‘Yeah, whatever. I’m not in the mood for your bullshit. Just know this: you’ll still be paying me, no matter what the story is with yourself and Harry.’
‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ Jay said. ‘And I’m glad you’re back. But something you should know. When you resigned this afternoon, John Joseph hired another PI –’
‘Who?’
‘Walter Wolcott.’
I knew him. Older bloke. Very different working style to mine. Methodical. Unimaginative. Not above throwing the odd punch. Ex-copper, it goes without saying.
‘He’s already got hold of all the airline manifests, even from private airstrips. Wayne’s definitely still in the country.’
‘But we knew that. I found his passport, remember?’
‘He’s also checked ferries, smaller harbours, boat hire places. Wayne hasn’t used any of them.’
Wolcott would have been able to get all that intel from his old muckers in the polis without it costing him a penny. That blue-on-blue love thing is very powerful.
‘Wolcott’s checked all the big hotels,’ Jay said.
Again, one of Wolcott’s former workmates would have been able to arrange that for him.
‘But no sign of Wayne,’ Jay said. ‘Wolcott’s trying smaller places now, B&Bs and that, but it’ll take time.’
Especially because they wouldn’t be on any databases.
‘Maybe you should pool your resources,’ Jay said.
No way was I teaming up with an old flatfoot like Wolcott.
I didn’t want him working the case at all. It was unlikely that we’d go down the same route, but it could make things messy if we both showed up, looking to talk to the same person. Particularly if he got there first.
‘How’s he doing on phone and financial records?’ I asked. They were what really mattered and it was far less likely that Wolcott’s pals in the force would be able to get them for him. Producing airline manifests without just cause is only mildly illegal; phone records and financial stuff are in a different league – really quite illegal.
Jay shook his head. ‘Wolcott wasn’t able to get the info through his usual channels. He needed money and John Joseph wouldn’t authorize it. In fact he went mental when he found out how much I’d paid you.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Just how canny was John Joseph? ‘Has he paid Wolcott anything at all? Has he made him take the case on a no-find-no-fee basis?’
‘Yeah.’
For a moment I almost felt sorry for Walter Wolcott. Lean times for private investigators, as I well knew. Precious little bargaining power available to us. But what it meant was that I was still ahead of Wolcott. I had the phone and financial records coming to me down the pipe. And I was getting two hundred euro a day, mingy and all as it was.
The producer was back. ‘Okay,’ he said to Jay. ‘You’ve left me no choice. We’ll go with the “beautiful new bride” stuff.’
‘Thanks, man –’
‘And don’t ever call me again. Ever. No matter who you represent, no matter what you’re flogging.’
‘Hey, no need to be like that,’ Jay said.
The producer ignored him. ‘You two,’ he summoned John Joseph and Zeezah. ‘Time for make-up.’
Jay handed me Wayne’s house key but I decided to stick around in the green room for a little while longer. I told myself it was research but really it was just that it was fascinating.
‘Parker,’ I said, ‘what if Wayne isn’t found and the gigs don’t happen?’
‘The gigs will happen. If I have to go on and sing myself, they’ll happen.’
‘Seriously. Apart from OneWorld Music, who’s financing it? If it goes tits up, who gets the insurance money?’
He took a moment before he spoke. ‘That’s not something you need to know.’
‘Just tell me, who gets the money?’
‘Like I said, that’s not something you need to know.’
I stared at him hard. ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. He turned away from me. ‘Look, you just keep looking for Wayne. That’s all you’re being paid to do.’
Fifteen minutes later John Joseph and Zeezah returned from make-up. Plastered in the stuff they were. Plastered.
‘So what’s the story?’ John Joseph said to me. ‘I hear you’ve unresigned?’
‘I have and you can get rid of Walter Wolcott.’
It was hard for John Joseph to terrorize as effectively as he usually did, on account of him wearing pearly pink lip gloss. Nevertheless he gave it a good shot. ‘I’m not calling him off,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen more results from Wolcott in three hours’ work than we’ve had from you in two days and he hasn’t cost us a penny. I’m thinking that maybe you’re the one we should get rid of.’
