Are You Watching Me

by Sinéad Crowley

  ‘Sure, now, what’s the point of dragging up any of that oul talk? It’s a long time ago. Long before your time, anyway.’

  The smile broadened into what could only be described as a leer and Claire found her dislike for the man growing by the second.

  ‘There’s nothing I can tell you that would be any use to you.’

  Claire was sick of the bullshit. ‘Mr McBride, we’ll be the judge of that. I need you to tell us, please, why Mr Mannion left Rathoban. As much detail as you can.’

  She left ‘now’ off the end of the sentence, but it hung there in the stuffy air and, beside her, she felt Flynn’s silent approval.

  The older man sat back, giving a long, put-upon sigh.

  ‘Ah, there was trouble over at the school. You know, yourself.’

  ‘No, Mr McBride, I don’t. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll tell us.’

  McBride reached up as if to run his fingers through his hair and then patted it down instead. ‘There was trouble. Trouble with a young fella. Abuse, I suppose you’d call it these days. We hadn’t a name for it then.’ He shook his head in a gesture of regret. ‘And maybe that was half the problem!’

  ‘OK’. Claire nodded, slowly. Finally, some information. She had figured that it must have been something like that, although she needed to hear more.

  McBride fell silent again, studying his reflection in the polished wooden table.

  ‘What exactly happened?’ Flynn’s voice was level, but Claire could hear impatience in it, mirroring her own.

  ‘Stephen Millar was the lad’s name.’

  McBride folded his arms across his chest and tipped his head back, directing his words to the ceiling.

  ‘He would have been – what? Fourteen, fifteen at the time? Apparently it was going on a while before anyone noticed. Poor young fella didn’t say anything; sure, kids didn’t, back in those days. They didn’t have the courage, I suppose. Anyway. Stephen used to stay late at the school the odd time to do a bit of homework and that. He was a quiet fella; nice lad, but quiet. James gave him a lift home a few times. They lived out the same direction; sure, nobody saw anything unusual in it. It wasn’t like today. You can’t have one child and a teacher alone together in a car now, but it was different back then. And then one day the poor lad arrived home in an awful state. Said Mannion had tried to . . . Well. I don’t need to go into details.’

  The colour rose in his cheeks, but Claire leaned forward in her seat, forcing him to meet her gaze.

  ‘I’d very much appreciate it if you did, Mr McBride. We’re guards; we’ve heard it all before, trust me.’

  ‘Well, he said he tried to . . . you know . . . touch him, and that. Said that his hands were . . . Anyway.’

  The man was totally flustered now and Claire watched, fascinated, as one strand of hair broke away from the rest and waved lazily across at her.

  ‘The main thing is, anyway, he told his father straight away. Thank God. There’s many a lad that didn’t, back in those days, and, sure, that led to bigger problems. And his father marched back down to the school the next day and demanded James be sacked. No messing around, he just wanted him gone. The next I knew, James was walking out the front gate, no questions asked. I’m not sure if he even handed in his resignation. He just left. He left town the same night too, so I was told, anyway. Never appeared around here again.’

  He patted the strand of hair firmly back into place and looked from Flynn to Claire.

  ‘I was only thankful it resolved itself before anyone else got hurt.’

  Flynn frowned. ‘And did anyone go to the guards?’

  McBride shook his head. ‘No. People would have thought there was no need to, I suppose. James was gone; the matter was over. That’s how things were dealt with in those days – you know that as well as I do. People moved on. I never saw or heard from James Mannion again, anyway. No one did, around here.’

  ‘And the boy? Stephen?’

  McBride shrugged. His colour had returned to normal now, his composure all but restored. ‘I’m not sure. The family moved away a short time later. His father opened a business in England, I think. Sold the land. There’s a housing estate on it now; you can see it out the road. Lovely job they made of it too. So, now!’

  The retired councillor sat back again, a faint smile on his face.

  ‘I don’t know if that was any use to you at all.’

