Blink

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘Why is he really here? What’s he going to do? Charge Lucy with joyriding … causing an accident? Teach her a lesson? Will that make the streets safe so she won’t do it again? She won’t do it again!’

  ‘Please, darling,’ Nancy implores. ‘He’s only doing a report, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s fourteen years old. She made a mistake. We all did at that age. She’s going to pay for it for the rest of her life. If she’s put through the ringer of a court case, found guilty and the judge recommends a custodial sentence, what then? She needs round-the-clock care. Everything would have to be adapted. The prison isn’t even equipped to deal with able-bodied people from what I read everyday in the newspapers.’

  Sexton opens his mouth to speak, but Nigel isn’t having any of it.

  ‘The lorry driver Lucy crashed into walked away without so much as a scrape or a bruise, but because Lucy was uninsured and had no licence, Tim McMenamy is suing us. It’s not enough for him that Lucy was the only one hurt by what happened. He wants his pound of flesh. We could lose our house and Lucy her only chance of some comfort at this stage in her life. And here you come wanting to charge her with a crime.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here,’ Sexton says.

  ‘Why else?’ Nigel asks.

  ‘If you give me a chance to get a word in edgeways, I’ll explain,’ Sexton clips.

  Nigel shuts it.

  ‘It’s just a report,’ Sexton explains. ‘Just a round-up of cases so we get an idea of what’s going on.’

  Nigel shoots his wife a puzzled look. ‘We’ve been completely paranoid,’ she admits. ‘The law seems so unforgiving these days. We kept thinking about that old bachelor in the papers from Wicklow who shot his brother for not obeying their mother’s last wishes not to be buried with her husband. Remember him?’

  Sexton gives a delayed nod.

  ‘Cecil something or other,’ she says. ‘He had Parkinson’s disease and it was a crime of passion, in as much as he was in the full throes of grief when he fired that shotgun, I remember.’

  Nigel puts his hands out. ‘What he did was terrible – I’m not condoning it – but it was understandable. The poor man had to be wheeled in and out of court every day and he couldn’t even speak his own name. Even after he was acquitted of murder in the Court of Criminal Appeal, the state arranged for a second trial. It brought him back to his nursing home to wait for the day they could put him through it all over again. I can’t bear the thought that Lucy might be prosecuted for what happened, on top of everything else.’

  Nancy whispers something in her husband’s ear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Detective,’ he says, offering his hand.

  Sexton shakes it, wondering how Nigel got the bruise on his cheek.

  ‘I shouldn’t have flown off the handle. It’s just we’re determined to care for Lucy in her home so she doesn’t end up doped up to the eyeballs in some home, or in prison. We love her so much. And when we learned this week that we’re being sued by that lorry driver, I thought he might want a criminal prosecution to help his civil action.’

  Nancy nods her head. ‘We’re going to fight off McMenamy’s despicable attempt to turn Lucy’s accident into his personal windfall …’ Her voice cracks, but she continues, ‘… Lucy was the miracle baby we’d given up hope of ever having, you see. We had her later than most. She was a blessing from the day she was born.’

  Sexton jangles the loose change in his trousers pocket. ‘I’m very sorry for your …’ He looks at his feet.

  ‘Troubles?’ Nigel reacts. ‘Lucy’s not dead, far from it. We’re glass-half-full people. We see ourselves as the luckiest people alive that Lucy has survived. We’ll have her back with us properly yet.’

  Nancy cuts in. ‘That’s why it’s so important to us we keep our daughter here, with us, where she belongs.’ She looks at her husband lovingly, as she goes on: ‘If we lose our home, Lucy is the one who will suffer. This is where she belongs. Lucy is everything to us. Our only child. We’re the best people to look after her. We love her so much.

  ‘We weren’t the perfect family. Lucy’s adolescence was becoming …’ she pauses ‘… problematic. In the year prior to the crash three months ago, she was finding it more and more difficult to manage the tidal wave of feelings that come with the transition to pubescence. But there was as much love in this house as any. We’d have got through it. Together. We will get through it together. This is her home. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail to convince the hospital we could care for her full-time ourselves. Tim McMenamy is an opportunist. If Lucy’s guilty of anything, it’s of being over-zealous in taking my car out for a spin that day, that’s it. We have to try to prevent whatever kind of comfort the money we’ve made could have given her, whatever we could have invested in research, from ending up in McMenamy’s pocket. If she can avoid criminal charges, that will be one less battle we have to fight. It will help us concentrate all our energies on her.’

