Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Liz had said, brushing by.

  ‘I’m going to make him my business. If you won’t dump him, I’ll have a chat with him myself and give him a few home truths about how our family will never accept him, and how you’ll be dead to us if you stay with him.’

  Liz still felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end the exact way they had all those years ago. She’d turned and lunged at Ellen, grabbing a clump of her hair.

  ‘Stay the fuck out of my life or I’ll kill you,’ Liz had said.

  It made Liz sick now to remember it. If she’d known she was never going to see her sister again, she’d have told her how much she loved her; she’d have put her arms around her and refused to let go. Instead, she’d spent more than half her life having to cope with a last conversation that was horrible and hateful. It wasn’t like she could even talk to anyone else about it. After Ellen had vanished, all the bad stuff about her had disappeared, too. Anyone who’d reminisced had only ever talked about the perfect daughter, pupil and friend. Ellen had become the perfect sister, and Liz had discovered what it really meant to live in her shadow.

  Liz had only released her grip on Ellen’s scalp that last day at the sound of their father’s voice calling up the stairs, ‘Which one of you two can call to the shops after school for a few bits for the dinner?’

  Liz had kept her eyes locked on Ellen’s and had shouted down, ‘I’ve got study club after school today.’

  For a split second, she’d thought Ellen was going to give the game away. There was a defiant glint in her stare. But Ellen had just stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Derek hadn’t turned up outside the school that day to collect Liz, like they’d planned. He’d turned up at her house later, apologizing for being late, not explaining why. He’d made no mention of seeing Ellen, and Liz hadn’t asked him if she’d stopped by. When things had heated up after the reporter had put him in the frame, he’d asked Liz to cover for him, claiming he’d lost track of the time – and she’d agreed.

  But today, after everything she’d found out, Liz knew in her heart that Ellen had gone to see Derek just like she’d threatened. Maybe that’s why Derek had …

  Snapping back to the present was easier than letting her head go there. ‘I’ll have all the answers for you soon, darling,’ she told Conor.

  Through the window she watched Charles shooting the breeze with George, who was slugging from the neck of a bottle of Bulmer’s. George slapped Charles’s shoulder and whispered something when he clocked Liz looking out, and Charles turned to look, giving her a quick salute.

  Liz pretended not to have seen. George scared her, and she could barely look at Charles now she knew his sideline was ripping people off. He was wearing a pair of knee-length combat shorts, flip-flops and a shiny plastic apron that turned his torso into a buxom French maid, and acting like he hadn’t a care in the world. It made her sick to the stomach to think of all the Jennys and Pauls of this world, who’d signed up to a lifetime of debt for a home they would never be able to live in, thanks to him. Bile rose in her throat, reminding her that since her own husband probably had more to hide than anyone, she wasn’t exactly in a position to judge.

  Liz looked over Conor’s shoulder at his meticulous handwriting. ‘I always said you were a bit of a genius,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Want a snack?’

  Even though he’d had some of Frieda’s lasagne, he was too literal for the kind of food that got served at a barbecue. If you told Conor he was good as gold, he went looking for the gold. One time, he’d been asked to take part in a school table quiz, but had declined because he didn’t know enough about tables. If you used a phrase like, ‘Hold your horses,’ he’d answer, ‘I don’t have any horses.’ Hot dogs were, therefore, non-runners …

  He shook his head. ‘Not now, Mum, thanks anyway. Maybe later.’

  Frieda took her by the elbow to lead her outside to the others, whispering that she suspected some of the neighbours were lying, and that it would turn out even more were affected than just this bunch.

  The sky may have been the colour of granite and dusk falling but Frieda had slipped right into character, just like her husband, and was tottering around in a shirt knotted at the front, denim shorts and red espadrilles. She’d even lit an insect stick, though it was too cold for the midges. Even her legs had broken out in goosebumps, Liz noticed.

  ‘So I heard Derek totalled his car,’ Charles said over his shoulder as they arrived out. ‘Are you going to go for a jeep again? Stay away from those Mitsubishi Pajeros, will you? Only cream crackers and drug dealers drive them, it would bring the tone of the whole place down.’

