The Nothing Man Read online

  ‘He might have,’ Ed said. ‘Maybe.’ He told me that, back in 2001, members of Operation Optic had pored over our phone logs, tracing every incoming call to our house of one minute or less. They had found five to flag as pertinent to the investigation. These had come in at various times of the day but each of them had come from a public telephone box located in or around Cork City. Two of them had come from the same public telephone box on Patrick Street, but beyond that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their locations or sequence. None of them were near the GAA stadium from where the Nothing Man had called Christine Kiernan and Linda O’Neill. ‘That could’ve been him,’ Ed said, ‘but we’ll never know.’

  We took cups of tea into the living room and sat down, Ed in an armchair and me on the couch.

  I asked another question that had just occurred to me.

  ‘If he didn’t call us,’ I said, ‘how do you know it was the Nothing Man who came here that night?’

  ‘The rope,’ Ed said. ‘Mainly. Plus the nature of the crime, the timing of it and the location. The rope was never described in the media.’

  ‘So he did leave something behind …’

  ‘That brand was widely available. Stocked in more than a hundred and fifty hardware stores all over the country. We visited every one in Cork county and within two hours’ drive of it but we had nothing to say to them other than, “Do you remember anyone buying this kind of rope recently, or a lot of it at any time at all?” It wasn’t fruitful.’

  ‘And the knife?’

  ‘The knife wasn’t as widely available but still, we only had a description of it from someone who was never attacked: Christine Kiernan’s neighbour. We don’t know if he brought the same kind to the other houses. The pathologist said that based on her description it could’ve been the same one used here, on your mother, but—’

  ‘It was. He did.’

  Ed’s face changed. ‘What do you mean?’

  I realised that he didn’t know about my finding the rope and the knife – because I hadn’t yet told him. I hadn’t told anyone. It wasn’t in my essay because I hadn’t realised its significance until after it’d been published and I’d started reading the other articles. So I told him now. About playing the game with Anna a few weeks before the attack. About lifting the sofa cushion and seeing the rope and the knife. Unlike the night itself, I could remember them clearly and described them in detail. The blue braid. The yellow handle that put me in mind of Fisher Price toys. The shiny, unsullied blade.

  Ed got up, paced a bit, then sat back down. He took out his Garda notebook, flipped up the cover and dug in his shirt pocket for a pen. He asked me to repeat everything I’d said.

  At first I was bemused by his reaction. He had just been telling me how the rope and the knife had led nowhere, so why was he so excited that I had seen them once?

  But it wasn’t the information itself that ignited him, but the fact that fourteen years later, he was getting it. The nature of my information was what excited him. I had known it all this time but I hadn’t recognised its significance until recently.

  All these years later, things could still come to light.

  And so a new phase of the Nothing Man investigation began, years after his last attack, in the very same house where he was last seen. I pictured him in another house, maybe one with a wife busy in the kitchen and children running around, or grandchildren at this stage, since his own children, if he had had them, must surely be grown. I imagined him feeling safe, maybe even smug, sure that since he had avoided detection all these years, no one was ever going to come for him now.

  But I was coming for him, with Ed by my side.

  It was only a matter of time.

  In six months, no day at Centrepoint had passed as slowly as Thursday did. Jim was not only bored but exhausted from having barely slept two nights in a row. He killed the minutes of his shift by picturing himself at the book signing, standing inches from Eve Black while she had no idea that Jim was the subject of The Nothing Man. Afterwards he used the few hours his white lie about working full days had bought him to park again down by the Marina. This time, he used it to take a nap in his car. He was so exhausted that it was his only option. Finally – finally – it was gone six and he and Noreen were on their way into town.

  They were driving along the quays when Noreen said something about an interview.

  ‘Interview?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Noreen was looking out the passenger’s side window. ‘She’s going to be interviewed first, then she’ll sign books after.’

  Jim kept his eyes on the road. ‘You never said anything about an interview.’

  He had been imagining a long queue of people, snaking around the tables and bookshelves of the shop, giving him ample opportunity to look at the woman at the top of it before he got there himself and she saw him. Now he had to throw that out and replace it with rows of folding chairs and her sitting facing them, able to look out into the audience and see every face if she wished. He didn’t like last-minute changes. He didn’t like feeling blindsided. Details mattered. Preparation was key.

  When Jim moved his hands out of the ten-two position on the steering wheel, he saw the black leather shiny with his own sweat. He moved them back.

  ‘Who’s interviewing her, then?’

  ‘Some journalist,’ Noreen said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look it up.’

  ‘Won’t we find out when we get there?’

  ‘Look it up.’

  She sighed. ‘Fine.’

  Jim turned the car into the multi-storey car park on Paul Street.

  ‘“Danielle Kennedy”,’ Noreen read aloud from the screen of her phone. ‘It says here she’s a reporter for the Irish Times.’

