The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

NINE

‘Business must be good, Ollie.’ Patrick Arnold strolled around Oliver’s office, and then paused, where Oliver had stood only a moment before, to look down onto the quays.

‘No shortage of divorces right enough,’ Oliver said. ‘But I assume that’s not what’s brought you here?’

Patrick gave a short laugh. ‘No, but I might be putting a bit of business your way.’

‘Oh?’ Oliver sat on the edge of the desk and scrutinized Patrick Arnold. Time had been good to him. It must have been, what, fifteen years since he’d seen him?

Patrick crossed the room and put his hands on the back of the swivel chair in front of Oliver’s desk. ‘My brother owed a lot of money. In fact, he was deeply in debt. Gambling – dogs, horses, anything that moved he put money on it. Six months ago he took out a life assurance policy. I expect there’ll be questions asked: you know what these insurance companies are like; they’ll use anything they can find to get out of paying.’

‘Are you saying your brother’s death might have been suicide?’

Patrick shook his head. ‘No, but they might start poking around, trying to make it seem like that. There’s no way Vince killed himself. We just got the result of the autopsy and it says he died of heart failure from hypothermia, not drowning. Ever heard of someone freezing themselves to death?’

‘Still and all, seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? That he’d take out an insurance policy, and six months later he winds up in the canal.’

‘That’s what I’m saying, Ollie. There’s no way they’ll let something like that get past them.’

‘And why do you reckon he decided to take out the policy?’

‘Loan sharks. He’d borrowed money from a lot of sources, and not all of them legit. I’m guessing he was afraid of what they might do if he didn’t pay up, and that brings me to the next question – there are several parties who might come looking for what they’re owed and Rachel’s worried that she’ll have to pay them. She’s already been getting calls from some bookie that Vince ran up a debt with.’

‘Back up a second and let me get my head around this. You’re saying that your brother took out life assurance because he was concerned about some dodgy characters he owed money to. And you’re also telling me that the autopsy said that Vincent died of hypothermia – that there was no water in the lungs?’

‘Not enough, it seems, to make drowning the primary cause of death.’

‘So do you suspect any foul play here? Hypothermia could have happened anywhere. Who’s to say your brother wasn’t dead before his body even hit the water? I assume there’s to be an inquest?’

‘Yeah, but really we don’t suspect anything like that. I reckon Vince fell through the ice and couldn’t get out. He couldn’t swim and, remember, the canal was frozen over; it wouldn’t take much for you to lose your bearings down there and lose sight of the place you’d gone down, particularly if you panicked.’

‘In which case, you would drown,’ Oliver said.

‘I’m not a pathologist, Ollie, I don’t know. Maybe he died on the ice, and ended up in the water when it cracked. A lot of people were fool enough to go walking on it. We’ll have to wait for the result of the inquest to know for sure. In the meantime, we’re hoping you might look after the insurance end of things – and the loan sharks. I’m assuming that since some of these loans weren’t legit Rachel won’t have to shell out for them.’

Oliver shook his head. ‘It sounds like there wouldn’t be anything legally binding, but it might be safer if she just paid them. These are not the kind of people you want to rub up the wrong way, Patrick. Your brother knew that. As for the insurance – I’d need to see the policy before I could give you any advice on it. The inquest will hold things up, but then probate tends to put everything on hold for months anyway. I take it Rachel is the beneficiary of this policy?’

Patrick shrugged. ‘I presume so. I don’t know the details.’

‘And what’s the value, roughly speaking?’

‘Again, I have no idea. Vince and I never discussed it. I didn’t even know there was a policy until Rachel mentioned it.’

‘Okay. Well, firstly, if your sister-in-law has the money, I’d pay off that bookie. Everything else can be paid from your brother’s estate, provided he had one.’ Oliver paused. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t you looking after the legal end yourself?’

Patrick smiled. ‘Ah now … don’t tell me you didn’t hear about that, Ollie. God knows, lawyers love to talk.’

‘I heard something all right. But, like you say, people talk; you can never be too sure what to believe.’

