Angel Kiss (23 page)

‘Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Your dress is lovely.’

‘Thanks.’

I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I reapplied my lipstick and fixed my hair while Mary washed her hands. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her looking at me. Like she was about to say something.

‘Listen, Jacki … I know you heard me and Michael fighting in the shop the other day. It’s so embarrassing, but … I’m sure it sounded much worse than it actually was.’

Mary’s guard was down, otherwise she never would have mentioned anything about it. She was so drunk she probably wouldn’t even remember this conversation in the morning. I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to find out more.

‘I, em … I heard you say he didn’t have an alibi for Beth’s murder,’ I said.

‘Yes … I made one up,’ said Mary, looking at me with glazed eyes. She lowered her voice to a hush. ‘See, he was at a poker game. He had a bit of a gambling problem back then, and he didn’t want any of the other Guards to know about it. They all thought he had given it up.’

‘You’re sure he was at this game?’ I asked. I was surprised. If he was, then this changed everything. Maybe Mary was covering up for him? But was she capable of that in her state? Maybe she was so used to telling this lie that she had actually started to believe it.

‘Sure, I picked him up from it. He had been there all night. He just didn’t want to use it as an alibi. Why?’ she asked, perhaps regretting that she’d said so much.

‘Oh, nothing … I was just wondering. Enjoy the rest of your party!’

‘Oh, I will,’ said Mary as she turned back to the mirror.

I went into the cubicle and closed the door behind me. If Michael Reynolds’s alibi was genuine and he didn’t kill Beth Cullen, then who the hell did? Had Lydia and Des lied to me? Were they two of the best actors in the world?

‘Hi, Mary!’ said a familiar voice on the other side of the door.

‘Hi, Rachel,’ said Mary. ‘How’s the house going?’

‘Great! The landscapers are coming in tomorrow. I will be glad to get that hedge cut down.’

I didn’t realize Mum was having the hedge taken down. The leather bag was hidden in it! I needed to get it out of there before the morning. I’d have to hide it somewhere else. I slipped on my black pumps and decided to try to run back to the caravan before anyone noticed I was gone.

There was nobody else in sight as I turned off the main street and up our lane. I ran behind the caravan, rooted in the hedge and pulled out the bag. Then I unlocked the caravan door and stepped inside. There was a cold, unlived-in chill in the air. I dropped to my knees and rummaged under the bed. I pulled out Alf Meehan’s letter, stuffed it in the bag and then looked through its contents again. A stick of lipstick, a packet of violin strings, a hat and a wallet. I opened the wallet, and searched through it again, but there was nothing in it.

Look in the bag
, said that voice in my head. But I had looked in the bag. I had examined all its contents. There was nothing new.

Look in the bag
.

I tipped it upside down, but nothing fell out.

I opened the two front pockets, but there was nothing in them.

I searched every inch of it. And that’s when I found it. A zip on the inside, at the very back, hidden by the torn lining. I pulled the zip open. There was something in there. A card. I took it out.

It was a library card for the library in Carrick.

The name on it?

Elizabeth Cullen.

Oh my God. I knew this was important. I knew it was evidence. It would prove this was Beth’s bag.

I put everything back in the bag and gripped the leather handles.

‘Hello, Jacki.’

I recognized the voice immediately. I felt my insides collapsing with fear. I turned round, gripping the handles tighter.

He was sitting in the darkness at the table. I hadn’t heard him come in; he must have snuck in after me.

‘Peter … What are you doing here?’ I tried to act normal, even though my heart was pounding.

‘Fancy yourself as a bit of a detective, do you?’

‘What?’ I said, trying to hide my terror.

He held up my notebook. How did he get that? He must have been rooting around in the spare room I was staying in. ‘Nice little collection of clues you’ve got here,’ he said.

I clutched the bag tightly. I remembered what Lydia had said.
He’s too well connected.
She was right: Peter Mulvey was very well connected.

He lit up a cigarette. My eyes darted around the caravan. If I made a run for the door I’d never make it. If I screamed, it was unlikely that anyone would hear me. Everyone was down in the town hall. Everyone except me and Peter.

