by Marian Keyes
‘You’d better pull over.’
‘I’m not fucking pulling over! I’m in a fucking HURRY. Fuck them, they’re not the boss of me.’
‘Claire, pull over.’
‘Oh fuck it, all right.’ Abruptly she disconnected, leaving me thinking about Bronagh.
When people first met her, you could see that they didn’t know what to make of her because she did nothing to make herself more appealing. For example, she had shortish legs, but unlike another short-legged woman who would spend her life trying to disguise her flaw by teetering around in four-inch heels, Bronagh defiantly wore flats. She did most things defiantly.
There were plenty of people who were scared sideways by her, but just as many – more – who were desperate to please her, to prove themselves to her. In ancient Greece or Rome or one of those places, wars would be started just so that some fool could impress her.
The most unexpected people adored her – Margaret, for one; she became giddy and girlish and squealy around her. ‘She’s so funny.’
But Mum would have nothing to do with her. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of you,’ she said to me. ‘I know this one’s game. Trying to shock people and general blaggarding. And to see people’s faces, all lit up like the Empire State Building, just because she calls the priest “Missus”. He was my priest, visiting me in my home. If anyone was going to make sport with him, it should have been me.’
Claire didn’t like her either. But Kate thought she was the business. ‘Bronagh’s afraid of nothing.’
‘Neither am I,’ I said.
Kate studied me carefully, through kohl-rimmed eyes and a cloud of cigarette smoke (she was thirteen at the time). ‘Er … yeah, but you’re a bit … There’s something in you, a bit of – let’s call it weakness.’
‘Weakness!’
‘Softness, if you’d prefer. But Bronagh? She’s hard as nails all the way down.’
I was really insulted and said as much.
‘See?’ Kate said, soft as a snake, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue and studying it for a moment before discarding it. ‘You care what I think of you. Bronagh wouldn’t give a damn.’
Snared. No way out of that trap.
I got back to Mercy Close in about twenty minutes, parked outside Wayne’s and looked around at the twelve houses in the cul-de-sac. Which house should I start with? The obvious choice would be either of the houses next door to Wayne’s – more likely to have heard or seen something – but it didn’t always work that way. What I needed was someone who was at home all day and who was really nosy.
What I really needed was a proper old-fashioned old person. But not a hope.
Bloody new-fangled active ageing! God be with the days when the second a person hit sixty they were housebound with rheumatoid arthritis and the telly didn’t start until six in the evening. They had no choice but to sit by the window, in a horrible brown armchair, their nosy-parker noses poking through their lace curtains, spying on everything with their surprisingly sharp eyesight and remembering astonishingly tiny details, despite the fact that, at their advanced age, their memories should have been as reliable as leaky sieves.
But nowadays? Oh no. Saga holidays and watercolour painting and Aerobics for the Aged. T’ai chi in the community hall, Oprah in the afternoon and plankton tablets to keep their joints nimble. Imedeen and strong denture fixatives and discreet incontinence pads – they have so much freedom!
Back in the olden days, elderly people were an absolute boon for someone looking for information. And they were so delighted to have someone – anyone – to talk to.
I was already so demoralized, I wanted to give up. But think of Wayne, I reminded myself. Think of him having been kidnapped by a fat gay man, a superfan, who’d bought two of Wayne’s white suits on eBay – one for Wayne and one for him, even though he was miles too lardy for it. Think of Wayne and the superfan singing into a karaoke machine, bellowing ‘Miles and Miles Away’, Laddz’s biggest hit, a soaring tear-jerker of a ballad, which you had to deliver with your eyes screwed shut and your fists clenched.
Poor Wayne. No one deserved that. I had to press on for him.
There was no answer from Wayne’s next-door neighbour in number three. Whoever they were, maybe they had a job. I’d try them later. No one was in the next house along, or the next one either. So I crossed the road, and at random chose number ten and the door was opened by an absolute exemplar of active ageing. A woman, trim and slim and brisk, with a swingy blondey-silvery bob. She wore pale grey tailored trousers and some sort of blouse thing, with a jaunty open neck. There were wrinkles around her mouth but her eyes were bright and blue. She could have been sixty. Or ninety-three. Hard to know, what with all the fish oils they take.
