs. Her mother was sitting in her armchair in the living room with her head in her hands.

‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Joanna said.

Her mother shook her head and looked at her hands clasped in front of her.

‘How did you know this Vince then?’

She waited for an answer. Her mother cupped her hands to her mouth and exhaled a breath that she must have been holding. It hissed through her fingers and a sound like a sob broke from her throat.

‘He was your father,’ she said.

THREE

Oliver picked up one of his wife’s blouses and folded it carefully before tossing it in a bin liner. He had taken all of Mercedes’s clothes from the wardrobe and they were strewn in a pile across the bed and in the black bags that lay scattered at his feet. He picked up a sweater and held it to his face. It smelled of Mercedes’s perfume – a rich, woody fragrance that had seemed always to linger in the room long after she’d left it. It was that scent as much as the sight of Mercedes’s clothes that evoked, unbidden, the memories that tormented him. He threw the sweater in an almost full bin liner, and knotted it tightly, trapping the scent of his wife inside.

That morning, when he had opened the wardrobe to take out a clean shirt, he was accosted, as he had been every morning for the past three weeks, by the sight of Mercedes’s clothes. He had decided at that moment that the only way for him to move on was to rid the house of any sign of her. Immediately after breakfast, he’d begun the clear-out. Apart from her clothes, which he would donate to a charity shop, Mercedes had owned few possessions. There was a music box that had belonged to her grandmother and a collection of porcelain dolls that she’d had since she was a child. Both had been of sentimental value to her and, because of this, he didn’t have the heart to pack them away with the rest, so he left them on a shelf in the living room where they had always been.

When the phone rang, Oliver clambered across the bin liners to reach it, but then seeing the international number on the display screen, he let it ring out until the answering machine clicked in. His heart beat wildly as he heard the voice at the other end, that husky Spanish accent that had fascinated him so much in the beginning and, if he were completely honest with himself, still did.

‘Mercedes, soy yo. Te sigo llamando y llamando …’

He got the gist of Carmen’s words. She wanted Mercedes to call, they could sort things out, she said. There was a pause as she considered what to say next, and clearly deciding that there was nothing else she could say that would make any difference to her sister, Carmen hung up, leaving Oliver staring at the phone. He’d lost count of the number of messages she had left. Sometimes she phoned and hung up before the machine had kicked in. He wondered how much longer he could avoid her. He expected her to call his office any day. She had already tried his mobile, but he hadn’t answered. He suspected that she wanted to speak to Mercedes before she spoke to him. It must have been killing her not knowing the result of the bomb she had dropped on her sister.

Well, he would not alleviate her anxiety. He suspected that eventually she would turn up looking for answers. Carmen was not the type to shy away from any situation. She would pay no heed to the fact that she had been the instigator – that she had been responsible for everything. He didn’t trust himself to meet her. What she had done was stupid, unforgivable, and he didn’t know what he might do if they met. If it hadn’t been for Carmen, that horrible night would never have happened. He and Mercedes may have grown slowly apart as so many couples did, but it would not have ended like it had. He would never forgive Carmen for that.

He pressed the button on the machine and erased Carmen’s message. Then he looked at the bags at his feet and decided that it would be better to leave some of her things hanging in the wardrobe. Should Carmen arrive unannounced, he would have some explaining to do if everything that belonged to her sister had vanished. It was unlikely that Mercedes would have taken everything with her so fast had she simply moved out.

Oliver untied one of the bin liners and pulled out a silk skirt. As he did so he imagined the cool swish of it against Mercedes’s tanned and shapely legs. She had worn that skirt to a wedding they’d attended in Barcelona just months after they’d met. He remembered slipping his hands beneath it later that night on a beach lit only by the lights of the fishermen lined up along the shore. Her legs were bare and he had run his hands along her silky thighs and pulled her to him as the fishermen, oblivious to the lovers, stared out at the black sea and waited for the fish to bite.

Oliver’s hands were shaking as he hung the skirt in the wardrobe. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of his wife like that for a long time. He had resented their lack of physical contact – a sex life that seemed to have petered out before it had run its natural course. Things had been strained between them long before Carmen had said anything. He tried to justify his actions by blaming Mercedes. If she hadn’t become so cold, so indifferent, would any of it have happened?

He spent the next hour sorting through his wife’s things – re-hanging some of them in their shared wardrobe and packing the others away. By lunchtime, he had finished. He took the bags and loaded them into the boot of the car. He wondered if any of the neighbours were watching – prying eyes peering from behind lace curtains. He was thankful that neither he nor Mercedes had struck up any friendships with their neighbours. They were private, passed themselves off with a ‘hello’ or a ‘nice day’, but that was as far as their contact had gone. Generally, he liked to avoid people who asked too many questions about his private life, and Mercedes had shared that feeling.

It was freezing despite the thaw. Oliver felt rather low as he drove into the city to unburden himself of Mercedes’s clothes, but he knew that it was the only way forward. Mercedes was gone, and his problem was far from over. There was Carmen to deal with. Not to mention the rest of Mercedes’s family. Soon, people would begin to ask questions and he’d better have his answers ready.

The shop was small and had a sign over it that read Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. He’d never been there before, but he figured that rather than going in with the stuff it’d be better to leave it outside. No point in drawing attention to himself. He pulled up close to the door and took a couple of bags out of the boot. Just as he put them down, the shop door opened and an elderly woman appeared.

‘Are they for us?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I have a few more to go.’

The woman, surprisingly agile for her age, grabbed a bag and made towards the door. ‘Bring them on in,’ she said, leaving him no choice but to follow her.

When he returned with two more bags, the woman was examining Mercedes’s clothes. She held a blouse up to the light and viewed it appraisingly. ‘This is nice stuff. Are you sure she wants to get rid of it?’ she asked.

Oliver panicked. ‘My wife died,’ he said quickly, thinking that would put an end to further questions.

The woman put down the blouse. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ Her eyes narrowed in sympathy. There were deep lines etched at the sides of her mouth. She moved her hand as if to reach out to him and then didn’t.

Oliver nodded and tried to block out Mercedes’s voice in his head. Because of you. ‘I’ll just get the rest of the stuff from the car,’ he said.

The woman smiled sadly, and he left her sorting through Mercedes’s things, fingering the cloth, searching for any imperfections. He felt a strange sort of emptiness as he watched her examining the things that Mercedes had worn. That she would never wear again. He hadn’t expected to feel that way, as though there were a void somewhere inside him.

He leant into the car boot to take out the last bag. He’d forgotten to knot it and the contents were spilling out where it had toppled over. He was shoving the clothes back in when he heard someone calling his name.

‘Oliver. Oliver Molloy, is that you?’

He looked up. There was a woman hurrying across the street. He didn’t recognize her at first. He stood there, at the open boot, trying to figure out who she was.

‘It is you,’ she said, as she got closer. ‘My God, it’s been such a long time!’

Finally, he recognized her, but couldn’t think of her name. She was an old friend of Mercedes; someone she used to work with.

‘Hi,’ he said, as he slammed the boot closed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t remember …?’

‘Adrienne,’ she said. She smiled and extended her hand.

‘Adrienne. Of course, I’m sorry, like you said it’s been what … three … four years?’

The woman called Adrienne laughed. She hadn’t let go of his hand, and he was aware of her fingers squeezing his. ‘I know, it’s hard to believe … I mean … God, how are you? How’s Mercedes doing?’

Oliver cast a quick look at the door of the shop. ‘Yes, she’s fine. We’re both good …’ he said. ‘And you, how are you doing? Are you still at Abacus?’

Adrienne laughed, a tinkling kind of laugh that reminded him of the C note on a piano.

‘No, I left soon after Mercedes did. I don’t know if you remember I was studying acting at the time … well, I’ve been trying to make a go of it. It’s difficult, of course, no money in it, but I get a bit of work doing ads and stuff …’

‘Really … wow … an actress.’

Adrienne smiled and he smiled back. She had a very pretty mouth; there was a dimple at one corner and her lips were coated in a shiny pink lip-gloss. He had no doubt that this girl would get parts.

