‘Here you go. Everything you need to know is on here.’
Sixteen years ago
Betsy
I like looking at the pictures on my wall. Dod let me hang the pictures with something called Blu Tack. They are pictures from the magazines he buys me. Some pictures are of girls. Some pictures are of boys. I like the picture of a girl called Christina Aguilera the most. She looks pretty. She has yellow hair and orange skin. I put that picture over my bed. I look at it when I wake up in the morning and then look at it before Dod puts the light out at night and I have to go asleep. My bed is nice. I remember the first night I slept here. I only slept on a small bed with a cushion and a blanket. It was really cold. I cried all that night. I don’t cry so much anymore. Sometimes if I can picture Mummy and Daddy in my head and they almost become real I will cry. But it’s hard for me to picture them as if they are real anymore. When I close my eyes I want to see them. I want them to become real. But it is not easy. Most times when I close my eyes I see the people who I read about in my books. Dod brings me lots of magazines and books.
I have fourteen books now. I counted them yesterday. One book I have teached me how to count. One book teached me all about shapes. One book teached me all about the farm. One book teached me all about the park. I used to go to a park with Mummy and Daddy. It had swings and a slide in it. Just like the park in my book. But I haven’t been to a park since I got here. I haven’t been outside at all. Haven’t been out of the house. Haven’t been out of this room. I did go up the steps once when Dod left the door open but when I got in to another room he just rushed me back down the steps. It was bright up there.
Sometimes people come to Dod’s house. He says I have to be very quiet when they come. He says if I’m not quiet he will hurt me real bad. So I just read my books. Sometimes Dod reads them to me. He hugs me on the bed and puts his fingers in my hair and reads to me. I like that. Sometimes I am scared of him. Sometimes he is really nice. I always know when he is coming. There is a small light that I can see under the door. And when he comes to the door the light goes away a bit. It’s gone away now. He’s coming.
‘Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Betsy.
Happy birthday to you.’
He has a cake and there are light sticks on it. He brings it over to my bed. Then he sits on the bed and smiles at me. He is being nice today.
‘Blow out the candles.’
I look at him.
‘What is candles?’
He makes a blow on the light sticks and the light almost goes away.
‘Go on, blow.’
I do the same. I blow really strong and two of the lights go out. Then I do it again and the other three go out.
‘Happy birthday, Betsy.’ He kisses me on the cheek and then puts the big cake on the bed. I read the cake. It says ‘Betsy’. And then a big number five. Dod walks back up the steps and then comes back down carrying a box.
‘Am I five?’
‘Yes, Betsy. You are five today. It’s your birthday.’
‘Am I a big girl now?’
‘Yes, Betsy. You are a big girl now.’
‘Does it mean I don’t have to hold Mummy and Daddy’s hands anymore?
Dod doesn’t say anything. He just hands me the box. It has red paper all over it. I should be happy. But I am thinking about holding Mummy and Daddy’s hands instead. I told them before that I didn’t like holding their hands. But I want to be holding their hands now.
‘Open it.’
I look at Dod.
‘Rip the paper off… here, let me help you.’
Dod begins to rip the red paper and then I help him. The box has pictures of a slide on it. It is a yellow slide. With a blue ladder. Dod is smiling. He must really like this slide. I smile too.
‘A slide?’
‘Yes. A slide that you can have in here. You can pretend it is like being in the park in your book.’
Dod pulls the box open and then takes out the big yellow slidey bit. Then he takes out the blue ladder bit and gets down on the stone floor. He tries to put them together so I can climb up the three blue steps and slide down the yellow slide. I should be looking at him and being really happy. But I am looking up at the door. Dod has left it open.
‘Don’t look up there, Betsy.’
I look back at Dod. He is not smiling anymore. He is just trying to put the slide together. Maybe I should be happy that it is my birthday and Dod bought me a cake and a slide. But I am not happy. I am thinking about Mummy and Daddy. I am thinking about what presents they would get me for my birthday.
