The Nothing Man Read online

  Would they run?

  Or would they turn towards him instead, asking him the questions, waiting to hear his story?

  He was sure he knew the answer. No one was interested in Eve Black. Not really. What all these people wanted to know about was the man who had made her what she was, who had made her someone. They wanted to know more about him. It had crossed his mind before to go to the press, like the Zodiac Killer and others had done before him, but this wasn’t America. Ireland was too small a stage for such antics and, moreover, forensics had moved on.

  But still, there was a part of him that wished he could tell his story.

  Instead of standing here having to listen to this shit.

  ‘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 …’

  A man who had been standing directly in front of him – a man who, Jim realised now, was a member of staff – suddenly snapped his head towards the cash register. A distant phone was ringing. He hurried away, presumably to answer it, leaving nothing but clear air between Jim and Eve.

  If she looked up now, she could be looking right at him.

  ‘… 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 with me 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.’

  So do I, Jim thought. So do I.

  But it’s never too late to do the right thing.

  Eve looked up, into the middle of the crowd.

  ‘Yes, I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man,’ she said, no longer reading. ‘I am the woman who is going to find him.’

  Twenty years, Jim reminded himself. It had been, give or take, twenty years since he’d called to the house on Bally’s Lane on New Year’s Eve night, and in all that time, no one had ever come close to finding him.

  Not the full resources of An Garda Síochána, not Ed Fucking Healy, and certainly not a lone woman on a crusade.

  Eve turned her head a few degrees to her left.

  Scanning.

  Searching.

  She stopped when her eyes landed on Jim.

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘trust me: I will.’

  The room erupted in applause.

  Jim reached out to the nearest bookshelf, intending to lean on it for support, but in doing so knocked over a glass of wine that some idiot had left there, on the two inches between the spines of a row of vegetarian cookbooks and the very edge of the shelf. Noreen jumped as the liquid hit the back of her legs and the five or six people nearest to them turned around to see what was going on. A couple of them glanced at Jim’s face before turning back.

  He felt cold and hot. His mouth was so dry his tongue felt swollen and thick. His palms were clammy.

  What the hell was that?

  Had she recognised him?

  Eve was mouthing thank you to various people in the crowd. Beside her, Danielle beamed and applauded too, then picked up her microphone and said, ‘Well. There you go. And that’s just the introduction!’

  More, harder applause.

  Eve picked up her microphone and said, ‘Thank you,’ into it. ‘Thank you very much, everyone. Thanks a lot.’ A faint bloom of pink appeared on her cheeks. She was embarrassed.

  Or trying to look like she was.

  ‘So let’s get down to business,’ Danielle said, shuffling her notes. ‘I often think books are particularly good at hiding all the messy work that goes into them.’ She touched a hand to the copy of The Nothing Man standing on the small table between them. ‘We have this glossy, finished product here – which, let me say again, is a truly astonishing read that will be keeping you all up until the wee hours tonight. But let’s talk about how it came to be. Let me take you back, Eve, to the beginning of the process. Many people will be familiar with The Nothing Man’s origins as that article we all read online. But in fact, it started life as an English essay …?’

  Jim looked around. There was a glass with a little bit of water in the bottom of it and a blush of lipstick on the rim sitting on a shelf nearby. He swigged it back, quickly, before its rightful owner could catch him in the act. It moistened his tongue but the hot, prickly dryness in his throat remained. He was hemmed in by the crowd and didn’t want to move, didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself. His lower back was soaked by a sudden cold sweat. A dull headache was forming at his temples. He could only take shallow breaths.

  He looked to Noreen.

  She was twisting around, assessing the damage to the back of her skirt. She turned back to face front, cross and annoyed. Then she looked up and saw Jim, and her face changed.

  First, eyes wide with surprise.

  Second, features softened with concern.

  She whispered, ‘Are you all right?’

  He looked at her hands. She wasn’t holding anything. She hadn’t picked up a drink.

  Useless to him.

  He turned away, ignoring her.

  Eve took a sip of water and apologised to Danielle for the momentary delay.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Danielle said gently. ‘Take your time.’

  The story of her late essay went on then for some minutes. Eve explained about the impending and, up until then, forgotten deadline, it being Anna’s birthday and her professor’s reaction to the piece. She called him ‘the renowned novelist’, the exact same phrase she’d used in the book. She described how the possibility that publishing such a thing might help catch the killer after all these years had helped her overcome the terror of revealing her own identity. She directed her answer at Danielle and waved her hands about while she talked. She spoke clearly and concisely. She had every single person in the room hanging on her every word, enraptured.

  Almost every person.

  Jim watched her, waiting.

  To look at him again, Eve would have to turn her head away from Danielle, to look over her own left shoulder. Had she done that the first time? Turned her head away from her interviewer, away from most of the audience, back towards him?

  Or had he just imagined the entire thing?

  How could she possibly recognise him? She’d been standing at the top of the stairs, he’d been in the shadows a floor below it, standing several feet back from the bottom step.

