‘He was there with Pamela,’ Evelyn says contemptuously. Pamela steered clear of us at the disco, and Geraldine Dobson was hopping around her like a fly on shite until Aidan brought Pamela into the dark corner for himself.
Maeve is turned to the wardrobe, is ordering the clothing by colour. The wire hangers clatter together.
‘Hey. Don’t move stuff around in there. I have a system.’
‘Sorry.’ Maeve returns to sitting on the bed. ‘I think I’d better go home. I’m not well enough yet to be out.’
Evelyn and myself write out a list of all the songs we heard at the disco and resolve to buy the singles the next time we go to Galway. Evelyn gets her mother to bring her to Galway all the time, and sometimes they take me along too. The small bit of money I have from shovelling chips keeps me in trendy tops, body spray and contact lenses. ‘Where’s Maeve?’
‘I think she said she’d to go home.’ Maeve has slipped out of the room without either of us noticing.
‘Isn’t it awful funny how Maeve got glandular fever. She must have caught it off the water fountain at school,’ says Evelyn.
‘Or else she licked the monument after Johnny Grealish pissed on it,’ I say, and Evelyn cackles and slaps her thigh. No one can make Evelyn laugh like I can. I love hearing her laugh. ‘Do you think we’d be friends with Maeve if Mary wasn’t your mam’s sister?’
Evelyn cranes her neck, looking to see that the bedroom door is closed. ‘Mam wants me to keep in with Maeve to make sure she’s alright. Why do you think I have so many clothes and CDs and stuff?’
‘She’s paying you to be friends with her?’
‘Sort of. Mam said Maeve had an awful start in life. She said it was like something from Dickens.’
‘A Christmas Carol?’
‘No, you dope. More like Oliver Twist,’ she says, and after a pause she adds, ‘with drugs.’
‘Jesus.’ I don’t press for additional detail. I don’t care too much for Maeve one way or the other.
‘Maeve’s my little project. I’m going to polish her up and pull the string and set her going.’ Evelyn has her work cut out for her.
It’s all over the news. Only a few days into the New Year, and Pamela Cooney has disappeared without trace. She went out to meet Aidan by the handball alley on a Friday evening, but she never arrived. Aidan got cold standing around waiting for her, took it that he’d been stood up and made his way home. When Pamela failed to materialise at her own house, Maureen phoned the guards, and it wasn’t long before talk of the missing girl hit the streets and households, Donovan’s Bar and Angelo’s Chip Shop. Pascal said I could shut up the shop and go home, and Daddy came down to collect me.
There were guards called in from all over the county, and they walked up and down the roads and poked around in the grass. They put empty wrappers and bottle caps into see-through bags. An old man called Bertie Halligan said, ‘These are lonely roads to be on by yourself. You could be taken off them just as easy, and no one would be any the wiser.’
Desmond Duignan headed up a search party comprised of his former students, but they were only covering the same ground as the guards. He said the scene of a crime could blow away in the wind, and the guards would need all the help they could get, but within a half an hour, a senior detective instructed Desmond and his cohort to clear off. And then a rainstorm rolled in and stayed for the full week, and people were less inclined to go out and search in the wet weather.
‘You must tell the guards everything you know. Even if you think it’s not important. You must say it anyway.’ What do I have for telling the guards? Why is it all on me? I said to Mammy that I don’t know Pamela as well as she thinks, but she didn’t listen. She got on to Mary Lynch and Alma Cassidy to see if Maeve and Evelyn will be going up to the station too. Mary says Maeve is too emotional to speak, and Alma says Evelyn won’t go up unless she’s called to go up.
Jarlath Quinlan is the sergeant in Adragule. There’s so little to keep him occupied under normal circumstances that he owns and operates a small farm as well as breeding greyhounds. ‘Katie and Pamela were becoming friendly. Isn’t that right?’ Mammy says, looking over at me. I wouldn’t have got caught up with Pamela at all only for Mammy’s interference. I would have observed her from a distance, and carried on wondering about what it was like to be her, and that would have been enough.