Patrick spread his hands. ‘Well, I wish I could say it wasn’t true, but I got myself debarred shortly after I’d set up a practice. It’s not something I’m proud of. I made a stupid mistake – got caught up in something I shouldn’t have. But look, sure I’d have made a lousy lawyer anyway. Best to leave all that to pros like you. So I’ll bring you that policy to have a look over. Make sure the insurance crowd can’t find anything amiss. Rachel will be relieved to have a solicitor involved. It’s her I’m doing it for. Things are hard enough for her without having to deal with Vince’s financial mess.’

Oliver nodded and picked up his briefcase. ‘I’m happy to help.’

He showed Patrick Arnold out of the office and down the narrow stairs. Arnold thanked him and said he’d be in touch to go over the policy.

‘We must have a pint while I’m home, Ollie,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ Oliver told him. ‘Give me a shout.’

He locked the outer door and watched as Patrick Arnold hailed a cab. There was something about the whole thing that didn’t sit right.

TEN

The lights were on when Joanna returned home. She expected to find her mother in front of the television, but she wasn’t. When she climbed the stairs, she saw that her mother’s bedroom door was ajar and the light was on. She was talking in a low voice. Joanna peered through the opening from the landing, curious.

Angela was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to the door, talking on her mobile. ‘It’s not how … obviously, I didn’t expect that … no. But … she’s angry, what would you expect? Me?’ She laughed. ‘… well, you weren’t exactly … no, I know that. Okay, it’ll be around three. I’ll text you when I’m leaving. Don’t worry, I won’t, I have them here. Okay, I’ll see you then. Bye … bye.’

Her mother ended the call, stood up and went to the window.

‘Who was that?’ Joanna asked.

Angela spun round, hand to her chest. ‘Joanna, Jesus, you put the heart crossways in me. I didn’t hear you come in.’

Joanna went in and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘So who was on the phone?’

Her mother waved her hand distractedly. She’d left her mobile on the bedside table. ‘Oh, it was just Pauline,’ she said.

‘How is she?’

‘Grand, she’s grand. Are you in long?’

‘No, just a few minutes.’ Joanna picked up the phone. ‘Did you get a new mobile?’

‘What?’

Joanna held up the phone. ‘What happened to your other phone?’

‘Didn’t I tell you? It drowned. I left it on the cistern and forgot about it. Then, when I was cleaning, I knocked it into the loo. Dead as a dodo when I took it out.’

‘You should have put it in a bag of rice.’

Angela took the phone from Joanna and put it in her pocket. ‘Rice?’

‘Yeah, it absorbs the water. If you give it to me, we can try it,’ she said, following her mother from the room.

‘Ah, I’d say it’s too late now. Anyway, it had its day. It kept switching itself off.’

Joanna detected something edgy about her mother, probably because she’d overheard her on the phone. No doubt she’d been telling Pauline what had happened. She wondered how much her mother’s old friend knew. They’d been friends since they were teenagers, so she would have known about Vince Arnold. Girls didn’t keep those kinds of things from each other.

In the kitchen, Joanna watched her mother spoon cocoa powder into two mugs. It was a nightly ritual when they were both home. She was trying to decide how best to broach the subject of Rachel and the photo, and then, figuring that no time would be a good one, she simply said it. ‘I was talking to Rachel Arnold.’

Her mother turned sharply. ‘What, did she come here again?’ she said.

Joanna shook her head. ‘No, I went over there. I know what you’re thinking, but I wanted to find out about him. The thing is, when I was there she showed me this.’ She took the photo from her bag and held it out.

Her mother shrugged. ‘What about it?’ she said.

‘Vince Arnold had it. She said you denied ever having seen it, but I know you must have given it to him, Mum. There’re half a dozen just like it in the album downstairs.’

Angela poured hot water on the cocoa and slammed the kettle down in frustration. ‘Jesus, would that woman ever keep out of our business!’

‘But it is her business, Mum. And it’s mine, too. You said you had no contact with him after he discovered you were pregnant, but that’s not true, is it? You gave him that picture.’

‘I told you, Joanna, I haven’t seen Vince in years.’

‘So where did he get it then?’

‘I sent it to him after you’d made your confirmation. I don’t know why. I suppose I wanted him to see what he was missing – what he’d have had if he’d chosen differently, if he’d chosen us. I knew there was more between us than there’d ever been between him and her. It takes some people longer than others to see their mistakes.’

