Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(35)

Because what if he’s not who I think he is? I can’t ignore the fact I’ve spent most of my life, not exactly sure in the belief, but certainly toying with – then blocking out – the idea that Dad might have killed Maryanne Doyle in 1998. Now that’s been proved impossible, can I trust my own instincts any more than I mistrust him?

Because what if he’s not a Bad Man? What if he’s just a liar. A womaniser. A run-of-the-mill arsehole. Just an ageing matinee idol with a moody, over-inked girlfriend and a complicated TV system he can’t work out.

What if I’ve spent the past eighteen years tormenting him – tormenting myself – for what amounts to nothing more than a few grubby white lies.





9

Seven a.m.

I wake up late, late for me anyway, twisted and practically mummified in my sheets with a cold sheen of sweat coating my body and a dozen family photos scattered across the bed. I don’t recall dreaming last night, although I must have done. The experts say that you always dream. That your dreams act as safety valves through which you live out unconscious desires, free from the hindrance of consequence or the shame of taboo.

I’ve never actually dreamed of killing my dad, although I did once dream that he’d killed me.

I sit up quickly, grateful for the late hour. Wake at seven a.m. and I’m thrown straight into focusing on real things, safe things – showers, vitamins, off-milk, tube delays – whereas at five a.m., my usual rise and shine, I’ve got two hours of lying in the half-light to grapple with. Two hours of thinking about all the things I could have done better and all the people I never see. Sometimes I use the time more effectively. I read lamebrain magazines by the light of my phone, doping myself with articles like ‘Change Your Face Primer, Change your life!!’ Other times I whisper affirmations into the silence, soothing myself with sad little cheerleads – advice from just about every self-help book I’ve ever been dopey enough to buy.

I am enough.

I am more than enough.

I love and approve of myself.

I am a good person.

It’s the last one that shames me. This notion that good somehow equals protected. Anyone would think I’d spent the past two years jazz-handing my way around Disney, not wading through the relentless grime of MIT, where despicable, unthinkable things happen to good people every day. Just last year I worked a case where a sixty-two-year-old dinner-lady, well known in her local community for her charity fun-runs and history of fostering disabled children, was fatally stabbed in the head four times in broad daylight, all over a piece of dropped litter.

She’d been a good person. One of the best by all accounts. I bet she never felt the need to affirm her goodness into the silence at five in the morning.

Fat lot of good being good did her.

Alice Lapaine had been a good person too.

*

‘Right, I’ve skim-read the report and I’m giving Vickery eight out of ten for crystal ball accuracy.’ At nine thirty, Steele sweeps into the office balancing files, a bucket of coffee, a paper bag containing something greasy and the thing she calls her handbag that most people would take on a citybreak.

Parnell, moving quicker than I’d have given him credit for, grabs the coffee as it threatens to capsize. ‘Cheers, Lu,’ she says, puffing and panting, dropping everything onto the nearest desk with a heavy thwack. ‘Chaps and chapesses, listen. I’ve literally got fifteen minutes for a quick catch-up and then I’m out all day – meetings with Blake, the Press Office, the bloody Dalai Lama for all I know. I’m assuming you’ve all had a chance to read through the PM reports? Well, you better bloody have, put it that way. Benny-boy, be a love and get the photos up on the big screen.’ To Parnell. ‘Lu, you lead. I need to eat.’

Ben busies himself being technical while everyone else dives into last-minute revision in case Parnell decides to play Ask the Audience.

‘So folks, Thomas Lapaine.’ Parnell walks over to the incident board and lands a meaty paw on his picture. ‘We need to get him back under this roof again because the PM threw up something very interesting – Alice had given birth to a child at some point. The shape of the cervix and pelvis confirms it. It’s hard to say when exactly, and I’m not even sure what this means, but it’s something he neglected to mention.’

‘Well, leave me out of that discussion, please,’ says Renée. ‘I think I’ve burned my bridges there – the first time we met I told him his wife was dead, the second time I told him she’d been lying through her teeth about who she really was.’

‘Bad, huh?’ I ask.

‘As bad as you’d expect. A few tears. A lot of shouting. He threw a glass at the wall as well – his mum shooed me out then, told me I was “impudent” and that she didn’t like my tone.’ Renée grins and I know what’s coming. ‘Didn’t like my skin-tone, more like. I don’t think Mother has a very diverse social set, if you know what I mean. It was a big enough shock learning her daughter-in-law was a hundred per cent Irish.’

Emily stops chewing a hangnail, straightens up. ‘Boss, I met the IVF consultant yesterday and I saw the patient registration form they both filled out. There was nothing on there about a prior pregnancy.’

‘Maybe Thomas Lapaine had no idea,’ I suggest. ‘It could have been before they met?’