by J. M. Smyth
‘I fancy you are being covetous with the truth, Jackie. You dislike Gemma?’
‘Yes.’
I’d suspected as much. In bed, Gemma had shown her back to Jackie in favour of Lisa. Jealousy. Gemma had been in the middle, the enviable of the three positions. Gemma and Lisa had shared the two-way artificial stimulant. The batteries had run out. I recalled Jackie’s look of disappointment. Perhaps she had bought the batteries and felt cheated. Perhaps she felt challenged. Gemma was prettier than her.
‘Which of you met Gemma first?’
‘Me.’
‘You were emotionally involved with Lisa at this time?’
‘Yes.’
‘But contemplating a change?’
She glanced towards Lisa’s room, concerned that she should not overhear her response. She nodded.
‘Then Lisa met Gemma?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Lisa contemplated a change?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not true,’ Lisa sobbed. ‘I told you it wasn’t true, Jackie.’
‘And yet you both loved Gemma, Jackie?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Gemma departed, leaving each of you to settle for second best – each other – in a relationship you had both intended dissolving.’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, the ever-adversarial vicissitudes of the ménage à trois.’
‘Gemma didn’t live with us.’
‘Oh, I see. With whom did she live? Lucille Kells?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she would not leave her?’
‘It wasn’t a question of leaving her. Lucille’s straight. She and Gemma share a flat, that’s all.’
‘Where do they work?’
‘Gemma works in the Top Towers Hotel.’
‘Dublin?’
‘Yes. She promotes the hotel, entertains foreign holiday companies’ reps. I’m not sure of the details. You’ll find her there every night.’
Again I was wondering if she was telling me the truth.
And so it went on, until I knew which nights Gemma Small and Lucille Kells were likely to be vulnerable. Jackie had supplied details I would otherwise have been able to obtain only through long observation. My intention was to avoid the risk associated with picking up models at random, in favour of the relative safety of knowing exactly whom to aim for.
‘Thank you, Jackie. Thank you.’
I went upstairs and finished my wine, then brought the portable television, the VCR and my guests’ mobile telephones down into the corridor and played their home video.
They came to the serving hatches, surprised by my choice of viewing.
Then I rang Jackie’s mother.
‘Mrs Hay?’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, hello. I’m sure you are anxious to hear from me about your daughter Jackie. Hello. Hello, Mrs Hay, are you there?’ I detected a sense of unease, as though Mrs Hay needed breathing salts.
‘Yes, I’m here,’ she said eventually, light-headedly, as is the way of mothers in her position. ‘Please, please don’t hurt my daughter. Please don’t hurt her.’
‘Of course not.’ I nodded to Jackie and gave her the thumbs up, to let her know her mother was concerned for her well-being, but that I had put her fears to rest. ‘Tell me, Mrs Hay, what did you think of the videotape I sent you? Jackie is here watching it as we speak.’
I presumed Mrs Hay to be sitting in front of her television set with loved ones, well-wishers, the police expressing their determination and so on.
‘What do you think of their performance, Mrs Hay? What part are you at now? We are at the part where Jackie is inserting batteries into one of those – what is it they call them now? She’s got such a big smile on her face, as much as to convey: “Look at what I’ve got for you, Lisa, darling.” Lisa looks delighted. I think it’s an extra large.’
‘Please, please let my daughter go. Please—’
‘Let my mother alone!’
‘Jackie, please be quiet, if you wouldn’t mind. I can’t hear your mother. I am so sorry for the interruption, Mrs Hay. You were saying?’
She was too overcome to talk.
I rang Mrs Shine on Lisa’s mobile. ‘Hello, Mrs Shine, is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh good. I’m glad I caught you in. I’m sorry – I forgot to introduce myself. I sent you a videotape. Lisa, I’ve got your mother on the phone.’ Lisa had returned to her corner.
‘Please don’t harm my daughter.’