  It was the smile that finally shattered her composure. The former mayor was clearly a man who was used to steering conversations. Well, Claire wasn’t going to let him steer this one.

  Reaching down into her briefcase, she pulled out a handful of photographs and slid them across the table. The lacquered surface lent them speed and they made it all the way to McBride, coming to a rest gently at his elbow. He looked down and paled so quickly she suddenly wondered if she’d done the right thing.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  The older man tried to turn his head away, but his gaze was pulled inexorably back towards the photos. They were in black and white, but the damage done to James Mannion’s skull didn’t need to be in colour to have a full impact.

  ‘Jesus!’

  McBride reached out and touched the top picture tentatively. It was the response, the human response, that Claire had been looking for. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to show crime-scene photos to witnesses, especially not people – like Richie McBride – who were on the periphery of the investigation. But McBride and his hair and his Galapagoes had pissed her off and she needed to get through to him.

  Stretching out her finger, she poked the edge of one photo and kept her voice level.

  ‘You see, Mr McBride? It wasn’t a heart attack. Mr Mannion was brutally attacked – murdered. And we need to find out why.’

  Leaning forward, Claire could see more clearly the red veins that had broken out across the bridge of his nose, how he had missed several spots when shaving that morning. How his hair was indeed dyed.

  The three of them stared at each other for a moment in silence. McBride seemed to be asking himself a question. Then he looked down at the table, almost embarrassed, and muttered.

  ‘I know nothing more than I’ve told you.’

  And Councillor McBride was back chairing the meeting.

  They sat in silence for another moment, but it was clear the man had nothing else to say. Claire and Flynn gathered their notes, their bags and their coats and went through the usual routine – the handing over of the cards, the exchanging of numbers.

  ‘If you think of anything else—’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  The older man pocketed the cards without looking at them. Claire’s head ached, and it wasn’t just from the smell of the furniture polish in the stuffy room. She and Flynn had come down to learn more about James Mannion but were leaving with more questions – questions that clearly wouldn’t get answered today. She was knackered and frustrated and so many things were bugging her she didn’t know where to start. She wanted Anna, and Matt, and a cup of tea in her own tiny house. She wanted to get away from this overly polished museum with Kim Jong McBride sitting under photographs of his former glory.

  She wanted to go home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Seven-letter score! Championay, Championay!’

  Touched by Felim’s enthusiasm, Liz attempted a smile but stopped when even that slight movement caused unbearable pressure in her temples.

  ‘I haven’t lost it, have I? Eh?’

  A tall, broad-shouldered man with sharp, handsome features, Felim leaned back from the table and looked triumphantly around the room. Across from him, his opponent, a new client called Eugene, rifled through the dictionary but his frown indicated he was unable to come up with anything that would call the winning word into question. He settled for muttering to himself instead, turning and warming his hands against the radiator on the wall. A musty, cattish smell rose from his damp trousers and Liz shuddered. Watching the game had been mildly diverting but her hangove
r was still at DEFCON 2 and she was nauseous as hell.

  ‘Not feeling the best, pet?’

  Oh, no. Lost in misery, Liz hadn’t noticed Richard come into the room and, clearly unabashed by her abandonment a couple of days previously, he grabbed an empty chair and wedged himself in beside her.

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  ‘No.’

  She searched her sodden, aching brain for a more comprehensive retort but couldn’t find one. Richard leaned closer, the sharp scent of his cheap aftershave cutting through the mugginess of the under-ventilated room. Liz’s eyes sought out Tom’s but, although he too was sitting at the table, it was clear he might as well not have been in the room at all. Gazing into the middle distance, he looked as shell-shocked as Liz herself felt.

  ‘How about a shoulder rub?’

  Minty mouthwash was added to the aftershave, and, underneath, the fetid tang of rotten breath. Liz failed to repress a shudder as Richard breathed into her ear.

  ‘I haven’t had many complaints.’

