The Doll's House (34 page)

Tears are blocking my vision and I’m stammering, ‘But – but – I would have loved her, I know I would.’

‘It’s not your fault, Clodagh.’ She sounds as if she is the adult and I am the child. ‘Emmaline wasn’t Daddy’s little girl. She belonged to somebody else. She wouldn’t have been right here. Not with us.’

I can hear Gerard’s voice. He’s asking me again, ‘Clodagh, who is dead?’

‘Emmaline,’ I say.

‘How did she die?’ he asks, as if it is the most normal question in the world.

I look around the room. My mother stands rigid by the window. My father sits, with his head bent, in the corner. Then I look back to the crib. My little-girl self is swinging the cradle, singing the lullaby again.

‘It’s okay, Clodagh,’ I hear her say. ‘She likes me to sing to her. It helps her to sleep.’ I hear Gerard’s voice. Again he is asking how the baby died.

How did Emmaline die? I find it hard to get the words out. If I say them my whole world may tumble. Instead I scream, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to come back, Clodagh?’

I look to where my mother is standing. I hear her voice, low, stern and without pity: ‘I will never forgive you,’ she says, and I’m not sure who she is talking to, me or my father.

‘Clodagh, can you hear me? Do you want to come back?’

I stare at my father. His face is no longer in his hands. He is looking
at me, then at my mother. He is trying to say something, but his words are stuck. I see the frown lines on his forehead, regret in his eyes, his stooped, beaten frame, and I feel his pain. It is weighing me down too. It is like a giant albatross across our shoulders.

‘Clodagh, I am taking you back, do you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll start counting backwards from ten, and when I do, you will leave the bedroom. You will leave the doll’s house. You will find the staircase that led you there, coming back into the garden.’

O’Connor, followed by Lynch, entered the incident room with more on his mind than the current investigation. He’d taken certain things for granted, until he’d risked losing them. Butler, regardless of hostile outbursts, had an underlying admiration for O’Connor. How you earned your stripes within the force meant more than your position. It was a reflection of years of hard graft and accomplishment. It could easily go down the tubes once O’Connor came clean.

But the height of an investigation wasn’t the time for guilty reflection. Despite his thumping headache, O’Connor had a job to do and, no matter how this whole saga turned out, he was damned if he wasn’t going to be up to the task in hand. Whatever repercussions came afterwards, he would have to deal with them. Kate was right in practically everything she had said. But he had never expected her to be any other way.

Matthews got the proceedings under way. ‘Right, O’Connor, fill us in.’

‘We should have a list of owners of the Volvo model in the next hour.’

‘Anything more from Dr Pearson?’ Again the question came from Matthews.

‘She’s sent an updated report, which includes observations about the perpetrator, and potential geographical area.’

‘Seeing as I don’t have a copy in front of me,’ Butler, keen to get his spoke in, ‘perhaps you’d be good enough to fill us all in.’

‘Considering both men knew each other, the probability of them knowing their attacker is rated by Dr Pearson as high. This has given us
a sub-set within the wider circle. The relationship between Gahan and Jenkins went back a long way. We’ll be talking to Dominic Hamilton, Clodagh McKay and her husband, Martin McKay, today. As you know, we’ve already spoken to Gahan’s sister, Deborah, all immediate members of Jenkins’s family and Alister Becon. Alister Becon was the last person to see Adrian Hamilton alive.’

‘You still think this is all connected, do you, O’Connor?’

‘Yes, boss, I do. We still have security in place on Jenkins’s house and Deborah Gahan’s.’

‘Bloody logistical nightmare.’ Butler’s words required no response. ‘Get back to what Dr Pearson has given you.’

‘She believes the drowning is critical, and could be a form of cleansing.’

Matthews sat up straighter in his chair. ‘Anything else from her?’

‘Our killer is older and therefore more calculating. Despite this, he’s willing to take risks. His fear of being caught is outweighed by his needs.’

‘What does she mean by “his needs”?’

‘She thinks he could be rating his victims in order of importance, keeping his most significant victim until last. Of course, there’s every possibility that Gahan was the final victim, but we can’t be sure.’