Jarlath grunts something unintelligible. His pen isn’t working and he goes out searching for another one, and I sit looking around in the interview room. The room doubles as a kitchenette with a travel kettle and a microwave set out on a sideboard.
Jarlath returns and tests the new pen by scribbling on his jotter. He licks the ball of it and tries again. Bingo. ‘It appears that your new friend has wandered off. Do you’ve any idea where she might have gone?’
‘No.’
‘Why don’t you tell me a bit about her.’
What am I to say. She was a girl who never seemed real. A girl you couldn’t relate to. ‘There wasn’t enough going on for her down the country. I’d say she might have been bored.’
‘Bored, is it. Did she want to return to Dublin at all?’
‘I don’t know. Eventually. She said Dublin was like a different planet.’
‘Did she have friends in Dublin that she talked about? People she might have gone up to visit.’
‘No. She didn’t mention any friends in Dublin.’ She’d no friends that she ever spoke about, and I suppose I was no good of a friend to her in the end, but who says you have to be friends with people even if they want to be friends with you. Who says she was any good of a friend to me, sure. She was only alright of a friend as friends go. Still, we shouldn’t have ruined the tape. I know now that we shouldn’t have done it.
‘What kind of form would you say she was in?’
It’s a hard one to answer. I’ve to make a guess. ‘I don’t think she was in great form.’
Mammy cocks her head sideways.
‘Why was that?’
‘It was hard for her making friends and keeping them.’ I should have returned the tape to Pamela, but how could I go against Evelyn? You couldn’t go against her, but the black mark is on me now.
‘This young fella. Aidan Morley. What do you make of him? What did Pamela make of him?’
‘She thought he was alright. She was going to break up with him.’
‘Is that so.’
‘She lost interest in him. She stayed over in our house and she snuck out and met up with someone else.’ There’s not enough air in the room. I’m seeing coloured stars.
Mammy leans forward, and Jarlath too. ‘Who?’
‘She wouldn’t say who. She said it was private.’
‘A secret suitor,’ Jarlath says, looking over at Mammy. ‘Isn’t that interesting.’ He flicks over the jotter cover and leans back in his chair.
‘Is that it?’ I ask him, my voice shrill. ‘Can I go?’
‘Go on so, good girl. Off with you,’ he says jovially. ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it.’
‘That’s everything, Jarlath? You’ve no other questions?’ Mammy says, sounding surprised and flustered.
‘We’ve a fair idea of what happened. We don’t think there’s anything sinister to it.’
‘Sure, we can come back if you need us for anything else.’
‘Mammy. Come on.’ I pull her on her coat sleeve. My stomach is heaving and roiling. I’ve to get out of the dank room quick.
The rain is lashing down and beating off the windscreen. I roll down the car window and gulp in cold air.
‘Did you tell him everything?’ Mammy says. ‘Everything you could have told him.’
‘I did.’ I did, I think.
‘Wasn’t she bold leaving the house like that? Wasn’t it ill-mannered? What sort of girl is she at all.’ I press my head back against the headrest and close my eyes tightly. ‘You did the right thing telling us, Katie. You’ve done your bit. We can tell Maureen we’ve done our bit and there’
s nothing more we can do.’ She pauses for a minute. ‘You wouldn’t ever slip out of the house on us like that, would you?’
‘No.’ I can feel Mammy’s eyes are still on me. Can she see the black mark? Is it indelible, or will it ever wash away?
‘You’d better close up that window or you might get a palsy.’
There hasn’t been a customer in Angelo’s in over an hour. The black-and-white television on the wall bracket is fixed on the horseracing highlights from Leopardstown, and the remote control is missing.
I can sense a shadow falling over me and I look up to see Desmond Duignan standing at the glass counter. ‘Robert tells me you’re a friend of Pamela’s.’ His eyes are a crystalline, Rasputinesque blue, and he’s a towering six foot seven in height. He’s so tall he could reach over the counter with his long arms and lift me out from behind it. ‘Have you heard from her at all?’
