The Blissfully Dead (13 page)

Chapter 24
Day 8 – Carmella

A
s the plane climbed above the bank of thick cloud, the seatbelt sign light went out with a ping, and an answering echo of unclicking buckles rattled around the cabin.
Carmella
switched on her iPad and swiped to the Notes section to double-check where she’d be going once she landed. The witness was called Roisin McGreevy and she lived in the roughest part of Tallaght, an already-rough area in South Dublin that used to be known as Knackeragua among Carmella and her school friends. Land of ‘knacker-wash’ denim – their name for stone-washed – blond mullets and petty crime. Carmella hadn’t been there for years, but by all accounts it was still fairly grim.

The flight was bumpy, as it so often was across the Irish Sea, but they landed without too much drama, and Carmella made good time through customs. She was striding out of arrivals toward
s th
e bus stop twenty minutes ahead of her planned ETA, taking a bus into the centre of town, and then another one out to Tallaght,
arriving
at her destination by half past eleven.

Roisin McGreevy was just sixteen now. She’d been fourteen when the ‘incident’ with Shawn Barrett occurred, according to Mervyn Hammond’s reluctant intel. Since it was before noon, the girl would likely still be in bed – if she was anything like Carmella herself had been as a teenager – assuming she didn’t have a
Saturday
job. Carmella hadn’t seen a photo of her but realised she was imagining her as a hard-faced skanger with piercings and dyed hair; the sort of girl who would jump into bed with a pop star without a second’s hesitation for the glory of it, and who probably thought all her Christmases had come at once when said pop star was as good-looking and famous as Shawn Barrett . . .

When Carmella walked into the small cul-de-sac, situated in the roaring shadow of a flyover, she thought her fears about
Roisin
would probably be realised. Cars on bricks decorated several of the driveways; others exposed decaying crazy paving and rusty
pushchair
skeletons. Carmella adjusted the skirt waistband of her navy suit, feeling self-conscious and over-dressed, as several grubby kids playing on scooters and skateboards in the circle of road at the end of the cul-de-sac gawped at her. One pointed and laughed.

‘Lookit the mad hair on yer one!’ This set them all off, roaring and jeering. Carmella felt affronted. Her hair was tied up! If they thought her ponytail was ‘mad’, they should see it when it was loose and brushed out.

None of the houses seemed to have numbers on them.

‘You,’ she said, pointing at one of the kids. ‘Where’s number twenty-one?’

He gaped at her as though she’d asked him for a snog. One of his mates replied by jerking his thumb towards the neatest house in the street. It had the only square of lawn in sight, a lawn that looked as though someone had mowed it recently.

When she rang the bell, a short, stocky woman answered immediately. The woman wasn’t much older than herself, but she had the sort of perm Carmella hadn’t seen for years, at least not on anybody under the age of eighty – regimented rolls of tight, short curls all facing the same direction.

‘Good morning,’ Carmella said, just about managing not to greet her with the habitual ‘howya’. ‘Mrs McGreevy?’

The woman nodded, frowning. She was wearing some kind of nylon housecoat that, with the perm, made Carmella wonder if she’d fallen into some kind of seventies time slip black hole.

‘My name is’ – she dropped her voice so that the kids couldn
’t he
ar.
They had all crowded closer, rigid with curiosity, and she didn’t want to get out her police ID unless she had to – ‘
Detective
Sergeant Masiello, from the London Metropolitan Police. I’m after speaking to your daughter, Roisin – if you’re her mother?’ She couldn’t help noticing how much more Irish she sounded when she came home.

The woman stared at her, eyes wide with alarm, her hand frozen on the door.

‘Please don’t worry, nothing’s happened to her, she’s not in any trouble. It’s concerning another investigation we’re in the middle of over in London.’

‘I think you must have the wrong girl,’ Mrs McGreevy said cagily. ‘Roisin’s never been to London.’

‘May I come in?’

Mrs McGreevy stepped aside to admit her but only, Carmella thought, to get her away from the prying eyes of the neighbourho
od lads.

The interior of the house was as neat as the front
garden
, but utterly devoid of any style or flair. It was as seventies as Mrs McGreevy herself, although clearly not in any sort of retro or ironic way.
Carmella
half-expected to see a man with Brylcreemed hair and peg-top trousers smoking a pipe in an armchair in the front room. She blinked at the swirly carpets and flock wallpaper, and
followed
Mrs McGreevy through to the back of the house, to a slightly less eye-watering breakfast room.