  ‘Lucy made a mistake,’ a sobbing Nigel tells his wife.

  Nancy holds him close, her head on his chest. ‘I know, love, I know.’

  ‘What happened to your face?’ Sexton asks.

  Nigel puts his hand up quickly. ‘This? It’s nothing. Just a run-in with a neighbour.’

  ‘What about?’

  Nigel shrugs. ‘I asked him to stop depositing his waste in my wheelie bin. You pay by the weight of those things.’

  ‘Did it have anything to do with the problems you’d reported to us – someone broke your windows and slashed your tyres, didn’t they?’

  Nigel looks surprised. ‘No, nothing at all,’ he says quickly. ‘That was just some kids getting drunk and messing about.’

  Sexton turns to Nancy. ‘You said Lucy can communicate.’

  She sighs and steps back from her husband, holding him at the upper arms. ‘You sure you’re OK, love?’

  ‘Yes, love.’ He nods.

  She takes his hand and they lead Sexton to Lucy’s bedroom.

  23

  Sexton stands, stares and jigs a leg. The gurgling sound of the pump is grotesque, and the smell of disinfectant mingled with bodily fluids is one he has only ever picked up in hospitals. He walks his tie down a couple of inches and opens a shirt button.

  Lucy Starling, lying in the bed with spittle drooling out from one side of her mouth and a rag perched under her chin to catch it, is one of the sorriest things he’s ever seen, especially since her eyes have followed him since he’s entered the room. He’s never seen as many tubes coming out of anyone. She’s only fourteen. The fact that the room is like a shrine to the teenage rite of passage makes her near-vegetative state even more depressing. The wall facing her is entirely covered with posters. He scans them, recognizing Chris Brown because of the controversy over a tattoo of a supposedly battered woman on his neck – he wouldn’t have recognized his music. He knows Professor Green too, but only because one of his superiors in the station had gone mental when the station’s social club had raffled tickets for one of his concerts. ‘Green’ was a thinly veiled reference to hash. That was it. Sexton didn’t know anyone else.

  ‘You can sit there,’ Nancy says quietly, pointing to a chair beside the bed.

  ‘Bet you’ve never heard of The Verve, or Oasis?’ he says to Lucy, still standing.

  ‘Sorry?’ Nancy cuts in.

  ‘I was just telling Lucy how old I feel,’ Sexton says.

  He glances at a crucifix nailed to the wall directly over her bed, wondering if it’s a form of torture for Lucy.

  The heat in the room is stifling. Sexton picks his shirt off the damp spots on his skin.

  ‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’ Nancy asks.

  He shifts his body weight to the other leg and turns to Nancy. ‘Shouldn’t she still be in hospital?’

  ‘Lucy gets more medical attention here than she would in any hospital,’ Nancy says. ‘And her personal happiness will have a huge bearing on her recovery. I’m convinced of that from almost forty y
ears in the job. Where there’s life, there’s always hope,’ she says, as much to herself as to him. ‘And stem cells are revolutionizing medical research …’

  ‘Yes,’ Sexton says. ‘Are you sure she can do this?’

  ‘Yes, if it will help, she can do it. But it’s exhausting for her, so if you could keep it brief. You need to confine your questions to answers that require yes or no answers. Lucy blinks once for yes, and twice for no.’

  24

  Rihanna Canon races down Rutling Terrace into her dad’s shop, Damm. She sweeps past ‘Gok’, the Chinese man who works there fixing iPhones. Grabbing either side of her bellshaped communion dress, puffed out with several layers of netting and lace, she clumps up the narrow, uneven stairs at the back.

  Eric Canon is out cold on a mattress on the floor of the dim box room, which stinks of sweat and booze. There is no other furniture in the room. Only a couple of cans remain in the slab of Dutch Gold on the floor beside him; crushed empties are scattered all over the floor.

  Rihanna pushes her ringlets out of her face with her satin fingerless gloves, grabs his T-shirt and shakes him hard.