I handed her my card. ‘I wonder if I could have a quick word with you?’ This was the tricky part – how could I ask questions about Wayne without giving away the fact that he’d disappeared?
‘I’m just on my way out,’ she said.
‘To yoga for the elderly?’
After a long assessing stare, she said, ‘Picking my granddaughter up from nursery, actually.’
Oh yes? Off on an assignation with her gardener, more like. KY jelly, there’s another thing that’s added to their superannuated high jinks.
‘And,’ she added. ‘I’m only sixty-six.’
Behind her I could see a folded newspaper on the couch. She’d finished the Sudoku. Believed in keeping her ancient old brain nimble, clearly.
‘You barely look fifty.’ I really must try to curb my knee-jerk curmudgeonly responses. It wouldn’t help to go round alienating potential witnesses. ‘I’m sorry I said that thing about the yoga. I didn’t mean it. There’s something a bit wrong with me.’
She inclined her head regally. I was just so beneath her. ‘I actually do have to go.’ She’d produced car keys from somewhere and was jingling them.
‘Would you happen to have been around yesterday morning?’ I asked. ‘Or Wednesday night?’ Even though I was pretty sure Wayne was still at home until yesterday morning, it would be no harm to see if anything strange had happened on Wednesday.
Now she was slinging her handbag over her shoulder and was setting the house alarm. ‘I go to my wine club on Wednesday nights and I play golf on Thursday mornings.’
Do you see what I mean? Isn’t it utterly infuriating?
‘So you wouldn’t have seen if a taxi had picked up Wayne Diffney?’
The front door was shut behind her and she was sliding past me towards her car, a Yaris, naturally enough. They all drive Yarises. I think they must be government-issued. I mean, who would willingly part with money for one? ‘No.’
‘Have you noticed any strange women visiting Wayne Diffney’s house? Might be answering to the name “Gloria”?’
‘No strange women.’ Then, as she walked jauntily up her little path, she threw over her shoulder, ‘Apart from you, dear.’
26
I went next door to number eleven. A middle-aged, burdened-looking woman came to the door. Behind her, several televisions seemed to be on. I sensed overcrowding and bitter teenagers and a high demand on hair straighteners.
I launched into my questions and she shut me down fast. ‘We were on holiday. We’re only just back ten minutes ago.’
‘Holiday?’ I asked. ‘There’s a recession on. No one’s going anywhere.’
She looked as if I’d accused her of treason – how dare she and her family be going on holidays when the country was tottering on the verge of collapse? ‘We’ve a mobile home in Tramore,’ she said, shamefaced. ‘It’s fourteen years old and very small.’
‘Even so,’ I protested. ‘Don’t you have to pay site maintenance fees and –’
‘We tried to sell it. No one was buying. Look, we had a terrible time, if it makes you feel any better. I’ve three teenagers and they want to be in Thailand. We came back early; we were meant to stay until tomorrow but we just couldn’t take it.’ Suddenly something occurred
to her. ‘Hey! Fuck off with yourself, I don’t have to tell you anything.’ She shut the door in my face.
I took a moment to recover – I really must be more diplomatic – then flattened my shoulder blades and proceeded to the next house. The door was opened by a fifty-something man, a bit grey and slumped and with hair growing out of his ears.
‘I was out at work yesterday morning,’ he said.
‘And Wednesday night?’
‘I stay over with my girlfriend on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.’
‘You’ve a girlfriend?’
This time the door wasn’t just shut in my face, it was actually slammed. Your man took a good energetic swing with it and Whomp! The windows bulged with the force of it.
Right, that was it. I was suspending the interviews. I was in the wrong frame of mind and doing more harm than good. I’d come back to it if – no, when, when (I must think positive) – I felt better. For the moment I’d retreat to Wayne’s and lie on the living-room floor. I’d gaze at the ceiling and pretend that the house was mine. Maybe something would come to me.
