The Mystery of Mercy Close (48 page)

My head was aching. I opened my eyes and looked at the tender skin on the insides of my wrists, following the lines of the blue veins. It would hurt, I acknowledged, and I was afraid the pain would interfere.

But flickering around in my memory was the anaesthetic cream I’d used when I’d got my hairy legs lasered. I had a tube of that left over and maybe if I rubbed a thick layer of the stuff on, maybe an hour before, it wouldn’t hurt so badly. It mightn’t hurt at all.

I stopped myself. I shouldn’t be thinking this way.

What was really scaring me was that I’d never really fitted into a neat ‘depression’ diagnosis, so there was no way of knowing where this was going, of where it would take me. Other people, with text-book depression, slowed down and down, further and further, until they eventually came to a halt. They went numb, they went catatonic. Or they went the other way; they went wild with anxiety, gasping for breath
and full of terror, unable to eat or sleep or sit still. And I had a bit of that, a good bit. But I had all kinds of added extras, like the suspicion that I’d crash-landed on to another planet. Like the comfort I took in natural disasters. Like the way I hated the light. Like the sensation that my soul was being held against a naked flame.

I didn’t think I could go through it again. It was worse this time because I’d thought I was cured. It was worse this time because I knew how horrible it could get. And it was worse this time simply because it was worse.

I reached for my phone, to make myself feel better – only to discover that I already had it in my hand. Perhaps I should get a second one. As I held it in my hand, it started ringing. It was Harry Gilliam calling. Fear seized my guts. It was strange. I was thinking about dying, I was already extricating myself from my life, from the world, and some parts of it seemed utterly meaningless and without power. But in other ways, feelings and situations were magnified. Like my fear of Harry Gilliam.

There was no way I was talking to him. I’d have to tell him I had nothing on Wayne, and I was too scared to do that.

But even as I was making the decision, I knew that I had no choice: if Harry Gilliam wanted to talk to me, I’d have to comply.

I let the phone ring out but, sure enough, two seconds after it stopped it started to ring again. Miserably I answered, ‘Hello.’

‘Don’t be doing that, Helen,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘When I ring, you make sure you answer,’ he said.

‘Yeah, okay.’ I sighed. There was no point in denying it. He had me.

‘I’m a busy man, I haven’t time for that sort of codology.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What news have you for me?’

‘Several leads, which I’m energetically pursuing.’

‘So he’ll be on that stage on Wednesday night?’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. With cold menace he said, ‘Are you spoofing me?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am. I’m just telling you what you want to hear because I’m scared of you. But you could help both of us.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘You know things that you’re not telling me.’

‘Me? How would I know anything? I’m just a simple hen-trainer.’

I gave up. ‘Of course, of course, and how
are
things with your fowl?’

‘Busy.’

‘Are they indeed?’

‘I’m trying out a new bird. I have high hopes for her. Don’t let me down, Helen.’

With that he was gone.

It took me several minutes to recover from talking to him. I sat in my car, clutching my phone like I was hanging on to the side of a cliff, and waited for the horrible feelings to dissipate. When they finally receded to a bearable extent, the first thing I did was look hopefully at my phone. I was delighted to see that a new email had arrived. My gratitude increased exponentially when I saw that it was from Telephone Man – Wayne’s phone records had arrived! This would unlock everything! Wayne was as good as found.

Then I started to read the email and I had to bite back a howl of despair. This was just a preliminary report, in response to the panicked request I’d sent earlier. Detailed records would arrive tomorrow, but in the meantime Telephone Man could tell me that Wayne’s mobile had been powered off on Thursday at 12.03 p.m. and
hadn’t been switched on since
.

Aghast, I stared at the screen. This was bad, very bad.

I did my calculations: just three or four minutes after Digby started driving him away, Wayne had turned off his phone. Or had it done for him?

This was far more sinister than Wayne not using his credit cards. Who can survive without their phone? I couldn’t. Simple as.

Unless Wayne
wasn’t
surviving …?

I was distracted from this awful thought by hearing Zeezah’s voice on the radio. I turned it up. Might as well have a listen.

Sean Moncrieff was asking her about her pregnancy and she admitted, coyly, that actually yes, she was with child.