‘Your friend Harry Gilliam is keen that I stay on the case.’
Was that a flicker? ‘Who?’
‘Harry Gilliam.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Course you haven’t.’
‘Look,’ Jay said hastily, trying to be the peacemaker. ‘The clock’s ticking down to Wednesday. The more resources on this the better.’
John Joseph gave me a long hard look. ‘Whatever,’ he eventually said. Then he turned away from me, fixed his glare on Roger and said, ‘Don’t drink any more, you’re making a show of us.’
We all sat in uncomfortable silence until a couple of runners came to take away John Joseph and Zeezah. They were the first item. This was a bad sign, an indication that they were the least important people on the show.
From the green room, we watched them on a monitor. Just before the interview went live, John Joseph blessed himself, which sent Roger St Leger into peals of scornful laughter. I was with him on that.
Maurice McNice described John Joseph as ‘a man who needs no introduction’ but gave him one anyway, just in case.
‘Tell us how you met,’ Maurice said, smiling from John Joseph to Zeezah, then back to John Joseph. He was Old School. Lobbed easy questions. If you were looking for controversial you wouldn’t get it here.
‘It was in Istanbul,’ John Joseph said. ‘Zeezah was singing at her friend’s birthday party. I hadn’t a clue who she was.’
Beside me, Roger St Leger roared with mocking laughter. ‘No, you hadn’t a clue who she was, had you?’
On the screen Maurice McNice said, ‘So you had no idea she was such a superstar?’
‘None,’ John Joseph said, and that triggered a fresh bout of drunken scorn from Roger St Leger.
‘Life according to John Joseph Hartley,’ he said. ‘What a wonderful world.’ Then he started singing it.
‘Shut up,’ the GAA hurling star said, ‘I’m trying to listen. And so’s my wife.’
‘Sorry, man, sorry. Sorry, Missus Hurling.’
Roger’s contrition lasted about half a second. As soon as John Joseph started speaking again, he creased with laughter.
‘I didn’t know she was a superstar,’ John Joseph said.
‘And I didn’t know he was a superstar,’ Zeezah chipped in.
‘That’s because he’s not!’ Roger said.
Maurice McNice ignored Zeezah. Like I said, Old School. Didn’t really think women should be allowed on the telly.
‘I believe you’re a great man for the classic cars,’ Maurice said to John Joseph. ‘I’m fond of them myself. Tell us about your Aston.’
‘Ah, she’s a beauty,’ John Joseph said smoothly.
‘“But not as beautiful as my wife”,’ Roger prompted.
‘But not as beautiful as my wife,’ John Joseph said, and Roger almost fell off his couch laughing.
‘Are you going to tell Mr McNice that you had to sell your Aston? For your “beautiful new bride”. To finance her career?’ Roger asked the screen. ‘No, I thought not.’
The interview was winding down. ‘Mention the gigs, you senile old fool,’ Jay muttered, gazing at Maurice McNice as if he could control his mind.
&nb
sp; Credit where it’s due, Maurice made much mention of the reunion gigs. The days, the times and the venue were all given. And given correctly, which was highly unusual.
‘Still a few tickets left, I believe,’ Maurice McNice said – then gave an unexpectedly spiteful laugh, the implication being that not a single one had sold yet.
And that was the end of that. The interview was over, the show cut to an ad-break and a few minutes later John Joseph and Zeezah were back in the green room, high on adrenaline, everyone hugging them and saying, ‘You were amazing. You were fantastic.’
Even I got caught up in it.
Zeezah hugged me. ‘I’m so happy you’ve changed your mind about finding Wayne. Please,’ she said. ‘You must go quickly now.’
Where should I go? It was ten thirty, so a bit late to start anything. I decided to go to Wayne’s house – the Source, as I was starting to think of it. I’d settle myself, regroup and see if anything came to me.
