Page 74 of The Trap by Catherine
DEBRIEF
Angela had been sitting in the passenger seat of a Garda car parked on the road outside Caroline O’Callaghan’s house for over an hour. No matter where she looked, pulsing blue lights lit up the night. When she closed her eyes, they continued to flash on the back of her eyelids. She was getting a headache.
Finally, she saw Denise walking down the drive, lifting the blue-and-white Garda tape and ducking underneath it. Angela studied her for clues as to what had happened inside the house, but there were none; Denise looked exactly the same as she had when she’d arrived. She wasn’t even flushed.
The driver’s door opened and Denise got in. There was a beat of silence before she turned to Angela and said, “So. How do I put this...? How about... What the actual fuckingfuck?”
Angela felt her cheeks coloring, but there was no point doing anything except telling the whole truth now. She took Denise through everything that had happened since Denise had left her in the MPU: her deciding to come to Caroline’s house, what she saw when she got there, what she’d said, what she’d done.
“Well,” Denise said when she was finished. “The good news is that the car you rented by the hour is now part of a scene, so God only knows when you’ll get it back.”
She’d been barely able to afford renting it for the few hours she’d thought this errand would take. The prospect of an eye-watering charge should’ve made her feel sick to her stomach but, tonight, that felt like the least of her problems.
“I’m sorry,” Angela said.
“Aren’t we all,” Denise muttered.
“What made you decide to come?”
“What do you mean?”
“You sent a text,” Angela said, “telling me to leave and ring you.”
“That was in response to your first one. But then I got the SOS and the picture, so things changed.”
“Oh.”
Angela had got Denise’s first textaftershe’d sent her the SOS and picture. Caroline had been telling the truth about one thing: reception around here was indeed patchy.
“Where is she now?” Angela asked. “Caroline?”
“Still in there.” Denise cocked her head to indicate the house. “They’re going to bring her to Naas any minute.”
“Has she said anything?”
“Only that she wants to get legal representation.”
“What happened in there?”
“I caught her trying to get over her garden wall,” Denise said.
“What’s happening now?”
“Well...” Denise hesitated. “Let’s just say there’s a patch in the garden that doesn’t match up with the rest.”
“Shit. So she... Are you saying that Caroline killed—?”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Denise said firmly. “And we never assume. But it turns out wedon’thave any evidence that Tana Meehan was on that train, even though Heuston has cameras everywhere, including inside the trains, and she would’ve probably got the Luas to the station, which also has cameras, which nobody thought to check either. The local boys just took Caroline’s word for it that Tana had arrived back in Kildare. By the time Tide got going, all the data that could’ve proved otherwise was long gone.” Denise shook her head. “Bloody morons.”
“But what do youthink???” Angela pressed.
Denise turned to her. “What doyouthink?”
Angela tried to push aside her headache and organize her thoughts.
“I think she has some sort of weird obsession with Roland,” she said. “Maybe going back to when they were all in school together. Maybe she did see Tana Meehan at that bus stop that night, but she picked her up and brought her here, and something happened—maybe Tana saw her little gallery wall—and Tana ended up dead. Or maybe it was all pre-planned, so Tana would be out of the way and Caroline could have Roland for herself. Either way, afterward, Tana’s parents make contact with Caroline and... Well, maybe she gets close to the families because that keeps her close to us, the Gardaí, via the FLOs, and keeps her abreast of the investigation, of what’s been found, of what they know. Or maybe she’s just a fantasist in all areas of her life, and she just liked being a part of this.” She stopped and looked to Denise, eyebrows raised, waiting for confirmation.
But Denise just shrugged and said, “Maybe.” She sighed, long and loud. “We won’t get any answers unless Caroline starts talking and, anyway, who cares? It doesn’t matter why. That’s not going to help anyone. What matters is getting a conviction. I don’t need it to come wrapped up in a neat little bow. And if there is something out in the garden, well... We can give Tana’s parents their daughter back. That’s what’s important, don’t you think?”
