Faithful Place (7 page)

And just like that, Mr. Daly no longer had the spotlight all to himself, getting a search warrant for his garden was no longer top priority, and snuggling up in Mandy’s cozy little corner of domestic bliss wasn’t as much fun any more. If Rosie hadn’t come out the front door of her house, it didn’t have to be because she was dodging me, or because Daddy had caught her in the act and had a melodrama moment involving a blunt object. It could have been just because he had left her no choice. Front doors were locked at night; back doors had a bolt on the inside, so you could go to the jacks shed without needing a key or locking yourself out. Without her keys, it didn’t matter whether Rosie was running away from me or into my arms: she had had to go out the back door, over walls and down the gardens. The odds were spreading out, away from Number 3.

And the chances of pulling prints off that case were going down. If Rosie had known she was going to be monkeying around with garden walls, she would have hidden the case in advance, ready to pick up on her way out of town. If someone had got his hands on her, along the way, he might never even have known the suitcase existed.

Mandy was watching me, a little worried, trying to work out if I got what she meant. “Makes sense,” I said. “I can’t see Rosie taking well to being sent to the corner, though. Was she planning on trying something? Nicking her keys back from her da, maybe?”

“Not a thing. That’s what tipped us off something was up, sure. Me and Imelda said to her, ‘Fuck him, come out with us anyway, if he locks you out you can sleep here.’ But she said no, she wanted to keep him sweet. We said, ‘Why would you be arsed?’—like you said, it wasn’t her style. And Rosie said, ‘Sure, it’s not for much longer.’ That got our attention, all right. The pair of us dropped everything and jumped on her, wanting to know what she was on about, but she wouldn’t say. She acted like she just meant her da would give the keys back soon enough, but both of us knew it was more than that. We didn’t know what, exactly; just that something big was happening.”

“You didn’t try for more details? What she had planned, when, whether it was with me?”

“God, yeah. We went on at her for ages—I was poking her in the arm and all, and Imelda smacked her with a pillow, trying to make her talk— but she just ignored us till we gave up and went back to getting ready. She was . . . Jaysus.” Mandy laughed, a soft, startled little catch, under her breath; her brisk hands on the washing had slowed to a stop. “We were just through there, in that dining room—that used to be my room. I was the only one of us had my own room; we always met up there. Me and Imelda were doing our hair, backcombing away—God, the state of us, and the turquoise eye shadow, d’you remember? We thought we were the Bangles and Cyndi Lauper and Bananarama all rolled into one.”

“You were beautiful,” I said, and meant it. “All three of you. I’ve never seen prettier.”

She wrinkled her nose at me—“Flattery’ll get you nowhere”—but her eyes were still somewhere else. “We were slagging Rosie, asking her was she joining the nuns, telling her she’d look lovely in a habit and was it because she fancied Father McGrath . . . Rosie was lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and biting her nail—you know the way she used to do? Just the one fingernail?”

Right index fingernail; she bit at it when she was thinking hard. Those last couple of months, while we made our plans, she’d drawn blood a few times. “I remember,” I said.

“I was watching her, in the mirror on my dressing table. It was
Rosie,
I knew her since the lot of us were babas together, and all of a sudden she looked like a new person. Like she was older than us; like she was already halfway gone, somewhere else. I felt like we should give her something—a good-bye card, or a St. Christopher medal, maybe. Something for a safe journey.”

I asked, “Did you mention this to anyone?”

“No way,” Mandy said, fast, with a snap in her voice. “No way would I have squelt on her. You know better than that.”

She was sitting up straighter, starting to bristle. “I do, babe,” I said, smiling across at her. “I’m only double-checking, out of habit. Don’t mind me.”

“I talked to Imelda, all right. We both figured yous were eloping. We thought it was dead romantic—teenagers, you know yourself . . . But I never said a word to anyone else, not even after. We were on your side, Francis. We wanted yous to be happy.”

For one split second I felt like if I turned around I would see them, in the next room: three girls, restless on that edge where everything was just about to happen, sparking with turquoise and electricity and possibilities. “Thanks, honey,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“I haven’t a clue why she changed her mind. I’d tell you if I did. The two of yous were perfect for each other; I thought for sure . . .”

Her voice trailed off. “Yeah,” I said. “So did I.”

Mandy said softly, “God, Francis . . .” Her hands were still holding the same little uniform tunic, not moving, and there was a long invincible current of sadness under her voice. “God, it’s an awful long time ago, isn’t it?”

