The Mystery of Mercy Close (23 page)

Startled, I looked up. The shout had come from number six, from the last house on Wayne’s side of the road.

‘What about us?’

A ‘young couple’ – a blondey woman and a blondy man in their twenties – were beckoning me towards them.

‘We saw you knocking on the other doors!’ the girl said gaily.

‘We were wondering when you were going to get to us!’

‘We’ve seen you snooping around!’

‘We saw you last night!’

‘Oh,’ I said, my heart lifting. This was excellent. I’d just stumbled on the modern-day equivalent of a squinty-eyed old nosy parker: a young unemployed duo.

They introduced themselves as Daisy and Cain and they welcomed me warmly. They were very tanned – ‘from sunbathing in the garden’. Cain was a software salesperson who’d been out of work for eight months, Daisy a bathroom-fittings salesperson who’d been unemployed for a year and a half.

‘We were both on antidepressants,’ Daisy said, with
somewhat inappropriate levity. ‘But we can’t afford them any more.’

They brought me into their living room. ‘Come in, come in.’

Sadly Daisy and Cain’s house wasn’t as attractive as themselves. Clearly they’d done it up when big-statement wallpapers were all the go, and their rooms were just too small for those bold, oversized patterns.

‘We won’t offer you a drink –’

‘– because we haven’t anything to give you!’

They both laughed long and hard.

Such cheerfulness! Such bizarre upbeat behaviour. Maybe they practised a Positive Mental Attitude. Maybe – my lip curled in scorn – maybe they listened to
The Wonder of Now
.

‘We can’t even afford food so we live on tomato soup. I’ve never been so skinny,’ Daisy said.

Their violently patterned wallpaper was doing funny things to my eyes; it was distorting my perspective, so that every now and then their wall went 3-D and seemed to rear at me.

‘Ask us anything,’ Cain said. ‘We spy on our neighbours all the time.’

‘We never leave,’ Daisy said. ‘We never go anywhere. Johnny-on-the-spot, that’s us.’

At that moment the wall decided to do a running jump at me and I shied away from it, putting up my arm to shield myself.

‘It does that sometimes,’ Daisy said apologetically. ‘I never wanted to get it.’

‘And now we’re stuck with it.’

‘So what’s the story?’ Daisy asked.

‘Something to do with Wayne Diffney?’ Cain chimed in.

‘What’s he been up to?’ Daisy asked eagerly. ‘An affair with someone’s wife? A politician’s, we reckon. So, the press are on to him and it’s going to be all over the red-tops on Sunday, right? That’s why he’s gone into hiding.’

‘Has he gone into hiding?’

‘Yeah.’ Cain rolled his eyes at me. ‘That’s why he went off in that big black car yesterday morning.’

Suddenly my nervous system lit up with enough electricity to power Hong Kong. ‘Hold on a minute.’ I could hardly speak, my mouth was so dry. ‘You saw Wayne getting into a big black car? Yesterday morning?’

‘Yeah. About what time, Daze? Eleven thirty?’

‘Eleven fifty-nine.’

‘How can you be so specific?’ I asked.

‘The first
Jeremy Kyle
had just finished. There are three in a row. At eleven, twelve and one o clock.’

‘Was it his own car Wayne got into?’ I was trying to clarify things. ‘You know he has a black Alfa?’

Cain shook his head. ‘Not his car. Look, it’s still parked over there. It was a great big SUV he got into.’

‘And what? He just drove away?’

‘No. Wayne wasn’t driving. There were other people there. Men. One of them was driving.’

Men! My heart started pounding so loudly I could hardly hear myself speak. ‘How many men?’

‘At least one,’ Cain said confidently.

‘Two,’ Daisy said.

I unpeeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth. ‘Listen, think about this next question very carefully. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, just answer honestly.’

‘Okay.’

‘How did Wayne look to you?’

After some thought Cain said, ‘There was something weird going on with his hair.’

‘Yeah, it looked a bit … patchy.’

‘What I mean is, how did he seem? Happy? Not happy?’

They looked at each other. A realization of how serious this was seemed to be dawning on them. Cain swallowed.

‘Well … actually,’ Daisy said tentatively, ‘he could have been scared.’

After a few moments Cain nodded and said, ‘Yeah. Scared.’

‘Really? Did it look like he was being strong-armed?’