‘Sit down, now. I’m sure you’ve had a wasted journey, but can I get you a coffee at least before you go, Miss, er, I’m sorry, what do I call you?’

‘Carmella is fine.’ She smiled at the woman, who looked sick with worry. ‘Thanks, I’d love a coffee, white, no sugar, please.’ She sat down at the kitchen table.

‘Are you sure Roisin’s not in trouble?’ Mrs McGreevy blurted, busying herself with the kettle.

‘No. It’s in connection with an incident a couple of years back.’ Carmella hoped the woman already knew about it. It would be a hell of a shock to discover your fourteen-year-old had been engaged in non-consensual S&M with one of the planet’s biggest pop stars.

‘What’s going on?’ came a small high voice from the doorway. Carmella turned, expecting from the voice’s pitch to see a young child, but was surprised to find a teenage girl in a blue uniform and baseball cap bearing an embroidered logo of Supermac’s burger bar resting on top of brown curls.

‘Who are you? Mam, who is this?’

‘Roisin, love, don’t be worrying. She’s a police officer from
London
. She wants to ask you a few questions about something. I can’t imagine what.’

Roisin couldn’t have been further away from Carmella’s mental image of her. She looked about twelve, and so wholesome that it was almost impossible to imagine her naked, indulging in all sorts with Barrett. The only hint that she might not always have looked this innocent were the empty pinpricks of holes in her ears, four or five in each.

‘Oh God, really? Why?’ Roisin’s eyes immediately filled with tears, making her look even younger.

‘Come and sit down, Roisin. I just need your help, that’s all.’

‘It was ages ago.’

Her mother’s eyes opened wide.
‘What
was ages ago, Roisin Marie McGreevy?’

‘Mam! You know. That business with that man. The money.’ Roisin was actually wringing her hands.

‘Ach,
that
business. I might have known.’

‘Well, what else would it be?’ Roisin turned to Carmella. ‘Amn’t I right? Is that what it’s about?’

Carmella smiled gravely at her. ‘It depends what man you
mean.’

‘Mervyn Hammond . . . We weren’t supposed to tell anyone about the money.’

Carmella nodded, although this was the first she’d heard about any money. So the sleazy bastard had actually paid Roisin’s family off, to keep quiet?

‘How much money did he pay you, Roisin? It’s OK to tell me. He’s the one that gave us your address, so he knows I’m talking to you.’

‘Ten grand, he gave her,’ said Mrs McGreevy contemptuously. ‘Damages, he called it. Not nearly enough, in my book. You should’ve seen the bruise on her cheek! Still, it’ll pay for her university.’ She banged down a cup in front of Carmella, grains of
undissolved
coffee swirling in a greyish liquid on top.

A guilty look passed across Roisin’s peachy face, unnoticed by her mother.
Ahah
, thought Carmella.
Mrs McGreevy clearly doesn’t have
all
the facts
.

‘I’ve to be in work in half an hour; my shift starts at noon,’ Roisin said.

Carmella took a sip of the coffee and tried not to grimace. It would be better for her bladder for her not to drink it anyhow.
‘Mrs McGreevy, would you mind ringing Supermac’s for Roisin, to
tell her boss that she’ll be a bit late?’

‘I’ll get fired!’ wailed the girl.

‘Tell them that you’re being interviewed as a police witness but you can’t say why – I’ll call them too if they give you any grief, OK? Please go ahead, Mrs McGreevy.’

As soon as Mrs McGreevy had left the room, Carmella pulled out the chair next to her, gesturing to Roisin to sit. ‘Quick, now, if you want to tell me while your mum’s out of the room. You’ve not told her the whole story, have you?’

Roisin bit her lip, her shoulders slumped. She was an exceptionally pretty girl, with pink, clear cheeks, a pointy little chin and bright blue eyes. ‘Has he done it to someone else?’

She started picking at the skin around her fingernails, ripping shreds off them, worrying at them until she pulled a strip too far on her thumb and a bead of blood sprang to the surface. She stuck it into her mouth, then turned it sideways so that she didn’t look like a toddler sucking its thumb.
Poor kid
, thought Carmella.

