She knew Derek wouldn’t hurt their son, even if she’d just seen him smash Paul’s head in. Paul had still been breathing when they’d left him. The wound to his head mightn’t have been deep, and Liz knew scalp injuries were notorious when it came to blood loss, but left unconscious and unable to help himself, Paul might well bleed to death. And there was a baby back there …
‘Quiet,’ Derek said.
Derek had refused to let her help Paul or take the baby, saying only that if she attracted any attention they might never see Conor again. So she’d shut up and had done exactly as he asked, slinking under the cover of night through the culvert and into the convent grounds to get out of Nuns Cross.
‘I need to use the bathroom.’
‘You know where it is,’ Derek said, holding the door open for her and pointing the torch out into the corridor. ‘But I can’t put on the light, love, sorry. And I can’t give you this either.’ He held up the torch. The gun was tucked under the belt of his trousers.
Liz pushed through the door, into the corridor, squinting to try and get her bearings as Derek shone the light.
‘Love …’ he said.
How could he still call her that? She froze, but didn’t turn.
‘I know you’re scared, I can hear it in your voice. But don’t worry, it’s nearly over.’
To her amazement, he let the door to the office close. Liz hurried into Amanda’s loo to keep up the pretence, as she tried to work out in the pitch black if the window, which she remembered seeing in here on Friday, could (a) be opened, and (b) was big enough for her to fit through. She’d started patting the walls – feeling around frantically for the window – when she heard the office door beside her creak open again. Derek was calling quiet reassurances through the door, telling her to let him know when she was ready, he’d hold the light for her. Liz flicked on the faucet so he wouldn’t hear the sound of her lowering the toilet seat down so she could stand on it. It banged on to the porcelain but she kept going. Her teeth chattered as her hands moved to the window and established its dimensions. It was much smaller than she remembered, tiny. She could feel the embossed frosting in the glass, it was no more than one foot across and two high. She’d never fit through it, but Conor might … if she could get Derek to bring him here. She flicked the handle, and her heart soared when she realized it wasn’t secured and opened perfectly.
Liz climbed back down, upending what must have been a basket of loo rolls – based on the things rolling about on the floor – and only barely managing to stop a vase of some description from shattering on the tiles.
‘You OK in there?’
She started to hyperventilate.
‘Yep,’ she called back, ‘coming.’
I can’t go anywhere without Conor.
With the thought came clarity. The panting began to slow down to deep breathy puffs in and out. There was no point in trying to escape because she didn’t want to yet, she thought. Not until she knew what Derek had done with Conor. Her only hope was to try and talk to him. Finishing up, she washed her hands under the tap, holding her wrists under the cold water and splashing her face. Then she slid the bolt back across and pressed the door handle down.
Derek held the door open for her, and then opened Amanda’s office door. In the beam of the torch she saw he’d rolled up the rug on Amanda’s salvaged wooden floor. Her heart stalled. Was he planning to move her body in that? And then something else in the centre of the floor caught her attention.
Liz stared. There was a handle set into it.
‘I know you probably have a lot of questions, and I’ll answer every last one of them, but not now, there isn’t time.’
He looked like death with the light shining up from under his jaw, the play of shadows in the hollows of his eye sockets and cheekbones making him resemble a kid mucking about at Halloween. He also had that skittish air of someone with a fever, she noticed. Something was up. Something more than panic. There was a sheen on his skin like varnish. She remembered the antibiotics he’d been getting in the hospital, and wondered if it was possible he’d had an internal bleed.
Derek reached over his shoulders, pulling his sweater over his head stiffly. A T-shirt he was wearing underneath, which was covered with damp patches, rose slightly, revealing bandages that must have been put on by nurses after his accident. He patted some strands of flyaway hair back down.
‘Is it just me or is it hot in here?’ he asked.
Liz was freezing. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. ‘I’ll be fine. Just feeling a bit, dunno, weird.’
Liz wondered if he’d collapse. If so, it would be the second miracle of the night.