They glanced at each other. ‘Now that you say it …’ Anxiety flitted across Cain’s face and he looked at Daisy for confirmation.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

Oh my God!

‘So why didn’t you call the law?’ My voice was shrill and panicky.

There was a little pause and then Cain said, ‘Because we grow cannabis in the back garden.’

‘And we didn’t really think …’ Daisy said. ‘When you see a man being helped into a car, you don’t really think bad things …’

Feck’s sake. A big black car, a frightened man being forced into it? What did they
think
was going on?

‘Did you get the licence plate? Even a partial?’

‘Aaaah, no.’ Clearly it hadn’t occurred to them. ‘I’m not even sure there
was
a licence plate,’ Cain said with some defiance.

That was bullshit.

What were this pair like? A couple of stoners watching a man being kidnapped and then cheerfully going back to watching
Jeremy Kyle
?

Anxiety overwhelmed me. This was where I bowed out. The rozzers could take over from here; I was no match for scary men in big black SUVs.

Never mind Jay Parker’s insistence on secrecy. That was all well and good when he’d thought Wayne had disappeared voluntarily. This was a totally different ball game.

I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder.

‘What are you doing?’ Daisy looked surprised.

Then it was my turn to be surprised. ‘A man has been abducted,’ I said, already at the living-room door.

‘You can’t go,’ Cain said.

Moving faster, alerted by some instinct, I whipped out into the hall, but to my shock Daisy pulled the sleeve of my top, trying to hoick me back into the room. I shook her off, then I saw that Cain was standing between me and the front door, blocking me from leaving.

What was going on? What did they want from me? I was confused and scared, properly afraid.

‘You can’t do this,’ Cain said.

‘Just watch me,’ I said, an automatic smart-arse reply.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to us,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re a bitch.’ To my further bewilderment, she burst out crying, great heaving sobs. ‘It’s true, you’re all bitches.’

Cain had his back against the door. My face was three inches from his. He and I locked eyes. I rummaged around until I found the steel in my gut, then forced it out through my pupils.

‘Get out of my way,’ I said.

‘Ah, let her out,’ Daisy said. ‘Fuck her.’ She waved her mobile around. ‘See this!’ she yelled at me. ‘We’re ringing someone else! Right now! You’re fucked.’

‘But –’

‘We don’t need you. We’ve got choices.’

Then Cain was stepping aside, my hand was on the latch, the door was swinging open – it was all unfolding like in a movie – and then I was outside, sucking down huge gulps of air. Freedom.

Immediately, I started running, trying to get to my car. My hands were shaking, my heart was pounding and pinpricks of sensation were playing over my face. What in the name of God had that been all about? Had I just witnessed an object lesson on the evils of weed? Or was it the hopelessness of long-term unemployment that had tipped them into lunacy?

I reached my car and clambered in. I didn’t indicate, didn’t look where I was going, didn’t even take off the handbrake, I just drove.

I found myself on the sea road, heading towards town. A high squealing noise was coming from the dashboard, telling me to unlock the handbrake. I reached down and released it and the squealing noise stopped, thank Christ.

First things first. I was safe from that pair of madzers, Cain and Daisy, whatever they’d wanted from me. I was safe and in my car and driving and the squealing noise had stopped. All good things. But Wayne Diffney had been kidnapped and I had to alert the coppers, and the mere thought of trying to explain everything to them sent a terrible wave of despair rushing up and over me. You’ve no
idea
what they’re like. They do everything with such ponderous slowness. Hundreds of forms had to be filled in. Pens could never be found. Shift change-overs occurred mid-sentence and you’d have to start the whole process again with the new person. Seasons could pass and the icecaps would have melted before you could successfully report a stolen wallet. Wayne could be dead a hundred times over before we’d finished the paperwork.

However, there was one way to bypass the whole appallingly tedious process. It was unethical but what did I care about ethics? The quickest way to get the cops on to this was to involve Artie.

He wouldn’t be happy. Tough.

I pulled in and rang his mobile, and this time he answered.

‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘At work.’

‘In your office?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t move. I’m on my way to see you.’

I hung up before he could tell me not to.

I found him behind his desk in his glass-sided office. His pale blue shirt was crumpled and rolled back at the cuffs and his hair was too long for a copper’s. Altogether a pleasure to look at.

