Angel Kiss - Laura Jane Cassidy [78]
The next morning there was no change. Des was still in a critical condition. I wondered what that meant. Was he more likely to die than to pull through? I asked Mum if she thought he was going to be OK. I’d needed her to say yes. I needed the reassurance that everything was going to be OK. But all she could say was, ‘I don’t know.’
That evening Mum, Colin and I drove to Carrick to hand in Beth’s bag to the Gardai and make a statement. As I dropped it down on the counter I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. Like I was free. For now at least.
Chapter 26
One year later, on 2 November, Peter Mulvey was charged with the rape and murder of Elizabeth Cullen. Shortly after I’d handed the bag into the Garda station, Gardai had tracked down Alf Meehan in his new home and questioned him. He said that the bag did not belong to him and that Peter Mulvey had once asked him to burn it. Alf Meehan had suffered from a fear of fire all his life, and so, rather than burning it, he had buried it in his back garden, along with all his other unwanted rubbish. Before he buried it, he took the money out of it, but was not interested in the library card, or the violin strings, or the hat, or the lipstick.
When he heard of Beth Cullen’s disappearance he had his suspicions. But he never said anything. Alf was a simple man, whom Peter Mulvey had a tight control over. Peter Mulvey was the only person who knew that it was Alf who had once stolen £25 from the church offertory. Peter was on a business trip when he heard that Alf was moving house. He sent him a threatening letter, just to make sure he didn’t say a word to anyone.
There was much speculation regarding the exact events of the day that Beth Cullen went missing. The night I handed in the bag I had a dream. In that dream I saw exactly what had happened.
On the evening of 21 December 1986 Beth Cullen was cycling home from Carrick-on-Shannon. That day she had bought Christmas presents for her parents and younger brother and sister and a packet of violin strings. She was about twenty minutes from her house in Avarna when Peter Mulvey pulled up beside her and asked her if she wanted a lift. Beth knew Peter well, from the ceili band and from the church choir, and it had just started to rain, so she accepted his offer. He put down the back seats and lifted her black bicycle into the boot. Beth sat in the passenger seat with her shopping bags and her brown leather handbag. A few minutes later Peter took a left turn off the main road that led them on to a much narrower one.
‘I just have to drop something off to a man up here. Is that OK?’ he said. Beth nodded.
‘All set for Christmas?’ asked Peter, his eyes glancing over at Beth as he spoke. She was wearing a blue dress that rested just above her knees.
‘Almost,’ she said with a smile.
The left front tyre hit a pothole hard.
‘I better check that,’ said Peter. He swerved into the right, to an opening in the forest and stopped abruptly. He got out of the car to examine the damaged tyre. Beth recognized where she was – they were parked near the mines, only ten minutes from her house. She opened the car door.
‘It’s stopped raining now,’ she said. ‘Mam will have the dinner ready. I could just cycle from here.’
Peter Mulvey stood up straight. And that’s when she noticed his eyes. There was something strange about them. Something not right. He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. She screamed and kicked and desperately tried to pull away, but was helpless against Peter’s brutal strength. He dragged her into the trees, pushed her to the ground and climbed on top of her.
‘Get off me!’ she screamed. ‘Stop it! Get off me!’
All the time he looked straight at her, looked right into her eyes with his own manic stare. She stopped screaming. He didn’t like that. He wrapped his hands round her neck, and didn’t let go until she couldn’t breathe any more. He carried her body further into the forest and set it down on a carpet of twigs. Then he went back to his