Page 150 of The Guilty Girl

‘A r-rapist?’ He shook his head vehemently.

‘I’ll be interviewing Hannah Byrne shortly. I believe her memory has returned.’ White lie, but what the heck. ‘I’m sure she’ll tell me the truth when she hears a little girl has been murdered.’

Lottie grabbed the file, giving the impression the interview was over, and stood.

‘Hold on. Wait,’ Cormac said, his voice at an unnaturally high pitch. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. Hannah wanted it. She dragged me out to the garden and down to the cabin, not the other way around, and we had … you know … It was consensual.’

‘How can a girl who has been drugged with GHB give her consent?’

‘I didn’t know that, and she had a condom.’

‘I’m sure many girls carry condoms. Doesn’t mean they want to have sex with every waster they meet.’

‘Is there a question there, Inspector?’ Scally said.

‘No comment,’ Cormac said.

‘Too late for that line,’ Lottie said and sat. ‘Tell me what really happened at Lucy McAllister’s party.’

Without looking at his solicitor for a prompt, the lad launched into a jumble of words.

‘Look, I’m nothing. I have nothing. I do a bit of gardening at the school and at Lucy’s house and brand it landscaping to earn more money. That’s all. I … I panicked when you turned up yesterday morning asking questions. Twisted the truth a little. I was terrified.’

His solicitor put down his pen and folded his arms as if to say, it’s your funeral, son.

‘Go on,’ Lottie urged.

‘You have to believe me, no matter what Hannah says, I did not force her, but I didn’t realise how out of it she was. Not then. Afterwards, we both fell asleep in the cabin. Something woke me. I thought it was a car engine, like an old car with a bad exhaust. Anyway, I shook Hannah. She was groggy and couldn’t string two words together. I tried to dress her and pulled on my jeans and found my shirt. I just wanted to go home and have a proper sleep.’

‘But you didn’t go straight home, did you?’

‘No.’

‘What did you do?’ Lottie hoped he was about to admit to the murder of Lucy McAllister. She kept her fingers crossed under the table.

‘The party seemed to be over, even though there were lights on everywhere. I got Hannah into my car, but she started freaking out. Shouting about leaving her rucksack behind and how her mother would go ape when she saw the clothes she was wearing. She was totally … What’s the word?’

‘Irrational?’ Lottie offered.

‘Yeah. She started thumping me. That was when I got most of the scratches, because I still had my shirt off. I pulled it on fast, I can tell you.’

‘What did you do next?’

‘You have to understand what Hannah was like at the time. You’d think she had a million euros in her fucking bag. Nothing I said could make her stop crying or leave without it. So we went back into the house. She came with me because I hadn’t a clue what her bag looked like or where she’d left it. She was mumbling pure shite, but I figured out she’d left it upstairs, so we went up there. Found it in a room and went back down again. That’s … that’s when we noticed the blood in the living room. The smashed patio door. Jesus.’

‘Take a drink of water.’

He shook his head. His solicitor moved to whisper in his ear, but Cormac shrugged him off.

‘I knew something bad had happened. There was no sign of Lucy. I said we should look for her in case she was injured or maybe someone else was. I dropped Hannah’s bag on the couch and we went back upstairs. That’s when … we found Lucy.’ He took the cup of water then and drained it.

Lottie had questions, but they could wait.

He squashed the cup between his fingers. ‘She was covered in blood. She was dead. It was awful. I’ve never seen a dead person before and I was sure I’d throw up. We didn’t kill her, that’s the truth. Hannah freaked out again. Started to bawl. She nearly fell over on top of the body. I pulled her away, but her hands had blood on them and then I got the blood on me too.’

Shit, he was about to cry. Lottie could see the tears gathering along the rims of his eyes. Not yet, lad. She needed to get the full story before he fell apart. ‘You’re doing great, Cormac. What happened then?’

‘I got Hannah down the stairs again, talking to her all the time, struggling to calm her and trying not to leave blood anywhere. I pushed her into the living room to fetch her bag from where I’d dropped it. I wanted to get the hell out of that house. She screeched at me to wash the blood off her hands. We went into the bathroom downstairs and I scrubbed us both as fast I could. The towel was bloody, so I stuffed it in her bag and then we left.’

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