‘I thought I ought to visit your back garden last week to have a little look … to see what had been dug up. But of course you and your mother interrupted me. I had to get out through the hedge before you could catch me. Scramble off like an animal.’ Peter gave me a sick little wink. I suddenly remembered him
trailing mud into the Garda station. The mud from our back garden.

‘People already know about this,’ I said. ‘Even if … even if something happens to me. You won’t get away with it.’

‘All people know about are the delusions of a ditsy fifteen-year-old. With no evidence to back them up, they’re hardly a threat to me,’ he said with a laugh, flicking his cigarette ash on to the white plastic table. The tiny pieces of orange ash faded into black dust.

‘And they definitely won’t be a threat when you … when you’re no longer here.’

I was terrified but I tried my best not to panic.

‘You’ll never get away with it,’ I said. ‘It’s not like it was back then, you know. The forensics are way more advanced … you’ll never –’

‘You’ve been staying in my house, Jacki. My DNA will understandably be on you. Besides I think we both know who is the more likely suspect. The man who has been stalking your mother … pestering you … The man who is already suspected of the murder of his own girlfriend.’

I tried to look unconvinced. ‘Des wasn’t stalking us.’

‘That’s not what your mother told Michael Reynolds.’ Peter took another puff. ‘Michael will know exactly who to blame when your body is found. But he’ll never be able to even ask Des for a confession, will he? Shame.’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Well … I wouldn’t be surprised if due to the guilt of killing you … Des hadn’t tried to take his own life. Poor guy. He’s probably lying in a pool of his own blood right now, his life draining away.’

He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his sleeve. I could see the evil in Peter’s eyes. His pale blue eyes.

‘No. You didn’t …’

‘It was actually pretty easy. Did you know Mrs Butler often forgets to lock their back door? Even though Des is constantly reminding her. Silly woman.’

‘They’ll know he didn’t do it. If he dies, they’ll know someone murdered him.’

‘You know what, Jacki, the Internet is a very handy thing. Don’t you think?’

I didn’t answer. Peter took another puff of his cigarette as the realization hit me straight in the chest.

You have to move the blade in a certain direction. Don’t cut the wrist at such an angle that the victim could not have comfortably done so themselves. You must cut before the victim is dead, as there will be no blood post-mortem. Be careful not to cut the tendons. Include hesitation marks. Be careful not to restrain the victim to such an extent that might leave bruising. Be sure levels of intoxication are not so high that the victim could not have inflicted the wound themselves … et cetera

I swallowed hard.

‘Guess he just couldn’t live with the guilt any longer,’ said Peter with a smirk.

I felt sick inside. I needed to get out. It wasn’t just my life I was fighting for. I was fighting for Des’s too.

Peter flicked more ash on to the table. I bolted for the door.

He grabbed my hair before I could reach the handle. I dropped the bag as he yanked my head back and I fell on to the floor with a thud.

I kicked and screamed and scrambled back to the door, but he grabbed my wrists and held them above my head, and pressed his knees against my thighs to weigh me down.

‘Feisty one, aren’t you?’ he said.

I suddenly realized I must have looked a lot like Beth Cullen, my hair plastered against my face and the brown leather bag lying by my side. It suddenly occurred to me that the vision in the master bedroom of the Mulveys might not have been about Beth Cullen. It could’ve been a premonition about me. After all, I’d been lying on Peter’s bed.

‘You have such a pretty voice,’ said Peter. ‘Pity nobody is going to hear it again. Now, this should shut you up,’ he said, grabbing one of Mum’s scarves to gag my mouth.

I don’t know where I mustered the strength, but it came from somewhere. I head-butted him in the face, jumped up, kneed him hard in the crotch and with my free arm I grabbed the frying pan off the hob and bashed his head with it. He stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, hitting his head against the counter top on the way. I grabbed the bag and got out the door. I ran faster than I had ever done before. I ran for my life.

My pumps smacked against the tarmac. I could feel the sharp loose pebbles digging into their flimsy soles. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I was so scared. I couldn’t let anything happen to Des. My mum really liked him. And he didn’t deserve this. He hadn’t done anything. I ran past the bungalows, down the hill, then past the guesthouse and across the street. There was no time to go to the hall. I had to get to Des.

