The Mystery of Mercy Close (22 page)

‘I thought I liked him too,’ she said. ‘But now I’m not sure.’

‘Listen, Mum, thanks for that but I’ve got to go.’

With shaking fingers, I logged on and, sure enough, seven years ago a house on a one-acre, lakeside site had been bought by a company that had been incorporated in the State of California. Docker was the only director.

I stared at the screen, trying to assimilate this unexpected information.

County Leitrim was a funny place for a worldwide superstar to own a house. Or was it? Hard to know because even though it wasn’t that far from Dublin – maybe only a couple of hours’ drive – I’d never been. Or ever met anyone from there. Maybe no one
was
from there, maybe it was totally uninhabited. Like Mars.

Lakes. That was the sum total of what I knew about Leitrim. They had lots of lakes. Riddled with them, by all accounts.

Next step was to check out Docker’s house on Google Earth but I’m reluctant to use Google Earth because I’m still a bit mortified.

When it first came on the scene, I thought that it was
live
. I thought you could go on it and spy on any property in the world and see what was happening there in
real time
. I thought you could see people coming in and out, and cars arriving and leaving. I didn’t realize that it was just a still photo. And that would have been all well and good if I hadn’t shared my misapprehensions with a client.

‘Oh yes!’ I’d said confidently. ‘Just give me the GPS thing for the house in Scotland and right now, on my laptop, we can check and see if your husband’s car is there. We might even see him scurrying out of his girlfriend’s love nest, cheating slimeball that he is.’

‘Are you sure?’ She’d sounded doubtful.

‘Certain,’ I said, drawing her nearer to the screen. ‘See here,’ I said. ‘That’s the house and that’s the … but why is nothing moving?’ I was hitting buttons left, right and centre. ‘The screen must be frozen. Hold on, I’ll just reboot. It’ll take a few seconds …’

All I can say is thank God it was a woman client. Call me sexist all you like, but the truth is that women are far more forgiving than men when it comes to technology fuck-ups.

Still feeling all the shame I’d felt during that error, I found a picture of Docker’s house. A blurry rectangle of roof surrounded by loads of green, apart from one side, which was loads of black, presumably the lake. Past the perimeter fence there was loads more of green. A remote house in a remote part of a remote county.

Wayne had to be hiding there, right? Wayne and Gloria?
Had
to be.

It all unfolded in front of me. Wayne hadn’t been able to take the carb-deprivation and mortification of singing the old Laddz songs and he needed to get away for a few days. So he emailed his old mate Docker, who said, I owe you for ever for the chorus of ‘Windmill Girl’, by all means go and stay in my house in faraway lakey Leitrim and take your lovely Gloria with you.

They decided to go in Gloria’s car, because … well, because they just did. Maybe Wayne had the sugar-shakes and couldn’t trust his hands to drive. Then something happened to derail them – maybe Gloria had a flat tyre. Yes! Gloria had a flat tyre. And they thought they couldn’t go. Then she fixed the tyre and she’d rung Wayne and said, ‘Good news!’ And off they went.

They were there right now. All I needed to do was get behind my wheel and nip down there. I’d go this very minute!

Hold on, though … Were they actually there? Was it worth
driving all the way to Leitrim just on a hunch? Yes, I argued. My intuition was telling me that Wayne was in Docker’s house.

But … there was a difference between intuition and … and … what would you call it? Madness, I supposed. It wouldn’t do to confuse the two.

Maybe I was just dying to see the inside of one of Docker’s homes?

I gnawed my hand as I made the tough, tough decision: I’d make myself wait. Just for a couple of hours. Anyway, it made sense to. It was late Friday afternoon and the traffic out of Dublin would be gridlocked.

I’d go and do what I should have done hours ago – I was almost back there anyway – I’d go and talk to Wayne’s neighbours.

Already I hated them for their uselessness.

The traffic wasn’t too bad for a Friday evening. As I drove, Claire rang and I put her on speakerphone.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘It’s Kate,’ she sighed. ‘She’s a complete monster. I know you’re not supposed to say it about your own child, but I hate her.’

‘What’s she done now?’

‘She bit me on my leg.’

‘What! Why?’

‘Because she felt like it. She’s a fucking bitch. She’s even worse than you were.’

