Can Anybody Help Me? (16 page)

A squall of rain lashed against the windscreen and she squinted out into the grey. Bloody awful day. The window wipers sighed rhythmically and her thoughts swayed with them. Must go home. Should go home. Baby will be starving.

Well, she wasn't going to wait around. If he wasn't where he said he'd be … But just as she was mentally planning how to get out of the arrangement, she saw him standing, as promised, by the bus stop on the main road. Excellent. She'd be on her way in no time.

Pulling over, she lowered the car window and blinked as raindrops spurted in.

‘Hi there.'

The voice was soft, hesitant. There was something decent about it.

‘Are you FarmersWife?'

‘I am!'

It was funny, to hear the name spoken out loud.

‘Here, sit in, for God's sake. You'll be drenched. I have the bottles in the back for you, hang on …'

She opened the car door, then heard it click shut as she bent through the gap in the front seats, leant into the back
and hauled the brown cardboard box towards her. Wondered, abstractly, just how big her arse looked from this angle.

‘I've left the instructions in there, they're fiddly yokes. Oh!' It was an involuntary response. Oh. She looked down at the gun, and up to his face. A movement she'd seen in a million movies. Assumed it was a joke, a very bad one. Gripped the box tightly and looked him in the eye.

‘Get out of my car.'

‘I'm not going anywhere.'

His arm was relaxed, the gun steady in his hand.

‘Not until we go for a little drive.'

‘Would you ever …?'

But she swallowed the second half of the sentence as the eyes narrowed and the voice grew cold.

‘I'm telling you to drive.'

There was no decency in his tone any more.

The rain was coming down vertically now and, moving automatically, she put the wipers on full blast.

A car sped past. Maybe she should sound her horn, flash her lights, do something that would make the driver look her way …

‘Don't even think about it. Not if you want those three beautiful boys to be okay.'

‘Oh, Jesus.'

Her throat dried. Swallowing furiously, she kept her two hands on the steering wheel, stared straight ahead and managed to choke out the words.

‘Have you done something to my children? I swear to God, if you've touched a hair on their heads …'

‘I haven't gone near them, FarmersWife.'

There was a touch of mocking amusement in the voice now.

‘Haven't laid a finger on them. Not on Cathal, nor on Mikey, or on that gorgeous little baby. Nice of you to post a picture by the way, handsome little man! I haven't touched them. And we want to keep it that way, don't we?'

‘What … what do you want? What do you want me to do?'

‘For the moment? Just drive.'

She couldn't think of anything else to do. So she just drove.

Those first thirty seconds. They got him every time. Jim turned off the engine and closed his eyes as the music fizzled and popped in his brain. His hands beat the familiar rhythm on the dashboard in front of him. Mighty stuff.

Shaking his head, he started the engine again and braced his feet against the clutch as he eased the vehicle forward. That sound system had been worth every penny. The face on the oul fella though, when he'd mentioned he was getting an iPod dock in the tractor.

‘An iPod? Sure what would you need one of them for? Waste of money.'

Although he'd expected the reaction, Jim had felt his shoulders tense anyway, his hands clenched under the kitchen table. Always the bitter word. Always the implication that whatever thing he was doing, it wasn't the right thing.

And then Martha had jumped in, teased the old man and made everything okay. Winked at her father-in-law, reminded him he'd had a transistor balanced in the cab every day of his working life and hadn't he told them himself many times
that the radio used to shorten the day? And what was an iPod only a fancy radio. The old man had chuckled – chuckled! Jesus, Jim didn't know that raspy oul throat could make such a sound. But he wasn't going to waste any more time on him, simply poked Martha's toe with his own under the table and winked a thank-you. Found himself hoping that the kids would sleep through the early part of the night, give them a bit of privacy. And then reddened when he realised that the gleam in her eye meant she was thinking the exact same thing.

He pressed on the accelerator and Bono's voice receded into the background as the tractor mounted the slope at the far end of the field.