  He chortled, only Liz was pretty sure he wasn’t joking. Once, when she, Derek and Conor had gone on holiday a few years back, they’d come home to find the shrubs she’d planted in the front garden had been trimmed to within an inch of their lives. A note in the letterbox from Charles had said they’d started to make the street look shabby.

  ‘So, Charles,’ she piped up, rubbing warmth into the tops of her arms. If she had to make idle conversation, she’d a few questions of her own. ‘Were you able to do anything for Jenny and Paul?’

  On the day of their neighbours’ eviction, when all hell had been breaking loose next door, Charles had offered to put a call in to the bank to help broker a new arrangement for them to get their house back. But having got everybody’s hopes up, he hadn’t bothered to come out of his house again to tell them what the result of his conversation with ‘senior bank executives’ had been.

  Charles drained the last of his beer, and dangled the bottle upside down so Frieda could see he needed another. ‘Nope, Jen and Paul let their situation go too far. It was their fault, essentially. Nothing the bank could do. That house could turn out to be a bloody nightmare because of where it is.’

  Jenny and Paul’s house bordered what remained of an old convent which had given the estate its name. An unresolved right-of-way issue meant it could potentially be used as a cut-through by anyone who wanted to get from one side of Rathfarnham to another.

  ‘It’s only a matter of time before squatters move in,’ Charles continued. ‘An empty house like that is just asking for trouble. Jenny and Paul should be fined for being so irresponsible, if you ask me.’

  Liz saw red. ‘I suppose if they’d been able to gamble other people’s money, lose it all, and get a government bailout on their debts and a fat-cat bonus for their trouble, maybe they wouldn’t have been so screwed,’ she said.

  Charles jerked his head back from an angry tongue of flame that had just shot up with a loud sizzle of burning fat.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said, reaching up to check if his hair was singed.

  ‘Can I have a word about your car?’ George asked.

  Liz hadn’t had a chance to get it towed from the hospital yet. She wasn’t about to put George off the sale by telling him it wouldn’t start. The sooner she got rid of it and any forensic evidence it might potentially yield, the better.

  ‘Can I collect it tonight?’ he asked, stepping closer.

  ‘Tomorrow suits better, George. I’ve something on tonight.’ She moved off before he’d a chance to object.

  The garden was a bog-standard suburban rectangle, about fifty feet long and the width of the house. A granite rockery planted with Alpine shrubs, dwarf grass, and bright, wild mountain flowers – purple bunches of tumbling aubrietia, delicate yellow helianthemum and bursts of pink soapwort – ran along the border fenced with woven hazel. There was a bottle-green mini-marquee taking up most of the striped lawn, and white plastic fold-up chairs had been lined up inside it in front of a long buffet table where bowls of cling-film-covered salad, stacks of plates and bundles of cutlery sat waiting for the guests.

  Liz headed for some decking just outside the French doors because there was nobody there, and sat down on the edge of a sunlounger, keeping her back to George, who had walked over to a small feature pond to throw chu
nks of bread roll to big, dishwater-coloured whiskered fish that kept coming to the surface to feed.

  Liz wondered what the Madigans, a pair of retired dentists who lived in a corner house, could want to keep hidden. They had no children, spent winters in an apartment in Marbella, and were more often seen heading in or out in their tennis whites than their civvies.

  She gave a quick wave to Kim and Kate, a lesbian couple who looked like pop stars with their sharp hair styles, face piercings and tattoos. They ran a hygiene business, collecting and dropping off sanitary-towel bins to and from public places, and drove top-of-the-range sports cars.

  Nigel and Maud were there, too, and Liz pondered what the mother and son, who’d given her such a hard time in the shop this morning, could have done that was dodgy.

  Frieda clanked a couple of bottles together and gave a little wave to indicate everyone should move into the mini-marquee. ‘Liz has to leave early, so we’d better get started.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’ George asked, sidling up to Liz.

  ‘I’m taking Conor to the circus, and then I’ve to go to the garda station,’ Liz said quickly, looking away.