‘Well, that puts me in a bit of a spot, Mrs Shine. Mrs Hay has asked me not to harm her daughter. And I agreed, because, well, I had yours. But if I agree to your request, I won’t have any daughters left. You do see my position.’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘Jackie, please stop interrupting. Kindly hold the line, Mrs Shine. Mrs Hay?’
‘Yes?’
‘Apropos your daughter – a situation has arisen. I’ve explained my commitment to your good self, and Mrs Shine wishes me to give her the same undertaking. My point is, mothers, I cannot decide which daughter to have first. Mrs Hay, shall I have your daughter first, after all, or would you rather I kept my commitment to you and have her second?’
Shirley starting barking as Jackie screamed, ‘Stop torturing my mother, HOCKLER!’
I hung up immediately.
This was the first error I referred to earlier. Had Shirley barked loud enough to drown out my name? Had the police been recording the conversations? Would they analyse the call through enhancing equipment?
Mine was not an Irish name. And few Hocklers lived in Ireland. Would the authorities be at my door before the night was out? You can see why I found the episode distressing.
Complacency, you see. Complacency can be a devil.
LUCILLE
Gemma’s letter came. The night I was due to move into the holiday cottage I arrived home from working late to collect my things and found it on the mat. I wouldn’t be seeing her for a week, so I took it to the Top Towers Hotel, went up to her room and knocked on the door.
Things weren’t well between me and Gemma. I didn’t like what she was doing. She didn’t want me there.
When she called out, ‘Who is it?’ and I said, ‘It’s me,’ her voice dropped. ‘Lu?’
‘Yes.’ She opened the door with her back to me. I’d embarrassed her by coming.
I’d always been like a big sister to Gemma, you see. When she left the home it was me she came to. I had her room all ready. She was happy at first, but being so tiny and all, she always felt inadequate. Then she got a job in a bar. She said the owner was the most honest man she’d ever met. There was nothing false about him; he lived his life according to his rules, and it impressed her. He didn’t judge people. Things started to go well for her when she met him.
Then she began staying out a lot, going to clubs and spending the night with a couple of mates in their flat. I’d be at work when she’d get in the following morning. A change of clothes and she’d be away again. We were very close, but, you know, people move on, form new relationships. Gemma could be very secretive about her new friends – insecurity I’d always put it down to, as if introducing them to me would make her less the centre of attraction.
Only that wasn’t it this time.
She’d begun spending a lot more money than she was earning and when I asked her about it she told me she’d quit her job and was working for a man called Ted Lyle.
When I said it must be some job, ‘It’s in the town’ was all I could get out of her.
‘Where in the town?’ was met with ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Gemma,’ I said, ‘what’s going on? What’s wrong with me asking you where you work?’
And then it all came out.
She told me they’d set her up in the hotel and that her old boss was being very good about the whole thing. He had this way of making her feel positive about herself, saying that she should capitalise on her strong points
and not feel that she was doing anything wrong.
I’d misread him. I’d thought he would have been against what she was doing. A couple of other girls from a home had got drawn in by the easy money too. Things changed between us after that. I was now seen as the ‘disapproving’ big sister. I suppose I was. Oh, she didn’t think I was a prude or anything like that – if girls want to work hotels, that’s up to them – just that I was angry at what she had allowed herself to become when she could have been so much more.
If this had been anywhere but that hotel room she’d have been a bundle of nerves at getting that letter, and I’d have sat beside her while she opened it, willing it to be the news she was hoping for. But I knew she wanted me to leave in case some client turned up and embarrassed her even more in front of me. She was feeling uneasy and wanted me to go and, once the letter was read, she knew I would.
Dear Gemma,
I’m sorry for taking so long to reply to your letter. But as much as I wish things were different, they are what they are, and to welcome you back into my life at this time would not be possible. My family are unaware of my past and, for their sake, I have to decline your request for us to meet. I do hope you understand and do not judge me harshly.
