People in Season (18 page)

For the first time, Dylan notices how nicely dressed his colleague is. Though the doctor’s suit is grey and the social agent’s brown, the difference in quality is negligible. For his part, the detective is draped in a wrinkled outfit, like he’s just rolled out of bed and wrapped himself in the bunched blankets. Above his lip an unshaved patch grows which his wife would say makes him look like a catfish.

‘We’ll let you get on with your day.’

Dylan’s positioned himself to steal that glance at the workbook which the doctor was using when they arrived. It doesn’t appear to hold anything of interest. It’s only a patient file with a few words and sentences scribbled out. On closer inspection though, it isn’t for the doctor’s work that items have been censored. The rows of information are scratched out to create some kind of found poetry. Names and adjectives have been altered to look like vulgar outbursts such as – The B_Ear f__ucks Jane’s___face – and – Shred_them all__and start again.

The sight of it has disturbed a dormant inkling in the detective. It’s like he’s seen the man naked. Behind the corporation’s name, through its security, past the clerk’s desk, resting among the trappings of success in this private chamber, under the title and inside the suit, is a man who makes ridiculous profanities of the people in his care. Is everything between that fact and Dylan just an illusion? This guy Alistair Evans seems to have just walked in off the street unnoticed, through the walls like they didn’t exist, and into this position where nobody can question him. Could Dylan have done as much? The building feels real to him. It’s certainly giving him a fine view of the drenched city. If he tried walking through the office door without opening it he’d more than likely get a bump on the nose, and making his way back to the car he’ll have to wander through the same labyrinth he came through. Nonplussed, he mumbles, ‘You’re not exactly dealing with a full deck, are you Doctor Evans?’

‘Excuse me?’ the doctor asks, not sure if he should be offended.

Dylan, taking a stab in the dark, is hoping to catch a tell, ‘You’re missing a card.’

But all the doctor reveals is puzzlement, followed by the understanding that he’s just been tested somehow. It’s left at that, until at the door of the office, he abruptly calls to the men as if he’s only now remembered his manners.

‘Detective Wong. It’s raining cats and dogs. I could find you an umbrella.’

‘We’re in the car park,’ Dylan says.

‘Of course,’ the doctor says. ‘Don’t get lost on your way out.’

***

‘Untouched,’ Dylan declares, happy to be back in the safety of his car. ‘I don’t know if he had anything to do with anything, but that guy is a billboard for the disorder. Jesus, a doctor. You think there’s a lot of them working in the field?’ Dylan pauses, then thinks to ask Agent Myers for confirmation rather than just assuming, ‘He’s untouched right?’

Agent Myers groans in thought, ‘They’re about as common as you’d imagine in the medical profession. I don’t know the specifics. It’s not a area we’ll be processing.’

‘You’d think they’d be first on the list.’

‘Every section that is prescribed testing involve activities that directly affect public wellbeing. I was surprised the media got put so high on it. But well, doctors. There’s certain jobs where it can’t hurt to have a cool head. Do you want a surgeon who worries about every cut he’s going to make or the one who doesn’t doubt himself?’

‘Oh I’m sure the UPD one is just fine when it suits him,’ Dylan says pointedly. ‘Who decides what professions get processed? I don’t remember having a vote.’

Disinterested, Agent Myers says, ‘UPD services have committees for that kind of thing.’

‘And who decides who goes on the committees? Santa Claus?’

They’re about done for the day when they get a call from Dylan’s boss, angry at them for approaching Alistair. Word travels fast at the top.

‘So maybe he had something to do with it?’

‘Who knows. People can’t afford implications and big money can pay them away.’

‘Another wasted hour.’

Dylan doesn’t agree. He’s finding numbers for dots and hoping they match up. When it’s drawn the numbers should make a circle around the dead body of Agent Mullen. In his head he has Doctor Evans as a one and Joanne as a two, but when he draws the line it’s going at an odd angle, not a circle at all.

Distracted by a thought, Agent Myers backtracks and offers, ‘You know where they’re really common? Restaurants. If we had to test chefs you’d never want to eat out again.’

Troubled, Dylan tries to resist asking what he wants to. The words drip from his mouth like sizzling droplets of acid. ‘What about cops?’

‘Cops,’ Agent Myers hisses. ‘If we had to test the Gards we’d lose half the police force in Dublin.’ The social agent directs the detective a pensive grimace. ‘Come on man, it’s no biggie. It’s just a disability that isn’t compatible with certain jobs. So there’s a few asshole cops out there. You don’t need a disorder classification to know that.’

