‘So, you noticed their jeep had gone, did you?’
‘What? Oh, yes, they took a Swords Cab to the airport so their jeep was in the driveway. They bought it second hand but, still, it’s only two years old and—’
‘And when did you notice it was gone?’
‘What? Oh, yes, well, I was dusting the window sill in the front room last Thursday. It must have been coming up to half seven in the evening because I saw Mr Mulligan walking down the road – he usually goes to the library on a Thursday evening and gets back in time for Coronation Street. He had the books in a SuperValu bag – he says he reads five books a week. Five! I ask you—’
‘And that’s when you noticed the jeep was gone?’
‘I’m getting to that, Cillian.’
Cillian waited.
‘And that’s when I noticed the jeep was gone,’ said Mrs Flanagan then.
Cillian waited some more.
‘And I know that her son – he’s married with three children over in Boraimhe – sometimes borrows it but I didn’t see him coming to take it. Usually I’d spot him, just out of the corner of my eye, like. Or hear the engine start. People say I’m very ... what’s the word ...?’
Cillian could imagine a few.
‘Observant, that’s it. I’m observant.’
‘Do you have a number for the Mitchells?’
‘I do, love. Mrs Mitchell wrote down her new number for me on the back of a flyer before she jetted off. It’s here someplace, just hold on a ...’
Protracted rustling now.
‘I have the number,’ said Mrs Flanagan, reading it out. ‘She wrote it on the back of Lenny’s flyer.’
‘Lenny?’ Cillian sat up straighter.
‘Leonard, I suppose. But we all call him Lenny. A lovely fellow. He’s a window cleaner – he was here last week, left my patio door so clean I nearly walked through it: I thought it was open.’
‘Lenny Hegarty?’
‘That’s him. Does he do your windows too?’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Flanagan.’
‘Have I?’
‘Better observational powers than some of my colleagues.’
‘Only doing my civic duty, Cillian, you know that.’
‘Well, keep up the good work.’
‘Over and out,’ she said before she hung up.
Cillian rang Mrs Mitchell in Lanzarote who confirmed that, no, her son hadn’t borrowed her jeep, which should be parked in her driveway in River Valley. She wasn’t best pleased to find out that it was not.
‘Did you get your windows cleaned last week? Before you went on holidays?’ asked Cillian when she’d calmed down.
‘Well, Lenny was up alright – he’s our window cleaner – but I can’t remember if it was last week or the week before. Why?’
‘Did you tell him you were going on holidays?’
‘God, I don’t know, it was ... oh, wait, yeah, I did. He said he’d been to this resort before. He recommended an Irish pub. They play traditional music in the evening. Fiddles and that. And then the fry-up in the mornings. It’s like a home from home.’
Cillian looked up Leonard Hegarty on the computer. He was on the system but it was petty stuff mostly. What interested Cillian was the company Lenny kept. He was a known associate of Jimmy Carty’s. He noted Lenny’s address and left the station.
Lenny’s car wasn’t in his driveway in Swords Manor. Cillian parked further up, on the other side of the road, adjusted his rear-view mirror so he could see the house. He settled down to wait. There was a lot of waiting in his line of work although he hadn’t known that as a young boy, dreaming of being a detective. He had always wanted to be one, which was strange because there were no guards in his family. His father – whom Cillian had only a vague memory of – had been a carpenter and his mother – who had died two years after his dad when Cillian was ten – a housewife.
Eventually a car pulled into Lenny’s driveway but it was his girlfriend, Natasha, and Cillian didn’t approach her, didn’t want her telling Lenny, putting him on the defensive. He checked his phone to see if Martha had phoned back. He had rung earlier, just to see how Tara was doing.
He decided to call it a night, the long wait in the car making itself felt across the backs of his shoulders and down his cramped legs.
If things had gone to plan, he would have been on the road to Donegal by now. Instead he was in his car driving west instead of north. To his own house in The Ward in north County Dublin – that he had leased to a fire-fighter friend of his when he’d moved to Donegal.