  They parked near the elevators on Level 1 and got out of the car. The bookshop was only a couple of minutes’ walk away now and Jim could feel the weight of what he was doing on his shoulders, hear the little voice at the back of his head telling him that he should stop, that this was a bad idea.

  But there was a much louder voice telling him that he should go, that she was never going to recognise him in a million years, and that this was necessary reconnaissance.

  That was the voice he trusted.

  They entered the bookshop via the back entrance, on Paul Street. As soon as Noreen pulled open the door a step ahead of him, Jim felt the muscles in his back release and relax. The shop was packed, the heat and noise and buzzing chatter of what was easily more than a hundred warm bodies hitting them like a wall as they stepped inside.

  Noreen had the opposite reaction. She didn’t like busy, noisy spaces and so avoided them. But that meant she was ill-equipped to deal with them when a situation forced her into one. Jim could see the change in her: suddenly tense, eyes roaming, face pinched with concern.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, half-turning back to him. She looked paler than she had a moment ago, although that might be the harsh lighting in the shop. And maybe it was the body heat of the assembled crowd that had forced a few beads of sweat out on to her upper lip, the one she regularly let a line of fine, white hairs grow along. ‘I don’t know about this. It’s much busier than I thought it would be …’

  She looked to him for help.

  ‘We’re here now,’ Jim said. ‘We’re not leaving.’

  He stepped around Noreen and then away from her, moving deeper into the shop, towards the thickest crush of bodies.

  There were rows of folding chairs laid out and each one of them was already taken. That meant he would have to stand, which would make him even more conspicuous once Eve Black had taken her seat in one of the two leather armchairs arranged on either side of a small table at the side of the room, facing the rows of chairs. At least there wasn’t a stage or stools; her view of the audience would be from their level. Still. The table had two bottles of water on it, a small vase of flowers and a copy of The Nothing Man stood on its end.

  Jim k
ept moving closer to the front of the store, pushing his way past elbows and turned backs. He could see there was another, larger table set up just inside the main doors, half-filled with glasses of wine and water, and next to that an identical one piled high with copies of the book. There was a tiny pocket of clear space just beyond it, near a display of notebooks. If he stood there, he should be close enough to see her but far away enough to make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to see him.

  Jim started to push his way towards this spot.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder.

  He wasn’t going to turn around, assuming it was either Noreen or one of the shop workers he’d made the mistake of conversing with, however briefly, the last time he was here.

  But then he heard a voice say, ‘Jim?’

  A male voice. A familiar one.

  He turned.

  Ed Healy.

  The fucking bastard.

  ‘Ed!’ Jim stretched a smile across his face and held out a hand. ‘Long time, no see.’

  ‘Too long.’

  They shook, three solid pumps.

  ‘How’s life treating you?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Good, good. Can’t complain. You?’

  ‘Ah … you know yourself.’

  The two men regarded each other for a beat longer than felt right.

  Then Jim said, ‘You’re still at it, I presume?’

  ‘Ah, actually … I’m just winding down. Finishing up at Christmas. I thought I’d hang on for the thirty but things changed and I just woke up one morning and realised that I wanted to start living my life instead of waiting to do that, you know?’

  Jim nodded, even though he had no idea what the fuck Ed was on about.

  ‘What about you?’ Ed asked. ‘What are you up to these days?’

  ‘Private security.’ That was Jim’s stock answer whenever he ran into any of his former colleagues.

  That’s what the retired ones tended to say to him too, but they meant bodyguard for some rich eejit, not security guard in a bloody shopping centre.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Ed said. ‘Local?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you miss it at all?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Jim made a sound that he hoped sounded like a chuckle. ‘So what are you doing here?’

  Jim had asked Ed before Ed could ask him.

  The younger man lifted his chin, indicating something behind Jim’s back.

  ‘I’m with her,’ he said.

  Jim didn’t have to turn around to know who he meant. He could feel her, a cold breath at his back. As he turned to look, everyone else in the room blurred into one long streak of other, indiscernible people.

  There was only her.

  She must have just appeared in the last few moments, standing near the leather armchairs, chatting with a man and a woman. The man might have been the assistant manager Jim had spoken briefly with the day before and, going by the fact that she was holding two microphones and a sheaf of pages, the other woman must be the journalist.

  Eve Black was taller than he’d expected, five-ten he’d say, and in a room full of ordinary people, looked somewhat ethereal. She didn’t seem as thin as she had on television, probably because whatever she was wearing – some kind of layered dress or skirt – was swaddling her frame, making it impossible to tell where the black material ended and her actual body began. Her hands were in its pockets, disappearing between the folds of the material halfway up to her forearms. She was wearing more make-up this evening, her skin warm and dewy-looking, the awful red slash of lipstick toned down for something more natural and pink. She was wearing long, dangly gold earrings with lots of little moving pieces that glinted in the overhead lights as she turned her head, and her eyes seemed bigger, somehow, different—

  She was staring right at him.

  And now, waving.