The road was quiet, only the singsong murmur of one of the little girls explaining something to the other, upstairs, and the rush of wind sweeping a gust of fine rain past the windows. “It is,” I said. “I don’t know how it got to be so long.”

I didn’t tell her. Let my ma do it; she would enjoy every second. We hugged good-bye at the door and I kissed Mandy’s cheek and promised to call round again soon. She smelled of sweet safe things I hadn’t smelt in years, Pears soap and custard creams and cheap perfume.

5

K
evin was slumped against our railings, looking the way he used to when we were kids and he got left behind for being too little, except that now he had a mobile and he was texting away at top speed. “Girlfriend?” I said, nodding at the phone.

He shrugged. “Sort of, I guess. Not really. I’m not into settling down yet.”

“That means you’ve got a few of them on the go. Kev, you dirty dog.”

He grinned. “So? They all know the story. They’re not into settling down either; we’re just having a laugh. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing at all,” I agreed, “except I thought you were wrangling Ma for me, not playing Fingers of Love with today’s laugh. What happened to that?”

“I’m wrangling her from here. She was doing my head in. If she’d tried to go across to the Dalys, I’d’ve caught her.”

“I don’t want her ringing the world and his wife.”

“She won’t ring anyone, not till she’s called round to Mrs. Daly and got all the sca. She’s doing the washing up and giving out. I tried to give her a hand and she threw a freaker because I put a fork in the drainer wrong way up and someone was gonna fall on it and lose an eye, so I split. Where were you? Were you in with Mandy Brophy?”

I said, “Let’s say you wanted to get from Number Three to the top of the Place, but you couldn’t go out the front door. What would you do?”

“Back door,” Kevin said promptly, going back to texting. “Over the garden walls. Did it a million times.”

“Me too.” I aimed a finger along the line of houses, from Number 3 up to Number 15 at the top. “Six gardens.” Seven, counting the Dalys’. Rosie could be still waiting for me in any one of them.

“Hang on.” Kevin looked up from his phone. “Do you mean now, or way back when?”

“What’s the difference?”

“The Halleys’ bloody dog, that’s the difference. Rambo, remember him? The little bastard bit the arse out of my trousers that time?”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’d forgotten that little fucker. I drop-kicked him once.” Rambo was, naturally, some kind of terrier-based mutt that weighed about five pounds soaking wet. The name had given him a Napoleon complex, complete with territorial issues.

“Now that Number Five’s those eejits and their Teletubby paint, I’d go the way you said”—Kevin pointed along the same line I’d drawn—“but back then, with Rambo waiting to rip me a new one, not a chance. I’d go that way.” He turned, and I followed his finger: down past Number 1, along the high wall at the bottom of the Place, up the even-numbered gardens, over the wall of Number 16 to that lamppost.

I asked, “Why not just come back over the bottom wall and straight up the road? Why would you be arsed with the gardens on our side?”

Kevin grinned. “I can’t believe you don’t know this shit. Did you never go throwing rocks up at Rosie’s window?”

“Not with Mr. Daly in the next room. I like having testicles.”

“I was buzzing off Linda Dwyer for a while, when we were like sixteen—remember the Dwyers, in Number One? We used to meet in her back garden at night, so she could stop me putting my hand up her top. That wall”—he pointed to the bottom of the road—“on the other side, it’s smooth. No footholds. You can only get over it at the corners, where you can use the other wall to pull yourself up. That takes you into the back gardens.”

“You’re a fountain of knowledge,” I said. “Did you ever get into Linda Dwyer’s bra?”

Kevin rolled his eyes and started explaining Linda’s complex relationship with the Legion of Mary, but I was thinking. I had a hard time picturing a random psycho killer or sex attacker hanging around back gardens on a Sunday night, hoping forlornly that a victim would stroll by. If someone had nabbed Rosie, he had known her, he had known she was coming, and he had had at least the basics of a plan.

Over the back wall was Copper Lane: a lot like Faithful Place, only bigger and busier. If I had wanted to arrange any kind of clandestine meeting or ambush or what-have-you along the route Kevin had pointed out, especially a clandestine meeting that might involve a struggle or a body dump, I would have used Number 16.

Those noises I had heard, while I waited under the lamppost shifting from foot to foot to keep from freezing. A man grunting, stifled squeaks from a girl, bumping sounds. A teenage guy in love is a walking pair of nads wearing rose-colored glasses: I’d taken it for granted that love was everywhere. I think I believed Rosie and I were so wild about each other that it got in the air like a shimmering drug, that night when everything was coming together, and swirled through the Liberties sending everyone who breathed it into a frenzy: wrecked factory workers reaching for each other in their sleep, teenagers on corners suddenly kissing like their lives depended on it, old couples spitting out their falsies and ripping off each other’s flannel nighties. I took it for granted that what I was hearing was a couple doing the do. I could have been wrong.

