‘God, you’re a right spy.’ But she sounded good-natured. ‘I was visiting my friend in Wexford. Not that it’s –’
‘– any of my business, I know. Sorry,’ I added. ‘One other thing, Birdie. I couldn’t help but notice that you still sound a little bitter at Wayne. I might be able to help.’
‘How?’ She looked so hopeful and pretty that it only served to highlight how strained she was the rest of the time.
‘I employ this thing called the Shovel List.’
‘A shovel …?’
‘No. A Shovel List. It’s more of a conceptual thing. It’s a list of all the people and things I hate so much that I want to hit them in the face with a shovel.’
‘A list …?’ She seemed interested.
‘I say a list but I keep it in my head, but certainly you could write it down if you found that more enjoyable. You might like to buy yourself a little Moleskine notebook and perhaps a nice pen. Or you could use cue cards and shuffle around the order. Obviously Wayne would be in at number one with a bullet for you. Or even Zeezah. But there could be other people or things you have a grudge against and some days they could go to the top spot. For example, I can’t take the clunking sound of someone opening their briefcase. Or the smell of cucumber. Or David Cameron’s voice. So sometimes they go to number one.’
‘Well, thank you for that.’ She was grateful, if mildly perplexed. And I’d offered succour to a suffering soul, so we’d all come out of it well.
57
There was no getting away from it: I really had to go to the MusicDrome now. I’d run out of other things to do and Jay Parker had left me about thirty-nine messages.
As I entered the venue I said a fervent prayer that Wayne would be on the stage, with his shaven head and his Swiss-roll stomach, doing a Laddz dance. That he’d have come back and perhaps would have a little catching up to do but basically all would be well.
But there was no sign of him. Under the blindingly bright lights I could see Frankie and Roger and Zeezah and … out of nowhere something lunged at me, like a leopard attacking from a tree! ‘Where is he?’ a voice snarled. ‘Where the fuck is he?’
It was John Joseph.
Jay stepped in and, after a short tussle, shoved John Joseph away from me. ‘Jesus, would you go easy,’ he said, clearly alarmed.
John Joseph was hysterical. Sweat was pouring off him and his hair was dishevelled. ‘Have you found him? Have you got him?’
‘Not yet,’ I said faintly.
‘You’ve got to find him. You’ve got to find him.’ I’d never heard a human being sound so desperate.
‘Step back a bit,’ I said. I had to tell him the bad news on the credit card report and I wasn’t in the humour for another lunge.
As succinctly as possible I relayed the information and watched John Joseph absorb the implications.
‘That can’t be right,’ he said. Suddenly he was screaming. ‘That can’t be right.’
‘Calm down, for the love of God,’ I said. ‘It is right. But we’ve still got the phone records to come. And I’ve got other lines of enquiry. And you’ve got your Walter Wolcott on the job.’
‘When will the phone records come?’
‘Probably tomorrow.’
‘We need them today. We need them now.’
It didn’t work that way, but I didn’t think John Joseph would appreciate an explanation, so I said, ‘I’ve already emailed my contact, but I’ll do it again. I’ll tell them how urgent it is.’
‘We’ll pay for a rush job!’
‘Okay, grand, I’ll tell them.’
I had to get away. I didn’t know where to go or what to do but I wasn’t hanging around here.
I took a quick look at Zeezah. She was biting her plump little lip and she looked quite miserable – who could blame her? Imagine being married to that ball of rage, John Joseph Hartley? She should have stuck with Wayne. As I watched her, she sidled away furtively, towards backstage, and I decided to follow her. Wherever she was going, it had to be better than here.
I trailed behind her. She was moving fast, heading with purpose along a breeze-block corridor, when we entered a small officey clearing, with a couple of desks and chairs. Suddenly she grabbed a wastepaper basket, brought it to her face – and puked into it. She must have been making for the ladies’ and hadn’t been able to hold out. And she thought no one was looking.