‘It’s so good to run into you like this. Mercedes and I should never have lost touch … we used to have such laughs. I must get your number, maybe we can arrange to meet up like we used to …’

Adrienne began searching in her bag and took out a mobile phone.

He gave her the house number and then Mercedes’s mobile number. ‘You won’t be able to get her at the moment. She’s away in Barcelona. Her father’s not so well,’ he said.

Just as he’d said it the shop door opened behind him and the old woman came out. Christ – that had been close. Adrienne was busy saving the numbers in her phone.

‘Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll give it a few weeks then … hopefully, everything will be okay,’ she said.

‘Yeah, it’s hard you know.’ He glanced at the old woman who was standing feet away examining the display in her shop window. He thought fast of something to say to change the topic from Mercedes. ‘Hey, what ever happened to that guy you used to bring round for dinner … did you?’

Adrienne started laughing. ‘Norman? My God, I haven’t thought of him in a long time …’

Oliver laughed. ‘I could never see what you were doing with him.’

Adrienne looked away. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t know either in the end.’

‘And now, is there someone special?’

‘No. I’m just concentrating on my acting … trying to make it work, you know?’

Her coppery hair fell in her eyes. She flicked it back, and when she looked up there was a moment of awkwardness. He had always thought she was attractive. The old woman, to his relief, had gone back inside. Adrienne smiled at him.

‘I’m really glad I saw you. I’d better go, but please tell Mercedes I was asking about her and that I’ll call her soon.’

‘I will. It was great to see you.’

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. Her face turned a shade of pink to match her lips, and he wondered if he’d been right all those years ago when he’d suspected she’d had a thing for him, and if he should have taken advantage of it.

He watched her run across the road and get into a silver Renault Clio. She waved to him as she passed. He waved back and made as if he were searching for something in the glove compartment. When he was sure she was out of sight, he got out of the car, went round to the boot and brought the last black bag into the shop.

The woman was sitting at the counter now, reading a magazine. She nodded and got off the stool when he entered. ‘Just put it over here, love,’ she said, pointing to a pile of bags yet to be sorted. He was about to turn away when she spoke again. ‘It’s a difficult thing having to get rid of someone’s belongings. When my husband died, I couldn’t bring myself to clean out his wardrobe. I’d take out a shirt and I could smell him off it. It was like he was in the room with me. But it’s better that you do it, you have to move on. She wouldn’t want you mourning.’

Oliver nodded, solemnly. ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘She was full of life. That was the thing I loved most about her – her energy.’

He left the shop feeling strangely bereft. He got into the car and drove slowly away feeling as though he’d left something behind. He thought of Adrienne. Maybe he should’ve told her that Mercedes had left him. It would have aroused her sympathy and maybe they’d have acted on that spark from the past. He hated to go home to an empty house. It was lonely in the evenings and he needed a distraction; someone to keep the ghosts away.

FOUR

Joanna stared down at her mother, who refused to meet her eye. ‘So all that stuff you said about not knowing who my father was – that was all lies. Why? Why couldn’t you have told me?’

Angela looked past her and through the open door to where, minutes before, the woman had stood. ‘I honestly thought it was for the best,’ she said.

Joanna looked at her hard. ‘How? I mean, all those years you said it was a one-night stand, that you didn’t know what happened to the guy. Did you not think that at some point I’d find out, that we might walk into him in the street or that he’d come looking for me?’

Her mother shook her head. She was still carefully avoiding her eye. Joanna stopped pacing and stood before her.

‘Mother, please – give me something to go on here. I mean, what was his name even? Vince what?’

Angela stood up and tightened the belt of her robe. ‘Joanna, can we just not do this now? It’s late. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, but not tonight. Surely, you can understand … it’s … it’s been a terrible shock.’

‘That woman, who is she?’ Joanna said, ignoring her mother’s plea.

Angela put a hand to her head as though it ached. ‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold, Vince’s wife.’

Arnold. At least she had a name – assuming that the wife had taken his. ‘And did he know – about me?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, what was the deal then? If he knew, why could you not tell me? Why did you have to pretend?’

Her mother looked at her now – eyes tired, face drawn. ‘I didn’t tell you because you’d have wanted to find him. You’d have wanted to know who he was – and I didn’t want that – he didn’t want that.’

‘Was he … was he married?’

‘Joanna, please.’

‘Just tell me – was he? Is that why he didn’t want to know?’

‘Yes. Look, keep your voice down. What difference does it make? He’s gone. You heard what she said: he’s dead, Joanna. Can’t you just leave it, please?’ Angela took a few steps towards the door.

‘Leave it? Are you serious, Mum? How would you feel if you’d just found out your whole life had been based on a lie? And the person responsible was your own mother!’

‘It wasn’t like that, Joanna. I did it for your sake … would you rather I’d told you, and he didn’t want anything to do with you? Would you rather that? It was bad enough he rejected me, I didn’t want to put you through it as well.’

‘Well, I think I’d have deserved the chance to find out, don’t you? So, what … he got you pregnant and then went back to his wife, is that it?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘How did she find out?’

Angela looked up. ‘I told her.’

‘You … what did she say?’

‘Not a lot. She listened to what I had to say and then she told me to leave. I have to admit I admired her composure. I didn’t tell her in order to hurt her – I wanted her to know what he’d done. I wanted her to know that I existed.’

‘And she stayed with him despite knowing?’

‘It’s what people did back then.’

‘And that was that? No contact, nothing all those years?’

Angela lifted the end of her dressing gown and crossed the room to where Joanna’s photographs lay scattered on the floor.

‘He wasn’t … he wasn’t a bad person, Joanna. He was young, arrogant, I suppose, yes, but his intent, it wasn’t malicious. He cared for me, I know that – but he couldn’t leave her, it would have meant losing too much.’

‘What do you mean? People do it – they do it all the time. They simply decide what’s most important to them – and clearly we weren’t.’

Angela shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that straightforward. Rachel’s father was the head of the newspaper. He was the one that gave Vince his chance.’ She paused, looked up from the pictures. ‘He was a journalist – covered all the sports events. He took pictures, too. So, you see, you have inherited something from him.’

‘But you must have hated him – he chose Rachel … she was his wife, yes, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have been some part of our lives, of mine. Did he even send you money?’

‘Sometimes. Cheques arrived – no note – nothing to ask me how I was doing, how you were. It was one of the conditions, you see.’

‘What conditions?’

‘Rachel told Vince that he would cut all contact – that it would have to be as though he and I had never met – it was that or she’d tell her father – and Vince could say goodbye to his career.’

‘What – and he was okay with that?’

Angela shrugged. ‘It was the choice he made. And now you know – I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I really am. I just hope you can understand, even a little bit, why I didn’t tell you. Protecting you was all I ever had in mind.’

Angela had crossed the room. She put her hand on Joanna’s arm, but she pulled away.

‘I can’t believe you expect me to accept this,’ she said. ‘Twenty-six years, Mum! And what’s worse, if that woman hadn’t come here tonight, you’d never have said anything, would you?’

‘Joanna, keep your voice down. The neighbours—’

‘Who cares about the neighbours? Who cares? This can never be fixed – don’t you understand that? You’ve robbed me of any chance to know my father.’

‘I’m sorry, Joanna. I know how this must seem to you now, but—’

‘It’s unlikely it’ll seem any other way, so don’t expect it to. I don’t care what kind of person Vince Arnold was – and he doesn’t sound like much of one – I should have had the opportunity to find that out for myself.’

They stood staring at each other.

‘I’m sorry,’ Angela said, again. ‘What else can I say?’

‘Nothing,’ Joanna told her. ‘Nothing you can say will put this right.’

