BALLYCOTTON TAXI 24.
Okay, new plan. She’d get a taxi to Midleton. Get back inside the sphere of civilisation. The drive should take about half an hour, maybe less. Midleton was an actual town with a train station and a Tesco and a large hotel. She could check into the hotel there tonight, head back to Dublin tomorrow morning. Or maybe she’d get the taxi all the way into Cork, it wasn’t that much further, and weren’t there buses that left from the quays for Dublin Airport all through the night?
She just needed to call the taxi.
The pay-as-you-go phone was sitting on the dining table. Its packaging had promised that it came fully-charged but repeated pressing of the power button did nothing. It had probably been hanging in that shop for years; no wonder.
Natalie plugged the charger into a wall socket and connected it to the phone. The power button began to blink on and off, but the screen stayed off. It probably needed a few minutes.
There was another option, of course. Once the phone was charged, Natalie could just end all this now and call Mike. Tell him where she was, ask him to come and get her. He would. He’d be here in three hours. They’d be back home in another three.
But she’d have to tell him where she was and there could only be one reason why she’d come here.
There’d be no avoiding it then. They’d have to talk about it. She wouldn’t be able to put it off any longer; she’d have to explain what the hell was going on here. And she’d be on the back foot for that conversation, what with her running off like Nancy Drew and him having to drop everything to come and get her because someone had left a threatening note on her fridge …
It sounded bonkers.
She’d sound bonkers, telling him it.
But this time, she had proof. Evidence. Things she could show him. She had the note and she had the poetry book—
Natalie’s insides turned cold with dread.
She’d looked everywhere for that Guest Information folder, and she didn’t remember seeing the book. Slowly she moved towards the drawer, knowing what she was going to see before she opened it and looked.
The book was gone.
Audrey didn’t know how to connect her mobile phone to the car’s Bluetooth system so when Dee called it at 8:45 a.m., she had to pull over to the side of the road so she could answer.
‘Morning, sis.’
‘So sorry to bother you,’ Dee said, her overly friendly tone dripping with sarcasm, ‘but I was just wondering: where the fuck is my car?’
‘Why, do you need it for the first time on a weekday morning ever?’
‘Audrey.’
‘But you don’t, do you?’
‘Not. The. Point. Where is it? And where the hell are you?’
‘Well, spoiler alert, sis, but I’m with the car.’
‘Audrey.’
‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? But I needed it.’
‘Oh,’ Dee scoffed. ‘Well, if you needed it …’
‘I left before five. I didn’t want to wake you up to ask—’
‘Because you knew exactly what I’d say.’
‘—and you never use it during the week, anyway. It just sits there. And I’m still insured since you guys went to France in the summer, so it’ll be fine. Everything’s fine. Except for your blood pressure, probably.’
‘Where the hell were you going at five in the— Where are you?’
Audrey sighed. There was no point lying; Dee would see the mileage when she got back.
‘East Cork,’ she said quietly.
‘What?’
‘It’s for the story, Dee. Natalie O’Connor.’
‘You told us last night that you were off that.’
‘What Joel said was that if she came home, it wouldn’t be news, and that if something bad happened to her, it’d go to the crime reporter. But he didn’t say anything about me finding her.’
Silence bloomed on the line. A van whooshed past Natalie’s window at high speed, sending a tremor through the car.
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ Dee said then. ‘Because that’s completely insane.’
‘You won’t say that if I find her.’
‘No, I think I will. Does Joel know about this?’
‘Yep,’ Audrey said lightly. ‘All about it.’
He didn’t. She’d sent him an email saying she’d been sick during the night and was going to visit a GP on the way to work. That would buy her a couple of hours. Enough time, she hoped, to confirm whether or not Natalie had been in Shanamore, maybe even find her there, at which point she’d call Joel and say, Surprise!
‘You could’ve asked me for the car,’ Dee said.
‘You would’ve said no. And like I said, I only decided to do this at, like, five o’clock this morning. I couldn’t sleep over this, Dee. The email from that girl in the café and the guy hanging up on me at the cottages … She has to be there. Or to have been last week. I can’t just sit back and let someone else find that out, can I? I mean, you’re the one who said I needed to start trying. This is trying.’
‘This,’ Dee said, ‘is grand theft auto.’
But Audrey could hear the smile that had crept into her sister’s voice.
‘I’ll bring it back in one piece, Dee. I promise.’
‘You better.’ A long, tired sigh. ‘Ring me if you need anything. I can transfer some money to your card if you—’
‘No, no,’ Audrey said quickly. ‘I mean, thanks but I’m good.’
Another lie. Her fund for this excursion was the five hundred euro she’d managed to scrape together over the last year, her security deposit for when she eventually moved out. Which, now that D-Day was three weeks away at the most, she really shouldn’t be spending and definitely wouldn’t have time to replace.
But she’d worry about that later.
Another van screamed past, blaring its horn.
‘Dee, I better go before someone runs into the back of me. I’m pulled into the ditch of a boreen here.’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’ll call you later, okay?’
‘Why the hell are you—’
Audrey ended the call, cutting her sister off mid-sentence.