Joanna’s mother stirred the cocoa; she wouldn’t meet her eye. It was almost as though she were talking to herself. Joanna took her mug and, cradling it in both hands, took the next step.

‘She said they’d wanted to adopt me.’

Angela snorted derisively ‘She didn’t hold much back, did she?’ She raised her mug to her lips and took a sip of cocoa, then continued. ‘Rachel couldn’t have children, so she decided she’d try to take mine. I think she blamed that on Vince’s affair, the fact that she couldn’t get pregnant, but that had nothing to do with it.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He called me and said he wanted to meet. I thought when I received that call that maybe he’d changed his mind; “it’s about the baby,” he said. Would I meet him in a café to talk? When I arrived and saw her there I nearly turned and walked back out. They were curt, both of them. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. It made me glad that I’d made the effort, even if by then I knew that a reconciliation was the last thing on the cards.

‘“What do you intend to do?” he said. He couldn’t look at me, not with her there, but she was doing enough of that for both of them. “What about?” I said, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking. “The child … you don’t want to raise it surely?”

‘“And why wouldn’t I?” I said. I got mad then, told him if they expected me to get rid of it, they had another think coming, that he could run from his responsibilities if he liked, but I wasn’t going to. That’s when she started talking. “That’s not why we’re here,” she told me. “We want to help. It’s not easy bringing up a child on your own. People talk, and then there’s the bills, it’s not cheap.” She went on, listing things out as though I hadn’t thought of them. I watched her, wondering what it was this woman wanted, baffled by the fact that she said she wanted to help me – and then she said it. Six thousand pounds – she took a cheque book from her purse and showed it to me. She’d taken the trouble to write it out. I looked at my name in the swirly black ink – I’d get it as soon as I’d handed the baby over – nobody would ever have to know, she said. I could get on with my life; forget the whole thing had ever happened.

‘Vince sat there all the while she was talking, silent – eyes lowered to the carpet. I ignored Rachel: willed him to look at me so that I might see in his eyes what he made of this preposterous suggestion, but he continued to sit there, eyes downcast – not daring to meet mine. “What’s wrong,” I asked him, “can’t you even look at me?” “You should think about it,” he said, looking past me – “what she said is right – he’d have a good life.” He – he said. He was convinced you’d be a boy.

‘I stood up then, told them both that they could keep their money – I had no intention of giving up my child. If Vince wasn’t willing to leave Rachel, then he was giving up any right he had to you. Not that I had to state that – Rachel wasn’t about to let him have anything to do with a child that wasn’t hers too.’

Angela stopped talking – she seemed exhausted by having to go over it all. Joanna tried to absorb all that her mother had told her.

‘And you didn’t see them again?’ she asked.

Her mother shrugged. ‘I saw her on the bus once. I had you in the pushchair. She kept staring at you. I pretended I didn’t know her – got off the bus two stops early and walked the rest of the way home.’

‘Did you not feel … sorry for her?’

‘I suppose I did sometimes. He should have left her – it wasn’t fair – she’d have met someone else – we’d have been happy. But people don’t always do the right thing.’

Angela stood up from her stool, rinsed her mug and left it on the draining board. She spoke with her back to the room. ‘I know I can’t tell you what to do, Joanna, but I’d rather you didn’t see Rachel Arnold again. And it’s not for what she might tell you – you needn’t think that, I just don’t want her latching onto you now that Vince is gone.’

Joanna said nothing. Enough lies had been told, and she wasn’t prepared to commit to not seeing Rachel again. There were things she wanted to know about her father.

Awkwardly, her mother kissed her goodnight. It was the first time since Rachel Arnold had come into their lives. She looked tired, Joanna thought. When she reached the door, she turned.

‘I almost forgot, Pauline asked me to go shopping with her tomorrow afternoon – she wants to get a dress. She’s going to a wedding or something. So I won’t be here when you get in.’

‘Okay, Mum, I’ll see you tomorrow night then.’

