Hannah
She looked up into Annalise’s face to show that she was listening.
Or trying to, anyway. It was hard to concentrate with the pain in her head.
‘Nobody can know about Jason,’ Annalise said.
‘Do you understand? So we can’t let the guards search the house.
It has …’ She paused, bit her lip. ‘This house has other secrets, and we need to keep them. Lives will be ruined if they get out. And it doesn’t matter where Jason is, does it?
Nobody’s looking for him. Nobody misses him. Nobody cares.’
Erin was a murderer.
Who’d just tried to kill Hannah, too.
The horror of being in the wall was already feeling unreal, just a bad dream, a particularly vivid nightmare.
‘So, here’s what you say,’ Annalise continued. ‘Tell the truth, but say Erin attacked you here, in the hall. Right inside the front door. And leave out anything she …’ Annalise glanced at Erin, who was staring into space. ‘Anything she may have said about what she did to him.’
The whine of a drill, from somewhere above their heads.
What was Steve doing up there?
‘You came outside to look for help,’ Annalise was saying now, ‘and I happened to be passing, on my way home from Sips. And I saw Steve walking by, and I called out to him for help. Then we rang the guards, called an ambulance … Hannah? Hannah, are you listening to me?’
She was listening, but she wasn’t understanding. Why would she lie to the guards about what had happened here tonight?
And for Annalise?
What had she got to do with any of this?
‘Who are you?’ Hannah asked through dry, cracked lips.
A rumbling sound, then: Steve, coming down the stairs.
‘The plasterboard is back up,’ he said from behind Hannah. ‘And I unrolled the carpet in the bedroom too, just in case.’
Annalise nodded. ‘Good. That’s good. Thank you.’ She turned back to Hannah. ‘We don’t have time for me to explain everything, but I used to live here. In this house. A long time ago. With—’
She stopped at the distant sound of sirens, then looked to Steve in question.
‘I didn’t call them,’ he said.
When Annalise gave Hannah the same look, she shook her head, just once, because the movement made the pounding inside it even more intense.
She didn’t say what she was thinking: that no one had had to call them. That she might have done it, effectively, by failing to call Garda Murphy back.
Everyone was silent, listening, as the sirens grew louder and louder.
Closer.
‘Maybe they’ll pass,’ Annalise whispered.
But they didn’t, and soon the hallway was pulsing with a bright blue light.
Hannah looked out at the squad cars, the paramedics, the gawping neighbours beyond the cordon, and felt a wave of déjà vu.
Delaney Row looked just like it did that night.
Only this time, she was the victim. She was in the back of an ambulance, not a Garda car.
But there was still a guard with her: Murphy, sitting on a pull-down seat to the right of the stretcher, watching her.
‘How are you feeling?’ Murphy asked.
They’d cleaned her wounds, put her arm in a sling and wrapped her head in bandages that also covered her left eye.
It looks worse than it is, the paramedic had said, trying to reassure her, but he’d also said that she’d need scans once they got her to the hospital.
They were refusing to give her any painkiller stronger than paracetamol, which may as well have been a pair of Tic Tacs.
Everything still hurt, and now it was starting to stiffen, too.
‘Peachy,’ Hannah said.
‘You know, when we first met, you said you didn’t often speak to the guards. But what’s this? Our third time this week?’
‘I don’t feel like speaking right now.’
‘You need to stay awake. We may as well.’
Hannah looked through the open doors, searching for a paramedic. ‘I don’t think this is allowed, to talk to me when I’m like this …’
Murphy scoffed. ‘Everyone in this country watches way too much TV, you know that?’ She folded her arms. ‘So what happened?’
‘My head hurts.’
‘And I want to find out why it does.’
‘I can’t really think straight right now.’
‘I’m not asking you to testify in court, Hannah.
I just want the headlines.’ Murphy stood up, so now she was looming over her on the stretcher.
‘That’s Erin O’Riordan out there, right?
The wife of your victim? And the woman in the CCTV I sent you.
Why don’t we start with why she was in your house tonight and why she was also in your house on Tuesday night, trashing the place? ’
‘She wanted me out of it,’ Hannah murmured.
‘Why?’
‘Because she thought it was hers.’
‘Why did she think that?’
But Hannah’s brain felt filled with cotton wool, threaded through with barbed wire. She couldn’t begin to answer that question. She didn’t have the energy, or the bandwidth.
‘Can we do this later, please? Or in the morning? I’ll tell you everything, I just can’t now. I can’t … I need to sleep.’
‘You’re not allowed to sleep,’ Murphy said sharply. ‘Let’s try some yes/no questions. Was it Erin who did this to you?’
After a beat, Hannah said, ‘Yes.’
‘She hit you with something?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘That’s not a yes/no.’
‘But it’s a one-word answer, so give it a try.’
‘The drill,’ Hannah said.
‘Where did she get a drill?’
‘My neighbour left it, in a crate in the hall.’
‘Was she already in the house when you arrived home?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘Outside.’
‘Did she force her way in?’
‘No.’
‘You let her in.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you talked?’
‘Yes.’
‘About what?’
Hannah hesitated.
Maybe the paracetamol was doing something. The pounding in her head had dialled down to more of a soft thumping, and the edges of her pain were becoming blurred. And this cleared enough space for her to remember what Annalise had said.
I used to live here. In this house. A long time ago.
Which made Hannah think of what she’d heard at the Murder House Club meeting.
Tuesday night, but now feeling like a million years ago.
The story about 1 Delaney Row from, what, 1968?
A couple of young newlyweds. Bruises and black eyes.
The husband disappearing one night, assumed to have fallen, drunk, into some river.
But local whispers telling a different story: that the wife had killed him and buried him somewhere in the house.
This house has other secrets, Annalise had said. We need to keep them. Lives will be ruined if they get out.
Hannah didn’t know what was really going on here, or what Annalise was referring to, but she did know what it felt like to have your life ruined.
And that made her hesitate.
She needed to delay. To find out more.
To say nothing, for the moment.
‘I don’t remember,’ Hannah said. ‘My head, it’s … I can’t think. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to talk, but—’
‘Hannah!’
A new voice, shouting her name.
And then Alex, standing at the rear of the ambulance, managing to look both panicked and relieved.
‘Jesus, Hannah. Are you OK? What the hell happened?’
‘We’re actually just—’ Murphy started.
‘I’m OK,’ Hannah said. She tried to smile, but it hurt. ‘Well, mostly.’
‘Are they taking you to hospital? Can I come with you?’
‘Oh …’ She started shaking her head, which hurt even more than the smile. ‘Alex, you really don’t have to.’
‘But I want to.’
A paramedic appeared behind Alex. ‘We need to go.’
A long, tense beat passed in silence.
Then finally – finally – Murphy turned to go.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she said to Hannah.
It was obviously a warning.
Hannah held her breath until Murphy had exited the ambulance and Alex had taken her place.
‘I know you really didn’t want to go tonight,’ he said as the ambulance doors closed. ‘But …’ A small grin. ‘Bit dramatic, all this. Don’t you think?’
He reached out and took her hand, and Hannah let him.
Say what you want about 1 Delaney Row, but at least it came with a next-door neighbour who had a habit of showing up at just the right time.