Checking the road behind her was clear, she swung the car back out on to it. It was narrow, potholed and bordered by thick hedgerow on either side. As promised by the sign back in the village, after about a kilometre’s worth of it, Shanamore Cottages appeared. The hedgerow had been cut away from the plot on which they stood so they were revealed suddenly, unveiled unexpectedly, a mirage of modernity in the middle of fields and farmlands.
There were three parking spaces just outside the entrance, all empty. In fact, Audrey could only see one other car in the entire complex: a red hatchback parked in the driveway of the closest cottage to the road. A small sign by that cottage’s door advised that it was RECEPTION. Audrey pulled into one of the spaces and killed the engine.
The cottages were strange things to look at, a second-cousin-onceremoved of actual cottages, at best. Audrey had watched enough episodes of Grand Designs while horizontal and hungover to know that these things weren’t blending into the landscape but screaming blue murder at it.
As soon as she got out of the car, she immediately felt the brunt of the bracing wind. It was so cold it pricked her skin, as if the air was filled with tiny pushpins all vying for a spot on her face.
Granted, it was an icy morning in mid-November, but looking around, Audrey wasn’t convinced summer sun would be enough to transform this place into a holiday destination. The cottages had a cold, industrial finish to them and, set only feet apart in this field in the middle of nowhere, they looked like they were huddled together for warmth.
The plot next door, one plot further away from the village, was an abandoned building site, a half-finished house surrounded by a chain-link fence. Soft plastic signs had been tied to the fence at intervals; once upon a time they may have advertised the name of the construction company but now they were ripped to shreds and flappi
ng in the breeze.
The whole place just felt … dead.
Why on earth would Natalie come here?
Why would anyone?
Audrey made it all the way to the front stoop of the RECEPTION cottage before she got her first sign of life: voices coming from inside. It sounded like it was coming from a television.
She pressed the doorbell. Waited.
Nothing.
She knocked on the door as well for good measure. Waited some more.
Still nothing.
She knocked again, harder, rapping her knuckles against the wood three times. The voices stopped abruptly; it must have been the TV. Footsteps approaching the door from its other side. A bolt turning.
The door opened but only three or four inches, revealing a sliver of a man’s face.
A youngish man. Tall and skinny. Pale, with purple shadows under his eyes and dark, floppy hair that had fallen into them. He was wearing what looked like a faded pair of flannel pyjamas pants and an off-white T-shirt turning yellow around the collar. And the way he was pushing his body into the gap between the door and its frame, how small that gap was … She wondered if maybe there was a dog in there that wasn’t allowed out or something.
A very quiet dog.
‘Yes?’ he said, squinting at her.
‘Hiya.’ Audrey smiled as brightly as she could this early in the morning after a night during which she’d barely slept. ‘Is this where I check in?’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘We’re closed.’
‘Closed?’ That’s not what it said on their website.
‘I mean, uh, no vacancies. Sorry.’ He started to close the door but Audrey reached out and pushed a hand against it.
‘But I have a reservation,’ she said, pleasant but firm.
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the piece of paper Dee’s printer had spat out just hours earlier. It was confirmation of a reservation for one night’s stay at Shanamore Cottages, arriving today, made on Booking.com. Paid in full in advance, non-refundable.
Audrey held it up and watched as the man’s eyes started to scan it.
During her MA, she’d spent a summer working in a call centre owned by one of Booking.com’s competitors. She knew how the system worked for smaller properties. When you made a reservation online, it got sent to the hotel or wherever as an email. The property then had to see it, read it and manually enter it into their reservation system. It was unlikely this guy had checked his emails yet this morning.
Audrey was counting on it.
‘Um …’ He looked back into the cottage. The room behind him was dark; Audrey couldn’t see a thing. He turned back to her. ‘I’m – I’m not feeling very well, you see, so we’re closed.’
‘I understand,’ Audrey said. ‘But I have a reservation. Can’t you just give me the key?’
He started shaking his head. ‘No, sorry.’
‘But I’ve pre-paid.’ She paused. ‘Is there a manager I could talk to?’
The door closed, disappearing him back inside. When, not ten seconds later, Audrey heard it opening again, she expected to see someone else – the actual manager – but it was the same man.
Only now he was smiling.
‘Sorry for the confusion,’ he said. ‘I have a cottage for you. Check-in isn’t until two, though, so the cottage isn’t ready right now. Yet, I mean. It wouldn’t have been ready anyway, even if I knew you were coming, so …’ He pushed the hair out of his eyes. His fingernails were bitten ragged and looked dirty. ‘Can you come back?’
He brought his left hand up to look at his watch, a movement that forced the door open a little wider. Audrey caught a glimpse of a large, gloomy space beyond. She saw a rectangle drawn in light straight ahead and realised then why it was so dark: all the curtains on the ground floor of this cottage were drawn. She must have woken him up. Maybe he really was sick and she’d forced him out of his sick bed. She felt bad about that.
A little bit.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘When?’
‘The earliest I can do is noon.’
‘That’d be great.’ That was three hours from now. What the hell was she going to do until then? ‘Sorry, I didn’t get your name …?’
‘Andrew.’
