The Mystery of Mercy Close (33 page)

I started opening and closing the drawers at high speed and discovered cable leads, battery chargers and other items of mind-crushing dullness. But in the bottom drawer I found a video camera. Just sitting there, all by itself, managing to look both innocent and remarkably guilty.

The unexpectedness of it caused me to recoil halfway across the room, then I tiptoed my way back and peered in at it. Small unremarkable little yoke, but all the same I felt a bit queasy. Video cameras are the Holy Grail. Well, they
can
be. You never know what you might find on them. All kinds of incriminating kinky nudieness if the stuff ‘leaked’ on the web is to be believed.

I liked Wayne, I didn’t want to find out he’d been up to incriminating kinky nudieness, but I had to do my job.

I lifted the camera out of the drawer, opened the little screen and hit play. A list of files came up, organized by date. I picked the most recent one, which had been filmed ten days ago, then I squeezed my eyes shut. Not a nudie flute, I begged the universe. Spare me a home movie of Wayne’s nudie flute.

Or of his pubic hair. I simply felt too fragile to be looking at a stranger’s pubic hair. Then I started to wonder what Wayne’s pubes were like and all of a sudden I’d veered off on a mental tangent. What if he got his ‘region’ styled to look like the Sydney Opera House? Like, to match the hair on his head? Not that the hair on his head was like that any more, but maybe once in a while he’d get both lots done, perhaps as a special treat for Gloria?

However, judging by the noises coming from the camera, we weren’t in nudie flute territory. It sounded more like some happy family occasion. There was laughter and voices speaking over each other and when I squinted one eye open I saw the lens advancing on Wayne’s mum – I recognized her from the photos on the shelves. Wayne’s voice was saying, ‘So here’s Carol, the birthday girl. Have you a couple of words for us on this momentous occasion?’

Carol was laughing and waving her hand at the camera and saying, ‘Stop, stop, take that thing away.’

‘Okay,’ Wayne’s voice said. ‘Rowan, do you want to take over filming?’

After a quick blurry shot of the floor, Wayne appeared on screen with a young boy, maybe aged about ten. ‘We’re filming ourselves,’ the lad – Rowan? – said. ‘I’m Rowan. And here’s my Uncle Wayne. He’s my favourite uncle, but don’t tell Uncle Richard.’

Richard was Wayne’s brother, so Rowan must be Wayne’s sister’s son.

‘It’s Grandma Carol’s birthday today,’ Rowan said. ‘She’s ninety-five.’

Was she? I thought, startled. She looked
decades
younger. There they were, at it again with the fish oils.

‘I am not!’ a disembodied voice said. ‘I’m
sixty
-five.’

‘I’m dyslexic,’ Rowan said.

‘You’re
cheeky
.’

‘You take over filming,’ Wayne said to Rowan. I was treated
to another view of the floor, as the handover to Rowan took place, followed by a marked decline in camera steadiness.

With Rowan at the helm, we advanced through the house – I was assuming it was Wayne’s parents’ place – into a kitchen. ‘Here’s my mum,’ Rowan’s voice said. ‘And my Auntie Vicky.’

Two women – Wayne’s sister, Connie, and Wayne’s sister-in-law, Vicky – were sitting at a kitchen table. They were drinking red wine and leaning in to each other and we got close enough to hear one of them say, ‘… so she can’t make up her mind between the two of them.’ Suddenly Connie sat up straight and looked right into the camera. ‘Christ, is that thing on?’

‘Turn it off!’ Vicky said. ‘We could be sued!’

But it was all very good-natured.

On it went. We met Granddad Alan (Wayne’s dad), who was wearing an apron and oven gloves and was ferrying sausage rolls out of the oven but paused in his labours to give an impromptu chorus of ‘When I’m Sixty-Five’ to the tune of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.

We met Baby Florence, who wasn’t really a baby, more of a toddler, and who threw a small plastic boat at us. We met Suzie and Joely, two little girls of about Bella’s age and pinkness. Well, we didn’t really meet them. As soon as they saw Wayne and Rowan, they shouted, ‘No boys!’ And the camera hurriedly withdrew.

We met Ben, Rowan’s slightly older brother, who was being adolescent and disdainfully withholding his presence by reading a book. Wayne showed Rowan how to zoom the lens – we couldn’t see him but we could hear his voice – to bring the title of the book into focus.