  He put a hand in his pocket and took out a bunch of fifties, offering them to her. ‘I’ve got cash here for the car. I want to take my girlfriend out for a lesson tonight. Where is it?’

  Liz pointed to Charles and Frieda at the top of the tent, clapping their hands for attention.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ Charles said. ‘We all know why we’re here, best not to rake over it, given what happened to Amanda. It goes without saying that it’s tragic, but we wondered if what’s going on with us might be connected. I’m going to be the first to lay my cards on the table to get this thing started.’

  He gave a little cough. ‘So I’m going to be completely upfront, but only if you’re all willing to do the same, otherwise what’s to stop everyone else here from getting in on the blackmail act?’

  After a show of nods he cleared his throat. ‘Someone’s been blackmailing me over my bank’s involvement in the sale of three hundred and fifty mortgages for a property developer whom my bank had also funded. The paperwork would suggest that the bank was aware the developer had already gone bust when it sold the mortgages to the homeowners – who never got their homes. On paper it all looks clear-cut. The reality, of course, is that it was a complete oversight. I just didn’t put two and two together. My commission is long spent, so it’s not as if I could even pay it back.’

  He doesn’t sound very convincing, Liz thought.

  ‘Obviously, if I’d known, I wouldn’t have allowed people to put good money after bad. Right, that’s my guilty secret out in the open,’ he went on. He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. ‘So, now you know what they’ve got on me, who’d like to go next so as to even the playing field?’

  After a prolonged pause, George stood up. ‘Someone is accusing my staff of breaking into cars to replace valid tickets with old ones, so as to clamp them. They want the same amount as you, Charles, a hundred thousand euro. I don’t have it, but shit sticks. If they start mouthing off, I’ll lose my tender with the council. That will cost me a lot more in the long run.’

  He sat back down. Frieda gave a little clap.

  Liz looked away in disgust. She believed every word of what George had been accused of. He was a guttersnipe.

  ‘The person wants a hundred thousand euro from us, too,’ Kate said, standing.

  ‘Why?’ Frieda asked.

  Kate hesitated until Kim touched her hand. ‘Our first big job in business was with the women’s prison. We got to know a lot of the girls. If we could help them get things in and out, we did.’ She paused so the neighbours could put it together. ‘Now we’ve got contracts with all the hospitals. We’re like George. We couldn’t afford to lose that business. It would finish us.’

  Liz clicked her tongue. If they’d been smuggling drugs and phones into a prison, they were no better than the prisoners in there, as far as she was concerned. The papers were always going on about murders that had been ordered by prisoners. That young Latvian mother killed on the doorstep of her Swords home was one. The gardaí had had to carry her little boys over her body so the forensic people could do their job. It had been horrible.

  Mr Madigan stood up. ‘I had a practice in Dubai that I didn’t declare to the Revenue. The blackmailer wants the same amount from us as everyone else. A hundred thousand euro. It’s our nest egg.’ He sat down again, and his wife put her arm around him.

  ‘Tax evasion is the lowest of the low,’ Liz muttered under her breath.

  Nigel flicked his hand up.

  ‘A pyramid scheme,’ his mother explained, snivelling. ‘We had to change our names. If they find us, we’re in Shitsville, Illinois.’

  All eyes turned to Liz.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t know exactly,’ Liz stammered, ‘I only found out about all this today. If Derek was here …’

  ‘Of course there’s a strong possibility you weren’t being blackmailed at all,’ Charles said decisively.

  ‘You did notice that you came into a lot of money lately,’ Frieda added.

  ‘One hundred thousand euro,’ Charles chipped in, for the benefit of everyone else.

  Liz looked at him in astonishment, aware her neighbours were glancing at each other.

  ‘I rang a pal in your bank,’ Charles said.

  Liz fidgeted.

  ‘And Derek’s disappeared, hasn’t he?’ Frieda said sadly. ‘Which suggests he’s something to hide. And, much as I hate to point out the obvious, Amanda’s body was found in the place linked to your sister, right?’

