In the Woods

"I'm sending Rosalind to counseling, like the judge said. I've done some reading and all the books say it makes no difference to people like her, they're made that way and there's no cure, but I have to try. And I'll keep her at home as long as I can, where I can see what she's at and try to stop her pulling her tricks on anyone else. She's off to college in October, music at Trinity, but I've told her I won't pay her rent on a flat-she'll stay at home, if it's that or get a job. Margaret still believes she did nothing and you lot set her up, but she's glad enough to keep her at home awhile longer. She says Rosalind's sensitive." He cleared his throat with a harsh sound, as if the word tasted bad. "I'm sending Jess to live with my sister in Athlone as soon as the scars on her wrists go down; get her out of harm's way."

His mouth twisted in that bitter half-smile. "Harm. Her own sister." For an instant I thought of what that house must have been like for the past eighteen years, what it must be like now. It made a slow, sick horror heave in my stomach.

"Do you know something?" Jonathan said abruptly and painfully. "Margaret and I were only going out a couple of months when she found out she was pregnant. We were both terrified. I managed to bring it up once, that maybe she should think about…taking the boat to England. But…sure, she's very religious. She felt bad enough about getting pregnant to start with, never mind…She's a good woman, I don't regret marrying her. But if I'd known what was-what it-what Rosalind was going to be, God forgive me, I'd have dragged her on that boat myself."

I wish to God you had, I wanted to say, but it would have been cruelty. "I'm sorry," I said again, uselessly.

He glanced at me for a moment; then he took a breath and shrugged his coat closer around his shoulders. "I'd better head in, see if Rosalind's finished up."

"I think she'll be awhile."

"She probably will," he said tonelessly, and plodded up the steps into the courthouse, his overcoat flapping behind him, hunching a little against the wind.

* * *

The jury found Damien guilty. Given the evidence presented, they could hardly have done otherwise. There had been various complicated, multilateral legal fights about admissibility; psychiatrists had had jargon-heavy debates about the workings of Damien's mind. (All this I heard third-hand, in passing snatches of conversation or in interminable phone calls from Quigley, who had apparently made it his mission in life to find out why I had been relegated to paperwork in Harcourt Street.) His barrister went for a double-barreled defense-he was temporarily insane, and even if he wasn't, he believed he was protecting Rosalind from grievous bodily harm-which often generates enough confusion to be mistaken for reasonable doubt; but we had a full confession, and, perhaps more importantly, we had autopsy photos of a dead child. Damien was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life, which in practice usually works out at somewhere between ten and fifteen years.

I doubt that he appreciated the multiple ironies of this, but that trowel quite possibly saved his life, and certainly spared him various unsavory prison experiences. Because of the sexual assault on Katy, he was considered a sex offender and sentenced to be held in the high-risk unit, with the pedophiles and rapists and other prisoners who would not fare well in general population. This was presumably something of a mixed blessing, but it did at least increase his chances of getting out of jail alive and without any communicable diseases.

There was a minor lynch mob, maybe a few dozen people, waiting for him outside the courthouse after the sentencing. I watched the news in a dingy little pub near the quays, and a low, dangerous rumble of approval rose from the regulars as, on screen, impassive uniforms guided Damien stumbling through the crowd and the van pulled away under a hail of fists and hoarse shouts and the odd half-brick. "Bring in the bloody death penalty," someone muttered in a corner. I was aware that I should feel sorry for Damien, that he had been fucked from the moment he walked over to that sign-up table and that I of all people ought to be able to muster up some compassion for this, but I couldn't; I couldn't.

* * *