Lying in Wait (14 page)

‘It’s not working, Dessie. Us, I mean.’

‘Ah, Karen, don’t be like that. Sure, I’ve forgotten all about it.’

‘Yeah, until the next time. I’m sick of it. You’re checking up on me all the time. Turning up out of the blue to collect me from jobs.’

He sat up and leaned on one arm.

‘You’re embarrassed by the van, is that it?’

‘Christ, Dessie, that’s not it at all. You don’t even know
how you’re controlling me all the time. Checking my phone calls? For God’s sake.’

‘I wouldn’t have to check if you were honest with me.’

I raised my voice now, my frustration levels growing. ‘I’m not able to be honest with you, ’cos you go off the deep end. You have practically ordered me to forget about my sister!’

‘Not this again. Jesus.’

He got out of bed and went into the bathroom, and I waited, listening to the long stream of piss, grateful for a moment to collect myself. By the time he came back, I had calmed myself for the storm I knew I had to face.

‘I don’t want to be married to you any more.’

It happened so fast that I didn’t see it coming. There was just a brief flash of his hand towards my face. I felt the air whip past my cheek. He dropped his arm at the very last second so that no contact was made. Dessie was handy with his fists. If he had meant to hurt me, he could have. Dessie didn’t want to hurt me. It was the opposite.

He cried and begged and apologized. He said he worshipped me and couldn’t live without me. He was terrified that I’d go down the wrong route like Annie. While I’d been at the dry-cleaner’s, he’d known where I was nine to five every day, he’d known who I was mixing with, but he was worried about me modelling, dressing up for strangers. He didn’t know what kind of people I was meeting.

There were stories in the
Sun
about models and drug addiction, but he didn’t understand that the Dublin scene was not London. I had heard about London supermodels using cocaine and champagne like it was going out of fashion, but Dublin might as well have been another planet, certainly an earlier decade. Most of the girls were middle-class types straight out of school, waiting for a husband, or earning their way through university. They were younger than
me and hid the fact that they smoked from their parents. I had never been offered drugs. Or champagne for that matter. I had explained all this to Dessie, but it seemed he was as obsessed with Annie as I was, although in a different way. He was afraid that his wife was going to become a drug addict, prostitute and murder victim. He said divorce was illegal anyway, and I told him I didn’t need a certificate to leave him.

That evening, I packed a bag and moved back home to Da’s. My father was upset, but once I assured him that the break-up was my decision, I think he was secretly delighted to have me home.

‘I’m not going back, Da.’

‘And sure, why would you, with a perfectly good bedroom lying empty here?’

In the years since Annie had gone, my father had become a nicer person, albeit a nicer person with a potential drink problem.

Dessie phoned frequently and called to the house to try to have peace talks. but my overwhelming feeling, aside from guilt and fear for the future, was one of relief. I no longer had to account for my movements or my actions. I no longer had to make excuses as to why now wasn’t a good time to get pregnant. I no longer had to hand over my earnings for the ‘house fund’. Dessie could keep what I had already contributed. I didn’t want anything from him. I just wanted our relationship to be over. Ma was very upset when I told her on the phone.

‘You had a good lad there. Hasn’t our family name been dragged through enough muck?’ She thought I was having my head turned by the modelling, and no amount of talking could persuade her otherwise. ‘He’s been so good to you and you throw it back in his face. When I heard about this modelling lark, I knew there was going to be trouble.’

I got the train to Mayo to see her, but she spent most of the weekend in the church in Westport, praying for my immortal soul no doubt. When she did finally speak to me, she blamed herself for setting a bad example by leaving Da.

‘It’s nothing to do with you, Ma. Honestly!’

She rattled her rosary beads.

The arrangement of living back at home suited Da well, because I could contribute financially to the household and do some of the cleaning that men just don’t notice need doing. He told his friend in the dole office, but apparently Laurence was very understanding and said it wouldn’t affect Da’s payments. I was earning good money and could give Da a few extra bob now and then, even though I knew he’d probably end up spending it in Scanlon’s. I made it clear to Da that I was only staying with him as a temporary measure. When the dust had settled, I was going to look for my own place to rent. But for now, I just needed to wallow a bit and think about my future and how I would continue to look for Annie’s killer, even if he was dead. Da didn’t like to talk about her. His guilt, I suppose.

I joined Da a few times in Scanlon’s, and that guy Laurence from the dole office was often there with his girlfriend. He was very nice to Da, very courteous, like. The rest of his crowd didn’t mix with us much and stayed up the other end of the bar, but Laurence always came over to say hello.

