by Marian Keyes
It had to be the same person.
She was quoted as saying, ‘The tax on plastic bags has had a very positive impact on our industry.’ I read the piece with interest and not a little pleasure. Would you believe that paper bags are a growth area? A heartening story in these recessionary times. Tough on those who work in plastic bags, though.
According to the article, Birdie was senior sales manager for a company called Brown Bags Please, which were based – unexpectedly handily – up the road in Irishtown.
Before I jumped into my car to go and badger her I rang to see if she was in.
Some woman answered and she didn’t give me the usual receptionist spiel, she just said, ‘Brown Bags Please,’ and she didn’t even bother enunciating the ‘Please’ properly; the end of the word just sort of slid away, like she resented having to say it, which made me think BBP was a small, not-very-important set up.
‘Can I speak to Birdie?’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Paper bags.’
‘Putting you through.’
After some clicks and hissing, the woman was back. ‘I can’t find her, but she’s around. She might be gone out for some crisps; she was talking about them earlier. D’you want to leave a message? I’d have to find a pen.’
‘No, you’re grand. I’ll call back.’
Actually, I wouldn’t. I’d arrive in person and I was on my way now.
I was just getting into my car when my phone rang – Harry the criminal. Or rather, one of his ‘associates’.
‘He has a window in the next twenty minutes.’
Twenty minutes! ‘God, you couldn’t make it even half an hour, could you? Just with the Friday afternoon traffic and –’
‘Twenty minutes. He’s going out tonight to a charity cockfight –’
‘– and yeah, he has to get his spray tan done, I know.’
‘Now, hold on –’
‘Still in his usual office?’
‘Yep.’
Harry based his operations in Corky’s, a godforsaken pool hall near Gardiner Street. If you weren’t suicidal to begin with, five seconds under those toxic orange strip lights would sap you of any will to live. Like always, Harry was down the back, looking glum, his shoulders slumped and his elbows resting on the Formica table. Such an ordinary-looking man – small and nondescript, with a bristly gingery moustache balanced on his top lip – it was hard to believe he was such a lawbreaker.
We nodded our hellos and I slid into the booth, trying to find a spot that hadn’t had all the foam pulled out. Even now, several years later, the wound on my bum can play up if I get it at the wrong angle.
‘Will you take a drink, Helen?’
This wasn’t an invitation to get rip-roaring – Harry always drank milk. And, as part of my contrary personality, I always requested something I knew Corky’s barmen would never have heard of – Grasshoppers, Flaming Sambuccas, B52s.
‘Sure, I’ll have a screwdriver, Harry, thanks.’
He semaphored something to the barman, then turned his deceptively mild eyes on to me. ‘So what can I do for you?’
‘I’m trying to find someone. Wayne Diffney.’
Harry’s face stayed poker steady.
‘He was in Laddz? The boy band? He was the one with the hair?’
Some light moved behind Harry’s eyes. ‘The hair. I’m with you now. I know who Wayne is. Poor sap.’
There was a clatter and somebody placed something metallic on the table in front of me. For a moment I was afraid to look – I thought it might be an instrument of torture – but when I eyeballed it I saw it was a screwdriver. An actual screwdriver.
‘Drink up,’ Harry said, with a glint.
‘Grand, thanks, cheers.’ I’d had enough of this game. The next time I came I was just going to ask for a Diet Coke.
There was something different about Harry. When I’d worked with him before I’d never been afraid of him. Mostly because I’d never been afraid of anything. I didn’t believe in fear; I thought it was simply a thing invented by men so that they’d get all the money and the good jobs. But Harry seemed altered in some way. Harder. Maybe because his wife had left him and run off to Marbella with a younger man to run a U2-themed bar. Or maybe it wasn’t Harry who’d changed. Maybe it was me.
‘So Wayne the hair …?’ Harry prompted.
‘He disappeared, probably yesterday morning. Just wondering if you or your … colleagues might know anything about it. This is sort of what he looks like at the moment.’ I slid the Photoshopped picture of baldy-Wayne across the table.