  Eighteen years ago.

  When she was twelve.

  ‘It must have been very difficult,’ Danielle was saying now, ‘to revisit the past. I have to admit, I found it quite difficult to read in parts and you lived this. How did you approach writing about it? Especially that night – although, as you write in the book, it was mostly an aural experience for you. You didn’t see anything until … Until after.’

  Eve tucked a piece of hair between her left ear, setting off a flash of something on her ring finger as it caught the light. Jim was reminded of the odd phrase Ed had used: I’m with her.

  ‘I found it – find it – difficult to explain what I remember about that night. How I remember it. It’s like a series of flashes. I liken it to – you know stop-motion animation? Like, um, The Nightmare Before Christmas?’ Danielle nodded and laughed softly, and then a few people in the crowd did too. ‘Well, it’s kind of like a bad version of that. Not smooth, but jumpy. Jerky. Because some of the frames are missing. Maybe a lot of them are. But I do remember it. But then the other problem is what I remember. I was there but I wasn’t. I was hiding in the dark in a bathroom. I could hear things but at the time I didn’t know what they were. I was scared, yes, but I was probably more confused. And …’ Eve swallowed. ‘As everyone knows, I saw the aftermath.’

  The silence in the room was total.

  ‘But not him,’ Danielle said. ‘Not the Nothing Man.’

  Eve shook her
head, no. ‘I never saw anyone else. Only my family. And I only saw them when …’

  Her voice had started to shake a little and she paused to take a sip of water while Danielle smiled at her sympathetically.

  ‘Let’s move on—’ she started, deflating the tension in the room like a spike in a balloon. The audience seemed to collectively droop down into their seats, knowing now that they weren’t going to get what they’d come for.

  Was Eve lying? Or did she genuinely not remember?

  After what had just happened, the way she’d looked at him, he was beginning to think she remembered everything perfectly well.

  ‘Afterwards,’ Danielle continued, ‘you were whisked away west, by your grandmother. How aware were you, initially, about what was going on, about what had happened?’

  ‘Not very,’ Eve said. ‘My grandmother kept a lot of it from me. Obviously I knew that Mum, Dad and Anna were dead, and I knew that a bad man had come into our house and done things to them, but I don’t think I really understood it, if that makes sense? Perhaps I didn’t want to. And I was so young. I’m not sure I had the capacity.’

  Danielle made a hmm noise. ‘And some journalists tracked you down …?’

  ‘I think Nannie got word that there were a few hanging around the village, not-very-casually asking questions about us. And one actually came to the cottage.’ Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Well, two. A photographer and a reporter. Working together. I remember coming back along the path that led to the beach and them waiting by the cottage’s gate, a man and a woman, and asking me questions. It was so strange because they knew my name. I thought they must know me. I was about to answer them, but then Nannie came running out of the house, roaring at them and roaring at me to get inside.’

  ‘Did you know there were others?’ Danielle asked. ‘Did you have any concept of’ – she made air quotes – ‘the Nothing Man?’

  ‘Not until I was in secondary school. You can imagine how it was. Teenagers whispering. My grandmother had done her best to protect me, but she hadn’t counted on the internet. I used to sneak into the library to look up my parents’ names online. But I was never quite brave enough to read anything I found. It sounds weird, but it was like there were two universes. The one I was in, and the one in which my parents and sister were in the newspaper because they’d been victims of the Nothing Man. It all felt very … Separate? I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. But I think I felt very detached from it all during those years in Spanish Point.’

  A beat passed.

  ‘Now’ – Danielle glanced at her watch – ‘I’m conscious of the time and I want to make sure that we can answer a few questions from the audience, but just before we finish up … I think it’s fair to say it’s not quite a spoiler to reveal that you didn’t identify the Nothing Man in the course of your research—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘—but you have found out a great deal of new information. Isn’t that true?’

  Eve nodded. ‘We have. And I say “we” because I haven’t done this by myself. I am so very grateful to have had the assistance of Ed Healy, who worked on the original investigation. Ed is actually the person who realised there was a serial attacker at work here. He was the one – the first one – to link the cases.’ Eve lifted her head and scanned the room. ‘Where are you, Ed?’

  The crowd turned and twisted to look for him too.

  ‘There he is!’ Danielle pointed to the corner of the room Jim had left Ed in. She addressed the room again. ‘After you’ve read the book, I promise you, you’ll come to appreciate how dedicated this man has been to this case, to finding this monstrous killer. He still is.’

  ‘I think he deserves a round of applause,’ Eve said.

  The audience complied.

  Jim couldn’t see Ed but he could see various members of the audience smiling at the same spot. What were they applauding, exactly? Ed hadn’t found the Nothing Man and, right now, the man was utterly oblivious to the fact that he was in the same room as him.

  Danielle waited a polite amount of time and then said, ‘And this new information. What can you tell us? I know that it’s probably—’

  ‘We know how he picked them,’ Eve announced.

