The Nothing Man

  Also by Catherine Ryan Howard

  Distress Signals

  The Liar’s Girl

  Rewind

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Catherine Ryan Howard, 2020

  The moral right of Catherine Ryan Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 8389 5106 1

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 659 1

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 660 7

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  To John and Claire, who have to share,

  because to put one before the other just wouldn’t be fair.

  Jim was on patrol. Head up, eyes scanning, thumbs hooked into his belt. The heft of the items clipped to it – his phone, a walkie-talkie, a sizeable torch – pushed the leather down towards his hips, and the weight of them forced him to stride rather than walk. He liked that. When he got home at the end of the day and had to take off the belt, he missed the feel of it.

  The store had only opened thirty minutes ago and the staff still outnumbered the customers. Jim circled the Home section, then cut through Womenswear to Grocery. There was at least some activity there. You could count on a handful of suited twenty-something males to come darting around the aisles round about now, eyes scanning for the carton of oat milk or pre-packed superfood salad they were after, as if they were on some sort of team-building task.

  Jim stared into their faces as they rushed past, knowing they could feel the heat of his attention.

  He made his way to the entrance, where the department store met the rest of the shopping centre beyond. He watched people coming and going for a few minutes. He checked the trolleys, all neatly lined up in their bay. He paused at the bins of plastic-wrapped bouquets to dip his head and breathe in deep, getting a whiff of something floral and something else faintly chemical.

  One of the bins appeared to be leaking water on to the floor underneath. Jim pulled his radio off his belt and called it in. ‘We need a clean-up by the flowers. Possible leaking bin. Over.’

  He waited for the crackle of static and the drawl of the bored reply.

  ‘Copy that, Jim.’

  This time of the morning he liked to have a surreptitious read of the headlines. He moved to do that next. But before he reached the newspapers he saw, in his peripheral vision, someone duck behind the carousel of greeting cards about fifteen feet to his right.

  Jim didn’t react, at least not outwardly. He continued with his plan, walking to the far side of the newspaper display so that he could face the cards. He picked up a paper at random and held it out in front of him. He looked at its front page for a beat and then slowly raised his gaze.

  A woman. For this time of the morning, she looked the part. Trench coat on but not buttoned up, large leather handbag resting in the crook of one arm, stylish but functional shoes. A harried look. A young professional on her way to work, trying to knock one thing off her endless list of ‘Things To Do’ before she had to go into the office and do more of them – or maybe that’s just what she wanted you to think. There was something tucked under her left arm. Jim thought it might be a book.

  A ding-dong sound interrupted the quiet muzak playing throughout the store before a disembodied voice boomed, calling someone named Marissa to Flowers. That’s Marissa to Flowers, please; Marissa to Flowers.

  The woman picked one of the cards and looked at it as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen in her life.

  Jim had the newspaper held up high. If she looked at him from this angle she would see the grey hair and the age-spotted hands, but not the ID hanging from his shirt pocket that said SECURITY in bright red lettering.

  The book slipped out from under her arm and fell to the floor with a smack. She reached down—

  The Nothing Man.

  The words were printed in a harsh yellow across the book’s black, glossy cover.

  As she bent down and picked it up, Jim could see the same three words on its spine too.

  Blood suddenly rushed into his ears in a great, furious wave, filling his head with white noise. It had an underlying rhythm to it, almost like a chant.

  The Nothing Man The Nothing Man The Nothing Man.

  He was dimly aware of the fact that the woman was now looking at him, and that it looked like he was probably staring at her. But he couldn’t pull his eyes from the book. He was rooted to the spot, deafened by the chant that was growing louder all the time, only moments away from becoming a full-blown, wailing siren.

  THE NOTHING MAN THE NOTHING MAN THE NOTHING MAN.

  The woman frowned at him, then moved away in the direction of the tills.

  Jim didn’t follow to check that she was actually going to pay for the book, which he might have done under normal circumstances. Instead, he turned and walked in the opposite direction, towards the aisle where they stocked the stationery supplies, a small selection of children’s toys and the books.

  It’s fiction, he told himself. It has to be.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  He didn’t have to search. Three entire shelves were taken up with its display. Every copy was facing out. A dark chorus, screaming at him.

  Pointing at him.

  Accusing him.

  They hadn’t been there yesterday, Jim was sure. The stock must have come in overnight. It must be a new book, probably just released this week. He stepped closer to look for the author name—

  Eve Black.

  To Jim, that was a twelve-year-old girl in a pink nightdress standing at the top of the stairs, peering down into the dim, saying ‘Dad?’ uncertainly.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  But it was. It said so right there on the cover.

  The Nothing Man: A Survivor’s Search for the Truth.

