The Girl Who Came Back (39 page)

Gavin shouted, ‘Then tell me what is the way. Tell me how you’re going to right the wrongs without God’s help.’

Kian looked round as Danny came to join him on the landing. ‘I don’t understand,’ he called to Foggarty, ‘are you saying that you’ve got God’s help now?’

Danny nodded, as Foggarty declared, ‘The Lord is assisting and guiding me to seek the vengeance that should be mine.’

Kian grimaced at Danny. With that kind of logic how the hell was he ever going to reason with the bloke?

‘I’ve been round and round this a dozen times already,’ Danny murmured. ‘He’s not listening, or understanding, or even connecting with anything beyond whatever shite he’s got going on in his head.’

Clutching at straws, Kian said, ‘Do you know where his wife is? Maybe she can talk him round?’

‘Do you know how to get hold of her?’

Kian didn’t.

Danny shrugged. ‘For all we know she’s in on this, although he hasn’t received any calls as far as I know and he hasn’t mentioned her at all.’

Pulling Danny back down the stairs, Kian said, ‘All we can do is wait for him to fall asleep and grab the gun then.’

Danny’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Easy. Question is, how are we going to know he’s asleep if we’re not in the room?’ He was clearly expecting an answer.

‘Don’t look at me,’ Kian exclaimed, ‘I can’t see through bloody doors any more than you can.’

‘So how about coming up with some solutions instead of more bloody problems?’ Danny growled. ‘I don’t want to be stuck here any more than you do, but the alternative is to walk out and leave him to it. We can do that, if you like. It makes no odds to me if he blows her brains out …’

‘If it didn’t you’d have already gone.’

‘I stayed put so you could take advantage of the situation if you wanted to. If you don’t …’

Kian’s hand went up. ‘Stop,’ he cut in sharply. ‘This is getting us about as far as arguing with him, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get that confession from her, give it to him to do whatever the hell he wants with it and then we’re all going home.’

Danny snorted. ‘
We’re
going to get the confession?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘And exactly how are we going to do that when he won’t even let us in the room?’

‘We’ll have to make him let us.’

‘How?’

‘You’re an Irishman, aren’t you? By
talking
him into it.’

And so began a charm offensive that went on through that day and the next, by which time they’d both yielded to exhaustion more than once, run the gamut of every imaginable approach in their persuasion from begging to cajoling to threatening and all the way back again, and still, as far as they knew, Gavin hadn’t slept. The bloke was clearly on something; or his Special Connections were keeping him alert. Exactly what Amelia was doing they could only guess; having heard nothing from her they couldn’t even be sure she was still there, although there didn’t seem any point to Foggarty staying put if he no longer had his hostage.

It was as dawn began rolling in through the open windows on Monday morning, fresh and fragrant and alive with birdsong, that Foggarty thumped the floor, a signal for one of them to go up there.

Danny went, and was back a few minutes later with his hands in the air and Foggarty, holding the gun, right behind him.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Kian muttered, springing to his feet and raising his own hands. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking from Danny to Foggarty and back again. He could see right away what Danny had meant about Foggarty losing it. Despite the man’s evident exhaustion there was a wildness about him, an almost feral light in his desperately haunted eyes, that seemed close to the point of explosion.

Telling Danny to sit down, and keeping the gun trained on him, Foggarty said to Kian, ‘OK. Go and talk to her. She’s sleeping now, be there when she wakes up. Let’s see how she can stand up to the father of her other victim.’

Kian glanced at Danny. Apparently his cousin was the new hostage.

By the time Kian reached the top of the stairs his head was spinning with tiredness and a desperate need to make himself think straight so he could handle this properly. He’d lost count of how many hours they’d been here, had practically even forgotten why he was in Kesterly.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ he’d told Jules the last time they’d spoken. ‘Everything will be taken care of, I promise,’ and now, depending on how much she knew, he could only imagine what conclusions she was coming to.

The room was dark and stuffy, smelled of sweat, food and old wood. It took a moment for Kian’s eyes to adjust, to register the thickly brocaded curtains edged by gleaming bands of sunlight, the walls of fading posters, most from Hope Cove Performing Arts Society productions;
The Magic Roundabout; Tears of My Fellows; One Night in Hector’s Heaven; Around Town in Eight and a Half Jokes.
He remembered them all, and the sudden swell of grief made him feel disoriented and nauseous.