That was probably the night AJ was conceived. Well, no probably about it. With two active lads they didn't get that many opportunities. And now they had three. Tough going sometimes. But great crack all the same.

Slowing the tractor, he eased it smoothly out of the field and onto the narrow road. Carefully scanned the horizon before increasing his speed again. Only last week he'd read about a man in Donegal, who'd backed his car out of the driveway and hadn't seen the child standing in the way. Jesus. Poor bastard. Jim turned the volume up on the speaker and hoped the music would chase the image away. He'd seen the story in the
Star
and read it out loud over dinner, made a big deal about it, jabbed his finger at the picture of the poor unfortunate baby and looked around at each of his children in turn.

‘Are ye listening to me now? That babba was after going outside without telling his mama or his dada where he was. And
look what happened to him. That babba didn't listen to his mama or his dada.'

Mikey's two blue eyes had filled up and he burst into tears, running over to his mother and asking her if the same thing was going to happen to him.

Martha had grabbed him and hugged him, burying his face in her shoulder before shooting a vicious look at her husband.

‘Why did you have to go upsetting the child?'

I didn't mean to, he wanted to say. I didn't mean to upset anyone. But I wanted the kids to listen to me, to really take it in, and I wanted you to realise that really awful things happen every day, really dreadful things and every day people wake up to these desperate things, desperate lives and we don't have any problems like that, not really, not real ones. We're great. We have a grand life. And I know you're down and I know you're tired, but just think of what that family is going through. We have it easy. We have a wonderful family. I love you and everything is fine.

But he hadn't said anything like that in the end.

It was still raining. That was the first thing she noticed, after she opened her eyes and the dashboard came back into focus. The second was that her hands were not tied. Her feet were loose. She could run, if she wanted to. But did she want to?

It had taken them almost an hour to drive here, plenty of time for him to outline his plan, and for her to experience, for the first time, absolute despair.

‘You're not as clever as you think you are, are you, Farmers-Wife? Didn't your mammy tell you not to get into the car with strangers?'

‘You're right.'

She had seen a programme about kidnapping once, on the Discovery Channel. The trick, the presenter said was to engage them in conversation. Remind them that you are human. It makes you harder to kill. So she tried questions, and even flattery. But as he outlined why he was there, she soon realised the advice had been useless.

‘Is the baby keeping you up much?'

The question had been like a slap. They were still driving at this stage and she hadn't answered him, but an image of her youngest child had shimmered up from the hard shoulder. She could almost feel him, nestled into her shoulder, his fuzzy head fitting perfectly under her chin. Gentle sighs escaping from him as he fell asleep in the place where he felt most secure.

She knew she should put him down in the cot after every feed, it was a bad habit, letting him fall asleep on her like that. But sometimes, in the dark, she'd cuddle him for longer than was necessary. With his two demanding older brothers finally asleep, it was their only time alone, and despite the exhaustion she relished it.

‘And the eldest fella, how is the speech therapy going? Long waiting list where ye live …'

She had jammed on the brakes then, heard the beep from the car behind her, allowed it to drive past without acknowledging the flashing lights and angry wave. Blocked everything out except the facts about her family he was flinging in her face.

He knew everything about them. And it was her own fault, because she had told him. Written them all down, on that cursed website. Sealed their fate. And hers.

He directed her off the main road, down a country lane she didn't recognise. Waited as she parked the car in a small clearing behind some trees.

‘You'll wait here now, while I get things ready.'

She gave up on the Discovery Channel, decided to try belligerence.

‘And what if I don't?'

‘If you don't? Well then, FarmersWife – the words were elongated, emphasised – then I'll come after your children. One by one. And I will hurt them. I know where to find them. You've given me quite enough information for that. How are the swimming lessons coming on, by the way? Every Wednesday, isn't it? After the eldest is finished in school? Not many swimming pools around here. I'd find them easy enough. Or maybe I'll wait till the little fella goes back for his six-week check-up …'

She cried then, and he waited almost patiently till she was finished. He didn't seem to enjoy the tears. Just sat and watched, and waited.