‘Ah for fuck sake!’ Dod seems really angry. He throws one of the blue steps against the wall. ‘My fucking thumb.’ He kicks the slidey part. ‘Stop fucking looking up there. Didn’t I tell you, Betsy? Never look up those steps when the door is open. You little shit.’
Dod picks me up and throws me on to the bed. The cake falls off.
‘I’ll hurt you, Betsy. You do as I say.’
Dod puts his thumb in his mouth and sucks it. Then he turns around and runs up the steps really fast and closes the door. It gets all dark again. I put my hands all around the bed until I find Bozy. Then I lie back under the covers with Bozy and we hug each other. This is what I do when Dod is angry. Hug Bozy. Bozy is my best friend. When we are scared, we sing.
‘Twinkle, twinkle little star…’
10:50
Lenny
Lenny stabs at the button. Six times. As if it’s going to make the lift come any sooner. He doesn’t eyeball the stairs behind him this time. He just waits; transfixed on the sheet of paper he’s just unfolded. Gordon rushed him out of the ward; told him to concentrate on the note he’d written and to call him when he needed to ask any questions.
Suspects
Alan Keating. Keating is a well-known criminal, nicknamed The Boss in the newspapers. I had some dealings with him before Betsy went missing. Underhand dealings. Illegal. I’m sure he had something to do with Betsy’s disappearance. But Keating keeps his hands clean. Knows he is always being watched by the cops. He’s now living up in Rathcoole. His seventh house in the last seventeen years. He has a sidekick freak who does all the dirty work for him…
* * *
Barry Ward. Keating’s sidekick freak. I think he was a traveller. Certainly sounds like one. Would do anything for Keating – including killing people for him. He’s more than capable of kidnapping a four-year-old. I’ve no doubt about that. He’s a scumbag. Lives in Drimnagh still. Be careful with him.
* * *
Jake Dewey. Slippery fucker. Thinks he’s ex IRA – but he’s not. He’s deluded. Lies for a living. Came into my wife’s life just as Betsy went missing. Never trusted him. Cops sounded him out but didn’t dig far enough. Has a restraining order against me, so I can’t go near him. Need you to dig deep today.
* * *
You make an impact today, Lenny, my house is yours. This is literally a million euro job for you if you get it right.
Lenny takes a deep inhale as the lift door pings opens into the hospital lobby. He hadn’t even realised he had gotten into the lift. Then he paces out the door, over the zebra crossing and towards the car park. He stares upwards just before he enters the archway, after the first drop of what looks like many today drips onto his shoulder. The clouds turned from off-white to dark grey in the fifteen minutes Lenny had been inside the hospital.
‘The fucking Boss,’ Lenny whispers to himself as he slides his parking ticket into the machine. He’s lost in thought as he waves his debit card over the reader, not even noticing that he’s paying ten euro for leaving his car here for just a quarter of an hour. If he noticed, he’d be furious. Ten euro can go a long way in the Moon household. Goose pimples begin to bubble up on his arms; and not because the temperature has dropped. He smiles to himself as he paces up the steps and towards his car.
‘Fuck it!’ he says as he swings his legs inside. ‘This is
why you became a private investigator, Lenny boy.’
He turns the key in the ignition only to be met by a loud hissing of white noise. The radio doesn’t work in here. He reaches for the standby button, knocks it off. Then he stares at his own eyeballs in the rear-view mirror and winks to himself.
‘You can do this.’
His orange Nissan Micra pulls out of the car park and over the speed bumps. It’s a 2005 Micra Lenny has. He can’t afford anything more modern. With the temperature dropping, and the car heaters not working, Lenny flicks the collar of his yellow puffer jacket up to cover his bare neck, then reaches for his Sherpa hat and pulls it on. A small part of him – the conservative, weak side of him – is beginning to wish he was back in his pokey office, playing Solitaire, waiting on one of the insurance companies to ring him with another boring job. But another part of him – the adventurous life-is-too-short side that he used to be filled with until he married Sally – is excited about what lies in store. He became a private investigator because he wanted to solve crimes. And it’s pretty impossible to solve crimes if you don’t deal with criminals. Though, he must admit, criminals don’t come more notorious in Dublin than Alan Keating. The whole of the country knows Keating’s the head of one of the biggest crime gangs in Dublin – but the cops can’t do anything about it. He keeps his nose too clean; controls his men from the comfort of his own homes.
