‘I’m fine.’
‘Yeah, well …’
The man was thin, but tall and well-built with muscular arms emerging from a brown T-shirt. His green eyes narrowed behind his glasses’ thick black frames.
‘Look, are you really a cop?’
Claire nodded, unsure of how much to give away.
‘Yeah.’
‘You didn’t get very far with Sandra.’
Claire paused, and then decided she had nothing to lose.
‘She wasn’t very forthcoming, no.’
The man snorted, shrugged his shoulders.
‘That one? She wouldn’t give you the steam off her piss.’
The old Irish phrase, like something her mother would come out with, was so at odds with the hipster uniform that Claire let out a sudden peal of laughter. He squinted at her, not getting the joke.
‘Look, is there somewhere we can go? Do you have a car or something? I think I might be able to help you.’
‘Sure.’
Claire turned, and began to walk down the stairs again.
‘I’m in the car park. Follow me.’
‘So, yeah, I’ve been working there for six months. Head of Technology should be the official title, but she wouldn’t let me use that, of course. She wouldn’t last five minutes if I walked. You know yourself. Thinks she runs the place, but she hasn’t a clue what goes on under the engine.’
Claire nodded encouragingly.
Shawn – he had emphasised the spelling not once, but three times – was one of nature’s most useful informants, a disgruntled employee. His job as an intern or, as he continually referred to it, an underpaid slave, at Netmammy had taught him a lot about how the company was run and he seemed determined to talk Claire through every little detail, never missing an opportunity to express his utter disregard for his boss while he was at it.
The first five minutes of his rant actually held her interest. Although she was now a daily user of Netmammy, Claire hadn’t given much thought to how the site was actually run. But according to Shawn, the business was in fact a very profitable one. Ireland was going through yet another baby boom and Irish suppliers of everything from eco-nappies to bottle warmers were happy to take out ads on the homepage. Sandra Johnson was apparently making a decent living from the site she had originally started, with her husband, in their front room. The husband was now an ex – Shawn had to be hauled back from the brink of a long discussion of how lucky his escape had been – and following his departure with most of the company’s technological expertise, Shawn had been employed.
‘For slave wages, totally. I mean …’
‘Yeah, okay.’
Claire held up her hand. She could probably now enter Mastermind with Sandra Johnson as her specialist subject, but was no closer to getting what she actually needed. She was also starting to realise that, despite the cool clothes, Shawn was something of a bore. She would have bet a tenner that Séan was the spelling on his birth cert. too. But he was all she had and she decided to risk a direct question.
‘I need to get into someone’s account. Can you help me?’
Colour flared on his cheek and he jiggled his right leg up and down, his shoe making a tapping sound on the car floor.
‘Is this, like, official police business?’
‘It is, yeah.’
Well, technically, Claire thought, she was being honest. It was LIKE police business. It just wasn’t police business, not exactly. But he didn’t need to know that.
‘Cool. Well, you’ve come to the right man.’
He began to slap his thigh in time to the foot jiggling and Claire worried that the car would actually begin to rock under the onslaught.
‘Actually, I’m handing in my notice next week, got a new gig, paying punters, you know yourself. So, shoot. Anything to help our brothers in blue, you know? And sisters. I mean …’
His voice trailed off and he used his non-jiggling hand to push his glasses back up on his nose. He had become, she noticed, slightly sweaty and she resisted the urge to open the window and let in fresh air. Instead, she took a deep breath and concentrated on letting him know exactly what she needed.
‘I need to get into someone’s account. Check their private messages. Two accounts actually.’
He wrinkled his forehead and the thick black glasses slipped down again.
‘Actually, that’s pretty hard. They’re all password protected?’
‘So you’ve no way of getting into them? Have you ever had to check them, go into an account yourself?’
‘God, no.’ He grimaced. ‘I stay as far away as possible from the actual punters, to be honest with you. I mean, have you read some of the shit they come out with? Just a load of whiny women. Whinge whinge whinge. Idiots, most of them. And they can’t spell.’
Claire, who found herself rather unnerved by the ferocity of his response, said nothing. And after a moment, his face brightened.
‘I’ll tell you what though, I can crash the system for you. But you’ll have to be quick. Do you have a computer here?’
She picked up her iPhone and waved it at him. He nodded, satisfied.
‘That’ll do. I’ll reset everyone’s password to PASSWORD, all caps. You can get into any account you like then. But you’ll have to be really quick about it. Some of those women are addicted, they’ll spot there’s a problem within minutes and then they’ll be on to the office, bitching and moaning as usual. I’ll tell Sandra it’s a system glitch and that I’m working on it.’
He sat back, self-importantly, the leg finally silent.
‘She knows that whatever it is, I’ll be able to fix it quickly. You can have twenty minutes, max. That do you?’
Claire nodded. It was the best offer she was going to get. No doubt there was a legal, ethical and technical way to get the information she wanted. But she didn’t have time. This method would get her into six degrees of shit when her bosses found out what she’d done. But it sounded effective. And fast.
Shawn straightened his glasses again and looked directly at her.
‘Do I get a reward for this?’
