One Hundred Names

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They met in the Brick Alley Café in Temple Bar, a charming café on Essex Street that seemed to be the only place that wasn’t a pub or chain sports bar or establishment without a shamrock or leprechaun emblazoned across the front, Ireland’s version of the child-catcher to lure in the tourists. It was a low-key place with friendly staff, and when Kitty entered she saw Archie sitting alone at the back of the café. He was the first customer of the day and had been successful in finding a table alone. Later, customers would be encouraged to sit at large wooden communal tables. He looked up when she entered, seemed slightly amused, and then he looked back down at his paper again. He appeared even more exhausted than he had before, as though he hadn’t slept, but after two nights of very little sleep Kitty dreaded to think what she looked like herself. After calling Richie’s phone sixteen times and getting no answer, she’d leaped on her phone as soon as it rang. She was lucky it was Archie.

She sat beside him on a high stool at a counter that was a wooden bench secured to the wall. Above the counter was a blackboard with the daily specials, and above that it said, ‘Every table has a story to tell’. She knew that was certainly true of this table. She was just hoping Archie was going to tell it.

‘Hi,’ Kitty said.

Archie was sitting to the side of his chair so that his elbow was resting on the counter and he could have a full view of the room. Perhaps not wanting to turn your back on a room is what came of doing time in prison. Or, in Kitty’s case, it was pure nosiness.

‘I just ordered breakfast,’ he said into his paper. ‘Do you want to order some?’

She could tell the paper was the Sunday tabloid with her story. So he had seen the article and for some reason that was probably why he had called her. He didn’t seem like the gloating kind, so she waited for his reasoning to be revealed.

‘No, thanks. I’m not hungry.’

‘You should eat,’ he said, still not looking at her.

‘No.’ She felt sick, sick by what she had read, by how she had been lied to, humiliated, by the fact she had slept with Richie. She felt disgusting and used and like she could never trust anyone ever again, and the last thing she wanted was food.

‘You need to keep your strength up,’ he said. ‘Or those fuckers will get you down.’

She sighed. ‘Too late for that.’ She heard her voice tremble; he did too and looked up from the paper. She was thankful his food arrived at that point, though the smell of it made her queasy. A large plate of tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, black and white pudding and enough toast to tile a roof with. The waitress placed it down before him and he finally set his paper aside and transferred his concentration to the food.

‘Are you ready to order?’ the waitress asked.

‘I’m not eating, thank you.’

‘Tea, coffee?’

‘Still water, please.’

‘And a plate of fruit,’ Archie said, cutting into his sausage. ‘She’ll have a plate of fruit. Fruit stays down okay.’

‘Thanks,’ Kitty said, touched by how he cared. ‘I suppose you’re the expert on this.’

He nodded his head in a horse-trying-to-get-rid-of-a-fly-on-his-nose kind of way.

‘What did you want to speak to me about?’

He didn’t answer, he just shovelled the food in his mouth, massive amounts that puffed out his cheeks and he chewed merely a few times before swallowing. Then he spoke as though she never asked the question. ‘Did you know the guy?’

She knew who he was talking about straight away.

‘An old college friend.’

‘Ha. That old chestnut.’

‘They did that to you?’

‘The entire family. And friends. They know how to catch people out. People who don’t know better. People who aren’t trained in how they work. People who believe what they read. Regular people.’

‘I’m not regular people.’

‘You’re different. You’re one of them, you weren’t expecting it.’

‘I’m not one of them,’ she said, disgusted. ‘Never have, never will. I made a mistake on a story; he did this deliberately.’ Her blood boiled. She really wanted to run from this meeting straight away and confront Richie at his house but she was afraid of what she might do to him. She couldn’t face assault and battery charges on top of everything else.

‘You’re angry,’ he said, watching her. Her foot was bouncing up and down; she felt like putting her fist through the wall.

‘Of course I’m angry.’

‘That’s why I phoned you.’

‘You like talking to angry people?’ she snapped.

He smiled. ‘I wanted to speak to one of them who I knew would never be one of them. That fella, your old college friend, he did me a favour.’

‘Well I’m glad he made one of us happy. So you trust me now.’

He didn’t respond, kept tucking into his breakfast. Kitty’s fruit and water arrived and despite feeling nauseous she picked at it and began to feel a little respite.

The café door opened and the third customer of the day entered. She was a mousy-looking woman, small face framed with dull brown chin-length hair and a fringe. She was meek-looking, thin and frail, as though a strong wind would blow her over. She looked around the café hopefully, as though expecting to see someone, and then her face fell and she sat at the communal wooden table. Archie actually looked up from his breakfast, took her in, and watched her cross the room and sit down. From that point on his eyes rarely left her.

‘Know her?’ Kitty asked.

‘No,’ he said bluntly, and turned away to down his tea. ‘So what do you know about me?’

‘A lot more than I knew about you on Friday.’

‘Go on.’