‘I see.’ Butler sounded deadpan now.

‘Dr Pearson has also narrowed down the geographical location. She believes the perpetrator is operating in a physical area with which he is both familiar and comfortable. It could be the area where he is currently living or working, or one he has been connected to in the past. Based on this, I’m intensifying the house-to-house enquiries around the stretch of the canal three bridges back and three forward. Once we get the list of possible vehicle registrations and owners, we can start picking up other connections.’

‘I want to know how you get on with Hamilton and the McKays.’ Butler looked across at Matthews to log the follow-up. ‘Where do they all live, O’Connor?’

‘The outskirts of Sandymount, boss.’

‘What? All of them?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s not far from either crime scene.’

‘No, boss, it isn’t.’

‘Car models? I assume you’d tell us if there were any matches.’

‘Dominic Hamilton’s doesn’t match. We’re checking the others.’

‘It doesn’t rule him out, though.’

‘No.’

‘Anything else, O’Connor?’

‘Considering what Dr Pearson has said, the house-to-house enquiries will be extended to the area around the Hamilton and McKay homes. Both, as I said, in Sandymount.’

‘Right. Hold back nothing on the house-to-house.’ Butler turned to Matthews. ‘We have the model of vehicle for
Crimecall
. Has that been set up?’

‘It’s scheduled for this evening.’

‘O’Connor, keep us posted during the day. Where’s Stapleton?’

‘Here, boss.’ Stapleton waved from the back of the room.

‘You’re in charge of the press. Feed those guys exactly what we want them to hear. Officially we’re following some definite lines of enquiry. Acknowledge that Gahan and Jenkins knew each other. The link should calm public anxiety, at least the jitters of anyone who didn’t know the men. It might shake some others.’ Butler looked around the room. ‘We need to get some more answers. Good ones. That means asking the right questions. Get out there and do what you do.’

If the rumours about Butler seeking a future career in journalism were true, O’Connor couldn’t help but wonder if his attitude would change once he was on the other side of the fence. Right now, the only news Butler wanted was good news, and faster than he’d been getting it.

The police pulled Stevie in this morning. I know because I followed him to work. He didn’t look so pretty in the face. Even if getting the shit beaten out of him is nothing unusual for Lover Boy.

He seemed shocked at first but he composed himself quickly. He’ll play it cool. Stevie was always the one with the cool head, streetwise, crap-wise, and capable of reading folks, especially their weaknesses.

Stevie doesn’t know that I know about his little run-in with Clodagh all those years back. I make it my business to know these things. Just as I made it my business to keep my eye on him. Some things are best handled by you alone.

McDaid being dragged in isn’t going to cause any change to my plans. He’s another pawn in this game of chess. The next marker feels safe right now. He thinks he’s off-limits. But no one is. It won’t be long now, and then it will be Clodagh’s turn. One should always keep the best till last.

They’ll have to be taken down close to one another. Anything else is too risky. I can’t take the chance of anyone working out my game plan. Not until everything is sorted exactly as it should be and precisely as I planned it. Destiny is funny, the way it has a whole momentum of its own.

When I come back from my regression, the first words out of my mouth are ‘The dolls know the killer.’

‘You’re talking about Emmaline?’ Gerard puts his thumb and index finger into his eyes, as if he is trying to think clearer.

‘Yes. Who else would I be talking about?’

‘What makes you think someone killed her, Clodagh?’

‘My mother said so, when I was inside the doll’s house. Only I don’t know who she was blaming.’

‘Explain to me how you felt when I was bringing you back.’

‘I felt like I was being pulled out of the room, sucked out of the darkness. I thought about the people I was leaving behind, my father, my mother, my little-girl self and the baby, that they were all trapped inside the doll’s house.’

‘And when you reached the staircase, the one leading to the garden, how did you feel then, Clodagh?’

‘The emotion felt enormous. I could barely hear you. When I got back to the garden, I could smell the sweet scent of summer flowers, then the faintest smell of vanilla candle wax. And then …’

‘And then what, Clodagh?’

‘I heard sounds coming from outside. A car passing by and the click of the gate.’

