The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  ‘No. But it got us two front pages.’

  ‘Delightful. Your mother must be so proud. Have you got my money?’

  He produced a bundle of notes and cautiously extended his hand. ‘Two hundred euro. I’m sorry, it’s –’

  I moved forward and seized the cash, then quickly stepped back into my comfort zone.

  ‘– yes, I know, all the bank would let you take out. Tell me,’ I said, ‘what’s the story with you and Harry Gilliam?’

  I watched him oh-so-carefully. If there was ever a time he was going to be honest, it would be now.

  He shook his head. ‘I swear to you, I don’t know Harry Gilliam.’

  Disappointment coursed through me. He might be telling the truth. But he might not. Impossible to know.

  ‘I want you to have this.’ Jay produced a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘It’s a contract. I’m cutting you in on the take on the door.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Just like I said. You’re getting a percentage of the take on the door on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and any subsequent concerts that might happen.’

  ‘Is this some pathetic attempt to wriggle out of paying me my fee? Because you can forget it.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me. This is in addition to your fee.’

  ‘It’s not up to you to make those sorts of decisions,’ I said with contempt. ‘There’s the promoters and John Joseph and God knows who else who have to be consulted.’

  ‘They don’t, because I’m giving it to you out of my cut. This is just between you and me. If you find Wayne, I’ll give you twenty per cent of my cut.’

  ‘So you are invested?’

  He sighed. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who else is?’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s not what this is about.’

  ‘How much is your cut?’

  ‘Three per cent.’

  I made scornful noises at how small his stake was. ‘And that’s net, I’m presuming. So you’re offering me twenty per cent of a net three per cent? I can’t accept less than fifty per cent.’

  ‘Ah Helen,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you thirty. Thirty per cent is as high as I can go.’

  ‘Fifty per cent,’ I repeated. This was a joke negotiation because the contract was worthless. Nothing bearing Jay Parker’s signature counted for anything. He’d always find a way to get out of things, to shirk his responsibilities. There would always be a clause, a hidden something.

  ‘Thirty-five,’ he said.

  ‘Call it forty and we have a deal.’ I’d got bored of the game.

  ‘Okay.’ Jay was scribbling things on the ‘contract’. ‘Forty it is.’ He handed me the crumpled piece of paper and I shoved it carelessly into my handbag. I’d already forgotten about it.

  He looked alarmed. ‘Don’t you get it?’ he asked. ‘If you find Wayne and the gigs go ahead, you’ll be looking at a nice chunk of change.’

  ‘Shovel List,’ I said. ‘“Chunk of change”. Don’t ever say it in my earshot again.’

  Shortly after he’d gone my phone rang and I scrambled to answer it. ‘Mrs Diffney?’

  ‘Is that Helen Walsh?’ She sounded tearful. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I was just wondering if you’d heard anything …’

  ‘Sorry, no.’ I’d just been thinking that I should drive to Clonakilty; now I decided I needn’t bother. ‘And he’s definitely not with you, is he?’

  ‘I wish he was.’ Her voice was choked with emotion.

  ‘If I hear anything, I’ll keep you posted.’

  49

  After she’d hung up, I ate nine handfuls of Cheerios and suddenly I felt able to do that most thankless of tasks: canvassing the useless bastarding neighbours. On the positive side, this was a good time to do it. People were often rattling around at home on a Sunday afternoon. Those that were lucky enough to have a home, of course.

  Propelled by glucose, I began with number three, the house to the left of Wayne’s. I’d got no answer there on Friday but today a man wearing a red check shirt came to the door. He was younger than me. I’d have put him at about twenty-five and I wondered to myself how he afforded his lovely house in Mercy Close. It’s like when you break up with a man and for a while all you can see, everywhere you look, are happy couples. I was so wounded by the loss of my flat that the world seemed full of people living in beautiful homes, casually wearing red check shirts and unaware of how very, very lucky they were.

