However, there was one way to bypass the whole appallingly tedious process. It was unethical but what did I care about ethics? The quickest way to get the cops on to this was to involve Artie.
He wouldn’t be happy. Tough.
I pulled in and rang his mobile, and this time he answered.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘At work.’
‘In your office?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t move. I’m on my way to see you.’
I hung up before he could tell me not to.
I found him behind his desk in his glass-sided office. His pale blue shirt was crumpled and rolled back at the cuffs and his hair was too long for a copper’s. Altogether a pleasure to look at.
I closed the door. Lots of his macho colleagues were milling about in the main office and I didn’t want them overhearing. I couldn’t help but notice that they all wore crumpled shirts too; clearly they had no womenfolk prepared to iron for them, and maybe that came with the job.
‘Right,’ I said, pulling up a chair and facing Artie across the desk. ‘This is what’s happened.’ I spilled out the whole story – Wayne, Daisy and Cain, the men in the black SUV …
Artie took it all calmly. Too calmly.
‘Were there signs of a struggle?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what Wayne’s house usually looks like.’
‘Broken glass? Overturned furniture? Neighbours overhearing shouts?’
‘Listen to what I’m saying, Artie: men, at least two of them, took Wayne away in a big black car.’
‘So go to the police.’
‘You are the police.’
‘I’m not the police.’
Well, he was and he wasn’t.
‘Not the kind you need,’ he said.
I stared hard at him, hoping to shame him into helping me. He met my gaze, remaining relaxed and steady in his chair, his arms behind his head.
‘I know this is “inappropriate”,’ I said.
‘Inappropriate’, now there’s another word I hate. Very high on my Shovel List, up there with ‘grounded’ and ‘spiritual’.
‘Artie, if I go to the ordinary coppers, they won’t take me seriously. At the best of times they’re lazy bastards. And when they find out I’m a PI they’ll do everything they can to obstruct me. And when they hear it’s Wayne and they remember his hair, they’ll just laugh at the whole thing. Someone must owe you a favour.’
‘Helen, don’t do this.’
‘You have to help me.’
‘I don’t have to help you.’
‘You’re my boyfriend.’
He sighed.
‘I’ll tell Vonnie you were mean to me.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘I’ll tell Bella you were mean to me.’
He rolled his eyes again and I gazed at him in mute appeal.
‘No, Helen.’ He shook his head. ‘That gazing thing doesn’t work on me.’
But I kept on gazing. I knew I could stare for ever, so I maintained a steady, unwavering lock on his look, and from time to time I wondered what he was thinking and how long this would take to work and actually being quite impressed that he was holding out for as long as he was, and eventually, with his stare still locked on to mine, he picked up his desk phone and said, ‘Artie Devlin here. Can you get me Sergeant Coleman?’
A few seconds later someone important came on the line – some man, of course – and Artie spoke in an authoritative tone of voice for a veritable age, giving them all kinds of info: Wayne’s address, Daisy and Cain’s address, my address, my phone number, my date of birth … on and on it went.
He ended by saying, ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d make it a priority.’
Then he hung up.
‘Okay,’ he said to me, ‘two officers are on their way over to interview Cain and Daisy. I’ll go too.’
‘I owe you,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Oh yes, you owe me.’ Then he smiled. Such a wicked, wicked smile and I was never more sorry that his office had see-through walls.
28
So what now? Well, I’d better bring Jay Parker up to speed on the latest developments. But, to be honest, I wasn’t ready for this to be over yet. Except for when I’d been scared shitless by Cain and Daisy, I’d been enjoying the work and the distraction it had given me. Now I could feel the blackness that had been hovering, that had been kept at bay by the search for Wayne, waiting to take over. Feeding into my darkness was worry about Wayne – who had taken him? Where was he right now?
In an effort to string out this case for fifteen more minutes I decided to give Jay the news in person.
All week the Laddz had been rehearsing at the Europa MusicDrome, where the gigs were going to be held, and there was a good chance I’d find him there.
