He was trying to remember the layout of Marina’s bedroom. Had he noticed anything suspicious? Anything that might have alerted him to surveillance equipment? There were no unusual light fittings, as far as he could remember, but these days cameras were so tiny they could be fitted anywhere. He opened the fridge and took out his share of the hummus, the olives and the flatbread. He tore off a piece of bread and spread it generously with hummus, took a large bite and looked at Marina’s mobile phone. The screen was blank. He picked it up and pressed the on button. The words ‘enter pin number’ appeared. He tried a few simple variations but none did the trick. He picked up the Filofax and turned to the address book. He flipped it open at H. He ran his finger down the page. It was late, but Becky would still be up. She’s young, he reasoned. But her voice was sleepy and he had a pang of guilt. He explained what he wanted.
She yawned. ‘Her pin number? Yeah, I know it. She had a friend who was into numerology and had given her a combination she said was lucky.’
0785. He picked up the mobile phone and tapped it in. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and scrolled through the list of names. And there at last was Simpson. Simpson, Gwen. And a phone number. He helped himself to more hummus, then pressed the call button. The phone rang and a message clicked in. ‘This is Gwen Simpson. My office hours are nine a.m. to five thirty p.m., Monday to Friday. Leave a message and I will call you back. Thank you.’ He stood up and hunted through the pile of cookery books on the dresser. The phone book was at the bottom. He leafed through it. Here she was. Simpson, Gwen, PhD, Psychotherapist, and an address in Fitzwilliam Square with the same phone number. He sat down again and finished off his flatbread and hummus. It was delicious. He must remember to put some chickpeas on to soak tonight and make some himself tomorrow.
He picked up Marina’s phone again and scrolled through the menu. He selected ‘messages’ and went to the inbox. There were several unread ones. He began to open them. Some were from Sally, wondering where she was, what she was doing, asking her to phone. The others were from Becky, with the same queries. He moved on to ‘archive’. Marina had saved a number of her voicemails. He selected the first and listened. A child’s voice whispered, ‘I saw you.’ His hand jerked with surprise and he dropped the phone. It crashed on to the tiled floor. He bent down, picked it up and selected the next message. This time it was a man’s voice. The message was the same. ‘I saw you,’ he said, his tone neutral. McLoughlin listened to each of the ten saved messages. Each said the same thing, although the voices were different. Men and women, old and young, and there was even a voice with an American accent. He checked the numbers: Dublin land lines. He picked one and pressed call. It rang out. He tried the next and the next and the next. Eventually one was answered. A young man’s voice with a strong Galway accent shouted, ‘Howya,’ and laughed. The background noise was loud. There was music, distorted, and the unmistakable buzz and hum of a bar.
‘Who’s that?’ McLoughlin asked.
‘Why d’ya want to know?’ the voice responded.
‘Is that a pub, a bar?’
‘What d’ya fucking think?’ the voice shouted back.
‘I just want to know, where is this phone?’ He tried to keep his voice calm.
‘What’s it worth?’ The voice was high-pitched, almost hysterical.
McLoughlin could imagine the scene. Late-night drinkers, a messy bunch at the best of times. He tried to remove all sound of confrontation from his voice. ‘Listen, do me a favour. I missed a call from my wife. She’s off on the tear and I want to come and pick her up. Can’t work out where she is. She’s a terror when she gets going.’
There was silence for a moment. Shit, McLoughlin thought. I’ve taken the wrong tack. He’ll hang up.
But the voice sounded more sober: ‘Is she a blonde? There’s a gang of girls in here. They’re all blondes, all hammered. One of them’s just started singing.’
‘That’ll be her. Tell me where she is and I’ll be in to pick her up.’
‘It’s the Mercantile, in Dame Street. D’ya know it?’
‘I do, thanks. You’re a star. Tell her I’ll see her in half an hour.’
He laughed as he finished the call. That’d be one confused lady. He knew the Mercantile. He could picture the scene. Drinkers crammed into every corner, the noise at headache level. And the phone on the wall at the back by the door to the toilets. He was pretty sure if he’d got through to any of the other numbers they would have come from the same kind of phone. He’d get on to Tony tomorrow, ask him to check them out.
