Three Little Truths

by Eithne Shortall

  Which was why she’d offered to carry in the pillows. Thankfully Carmel had her arms full with sheets. Any Pine Road resident would have jumped at an opportunity to snoop, obviously, but Edie was on the hunt for clues. That was when she spotted the magazine.

  ‘I’ll never read it, honestly,’ said Martha, flapping her hand. ‘Take it.’

  And so she had.

  Edie had thanked Martha and told her how much she enjoyed interiors magazines. What she didn’t mention, however, was that she already owned this edition. The November issue had a thirty-page bathroom special so Edie, who hadn’t yet known the big job at the garage had fallen through, had bought it for herself and read it cover to cover.

  Edie turned Martha’s copy of the magazine over in her hands.

  What this copy had that hers didn’t was the packaging: the clear cellophane wrap and the white address sticker fixed to the reverse.

  Martha Rigby,

  Abbyvale Lodge,

  Abbyvale,

  Co. Limerick

  No longer singing her nonsense jingle, Edie laid the magazine to one side and opened a browser. Curiosity had always been a terrible weakness. But she had a good nose for mysteries. Maybe she could help.

  Edie glanced at the address sticker one more time and, carefully, began to type.

  NINE

  Trish’s mobile was vibrating its way across her kitchen counter. They were trying to decide who was bringing what to Ruby’s for poker tomorrow night. Trish would not be going. She couldn’t chance sitting at the same table as Bernie Watters-Reilly. She kept expecting everyone to find out at any given minute.

  She switched her phone to silent and turned it over so she couldn’t see the screen.

  Every time it rang in the twenty-four hours since Gormless Paul had wandered into her office and ruined her week – although hopefully not her career – Trish expected it to be a journalist or an outraged parent. That morning an unknown number had flashed up and she had stared at it in horror until it stopped. It took her an hour to work up the courage to listen to the voicemail. In the end, it had been the exterminator – returning her call four whole days after she’d phoned him.

  Trish had sent an official email to the head of the school management board outlining what had happened and wondering if they should inform the Department of Education. Then the head of the board had phoned her and had an entirely unofficial conversation in which expletives were used and he said he knew full well she was just sharing the blame around, making sure there was a paper trail to cover her arse, and that of course he didn’t want the department involved.

  She sat at her kitchen island stirring the long-dissolved sugar into her coffee and staring out into her beautifully landscaped garden. Trish clanged the spoon against the china cup. She would give it a week before she allowed herself to relax.

  ‘Mum?’

  She stopped stirring. Emily, her youngest daughter, had appeared in the kitchen, still wearing her uniform. A ladder was starting to form in her right sleeve. ‘Did you check if Laura’s old school jumper was up in her wardrobe?’

  ‘This is Laura’s,’ said Emily, opening the fridge. ‘Where’s Dad? I’m starving.’

  ‘He’s gone to get pork chops.’

  ‘Did I tell you I’m considering becoming a vegetarian?’ asked Emily idly, closing the fridge and moving on to the cupboards.

  ‘You didn’t, no.’ There was no chance of Emily becoming a vegetarian; the child hated almost every vegetable. ‘How’s school going?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Just fine? Nothing to report. No annoying teachers . . . no annoying boys?’

  Emily looked at her with mild contempt. ‘I’m not ten, Mum. I actually like boys now?’

  ‘No gossip whirling around the locker room? No rumours flying about?’

  Emily closed the cupboard and brought a hand to her hip. ‘Mum, you know you’re a double pain, right? As in, a pain in the side and a pane of glass. I can see right through you. I told you before: I’m not your spy. It’s hard enough having the principal as your mum, without everyone thinking I’m a rat too.’

  ‘I was just—’

  ‘Nope!’

  The bell went and Emily sauntered out of the kitchen, right past the front door and up the stairs, as if that ringing sound had nothing to do with her. Trish sighed loudly as she got down from her stool and went to let her husband in.

  On the plus side, she thought as she reached for the latch, she was almost positive Emily hadn’t a clue what she’d been attempting to get at.