‘Andrew,’ she repeated. ‘Hi. I’m Audrey.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s on your reservation.’
‘Ah. Right.’
He looked at her blankly.
‘So,’ she said, ‘the place in the village – The Kiln, is it? Do you know what time it opens?’
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Nine.’
‘I’ll head there so.’ She started to turn.
‘Why are you here?’
She turned back. ‘Sorry?’
‘You here for the pottery?’
‘Ah …’
‘Are you taking a class? Over at the pottery.’ Andrew was looking her right in the eye now, which she realised he hadn’t done before. ‘That’s why people come here. Normally.’
Audrey had no idea what he was talking about.
‘No,’ she said breezily. ‘Just taking a little road trip. Someone recommended this place to me, so …’ She looked around, realising how unlikely that sounded. ‘It seems very quiet.’
‘You’re my only guest,’ Andrew said. Then, abruptly, he stepped back into the gloom and a front door swung shut in Audrey’s face for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
‘Visit Ireland,’ she muttered to herself as she walked back down the drive. ‘The land of a thousand welcomes. Or sometimes, not even one.’
She wasn’t quite at the car when her phone began to buzz in her hand. The screen warned there was NO CALLER ID and only one bar of service.
When she answered, a vaguely familiar male voice said, ‘Is that Audrey? Audrey Coughlan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘This is Mike Kerr. Natalie’s husband?’
‘Oh.’ Audrey froze on the spot, lest she lose her remaining bar of mobile phone reception. ‘Hi. How are you?’
‘I’m calling to apologise. For yesterday. I wasn’t very helpful. And then I got called away … You were just doing your job. And your article really did help. I’m told the guards over in Blackrock are getting loads of calls, so … Thank you.’
‘Well, that’s great. But there’s no need to apologise. Really.’ Audrey desperately wanted to know what all those calls were about but now that she had Mike on the line, there was something more pressing she wanted to ask him. ‘Actually, I’m glad you called. There’s something you might be able to help me with. Shanamore. It’s a village in East Cork, by the sea. Does that name mean anything to you?’
Silence.
‘Mike?’
‘Shanamore,’ he said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly.
‘Yeah. Do you know it?’
‘That’s what she asked me.’
‘Who?’
More silence.
So much that this time Audrey pulled the phone from her ear to check that her service hadn’t gone completely.
‘Mike?’ she prompted. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Natalie,’ he said. ‘Natalie asked me. On the morning she left. She asked me if I’d ever heard of Shanamore.’
_________
The inside of The Kiln looked and felt like some kind of modernist church. The only colour in the building itself came from the wooden beams holding up its vaulted ceiling; everything else was a white wall or pale floor tile or a window of grey sky. And it was, like a church, eerily quiet, but in a deliberate, hushed way, as if the items on the shelves and in the display cases – ceramics, blown glass, horrendously oversized jewellery that would surely weigh the wearer down – were ancient religious relics that demanded respect.
There were no customers, just a cashier standing behind a service counter in the centre. She looked up and smiled briefly, then went back to the magazine or catalogue she’d been leafing through.
Through a gap in the shelve
s at the rear, Audrey could see dining tables and chairs and she thought she could smell coffee. The café. It must be.
It had no customers either. There were only – Audrey counted quickly – eight tables. A glass counter to the left showcased various cakes and pastries, their icing glistening, and above them a large blackboard displayed the menu in chalk. Most of the back wall was an enormous picture window, offering a stunning view of flat fields in the foreground, sea in the middle distance and wintry sky beyond that.
A voice said, ‘Take a seat.’
Audrey turned. A girl – woman – had materialised, wearing a black apron with a dusting of flour on it. She looked to be twenty at the most. She wore little to no make-up and her shiny hair seemed to be its natural, mousy-brown colour.
She wasn’t wearing a name-tag, but this had to be Orla.
‘Thank you,’ Audrey said. She pointed to a table whose far end was pushed up against the window. ‘Is there all right?’
‘Anywhere you like. Menu’s on the board. Can I get you something to drink?’
‘Ah, I’ll have a cappuccino. Please. And actually’ – she quickly scanned the blackboard – ‘I’ll go with the poached eggs on toast.’ The prices were half that of Dublin, she might as well take advantage of it.
‘Great.’ Potentially Orla smiled. ‘I’ll be right back.’
Audrey took a seat and pulled out her phone. No bars at all now; she had no reception. There was a wifi network called Kiln-Guest, but Audrey didn’t want to connect to it. If Joel had detected her deceit and was trying to call or email, it was good to have an excuse. And it was easier to give it if it wasn’t also a lie.
She did use her phone to take a few pictures of the café, ensuring beforehand that the device was on silent, so its click-click-click wouldn’t give her away.
She stopped when she heard footsteps coming out of the kitchen.
‘Here you go.’ Potentially Orla had returned with the coffee. ‘Your eggs will just be a few minutes.’
‘Thanks,’ Audrey said. ‘Sorry – are you Orla, by any chance?’
The girl frowned. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’m Audrey Coughlan. From ThePaper.ie.’
Confusion bloomed on the girl’s face for a second, then shock as the penny dropped.
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