The Mystery of Mercy Close (49 page)

‘This is momentous news,’ I said. ‘I’ll need time to process it.’

‘You needn’t worry; we won’t be telling anyone else,’ Cain said. ‘We feel so bad for the way we scared you that day.’

‘We wanted to apologize to you,’ Daisy said. ‘We wanted to help.’

‘I’m very grateful to you,’ I said solemnly. ‘You’ve been a great help.’

Well, they hadn’t really, but did it hurt to be nice?

Back in Wayne’s beautiful home, I went straight upstairs. I needed to revisit his bedside drawer. Even though Connie had confirmed that Wayne had gatecrashed Zeezah and John Joseph’s honeymoon, I felt I had to physically clap eyes on the lighter that had kick-started my – frankly – genius train of thought. And there it was. Lying amid the usual bedside drawer assortment of stuff was a white lighter with a picture of the Colosseum in Rome on it. I took it out and weighed it in my palm. I even flicked on the flame. Yes, it was real. It was real and I was great and was there anything else in here that could enlighten me?

Coins, old receipts, leaking pens, elastic bands, old batteries, plug adaptors, a tube of Bonjela and a few cards of medication: Gaviscon, Clarityn, Cymbalta.

The Bonjela was for mouth ulcers, the Gaviscon was for indigestion, the Clarityn was for hay fever and the Cymbalta – I’d been on it myself for a while, for all the good it had done me – was for depression.

I should have paid more attention to the medication the first time I’d looked in this drawer.

Poor Wayne.

The presence of the Koran on his bedside table made sense now. Even
The Wonder of Now
CD. Trying to find peace of mind must have been very tricky under the circumstances in which he’d been living.

In fact so much made sense to me. I’d known John Joseph had been lying when he’d denied that Wayne had a girlfriend. At the time I’d assumed Wayne’s girlfriend was the mysterious
Gloria. How could I ever have guessed that Wayne’s girlfriend was John Joseph’s wife?

And the same with Zeezah. She’d gone weird when I’d asked her about Gloria. She’d been … jealous. Maybe not exactly jealous, but something from the same stable of emotions. Territorial, perhaps. Or suspicious. She knew Wayne was mad about her, so was she wondering what the hell he was doing with this Gloria person?

Indeed, that was a fine question: what the hell
was
Wayne doing with this Gloria person? How I would
love
to know.

I went into Wayne’s home office, in the hope that, being surrounded by so many lever-arch files of information, some enlightenment would seep into me by osmosis. I wondered if I should start pulling folders off shelves and poring, once again, over his financial records, praying that something I’d missed would jump out at me and change everything, but I sank to the floor and sat with my back to the door, letting my head go down a different track.

There was so much detail to consider. Because I was right-handed I’d have to do my left wrist first. And – I’d got this information from the internet – it was important to have the bathwater hot enough, something to do with the temperature that blood clots at.

So wearying to consider the nitty-gritty, but it had to be addressed. It was a complicated job, with several aspects – like a heist. Every stage had to be managed very carefully.

My phone rang a couple of times but I didn’t even look at it. I was so deep into my planning that I barely registered the faint crunching sound. By the time the second noise came I’d identified the first noise as a key going into the lock in Wayne’s front door. Was I hearing things?

Or had a person just come into the house? I was nearly certain I had heard footsteps in the hall. Someone
could
be here, because I’d forgotten to put the chain on the door when
I’d arrived. Then – making my heart almost jump out of my ribcage – my phone beeped. It was a text to tell me that movement had been detected in Wayne’s hallway.

Adrenaline roared through me. I wasn’t imagining it. Someone was really here. I crouched on the floor, trying to follow what was going on downstairs.

Was it that ox, Walter Wolcott?

Was it the Mysterious Clatterer of Old Dublin Town?

Was it … 
Wayne
? Was he finally back?

I was suspended in a paralysing mix of fear and anticipation. Someone had hurt me on Saturday night. They’d told me to stay away from Wayne and I hadn’t. Had they come to hit me again? Was I about to have some of my bones broken? And how did I feel about that?

Peaceful. Hopefully I would be killed. And, if not, perhaps I’d have a lengthy spell in hospital, out of my head on morphine. There was something about having my emotional pain transmuted into physical pain that was very appealing.

