In Deep Water

by Sam Blake

  What the . . . ?

  In that second, on the screen, Vijay reappeared from the stockroom and Sarah Jane smiled at him and jerked her head towards the door. Cathy glanced at him, looking for clarification.

  ‘Sarah Jane said she was late for work, that she’d be back later.’

  ‘Did she come back in?’ He froze the screen, capturing her in the doorway, and shook his head. His eyes were fixed on Sarah Jane’s back, her pale hair caught back in its loose plait. ‘No, I didn’t see her again until Sunday, when she got into that cab.’

  ‘Who’s the girl she spoke to, have you seen her before?’

  Vijay nodded, ‘She’s Russian maybe, I’m not sure. She came in about a week ago to do some MoneyGram transfers. She must have been doing them for friends or something.’

  Cathy turned back to the screen. In the bottom left corner, the external camera trained on the door showed Sarah Jane standing outside the shop reading the notices in the window. A moment later the girl inside concluded her business, pushing the receipts Vijay’s uncle had given her into her bag, looking around for the guy in the jacket. He put the magazine back and joined her, turning left out of the shop door, his arm protectively around her shoulders as they headed across the road. The other external camera picked Sarah Jane up again as she apparently finished whatever she was reading in the shop window, and turned to cross the road, heading for the arch beside The Rookery where O’Rourke had parked this evening.

  ‘We’ve a hit on the cab.’ Cathy jumped at the sound of O’Rourke’s voice behind her, ‘It’s a city centre company. He’s just dropped a fare to James’s Hospital, will meet us here in ten. Come on, we can wait in the car.’ O’Rourke held out his hand to Vijay. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, we may need to take a statement from you and send someone over for these tapes in the morning.’

  ‘No problem, anything I can do to help. You’ll keep me in the loop when you find her?’ Vijay’s face was troubled, his forehead creased in a frown.

  Cathy reached out and touched his elbow, ‘We will, don’t worry, we will.’

  9

  When they found her. When they found her. Cathy kept Vijay’s words circulating in her mind. They would find her. They couldn’t not find her. Cathy didn’t do failure. And nor did O’Rourke.

  ‘Jump in, cabbie shouldn’t be long.’ O’Rourke hit the central locking on his key fob and his car flashed them a welcome. He slipped into the driver’s seat as Cathy pulled her door closed. She shivered involuntarily and, glancing at her, he stuck the key in the ignition and fiddled with the dials on the dashboard. A moment later hot air was pumping out over her feet.

  ‘Better?’

  She nodded, her eyes meeting his. He was looking at her intently, his eyes full of concern. She drew in a shaky breath and glanced away; she wasn’t up to deep conversation now, the image of Sarah Jane in the shop was too strongly imprinted in her mind.

  Reaching out, he put his hand on her knee, giving her a reassuring rub. Before she’d thought about it she’d put her hand on top of his, his skin warm, and linked their fingers.

  ‘Your hands are cold.’ His voice was soft.

  ‘My hands are always cold.’ Avoiding his eye she gave his hand a gentle squeeze, ‘You know what they say about cold hands . . .’

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught him smile. Breaking the union of their fingers, he picked up her hand and held it in both of his, rubbing it to get it warm. ‘Better?’

  She shot him a shy grin. But her movement broke the moment, if it had been a moment at all, and he put her hand down gently, patting it, sitting up straight in his seat, the leather creaking as he pushed his shoulders back, wincing as he straightened. He glanced over at her. ‘So what do you think?’

  Cathy bit her lip and ran her hand into her hair, pushing a dark curl back out of her face. She thought a lot of things, none of which she was going to blurt out right now, even if they were on their own in a dark car park in the middle of the night. Too much was happening. She paused before speaking, ‘Vijay’s straight up. He likes her a lot, he’s a good witness.’

  There was a pause. Expecting O’Rourke to respond, she glanced across at him. He was staring out of the window into the middle distance, his broken nose in profile. He looked tired, the shadow of stubble already forming along his jawline. He was worrying about Sarah Jane, she could see it in the creases in his face. He knew Cathy was as worried as hell too, but where she found it hard to hide, he internalised everything. Always had done. He was impossible to read, which, she had realised a long time ago, was why he was so damn good in the interview room. She was sure he’d be good at poker too, but he’d resisted all her brother Tomás’s efforts to bring him to the tables.