He could smell the dough now. He opened the oven and pushed the tin inside. Then he picked up his beer, slid back the glass doors and stepped outside on to the terrace. It was warm tonight. Heat rose from the stone flags. The city glowed and sparkled in the distance. Poor Marina, he thought. What on earth had been going on in her life? He stepped off the terrace and felt the softness of the lawn beneath his feet. He walked down the slope towards the beech hedge that separated his garden from the fields. He stopped and made a clicking sound with his tongue. A large dark shape moved towards him. There were horses in the field, a couple of mares with whom he was on speaking terms. He held out his hand and waited. The small chestnut with the perfect white star on her forehead got to him first. She poked her head forward and sniffed his fingers. Her nose was soft and wrinkled. She snuffled and blew warm, wet air towards him. He reached out and pushed her forelock back, then dug his fingers into the softness beneath her mane and scratched hard.
‘’Bye, girl.’ He stepped away and began to walk back up the slope.
He was tired now. He would leave it until the morning. He went back into the kitchen. The bread was done. He pulled out the tin. The loaf was a beauty, perfect for tomorrow’s breakfast. He moved to the store cupboard and took out a packet of chickpeas. He shook half into a saucepan and covered them with water. He looked out again into the darkness and had a sudden image. The lights from his kitchen shining out through the patio doors. Visible for miles around. And the man holding the saucepan. Middle-aged, overweight, unfit, defenceless, his guard down. A target, a sitting duck. The nearest house out of earshot. He put the pan on to the hob, picked up his phone and backed out of the kitchen, switching off the lights. He walked around the house, checking the windows and doors, then turned on the alarm. He had had it fitted at the height of the Provo campaign. Better safe than sorry, everyone had said. You don’t want to wake up with the muzzle of an Armalite jammed against your cheekbone, or come home to a ransacked house. Perhaps it was because of his age, or because he could no longer carry a gun, but somehow he felt safer when the electronic beeps signalled that the system had been activated.
He walked into the sitting room and picked up the photographs of Marina. He slid them back into the envelope and carried them into his bedroom. He opened the top drawer of his bedside table, lifted up the pile of old letters and laid the envelope beneath them. They’d be safe there, he thought, out of sight. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. Then picked it up again and slipped his fingers into the inside pocket. He pulled out the folded emails. He opened the drawer and slipped them in with the photographs. Then he undressed and got into bed. Was it blackmail? he wondered, as he switched off the light and buried his face in the pillow. Whatever it was it hadn’t been fun. A reason to kill herself? What was it she’d said in her note? She was looking for forgiveness. For what? What could she have done that would have caused her to take her own life? He thrashed around in the bed. He couldn’t get the words out of his head. ‘I saw you.’ What could someone have seen Marina do? What was so bad that it could be used to frighten her, threaten her, upset her? He had been the one who saw. He knew what it was like to be the clandestine watcher.
He spoke the words out loud: ‘I saw you, Margaret. I saw what you did.’
ELEVEN
It was the girl from the graveyard. She was sitting on the sea wall across the road from the house. She was eating a Magnu
m. Margaret watched her. She was carefully picking off the pieces of chocolate and slipping them into her mouth. Then, when she had removed all traces she began to lick the icecream, shaping it into a tall toadstool, then wearing it away with her tongue until nothing was left but the wooden stick.
Margaret moved her position, gazed up and down the road. The girl seemed to be on her own. It was quiet outside today. Too early for the usual crowds, coming from the city to sunbathe, swim and sit in their big family groups.
She picked up her basket and opened the front door. She closed it firmly behind her, pushing back against it to make sure that the lock had caught. Then she walked quickly down the steps and along the path. As she opened the gate the girl turned towards her. She slid off the wall. Her feet in her wooden clogs clicked on the ground. She smiled. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ she said. ‘I met you at Uncle Patrick’s grave.’
‘That’s right. You did.’
‘Fancy meeting you out here,’ the girl said. ‘Do you know Aga, the Polish girl who lives there?’