With a capacity of fifteen thousand people, the MusicDrome was massive by Irish standards. Inside, most of the venue was unlit. Tiers and tiers of empty seats were sitting in the darkness, being watchful and sinister. But the area around the stage was brightly lit and aswarm with people – choreographers, lighting men, wardrobe mistresses, techies, hairy roadie types – all milling about, looking anxious.
Up on the enormous stage, in the middle of the hordes, the Laddz were marking a dance routine, which, even in my subdued state, made me smile. Frankie was giving it socks, bulging his eyeballs and thumping his chest. Next to him, Roger St Leger barely bothered to move an atom, contempt for the whole process oozing from his every pore. John Joseph was making more of an effort to do the moves, mostly, I suppose, because he was sort of the front guy, but I could tell he was feeling a bit mortified.
The bloke on the end – some techie who’d obviously been commandeered to stand in for missing Wayne – was the only one who was any good. And he was brilliant, so fluid and rhythmic that he made the rest of them look pitiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Then, to my surprise (category: very unpleasant), I saw that it was Jay Parker. He’d removed his jacket and tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was giving it loads with his snake-hips.
It took a moment for me to relocate my equilibrium. Of course Jay Parker was a good dancer – he’d always been slippery.
He saw me and abruptly ceased and desisted with his shimmying. He came right over, pulled me into a little corner and said quietly, ‘You found him?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Where is he?’
Suddenly John Joseph’s face appeared beside Jay’s. Then Zeezah was there. Where had she come from?
I shut my mouth. Client confidentiality was client confidentiality.
‘Keep talking,’ Jay said. ‘No secrets here.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I have eye-witness reports that Wayne was abducted yesterday morning.’
‘What?’ Even Jay seemed shocked.
‘He was taken away by at least two men in a black SUV.’
‘But who would kidnap Wayne Diffney?’ Jay asked. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know but the police are on it. I’m out.’
‘What? Now wait a minute! You told the police! I told you not to!’ Jay’s face darkened.
‘A person has been abducted,’ I said. ‘It’s more important than the singing and dancing show you’re trying to put on here.’
Jay glared at me, then his face cleared as it dawned on him that, if he handled this right, he could generate more publicity and tickets sales for Laddz than in his wildest imaginings. You could see the cogs turning in his brain as he tried to decide how he could twist and shape this latest development into something that would ultimately make money. Heartbreaking appeals on the six o’clock news from Wayne’s parents as they begged, ‘Please let our baby go’? Or making an enormous deal of having an empty white stool on the stage during the ballads, ‘waiting’ for Wayne to come back?
Suddenly my attention was caught by John Joseph and Zeezah. They’d stepped away from Jay and me and were speaking to each other in low
, tight voices. They looked anxious, very, very anxious, and out of nowhere my imagination was going like the clappers. What if John Joseph and Zeezah had ‘disappeared’ Wayne? What if they’d murdered him? What if his body was in a shallow grave in their garden, and tomorrow a concrete ornamental fountain was going to be built over him, sealing him in for ever? Or maybe Wayne was stretched out on the kitchen worktop right now, and obedient Alfonso and Infanta were disjointing him with a chainsaw, preparing to feed him to the dogs?
‘What’s going on?’ I said to them.
‘We are really concerned for Wayne,’ Zeezah said.
‘Is that right?’ I didn’t know why but I wasn’t quite buying it. And it was good to get a look at her in proper lighting. She was still very beautiful but quite hairy. Along her jawline she had sideburns that could have given Elvis in his Vegas period a run for his money. You’d have thought she’d have got it lasered. I mean, I’d got both my legs done and admittedly the pain was horrific – at least it was before I illegally bought the anaesthetic cream off the internet – but the jawline wouldn’t take five minutes. I could even give her a tube of the cream if I could find a diplomatic way of making the offer, since I had a couple left.