FIVE

Oliver leaned forward at his desk and tried to focus on what the woman was saying. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words that were coming out; instead, he was hearing fragmented bits of speech floating on the air thick between them. The woman sat back and crossed her black-stockinged legs. The action caused him to shift his gaze momentarily from her face. She was not beautiful, but she gave the impression of a woman convinced by her own attributes. Her small face, framed by a thatch of dark hair, was too pointed at the chin, and her narrowed blue eyes gave her the look of a small, but fierce animal. It was her full lips, startlingly red against her pale skin, that captured his attention. And there was something else, too, something that despite their physical dissimilarities reminded him of Mercedes. He couldn’t quite figure what it was, but it bothered him.

‘So, what are my entitlements? I’m still his wife, so that must mean I’m entitled to half of this new house despite the separation? I mean, I’m not the one that walked out on the marriage.’

If he hadn’t been feeling so ill, he may have commented on that. The fact that this woman had had an affair with her husband’s friend – a lover who, from what he had gathered, had long since departed the scene – seemed to escape her memory.

Oliver pulled at his tie. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, but the air in the room seemed to have evaporated and a nauseous feeling was rising from the pit of his stomach. Something in the atmosphere, maybe the woman’s perfume, seemed to exacerbate it, and when he looked again at her expectant face he found that it was partially obscured by splotches of yellow light.

‘I’m sorry, but could you excuse me for a moment?’ he said.

He felt rather than saw her eyes follow him from the room.

In the men’s room the nauseous feeling overcame him and he leaned on the sink with both hands and retched acid-tasting bile. Perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he loosened the knot of his tie and tried to breathe, but he couldn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. The woman who sat in his office was nothing like Mercedes. And yet in every woman that he’d met since that terrible night he had seen something to remind him of her. It would have to stop.

He examined his face in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent light his skin was opaque and the dark circles beneath his eyes screamed of his sleepless nights. He turned on the cold tap, cupped his hands and doused his face several times in icy water. Eventually his heart resumed its regular beat, but his legs felt weak and he couldn’t still the trembling in his hands. It was the panic that he felt in his dreams, but in daylight it was far more frightening.

To distract himself, he thought of the woman who sat in his office awaiting his return. It was a divorce case that he’d been working on for the past year. She was the sort of woman that he despised, intent on taking her husband for everything she could get, but he couldn’t afford not to represent her. Business had been slow, and it was an easy case to win.

He took a deep breath, grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and blotted his face dry. The woman was his last client of the day. He would simply have to get through it.

‘I’m sorry about that. Haven’t been feeling very well all day,’ he said. His legs were still shaking as he sat back down in his leather chair. The woman leaned forward at his desk.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what are my rights here?’

If it was sympathy he’d been after, he’d miscalculated. The woman, who seemed to have forgotten that it was her infidelity that had instigated her husband’s divorce proceedings, was interested only in money. It pained him that the law, albeit to his advantage, was on this woman’s side. He gave her a long, silent look in which he hoped his distaste was evident and then, putting his personal feelings aside, forced himself to enter legal mode.

When the woman had left, he closed and locked the door behind her. His partner, who worked in an adjoining office, had gone to the courts and wouldn’t return that evening. Oliver sat down but, not feeling like working, he picked up the newspaper from his desk. He’d read it briefly that morning. The body in the canal had made the front page. The man, named as Vince Arnold, had worked as a sports journalist for one of the national papers. Arnold. It wasn’t such a common name. He’d known an Arnold once – sat his bar exams with him at the King’s Inns. He wondered if there was any connection. Putting the paper down, he typed the man’s name into Google. The obituary came up. Oliver clicked on it, read: ‘Sadly missed by his wife, Rachel, brother, Patrick …’ Patrick Arnold, that was it. The name of the guy he’d studied with. He’d often wondered what had become of him. Rumour had it that he’d been struck off – found guilty of fraud, something to do with a land deal. He couldn’t remember the details. He looked again at the notice – the Removal Mass was to take place the following evening in a church not far from the office. Curious about the dead man, and wondering if it were the same Patrick Arnold he’d known, he decided that he would go along to find out.

SIX

‘Where are you off to?’ her mother asked, as Joanna sat on the stairs pulling on her boots. Joanna had barely spoken to her in the two days that had passed since Rachel Arnold’s visit. Angela had been at pains to restore normality, Joanna knew that, but she wasn’t about to concede. The fact that they’d always been close – more like sisters – made her mother’s lie impossible to accept.

She looked up, knowing that her mother wouldn’t like her answer. ‘My father’s funeral,’ she said.

‘You’re not … surely, you’re not thinking of going?’ There was a warning tone in Angela’s voice that Joanna was only too familiar with.

‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s my last chance to see him … to know what he was like.’

‘But you won’t see him. The coffin, it’ll be closed.’

‘How do you know?’ Joanna stood up, and took her heavy winter coat from the banister. She wrapped a red scarf round her neck.

‘It’s not possible in these circumstances. The water, it’ll have bloated the body. Made him … unrecognizable. He’d been in the canal for days.’

Ignoring her mother, Joanna took her car keys from the hall table. ‘Well, it’s my decision and I’ve decided to go,’ she said.

‘Don’t.’

A low warning that caused Joanna to stop and look closely at her mother.

‘Why not? Is there something else you’re worried I’ll find out about?’

‘No. It just won’t do you any good, that’s all. Look, can’t we talk? It’s getting us nowhere, you behaving like this …’

‘Me behaving like this? What about you? You’re the one who brought about this mess – you and your lies. Did you think I’d just forgive you, Mum? And anyway, I don’t see what’s so strange about going to my own father’s funeral, do you?’

Angela stood blocking the door. ‘I’m asking you not to do this, Joanna, for my sake. Don’t go bringing that woman into our lives.’

‘This isn’t about you.’ Joanna strode past, forcing her mother to step back from the door.

‘Well you needn’t expect them to welcome you,’ Angela shouted after her.

Joanna ignored her. She slammed the car door and reversed dangerously fast out of the driveway.

Joanna was still seething when she arrived at the churchyard. How dare her mother attempt to stop her from going. She pulled into the car park, which was already filling up, and attempted to calm down before going inside. As Joanna sat there, she watched, from the anonymity of her car, the groups of people gathered near the church doors. Yellow light spilled from inside and illuminated the faces of men in heavy winter coats congregated at the entrance. They moved from foot to foot in an attempt to thwart the icy chill as their wives clutched at each other’s arms. These, she thought, were the people who had shared her father’s life.

In the street, the cavalcade of rush hour traffic passed the church gates – a procession as slow as that which would bring the dead man to his mourners. She watched them pass and felt strangely detached. Heads turned and the crowd dispersed to make way for the long black hearse as it drove slowly through the gates. It was followed by a single mourning car. The doors opened and a tall man dressed in black got out. The driver opened the door at the other side and Rachel Arnold stepped out, head held erect as she stood by and watched the pallbearers slide her husband’s coffin from the back of the hearse and then wheel it into the church. Several people touched her arm, and she exchanged words with them as she passed.

Joanna waited until the crowd outside the church had entered. And, with a glance in the rear-view mirror, she stepped from the car and crossed quickly to the entrance. A man reached the door just as she did. He nodded and beckoned for her to enter first.

There was quite a crowd in the church. Rachel Arnold sat in the first pew and next to her sat the man from the mourning car. The previous night, Joanna had read Vince Arnold’s obituary online. She knew that he had a brother – Patrick – and she figured that must be him. The Arnolds had no children. None, that is, except for her.

Joanna stared at the coffin and reminded herself that the man inside was her father, but she felt detached. Her feelings amounted to nothing more than a macabre curiosity about the dead man. She scanned the room, eyes moving over the rows of people that filled the church as they had once filled her father’s life. As the priest droned on, she became aware of someone watching her. She turned to find the same man she’d met at the entrance staring at her. Embarrassed, she looked away, but when she turned again a moment later he was still looking. He smiled slightly and nodded. She returned his gaze, but not his smile. And suddenly the Mass had ended.

The church organ played as Rachel Arnold made her way slowly down the aisle accompanied by the man in the dark suit. The people in her pew stood, and she joined the procession of mourners who filed out of the church to pay their respects to the widow.