Lenny knows titbits about Keating – like most people in Ireland do. It’s no secret Keating was involved in the attempted murder of crime journalist Frank Keville back in 2003. Keville was shot in the back outside his child’s classroom during a routine school pick up one Friday afternoon. The Guards still haven’t found the man who pulled the trigger, but they know the instruction came from Keating. They just can’t prove it. Keating was on holiday in Portugal when Keville was shot. He always hid himself well. It was actually Keville who first coined the nickname ‘The Boss’ for Keating. He was obsessed with Keating; wrote about him at least once a month in his weekly column for the Irish News of the World.
Lenny squelches up his mouth, then sucks his teeth. While he’s aware just how dangerous Keating can be; he can’t see a reason why he would have abducted Betsy without there being financial gain for him and his gang. It doesn’t make sense. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel as questions whizz around his mind.
‘Where’ll I even start?’ he says, eyeballing himself in the mirror again.
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone and when the traffic halts his progress, he presses at buttons on his cheap mobile phone and goes into his call history, straight to the last dialled number. Lenny can’t quite afford a hands free kit for his car, but he’s mastered the art of gripping the phone between his thighs with the phone’s loud speaker turned on. A horn beeps from behind just as the tone begins to ring and Lenny steps on the accelerator and pulls off with his wheels spinning.
‘Hello.’
‘Gordon, it’s Lenny Moon.’
‘Good. Where are you now?’
‘I’m on the N7. Heading to Rathcoole to see if I can have words with Alan Keating. You wrote on the note ‘Peyton Avenue’ – where is that exactly?’
‘It’s up off the village, a left turn before The Baurnafea House pub. You can’t miss the estate.’
‘Estate? What number does he live in?’
‘I have that information at home. I can’t think of it. You’ll have to ask somebody when you get there. I think it’s on the second row of houses.’
Lenny rolls his eyes, then blinks them. The surreality of the whole job begins to consume him.
I’m off to question The fuckin’ Boss about the Betsy Blake disappearance.
Lenny stares at his eyes again in the rear-view mirror as he pulls off the N7 at the Rathcoole exit.
‘Lenny,’ Gordon says, startling him back to the call.
‘Yeah.’
‘What are you gonna ask him?’
Lenny blows out his cheeks.
‘I’ll just start off as if I’m interviewing him for a routine investigation. I certainly won’t be accusatory. I’ll just say that as an associate of Gordon Blake at the time I’d just like to ask you a few questions.’
‘Lenny…’ Gordon says, then pauses. ‘Ye have to tell him I’m dying. We used to be mates once; ask him… please, if he knows anything about Betsy. Anything at all. I don’t have much time. No pussy-footing around. If you’re happy with one-thousand for your day’s work, fine, pussy-foot. But if you want serious money – and I mean if you want to become almost a millionaire in the next few hours – you gotta get me some answers. Answers I’ve never heard before. Please. I’m almost convinced that fucker has something to do with Betsy’s disappearance. He’s gotta know something. I’m begging you to figure it out!’
‘Hang on, Gordon.’
Lenny scratches at the stubble under his chin, then pulls into a parking spot outside a bungalow at the entrance to Rathcoole Village.
‘You wrote on the note that you had illegal dealings with Keating. You’re gonna have to give me the details.’
Lenny hears the sigh on the other end of the line.
‘I was his accountant. He practically forced me to handle his books; ran all his dealings through me. In simple terms I cooked his books… what can I say? I was doing it for about five years. I was probably a bit afraid of the fucker… but I… y’know… I was earning great money doing it and then… And then we just had a falling out. He kept wanting to push it too far… I was wary of getting caught. At one point I told him ‘no’. And he… he threatened me.’