‘Only the reward of knowing you’ve done a good deed.’
His eyes narrowed, making him look older than he had first appeared.
‘That’s a bit shitty.’
‘Well, it’ll have to do.’
Suddenly the space within the car was too small, the air suffocating. She wanted him out, quickly.
‘I’ll give you my card, okay? Give me a shout in a few days and I’ll see what I can do.’
The only phone number on the card was her desk in Collins Street, and she wouldn’t be back there for the best part of a year. But as she had suspected, he didn’t read it, just nodded smugly and stuck it in the pocket of his jeans.
‘Sound. Okay. Give me a chance to get back up there. And then work as fast as you can.’
In the end it only took her a quarter of an hour.
Tapping furiously on her phone and praying the 3G connection would hold, Claire found the Netmammy homepage and logged in as LondonMum. ‘Shawn’ may have been a weirdo, but he had come up with a nifty solution to her problem. She typed ‘PASSWORD’ into the blank space in the log in screen and LondonMum’s homepage unfolded beneath her thumb. The woman was a very frequent user of the site and the page was crowded with posts, ‘liked’ products and bookmarked pages. Scrolling quickly down Claire found the personal message page. Opened up the Sent Mail folder. And began to read.
LondonMum had sent a lot of messages. There was several to MyBabba, sent over a period of months. Two each to Farmers-Wife, MeredithGrey and Della. And, of course one to Claire herself, SofaBound.
And then there was the one she was looking for.
Great. See you then!
Claire checked the time and date. And navigated her way back to the Inbox.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
MyBabba – LondonMum
We’re going to a little pub I know in Wicklow, impossible to find
if you don’t know the area. Best thing is to drive to the Gambolling Lamb on the main road. It’s closed, but there’s a big car park. Pull in there and I’ll meet you, you can follow me then. Two o’clock sound okay?
It was five past one. She had only a vague notion of what she would do when she got there, but if she wanted to intercept this meeting she would have to leave now. But there was one more account she had to check first. Quickly, she logged out as LondonMum and in as FarmersWife. The account, once ferociously busy, had not been used for a week. She repressed a momentary feeling of guilt and began to check through the messages. One leapt out at her.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
MammyNo1 – FarmersWife
Hey there. Are you still selling those bottles? Happy to give you 30 quid for them. I’m not in Galway myself, but my brother works over there. He can meet you and buy them for me, if that’s okay?
And the response:
Yeah great. Here’s my number. Tell him to text me. I’ll see him then.
MammyNo1. Claire recognised the name from the site of course, but wasn’t sure where it fitted into this story. But she didn’t have time to figure that out right now. She checked her watch. She had to leave. But if she could grab just one more minute …
She logged out and went back into the site for a third time, this time as MyBabba. This account was even more active than LondonMum’s. She checked the private messages. There were hundreds, going back almost three years. She checked the most recent ones. The messages to LondonMum, organising the Wicklow meet-up were there. She went back a couple of weeks. And found what she was looking for.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
MammyNo1 – MyBabba
Hey there. So we’ve fixed on a pub for the drinks, yay! MacCabes, just up from Cork St, you know it? It’s a bit of a dive but one of the other girls lives near there and she says we’ll definitely get a seat, even on a Saturday. And sure we can always move off afterwards.
MyBabba had replied.
Great. I’ll be there around 8. I’m kinda nervous, isn’t that silly?
MammyNo1
I know how you feel, but don’t worry. There’ll only be three or four of us. We’re all Mammys, no reason to be scared LOL. It’ll be a laugh.
MyBabba
Great. See you there.
Claire closed her eyes. Miriam Twohy had thought she was meeting her friends. Instead, she had been lured to her death. Claire didn’t know why, and she hadn’t time to figure it out right now. She was convinced that LondonMum was in similar danger. She couldn’t risk ringing Flynn though, or anyone else in the station. Her visit to the Netmammy HQ had been completely unauthorised and they wouldn’t be able to act on the information without, at the very least, an official reinvestigation. She’d have to do something herself.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Yvonne buckled her seat belt and felt the usual stab of guilt as she drove out of the car park. She hated leaving her daughter behind. Which was ridiculous. Róisín loved staying with Hannah. The woman mightn’t be the most affectionate mother-in-law in the world, but she doted on her granddaughter and the little girl adored her. She would be fine. They would both be fine. Everyone kept telling her that she needed some time alone; maybe it was time to start listening to them.
She braked and looked back at the apartment block. The three of them stood at the window, Hannah flapping the baby’s arm in an imitation of ‘goodbye’. Hannah, Róisín and Bill. Yvonne shivered. It looked like they were the family, standing there, and she merely the visitor. As she watched them, Bill leaned over and blew a raspberry on his niece’s cheek. Watching her daughter’s body shake with hearty giggles, Yvonne had to fight the impulse to turn off the engine, run back and snatch her from his arms.