There was a large crucifix hanging over the single, iron-framed bed; a muscular yet forlorn-looking Christ gazed down on the wretched creature below.

And she was wretched. Her hair was a tangled nest, her eyes were rimmed in old make-up; her mouth was set in a tight defiant pinch.

‘Yes I did it,’ she hissed at Kian before he could speak, ‘but nothing you or anyone else says is going to make me give that madman a confession.’

Kian’s eyes closed as bile rose up from the darkest depths of his soul. This was the girl who’d destroyed his precious daughter, who’d ended her life so violently and needlessly that she should never have seen this side of freedom again. Why didn’t he just call the police and let Foggarty do his worst? She didn’t deserve to live; she didn’t even deserve to speak, after all the lies she’d told.

Looking at her, he forced himself to say, ‘I don’t want to be here any more than you do, but neither of us is going anywhere unless you own up to what you did.’

‘I just told you,’ she raged.

‘I know what you told me, but your father’s a lawyer, so I’m sure you know that nothing you say now will be usable against you. You will still have got away with murder. I don’t know how that makes you feel, but frankly I don’t care how you feel. You’re not like the rest of us. No one with normal compassion and a functioning conscience would even want to hurt someone who’d never done them any harm …’

‘But she did,’ Amelia cried savagely, ‘and who ever talked to
her
about compassion and conscience? Who tried to make her care about what she’d done to me?’

Regarding her with as much contempt as disbelief that she still didn’t seem to get it, he said, ‘I’m not wasting my time on you. I want you out of my life for good, and that’s what’s going to happen. Once we leave here you’ll be history for this town and for my family …’

‘You can’t make me leave …’

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. Just listen to what I’m telling you. As soon as you’ve given Gavin Foggarty the confession he wants I’ll call the police myself and tell them to come and get you. There won’t be anything they can do with the confession; it’s not admissible because it will have been extracted under duress. So all you have to do is pick up that pen and paper there and write the words that will corroborate Dean’s story. Let Gavin read how you tricked his son and Daisy into going to Crofton Park that day, how you planned the whole thing right down to everything you were going to tell the police, and how you lied in court, then you’ll be free to carry on your life however and wherever you please.’

Her eyes were slits of suspicion; she was making no move to carry out his instructions.

Suddenly he could hear Daisy’s voice calling to him, from a great and terrible distance.

Daddy, Daddy, please help me.

He closed his eyes, but he could still see her lying on the ground, helpless, terrified, and this girl’s maniacal face looming over her, twisted, sallow, spattered in blood. She was crazed, out of control, loving what she was doing, panting, seething, raising her hand time after time …

Knowing the only safe course was for him to leave the room right now, he turned abruptly for the door. ‘I’m calling the police,’ he told her, ‘and if Gavin shoots you before they get here, do me a favour and go straight to hell.’

‘Wait!’ she called after him.

He stopped, but didn’t turn back.

‘Why are you here and not Jules?’ she demanded.

Puzzled by the question, he said, ‘What difference does it make?’

She shrugged. ‘I just thought … Does she know what you’re doing?’

He didn’t answer.

Finally she said, ‘Why are you still here?’

He turned to look at her.

‘You could have walked out at any time and left me alone with Gavin,’ she challenged, ‘but instead you’re staying, and the only reason you’re doing that is because you don’t want him to hurt me.’

Kian’s sudden snarl made her draw back. There were so many things he wanted to say to that, so much hatred and venom he’d like to scald her with, but in the end all he did was turn away.

‘I’ll do what you want on one condition,’ she said as he reached the door.

He didn’t respond, but nor did he leave.

‘If Jules will agree to see me so we can repair our friendship, I’ll write the confession.’

‘My God! What on earth did you say to that?’ Stephie cried, as Kian took another sip of his beer and tried to hide his tiredness.

‘You surely didn’t agree to it,’ Bridget protested. ‘Delusional bitch, thinking she can set out conditions.’

‘He must have gone for it,’ Liam put in, ‘or he’d still be there.’

