She picked up a bottle of water she’d purchased from the petrol station. Took a sip and then realised she needed to go to the toilet. Nerves. What was she like? You’d think she was on a blind date, or something. Ridiculous. But that’s exactly how it felt. She’d even taken extra care over her wardrobe that morning – more care than she’d taken in months. She had spent the best part of an hour making a final decision on her outfit, settling on her best jeans and the flowing blue top from Primark that covered a multitude of sins. Penneys. Primark, she called it, but it was Penneys over here. And every woman in the country seemed to shop there. It was a national joke. Oh, your jacket is lovely! Penney’s, five euro. The automatic response. Even if you’d spent a fortune on it.
She hadn’t thought it was possible to gabble internally, but that was exactly what she was doing. Yvonne gripped the steering wheel tightly and slowed the car, ostensibly because the road had narrowed, mostly because she was trying to delay her arrival. What in God’s name was she doing here? She should be at home with her baby, arranging the new toy she’d bought her on the bouncy chair and DVR-ing old episodes of Casualty so she could watch them during naptime with a cup of tea. That was life; that was reality. This wasn’t real, this journey to nowhere on a winding twisty country road. Surely this couldn’t be the place? She turned off the engine and pulled out her phone again, checking her Netmammy messages. The Gambolling Lamb. This was it, alright. The place MyBabba had named. But there was no other car. No sign of another, equally nervous woman waiting to lead her to safety.
Safety? Strange, how that was the first word that came into her mind. Yvonne swallowed, aware of how unsettled she was feeling. She’d love to hear a friendly voice now. Suddenly, achingly lonely, she picked up her phone, scrolled down to the Gs and dialled. But her husband’s phone went directly to voicemail. She went back into the contacts, found the Ireland 24 office number and pressed ‘call’ before she could change her mind. The receptionist, managing to sound both bored and efficient, told her to hold for a moment. But when the call was finally answered a young woman’s voice came on the line.
‘Hello? I was … I was looking for Gerry? Gerry Mulhern?’
Yvonne hated how her voice sounded, weak and tentative. The woman on the other end sounded vibrant in comparison.
‘I’m sorry, he’s not here right now. Can I take a message?’
‘Yes. I mean … just tell him his wife called.’
Yvonne was about to hang up when the woman spoke again, her tone warmer this time.
‘Hey – is that Yvonne? I mean sorry, of course it is! It’s Mary! How are you?’
‘Oh … fine.’
Although she was alone in the car, Yvonne could feel the blush flowing up from her collarbone. She hadn’t spoken to the young researcher since the disastrous night at the television awards, and in fact still couldn’t remember how the evening had ended, or when. But the researcher sounded as bubbly and as friendly as she had previously been.
‘He’s in a meeting – but let me see if I can grab him, okay? There’s nothing wrong, is there? Is the baby okay?’
‘Yeah … yeah, she’s fine.’
Yvonne was feeling more foolish by the second. The last thing she wanted was for Gerry to be dragged away from something important, just to speak to her.
‘Look, it doesn’t matter …’
But she was speaking to thin air. She heard the thud of a receiver being carelessly put down on a desk and then the light distant buzz of office noise began circulating around it. Mary’s voice in the distance, ‘Hey, Gerry! The missus is on the phone!’
She winced. He would not be happy. Stupid of her, to interrupt him like that. Completely unnecessary. Maybe she should hang up …
‘Yvonne? You okay?’
Gerry’s voice was tighter than usual, focused. His work voice, she called it when she heard him using it on the phone at home.
‘I’m fine. Honestly, she shouldn’t have bothered you …’
‘Hey, it’s no trouble.’
The ‘Hey’ was cheerful, and Yvonne could feel herself starting to relax.
‘I just wanted to say hi, that’s all.’
‘Well, it’s lovely to hear from you!’
In the background, a television blared the latest headlines and he had to shout to be heard over the office din. But he didn’t sound like he was too busy to talk to her.
‘How did the drop-off go, okay?’
‘Yeah, great. Well, you know your mum …’
She smiled in response to his chuckle.
