The Mystery of Mercy Close (53 page)

Mum tiptoed downstairs. ‘Is he gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it real? Did it really happen?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was one of the worst experiences of my entire life. I’ll never be the same again.’

‘Me either. I think I’ll have a lie-down.’

Feeling very strange, I slowly climbed the stairs and crawled into bed, still in my clothes. I’d somehow kill time until ten o’clock, when ‘the office’ that Wayne had rung the morning he’d disappeared, would open. And if, as I suspected, it turned out to be a phone company, I’d ring Jay Parker and get him to issue a press release cancelling all the gigs.

I closed my eyes and entered some sort of peculiar suspended state for a couple of hours. Then, at about five to ten, I began to stir myself.

Slowly I sat up and put my feet on the floor. I decided that before I did anything, I’d take my tablet. I took the foil card out of the zipped inner pocket in my handbag, where I kept it for safety and easy access, and I was so grateful for it, I practically kissed it. I thought of the Cymbalta in Wayne’s bedside drawer and the Stilnoct in his bathroom cabinet and the way he’d just casually swanned off wherever he’d casually swanned off to, leaving them behind.

At the moment I couldn’t go anywhere without having my medication with me – the thought of being without it was terrifying.

And, just like that, I had one of my rare but dazzling moments of brilliance: I knew where Wayne Diffney was.

I rang Artie. ‘I need a favour from you,’ I said.

Then I made another call and Docker answered after four rings. ‘Helen?’

There was an awful racket going on. I could hardly hear him. ‘Docker? God, what’s the noise? Where are you?’

‘At the moment I’m above Roscommon. I’m in a chopper. It’ll be at the house in Leitrim in about fifteen minutes.’

A chopper? But this couldn’t be more perfect.

‘I spoke to your friend Terry O’Dowd,’ he yelled, trying to be heard above the mechanical din. ‘Lovely man. It’s all arranged. The local hotel are loaning me three hundred cups and saucers and a couple of tea urns. Terry’s sorting out the sandwiches and cakes – he knows someone. His wife and her pals are already in the house, doing a dust and hoover. The invitation has been announced on the local radio station.’

That was all good to hear. But things were actually about to get better for Docker, the altruism addict. ‘Listen, Docker, I’ve something
fantastic
to tell you.’

‘And what’s that?’ Even with all the clatter that was going on, I could hear the mild fear in his voice.

‘Today you’re going to get a second chance to make a difference.’

‘Oh … in what way?’

I had to shout my explanation and instructions, but Docker heard and understood every word.

Then I forwarded Wayne’s phone records to Walter Wolcott, because it didn’t matter any more.

Everyone said it looked like a hotel, but it didn’t. It looked like a hospital. A nice one, I grant you, but it was still definitely a hospital. There were actual windows admitting actual daylight but the beds were definitely hospital beds, narrow and height-adjustable, with metal bars for headboards. And there was no disguising the function of the awful swishy curtains that divided the beds: to give you privacy for when the doctor came in and examined your bottom.

St Teresa’s Hospital had some wards where the doors were locked and where it was a high-security, key-jingling affair to be let in or out, but to get to Blossom ward, where I was going, you simply took the lift to the third floor and walked straight in.

When the lift doors opened, a long corridor made of very nice wood – probably walnut – led up to the nurses’ station. Bedrooms opened off the corridor, each one housing two beds. Full of horrible curiosity I stared into each room I passed. Some were empty and bright and the beds were neatly made. Some had the curtains closed, and hunched deadened forms lay under blue hospital blankets, their backs towards the door.

I walked along, swinging my bag, trying to look casual. I checked out everyone I passed but no one paid any attention to me. I could be any old visitor.

I reached the nurses’ station. Beautiful, it was, with its curved wood desk, like a reception desk at a boutique hotel. I kept going, past the open-plan seating area, past the kitchen, past the smoking room and into the television lounge.

There was a man in there. He was alone, sitting motionless in front of a chess board. I paused in the doorway and he looked up, suddenly wary.

I spoke. ‘Hello, Wayne.’

He jumped to his feet. ‘What?’ he asked. He sounded panicked.

‘It’s okay,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay. Stay calm. Don’t call the nurses, just give me a second.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Helen. I’m no one. I’m not important.’

