Then Helen stops, bends over slightly and holds her hands to her knees.
‘Sorry, Charlie, I’m moving too fast for a woman of my age.’ She looks up at him, still bent in her own unique way, and then sucks a large breath in through her nostrils. ‘How old you reckon I am?’
Charlie’s eyes widen a little. He pivots on his heel, swaying one way, then the other.
‘Jee, I don’t know…’ he says before blowing out his cheeks. ‘Fifty-odd, mid fifties?’
‘Ha,’ Helen shouts out, almost too loudly. ‘Nope. Sixty-three. Can you believe that?’
Charlie can believe it. He politely aimed low with his estimation. Her face looks every inch the face of somebody in their sixties, perhaps even in their late sixties. There are heavy lines around her mouth, two rows of bags under each eye.
‘Really? Wow. You don’t look it. And your… eh… movement, sure, Jaysus, I have to run to keep up with ye,’ he says.
‘Well, you don’t have to run now, do you? I’ve stopped. Gimme a second to grab my breath.’
Charlie swallows, then pivots again on his heels as he waits on Helen to stand back up.
‘I won’t move so fast this time,’ she says, holding out a hand to Charlie. He grabs it, allows his weight to help Helen to straighten up.
‘People always say I look younger. I think it’s the hair.’
Charlie swallows again, then stares at the back of her hair as she walks on. He still hasn’t worked out what colour it’s supposed to be.
‘Yeah… it’s cool,’ he says. ‘Bet you’re a really cool grandmother.’
Helen balks a little, but keeps walking.
‘Never got a chance to be a grandmother,’ she says.
A cringe runs down Charlie’s spine. He slaps himself in the forehead, then sets off after Helen, trotting again to keep up with her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I eh… I want you to know. I am just as determined as you are to find these two girls before they do the wrong thing. We’ll save their lives, okay? We’ll save their lives in Scott’s memory.’
Helen stops walking to glance back at Charlie.
‘Thank you,’ she says. Then she paces again, forgetting that she said she’d slow down.
‘Never in a million years would I have thought he’d do it. I mean suicide… Scott? And every parent I’ve talked to since, who has had a child who has done the same thing, they say exactly that. Not in a million years could they have even guessed their child would end it all. I bet… I bet you any money that the parents of these two girls haven’t one darn clue what’s going on tonight.’
Charlie stretches out his arm and gently pats Helen between her shoulder blades as he catches right up to her.
‘You never get over it, y’know? Well, I didn’t anyway,’ she says.
Then she stops walking again and pinches the top of her nose.
Charlie pivots on his heels, then winces a little before wrapping his two arms around her.
Neither of them say anything as he hugs her in the middle of the dark laneway. Then Helen swipes her nose with the sleeve of her leather coat, pushes Charlie gently away and walks on.
‘C’mon, let’s get to this Headteacher. What time’s it now?’
Charlie reaches for his phone and stabs at the screen so the light comes on.
‘Just gone quarter-past nine,’ he says.
‘Fuck sake. Not that long to go. Right….’ Helen says, blinking her eyes as she continues to walk. ‘If we can get a name for this boy from this Headteacher, we’ll be fine. We can get to him, get the names of the girls out of him, track them down. If he knows they are gonna kill themselves, then he’ll likely know where they’re planning on doing it. We’re going to stop them from doing what they want to do.’
Charlie nods his head, though his instinct is telling him Helen’s plan doesn’t sound particularly genius. There are no guarantees to any part of what she’s just said. He squelches up his face, then decides to talk.
‘But, Helen, why didn’t he leave all that information… the girls’ names and everything else… why didn’t he share everything he knew when he made the calls?’
Helen twists her head to face Charlie, still striding forward, then shrugs her shoulder.
‘It’s happened thousands of times before, people ringing in to the station and offering up tiny bits of information.’
She notices Charlie’s face contort.
