Geoff walked into the kitchen scratching his stomach and yawning, like an old bear waking after a winter’s sleep. He noticed I was blushing. It didn’t shock me; Geoff was one to notice the small things.
‘You two all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh, more than all right, I’d say,’ Mum replied, her tone playful and teasing.
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Claire is on a promise.’
‘I’m not on a promise, Mum! Who even says that anymore? Paul’s just coming around for a bite to eat.’
‘Yeah, Geoff did the same thing nearly twenty years ago.’
‘She’s not been able to get rid of me since,’ he said, laughing and squeezing Mum’s shoulder with his wide calloused hand before sitting at the table beside her.
‘You two are hopeless,’ I said, smiling at them before getting up to grab the mugs.
‘So, what time is he coming over?’ Geoff continued, blowing on his tea.
‘I don’t know, later?’
‘Want us to pop out and get a bottle of wine or something?’
‘No, I’ll go,’ I said, and both Mum and Geoff looked at me a little too quickly.
‘Claire, shall I come with you?’ Mum asked delicately.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah, I want to go for myself.’
‘Good for you!’ Geoff replied, a little too eagerly.
It wasn’t every day I had something to look forward to. It wasn’t every day I even needed to get dressed. Paul coming back and wanting to see me filled me with an unexpected sense of purpose. I needed to do something before seeing him. I decided I wanted to be out in the world, to get us a bottle of wine and something for dessert; I wanted to be the one to do it.
I had to prepare myself first.
April 2006
Ballybunnion, West Ireland
The first
The wind gusting across the Atlantic hadn’t let up all day, and now dusk had settled and night taken hold, it intensified. The gusts roared so ferociously he could hear the trees that lined the Ballybunnion golf course moaning, their aching limbs struggling against the onslaught. The relentless wind, buffeting against his right side, had caused an earache that spread down to his jaw and behind his eye. But it didn’t deter him from what he had to do. If anything, the ache made the moment more poignant, his suffering reminding him of the necessity of his task.
Despite the weather, he didn’t walk fast, the pain in his ear a steadying friend. As he passed the ninth hole, he stopped and looked back to the bay that nestled against the town centre. His mother would have loved the view. The golf course itself was closed, meaning he could enjoy the last of the weak spring sun cast out to sea without the need to be mindful of other people. Once pitch black – a blackness you didn’t get in cities, a blackness that wrapped itself around you, a blackness that became a consuming void – he would carry out his violent act. He would work in a way God didn’t and he would punish the one his research told him needed to be punished.
The act he would commit was something his inner voice had whispered about for years, but he hadn’t listened. It wasn’t until his father died, and he had no one else in the world to listen to, that he allowed himself to hear what it had to say. It told him what to do, and why he was to do it. It was rational in its argument, composed, clear, and it made perfect sense to him. Once he allowed himself to fully commit to the thing that had monopolised his subconscious thoughts since he was young, he gained a purpose to his life.
It had taken another few months to find the right man to be the first. He had to fit the description he knew well; he had to be someone who needed punishing. So, he set about his research, compiling a list of his potential victim’s desirable attributes, and then sought him out based on the list. Opting to go to pubs both in the area and further afield, he’d listen as men drank and then bragged about how good their lives were, and if one of them said something of interest, he made a mental note of it. To these men he was Jim or Jimmy, Frank or Donny, and he said just enough for them to think they knew who he was, so then he could listen to what they said. Most he talked to weren’t of interest. But the few who stirred something inside, he obsessed over. He made a point of ‘bumping’ into them and then, after they were comfortable in his presence, he would help them get blind drunk so he could offer to drive them home and learn where they lived. They thanked him, thinking they were entirely safe with their new drinking buddy. Then he would watch their homes, watch how they lived once the front door was closed. His instincts about the ones that interested him were always right. They were the right breed of men. After a few months he had his shortlist, but knew he had to whittle it down to just one.
Blair Patterson.
Stopping to look at the violent waves rolling into shore he thought about the four others he had ruled out, and felt formidable knowing it was entirely his decision to let them live. One resided in a flat in Kanturk; another on a busy main road just outside Limerick. He would visit those when he felt more confident, if no other options became available. The other two had children, and he hoped that after the world knew who he was targeting, they would take heed and change their ways – if not, the children would become fatherless. It wasn’t ideal, but, he argued, it was perhaps better to have no father at all than one who was like his own. For a moment, he wondered what kind of man he could have been if someone like him had been around to change his own father’s ways. Or to have killed him before he could inflict the harm he had.
Blair, his first, had a house in the remote, furthest south part of Ballybunnion, along with half a dozen other houses. Behind the small, detached home was the closed golf course he walked across, and in front, an estuary to the Atlantic. The nearest neighbour was close, probably only thirty feet away, but he knew the noise emanating from Blair’s house would be minimal.
Darkness descended and, knowing it was time, he left the golf course via a small gap in the furthest corner that backed on to a car park for people wanting to walk along the estuary sands. Then, joining the footpath, he walked back past the house where his victim lived. He looked inside the window to see him sat in front of the television: one arm folded across his belly, his legs wide apart, and a bottle of lager in his other hand. In the other window at the front of the house, visible from the footpath, he saw Josephine, his wife. A nice lady he had met on the few occasions when he was invited in after dropping Blair home from yet another pub session. She was busy washing up after her man, her expression tired and numb. When he entered to kill Blair, she would be out of the house, because it was a Wednesday, and she always went to work on a Wednesday night.
Pressing himself against a tree, he sat and watched inside the house. Josephine fluttered around the kitchen, trying to keep busy. Blair sat motionless, staring at the TV. She would leave soon. He didn’t mind waiting. Watching them was exciting, because he knew that after tonight one would be dead, and the other would be free.
An hour later, Josephine put on her coat, said goodnight to her husband and left the house to start her night shift at the supermarket. He deduced she worked nights to have one night a week avoiding Blair. Watching her drive down Sandhill Road, he stood up, knowing it was time to begin something that would become talked about not just here, but all over Ireland, and eventually, the world.
Two hundred yards past the house was the sub-generator he needed to access. The three-foot green metal box contained the power supply for this small cluster of houses, and another few hundred at the other end of the golf course, closer to the town. Removing his bolt cutters, he let