  I introduced myself, but didn’t go into too much detail, just said I was looking into a couple of things for Wayne, and although your man gave my bloodshot eye a funny look and didn’t invite me in, he seemed affable and inclined to help. He leaned against the door jamb, always a good sign that someone is willing to chat. I’ve noticed that if someone stands up straight, my job is much harder.

  Maybe Check Shirt Boy shared this house with eight other young men, I thought. Maybe that was how he could afford to live here. But when I asked, he said that he lived alone. How? I wondered. How?

  I forced myself to focus on the job in hand. Christ, though, it was a real effort.

  ‘Have you noticed anything unusual round here recently?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like …’ Maybe I should pursue the Gloria angle. ‘Like any women visiting Wayne?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s been one.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, a short little thing, with long dark hair. Wearing jeans, orange trainers …’ His gaze snagged on my orange trainers and his voice trailed away. ‘Actually, it might have been you.’

  I swallowed back a sigh. ‘When did you see this alleged woman? Last month? Last week?’

  ‘This morning. Couple of hours ago. Coming out of Wayne’s house.’

  ‘That’d be me all right. Any other strange women knocking about over the past while?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  Under my excited scrutiny, he seemed to wilt. ‘No. I don’t know why I said that. I just didn’t want to disappoint you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay, it happens all the time. Thanks anyway. So nothing unusual at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me, do you own this house or are you just renting?’

  ‘Er … what’s that got to do with Wayne?’

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing at all,’ I was quick to reassure him. ‘I’m just curious.’

  ‘Renting,’ he said.

  That made me feel a little better, that he didn’t have a mortgage. I wasn’t a total failure.

  I pressed on with my search. Number two yielded up an Active Ageing. A woman, very similar to the one I’d met on Friday. Like that version, this one claimed to be way too busy to have noticed anything and she despatched me with brutal efficiency.

  Number one featured a teenage girl, a student at UCD, a Bank of Mum and Dad type. She twisted and turned and wouldn’t make eye contact and sucked the ends of her hair and seemed unable to say anything other than ‘like …’ in an LA accent, even though she was from Tubbercurry. She wasn’t being deliberately obstructive. She was just young and I understood that whenever her eyes landed on anyone over the age of twenty she was subject to a neurological phenomenon that meant she went literally blind. It happened to all teenagers. Nevertheless she irritated me so much I decided to put her on my Shovel List. I’d rank her underneath The Wonder of Now, milk drinkers and vino, but above snow, dogs, Fozzy Bear’s voice, doctors’ receptionists, hairdressers’ receptionists and the smell of fried eggs.

  The ranking in my Shovel List was a fluid kind of affair and I amused myself by constantly reorganizing it.

  I crossed the road to continue my search. Number twelve housed the delusional, hairy-eared, fifty-something man who’d claimed to have a girlfriend, so I gave that a good swerve. As I did with number eleven – the hair-straightener family who were just back from holidays – and number ten, the original Active Ageing woman.

  Number
nine contained yet another female Active Ageing! What was happening to the world? No wonder the economy was banjoed, if we were having to pay pensions to this lot. And with all the exercise and eating Flora they do, they were going to live to be a hundred and thirty.

  This woman wasn’t perhaps quite as brisk as the other two of her ilk who lived in Mercy Close; she was a little warmer and more sympathetic but she was still useless. She hardly ever saw Wayne, she said. Bridge, apparently, took up a lot of her time. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I spend half the week in Waterford with my boyfriend.’ And at least I’d learned, from Friday’s encounter with the hairy-eared man, not to blurt out, ‘You have a boyfriend? But you’re eighty-seven!’

  On I pressed to the next house, by now more than a little discouraged. The Cheerio sugar rush had run its course and no adrenaline had come along to take its place. No one had given me anything to work with.

  Number eight had the door whisked open before I’d even finished ringing the bell.

  It was a man. Sort of. He had a slightly neutered look, as if his genital region was made of smooth mickey-free plastic. He was wearing casual clothes but they looked stiff and new.

  ‘Yes?’ he barked. There was no door-jamb-leaning from him. Oho, no. This was a real stand-up-straight merchant.

