I Saw You (13 page)

‘Hey,’ McLoughlin moved towards her, ‘are you all right? Can I help you?’

She lifted her head and stared at him. Her face was red and tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t reply. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and nose.

‘Here.’ McLoughlin pulled out a handkerchief. ‘It’s OK. It’s clean.’ He held it towards her. She took it without speaking, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
She handed it back.

‘No, it’s OK. You keep it. Looks like your need is greater than mine.’

She gave him a small smile and, in the light that streamed from the club’s windows, he saw who she was.

‘Do you need anything? Can I get someone to come out to you?’ He jiggled his keys in his hand.

She shook her head.

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ He turned to leave.

‘Um, just a minute. Where are you going?’ Her voice was slightly slurred.

‘I’m heading home. Stepaside direction.’

‘Could you give me a lift? I don’t feel very well. I’ve had too much to drink. I’d get a taxi but I’m not sure I could handle it.’ She swayed a little as she
spoke.

‘No, that’s fine. Come on, I’m parked over here. Where are you going?’

She lived in Terenure. She told him the name of the road, then slumped against the passenger door. He introduced himself. She said her name was Poppy Atkinson. He checked to
make sure her door was locked, that her seat-belt was fastened, that she had her handbag. He pushed ‘play’ on the tape deck. Billie Holiday’s voice sang out. He drove slowly and
carefully, only too aware that he was over the limit. He hummed along with the songs.

‘I like that, it’s lovely.’

He glanced at her. Her eyes were still closed but the features of her fleshy white face were calmer and more composed. ‘“God Bless the Child”,’ he said. ‘Such a
great song. Billie Holiday wrote it, you know. She’s one of my favourites.’

She shuddered. ‘She was my sister’s favourite too.’ A tear slipped from beneath her closed eyelids.

‘Your sister?’

‘My sister Rosie. She died yesterday. I can’t believe it. We’re twins. I can’t believe she could have done it without telling me.’

‘Done what?’ McLoughlin slowed. A Garda car was coming up fast behind him. Its roof light was flashing.

‘The doctor said she killed herself. She drank a load of vodka and she took a load of cocaine. I just can’t believe it. The kids were in the house. They were in bed asleep, and when
they woke up they couldn’t get into the bedroom because the door was locked. They’re only five and three. Just little ones. She’d never have left them on their own like
that.’ She was sitting up straight now, her fists clenched in her lap.

‘It’s hard to know what’s going on in someone’s head when they’re suicidal. They’re not thinking straight. They’re not thinking like you or me.’
McLoughlin’s wing mirror showed the guards turning right behind him.

‘I know that. But I still don’t get it. We’d read all those books about Sylvia Plath. You know – the poet? She put her head into a gas oven when her kids were little. She
left glasses of milk and plates of bread and butter in their bedroom and she’d arranged for a new child-minder to come that morning. She tried to protect them. At least she did that. But
Rosie – Rosie locked herself into her bedroom. God knows what the kids could have got up to, wandering around in that great big house by themselves.’

‘And their father? Where was he?’ There was another Garda car behind him now. He reduced his speed, conscious that he was in a fifty k.p.h. zone.

‘In London, doing some property deal. If you can believe that.’ Her voice was louder, more aggressive.

‘And you don’t?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I was with him earlier this evening. He’s in bits. The kids are in shock. I don’t know how he’s going to explain
it to them. I don’t know how I would do it, what I would say.’ She pushed herself up in the seat and peered through the window. ‘I just don’t get suicide. It’s so
cruel. It hurts so many people.’ Her voice broke. She held on tight to McLoughlin’s handkerchief and raised it to her eyes.

‘Yes, you’re right. It leaves so many unanswered questions. It’s real agony for the families. I was with a woman yesterday whose daughter drowned herself in a lake up in
Wicklow. It was six weeks or so ago, but for the girl’s mother it’s as if it’s just this minute happened. You can forget about time and healing.’ He pressed the button and
his window slid down. He took a lungful of fresh night air.

‘Wicklow, you say?’ Poppy turned to him. Her voice was loud, the consonants slurred. ‘Wicklow. Are you talking about Marina Spencer?’

A cyclist shot off the footpath and wobbled in front of the car. McLoughlin stamped on the brake pedal. They both jerked forward.

‘Sorry, sorry, they’re all out tonight.’ He hit the horn with the heel of his hand. The cyclist looked back over his shoulder and stuck one finger in the air. ‘And fuck
you too, mate,’ he muttered.

