Eager to Please (18 page)

‘Jack Donnelly came to see you?’

‘Yes. He came yesterday.’

‘Good, good. And of course, you gave him whatever help you could? You told him anything you thought might be useful? Because it’s very important. It’s not great when someone
who you knew in prison . . . Well, when there’s any trouble or anything like that, it’s very important that you come clean about it. That you’re straight with the guards. You
don’t want any messing, do you, Rachel?’

It was a beautiful morning. She had gone to sleep the night before with the shutters open, watching the half-moon make its slow progress across the piece of sky visible through her window. And
she had been woken early by shafts of sunlight falling across her face. When she turned over, shielding her eyes from the brightness, the pillow beneath her cheek was wet. Sodden. And then she
remembered. Judith was dead. She had died more than a week ago and Rachel hadn’t known. Hadn’t even suspected. She had been so caught up in her own plans that she had barely given
Judith a thought.

Jack Donnelly had arrived early and caught her unawares. She had recognized him immediately from the church a couple of weeks ago. And then, from the time before. He had shown her a photograph.
She remembered it well. It was taken in the prison school, the day the Leaving Certificate results had come out. Judith had done brilliantly. A1s in English, History, French. Bs in Geography and
honours Maths. The teachers had thrown a party. Fizzy drinks and biscuits and a chocolate cake. Paper hats and streamers to decorate the prefab where the classes were held. She had watched Judith
celebrate and known what it meant. They would let her out now.

He wanted to know, he said, all about her. Who were her friends? Who was her dealer? Who was her pimp?

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said, suddenly frightened. ‘I didn’t know her outside. I didn’t know her when she was part of that world. And
I’m telling you now. I haven’t seen her since I came out. For just that reason. I’ve enough problems of my own. I don’t need hers.’

He took his time before he told her Judith was dead. He led her on. To betrayal.

‘OK, all right, she did give me some names. The guy she worked for. Not that it was much of a mystery. Half the girls inside had worked for him at some stage. And Judith swore she
wasn’t going to get back into all that when she got out.’

‘And what about her father and her brother, what do you know about them?’

She shrugged, then said, ‘Why are you asking me all this? What’s going on here?’

‘Nothing to concern you. I just want to know. Now tell me. Her father and her brother, what kind of a relationship did she have with them?’

But now she knew. She could tell. This wasn’t right.

‘Did?’ she said. ‘Why do you say did?’

She waited while he described how they had found Judith’s body, how she had been killed, what had been done to her. And then she could say nothing more.

‘You hadn’t seen her, had you, since you got out?’ Andrew Bowen’s voice was soft so she had to sit forward in her seat to hear what he was saying.

‘You know I wasn’t allowed to.’

‘That didn’t stop you harassing your daughter, did it?’

Rachel looked at him. The clock behind his head said nine-forty. There were twenty more minutes of this to endure. Half an hour every week.

‘You could have asked me for permission to see her, to see Judith. It would have been understandable, and it seemed from what I hear that she had been doing well since her release. She
might have been able to give you some help with your own rehabilitation.’

Had she known this man all those years ago, in her life before? His face might have been familiar, but then again it might not. She could never tell these days.

‘I would imagine that it must have been a bit of a relief for you when Judith fetched up in prison. Someone you might have something in common with, someone educated,
intelligent.’

‘There was plenty of intelligence inside.’ Rachel sat up in her chair and stared at him. ‘There are a lot of very clever women in there.’

‘But not educated, in the conventional sense. Not like you. University background, that sort of thing.’

She wondered. He could have been in college when she was there. It was such a small city, Dublin. So difficult to hide your background, your past. So hard to have secrets.

‘But I’m sure it was definitely a relief for Judith Hill to find someone like you there already. A shoulder to cry on, a bit of help and understanding. She was an addict,
wasn’t she? Tough corner to be in, getting convicted in that state.’

‘She wasn’t the first. She won’t be the last.’

‘But you helped her, didn’t you? I’m sure you did.’

‘Judith didn’t need much help. You forget, Mr Bowen, I was the one who had been in prison for nearly ten years when Judith was sent down. She had been out in the world. She knew her
way around already. She had a reputation which followed her. The girls called her Snow White, you know, because of the way she looked. And because she was special.’