‘But great. I’m on my way to lunch now. Just … just checking in, really.’
‘That’s great. Look …’
His voice dropped, and she could hear him breathing softly.
‘I’m really glad you’re getting away, you know. You need a bit of time to yourself.’
‘I know.’
She stared straight ahead, out of the car windscreen, to the car park which only minutes before had looked ugly and intimidating, but now looked quaint, rural, a place of peace.
‘Maybe we can get a night out ourselves in a little while, yeah? Just the two of us.’
‘That sounds fantastic.’
‘Gerry! Gerry, man, I’m sorry to hassle you but we’re on a deadline here …’
An unfamiliar voice boomed in the distance, and her husband sighed.
‘Listen, I gotta go, okay? Have a blast, and I’ll see you tonight. I’ll try not to be too late.’
‘Absolutely.’
She paused.
‘Love you, babe.’
‘Love you too, honey. Bye now.’
The last had been said at a volume the entire office must have heard.
Suddenly giddy, Yvonne wondered if Mary had been within earshot, and hoped she had. Right, time to see where MyBabba had got to. She replaced the phone in her bag, pulled down the sun visor to check her make-up. And started, when the door suddenly opened.
‘Hey! What are you doing here?’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
‘I don’t want to drink it.’
‘You have to, Yvonne. It’ll all be so much easier if you do.’
So, that was what a gun looked like. She looked at it dispassionately. It looked cold. Black and shiny and cold. And, pressed into her waist, she could feel its chill through the cheap material of her blouse. Penneys, five euro. Not a top she wanted to die in. Funny the things that went through your mind at times like these.
She drank. It seemed easier to take it than to refuse. Not that she had a choice. The coldness pressed closer.
Neat vodka. She gagged, felt the liquid rise up her throat and then swallowed again. An approving smile. A small red tablet.
‘This one now, please.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s just cold medicine. Here, have another drink.’
All said in a light tone, as if they were at a party, and arguing over rounds. Yvonne took the small bottle of vodka, swallowed harder this time. It had been three years since she last drank neat spirits. Brighton, with Rebecca, a training weekend. The dinner had been dull, the drinks afterwards in the bar excruciating, as their boss slurred ‘what went on tour, stayed on tour.’ They’d lasted less than an hour before persuading him to buy them a bottle of red, escaping to their bedroom and giggling like fourteen-year-old girls. They’d broken into the minibar when the wine ran out and drank the vodka neat; from a shared tooth glass, the rough liquid trickling down their throats and bringing tears to their eyes. A great night. One of the best.
‘Are you okay?’
For a second, dazed, she thought the question was being asked out of kindness, and she almost answered. Until she remembered why they were there.
‘Please leave me alone.’
‘Ah, Yvonne. Sure we’ve a good bit to go yet.’
A third pill was resting on the dashboard. She could refuse to take it. But wasn’t going to.
‘I will kill her, you know.’
T
he pill looked tiny in the gloved fingers.
‘I’ll kill little Róisín. I mean, I don’t want to. She’s a sweet little thing. But I will do it.’
Vodka surged back up her throat and she vomited, the regurgitated liquid splashing against the steering wheel and onto her carefully chosen jeans.
‘Jesus!’ It was surprising, the level of disgust. Considering.
‘That was really stupid of you. We’re going to have to start again now, aren’t we? You could have given me some warning.’
‘I didn’t know.’
She hadn’t known a lot of things. That much was clear.
The gun was aimed at her temple this time. The barrel had grown warm from the pressure against her blouse.
‘Drink it slowly now. I don’t want to risk losing any more of it. Or I will kill the baby. And you know how easy that would be for me, don’t you?’
Afraid to turn her head or even to nod agreement, she stared out the windscreen. The instructions had been precise. They had driven into a clump of trees at the end of a deserted lane, the car skidding slightly on the piles of damp, browning leaves. You wouldn’t be able to see it from the road now.
She had thought it was some sort of bizarre coincidence when the passenger door was first opened. Then she had seen the gun and thought it was a joke, although neither of them was laughing.
The coldness tapped against her temple, once, twice. And then a second bottle, removed from a plastic bag and balanced in the gloved hand.