  Charles crossed his arms. ‘I think it’s safe to presume that whoever murdered Amanda was probably blackmailing her, too. Derek is gone, so …’

  ‘He had a bang to the head, he’s not himself,’ Liz protested, checking through the kitchen window that Conor was still out of earshot.

  Charles didn’t seem to be buying it. ‘We need to stop Derek, without involving the authorities and risking a criminal investigation into our private business. We have to meet like with like.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Maud asked. ‘We’re just normal people.’

  ‘There are always ways,’ Kim said sullenly.

  Kate, whose bleached-blonde hair was shaved on one side and long on the other, nodded mournfully.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Liz asked.

  Frieda sighed heavily, picking between her teeth with her cocktail stick. ‘Don’t be so naïve, Liz. Everyone knows about that housewife from Clare, who was able to Google the word “hitman” and hire one.’

  Even though the same thought had occurred to Liz, now that the offer to bump her husband off was being handed to her on a plate, she felt violently ill. ‘I have to go,’ she said, standing up quickly.

  ‘There’s an elephant in this room, and I’m just going to say it, OK?’ George said. ‘What if the gardaí put you under pressure later, and you crack and tell them what was said here tonight? If that happens every one of us is facing a hefty jail sentence.’

  26

  AT THE SURVEILLANCE van with the waterworks’ logo on the side, Alfie – dressed in Dublin Corporation overalls – rapped on the back doors, and when one opened, climbed inside and pushed through the black sheet blocking the view.

  ‘I heard you’ve got me a new lead?’ he said, taking a cap off and sitting opposite a fresh-faced officer in his twenties, who twisted around from a panel of screens and buttons to face him.

  Alfie wondered why someone with his qualifications would want a thankless job working for a pittance in the police.

  ‘That’s right. We’ve picked up some very interesting email correspondence between the victim and one of the residents, who lived on the road behind her,’ the officer said.

  ‘Derek Carpenter?’ Alfie asked. He hated computers, and didn’t want to get into anything that would show up how little he knew about them, especially in front of someone w
ho still had bumfluff on his face.

  ‘No, not Derek. Here you go,’ the officer said, handing the paperwork over.

  ‘So what do these emails say?’ Alfie asked with a lukewarm smile as he scanned them.

  ‘It looks like Amanda Wells was paying one of the residents to dig the dirt on one of her neighbours.’

  ‘What?’ Alfie scanned the printouts and pursed his lips.

  The officer shrugged. ‘I thought it might be evidence of motive,’ he said. ‘Amanda Wells might have made herself some enemies.’

  ‘It is. So I take it then that Derek Carpenter was the neighbour Amanda wanted the dirt on, right?’ Alfie asked, rephrasing the question.

  ‘No, actually Charles and Frieda McLoughlin were the subjects,’ the officer said. ‘And like I said, the neighbour working for Amanda wasn’t Derek Carpenter, either. There’s something else. There’s also contact between this neighbour and a reporter called Niall Toland on the Daily Record, the one who got the tip-off about her body. They’re only blank texts, but too frequent to be coincidental. It could be they were some kind of coded message – telling the other person to get in contact.’

  ‘Which neighbour was Niall in contact with?’

  The officer handed him a sheet of paper with the name and address.

  ‘Ouch,’ Alfie said, standing up too quickly and hitting the crown of his head on the roof. He rubbed it to ease the pain, and read the words on the paper. ‘Amanda Wells is our victim, just remember that.’

  He hopped out, banging the van door shut, pulled out his phone and dialled Niall Toland’s number.

  ‘Lunch tomorrow is on you,’ Alfie spoke into the mobile. ‘The usual place. If you put the receipt on your expenses I don’t want my name down on any documentation. I may be retiring on Friday, but all these government bailouts have made shit of my pension, and I’m still bound by the Official Secrets Act. And while I’m on the subject of me giving you dig outs, I’m going to need to make our arrangement more formal. I quite fancy writing a column giving my opinions on the crimes of the week and what they say about society at large. You can run it by your editor today and let me know what he thinks when we meet. ’