But that would be madness. Bill was her friend. Probably the best friend she had in Ireland, she thought to herself as she indicated right and pulled out onto the main road. As always, his presence in the apartment that morning had made everything so much easier. She had called around as arranged at eleven, a scrap of paper in her pocket listing the times Róisín would need to nap and eat. Hannah, as usual, had addressed all of her comments to the baby, informing her with a wide, fake grin that she was sure her mammy had a big page of instructions for her as if she hadn’t ever reared a baby herself. But before either of them could say anything they’d regret later, Bill had bounded into the room, plucked the baby from her car seat and swung her in the air, making her squeal with such delight that it was impossible for the other two adults not to crack a smile.
‘Mam was just saying how it’s great you have her in such a good routine, you could set your watch by her, isn’t that right, Mam?’
The two women had stared at him, Hannah clearly having said nothing of the sort, but Bill had continued to talk, smiling widely.
‘Sure, you probably have a bit of paper in your pocket with the times she needs feeding and everything, doesn’t that make everything very easy for us? Isn’t that right, Mam?’
Unable to think of a response, Hannah had simply nodded and silently accepted the offending list. Bill had winked at Yvonne then, behind his mother’s back, and suddenly handing over the baby to them felt like a natural thing to do.
God bless him, Yvonne thought. He wanted her to have a good day, and she would have a good day. It wouldn’t do her any harm to leave Róisín behind.
Besides, keeping the lunch Adults Only had actually been MyBabba’s idea. Yvonne had initially thought that a bit strange; after all it was their babies who had brought them all together in the first place. But the more she thought about it, the more she could see where her friend was coming from. The whole point of the meeting was to cheer up MammyNo1 – Yvonne still found it impossible to refer to the women by anything other than their Netmammy names – and to give her space and time to talk about what was happening to her. According to her last post, she was currently sharing her mother’s spare bedroom with her two children. The last thing she needed was someone else’s offspring squawking around the place.
Only problem was, Yvonne couldn’t help feeling a bit lost without her baby safety blanket. She glanced into the rear-view mirror and looked at the space where the car seat should be. You always had something to talk about with a baby in your arms, or somewhere to look if conversation faltered. Well, maybe it was time she learned to communicate with adults again.
Following the signs for the N11 she depressed the accelerator, enjoying the feeling as the car picked up speed. She had never really driven outside Dublin. Gerry usually had the car during the week unless she needed it for a special occasion like a hospital appointment or (shudder) baby yoga. And on weekends he tended to take the wheel, that’s if they managed to leave the house in the first place. He was technically off on Saturdays and Sundays, but it was a rare day when he didn’t have to take a phone call or make a ‘quick trip’ into the office to deal with some emergency that couldn’t possibly be sorted out in his absence. He was a great man for making plans. But on more than one occasion Yvonne had found herself in the park with Róisín on a Sunday afternoon, smiling vaguely at other mothers and wishing the baby was old enough to amuse herself on the swings. She had thought she was happy with those solitary outings. But, as the dual carriageway opened up and fresh air was pumped in through the open window, she realised she missed the sense of freedom that went with a long drive.
She leant forward and switched the car radio to a classical station. She listened to Radio 1 mostly, at home. But Yvonne had a vague idea that Róisín needed to be exposed to something other than pop music, so she’d started playing Lyric FM in the car every time they were out together, and now listening to classical music had become a habit.
Home. Funny. She meant London, of course. And that wasn’t home, not anymore. Home was Dublin now. She hadn’t thought of London like that in months. It was strange, the tricks your mind played on you when you least expected it.
MyBabba’s directions had been precise, and easy to follow. Fai
r play to her, as the Irish said. Yvonne didn’t know Wicklow well, but she felt confident today. She smiled as the air from the outside brushed against her face. Confident, and awake. She hadn’t felt this awake in ages.
The lights remained green as she drove on past a large hotel, a couple of huge apartment blocks and a hospital, nestling in its own green grounds. She’d really have to get to know more of her adopted city. Her husband was right: she was spending far too much time in her own little comfort zone. Róisín wasn’t a newborn anymore; it was time to start living again.
She reduced her speed, came off the main road, turning at the sign for a village whose unpronounceable name began with a K. This stretch of road was almost completely in the shadow of overhanging trees, and she shivered as the sunlight disappeared. There was something quite eerie about the way the canopy blocked out the sunlight. She slowed even further and then jumped as a car behind beeped and overtook on the inside lane. Sorry. She blinked, and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She hadn’t been like this when she drove in the UK. Had travelled up and down the country without a care, weaving in and out of traffic, performing the odd manoeuvre and thrilling at the feeling of being at the edge of illegality. Speedy Gonzales, Gerry had called her. And admitted he found her driving a turn-on. But that had been then. She was far more cautious now.
God, she hoped she hadn’t misread the directions. Craning her head, she looked at the notes she’d scribbled down on the back of an envelope and then out at the road again. The road was in a dip, houses dotted along the slopes at each side. Houses were watching her and trees were blocking her view.
Houses were watching her. She bit her lip, embarrassed at the thought, then just as she was starting to seriously contemplate turning around and heading for home, the canopy unfurled and she found herself driving through the daylight again. Still on the N11, still heading in the right direction. All was well.
Can Anybody Help Me? Page 23