Wearily I traipsed back over the road and towards Wayne’s front door, when I heard, ‘Hey!’
Startled, I looked up. The shout had come from number six, from the last house on Wayne’s side of the road.
‘What about us?’
A ‘young couple’ – a blondey woman and a blondy man in their twenties – were beckoning me towards them.
‘We saw you knocking on the other doors!’ the girl said gaily.
‘We were wondering when you were going to get to us!’
‘We’ve seen you snooping around!’
‘We saw you last night!’
‘Oh,’ I said, my heart lifting. This was excellent. I’d just stumbled on the modern-day equivalent of a squinty-eyed old nosy parker: a young unemployed duo.
They introduced themselves as Daisy and Cain and they welcomed me warmly. They were very tanned – ‘from sunbathing in the garden’. Cain was a software salesperson who’d been out of work for eight months, Daisy a bathroom-fittings salesperson who’d been unemployed for a year and a half.
‘We were both on antidepressants,’ Daisy said, with somewhat inappropriate levity. ‘But we can’t afford them any more.’
They brought me into their living room. ‘Come in, come in.’
Sadly Daisy and Cain’s house wasn’t as attractive as themselves. Clearly they’d done it up when big-statement wallpapers were all the go, and their rooms were just too small for those bold, oversized patterns.
‘We won’t offer you a drink –’
‘– because we haven’t anything to give you!’
They both laughed long and hard.
Such cheerfulness! Such bizarre upbeat behaviour. Maybe they practised a Positive Mental Attitude. Maybe – my lip curled in scorn – maybe they listened to The Wonder of Now.
‘We can’t even afford food so we live on tomato soup. I’ve never been so skinny,’ Daisy said.
Their violently patterned wallpaper was doing funny things to my eyes; it was distorting my perspective, so that every now and then their wall went 3-D and seemed to rear at me.
‘Ask us anything,’ Cain said. ‘We spy on our neighbours all the time.’
‘We never leave,’ Daisy said. ‘We never go anywhere. Johnny-on-the-spot, that’s us.’
At that moment the wall decided to do a running jump at me and I shied away from it, putting up my arm to shield myself.
‘It does that sometimes,’ Daisy said apologetically. ‘I never wanted to get it.’
‘And now we’re stuck with it.’
‘So what’s the story?’ Daisy asked.
‘Something to do with Wayne Diffney?’ Cain chimed in.
‘What’s he been up to?’ Daisy asked eagerly. ‘An affair with someone’s wife? A politician’s, we reckon. So, the press are on to him and it’s going to be all over the red-tops on Sunday, right? That’s why he’s gone into hiding.’
‘Has he gone into hiding?’
‘Yeah.’ Cain rolled his eyes at me. ‘That’s why he went off in that big black car yesterday morning.’
Suddenly my nervous system lit up with enough electricity to power Hong Kong. ‘Hold on a minute.’ I could hardly speak, my mouth was so dry. ‘You saw Wayne getting into a big black car? Yesterday morning?’
‘Yeah. About what time, Daze? Eleven thirty?’
‘Eleven fifty-nine.’
‘How can you be so specific?’ I asked.
‘The first Jeremy Kyle had just finished. There are three in a row. At eleven, twelve and one o clock.’
‘Was it his own car Wayne got into?’ I was trying to clarify things. ‘You know he has a black Alfa?’
Cain shook his head. ‘Not his car. Look, it’s still parked over there. It was a great big SUV he got into.’
‘And what? He just drove away?’
‘No. Wayne wasn’t driving. There were other people there. Men. One of them was driving.’
Men! My heart started pounding so loudly I could hardly hear myself speak. ‘How many men?’
‘At least one,’ Cain said confidently.
‘Two,’ Daisy said.
I unpeeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth. ‘Listen, think about this next question very carefully. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, just answer honestly.’
‘Okay.’
‘How did Wayne look to you?’
After some thought Cain said, ‘There was something weird going on with his hair.’
‘Yeah, it looked a bit … patchy.’
‘What I mean is, how did he seem? Happy? Not happy?’
