She gave him a powerfully withering are you stupid look. ‘He doesn’t live here anymore. He’s moved on.’
‘Any idea where?’
She shrugged. Glanced back over her shoulder into the flat. Making it clear that she had better things to do than talk to him.
Cormac made a gesture towards the make-up on her face. ‘That looks great,’ he said. ‘Are you a professional?’
She looked at him with suspicion, but the hostility faded when she found only honest interest in his expression. ‘I did a course out of school, but it was shite,’ she said. ‘I taught meself most of it.’
‘Why only half?’ Cormac said.
‘I’m making a video,’ she said, then rolled her eyes at his look of confusion. ‘For YouTube? I have my own channel. I do make-up. Hair. The lot. Tutorials, you know? I’ve got two hundred and fifty thousand subscribers.’
Cormac didn’t have to feign his surprise. ‘Jesus, that’s great,’ he said. ‘Good on you.’
‘I’m only at it six months,’ she said, her chin coming up. ‘Zoella has twelve million. But give me a year, like.’
Cormac laughed. ‘Can you make any money out of it?’ he asked. They were chatting now. She was leaning against the doorjamb, a bit more relaxed.
She made a face. ‘You can, but you need to be at it all the time. A new video every day. Have to come up with something different. And you need loads of energy, to keep it interesting. But I made three grand out of my last video.’ She shrugged at his start of surprise, but a smile lurked at the corners of her half-painted mouth. ‘Don’t tell the social, but.’
They both laughed. Cormac leaned back against the wall opposite her door, giving her a bit of space.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Shauna.’
‘Cormac,’ he said. ‘Look, Shauna, I know you’ve stuff to be getting on with, but anything you can tell me about Collins would be a real help.’
‘You’re a guard,’ she said, with a hard look.
‘Got me,’ he said. ‘But look, I’m not looking to arrest him or anything, and I’m not trying to make trouble for anyone. I just want to have a chat.’
She rolled her eyes again, like she’d heard it all before, and knew exactly what a chat entailed. ‘Look, I don’t know him. This wasn’t even his place. It was his sister’s. She got it because she had a little one. He was just living with her and her little girl. Then she bailed, and he stayed on until the social found out and kicked him out.’
‘Right. Any idea where he might have gone after that? Maybe he followed his sister? He could be living with her again.’
Shauna made a face. ‘Don’t think so. She hasn’t been around.’
‘But he has?’
Cormac could tell that she was beginning to lose interest in the conversation.
‘All I know is he’s a junkie. You should have seen the state of this place when I got it. They send in the cleaners, but they only ever do half the job. Me ma came to help but it still took us two days to get the place straight.’
‘And you haven’t heard anything about him since?’
‘No.’ Her hand was on the door.
‘All right, Shauna.’ Cormac reached into his back pocket, pulled out a card and gave it to her. ‘If you ever do hear anything, you give me a call or drop me a text. And hold on to the card. I don’t forget a favour. If you ever need something in return you can give me a shout and I’ll do what I can.’
She examined the card, then looked up at him. ‘Try the drop-in centre on Liffey Street. My cousin said he goes there sometimes.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Cormac said.
He was walking away when she called after him.
‘That counts, right? For the favour?’
He turned back. ‘It does if I find him.’
She sniffed. ‘Ye’re all the bleeding same,’ she said, and she closed the door.
The drop-in centre was only a fifteen-minute drive from Shauna’s flat. Cormac flashed his badge at the man sitting behind the reception desk.
‘I’m looking for Niall Collins,’ he said.
The man behind the desk – a clean-cut twenty-something with a hipster beard – had looked up with a friendly smile, but his expression darkened as soon as the badge came out.
‘I haven’t seen him for a few days,’ he said.
‘Right,’ Cormac said. ‘But he does come here?’
The receptionist flushed a little. ‘Sorry. I’m not supposed to share any information about our clients. Not without a warrant. I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s about respecting people’s privacy.’