One night he introduced me to his girlfriend. I liked Bridget immediately. She was incredibly shy and nervous, and my heart always goes out to people like that because it’s not so long since I was like that too. She had a bad squint in one eye, so she kept her head angled to one side. I remembered trying to hide my red hair when I was a child. Laurence said she was an amateur photographer, and we got into good conversations about fashion photography. I said I’d be happy
to pose for her any time she liked if she wanted to build up a portfolio, but she laughed and said it was just a hobby. Laurence was really encouraging, though, and told her she should take up my offer. She kept saying she couldn’t possibly, but I insisted on taking her number and said I’d ring her the following weekend. I liked the way he was really supportive of Bridget trying to make a career out of a hobby that she was passionate about. They just seemed to have a nice relaxed relationship, like the kind I wanted.

So on a sunny Sunday afternoon in April, I met Bridget in Stephen’s Green and she used up three whole rolls of film. I liked what she was doing. She didn’t have all the equipment of a professional photographer, and obviously she didn’t have a studio, but she knew how to balance all the natural spring light that streamed through the trees and how to frame a swan as it glided into shot. She was much more confident behind the camera. She had asked me just to wear minimal make-up and white clothing. She brought with her a long piece of white gauze that she used to drape over my shoulders or as a veil. She knew what she wanted, and I was quite excited to see how her shots would turn out. Laurence came too. He brought along a picnic and helped Bridget with all her stuff, even lifting her on to his shoulders to get a better angle at times.

After all the photos were taken, we spread out the rug and ate apples and ham sandwiches and shared a flask of tea as we watched people walking through, taking advantage of a sunny evening. The whole day had been lovely, and then it was utterly spoiled.

I saw him approaching but didn’t immediately identify him in jeans and a T-shirt. At all our previous encounters, he’d been wearing a suit. In front of Bridget and Laurence, he said in a loud voice, ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t the ginger whinger.’

‘O’Toole.’

‘
Declan.
Doing threesomes now, are we?’

‘I’m just trying to have a picnic with my friends. Don’t you have any serious crimes to ignore?’ I don’t know where I got the nerve to be so sarcastic like that with him – perhaps it was because I felt I had backup.

Laurence detected the tone of hostility and stood up, interrupting. ‘Can we help you?’

O’Toole looked at him. ‘Where do I know you from?’ And the way he said it was really intimidating, because Laurence just shrank down on to the grass again.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘Just passing the time of day with a future inmate. I’m surprised you’re not up by the canal on an evening like this. Business would be much better for you up there.’

‘Piss off!’ I roared at him.

He sauntered off then, whistling, delighted with himself.

‘Who was that?’ said Bridget.

I was absolutely mortified. I should not have tried to get the better of him. I felt the tears welling up and saw Laurence silently staring at me. Bridget moved to put her arm around me, and then the floodgates opened and the frustration of years poured out of me right there in a public park in front of these people I barely knew, not to mention all the strangers who looked around to see who was behind the sobbing. Bridget started to fold up the rug and said to Laurence, ‘Take her to Neary’s. I’ll follow you when I’ve everything packed up.’

I followed him blindly out of the park on to Grafton Street. He took my arm and guided me gently towards the pub, asking no questions while I tried to compose myself. He gave me a freshly laundered handkerchief. In the pub, Laurence installed me in a corner and went to the bar. By the time he came back, Bridget had arrived.

‘Who
was
he?’ said Bridget.

‘Karen doesn’t have to say if she doesn’t want to.’

‘He … he’s a detective who was supposed to be investigating my sister’s disappearance, but he never gave a damn about her …’

Throughout my marriage to Dessie, we lived in a kind of a bubble. We hardly hung out with other people at all. We were content just being the two of us, and sometimes going for a drink with the couple next door. Dessie didn’t like me to go and meet friends in town at night, because he didn’t think it was safe, and on the rare occasions that I did, he would collect me at ten o’clock, when the night was just getting going. So after a while, my friends stopped inviting me out. When I left him, I realized that I no longer had friends of my own. The girls I had been pally with in the dry-cleaner’s still worked with Dessie, and I hadn’t really kept in touch with them since I’d started working with Yvonne. That was my fault. So really, I had no one to talk to. But now, here in front of me in this pub were two people my own age who were good company and decent types. Laurence seemed a good bit grander than Bridget, but it obviously didn’t bother him. She was just an ordinary girl like me, with an office job, hoping to make something out of her hobby. I felt that I could trust them, so I told them everything.

I watched their faces as I told them the story of Annie. Her learning difficulties in school, her pregnancy, and St Joseph’s taking baby Marnie away from her, her drug addiction and prostitution, her disappearance and probable murder, O’Toole and his disgusting attitude, my investigation into the old car, and Mooney’s impression that the murderer was a high-profile man who had died shortly afterwards.