Margaret shook her head. ‘She doesn’t live there any longer. I do now.’
‘Oh,’ the girl smiled, ‘she was really nice. Very friendly. All the Poles are like that. They seem to specialize in niceness.’
Margaret breathed in the salty smell. ‘I have a forwarding address for her, if you want it.’
‘No, that’s OK. I was just curious. I live up the road in Trafalgar Lane. And we’re a nosy lot. We know everyone. And, well, of course, this house,’ she waved a hand, ‘well, this house is special, really.’
Margaret straightened. ‘In what way?’
‘Because it’s . . . well, you know . . . It’s where that girl lived. It was ages ago, I was only little, but there was a girl who lived in that house and she was killed. It was terrible.’ The girl stopped. She looked at Margaret. ‘Oh, of course, I’m really sorry, I’m a terrible chatterbox, my mother’s always warning me to think before I speak. But I never do. I’m awfully sorry.’
Margaret moved away from the wall. She set off along the road towards the Martello tower. The girl kept pace with her. Margaret tried to speak but her throat was tight.
The girl’s face had gone bright red. ‘I didn’t think. I thought you were living in New Zealand or somewhere. When I met you yesterday I was sure I knew you. It’s because you look very like the girl, Mary. She was your daughter, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ Margaret said.
‘She was so pretty. She was lovely. We gave her a lift into town one day.’
‘You did?’ Something else she hadn’t known. Someone else who could tell her something about Mary.
The girl nodded, and a lock of hair plaited with beads swung from side to side. ‘I remember it too. She was waiting for a bus and she stuck out her thumb to hitchhike and my mother said she shouldn’t be doing that because it’s not safe, so she stopped the car and Mary got in. I remember she was nice. And Mum told her she could get the bus or the DART into town, that she shouldn’t hitchhike because it wasn’t safe and you never knew who you were getting into a car with.’ The girl spoke in a rush without taking a breath.
You never know whose car you’re getting into. It’s raining, one of those heavy, thundery showers that you get in summer. And you’re standing at the bus stop, the rain sluicing down your face, your body, dripping into your little strappy sandals. And you put out your thumb and you’re laughing because you’re getting so wet. And a young man with hair the colour of a Botticelli angel, driving a big black car, a Merc or a BMW or something like that, a big black car that looks safe and secure and somehow almost official, slows down and pulls over and leans across and says to you out of the open window, ‘You want a lift?’
Stop, Mary, just stop and think. But you don’t. Maybe you take one look at him, at his smile and his even white teeth and his blue eyes and his fair hair and his smooth skin, and your heart beats faster and you lean into the window and say, ‘Thanks, that would be great.’
And that’s how it all begins.
‘Can I ask you . . .’ Margaret turned to her again. ‘By the way, my name’s Margaret Mitchell.’
The girl held out her hand. ‘I’m Vanessa – Vanessa de Paor.’
They shook. Vanessa’s grip was cool and firm. ‘Tell me,’ Margaret said, ‘did you ever see my daughter again?’
‘Mm.’ Vanessa stopped. ‘I don’t think so. I just remember that one time.’
It was quiet by the sea. A gull floated overhead. It cried out, its harsh voice loud. Margaret followed its progress with her eyes. It glided on an updraught, then banked and swooped low over the ridged sand. It landed, its wings stretched wide, and began to drag a worm into its maw. She watched as the gull gulped and swallowed it whole. ‘Your mother, how is she?’ Margaret touched Vanessa’s arm. ‘Didn’t you say when we met the other day that your sister had died? Was that recent?’
‘It was just a few weeks ago. Midsummer’s Night. The shortest night of the year. She’d gone to a party given by my half-brother, Dominic. It was in the house in the Wicklow mountains that had belonged to my father. She went out in a boat and she drowned. The police think it was suicide.’
‘And what do you think?’ Margaret watched the seagull. It had found a crab and was holding it by the claw in its beak.
Beside her Vanessa played with her hair. ‘I don’t know. She was a lot older than me and she hadn’t really lived here for ages. She’d come back to Dublin about a year ago. It sounds like it might have been an accident, but she left a note.’ She paused. ‘But my mother doesn’t think Marina killed herself. She says she wasn’t the type to do it.’
