She stopped, one hand holding both mugs by their handles, the other on the tap over the sink.
Click. Click. Click.
Alice was taking photos. But of what?
Natalie tiptoed across the kitchen to peek into the living room and saw the woman standing in front of the fireplace, holding her phone out in front of her, smiling manically, snapping away.
Click-click-click.
Alice was taking selfies in front of Natalie’s fireplace.
That was strange, but not—
Alice pointed behind her, at the framed wedding photo sitting on the mantelpiece, and smiled even wider.
Click.
Natalie stepped into the room. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Oh—’ Alice was so startled, she dropped the phone. It clattered on to the floor. She bent down to pick it up and then dropped it again. Her cheeks had flushed. ‘I was – I was just …’
Natalie was expecting embarrassment, shame, apology. Or maybe some kind of reasonable, logical explanation. But when Alice straightened up, the look on her face was one of annoyance, and her words, when they came, were dripping with indignation.
‘If it wasn’t for people like me, you wouldn’t even have this fucking house.’
The air temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. This wasn’t an inappropriately nosy neighbour. This was an internet crazy, one of Natalie’s followers, who’d come crashing out of the screen and into real life via her own front door.
And Natalie had invited her in.
She didn’t know what to do. Her phone was upstairs, in the office. She could run. As quickly as she could, up the stairs and into that room. The door had a key in it. She’d lock it behind her and ring Mike. No, the guards. They were closer. Then Mike. Alice could take as many pictures as she wanted in the meantime because when the Gardaí got here, they’d bloody arrest her.
But before Natalie could move, Alice muttered something under her breath and stalked out of the room, into the hall.
Natalie followed, but kept her distance.
She’d set the pink flower pot on the little console table out there, next to the tray where she and Mike had already established a habit of depositing keys, change, Leap cards and the like. As she passed, Alice knocked the pot on to the floor with a single decisive swoop of her hand, smashing it into smithereens, sending shards of pink pot and crumbs of dark soil flying across the floor.
Then she turned to roar a ‘Fuck you’ at Natalie. ‘You stuck-up, ugly bitch.’
She went out, slamming the door so hard behind her that the letterbox rattled on its hinges, leaving Natalie standing dumbfounded in the hall, blood thumping in her ears, shaking.
_________
‘Crazy bitch,’ Madeline muttered. ‘How the hell did she find your house?’
Natalie and Madeline were sitting beside each other at a long trestle table covered in starched white cloth and festooned with sweet-smelling floral arrangements, flickering beeswax candles and exquisitely wrapped gift boxes whose calligraphy tags doubled as place-cards.
A cosmetics brand was having a brunch at the Dylan Hotel to celebrate the launch of a new lipstick line. Every seat was taken and the room thrummed with the sound of two dozen women talking. Natalie was relieved to find she’d been seated next to Madeline Creen, a make-up artist who’d amassed a huge following with YouTube tutorials that featured only value brands you could buy in chemists and supermarkets. The two of them were decidedly the elder statesmen at the table. Looking around, all the other women seemed to be under twenty-five.
They were also the only two who didn’t currently have their phones in their hands. Madeline had already done her duty, adding a video of the room to her Instagram story and pulling Natalie in for a selfie that she’d post later, when she got home, and Natalie just wasn’t in the mood for it.
Not after yesterday.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Natalie said. ‘But I did post a picture of Sandymount Strand right after our offer was accepted and said something like, “It’s going to be great living so close to the beach.” Mike thinks this woman may have gone online, on to Daft or something, and looked up recent house sales in the area. There’d have been pictures there she could’ve matched with pictures I posted later, from the house. Matched up the backgrounds, I mean. Then she buys her potted plant and comes knocking on my door.’ She sighed. ‘But Mike thinks I’m overreacting. He maintains that she’s just a neighbour who’s a tad unhinged.’
‘Nah.’ Madeline shook her head. ‘She’s definitely a crazy. And look, they come with the territory. We want people to feel like they know us. Otherwise all this, it doesn’t work. But if they’re a bit, you know’ – she made a face – ‘unhinged, they don’t understand that they don’t know us, actually. This Alice may be your first one but, honey, she won’t be your last.’
‘What a comforting thought, Maddy. Thanks for that.’
She laughed. ‘Sorry.’
‘Have you had any visitors?’
‘My crazy’s confined to email, so far. There’s one woman who’s been messaging me every day for weeks now because she ran out and bought all the products I used in a video but she’ – Madeline made air quotes with her fingers – ‘“couldn’t achieve the same result”. And that’s my fault, apparently.’
‘What does she want?’
‘Me to refund the money she spent on the products.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘She says I have a responsibility. When I didn’t agree – and stopped responding – she started on the insults. I’m a liar. I’m a fraud. I’ve got three chins. My teeth aren’t straight. My skin is disgusting. Oh, and of course the classic who do you think you are?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Isn’t it? Gotta love fan mail.’ Madeline took a swig of her drink; they’d been handed mimosas as they entered the room. ‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know …’ Natalie shrugged. ‘Mike thinks we should get electronic gates. He says they’d deter people from coming up the path and knocking on the door. But to be honest, I’m more worried about walking around the neighbourhood. Walking down to the beach. What if I was on my own and someone approached me? Is it weird to be worried about that kind of thing? Or am I catching the crazy?’