I fumbled with the handle of the front door for several precious seconds before pulling myself up over the little gate between Des’s house and Mary’s shop. I hoisted myself over its
steel bars. My anklebones cracked as they hit the ground on the other side. I dropped the bag and ran over to the back door. It was locked. The sick bastard had locked it.

‘
Hello! Hello!
’ I banged my fist against the glass, and I kicked the wooden panels, but nobody came to open it.

‘Hello! Open up! Open up!’ It was pointless. The window. Get in through the window. It was locked too. But the glass was single glazed. I had no choice. I had to do it. It didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel my fist slice through it. I couldn’t feel the shards slitting my skin. I grabbed the handle, pushed the window open and climbed in. I clambered up the stairs and pushed his bedroom door open. That’s when I saw him, slumped in the corner. His head hanging limply, his legs outstretched. Blood on his wrists. A Stanley knife lay on the ground.

‘Des! Des!’ He didn’t look up. His eyes were closed; his body was still. ‘
Wake up! Wake up!
’ His eyes opened for a second, but then they shut again. I ran into the hall and picked up the phone. I don’t remember dialling the number, but I must have done. A voice answered immediately.

‘What is your emergency?’

‘I need an ambulance. An attempted murder. He’s still alive but – OK. Number 16, Main Street, Avarna. OK. OK.’

I ran back into the bedroom, and knelt down beside him. I tore two strips from my dress, and wrapped them round his wrists. Des’s face was getting paler. His eyes closed. I wasn’t sure if they were ever going to open again.

Peter Mulvey was tracked down at Belfast Airport just a few hours later, waiting for a flight to Frankfurt. He was arrested and taken to the Garda station in Carrick-on-Shannon. Des lay in a hospital bed in the intensive care ward, his situation critical.

Mum, shocked by the news, sat on her bed in the caravan, very concerned and utterly confused. I needed to explain everything to her. So I started at the beginning. I told her all about the headaches and the bag and the doctor and the healer and Peter Mulvey and how I had been wrong about Des.

‘I always knew there was something special about you,’ she said, brushing my hair back behind my ear and tracing her finger across my freckle.

I wasn’t sure if you could call it special.

‘So you’re sure Des didn’t kill anybody?’ she said a few moments later.

‘Yes. I am one hundred per cent sure. You can trust me on this one, Mum. Peter killed Beth. Des didn’t kill anybody.’

‘You said you had a bad feeling about him though?’

‘I overheard him fighting with Chris at the fête, but Chris explained to me that he had overloaded one of the sockets at
the funhouse. He was hungover and wasn’t really paying attention. Des just got angry because one of the kids could have got hurt. He even apologized to Chris for shouting at him.’

‘He’s never going to forgive me …’ she said, wiping tears from her cheeks. ‘He spends half his life being blamed for a crime he didn’t commit and then I come along and blame him too.’

‘He will forgive you,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t blame you. I know.’

Mum wanted to be by Des’s side at the hospital, so I went with her. I never used to drink coffee, but I drank it that day, a sweet cappuccino from the machine in the waiting room that tasted disgusting. I think that in times of extreme emotion you notice everything more. I noticed the hot coffee on my tongue, the feel of the hard plastic chair against the back of my knees and the smell of disinfectant on the floors. I didn’t like this heightened state. It reminded me too much of another day. That day six years ago when I’d watched my dad being buried. I tried not to let my mind go there. Des couldn’t die. Mum would be so upset. I kept thinking maybe if I’d been able to run a little faster, if I’d left the party earlier, if I’d solved the clues in time, then it would have been different. And if I hadn’t gone looking for answers in the first place Des wouldn’t have got hurt.

Mum was allowed into the ward, but I had to wait outside. I didn’t mind waiting. I liked it; I liked there being no news. I would have waited there forever, because that would mean he was definitely still alive. Every time Mum came down to check on me, I’d read her face for clues, and then feel a huge sense of relief when she’d say ‘No change’, and tell me to go home. After the fourth time that she told me to go, I went. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. The adrenalin that had been keeping
me awake was gone. I got a taxi back to the caravan. Colin was waiting by the door.