by Sam Blake
Slug was right behind her, too close, craning to look inside. She almost bumped into him.
‘She’s normally really tidy.’
Cathy’s eyes blazed, her retort swift, ‘I know. I don’t think she did this herself, do you?’ Then, before he could reply, ‘Don’t touch anything.’
She pulled her phone from her pocket. J.P. answered on the second ring, his country accent immediately reassuring. His family owned a massive cattle farm in Tipperary – he’d been taking emergencies in his stride since he was old enough to stand and hold a bottle for a new-born calf.
Cat put one finger in her ear so she could hear him properly over the sound of the video game coming from downstairs, ‘I’m at Sarah Jane’s, her room’s been turned over. Did Decko call you?’
‘I’m on my way, with you in five. Don’t touch anything.’
‘I have to see if she’s in there.’
‘Listen to me, Cat. Don’t go in. Preserve the scene. You know the routine.’
‘But she could be injured, unconscious . . .’
‘Don’t go in. We’re on our way.’
Cathy drew in a shaky breath, ‘OK, OK, hurry up.’
Cathy stuck the phone back in her pocket, spoke half to herself, half to Slug, ‘I just need to see behind the door. She could be . . .’
‘Who was that?’ Cathy knew from Slug’s tone, sort of nonchalant and offhand, that he already half knew the answer to that one.
‘It’s one of my colleagues.’
Slug’s nod was exaggerated, as if he was trying to act relaxed. ‘You should wait for him to get here.’ Like he was an expert on police procedure and she was a girl and couldn’t handle it?
Cathy’s retort was sharp, ‘Thank you, Mastermind. Did you see anyone here tonight?’
Slug took a step backwards, shrugging, defensive, ‘I don’t know. I was on the Xbox.’
Cathy looked at him hard. No doubt he’d been having a bit of a smoke at the same time.
‘Great . . . that’s just great. Have you got a torch?’
A moment later, Slug retrieved a heavy steel torch from his room across the landing. Cathy screwed up her face at the smell that hit her the moment he opened the door. Weed and sweat with a liberal dose of seriously bad socks. Sarah Jane had said he was single. She could see why.
From Sarah Jane’s bedroom door, the torch’s powerful beam picked out the hotchpotch colours of clothes scattered all over the floor, purples and blues merging like a bruise.
J.P. was going to kill her, but Cathy knew she couldn’t wait. She’d been here a hundred times before, her DNA would be all over the place, so it wasn’t like she was going to contaminate the scene.
Her heart thumping in her ears, Cathy eased the door open with the tip of her elbow.
‘You should wait for him.’
Behind her, Slug’s voice, even with whatever he’d been smoking this evening, was a lot steadier than Cathy’s hand. The torch shook for a second as she gathered her thoughts. Glancing back at him defiantly, Cathy took a big step into the room, her Nikes silent on the thick cream carpet. Pivoting to swing the beam around behind the door, Cathy braced herself, suddenly realising there was a chance that whoever had done this was still here. Hiding behind the door.
Christ, J.P. was right, she should have waited for him. But what if Sarah Jane was here? What if someone had hit her over the head and she was lying in a pool of blood? Minutes could make a difference between . . . between . . . Cathy didn’t let her mind go there. What was she working on that was dangerous, for God’s sake? Cathy could feel her mouth going dry, sweat trickling down her spine. Sarah Jane’s dad had built his reputation as a journalist covering terrorism and war zones, his idea of danger was a whole different walk in the park to your average dad. If Ted Hansen had said a story was dangerous, he wasn’t joking.
Sarah Jane’s double bed was a mess. The milky-white duvet and sheets had been pulled back into an angry tangle on the floor, the mattress pushed off the base into the gap between the bed and the radiator. Whoever had been here hadn’t been messing about.
Cathy felt the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Why toss the place like this? Someone had been looking for something. And wanted to find it really fast. But why the bed? Did they think she’d hidden something under the mattress? She swung the torch quickly, checking to her left, taking in the open door to the en suite bathroom, the drawers hanging open in the white painted chest opposite. Sarah Jane’s minimalist desk, normally meticulously tidy, was a jumble of papers, empty files tossed on the floor. The desk chair lay on its side, a purple satin cushion beside it, the cover ripped, the stuffing spilling like entrails. Holy, holy feck.
‘Is she there?’
Slug was at the door, his slim frame blocking the light from the landing. Throwing him a glance, Cathy shook her head.
‘Keep back from the door . . . The mattress has been pulled off. I can’t see down the side of the bed.’
Trying to still her heart, Cathy looked for somewhere clear to stand in the mess on the floor. The stench of Sarah Jane’s favourite perfume was turning her stomach, nutmeg and cinnamon catching in the back of her throat, masking, she was sure, whatever other smells there were in the room.
Taking two big strides, desperately trying not to disturb anything, Cathy steadied herself. Leaning forward, she could just see under the upended mattress, playing the torch beam into the cavern it had created where it had been pushed off the bed. Half expecting to see Sarah Jane’s foot poking out, Cathy didn’t know if she was relieved or more alarmed to see the space empty except for a book lying face down on the carpet where it must have been knocked off the bedside table.
‘Anything?’ Slug’s voice again, this time from outside the door.
‘No. But someone’s had a bloody good go at the place.’
Twisting around, looking for the next suitable place to step, Cathy glanced at the jumble on Sarah Jane’s desk. And stopped abruptly.