She heaved into it three or four times, then spat weakly. I allowed her to find a tissue in her bag and to wipe her mouth before I made my presence known.
‘Zeezah?’
‘H-Helen!’
‘So you really are pregnant!’
‘Yes.’ She straightened up and looked me in the eye.
‘Why did a Laddz spokesman deny it?’
‘Because that’s what you do with the media. Keep them guessing.’
‘None of us thought you were really pregnant. We just thought it was a publicity stunt. My mum says you’re really a man.’
‘Well,’ she said, with a wan little smile, ‘you have seen with your two eyes that I am not. Do you have a mint?’
‘I can do better than that. I can give you a brand-new toothbrush and some toothpaste.’ I began rummaging in my bag.
‘Thank you.’ She accepted my impromptu gift. ‘Although even brushing my teeth makes me want to throw up.’
‘My commiserations. It must be hard feeling this sick with all the shit that’s going down here. So that’s why you weren’t drinking at the barbecue? I thought it was because you were a good Muslim girl.’
‘You wondered why I wasn’t drinking? Huh!’ Her old spirit was back. ‘I wasn’t drinking because I never drink.’ She waved a hand in front of her stunning little body. ‘You think I look this good because I have a fast metabolism and I’m twenty-one years old? Well, actually twenty-four, but that’s our little secret. No, Helen Walsh. I look this good because I permit myself to eat a mere nine hundred calories a day. And on nine hundred calories a day I will not waste a single one of them on beer.’
‘Nine hundred calories a day?’ That barely covered an apple, right? ‘Even now, when you’re pregnant? Shouldn’t you be eating for two?’
Sorrowfully she shook her head. ‘Calcium supplements will have to suffice. I must be back in my size-six yellow jeans and doing a photo shoot half an hour after I give birth. I’m a celebrity. I know my responsibilities.’
She was so funny, she really was.
‘How pregnant are you?’ I asked.
‘Thirteen weeks.’
‘Well, ah … congratulations.’ That was what people normally said to a pregnant person, wasn’t it?
‘Thank you. And now I must gather myself. Even though we don’t know if the gigs will happen, Jay Parker says I must do a radio interview with some man called Sean Moncrieff. You know him?’
‘Yes. Actually I’m very fond of Sean Moncrieff.’
‘What if I vomit in the taxi on the way there?’
‘Give me a few minutes to collect two hundred euro from Jay Parker and I’ll drive you there.’
I wasn’t just being kind. There was a question I needed to ask her.
I waited until we were on the road. They say that all awkward conversations should be held in a car, so that there’s no danger of eye contact and any uncomfortable silences could be filled with traffic noises.
‘Zeezah … the other day … the day the swan costumes arrived? I could have sworn that I saw you give Roger’s crotch a little … squeeze. I haven’t been feeling too well in my head and I’d appreciate you telling me that I wasn’t hallucinating.’
‘A squeeze?’
‘A squeeze.’
‘On his crotch?’
‘On his crotch.’
‘You ask me this question?’ Zeezah gave me a sly little sideways smile. ‘And I say to you that a little flirting, making every person feel special … As you Irish say, it doesn’t do any harm, no?’
58
I dropped Zeezah o
ff at the radio station.
‘Will you come in with me?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ve stuff to be getting on with.’
‘Okay.’
But, as soon as she was gone, I regretted it. Whenever I made the mistake of stopping for thought I started thinking about dying. The trajectory felt much sharper this time. I sat in my car and closed my eyes and wondered if I should ring Antonia Kelly. Wednesday was hurtling at me and no matter what happened, if Wayne turned up or if Wayne didn’t turn up, the reality was that after Wednesday there was nothing but blankness for me.
My head was aching. I opened my eyes and looked at the tender skin on the insides of my wrists, following the lines of the blue veins. It would hurt, I acknowledged, and I was afraid the pain would interfere.