The type to do it. Margaret repeated the words to herself. Who was the type to do it? She had thought she would be. She had tried it. Not long after she left Ireland, after that night in Ballyknockan. When she had gone to Noosa on the Queensland coast and she had walked down the narrow sandy beach in the cool of the evening and immersed herself in the water. It was lukewarm, not much different from the temperature of the water in her shower, and she had lain back, her head parallel to the sand beneath. The sea had covered her ears so she could hear nothing but her heart beating and her breath sucking air in and out of her body. And she had thought that she could float out to sea. No one would see her, no one would notice that she was gone. No one would miss her or come searching for her. But she mustn’t have been as ready for death as she had thought because when she swallowed some seawater she felt sick, so she raised her head to clear her throat and then she saw that she wasn’t drifting out at all. She was being carried back on to the beach and if she put her feet down she could feel the soft sand between her toes. And she was glad. And she dragged herself out and lay on the sand until the night cold drove her off the beach and into her hotel room to stand under a hot shower, to wrap herself in a bathrobe and to order food and drink from room service. And she remembered how good that steak sandwich and that bottle of wine had tasted. And she had wanted to cry out her apology to Mary that she wasn’t ready yet to join her. And so she would go on living. And as time passed it was not only her pain that consumed her, but her guilt as well.
‘So she drowned, however it happened. And, of course, what makes it even worse for my mother is that it was in the same place where my father drowned.’ Vanessa stooped to pick up a shell. Her hair swung forward across her face but Margaret could see the tears. She said nothing. Vanessa wiped her face with the back of her hand and jumped down from the path on to the beach.
‘I’m going to paddle.’ She kicked off her clogs and ran towards the sea. ‘Are you coming?’ she shouted over her shoulder. Margaret slipped her feet from her sandals and followed slowly. The sand was wetter here. Every step created a small pool around her feet. She wriggled her toes and felt the suck of the mud below. And heard the girl calling to her: ‘Hey, come and have a look at this. It’s a giant, an absolute giant of a jellyfish. Come and look. Quick.’
It was floating in the shallow water, shocking pi
nk and purple, the size of a large dinner plate, its tentacles splayed around it.
‘Careful.’ Margaret’s voice was sharp. ‘Mind it doesn’t sting you.’
Vanessa’s skirt was wet around the hem.
‘It’s so pretty, isn’t it? Why is it so pretty, do you think, when it’s dangerous? Is it so everyone will notice it and stay away?’ She bent over, one finger poised above its soft, floating back. ‘But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that it would be the other way round? If it was ugly it would be dangerous, and if it was pretty it would be harmless.’
Margaret didn’t answer. Jimmy Fitzsimons had been pretty, so pretty with his bright blond hair and his smooth pale skin. And his smile – what a smile. He had come to Mary’s funeral, that terrible day in the church in Monkstown, and he had smiled at her and she had smiled back at him. A reflex action, the way a mother smiles at her baby. The corners of her mouth dragged out to the side and her teeth showing. Of course, she hadn’t known who he was then. It wasn’t a betrayal of Mary. It was only later that she knew who he was and what he had done. And then she had punished him. And the last time she saw him he wasn’t smiling. He was terrified. His face was white with the fear of what lay ahead. He would have done anything to get her to let him go. But it was too late. It was too late for all of them.
Margaret stepped away from the jellyfish. ‘I don’t know about you but all this sea air is making me hungry. I’m on my way to Monkstown to do some shopping. Would you like to come with me? We could have a cup of coffee and maybe a scone or something.’
‘Yes.’ Vanessa nodded. ‘That would be very nice. I’d like that. Thank you.’
‘You don’t need to thank me. It’s my pleasure.’
‘Well, I want to thank you for being kind to me. And for listening to me. It’s kind of difficult at the moment. My mother’s in a state all the time. And my friends are away. Gone for the summer.’ She tiptoed out of the water, holding up her skirt. ‘I was to go too. But then Marina died and everything changed.’
I Saw You Page 8