I wish you all the best in life.
Angela Reading
It was a terrible letter for any mother to have written. Even the style was cold and dispassionate. ‘I have to decline your request.’ It had all the indifference of a bank manager turning down a loan application. All I could do was kneel down and put my arms around her and tell her how sorry I was. She was beyond devastated.
Gemma suffered from migraines. The rejection brought one on. Her left eye had almost closed over. A lie down in her own bedroom – without the distractions of that place – with the curtains drawn sometimes helped. Light made it worse. But she said she couldn’t face going home and wanted to go for a drink. We would go to a nice quiet bar in the country and have a talk. I decided she should come in my car; we could pick hers up the next day. She would have a shower, I’d go and buy some petrol and by the time I got back she’d be ready.
So I went down to the car park, got her coat and handbag out of her car and put them in mine. She didn’t like having her handbag in the room. Her clients were strangers.
A laptop was under her coat, on the passenger seat. Gemma had been too upset to remember to tell me she’d bought one. That was why, I thought. I didn’t know at that time it wasn’t hers. She’d been talking about buying a computer of her own. She was always on mine. This one seemed very expensive. I put it and her other things in my car and drove to the nearest petrol station.
The attendant filled her up, and I went inside and paid. When I came back, sounds were coming from inside the laptop. The kind they make when they’re starting up or reprocessing. If Gemma had left it on by mistake, the batteries would run flat. That’s how I was seeing it. I didn’t know at that time that it was a specially designed surveillance computer. To me it was just a fancy laptop. I lifted the lid to turn it off. Gemma was on screen. It was live, recording her in her room. She was lying on the bed naked. A man was sitting on top of her, humming. It had sound.
At first I thought it was some kind of sick bondage. Her hands were behind her back and he was taping her mouth.
But as I was pulling on to the dual carriageway and speeding back to the hotel to get her out of there – I was furious at seeing someone treating her like that; I’d make her give it up, to hell with how hard a time she gave me over it – he was putting on a pair of surgical gloves and opening out a wallet of instruments next to her head, taking out a protractor and making some kind of design on her chest. And while I rang reception, he picked up a scalpel and began cutting into the lines the protractor had scored.
But the phone just kept ringing. I was out of my mind. She was trying to get him off her, but he must have been three times her weight.
‘Top Towers Hotel …’
He had his hand on her throat, pinning her down, while carving with the other. She was powerless to do anything but watch the scalpel carving.
‘… Hold the line please.’
‘For fuck’s sake answer the phone.’
‘Top Towers Hotel.’
‘Gemma’s being killed. She’s in room 720.’
He reached for a saw.
‘Is this some sort of practical joke?’
‘Gemma’s being killed in room 720. Help her. Please. He’s killing her.’
And started sawing …
‘Oh my God! My God! What room did you say, miss? What room—’
‘For fuck’s sake – 720. Hurry. He’s killing her. He’s killing Gemma.’
… into her groin, grating into her bone.
I wish you all the best in life. Angela Reading.
I sped back into the hotel car park to run and help her, even though I knew she was beyond help – no one could survive what he had done to her – but when the car came to a halt, he was there, stepping in front of it, out of nowhere, glaring at me through the windscreen then lunging at my door.
All I could do was get away from there as fast as I could, go straight to the nearest Garda station, but he was getting into a Transit van and coming after me, and the traffic going towards the city was thick and wouldn’t let me out. If I joined it, I’d be locked in it, and he would catch me. By taking the country road going out of the city, I might be able to outrun him. It was the only route open to me. And it led to Clonkeelin, which no one but me knew about. If I could lose him, I could ring the police from my holiday cottage. Or on the way.
Only I’d made the mistake of thinking that he’d picked Gemma randomly. I thought he’d seen her working the hotel and gone up to her room. It never occurred to me that he knew her. Knew us both. That he’d been watching us.
