The Mystery of Mercy Close (5 page)

They’re no good at making the transition to real life, in which members of the public don’t have to answer a thing. If you want to get people talking and you don’t have a warrant
or police ID, you need charm. You need subtlety. You need wiliness. You can’t just stand there in your size-thirteen shoes, a rasher sandwich in your pocket, bellowing questions.

And on stake-out the ex-coppers are worse than useless. Basically they won’t get out of the car – too fat? Too lazy? – and sometimes you need to, especially on a rural job.

There was one case I was on, an insurance job, involving a man who had put in a big claim for a paralysed leg. He lived in a farmhouse that managed to be both remote and bleak, and there was nowhere I could hide without him seeing me. So in the dark of the night I dug – yes, actually with my own hands and a spade – I dug a ditch and then climbed down into it and spent thirteen hours a day lying in it for the following three days, my lens trained on the house.

It rained. The mud got wet and turned to mire. My clothes were ruined. I was cold and bored and had nowhere to wee. And I stayed there until I got the video evidence I needed.

Which eventually happened when a lorry drove up the boreen and my subject emerged from the house looking very jaunty and light on his feet for a man who was meant to have a gammy leg. The lorry came to a halt outside the house and my subject vaulted himself up on to the back of it and, with the help of the lorry driver, began to unload a bath. (Claw-foot but modern: the feet were made of pads of stainless steel instead of copper claws and the outside was painted a sort of silvery-pewter. Extremely nice. The sort of bath that could definitely hold its own and form the centrepiece of a much bigger room.)

I was so bedazzled by the bath that I nearly missed what happened next, which is that my bad-leg subject produced a ladder, put it against the wall of the house and began hoisting the bath up, then shoving it into the house via a bedroom window. Click, click, click went my camera from my muddy little dug-out, whirr, whirr, whirr went my video, and after darkness fell at last I clambered out, filled in the hole and
went back to the B&B, where I spent an hour in the bath (very ordinary, alas), drinking the vodka and Diet Coke which I’d smuggled in, and basking in the satisfaction of a job well done.

But an ex-copper would never go to such lengths; they think they’re above all of that. (‘Ditching’, it’s called.) And the other thing about ex-coppers: they’re terrified of getting shot. Really proper squeal-piggy-squeal scared. As I said, I’ve been shot at a couple of times, and while it wasn’t pleasant I have to admit it was interesting. Even – yes, there I’ve said it – exciting. That sort of thing makes good dinner party conversation.

If I ever went to dinner parties.

People often ask me how I became a private investigator, as if it’s as secretive as being inducted to the Masons. And my answer is very simple, far simpler than the one they were expecting: I did a course. Not in Los Angeles. Not in Chechnya. But in my local tech, a five-minute drive from my house.

Not the kind of course where you and the rest of your classmates are taken away for a ten-day intensive to a stately home and then sent out into the woods to have potshots taken at you by invisible marksmen, just to prepare you for the reality of the job ahead.

No, my little course was an evening class. Once a week, on a Wednesday night. For eight weeks.

My hopes weren’t high because, career-wise, I’d tried so much and failed at so much.

When I finished school I spent a couple of years in university trying to do an arts degree, but it all seemed so silly and pointless that I failed all the exams. A short spell competing for title of World’s Worst Waitress followed, then I decided I wanted to be an air hostess, but couldn’t manage to be pleasant enough. After that I trained to be a make-up artist. I’d been hoping to get work in films, covering actors in
fake blood and gore, but because I was a freelancer I had to compete with ten thousand other make-up artists for every single job and we practically had to wrestle each other to the death, like something out of
Gladiator
. Last one alive gets the gig. The only way round the freelancer scrum was to have a good relationship with the bookers and that was something I couldn’t seem to manage.

People don’t tend to employ me. I’m the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me
for a short time
and then they sack me. A film-booker once told me, as she terminated my contract, that I have a misleading sort of face. ‘You’re pretty,’ she complained. ‘Your features are symmetrical and there was an article in
Grazia
that says human beings are programmed to find those with symmetrical features more pleasing to the eye. So this isn’t my fault, I was simply responding to a biological imperative. You’ve even teeth, so when you smile you look … 
sweet
, I suppose. But you’re not, are you?’