I drove the short distance to Mercy Close and parked about three houses down from Wayne’s. I got out of my car and slammed the door shut, and I’d barely registered the sound of running footsteps behind me before the blow came. Something hard hit me on the back of my head, sending my brain crashing into the front of my skull. I fell forward and the road rushed up to wallop itself against my forehead. As stars burst behind my eyes and puke rushed into my gullet, a voice said quietly into my ear, ‘Stay away from Wayne.’
The whole thing happened very fast. I knew it was urgent – imperative – to turn round to get a look at him, but I was too stunned to move. The footsteps were running away, pitter-pattering and getting fainter, then disappearing.
I wanted – I tried – to scramble to my feet to run after him but my body couldn’t do it. I knelt in the road on all fours and retched twice but didn’t puke.
Because it was so highly dramatic, I was sure that one of Wayne’s neighbours would come out of their house and ask me if I was okay, but no one stirred. In the end I suppose I just got a bit bored waiting for a ‘concerned person’ and, shakily, I got to my feet and tried to establish how damaged I was. How many fingers was I holding up? Three. But I knew that because I was the one holding them.
What day was it? Who was Beyoncé married to? Was I bleeding?
Saturday. Jay-Z. Yes.
There was a bump on the front of my head and a bump on the back, and blood on my forehead.
Someone had hit me. The nerve. The colossal nerve.
It hadn’t been enough to properly hurt me, just to scare me.
But it hadn’t scared me.
Being the contrary type I was, it had the opposite effect. If Wayne’s disappearance was important enough for someone to warn me off looking for him – to hit me, for God’s sake! – then I was definitely going to find him.
46
St Teresa’s was the go-to hospital for breakdowns, where everyone in Dublin – or at least everyone in Dublin who had health insurance – went when they needed ‘someplace for a rest’. It was the dreamy white, Xanax-riddled refuge that featured in so many of the fantasies of Claire and her mates – without any of them ever having been there, of course.
Everyone said it looked like a hotel, but it didn’t. It looked like a hospital. A nice one, I grant you, but it was still definitely a hospital. There were actual windows admitting actual daylight but the beds were definitely hospital beds, narrow and height-adjustable, with metal bars for headboards. And there was no disguising the function of the awful swishy curtains that divided the beds: to provide privacy for when the doctor came in and examined your bottom. (Although I wondered why a doctor would need to examine your bottom in a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps if you were talking through your arse?)
I knew that St Teresa’s had some wards where the doors were locked and where it was a high-security, key-jingling affair to be let in or out, but to get to Blossom ward, where I was going, you simply took the lift to the third floor and walked straight in.
When the lift doors opened, a long corridor made of very nice wood – probably walnut – led up to the nurses’ station. Bedrooms opened off the corridor, each one housing two beds. Full of horrible curiosity I stared into each room I passed. Some were empty and bright and the beds were neatly made. Some had the curtains closed, and hunched deadened forms lay under blue hospital blankets, their backs towards the door.
It was a strange, terrible thing to discover myself in a psychiatric hospital, but after my meticulous plan to drown myself had failed so humiliatingly I was at the end of my rope and open to all suggestions. When my dog-walking rescuer had suggested that I go into ‘someplace for a rest’, I felt a small bud of hope.
The following morning I rang Dr Waterbury and he rang St Teresa’s, but they had no availability in the nice ward, the ‘hotel-like’ ward. There were some free beds in the not-so-nice Daffodil ward, where the doors were always locked and where poor bastards routinely got strapped to their bed, but I didn’t want to go there.
I almost lost my reason: I had to go ‘someplace for a rest’ – it was the only option left to me. I got on the internet, looking for other hotel-like hospitals in Ireland and there were a couple, but they were also full. I’d extended my search to the UK and had just discovered that my health insurance didn’t work there, when, all of a sudden, wonderful news arrived from Dr Waterbury: a space had materialized in Blossom ward. Either someone had rallied with miraculous speed or else – more likely – their health insurance had refused to cough up any more. So less than twelve hours after my late-night swim, I found myself asking Mum to drive me to the nut-house (her phrase, not mine).
