Whatever Happened to Betsy Blake?

by David B Lyons

  ‘C’mon, Betsy. Come up. It’s okay.’

  I squeeze Bozy and then walk onto the first step. I look up and wait for Dod to shout at me. But he doesn’t. He is just waiting for me at the top. Then I walk onto the second step. Then the third. And fourth. Dod is still quiet. I close my eyes. That way, he won’t get angry if I see anything. I don’t think I’m allowed to see what’s up the steps. I walk up the rest of them. All thirteen. I know there are thirteen. I count them every day.

  Dod puts his hands on my shoulders when I reach the top.

  ‘It’s okay, Betsy. Open your eyes.’

  I do. I open them wide. But it’s too bright. It hurts my eyes a bit. It smells different up here. In my room it is mostly the smell of poo. Except for when I smell my books. Then the poo smell goes away for a few seconds. But up here smells like… I don’t know. Different. Nice.

  Dod keeps his hands on my shoulders and walks me down a room that has a brown wood floor. It’s nice. It looks a lot nicer than my stone floor. More flat. Then he makes me turn around. I still can’t see much. The light is too bright.

  ‘This is my downstairs toilet.’

  I blink my eyes until I can see more clear. Then I see white walls with a big white bowl. It makes me think of my Mummy and Daddy’s house. We had a big white bowl like that too.

  ‘You can do your pee and poo in here.’

  Dod opens a lid on the big white bowl and I look into it. There is a little bit of water in it.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you need to poo or pee just knock on the door and I will let you come here to do it.’

  I look up at Dod. I am a little bit scared.

  ‘Am I okay to walk up the steps and knock on the door?’

  Dod laughs a little bit.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you won’t get angry. Won’t turn into angry Dod?’

  Dod laughs again. This time louder.

  ‘You’re becoming a big girl now. I can’t be carrying that basin up and down the steps all the time. You can pee and poo in this, and see here…’ He points at another white bowl. It’s like the first one. Just a bit smaller and a bit higher up. ‘You can wash yourself some mornings in this one.’ He turns the shiny bit on top and water comes out. I think of my old house again. Mummy and Daddy’s house. I think they had the same bowl too.

  I smile a big smile. But I am also a bit scared. I’m afraid of being up the steps and inside the light rooms. I turn around and look at Dod. He is smiling too. I notice another bright room behind him. It has a big blue chair in it. I wish I had a chair like that in my room.

  ‘No looking in there.’

  Dod says that a bit angry. But then he smiles again. I don’t know what to do. So I just squeeze Dod’s legs.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  He bends down towards me so that his nose is close to my nose. There’s always a bad smell when his face is close to me.

  ‘But there’s one condition. Anytime you’re up here, you need to be really quiet okay?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘And I mean really fucking quiet. If you ever raise your voice or make any noise up here at all, I won’t just hurt you. I will kill you.’

  11:55

  Lenny

  Lenny feels a tsunami of relief wash through him as the hall door closes and he finds himself outside. Never before has rain felt so good. Keating and Barry almost folded over with laughter as soon as Lenny called out Betsy’s name. Then the light switched on under the stairs. He was staring into a space a human could barely stand up in, let alone be held captive in.

  He thought Barry was going to throw up, so heavy was his convulsion of laughter. He looked at both of them, then headed for the door.

  He removes his phone from his pocket as he paces down Barry’s tiny garden path and then begins to jog down Carrow Road. He fidgets with his phone, is keen to ring Gordon back, ask him if getting into Barry’s home and concluding with absolute certainty that Betsy isn’t there constitutes triggering the gentlemen’s agreement they made earlier.

  But he also knows Gordon heard the men laughing, that it was all a joke and he isn’t quite sure how he’s going to take it. Maybe it won’t constitute enough to activate the will.

  He turns around to walk backwards, such is the force of the wind driving down the canal. When he reaches the junction that the old Black Horse pub used to sit on he squints into the distance, into the greyness of the day in hope of seeing a taxi light approach.