They looked at each other. A realization of how serious this was seemed to be dawning on them. Cain swallowed.
‘Well … actually,’ Daisy said tentatively, ‘he could have been scared.’
After a few moments Cain nodded and said, ‘Yeah. Scared.’
‘Really? Did it look like he was being strong-armed?’
They glanced at each other. ‘Now that you say it …’ Anxiety flitted across Cain’s face and he looked at Daisy for confirmation.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
Oh my God!
‘So why didn’t you call the law?’ My voice was shrill and panicky.
There was a little pause and then Cain said, ‘Because we grow cannabis in the back garden.’
‘And we didn’t really think …’ Daisy said. ‘When you see a man being helped into a car, you don’t really think bad things …’
Feck’s sake. A big black car, a frightened man being forced into it? What did they think was going on?
‘Did you get the licence plate? Even a partial?’
‘Aaaah, no.’ Clearly it hadn’t occurred to them. ‘I’m not even sure there was a licence plate,’ Cain said with some defiance.
That was bullshit.
What were this pair like? A couple of stoners watching a man being kidnapped and then cheerfully going back to watching Jeremy Kyle?
Anxiety overwhelmed me. This was where I bowed out. The rozzers could take over from here; I was no match for scary men in big black SUVs.
Never mind Jay Parker’s insistence on secrecy. That was all well and good when he’d thought Wayne had disappeared voluntarily. This was a totally different ball game.
I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder.
‘What are you doing?’ Daisy looked surprised.
Then it was my turn to be surprised. ‘A man has been abducted,’ I said, already at the living-room door.
‘You can’t go,’ Cain said.
Moving faster, alerted by some instinct, I whipped out into the hall, but to my shock Daisy pulled the sleeve of my top, trying to hoick me back into the room. I shook her off, then I saw that Cain was standing between me and the front door, blocking me from leaving.
What was going on? What did they want from me? I was confused and scared, properly afraid.
‘You can’t d
o this,’ Cain said.
‘Just watch me,’ I said, an automatic smart-arse reply.
‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to us,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re a bitch.’ To my further bewilderment, she burst out crying, great heaving sobs. ‘It’s true, you’re all bitches.’
Cain had his back against the door. My face was three inches from his. He and I locked eyes. I rummaged around until I found the steel in my gut, then forced it out through my pupils.
‘Get out of my way,’ I said.
‘Ah, let her out,’ Daisy said. ‘Fuck her.’ She waved her mobile around. ‘See this!’ she yelled at me. ‘We’re ringing someone else! Right now! You’re fucked.’
‘But –’
‘We don’t need you. We’ve got choices.’
Then Cain was stepping aside, my hand was on the latch, the door was swinging open – it was all unfolding like in a movie – and then I was outside, sucking down huge gulps of air. Freedom.
Immediately, I started running, trying to get to my car. My hands were shaking, my heart was pounding and pinpricks of sensation were playing over my face. What in the name of God had that been all about? Had I just witnessed an object lesson on the evils of weed? Or was it the hopelessness of long-term unemployment that had tipped them into lunacy?
I reached my car and clambered in. I didn’t indicate, didn’t look where I was going, didn’t even take off the handbrake, I just drove.
27
I found myself on the sea road, heading towards town. A high squealing noise was coming from the dashboard, telling me to unlock the handbrake. I reached down and released it and the squealing noise stopped, thank Christ.
First things first. I was safe from that pair of madzers, Cain and Daisy, whatever they’d wanted from me. I was safe and in my car and driving and the squealing noise had stopped. All good things. But Wayne Diffney had been kidnapped and I had to alert the coppers, and the mere thought of trying to explain everything to them sent a terrible wave of despair rushing up and over me. You’ve no idea what they’re like. They do everything with such ponderous slowness. Hundreds of forms had to be filled in. Pens could never be found. Shift change-overs occurred mid-sentence and you’d have to start the whole process again with the new person. Seasons could pass and the icecaps would have melted before you could successfully report a stolen wallet. Wayne could be dead a hundred times over before we’d finished the paperwork.
