Ryan’s Confrontation with Jonathan Devlin

Rob Ryan’s confrontation with Jonathan Devlin turns an interview about Katy Devlin’s murder into an inquiry about an old rape and a disturbing sound in the woods. Jonathan’s account supplies both a direct admission of his own role in the assault on Sandra Scully and an uncertain memory of laughter afterward, leaving Ryan with a possible witness to the old crime whose identity remains unknown.

The interview at Jonathan’s home

Jonathan is alone when Ryan arrives. Margaret has taken Rosalind and Jessica to her sister’s, and the house seems suspended in their absence: no food is cooking, no television or washing machine is running, and nothing suggests that Jonathan had been occupied before Ryan came. Jonathan looks markedly changed, having lost enough weight that his clothes and face seem loose; his closely cut hair adds to the impression of a lonely, desperate man. He gestures Ryan toward the sofa and sits opposite him, leaning forward with clasped hands.

The meeting begins with the ordinary language of an investigation. Ryan asks how the family is managing and says the police are following up leads, while declining to disclose specifics. The urgency Ryan had felt on the journey has ebbed by the time he enters the house; he feels calmer and more lucid than he has in weeks. The room’s quiet sharpens that change. A kitchen clock ticks, late-afternoon light crosses the grimy windows and polished furniture, and the two men sit facing one another across a small coffee table. Ryan senses that there is no need to rush the questions.

The interview shifts when Ryan tells Jonathan that two separate witnesses place him, Cathal Mills, and Shane in the rape of a local girl in the summer of 1984. Jonathan reacts sharply, demanding to know what the allegation has to do with Katy and whether Ryan is accusing him. Ryan notes that Jonathan has not denied it. When Jonathan corrects him to call it an alleged rape, Ryan accepts the distinction, explaining that he is interested only in whether the matter bears on a murder. The exchange establishes the interview’s narrow purpose: the old crime matters here as a possible investigative lead, not as a charge Ryan claims to have proved.

The disclosure of the assault

Jonathan insists that he never behaved improperly toward his daughters and says that he loves them. His denial is specific: he describes ordinary affection and rejects any implication that he touched them wrongly. Ryan acknowledges the point, then explains that the police are considering whether Sandra might have had a connection to Katy’s death through revenge for the rape. He stresses that this is only an outside possibility, that there is no solid evidence, and that Jonathan must not contact Sandra because doing so could compromise a case. Jonathan says he will not contact her. Ryan then asks him to give his own account of what happened.

Jonathan recalls a summer day in the woods, in a clearing where the group had spent time before. He describes the four of them—himself, Cathal, Shane, and Sandra—being there late in the afternoon after spending much of the day outside. His account presents the setting as part of a long, carefree summer, but that atmosphere does not excuse what followed; Jonathan explicitly says there was no excuse for their actions. Recounting how rough play among the young men became entangled with Cathal and Sandra’s joking, he describes a sudden change in the group’s behavior.

Asked directly whether all three men raped Sandra, Jonathan says that Shane was the one who did so and admits that he helped hold her. The distinction he draws does not remove his complicity: he identifies himself as an active participant in the assault, even while separating his action from Shane’s. His account of the episode is also marked by a sense of unreality. He remembers fear and confusion, a distorted perception of the clearing, and difficulty recognizing his own hands or understanding what was happening. Those recollections describe his disorientation, not an exoneration; he had already acknowledged that the group’s conduct had no excuse.

The laughter in the woods

Ryan’s next question moves from the assault itself to a sound he hopes Jonathan may remember: whether, in the minutes afterward, he heard anything unusual, perhaps like a large bird flapping its wings. Ryan withholds the more peculiar detail that the sound may have been voiced. Jonathan initially says the woods were full of birds and other animals and that, given the group’s condition, he might not have noticed one more. He describes the immediate aftermath as a state of shock: Sandra was struggling to breathe, Shane lay staring and twitching, and Cathal began laughing and staggering around the clearing. Jonathan says that he told Cathal to stop, then falters as another memory returns.

In Jonathan’s recollection, he grabbed Cathal and told him to be quiet; Cathal stopped laughing and seized Jonathan’s shirt. Then Jonathan heard laughter that did not seem to come from any of the four of them. Sandra and Shane began screaming, and the sound grew louder. Jonathan remembers it as an immense voice coming from among the trees. Cathal shouted something about children, but Jonathan could not make sense of the words. Asked about that reference, he explains that children from the nearby estate sometimes played in the wood and watched the older group. He nevertheless says the voice sounded like a young man around their age, not like a child.

Ryan feels the force of this opening but does not use it to press Jonathan about whether children witnessed the assault or whether anyone might have tried to silence them. He recognizes that the question could expose his own personal connection to the old events and decides to keep to the ground he can support with evidence. Instead, he asks whether anyone went to find the source of the laughter. Jonathan says no: he was frozen, the group was already in shock, and the sound seemed to grow until he thought the whole estate might come to see what was happening. It eventually stopped and seemed to move farther into the woods, though Jonathan cannot say where it went. The group left quickly; Jonathan went home, took his father’s alcohol, and got drunk. He does not know what the others did.

An unresolved lead

Jonathan qualifies the memory as uncertain. He says he had forgotten it and cannot be sure the sound was real, because the group’s state could have made it imagination. His account therefore gives Ryan no identified person, no confirmed witness, and no reliable explanation for the laughter. It does, however, change the shape of the old crime: someone may have been close enough to hear what happened, and possibly to see those present. Jonathan says Cathal later asked who the person might have been and how much that person had witnessed, but Jonathan has no answer.

For Ryan, the disclosure links a past assault to the present investigation without establishing that Sandra or the unidentified laugher had anything to do with Katy’s death. He leaves with Jonathan’s admission, the possibility that an outsider was in the woods, and the limits of Jonathan’s recollection. The scene’s force lies in that combination: a clear acknowledgment of complicity alongside an uncertain, half-recovered clue. Jonathan can tell Ryan what he himself did, but the person whose laughter might explain what happened afterward remains beyond identification.