The Coast Road (Matt Minogue Mysteries)

by John Brady

  Her anger surged back: that stupid thing Maeve had said last week! She had been moaning to Maeve about the project, how it was such a pain now, and how Miss Conway was Satan and all. Well that’d teach her, was Maeve’s comment. Teach her what? Teach her for getting a crush on Miss Conway, the cool Art teacher. Joke, ha-ha! Really? Not. But so totally Maeve. So totally sly. So typical. Why was Maeve her friend then?

  Rhiannon eyed the lights under the mountains where the suburbs petered out. No answers there. She began to circle the tripod with slow, measured paces, her irritation curdling into resentment. There was no way around it: Maeve was a total bitch. Pretending to be her friend, but setting her up. Like to Kate, who was her friend first. Sabotage, that was Maeve’s thing. No way was she going to put up with that two-faced—

  It was only the toe of her shoe that caught the tripod leg. It was enough to move the camera. Rhiannon lunged for it, and she resettled the leg carefully in the beaten earth. Jesus, it was close. She made sure the view in the finder was close to what she had before. She stepped back, and eyed the set-up.

  It was just one more thing to worry about, one more thing to go wrong. For all his annoying culchie ways, it was actually decent of her father to let her use his stuff. There was about fifteen hundred euro worth of camera stuff here. And he was very territorial about his gadgets, fussing over them, big-time. But that was his job. She had seen a lot of wicked-cool gear on visits to his office in the State Lab. It was the forensic side she was most interested in. He never liked talking about stuff to do with that.

  A gust found its way under her jacket. This was June, for Christ’s sakes? Not much longer, she thought. Never again, for sure. Even the title of the project annoyed her now: ‘In the Dark.’ It had been good for the first while. She had even enjoyed seeing her parents’ reaction to the title. Was she going a bit Goth? Vampire stuff…?

  They didn’t get it. She had tried telling them anyway. It was about how society tried to keep young people in the dark. How society wanted people not to know what was really going on. Like with the environment, and the drug companies and the oil companies paying people to cover up and to lie. The fashion sweat shops and their child labour. Anorexic models with popsicle bodies – bulimia too, of course. Clothes designed by weirdo creepy loser men the age of fifty. The government, the school system. Everything really, when you thought about it.

  They had done their parent thing about that, nodding their heads and looking thoughtful. Her father couldn’t fake it, however. He just did his usual thing then when things got a bit tense. That meant looking up from a book or something he was working on. That constipated look on his face, eyeing her like she was an alien. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it wasn’t.

  Her mother took everything a bit personally, as usual. Like: what ‘society’ was Rhiannon talking about? Did she think that adults were trying to cod teenagers all the time? Rhiannon had told her that it was basically about hypocrisy. She had said that as a hint, and she knew her mother had gotten it because the talk ended soon after that. Later that evening, she had heard through the door some of the murmured words between them. For shock value, love … But is anger like that normal? She felt elated, powerful, when she heard that, and then stricken. Later, in bed, she had cried. Why, how could things get so stupidly complicated?

  Something eased then. It was like a screen sliding open to reveal a majestic Himalayan scene. She felt her shoulders release their tightness. She stretched her neck in a slow half-circle, and rested her gaze on the clouds as she came around again. They were actually brown! She held her eyes shut for a count of three, and opened them again. Okay, manila maybe. But anyway: the fact was, she was almost finished this project. But never again. As in never ever. Someday she’d even laugh about it. And when Maeve and the others would finally see it on the screen, she’d realize what work had gone into the project. That’d be a moment, all right.

  Maeve. The truth was, Maeve did actually hate her parents. She really did. Rhiannon didn’t hate hers. Maeve took her parents for whatever she could get out of them. Rhiannon couldn’t do that. She’d just feel crap if she tried. Maeve lied and she stole, and she got drunk, and she scored with different guys almost every weekend. Well that actually made Maeve a slut then, didn’t it? And: Maeve was jealous. Just because Rhiannon liked multimedia and Photoshopping and that sort of thing? Maeve slagged it because she couldn’t do it. She pretended she didn’t want to, but she did, and anyway Rhiannon was good at it. The project last year on History of Fashion? Those animations …?