  For a split second he felt the impulse to raise his own hand in response but then he saw, in his peripheral vision, Ed lifting his hand.

  She was looking at Ed, not him.

  Jim said, ‘You know her?’

  Eve turned back to her conversation.

  ‘Well, yeah …’ Ed frowned. ‘That’s Eve Black.’

  ‘Eve Black?’

  Ed’s expression was unreadable and Jim wondered if he was pushing this feigned ignorance a bit too far.

  ‘The survivor,’ Ed said, ‘from the Passage house.’ He pointed to the nearby table covered in copies of The Nothing Man.

  ‘Oh …’ Jim said. ‘Oh. Jesus. Sorry, Ed. I was a bit slow on the uptake there. My wife’s dragged me to this, you see. I only realised what the book was on the way in. It wouldn’t be my kind of thing.’

  Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘No?’

  ‘Nah. You know yourself. After thirty years of it, the last thing you want is reading about the ones that got away. Am I right?’

  Ed said, ‘Hmm,’ but he was regarding Jim with something new, something that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

  Scrutiny.

  ‘So you worked on the book, is it?’

  Ed nodded. ‘You worked on Optic too, didn’t you? Back then?’

  ‘Only in the sense that we all did at some point. I think I helped man the phone lines a few times.’

  ‘There you are!’

  Noreen, a sheen of sweat at her temples, was on Jim’s left, looking up at him, radiating annoyance.

  She said to Ed, ‘Hi. I’m Noreen, Jim’s wife.’

  Jim glared at her.

  He imagined what Ed was seeing, seeing her for the first time. Short, fat and frumpy. She was wearing bright white runners under a dress with a garish pattern on it that, as far as he was concerned, belonged on a tablecloth. She never did anything with her nest of brittle grey hair and, as ever, she wasn’t wearing make-up. She was a fucking mess.

  Jim wanted to strike her as hard as he could across the face, then smash her headfirst into the nearest hard object. He bit down on his lip to create a point of pain, an anchor to keep him here, in the moment, to stop him from acting on impulse.

  Ed introduced himself and shook Noreen’s hand.

  ‘You’re the one who dragged him here,’ Ed said goodnaturedly.

  Noreen opened her mouth to speak, stopped and looked to Jim for guidance.

  ‘Okay, folks,’ a voice called out from the other side of the room. ‘Are we ready to go? If you could all just take your seats …’

  Saved by the bell.

  Jim took hold of Noreen’s elbow, pinching the skin hard.

  ‘We better go find a spot,’ he said. ‘Can’t see a thing from here. Good to see you, Ed. I’ll find you after, okay?’

  Jim was already turning away, steering Noreen with him.

  He pulled her back across the room, through the crowd, until he had found another place for them to stand.

  Where they could see Eve, but she couldn’t see them.

  When not sat in front of a television camera transmitting live to the nation, Eve Black was different. She looked apprehensive, but the fidgeting was gone. While she waited for the journalist – Danielle something – to begin, she sat perfectly still, seemingly confident and relaxed. During the introduction (‘… she’s an author, survivor and detective’) Eve scanned the crowd, smiling at what must have been the faces she recognised, giving a little wave or nod here and there.

  ‘I thought,’ Danielle said, ‘we might start with a little reading?’

  Eve nodded. She leaned down to retrieve a book from the large handbag resting against the leg of her chair. It was The Nothing Man, but it also wasn’t. It had a soft cover and was completely blank, and black, except for the words ‘The Nothing Man’ printed in bright white down its spine.

  She took a delicate sip of water and cleared her throat.

  ‘Good evening, everyone,’ she said. ‘Thank you so much for coming. I think what I’ll do is read just a little bit from the very start of the book, the introduction. It’s safe enough. I don’t want anyone to have to listen to … Yo
u know.’ She paused. ‘Any gruesome details.’

  Whispers rippled through the crowd. No doubt some of them – most of them? – were only here for that.

  Jim hoped they were disappointed now. The idea pleased him.

  Eve cleared her throat again and then began to read in a strong voice, loud enough to fill the four corners of the room without the need for the microphone, which was still sitting on the table beside her chair, evidently forgotten.

  ‘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 …’

  Jim tuned out, lost in the strangeness of the situation.

  Here he was, standing in a room listening to Eve Black read aloud to him from her book about him, while Ed Healy, who’d helped lead the Nothing Man investigation (to nowhere), stood nearby.

  And Noreen hovered right beside him.

  The feeling he had was what he imagined skydivers felt as they sat in the open door of the plane thousands of feet above the ground, dangled their legs over the side and waited for the Go signal: more alive than ever thanks to the threat of imminent death. But also confident that everything would go as planned, that really there was no threat, that they’d get to feel this way without paying a price for it.

  ‘This is always my fear,’ Eve continued, ‘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 …’

  Jim surveyed the assembled crowd and wondered what the reaction would be if they somehow suddenly realised that the Nothing Man was here, among them, in this very room.