The possibility that she might yet escape with her life sent a rush of adrenalin coursing through her veins. ‘Whatever you’ve done … whatever it is you’re going to do … I know you love our son … just tell me where he is,’ Liz said, her voice breaking.
But Derek was too focused on that handle to answer. He pulled it up and a hole appeared in the floor.
46
‘AMANDA HAD ME fit it up during the renovation job,’ Derek explained about the trapdoor. ‘There was a whole basement level that had fallen into complete disrepair because of the extent of the damp. She said it could come in handy for storage space, so I dry lined it, and got Tom to plaster it. I even offered to put in proper stairs so it wouldn’t be hidden, but Amanda wanted the access to be concealed because of the documents she was keeping down there. I assume she didn’t want everyone knowing about it. Solicitors need to keep a lot of important documents secure.’
Liz remembered the banging noise she’d heard from Amanda’s office when she’d been hiding in the loo on Friday, and realized that it could very well have been that lid. She could see a ladder set against one of the shaft walls behind the trapdoor, which sat open at a ninety-degree angle against the floor. She could tell, as the torch flashed around it, that if Derek stood in the hole at his six-foot-two height, the top of his head would probably only just be below the hatch.
He lowered himself to the floor so he could lie flat and extend an arm into the hole to guide his torch around the inside, glancing up as if he seriously expected her to lean over and share his appreciation, like a kid who’d found a cave full of treasure.
Liz took a few steps closer. The beam of light was bouncing a lot further than she’d anticipated in his dark cave.
‘I know it’s not much to look at, but you have to see it from down here to appreciate it. You’ll understand when you get in, because from this point on, it’s our bolthole. It’s fully stocked with food and water – I cleared out all of Amanda’s files to make room. It’s wired up, so there’s power in there, too. I had to paint it myself because she was so paranoid about anyone else knowing about it. There’s a generator and a heater. If it came to it, we’ve enough supplies down here to survive for a month. It’s aerated, too, so you don’t have to worry about smothering. I’ve run vents up. It’s even got a toilet. Hey, I’ve even got a mini-fridge down here, full of Bud, and a portable DVD player. Oh yeah, there’s a water cooler, too. It tastes a lot better than what comes out of our tap. You never know, you might not want to come back up to the land of the living. You still can’t put the light on, though, because Conor’s asleep down there …’
Taking a deep breath, Liz aimed the sole of her shoe at the open lid of the trapdoor and kicked it, sending it smashing against Derek’s head.
He let out an almighty roar. Kneeling down on her hunkers, Liz lifted it so she could smash him again.
‘Dad, are you OK?’ came the words from below in the split second before her arm crashed down.
With that, the bunker flooded with sudden light.
47
LIZ’S HEART STALLED.
‘Ow, my fucking head,’ Derek groaned. Liz watched in horror as he rolled over on to his back, his hands moving to his head. ‘What happened? I spring-loaded that to stop it from
happening.’ He moaned. Liz scrambled towards him and managed to grab the gun from his belt.
Darth Vader appeared at the top of the ladder. ‘Dad, is there blood? You know I’ll faint if there’s blood. So is there?’
‘Sorry for waking you,’ Derek grunted.
‘Oh, hi, Mum. You have got to see in here, it’s super cool. It’s like a regular tree house, without the tree, I mean. Are you OK, Dad? Good news, there’s no blood. Can you see any, Mum?’
‘Go back down and put on The Clone Wars,’ Derek said. ‘We’ll be down in a second.’
When Conor disappeared from view, Liz said in a hushed tone, ‘If you think you’re going to bury me and my son alive, you’re sadly mistaken.’
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Derek hissed, checking Conor was definitely out of earshot before easing himself up on to his elbows. ‘I’m trying to protect you from the people who want to get at me, and you’re trying to kill me?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Ellen?’
Derek moaned and rolled over on to his side. His hair was damp with perspiration. He looked terrible, paler than marble.
‘I tried. I told you I thought I was protecting you … us … at first. The more time went on, the harder it got. I’m sorry.’