‘That bad?’ I asked with sympathy.

‘As bad as Bronagh! That’s how bad. No fucking surprise that they loved each other. Ah fuck!’ In the background I could hear a whooping siren noise and lots of unrecognizable racket.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I went through a red light – what do they expect? I’m in a fucking hurry! And now the fucking cops are behind me with their siren.’

‘You’d better pull over.’

‘I’m not fucking pulling over! I’m in a fucking HURRY. Fuck them, they’re not the boss of me.’

‘Claire, pull over.’

‘Oh fuck it, all right.’ Abruptly she disconnected, leaving me thinking about Bronagh.

When people first met her, you could see that they didn’t know what to make of her because she did nothing to make herself more appealing. For example, she had shortish legs, but unlike another short-legged woman who would spend
her life trying to disguise her flaw by teetering around in four-inch heels, Bronagh defiantly wore flats. She did most things defiantly.

There were plenty of people who were scared sideways by her, but just as many – more – who were desperate to please her, to prove themselves to her. In ancient Greece or Rome or one of those places, wars would be started just so that some fool could impress her.

The most unexpected people adored her – Margaret, for one; she became giddy and girlish and squealy around her. ‘She’s so
funny
.’

But Mum would have nothing to do with her. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of you,’ she said to me. ‘I know this one’s game. Trying to shock people and general blaggarding. And to see people’s faces, all lit up like the Empire State Building, just because she calls the priest “Missus”. He was
my
priest, visiting me in
my
home. If anyone was going to make sport with him, it should have been me.’

Claire didn’t like her either. But Kate thought she was the business. ‘Bronagh’s afraid of nothing.’

‘Neither am I,’ I said.

Kate studied me carefully, through kohl-rimmed eyes and a cloud of cigarette smoke (she was thirteen at the time). ‘Er … yeah, but you’re a bit … There’s something in you, a bit of – let’s call it weakness.’

‘Weakness!’

‘Softness, if you’d prefer. But Bronagh? She’s hard as nails all the way down.’

I was really insulted and said as much.

‘See?’ Kate said, soft as a snake, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue and studying it for a moment before discarding it. ‘You care what I think of you. Bronagh wouldn’t give a damn.’

Snared. No way out of that trap.

I got back to Mercy Close in about twenty minutes, parked outside Wayne’s and looked around at the twelve houses in the cul-de-sac. Which house should I start with? The obvious choice would be either of the houses next door to Wayne’s – more likely to have heard or seen something – but it didn’t always work that way. What I needed was someone who was at home all day and who was really nosy.

What I really needed was a proper old-fashioned old person. But not a hope.

Bloody new-fangled active ageing! God be with the days when the second a person hit sixty they were housebound with rheumatoid arthritis and the telly didn’t start until six in the evening. They had no choice but to sit by the window, in a horrible brown armchair, their nosy-parker noses poking through their lace curtains, spying on everything with their surprisingly sharp eyesight and remembering astonishingly tiny details, despite the fact that, at their advanced age, their memories should have been as reliable as leaky sieves.

But nowadays? Oh no. Saga holidays and watercolour painting and Aerobics for the Aged. T’ai chi in the community hall,
Oprah
in the afternoon and plankton tablets to keep their joints nimble. Imedeen and strong denture fixatives and discreet incontinence pads – they have so much freedom!

Back in the olden days, elderly people were an absolute boon for someone looking for information. And they were so delighted to have someone – anyone – to talk to.

I was already so demoralized, I wanted to give up. But think of Wayne, I reminded myself. Think of him having been kidnapped by a fat gay man, a superfan, who’d bought two of Wayne’s white suits on eBay – one for Wayne and one for him, even though he was miles too lardy for it. Think of Wayne and the superfan singing into a karaoke machine, bellowing ‘Miles and Miles Away’, Laddz’s biggest hit, a soaring tear-jerker of a ballad, which you had to deliver with your eyes screwed shut and your fists clenched.

Poor Wayne. No one deserved that. I had to press on for him.