‘
The Outsider
by Albert Camus,’ Rowan’s voice said. ‘Some stupid thing. All Ben does now is read
books
.’ The scorn in his tone couldn’t hide the fact that he was baffled and a little hurt by the changes in his brother.

‘He’ll grow out of it,’ Wayne said compassionately.

‘You didn’t,’ Rowan said.

‘Ah, I did really; it’s all just for show.’

Then we had a cake, candles and everyone gathered in the kitchen singing ‘Happy Birthday’. We had claps and cheers and cries of, ‘Speech.’ By the time the little film came to the end, I felt quite weepy. And I understood something very important. I understood that Wayne Diffney was a decent man. He was kind to children, he let them roam freely with expensive video equipment and didn’t micromanage their work. He loved his family and clearly they loved him in return.

For reasons of his own Wayne didn’t want to be in Laddz any more and that was his right.

I was calling off the search.

I had to deal with Jay Parker
mano-a-mano
. If I told him over the phone, he’d keep badgering me, but when he saw the resolve in my eyes, he’d know I meant it.

I gathered up my stuff, including my box of Cheerios, and just before I set the alarm, for the last time, I said goodbye to Wayne’s beautiful house. I already missed it with a horrific ache.

I drove over to John Joseph’s compound and had to answer all kinds of impertinent questions from Alfonso before he let me in. A uniformed maid – not Infanta – led me through the house and out through the most enormous pair of glass doors I’ve ever seen, into an elaborate tiered garden.

I stood on the patio and scanned the thirty or so people below me and brought Artie’s words to mind: ‘Anything is possible. Anything. The extremes of human behaviour … there’s no limit to what people will do and who they’ll do it with.’

But everything here looked pretty tame. Any dark undertow I was feeling was in my own head, it was nothing to do with Wayne. Wayne – wherever he was and good luck to him – was okay. It was right to stop looking for him. I wasn’t abandoning him to some terrible fate.

No one had been fed yet, I couldn’t help but notice. Trouble getting the charcoal to light. The grill was set up on the patio and Computer Clive and Infanta were desperately trying to get it going.

I moved away from them because their craven fear was so dreadful. Sooner or later, we all knew, John Joseph would notice and he’d come and shout at them.

But for the moment he was swinging a beer bottle and
pretending he wasn’t a despot. Bending the ear of poor Harvey, though, and I’d say it wasn’t football they were discussing. Faults and Failings of Harvey looked more like the topic of conversation.

I continued watching the people in the garden. If I was the barbecue inspector from the Irish government, I’d have to say that the conviviality levels hovered merely at ‘Adequate’. We were a long way from ‘Dangerously Messy’. (The highest level: it involved public urination. In theory, if you achieved that, you got a medal from the President of Ireland, but last summer so many people excelled that there was a stampede at the presentation ceremony so they’ve had to stop.)

But this lot, here in John Joseph’s garden, they’d want to buck their ideas up a bit, if they didn’t want to be carted off in the green van to the re-education camp in Temple Bar, to be tutored in having ‘the mighty craic’. They really weren’t putting their backs into it. In fact – I narrowed my eyes for a closer look – I thought I saw someone drinking water. Water! Not alcohol! Oh, this wasn’t looking good for my report, not good at all. The water-drinker was Zeezah and maybe she had her reasons for staying off the beer, her religion perhaps. But we Irish are a
very
religious nation and it doesn’t stop us drinking our heads off.

Zeezah was chatting charmingly to some of the hairy roadies. (And, all credit to them, they
were
making the effort. Beers in both hands and one of them had a bottle stored in his ponytail. I’d find out their names and put them forward for a ‘Highly Commended’.) Zeezah looked up and saw me and I thought I saw the hint of a shadow cross her face, then she gave a little wave and a sweet smile and I couldn’t help but smile back.

There was Frankie, still looking a bit glassy-eyed in the Xanax aftermath. And there was Roger St Leger, casting a spell on some misfortunate woman who was wearing very small cut-off denim shorts and cowboy boots. She was throwing her
sun-streaked head back and revealing her tanned throat as she laughed uproariously. I wanted to rush up to her and say: Oh, you’re laughing
now
. Oh, you’re delighted
now
. But give it six weeks. A mere six weeks before he’ll have driven you completely mad. Before you show up in A&E, after having tried to slice your veins open with the disposable razor you’d bought to shave your legs for him.

