The Mystery of Mercy Close (19 page)

I rummaged around through the bric-a-crap and had a short moment of excitement when I saw a set of salt and pepper dispensers shaped like camels that might be a possibility. Until I lifted them up and saw just how hideous they were. Hastily I replaced them.

Hope flared, then died in the eyes of the twinsetted lady behind the table.

Amidst the sea of junk I suddenly saw something that mightn’t be total rubbish! It was a silver-backed hairbrush and matching hand-mirror. There was something slightly sad and spooky about them, as if they’d belonged to an eighteenth-century child who’d died of the ague (perhaps a tube of pomegranate-scented hand sanitizer would have saved the nipper), and they would go perfectly in my slightly sad and spooky bedroom.

I lunged towards them – they were already mine – but to my great astonishment someone else got there first. Someone with a small hand and bubblegum-pink nails.

She was a little girl, well, not that little, she was about nine. She grasped the brush and mirror and held them to her pink-clad chest.

‘But I wanted them,’ I said, too surprised not to. I know that in this strange modern world we live in, children are king. Anything they want, they must get. We’re not supposed to deny them anything. We mustn’t even admit to wants or
needs of our own in their presence. (Is it an actual law yet? If it’s not it will be soon. You watch.)

‘She got them fair and square,’ the stall-holder piped up. This was probably the most action she’d seen all morning.

Was there any point, me mentioning that I didn’t believe in fair and square? I was prepared to wrestle for them.

‘Oh.’ The little girl looked me in the eye. She seemed to like what she saw. ‘Please, you have them.’ She thrust the brush and mirror at me and – yes! – I took them.

‘No!’ The stall-holder lady said. She’d clearly taken agin me for raising then dashing her hopes with the camel salt and pepper shakers. ‘Little girl, you got them first. I saw it. You!’ She pointed an accusing finger at me. ‘Give the little girl back her goods.’

‘They’re not my goods,’ the little girl said. ‘I don’t know if I can afford to buy them.’

Believe me, love, I was thinking, you can
definitely
afford to buy them. Twinset behind the counter would be willing to sell to her at any price, no matter how low, just so that I wouldn’t get them.

The little girl had produced a small pink purse. ‘I’m buying Christmas presents for my family. I have five euro to spend on each of them.’

‘Isn’t that just perfect!’ the twinset lady said. ‘Five euro is exactly what the set costs!’

‘And what is their provenance?’ the little girl asked, like we were in Sotheby’s.

‘
Provenance?
’ Twinset asked.
‘
What does that mean?’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘A cardboard box. Along with all this other junk.’ Twinset cast a bitter hand over her pitiful wares. ‘How would I know? I wanted to be on the knitting stall.’

I wondered what she’d done to deserve this fate. Given insufficient praise to the president of the committee’s Victoria sandwich? Cake Wars are a peculiarly savage form of
engagement. Criticizing a person’s cake is nearly as bad as saying that their baby looks like a serial killer. You cannot imagine the forces of darkness that you will unleash.

The little girl gazed at me with limpid eyes. ‘Will you give this brush and mirror a good home?’

‘Yes.’

‘I trust you. I can tell you have a good heart.’

‘Well … thanks very much. So do you, obviously.’

‘Bella Devlin.’ She extended a small polite hand to me and I put my goodies down so I could shake it.

‘Helen Walsh.’

I paid the stall-holder her fiver and she rewarded me with a puckered lemony face.

‘It’s the right thing that you got them,’ Bella said. ‘I was thinking of giving them to my brother but I see now that I was wrong. Oh!’ She saw someone over my shoulder and her face lit up. ‘Here’s my dad. He’s been buying our Christmas tree.’

I turned round and there he was. Artie Devlin, the ridey police man. Scalpel Man.

‘Dad!’ Bella was bursting to share her good news. ‘This is my new friend, Helen Walsh.’

Oh my God. I stared up at Artie. He stared down at me. ‘We’ve met,’ we both said.

‘Really? How?’ Bella was amazed.

‘Via work,’ I said.

‘So how old are you?’ Bella seemed to think that she and I were roughly the same age.

‘Thirty-three.’