When she stepped outside, she saw the man who had smiled at her. He was unshaven and wore a long black coat. He was talking to the man by Rachel’s side – the one Joanna imagined was her uncle. She saw him introduce the man to Rachel, who took his hand. They talked while others idled waiting for their opportunity to pay their respects. Joanna wondered who the man was. He’d stared at her so intently in the church that she wondered if he knew her.

She waited until the crowd had thinned. Then suddenly she found herself standing before Rachel Arnold wondering what to say.

Rachel took her hand in hers and squeezed it. ‘You came,’ she said. ‘I wondered if you might.’

Joanna nodded. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said. The well-used expression sounded meaningless, but she couldn’t think of what else to say.

‘Is your mother here?’

‘No.’

Rachel looked relieved. ‘I take it she told you?’

‘That he was my father, yes.’

‘I’m sorry that you had to find out like this. I’d have liked it to be different.’ Rachel looked around. There were still some people waiting to speak to her. She kept her voice low. ‘I’d like to talk to you again, Joanna – when everything calms down. You must have so many questions about Vince.’

Joanna nodded, unsure of what to say.

Rachel fumbled in her bag. ‘I’ll give you my number,’ she said. She took out a small notebook, scribbled something, tore the page out and handed it to Joanna. The man in the black coat was standing a few feet away smoking a cigarette and talking to Patrick Arnold. Joanna looked past Rachel to where the man stood.

‘That man … the one in the black coat … who is he?’ she asked.

Rachel turned to look at him. ‘He’s the one that found Vince. It turns out he knew Patrick, Vince’s brother. I’ll introduce you if you like. You should meet him, Patrick …’

Joanna hesitated. ‘No. I mean – I’d like to, but another time. It’s all a bit too strange right now.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Rachel nodded her understanding.

Patrick Arnold had turned away from the man in the black coat. He glanced over, but Joanna took her leave before Rachel had a chance to beckon him. The other man stubbed out his cigarette and walked towards his car, which was parked near Joanna’s. He looked up as she approached.

‘I heard you’re the one who found him,’ she said.

The man looked at her, curious. ‘That’s right.’

She held out her hand. ‘I’m Joanna. The man … Vince … he was my father.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m Oliver. Oliver Molloy.’ His hand was cold as he shook hers. ‘I can imagine how distressing it must be …’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know him,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

She felt suddenly stupid, unsure why she had said that to a total stranger. A morbid desire to know the details of her father’s death made her carry on. ‘They said he was trapped under the ice? How did you find him …? I mean was the body …?’

Oliver studied her for a moment before he answered. ‘He was close to the edge of the canal, just beyond the reeds. He’d probably floated down from somewhere else. His hand was above the ice, but apart from that I didn’t see him … like you said he was trapped …’

‘Do you think it was an accident?’

‘I suppose … don’t you?’ His grey eyes looked into hers with interest.

‘I wouldn’t know. I just … I wondered. The thing is I didn’t know he existed until last night.’

Oliver Molloy watched her, waiting for some kind of explanation. His silence forced her to speak. She was surprised at her own anger.

‘My mother never told me about him … and then last night she came …’ She looked over at Rachel who was talking to a small group of people standing by the mourning car. Patrick Arnold was looking in their direction.

‘I’m sorry … that must have been quite a shock.’

‘Yes.’ Her uncle was still looking over. She didn’t want to meet him; she wasn’t ready for that. ‘Look, I’d better go. Thanks … for talking to me … I’m sure you must think it strange. I hadn’t meant to tell you all that. I’m just … never mind.’

The man reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out his wallet. ‘Here, take my card. If you ever want to call me … for advice or just to chat …’

She took the card from between his fingers: ‘Molloy and Byrne Solicitors’ in thick black print.

‘Not just legal advice … anything at all … sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.’

Joanna slipped the card into her pocket. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

He smiled and said goodnight.

SEVEN

Oliver closed the door behind his last client of the day and walked to the window. The evening air was punctuated by the sound of car horns as frustrated commuters attempted to escape the chaos of the city in order to return to their comfortable suburban lives. Below, the quays were blocked in both directions. Traffic inched forward en masse like some huge lumbering beast as pedestrians launched themselves in front of slow-moving cars to cross bridges whose lights burned orange in the blackness of the Liffey.

A rough-looking couple were arguing in the street. The man took a few steps towards the woman who pointed a finger in his face as he swayed and gesticulated, spilling beer from the can that he clutched in one hand. The woman lifted a hand as though she was about to slap him, but he turned away. She tugged at his arm, and he shrugged her off, raised the can to his lips and made his way back towards the boardwalk where he would probably spend the night. The names she shouted after him hung in the night air.

Oliver turned away from the window, disgusted by the fact that he had wanted the man to strike out. He wanted him to lose his patience with the woman; the fact that he hadn’t rendered him, Oliver, the inferior of the two. If he had walked away, none of it would have happened. Mercedes would, at that moment, be making dinner in their house across the city – the house that he couldn’t bear to return to each evening; instead, choosing to stay late in the office, replaying the events again and again in his mind, tormenting himself with the possibility of an alternative outcome – one that might not have been so devastatingly absolute.

Mercedes had been in the kitchen that day when he arrived. A rich aroma of cooking spiked the air. She didn’t answer when he shouted hello, and he assumed she hadn’t heard him and continued up to the bedroom where he kicked off his shoes, undid his tie and pulled on a warm fleece over his white shirt. When he went back downstairs she was putting dinner on the table.

They talked about their day. He didn’t notice anything strange in her behaviour; she hid it well. Then she began to tell him about a guy in the office at work who was having an affair with a French girl in her department. She cursed him. She didn’t blame the girl, she said; she was smitten and couldn’t see that he was never going to leave his wife for her.

‘I suppose the only thing she can be blamed for is being foolish. What do you think?’ she said.

Oliver shrugged and told her he’d seen that kind of case so many times. Of course the law would say that the man was wrong; the mistress wouldn’t come into it, and the wife, well, she’d try to take the man for every penny she could get. They always did.

‘I’m not talking about law; I’m talking about lives. I mean … who’s to blame, the husband or the girl? What if I were the wife, for example, who do you think I should take it out on, you or the girl that you seduced?’

It was then that he went on his guard. ‘Look, not everything is black and white,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, you don’t know these people, their situation.’

‘Ah, but I do.’

Mercedes’s eyes flashed as she spat the words, and he knew that she’d found out. He should never have believed that Carmen would keep quiet. She was too like Mercedes: a straight talker. She liked to get her own way, but she lacked Mercedes’s morals. Carmen didn’t care whose lives she destroyed to get what she wanted, and she knew that her sister was likely to forgive her in time.

Mercedes had stood up and instinctively he did the same. She walked round to his side of the table, drew her tiny frame up to its full height and slapped him so hard that his cheek stung.

‘Why did you do it?’ she said. ‘Why the fuck did you have to do it, and with Carmen. You … you think you’re so above it all, above everyone, but you’re weak. Can’t you see it? You’re just like the rest of them. Dangle a piece of bait and you’re hooked. It’s pathetic.’

He tried to apologize. He told her that, yes, he’d been weak at that moment. Hell, they hadn’t had sex for the last couple of months. What did she expect him to do? He realized as he said it that his apology with its counter-accusation was probably not the best tactic, but he couldn’t help but try to push some of the blame onto her. It was his only mechanism of defence.

‘So, you don’t think your sister had any part in this?’ he snarled. ‘You don’t think that her coming round here when you were away, dressed like a … like a fucking prostitute had anything to do with it? I mean, what man with blood in his veins wouldn’t, for Christ sakes? She was screaming for it!’

Mercedes hit him again. This time it wasn’t just a slap. She pummelled and kicked him, and he tried to grab hold of her wrists to stop her, but she bit his hand so hard she drew blood. He knew that he should’ve taken it, but something inside him just snapped. Mercedes lashed out, her fist catching his jaw. He stumbled backwards, and then lunged at her. His hands were round her throat as he pushed her down onto the sofa. She struggled and he pressed down harder to prevent her from hitting him again. He was appalled and aroused by the violence, and the more she tried to free his hands from her throat, the tighter he clenched them. When she finally stopped struggling, he released her. He thought that he had merely tired her out, stopped her from attacking him. Wasn’t that what he had set out to do?

