View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Bangor University: eBangor / Prifysgol Bangor Dark Room Prologue Bleak. The man had never known it so bleak. He shuddered and with hands raw from the wind he pulled the flimsy coat closer to his body, but it was no protection against the cold. The wind had gone, but an icy front from the North had replaced it. He had heard it said that it was the harshest winter in forty years. He certainly recalled no other like it. In the daytime he walked the city streets seeking warmth in shop doorways until the security guards began to look at him with suspicion. He was no thief. He would rather starve than steal, and he made it his business to move on before any false accusations could begin. The shops were quiet after the bustle of the New Year sales. The Christmas lights hung unlit across the streets. There was something sad about the end of another year, but maybe this one would be different. The man shivered, and turned down a side street where he might at least get shelter in a doorway. From a shop window light spilled into the narrow street. The man looked at the sign above the door - gold letters on peeling light blue paint that read Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. He looked through the window. On a tall stool, a bespectacled woman in her sixties was sitting at the counter reading a newspaper. She looked up as he pushed the door open and he felt a rush of warmth from the electrical heater by the counter. The woman greeted him. ‘I’m looking for a coat,’ he said. ‘Something warm.’ She eyed him and got down from the stool. She went to a rail and he watched her push aside sweaters and shirts until she pulled out a hanger with a long navy blue coat. ‘This is just in,’ she said. ‘Should be your size.’ The man tried it on. The woman pulled back a curtain to show him a full-length mirror. He looked at his reflection – at his unshaven face and unruly hair. It had been some time since he’d had a shave or a haircut. He turned away from the mirror. ‘How much is it?’ he asked. ‘Ten euro,’ the woman replied. 1 He took the change from his pockets and began to count it, embarrassed as he felt the woman’s eyes upon him. ‘I’ve only got seven,’ he told her. The woman nodded. ‘I’ll tell you what, give me your one and we’ll make it five,’ she said. He looked at his tattered old coat on the rail where he’d thrown it. It wasn’t worth five euro. It wasn’t worth anything, but he nodded and handed the woman the fistful of change, grateful for her kindness. 2 Chapter One Oliver Molloy woke abruptly and felt the urgent need to get out of the house. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he tried desperately to rid himself of the remnants of a particularly disturbing dream, but it refused to be obliterated, even after he’d turned on the dim overhead light. Sometimes his dreams were so realistic that he found himself searching the house to see if Mercedes had returned. He walked from room to room switching on lights, sometimes even going so far as to call his wife’s name, but he knew that despite his compulsion to do such things, his thoughts were irrational. The only place that he would see Mercedes now was in that dark recess of his mind, and that thought disturbed him more than any dream. It had been almost a month since he had seen her, a month since that awful night, but every time he closed his eyes she was there. He had begun to dread the night, the time when he was most susceptible to these visitations. He feared that soon he would sleep like a fish - eyes wide, such was the trepidation that these nocturnal episodes caused. Mercedes had become like a cataract, something he couldn’t see past, and it was only daylight that could dispel her presence and allow him to breathe normally again. Oliver pulled on his heavy winter coat and wound a scarf round his neck. The scarf caught on his unshaven jaw. He didn’t care about his dishevelled appearance. It was unlikely that he would encounter anyone out walking in the hours before dawn. He eased the front door open. The street was quiet. A lone cat crossed the neighbours’ garden and leapt onto the wall between them. It looked at him, eyes luminous in the semi-darkness, and then opened its mouth and let out a silent cry. When he didn’t respond, it moved on. Finally, a thaw had begun. For three weeks the city had been held captive to an unprecedented freeze. A layer of ice covered the canal still, but already it had thinned at the edges to reveal the murky water beneath. Oliver watched it trickle slowly from amongst the reeds, and heard the steady drip as the willows wept at the water’s edge and stained the ice grey. Through his leather shoes the cold crept and he hurried his step to improve the circulation in both his hands and feet, which didn’t bear the weather well. When he had reached the last lock before the main road, the point at which he normally turned back for home, the sky had begun to lighten. He stepped onto the lock, crossed halfway and looked back along the canal in the direction of home. His head was clearer now, but still his dreams had not left him. In 3 the time that they had been together, he had never dreamt of Mercedes. Now, she wouldn’t leave him alone, and every dream was an attack, a bitter recrimination. The dream from which he’d woken that morning had been the most disturbing yet. With one hand on her hip, she’d stood there, her body jutting forward as she told him that he was nothing without her. She had called him a fake, said that it wouldn’t take long for people to see right through him. Then she’d pointed to him and laughed, and when he looked down his body was transparent. There was nothing but a watery outline that showed where it used to be. Inside was hollow, bereft of organs; he was nothing - just like she said he was. He shuddered and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. He had to stop obsessing over Mercedes. The dreams were constructs of his own conscience; he knew that. No good would come of it. He walked down the opposite side of the lock and gazed into the water. There were no swans near the bridge where they usually gathered, waiting for the students from the nearby college to throw them crusts from leftover sandwiches. He supposed they’d return now that the thaw had come. As he stood staring into the water, he became aware of something caught beyond the reeds. It looked like an old coat; something that may have been discarded before the freeze came. He stared harder, eyes straining in the half-light, and then he saw something shiny amongst the bulrushes. Gingerly, he stepped down the bank. The mud was frozen beneath his feet and he edged closer to the water, crouching as near as he dared to peer between the rushes. Where the ice had melted a man’s hand rested above the water, the fingers blue-white. On the second finger a gold wedding band caught the first light. Hastily, Oliver retreated from the water’s edge. It occurred to him that he could go home and forget that he had ever seen the body beneath the ice. He didn’t want to phone the Guards, didn’t want to answer their questions. It was the kind of attention that he would rather avoid, but even as this thought went through his mind, he found himself dialling the number for emergency services. He could not ignore his civic duty, and so he waited with the dead man for help to arrive. They took their time in coming. He guessed there was no hurry for a man whose life had already ended. He moved down the bank again and stared into the water. The body was face down, arms raised above the head, as though making a plea for help. The fingers had stiffened into position and looked as though they might snap, like dead wood, if he were to touch them. He wondered what had happened, if the 4 man had fallen into the icy water and had been unable to get out or if it had been planned. He couldn’t fathom why anyone would do such a thing; there were easier ways to end it. Of course there was a third option, one that made him uneasy just waiting in the place where it may have happened. The man could have been murdered and his body dumped in the water. It wouldn’t have been the first gangland killing in the area, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. It made him glad he’d opted to practise family rather than criminal law. The former had its share of malevolence, but as a rule it didn’t involve bloodshed.