‘Right,’ Dylan says, just wanting to end that line of thought. If he were to follow it to its conclusion it would lead to a nightmare. The gears in his head turn regardless. Fifteen years serving with the Garda and he’d seen enough seedy behaviour from his fellow officers to know as much. Even among them though, were lines that weren’t to be crossed. He didn’t like it, but there were people in cells who demanded thumps to the back of the head and plenty of men and women who were only too happy to deliver them. He’d known of suspects beaten unconscious. He might even have been privy to looking the other way. It was a part of the job. Anybody who volunteered to be a policeman was putting themselves on the line every night they went out. The risks they took, it meant you forgave the guy next to you for losing it sometimes. You’d want him to do the same for you. Institutional cover up, he supposed the press would call it. It’s what happens when a group with any kind of power have to protect themselves. But what of the UPD among them, invoking friendship that didn’t really exist? Worse, he’d heard enough stories of officers who brought their work home with them to know that it was less than unusual. And he’d been close to it himself, bringing the work home. He sniffs, nauseated by the euphemism. He can feel his hand shaking on the wheel of the car, and when enough time has passed he rallies up the courage he needs to ask the social agent a question that’s been troubling him all along.

‘Do people ever volunteer for the UPD scan?’

‘More than you’d think,’ Agent Myers assures him. ‘People worry about themselves too much. The country’s drowning in guilt. Must be an Irish thing. They’ve got to go somewhere since the confession boxes went out of service. Why? Did you do something wrong?’

The detective slams his hand down on the horn, growing angry at an automatic taxi, which for no apparent reason, sails to cut him off.

‘If I did,’ he says, ‘I certainly wouldn’t tell you.’

The car comes to a reluctant stop under the uncompromising instruction of a traffic light. Dylan could have driven through it. The evening road is empty. Instead he sits. There’s a message from his wife asking if she should get started on making dinner and he’s holding his phone to type a response. Letting the engine rumble quietly, he watches a long exhalation from his mouth fog the damp glass. Droplets of condensation are finding staggered trails down the windscreen, catching pieces of red light as they go. It takes a conscious effort on his part to tell his wife that he’ll be late getting home. How late? she asks. The windscreen wipers swipe across his vision twenty or thirty times until he replies with an apologetic – I’ll let you know when I know – but the tone of his regret is lost in the message. Realising this, he quickly sends another – Love you – and holds his breath in anticipation of a response, dizzy before he understands that he won’t be getting one.

In his rear view mirror he sees a Kinder Egg toy dropped among the crumbs of an empty Tayto packet, then, noticing the red droplets changed to green sometime ago, he pushes forward. I’ll be home to put him to bed. Leaving the thought behind, he concentrates on the case once more, going over the steps in the process he has covered thus far.

During the office interviews, Agent Myers kept a tablet with him, supposedly to use the opportunity to examine the personality types, but he had spent the time fidgeting, bored within minutes. Dylan didn’t need to ask why. When the scans begin none of what they discovered will matter to the agent. The office too, for the most part, seemed to be comforted by the fact. After all, they won’t need to get mixed up in anything distasteful if the killer is found by a simple test of the brain. Nobody feels the pressure of that eventuality but the detective. The scan isn’t for finding killers and nobody seems to appreciate the matter but him. As he went through the list of employees, finding no information of note, he happened across one last avenue to explore. Susan, a bright redhead in her employee photo, had been fired when Agent Mullen was processing the office. On questioning the editor about this she could barely bring an image of the girl to mind. Nobody in the newsroom seemed to have more than the vaguest idea of who she was. This nobody, who barely merited a thought as far as her colleagues were concerned, was Dylan’s last, best hope of finding a motive for the murder. With this weighing him down, he’d said goodbye to Agent Myers for the day and drove against the evening traffic to find her.

Having parked between a bin and bent lamp post, he hears the car beep-beep goodbye as he sprints across road, his shoulders hunched to keep the now lashing rain from running down his neck. Stalling under the shelter of a shop’s awning, he sees the girl’s apartment building, another run down town house on the edge of the city. As he makes a dash for the door, it opens and a woman wrestles a buggy and her child through.

‘This is a storm,’ she says, tightening a hood.