  Needing to draw him out, to bring him back from wherever he had gone, Cathy swung around in the seat, drawing her knees up, catching a familiar blast of his aftershave over the scent of the car’s leather interior.

  ‘Who’s the cab driver?’

  Back to business.

  He snapped out of it and focused on the steering wheel, running his hand over the soft leather covering.

  ‘Nigerian guy. Dispatcher says he’s very reliable, no complaints. Family man.’

  Before Cathy could answer there was the sound of a car drawing up behind them. She looked over her shoulder out the back window. A silver Ford Mondeo had parked across the entrance to the car park. ‘This looks like him.’

  O’Rourke glanced into the rear-view mirror. ‘Let’s roll.’

  Ade Adebayo had arrived from Nigeria some eighteen months previously, borrowing the money to buy his taxi, and the licence, from his brother-in-law, who had been in Ireland almost five years. He had been sending money home to his wife and six children from the moment he’d arrived. Adebayo swung the driver’s door open and got out to talk to them, leaning with his back on the car, his arms crossed. Cathy ran her eye over the interior of the Mondeo as O’Rourke introduced them. It was spotless, as clean as O’Rourke’s meticulously kept BMW. He was a nice guy, round faced, slightly overweight, his smile broad, genuine. His English was so heavily accented Cathy struggled to understand him, but he was keen to help.

  O’Rourke took the lead. That worked for Cathy. Some men responded better to men, and they had an unwritten agreement about stuff like this.

  Standing on the pavement outside The Rookery, O’Rourke had his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, the navy wool almost black in the reduced light. When Billy had locked up The Rookery he’d turned off the outside floodlights, their stark white light now replaced by the soft glow of the street lamps.

  Steam rose from O’Rourke’s breath as he spoke, ‘You picked up a girl here last night?’

  ‘Yes, boss, took her to Dún Laoghaire – long way, big money.’ Adebayo held up his thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together. Despite his strong accent, Cathy understood that this trip had made his week, ‘The boss man gave me sixty euro up front. I told him too much, but he insisted.’

  Cathy frowned. Sixty euro was a lot. She usually paid thirty-five; she’d once paid fifty to get out of town, but that had been after midnight. At least it was a sign that Billy had wanted to get Sarah Jane home safe.

  O’Rourke pursed his lips, ‘And you dropped her where?’

  ‘The man here give me address, I put it into my phone.’ He reached for a Samsung S5, tapping the screen, ‘Thirty-two Royal Avenue.’

  ‘Tell me about her. Did she talk to you?’ O’Rourke adjusted his stance on the pavement – more friendly, relaxed. He kicked an imaginary stone with the toe of his shoe, the leather grating on the wet paving stones.

  Adebayo shook his head emphatically, ‘Not well, boss, she didn’t speak at all, just huddled into corner, curled up, like. I was listening to the game on the radio, not my job to talk.’

  Cathy studied him as he spoke. Sarah Jane was normally chatty, particularly with cab drivers; perhaps it was the journalist in her, but she was deeply curious – nosey, as
she put it herself. She always talked to cabbies, was fascinated by their stories, of the window on the world that they had, meeting so many people each day. She’d told Cathy that she’d caught a cab once in London on the morning of a Tube strike and the driver had collected a friend on the way. She’s been transfixed with their conversation about a man in a white suit being arrested for murder – mistaken identity, apparently – and something about a vintage American car that was worth thousands hidden away in a lock-up in east London. Cathy could hear her now, ‘I couldn’t believe it, it was baking hot and I was on the way to an exam, I should have been reading over my notes and it was like I was sitting in a film set. One day I’m going to write that into a book!’

  Cathy knew if Sarah Jane hadn’t spoken to Adebayo at all she must have been feeling really ill.

  ‘So you dropped her to her house?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Did you see her go inside?’

  Adebayo frowned, thinking hard, ‘Not sure, boss. Know she got out but I didn’t see her go inside. The game was on, I didn’t see.’ He pulled a face, shrugging. ‘Sorry, boss.’