  Jim felt a heat spreading inside him. His cheeks flushed. His hands shook with the duelling forces of his desperately wanting to reach for the book and the part of his reptilian brain trying to stop him from doing it.

  Don’t do it, he told himself, just as he reached out and took one of the books from the shelf.

  The hard cover felt smooth and waxy. He touched the title with his fingertips, feeling the letters rising to meet his skin.

  The Nothing Man.

  His other name.

  The one the newspapers had given him.

  The one no one knew belonged to him.

  Jim turned the book over in his hands.

  He came in the night, into her home. By the time he left, only she was left alive … The sole survivor of the Nothing Man’s worst and final attack, Eve Black delves deep into the story of the monster who terrorised Cork City, searching for answers – and searching for him.

  After all this time …

  That little fucking bitch.

  Jim opened the
book. Its spine cracked loudly, like a bone.

  First published in the UK and Ireland by Iveagh Press Ltd, 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Eve Black

  IVEAGH PRESS IRELAND LTD

  42 Dawson Street

  Dublin 2

  Republic of Ireland

  Material covered in The Nothing Man was featured in the article ‘The Girl Who’ first published by the Irish Times.

  The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

  The right of Eve Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 987-0-570-34514

  For Anna

  and all the victims whose names we tend to forget, or never learn

  THE VICTIMS

  Alice O’Sullivan, 42,

  Physically assaulted in her home on Bally’s Lane, Carrigaline, Co. Cork, on the night of 14 January, 2000.

  Christine Kiernan, 23,

  Sexually assaulted in her home in Covent Court, Blackrock Road, Cork, on the night of 14 July 2000.

  Linda O’Neill, 34,

  Violently and sexually assaulted in her home outside Fermoy, Co. Cork, on the night of 11 April 2001.

  Marie Meara, 28, and Martin Connolly, 30,

  Murdered in their home in Westpark, Maryborough Road, Cork, on the night of 3 June 2001.

  Ross Black, 42, Deirdre Black, 39, and Anna Black, 7,

  Murdered in their home in Passage West, Co. Cork, on the night of 4 October 2001.

  The author was the lone survivor.

  She was aged 12 at the time.

  A Note on Sources

  There are three sides to every story, they say: yours, mine and the truth. At the time of writing, the Nothing Man has not yet told his. Transcripts, reports, recordings and in-person interviews are as close as we can get to hard facts, and I have relied on them exclusively as sources for this book. I have made every effort to tell other people’s stories – those of his victims, those of the man who tried to stop him – as accurately as possible. But this is also my story. I have done my best to tell it to you as I tell it to myself. That, I think, is as close as we can get to the truth.

  INTRODUCTION

  The Girl Who

  When we meet, I probably introduce myself to you as Evelyn and say, ‘Nice to meet you.’ I transfer my glass to my other hand so I can shake the one you’ve offered, but the move is clumsy and I end up spraying us both with droplets of white wine. I apologise, perhaps blush with embarrassment. You wave a hand and protest that no, no, it’s fine, really, but I see you snatch a glance at your shirt, the one you probably had dry-cleaned for the occasion, to surreptitiously assess the damage. You ask me what I do and I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved that this conversation is going to be longer. I say, ‘Oh, this and that,’ and then ask what you do. You tell me and I make the mmm sounds of polite interest. There’s a silence then: we’ve run out of steam. One of us rushes to use the last remaining card in play: ‘So, how do you know …?’ We take turns explaining our social ties to the host, casting for connections. We probably find some. Dublin is a small place. We grasp for other topics: the turnout tonight, that podcast everyone is obsessed with, Brexit. The room is uncomfortably warm and noisy and strange bodies brush against mine as they pass, but the real source of my anxiety, the thing that has an angry red flush flaring up my neck, is the possibility that, at any moment, the penny will drop, and you’ll frown and cock your head and look at me, really look at me, and say, ‘Wait, aren’t you the girl who …?’

  This is always my fear when I meet someone new, because I am.

  I am the girl who.

  I was twelve years old when a man broke into our home and murdered my mother, father and younger sister, Anna, seven years old then and for ever. I heard strange and confusing sounds that I would later discover were my mother’s rape and murder and my sister’s asphyxiation. I found my father’s bloody and battered body in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. I believe that, having survived the attack, he was trying to get to the phone in our kitchen so he could raise the alarm. I survived because of my bladder, because of the can of Club Orange I’d smuggled into my bedroom and drank in the hour before I went to bed. Minutes before the intruder made his way up the stairs, I woke needing to go to the bathroom. I was then able to hide in there once it began. The lock was flimsy and there was no means of escape. If the killer had tried the door it would have yielded and I’d be dead as well. But for some reason, he didn’t.