  TEN

  Though ‘Martha Rigby’ didn’t lead to much, the first result for ‘Abbyvale Lodge’ was an article from the Limerick Leader dated 9 November 2018 – three months ago.

  Bravery Medal for Abbyvale Tiger Raid ‘Hero’

  Edie opened it and read the first couple of paragraphs.

  ‘Oh gosh,’ she whispered, looking up from the computer and instinctively glancing over her shoulder. She felt like a child pilfering from the biscuit jar. She shouldn’t be doing this. She tried to summon up the shame she knew she’d feel later, but it was no good; curiosity overrode everything else.

  She kept reading. Her hand inched closer to her mouth as she made her way through the article and connected the people being written about with the ones who’d just moved in across the road.

  ‘Oh gosh, oh gosh.’

  Done, she sat there dumbfounded. Then she pressed ‘print’. ‘Poor Martha Rigby,’ she whispered to herself as she waited for the printer to kick noisily into action. But it didn’t. She pressed ‘print’ again. Still nothing. Again, and again, and again, until finally it spluttered into action and shunted out five copies of the newspaper article.

  Edie threw the first four in the bin and carried the fifth copy through to the kitchen. She made herself a decaffeinated coffee – they would be getting down to business tomorrow, after all – and pulled out the notebook she used when listening to true-crime podcasts or watching Netflix documentaries and trying to guess the culprit before it was revealed.

  She clicked her pen into action, picked up the article and, slowly this time, read it again.

  Bravery Medal for Abbyvale Tiger Raid ‘Hero’

  Reporter: Cathal McMahon

  An Abbyvale resident has been awarded a medal for outstanding bravery from the city’s lord mayor after thwarting an attempted tiger raid at his home on Thursday last.

  Mr Robert Costello, of Abbyvale Lodge, Co. Limerick, was awarded the medal at a private ceremony this week. His wife and daughters were not in attendance and are believed to be recovering from the ordeal. Mr Costello, a manager at the Limerick City branch of Bank of Ireland, thanked Eoghan Ó Mhurchú, the Limerick City lord mayor, and asked for the privacy of his family to be respected at this time.

  A so-called ‘tiger raid’ – where an employee is forced to retrieve company money for a gang of thieves while his family is held hostage – was attempted on the morning of 1 November at Mr Costello’s home. An armed gang of five men entered the premises at 7.30 a.m. wearing balaclavas and carrying crowbars. They ordered Mr Costello, his wife and their two children into the living room where they were tied to the radiators. Garda sources told the Limerick Leader that the gang threatened to turn on the central heating if any of the family misbehaved.

  At 8.30 a.m., Mr Costello, who has worked at the Limerick bank branch for 17 years, was ordered to go to his place of work and remove the contents of the safe. He was told his family would be held hostage by the gang members while he was gone. He was ordered to go about his morning as normal and return home with the cash at lunchtime, at which point his family would be released. The gang informed Mr Costello that his Volkswagen station wagon had been fitted with a GPS tracker and that a sixth gang member would follow his vehicle. They threatened to do serious harm to his family if he delineated from the instructed path.

  However, the brave Mr Costello did not do as the gang said. Several minutes into the thirty-minute d
rive from his home to the Bank of Ireland branch, he noticed the vehicle that had been shadowing him had disappeared. When he arrived at the bank, Mr Costello raised the alarm with local guards.

  Armed detectives from Limerick City’s organised crime branch arrived at Abbyvale Lodge shortly after 11 a.m. While the captors managed to escape through the fields to the rear of Mr Costello’s home, Gardaí are following a definite line of inquiry and have drawn up a shortlist of suspects. Mr Costello’s wife and daughters were unharmed.

  Gardaí believe the gang had Mr Costello’s home under surveillance for two months before the attempted robbery. They have appealed for any witnesses who saw a silver Renault Laguna with a Dublin registration plate in the area during that time, and particularly on the night of 31 October and morning of 1 November.