  She settled the tripod again and checked the viewfinder. There was plenty of battery power left. She got her mark on the branches that started over the mountain there, and slowly took a set of five shots. She made sure she had decent overlap each time. She listened to the shutter each time. The speed was slow, so the F-Stop thingie was doing its job. That’d do it for the bay panorama then. She switched off the camera, and waited.

  Seventeen calls from Maeve in the past two days? Was that possible? And a billion texts: she didn’t want to look. Maeve told her she read too much into things. The weird thing was, this ‘Reading a bit much into things’ was one of her father’s expressions. Each time she heard it, it pissed her off more and more. How could he have a clue what she was thinking? Maybe it was one of those phrases he used at work, when he’d have to be precise and all that. After all, he had said to her, a person could be sent to prison for years if the science was sloppy here.

  Whatever. Bygones be bygones and all that. She closed the mobile gently this time. It was an okay phone, it did the job. And she wasn’t a spoiled cow like Maeve. For a moment she imagined throwing the phone right out far into the sea: text me now, Maeve, you wannabe, you bitch.

  She smiled. It was the sudden recall of her father, and that test she gave him on texting. It was actually his idea, a joke. He knew the lol and cul8r stuff, but the rest was Chinese to him. He just made it up though. She had to laugh, really. That was the thing with him: he didn’t mind making an iijit of himself. If only he didn’t keep going on about it, like he did with jokes, telling them over and over again. The nerd side of him, she supposed. Aspy, really.

  She ran her finger over her eyebrow. The stud there had fairly freaked him out. He hadn’t a clue what to say. He had given her a long, hard look when he had first seen it. His world had changed suddenly, had turned upside down. Like he hadn’t expected anything like this at all, ever. The precious little daughter, the one whom he had decided deserved a name from Fleetwood Mac, well she was only doing something that he would have done at her age too. That was exactlywhat she had meant by the hypocrisy thing with ‘In the Dark.’ They’d never get it.

  She didn’t want to think about it anymore. Instead, she thought ahead to the work she’d do tonight. The panoramas: bring up the colours better, make them glow a bit, and try some of those effects. Miss Conway, bitch of the entire known universe, would notice. Hard to admit this, but when it came down to it, it was true: Miss Conway actually wasn’t the worst. As Art teachers go, anyway. She actually wasn’t a thick with computers, not like the others. So yes, Rhiannon thought wearily, she’d hand in the project on Thursday. Yes, it was a week late. But she deserved an A, didn’t she? That’s right. ‘A for not screaming in the Art teacher’s face.’

  Art teacher: her heart still soared at the thought. It would be so cool, being an Art teacher. To actually get paid to do something you loved, something creative and fun. And it wouldn’t be spotty secondary school students, no. It’d be the College of Art, the real thing. Miss Conway would write her that reference—

  The rustlings came from close by. They came and went again. Maybe it was birds hopping about in the undergrowth. She looked up and down the path. It was funny how things changed with the light, and that feeling of threat came on. It would be creepy here at night. More than creepy, actually.

  A small shape came quickly around a bend in the path: a little dog, a terrier, hyper. It was soon nosing aro
und the tripod. He or she was young, all tail-wagging and panting, jumpy.

  Rhiannon liked the way it licked furiously at her fingers. “Tess,” a woman called out. “Come here, Tess.” Tess was having none of it. Good on you, girl, Rhiannon thought. The woman came around the path. She had a Burberry outfit, a mobile held away from her face.

  “She won’t harm you, all right? She is just a pup.” iPhone, of course. Southside. ‘Roiight.’ Bossy tone too. Maybe a doctor? This Tess one was beyond giddy now, prancing and jumping. Rhiannon clamped her hand on the tripod.