Harry looked at it for a good long while but if he’d seen Wayne recently, I hadn’t a clue.
‘What was he mixed up in?’ Harry asked.
‘Nothing as far as I can see. But you never know.’
‘I’ll ask around. But the game has changed. A lot of freelancers. Foreign.’
I knew what he was talking about. Ex-Soviet, ex-military. A few of them had turned up in the PI world and they were worse than useless, even worse than ex-coppers and that was saying something. These lads spend one night in a drunk tank in Moscow and suddenly they think they’re Vin Diesel, the toughest of the tough. They live in a fantasy world. They’re the kind of gobshites whose Facebook photo has them brandishing a toy machine gun and standing beside a badly Photoshopped helicopter.
‘And I’m interested in a woman called Gloria,’ I said.
‘Gloria what?’
‘I only know her as Gloria. But I’ve a feeling that if I find her, I’ll find Wayne.’
‘Who brought you in on this?’ Harry asked.
‘Laddz’s manager, Jay Parker.’
‘Say again.’
‘Jay Parker.’
He tapped his nail against his glass of milk in a way that made me blurt out, ‘What do you know about Jay Parker?’
‘Me, Helen? What would I know?’ he said mildly. ‘Leave this matter with me. I have your numbers.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And then we’re square? I won’t have to see you again?’
‘Well, I don’t know, Harry. Maybe you might need my help sometime?’
He stared at me, hard and cold.
‘Ah … yeah …’ I admitted. ‘And maybe not.’
23
‘I’m here to see Birdie Salaman.’
The woman sitting behind the reception desk at Brown Bags Please was exactly as I’d envisioned her: a Disgruntled Mum, who clearly resented every second she had to spend there. I sympathized. I’d be the same.
‘Your name is …?’
‘Helen Walsh.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go on in so.’ She pointed at a door.
I was delighted to be told that Birdie was still here. I’d driven fast and recklessly across the city, getting from Corky’s to Irishtown in illegal time, but, what with it being after four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, I was afraid that she might have knocked off for the weekend.
I knocked and entered. Birdie Salaman was very pretty, even prettier in the flesh. Her hair was gathered into a smooth bun at the nape of her neck and she was wearing a pencil skirt and a cute lemon-coloured chiffony blouse. Under her desk I saw that she’d kicked off her shoes – yellow and black polka-dotted slingbacks.
‘Ms Salaman, my name is Helen Walsh.’ I handed her my card. ‘I’m a private investigator. Can I talk to you about paper bags?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Good! Right!’ Then I realized I had nowhere to go with this approach. ‘Sorry,’ I said awkwardly, ‘I meant, can I talk to you about Wayne Diffney?’
Her face hardened. ‘Who let you in here?’
‘Your woman on the desk out there.’
‘I’m not talking to you about Wayne.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because. I’m. Not. Could you leave, please?’
‘I’m asking for your help.’ I paused. I shouldn’t be telling her confiden
tial stuff but how else could I get her to talk to me? ‘Wayne is missing.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Why not? Wayne is nice.’
‘Okay, if you won’t leave, I will.’ She was pawing with her feet under her desk, looking for her shoes to put on.
‘Please tell me what happened. You and Wayne seemed so happy.’
‘What? How do you know?’
‘I saw a photo. The pair of you looked all cashmere-y and Abercrombie and Fitch-y.’
‘You were looking at private photos?’
‘In his house.’ I spoke quickly. I’d gone too far. ‘I’m not spying on you!’ Well, I was, but not in a bad way.
She was at the door now. Her hand was on the handle.
‘You have my number,’ I said. ‘Call me if you think of –’
She darted back across the tiny room, tore my card into four pieces, and chucked them in the bin. Then she was at the door again.
I had to go for broke, but it was a risk: she might belt me one. ‘Birdie, where can I find Gloria? Wayne’s friend Gloria?’