‘Do you know yet if it’s a boy or a girl you’re having?’

This sort of fluff interview was way beneath Sean, to be honest. Normally he was holding his own with the finest brains in the land and making all kinds of arcane subjects seem accessible and interesting.

‘No, we decided we don’t want to know the sex of our baby.’

‘You don’t mind as long as it’s healthy?’ I could have sworn Sean was being mildly tongue-in-cheek.

‘Just so. As long as it’s healthy.’

‘So obviously you haven’t decided on a name yet, then?’

‘But we have.’ Zeezah gave a charming giggle. ‘If it’s a boy, he will be called Romeo, and if it’s a girl, we will call her Roma.’

‘Would that be because the baby was conceived in Rome?’ Not much got past Sean.

‘Yes.’ Another delightful giggle. ‘On our honeymoon.’

Now
wait
a minute. Rome? I thought.

Rome?

Ah.
Rome
.

I had a moment when I contemplated not making the call, when I considered driving, for the second time in one day, to County Cork and having it out with her in person, but time was not on my side, so – and, in retrospect, perhaps I made a mistake – I went for the quickest option.

She picked up immediately. ‘’Lo.’ She sounded impatient. Frankly, she was a right briar.

‘“She can’t make up her mind between the two of them”?’ was my opening gambit.

‘Excuse me?’

‘My apologies, Connie. This is Helen Walsh here. We met earlier today and you very kindly showed me around your house. Let me rephrase my question. I’m asking you about Zeezah? Couldn’t make up her mind between your brother Wayne and John Joseph Hartley? Had them both on the go at the same time? Even after she got married? Just a yes or no.’

After a pause she said, in humbler tones than I would have expected from her, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. But I can’t bear what that manipulative little … 
bitch
has done to Wayne. I was so sickened by that display on Maurice McNice. I don’t even know how I ended up watching it. I never watch it.’

‘You and Wayne are close?’

‘We’re his family. We love him. He confides in us – me and his brother. So what do you know? What have you found out?’

‘I overheard you on a video of your mum’s sixty-fifth birthday. You were talking to your sister-in-law. You were talking about some woman who, I quote, “can’t make up her
mind between the two of them”. It’s just clicked that you were talking about Zeezah and that the two people she couldn’t decide between were Wayne and John Joseph.’

‘Okay …’

‘And now Zeezah is pregnant and she’s just been on the radio saying her baby was conceived in Rome –’

‘– how can she know that for sure?’

‘I don’t know. What I do know is that when I was searching Wayne’s house on Thursday night I found a lighter from the Colosseum in Rome in his bedside drawer. Of course there’s every chance that Zeezah brought it back as a souvenir for Wayne – please, don’t bite my head off, I’m joking. Or maybe Wayne just showed up on the honeymoon –’

‘He didn’t “just show up”,’ Connie said angrily. ‘She had him tormented. Ringing him day and night. Saying she shouldn’t have married John Joseph, that she’d made a terrible mistake, that she had to see him. So he flew out there. But she still didn’t decide. And she kept on not deciding. She still hasn’t decided, as far as I know.’

‘So Wayne could be the father of Zeezah’s baby?’

‘He could be.’

‘And Wayne knows that?’

‘Of course Wayne knows. How would I know if he didn’t? But John Joseph could also be the father. At least Zeezah never fed Wayne a line that herself and John Joseph don’t do the business. Wayne’s known all along that Zeezah’s been bouncing between the two of them.’

‘Does John Joseph know too?’

A heavy sigh. ‘So I believe.’

Christ. What were the implications of that? John Joseph didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d take too kindly to his wife being impregnated by his subordinate. But did I really think that John Joseph could have … like … 
killed
Wayne?

However, someone had hit me.
Someone
wasn’t afraid of being violent.

Then I remembered John Joseph’s out-of-control fear earlier this afternoon. How did that tie in with him having hurt Wayne? Could John Joseph have been faking? He
might
have been, especially because he was normally so controlled.

‘I’m sorry I missed your hints earlier, when you were talking about the stuff in yesterday’s papers … you know, about the pregnancy making Zeezah and John Joseph’s happiness complete,’ I said. ‘I’m not normally so dense. I just wish you could have told me straight out and saved us all some time.’