When the paperwork in Admissions had been dealt with, a nice girl accompanied Mum and me to Blossom ward, where a nurse called Mary welcomed me warmly and told Mum to hop it. She could come back later, she said, at visiting time.
As Mum scurried away down the corridor with hasty relief, Mary said, ‘I’ll show you to your room. You’re sharing with Camilla; you’ll meet her later. Yours is the bed by the door.’
Mary searched my bags and took away my hairdryer, my phone charger, the belt of my bathrobe (anything I could hang myself with, basically), my underarm razor and all of my tablets, including my vitamin C and – far more worrying – my antidepressants. Even though they hadn’t been helping me, I was terrified of being without them.
‘It’s okay,’ Mary said. ‘The doctor will review your medication and put a plan together for you.’ Oh, I liked the sound of that. A plan. ‘You’re under the care of Dr David Kilty,’ she said. ‘He’ll be along to see you in a while.’
‘And what will I do until then?’
She looked at her watch. ‘It’s a bit late for Occupational Therapy. You could watch television – the lounge is just down there. Or you could lie on your bed.’
So I lay on my high narrow bed and wondered what form the miracle cure would take. I didn’t really know what I expected from the place – it was a mystery what happened in psychiatric hospitals. Obviously, I was certain they’d fix me. It was such an extreme step to admit myself to an institution, so I knew they’d respect that and match my gesture with extreme and effective remedies. But once I got down to thinking about the nitty-gritty I wasn’t sure how they were going to go about it.
It was all very quiet out there. No noise coming from the corridor, no noise coming from the other rooms. How long had I been lying here? I looked at my phone, and it was nearly an hour since Mary had left me – what was keeping my doctor? The familiar panic began to rise, but I reminded myself that a miracle plan was going to be put together for me, by medical experts, and that I should try to be calm. It was okay, it was all okay.
To distract myself, I decided to violate Camilla’s privacy. She had a teddy on her neatly made bed and a cluster of Get Well Soon cards on her shelf. I opened her locker and found it contained four strap-on hand weights, a travel yoga mat and two pairs of trainers. Our shared bathroom was full of her stuff – my keen detective eye led me to de
duce that she suffered from ‘fine flyaway hair’ – and an inspection of her wardrobe revealed her to be a size six.
There was a knock on the door, startling me in my nosy-poking, and an eleven-year-old boy came in. To my astonishment he introduced himself as Dr David Kilty. Frankly I wondered if he was another patient, one of the delusional ones, but under my rigorous questioning he claimed not only to be thirty-one, but also to have passed all his exams and to have worked as a hospital psychiatrist for almost three years.
‘I don’t know, Dave … Do you mind if I call you Dave?’
‘If that’s what you’d prefer. Although I am a doctor.’
He read the notes Dr Waterbury had forwarded and he asked me detailed questions about my attempt to drown myself.
‘Are you still suicidal?’
‘No …’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ Because I’d tried and I’d failed. Twice.
My late-night dip had actually been my second attempt to kill myself. Ten days before that I’d given my Alexander McQueen scarf to Claire, written a short apologetic note to the people I loved and swallowed back my sleeping tablets, all ten of them. To my horror, I’d woken up twenty-nine hours later, with no ill effects. Apart from being still alive, of course. No one had even noticed my absence, and having to explain to Claire why she had to return my scarf was the least of my worries. (‘I only gave it to you because I thought I’d be dead and it would be a waste of a good scarf, but I’m still alive so I’d like it back.’) I’d really thought I could depend on the old sleepers to do the trick and it came as a deep shock to discover that killing myself wasn’t as easy as I’d assumed. I was so demoralized that I felt there was no point giving it another go.
But, a few days later, my old can-do spirit returned and I resolved that I’d try again and this time I’d succeed. I spent literally days on the net doing research.
Flinging myself off a high building or cliff was a method that was popular in mythology but – I soon discovered – fiendishly difficult in practice. Local authorities and suicide-prevention had put all kinds of measures in place to stop people hurling themselves to their death.