  Every one of her nerve endings screamed at her to push him away, but the fog of her hangover, coupled with the knowledge that Tom would notice if she was rude, kept her pinned to her chair.

  ‘Let me in there, now, till we have a look . . .’

  Richard scraped his chair back a fraction until he was sitting directly behind her, flexed his fingers ostentatiously and then began to knead at her shoulder blades. Liz twisted in her seat, trying to evade his touch, but her chair was trapped by his. She was even more nauseous now, dizzily claustrophobic, but no one else in the room seemed to notice, or care what was going on.

  ‘Another game? Best of three, maybe?’

  Across the table, Eugene gathered the tiles towards him and put them back in their cloth bag. But Felim merely smiled, stood up and wandered away. Eugene’s face fell. They were seated at what had once been a family’s dining table, rescued years ago from a skip by Tom and given pride of place in the sitting room at Tír na nÓg. Covered with scratches, the remnants of someone else’s family life, it made Eugene look like a dejected grandfather trying to get the kids to hang on after Christmas dinner while they just wanted to get their hands on their electronic games.

  ‘Ah, go on – one of yiz will.’

  Sensing an escape route, Liz made another attempt to wriggle away from the poking, probing fingers and managed to twist her head around.

  ‘Why don’t you have a go, Richard?’

  But the silver-haired man behind her shrugged and smiled.

  ‘Not for me. I prefer my games a little more dangerous, if you know what I mean.’

  Ugh. Richard’s fingers found a particularly tender spot just below her ear and Liz moaned in pain, before realising, correctly, that he’d take the sound as an instruction to continue.

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Ah, relax, now; sure, we all need a bit of looking after.’

  Dear Lord, why was the place so packed today? It was a Tuesday, an ordinary Tuesday morning. Usually there’d be four or five men in around now, reading the paper or drinking tea. But today there was over twice that number, driven inside by the biting wind and threatened rain. Who were they, anyway? These men with nowhere to go? Had they failed in some way, to end up here? And, when it came down to it, hadn’t she failed in the same way?

  ‘Enough!’ Gathering all of her strength, she shoved her chair back from the table, narrowly avoiding Richard’s toes, and stood up.

  The noise seemed to wake Tom, who blinked and then looked across at Eugene.

  ‘Sure, I’ll give you a game, so.’ He shook the bag of letter tiles and drew it towards him.

  Liz turned away. ‘Sorry – bit of a headache . . .’

  Hurt and anger flickered across Richard’s face as she pushed past him and, after a moment, he stood up too and moved quickly towards the door. She crossed the room to where an ancient grey sofa was wedged between fireplace and wall. It was the same sofa she had slept on the first night Tom had brought her here. Or passed out on, or whatever you wanted to call it. That wouldn’t be the worst idea right now, she thought, wanly, just to lie down and stick a cushion over her head and hope sleep could make the events of the past few days go away.

  Bloody Tom, insisting she come here. Then again, it wasn’t like she had had anywhere else to go. Her boss had turned up on her doorstep that morning, after she’d failed to come to work for the second day in a row, and, when she hadn’t answered the intercom, had let himself in, anyway.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  She had a vague sense that she could accuse him of trespassing, or something, but her brain couldn’t locate the word. The shorter sentence got her message across just as well, anyway, and, before her legs gave out, she collapsed on to the sofa directly across from him and repeated it.

  ‘Leave me. The fuck. Alone.’

  ‘I didn’t break in, you know. You gave me a key, ages ago.’

  ‘Well, use it to get out again.’

  That didn’t really make sense, she realised dully, but it was the best she could come up with under pressure. She grabbed the TV remote control and turned the set up as loud as she could in the hope it would force him to leave, but after a moment she realised the noise was doing her far more damage than it was him and she turned it off and stared at him, sullenly.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You didn’t show up for work yesterday, or this morning.’

  ‘Worried, were you?’ The snarl in her voice felt good, relieved some of the tension, and she intensified it. ‘Afraid you wouldn’t get your money’s worth out of me? Tight bastard.’