‘Ten years ago your sixteen-year-old daughter went missing. She was last seen on CCTV leaving a clothes shop in Donaghmede shopping centre. The gardaí issued a search for her, you and the family began a public search and a rather big campaign. A month later she was found in a field. She’d been strangled. Four years later you assaulted and viciously beat a twenty-year-old man believed to have been her boyfriend at the time and you went to prison for four years.’

There was a silence.

He chewed on the rind of his bacon, then threw the leftovers down on the plate.

‘It was eleven years ago, it was one week before her sixteenth birthday.’ He took a moment to compose himself and when he spoke again his voice was quieter. ‘She was last seen by a witness in the car park of Donaghmede shopping centre telling that lad, Brian “Bingo” O’Connell, to leave her alone, a lad who was not her boyfriend but who was in fact her friend’s boyfriend. He’d developed a fascination with her and wouldn’t leave her alone. I told the gardaí all this the day she didn’t come home. I told them countless times but they kept insisting they had nothing on him. If it wasn’t for a cabbage farmer who came across her body they never would have found a thing. They kept barking up the wrong tree.’

‘More specifically, you,’ Kitty said.

‘They wouldn’t leave me alone, they just couldn’t get it out of their heads. The only person they fully investigated was me, and I was the only one with the slightest bit of information on the last place she was seen.’

‘Maybe that was why.’

‘My friend Brick was the guy in the car park. They were so obsessed with pinning it on me, they didn’t believe anything I told them.’

‘Don’t they always look to the family first?’

‘Not like that they don’t. Brick wasn’t exactly the most reliable of witnesses. He’d been in some trouble.’

Kitty supposed he didn’t get a nickname like ‘Brick’ for any good reason.

They were silent. Archie watched the woman again. She was wringing a tissue around her finger, spiralling it till it pushed the skin up between the tissue and then unwinding it again. The café was filling up and the chef was busy behind the counter cooking fry-ups on a hot plate. The food sizzled and the smell filled the small room. Kitty’s stomach churned and she reached for another grape.

‘What made them eventually stop looking at you?’

‘When they found the body.’

He was silent.

‘She was raped, you know,’ he said suddenly, and Kitty had a hard time swallowing her grape.

‘No, I didn’t know that.’

‘I wanted to keep that out of the papers. Give her a bit of dignity. Her body had been left out too long and there wasn’t enough evidence.’

‘And you’re sure it was that guy? Brian O’Connell.’

‘Bingo,’ he said firmly, confident as hell. ‘As sure as I live and breathe. I used to see him around and he’d give me a look, a look like he’d got away with it and he found it funny.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘I don’t blame you for what you did to him.’

‘I’d do it again if I could,’ Archie said straight away. ‘Only blessing is I didn’t kill him, because it means I could do it again if I wanted.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

He dropped the bravado. ‘I went far enough to see the fear in his eye and that was enough for me. I’ll remember that look for ever. Keep it right here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘That was for Rebecca.’

Kitty thought about his life since then, family man, life torn apart by a tragedy, suffering twice as a consequence.

‘You don’t live with your wife any more?’

He shook his head. ‘She moved to Manchester. She’s with a good man. She’s found a way to live again. She deserves it. It’s not right to be living with such anger. It’s unhealthy. It destroys things. Destroyed our marriage, my friendships. Needless to say my job wouldn’t take me back. Having a record doesn’t make you a desirable candidate for employment.’

Tell me about it, Kitty thought. ‘So you work at the chipper.’

‘And I’m a bouncer at a club around the corner. That’s why I end up here for breakfast most mornings.’ He looked at the woman again. ‘Have to make ends meet. Work as many jobs as I can. Build my life back up again, as much as I can.’

‘Any other jobs going?’ Kitty asked.

He gave her that amused look. ‘Nah. You’re not looking for a job. You’ve got one.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’ She thought about Pete and how the shit was really going to hit the fan after her supposed exposé in today’s paper.

‘Well, you make sure,’ he said, standing up. ‘Because you have a story to write. My story.’ And with that, he left with his rolled-up paper, leaving Kitty to ponder that, and pay the bill.

Archie left Kitty Logan at the Brick Alley Café and followed the woman who’d been sitting inside. As always she’d had a pot of tea and a fruit scone with butter and jam, stayed for twenty minutes and then left. She was like clockwork; every single morning that Archie had been there for the past nine months she had also been there. She never acknowledged his presence despite the fact they were always the first two people in the café. She would walk in looking for somebody else, not see anybody who was really there, sit and wait for the ghost of someone else, and then leave. Though he only ate in the café on weekends after night duty in the club, he had started going a few times during the week just to see if she was there and sure enough she was. Eight o’clock on the dot she would enter the café with the same expression.

He followed her down Wellington Quay, across the Halfpenny Bridge to Bachelor’s Walk, and watched her go into the Blessed Sacrament Church. He thought about following her, then changed his mind, not because it was inappropriate but because he couldn’t bring himself to go in there. Not in there. Not with what was going on with him.

He turned round and made his way back to his flat.