‘Why would someone kidnap Wayne?’ Zeezah asked.
‘Sacred divine!’ Frankie Delapp had crept up on the conversation. ‘Wayne’s been kidnapped! But why? What if someone wants to kidnap me? I’m more important than Wayne. I’m on the telly. I’d be worth more to a kidnapper. And I’m a family man; I’ve children to fend for.’
He turned on Jay Parker. ‘You need to organize protection for us. Round-the-clock people!’
‘Quieten the fuck down,’ Jay muttered. ‘Get a grip here. I’ll talk to the law, see what really happened. No one’s going to kidnap you.’
Roger St Leger ambled over. ‘You know me, open-minded kind of guy. I’ll try anything once, including incest and alcohol-free beer. But even I’m not crazy about the idea of being kidnapped.’
‘I’m on it.’ Jay was starting to look panicky. ‘No one’s going to be kidnapped. Keep dancing, you lot. I’ll go and talk to the law. I’ll sort it all out.’
My phone rang. It was Artie. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘How soon would you be able to get over to Cain and Daisy’s house?’
‘Why? What’s going on? They’re dangerous, that pair. They scared me.’
‘No, they’re okay. And I’m here. And so are Officers Masterson and Quigg. But I think you’d better get over here fast.’
‘Really?’ Artie wasn’t a drama queen. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. ‘All right, I’m on my way.’
I hung up – and recoiled from a sea of beseeching faces: Jay, John Joseph, Zeezah, Roger and Frankie. Especially Frankie. He looked like Jesus on the cross in his final few minutes.
‘Stop!’ I said.
‘What’s going on?’ Jay asked.
‘The people who saw Wayne being kidnapped? The police are with them now and they want to talk to me.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Jay said.
‘We’ll all come with you,’ Frankie said.
‘You can’t. There’re too many of you.’
‘We could be in danger too,’ Frankie said wildly. ‘Anyone who’d kidnap Wayne would definitely kidnap me. I mean, I’m on the telly; I’m in the public eye. I’m a celebrity.’
‘Wayne is our brother,’ Roger St Leger said. How did he make everything sound like a sneer? Even the sweetest of sentiments? ‘You can’t blame us for being concerned.’
‘Oh, all right, then!’ I said. ‘But we go in my car, all six of us.’ I needed to retain some control of the situation; I didn’t want us arriving in batches. ‘And if the coppers won’t let you sit in on the interview, you don’t take it out on me.’
‘Okay.’
‘And if they do let you sit in, then I do all the talking. All the talking, understand?’
John Joseph, Zeezah, Frankie and Roger squashed themselves into the back seat of my Fiat 500. Jay Parker took the plum position in the passenger seat and we headed for Sandymount. A great deal of jostling for space and bickering was going on behind me.
I drove fast. As we approached an amber light on Waterloo Road, I put my foot on the accelerator and we sailed through as the light changed to red. Roger St Leger yelled, ‘Wahay!’
‘Jesus,’ Jay Parker remarked, ‘it’s just like old times.’
Exactly what I’d been thinking: a movie entitled When Jay Parker was My Boyfriend had begun running in my head. I found myself watching a scene of me and Jay in this self-same car, driving at high speed to some appointment that Jay hadn’t warned me about and hadn’t given me enough time to get to. ‘You can’t keep pulling these last-minute stunts!’ My memory was that I’d never stopped complaining, but in the movie I seemed to be elated and high-spirited.
We’d spent night after night whizzing from pubs to clubs to house parties, accumulating and losing new friends as we went. ‘I’m a businessman,’ Jay used to say, to excuse his unpredictability. ‘I don’t keep regular hours.’
‘What sort of businessman?’ I always asked, and got a different answer every time.
‘I’m a restaurateur,’ he’d claimed one evening.
‘That’s today! Yesterday you were trying to broker the sale of seventy-five combine harvesters.’