The floor is cold cement, as are the stairs. Looking up the winding case when he’s at the bottom, Dylan stomps up the steps two at a time and finds himself staring down the spiral as he reaches the top. Out of breath, his knocks on the door of the flat bounce through the corridor. From the sound of them he guesses that nobody is home. He pounds harder, annoyed at the absent room for wasting his time. He has pissed off his wife to meet a girl who probably doesn’t know anything and who doesn’t even seem to be at home. His response to this is a miserable chuckle. Time goes by, nothing to mark it. He feels wetter for having nowhere to dry off and ruffles his cropped hair to keep the water from dripping down his forehead. By the time his breath is steady nobody has come to the door.

He should go home.

But for all intents and purposes his investigation will be inconsequential if a UPD is found. He needs to take advantage of the time he has. Groaning, he slides down the wall to sit on the stairs, a wet patch streaked on the plaster in his wake. Phone in hand, he considers messaging his wife, then decides to wait twenty minutes or so. Maybe it won’t be long till the occupant’s return, but twenty becomes thirty, thirty an hour, and an hour, well, it’s too late to send her anything appeasing by that stage. He spends the protracted period playing games on his phone and remembers a packet of peanuts in his pocket. As he pats the last of them into his mouth and throws the empty pack over the banister, a muffled complaint sounds from downstairs and he notices the footsteps of two people sound out. Brushing himself off, he regains his composure just as the couple slow at seeing him stand.

‘Susan?’ he asks.

The couple don’t respond, surprised by his presence.

The man speaks for them both, ‘Who’s asking?’

‘I’m Merriam,’ the woman says, an irritated tone directed at her friend.

‘That’s right,’ Dylan says, remembering that Susan was a redhead in the employee file. ‘I’m Detective Dylan Wong,’ he flashes his ID. ‘I’m looking for Susan Ward. I haven’t been able to get through to her and I understand she lives here.’

‘I guess she does,’ the girl purses her lips. ‘You would have had better luck a few days ago. I haven’t seen her in about a week.’

‘What’s this about?’ The man inquires, clearly annoyed at the girl for volunteering information so readily.

Dylan ignores him and talks to the girl. ‘She’s not in any trouble, but she might have some information pertaining to an investigation I’m involved with. How was she acting last time you saw her?’

‘Acting?’ the girl asks herself. ‘She was annoyed about work. She always was though. Seems like a shite job to me. Nobody ever listened to her, she said. Except, ah, you know Ava O’Dwyer? She was starting to stick up for. Helping her get traction in the office. I guess it wasn’t enough. She was talking about visiting her brother in the States. I kind of got the impression I’d need a new roommate lined up soon. She wasn’t very happy.’

‘Ava,’ Dylan says, noting the friendship. ‘Any specific idea of what might have got to her in the end? Something that would have given Susan the final push to leave the country?’

The girl shakes her head. ‘They fired her by email. Maybe she thought she deserved better.’

‘And you really think she’d just take off?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. She left some stuff in her room but her laptop and a bunch of clothes are gone. Her rent’s paid up to the end of the month but there’s only what? Three days left in it now? She won’t get her deposit back that’s for sure,’ the girl says, almost gloating.

Dylan shifts on his feet. ‘She’d leave you in a lurch like that? Having to find a roommate to make rent?’

The guy laughs and the girl elbows his side.

‘We weren’t exactly best friends.’

‘And you?’ Dylan asks the man.

‘We, eh, dated briefly.’

The man’s hand is holding the girls tightly. Dylan understands from it all the drama that might have led to Susan Ward abandoning her flat. ‘Ah. Well, if she gets in touch, have her contact me. She could be very helpful,’ he flicks his number to them. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Jogging through the rain, his feet splash and scatter the orange streetlight a hundred different directions. The car beep-beeps to welcome him back and he jumps into the driver seat. Water is washing over the glass and he finds himself saying a word out loud.

‘People.’

If that guy hadn’t cheated on Susan he might have been talking to her now. More than that, maybe she could have told him something he needed to hear. He might have found out about her pushing the doctor’s story in the office. About Ava’s promise to champion her cause only to bury it. Lost in the dark he can only make guesses. It’s because of this he’ll be observing a computer test that tells him something he doesn’t need to know, but which everyone else insists is imperative.

When he gets home, the lights are off in the house, and he wonders what time it is. It feels like midnight but it’s probably later. He pushes his key in the lock and lets the door drift open, paces into the hall and shakes himself off. There’s a towel draped on the stairs which he wipes his face with as he saunters into the kitchen where he finds a sandwich prepared. Then, walking into the sitting room, he sees his bed for the night. His wife has made the couch up for him. The message couldn’t be more clear – how nice for them life could be, and how bad things really are. Their future is in his hands.