But flickering around in my memory was the anaesthetic cream I’d used when I’d got my hairy legs lasered. I had a tube of that left over and maybe if I rubbed a thick layer of the stuff on, maybe an hour before, it wouldn’t hurt so badly. It mightn’t hurt at all.
I stopped myself. I shouldn’t be thinking this way.
What was really scaring me was that I’d never really fitted into a neat ‘depression’ diagnosis, so there was no way of knowing where this was going, of where it would take me. Other people, with text-book depression, slowed down and down, further and further, until they eventually came to a halt. They went numb, they went catatonic. Or they went the other way; they went wild with anxiety, gasping for breath and full of terror, unable to eat or sleep or sit still. And I had a bit of that, a good bit. But I had all kinds of added extras, like the suspicion that I’d crash-landed on to another planet. Like the comfort I took in natural disasters. Like the way I hated the light. Like the sensation that my soul was being held against a naked flame.
I didn’t think I could go through it again. It was worse this time because I’d thought I was cured. It was worse this time because I knew how horrible it could get. And it was worse this time simply because it was worse.
I reached for my phone, to make myself feel better – only to discover that I already had it in my hand. Perhaps I should get a second one. As I held it in my hand, it started ringing. It was Harry Gilliam calling. Fear seized my guts. It was strange. I was thinking about dying, I was already extricating myself from my life, from the world, and some parts of it seemed utterly meaningless and without power. But in other ways, feelings and situations were magnified. Like my fear of Harry Gilliam.
There was no way I was talking to him. I’d have to tell him I had nothing on Wayne, and I was too scared to do that.
But even as I was making the decision, I knew that I had no choice: if Harry Gilliam wanted to talk to me, I’d have to comply.
I let the phone ring out but, sure enough, two seconds after it stopped it started to ring again. Miserably I answered, ‘Hello.’
‘Don’t be doing that, Helen,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘When I ring, you make sure you answer,’ he said.
‘Yeah, okay.’ I sighed. There was no point in denying it. He had me.
‘I’m a busy man, I haven’t time for that sort of codology.’
‘Sorry.’
‘What news have you for me?’
‘Several leads, which I’m energetically pursuing.’
‘So he’ll be on that stage on Wednesday night?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause. With cold menace he said, ‘Are you spoofing me?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘No?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am. I’m just telling you what you want to hear because I’m scared of you. But you could help both of us.’
‘And how’s that?’
‘You know things that you’re not telling me.’
‘Me? How would I know anything? I’m just a simple hen-trainer.’
I gave up. ‘Of course, of course, and how are things with your fowl?’
‘Busy.’
‘Are they indeed?’
‘I’m trying out a new bird. I have high hopes for her. Don’t let me down, Helen.’
With that he was gone.
It took me several minutes to recover from talking to him. I sat in my car, clutching my phone like I was hanging on to the side of a cliff, and waited for the horrible feelings to dissipate. When they finally receded to a bearable extent, the first thing I did was look hopefully at my phone. I was delighted to see that a new email had arrived. My gratitude increased exponentially when I saw that it was from Telephone Man – Wayne’s phone records had arrived! This would unlock everything! Wayne was as good as found.
Then I started to read the email and I had to bite back a howl of despair. This was just a preliminary report, in response to the panicked request I’d sent earlier. Detailed records would arrive tomorrow, but in the meantime Telephone Man could tell me that Wayne’s mobile had been powered off on Thursday at 12.03 p.m. and hadn’t been switched on since.
Aghast, I stared at the screen. This was bad, very bad.
I did my calculations: just three or four minutes after Digby started driving him away, Wayne had turned off his phone. Or had it done for him?
This was far more sinister than Wayne not using his credit cards. Who can survive without their phone? I couldn’t. Simple as.
Unless Wayne wasn’t surviving …?
I was distracted from this awful thought by hearing Zeezah’s voice on the radio. I turned it up. Might as well have a listen.
Sean Moncrieff was asking her about her pregnancy and she admitted, coyly, that actually yes, she was with child.