Oliver’s hands were shaking from the memory as he tidied away the files on his desk. He jumped when the door opened and his partner, Colin Byrne, appeared in the doorway.

‘Is there something you’re keeping from me, Oliver?’

‘What?’

He froze at the open cabinet.

‘Is business better than I figure, because I’m beginning to think you’re hoarding all the clients for yourself. You’ve been here late every night.’

‘Ah. No, it’s not that,’ Oliver said. He hesitated, returned the files to the drawer and locked it. ‘To be honest, Colin, I’ve been having a few problems. Mercedes and I haven’t been getting along.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to go home then and try to sort it out?’ Colin asked.

‘It might if there was somebody there to sort things out with. She’s gone away for a while – I’m not sure for how long. So, I’d rather be here sorting some stuff out, anything rather than sitting in that house thinking about her.’

Colin didn’t ask questions. He was tactful, and when Oliver didn’t offer any more information he took his cue to leave.

‘She’ll be back,’ he said, touching Oliver’s shoulder before going home for the night.

The truth was Oliver couldn’t stand being in that house. He’d begun to take the phone off the hook in the evenings so that he didn’t have to listen to Carmen Hernandez’s messages. Sooner or later he knew that he would have to come up with something to put Carmen off for good. He’d considered sending her a letter. He’d even spent time copying Mercedes’s handwriting in order to send Carmen a note that said she never wanted to see her again, but then he’d given up. He knew that it wouldn’t be enough, that there had to be something else, but without Mercedes he couldn’t think of anything else. He could say that she had left him. Carmen would believe that, but he knew that Mercedes’s disappearance would motivate her family to contact the police – and he wanted to avoid that for as long as he possibly could.

Oliver was about to leave the office when there was a long buzz on the intercom. He looked at his watch. Could Colin Byrne have forgotten his keys? Cautiously, he crossed to the window and looked down into the street. A man in a dark-coloured coat stood below. He didn’t recognize him until the man stood back and looked up at the window. Curious, Oliver lifted the intercom and told Patrick Arnold to come up to the office.

EIGHT

Joanna’s mother was seldom home. At first, she thought her absence an attempt to avoid her but, when she thought about it, her mother had been out a lot recently, even before Rachel Arnold’s visit. She hadn’t asked Joanna about the funeral nor had Joanna volunteered any information about it. What she had decided to do was take Rachel Arnold up on her invitation in order to find out about her father.

She stood outside the front porch of the Arnolds’ house and leaned on the bell. It buzzed, a sharp, insistent sound. There was movement in the hall, and through the amber glass next to the front door she saw a figure move down the hallway, and she braced herself for the meeting. The door swung open, but instead of Rachel Arnold, Joanna found herself face to face with the man she had seen at the funeral – the one that Rachel had told her was Patrick.

Joanna stammered, disconcerted. ‘I’m here to see Rachel.’

Patrick Arnold seemed to scrutinize her. ‘Joanna, isn’t it? I saw you the other night at the church, but you disappeared before I’d a chance to say hello. I’m Patrick, your … Vince’s brother.’

He extended his hand; it was warm as it gripped hers. He had been about to say ‘your father’ Joanna mused, but had thought better of it. She wondered how close this man had been to his brother – if Vince had confided in him all those years ago about the affair with her mother. He stood back and Joanna stepped into the warmly lit hall, acutely aware that she was entering her father’s house.

She glanced round. Both walls and carpet were a deep cream colour. A large Monet print hung above the stairs, and a man’s navy sports jacket lay draped across the banister. She wondered if it was Patrick Arnold’s, or if it had been her father’s. Patrick led her into the living room, and she resisted the urge to touch the coat as she passed.

Rachel’s expression as she entered the room was a mixture of pleasure and surprise.

‘Joanna, I’m so glad you’ve come. I see you’ve met Patrick.’

He stood by the fireplace looking slightly amused but he didn’t say anything. None of them did, they stood round in the bellowing silence until Rachel finally spoke.

‘Odd meeting like this, isn’t it? But then it’s been an odd few weeks. It’s hard to know where to begin. Thank you for coming the other night. I wasn’t sure you would but I imagine she’s told you everything, your mother?’

‘She told me some things.’

Rachel’s blue eyes were not without sympathy. ‘It must have been a shock to find out like that. I’m sorry.’

Joanna straightened. ‘That’s what Mum said. Bit late to be sorry now though, isn’t it? It seems no one wanted me to know.’

Rachel didn’t deny that. ‘And what did she tell you?’ she asked.

‘I know about my mother’s affair … that he didn’t want anything to do with me when he found out, that you forbade contact.’ The words cut even as she said them, the wounds deeper than she’d thought.

‘Well, I should have known she wouldn’t leave that out.’ There was anger in Rachel’s tone, but she checked it. ‘I don’t suppose she told you that I wanted to adopt you, bring you up as our own.’

‘What?’

Rachel nodded. ‘Vince and I had been trying for a child for a number of years – then he had the affair with your mother and … well, she refused to give you up, of course. Why wouldn’t she? I hated her. She had Vince’s child and I didn’t. How fair was that? So yes, I told him if he had any part in your life, our marriage was over. I suppose you think that was selfish … maybe it was, but it would never have worked. I wasn’t about to be part of any triad. I was his wife.’

Patrick, having stood by listening, spoke suddenly. ‘So you see it wasn’t that easy … for anyone, not for my brother either.’

Joanna felt light-headed. She wished her mother had told her everything and not left her open like this. She turned on Patrick Arnold. ‘Oh, it seems it was easy enough. He cut himself off – never bothered to find out anything about me – his only child. Just as well he didn’t have any others, isn’t it? If that’s the kind of father he was.’

This was aimed at Rachel, who looked taken aback by her sudden anger.

‘I’m sorry, Joanna. And I don’t blame you for being angry. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t my fault – all our faults – it must seem everybody conspired against you. We did think about you … I wondered if he’d one day want to find you. I knew where you lived; your mother was in the phone book, so he knew it too. And it seems he did wonder because I found this among his things.’

Rachel crossed the room and took a book from the shelf. As she did so, Joanna saw a silver-framed photo of her father on a cabinet; it was the same photo she’d seen when she’d typed his name into a search engine the night that Rachel had come to the house. Vince Arnold smiling into the camera at what looked like a racetrack. He wore a white shirt open at the neck and a sports jacket, his hair was thinning, eyes creased with laughter lines as he squinted into the sun. Most of the national newspapers had printed the picture next to the article reporting his death. A tragic accident, they had said – Arnold was the latest victim of the biggest freeze to have gripped the country in almost forty years.

Rachel returned and Joanna found herself looking at another picture, which Rachel held out to her.

‘This is the reason I went to your mother’s house that night. I thought that maybe she knew something; that she’d had some contact with him before his disappearance, but she denied ever having seen it.’

It was a picture of Joanna on her confirmation day, posing outside the church in a little skirt suit that her mother had bought her for the occasion. There were many like it in the family album at home.

‘Where did he get this?’ she asked.

Rachel shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. I thought maybe you could help me to find out?’

Joanna looked at her. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been my mother; she said she hadn’t seen him in years.’ Even as she said the words, she knew that it was the only possible way such a picture had come into her father’s possession. She looked at Patrick and again wondered how much he knew.

‘Did you know my mother then?’ she asked him.

‘No, I was just a kid. Vince didn’t exactly want me hanging around back then.’

‘But you knew … about me?’

‘Yes, he told me one night … he was upset.’ He glanced at Rachel Arnold, giving Joanna the impression that he didn’t want to say too much in front of her.