‘Here, you open it, it’ll look more authentic if it has your fingerprints on it. Now, what was I saying?’
She took a tiny sip of the vodka and felt it burn through her.
‘There’ll be a prize now! For good girls who eat up all their dinner.’
She felt the bile rise in her throat again but swallowed desperately. Róisín. It was all about Róisín now. The Vaseline haze was descending again, but an edge of a fact poked its way through to her brain.
‘MyBabba’s dead, isn’t she? She was never meant to meet me here.’
‘Well now! You’re smarter than you look, Yvonne Mulhern. Or would you prefer I called you LondonMum? Hard to know with you Netmammies. I’ll tell you, ye’d want to stay away from that site. Seriously, you should all get a life. Mad, really the stuff you put on there.’
A wave of the gun and she took another swallow from the bottle. The drink tasted less strong now, her throat had grown numb.
‘’nother tablet? Good girl. Yeah, that website’s a bit of an addiction, isn’t it, Yvonne? I mean, each to their own, but I’d stay away from it if I were you. Well …’
A quiet chuckle. Almost sad.
‘It might be a bit late for that now, but you know what I mean.’
A ‘drink up’ gesture. A final wave of the gun
‘Sláinte. Oh, sorry, I forgot you don’t understand Irish. Bottoms up, will that do?’
So she drank, and felt the veil descending. Thought about escape, and then remembered the baby. And then, through the haze, wondered miserably what would happen to Róisín anyway. Afterwards. After her mother was gone.
Her eyes closed. The door opened, and was then shut with a bang. Silence. Peace. Her breathing deepened. Easy, now, to fall asleep. And then, just before unconsciousness gripped she heard the door being opened again, windows being fiddled with. A hosepipe. The engine. She had to do something. Swallowing, she pressed her elbow against the door and pushed as hard as she could. Fresh air fell onto her face for one precious moment before she felt an arm around her shoulders and she was slid, with surprising gentleness, back into the car.
‘I don’t want to rough you up, but a few bruises won’t do any harm. Make you look as if you changed your mind at the last minute. A lot of them do, apparently.’
‘But, you?’
She didn’t have the strength to ask a new question. Instead, she closed her eyes again. Was vaguely aware of movement, a key turning, the engine starting.
And a voice in her ear.
‘You just remember, pet. You move, and I’ll kill Róisín. You know how easy that would be. Sleep now.’
And her eyes closed.
‘Yvonne!! Yvonne, wake up! You have to hear me!’
A pain in her head. Acid in her throat.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Come on, pet. Work with me now.’
Pain under her arms. Dragging. Róisín.
‘Leave me alone!!’
No strength, she had no strength to shout. But she was still being pulled.
‘We have to get you out. Now!’
She was back in the labour ward. Dazed, and sad and frightened and alone and people shouting and telling her she HAD to push and she HAD to make an effort. But she didn’t want to. She was tired and she just wanted to be left alone.
There was something wet under her cheek.
The woman was fat and red-faced. ‘Work with me now!’
The memory of falling.
She slept again.
A siren. Too loud.
‘Turn it off! My baby. Róisín. Oh, Róisín.’
Vomiting.
‘Good girl. Good woman. Get it all up, that’s right.’
A white uniform. A dark moustache. The fat woman, staring down at her.
Air rushing against her cheeks. Oh, dear God, please send me back. Save my baby. But no one was listening. They were too busy attaching masks, and tubes, strapping her down and hurtling her along noisy white corridors. Faces stared down. My baby. Who will look after my baby?
Yvonne’s eyes closed.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Neither do I,’ Flynn was tempted to say. Instead, he leafed through the pages of his notebook as if they could provide him with inspiration, or words of comfort for the distraught man sitting opposite him. But the leaves were blank. The only information Flynn actually had to go on had been sent to him in a series of badly punctuated text messages by Boyle, who was now – in her own words – under lock and key in a maternity hospital across town. But staring at the notebook bought him time, time he needed to come up with a rational explanation for the questions she had asked him to put to a bemused and heartbroken Gerry Mulhern.