‘Oh,
are
you? I thought you were about fourteen. Or maybe fifteen. I didn’t realize …’ She went off into a little place in her head and when she re-emerged she had adjusted to the new normal. ‘You’re thirty-three. And he’s –’ she nodded at Artie – ‘forty-one. So that’s fine, you’re in the same age bracket. Are you married, Helen? Do you have a husband and babies and all those things?’

‘No.’

More calibrations seemed to take place in Bella’s head, then her face cleared and she said cheerily, ‘How about we go to your house and see if your new brush and mirror set fit in?’

‘Hold it, Bella,’ Artie said quickly, trying to hustle her away. ‘Leave Helen alone –’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to my house, even though it’s fair to warn you it’s only a flat.’

‘When?’ Artie seemed startled. ‘What? Now?’

‘Yes, come on over for a seasonal glass of Diet Coke.’ I was officially throwing caution to the wind. ‘I can even offer you some cake.’

Bella insisted on coming in my car. She said she couldn’t fit in with Artie because the Christmas tree was taking up too much room.

‘But that was a ruse,’ she said, as soon as we’d driven off. ‘I wanted to talk to you about him. He works too hard. And he doesn’t have a girlfriend. He worries about us, the kids. In case we form an emotional attachment to one of his girlfriends and then they break up. So he hasn’t had any girlfriends. But he’s really nice; he’d make a good boyfriend, if you were interested. And I can tell that you and I would have a lot in common also.’

‘Well … er …’ Christ, what could I say? I’d only popped out for some bric-a-crap and seemed to be coming home with an entire new family.

‘The break-up with Mum was very amicable, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ Bella went on. ‘She has a boyfriend and he’s cool. We all hang out together, all the time. It’s totally fine.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well.’ Bella sighed, sounding quite grown-up. ‘It’s not ideal but we must make the best of things.’

Bella was mad about my flat. She ran from room to room – which didn’t take long – and declared, ‘It’s like someone has died in here, but in a good way! It’s Halloween all year round! But I’m not saying you’re a goth. It’s much subtler than that. Mum would be very interested in your design, wouldn’t she, Dad?’ To me, she said, ‘Mum’s in interiors. Now let’s brush your hair with your new brush. Can you believe how much it
so
belongs in this flat? It was meant to be.’

She sat me at my dressing-table mirror and brushed my hair and the whole thing was a little strange, if I thought about it, so I didn’t.

Wordlessly, Artie lounged against the bedroom wall, watching my reflection with his blue, blue eyes. I have never, before or since, wanted a man so badly.

The agony went on for a long time, Bella stroking my hair and Artie and I locking eyes in the mirror, silently combusting with longing.

Suddenly, Bella exclaimed, ‘What time is it?’ She whipped her little pink phone out of her little pink bag and said, ‘Dad, you’ve to drop me over to Mum’s! It’s her Christmas cocktail party and I’m serving the home-made époisse tuiles! So let’s all swap numbers. Helen, you tell us yours. Now we’ll text you ours.’

While Artie fiddled with his mobile, she took hold of my arm and said, in an undertone, ‘Mum has all of us kids for the rest of the weekend. He’s free as a bird. Free. As. A. Bird,’ she hissed. Then in a louder voice, ‘Goodbye, Helen, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. I
know
we’ll meet again.’

Awkwardly, Artie said to me, ‘It takes around twenty minutes to get over to her Mum’s.’

Which meant he’d be back in about forty minutes.

He managed it in thirty-one.

‘Bella said I was to come back,’ he said as I opened the door, letting the cold winter’s day in with him. ‘I must admit it’s a novel feeling to be pimped by my nine-year-old daughter.’

‘Let me take your coat,’ I said. ‘I’m planning for you to stay for a while.’

We both neighed with panicky laughter and I realized he was nervous, as nervous as I was.

He shrugged off his coat, a dark heavy thing, and I helped him out of it. It was the first time I’d touched him.

‘I have a coat stand,’ I said with some pride. ‘A circular one.’ A coat stand struck me as a very civilized thing to own. I’d bought it from a dead man in Glasthule – well, from his family, in an executors’ sale.

But the weight of Artie’s coat made the stand fall over. We stood and watched it as it simply toppled over, on to the floor. ‘How about we refuse to think of this as an omen?’ Artie said.

‘Okay.’

‘Just sling the coat on the couch there,’ he said. ‘It’ll be grand.’