Cillian had bought the house in The Ward nearly three years ago. Just after he’d been promoted to detective.
The estate agent had called the house a ‘fixer-upper’.
‘More like a “faller-downer”,’ Martha had told him when he took her to see it.
The house – a subsiding stone cottage crowned with a sodden straw roof gaping with bald spots – was situated in what Martha called ‘the middle of nowhere’ but what Cillian referred to as ‘halfway between Finglas and Ashbourne’.
‘The good thing is the windows are so dirty you can’t see the countryside,’ Martha had said, rubbing a pane with the cuff of her jacket, an act which had no discernible effect on visibility.
‘Can’t you say anything positive?’
‘Yes.’ She’d rummaged in her bag, taken out a bottle and two glasses. ‘I brought wine.’
Cillian tightened his grip on the steering wheel, shook his head, as if he might dislodge Martha from his mind in this way. He concentrated on Stella. Pictured her in his head. Small. She was definitely small. Petite, he supposed some people might say. There was a plump softness to her body which Cillian still found unsettling, after the taut length of Martha. He’d always felt that Martha’s body had to be navigated carefully, whereas Stella’s felt like pillows you could sink into. He remembered the first time they’d slept together, thinking that thought. And wondering how long it would take before he stopped comparing every woman he met – every person, actually – to Martha bloody Wilder.
It was nine o’clock by the time Cillian pulled up in front of his house. He killed the engine, listened to it idle away, looked at the stone cottage. Oddly, when Stella had mentioned home the other day on the phone, it was this place that had come to mind. He had leased it out for the past two years but whenever Cillian stepped back into it – to replace a floorboard or paint a room – the sensation of being home was strong, despite the evidence of his tenant’s belongings in every room.
The townhouse he rented in Mount Charles outside Donegal town looked pretty much the same as when he’d moved in, he realised. Stella said he hadn’t put his stamp on it. Apart from his few toiletries in the bathroom, his books in a pile on the floor beside his bed and his fishing rods propped in a corner of the hall, it could have been anyone’s house.
Niall – the fire-fighter to whom he had let his house when he left Dublin – had kindly agreed to let Cillian stay in the spare room during his six-month secondment to Swords. Cillian halved his rent, lent Niall his fishing rods when he wanted them and cooked his speciality – chicken tikka masala – when he had the time. It was an arrangement that suited them both.
What Cillian enjoyed about living out here was how dark the dark got. On a clear night, like tonight, the sky was lit with stars, the light from the closer ones clear and uncompromising, others glowing in clusters, like lamplight. Now, as he looked up, he saw a shooting star arcing across the sky and he smiled as he remembered Joan, years ago, pointing out his first one, telling him he could make a wish. He took his keys out of the ignition, lifted his work files from the passenger seat and got out of the car. The cold was sharp and immediate and he thought about the boy – Roman – somewhere out there.
‘You can make a wish on that, you know.’ The voice came from the step at the front door and startled him.
‘Who’s that?’ He looked around, peered through the darkness towards the voice.
&
nbsp; ‘It’s me.’
‘Stella?’
She moved towards him, stopped short of him. ‘Surprise,’ she said, smiling.
‘How did you ... find me here?’
There was some truth to what Martha had said. About the house being in the middle of nowhere.
‘I took a few wrong turns but I got here in the end,’ she said. In the dark, her teeth seemed very white and very long. She was wrapped in a wool coat with an enormous collar that she had turned up against the cold. A scarf was wrapped around her neck and her arms were wrapped around her body. In spite of these efforts, her teeth chattered. The noise it produced sounded loud in the darkness.
‘Are you going to let me in?’
‘Sorry, of course, I’ll just get my ... keys and ... you took me by surprise, that’s all. I wasn’t ... expecting you.’
‘A nice surprise, I hope.’
‘Yes. Of course. Of course it is.’
She leaned towards him, wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed his mouth. Cillian wondered if Niall were in. He wouldn’t mind Stella staying. Not at all. It was just ... well, Cillian would have liked to run it past him. He pulled away from Stella, whose eyes were still closed.