‘Why … why would someone want to kill Yvonne?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ would have been the honest response. Instead Flynn thought back to the text messages, and decided his only option was to keep things vague.
‘You understand we have to investigate all incidents of this nature.’
The words meant nothing, but sounded both rational and reassuring. The man in the uncomfortable hospital chair nodded. His face was grey and he didn’t look much healthier than the woman lying in the bed beside him. He clutched her hand, careful not to disturb the many tubes attached to her body and then released it before continuing.
‘Of course. Yeah. Whatever you have to do.’
Flynn leafed through his notebook again. He hadn’t a clue what he was doing here, or what questions he was supposed to be asking. He had a lot of time for Claire Boyle. But right now he was beginning to wonder if his faith in her was justified.
A WOMANS BEEN BROUGHT INTO A AND E THERES A MIRIAM TWOHY LINK YOU NEED TO GET DOWN THERE ILL FILL YOU IN LATER
Flynn had been in Collins Street typing up his notes on the Eamonn Teevan interview when the first text arrived. He’d tried calling Boyle but the conversation hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds before he heard a woman’s voice telling her that she didn’t care if it was the Garda Commissioner himself on the line, she couldn’t use that phone IN HERE. So Boyle had resorted to surreptitious texts. She seemed to be saying that she had interrupted an attempted murder that, in turn, was linked to Miriam Twohy’s death. But that didn’t make sense to Flynn, and by the time he got to the hospital she was gone, spirited away by her husband, who according to the nurses had had to practically throw her over his shoulder in order to get her to leave. Lea
ving him alone with this man, this grey-faced and grieving man who was sitting by his wife’s bedside and understandably confused as to why her attempted suicide was of such interest to Gardaí.
A friendly nurse had told him that Yvonne Mulhern had parked in an isolated part of the Wicklow hills and had attempted suicide by running a hosepipe from her engine and taking a mixture of alcohol and sedatives. Boyle had apparently saved her life by dragging her out just in time. Leaving aside just what the hell Boyle was doing in Wicklow when she was supposed to be in bed, it all sounded fairly straightforward to Flynn. Boyle was the only person who seemed to think there was more to the story. But she wasn’t here, and Yvonne Mulhern was still unconscious, leaving Flynn to ask her husband what were sounding like increasingly ridiculous questions.
‘Did your wife know a woman called Miriam Twohy?’
‘No!’
Mulhern frowned.
‘Hang on, do you mean that woman who was murdered? We did a piece on the programme last week … why … why would Yvonne have known her? Look, Guard … my wife is really ill. I’m sure you’re trying to do your job, but …’
He was being much more patient, Flynn thought, than he himself would be under the circumstances. He was about to give up on Boyle’s mad theories, apologise and leave when the man ran his fingers through his hair and began to speak again.
‘The fact is, Guard, I’m not really surprised at … this.’
He picked up his wife’s hand again, kissed it, and laid it back gently on the bed-sheet.
‘When the hospital rang, earlier today … when they told me I needed to come in … to be honest with you, I think part of me had been waiting for that call.’
Flynn waited, said nothing, let him continue.
‘Yvonne hasn’t been herself for months now. Not since our baby was born. Róisín.’
His face softened, and he glanced down at his mobile phone, pressed a key, and smiled at the face beaming up from the screen saver. Replacing the phone on the bed, he took a deep breath and continued, as if it was a relief to get the words out.
‘At first, we thought it was the baby, you know? The baby blues kind of thing? But then Róisín was getting older and Yvonne, well, Yvonne didn’t seem to be getting any better. She was just distracted all the time, you know? Down in herself. And tired … I know babies are tiring, I’m not completely stupid. I work long hours, but I tried, I really did, to take up some of the slack. But she wasn’t having any of it. It was like no one was good enough, only her. My mum tried to babysit loads of times, but Yvonne wouldn’t let her. Actually my mum called over there a lot, to keep an eye on her, she was worried too. We were all worried, Mum, me, my brother … Everyone. It was like she was locked away in her own little world. This might …’
Can Anybody Help Me? Page 24