It was a while before Connie spoke. ‘I don’t know if I should have said anything at all. It just made me so angry.’ After another pause she said, ‘And obviously I can’t know for certain who the father is. But what with you being a private investigator, I was hoping you’d discover stuff that no one else could. That you might find some records from Zeezah’s doctor, the results of a DNA test, or something …’

‘You can’t do a DNA test until the child is born.’

‘Oh.’

I really wished I’d driven back to Clonakilty to see Connie in person; she was so close to Wayne that the right question might crack this whole thing.

I weighed my next words carefully. ‘Connie, I’m worried about Wayne. Desperately worried. His phone has been switched off since Thursday and he hasn’t used any of his credit cards.’

‘Shit.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘We’re worried about him too. We’re worried sick. And that man showed up, the man you warned us about.’

‘Walter Wolcott? What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing. He was horrible. He shouted at Mum.’

‘Look, should we call in the law to look for Wayne?’

‘I don’t know. The whole business with Zeezah is so shabby, if it comes out it’ll make him look bad –’

‘But if he’s in real trouble?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sounded utterly miserable. ‘I need to
talk to Mum and Dad. Could you leave it with me until tomorrow?’

‘Connie, it’s really important that you tell me everything you know.’

‘I have.’

‘Have you ever heard Wayne talk about a girl called Gloria?’

‘No, never.’

I swallowed back a sigh, then forged ahead. ‘Connie, do you know where Wayne is right now?’

‘Truthfully? No.’

Maddeningly, I believed her.

I couldn’t handle telling Jay and John Joseph in person the bad news about Wayne’s phone, so I sent Jay a cowardly text, then I went back to Mercy Close.

As I parked my car, Cain and Daisy’s heads popped up at their sitting-room window and two seconds later they were out on the street, making for me. But I wasn’t afraid of them any more. I’d realized what they wanted to tell me, what they’d been trying to tell me for days.

‘Please can we talk to you?’ Cain asked. ‘We’ve some info for you.’

‘And we’re not looking for money or anything,’ Daisy said.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Should we take this inside?’ Cain asked, with a furtive glance over both his shoulders. ‘Some fat bloke in a raincoat has been round here asking all sorts of questions about Wayne.’

But I didn’t want to go back into Cain and Daisy’s sad home in case the wallpaper did a running jump at me. And I wasn’t bringing them into Wayne’s lovely house. That was mine.

‘Ah no, we’re grand here.’ I leaned against my car and, with a wave of my hand, indicated that they should assume a similarly relaxed attitude.

‘We didn’t tell the raincoat bloke anything,’ Cain said. ‘We were saving it for you.’

‘I appreciate that,’ I said.

‘What happened to your forehead?’ Daisy asked.

‘Someone hit me.’

‘Who? Raincoat bloke?’

‘I don’t know. In fact it happened just over there.’ I pointed to the spot on the road where I’d been felled. ‘On Saturday night. Just before eleven o’clock. You didn’t see anything, did you?’

‘Ah no,’ Cain said. ‘See, we tend to … partake of the weed … quite heavily … in the evenings. Helps us to sleep. We’d have been out of our heads by eleven. Sorry about that. So, do you want to hear our big news?’

‘Yes, of course, go for it.’

‘Okay.’ He shifted himself about on the balls of his feet, like he was getting ready to do a one-hundred-metre sprint. ‘Or do you want to tell it, Daisy?’

‘No, you do it, Cain.’

‘Okay. This is heavy stuff, Helen. Are you ready?’

‘I hope so.’ I tried to sound a little awed.

‘Okay. There’s been a woman who’s been calling round to Wayne’s house for the past, like, ages. Months. And it’s Zeezah!’

‘What? Go on!’

‘Yes! We recognized her that day you all arrived at our house. I mean, we knew what she looked like, we’ve seen her on telly and everything, but when we saw her in real life we realized that she’s the same girl who’s been calling round to Wayne’s.’

‘She always showed up in a baseball hat and shades,’ Daisy said. ‘And loose clothes. Big T-shirts, baggy trackies –’

‘Trying to disguise her arse,’ Cain said.

‘Yeah, that booty,’ Daisy said, sounding envious. ‘A dead giveaway. She
had
to hide it.’