Cormac nodded. ‘I get that.’ He drummed his fingers on the reception desk, thinking. He looked around. The place was all bright colours and openness. It must have been a recent refit, and whoever had funded it had had money to spend. Cormac found it difficult not to be cynical about drug rehabilitation. He’d seen too many serial failures, people who sucked up their family’s resources to pay for expensive rehab, only to return to the needle or the pills again and again. Still there was the occasional success, and people needed hope. And this place had a sense of hope about it. He could see past reception into a canteen area. There were clients sitting around, playing cards and drinking coffee. A couple of people were engaged in private conversations that looked like they might have a counselling aspect to them. Cormac made a gesture in their direction. ‘Do you think there’s anyone else here who might know Niall? Might be able to point me in his direction? I’m guessing your other clients don’t have the same confidentiality obligations.’
The receptionist gave him the dirtiest of looks, then picked up his phone and dialled a number, muttering a quick description of the problem before hanging up. ‘Someone will be with you in a minute,’ he said.
The someone in question was a young woman, attractive, with dark hair to her shoulders, blue eyes and very clear skin. She held out a hand to him. ‘Karen Allen, Director of Services. Would you like to come this way, Detective?’ she said.
He followed her into an office. She sat and picked up a pen like she was about to take notes, gesturing to the seat opposite her. ‘Please do sit. I understand that you would like to speak with Niall Collins. We can’t help you with that because Niall isn’t here. He hasn’t been here for a few days and he may not come again.’
‘I’m not trying to invade Mr Collins’ privacy unnecessarily. But I would like to talk to him. I understand he was living with his sister until recently. Do you know where he’s living at the moment?’
‘I think he’s homeless, so it could be anywhere.’
Cormac didn’t quite manage to hide his surprise at that. The woman saw it and nodded.
‘Niall had been doing very well in his recovery. He was one of our volunteers on our peer-support program for many months. But things went downhill for him five or six months ago and he hasn’t been part of the program for some time. Niall does sometimes drop in for a chat or something to eat, but he’s been coming in less lately. Beyond that there’s really nothing I can tell you. I’m not his counsellor, and if I were I wouldn’t be able to share anything Niall has spoken about in confidence anyway.’
‘Understood.’ Cormac hesitated. He wanted to ask her more, ask for her impression of the man, but he’d spent enough time here. It was a drug treatment centre. If there were six degrees of separation in most of the world, as a general rule there were no more than four in Ireland. And surely here no separation at all between the drug users who came to seek treatment and the drug gangs who fed their habits. It was one thing to be open about his approach, but he didn’t want to be so open that Collins bolted before he got to him.
Cormac stood up. ‘Thanks for your time,’ he said.
‘Do you want to leave a card? I can let Niall know you were looking for him.’
‘Thank you, but no. I’ll keep looking.’
He spent much of the early hours of Friday night walking the streets of inner-city Dublin, talking to the homeless. The
re were far too many of them, men and women, young and old. Some obvious addicts, and some who were tidy and put-together and seemed at first glance to be in good shape, until you saw the look of despair in their eyes. He found a few who were happy to have a chat, two who professed to knowing the Niall Collins he was talking about. One young fella agreed to ask around, see what he could learn about Collins’ location by the following night, in exchange for appropriate compensation. And that was it. At one a.m. Cormac retreated to his hotel for some sleep, intent on getting some rest and trying again the following day.
He checked his phone before he went to sleep. At some point in the night he’d missed another call from Emma. Shite. She would assume he was avoiding her, and maybe he was. There was only one way they could be together, and that was if he walked away from his job, rolled the dice on a new life. It seemed impossible. He’d been a garda for more than twenty years and, false modesty aside, he knew he was bloody good at it. Walking away from all of that didn’t feel like a step towards a new life, it felt like taking a step off a cliff. What else could he do? There was only one possibility. If Matt Staunton could introduce him to the right people, there might be an opportunity for him at Interpol. The chances were slim, and it was hard to imagine leaving Ireland, leaving the gardaí, but losing Emma felt like an impossibility. Lyon wasn’t Brussels but Emma could undoubtedly find a lab in France, if it came to it. He needed to talk to her, tell her what he was thinking, but it would have to wait until things were a bit more certain.