He’d got it wrong. Big time. It was Judith who helped her. Oh, Rachel had looked after her when she was coming down from the heroin. Cleaned up her vomit, hauled her on and off the toilet.
Read aloud to her when she was too sick to get out of bed. And what did Judith give her in return? She gave her love.

‘OK, I’m beginning to get the picture now. We have this “special” girl, who was in prison with you. And I think we all know the nature of your relationship with her. At
least the prison staff certainly did, and your probation officer inside did too, and of course all this information has been passed on to me.’ He paused.

She looked away. She could feel Judith’s head on her shoulder, her slight body curled up against her side, see her long white fingers linked through her own.

‘So this “special” girl suddenly winds up dead, very dead, not a mile and a half from where you’re now living. And the guards can’t quite figure out why she was
found there. Why she wasn’t found near her home, near her university. There doesn’t seem to be much sense to it, does there? Apart from the inescapable fact of you. You can understand
why Donnelly is so interested.’

She nodded. She felt sick. Donnelly had shown her the photograph taken in the mortuary. She had tried not to look, but he had waited until eventually her gaze had slid across the coloured
print.

‘This is what happens when you die from strangulation,’ he had said to her, his voice neutral. ‘This is what you look like. It’s not pretty, is it?’ He had pushed
the picture closer to her as he continued. ‘Let me see if I can remember what the forensic pathology textbooks say. Face and neck grossly congested, puffy, bloated. The conjunctival tissues
of the eyes and ears haemorrhage. The facial blood vessels, the vessels of the eyelids and lips rupture. An awful sight, isn’t it?’

She had struggled not to give way before him. Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. This was not Judith, this creature in the photograph.

‘So, Rachel,’ Andrew Bowen rocked back in his chair, ‘I’m warning you now. I’m firing a shot across your bows. Metaphorically speaking. You told Donnelly you
hadn’t seen her, but I happen to know that you lied to him. Just as you have lied to me. There are witnesses who saw the two of you together. A number of people have told me where and when
you and she met. So I hope you’ve got your story straight, got your alibi sorted out, because you of all people know the importance of an alibi, how it can make or break a case, don’t
you?’

She looked at him, then looked away out through the window, watching a flock of pigeons wheel and turn, their wings dark against the light blue sky.

‘It’s coffee time, you’ll join me of course, won’t you?’ He stood up and walked to the glass coffee jug resting on its element on top of the filing cabinet. He
filled two mugs, and then with his back still turned to her he opened the top drawer and took out a bottle. He unscrewed the cap and added whiskey to one of the mugs. She saw then how thin he was,
how his hands shook as he passed the coffee to her. How his face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, his lips cracked at the corners. He sat down again and drank. There was silence in the room. Then he
spoke again.

‘I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a while, Rachel. I’ve been wondering. Do you remember me?’

She didn’t answer.

‘It’s odd because I remember you. My wife was friends with some of the girls in your year in college. Maybe you remember her? Her name is Clare. Her maiden name was
O’Brien.’

There was a face that came to mind. Heart-shaped, very pretty, lots of make-up. One of the Loreto girls who still hung around together in their sixth-form group. She nodded.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘That’s good. I’m glad because I want you to do something for me. And I will be grateful for your help. So grateful that I will forget that I know anything about you and your
“special” girl. I won’t suggest to Jack Donnelly that he takes you in for questioning. I won’t spread your story around and attract any kind of unwanted attention to you. I
won’t demand that you come to see me more often.’

And he told her about his wife. Her illness, his despair.

‘You see, we’ve talked about you a lot recently. She remembers you well. She says that you all kept in touch for quite a few years after you graduated. She says that her friends were
all in awe of you. You were so clever, so brilliant, indeed. First-class honours degree. Offers of scholarships in America, in France and Italy. They were all amazed when you got married. And to a
guard, of all things. She says she remembers how dismissive you were of your father and all his friends. She says she remembers going to your house for some kind of class reunion. She said it was
lovely. Full of colour and light. She remembers especially your garden, and your beautiful conservatory. It was so unusual then. Not like now when every Joe Soap has a bit of plastic and glass
stuck up against his back door. And she says that she thought it was a terrible shame, a waste that you were designing kitchen extensions and attic conversions when you had such talent. Genius was
what she actually said.’