Joanna looked at Rachel, unable to decide whether she should hate this woman for making her father disown her, or feel some allegiance to her as another victim of her parents’ deceit. If she were to find out anything about her father, she decided, she had better keep her resentment in check. These people were her only link to him. Family by blood if nothing else; at least, Patrick was. She looked at him, curious, wondering if he bore any resemblance to Vince. She looked again at the picture Rachel had given her. ‘I’ll ask her about it,’ she told her, putting the photo in her bag.

NINE

‘Business must be good, Ollie.’ Patrick Arnold strolled around Oliver’s office, and then paused, where Oliver had stood only a moment before, to look down onto the quays.

‘No shortage of divorces right enough,’ Oliver said. ‘But I assume that’s not what’s brought you here?’

Patrick gave a short laugh. ‘No, but I might be putting a bit of business your way.’

‘Oh?’ Oliver sat on the edge of the desk and scrutinized Patrick Arnold. Time had been good to him. It must have been, what, fifteen years since he’d seen him?

Patrick crossed the room and put his hands on the back of the swivel chair in front of Oliver’s desk. ‘My brother owed a lot of money. In fact, he was deeply in debt. Gambling – dogs, horses, anything that moved he put money on it. Six months ago he took out a life assurance policy. I expect there’ll be questions asked: you know what these insurance companies are like; they’ll use anything they can find to get out of paying.’

‘Are you saying your brother’s death might have been suicide?’

Patrick shook his head. ‘No, but they might start poking around, trying to make it seem like that. There’s no way Vince killed himself. We just got the result of the autopsy and it says he died of heart failure from hypothermia, not drowning. Ever heard of someone freezing themselves to death?’

‘Still and all, seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? That he’d take out an insurance policy, and six months later he winds up in the canal.’

‘That’s what I’m saying, Ollie. There’s no way they’ll let something like that get past them.’

‘And why do you reckon he decided to take out the policy?’

‘Loan sharks. He’d borrowed money from a lot of sources, and not all of them legit. I’m guessing he was afraid of what they might do if he didn’t pay up, and that brings me to the next question – there are several parties who might come looking for what they’re owed and Rachel’s worried that she’ll have to pay them. She’s already been getting calls from some bookie that Vince ran up a debt with.’

‘Back up a second and let me get my head around this. You’re saying that your brother took out life assurance because he was concerned about some dodgy characters he owed money to. And you’re also telling me that the autopsy said that Vincent died of hypothermia – that there was no water in the lungs?’

‘Not enough, it seems, to make drowning the primary cause of death.’

‘So do you suspect any foul play here? Hypothermia could have happened anywhere. Who’s to say your brother wasn’t dead before his body even hit the water? I assume there’s to be an inquest?’

‘Yeah, but really we don’t suspect anything like that. I reckon Vince fell through the ice and couldn’t get out. He couldn’t swim and, remember, the canal was frozen over; it wouldn’t take much for you to lose your bearings down there and lose sight of the place you’d gone down, particularly if you panicked.’

‘In which case, you would drown,’ Oliver said.

‘I’m not a pathologist, Ollie, I don’t know. Maybe he died on the ice, and ended up in the water when it cracked. A lot of people were fool enough to go walking on it. We’ll have to wait for the result of the inquest to know for sure. In the meantime, we’re hoping you might look after the insurance end of things – and the loan sharks. I’m assuming that since some of these loans weren’t legit Rachel won’t have to shell out for them.’

Oliver shook his head. ‘It sounds like there wouldn’t be anything legally binding, but it might be safer if she just paid them. These are not the kind of people you want to rub up the wrong way, Patrick. Your brother knew that. As for the insurance – I’d need to see the policy before I could give you any advice on it. The inquest will hold things up, but then probate tends to put everything on hold for months anyway. I take it Rachel is the beneficiary of this policy?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘I presume so. I don’t know the details.’

‘And what’s the value, roughly speaking?’

‘Again, I have no idea. Vince and I never discussed it. I didn’t even know there was a policy until Rachel mentioned it.’

‘Okay. Well, firstly, if your sister-in-law has the money, I’d pay off that bookie. Everything else can be paid from your brother’s estate, provided he had one.’ Oliver paused. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t you looking after the legal end yourself?’

Patrick smiled. ‘Ah now … don’t tell me you didn’t hear about that, Ollie. God knows, lawyers love to talk.’

‘I heard something all right. But, like you say, people talk; you can never be too sure what to believe.’

Patrick spread his hands. ‘Well, I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but I got myself debarred shortly after I’d set up a practice. It’s not something I’m proud of. I made a stupid mistake – got caught up in something I shouldn’t have. But look, sure I’d have made a lousy lawyer anyway. Best to leave all that to pros like you. So I’ll bring you that policy to have a look over. Make sure the insurance crowd can’t find anything amiss. Rachel will be relieved to have a solicitor involved. It’s her I’m doing it for. Things are hard enough for her without having to deal with Vince’s financial mess.’

Oliver nodded and picked up his briefcase. ‘I’m happy to help.’

He showed Patrick Arnold out of the office and down the narrow stairs. Arnold thanked him and said he’d be in touch to go over the policy.

‘We must have a pint while I’m home, Ollie,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ Oliver told him. ‘Give me a shout.’

He locked the outer door and watched as Patrick Arnold hailed a cab. There was something about the whole thing that didn’t sit right.

TEN

The lights were on when Joanna returned home. She expected to find her mother in front of the television, but she wasn’t. When she climbed the stairs, she saw that her mother’s bedroom door was ajar and the light was on. She was talking in a low voice. Joanna peered through the opening from the landing, curious.

Angela was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to the door, talking on her mobile. ‘It’s not how … obviously, I didn’t expect that … no. But … she’s angry, what would you expect? Me?’ She laughed. ‘… well, you weren’t exactly … no, I know that. Okay, it’ll be around three. I’ll text you when I’m leaving. Don’t worry, I won’t, I have them here. Okay, I’ll see you then. Bye … bye.’

Her mother ended the call, stood up and went to the window.

‘Who was that?’ Joanna asked.

Angela spun round, hand to her chest. ‘Joanna, Jesus, you put the heart crossways in me. I didn’t hear you come in.’

Joanna went in and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘So who was on the phone?’

Her mother waved her hand distractedly. She’d left her mobile on the bedside table. ‘Oh, it was just Pauline,’ she said.

‘How is she?’

‘Grand, she’s grand. Are you in long?’

‘No, just a few minutes.’ Joanna picked up the phone. ‘Did you get a new mobile?’

‘What?’

Joanna held up the phone. ‘What happened to your other phone?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? It drowned. I left it on the cistern and forgot about it. Then, when I was cleaning, I knocked it into the loo. Dead as a dodo when I took it out.’

‘You should have put it in a bag of rice.’

Angela took the phone from Joanna and put it in her pocket. ‘Rice?’

‘Yeah, it absorbs the water. If you give it to me, we can try it,’ she said, following her mother from the room.

‘Ah, I’d say it’s too late now. Anyway, it had its day. It kept switching itself off.’

Joanna detected something edgy about her mother, probably because she’d overheard her on the phone. No doubt she’d been telling Pauline what had happened. She wondered how much her mother’s old friend knew. They’d been friends since they were teenagers, so she would have known about Vince Arnold. Girls didn’t keep those kinds of things from each other.

In the kitchen, Joanna watched her mother spoon cocoa powder into two mugs. It was a nightly ritual when they were both home. She was trying to decide how best to broach the subject of Rachel and the photo, and then, figuring that no time would be a good one, she simply said it. ‘I was talking to Rachel Arnold.’

Her mother turned sharply. ‘What, did she come here again?’ she said.

Joanna shook her head. ‘No, I went over there. I know what you’re thinking, but I wanted to find out about him. The thing is, when I was there she showed me this.’ She took the photo from her bag and held it out.

Her mother shrugged. ‘What about it?’ she said.

‘Vince Arnold had it. She said you denied ever having seen it, but I know you must have given it to him, Mum. There’re half a dozen just like it in the album downstairs.’

Angela poured hot water on the cocoa and slammed the kettle down in frustration. ‘Jesus, would that woman ever keep out of our business!’