‘No make-up,’ Madeline said. ‘Hair in a ponytail. Glasses instead of my contacts. That’s what I do when I go out running and no one has ever said anything to me. No one even looks at me. I’d bet money my most loyal followers wouldn’t be able to pick me out of a line-up when I look like that. And I’m in all my shots. You’re only in some of yours. So I wouldn’t worry about it. Really. Yesterday was just bad luck.’
They heard the clinking of cutlery against glass. A representative from their corporate hosts was standing at the head of the table, waiting patiently for everyone’s attention. The chatter tapered off quickly and a handful of women who’d been standing at various points around the table, leaning down to chat – other representatives of the company, Natalie presumed, based on the conversations she’d overheard – straightened up now and started to drift towards the top of the table too, throwing smiles and excited little waves at individual guests as they passed.
Except for one.
One of these women didn’t look at anybody. She kept her head turned slightly away, as if studying the opposite wall. And she didn’t drift towards the top of the table as much as hurried towards it – and then kept going, past the speaker, through the double doors and out of the room, at a speed that suggested she was trying to get out before anyone saw her leave.
A little voice in Natalie’s head said, She’s not supposed to be here.
Was she a gatecrasher? There was always at least one at these things. It was the goody bags that drew them.
But just as the woman crossed the threshold, she glanced back and Natalie saw that she was older, too old, surely, to be bothered gatecrashing a Millennial-filled event like this, and that she was wearing bla
ck glasses with thick, trendy frames.
They made eye contact.
And then Natalie clocked the impeccable ponytail, the perfectly neat gathering of sleek, bleached-blonde hair, and she realised who it was, where she’d seen her before.
It was with Carla, in Bestseller, a couple of weeks ago.
It was the woman from the café.
By sticking her head outside the front door, Audrey could see what she hadn’t been able to from the bedroom window: that while she was sleeping, a convoy of Garda vehicles had arrived and parked in a neat row at the entrance to the complex. The only actual Gardaí Audrey could see, though, were huddled in a little group of five or six by the side of the van marked TECHNICAL BUREAU. Each of them had adopted an identical stance: legs straight and slightly apart, both hands hooked into the sides of their neon yellow vests.
Well, them and the suited one standing in front of her.
When he flashed his ID, Audrey reached out and snatched it from him.
‘You lads always do that so fast,’ she said, ‘you can never read the names. It’s almost like that’s what you want to happen.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Meet a lot of us, do you?’
‘Detective Sergeant Steven O’Reilly.’ Audrey handed the ID back to him. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure? Again.’
‘I need you to pack up your stuff and leave.’
‘You’re not seriously kicking me out of a house for the second time in two days? Neither of which were actually yours, I might add.’
‘The cottages are closed,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay here.’
‘Is that because of Natalie O’Connor? Is this a crime scene?’
‘This is official Garda business. Not yours.’ The detective held up a splayed hand. ‘Five minutes. That’s how long you’ve got to pack up and go.’ He turned to leave.
‘You can’t just kick me out,’ Audrey called after him.
Over his shoulder: ‘And yet I just have.’
‘Wait!’
When he’d reluctantly turned back around to face her, his expression was somewhere between bemused and annoyed.
‘What if I’ve nowhere else to go?’
‘Then I’d suggest you go home,’ he said. ‘Or back to work, maybe? I’m sure there’s some Pulitzer Prize-worthy arse-related news about Kim Kevorkian that needs writing up.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ Audrey said. ‘The deliberately getting the name wrong. I mean, I’m not falling for it, but I can see how it’d work on other people.’
The detective sighed deeply. ‘Why are you like this?’
‘What?’
‘So … combative.’
‘I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.’
‘A woman is missing, as well you know, and you are impeding the effort to locate her by delaying me. There. Now you’re all caught up.’
‘Were your phones ringing a lot in the past twenty-four hours, Detective? I wonder why that could be …’
‘Yeah, they were,’ he said. ‘Off the hook, actually. Unfortunately it was all crazies and fantasists on the end of the line, so many thanks for wasting our limited resources.’
‘Didn’t they get you here?’
‘No, they did not.’
Either he was lying or it wasn’t Orla’s tip-off that had brought them to Shanamore.
Thinking about it, though, an email from a waitress would hardly warrant the arrival of a small army without so much as a follow-up first, would it? They had to have something else.
Maybe Mike had called them and told them about Natalie asking him about Shanamore. But wouldn’t he have done that already, yesterday? Why would they have waited twenty-four hours to show up here? No, there had to be a new lead. A development.
And Audrey absolutely had to find out what it was.
‘Aren’t you wondering why I’m here?’ she asked.
‘The husband told you she’d asked him about this place. Mystery solved.’
‘But I knew before that. I asked him if he’d ever heard of Shanamore. And I was already here when I did.’