Bridget was utterly horrified, her mouth hanging open and her eyes widening, but Laurence’s reaction surprised me. At
the beginning of my story he just stared into his pint, but as I continued my sorry tale his shoulders began to shake, and when he looked up at the end, his eyes were wet with tears.

‘Oh my God, that is just awful!’ Bridget said, hugging me. ‘I’ve never heard anything so bad. I don’t know how you can have coped all these years. Oh my God!’

Laurence simply said, ‘I am so, so, sorry. It’s … horrendous. I am so sorry.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘it’s not your fault. It’s a tragedy, but I can’t let it go. The guards are not interested in helping me, so I have to do it myself.’

‘Oh God, we’ll help you, won’t we, Laurence?’ said Bridget. ‘We have office phones, we can ring around all the other garages at lunchtimes, can’t we? And, Laurence, you’re always at the library – couldn’t you find out how to look up newspaper archives and see what important people died in the weeks after Annie disappeared?’

I hadn’t even thought of doing that. Laurence nodded and got up to go to the bar again.

‘He’s pretty sensitive, don’t mind him. But we’ll help you, I promise. I can’t believe that detective spoke to you like that, as if you were …’

‘A prostitute?’

‘What an absolute bastard. You should complain about him, or write to the papers – something, you know?’

‘I did at the time. He got promoted. And now my agent thinks it would be bad for my career if I were to go public about any of this, but if you two could help like you say, that would be amazing!’

‘Of course we will.’

Laurence came back with drinks. I toasted Annie and they joined me. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had friends, allies.

‘He
can’t have recognized you. You were three stone heavier and five years younger then.’

‘He couldn’t place me, but he knew me, I know he did!’

Laurence had been keeping secrets from me. It was profoundly disturbing. He arrived home one night pale-faced and shaking, having been out with Bridget. He admitted that he had made a friend out of the dead whore’s father and, worse, her sister, who, he insisted, was investigating Annie Doyle’s disappearance herself. Laurence was petrified that she was close to the truth.

‘She’s going to find out it was Dad. She knows a lot of stuff already.’

He had left Bridget and the girl behind in the pub. I tried to ascertain what she knew. Laurence had just met the same detective, O’Toole, who had questioned him at the gate of Avalon all those years ago. It seems his sidekick, Mooney, had suspected Andrew but the whole matter had been dropped when Andrew died.

‘But how did you even meet this girl, or her father? And why didn’t you keep away from them? They are not the sort of people you should be mixing with.’

Laurence was taken aback, and I realized I had to check myself.

‘Mum, don’t you see? We should be doing everything we can to help Annie Doyle’s family. Dad killed her and she is buried behind our kitchen wall and I put a concrete shelf and a bloody bird bath on top of her grave. I try to forget about
it, and most of the time I’m fine, but over a year ago Annie’s dad came to sign on in my office and I recognized him. I got to know him a little bit, and he’s a decent man, Mum.’

I handed Laurence a glass of whiskey.

‘Darling, you really should not consort with these people, drug addicts and prostitutes, they are beneath us. Do you understand?’

‘And what about murderers? Are they beneath us?’

I would have loved to have explained to Laurence that his father was not just a common murderer, that he had merely made a mistake under pressure and that the girl was of no consequence. If she had lived, she would have made no contribution to the world. Her family were obviously layabouts too, if the father was on the dole. Of course I am not saying that she didn’t deserve to live, I’m not saying that at all, but who really missed her?

‘Laurence, whatever happened, you must remember that your father was a good man. I’m sure it was a silly accident that led to the death. I very much doubt that your father would ever have gone with a prostitute. He just wasn’t the type, and he loved
me
, you know he did. You must not think of him as a murderer. Who knows what type of trouble that girl was involved in? Wasn’t she a heroin addict? Heroin is a terrible, terrible drug. It is quite possible that your father was trying to help her. He often helped people but he kept his charity work very quiet. I’m sure he was only trying to help her when she died, perhaps of an overdose, and to avoid a scandal he just buried her here.’

Laurence sat looking at me. I know he was thinking that I was in denial, I know he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but I also knew that he would go along with it for my sake.

‘But this girl Karen, Annie’s sister, she’s not giving up, Mum. She’s going to find out. And she is so –’

‘You must find a way to stop her.’

‘Bridget has said that we will
help
her.’

‘Well then, you’re in the perfect position to find false information and throw her off course.’

‘Mum!’

I raised my voice in anger. It is something I do very seldom. ‘Laurence. I am trying to protect you. If this gets out, you will go to jail.’

He shut up then, realizing I was right. I used softer tones.

‘Darling, let us think about this. Annie Doyle has been missing for nearly six years?’

‘Five and a half. Yes.’

‘But there is absolutely no proof she is dead?’