  I started my spiel. ‘My name is Helen Walsh. I’m a friend of Wayne Diffney’s and –’

  ‘I don’t want to get involved,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I just don’t want to get involved. But,’ he added, ‘don’t quote me on that.’

  ‘Grand, so,’ I said, countering his uptightness by acting super-easy-going, just to annoy him. ‘Is there anyone else living in this house that I could talk to?’

  ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘And he doesn’t want to get involved either.’

  Fascinating. I was guessing a sexless gay relationship. I bet they both looked very similar and wore almost identical clothes, but would be appalled at the idea of sharing them. I bet they both had one of those things that take the balls off cashmere jumpers and a complicated brush and wax kit for polishing their black leather shoes.

  I had a strong suspicion this chap worked in the legal profession and I decided to test it. ‘What colour is the sky?’ I asked.

  He stuck his head out of his hallway to get a good look. ‘Without prejudice,’ he said, ‘it’s open to interpretation.’

  To be fair, he had a point. The sky was currently blue, but in five seconds’ time it could be grey, this being Ireland.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t help you,’ he said quickly. I could see the words running through his head – ‘Any advice you may have given and which is subsequently acted upon will open you up to the risk of being sued for everything you own blahdeeblah …’

  ‘Ah, would you relax,’ I said, walking away. I knew he wasn’t hiding anything about Wayne. You get an instinct for these things. He just didn’t want to get into any kind of trouble.

  As I swung myself along the little path and through the low gate of number seven, the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly prickled. Quickly I turned round, to see Cain and Daisy in their front garden, on the opposite side of the road, silently watching me.

  ‘Shoo!’ I cried, waving my arm in the hope of dispersing them. ‘Stop looking at me.’

  ‘We’re sorry we scared you on Friday,’ Daisy called.

  ‘Can we talk for a moment?’ Cain said.

  ‘No! Hop it! Shoo! Be off!’

  Resolutely I turned my back on them and rang number seven’s bell. No one came.

  ‘No one lives there,’ Cain’s voice called from over the road.

  I ignored him and rang the bell again.

  ‘They moved out months ago,’ Daisy’s voice said.

  I rang the bell again. I would pay no heed to that pair of madzers. However, I couldn’t help but notice that number seven’s small front patch of garden was riddled with yellow dandelions and a general air of forlorn abandonment hung over the place. I bet the people who lived here hadn’t been able to pay their mortgage. Like me. Who would move into my flat now that the bank owned it? Would anyone? If it was left empty, it would almost be more agonizing than the thought of someone else living there, being happy.

  I rang the bell again, even though I was sure by now that the house was empty.

  ‘There’s no point,’ Cain called. ‘No one is there.’

  I turned round. ‘Don’t help me,’ I said to him. ‘I don’t want your help.’

  There was only one house left to try in Mercy Close – number five, sandwiched between Wayne’s and Cain and Daisy’s. Haughtily, aware that my every move was being watched with hungry eyes by Cain and Daisy, I made my way towards it.

  ‘Nicolas lives there,’ Daisy called. ‘But he’s away for the weekend. He’s gone surfing in Sligo.’

  I pressed the bell and ignored them.

  ‘He’ll be back tonight,’ Cain said. ‘Or maybe tomorrow. He’s our mate; he’s a good guy.’ That was code for: He buys blem from us.

  No one was answering the door. I rang again.

  ‘We can get him to call you as soon as he’s back. We can get him to call you now.’

  Still the door remained firmly closed. I had no faith in anything that pair of fantasists said, but it was pretty clear no one was at home at number five right now. I’d try again later.

  ‘Let us help you,’ Cain beseeched.

  Deep in thought, I let myself back into Wayne’s. Between Friday and today I’d spoken to nine of his ten neighbours. I rewound quickly through every conversation. Had I missed any vibe? Was there anything a bit weird? A bit suspicious?

  But I was forced to admit that there was nothing.