The detective said nothing, but his mouth twitched.
Audrey smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’
‘Don’t say things like that. Don’t you read the news?’
‘Don’t worry, Detective. You’re a little flat-chested for me.’ Audrey winked at him. ‘Geddit?’
‘Please God,’ he said, groaning. ‘Make it stop.’
‘Ask me the question then.’
‘Fine. Why did you come here?’
‘I got a message from a woman named Orla Sheridan. She’d read my article, saw my email on there. She works in the café in The Kiln, next to the church back in the village. She spoke to Natalie last Tuesday and Natalie asked her not to tell anyone she was here. And Natalie told her that Mike had been here, but Mike told me he’s never been here in his life. And when I rang reception’ – she nodded towards Cottage No. 1 – ‘he told me there was no guest here by that name.’
O’Reilly was looking at her now like he was afraid to make any sudden moves.
‘So you get this email,’ he said, ‘and then you get in your car and drive down here in the middle of the night?’
‘I drove down this morning,’ Audrey said. ‘And technically the car is my sister’s.’
‘Seems like a bit of an overreaction to me.’
She pointed at the Garda vehicles. ‘Oh, does it?’
‘I think those five minutes are up.’
‘You’re not going to tell me anything?’
‘That’s the way this works,’ O’Reilly said. ‘We don’t keep the press abreast of every move we make. We’re trying not to shit all over our own investigation. Or let you do it. And let’s be honest here, this is all a bit of a moot point, isn’t it, because do you even really qualify as press?’ He turned to leave for the second time. ‘Get your stuff and get out and stop wasting my bloody time.’
‘She bought a phone,’ Audrey blurted out.
O’Reilly aborted his departure, turned back to her.
‘She what?’
‘Orla’s family own the shop up at the petrol station. Her father sold a phone to Natalie when she was here. Not a smartphone. A dumb one. Cheap. Pay-as-you-go. And, well …’
Audrey hesitated. This was her last card to play. It was her only card. It was also the right thing to do, but she needed something to give to Joel so he wouldn’t fire her …
The detective took a step back, closer. ‘Go on.’
‘I found a phone. Here. Just now.’ Audrey slid the package out of her back pocket. She pulled back the plastic bin liner until O’Reilly could see the phone inside. ‘It was in the bin in the bathroom upstairs. It’s dead. I did touch it when I took it out, but I put it in this as soon as I … Well. Here.’ She held it out to him.
He looked at it, then back up at her.
Then he reached inside his pocket, pulled out a blue latex glove and used it to take the phone from her without actually touching it.
‘We’ll have to get your prints,’ he said. ‘And a DNA sample. For elimination.’ He re-wrapped the phone in the bin liner and slipped it into a trouser pocket. ‘And I’m going to need your details.’ He produced a small leather notebook and wrote Audrey’s full name, address and telephone number into it.
‘I hear there’s a room over the pub in the village for you,’ he said then, ‘if you want it. On your way out – which better be in the next sixty seconds – stop at the van and one of the lads will take your samples.’ He hesitated, as if trying to decide something. ‘Her mobile phone activity. That’s why we’re here. The last time it pinged off a mast was in Shanamore a week ago yesterday. If this phone is hers, it places her here. Not just at the cottages, but in this cottage.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are we even now?’
Audrey grinned. ‘Suppose.’
‘Don’t name me.’
‘But I can quote you?’
‘You can use that
information. No names.’
‘What do I call you then?’
‘What do you …?’ O’Reilly smirked. ‘I believe the term is “senior Garda sources”, my dear.’
‘“My dear”?’ Don’t say things like that to me, Detective. Don’t you read the news?’
‘I’m going to have to take an extra Captopril because of you today, you know.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Get yourself a highly stressful job and you’ll find out when you’re older. Now please, for the love of God, get out.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Audrey said, holding up her hands. ‘I’m going.’
She closed the front door and went back inside. Through the front window, she watched the detective walk back across the complex, towards the cluster of Garda vehicles.
Then she ran around the cottage, taking as many pictures as she could as quickly as she could with her phone.
A headline popped unbidden into her head. Exclusive: Inside the Isolated Country Cottage Where Tragic Natalie Spent Her Last Days.
She should really ring Joel.
She would just as soon as she got back to the village.
_________
Audrey pushed open the door of Murphy’s pub and walked straight into the past.
This wasn’t the actual pub where she’d spent long-ago Sundays playing Barbies with Dee under the tables, but it was like one of them and they were all the same. An Old Man Pub, as she called them now. Dusty bare floorboards. Brown and orange swirls in the seventies upholstery in the snug. The crackle of the open fire and the earthy smell of burning turf. Even the smattering of patrons, all men and all local and all old enough to remember when JFK came to Ireland, seemed to have been transported here from a different time, complete with their half-drained pints of stout and copies of the Evening Echo. All Audrey needed was a glass bottle of room-temperature off-brand Coke, a packet of Bacon Fries and Dee annoying the absolute shite out of her, and the time-travelling would be complete.
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