‘John Joseph? Jay?’

‘Listen –’

‘I’m not coming back. I’m not doing those gigs, I’m not –’

‘You don’t have to do anything. I was never here; I never saw you.’

‘So, what –’

‘You need to make one phone call. In fact I’ll call the number for you.’

‘I’m not talking to anyone.’ He gestured wildly, at the room around him, at his baggy clothing, at his shaven head. ‘I’m in
hospital
. I’m
suicidal
. Look at me!’

‘Wayne, you have to do this. Someone else is looking for you. He’s got your phone records and it’s only a matter of time before he finds out that you’re here. He won’t care that you’re not well. He’ll tell John Joseph where you are and John Joseph is desperate. Right now he’d do anything. He’d bundle you into a laundry basket and smuggle you out via some handy chute if he had to. One way or another, you’d be on that stage, wearing your white suit and doing those old routines, and you’d be putting your heart and soul into them because John Joseph would have someone standing in the wings with a gun trained on you.’

Maybe I was over-dramatizing things. And maybe I wasn’t.

Wayne stared at me in silence. He looked like he was about to cry.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. I felt like I was going to cry myself.

‘Okay. What do I have to do?’

I pulled out my mobile and hit a number. I waited until it was answered. ‘Here’s Wayne for you,’ I said.

I gave my phone to Wayne and after a short conversation he handed it back to me.

‘All sorted?’ I asked.

‘All sorted.’

‘I just need you to sign something saying that it’s okay with you.’

He took a quick look through the simple contract Artie had drawn up for me and signed it.

‘Before I go,’ I said. ‘Would you mind just confirming a couple of details? No one will know. Not even my mother. It’s just a matter of personal pride.’

‘I’ll see,’ he said cautiously.

‘You met Zeezah in Istanbul? The pair of you fell in love and Birdie found out –’

He groaned. ‘I hurt her really bad. She didn’t deserve any of that –’

‘Not to worry,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to lose him in a morass of guilt. ‘Moving on. John Joseph meets Zeezah and steals her. He decides he’ll be the one to produce her and the one to marry her. And she’s so young and, er …’ How to hint at appalling shallowness? ‘… so, er,
young
, that she decides John Joseph would be a better bet than you. So they get married and he imports her to Ireland. But she won’t leave you alone? Even on her honeymoon she is telling you she’s made a terrible mistake in marrying John Joseph? To the point where you fly to Rome? But she stays with John Joseph. Back in Ireland, the pair of you keep seeing each other. You’re a decent soul from the looks of things. It doesn’t sit well with you, the deceit. You’re spending every
day trying to rehearse with John Joseph and it’s all getting to you – the guilt, the anger – and you’re prone to depression anyway? How am I doing?’

‘Good.’

‘Then you find out that Zeezah is pregnant and there’s every chance that you’re the father, and maybe it brings back that horrible time when your wife got pregnant and it turned out that Shocko O’Shaughnessy was the dad? You’re very … distressed. To use your own word, you’re suicidal. So on Thursday morning you ring your doctor, your …’ I coughed discreetly, because I didn’t want to imply that he was mad; after all I was far from sane myself. ‘… your, ah,
psychiatrist
, and he suggests you’d better come here, and even though beds in this place are like parking spaces on Christmas Eve, he says they’ll pull out all the stops to get you in straight away, that someone will ring you back as soon as they have good news. You get the call, they send their driver to pick you up – Digby, is it Digby?’

He nodded.

‘You throw a few things into a bag, no need to bring your meds because they’re overflowing with them here. Digby arrives, you come out, throw your bag into the boot and at the last minute run back into the house, to collect something. I’m not sure what –’ Then, in a light-bulb moment, I knew. ‘Your guitar, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’ He was clearly impressed. In fairness, I was pretty impressed myself.

‘Digby drives you here and in you come.’

‘That’s exactly what happened.’

‘So what’s the password on your computer?’

‘Guess.’ He was almost smiling.

Suddenly I felt very stupid. I knew. Because she’d told me. ‘It’s … not Zeezah, is it?’

‘Of course it is.’