‘Stella?’
Her eyes snapped open. She smiled. ‘And don’t worry about Niall. I rang him during the week. Let him know I was coming.’
‘Really? How did you—?’
‘I rang the fire station. He said it was fine. In fact, he’s gone away for a few days so we have the place to ourselves.’
‘Oh ...’ Niall hadn’t mentioned any plans. Cillian hoped his tenant hadn’t felt obliged to absent himself. He wasn’t even sure Niall knew about Stella. Had he mentioned her?
‘It’s so nice to finally be here,’ she said, waving towards the house. ‘It looks a lot more ... homey than I would have thought.’
‘Come on inside, you’ll freeze out here.’ Cillian moved towards the house, stopping to pick up her bag, which seemed bigger than an overnight case. ‘How long are you planning to stay?’ he asked.
‘We’re on midterm break so ...’ she said, without finishing the sentence.
Cillian turned on the lights in the hall, the sitting room and the kitchen as he made his way towards the spare room – his bedroom now – at the back of the house where he set her bag.
Her suitcase.
When he returned, the lights were off and the lamps were on and Stella was crouched at the fireplace, lighting both ends of a Firelog she had brought. Cillian had to agree that in the soft lamplight, with the fire taking hold, the cottage did have a homey feel to it. A lot homier than the townhouse in Mount Charles.
Stella stood up, put the guard in front of the fireplace and turned towards him, still smiling.
‘I thought it was Sandra’s engagement party tonight,’ he said.
‘Selene’s, you mean? And no, that’s not till next month.’ Stella was the middle child of seven – or was it eight? – children, all daughters. It was hard to keep track. Their names all began with the letter S – Susan, Sarah, Sorcha, Selene, Sadie and ... he couldn’t remember ... oh, Sam, was it? Short for Samantha, he supposed. Seven of them in total. He was fairly sure. Stella said her mother had overcome a lisp in her mid-twenties and she thought that might be the reason for the prevalence of S names for each of her mother’s seven – eight? – daughters.
‘Tonight is Saoirse’s first wedding anniversary, remember? They’re just having a small party in their house.’
Oh, yes, Saoirse. Eight so.
There was always some occasion when it came to the Bennett sisters. Three of Stella’s sisters were married with children, one was married and expecting her first child, one was engaged to be married, another had recently discovered an engagement ring in her boyfriend’s toolbox that slid onto the finger she and her sisters called ‘the wedding finger’ perfectly and, while she had replaced it in amongst the nails and screws and spanners, it was, the sisters knew, only a matter of time. The remaining sister – the youngest, Cillian felt sure – was doing what was referred to as a strong line with a local politician. With an election looming, it wouldn’t be long before he made an honest woman of her, as Stella’s parents phrased it, the electorate being more trustful of young bucks like that whose cards were marked.
‘Saoirse understood when I told her I couldn’t make it. She knows I haven’t seen you in ages.’ Cillian thought he detected an emphasis on the word. Ages. But that wasn’t true. Was it? He had travelled to Donegal two weeks ago, hadn’t he? But there was an expectant expression across Stella’s face and he felt obliged to say something.
‘I’m sorry, work has been—’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You’ve been busy.’ She walked over to him, put her hands on his shoulders. ‘I won’t get in your way,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a few home-cooked meals. You look like you could do with some looking after.’
‘You told me I was self-sufficient, remember?’ She had added for a man at the end of the sentence.
Stella studied his face. ‘You’re not annoyed with me?’ she said. ‘For surprising you like this?’
‘No.’ It came out faster than he’d intended. He didn’t think he was annoyed. Wrong footed, maybe. He moved towards the kitchen to check provisions. See what he could rustle up. An omelette maybe. He thought there might be a box of eggs.
‘Good,’ Stella said. ‘It’s just ... well, I’ve missed you. There! What do you think about that?’ He opened the fridge, scanned the shelves.
