Chapters (60)
Doireann stared at him. ‘Did I what? Did I know any of them? Of course I didn’t know any of them! I don’t know nobody! Only my stupid da and that geebag of a woman he calls his wife, and Mrs Haggerty, and Mrs Haggerty’s gom of a son Charlie who keeps waving his langer at me whenever he comes out of his bedroom and asking if I want some. Why should I need to know somebody to know that I’ll never have what they have?’
Shaking with anger, she held up one hand and counted off on her fingers the things that she believed she would never have. ‘Never have friends. Never have a job. Never have enough money for a holiday, nor somebody to go with. Never have a boyfriend who loves me. Never have a husband. Never have children.’
She paused for breath, and then she leaned forward and said, much more softly, ‘Do you know something, I’ve never had somebody cuddle me. Never. Nobody has ever put their arms around me and told me that I’m the one for them.’
‘But you’re alive,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘You’re alive and God loves you for a start, otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all. And you’re as beautiful as you feel, not as other people judge you. It’s just tragic that you took so many other people’s lives away from them so that you could have your revenge for being bullied.’
Doireann burst into tears and started to rock backwards and forwards in her chair, making a thin keening sound. Sionha looked across at Katie and raised her eyebrows.
‘I don’t think there’s much point in taking this any further,’ Katie told her. ‘It seems that she’s going to plead guilty to all but one of the charges, the murder of Roisin Carroll, and we’ll have to question her about that again later. First, though, we’ll have to talk to her landlady about her whereabouts on Tuesday, and interview the eyewitness again, and see what other evidence we can come up with. Doireann may not have pushed Roisin Carroll into the river, but somebody did.’
Once the garda had ushered Doireann back to her cell, Sionha said, ‘Well… you saw for yourself how unstable she is. I think we need to have a psychiatric report, don’t you, before we take her prosecution any further?’
‘I agree. And I’ll make sure that we keep a twenty-four-hour watch on her, too. I’ve come across young women like her before, who feel they have nothing to live for.’
Sionha folded up her spectacles and stood up. ‘I think there are times when we all feel a bit like that, DS Maguire. When we’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.’