  Burberry Lady’s hubbie/ancient boyfriend/gigolo was Gore-Tex Man. He looked much older than she did. Trophy wife, Rhiannon wondered now. And plastic surgery? Gore-Tex Man slowed to watch Burberry Lady trying to corral the dog. My God, but he was wearing a really, really stupid hat. This Tess was having none of it. Off it went full tilt, stopping abruptly every now and then and turning to look back.

  Rhiannon couldn’t help but smile. Burberry Lady was getting annoyed.

  “You should take a picture of this,” Gore-Tex Man murmured.

  Rhiannon eyed his hat. He had probably bought it in some ridiculously priced place in – who knows, Germany? Italy? No, not the type to go to Italy.

  “A bit of a comedy,” he added. “Wouldn’t you say?” Tess the rebel terrier was well into the undergrowth now, skipping and prancing and skidding in the leaves. She stopped to sniff, jerking her head all the time, talking to herself. A shame, Rhiannon thought, that puppies didn’t stay like that all their lives.

  “That’s a good camera,” Gore-Tex Man said.

  She tried to look him in the eye for a moment, but the glasses only reflected the light. Okay. He was just being friendly. Like they say, don’t judge by appearances. “It does the job,” she said.

  Gore-Tex Man glanced over to where Burberry Lady was calling out to the dog.

  “Or maybe more a farce than a comedy,” he muttered. He fumbled in his pocket. Rhiannon heard a plastic bag. “Claire,” he said, louder than Rhiannon had expected.

  “Claire?”

  Well of course she had to have a name like Claire, didn’t she. Another gloss of bobbly, Claire dear?

  “Tess,” Gore-Tex Man called out then. “Bikki, Tess. Bikki?” The puppy stayed in the undergrowth, sniffing and pacing up and back, half-yowling to itself. It was just too much, Rhiannon decided. Even his dog ignores him.

  Burberry Lady Claire seemed to be giving up. As though calculating each step, she stepped carefully back through the grass and toward her hubbie. Maybe she was embarrassed, Rhiannon thought, the way snobs are embarrassed when things don’t go perfectly in their perfect universe according to their perfect whims.

  “All yours,” Rhiannon heard her say. The tone said everything really. She gave Rhiannon a brief smile, and raised her mobile again.

  Gore-Tex Man hunkered down and held out the biscuit. The dog made a few darting step toward him, barked, darted back. But after a few runs, it opted for bikki. Seeing Gore-Tex Man scoop the dumb dog up so easily soured Rhiannon. She turned back to the tripod. It was time to just get this thing finished. She checked the aperture again. Nothing was perfect, it never would be. She planted her feet away from the tripod legs, and settled in behind the camera.

  She took a five-shot panorama at 55 mm. After she had taken a second set of five, she reviewed them. The ones where she had tilted the camera toward the foreground worked the best. The bit of worn grass seemed to flow out like the sea from under the trees. The patch of evening sky had a bleached, almost luminous look to it too. A sudden, sharp elation glowed in her. The whole thing had actually worked out. Like her father had said: the camera sees things that the operator can’t.

  The couple had moved on. Mrs. iPhone Burberry Lady Claire and Mr. Stupid Hat Gore-Tex Man, to give them their proper titles. Rhiannon detached the camera from the tripod, and unscrewed the lens hood. She pinched the lens cap on, and she slid the camera carefully into the bag. There was something very satisfying about getting the tripod down, how it slid together so cleanly.

  She was almost finished when she heard Gore-Tex Man calling for the dog again. The voice was quite a way off. And he definitely sounded less than thrilled.

  Then, Tess burst out from the gloom, right where the path turned inland. She was panting, her short legs going full tilt, the eyes on her big and full of mischief. Rhiannon got down on one knee.

  “You made a break for it, you little bugger, didn’t you?” The dog sidestepped her, and dropping its nose abruptly to the ground, it raced into the undergrowth. It seemed not sure how to bark, but went back to arguing and talking to itself instead. Gore-Tex Man appeared down the path now.