  We were the last family this man attacked but not the first. We were his fifth in two years. The media dubbed him the Nothing Man because the Gardaí, they said, had nothing on him. With the sole exception of a momentary glimpse in the beam of headlights on the side of the road one night, no one saw him coming or going. He wore a mask and sometimes shone a torch directly into his victims’ faces, so no survivor could provide a useful physical description. He used condoms and left no hair or fingerprints that anyone was ever able to collect. He took his weapons – a knife and then, later, a gun – with him when he went, only ever leaving behind the strands of braided blue rope that he used to restrain his victims. The rope never gave up any secrets. He spoke in a weird, raspy whisper that offered no clues as to his real voice. He confined his crimes to one county, Cork, Ireland’s southernmost and largest, but he moved around within it, striking places like Fermoy, a town nearly forty kilometres outside of Cork City, but also Blackrock, a suburb.

  Nearly two decades later he remains at large and I miss my family like phantom limbs. Their absence in my life, the tragedy of their fates and the pain they must have suffered is a constant ringing in my ears, a taste in my mouth, an itch on my skin. It’s everywhere, always, and I can’t make it go away. Time hasn’t healed this wound but made it worse, turned the skin around the original cut necrotic. I understand much more about what I lost now, at thirty, than I did when I actually lost it at twelve. And the monster responsible is still out there, still free, still unidentified. Maybe he’s even spent all this time with his family. This possibility – this likelihood – fills me with a rage so intense that on the bad days, I can’t see through it. On the worst of them, I wish he’d murdered me too.

  But you and me, we’ve just met at a Christmas party. Or a wedding. Or a book launch. And I don’t know you but I know that you wouldn’t know what to do if I said any of this out loud, now, in response to your question. So am I girl who …? I feign confusion. The girl who what? Just how many of those drinks have you had, anyway?

  I’m good at this. I’ve had lots of practice. You will think you’re mistaken. The conversation will move on.

  As soon as I can I will, too.

  In the aftermath of the attack, my only surviving grandparent – Colette, my father’s mother – whisked me away to a place called Spanish Point on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. We arrived there in the middle of October, just as the last few seasonal stragglers were packing up, and moved into a tiny, whitewashed cottage that she said had been there since before the Famine. Its bright red door had been newly painted in advance of our arrival and every time I looked at it, all I could see was fresh blood dripping down pale bedroom walls.

  We were there three weeks before I realised there must have been funerals.

  The cottage was squeezed on to a narrow slip of land between the coast road and the yawning expanse of the seemingly endless sea, churning and wild, the winds angry to meet their first obstacle for thousands of miles. Our position felt precarious. Lying in bed at night, I’d listen to the roar of the waves and worry that the next one would rise up, crash down on to the cottage and carry away what was left of us with the force of its retreat.

  It didn’t he
lp that Spanish Point was so called because two ships of the Spanish Armada were wrecked against the headland there in 1588. According to local folklore, the sailors that didn’t drown were executed and buried in a mass grave in a spot called Tuama na Spainneach, the Spanish Tomb. Sometimes, in the winter months, when night arrived early, I stood on the beach as it darkened and imagined the ghosts of these men emerging from the sea. They always looked like a cross between Egyptian mummies and Hollywood pirates, and they were always walking directly towards me.

  Our life in Spanish Point was painfully simple. We had no TV and no computer, and I don’t remember there ever being newspapers in the house. My grandmother, who I called Nannie, listened to the radio for a couple of hours in the morning but only ever stations that played traditional Irish music and never anything with news bulletins in between. We had a landline, which occasionally rang, but whenever it did I’d be shooed into another room or, weather permitting, sent outside while Nannie spoke to whoever was on the other end in hushed tones. The phone rang often in those first few weeks and months but afterwards, almost never. Eventually calls became so rare that the sudden shrill of the ringer would make us both jump and turn to one another, panicked, as if a fire alarm had just gone off and we hadn’t known there was a fire or even an alarm.

  That first year almost every day was the same, our tasks expanding to fill however many hours we had like an emotional sealant, preventing the grief from bubbling up to the surface and breaking through. Each meal had a preparation, consumption and clean-up phase. Even a simple breakfast of toast and eggs could be stretched to an hour if we put our minds to it. Mid-morning we did what Nannie called the jobs, tasks like housekeeping and laundry. After lunch, we’d take a long walk down the beach and back, returning with an appetite for dinner. In the evenings, Nannie would light a fire and we’d sit in silence, reading our books, until the flames were reduced to embers. Then we would double-check the doors were locked, together, and go to bed.