She didn’t even reply. She stomped past the reception desk and nearly pulled the entrance door off its hinges. Proceeding at great speed, she was, despite the height of her heels.
‘Where are you going?’ the Disgruntled Mum called after her.
‘Out.’
‘Bring me back a Cornetto!’
24
That had gone well.
Somewhat demoralized, I went back outside and leaned against the side of my car, waiting for the shame and sense of failure to pass.
After a while I reached for my phone. If there wasn’t a text or an email or a missed call waiting for me now, one would come eventually. If I waited long enough my phone would always provide comfort. I would die without it.
Nothing was waiting for me, so I rang Artie, but it went straight to message. Out of desperation, needing some sort of friendly voice, I rang Mum.
She greeted me with warmth, which meant she hadn’t found the nudie pictures of Artie. ‘Claire never came back, but Margaret and myself are unpacking like billy-o,’ she said. ‘Making it all lovely for you. How’s the mysterious work with Jay Parker going?’
‘Ah, you know … okay. Listen, just on the off-chance, do you know anything about Docker?’
‘Docker?’ She sounded delighted. ‘I know plenty. What would you like to know?’
‘Oh, anything at all. Where does he live?’
‘He’s what you might call a citizen of the world,’ she said, warming to her subject. ‘Homes “dotted around the globe”. An eight-thousand-square-foot apartment in an old button factory in Williamsburg. Desperate-looking place. People did a feature on it and they had to pretend they thought it was gorge; but, Mother of divine, it was, what’s that word you say? Rank. That’s what it was. All these bare brick walls, like a refugee centre, and floorboards on their last legs and no different rooms, if you know what I mean; screens dividing the different “spaces”, and it’s so big he needs a skateboard to get from the sleeping “space” to the toilet “space”, which would give you mares to look at. A chain flush! Even thinking about it makes me want to wash my hands. You’d think with all his money …’ She sighed heavily. ‘Also in New York, there’s his room in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, which he rents on a permanent basis, and you’d get lice just from the pictures. Would you believe I’ve started scratching myself, only from talking about it! There’s something he calls a “bothy” halfway up the side of some mountain in the Cairngorms. One room, no electricity, no running water. Says he goes there to “get headspace”.’
‘And you know all this stuff from reading the magazines?’
‘I study them avidly and I have a photographic memory.’
‘You haven’t.’
After a short pause, she said, ‘You’re right, I haven’t. I don’t know why I said it. It just felt nice. Will I carry on? There’s his two-roomed corrugated-iron hut in Soweto – his favourite home, he says; my eye, says I. There’s his forty-nine-roomed residence in LA, which even has its own farmers’ market, in case the humour takes him to hop out and buy a lopsided apple …’
Jesus Christ, Wayne could be secreted in any of these places. I hadn’t a hope of finding him.
‘… and his house in County Leitrim.’
‘Hold on! What? He has a house in County Leitrim?’
‘Oh yes!’ She sounded surprised that I didn’t know. ‘Beside Lough Conn. He bought it about six or seven years ago. Mind you, he’s never actually been there. Can you believe it? Flash article. Some of the rest of us, and I’m speaking to one who knows, don’t even have a roof over our heads – well, of course you have a roof over your head, you have my roof over your head, but it’s not your own roof over your head – and Docker’s got so many roofs, he hasn’t even been under them all.’ She finished, sounding quite bitter.
‘I thought you liked him.’ I was speaking fast. I needed to get off the phone and log on to the land registry right now.
‘I thought I liked him too,’ she said. ‘But now I’m not sure.’
‘Listen, Mum, thanks for that but I’ve got to go.’
With shaking fingers, I logged on and, sure enough, seven years ago a house on a one-acre, lakeside site had been bought by a company that had been incorporated in the State of California. Docker was the only director.
I stared at the screen, trying to assimilate this unexpected information.
County Leitrim was a funny place for a worldwide superstar to own a house. Or was it? Hard to know because even though it wasn’t that far from Dublin – maybe only a couple of hours’ drive – I’d never been. Or ever met anyone from there. Maybe no one was from there, maybe it was totally uninhabited. Like Mars.