That first night I’d met her in the medieval nobleman’s receiving room, she’d suggested that Wayne’s password was
Zeezah and I’d just thought she was an egomaniac. She herself hadn’t known, not consciously (she would have told me because she needed Wayne found as much as the rest of them did); she’d just thought she was being funny. But, like I keep saying, there’s always some nugget of truth in what people tell you, even if they don’t know it themselves.

‘And your alarm code? Zero eight zero nine?’

‘My birthday,’ he said. ‘The eighth of September.’

I frowned. ‘They say you shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t use your birthday, it’s too obvious.’ I stopped. It mightn’t be good to add to his anxiety. Changing the subject quickly I said, ‘I love your house.’

‘You’re the only one who does. Everyone else says it’s really depressing. They don’t like the paint colours.’

‘You’re joking? They’re Holy Basil! They’re fabulous.’

But it all started to make sense. What does it say about a man when he paints his bedroom in Wound, Decay and Local Warlord? Suffering somewhat from melancholia, no? No wonder I felt so comfortable in that house.

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘how much does your family know? Your mum, Connie?’

‘Everything.’

‘They know you’re here?’

‘Of course. They’re my family.’

‘Even your brother in upstate New York?’

‘Yes.’

‘But your mum rang me on Sunday, asking if I’d found you.’

He nodded. ‘She was here with me when she made the call. She thought the best way to keep you away from us was to pretend they were so clueless they were going mad with worry.’

Jesus. ‘She was putting it on? She was acting?’

‘She was just trying to mind me.’

‘Well, I … I’ve got to hand it to her, to all of them …’ Meek Mrs Diffney and stroppy Connie, even Richard the
brother – between them they’d done a brilliant job of protecting Wayne.

Time for me to go.

‘Wayne,’ I said, ‘I really hope you get well. Take the tablets, do everything they tell you to do, even though a lot of it is a load of shit, especially the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. And the yoga. And the –’ I made myself stop. Horses for courses; he might find yoga helpful. ‘Take your time, don’t come out until you’re properly better.’

‘Are you going?’ Now that I was leaving it seemed he wanted me to stay.

‘I’m off. I just want to say hello to someone first.’

Admissions was on the ground floor. I’d been there before in another life. Mind you, I could barely remember it: I’d been in such a state when I arrived.

I knocked lightly on the door, then went in. There were three people inside, two women and a man. The girls were both behind PCs and the man was at a filing cabinet.

‘I’m looking for Gloria,’ I said.

‘That’s me.’

She was nothing like the picture in my head. I’d imagined her as blonde. Blue-eyed, with a big head of swishy curls. Instead she was small and dark.

‘My name is Helen Walsh,’ I said. ‘I’m a friend of Wayne Diffney’s. He’s on Blossom ward.’

She nodded. She knew who Wayne was.

‘I just want to thank you,’ I said.

‘For what?’

‘For getting him a bed so quickly. I know he was desperate and I know how hard it is to get a bed in here at short notice. Your call to him was a lifeline.’

She coloured with pleasure. ‘Ah,’ she said shyly. ‘We’d always do our best to help someone in trouble. And,’ she added quickly, ‘we can’t discuss individual cases.’

‘Jesus Christ, would you stop
pushing
me?’

‘I’m not fucking pushing you, I’m just trying to see!’

‘Let’s take it easy, okay?’ Artie said.

‘It’s all right for you!’ Mum almost spat. ‘You’re six foot two.’

Mum, Claire, Kate, Margaret, Bella, Iona, Bruno, Vonnie, even Dad, were jostling at the front of our box at the MusicDrome, each trying to get the spot that guaranteed maximum visibility of the stage.

Jay Parker hadn’t lied – he really had got me a box that seated twelve and there really
were
free peanuts.

But the excitement was getting to us all. The atmosphere in the stadium – the audience made up almost entirely of women and gay men – was electric. All fifteen thousand people had started out being friends with each other, united under the umbrella of love of Laddz, but the heightened happiness was starting to tip over into fractiousness.

‘It’s quarter past nine,’ Bruno said to me. He’d suddenly become my new bff; the beautiful friendship had kicked off within seconds of him learning that I could get him a free ticket for the gig. ‘They were meant to have started fifteen minutes ago!’

‘Fifteen minutes ago!’ Kate’s bottom lip started to wobble. The transformation was astonishing – in the last few hours Kate had changed from a mother-biting monster into a teary teenage girl.