Joanna sat for a while in the kitchen, looking out into the dark, listening to her mother moving about upstairs. She thought of the solicitor she’d met at the funeral and went out to the hall to check her coat pocket to see if she still had his card. She took it out and looked at it. She had a sudden urge to see the place where the man, Oliver, had found her father’s body. She decided that she would call him the following day when her mother was not around.

ELEVEN

‘So where exactly were you when you saw him?’

Oliver pointed down the bank towards the lock. ‘Just there,’ he said. ‘I’d crossed over and come down the other side.’

He watched as the girl, Joanna, moved towards the water’s edge. She knelt close to the damp earth, lifted the camera and began to photograph the scene. She zoomed in on the reeds where he told her he’d spotted what he’d thought was a coat. She asked him to describe as clearly as he could what he had seen – the position of her father’s body and how the rescue team had removed him from the water. She moved back then and took some shots of the lock with the reeds in the foreground. He heard the sound of the shutter opening and closing repeatedly until she rose and walked stealthily onto the lock to point her camera at the murky canal beneath. It was coming on for four in the afternoon and the light had begun to fade.

Oliver took the opportunity to observe the girl as she stood there, eye to the lens, her attention focused entirely on the camera. She was quite striking, but in a different way altogether from the Hernandez sisters. Her auburn hair hung loose over her shoulders, and her skin was so pale that it appeared almost translucent. He wondered how old she was and guessed that she was perhaps mid-twenties. She had told him as they’d walked along the canal road about how she was the fruit of Vince Arnold’s early infidelity. He would have been, what, late twenties when he’d had the fling with Joanna’s mother? According to the papers, he was fifty-four when he died.

Oliver had not told Joanna about Patrick’s visit. He’d arranged to meet him that evening in Brogans’ pub, and he’d decided to tell him that he couldn’t take on the legal work he’d offered him. Given Patrick’s record and the circumstances in which Vince Arnold’s insurance policy had been taken out, he wanted no involvement. The last thing he needed was to become embroiled in a potentially dubious insurance claim. Patrick could find some other patsy to look after that one. His gut told him to stay clear.

The girl had finished taking pictures. She put the cover back on the lens and retraced her steps down the bank.

‘Do you reckon it was an accident?’ she asked.

Oliver looked at her, at her pale skin and eyes the colour of storms. ‘The family seems to think so,’ he said. There was no point in telling her about the autopsy result, raising questions in the girl’s mind. She was still trying to get to grips with having discovered the identity of her father.

‘Rachel said that you studied with Patrick?’

‘Yes, it was a long time ago now.’

‘Is he a solicitor, too?’

‘No. He hasn’t practised in a long time. He … well, to tell you the truth he was struck off. I asked him about it when we were speaking. He was quite frank, said he’d done something he shouldn’t have and got himself debarred.’

Joanna nodded. ‘Did he tell you anything else? Did he say anything about my father?’

Oliver hesitated, and then decided that it might be better to tell the girl the truth. She would hear it anyway, he assumed, from Rachel or Patrick if they were to keep in touch. ‘He mentioned that your father may have run up some debts. He was a sports journalist, I believe, and it’s not unusual for people involved to fall into the trap. Betting is a tempting game. I’ve seen men lose everything over it.’

‘Do you think maybe he … that he might have taken his own life? People often do, don’t they, when they have problems like that?’

Oliver shook his head. ‘It did occur to me when Patrick told me, but I asked him and he said no. They think that Vince was simply unlucky, another victim of the freeze.’

They had started walking, left the lock and reeds behind. Oliver pointed towards the camera. He wanted to change the subject and to get to know something about the girl.

‘You like taking pictures?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘This probably looks a bit strange, macabre even. But yes, I take the camera most places, never miss an opportunity. I’m doing a degree at the moment in the IADT.’

‘That’s the art college?’

‘Art, yes. What – you don’t see photography as an art form?’

Oliver laughed. He knew that she was trying to bait him, make him say the wrong thing. ‘I’m sure it is. I never thought much about it.’ They were nearing the point where he turned off for home. He thought about the house and if there was anything there that he might not want the girl to see. He had an hour or more before he was to meet Arnold and, despite the circumstances, he was enjoying her company. ‘I live just round the corner,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy continuing this conversation over coffee?’

The girl hesitated, but then agreed.