  It doesn’t take long; just five minutes, though those five minutes felt a lot longer than five minutes to Lenny. He’s soaked by the time the taxi pulls up alongside him; his hat weighing heavy on his head. On numerous occasions during his short jog he had wished the phone call from Gloria Proudfoot at Excel Insurance had come before his phone call from Gordon Blake – that way he’d be most likely snug and warm in some gym taking sneaky pictures with his dated film camera instead of feeling like a drowned rat in the back of a taxi going in search of somebody he knew he couldn’t possibly find. But that house, that big old house on South Circular Road won’t leave his mind. What if Gordon Blake is telling the truth; what if he genuinely left it in his will to Lenny, Sally and the twins? Soaked to the bone or not, chasing a lost cause or not, Lenny had to admit to himself that this was one hell of an interesting morning.

  ‘Fuck the warmth of a gym,’ he mutters to himself in the back of the taxi. As the driver is turning on to the Naas Road, Lenny’s phone vibrates in his jacket pocket. He knows who it is; it’s midday.

  ‘Hey, sweetie,’ he says.

  ‘I know you rang me since our last call, but I still thought I should ring you at twelve.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lenny had made a pact with Sally that she would ring at ten a.m., midday and then again at two p.m. every day just so Lenny could rest assured that the day was going well for his wife. The story he’d shared with Keating and Barry was true. Every word of it. Sally is suicidal. Has suffered with high levels of depression ever since the twins were born. In fact, she’d shown signs of depression even in pregnancy; her levels of anxiety rising so much she had to be kept in hospital on occasions. Lenny assumed post natal depression was inevitable for Sally, yet he never quite knew how awful it would be. He found her one morning standing atop their toilet seat trying to put her neck in a noose she had tied using the belt of her woollen bathrobe. The twins were only eight weeks old then. On his first day back in work – three months later – he got a phone call from Sally who told him he had to get home quick before she started to slice at her wrists with a Stanley knife. She was sitting in a corner of their sitting room with the blade in her hand when he arrived home, the twins both crying upstairs. There were no cuts on her skin, but Lenny has never been entirely convinced of what would have happened had he not been fortunate enough to have his phone in his possession when she rang that day. As a police officer, he was supposed to have it turned off.

  His station chief offered him six months leave after Sally’s second suicide attempt, but Lenny knew it wasn’t enough; that he could never return to a job in which he had no control over his time, over his phone. It was a shame; Lenny had always wanted to be a Garda, had ambitions to be a detective from quite a young age. Sally hasn’t made any suicide attempt since, but her moods have still not evened out or even become consistent day-to-day. Every morning he wakes up, he doesn’t know how Sally is going to be feeling.

  ‘Any more work today?’ Sally asks. She sounds okay, monotone but alert.

  Lenny pauses; the hesitation even obvious to the taxi man.

  ‘Leonard,’ Sally says re-prompting her husband.

  ‘Sorry, love, phone is playing up a bit. Eh… yeah. I’ve to go to some gym in Coolock now; usual stuff. Got to take a photo of a girl who—’

  ‘Think you’ll be home to go meet the teacher today?’ Sally interrupts, clearly not interested in the answer to the initial question she’d asked. This wasn’t unusual. Their phon
e calls weren’t about anything, merely routine.

  ‘Yeah… yeah,’ Lenny says, his eyes blinking. It was unusual he’d blink when speaking to his wife. But that’s because it was also unusual he would lie to her. He didn’t want to tell her about the Betsy Blake case, didn’t want to raise her anxiousness levels in any way. ‘Yeah – I’ll be there if you can get a three o’clock meeting.’

  ‘Good. I’ll make an appointment so,’ Sally says.