Jules’s heart turned over as Kian’s eyes found hers. ‘I didn’t say anything at all,’ he told her. ‘I just carried on out the door, closed it behind me and went downstairs. When I got there I found Gavin fast asleep on the sofa and Danny standing out in the garden, aiming the gun.’

‘At what?’ Bridget demanded.

‘At nothing.’

Frowning, Joe said, ‘So it was all over? You called the police, they came and now here you are?’

‘Not quite. We decided to let Gavin sleep for a while, and by the time he woke up it turned out Amelia had written the confession.’

Stephie’s jaw dropped as Jules blinked.

‘She wrote it?’ Joe responded incredulously.

Kian nodded. ‘She handed it to Gavin when he went upstairs, warned him that she’d tell the police he’d forced it out of her, and said she wanted to go home.’

As everyone frowned or gaped in amazement, Terry said, ‘So what happened then?’

Kian shrugged. ‘We knew the police were looking for her by now, so there was only one thing we could do. We called them, they came, we were arrested and she was taken to wherever they took her.’

‘So what made them let you go?’ Jules wanted to know.

‘I’m guessing she gave a statement that confirmed what I’d already told them, that I wasn’t involved in snatching her, and flight records would show that I wasn’t even in the country when it happened.’

‘So they were satisfied that the only reason you didn’t call them the minute you found out what was going on was because Gavin had a gun?’

Kian shrugged again. ‘They didn’t tell me much, but according to the duty solicitor that’s about the size of it.’

‘What’s going to happen to Gavin now?’ Joe asked.

Before Kian could answer Bridget jumped in crossly. ‘Never mind him,’ she cried, ‘what about our Danny? He’s going down again, isn’t he? They’ll throw away the bloody key this time. Well, serves the silly bugger right, is what I say. He’s like his father, never did know how to stay out of trouble.’

‘Don’t be too hard on him,’ Kian countered, ‘remember, the only reason he did it was to try and help Gavin get Dean’s name cleared, so technically that makes him the good guy. And as barmy as Gavin might be, every one of us understands what drove him to do what he did.’

Sobered by that, they were quiet for a while, each caught in their thoughts of Daisy and the torment they’d been through since losing her.

Jules looked at Kian, and as their eyes met she could see his tiredness.

‘It was a pity,’ Bridget said, ‘that you didn’t manage to persuade the girl to stop darkening our doorsteps. Why doesn’t she get that she’s not wanted around here?’

‘I think she gets it,’ Stephie answered, ‘but she just doesn’t care.’

Kian got to his feet. ‘If you’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘I need to shower and shave and spend some time alone with my wife.’

OVER THE NEXT
couple of days Jules and Kian deliberately put Amelia Quentin out of their minds, not wanting her, or anything about her, to spoil the time they had left with the youngsters before they took off on their European travels. It was uplifting for them all to discover just how much they enjoyed being with one another, though there were many tears too. Most important of all, they found, was the fact that the time was proving as cathartic as it was special.

‘I’m going to miss them when they’ve gone,’ Kian sighed, as he and Jules got ready for bed the night before the others were due to leave for Paris. ‘It feels strange to think that by this time tomorrow it’ll only be us in the house.’

Teasingly, Jules said, ‘Do you wish you were going with them?’

He considered it. ‘Let’s just say I wouldn’t mind being in Paris,’ he decided, ‘but only with you. They need time to themselves now, and so do we.’

Not arguing with that, she slipped into bed beside him and settled against his shoulder as he put an arm around her. ‘I still can’t believe they’ve dismissed the charges against Danny,’ she commented. ‘One minute he’s getting the book thrown at him, the next we hear he’s down the pub with his mates like nothing ever happened.’

Equally mystified, Kian said, ‘No doubt we’ll get the full story soon enough, but that lawyer Andee Lawrence got for him, what was her name?’

‘Helen Hall.’

‘That’s right. Well, she’s obviously the business. It’s a shame we didn’t have her on our side two years ago, things might have turned out very different if we had. Anyway, at least they let Gavin out too, even if he isn’t walking away scot-free. Silly sod, he knew all along that they wouldn’t be able to use the confession, but he had to have it. Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up costing him his freedom. That would be a bitter irony, wouldn’t it: instead of freeing Dean he gets himself banged up instead?’