It took a mind-bending effort to assume, just for a second, that she had been coming to me after all. If she had, then the note said she had very probably made it along Kevin’s route as far as Number 16. The suitcase said she had never made it out.

“Come on,” I said, cutting off Kev, who was still going (“ . . . wouldn’t have bothered, only she had the biggest rack in the . . .”). “Let’s go play where Mammy said we shouldn’t.”

Number 16 was in even worse shape than I’d thought. There were big gouges all the way down the front steps where the builders had dragged the fireplaces away, and someone had nicked the wrought-iron railings on either side, or maybe the Property King had sold them too. The whacking great sign announcing “PJ Lavery Builders” had fallen down the well by the basement windows; nobody had bothered to retrieve it.

Kevin asked, “What are we doing?”

“We’re not sure yet,” I said, which was true enough. All I knew was that we were following Rosie, feeling our way step by step and seeing where she led us. “We’ll find out as we go, yeah?”

Kevin poked the door open and leaned forward, gingerly, to peer in. “If we don’t end up in hospital first.”

The hallway was a tangle of crisscrossing shadows, layered half a dozen deep where faint light seeped in from every angle: from the empty rooms with their doors pulled half off, through the filthy glass of the landing window, down the high stairwell along with the cold breeze. I found my torch. I may be out of the field, officially, but I still like being ready for the unexpected. I picked my leather jacket because it’s comfortable enough that it almost never comes off, and it has enough pockets to hold all the basics: Fingerprint Fifi, three small plastic evidence bags, notebook and pen, Swiss Army knife, cuffs, gloves, and a slim, high-powered Maglite. My Colt Detective Special goes in a specially made harness that keeps it snug at the small of my back, under my jeans waistband and out of sight.

“I’m not joking,” Kevin said, squinting up the dark stairs. “I don’t like this. One sneeze and the whole place’ll come down on top of us.”

“The squad has a GPS tracker implanted in my neck. They’ll come dig us out.”

“Seriously?”

“No. Man up, Kev. We’ll be fine.” And I switched my torch on and stepped into Number 16. I felt the decades’ worth of dust specks hanging suspended in the air, felt them shift and stir, rising up to whirl in cold little eddies around us.

The stairs creaked and flexed ominously under our weight, but they held. I started with the top front room, where I had found Rosie’s note and where, according to Ma and Da, the Polish boys had found her suitcase. There was a great jagged hole where they had ripped out the fireplace; the wall around it was crowded with faded graffiti explaining who loved who, who was gay and who should fuck off. Somewhere on that fireplace, on their way to someone’s Ballsbridge mansion, were my initials and Rosie’s.

The floor was littered with the same old predictable stuff, cans and butts and wrappers, but most of it was thick with dust—kids had better places to hang out, these days, and enough money to get into them—and, attractively, used condoms had been added to the mix. In my day those were illegal; if you were lucky enough to get into a situation that called for one, you took your chances and spent the next few weeks shitting bricks. All the high corners were clotted with cobwebs, and there was a thin cold wind whistling through the gaps around the sash windows. Any day now those windows would be gone, sold to some merchant wanker whose wife wanted an adorable little touch of authenticity. I said—the place made me talk softly—“I lost my virginity in this room.”

I felt Kevin glance at me, wanting to ask, but he held back. He said, “I can think of a lot more comfortable places for a ride.”

“We had a blanket. And comfort isn’t everything. I wouldn’t have swapped this dive for the penthouse of the Shelburne.”

After a moment Kevin shivered. “God, this place is depressing.”

“Think of it as atmosphere. A trip down Memory Lane.”

“Fuck that. I stay as far from Memory Lane as I can. Did you hear the Dalys? How bloody
miserable
were Sundays in the eighties? Mass, and then the shite Sunday dinner—how much do you want to bet it was boiled bacon, roast potatoes and cabbage?”

“Don’t forget the pudding.” I ran the torch beam along the floorboards: a few minor holes, a few splintered ends, no mended patches—and in here anything mended would have stuck out like a sore thumb. “Angel Delight, every time. Tasted like strawberry-flavored chalk, but if you didn’t eat it, you were making the black babies starve.”

“God, yeah. And then nothing to do all day long except hang out on the corner in the cold, unless you could bunk into the cinema or unless you wanted to put up with Ma and Da. Nothing on the telly except Father Whoever’s sermon about contraception making you go blind, and even for that you had to spend hours messing around with those bloody rabbit ears trying to get the reception . . . By the end of some Sundays, I swear I was so bored I was looking forward to school.”