Then laughed when she asked the obvious question.

‘Why are you doing this to me?'

The music jumped forward a decade. The Chilli Peppers. Now you're talking.

Jim pressed down on the accelerator again. He'd checked on the herd in the upper meadow and made sure the cows down below had enough shelter from the heavy rain that was forecast. Now it was five o'clock and he was heading home. A half day. Martha had gone into town to do some shopping, her first day out since AJ had been born. His mother was
minding the children. With any luck, he'd be home before her, get the dinner on. Cheer her up and then tell her his news.

For the fiftieth time that day, he reached into his breast pocket and felt the pointed edge of the envelope. It was going to be a mighty weekend. Two whole days and nights away. Dinner, a lie-in and a wander around the shops if she felt like it. And then the gig. Leonard Cohen, outdoors at the Royal Hospital. Martha was a big fan. He couldn't see what all the fuss was about himself, but she loved him, had all his CDs, listened to them in the kitchen while she was clearing up. Gave out yards when she heard young ones singing Hallelujah, thinking it was just some ditty off
The X Factor
. Jim couldn't tell one song from the other, but he'd be happy just going along and sipping a pint, seeing what the fuss was about. It was going to be a fantastic evening.

Jim knew how exhausted his wife was. He could see it in her every day, in the weary way she folded clothes, prepared dinners, wiped up spills and sank into the kitchen chair for forty minutes before getting up at dawn and doing the whole thing again. And since AJ had been born, it was like nothing he did was good enough for her. If he went shopping, he bought the wrong stuff. If he asked her what he should be buying, she accused him of leaving everything up to her. If he dressed the boys, he used the wrong clothes. Seriously, that was what one of their rows had been about, him using the black socks on AJ when she'd left out a carefully coupled pair of red. That one had escalated fairly quickly and ended with her flinging the socks at him and him accusing her of frightening the baby
who was red-faced, roaring and barefoot in the bouncy chair on the floor.

But the weekend away would fix everything.

‘Why are you doing this to me?'

‘You don't know?'

She shook her head, silently, as he lifted the gun, as if to show it to her, and laid it on his lap again.

‘You were too clever for your own good, sweetheart.'

He smiled, looked down at the gun, and then directly into her eyes.

‘You had me figured out. You're a bright one, FarmersWife, I'll give you that much. None of the others spotted it. But you did. It was just a little slip, DS instead of DD, but you picked me up on it. And then the thing about the ice cream … well. I can't be expected to remember everything, can I? Every damn thing that gets written down. But you did. And I couldn't risk you telling anyone else.'

Her brain whirring, she tried desperately to understand what he was talking about. There had been a typo, DD instead of DS, or maybe the other way around, something like that. MyBabba's mistake maybe? She'd slagged someone about it anyway, and sent a PM. Hard to remember now, but there had been words, sent in the middle of the night when she was feeding the baby, exhausted beyond consciousness, her phone a glowing anchor tethering her to wakefulness and keeping him safe in her arms. She couldn't remember exactly what she'd said. Something about ice cream? Nothing important anyway. Nothing worth remembering. And she couldn't for the life of her understand what it had to do with this man.

Who he was, or why he was there. Someone had made a slip of the tongue, what of it? Sure, she did it herself the whole time. Mixed up words. Called the lads whichever name first came to her, whether it belonged to the baby, her eldest or Mikey, her darling middle child …

Mikey.

Her eyelids drooped and she allowed them to close. Mikey. She could still see him, the way he had looked that morning. Eyes red, nose running from the cold he'd picked up in playschool and had been nursing miserably for three days. The virus had left him cranky and exhausted, his mood balanced on a knife-edge. He'd cried because she'd put the wrong socks on him, turned off the tap before he'd rinsed his teeth, poured cold milk instead of warm on his cereal. Mikey. She'd yelled at him in the end. Watched his small, snotty, feverish face crumble as she'd whipped the breakfast bowl away.