‘I’m afraid I can’t say what it’s about. I know this won’t be easy for you, dragging it all up when I’m sure you don’t ever want to think about it again. Can you talk me through what happened? But before your mum gets back, tell me – was it just the bruise on your face that made Hammond give you that money? I’m guessing it wasn’t.’

Roisin shot a panicked look towards the hall, where her mother was on the phone – they even had an old-fashioned telephone with a curly cable, on a little wooden table by the front door. ‘Please don’t tell her. It would kill her if she knew what he really did to me,’ she whispered. ‘They wanted to make sure I never told the papers.’

‘What was it, Roisin? What did Shawn Barrett do to you?’

But at that moment they both heard the click of the receiver being replaced and Mrs McGreevy came back in. ‘It’s grand. Nicola will see you when she sees you, she says. I told her you’d been a
witness
to a road accident and the police were talking to you.’

‘Oh, Mam! What if she asks me about it?’

Carmella glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something, Roisin. In the meantime, could you talk me through how you first met Shawn? Do you mind if I record this, just so I can write notes later?’

Roisin nodded. Her mother bustled around the already-clean kitchen, wiping down clean surfaces with a clean sponge, listening but pretending not to.

‘I went to an OnTarget concert, their first big tour. It was the first time they’d played in Dublin. I’d never been to the O2 arena—’

‘That’s the place that used to be the Point, right?’

‘Yeah. Think it’s changed again now, to the 3Arena. Anyway, I’d never been there. Me and my mate Scarlett went together, queued for hours to get near the front, we did. Couldn’t
believe
it when Shawn got me up out of the crowd.’

There was just a hint of pride in her voice, even after everything that happened that night.

‘Go on.’

‘It was during “Catch Me Falling”
,
in the first encore. He just pointed at me and beckoned, and before I knew it these two
massive
bouncers dragged me up on the stage. Everyone was screaming and cheering. I sang a whole verse with him into his microphone! He kissed me . . .’

Her voice faltered.

‘Then what? How did you end up at his hotel?’

‘When I was up there, he put this little bit of paper in my hand without anyone noticing. It said “CALL ME AFTER THE SHOW”, with a number on it.’ She was starting to look sligh
tly sick.

‘And you did?’ Carmella prompted.

Roisin looked at her mother’s set shoulders in her flowery housecoat. ‘I know it was wrong. I know it was asking for trouble, but I honestly thought it would be OK. I mean, he’s so famous, surely he wouldn’t risk doing anything mental . . .’

‘What about your friend – Scarlett? Did she come with you when you went to meet him?’

Roisin shook her head. ‘Her older sister was there, at the concert. We were meant to be going home with her after, but I told them that I’d bumped into my auntie and my cousins who live round the corner, and they’d take me. Shawn said on the phone not to worry about getting home, he’d get a car for me, but I wasn’t to tell anyone and I was to come on my own.’

‘Did anyone ask how old you were?’

Roisin looked sheepish. ‘Yes. One of his bodyguards. But I . . . I—’

Her mother interrupted, a harsh edge to her voice. ‘She had a fake ID saying she was eighteen. And she looked different then. You wouldn’t believe the phase she was going through. Right little skank she looked – bleached hair, ridiculous heels and enough make-up it’s a miracle she could even open her eyes. If her da and me had seen her before she went out dressed like that, we’d never have let her go. Never!’

‘I’ve not worn a scrap of make-up since that night,’ Roisin said quietly. ‘Or heels, or short skirts.’

Poor girl
, thought Carmella. The sort of rite of passage that no girl ever deserved.

‘So that’s one good thing that came out of the whole sorry
business
,’ said Mrs McGreevy sanctimoniously, polishing the
already-gleaming kettle. Carmella suddenly felt desperate to get Roisin on her own. She clearly wasn’t going to say what really happened, not with her mum there being all judgemental.

Roisin looked up, anguished. ‘If he has done it again, will I have to go to court? They’ll kill me – if my name gets out, they will actually kill me, I’m not joking.’

Her mother’s hand stilled on the disinfectant spray.

‘Who will, Roisin?’ asked Carmella gently, wondering who she meant. Hammond? The band? Shawn’s family?