‘Do you know yet if it’s a boy or a girl you’re having?’
This sort of fluff interview was way beneath Sean, to be honest. Normally he was holding his own with the finest brains in the land and making all kinds of arcane subjects seem accessible and interesting.
‘No, we decided we don’t want to know the sex of our baby.’
‘You don’t mind as long as it’s healthy?’ I could have sworn Sean was being mildly tongue-in-cheek.
‘Just so. As long as it’s healthy.’
‘So obviously you haven’t decided on a name yet, then?’
‘But we have.’ Zeezah gave a charming giggle. ‘If it’s a boy, he will be called Romeo, and if it’s a girl, we will call her Roma.’
‘Would that be because the baby was conceived in Rome?’ Not much got past Sean.
‘Yes.’ Another delightful giggle. ‘On our honeymoon.’
Now wait a minute. Rome? I thought.
Rome?
Ah. Rome.
59
I had a moment when I contemplated not making the call, when I considered driving, for the second time in one day, to County Cork and having it out with her in person, but time was not on my side, so – and, in retrospect, perhaps I made a mistake – I went for the quickest option.
She picked up immediately. ‘’Lo.’ She sounded impatient. Frankly, she was a right briar.
‘“She can’t make up her mind between the two of them”?’ was my opening gambit.
‘Excuse me?’
‘My apologies, Connie. This is Helen Walsh here. We met earlier today and you very kindly showed me around your house. Let me rephrase my question. I’m asking you about Zeezah? Couldn’t make up her mind between your brother Wayne and John Joseph Hartley? Had them both on the go at the same time? Even after she got married? Just a yes or no.’
After a pause she said, in humbler tones than I would have expected from her, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. But I can’t bear what that manipulative little … bitch has done to Wayne. I was so sickened by that display on Maurice McNice. I don’t even know how I ended up watching it. I never watch it.’
‘You and Wayne are close?’
‘We’re his family. We love him. He confides in us – me and his brother. So what do you know? What have you found out?’
‘I overheard you on a video of your mum’s sixty-fifth birthday. You were talking to
your sister-in-law. You were talking about some woman who, I quote, “can’t make up her mind between the two of them”. It’s just clicked that you were talking about Zeezah and that the two people she couldn’t decide between were Wayne and John Joseph.’
‘Okay …’
‘And now Zeezah is pregnant and she’s just been on the radio saying her baby was conceived in Rome –’
‘– how can she know that for sure?’
‘I don’t know. What I do know is that when I was searching Wayne’s house on Thursday night I found a lighter from the Colosseum in Rome in his bedside drawer. Of course there’s every chance that Zeezah brought it back as a souvenir for Wayne – please, don’t bite my head off, I’m joking. Or maybe Wayne just showed up on the honeymoon –’
‘He didn’t “just show up”,’ Connie said angrily. ‘She had him tormented. Ringing him day and night. Saying she shouldn’t have married John Joseph, that she’d made a terrible mistake, that she had to see him. So he flew out there. But she still didn’t decide. And she kept on not deciding. She still hasn’t decided, as far as I know.’
‘So Wayne could be the father of Zeezah’s baby?’
‘He could be.’
‘And Wayne knows that?’
‘Of course Wayne knows. How would I know if he didn’t? But John Joseph could also be the father. At least Zeezah never fed Wayne a line that herself and John Joseph don’t do the business. Wayne’s known all along that Zeezah’s been bouncing between the two of them.’
‘Does John Joseph know too?’
A heavy sigh. ‘So I believe.’
Christ. What were the implications of that? John Joseph didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d take too kindly to his wife being impregnated by his subordinate. But did I really think that John Joseph could have … like … killed Wayne?
However, someone had hit me. Someone wasn’t afraid of being violent.
Then I remembered John Joseph’s out-of-control fear earlier this afternoon. How did that tie in with him having hurt Wayne? Could John Joseph have been faking? He might have been, especially because he was normally so controlled.