‘Maybe you can show me some of your pictures,’ he said. ‘Convince me that it’s art.’

She laughed. ‘Not on this, I can’t. It’s your traditional wind-on camera, nothing digital going on here. I’ve got to develop these in the darkroom.’

‘Wow, people still use those things?’

‘Mostly only photography students, to be honest, but I love it. Some professional photographers still do it this way, but it’s more expensive – the money you have to spend on solutions and stuff makes it a costly hobby.’

‘And is that what it is – a hobby?’ Oliver asked.

‘For now it is. Obviously, I’m hoping it’ll pay the bills one day. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a lot of point in investing all this money in a degree course. At least that’s what my mother says.’

‘Doesn’t she approve?’

Joanna shrugged. ‘I think she finds the arts a bit whimsical. She’d have been happier if I’d gone on to study something more practical – business, or law maybe – like you. What area do you work in?’

‘I practise family law: divorces, custody cases, nothing too exciting.’

They had reached the house. The girl waited as he turned his key in the door, and he wondered again if there was anything lying around that shouldn’t be. ‘I hope you’ll excuse the mess,’ he said. ‘A man on his own tends to let things go …’

She followed him down the hall. When they entered the living room he saw her eyes travel quickly around, taking everything in. He followed her gaze – there was nothing particular in this room to suggest a woman’s presence. He had removed all evidence of Mercedes – packed everything away where he didn’t have to see them. Joanna took the camera from round her neck and carefully placed it on the coffee table. He asked her if she’d like tea or coffee, and she followed him into the kitchen and sat at the breakfast bar while he scalded the pot and put the teabags in. He felt very conscious of her presence and wondered what to do or say next.

‘So what do you do for fun?’ she asked him.

‘I sue people.’

She laughed. ‘No, really,’ she said.

He turned to her, smiling. ‘You’re right, that’s not so much fun, but it’s all I seem to have time for lately.’

He steered the conversation away from himself by asking her about her course.

‘I’m putting together a portfolio at the moment,’ she told him. ‘We’re having an exhibition in a few weeks’ time.’ She paused and then jumped up from her stool. ‘In fact, if you’re really interested, I can show you the shots. I have them saved to a USB. It should be in my bag.’

‘Great, I’d love to see,’ he told her. ‘You go get it, and I’ll take the tea into my office. It’s just through here.’ He took the two mugs, placed them on the desk and booted up his computer. Joanna went out to the living room to retrieve her bag.

They were standing side by side in the small room watching the slide show of her photographs when the phone rang.

‘Aren’t you going to get that?’ Joanna asked him.

‘No, let them ring back,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing that can’t wait.’

He closed the office door on the ringing lest the answer machine should kick in.

TWELVE

Joanna arrived home to an empty house. Her mother had not yet returned from her shopping expedition with Pauline. She decided that she would process the film on which she’d taken the canal bank shots that afternoon, but it was just as she had that thought that she remembered she’d left the USB stick containing the photos for her college presentation in Oliver Molloy’s laptop. She looked at the clock. She needed that USB for her class the next day. She had two choices: she could either scan the photos again, which would take a lot of time, or she could go back to Oliver’s for the stick. She didn’t have his home phone number so she would just have to take the chance on his being home.

Joanna drove slowly past the row of terraced houses until she came to Oliver’s. There was a light on in the front room, but it went out just as she turned off the engine. Perhaps she had just caught him before he went out, she thought.

She was about to get out of the car when the front door opened and a woman stepped out. The woman pulled the door behind her and walked swiftly down the path and crossed the road just in front of Joanna’s car. She couldn’t say why but, instinctively, Joanna shrunk down in her seat. She didn’t want to be seen sitting in her car outside Oliver’s house, even though she was doing nothing wrong.

She’d had a clear view of the woman as she’d crossed in front of the car. She was dark-skinned and dark-haired, and definitely didn’t look Irish. She wore a leather jacket, a short skirt and knee-high boots. If Joanna had had her camera, she’d have felt compelled to take her picture, but she’d left it in the darkroom back at the house. She continued to watch the woman until she grew small in the distance, then she vanished altogether. Joanna wondered if she’d hailed a cab at the side of the road.