Someone was coming up the stairs now. They’d gone into Wayne’s bedroom. Out again and into the spare room. The bathroom was next and I stood up, so that they could come in here.

The door was pushed open with force and into the room rushed Zeezah.

She shrieked when she saw me and said many urgent things in a foreign tongue. I caught the word ‘Allah’ several times and even in the midst of the drama I took a moment to savour my evident gift for language.

Eventually Zeezah switched to English. ‘Helen! Helen Walsh!’ She was gasping and had her hand held over her heart. ‘You gave me such a fright. Why are you here?’

‘Doing my job. Why are you here?’

‘I’m looking for Wayne.’

‘And you really thought he might just be sitting here in his home, when half the country is looking for him?’

‘I am desperate. We are all desperate. Desperate people do stupid, pointless things because they have to do something instead of nothing.’ She was crying now.

‘What would you say if I suggested that John Joseph has had Wayne … ah … you know … disposed of?’

‘John Joseph has done nothing to Wayne. I can assure you of this. He needs Wayne back more badly than you can ever know. We have no money, Helen Walsh, no money. John Joseph is … what’s the word? John Joseph is
bricking
it.’

‘You never told me about yourself and Wayne,’ I said.

‘You never asked.’

Cheeky little madam. Never stayed down for long.

‘When did you last see Wayne?’ I asked.

‘Wednesday night. I came here to this house.’

‘Did you have an argument?’

She nodded.

So that was the shouting match that surfey Nicholas, the next-door neighbour, had overheard.

‘He said I must choose between him and John Joseph. He said that even if John Joseph is the father of the baby, he wanted me, but that I must make a decision. I said I cannot. I love Wayne but I no longer have a record label. I am signed to John Joseph. But he has no money. And will have no money unless these …’ She paused, clearly trying out the word, ‘… 
fucking
reunion concerts happen. But they will not happen without Wayne. So I am … 
fucked
. We all are. We are all fucked.’ As an afterthought, she said, ‘But at least we have a good word to describe our situation.’

I was sick of asking this question, but here it was again: ‘Zeezah, where do you think Wayne is?’

‘I think he has gone to his family. He likes that bossy-pants sister, Connie.’

No love lost there, obviously.

‘He’s not with his family,’ I said.

‘To my sorrow, I have no other suggestions, Helen Walsh. I will leave now. I will go to the home that I will probably not be living in for much longer and try to calm down my husband. For this purpose I will get from Roger St Leger a Xanax.’

It had been such a long, busy day that I still hadn’t managed to speak to Artie. There was a missed call from him, but no message. I rang him back; again, it went straight to voicemail so I clicked out a quick text, telling him I was fine and to ring me whenever.

Then I located Antonia Kelly’s number on my phone and I stared at it for a long time, wondering if I should call. What if she answered? What would I say to her? She’d know I wasn’t just ringing for an idle chat.

My finger hovered over the ring button for ages, and suddenly I went for it.

‘Antonia Kelly here.’ For a moment I thought it really was her, then I realized it was her voicemail. She had a beautiful voice, the voice of a woman with a black car and excellent taste in scarves. ‘Please leave a detailed message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.’

Hang up
,
hang up
,
hang up
 …

‘Antonia … ah, it’s Helen here, Helen Walsh. Could you give me a ring sometime …?’

I disconnected. Who knew when she’d ring back? The number I had for her was a mobile, but I suspected it wasn’t her personal phone and that she switched it off after office hours. She probably wouldn’t get my message until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

I’d been very tightly wound before I made that call and the anticlimax of not getting to speak to her opened an abyss inside me.

To stave off the feelings, I went downstairs and looked through Wayne’s massive CD collection, in the faint hope
that it might yield up something useful, but it all meant nothing to me so I switched my attention to his SkyPlus. To my surprise (category: disappointing), he seemed to like cookery programmes – Jamie Oliver, Hairy Bikers, Nigel Slater, that sort of thing. Not for me. Plenty of time to cook when I’m dead.

I flicked down through the list, nothing catching my eye until I discovered that he’d series-linked
Bored to Death
, a comedy about a private detective in Brooklyn. Very fond of that show, I was. I watched an episode, even though it was one I’d seen before, then I started watching another, until I realized that my behaviour was alarmingly close to idling, so I made myself stop.