  ‘Da, wake up! Come on, Da, wake up now!’

  Eric doesn’t move.

  She grabs his hair and yanks. ‘Da, there’s pigs across the street.’

  Canon opens his eyes wide, sits up straight and pushes the child out of the way. He has a red goatee beard in a fleshy face that is permanently pink. He staggers over to the window in his grey towelling socks. He puts a hand to his head as he moves.

  ‘Don’t!’ he roars at the child, jerking away from the window as she switches the light on.

  It goes off again.

  He tousles her hair, reaches for a pair of binoculars perched on the sill and peers out. ‘How long are they there?’

  ‘Don’t know. I was down the flats collecting my money.’

  ‘Anyone downstairs?’

  ‘A man in from the hostel, but he’d no money and Gok kicked him out.’

  ‘And how long since you went to the flats?’

  ‘An hour. They definitely weren’t there when I went out.’

  Eric puts the binoculars down. ‘How much did you get, in anyway?’

  ‘Seventy-nine euro.’

  ‘Scabby fucks. Did you get your breakfast off your ma?’

  ‘No, I’m saving any money I make for a pair of Heelys, remember?’

  ‘What the fuck is going on over there?’ he mutters, pre-occupied again by the presence of the squad car at the Starlings’ house.

  She shrugs and smoothes the ruffles in her dress.

  ‘Did you get any dinner?’ he asks, bending to pull up a corner of the heavily stained mattress.

  ‘I had a bag of chips,’ she says.

  ‘Want to go to McDonald’s?’ he asks, sliding out a Glock 9mm semi-automatic and tucking it in the back belt of his jeans, pulling his T-shirt on over it.

  ‘Get the usual for me, princess, and whatever you’re having yourself. Good girl. How’s your ma, in anyway?’

  ‘She’s a dope,’ Rihanna says, pulling a crooked face that makes him laugh.

  He holds his hand up for her to high-five it. ‘Here’s fifty euro for your skates. Don’t let your mother see it.’

  Rihanna nods and starts to totter off towards the stairs.

  Canon calls after her, ‘Here, have you called over the road and told them you made your communion yet?’

  ‘No, you told me to stay away from there.’

  He follows her and looks down at her on the staircase as she looks up. ‘I’ll go with you. We’ll do it now. What’s the only way to get rid of rats?’

  ‘Smoke them out, Da,’ she says robotically.

  25

  Sexton manoeuvres through the wires and oxygen tank and monitors that are humming and beeping in Lucy’s bedroom. He pulls a Kleenex from a box perched on her locker to soak up the sweat beads breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘We’ve ordered equipment that will allow Lucy to spell out entire words by just glancing at the letter of the alphabet,’ Nancy says.

  ‘As long as Tim McMenamy doesn’t empty our bank account first,’ Nigel adds.

  ‘Do you know how Jean-Dominique Bauby came to write The Diving Bell and the Butterfly?’ Nancy goes on. ‘He would spell out words by blinking a number to indicate which alphabet letter he needed. We’ve come a long way since then. We don’t want to go back.’

  Sexton turns to Lucy. ‘I should have introduced myself to you earlier, Lucy,’ he says, checking over his shoulder that he was doing it right.

  Nancy nods.

  Sexton turns back to the bed. On Facebook, Lucy had been a ringer for that Hollywood actress Drew Barrymore, but now there is no similarity at all. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton and I’m attached to Store Street station. I’m here, as you know already, to investigate the circumstances surrounding, well … what happened to you.’

  Lucy blinks once through her dead stare. Yes.

  Sexton is astonished. It is unmistakeable. A big grin breaks out on his face. His heart has stalled and surged in pity and amazement.

  ‘I need to ask just a few basic questions so I can put together my report and then I’ll leave you in peace to concentrate on more important things, such as your recovery,’ he says.

  It wasn’t meant as a question, but her Bambi eyelashes are batting again – twice this time. He wonders why she is indicating ‘no’. Maybe she means ‘no’, as in ‘Don’t leave’? Then again, maybe Lucy means she doesn’t want to recover. He presumes she is as depressed as fuck in there, trapped, powerless, claustrophobic. He takes his pen out.

