Authors: Julie Parsons
As she turned towards him and he saw, the cropped dark hair, the pale face, the bruised cheekbones and eye socket, the arm that she cradled protectively against her body, the torn and dirty
black jeans. The smell of urine and vomit. The sound of her sobs as she cried out to them, ‘He wouldn’t let me go. He made me go with him. I was so scared. I thought he was going to
kill me!’
The sound then of the spade as it clattered to the floor. He looked down at it, saw the remnants of the soil from the garden falling off on to the pale rug. Ursula would never forgive him for
making such a mess. He bent down to pick it up. And for a moment, as he felt its weight in his hand, he thought of what he could do with it. The way it could come crashing down on the girl’s
skull, cutting off in mid-sentence her accusations, her complaints. And then he could use it on the guard, wiping that look of satisfaction from his smug, round face. Make him scream out with pain
and terror. Leave him lying bleeding on the floor, humiliated, hurt. Damaged beyond all repair. And he weighed it all up as he swung the spade up and down, down and up, feeling it heavy in his
hand, feeling the tick-tock of its pendulum arc. Until, suddenly, his arms were grabbed from behind, the spade was pulled from his grasp, and he could feel the sharp bite of the handcuffs as his
wrists were locked together. And he was being half dragged, half pushed out of the door, up the drive and into the car.
A face appeared at the window beside him, and Jack Donnelly bent down and smiled.
‘Gotcha,’ he said, then banged the roof with his fist, a sharp angry sound, and stepped back as they began to make their stately progress up the hill. Away from the house, away from
the sea, away from his freedom.
I
T WAS A
year later. It was Court Number Four again. The same court where Rachel Beckett had been convicted of the murder of her husband. And again it
was packed to capacity. Spectators, journalists, guards, solicitors and barristers, and of course the jury, the witnesses and the accused. Daniel James Beckett, charged with the murder of Rachel
Beckett and the false imprisonment and attempted murder of Amy Beckett. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges. The State’s case in the lesser counts of false imprisonment and attempted
murder was strong, watertight it could be said. But there were still some doubts about the viability of the charge of murder. Rachel Beckett’s body had never been found. Speculation had been
endless. Precedents were raked over. There was the case of Michal Onufrejczyk, a Pole, who was convicted in Glamorganshire Assizes back in 1955 of the murder of a Mr Sykut, despite the fact that
neither the body nor any trace of the body had been found and the prisoner had made no confession of any participation in the crime. He was sentenced to death. More recently there was the case of
the British army undercover officer, Captain Robert Nairac, who went missing in the 1970s in South Armagh. His body had also never been found, but eventually in 1977 one Liam Townson was convicted
of his murder. And ten years or so ago the tragic case of Helen McCourt in Liverpool. Again, no body but bloodstained clothing and a piece of rope, also bloodstained, found in the boot of the
accused barman’s car were enough to convict him of her killing.
Jack sat and watched the proceedings. He stood in the witness box, took the oath, gave his evidence. He listened to Beckett’s denials. His protestations of innocence, his account of the
appearance of Rachel Beckett that night at his house, an account which had never been corroborated. The guards who had gone into the house had seen no one except the girl, Amy. They heard her
screams and cries for help. They broke down the locked door and found her in a dreadful state on the floor. Head injuries, internal injuries, shocked, hysterical, slipping in and out of
consciousness. And in no doubt that Beckett would be back. To finish what he had begun.
Jack watched the shock and anger around the courtroom when the girl Amy told what had happened to her. Said how he had convinced her that her mother was still alive. That the only thing that
would bring her back was if she thought that Amy was at risk. Now he had forced her to stay with him in the house in Killiney. Refused to let her go. Then threatened her, said he would finish her
off. He didn’t want me, she said. He just wanted to use me, and then when that didn’t work he wanted to get rid of me. After he had told me I was his daughter. Jack looked around him at
the stunned faces in the courtroom. The silence was absolute as the girl told her story.
He listened carefully to the prosecution’s summing-up. That Beckett had wanted to get rid of anything from his past that might embarrass him, that might upset or endanger his new life.
