Covent Court is all windows. They had been one of its most innovative features: floor-to-ceiling panes, more window than wall. The buildings are arranged in a tight, angular U-shape around the courtyard and although Christine knew from looking out of her own windows that the people directly across from her couldn’t really see into her home, she still felt exposed. Not least because despite the PRIVATE PROPERTY signs littered throughout the complex, there was no gate or barrier – although, after a recent burglary in the neighbourhood, there was chatter among the residents that perhaps there should be. Technically, anyone could come walking in.
Early one morning in the first week of July, most likely the fourth but no later than the sixth, Christine removed the net curtains from her ground-floor windows. The effect on the light was dramatic, and she was pleased. A little uncomfortable, perhaps, but pleased. It would take some getting used to, but the pay-off was a much brighter room. Christine was intent on getting used to it and keeping the curtains down.
Then she saw the handprints.
Jim set the book aside and hoisted himself out of the chair with a groan before remembering that it was the middle of the night and he was striving to be silent. He opened the tool cabinet and scanned its contents for something to write with. There was a stubby pencil in a jar of loose screws and Allen keys. Barely a nib on it, but it would do for tonight. Tomorrow, he’d come to his reading room better prepared.
There was an old compact hoover sitting on the bottom shelf of the cabinet. Just the unit itself – its hose and other attachments were missing. It was turquoise green and said GOBLIN on the front. Jim had taken it from a skip parked near the entrance to the estate years before. He bent down and went to lift the cover off it, but then changed his mind and stood up again.
Not yet. Not now.
Reading the book was one thing, but opening that was quite another.
He locked up the tool cabinet and sat back into his chair. He flipped to the inside cover of The Nothing Man and wrote:
Eglin – who/where now?
Irish Times article – May 2015
Knife/rope – neighbour new report?
‘recent burglary’ – more??? Check!
with the stubby pencil. It made his letters thick and smudged.
Then Jim returned to where he’d left off and, pencil in hand now, read on.
They were on the living room’s window the following morning, the largest one to the front. She was certain they hadn’t been there the day before. Two large impressions, a little more than halfway up and side by side, as if someone had been standing with two hands pressed flat against the glass, looking in. Christine went outdoors to examine them more closely. They were smears rather than prints, as if the leaver had touched something greasy first. The fingers were unnaturally splayed, like children’s finger-paintings.
It was as if the matching hands had been trying to leave evidence there, Christine thought. She cleaned them off and, later that day, put the net curtains back up.
One night, when I was nine or ten, I woke up to the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, a steady rhythm of distinct, alternative creaks. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. I knew instantly that something was very wrong, because I could also hear the soft snoring that meant my father was asleep in the bedroom next door and, as my eyes adjusted, see the little mound of blankets in the bed across from mine that was Anna, still asleep too. The timbre of the footsteps sounded nothing like my mother’s light tread, so who was coming up the stairs in our house in the middle of the night? And why were they taking so long?
I held my breath and lay stiff with fear for what felt like an eternity, but was probably closer to several seconds in reality. Then, happily, I realised my mistake. What I was actually hearing was my own bedroom door, trapped in the draught of some forgotten open window, repeatedly opening half an inch, closing half an inch, the hinges protesting every time.
On the night of 14 July 2000, Christine Kiernan had a similar experience, in that she woke up to the sound of footsteps coming up her stairs and felt her limbs freeze up with fear. But this was no aural illusion. The sound drew closer and closer. It changed as the steps left the bare wood of the stairs and crossed the carpeted floor of the landing. And then a shadow detached itself from the darkness and moved towards her until it became a masked man standing at the end of her bed.
None of her neighbours would recall hearing it, but Christine managed to let out a short, piercing scream before a gloved hand was clamped over her mouth and the sharp tip of what she knew must be a knife was pressed against the skin of her neck. In a strange, almost theatrical whisper, her attacker told her that if she stayed quiet, he would ‘only’ rape her. If she made a noise or tried to escape, she would die. Then he rolled her on to her stomach so he could bind her wrists behind her back, and after that there was only pain.
Christine was five-foot-six and weighed less than eight stone. Physically, she was no match for this broad, tall, heavy man on top of her – and he had a weapon. So while he violated her body, she did the only thing she could and rolled down steel shutters around her mind. She tried to detach herself from what was happening now and focus instead on what she was already determined to make happen next: she’d make sure he was caught, tried and locked up.
She mentally catalogued what she knew about him. She could picture him standing in the doorway, so she’d be able to tell them how tall he was. There’d been no real accent to his weird whispering, but that in itself told a story: he was Irish, probably from around here. She had seen the skin around his eyes: he was white. She got the impression he was in his thirties or forties. There was a strange, earthy smell off him. Wet leaves and mud. She told herself that, if she got the opportunity, she would rake her nails across his skin. She knew from TV that she would end up with pieces of him beneath her fingernails and that the Gardaí could scrape it out and test it for things. But with her hands tied behind her back, Christine never got the chance. When he was done, her rapist turned her over and roughly stuffed some woolly material – a balled-up sock – deep into her mouth. She couldn’t breathe and began to gag.
She tried to pull herself into a kind of sitting position, hoping that would help. It didn’t. She began to feel faint. Her attacker didn’t react. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her choking and spluttering. All she could feel was pain, as if a sustained electrical shock was cursing through her skeleton. And now there was the burning in her chest too, the panic of not being able to breathe. At the very last moment, just when Christine thought she’d have to give in, to give up, her rapist held the knife in front of her face, then pointed the tip off to the side. It was a question and Christine nodded the answer desperately. She wouldn’t scream. He pulled the sock from her mouth and she immediately vomited, sending the spray all over his sleeves, the T-shirt she slept in and the sheets.
He recoiled as if the substance was radioactive. He scrambled off the bed and stood at the end of it, regarding her. Then he abruptly turned around and left.
For Christine, one of the most horrific aspects of this most horrific experience was that she didn’t know how long she would have to suffer it or what might happen next. Would it get worse? What else would he do? Would she be able to take the pain? What kind of injuries would she have? Wouldn’t he just kill her anyway? As long as he was in her bedroom, there was a terror much worse than the violation of her body: the not knowing just how bad this might get. His sudden leaving, the end point, already here – it allowed her to think about what had happened as what had happened, past tense, to know the parameters of what had to be dealt with, moving forward. And it was so unexpected, Christine didn’t know quite what to do. She listened as he hurried down the stairs and slammed a door closed behind him. Then she sat still in the silence that followed. She cried and hurt and bled.