  The doorbell goes and Nigel moves to the window to peer out. ‘It’s him,’ he tells his wife. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Let’s start with what was going through your mind at the time of the crash, and then we can get into the detail,’ Sexton says as Nigel leaves. ‘Were you down … low … did you want to end your life?’

  Sexton is conscious that Nancy has followed Nigel into the hall, where they are talking out of earshot, but he keeps his gaze fixed on Lucy.

  She blinks – once, twice. He is about to make a note of her answer – no – when he realizes she is still blinking – three, four – perfectly paced blinks. There are nine in all in the sequence.

  He opens his mouth to call Nancy back to ask what nine blinks mean, but he doesn’t get a chance, because Lucy has started blinking again, and he counts eight perfectly paced blinks.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he asks, as Nancy returns to the room. ‘Lucy blinked nine, and then eight times. What does it mean?’

  ‘That she needs to rest,’ Nancy says categorically.

  ‘What?’ Sexton asks vaguely, because he is concentrating on counting again: nine times again. After a beat, Lucy’s off again.

  ‘I think we’ve been too hasty,’ Nancy says.

  Sexton does not take his eyes off Lucy, afraid he’ll lose count. He puts a hand up to tell Nancy to wait. At eighteen blinks, Lucy stops. He makes a note. He realizes she’s off again and adds five blinks to the list.

  Nigel arrives back in the room, asking Nancy for her wallet. She directs him to the kitchen, where she’s left her bag.

  ‘Four,’ Sexton writes.

  Nancy moves to the opposite side of the bed to try to get Sexton’s attention. ‘I want Lucy to sleep now …’

  One.

  He holds his palm up again to silence her so he can count. Lucy blinks eight times. A pause. Nine. Another pause, during which he didn’t so much as breathe in anticipation, and then she starts talking again through those eyes, a desperate staccato Morse code to tell them: she’s in there. He writes ‘20’ on his list as Nancy leaves the room to consult her husband. When she comes back a couple of minutes later, the numbers 13, 1, 1 and 14 are on his pad.

  ‘Have you any idea what this is about?’ Sexton asks, once he’s sure the blinking is over.

  ‘Maybe she wants to do the lottery,’ Nancy jokes
nervously.

  Sexton looks at her to see if she’s serious, but she has begun clattering in a metal press behind him. Sexton notices the word ‘Love’ cut into Lucy’s arm in healed scars. Nancy moves to the bedside.

  ‘We’d hoped for too much for tonight,’ Nancy said. ‘Come back tomorrow, Detective. I don’t want her upset.’

  With a couple of steps Nancy reaches for Lucy’s arm, turns it over and twists the plug on a cannula. She inserts a hypodermic syringe filled with fluid.

  ‘Just your medication, darling,’ she says gently. ‘This is not normal for her,’ she tells Sexton. ‘It’s too soon. She’s worked up. You should go. She’s asleep,’ she adds.

  Sexton looked from the series of numbers on his page to Lucy.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom?’ he asks.

  In the pokey space he stares at the numbers on the page: 9-8-9-18-5-4-1-8-9-20-13-1-14 and begins to count up to the corresponding letter with his fingers. As the words appear on the page, he realizes exactly why Nancy and Nigel wrapped up the interview and are so anxious at the thought of a criminal prosecution. They weren’t worried about a dangerous-driving charge at all. Sexton stares at the words on the page: ‘I hired a hitman.’

  26

  Nigel and Nancy are waiting for him when he emerges from the loo. Nancy hands him his coat.

  ‘I need to ask some more questions before I go,’ Sexton says.

  They are surprised.

  ‘But Lucy is asleep,’ Nancy says.

  ‘I need to talk to you two this time.’

  He sees the distrust in Nigel’s face. ‘It’s just procedure,’ Sexton explains.

  They lead him back to the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but is this going to take long?’ Nancy asks. ‘I’m due on a call-out to a patient.’

  ‘I wanted to get some more things straight in my head before I go,’ he says, returning to the kitchen chair he’d been sitting on.

  ‘Such as?’ Nigel quizzes.

  ‘You said that Lucy’s teenage years were becoming problematic, difficult. I wondered how bad relations were right before the crash?’