  ‘There is nothing as frightening as our loved ones being placed in the path of serious harm, and few people would have blamed Robert Costello if he had complied with the demands of these cowardly criminals. Yet his bravery in the face of such anguish has made not just his family proud, but his city and county too,’ said Mr Ó Mhurchú, as he awarded the medal for outstanding bravery.

  ‘Robert Costello is a Limerick hero and he symbolises the best of our great city. His actions send out a message. They tell thugs and gangs that they do not own us, and we are not afraid. Robert’s actions also send a message to international enterprises seeking to establish a base in Europe. They say: “Come on in to Limerick – the home of highly trained graduates, competitive commercial rents and an exceedingly loyal workforce!’

  While the Abbyvale raid was not successful, it was the seventh such incident in the county this year, the highest number recorded since the recession.

  A postmaster in Adare and a bookmaker in Limerick City were the two most recent targets. In both cases, the perpetrators escaped with large sums of cash. Gardaí have not yet said if they believe the incidents are connected.

  *** Pine Road Poker ***

  Bernie:

  We need to set a date for this year’s pre-Easter street party. I am suggesting Saturday 6 April. I am giving the keynote speech at a parenting conference the w/end of April 13/14 so can’t do then. Rgds, B W-R

  Ruby:

  My favourite time of the year. Oh, how I love to get drunk and disorderly in public . . .

  Carmel:

  Mick got me a 1980s cookbook for my birthday. Hence I’ll be making fondue this year.

  Ruby:

  I’ll be drinking gin.

  Fiona:

  Yum! XXX

  (Fondue. Not gin. XXX)

  Bernie:

  Sylvie’s actually allergic to cheese.

  Carmel:

  I’ll make sure not to throw her in it, so.

  (BTW, Fiona – like the new wheels.)

  Ruby:

  Ellen:

  Ruby – Sylvie’s been through a lot, with the dog bite and everything. As has Bernie. I hardly think that’s appropriate.

  Fiona:

  Will you make your famous walnut cake again, Rita Ann??? XXX

  (Thanks, Carmel! Insurance covered them, thank God!!)

  Rita Ann:

  I’m making nothing until my newspapers are returned.

  ELEVEN

  Robin stood at the bar, trying and failing to catch the barmaid’s eye. On the small stage behind her, a duetting couple were reaching for the high notes on ‘Summer Nights’. She’d felt sorry for Edie that day in the retail park, so eager for friends that she was desperately courting women twice her age, so she’d invited her out. She was happy to have an excuse to go for a couple of drinks. But it had been a while since she’d been to the Fern and she hadn’t realised Sunday night was karaoke night.

  The barmaid continued to ignore her. She looked over to Edie who waved brightly. Robin gave her a half smile and winced as the duetters summited the crescendo.

  ‘Summer Ni-hi-heights!!!!’

  ‘Excuse—’

  But the barmaid strode on towards a customer at the far end of the counter.

  Barmen never ignored Robin, but barwomen seemed to go out of their way to leave her parched.

  She kept her eyes trained on the woman as she pulled a pint of Guinness. She willed her to look up, to feel the stare on the crown of her head, to know Robin was next.

  The woman’s head snapped up. Her eyes flickered in Robin’s direction. Bingo.

  She was putting the head on the pint but Robin didn’t break eye contact. She repeated the order in her head until it took on a hypnotic rhythm. It was on the tip of her tongue, ready to hop. A gin and tonic and a chardonnay, a gin and tonic and a chardon-nay.

  She delivered the pint and returned to Robin’s end. ‘A gin—’

  ‘Guinness, please! And a red wine. Rioja, if you’ve got it.’

  Robin whipped her head around to see a man about half a foot away, leaning on the polished counter. He smiled at Robin – not a gloating smile or an apologetic one, but worse. His smile, confidently displayed below an equally self-assured and inadvisable moustache, was commiserative, as if they’d both had equal claim to the next order and it could as easily, and as justly, have gone either way. And who pronounced ‘Rioja’ like that? He sounded like he had a hair caught in his throat. The man’s skin was so pale as to be almost translucent. Nobody was going to be fooled into mistaking him for a Spaniard.