That if he was ruthless enough to kidnap and attack his own daughter, then he was certainly ruthless enough to commit murder. He heard the forensic evidence detailed again. Bloodstains in the boat,
a bloody knife with Beckett’s fingerprints on it. Blood on his clothes. Rachel’s clothes, stained and slashed, found in the plastic bag dumped in the sea. Testimony given of the angry
encounter between Rachel and Beckett, and of her fear of him. He sat in the Round Hall and waited for the jury to decide. They took their time. The day passed. He spoke to Alison on the phone and
to the girls.
‘We saw you on the telly,’ Rosa said, ‘on the news. Everyone at school saw you too. You’re famous, Daddy.’
The jury were sequestered over night. He couldn’t decide whether it was a good sign or not. They had a lot to think about, so much evidence to sort through. He’d have loved to have
been a fly on the wall in the jury room. And what if they failed to agree? He remembered it had nearly happened with Rachel’s trial. The jury had asked the judge for guidance. He had said he
would accept a majority verdict and that was what he got. And what if this group of men and women failed to reach even that? The judge might declare a mistrial. And then they’d have to start
all over again. Christ, he couldn’t bear the thought of it. And then word came. They were back. They had a verdict. Beckett was going down. For life.
Afterwards he realized how tense and anxious he had been. His legs ached, his neck and shoulders were like planks of wood. It took all Alison’s skill and persuasion to untie the knots.
‘Let’s celebrate,’ he said to her.
But the girls wanted to celebrate his new-found fame too.
‘Take us out, Daddy,’ Ruth demanded. ‘We want to go to a proper restaurant, not McDonald’s or Burger King, somewhere with waiters and candles. We’ve got something
to show you.’
The something was a Polaroid camera. Joan’s boyfriend had given it to them.
‘It’s so we’ll like him,’ Rosa said. ‘It’s a brime.’
‘Not a brime, you thicko.’ Ruth was quick to butt in. ‘A bribe. It’s a bribe.’
He took them all to the Brasserie na Mara in Dun Laoghaire. It had waiters, candles, tablecloths, good food and plenty of wine. Ruth appointed herself chief photographer. Soon the table was
covered with snaps.
He woke in the middle of the night, his head pounding, his mouth dry. Alison had gone home. The girls still hadn’t accepted her staying with him over night. Soon, he promised, soon
I’ll make them. Rosa was curled against his side. Ruth was snuggled into the sofa bed. She had left her photographs in a pile on the kitchen table. He drank glass after glass of water as he
flicked through them. There was one in particular that he liked. Alison had taken it. Me and my girls, he thought as fondly as his hangover would allow. He picked it up and pinned it to the cork
noticeboard above the fridge, beside the girls’ school timetable. He refilled his glass and looked at it. It reminded him. What was it? Suddenly he saw Judith Hill’s body, twisted in
death and remembered the photographs that he had found that day in her mother’s studio. The room at the top of the house in the quiet, leafy suburb. He was still not completely sure who had
killed her. Her mother had been so adamant that it wasn’t the girl’s father. After his death, and after the brother, Stephen, had gone crazy, he had wondered if it might have been him.
But eventually when they got the DNA test back from Judith’s dead baby, it had matched neither father nor brother. He wished now that he was able to tell Elizabeth Hill that he knew what had
happened to her daughter. He liked her. He felt for her. He knew how he would feel in her situation.
He finished his glass of water, rinsed it and left it to drain, then turned back to the board again, and this time it was something else that he saw. A similar collection of school notices,
timetables for swimming lessons, letters from the council about bin collections. And photographs. Polaroids. Another family group. A middle-aged woman with a good haircut and a bad figure. A man of
similar age, with longish grey hair and a lined face. A son and a daughter, late teens, early twenties, and two small girls holding on to the parents’ knees. What was it Jenny Bradley had
said? Judith had babysat for their younger kids. Next-door neighbours brought even closer together by the upset that had befallen them all. He wondered as he walked through the sitting room, bent
down to kiss Ruth’s flushed cheek, tucked the quilt tightly around Rosa’s skinny little body. He wondered.
He wondered again next morning if he was completely wasting his time. But he might as well do it anyway. He put in a search request.