Cormac sent her a text message, a simple good night and a promise to talk the following day, then he rolled over and fell asleep.
Tuesday 1 September 2015
ANNA
By the time they were an hour out of Dublin, Tilly had her head buried in a library book, which would now never be returned, and Anna was taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi on the bus to search for flats. Anna knew she would qualify for rent allowance, but even if she applied first thing in the morning it would take two months for the money to come through. Besides, putting in an application for rent allowance meant formally forgoing the flat to the next person on the housing list, which meant that Niall would be evicted all the sooner. She couldn’t quite bring herself to pull that trigger. Not yet, though she couldn’t afford to delay for very long. In the meantime, she and Tilly needed somewhere to stay. Anna flicked through the images on a real-estate website, sorted them so that the cheapest came up first. She’d started by searching for single rooms, but there were only two single rooms to rent, both in houses already occupied by university students. They wouldn’t want the likes of her. And even those single rooms were asking for four hundred euro a month. The next cheapest place on the list was a shitty one-room bedsit for five-fifty. Jesus. They’d want a month’s rent in advance, which would leave her less than a hundred euro in her savings, and then she’d be back to living week to week on her welfare payments. There had to be a better solution.
Anna widened the search field to all of County Galway, set the maximum rent at three hundred euro a month, and came up with nothing. Not a single hit. She moved the cap up to four hundred euro and got three results. Two student accommodation places, and a lovely little cottage in a place called Kilmore. But as far as she could see from the map, the cottage was miles from the nearest village, so what chance would she have to find work there, and how would she get Tilly to school? Anna felt tears threatening. Tilly tugged on her arm, looked up at her anxiously, and Anna forced a smile.
‘Are you hungry, Tils?’
Tilly nodded, smiling tentatively back at her. This was all a big adventure. Anna handed her a sandwich and a bottle of water. Tilly tucked the water at her side then, balancing sandwich and book, continued to read. Anna returned to her search. She couldn’t eat until she’d figured something out.
She pushed the cap up to four hundred and fifty, and one other place popped up. A one-bedroom flat in a seaside village called Roundstone. Anna flicked through the pictures. They looked blurry, but it might be all right. It wasn’t right in the village, but walking distance, surely. She looked up the village online and it was very pretty. There was a primary school. There were a couple of pubs, a small hotel. Surely there’d be a bit of work going? But could she afford it? Four hundred and fifty up front. Anna bit her lip. She looked at the flat again. Tried to zoom in on the photographs. It was listed for rent by the owner, not an agency. All right. Well, she’d said she was going to be tough, to fight for her daughter and this was the place to start. The ad included a mobile number.
Looking for a place to rent for me and my little girl. I’m a great cleaner. Would you take three hundred and fifty and I’ll give the place a great clean for you?
Anna closed her eyes and let her head rest against the seat. Please. Please please please. Her phone buzzed a moment later.
When would you want it?
Anna stared down at the message, her fingers were clumsy in her haste to respond.
Today, if that’s all right.
The wait for a return message felt like forever.
I’ll let you have it if you paint it. Flat comes as is.
Comes as is? What did that mean? Anna glanced uncertainly at Tilly. But how bad could it be? They’d have a roof over their heads. An oven. A fridge. And she could fix it up. On her phone she flicked back to the photographs of the village, the painted terrace houses, the gleaming water of the bay and the little fishing boats. It was a million miles from The Liberties, a million miles from the world they were leaving behind. She suddenly wanted it very badly. But she couldn’t afford to be stupid.
I’ll paint it no problem. But you’ll need to supply the paint, and I’ll need a discount off the rent.