‘It does, Charlie. Happens all the time. I don’t know whether these guys just like to get their kicks from it… or… I don’t know. He’s a young kid. He’s probably frightened. Maybe he’s the reason they’re planning on killing themselves… there might be a lot of guilt on his part, that’s why he rang it in. And perhaps he’s too frightened that it’ll all come back on him.’ She stops walking and holds a hand out towards Charlie. ‘Listen; the psychologist will have a field day with this boy after we bring him in. But we’re not the psychologists are we? Our job is to investigate and act. And that’s what we’ll do.’
Charlie swallows again, then nods his head. And they both walk on, past the last of the bush that squeezed them into the laneway and out into an open road.
‘Where the fuck is this pub?’ Helen says, spinning around, her palms face up.
Charlie takes a few steps forward and peers around the bush.
‘Here it is,’ he says.
The pub looks like a large cottage house, topped off with a hay-brush rooftop.
‘Jaysus, never knew there was a pub around this neck of the woods,’ Helen says before swiping some of the bush away and forcing her way through a gap.
She puffs out her cheeks as they cross the small car park and towards a lit open porch.
‘Bar or lounge?’ Charlie asks.
‘Locals always drink in the bar,’ Helen says, pulling at the door to their left. She steps aside, allowing Charlie to enter first.
The murmuring of chatter she heard as she opened the door immediately stops.
‘We are looking to talk to Brother Fitzpatrick,’ she says to the dozen people sitting at low tables.
Heads pivot around the room.
‘He was here a minute ago, hardly did a bleedin’ runner did he?’ an elderly man says.
A mumble of laughter sounds out before the man behind the bar, drying a pint glass with a stained tea towel, cocks his head at Helen.
‘He’s in the Gents, Guards. Be out in a minute.’
Helen and Charlie take one step backwards and then both clasp their hands in front of themselves in unison as they stand still. Nobody’s eyes divert from them and only the hum of a distant hand dryer creates any sound at all.
‘Can I get yis a drink?’ the barman, still drying the same pint glass, asks.
Helen waves a ‘no’ at him, almost managing a smile in the process.
The sound of a door creaking turns everybody’s heads in the opposite direction. Then the door with ‘Gents’ written on it swings open and a bearded man limps into the bar; suddenly stopping upon noticing all faces staring at him. Then he spots the two strangers — one in a Garda uniform — and he staggers backwards, resting his shoulder blades against the wall.
‘You’re in trouble, Brother,’ one man calls out. Most of the other patrons laugh. But their laughter sounds cautious, non-committal.
‘Brother Fitzpatrick, I assume?’ Helen asks, taking a stride forward towards him, staring at the clerical collar that she can see behind thin strands of his beard.
‘Oh sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Fitzpatrick says, blessing himself.
Helen squints her eyes when she gets closer to him, can tell by his glazed look that he’s had a few too many already.
‘We eh… we need to speak with you as a matter of urgency.’
Helen points her hand towards the door behind her.
Fitzpatrick doesn’t move.
‘Unless you would eh… like us to talk to you here in front of everybody, Brother?’
‘Hold on, hold on
,’ he says, raising a palm to the air. ‘Gimme a second.’
He steadies his feet, sucks in a stuttering breath, then exhales slowly before leaning off the wall and walking, one foot in front of the other, as slowly as he can — past Helen, then past Charlie and finally out the door.
He’s leaning against the porch wall when Helen and Charlie get outside.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I eh… it’s all really innocent… it’s…’ he shrugs his shoulders.
‘What are you sorry for?’ Helen says, folding her arms.
Fitzpatrick stares at her, then eyeballs Charlie before repeatedly blinking.
‘Huh?’ he says. Helen looks back at Charlie and whispers a ‘fuck sake’.
‘What are you saying sorry for?’ Charlie asks.
‘I…. I… need to speak with a what’s-it-called? A eh… someone who eh… a legal thing?’
‘A lawyer?’ Charlie steps forward so that he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Helen.
Fitzpatrick nods his head, burping quietly as he does so, then re-steadies himself against the porch wall in an effort to rid himself of the swaying motion that’s going on inside his head.
‘How much you had to drink?’ Helen asks.