‘I hope not,’ I said.

‘You see, there you go again. You’re a smart-arse and you’ve no ability to filter your thoughts –’

‘– and my thoughts are often abrasive.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’ll just get my brushes and sponges and leave.’

‘If you would.’

Anyway, sort of on a whim, I signed up for Private Investigating for Beginners and for the first time in my life I managed to go to every class in the entire course. I was for ever starting things, desperately searching for my niche, and after week three or four the boredom would kick in and I’d pretend I had a cold and I’d better stay home this week, and by the time the next class rolled around I’d tell myself I’d already missed too much and may as well give it up until next autumn.

But these classes were different. They gave me hope. I could do this job, I thought. It would suit my awkward personality.

Nevertheless the syllabus was pretty tame. There was a fair bit about technology, about all the different ways you could spy on someone, which I found fascinating. But there was an awful lot about the constraints put on investigators by the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act. The teacher spent a long, long time telling us what we
couldn’t
do and about all the juicy delicious information that’s out there in the world but access to which is barred without a warrant.

All the same he made a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-wink mention of ‘contacts’. Apparently all good PIs have ‘contacts’.

I put my hand up. ‘By “contacts” do you mean people who have access to information that isn’t legally available?’

The teacher looked pained. ‘I’ll leave that to your own discretion, Helen.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes. So where do we find these contacts?’

‘At www.illegalcontacts.org,’ he said. ‘I’m joking,’ he said hurriedly, as a couple of people wrote that down. ‘It’s a matter for the individual. But illegal,’ he stressed again. ‘It’s illegal to give the information but it’s also illegal to pay for it. Far better to build up your case with solid surveillance, talking to witnesses, et cetera.’

‘So sleeping with a policeman would be a good idea?’ I said. ‘And someone who works for Vodafone? And Mastercard?’

He looked like he wasn’t going to reply, then he said, ‘You could try making cupcakes for them first. Don’t give it all away straight out of the traps.’

We were a nice little group and on our last night we finished up with mulled wine and mince pies even though Christmas was still a month away, then, armed with our certificates, we went our separate ways in the world.

Within a week – a
week
– I got a job as a private investigator.

Fair enough, it was boom time in Ireland and everyone was looking for staff, but still, I was very pleased to be taken on by one of the big Dublin firms. When I say big, I mean, of course, small. But it was big in Irish private investigating terms. (Ten employees.)

They specialized in electronic sweeps – you know the sort of thing: when a company was having an important meeting to discuss confidential stuff, they were terrified of being bugged by rival firms or by rogue elements within their own, so the likes of me would be sent in with a load of machinery that would screech and beep like billy-o every time it came across a bug hidden under a table or in a keyboard.

I quickly realized a trained monkey could have done it and it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. But, in an unprecedented life event, I wasn’t sacked, I was head-hunted! By another big Dublin PI firm and when I say big, I mean, of course, small. And this was a different prospect entirely. No more monkey work. This time, lots of donkey work, i.e. surveillance.

However, Ireland being the way it was at the time, awash with cash and people with notions, some of the surveillance was abroad. For a while the life was pretty glamorous. I got sent to Antigua, where I stayed in a five-star hotel. I got sent to Paris and I stayed in another five-star hotel there. Granted, I was working. I wasn’t exactly strolling along the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré buying shoes. Instead I was holding super-sensitive microphones on to dividing walls, recording incriminating conversations between men and women who weren’t their wives and then coming home victorious, with proof of an affair.

And, of course, I also did the jobs where I was stuck in muddy ditches for three days, and to be quite honest I enjoyed them too. I’d go to any lengths to get a result. I suppose I was – please forgive the cliché – I was hungry. I wanted the adrenaline rush of nailing the bad guy, of getting the impossible-to-get proof.