A long, long pause.
Two fifty for the first month.
Anna nearly dropped her phone in her haste to type in her acceptance. She pressed send, then clutched the phone in excitement. She was doing it. She was going to make this work. She picked up Tilly’s hand and gave it a squeeze, returned Tilly’s smile, this time sincerely, then searched in the bag for her own sandwich. She was absolutely starving.
They arrived in Galway at five forty-five p.m., exactly on time, which left them only twenty-two minutes to gather their bags, buy their tickets for Roundstone at the ticket office, and make their way to the departure point for their bus. The Clifden bus was the only one to stop in Roundstone, there was only one departure per day, and Anna had already decided that they couldn’t afford to stop in Galway for the night. She was going to make every penny she had work as hard as possible. They hurried, made it with only a couple of minutes to spare, and Anna was too frazzled and too distracted to notice the man who followed them off the Galway bus, followed them to the ticket office, and continued to watch as they boarded the bus to Clifden, his mobile phone pressed to his ear.
Tilly was caught up at first by all the activity in the bus station but as the bus pulled out, she went looking in the bag for more food. Anna handed her the muffin, felt her own stomach grumble. Oh well. It was only an hour and a half. They could pick up a bit of food when they got there.
The bus was only half full when they left Galway, and they lost passengers steadily. For the last leg of the journey, Anna and Tilly were the only passengers on board. The roads were terrible, narrow and potholed, uneven and full of sudden sharp turns. But the landscape was beautiful. The road met the coast as they approached Roundstone and a dazzling view of the ocean opened up before them. The sun was setting, the last of its light brightening and warming the headland. In the shadow the water was the colour of a bruised blueberry. It made Anna catch her breath.
The bus dropped them on the main street. Anna took Tilly by the hand, caught up their bags and baggage, and crossed the road into Gilmartin’s pub, where she’d arranged to meet her new landlord. The hum of noisy talk, the warmth of a busy pub and the smell of good food reached out and grabbed her. She paused at the threshold for a moment – it was a lot after the near-silence of th
e bus journey – then made her way to the bar, Tilly following close behind. The barman was tall and blond, looked more Swedish than Irish, and had his hands full. All the bar stools were occupied, men in conversation. One of them, older, overweight and with the reddened nose and cheeks of a regular drinker, turned to look at her.
‘Do you want to sit?’ he asked, moving as if to vacate the stool. His eyes flicked to Tilly behind her.
‘No, you’re grand,’ Anna said. ‘We’re not staying.’
He nodded. ‘Looking for someone?’
Anna shrugged. She wasn’t going to get into it with a stranger. He seemed to get the message after a minute, turned back to his pint. At least he hadn’t taken offence. You never knew with older men. She had to wait another couple of minutes before the barman made his way back down to them. That was all right. They served food here too. Anna counted the tables . . . twelve tables in the front bar where people were eating their dinner. If they served lunch as well, she might be able to get a few shifts waitressing.
When the barman approached, she gave him her biggest and brightest smile.
‘Howr’ya,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for Dieter Blume. I’m Anna. He said he’d meet me here.’
The barman didn’t get a chance to answer. The man who’d offered the barstool cut in instead.
‘Dieter’s not here,’ he said. ‘He’s not been in yet this evening.’ He offered his hand. ‘Sorry for butting in. My name’s Des Fisher. I’m the local garda sergeant. Can’t seem to mind my own business. Isn’t that right, Mike?’ The last was said with a friendly nod to the barman, who laughed lightly. ‘Can I get you a drink while you’re waiting? Would the little one like something?’
Anna’s sense that she was in control of her situation dropped away. She wanted to retreat to the furthest corner of the room, but she knew it would only draw more attention. She forced herself to smile again.
‘Ah, no,’ she said. ‘You’re all right.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ He turned to the barman. ‘Mike, we’ll have a juice for the little one, and . . . what’ll you have yourself?’
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