‘Eh… few pints. Just a few. I’m not driving. I just live down… see that lane way over there?’ he says, almost tripping over his own feet as he turns to point.
‘We know where you live, Brother Fitzpatrick. We’ve just called by. A neighbour said we’d find you here.’ Fitzpatrick turns back slowly. ‘Now before we tell you why we’re here, mind telling us why you feel you need a lawyer… why you are apologising to us?’
Fitzpatrick tries to focus on both faces by repeatedly blinking again.
‘I think I need a lawyer,’ he says.
Helen holds her fingers to her forehead and stares down at her red Converse trainers.
‘We don’t have time for a lawyer,’ she says, ‘and we don’t have time to deal with, well… whatever it is you are sorry about. We believe two of your students are in grave danger tonight and we need to track them down as quickly as possible.’
She looks up to see Fitzpatrick readjust his standing position, a hint of relief causing his brow to straighten.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Students? Which students?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Charlie says.
‘Brother, we need you to look at this image and tell us if you know who this boy is,’ Helen clicks her fingers as she’s finishing her sentence. But when she looks at Charlie, she notices he has missed his cue again. He fumbles into his pocket, grabs his phone and thumbs through the screen until he comes to the fuzzy CCTV image.
Helen takes the phone from him and stretches it towards Fitzpatrick’s face.
Fitzpatrick squints, then blinks, before moving even closer to the phone and blinking again.
‘Shurr what am I looking at here? I just see black and white,’ he says, his glazed eyes narrowing.
Helen peers around at the phone, then points her finger at the screen.
‘This, here… this boy… can you make out the face? Do you know who he is?’
Fitzpatrick blinks some more, then falters his step backwards, so that he’s leaning against the wall again.
Helen puffs out a sigh and hands the phone back to Charlie.
‘Back in a sec,’ she says. She opens the door to the bar and holds up her hand.
‘Pint of tap water, please. Cold… lots of ice.’
The barman grabs at a glass, then turns to the tap.
‘Actually, make it two glasses,’ Helen says.
‘Brother Fitzpatrick okay?’ the barman asks.
‘He will be in a minute.’
The barman shovels ice cubes into both glasses, then hands them over to Helen who mutters a ‘thanks’ before storming back outside.
‘Brother Fitzpatrick?’ she says approaching him quickly. When he looks up at her, she flings her wrist, drenching his face.
‘Sweet Jesus, Mary and—’
‘Joseph,’ Helen says, finishing his blessing for him. ‘Here’s another glass, Brother Fitzpatrick; drink it up, sober up and take another look at this image. Two of your students are in grave danger and the clock is ticking. There’s no time for messing about.’
Fitzpatrick swipes at his face, removing as much water as he can. Then he holds out his hand, takes the full pint glass from Helen and swigs on it, slowly at first, then gulping until the ice rattles back into the glass.
‘Now let’s try again, Brother,’ Helen says, clicking her fingers. Charlie reads her cue this time. ‘I need you to look closely at this image and tell me if you know the boy in it.’
Charlie stretches the phone towards Fitzpatrick who wipes at his eyebrows before inching his nose closer. Then he begins to nod his head very slowly.
‘Yeah. I know him. He’s one of ours,’ he says. ‘Tommy Smith. He has some funny nickname they all call him… can’t quite remember it. All the boys have weird nicknames. But yeah… that’s definitely him. Little Tommy Smith. He lives in one of those bungalows up at the Harold’s Cross Bridge.’
21:20
Ingrid
I push my finger into the corner of my eye to try to stop a tear from falling out.
Harriet kneels down, wraps her arms around me and I lean my ear on the top of her head, looking up at Ciara. She widens her eyes. I know she’s feeling scared; scared that I will say too much and let Harriet change my mind.
‘Boys are feckin’ eejits,’ Harriet says into my chest. She pulls away from me and looks into my eyes. ‘Honestly, don’t let this little fecker bring you down. You’re better than that.’