Nothing where the fireplace had been, or up the chimney; just a bird’s nest at the top, and years’ worth of white droppings streaked down the sides. The chimney was barely wide enough to fit the suitcase. There was no way anyone could have got a grown woman’s body up there, even temporarily. I said, “I’m telling you, mate, you should’ve come in here. This was where all the action was. Sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

“By the time I was old enough for the good action, nobody came in here any more. There were rats.”

“There always were. They added atmosphere. Come on.” I headed into the next room.

Kevin trailed after me. “They added
germs
. You weren’t here for it, but someone put down poison or something—I think it was Mad Johnny, you know how he had a total thing about rats, because of being in the trenches or whatever? Anyway, a bunch of the rats crawled into the walls and died, and Jesus, I’m not kidding, the
smell
of them. Worse than the piggeries. We’d have died of typhoid.”

“Smells fine to me.” I did the routine with the torch again. I was starting to wonder if I was on the world’s stupidest wild-goose chase. One night of my family, and the loony was already rubbing off all over me.

“Well, yeah, obviously it went away after a while. But by that time we’d all switched to hanging around in that empty lot up at the corner of Copper Lane, you know the one? It was shite too—in winter you froze your balls off, and there were nettles and barbed wire all over the place—but all the kids from Copper Lane and Smith’s Road hung out there too, so you had a better chance of getting a drink or a snog or whatever you were after. So we never really came back here.”

“You missed out.”

“Yeah.” Kevin glanced around dubiously. He had his hands in his pockets, keeping his jacket wrapped tightly around himself so it wouldn’t touch anything. “I’ll live. This kind of stuff is why I can’t stand it when people get nostalgic about the eighties. Kids bored to death, or playing with barbed wire, or shagging in bloody
rat
holes . . . What’s to miss?”

I looked at him, standing there in his Ralph Lauren logos and his snazzy watch and his slick upmarket haircut, all full up with righteous indignation and looking a thousand miles out of place. I thought of him as a skinny, cowlicky kid in my patched hand-me-downs, running wild in and out of this house without ever realizing it wasn’t good enough. I said, “There was an awful lot more to it than that.”

“Like what? What’s so great about losing your virginity in a shit hole?”

“I’m not saying I’d bring the eighties back if I had the choice, but don’t shove the baby down the plughole with the bathwater. And I don’t know about you, but I was never bored. Never. You might want to have a think about that.”

Kevin shrugged and mumbled something that sounded like, “I don’t have a clue what you’re on about.”

“Keep thinking. It’ll come to you.” I headed for the back rooms without bothering to wait for him—if he put his foot through a rotten floorboard in the shadows, that was his problem. After a moment he came sulking after me.

Nothing interesting in the back, nothing interesting in the hall-floor rooms, except a huge stash of vodka empties that someone had apparently preferred not to put out with their rubbish. At the top of the basement steps, Kevin balked. “No way. I’m not going down there. Seriously, Frank.”

“Every time you say no to your big brother, God kills a kitten. Come on.”

Kevin said, “Shay locked us down there once. You and me—I was only little. Do you remember that?”

“Nope. Is that why this place gives you the vapors?”

“It does not give me the fucking vapors. I just don’t see why we’re trying to get ourselves buried alive for no bloody reason at all.”

I said, “Then wait for me outside.”

After a moment he shook his head. He followed me for the same reason I had wanted him there to begin with: old habits last.

I had been down in that basement maybe three times, total. The local urban legend claimed that someone called Slasher Higgins had slit his deaf-mute brother’s throat and buried him down there; if you invaded Gimpy Higgins’s territory he would come for you, waving his rotting hands and making terrible grunting sounds, cue demonstration. The Higgins brothers had probably been invented by worried parents and none of us believed in them, but we still stayed out of the basement. Shay and his mates sometimes hung out down there to show what hard men they were, and a couple might go there if they were truly desperate for a shag and all the other rooms were otherwise occupied, but the good stuff happened upstairs: the ten-packs of Marlboros and the cheap two-liter bottles of cider, the matchstick-thin spliffs and the games of strip poker that never got more than halfway. Once when Zippy Hearne and I were about nine we dared each other to touch the back wall of the basement, and I had a vague memory of bringing Michelle Nugent down there a few years later, in the hope that it would scare her enough to make her grab hold of me and possibly snog me. No such luck; even at that age I went for girls who didn’t scare easy.