There was no answer from Wayne’s next-door neighbour in number three. Whoever they were, maybe they had a job. I’d try them later. No one was in the next house along, or the next one either. So I crossed the road, and at random chose number ten and the door was opened by an absolute exemplar of active ageing. A woman, trim and slim and brisk, with a swingy blondey-silvery bob. She wore pale grey tailored trousers and some sort of blouse thing, with a jaunty open neck. There were wrinkles around her mouth but her eyes were bright and blue. She could have been sixty. Or ninety-three. Hard to know, what with all the fish oils they take.

I handed her my card. ‘I wonder if I could have a quick word with you?’ This was the tricky part – how could I ask questions about Wayne without giving away the fact that he’d disappeared?

‘I’m just on my way out,’ she said.

‘To yoga for the elderly?’

After a long assessing stare, she said, ‘Picking my granddaughter up from nursery, actually.’

Oh yes? Off on an assignation with her gardener, more like. KY jelly, there’s another thing that’s added to their superannuated high jinks.

‘And,’ she added. ‘I’m only sixty-six.’

Behind her I could see a folded newspaper on the couch. She’d finished the Sudoku. Believed in keeping her ancient old brain nimble, clearly.

‘You barely look fifty.’ I really must try to curb my knee-jerk curmudgeonly responses. It wouldn’t help to go round alienating potential witnesses. ‘I’m sorry I said that thing about the yoga. I didn’t mean it. There’s something a bit wrong with me.’

She inclined her head regally. I was just so beneath her. ‘I
actually do have to go.’ She’d produced car keys from somewhere and was jingling them.

‘Would you happen to have been around yesterday morning?’ I asked. ‘Or Wednesday night?’ Even though I was pretty sure Wayne was still at home until yesterday morning, it would be no harm to see if anything strange had happened on Wednesday.

Now she was slinging her handbag over her shoulder and was setting the house alarm. ‘I go to my wine club on Wednesday nights and I play golf on Thursday mornings.’

Do you see what I mean? Isn’t it utterly infuriating?

‘So you wouldn’t have seen if a taxi had picked up Wayne Diffney?’

The front door was shut behind her and she was sliding past me towards her car, a Yaris, naturally enough. They all drive Yarises. I think they must be government-issued. I mean, who would willingly part with money for one? ‘No.’

‘Have you noticed any strange women visiting Wayne Diffney’s house? Might be answering to the name “Gloria”?’

‘No strange women.’ Then, as she walked jauntily up her little path, she threw over her shoulder, ‘Apart from you, dear.’

I went next door to number eleven. A middle-aged, burdened-looking woman came to the door. Behind her, several televisions seemed to be on. I sensed overcrowding and bitter teenagers and a high demand on hair straighteners.

I launched into my questions and she shut me down fast. ‘We were on holiday. We’re only just back ten minutes ago.’

‘Holiday?’ I asked. ‘There’s a recession on. No one’s going anywhere.’

She looked as if I’d accused her of treason – how dare she and her family be going on holidays when the country was tottering on the verge of collapse? ‘We’ve a mobile home in Tramore,’ she said, shamefaced. ‘It’s fourteen years old and very small.’

‘Even so,’ I protested. ‘Don’t you have to pay site maintenance fees and –’

‘We tried to sell it. No one was buying. Look, we had a terrible time, if it makes you feel any better. I’ve three teenagers and they want to be in Thailand. We came back early; we were meant to stay until tomorrow but we just couldn’t take it.’ Suddenly something occurred to her. ‘Hey! Fuck off with yourself, I don’t have to tell you anything.’ She shut the door in my face.

I took a moment to recover – I really must be more diplomatic – then flattened my shoulder blades and proceeded to the next house. The door was opened by a fifty-something man, a bit grey and slumped and with hair growing out of his ears.

‘I was out at work yesterday morning,’ he said.

‘And Wednesday night?’

‘I stay over with my girlfriend on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.’

‘You’ve a
girlfriend
?’

This time the door wasn’t just shut in my face, it was actually slammed. Your man took a good energetic swing with it and Whomp! The windows bulged with the force of it.

Right, that was it. I was suspending the interviews. I was in the wrong frame of mind and doing more harm than good. I’d come back to it if – no, when,
when
(I must think positive) – I felt better. For the moment I’d retreat to Wayne’s and lie on the living-room floor. I’d gaze at the ceiling and pretend that the house was mine. Maybe something would come to me.

Wearily I traipsed back over the road and towards Wayne’s front door, when I heard, ‘Hey!’