‘The gate outside?’

‘Yes.’

Gerard stood up. ‘But I’m not expecting anyone.’

‘Maybe I was mistaken.’ I start to shake. Gerard puts a blanket around me. He tells me this often happens. That my body is coming to terms with the emotions involved.

I say again, ‘Gerard, the dolls know,’ calm and clear.

‘Clodagh, the dolls are an extension of you. You do understand that?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘If there are answers, you already know them. You simply can’t remember them. It’s as straightforward as that.’

The shaking has stopped, but he asks me to remain lying down.

‘Gerard, is it possible I’m mistaken? Could I have imagined it all?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘But you said memories are stored completely intact in our subconscious. They’re more reliable than actual recall because our conscious mind alters memory over time. It adds in layers.’

‘I did say that, Clodagh, and it’s true, but the mind is fragile.’

‘Meaning?’

‘As I explained before, in hypnosis one has to be careful not to manipulate.’

‘Do you think you’ve manipulated me?’

‘Perhaps I’ve influenced you, inadvertently used the power of suggestion. I make a point of avoiding asking leading questions but outside influences can play their role too.’

I think about finding that old photograph, the one with my father and his old college friends. How, after Keith Jenkins’s murder, I’d seen his face at the door of my doll’s house.

‘Could I have superimposed images or ideas on my memory?’

‘Perhaps. It happens, especially if a client is under duress.’

‘I see.’

‘Clodagh, do you want to talk about the things you remember from the regression?’

‘I’m not sure.’ He waits, not wanting to rush me. The fear I felt is still close. It was all-consuming. The world of the doll’s house was more real than the here and now. ‘Gerard, it didn’t feel imagined.’

‘You have to realise, Clodagh, in your case, when you regress,
your adult mind is there but so, too, it seems, is the mind of your younger self. In part, you’re looking at things through the eyes of a seven-year-old. Any number of influences could be brought to bear in how childhood perception comes to be. Whatever your younger self believes she witnessed may not be true. When you’re a child, some things are hard to grasp. Your mind can force a solution, or an understanding, a shortcut of the truth.’

‘So it can’t be trusted, this truth?’

‘It’s a different kind of truth. But it’s all you have right now. Ultimately, the hope is that, with your adult self being present during the regression, the true picture will unravel.’

‘When I regressed, Gerard, did I regress to an actual memory or an imaginary one?’

‘What you experienced most likely did happen. It wasn’t a dream but, as I’ve already said, it seems to be coming from a child’s point of view. It has to be taken in the context of a seven-year-old mind.’

‘But what my mother said, about the baby being killed, why would I remember that if it wasn’t true?’

‘I wish I could help you, Clodagh, tell you which parts can be relied upon and which cannot, but within your regression, there is a form of truth. We simply need to find the correct roadmap to it.’

‘Can I tell you something else, Gerard?’

‘What?’

‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘I’m a good listener.’ He smiles. ‘Helps with the territory.’

‘I keep thinking about why I came here in the first place.’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought it was to understand why the relationship between my mother and me was so difficult, to explain the barrier between us, and why I turned to alcohol for escape.’

‘I know that.’

‘The death of my sister could explain it. Perhaps my mother wasn’t able to love me because she’d suffered such a huge loss.’

‘It certainly sounds reasonable, Clodagh.’

‘But I don’t feel that’s all of it. You see, there have been times over the last while, during my regression and in part through memory recall, that I …’

‘You what, Clodagh?’

I stare past Gerard, concentrating on the candle still burning by the window, the tiny flame swaying, changing colour and shape. ‘That I think about the way she looked at me.’

‘Your mother?’

‘Yes.’ I continue looking at the flame. ‘It’s as if everything that happened is somehow my fault. And that’s not all.’

‘What?’

‘It’s to do with the boys.’

‘The boys?’

‘Yes.’ I sit up. ‘Martin, Dominic and a boy called Stevie McDaid.’

‘What about them?’

‘I heard them whispering. We were all in the attic.’

‘This is from memory, Clodagh?’

‘Yes. It was when I went to our old house with Dominic.’