Lakes. That was the sum total of what I knew about Leitrim. They had lots of lakes. Riddled with them, by all accounts.
Next step was to check out Docker’s house on Google Earth but I’m reluctant to use Google Earth because I’m still a bit mortified.
When it first came on the scene, I thought that it was live. I thought you could go on it and spy on any property in the world and see what was happening there in real time. I thought you could see people coming in and out, and cars arriving and leaving. I didn’t realize that it was just a still photo. And that would have been all well and good if I hadn’t shared my misapprehensions with a client.
‘Oh yes!’ I’d said confidently. ‘Just give me the GPS thing for the house in Scotland and right now, on my laptop, we can check and see if your husband’s car is there. We might even see him scurrying out of his girlfriend’s love nest, cheating slimeball that he is.’
‘Are you sure?’ She’d sounded doubtful.
‘Certain,’ I said, drawing her nearer to the screen. ‘See here,’ I said. ‘That’s the house and that’s the … but why is nothing moving?’ I was hitting buttons left, right and centre. ‘The screen must be frozen. Hold on, I’ll just reboot. It’ll take a few seconds …’
All I can say is thank God it was a woman client. Call me sexist all you like, but the truth is that women are far more forgiving than men when it comes to technology fuck-ups.
Still feeling all the shame I’d felt during that error, I found a picture of Docker’s house. A blurry rectangle of roof surrounded by loads of green, apart from one side, which was loads of black, presumably the lake. Past the perimeter fence there was loads more of green. A remote house in a remote part of a remote county.
Wayne had to be hiding there, right? Wayne and Gloria? Had to be.
It all unfolded in front of me. Wayne hadn’t been able to take the carb-deprivation and mortification of singing the old Laddz songs and he needed to get away for a few days. So he emailed his old mate Docker, who said, I owe you for ever for the chorus of ‘Windmill Girl’, by all means go and stay in my house in faraway lakey Leitrim and take your lovely Gloria with you.
They decided to go in Gloria’s car, because … well, because they
just did. Maybe Wayne had the sugar-shakes and couldn’t trust his hands to drive. Then something happened to derail them – maybe Gloria had a flat tyre. Yes! Gloria had a flat tyre. And they thought they couldn’t go. Then she fixed the tyre and she’d rung Wayne and said, ‘Good news!’ And off they went.
They were there right now. All I needed to do was get behind my wheel and nip down there. I’d go this very minute!
Hold on, though … Were they actually there? Was it worth driving all the way to Leitrim just on a hunch? Yes, I argued. My intuition was telling me that Wayne was in Docker’s house.
But … there was a difference between intuition and … and … what would you call it? Madness, I supposed. It wouldn’t do to confuse the two.
Maybe I was just dying to see the inside of one of Docker’s homes?
I gnawed my hand as I made the tough, tough decision: I’d make myself wait. Just for a couple of hours. Anyway, it made sense to. It was late Friday afternoon and the traffic out of Dublin would be gridlocked.
I’d go and do what I should have done hours ago – I was almost back there anyway – I’d go and talk to Wayne’s neighbours.
Already I hated them for their uselessness.
25
The traffic wasn’t too bad for a Friday evening. As I drove, Claire rang and I put her on speakerphone.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘It’s Kate,’ she sighed. ‘She’s a complete monster. I know you’re not supposed to say it about your own child, but I hate her.’
‘What’s she done now?’
‘She bit me on my leg.’
‘What! Why?’
‘Because she felt like it. She’s a fucking bitch. She’s even worse than you were.’
‘That bad?’ I asked with sympathy.
‘As bad as Bronagh! That’s how bad. No fucking surprise that they loved each other. Ah fuck!’ In the background I could hear a whooping siren noise and lots of unrecognizable racket.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I went through a red light – what do they expect? I’m in a fucking hurry! And now the fucking cops are behind me with their siren.’