‘But it is her business, Mum. And it’s mine, too. You said you had no contact with him after he discovered you were pregnant, but that’s not true, is it? You gave him that picture.’

‘I told you, Joanna, I haven’t seen Vince in years.’

‘So where did he get it then?’

‘I sent it to him after you’d made your confirmation. I don’t know why. I suppose I wanted him to see what he was missing – what he’d have had if he’d chosen differently, if he’d chosen us. I knew there was more between us than there’d ever been between him and her. It takes some people longer than others to see their mistakes.’

Joanna’s mother stirred the cocoa; she wouldn’t meet her eye. It was almost as though she were talking to herself. Joanna took her mug and, cradling it in both hands, took the next step.

‘She said they’d wanted to adopt me.’

Angela snorted derisively ‘She didn’t hold much back, did she?’ She raised her mug to her lips and took a sip of cocoa, then continued. ‘Rachel couldn’t have children, so she decided she’d try to take mine. I think she blamed that on Vince’s affair, the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant, but that had nothing to do with it.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He called me and said he wanted to meet. I thought when I received that call that maybe he’d changed his mind; “it’s about the baby,” he said. Would I meet him in a café to talk? When I arrived and saw her there I nearly turned and walked back out. They were curt, both of them. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. It made me glad that I’d made the effort, even if by then I knew that a reconciliation was the last thing on the cards.

‘“What do you intend to do?” he said. He couldn’t look at me, not with her there, but she was doing enough of that for both of them. “What about?” I said, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking. “The child … you don’t want to raise it surely?”

‘“And why wouldn’t I?” I said. I got mad then, told him if they expected me to get rid of it, they had another think coming, that he could run from his responsibilities if he liked, but I wasn’t going to. That’s when she started talking. “That’s not why we’re here,” she told me. “We want to help. It’s not easy bringing up a child on your own. People talk, and then there’s the bills, it’s not cheap.” She went on, listing things out as though I hadn’t thought of them. I watched her, wondering what it was this woman wanted, baffled by the fact that she said she wanted to help me – and then she said it. Six thousand pounds – she took a cheque book from her purse and showed it to me. She’d taken the trouble to write it out. I looked at my name in the swirly black ink – I’d get it as soon as I’d handed the baby over – nobody would ever have to know, she said. I could get on with my life; forget the whole thing had ever happened.

‘Vince sat there all the while she was talking, silent – eyes lowered to the carpet. I ignored Rachel: willed him to look at me so that I might see in his eyes what he made of this preposterous suggestion, but he continued to sit there, eyes downcast – not daring to meet mine. “What’s wrong,” I asked him, “can’t you even look at me?” “You should think about it,” he said, looking past me – “what she said is right – he’d have a good life.” He – he said. He was convinced you’d be a boy.

‘I stood up then, told them both that they could keep their money – I had no intention of giving up my child. If Vince wasn’t willing to leave Rachel, then he was giving up any right he had to you. Not that I had to state that – Rachel wasn’t about to let him have anything to do with a child that wasn’t hers too.’

Angela stopped talking – she seemed exhausted by having to go over it all. Joanna tried to absorb all that her mother had told her.

‘And you didn’t see them again?’ she asked.

Her mother shrugged. ‘I saw her on the bus once. I had you in the pushchair. She kept staring at you. I pretended I didn’t know her – got off the bus two stops early and walked the rest of the way home.’

‘Did you not feel … sorry for her?’

‘I suppose I did sometimes. He should have left her – it wasn’t fair – she’d have met someone else – we’d have been happy. But people don’t always do the right thing.’

Angela stood up from her stool, rinsed her mug and left it on the draining board. She spoke with her back to the room. ‘I know I can’t tell you what to do, Joanna, but I’d rather you didn’t see Rachel Arnold again. And it’s not for what she might tell you – you needn’t think that, I just don’t want her latching onto you now that Vince is gone.’

Joanna said nothing. Enough lies had been told, and she wasn’t prepared to commit to not seeing Rachel again. There were things she wanted to know about her father.

Awkwardly, her mother kissed her goodnight. It was the first time since Rachel Arnold had come into their lives. She looked tired, Joanna thought. When she reached the door, she turned.

‘I almost forgot, Pauline asked me to go shopping with her tomorrow afternoon – she wants to get a dress. She’s going to a wedding or something. So I won’t be here when you get in.’

‘Okay, Mum, I’ll see you tomorrow night then.’

Joanna sat for a while in the kitchen, looking out into the dark, listening to her mother moving about upstairs. She thought of the solicitor she’d met at the funeral and went out to the hall to check her coat pocket to see if she still had his card. She took it out and looked at it. She had a sudden urge to see the place where the man, Oliver, had found her father’s body. She decided that she would call him the following day when her mother was not around.

ELEVEN

‘So where exactly were you when you saw him?’

Oliver pointed down the bank towards the lock. ‘Just there,’ he said. ‘I’d crossed over and come down the other side.’

He watched as the girl, Joanna, moved towards the water’s edge. She knelt close to the damp earth, lifted the camera and began to photograph the scene. She zoomed in on the reeds where he told her he’d spotted what he’d thought was a coat. She asked him to describe as clearly as he could what he had seen – the position of her father’s body and how the rescue team had removed him from the water. She moved back then and took some shots of the lock with the reeds in the foreground. He heard the sound of the shutter opening and closing repeatedly until she rose and walked stealthily onto the lock to point her camera at the murky canal beneath. It was coming on for four in the afternoon and the light had begun to fade.

Oliver took the opportunity to observe the girl as she stood there, eye to the lens, her attention focused entirely on the camera. She was quite striking, but in a different way altogether from the Hernandez sisters. Her auburn hair hung loose over her shoulders, and her skin was so pale that it appeared almost translucent. He wondered how old she was and guessed that she was perhaps mid-twenties. She had told him as they’d walked along the canal road about how she was the fruit of Vince Arnold’s early infidelity. He would have been, what, late twenties when he’d had the fling with Joanna’s mother? According to the papers, he was fifty-four when he died.

Oliver had not told Joanna about Patrick’s visit. He’d arranged to meet him that evening in Brogans’ pub, and he’d decided to tell him that he couldn’t take on the legal work he’d offered him. Given Patrick’s record and the circumstances in which Vince Arnold’s insurance policy had been taken out, he wanted no involvement. The last thing he needed was to become embroiled in a potentially dubious insurance claim. Patrick could find some other patsy to look after that one. His gut told him to stay clear.

The girl had finished taking pictures. She put the cover back on the lens and retraced her steps down the bank.

‘Do you reckon it was an accident?’ she asked.

Oliver looked at her, at her pale skin and eyes the colour of storms. ‘The family seems to think so,’ he said. There was no point in telling her about the autopsy result, raising questions in the girl’s mind. She was still trying to get to grips with having discovered the identity of her father.

‘Rachel said that you studied with Patrick?’

‘Yes, it was a long time ago now.’

‘Is he a solicitor, too?’

‘No. He hasn’t practised in a long time. He … well, to tell you the truth he was struck off. I asked him about it when we were speaking. He was quite frank, said he’d done something he shouldn’t have and got himself debarred.’

Joanna nodded. ‘Did he tell you anything else? Did he say anything about my father?’

Oliver hesitated, and then decided that it might be better to tell the girl the truth. She would hear it anyway, he assumed, from Rachel or Patrick if they were to keep in touch. ‘He mentioned that your father may have run up some debts. He was a sports journalist, I believe, and it’s not unusual for people involved to fall into the trap. Betting is a tempting game. I’ve seen men lose everything over it.’

‘Do you think maybe he … that he might have taken his own life? People often do, don’t they, when they have problems like that?’

Oliver shook his head. ‘It did occur to me when Patrick told me, but I asked him and he said no. They think that Vince was simply unlucky, another victim of the freeze.’

They had started walking, left the lock and reeds behind. Oliver pointed towards the camera. He wanted to change the subject and to get to know something about the girl.

‘You like taking pictures?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘This probably looks a bit strange, macabre even. But yes, I take the camera most places, never miss an opportunity. I’m doing a degree at the moment in the IADT.’