If I’d known that, I’d never have gone to Clonkeelin. When I eventually lost sight of his Transit in my rear-view mirror, I thought I’d shaken him off, not that he’d realised I was going to my cottage and had taken a short cut to wait for me there.
When I reached it, my mobile rang and when I answered it a voice said, ‘Lucille, how’s it going? I’ve been looking for you. We’ve something to discuss,’ and then the laptop’s built-in phone rang and he said, ‘I hear you’ve something belonging to me.’
This man had tricked me. He’d rung both phones and heard the one in the laptop ringing through my mobile and knew I had it. Not that I cared about any of that then. But if I’d known that the laptop was to play such a crucial part in what would happen later, I’d never have got out of the car. I’d have kept driving until I could get to the police.
But I did get out. I hung up and went inside to call 999 and as I was closing the hall door, a voice said, ‘Ah, Lucille, I had an idea you were driving in this direction.’ And then a spray of some kind hit me and I passed out.
RED DOCK
Ted Lyle is what you call a cowardly bastard. He should’ve kept that surveillance laptop in his car. But he was afraid in case the law got wind and nabbed him. So he kept it in Gemma’s. They’d figure it was all her doing and blame the scam on her was how he was looking at it. Naïve, but there you go; that’s Ted for you – not one of life’s great thinkers.
He’d left it under Gemma’s coat, recording, while he stayed in the bar.
All very well and good. Until Greg Swags walked in.
Charlie Swags had two sons. Tony, in his mid-thirties, had about eight years on Greg. Tony’s one of these guys who’d gained his position in life on the back of what his dad had achieved. Thought it gave him standing. Fancied himself as a bit of a hard case. People were afraid of him only because they knew that if they went up against him, they’d have to deal with Charlie.
Greg was different. He never got involved in Charlie’s operations. Didn’t know about the camera set-up. To Greg, Ted Lyle was in the hotel waiting on a working girl in the normal course of business.
They got talking. Small talk mostly, Greg say
ing he’d just dropped off his fiancée and called in for a beer on the way home, and ‘How’s things with you?’ crap that I won’t bore you with. But somewhere in amongst all this, Gemma’s name gets mentioned. Greg says he knows her, in a way that suggests they’re good friends, and eventually, when he downs his beer, he tells Ted Lyle he hasn’t seen Gemma in a while, that he’ll go up and see how she’s getting on.
You can never plan for things like this. I had no idea Greg was that friendly with Gemma. Certainly not enough to make him take the trouble of going up to see her.
Anyway, that’s the way it went. Greg goes upstairs and Ted heads for the Gents. Ted’s got a bowel problem. The cunt’s forever in the bog. When he comes out, he passes reception and overhears the receptionist taking a call in the office behind the front desk. And by the state she’s in, it’s obvious that she isn’t taking a reservation.
She’s saying something like, ‘Speak up, miss. Which room number?’ Down goes the receiver, and the receptionist’s running into the porter’s office screaming, ‘There’s a girl being murdered in 720. There’s a girl being murdered in 720.’
Ted jumps into the lift and when he reaches Gemma’s room, the door’s open and Greg’s lying on the floor. He’s not what you’d call covered in blood, but there’s enough of it on him to suggest he’d come into contact with Gemma, who’s lying on the bed in bits. And Ted’s thinking he must’ve had a bad pint, because suddenly it doesn’t wanna stay down. Which means he’s in the bog again. But he can’t stay in it for long. The law’ll be on their way, and he does not want Charlie Swags asking him questions like, ‘Why the fuck didn’t you get Greg out of there before they arrived?’ Ted knows that when questions like that turn up, he’s wishing he’d brought a toilet with him. So it’s, ‘Greg, get the fuck up,’ while having enough of his wits about him to grab the hidden camera. And up Greg gets, drowsy at first, then one look at Gemma and his legs are giving out on him again, Lyle going, ‘Don’t look at her, don’t look at her,’ while following his own advice, and that was that.