‘Threatened you how?’
‘Y’know… he just held me up against the wall, said I’d regret fucking with him.’
‘Did he ever threaten Betsy?’
The line goes silent. Then Lenny hears a woman’s voice in the background.
Gordon’s tone turns different. More mature. More pronounced.
‘Sure, Elaine. That is no problem. Whatever if it is you need to do, my love… Lenny,’ he says, returning to the call. ‘I’ll have to ring you back. A nurse is here to run some tests.’
Lenny stares at the phone in his hand after Gordon’s hung up.
‘What the fuck am I doing?’ he says. He laughs after he says it too, then shakes his head.
I’m off to question The fuckin Boss about the Betsy Blake disappearance.
The million pound house on South Circular Road crosses his mind. Not because he’s dreaming about living in it – nor is he even considering the possibility – but because it’s added to the craziness of his morning. He then runs back through the moment he held Gordon’s medical chart in the ward; just to remove the possibility of being bullshitted to. He’s been pranked well before, but this’d be some world-class award-winning pranking. He picks the phone up from his lap and presses in to his call history before pressing at the button beside ‘home’. It was at moments like this, when he had to ring Sally to check something on the internet, that Lenny wished he had a smart phone.
‘Hello.’
‘Sweetie, sorry to bother you, But could you just check the online banking? I wanna see if money was put in this morning. Somebody was supposed to pay me today for a job.’
Sally hid her sigh well, but Lenny still caught a hint of it. It didn’t bother him. He wouldn’t have expected anything less. The fact that her sigh was so subtle was actually a sign that she was having a good day. The slight humming of a tune from her lips while she typed away at the home computer confirmed it. Today was a good day for Sally Moon. Normally that’d be enough to make Lenny content, but he’s still staring down into his lap, scratching at his bald head with confusion when Sally sucks her lips; signalling she’s about to talk.
‘Yep. One thousand euro exactly. About half an hour ago. Who’s that from – that’s a big payment?’
‘Oh a client I did a couple of jobs for a while back. He’s owed me that for quite a while.’
‘Gordon Blake?’
‘Yeah – he’s a guy I met through one of the insurance companies… asked me to look into a number of old clients of his he thought was scamming from them. I had to look into each of them. Turned out to be very little in it, but eh… yeah, he said he’d pay today, so I can scratch that off my list.’
Lenny wasn’t concerned Sally would take the conversation much further. She’d been bored by his job for quite some time. Nothing exciting ever happen to her husband.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Nice few quid. We need that coming up to Christmas. How is your—’
‘I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m gonna have to go. I got a spate of calls from insurance companies this morning and… eh… give me a call at, y’know, the usual time. Love you.’
Lenny hung up. It was unusual he’d hang up on Sally, but her feelings, unusually, aren’t at the forefront his mind right now.
‘A grand,’ he says to himself. He’s chewing on the edge of his rubber mobile phone cover when it buzzes in his hand.
‘Yes love.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Oh sorry. Eh… Lenny Moon – Private Investigator.’
‘Lenny… it’s Gloria Proudfoot, Excel Insurance.’
‘Gloria – how are you? Sorry… miles away.’
‘Listen, I have a job for you. A Delaney Griffith. Claims she injured her back in a car crash back in August. But we’ve just had somebody tell us she’s off down the gym lifting weights this morning. Can you get out to Coolock now, get confirmation and a photograph for us?’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah.’
Lenny brings the phone back towards his mouth to bite on the edge of his rubber case.
He normally jumps on anything an insurance company offers him. In fact he lives for it. But he never had the option of comparing the taking of a standard photograph of somebody in a gym over the interviewing of Dublin’s biggest gangster about the most intriguing missing persons case to ever hit Ireland.
Whatever Happened to Betsy Blake? Page 4