  Robin glared at him and rolled her eyes as the barmaid took his money and waited for the Guinness to settle before adding the head.

  Of course, that was the one time the barmaid did look in her direction and she thought Robin was rolling her eyes at her so when she finally, reluctantly, took her order, she spilled half the gin measure over the side of the glass and made no effort to fix it.

  ‘Right. Thanks,’ Robin muttered, pouring the tonic in after it and carrying the two glasses over to their table. The European wannabe disappeared into the lounge area next door, whistling along as an inebriated man in his forties murdered Bon Jovi.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Edie, her eyes widening in gratitude as she took the glass. They widened every time she wanted to stress a point, which seemed to be all the time. They were more like quotation marks, really; when you saw them expanding, you knew words were about to follow. ‘I’m not supposed to be drinking at the moment because I’m trying to get pregnant, as you know.’

  Robin nodded politely. Did Edie actually think conception was good chitchat material?

  ‘But me and Daniel got into a big argument on Friday,’ she continued, ‘when I was ovulating, of course, and it killed the mood entirely.’ Edie took a gulp of wine and made an explosion gesture. ‘Another month gone.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Robin, who had no idea how it must feel to mean to get pregnant. ‘I guess there’s always next month?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ agreed Edie, blushing slightly. ‘It’s not a big deal. At all, like. We’ll just try next month. You know what they say: getting pregnant is great, but trying is even better.’

  Edie flashed her a full-wattage smile, though it didn’t look entirely genuine.

  ‘Oh!’ she shouted suddenly. ‘I have something to show you.’

  Robin caught the table as Edie reached under and almost sent it, and their drinks, flying. When she emerged, she was holding two sheets of paper. ‘Here.’ She handed them over but just as Robin was about to start reading, she slapped her palm down on them.

  ‘First,’ she said, eyes popping, ‘let me just say that I don’t normally go snooping on my neighbours. Okay? But when Martha told us about the burglary, and then I saw her old address on a magazine on her hall table, my curiosity just sort of got the better of me. I love mysteries, you see; I’m addicted to them really and I’m good at solving them – ask Daniel. When we’re watching Law and Order, I almost always guess the ending. So anyway, I put the address into Google and I know I shouldn’t have but I did, and, well . . . yeah.’

  Slowly she drew back her hand and bit her lip.

  Robin look
ed down at the pages. It was a printout of a newspaper article. ‘The Limerick Leader?’

  Edie nodded quickly.

  She read slowly, squinting in the dim light and angling the pages towards the fluorescent bulbs at the bar. It was an article about a tiger raid at a home in Limerick. Martha’s home, she presumed. Martha and her girls must be the wife and daughters. A gang of men had held them hostage while her husband was sent to work to steal money. Robin came to ‘tied to the radiators’ and looked up.

  ‘Keep reading.’

  Robert Costello, Martha’s husband, had thwarted the plan. He had alerted the guards. Gardai believed their home had been under surveillance for two months.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said when she’d finished, laying the pages back on the table.

  Edie stared back over the rim of her wine glass.

  ‘At least nobody was hurt, right?’ said Robin. ‘I’m not surprised they moved. Have you met the husband yet? Robert? I saw him through the window once. God, wow. Quite the hero.’

  Edie nodded empathically as she took another mouthful of wine. ‘She must be very proud of him. Poor Martha. Can you imagine? I can totally understand why she’d have to get out of that house. It says here they were following a definite line of inquiry. That usually means they know who did it, but it’s more than three months and there haven’t been any arrests.’

  ‘How do you know there haven’t been any arrests? Are there follow-up articles?’

  Edie shook her head. ‘I couldn’t find any so . . .’ She dropped her voice to a half-whisper. ‘I rang the garda press office.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I telephoned the garda press office.’

  ‘No, I heard you.’ They were between karaoke songs. ‘But what do you mean you rang them? Isn’t that only for journalists and media types? I thought you were a receptionist.’

  ‘Receptionist-slash-supervisor,’ Edie corrected her, ‘as of this week.’