Surname: Bradley.
First name: George.
Address: 15 Plane Tree Parade, Rathmines.
Then he went off viewing houses with Alison. She had finally got him to commit.
‘Come on, Jack. You put it off until the Beckett case was settled. Now it’s time. We need a place of our own. Don’t you agree?’ There was a moment’s silence. She
spoke again. Her tone was blunt. ‘Well, if you don’t agree, I don’t, to be honest, see much future for us. I’m not going on like this.’ And for a moment he saw the
Alison that Andy Bowen always talked about.
It was afterwards, when they’d gone to a have a drink to discuss the relative merits of the three properties they had seen, that his phone rang. It was Sweeney.
‘You know that guy Bradley you were interested in? Well, here’s a bit of a surprise. He was part of an investigation into allegations of abuse, sixteen years or so ago, at a school
where he taught maths and physics. Some of the girls complained about him and another bloke. It didn’t go far. In those days no one was interested. But Bradley left not long afterwards. That
was when he got into computers. Set up his own business.’
Jack went back to the office and got out the file. Read over all the statements. Jenny Bradley had been very clear about that weekend when Judith died. It was her birthday. Judith had brought
her flowers. She had arrived just after lunch on that Saturday. She stayed for a couple of hours. They sat in the garden. They gossiped. Mrs Bradley said how lovely it was to have the old Judith
back again, the way she had been before she got involved with those dreadful drugs.
‘Were you alone?’ he had asked. He looked to see what she had said.
‘Yes, we were. The children were all off doing other things and my husband was in his office. You know, at the end of the garden. We could see him in the window. Judith was waving to him.
I remember she leaned over and whispered in my ear. Let’s pretend, she said, that we’re talking about him. And she cupped her hand around my ear and we both had a good laugh.
‘And afterwards, what happened afterwards?’
‘Nothing of any consequence as far as I can remember. Judith went back home. She said she had some tidying up to do. I asked her if she’d like to have dinner with us, we were having
a bit of a special one. For my birthday, you know. But she said no, she was going back to college that night. And that was the last I saw of her.’
He looked at George Bradley’s statement. Bradley didn’t mention anything about seeing them in the garden. In fact he said he hadn’t seen Judith at all that day. He said he had
been working all afternoon. A rush job.
‘Even though it was a Saturday and your wife’s birthday?’
Bradley had made some kind of disparaging remark, how at Jenny’s age birthdays weren’t something you wanted to celebrate. And then said that his wife knew what it was that paid the
bills, kept her world ticking over.
Might as well go and see him. Nothing much else on the books at the moment. Might as well make the effort.
He arrived first thing next morning. He hadn’t phoned ahead. He stood in the lane that ran behind all the houses and pressed the intercom on the modern steel door. The old stone of the
original mews had been rendered and painted white and blocks of frosted glass had replaced the original windows. It all looked very sophisticated, trendy, up to the minute. There was building work
going on next door where the Hill family had once kept their car, their bicycles, their gardening tools. He supposed the house had been sold. It was unlikely that Stephen would ever leave the
secure hospital where he now lived.
If George Bradley was surprised to see him he didn’t show it. His office was filled with light. Large abstract paintings hung on three of the walls. The fourth was a huge window that
looked out over his house and garden, and Jack saw immediately the house and garden next door.
‘Great view,’ Jack said as he took the proffered seat.
Bradley grunted. ‘It’s for the light, not the scenery.’ Then added, ‘You’d better get to the point. I’m busy.’
They went back over the statement. Jack couldn’t understand how he had missed it all before. The guy had no alibi. No one had seen him, been with him, from the time that Judith and Jenny
Bradley had watched him from the garden until he had come home for dinner, sometime between eight-thirty and nine that night.
‘You were here by yourself? There was no one else working with you?’ Jack asked him for the third time. And for the third time Bradley stated that he was.
‘This job you were doing, who was it for?’
Jack wrote down the details, and all the time his gaze kept on sliding across to the windows of the Hills’ house. Downstairs, the dining room and kitchen, bedrooms on the first and second
floor, and upstairs in the attic, the large dormer window set into the slated roof. North light, that was it, north light for the artist.