She’s right. I am better than that. I know I am. It’s just… nobody else does; certainly nobody at school. And nobody at home. They all treat me as if I’m a bother to them. Or I certainly feel as if I am a bother to them. The only people who have ever treated me as I should be treated are in this little bedroom right now. These two and Miss Moriarty… that’s it. One friend. One cousin. One old teacher. I realised this morning as I was lying on my bed just how sad that is.
‘Y’know what I’ve been thinking about lately?’ Harriet says, getting to her feet before she plonks down on to the bed, pushing herself back so she’s lying, her legs hanging off the edge. ‘Girls don’t need boys; women don’t need men. They just don’t understand us. Never will. Besides, what the hell do boys offer the world anyway? We’re the ones who do everything. We do all the housework, all the cooking, all the… we give birth. A man can’t give birth, can he? All he can do is offer sperm and sure d’ye know what I read in a book once? There’s loads of sperm stored in hospitals and stuff, so much so that men are useless to women. The world doesn’t need ’em anymore.’
She twists the back of her neck, so that she can look up at us. I don’t like the word sperm. It sounds horrible.
‘Lie down, girls, let me tell yis something.’
I push out my bum, then lay my back down so that I’m lying in between Harriet and Ciara; all of us gripping our hands behind our heads and staring up at the cool posters on Harriet’s ceiling. Moseley Shoals the one I’m staring at reads. Whatever the hell that means. I just know that it’s cool. It must be if Harriet likes it.
‘With me and Conor, even though it was me who dumped him, it still hurts me a lot. I’m not really sleeping that well at night; find meself thinking about him all the time. But I’ll get over it. I know I will. Because the books I read… they tell me that I don’t need a boy to make me happy. Here…’ she says, stretching her arm towards her windowsill. She grabs one of the books and then lays it on my stomach. ‘Backlash it’s called,’ she says. ‘Give it a good read. S’all about how women are going to take over the world. Feminism… ye know what that means?’
She lies back down after asking this, back in to the same position she was in seconds ago; her legs dangling, her fingers gripped behind her head.
‘About female-something?’ Ciara says, leaning
up on her elbows.
‘Yep,’ Harriet replies. ‘All about how women are better than men and that, y’know, we don’t need them. Feminism… the movement for women to become king.’
‘Cool,’ I say, before turning my face to look at Ciara. She raises an eyebrow, then shrugs her shoulder. I turn my face, so I’m staring at the posters again. ‘You’re into the coolest stuff, Harriet,’ I say. ‘Wish I could be more like you.’
Harriet laughs out through her nose.
‘No you don’t. Jaysus, I wish I was like you. Any idea how much the boys are gonna be swarming over you when you’re older? You’re gonna be a model, just like yer mam.’
Ciara sits up.
‘But sure, what’s the advantage of being pretty and getting all the men if we don’t need men?’ she says.
That’s actually a good question.
Harriet tilts her neck so she can stretch her eyes to meet ours.
‘Exactly,’ she says.
Ciara stares down at me, her eyebrow raised again. I don’t think she’s getting what Harriet is trying to say. I’m not sure I get it either.
‘Ah, you’re too intelligent for us two, Harriet,’ I say.
‘You’ll understand when you’re older. Read these kinda books. They’ll open your eyes.’ She pats the book that’s lying on my stomach.
So I pull myself up to a seating position and look at the front cover.
‘Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women… hmmm,’ I say and then I begin to flick through it. It’s a long book. Very long. And the writing is really small in it. I can’t imagine I’d ever read a book like this.
‘The first chapter is called ‘Blame it on Feminism,’ I say. ‘What’s that mean…? I thought you said feminism was a good thing?’
‘Huh?’ Harriet says, sitting up. She takes the book from me and begins to read through the chapter. ‘Ah… it’s just some women think the feminism movement goes too far.’ Then she hands me the book again and lies back down. ‘It’s a warzone out there,’ she says. ‘But the truth is, we have to be strong. Everyone has to be strong. Especially women, though. Men have ruled the world for far too long and all they want from us is food and sex.’
The Suicide Pact (The Tick-Tock Trilogy Book 3) Page 12