Liz kept her eyes centred on his head as he tried to sit up. ‘Don’t move. I will use this gun, I mean it. I don’t want you to talk any more, either. I don’t want to hear any more of your warped logic.’
‘If you’re planning to kill me, go right ahead. You won’t be able to shift my body, which means you’ll have to walk our son out past me. The alternative is you lock me in there and take Conor, but if you head back out there alone, I know both of you will be killed,’ Derek said with another deep groan. ‘Mervyn has paid people to kill me, and they will wipe you out without so much as a second thought to get to me.’
He curved his back and knelt shakily.
‘I said, don’t move,’ Liz warned.
‘Use it, then, I wouldn’t want to live without you and Conor anyway.’ He lunged and grabbed her by the wrist. Derek knocked the gun from her hand and kicked it out of the way. He wrestled it free, and then, wrapping his two arms around Liz’s upper body to restrain her, he manhandled her on to the ladder. Gripping her tightly, he pulled her down into the den.
‘Are you two fighting?’ Conor asked when they landed with a thump, Derek on his back and Liz on top of him. She shrugged Derek off her angrily.
‘No, son,’ Derek answered, getting up slowly. Clutching his head, he climbed up the steps and out, lowering the lid closed behind him. She heard him wedging something against the trapdoor, and guessed he’d pushed whatever it was under the handle to prevent her getting the lid up as soon as he was gone. She tried to visualize what it could be. It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t take much to shake it free.
In any event, all hope of that happening evaporated with the sound of a deadweight thud directly overhead.
48
BACK HOME BY half eleven, Jo did her best to wipe up the food Harry was firing from his plate, while negotiating the binging microwave, supposed to be defrosting some steaks for dinner. Harry shouldn’t have been up at all, but Dan had said he hadn’t wanted to wake him after he’d fallen asleep at four without any dinner. The result was that Harry was up, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. Jo had the phone squashed between her shoulder and ear waiting for an update from Tallaght Children’s Hospital, where the baby they’d found in the attic had been rushed by ambulance.
‘She’s stable,’ the doctor told Jo. ‘We’ll know a lot more in the morning. Let’s just say it’s a good thing you found her when you did. She wasn’t malnourished, but she was very, very cold.’
Thanking her, Jo sighed as she hung up and rang Foxy to tell him the news. She was about to ring Sexton too, but spotting Dan’s impatient expression at the sight of her on the phone she snapped it shut instead. This was always the hardest part of the day for her, and considering this one had started in such a gruesome way, that was saying something. Every night when she got in, the first thing she had to deal with was guilt. It required a mental shift: she had to force herself to put work to one side and concentrate on her family. Jo permanently felt bad that she wasn’t spending enough time with them, that the house looked like a bomb had hit it, and that she was failing so miserably on the home/work balance front. She even felt guilty that she felt guilty, and couldn’t just enjoy this precious part of the day at home.
Tonight was no different. The kitchen sink was piled with dishes, and she groaned at just how manky the floor was – in dire need of a hoover and a mop. She cursed at the sight of a bag of groceries she’d bought on the way home the previous night and hadn’t emptied yet. It had fallen over on its side, and a box of eggs had broken and seeped into the sliced bread. She pulled a face as she deposited them in the bin. It wasn’t as if she could ask Dan to get his finger out. He could barely get from A to B, and was hypersensitive as it was about the role reversal induced by his injuries, which was putting enough strain on their marriage. Sourcing a bloody cleaner had proved impossible, because their home was too out of the way, and nobody who was prepared to work for what they could afford to pay drove a car. And as for the laundry …
It wasn’t that Jo wasn’t willing to get stuck in each night, just that because she was wrecked she begrudged any time spent on the house, because it was attention diverted from the few precious hours she got to spend with her sons, and that made her grumpy. She’d passed a bearded electricity guy reading her meter on the way in, reminding her that everyone was in the same boat. The days of unions and rights were gone, everyone was working around the clock, and a person had to be grateful for any job in the current climate.