  “Well,” he said in a strained tone. “Who’s training who, I wonder.”

  Rhiannon said nothing. She settled the bag on her shoulder, and shuffled a bit to make sure nothing was loose in there. The tripod was cool on her palm. She took a last look over the bay, tracing the curve south to Bray Head. Someday – soon, she decided – she’d actually go to the real places in Italy that all this was named after.

  Burberry Lady Claire was back. She stood by the path, still deep in her love affair with her mobile. Gore-Tex Man had started talking to the dog now, and he continued making his way over slowly, his hand out with another bribe.

  Tess wasn’t running away this time. She was clearly torn between the game and the bikki. She pawed at the grass and weeds, the small trunk tightening in spasms from her yelps and whines. Then slowly and uncertainly, she made her way to Gore-Tex Man. Just as she took the bribe, he fingered her collar and drew her in.

  Rhiannon watched how he leaned in and talked to the puppy, holding her gently but firmly while he attached the clip to her collar. It was a small enough revelation for her, but it left her more ashamed than confused: maybe Gore-Tex Man wasn’t so predictable after all.

  Now released again, the puppy immediately tested the length of the leash. Gore-Tex Man began tugging it away from the undergrowth. This time, the puppy yelped and pulled harder, and bounded and hopped on its back legs trying to get free.

  “All right, Tess,” Rhiannon heard him say. “One last go of it.” He let himself be pulled into the undergrowth.

  The breeze seemed to have decided it would settle here on the headland. Rhiannon turned from it as she gathered her gear, and then she headed for the path. Burberry Lady Claire ahead didn’t seem one bit interested in the goings on. She kept up her quiet conversation instead, staring at the foliage like she was in a trance. A hint of Burberry Lady’s perfume came to her. Rhiannon decided that she wouldn’t be the one to say hello first when she passed her.

  The shout made Rhiannon actually jump. “Claire!”

  Burberry Lady Claire had started too. She didn’t know where the shout had come from. Rhiannon turned to see Gore-Tex Man, walking sideways, pulling the puppy hard. “Claire! Your phone? Phone 999, the Guards.” Burberry Lady Claire was looking steadily at Rhiannon now, as if looking for some understanding. Gore-Tex Man mimicked holding a phone to his ear. He reeled in the puppy and picked it up, and he held it tight against his chest.

  He was breathing hard. He didn’t seem to notice the puppy’s snout working its way around his mouth.

  “The Guards,” Burberry Lady Claire said. “Phone the Guards? What for?” “Give it to me then, I’ll do it.”

  “What’s wrong?” Rhiannon asked.

  He seemed dazed. Burberry Lady Claire murmured into her mobile, and then slid it into her pocket. “There’s something over there,” he said.

  A stark-eyed look had come to Burberry Lady Claire. “What are you saying?”

  He looked at Rhiannon. His eyes had gone watery from the wind.

  “I don’t want to say. Just phone, will you.” She began to push the keypad. Rhiannon held the tripod tighter.

  “Are you here on your own?” Gore-Tex Man asked her.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “I mean, your family – You’re on your
own here? Nobody . . .?”

  “I live up the road – Wait, that’s none of your business.”

  “Stay with us until the Guards get here.”

  Burberry Lady Claire was poking him with the phone. “You talk to them,” she said.

  The leash got caught in the man’s arm as he tried to swap the dog over.

  “Tony Meehan’s my name. Yes, Meehan. Anthony, Tony...

  M-e-e-h…Yes.”

  Rhiannon watched Burberry lady try to hold the dog, fending off its wriggles and licks at the same time. Meehan, she thought. It was an ordinary-sounding name really. He was getting exasperated, trying to explain where he was. No, he didn’t know the exact name of the nearest road. He had walked into the park from the Dalkey side. So they were somewhere between the obelisk and Dalkey Hill. Yes, there were woods. There was a GPS on the phone, he said, would that help? Apparently not.