I checked my phone to see if Artie had rung back but he hadn’t and it was almost midnight. It was a bit odd; usually we spoke several times a day and today we hadn’t connected once. I still felt like that ragged, unfinished feeling from yesterday was lurking around us. But there was nothing I could do now – it was too late – so I took some Nurofen and a sleeping tablet and settled myself down with a cushion on Wayne’s living-room floor.

I fell into a nasty slumber, and my final conscious thought was: You’ll come home tomorrow, Wayne.

At some stage I bolted into wakefulness, my head killing me. It was already starting to get light, but when I looked at my phone it was only 3.24 a.m. Oh God. That was what usually happened: the sleeping tablets would knock me out for the first few nights, then become less and less effective.

It was far too early for Tuesday to start. I couldn’t bear it. I could not endure it. I had to do something.

I could take another sleeping tablet, except I shouldn’t … or I could try watching another episode of
Bored To Death
 … or I could go to Artie. I’d have the comfort of his body, of his heat, of his lovely man smell.

Decision made, I got up, swallowed down the last of my painkillers and drove through the empty streets. I found a parking spot only a few houses away from Artie’s.

Quietly I let myself in and tiptoed up the stairs. The pearly morning light was already coming through in shafts. As I put a foot on the landing, I collided with another person: Vonnie!

I gaped at her. For once I couldn’t summon the insouciant banter we used with each other. And neither could she. In the dim light she looked as shocked as I felt.

She was wearing a tiny vest and yoga pants, which could be either real clothes or bed clothes.

‘Whose room are you sleeping in?’ I asked.

‘No one’s,’ she said.

‘Keep it that way,’ I said, with a breeziness I was far from feeling.

Soundlessly she stole away down the stairs and I made my way along the landing. I paused outside Artie’s bedroom door. I stood there for the longest time, paralysed with indecision, afraid to go into his bedroom in case I discovered some evidence that Vonnie had been in there with him. Maybe she hadn’t been, and all the dread could fall away from me. But what if she had been …?

It was safest to leave so I went back to Wayne’s and I took another sleeping tablet because I couldn’t not.

I woke on Wayne’s floor at 10.37 a.m. I had two messages from Artie asking me to call him, but I didn’t. There were also about eighty messages from Jay Parker, but I didn’t ring him either. I took a swig of Diet Coke and swallowed down my tablet, but I didn’t bother with any Cheerios, then I got straight in my car and drove to a hardware store in a mini-mall in Booterstown.

‘I’m looking for a Stanley knife.’

‘A Stanley knife. Right,’ the man behind the counter said. ‘Well, we have a few different ones I can show you.’

It was the fullest place I’d ever been to in my life. There were nails and screws and hinges and keys and endless numbers of small strange metal things. Millions and millions of them in millions and millions of different sizes. It was like an Aladdin’s Cave but one you’d find in hell.

I’d have preferred to have kept my purchase discreet and anonymous, but I couldn’t find the Stanley knives, and as I scanned the shelves nasty things kept lurching out at me – chainsaws and electric drills and Dulux paint charts. A horrible, horrible place.

Eventually I gave up and went to the man behind the counter and made my request, which he attended to with enthusiasm. Evidently a man who enjoyed his job.

‘This is your basic model.’ He demonstrated a small thick knife with a diagonal blade. ‘It’s only got the one blade in it, but you can buy extra.’

‘Okay.’

‘This is a more sophisticated model. It’s got three blades
in one. See this little button here?’ I leaned in to take a closer look. ‘You just press that and you get a longer blade. See? Then press it again and you get an even longer one.’

‘Okay.’

‘And this one …’ He was clearly very proud of it. ‘This one comes in its own presentation case.’ He produced a small wooden box and opened it with a flourish. ‘Pricier, of course, but worth it.’

Suddenly some other bloke, a customer, intervened. ‘Don’t let him be codding you,’ he said, in an almost-but-not-quite-jocular tone. ‘I’m a DIY expert – there’s nothing about DIY I don’t know – and I’m telling you that all you’ll need is the most basic one.’