‘Are you talking about Marina Spencer?’ Poppy repeated the words carefully.

McLoughlin nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s her name. Did you know her?’

‘Yes. Rosie and I went to boarding-school with her.’ Poppy sank down in the seat again. ‘It was years ago, when we were fourteen, fifteen. You knew her too, did you?’

McLoughlin shrugged. ‘No, I didn’t. Not when she was alive. I’m a policeman – or at least I was until I retired a couple of weeks ago. Her mother doesn’t believe
she killed herself so I said I’d see what I could find out about how she died.’

‘And?’

‘And not much, I’m afraid. She seemed reasonably happy, reasonably successful. She didn’t have money worries. And she had friends. A healthy social life.’

‘Friends? I doubt that somehow. Marina didn’t do friendship.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘A social life, yes. She’d always have that.’

There was silence. McLoughlin tried to concentrate on his driving.

‘Yeah, she’d have a social life,’ Poppy repeated. ‘Always some poor unfortunate stuck in her greasy web. Even bloody Mark Porter, though what he was doing with her again,
God alone knows.’ She fiddled with McLoughlin’s handkerchief, winding it around her fingers.

‘Mark Porter? You know him too, do you?’ McLoughlin was sweating, but the road ahead was clear. No crazed cyclists, no predatory Garda cars in sight.

‘Oh, yeah, I know Mark. Mark and Marina go way back. That’s why it was so odd when she started seeing him again. Rosie told me about it. We couldn’t figure it out.’ She
gave a tight snigger. ‘Especially after the way she treated him when we were at school. The bullying and everything that went with it. Did you know about that?’

‘No. Tell me.’ He was checking the street signs, looking for Poppy’s road. He flicked on the indicator and slowed to turn left.

‘Well,’ she took a deep, shuddering breath, ‘you see, Marina didn’t like me. Rosie was the one she liked. We’re not identical. Rosie got the looks. I got the
brains. That’s what everyone said. Marina liked pretty people. And Rosie was mad about her. She didn’t want me while Marina was around.’ Poppy began to sob again. ‘I
don’t know how it started but they had this kind of gang. There was Marina, Rosie, Dom de Paor, or Power as we called him then. Ben Roxby was part of it. And Gilly Kearon, who got married to
Dom years later, poor girl. And, of course, Sophie Fitzgerald. Another dumb blonde. Even dumber and blonder than Rosie.’

McLoughlin slowed to a crawl. The street was dark, the lights partly obscured by the luscious growth of chestnut trees. The houses were set back, long front gardens with hedges and brick walls.
He waited for Poppy’s sobs to quiet. ‘What number are you?’ he asked.

‘Fifty-five, it’s just here.’ She wiped her eyes again with McLoughlin’s handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘Thanks, this is really kind of you. I just couldn’t
stay there any longer, in the club, you know. I couldn’t bear to be around all those people.’

‘That’s OK.’ He stopped the car and switched off the ignition. He reached out to give her hand a squeeze, but thought better of it. ‘You should be careful, you know.
You’re probably in shock. You want to get into bed and keep warm.’ He pulled up the handbrake and sat back in his seat. ‘But tell me about Marina first. What happened with Mark
Porter?’

Poppy reached for the release on her seat-belt. ‘They bullied him. He was very small, you see. He had some kind of growth problem. He had to take something for it. The stuff is made from
pituitary glands. Human pituitary glands. Taken from the dead. Well, Marina found out about this. And every time she saw Mark she’d hold her nose, pretend to vomit, say things about rotting
bodies, worms, decay. Make sounds like ghosts. All that sort of thing. It was kind of funny to begin with. Mark wasn’t popular. Nothing to do with his disability. He was as pompous as hell.
His family were old colonials. They’d been in India, Malaya, wherever. Mark was a terrible snob. Always going on about old money and new money. That didn’t go down well in a school
where half the pupils came from the new-money brigade.’

McLoughlin knew what she meant. The yacht clubs were sodden with the same kind of stuff.

‘Anyway, it got out of hand. Other things happened too. Marina was precocious. She was very pretty. Lovely figure. She and Rosie were runners. They were on the athletics team. Great
tennis-players too. I remember that Marina had the most fabulous long legs. She looked great in shorts.’ Poppy shifted in the seat. ‘God, I remember what mine were like. Fat, white,
ugly. Still are, for that matter.’

McLoughlin said nothing. Guiltily he remembered Harris’s comments about her ankles.