‘No. I haven’t. If I heard from her I’d go straight to the guards.’ She’s gone now two full weeks. It’s frightening to think that she was here one day and gone the next. It can’t be that long ago she half stayed the night.
‘I was very fond of her. Did she ever say anything about me?’
‘No,’ I tell him, though I can’t entirely recall.
Desmond Duignan nods thoughtfully. ‘Very good. Very good.’ The fluorescent ceiling light is flickering. Spink, spink. He reaches his hand up to the ceiling and pushes the loose tube back into its casing. ‘You’d want to be careful in here on your own.’
‘It’s okay. We’ve a security camera.’
Desmond Duignan takes the camera down off the top of the television. He turns it over and shakes it, and it turns out that it’s only a hollow box with a false lens and a red light on top powered by a battery. Pascal bought the dud security camera from a travelling salesman.
‘This is an imitation. It wouldn’t be much good to you.’
‘Oh.’ I have a wave of fear that leaves me feeling weakened. ‘Would you like me to get you anything, Mr Duignan?’
‘Desmond. Des,’ he says, grimacing and rubbing his strong chin. ‘Something quick.’ He clears his throat and inhales deeply through his nose. I do up chips and a piece of cod for him and pass him the bag over the counter as Pascal is making his way in the door and him cleaning out his ear canal using a hairpin.
‘Des,’ says Pascal.
‘Pascal,’ says Des, doffing an invisible cap.
Des glances back into the shop before crossing over the street. He scans up the way and down the way, and then he folds himself into his silver Toyota car. He throws the hot paper bag onto the dash and hurriedly drives away. I don’t think there’s one ordinary person to be found in Glenbruff, but sure, the same could be said of any place.
Mammy and Daddy have advised me to leave the job in Angelo’s. The exams will be coming up in a few months’ time, and it isn’t safe to have a teenage girl working alone in a chip shop at night. You wouldn’t know what sort of an oddball would take a shine to you over his fish and chips, and it isn’t safe to be cycling around afterwards in the pitch black.
There’s a vigil for Pamela organised at the church in Saint Malachy’s Parish and we’re all let out from school to attend. There are undercover detectives present and talk that the vigil is their idea, the purpose being to pay close attention to the people in attendance, eavesdrop on conversations and keep an eye out for abnormal behaviours. The other schoolgirls weep dutifully, but neither myself nor Evelyn nor Maeve shed a tear. There’s a tense moment when Aidan enters the church, flanked by his father, Terry, and Peadar too. Heads turn and tut. Up at Saint Ambrose Boys’ College, everyone’s talking about him and eyeballing him. Pamela’s brothers, Daithí and Donnacha, shoulder him in the corridor, and they beat him up after a match because it’s something they feel the need to do. Aidan’s right eye is blackened and half shut, and Evelyn had had the idea that we’d sit next to him to show our solidarity, but when it comes to it, we stay put.
Maureen stands up on the altar wearing a stained blouse, and says a few short words in a wavering voice. ‘Pamela isn’t the least bit of trouble to us. She’s a happy, pleasant girl. If anyone knows anything, please talk to the guards. Someone must know something.’
Myself and Evelyn and Maeve make our way through Saint Malachy’s Parish in the direction of Glenbruff, and pass the boundary wall of the Cooney household. There’s a colourful display of cuddly toys, bouquets and cards, and even a figurine of a ballet dancer. Everything is sopping wet after the week’s rain. Maeve shivers to see the gaudy items resting by the wall, and then she sticks her face forward and picks up her stride. She whistles the melody to The Great Escape as we skip around the big puddles. The three of us are afraid, but we’re exhilarated too, because this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in the locality.
‘The guards are shite,’ says Evelyn with her nose in the air.
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘They’ve no arrests made. Not even one.’
‘Sure, there isn’t even a body. Where would they get evidence from?’
Evelyn watches a lot of true crime documentaries, and espouses the theory of a serial killer, a man taking and killing women all over the country. ‘Or…’ She pauses for dramatic effect. ‘It might have been someone she knew.’
