The Nothing Man.
His other name.
The one he hadn’t chosen.
The one no one knew was his.
No one except for Eve Black. She’d found out somehow. She hadn’t put it in the book and she hadn’t, apparently, reported him to the Gardaí, but she wanted him to know that she knew it.
Why? Was she trying to communicate something to him? Was she letting him know that actually she did remember everything from that night, that she did—
‘Have you finished it?’
Noreen was standing by the door, holding a copy of The Nothing Man in her hand.
Another one.
Jim stared her, confused.
‘I bought it,’ she said. ‘Tonight. I got Katie’s copy signed and then I bought another one on the way out.’ She lifted the book, looked at the cover. ‘I haven’t read it all, but I’ve read as much as I can. I had to skip the … The descriptions.’
‘What are you doing up, Nor?’ Jim took a step forward in an attempt to hide the broken glass from her view. ‘I thought you weren’t feeling well.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then why—’
‘Katie is going to read this, Jim. Katie will—’ Whatever was supposed to come after that got swallowed by a sob.
Tears started to roll down Noreen’s cheeks.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ Jim said. ‘Tell her it’s unsuitable. She’ll listen to—’
Noreen screamed.
The sound was high-pitched, raw and primal. And excruciatingly loud.
For a moment Jim could only blink at her, stunned that such a noise had come out of her mouth. He’d never heard her make anything like it before.
Then he wondered if she was having some kind of mental breakdown.
‘Noreen—’ he started.
But now she was screaming and coming towards him, at him, and then the book in her hand was in the air, coming down—
She was attacking him with the book.
Hitting him with it. Repeatedly. Hard. On the chest and against the sides of his chest and his forearms once he’d lifted them up to try to fend off the blows. While continually screaming and sobbing.
No, not screaming.
Not just screaming.
After enough repetitions, Jim could make out the words.
‘How? Why? How could you do this to us? To Katie? To me?’
Jim got hold of the book and threw it across the room.
Then he did the same to Noreen.
Silence. Finally. He closed his eyes.
He opened them again when she started whimpering.
Noreen was slumped on the floor against the opposite wall, gingerly touching a hand to the back of her head. When she pulled it away, there was a little bright red on her fingertips.
‘Noreen,’ Jim said evenly, ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, but you need to get a hold of yourself. It’s four in the morning. The neighbours will hear.’
‘I won’t let you do this.’ Her breathing was laboured but otherwise she sounded eerily calm. ‘I won’t let you ruin Katie’s life. I won’t let her find out what her father is.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
He had no idea.
Because Noreen couldn’t know. It wasn’t possible.
‘I was pregnant with Katie.’ She winced as she slowly pulled herself up on to her knees. ‘I woke up in the middle of the night, in pain … I thought something was wrong. I rang the station to tell you, but they said you were off-duty. And when you came home you were … You were different somehow. Excited about something, I thought. Or especially pleased with yourself. And you weren’t wearing your uniform. But you told me you had been at work.’ Noreen smiled weakly. ‘I thought you were just having an affair.’
Jim didn’t know where she was going with this, but he didn’t like it.
‘Have you been drinking, Nor? Is that what this is?’
‘There was another morning, when you came home from work wearing your own clothes, and I wondered if it had happened again. Whatever it was. As soon as you got into the shower I rang the station. Whoever answered didn’t know my voice. I said I was trying to get in touch with a Garda I’d spoken to the night before, and that I thought his name might be Jim something. Jim Doyle? “Can’t be him,” she said. “He was off.”’
‘Stop this,’ Jim said. ‘You’re only making a fool of yourself.’
‘I was wondering what the hell I was going to do when I saw the news.’ Noreen wasn’t looking at him any more. Her gaze was directed at the floor by his feet. ‘That family, in Passage West. Four dead, they thought at first. And that made me think about the other time, about how I hadn’t had a chance to ask you where you’d been, to work up the courage to confront you, because you’d got a call about the murder in the house on the Maryborough Road – what was it? Westpark? That young couple. The man trapped under his car, his wife dead upstairs. It was all hands on deck and you had to go.’ She paused. ‘And then all the stuff about the Nothing Man came out, and that sketch was everywhere, and you were suddenly obsessed with your weight, doing all this exercise, changing how you looked … But it was the eyes, Jim.’ Noreen lifted her head and looked into them now. ‘I knew those eyes. I’d know them anywhere.’ She struggled into a standing position, swaying slightly before leaning back against the wall for support. ‘I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew in my heart that it was true. I was the wife of a Garda, I knew how it would go if I tried to report you. All your buddies down the station, they’d take your word over mine. I wouldn’t even blame them. Who’d believe the man the Gardaí were looking for was hiding among them? And I knew what you’d do to me afterwards. So …’ Noreen sighed resignedly. ‘I’d nowhere else to go and Katie was nearly here, her arrival was days away. I had only one option: to stay and say nothing. And to protect her. To protect my daughter.’
‘Our daughter,’ Jim corrected.
While Noreen droned on, he’d been considering his options. All she had right now was a blunt-force injury to the back of her head that had happened when she’d impacted the wall. She might have a bit of bruising on her upper arms from where he’d grabbed her but then again she might not. He could pull her by the hair to the top of the stairs and push her down. But the screaming. What if the neighbours had heard it? How would he explain that away?
And what if she survived the fall?
Noreen started shaking her head, as if she could read his thoughts.
‘There’s a letter,’ she said. ‘With a solicitor. If anything happens to me, he’ll make sure Katie gets it. Then she’ll know the truth. I don’t want that to happen. And I don’t think you want it to either.’
She straightened up, moved away from the wall, tested her balance.
‘I prayed for you to die, Jim. Every morning and every night. May God forgive me, but I did. But here we are, all these years later, and no such luck. And now’ – she pointed at the books, both copies of which were lying discarded on the floor – ‘it’s all in there, in that bloody book, and that book is out there in the world, all over the place, and it’s only a matter of time before there’s a knock on our door and I can’t …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t protect Katie any more, Jim. Only you can. So I’m asking you to. I’m asking you to protect her.’