  50

  My phone made a sudden, plaintive, beeping noise, like a baby bird looking to be fed – it was almost out of battery! How had I let that happen? A panicky rummage through my very full handbag revealed that I didn’t have my charger with me; I must have left it in Mum and Dad’s. Schoolgirl Error! Quickly I gathered up my stuff and left Wayne’s and got into my car. I could not be without a working phone.

  Just as I was driving out of Mercy Close, who did I see driving in? Only Walter Wolcott! Like a bullock in a beige raincoat, bent, with purpose, over his steering wheel, filling up most of the front of whatever car he was driving. Clearly he’d come to interview the neighbours. I almost laughed out loud. They’d make mincemeat of him. Especially the Active Agers. Any patience they’d had, they’d used up on me. And perhaps Cain and Daisy might do the same false imprisonment trick that they’d treated me to. I could but hope.

  Wolcott was so focused on the task ahead that he didn’t notice me at all. Some private investigator.

  I wondered again if he was the person who’d hit me. Did he have it in him?

  Hard to know what age he was. Fifty-seven, perhaps. Or sixty-three. One of those sorts of ages. Fat. In a compact sort of way. I saw him once – do not ask me under what circumstances because I couldn’t possibly remember – but I saw him once at a function (could have been a wedding) and, entirely unexpectedly, he was quite a good dancer. Light on his feet for a heavyset bloke, steering some woman, who I presumed was his spouse, around the floor, in an old-fashioned, confident, almost skippy way.

  A few minutes later my phone beeped with a text. Still driving, I picked it up and looked at it: the movement sensor at Wayne’s had been triggered. Wayne had come home! So much adrenaline rushed through me that I thought my head was going to lift off – then, as my heart sank like a stone, I realized it was probably Walter Wolcott.

  I felt … violated. As if it was my own home he’d gone into.

  With my dying phone I rang Jay Parker. ‘Does Walter Wolcott have a key to Wayne’s?’

  ‘John Joseph gave it to him.’

  As if expressing its disgust, that was the moment my phone gave up the ghost.

  Over at my parents, Mum had rounded up Margaret and Claire. Afte
r I’d found my charger and plugged in my phone, I accepted their shocked remarks about the bruised and cut state of my head, I let them bully me into having a shower and washing my hair, and I got Mum to write a cheque for Terry O’Dowd and put it in an envelope with a stamp.

  ‘Leitrim,’ she said in wonderment. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met someone from Leitrim. Have you, Claire?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you, Margaret?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you, Hel –’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I think you should go to A&E to have your head looked at,’ Margaret said.

  ‘To have her head examined?’ Claire said, and she snorted with laughter. ‘Much good that would do! So how’re you doing today, Helen? Feeling any mad urges to fling yourself into the sea?’

  Riiiigght.

  The last time I’d been unwell, suicidally depressed, whatever you want to call it, the reactions of my friends and family had fallen into several different camps:

  The Let’s Laugh It Off merchants: Claire was the leading light. They hoped that joking about my state of mind would reduce it to a manageable size. Most likely to say, ‘Feeling any mad urges to fling yourself into the sea?’

  The Depression Deniers: they were the ones who took the position that since there was no such thing as depression, nothing could be wrong with me. Once upon a time I’d have belonged in that category myself. A subset of the Deniers was The Tough Love people. Most likely to say, ‘What have you got to be depressed about?’

  The It’s All About Me bunch: they were the ones who wailed that I couldn’t kill myself because they’d miss me so much. More often than not, I’d end up comforting them. My sister Anna and her boyfriend, Angelo, flew three thousand miles from New York just so I could dry their tears. Most likely to say, ‘Have you any idea how many people love you?’

  The Runaways: lots and lots of people just stopped ringing me. Most of them I didn’t care about, but one or two were important to me. Their absence was down to fear; they were terrified that whatever I had, it was catching. Most likely to say, ‘I feel so helpless … God, is that the time?’ Bronagh – though it hurt me too much at the time to really acknowledge it – was the number one offender.