  10

  Despite all the planning and the strategies recommended by his psychologist, half the time Rebecca had no idea what caused Jacob’s meltdowns. She had to spend hours tracking back through his day, trying to find out where it had all gone wrong. Sometimes it was as simple as a boy on his table telling him he’d coloured something in the wrong colour. Or a fire alarm going off. Once it had been a man on the TV saying something about the atmosphere, like there was only one layer. Sometimes it was someone using a well-known phrase like ‘What’s your taste in music?’ that totally confused him. How could you eat music?

  This evening, thankfully, he’d calmed down and had spent the time before bed absorbed in Minecraft, lying on the sofa with her laptop balanced on his tummy, his fingers flying over the keys. Which had given her a few moments to catch up with her paperwork.

  ‘Ah, a mutant creeper just blew up my house!’

  ‘I thought you were on creative?’ Her eye still on the invoices spread out on the coffee table in front of her, Rebecca had been only half listening to him.

  ‘There’s creepers in creative and survival. And hard core.’

  ‘Hard core?’ He had her attention now, ‘What’s hard core?’

  ‘It’s where you have one life and if you die the world gets deleted.’ His eyes still on the screen, he continued, ‘It’s really really fun, it makes the game better.’

  ‘Right. What are you on now?’

  ‘Survival. Stormblade282 is showing me how to make a TNT cannon.’

  Rebecca had rolled her eyes. Jacob was obsessed with Minecraft, but it was better than some of the things he’d been obsessed with. Like insects – she shivered at the memory of the jars of earwigs on the kitchen table – or the Winsor & Newton colour chart, which had seemed harmless enough until he’d used every drop of ink in the printer to produce A4 pages of solid colour, and then had a meltdown because he only had the blues done. Eventually she’d persuaded him to print small squares of colour, but it had still cost her a fortune in ink. At least with Minecraft he was learning spatial awareness and it was stretching his creativity, or at least she hoped it was – but TNT cannons?

  He was fast asleep upstairs now. Rebecca swirled the chilled white wine around her glass, enjoying the dying embers of the fire. She’d turned the TV off when she’d taken him up for his bath, and now had a CD on, gentle jazz reaching out to the parts of her mind normally busy with a hundred different things. This was the only time of the day she got to relax. Not that it was day – it was well after midnight. Rebecca took a sip of her wine, thinking about today. She needed to spend more time with Jacob, try and free up some afternoons so she could organise play dates. But there was just so much to do.

  Immediately she began feeling guilty all over again that she let him play Minecraft too much. He should be out playing with friends, they should be out doing things together. She sighed inwardly. In all his eight years she hadn’t worked out how you were supposed to balance motherhood and working, especially working for yourself, which seemed to take up every waking minute. But it wouldn’t be for ever. Her one aim in life was to earn enough money to make sure he would always be comfortable and so she could stop working – while she was still young enough to enjoy it – and spend time with Jacob. Take him to the zoo, to exotic beaches, show him New York and Paris. Earn enough that she could employ someone else to do the worrying.

  Rebecca took a sip of her wine and reached for the book lying on the coffee table, pulling it onto her knee. The Five-Minute Journal. Cloth bound in cream hessian, it was something one of her customers had mentioned. An astute business woman, she said she used it every day to record her successes, to focus on the things she was grateful for. Ordering it from the States hadn’t been cheap, and she rarely had the time to be diligent with it, but on days when Jacob was struggling with life, or she was struggling with the business, this little book gave her a few moments to unwind and think. The inspirational quotes at the top of each page were like her guilty pleasure. She knew when she did get a chance to switch off from the shop and everything, her mind was always so much clearer. Having the journal, feeling its pull when times were tough, almost gave her permission to dream again.

  The only way to get what you want in this life is to know where you are going, and that means making a plan. She’d had that phrase in her head ever since she’d read it in a teen music magazine when she was twelve.

  And she’d used it from then on. Writing her goals down helped crystallise them – six-month goals, five-year goals; the plan itself, the how to get there, usually fell into place once you knew what the end game was. Sometimes it was just about getting through tomorrow or this week, but right now, cosy in her own space, the music freeing her mind, she had space to look forward.