‘Not that I know of, but one of the guards thought that Dad –’

‘Never mind about that. Did she have a bank account or a post office savings account, do you know?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because we can bring her back to life. Send the mother a letter from her.’

‘What?’

Even as I said the words, an idea was forming. Annie was not dead. Perhaps she decided to clean up her life and get off drugs and move away where nobody would know her, start afresh. She was living a normal life down the country but did not want to be contacted and reminded of her old life. It was alarmingly simple. When Laurence calmed down enough, he saw the wisdom of the idea, although he said it was cruel. Not as cruel as what Annie Doyle had done to us.

‘But, Laurie, won’t it be so much better for them to think that she is alive? It will be such a huge relief to them. We will be giving them back their daughter. It’s an act of mercy. She will write to them.’

I changed my mind about Laurence befriending the Doyles. Keep your enemies close, isn’t that what they say? I encouraged him to engage with them, gain their trust, find out as much as he could about Annie before we put our plan into action, and in the meantime he could feed them misinformation. He had already agreed to look up death notices in the
Irish Times
office for the weeks after 14 November 1980. He could conveniently omit Andrew’s name from the list of his findings. He should take control of Karen’s investigation, be sympathetic, but not too enthusiastic. Perhaps he could pretend to develop a personal interest in Karen.

But he seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion.

‘I can’t do that. She’s Bridget’s friend. And Bridget keeps asking me when she’s going to meet you, and when I’m going to Athlone to meet her parents.’

‘Athlone? God help us.’ And then it struck me. ‘Actually, I think you should go. You can post the Annie letter from there! Athlone is perfect – a letter posted from there could have originated anywhere. It’s slap bang in the middle of the country.’

He winced at this. I was terribly excited. This was a project that Laurence and I could work on together. It could only bring us closer.

Over the next few weeks, Laurence and Bridget and Karen met up regularly to go over all the information she had about Annie. I encouraged Laurence to bring home whatever he could so that we could combine our wits to decide how best to use it. As I suspected, Annie had no savings accounts in which money might have remained untouched if she was dead. There was no proof at all that she hadn’t picked up her life and moved away. We had to make it look like she’d gone in a hurry. One of the most crucial things Laurence brought home was an old diary in her appalling, childlike, semi-literate handwriting. I could see Annie had entered the payments from Andrew,
which she listed under J, presumably for Judge. The little bitch had probably known all along who he was. Karen had entrusted the diary to Laurence so that he could check out the addresses and phone numbers. There was a letter in it to a child that she gave up for adoption, and when I saw that, I lost any sympathy I might have had for her. She had been pregnant before,
by accident.
She knew Andrew and I were desperate and willing to pay for a baby, and she had already given one away. What a truly pathetic creature she was.

But that book gave us everything we needed to construct the new Annie Doyle. I started to write the letter from Annie, using her typing and grammatical errors, but found I couldn’t get the shape of the words convincingly. With a heavy sigh, Laurence took the pen from my hand. Laurence was an excellent forger, it turns out. He said that Karen referred to her mother as ‘Ma’, so assumed Annie must have done the same. I dictated the note.

Dear Ma,

I am really sorry if you wore wurried about me over the last few years but I got in a bit of trouble with a lone shark and druges and stuff and I had to get away in a hurry to a kwite place to start my life agan. I know the cops was loking for me and all but I was in a bit of trouble with them too. So I bin laying low for a few years now but I have my act together ma and im living a good life and youd be proued of me if you saw me. I was to sad after the baby and all and I tried to ferget about her but you now What it was like with da. he was ashamed. I hope hes all rite. Tell him not to worry about me now and that im sorry for all the hasel. tell Karen I love her too. i love you all but my life is bettur her. dont come loking for me couse theres no pont. Im not coming back ma but im very happy here.

Love from your Annie

I have a diffarant name now.

Laurence baulked at some of it. He was dead set against the reference to her father’s shame, but it had to be realistic. The loan shark references were my idea. It would suggest that the large sums of money noted in the diary were sums owed rather than payments to her from Andrew. The guards had apparently made lewd suggestions that a client could have paid her large amounts for perverted reasons. Laurence wanted the letter to be written to Karen, but that didn’t make any sense to me. Every child is closer to his mother than to anyone else. He wanted more about Karen in the letter, but I pointed out how illiterate Annie was, how much of an effort writing must be. She wouldn’t write a word more than she needed to. A declaration of love should be enough to satisfy the sister.

I could tell that Laurence was quite stressed by all of this. I reassured him and told him that we were doing a very kind thing and that he was a good man. He had turned into the most handsome young man one could ever see, like a younger version of his father. Everything was going to be fine, I told him. This was just another of life’s hurdles that we would have to get over.