Not that it was all fun and games. Sometimes I got spotted and angry adulterers tried to attack me and break my camera. The first time it happened I got a right old fright. I hadn’t fully appreciated how much danger I was putting myself in. But it didn’t stop me. I was more careful but it didn’t stop me.

I got a name for being reliable, even fearless, and for the first time in my life lots of people wanted me on their payroll. I was getting job offers left, right and centre, but I decided I’d do what everyone thinks they want to do: I’d set up on my own. Be my own boss, only take the cases that interested me, work the hours I wanted and – everyone’s favourite – knock off early on a Friday.

But I’ll tell you, being a sole operator isn’t as easy as it sounds. I had to invest thousands of euro buying my own surveillance stuff, I had to hustle for new clients because I wasn’t allowed to bring any of my old ones with me, and I had to juggle everything on my own without any colleagues to pick up the slack or even answer the phone.

But I did it. I got myself a Facebook page and business cards and a nice little office. When I say nice, I mean, of course, unpleasant. Really quite nasty, actually. A tiny little space on the edge of a heroin-soaked estate of flats.

The peculiar thing is that at the time I could have afforded a better office. I viewed a beautiful one just off Grafton Street, ideally situated for the lunchtime shoe run. It had deep carpets, high ceilings, perfect proportions and a skinny blonde answering phones out front. But I turned it down in favour of crunching over hypodermic syringes of a morning.

When my sister Rachel heard this she said it confirmed her original analysis that there’s something wrong with me. And she’s trained in all that stuff so she should know. (She’s an addiction counsellor because she’s an ex-addict herself.)

She said I’m abnormally, almost psychotically, contrary.

And right enough, it
does
seem to be my way.

It’s always a surprise when a famous person lives in an ordinary house. Just because someone’s been on telly I expect them to live in a white leather penthouse. As if it’s a law.

Wayne Diffney’s home was in Mercy Close, a tucked-away cul-de-sac off the sea road in Sandymount. There were only twelve houses in total – two rows of six, facing each other – which should make short work of interviewing the neighbours.

If
I took the job.

The houses were small but detached and sat behind low walls, each with a small patch of garden out front. Vague deco influences abounded – high, metal-framed windows and stained-glass tulips over the front door.

Jay whipped the key out of his pocket and was all set to go hurtling straight in, but I made him ring the doorbell. ‘Wayne might have come back,’ I said. ‘Have some respect.’

After we’d rung six times, and no one had appeared, I gave Parker the nod. ‘Go on.’

‘
Thank
you.’ He pushed the door open and I waited for the alarm to start beeping, but it didn’t.

‘No alarm?’ I asked.

‘Yes alarm, but it wasn’t on when I came over earlier.’

So Wayne had left without setting his house alarm. What did that tell me about his state of mind?

‘And you didn’t think of setting it when you left?’

‘What am I? Securicor?’

The funny thing was that I’d wanted to set the alarm on my own beloved flat when I’d left for the last time today. I’d wanted to protect it as best I could even if I couldn’t be there
for it any more. (All that stopped me was that the electricity had been cut off.) I’d felt as heartbroken as a woman in a crappy made-for-TV movie who is lying in bed dying of cancer, and giving her beloved eleven-year-old daughter life advice in a croaky voice. ‘Never …’ Pause for coughing. ‘Sweetheart, never … wear brown shoes with a black handbag.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘In fact never wear brown shoes at all, they’re rotten.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘My little darling, I must die now but please remember … aaahackahackahack … remember, never do an aerobics class after you’ve had a blow-dry. Your hair will go all frizzy.’ (Made-for-TV movies always took place in the olden days when they still did aerobics classes.)

Jay picked up a few letters and flyers that lay on Wayne’s mat and immediately started tearing them open.

‘Fyi,’ I said, ‘it’s illegal to tamper with another person’s mail.’

But he didn’t care and actually neither did I because I was overwhelmed with the beauty of Wayne Diffney’s home. Bearing in mind my own recent loss, it was no wonder I was mired in house-envy but Wayne’s place really was something special. Smallish but surprisingly tasteful.