‘That’s the art college?’

‘Art, yes. What – you don’t see photography as an art form?’

Oliver laughed. He knew that she was trying to bait him, make him say the wrong thing. ‘I’m sure it is. I never thought much about it.’ They were nearing the point where he turned off for home. He thought about the house and if there was anything there that he might not want the girl to see. He had an hour or more before he was to meet Arnold and, despite the circumstances, he was enjoying her company. ‘I live just round the corner,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy continuing this conversation over coffee?’

The girl hesitated, but then agreed.

‘Maybe you can show me some of your pictures,’ he said. ‘Convince me that it’s art.’

She laughed. ‘Not on this, I can’t. It’s your traditional wind-on camera, nothing digital going on here. I’ve got to develop these in the darkroom.’

‘Wow, people still use those things?’

‘Mostly only photography students, to be honest, but I love it. Some professional photographers still do it this way, but it’s more expensive – the money you have to spend on solutions and stuff makes it a costly hobby.’

‘And is that what it is – a hobby?’ Oliver asked.

‘For now it is. Obviously, I’m hoping it’ll pay the bills one day. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a lot of point in investing all this money in a degree course. At least that’s what my mother says.’

‘Doesn’t she approve?’

Joanna shrugged. ‘I think she finds the arts a bit whimsical. She’d have been happier if I’d gone on to study something more practical – business, or law maybe – like you. What area do you work in?’

‘I practise family law: divorces, custody cases, nothing too exciting.’

They had reached the house. The girl waited as he turned his key in the door, and he wondered again if there was anything lying around that shouldn’t be. ‘I hope you’ll excuse the mess,’ he said. ‘A man on his own tends to let things go …’

She followed him down the hall. When they entered the living room he saw her eyes travel quickly around, taking everything in. He followed her gaze – there was nothing particular in this room to suggest a woman’s presence. He had removed all evidence of Mercedes – packed everything away where he didn’t have to see them. Joanna took the camera from round her neck and carefully placed it on the coffee table. He asked her if she’d like tea or coffee, and she followed him into the kitchen and sat at the breakfast bar while he scalded the pot and put the teabags in. He felt very conscious of her presence and wondered what to do or say next.

‘So what do you do for fun?’ she asked him.

‘I sue people.’

She laughed. ‘No, really,’ she said.

He turned to her, smiling. ‘You’re right, that’s not so much fun, but it’s all I seem to have time for lately.’

He steered the conversation away from himself by asking her about her course.

‘I’m putting together a portfolio at the moment,’ she told him. ‘We’re having an exhibition in a few weeks’ time.’ She paused and then jumped up from her stool. ‘In fact, if you’re really interested, I can show you the shots. I have them saved to a USB. It should be in my bag.’

‘Great, I’d love to see,’ he told her. ‘You go get it, and I’ll take the tea into my office. It’s just through here.’ He took the two mugs, placed them on the desk and booted up his computer. Joanna went out to the living room to retrieve her bag.

They were standing side by side in the small room watching the slide show of her photographs when the phone rang.

‘Aren’t you going to get that?’ Joanna asked him.

‘No, let them ring back,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait.’

He closed the office door on the ringing lest the answer machine should kick in.

TWELVE

Joanna arrived home to an empty house. Her mother had not yet returned from her shopping expedition with Pauline. She decided that she would process the film on which she’d taken the canal bank shots that afternoon, but it was just as she had that thought that she remembered she’d left the USB stick containing the photos for her college presentation in Oliver Molloy’s laptop. She looked at the clock. She needed that USB for her class the next day. She had two choices: she could either scan the photos again, which would take a lot of time, or she could go back to Oliver’s for the stick. She didn’t have his home phone number so she would just have to take the chance on his being home.

Joanna drove slowly past the row of terraced houses until she came to Oliver’s. There was a light on in the front room, but it went out just as she turned off the engine. Perhaps she had just caught him before he went out, she thought.

She was about to get out of the car when the front door opened and a woman stepped out. The woman pulled the door behind her and walked swiftly down the path and crossed the road just in front of Joanna’s car. She couldn’t say why but, instinctively, Joanna shrunk down in her seat. She didn’t want to be seen sitting in her car outside Oliver’s house, even though she was doing nothing wrong.

She’d had a clear view of the woman as she’d crossed in front of the car. She was dark-skinned and dark-haired, and definitely didn’t look Irish. She wore a leather jacket, a short skirt and knee-high boots. If Joanna had had her camera, she’d have felt compelled to take her picture, but she’d left it in the darkroom back at the house. She continued to watch the woman until she grew small in the distance, then she vanished altogether. Joanna wondered if she’d hailed a cab at the side of the road.

She looked at Oliver’s house. There was a single light on in the hall, but otherwise no sign of life. She wondered if the woman was his girlfriend and was surprised that with that thought came a pang of disappointment. For some reason, she had assumed that he was single. She supposed it was his quip earlier about ‘a man alone tending to let things go’. She wasn’t his wife, then; but he was an attractive man and she shouldn’t have been surprised that he might have just as attractive female callers.

After a sufficient time had passed since the woman’s departure, Joanna got out of the car and made her way up the driveway. She rang the bell, a musical ding-dong, and waited. There was no sound within. She rang the bell again, but still there was silence. Oliver must be out, she thought, and in that case, the woman she had just seen leaving had either been there when he left, or she had her own key. Joanna sighed and traipsed back down the driveway. As she did, she saw a glove on the path. She leaned down to pick it up. It was a red wool glove that the woman must have dropped on her way out. Joanna put it back where it was, closed the gate behind her and got back into the car.

She wondered what to do. She could wait, but there was no telling what time Oliver might return. And what if the woman returned instead? She didn’t want to make trouble. She would just have to wait until tomorrow to get the USB back. There was nothing for it but to go home and begin scanning her photos again.

Joanna gathered her collection of photos and took them up to her room to scan. Her mother had still not returned home. The landline rang when she was about half an hour into the work and she went to her mother’s room to answer the extension. It was her mother’s friend, Pauline, asking to speak to Angela.

‘Mum? No, she said she was going shopping with you. Oh really? Maybe I got that wrong, then. She said something about going to buy a dress for a wedding, that wasn’t with you? Okay, Pauline. No worries. I’ll tell her to give you a call.’

Joanna put the phone down, puzzled. She was sure her mother had said it was Pauline she was meeting. A few minutes later, she heard her mother come in. She went into the landing and shouted down the stairs.

‘That you, Mum?’

‘No.’ It was her mother’s customary reply.

Joanna went downstairs. ‘Pauline just called,’ she said. ‘Did you not say you two were going shopping together today?’

Her mother looked up. ‘What?’

‘Pauline, I thought you said you were meeting her today but she’s just been on the phone.’

‘No, I said I was meeting Helen.’

‘Really? I was sure you said Pauline.’

‘Oh, maybe I did, I meant Helen.’

Joanna looked at her mother’s lack of shopping bags. ‘Did you not see anything you liked?’

Her mother shook her head. ‘I wasn’t really looking for anything – I just tagged along. Did you get yourself something to eat?’

‘No, I was out. I was thinking of maybe ordering something in. Do you fancy it?’

‘No, I’m okay, I grabbed a bite with Helen earlier. Get yourself something.’

Joanna nodded. She wasn’t sure she believed that her mother had mixed up the names of her two friends. Certainly, she knew she hadn’t misheard. But if she hadn’t gone shopping, where had she been? Rather than confront her about it Joanna decided to let it go. Maybe it was something and maybe it wasn’t; her mother’s lies had broken all trust between them. She missed the closeness they’d shared before Rachel had dropped her bomb. The distance wasn’t helped, she knew, by her own omissions. She would have liked to tell her mother about the afternoon she had spent with Oliver Molloy, about him taking her to see the place where Vince’s body had been found, but she wouldn’t. She would hide the fact and the photographs she’d taken from her mother because she knew that if she told her she wouldn’t understand.

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