‘Here you go, son,’ she told Harry, swapping plates and giving him a chocolate pudding and a spoon.
Jo leaned sideways, pulled the microwave door open, muttering, ‘Blast,’ when she realized she’d managed to partially cook the steaks. She glanced around for a cloth. The inside of the microwave looked like someone had heated tomato soup for too long: there were red splodges and splashes all over the walls and door.
Harry stretched his arms, dropping the spoon and sending chocolate spattering on to the floor. He needed bathing, too.
‘Poor love,’ she said, giving him another spoon and kissing him on the top of his head.
‘Mmmm, microwaved meat,’ Rory teased, looking over her shoulder at the sorry plate of leathery-looking steaks giving off a foul smell. He was in his pyjamas, but had got up to say goodnight.
Jo made a ‘blah blah’ motion with her hand, and began to empty the dishwasher, keeping one hand in the small of her back, and grumbling under her breath at the amount she’d still to do.
It wasn’t fair to ask Rory to give her a dig out: as he was sitting his Leaving Certificate, it would only eat into his study or sleep time. But she was going to have to broach the subject of hiring one of those come-in-and-blitz-the-house firms to appear every quarter at some stage with Dan, even if it meant forking out five hundred euro for the privilege. She’d happily go hungry for the joy of sitting down in a clean house at night.
Dan banged the bottom of the kitchen door open with one of his crutches, and heaved himself into the room.
‘Oi,’ he asked Rory, ‘since when has becoming a MasterChef judge been an option on the college application form? Are you still hungry?’
‘Nope. I’m full,’ Rory said, eyeing up Jo’s steaks. ‘Think I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it.’
‘Night,’ Jo called after him.
‘In fairness, he’s right,’ Jo told Dan, wiping chocolate off her own face with some kitchen roll. ‘I’ve made a pig’s ear of it, again.’
‘You can’t be good at everything,’ Dan said.
‘Thanks, love,’ Jo said, leaning in for a kiss. Right now she felt pretty crap at everything.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ she told him. ‘It’s this bloody case.’ How often have I use
d that as an excuse? she wondered, hoping against hope the guilt was making it seem more often than it actually was.
Dan had been organizing knives and forks from the cutlery drawer to set the table when she got back. She wondered why he was now lighting a candle in the middle of it, as he moved piled-up laundry from one side to the other. Jo was not going to sit at a table piled with clothes. She began to tell him as much, but he dropped a clattering knife, and started lowering himself to pick it up.
‘Here, let me,’ Jo said, anxious to help.
‘I’ll manage,’ he said, losing his grip on his crutch, and trying to manoeuvre the knife into a position he could reach with his foot.
Jo backed off helplessly, and got distracted by the sight of Harry firing more food from his spoon for fun.
‘Happy anniversary,’ Dan said, sounding like he was talking to himself.
Jo turned around, and pulled a face. ‘Oh Jesus, love, I’m so sorry. I’ve been too busy, I forgot.’
He loped off towards the sitting room, muttering, ‘I remembered because I’ve got nothing better to do. Your present’s on the bed.’
Jo hated that he looked so hurt, and followed him. ‘I didn’t mean you’re not busy, Dan. Come on, give me a break.’
He waved a hand over his shoulder to tell her she was digging herself into a bigger hole and to stop, but that was like waving a red flag, because it felt to Jo as if he couldn’t be bothered to argue.
‘Dan, can you just listen to me for a second?’
‘I’m not one of your underlings.’
‘I wasn’t for a minute suggesting you were.’
‘There you go again with your bloody patronizing tone.’
Jo reached for his hand and sighed. ‘Fifteen years, eh, who’d have thought?’
‘Thirteen really, if you count the two I wasn’t around.’
If he’d intended to hurt her, it had worked. Jo stood up to walk away before she said something she regretted. But Dan came as close as he could to an apology. ‘Don’t bother cooking tonight. I’ve been picking all day. I could do with a drink, though. Did you get a bottle of wine? I left a message when I couldn’t get you, asking you to pick a bottle up on the way home.’
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