‘Yeah, well,’ and he was laughing, ‘you’ve to spread your net wide …’
It used to amaze me, the diversity of people he’d known – farmers, beauticians, bankers, civil servants, low-level crims – and he was eternally up to mysterious stuff. He had fingers in countless pies, endless ideas on the fizz and a complex network of exploratory contacts. I didn’t know the half of it and I hated being kept in the dark; I liked to be the secretive one in a relationship and Jay Parker was miles better at it than me.
He kept pulling new locations and new people out of a hat and was for ever springing unexpected stuff on me – ‘I just said I’d meet this bloke for a drink. In Copenhagen. Are you coming?’
Yes, well. As a movie When Jay Parker was My Boyfriend had turned out to be a dud. Promising opening scenes, admittedly, and an interesting middle section, but a bitterly disappointing ending.
29
I rang Cain and Daisy’s doorbell and it was Artie who opened the door. He took a look at the lot of us, sighed, but said nothing. I felt ridiculously proud of how big and handsome he was, as if I was personally responsible for his good looks, but decided not to introduce him as my boyfriend in case I compromised his professional standing in some way.
We followed him down the short hallway into the sitting room, where Officers Masterson and Quigg – a man and a woman – were sitting with Cain and Daisy, who both seemed super-shamefaced.
They looked up in wild surprise as the Laddz and Jay and Zeezah and I piled into their already crowded sitting room. Their jaws literally hung loose as they gazed at faces that they’d heretofore seen only in the pages of glossy magazines. Indeed, Officers Masterson and Quigg looked almost as overwhelmed as Cain and Daisy.
‘I’d introduce everyone,’ I said, ‘only we’d be here all night.’
‘Are you … Zeezah?’ Daisy was so bamboozled she looked like she might faint.
‘She is,’ I said. ‘But she won’t be doing any talking.’
‘And I’m Frankie Delapp,’ Frankie said. ‘You’ll know me from the telly.’
‘Shush,’ I said. ‘Get in there, all of you.’ I corralled my posse into a cluster behind me and took a position facing Cain and Daisy, who were sitting on the couch. I stood in order to retain control of the interview. Also because there were no seats left. Currently there were eleven of us in the room. The wallpaper, clearly overexcited by so many visitors, was buckling and lunging like no one’s business.
‘So what’s going on?’ I directed my question to Artie because I thought I had the best chance of getting sense out of him. ‘Where’s Wayne? Have you found him yet?’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s better coming from them,’ he said, nodding at Cain and Daisy. ‘Okay, Daisy, would you like to start?’
Daisy spoke, looking at her feet. ‘We thought you were a journalist.’
‘Me?’ I asked. ‘How do you mean?’
‘We saw you snooping around, asking questions like a journalist, and we decided it had to be something to do with Wayne because Wayne is the only thing that resembles a celebrity round here.’
Cain took up the story. ‘We did see Wayne getting into a car yesterday morning … voluntarily. Leaving with a packed bag. But we thought if we … you know … sexed it up a bit, if we told you he was being forced into the car and looking scared, you’d pay us more for our story.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘Wayne did get into a car and leave yesterday morning. Just before twelve. We weren’t lying about the time. But no one strong-armed him; he went willingly.’
‘How many other men were there with him?’ I asked. ‘Were there any?’
‘There was, but just one. And he seemed … you know … matey with Wayne. He might have been a friend of his, although I didn’t recognize him. At the last minute it looked like Wayne had forgotten something because he hopped out of the car, and the man didn’t try to stop him. Just waited while Wayne went into the house, came back out again, got in the front beside him, and then they drove off.’
‘So Wayne wasn’t forced into the car?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘So … Wayne wasn’t kidnapped?’
‘Sorry,’ Daisy whispered. ‘It’s just that we’re so strapped for cash. We thought if we exaggerated a bit, gave you what you wanted, that you’d pay us. We didn’t think the police would end up involved.’
‘Did you recognize the other man?’ I asked.
They shook their heads.