  Lenny thanks her and after the phone call ends he bites at the cover of his phone, disappointed with himself. He knows there’s a chance he won’t make that meeting; hates that he might let not only his wife down, but his sons too. Particularly Jared. He’s having an awful time of it at school. Not only is he being bullied, but he’s being drowned in the politics of the education system. The school don’t know what to do with him; so low is his comprehension. Lenny’s only concerned about the bullying, not bothered about the latter. He genuinely feels institutional education is vastly overrated. Though he is keen to stay on top of things if only for Sally’s sake. If she’s worried, then Lenny is worried too. He lets out a little sigh. The meeting he just agreed to attend is supposed to take place straight after the kids leave school at three p.m., exactly when his case with Gordon Blake is due for conclusion too.

  Lenny shakes his head as the taxi man pulls into Peyton estates, ridding his mind of the worry.

  ‘If you can pull over at the orange car there please…’

  Lenny almost tuts as he hands the taxi man a twenty euro note. He hates spending money, unless it’s on something that would cheer either his wife or the twins up.

  He runs the five yards to his car door, wrestles with the lock and then jumps in. It was pointless trying to be quick; he really couldn’t get any wetter than he already is.

  He starts the engine, begins to pull out of Peyton estate when he hears an unusual sound. His car slogs, even though he’s pressing hard on the accelerator. He squints at himself in the rear-view mirror, then his eyes widen. He begins to slap at the steering wheel; the penny finally dropping. He doesn’t stop slapping, not until the palms of his hands sting unbearably.

  Then he gets out of his car and looks up and down the driver’s side, walks to the other side of the car and does the same thing. He clenches both fists, tilts his head back – eyes open, mouth open – and lets the rain shower down on his face.

  ‘Fuck sake!’ he roars into the sky.

  12:10

  Gordon

  I finish writing up the letter and will; tuck the flap of the envelope inside itself and then push it under my pillow. I want Lenny to know I’m deadly serious; that I will leave him my house if he can somehow get me some answers today. I may have come across like a right twat having him call out Betsy’s name in Barry Ward’s gaff, but I don’t mind looking like a twat. I’d do anything to find some answers. Her disappearance plagues me every day; her loss from my life eats at me. But it’s the guilt that makes the most impact. It resides in both my stomach and my head, and it won’t go away. It was my fault she went missing. It was on my watch.

  I wasn’t a lazy dad; I was just like any other dad – unfocused. Mothers are great at paying their children every nuance of attention. But dads? Fuck no. We’re easily distracted. I was busy working. Guus had managed to bring in two massive clients to our company just before Betsy went missing; they were million euro deals. I was finalising one at home while I was supposed to be looking after my daughter. I think she got bored, walked away from me, walked away from our home. One of the main reasons I feel guilt is because I’m genuinely not sure how long she was gone before I realised she was missing. May have been just ten minutes, could’ve been two hours. I was too consumed with work.

  I went into shock when I realised she was gone; ran into the streets shouting her name. I stopped people, asked if they’d seen a four-year-old with mousy brown hair. Nobody’d seen anything. I thought I was going mad. I remember running back into the house and checking everywhere for her; under the beds, in the closets, the washing machine. I even checked the fuckin microwave. I don’t know why. I think I was beginning to lose it. I rang the police before I rang Michelle; knew it’d be a much easier call to make.

  ‘My child’s gone missing,’ I said matter-of-factly down the line. I know I said it matter-of-factly because it was played back to me about eight times when I was being questioned by Detective De Brun a few days later. I was their first suspect; they assumed I had something to do with her disappearance. By that stage I was convinced it was Keating who’d taken my girl. I told the police about my dealings with him; spilt the beans. But they were still convinced I knew something. I didn’t. I hadn’t one fucking clue what happened to Betsy. I still don’t. I still don’t have one iota of an idea what happened to her that day, or what has happened to her any day since. But I know she’s alive. I know deep down in my gut she’s out there somewhere. If only the cops had acted sooner, instead of wasting time questioning me, I’m pretty certain they could’ve found her. But now – just over seventeen years later – there’s probably no chance whatsoever that I’ll ever see her pretty little face again. I can’t give up though. I’ve told anyone who’s ever listened to me over those years that I will fight until my dying day to find Betsy. Well, today may well be my dying day, and I ain’t stopping. I guess I just have to put all of my hope in little Lenny Moon. Not that I’ve given him much to go on; same old leads I’ve looked into hundreds of times – all of them producing sweet fuck all over the years. But fair play to him, he got into Barry’s house within an hour or so of starting his investigation. That’s some going. It took me four years to get inside that gaff.