‘Anyway, Marina set her sights on Ben Roxby. He was Rosie’s boyfriend, everyone knew that. Rosie was so upset. Marina was supposed to be her friend. And there was talk about other
things too.’

She stopped. She felt around with her feet for her bag.

‘What kind of talk?’ McLoughlin’s lower back was aching. He must have pulled something on the boat.

‘Oh, that Marina was giving blow-jobs in the basement.’ Poppy let out a shriek of high-pitched laughter. She slapped her hands on her knees. ‘Blow-jobs in the basement. Have
you ever heard the like? Sounds like the title of a soft-porn movie. I don’t think most of us knew what a blow-job was. Not like teenagers these days. They’re all experts.’ She
dragged her bag on to her lap. ‘Anyway, whatever was going on, it had a terrible effect on Mark. He got so upset that he tried to hang himself from the banisters on one of the top landings.
But the rope broke and he fell. It was amazing he didn’t die.’ She took out a powder compact. ‘The teacher who found him did CPR until the ambulance came.’ She clicked it
open and examined her face in the small round mirror. ‘Marina was expelled. Rosie wasn’t. I was so glad when Marina left. She was a rotten bitch. Bad news.’ She pushed her hair
out of her eyes.

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘Not for years and years. I heard she’d gone to the States or somewhere. Her brother, Tom, stayed on in school for another couple of terms, then he left too. That was for financial
reasons. They’d no money after James de Paor died. But I did see Marina in town not that long ago. It was just before Christmas. I was in Grafton Street and I saw her coming out of Brown
Thomas. I got a real shock.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘Speak to her? No, I didn’t speak to her.’ Her voice was very loud in the car. Loud, bitter, angry. ‘She didn’t see me. Nothing new in that. She never saw me. She
looked great. She was with a girl, a teenager. I think it must have been her half-sister, the child her mother had with Dominic’s father. I watched them walking down the street. Christmas
lights, carol singers, everyone happy and jolly and I thought, You bitch. One of these days it’ll all catch up with you.’ She closed her bag. ‘And you know what? Finally it
did.’ She groaned. ‘Christ, I don’t feel great. My hangover’s kicking in already.’ She half turned towards him. ‘Listen, thank you again. You’ve been
really kind. I’d better go. I should phone my husband. By now he might just have noticed I’ve left and he’ll be wondering what I’m up to.’

She got out of the car. He sat and watched as she pushed open the gate and walked quickly up the front path. He watched her open the door. She turned and waved, then disappeared inside.
McLoughlin reached into his pocket and took out his notebook. He flipped it open and wrote. Then he started the car and turned it around.

He was sober now, completely sober, and wide awake. He drove slowly out on to the main road. A bully. So that was what Marina had been. A nasty bully. He could see the photographs. The wide
smile, the glossy dark hair, the dark eyes crinkled up against the sun, the high cheekbones and long limbs: that was what she had been like as an adult. But what was she like as a teenager? They
bullied the boy until he tried to kill himself. They made his life so miserable that he preferred to end it. He stood on the landing and tied one end of the rope to the banister. He made the other
end into a noose and slipped it over his head. Then he jumped. He must have thought his neck would break. He must have thought he would die immediately. But he didn’t. He dangled from the
rope. Then he fell. A teacher heard him. Breathed life into his body. Shouted and screamed until help came. And the boy was saved.

McLoughlin pushed the tape back into the machine and began to sing again. ‘God Bless the Child’. Good for Billie Holiday. She certainly knew how to sum it all up. Rich folks and poor
folks and never the twain shall meet. Look at Marina. Out of her depth in more ways than one.

He drove slowly and carefully back towards town, back towards Marina’s small, neat house. He was sure he had seen some old school photographs on the wall in her study. He wanted to look at
them again. See if they could tell him anything more about her. ‘What were you up to?’ he asked quietly. Marina’s face smiled back at him from the windscreen. Her mouth was
joyful, but her eyes were sad and wary.

He turned into the narrow street and inched forward. Cars were parked bumper to bumper but there was a small spot he reckoned he could just about squeeze into. He stopped and put the car into
reverse. He turned the steering-wheel hard. Then he saw. The lights were on in her house. Upstairs and downstairs. He got out of the car and checked the number on the wall. He took out her keys and
checked the number on the label: 18 Mount Pleasant Mews. He put his hand on the garden gate. It squeaked loudly as he walked through. Lights and music poured from the front windows, upstairs and
downstairs. He moved quickly to the door. He slipped the key into the Yale lock, but the door was already open. At his touch it swung back and he stepped forward into the house.