Losing his appetite, he leaves the sandwich on the coffee table, peels his clothes off, the wet socks doing their best to cling to him, and slides under a blanket, yelping as he feels a sharp poke against his legs. It’s the corner of a toy. Picking it up he’s tempted to break it in his hand. Instead, a current of malaise pulls him under and he turns into the couch, curling up, trying to find relief that isn’t there.

Fired over email, cheated on by a friend, and left the country without a goodbye. Some people, Dylan wonders at them all. The things they do.

***

As far from each other as the buildings they occupy, connected only by the length of fibre optic cable they’re channelled through, a pair of disembodied voices speak. With no faces to accent their emotions, the language being sent over the line is just that, packets of thought to be registered, analysed, and responded to. The first distracted sounds are Ava’s who, painting her toenails, is having to wedge the phone between her shoulder and ear. ‘You’ve caught me at an awkward time.’

She’s talking to Alistair. The man is spitting venom. ‘Considering what happened to me today, you’re lucky I’ve only caught you by phone.’ After the detectives visit, he’d abandoned caution and sped to her apartment only to find that, besides not answering his calls, she wasn’t at home. Spurred by the death of Francis Mullen, people throughout Dublin were locking themselves in and here he was scrambling from one end of the city to the next only to find a dead end. He’d contemplated kicking in the door and waiting for her in an armchair. Hands suspiciously covered by leather gloves, he would remove the things on her sighting of them. All he wanted was for her to understand how angry he was – not with the detective’s prodding him, but at her ignoring it, essentially putting him into isolation until he was less of a contaminant. In the end, he’d stood there in her corridor, chagrined, aware that a broken door would hardly go unnoticed. Much to his regret, lock picking was not one of his clandestine talents. ‘I should have made another visit to your office.’

That’s a threat.

‘You’re not the brightest, are you Alistair?’ Ava asks, sedate. ‘We shouldn’t even be talking. If I was in my right mind I’d hang up.’

‘Well why don’t you?’ he challenges.

‘Alright...’

‘You clearly don’t want to talk about it. No interest whatsoever as to why a homicide detective might have visited me, in work no less, under my secretary’s nose.’

‘I thought you’d be able to take a hint.’

There’s a long pause in the dark as he struggles to understand what she might be suggesting. Her tone flat, it gives him little indication. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean, Alistair, is I don’t want to talk. I mean that I’m annoyed I have to spell it out for you. I don’t want any links existing between us. The past is a thing best forgotten. I thought you knew that. Let’s both of us just concentrate on our respective futures, uncertain as they are.’

The allusion to the investigation and what it could mean for them, though it’s what he’s wanted to talk about all day, and certainly has a huge baring over how the rest of his life will unfold, is of no interest to him now.

‘You’re dumping me?’

Impatient, she corrects him, ‘Dumped, Doctor Evans! Past participle. It’s already happened, you just haven’t figured it out.’

‘You can’t dump me.’

‘All evidence to the contrary?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Alistair, please,’ she stops, expecting him to understand that he’s embarrassing himself, but finds that she needs to spell it out. ‘Haven’t you noticed that the weather has changed? Let’s say you were summer wear and now I’m on the lookout for something more current. I’m hardly an appropriate fit for you at the moment either. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss about it. Is it the ChatterFive access you’ll miss? I’ll still do a write up on you in a few months if it means you’ll leave me alone.’

Enjoying the banter, and having him squirm under foot, Ava is still hoping that he’ll agree with her reasoning without putting up much of a struggle. She bites her lip as she awaits his reply, concentrating on the wet brush that runs over her little toe. Satisfied, she examines the results.

‘You think I don’t know what happened?’

That’s another threat.

Without allowing time for the implication to sink in, she replies, ‘You don’t know anything, Alistair, you weren’t there. Don’t let your imagination get to you. I’m sure you know better than to spout ignorance, which could put us both in a tight spot, over the phone. Why is it anytime I dump a guy they go crazy? Other people manage to have amicable breakups, don’t they? Is it just me? How do I meet you loonies?’

‘You’re not dealing with a full deck,’ he spits.

To the doctor’s surprise she takes a hit from the comment. Even without a face to see, he can sense her attention leave her toenails and go to a point outside her window.