But what can you do? You have to let people make their own mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, there was Jay Parker. He was engaging Lottie and one of her assistants in guff, waving his beer bottle about and gesticulating in his rolled up shirtsleeves.

I set my shoulders, located my inner steel bar and set off towards him. As if sensing my purpose, the people in my path parted like the Red Sea.

Just before I reached him, he spun himself towards me, swivelling on a nimble little foot, like he was in the Jackson Five. ‘Helen!’ He stamped his other foot to stop himself spinning. Nice timing. He looked thrilled to see me.

‘Listen, Parker, I’m out.’

‘What do you mean?’ He knew, I could see it in him. The smile stayed on his lips but his eyes had gone furtive and darty, already seeking a solution.

‘I don’t want to look for Wayne any more.’

‘Why not? I’m good for the money.’

‘I don’t care about the money.’ Now, there’s a line I never thought I’d hear myself say. ‘Here’s Wayne’s key.’ I handed it over, making sure I didn’t actually touch Parker. Reluctantly he took hold of it.

‘But Wayne might be in trouble,’ he said. ‘He might
need
to be found.’

‘He’s not, he doesn’t. He just doesn’t want to do the concerts. Leave him alone.’

‘It’s not that simple.’ Parker nodded in the direction of Frankie, then Roger, who were both watching me intently.
‘They need the money.’ His eyes flicked towards John Joseph and Zeezah, who were also staring at me. ‘All of them. A lot of livelihoods are depending on Wayne coming back.’

‘So get somebody else.’

‘I don’t want anybody else. I want you.’

‘You can’t have me.’

He reached out his arm and I stared at his hand, wondering if he’d have the gall to touch me.

‘Helen …’ He looked so desperate that I considered relenting. But only for a moment.

‘I hope it works out for all of you,’ I said, and moved to walk away.

‘Wait!’

I turned back to look at him.

He swallowed, then swept away the lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead. ‘Look, forget about Wayne. Could we see each other anyway? You and me?’

I stared at him for a long, long time.

‘I miss you,’ he said, almost whispering.

‘Do you?’ Suddenly I felt very sad. ‘Well, I miss Bronagh.’

As I turned and walked away, I had a paralysing moment when I wondered if I’d abandoned Wayne to some awful fate, but I knew I hadn’t. I was doing the right thing.

So why did I feel so wretched?

Nothing to fill my head now, that’s what it was.

Nothing to do but go to my parents’ house and acknowledge that I no longer had a home of my own.

Nothing to do but face the fact that I hadn’t had a shower in over twenty-four hours and there were no more excuses for putting it off.

The wave of blackness that rushed up from my guts almost blinded me. It was like an eclipse of the sun. But I’d been here before. I knew what I had to do. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Until maybe I couldn’t any more.

As I drove to Mum and Dad’s, memories of Bronagh rushed back at me.

She’d never worn jewellery – not earrings, not bracelets, nothing. So that day when she’d turned up at my newly acquired flat, I thought I was hallucinating.

‘Bronagh,’ I’d said. ‘Why are you wearing that ring?’

She looked at her left hand, at the big square diamond, like it all belonged to someone else. ‘Oh. Yeah. Blake asked me to marry him.’

‘And … are you going to?’

‘I suppose.’

‘I see. Well … aren’t we supposed to squeal and jump around the place?’

‘Yeah. And you’re supposed to hug me and cry and say how happy you are for me.’

‘Okay, let’s give it a go.’

We held hands and lepped a bit and I tried squealing, but it’s like being asked to laugh on command, it’s very hard to get it to sound natural.

‘Now the hug,’ she said.

Dutifully I hugged her and said, ‘I’m so happy for you.’

‘Where’s the crying?’ she asked.

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I think I might be in shock.’

‘
You’re
in shock?’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s lie on the bed and complain about things and get our equilibrium back.’

Side by side we lay on my Mother Superior bed, and to get things underway I launched into a diatribe about people who use tea trays. ‘I know it’s an efficient way to ferry
the teacups and all that shit into the kitchen, but it’s so prissy.’

‘So nineteen-fifties!’

‘I’d rather make a separate journey for each individual spoon than use a tray.’

‘Will I have to wear a dress?’ she asked.

‘To carry a spoon?’ For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about. ‘Oh, to get married in. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You’re Bronagh Keegan.’