  A murmur of interest rippled throughout the room.

  Jim’s world came to a sudden, screeching stop.

  ‘Wow,’ Danielle breathed.

  She couldn’t. They couldn’t. No one could. It wasn’t possible.

  He became aware of Noreen whispering something to him.

  ‘Jim? Jim, what’s wrong? You’re shaking your head.’

  Eve was smiling. ‘I’m pretty pleased about that, I have to admit.’

  ‘You should be,’ Danielle said. ‘I mean … when I got to that part, it just blew me away. And the way you put it together … I felt like I was reading a thriller!’ She turned to the audience. ‘We won’t say any more on that. I don’t want to spoil it for you.’

  Jim’s heart was beating out of his chest.

  Noreen was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

  ‘One last question,’ Danielle said. ‘Aren’t you at all worried’ – she paused, a pathetic attempt to amp up the drama – ‘that he’ll come for you? I mean … he’s still out there, as far as we know. Do you think he’s here, in Cork, still? Do you think he knows about the book?’

  Eve took a deep breath, considering.

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ she said. ‘If he’s still alive, he probably is still here, and if he’s still here, he probably knows about the book. But so what if he is, if he has? I’m not afraid of him. He’s an old man now. He hasn’t done anything in nearly twenty years. And in those twenty years, detection has come on leaps and bounds. I believe if he committed his crimes today, we’d catch him in a few days. If he is still around, he must know that. I think that’s why he stopped – because he knew he couldn’t continue to get away with it. He was – is – ultimately a coward. But I’m not. And I’m coming for him. My searching didn’t stop just because I finished writing the book. I actually think the book – people reading it, reacting to it, remembering the case – will generate new leads. So to answer your question: no. I’m not worried. But I am determined. I am going to find him.’ Eve paused. ‘I know I will – and it will be soon.’

  Danielle asked the audience to give Eve a round of applause and in the noise of it, Jim turned to Noreen and said, ‘We have to go. Now.’

  ‘But I need to get Katie’s book signed.’

  Katie.

  He had completely forgotten she was why they were there.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But do it quick. I’ll meet you at the back door.’

  Noreen looked like she was about to protest. Jim turned away before she had the chance. All around him people were rising from their seats, turning to talk to one another, moving to form a long queue in front of the chair where Eve Black still sat.

  Jim moved away from it, in the direction of the rear doors.

  The bookshop was long and wide, curving slightly at its middle. Jim passed tables of books; the cash registers; a children’s section, strung with colourful bunting. The crowd thinned out more and more the further he got from the front and, by the time he was in Reference, he was alone.

  Finally.

  He stopped to lean against the nearest bookshelf and take a breath for what felt like the first time in several minutes.

  We know how he picked them.

  But they couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible.

  He needed to get home, to get back to the book, to read on.

  ‘Jim! There you are.’

  Ed Healy’s voice. Again. Close. The man must be standing right behind him. Jim arranged his face into an expression of pleasantness and turned around to face—

  Eve Black.

  So close, there was barely two feet of clear air between them. He could see the fine hairs on the sides of her face. The glittery stuff on her eyelids. The fluttering of her pulse beneath the delicate gold necklace sit
ting in the little hollow at the base of her throat.

  She was staring at him.

  And then, smiling at him. Widely. Flashing a neat row of bright white teeth.

  ‘This is Eve,’ Ed said. ‘Eve, this is Jim Doyle.’

  She didn’t extend a hand, or move towards him at all. She was standing perfectly still, staring intently at his face.

  ‘I remember you,’ she said.

  Jim’s knees threatened to give way and he found he had to actively instruct them to keep him standing, to consciously dispatch the pertinent messages from his brain. He opened his mouth but no words came out.

  There were no words any more, anywhere. His mind was only an emptiness, cleared entirely. He didn’t even feel like he was inside his body any more but standing nearby, watching this happen.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ Her eyes were still on his, searching. ‘I looked very different back then. My hair was long and dark.’

  Jim had never had a heart attack but he thought he might be having one now. A sudden blockade of pain in his chest, an acidic burning in his throat, tightening in his throat. Being completely unable to take a breath. Panic approaching like a tsunami in the distance.

  Eve was looking at him quizzically.

  Say something. Say something. SAY SOMETHING.

  Jim pushed the words out. ‘I don’t … I don’t remember.’

  Eve exchanged the briefest of glances with Ed.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not a crime.’

  Jim felt as if his entire body might burst into flames. He tried to wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Wh– where …?’

  ‘Togher Garda Station,’ Eve said. She waved a hand dismissively, threw him a small smile. ‘It was very brief, don’t worry. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me. I’m just good with faces.’

  Like a sudden shock of freezing water, it came back to him. Two, three years ago. He’d been on the reception desk in Togher. She’d come in, looking to speak to a Garda who, it turned out, now worked with the GNBI, the National Bureau of Investigation, out of Harcourt Square in Dublin. Aisling Feeney. It was nothing. Three or four minutes at the most.