‘What do you think of my flat?’ I asked. ‘I’m not just making conversation,’ I added. ‘Cripplingly awkward though this situation is.’

Because if he didn’t like my home, things weren’t going to work out with us.

Artie walked from the living room to the kitchen to the bedroom, silently taking note of all the different touches, and eventually he said, ‘It wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste.’

He flicked a quick look at me.

‘But then,’ he added, with a gleam in his eyes that sent a shot of sensation right to my nethers, ‘neither are you.’

Correct answer.

Right, that was enough flirting, foreplay, whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t endure any more waiting.

‘I’m worried about my bed,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ He quirked an eyebrow. Another shot of sensation to my nethers.

‘It’s quite small,’ I said. ‘What if you don’t fit?’

‘Oh …’

‘Only one way to find out,’ I said. ‘Clothes, off.’

Already he was peeling his shirt off.

Christ, he was gorgeous. Big and fit and sexy. I stretched him out on my bed and lowered myself on to him but within seconds his hips were arching upwards and his face was contorted. Too quick.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pulling me down to him and hiding his face in my neck. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while for me too.’

But soon, we did it again, properly this time. We were left panting and exhausted, and lay in silence as the winter sky, heavy with unfallen snow, got dark outside.

Eventually I said, ‘Go on.’

‘What?’

‘This is the bit where you say, “So what happens now?”’

‘So what happens now?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not having this conversation. I don’t know what happens now. I’m not a fortune teller. None of us knows. I know your situation isn’t ideal. I know you have your kids to think about. I know we can’t insure against disaster. If we thought about all the things that could ever go wrong in a life, we’d never leave the house. We’d refuse to come out of our mother’s womb.’

‘You’re very wise.’ He paused. ‘Or very something.’

‘I don’t know what I am. But I fancy you. And your daughter likes me. And we’ve got to live our lives, risky and all as that is.’

‘The well-being of my kids is very important to me.’

‘I know.’

‘And my ex-wife is a … formidable woman.’

‘I’m fairly fecking formidable myself when I’m in the humour.’

‘I wouldn’t want to put you in any … uncomfortable situations.’

‘Please!’ I was disgusted. ‘You underestimate me.
Greatly
.’

So that was the wife dealt with, and the nine-year-old daughter was a rock-solid ally. The thirteen-year-old son was bound to fancy me; so the only tricky one might be the fifteen-year-old daughter, Iona. Grand, it would all be grand.

Somehow I still seemed to be lying on the flat of my back on Wayne’s living-room floor. I forced myself to get to my feet and I went upstairs to Wayne’s office. I was going to take another, more detailed, look at his money – any unusual outgoings, but also, more importantly, any unusual income. I admit I wasn’t approaching this case systematically, but I was following my gut. If I was interested in it, it was, by definition, interesting, right?

I got down some lever-arch files – bank statements, tax returns and invoices issued. Some stuff was easy to track. Royalties came in twice a year – September and March – from Laddz recordings. Can you believe it?
Still!
After all these years! Less and less every time, but it was a few quid nevertheless. Another lot of royalties also came twice a year from Wayne’s solo albums – far less than the Laddz money, pennies really. Then there were payments from Hartley Inc., which it didn’t take a genius to figure out was John Joseph’s company. They were sporadic and varied and could be cross-referenced back to invoices from Wayne.

Everything was clear and in order and all pretty modest. Wayne didn’t make big money. Same as what I would have got in a good year. But when I did a quick tot of all of last year’s various incomes, I noticed that the total wasn’t the same as the amount he’d declared on his tax return. I checked my sums, and when I got the same figure again my first thought was that he was cheating on his taxes – but no. In fact he’d overstated his income by roughly five thousand euro.

Strange. I flipped back through his deposit account statements and there it was, in May of last year, a deposit of five thousand dollars, which translated as roughly five thousand euro.

There was no indication of who or what the money had come from. Unlike the royalty income or the payments from Hartley Inc., all it had as a reference was a string of numbers.

And why was it a round figure? And in dollars?

I flipped back to the previous year and there, again in May, was a deposit for five thousand dollars. And again the previous year. At this point, I had to get another lever-arch file down off the shelf, but there we were again – five thousand dollars. Every May. Going back ten years and maybe more, but Wayne’s bank statements stopped around then.