  ‘That time again, Gordon,’ Elaine says, opening up the door to my ward. I twist my head on the pillow, crease my mouth into a slight smile.

  ‘You look more relaxed anyway,’ she says.

  I just maintain the smile, pull my T-shirt over my head again and wait for her to attach the blue tabs to my chest.

  ‘The theatre will definitely be ready for three p.m., Gordon. Everything’s running on time. Dr Johnson and Mr Broadstein are due to land at one p.m. and should arrive here at the hospital around two-ish. The surgery that’s going on in the theatre right now is expected to be finished in a couple more hours. Half an hour clean up and prep after that, then we’ll get you down there.’

  I’m listening to what Elaine is saying, but I don’t react, except for nodding my head out of politeness.

  ‘Okay… heart rate is still high,’ she says,’ but it’s come down a good bit. Keep that head back on your pillow and just relax, Gordon. It’s your best chance of beating this.’

  I just nod again.

  ‘You okay… You’ve gone very quiet on me?’

  I look up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since she re-entered the ward.

  ‘Just letting it all sink in,’ I say. ‘Y’know what’s upsetting me the most?’

  She doesn’t finish wrapping the rubber tube around her hand, instead she puts it aside, squints at me, then perches on the bed.

  ‘Ever hear of Betsy Blake?’ I ask her.

  She squints again. The name didn’t immediately register with her.

  ‘Girl that went missing seventeen years ago, was taken outside her home?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Elaine says. ‘South Circular Road. I was too young to remember at the time, but I’ve heard about it since.’

  ‘My daughter,’ I say. Her mouth opens a little, then she places her hand on top of mine again.

  ‘Oh I’m so sorry, Gordon.’

  ‘It’s okay, Elaine… you didn’t take her.’ I sit more upright in the bed again. ‘It’s just, the thought of dying without ever finding out what happened to her is… It’s…’ I pinch my thumb and forefinger into the corner of my eye sockets.

  ‘Gordon… we’ll get you through this,’ Elaine says, rubbing her fingers across the top of my hand. ‘I thought… I thought…’ she hesitates. ‘I thought they concluded Be
tsy’s investigation… wasn’t she supposed to have been found to have been knocked down… they found a car or something with her DNA in?’

  ‘That was all baloney,’ I say, removing my fingers from my eyes. ‘That was the cops trying to close off a case many years later because it was costing them too much money, costing them too much time. They’ve always been embarrassed by the fact they never found out who took Betsy… So they made that shit up.’

  Elaine’s brow creases.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asks.

  ‘Dead serious.’ Then I breathe out a long, drawn out sigh. I haven’t opened up about Betsy in years.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Elaine says, still rubbing at my hand. ‘Listen. I have to go downstairs to Mr Douglas’ office for a consultation about your surgeries. I’ll be half-an-hour, forty minutes at most. When I’m back, I’ll pop in to you. You can tell me what you want… we can keep quiet… we can watch more TV; whatever it is you would like to do.’

  She’s so lovely. Very genuine. Very natural. I wonder if Betsy would have grown up to be just as impressive.

  ‘She’d be only five years younger than you are now, y’know?’

  ‘Really?’ Elaine says as she scribbles a note on the clipboard. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Gordon. I don’t know what to say. Y’know I thought about you and your whole family a number of times over the years… I guess most people have. Everybody’s hearts went out to you.’

  I smile my eyes at her and then wave my hand.

  ‘Go on, go to your meeting and… yes please, drop in when you’re done. I’d love the company.’

  She takes a step towards me, rubs at my hand again, and then pinches each of the tabs off my chest.

  ‘You just relax for the next half-an-hour, Gordon. Put the back of your head on that pillow and close those eyes.’