We walk along for a small while, and then, with some reluctance, I say, ‘Do you think it could have been Aidan, like people are saying?’ Aidan was questioned by the guards but released without charge. It was Peadar told them Aidan was in the door at ten past seven and they watched television together for the whole evening. Aidan was able tell the guards who had been the guests on the Late Late Show.
‘Aidan’s our friend,’ Evelyn says sternly. ‘If he says he didn’t do it, then he didn’t. He’s fed up explaining himself.’
Maeve’s eyes are round, like she’s been suddenly disturbed. ‘It wasn’t Aidan,’ she says. ‘He’d never hurt anyone.’
‘I was watching a documentary on Sky Television the other night about portals to other dimensions,’ Evelyn says. ‘I’d say it’s entirely possible that she walked through a portal to another dimension, and now she can’t get back.’
I burst out laughing. ‘You’re having me on. Serial killers and portals. Whatever next.’
‘Here. There’s plenty of unexplained stuff that goes on in Glenbruff. It’s a queer old place. You should hear some of my dad’s stories.’ Dan Cassidy has a few strange stories. One of them is about a ghost dog that came along the bog road and ran right through him on a winter’s evening. Another is the story of his own father, who was lost in a field at night and became possessed by ‘the hungry grass’, a residual hunger from the Great Irish Famine that hangs like mist in lonesome places. ‘I’ll tell you who they should bring in and string up by the toes.’
‘Who?’
‘Desmond Duignan. He’s been front and centre since the news broke.’ Maeve’s mouth makes an ‘o’ shape, and Evelyn continues, ‘A killer will often infiltrate an investigation by offering to help out. They think they’ll avoid suspicion but they end up drawing attention to themselves. It’s textbook.’
There are several journalists knocking around the place and annoying people. We’re approached by a whippersnapper girl in her twenties with blonde hair and cracked lips. She introduces herself as Sheena Sheppard from the Connacht Press. A young man with a big camera and a flash on the top of it is with her. We look about instinctively, in the hope that an adult will come along to shoo her away, but there’s no one in sight. ‘Girls. What do you think happened to Pamela?’
‘We don’t know,’ I begin, and then Evelyn says, ‘She might have just wanted a change of scenery.’
‘I see you’re all walking along together. Are all the young girls travelling in groups until Pamela’s found?’
‘We’re well able to look after ourselves,’ says Evelyn haughtily. ‘We’re getting on with our lives in the same way. We won’t allow it affect us.’
‘Stop taking photographs of my cousin. Leave us alone,’ Evelyn protests. The photographer persists, and Sheena Sheppard is patting Maeve’s hair. ‘This is exploitation.’
A picture of Maeve’s crumpled face is featured in the paper the following week, with the caption: Distraught classmate of missing girl attends vigil in Roscommon.
‘Everyone loves a story with a missing girl in it. There’ll be another one next week, and the whole thing will be forgotten about,’ Evelyn says, as though she’s tired of the world and everyone in it.
‘I was told the banshee was heard in Glenbruff the night that girl disappeared,’ Daddy announces in the kitchen at home, and Mammy throws him a cross look. She doesn’t want me feeling afraid in my own hometown. Mammy and Daddy both are wary of me going out in the evenings and at the weekends, and I’m to be dropped off and collected for the time being. Evelyn can go out whenever she wants as long as she’s with Peadar. She’d throw a fit if she wasn’t allowed come and go.
‘What daft person said that?’
‘Tom Lynch said it.’
‘Arrah, Tom Lynch, my eye. He’s still leaving bread on the doorstep for the fairies.’ Tom Lynch has a hawthorn tree at the side of his house, and he swears up and down that there’s fairy activity attached to it.
‘What do you think about Aidan Morley?’ I pipe up. Aidan’s been standing by the side of the bog in the evening time and staring blankly across the horizon. The bog goes on for miles and miles, and it could be a thousand years before they’d find a person in a bog, if they’re even in there at all.
You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here Page 6