  When she’d been studying for her Leaving Cert she’d created a mood board of where she wanted to go – photos of the Gaiety School of Acting leading towards an iconic panoramic shot of the Hollywood hills she’d torn from Vogue. Blu-tacked onto the textured pink floral wallpaper of her box bedroom alongside posters of her heroines, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, women with poise and class and timeless beauty, she’d positioned it so it was the first thing she saw every morning when she woke up.

  She hadn’t made it to Hollywood, but that board had been more about getting herself out of a north-side council estate where the view from her bedroom window was an expanse of waste ground surrounding the skeleton of a burnt-out car than anything else. At night as she leaned on the window sill and looked out, she’d pretend the car was a modern art sculpture, closing her eyes and imagining she was in New York or Los Angeles, that the sirens she could hear were like the ones on Hill Street Blues.

  She had gone on to study drama, and disguising her inner-city Dublin accent had been crucial in getting her the job in the hotel in Spain. That year had been one long performance, had shown her what a five-star lifestyle was really all about. A glimpse of a whole new world. And it hadn’t been what she’d expected at all. When money was no problem, the value system changed; drugs were like chocolate, people became disposable. That year had opened her eyes to a lot of things. Some of them things she didn’t want to remember. Like the Russian guest who had wanted a lot more than she was prepared to offer personally, a man who had been unable to understand that she didn’t come as an added benefit to renting a suite.

  Rebecca abruptly tried to curtail that line of thought, reaching for the bottle on the floor beside the sofa and topping up her glass, but it wasn’t something she could forget: the excitement at being invited to a private party with some of the hotel’s wealthiest guests, of choosing what to wear, the sound of laughter and the chink of glasses from the balcony. The heat of early August had been solid, even long after the sun had set, and as the party had begun to wind down she’d felt his hand around her waist, breathed in the cloying sme
ll of his aftershave. And then, as she pulled away, suddenly realising what was happening, the impact of his hand across her face and the sound of the glass breaking as she’d fallen through the partly open first-floor window had merged into one moment of shock, like a high note on a violin as the bow was drawn roughly across. Thank God the suite had been immediately above the pool. Her silver evening dress had suffered, but that was the least of her problems.

  Whether it was deliberate or some sort of inbuilt coping mechanism, she’d blanked out most of the details. She remembered one of the groundsmen pulling her from the water, and the bright lights of the emergency room but not much more.

  Thank God.

  That night had changed the plan, though; the scar on her face would have made movie auditions tricky, not that she’d ever wanted to play dopey women in romantic leads, but even so . . . She’d come back to Dublin to sort herself out, had thought she’d only be here for a few weeks, regrouping, getting back on track, working out the next step. But then one night, sipping gin cocktails in Lillie’s Bordello she’d met Jacob’s dad, and a world of opportunity had opened up. A world of opportunity that came with a few less than tasteful caveats, but his weirdness in the bedroom was a small price to pay for the access it gave her to an established business and ready cash flow. Being pushed through a window hadn’t been her idea of an ideal way to change her course in life, but it had brought her to where she was now. And whatever about the stresses and strains of being a single working mum, of having a child on the spectrum, of the long hours and the worry, there was nothing better than being your own boss.

  Rebecca took another sip of her wine and opened the journal. One of the things she liked about it was that the pages weren’t dated, so she didn’t feel a failure if she didn’t get to write in it regularly. Smiling, she scanned the quote at the top of the page, from Einstein, ‘It’s not that I’m smart. It’s that I stay with problems longer.’ Below it there was a space for her to write, ‘I am grateful for . . .’ In every single entry she wrote Jacob’s name here. She chewed the pen for a moment, and then, under ‘What would make today great . . .’ she wrote, ‘Everything going to plan.’ There wasn’t a space for it, but at the top of each page she often wrote a word that she wanted her day to be guided by. Someone had told her she should come up with a word at the start of each year, but she found that a daily word could be incredibly powerful. She chewed the end of the pen again for a moment and then wrote SUCCESS in capital letters across the top of the page.