She said nothing for a moment. Outside the pigeons still banked and wheeled against the pale morning sky.

Then she nodded. ‘My conservatory, yes,’ she said, ‘it was lovely.’

She had designed it. She wanted to do it as a wedding present for Martin. At first he was interested. Then his interest waned. As it always did. Drifted away. Back from the world of family and
women, back to the world of men. But Daniel understood. Said he’d build it for her. That summer, when Martin was away on duty, in Donegal, on the border.

Andrew cleared his throat.

‘You see, Rachel, my wife needs to be looked after. Especially at night. I want someone to be with her at night. Not every night, but from time to time. Shall we say three, maybe four
evenings a week? So I can go out, have some time to myself. Clare is very fussy about who she’ll let close to her. She won’t have a nurse. She won’t have anyone who’ll feel
sorry for her. But she will have you. She says you’re a wounded person, a broken person. Like her. You won’t have to do anything very much. Just sit with her, perhaps read to her. Then
make sure she takes her pills. I’ll leave them for you. I’ll take care of the dosage. You just make sure she takes them. That’s all.’

He stood again, and again poured whiskey into his mug. This time he didn’t offer her anything. He sat down. He drank. He looked at her over the rim of his mug. He put it down on a pile of
papers on the desk.

‘You’ll accept my offer, of course, won’t you?’

She looked at him. He turned away for a moment, and she wondered what he was thinking about. He turned back towards her.

‘You will, won’t you?’

She nodded.

He fiddled with his tie. ‘I’ll be in touch. I’ll tell you when I want you. And you don’t need to worry about that other business. It’ll be our secret, won’t
it?’

Outside in the street the air was warm, but she buttoned up her denim jacket, folding her arms tightly over her breasts as she hurried home. It was so hard to keep secrets. She had said to
Daniel, ‘You won’t tell Martin, will you? Promise me. I do care about you, you know that. You’re very special to me. And we will always be friends, won’t we? But please,
please don’t tell Martin.’

And he didn’t. And after a while she had almost forgotten what had happened between them that summer. When he had come to stay, and the sun had shone every day for three weeks. Every
morning when she got up Daniel was there cooking breakfast. She’d spread out the drawings on the table and they’d plan the day’s work. She would bring him glasses of homemade
lemonade and sandwiches, then cook him dinner, and they would sit in the garden until it got dark and talk. He told her then all about what had happened when he was a teenager. How he’d got
into trouble. Fallen in with older kids. They’d stolen a car. Driven it at high speed. A woman and her child had been walking along the footpath when the car went out of control. Both had
died. He’d been sent to borstal.

‘Look,’ he said, and showed her his tattoo. A rose on his left shoulder.

‘I was a disgrace to the family,’ he said. ‘And Martin never lets me forget it.’

‘No,’ she protested, ‘Martin doesn’t think that. He loves you. It’s just, you know the way he is, he has very high standards. He expects a lot from everyone, from
me, and from you.’

‘But I can never match him,’ he said, ‘he’s so good at everything.’

And she had laughed and told him there was one thing Martin wasn’t good at.

‘Come with me,’ she said, and drove him down to the harbour. And together they launched her dinghy down the slippery granite slipway. Daniel had never sailed before but he took to it
immediately.

‘Now,’ she said, watching the way he used his balance, how quickly he learned to anticipate shifts in wind. ‘Now, Martin can’t do that. He hates it. He gets seasick. And
do you know something, Dan? Don’t tell him I told you. He’s scared of the sea.’

And it must have been that night that she heard her bedroom door opening. Saw him standing in the half-light waiting. Sat up and reached out to him. Pulled him into bed beside her. Buried her
face in his neck. Felt his hand on her breast. Lay all night hovering between sleep and wakefulness. Then opened her eyes to a bright blue day. The smell of rashers frying, and Daniel in his faded
blue jeans and torn T-shirt, singing along to an old Beatles song on the radio. Toast popping, the table laid and a nasturtium flower, streaks of red flushing through its pale orange, lying on her
plate.