‘I’ve been eating on the hoof the last couple of days so I don’t have a lot of grub in, I’m afraid,’ he said, and it was entirely plausible that he mightn’t have heard her, with the sound of his rummaging and the distance between them. It was just ... he’d been busy. He hadn’t had time to miss her. ‘And Joan keeps threatening to feed me so I haven’t done much shopping.’ He stood up, turned around to look at her.
‘Oh, good, I’m really looking forward to seeing Joan again,’ Stella said. ‘I’ll make something for dessert.’
‘Well—’
‘The signal’s not great here, is it?’ Stella scrolled down the screen of her iPad with her finger.
‘The thing is,’ said Cillian, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to Joan’s. With work and everything. This new case. I’ll be flat out, I’d say.’
‘OK, look,’ said Stella, setting her iPad aside. Her tone was brisk. The school teacher calling her class to heel. ‘Why don’t we just make the most of the time we have now? Hmm?’
Cillian nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone for take-out. There’s a lovely Indian in Ashbourne that delivers—’
‘No need,’ said Stella, standing up. ‘I made lasagne. It’s in the boot of the car.’ She paused and her look was expectant so he said, ‘Great.’ He’d told her that lasagne was his favourite food when she’d asked him once. Months ago. The effort she’d gone to. On the drive home, he’d been thinking about a hot shower, a mug of tea and a read of his book in bed before he got a few hours’ kip. But Stella had gone to trouble. He should be more grateful.
He was grateful.
She had just taken him by surprise, that was all.
‘I’ll get it, pop it in the oven. Why don’t you go and freshen up?’
In the bathroom, he manhandled himself out of his clothes, took a quick shower and towel-dried his hair – which could do with a cut – ran his hand along his face – which needed a shave. He walked into the bedroom. Stella must have unpacked while he’d been in the shower. Her clothes hung in the wardrobe, a bottle of perfume, a collection of nail polishes and a couple of magazines on the locker beside the bed. The window that he had opened was now closed and the radiator made the groaning noise it made when it was turned on, which it never was because, otherwise, Cillian found the room stifling. He could hear Stella moving around in the kitchen now, filling the kettle, opening a press. He heard the low hum of the oven, pre-heating, and another low hum which was, he
presumed, Stella herself. Humming a tune to herself. She sounded happy. She had made an effort, travelled all this way. With lasagne. He left the window closed, the radiator on and put on the jeans that Stella had bought him a while ago.
‘How did you know my size?’ He had been surprised to find they fit perfectly when she’d insisted he try them on. He struggled to find clothes that fit his tall, lanky frame, which was his reason – his excuse – to darken the doors of as few clothes shops as possible.
He pulled a T-shirt over his head, pushed his feet into a pair of flip-flops and walked downstairs. ‘There you are,’ Stella said as he walked into the kitchen. She had changed too. She must have done that while he was in the shower. Now she wore a dressing gown – although it probably had a fancier title than that, with its delicate shade and shiny material. Silk perhaps? Satin?
‘You must be tired,’ he said. ‘After the journey.’
She laughed, then pulled at the belt of the dressing gown to briefly reveal a complicated red-and-black all-in-one bodice-type thing, with no obvious buttons or zips or anything else that might suggest a way in. She wrapped the dressing gown around her again, tied the belt. ‘I’m not a bit tired.’
She stepped close to him, encircled his waist with her arms. Through the flimsy material, he could feel her heart and it was racing and it made him feel bad. He knew he wasn’t the romantic type. Thank Christ, Martha had said when he’d admitted it.
Stella set the table in the dining room. She lit tea lights, arranged them along the sideboard. In the centre of the table, two long red candles flickered.
‘You sit down, I’ll dish up,’ she said before disappearing into the kitchen, leaving Cillian sitting at the table with the candles and the matching napkins. He felt strange. Like a visitor in his own house. It had been a strange week. He supposed it might have been partly because of Martha. Seeing her again. She had never arrived at his door unannounced. And definitely not with homemade food. A bottle, perhaps. Always a bottle. He’d never seen her in a dressing gown, flimsy or otherwise.
Entirely naked or fully dressed, that was Martha. No half measures.
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