  She watched him wince and that felt good too, but even as she spat out the words she was already doubting what he had said. Yesterday? Had two whole days passed, then, since she’d opened that envelope, read that note? She couldn’t be sure. OK, there had been the first evening, when she’d prised herself away from the flat long enough to find a pub and some people who could get her what she wanted. After that, though, it was harder to remember the sequence of things. Had she stayed out for long? Had a few drinks, a bit of a party? That was ringing a bell. Possibly. But what had happened then? And how had she got home? Oh, Christ; who the fuck cared? Maybe it had been two days. Maybe it had been a month. What difference did it make, anyway?

  ‘I was worried about you.’

  She lifted her head, squinted at Tom, noticed how tense he was looking and then felt the skin on her scalp contract, the need rising in her. ‘Do you have any money?’

  He sat down heavily on the sofa. ‘I was worried about you. You haven’t been answering your phone.’

  ‘Well, maybe that was because I didn’t want to talk to you.’

  The roughness in her voice hurt him – she could see that even through her own misery – and he turned away. ‘I’ll make coffee.’

  Then a great wave of need and cold and shame and desperation had washed over her; she gave a huge rolling shiver as her skin crawled.

  ‘Can you lend me twenty quid? Please, Tom, I’m in the horrors, here.’

  ‘I don’t have any money on me.’

  ‘Please . . .’

  Then she was crying free-flowing, helpless tears. Tom walked over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and, for a moment, held her tightly. Then he pushed her away again and told her they had to leave.

  He brought her straight to Tír na nÓg, asking her on the way, almost in a whisper, what had happened ‘to set her off’, as he put it. He’d nodded patiently when she said she couldn’t tell him. Not yet. To admit it would be to make it real.

  A flash of memory. A cigarette. Hands shaking, paper catching fire. She tossed the burning letter into the sink and watched black ashes float for a moment, then swirl away.

  ‘I can’t say.’

  Couldn’t, wouldn’t. Didn’t understand it. Couldn’t face thinking about it. Just wanted the words not to exist at all.

  You could be next.

  ‘Here, get this down
you.’

  Without her noticing, Felim had come back into the room and was pressing a can of Coke in her hand.

  ‘I saw you looked a bit rough earlier. I got you crisps as well.’

  She looked at the bag he had handed her. They were the dear, hand-cut kind, which must have cost him a couple of euro. The thought of eating them made her want to throw up again, but she appreciated his kindness and attempted a smile.

  ‘Ah, you’re very good, but I can’t—’

  ‘Head at you? Stomach as well? Listen to me, now; this is your only man.’ He took the can from her, pulled back the strip tab and pressed it into her hand again, steering her elbow upwards, gently moving the drink towards her lips. ‘It’ll do you good.’

  He sounded so like a father, this kindly grey-haired man in his ancient brown suit jacket, that she smiled at him and took a sip. The bubbly liquid fizzed over her tongue and ran down her throat into her poor, tortured stomach. It seemed to soothe it, a little. She took another gulp and burped. And smiled.

  Felim grinned back at her, and opened the crisps.

  ‘Careful, now. You don’t want it coming back up on you. Here – have one of these.’

  Salt and vinegar. The mixture shouldn’t have worked, but the strong chemical salty tang mixed with the cola was the most wonderful thing she could imagine. She hadn’t, she realised suddenly, eaten for two days.

  ‘It was the only thing that ever sorted me out, back in the day.’

  ‘Right. Of course.’

  Liz hadn’t known Felim had a drink problem, or used to have, but it didn’t surprise her. Many of the men who used Tír na nÓg’s services battled with addiction, or depression, or a mixture of the two. Tom didn’t allow alcohol on the premises, but he had been known to let some of them sleep it off if they were drunk but calm when they arrived. And she herself was hardly going to criticise them for that.

  She shivered, and felt her mind reawaken as the sugar entered her bloodstream. Too soon. The drink was making her body feel better, but her head was still in the horrors.