I closed the door. Lots of his macho colleagues were milling about in the main office and I didn’t want them overhearing. I couldn’t help but notice that they all wore crumpled shirts too; clearly they had no womenfolk prepared to iron for them, and maybe that came with the job.

‘Right,’ I said, pulling up a chair and facing Artie across the desk. ‘This is what’s happened.’ I spilled out the whole story – Wayne, Daisy and Cain, the men in the black SUV …

Artie took it all calmly. Too calmly.

‘Were there signs of a struggle?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what Wayne’s house usually looks like.’

‘Broken glass? Overturned furniture? Neighbours overhearing shouts?’

‘Listen to what I’m saying, Artie: men, at least two of them, took Wayne away in a big black car.’

‘So go to the police.’

‘You
are
the police.’

‘I’m not the police.’

Well, he was and he wasn’t.

‘Not the kind you need,’ he said.

I stared hard at him, hoping to shame him into helping me. He met my gaze, remaining relaxed and steady in his chair, his arms behind his head.

‘I know this is “inappropriate”,’ I said.

‘Inappropriate’, now
there
’s another word I hate. Very high on my Shovel List, up there with ‘grounded’ and ‘spiritual’.

‘Artie, if I go to the ordinary coppers, they won’t take me
seriously. At the best of times they’re lazy bastards. And when they find out I’m a PI they’ll do everything they can to obstruct me. And when they hear it’s Wayne and they remember his hair, they’ll just laugh at the whole thing. Someone must owe you a favour.’

‘Helen, don’t do this.’

‘You have to help me.’

‘I don’t have to help you.’

‘You’re my boyfriend.’

He sighed.

‘I’ll tell Vonnie you were mean to me.’

He rolled his eyes.

‘I’ll tell Bella you were mean to me.’

He rolled his eyes again and I gazed at him in mute appeal.

‘No, Helen.’ He shook his head. ‘That gazing thing doesn’t work on me.’

But I kept on gazing. I knew I could stare for ever, so I maintained a steady, unwavering lock on his look, and from time to time I wondered what he was thinking and how long this would take to work and actually being quite impressed that he was holding out for as long as he was, and eventually, with his stare still locked on to mine, he picked up his desk phone and said, ‘Artie Devlin here. Can you get me Sergeant Coleman?’

A few seconds later someone important came on the line – some
man
, of course – and Artie spoke in an authoritative tone of voice for a veritable age, giving them all kinds of info: Wayne’s address, Daisy and Cain’s address,
my
address, my phone number, my date of birth … on and on it went.

He ended by saying, ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d make it a priority.’

Then he hung up.

‘Okay,’ he said to me, ‘two officers are on their way over to interview Cain and Daisy. I’ll go too.’

‘I owe you,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Oh yes, you owe me.’ Then he smiled. Such a wicked, wicked smile and I was never more sorry that his office had see-through walls.

So what now? Well, I’d better bring Jay Parker up to speed on the latest developments. But, to be honest, I wasn’t ready for this to be over yet. Except for when I’d been scared shitless by Cain and Daisy, I’d been enjoying the work and the distraction it had given me. Now I could feel the blackness that had been hovering, that had been kept at bay by the search for Wayne, waiting to take over. Feeding into my darkness was worry about Wayne – who had taken him? Where was he right now?

In an effort to string out this case for fifteen more minutes I decided to give Jay the news in person.

All week the Laddz had been rehearsing at the Europa MusicDrome, where the gigs were going to be held, and there was a good chance I’d find him there.

With a capacity of fifteen thousand people, the MusicDrome was massive by Irish standards. Inside, most of the venue was unlit. Tiers and tiers of empty seats were sitting in the darkness, being watchful and sinister. But the area around the stage was brightly lit and aswarm with people – choreographers, lighting men, wardrobe mistresses, techies, hairy roadie types – all milling about, looking anxious.

Up on the enormous stage, in the middle of the hordes, the Laddz were marking a dance routine, which, even in my subdued state, made me smile. Frankie was giving it socks, bulging his eyeballs and thumping his chest. Next to him, Roger St Leger barely bothered to move an atom, contempt for the whole process oozing from his every pore. John Joseph was making more of an effort to do the moves,
mostly, I suppose, because he was sort of the front guy, but I could tell he was feeling a bit mortified.