‘Her laptop’s gone. And . . .’ – in the half-light it took her a moment to work it out – ‘the hard drive to her desktop’s gone. The keyboard’s here . . .’ Cathy could see trailing cables where the tower normally lived under Sarah Jane’s desk, the keyboard upside down on the floor.
There was a pause before Slug answered, ‘She’s probably got her laptop with her.’
Cathy paused, talking more to herself than to him. ‘Did she say anything about getting the desktop fixed?’
The desktop was ancient, slow. Sarah Jane only used it to back up her laptop. Had she dropped it into the shop to be fixed? Everyone knew ancient computers were worth feck all, so it had hardly been pinched.
As if he hadn’t heard her, Slug said, ‘She’s probably at college.’
Maybe Slug was right. Maybe she was in the students’ union bar. Maybe her phone battery had died, she’d forgotten about training and someone had just broken in . . .
There was that word again. Maybe.
‘She would have called, she’d never have missed training.’ Cathy paused, ‘She doesn’t have lectures on a Monday, said she was going to be in the library all day and it’s only down the road from the gym.’ Then, louder, ‘It closes at nine, what’s the time now?’
‘Ten past. Look, I’m going downstairs. How long did your mate say he’d be?’
For a moment Cathy felt like screaming at him. Slug had finally realised the cops were coming – was whatever he was smoking downstairs really more important than his housemate disappearing?
A moment later Cathy was at the en suite bathroom door. Sarah Jane had to be at college somewhere. Had to be. There was no way she was lying dead on the bathroom floor. No way.
Her heart was thumping so loud in her head it drowned out the sound of a car pulling up in the road outside. Cathy swung the beam into the tiny en suite, polished white tiles flashing back at her.
Empty.
Towels littered the floor. Cathy leaned inside to
check the bath, at the same time catching a movement in the mirror over the sink in the corner of her eye. She started, spun around, realising at the exact same moment that the reflection was her own, her dark curly hair dragged back into a ponytail, her skin alabaster against the black of her sweat top. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. Holy feck. A moment later she ran the torch beam around the bathroom again.
There was nothing here. No sign of Sarah Jane, anyway. Jesus, what the hell had happened to her?
J.P.’s voice outside on the landing almost made Cathy drop the torch, his tone unmistakably angry. ‘Jesus Christ, Cat, why the hell can’t you do what you’re told?’
4
The sound of the rain was relentless, like children pounding their pencils on their desks. Rebecca Ryan leaned her forehead on the glass of the shop door, the chill calming her. Running a business had its stresses on a good day, but right now her worries felt like they were off the scale.
Outside it was grey, such a miserable day that it looked like it was already starting to get dark, low cloud shrouding Enniskerry village with its picture postcard terraced Victorian shopfronts leaning into the hill. The street lights would be coming on soon, the shops that closed early on a Monday had already turned the signs on their glazed doors. Not for the first time she wondered if she should close early too. But living where she worked meant she’d only be doing her paperwork in the kitchen behind the shop or upstairs in the living room instead of down here, and it seemed silly to miss a potential customer.
Rebecca sighed. Business was better than it had been, but still tough. Trying to sell high-end Spanish and Italian designer clothes and handbags during what had felt like the deepest recession Ireland had ever known wasn’t a place she honestly thought she’d end up after drama school. She’d survived it, but she felt like kicking herself sometimes. It was so obvious now that the boom had been a mirage, some sort of crazy Disney-inspired, rainbow-tinged bubble. She could feel the anger welling up inside her, deliberately fought it back. It had been a long day. Jacob was busy drawing upstairs – she’d needed to come down to get some breathing space – but she knew he could be down at any second, and soon she’d have to go up and start trying to think of something he’d actually eat for his tea all over again.
Rebecca closed her eyes, enjoying the cool glass on her forehead, consciously reaching for the positive – she did have her business and it provided a roof over their heads. Her village boutique was the only stockist in Ireland for the brands she carried, and she had loyal customers who came out to Wicklow to visit her – they knew what they liked and had stuck with her through the tough times. It kept ticking over, which was the main thing. She needed it to. Rebecca opened her eyes.
Everything would be fine. She was careful – that’s why she was successful – and she’d worked everything out meticulously. It was all about attention to detail.
Turning away from the door, Rebecca put her hands on her hips and looked back critically at the long narrow room that formed the shop, rails of velvet-covered hangers displaying the ranges in blocks of colour, glass cases of glittering handmade jewellery refracting the lights, creating prisms on the white walls. Momentarily distracted by the sight of her reflection in one of the many mirrors, Rebecca pulled her navy blue wraparound T-shirt down over the top of her jeans and pushed a stray strand of hair into her ponytail, looking speculatively at her parting.
The strands of grey pushing through her thick strawberry-blond layers were unmistakable. Rebecca sighed. She wasn’t sure if her grey hair was growing faster as she approached forty-five, or if her hairdresser’s had changed their products and they just weren’t doing everything they should. They charged enough. But then, she’d be mouse brown without them. Mouse brown with shades of badger. She grimaced in the mirror and immediately stopped as the movement changed the way the light fell on her face and the scar that ran from the corner of her eye to the edge of her mouth stood out, despite the layers of specialist make-up. She didn’t want to start thinking about that now. Her year in the hotel resort in Spain after drama school had taught her independence and self reliance, and she’d met people and had made connections that she would never have made if she’d stayed in Ireland. She’d gained the experience she needed to set up here, but there had been a dark side, a level of violence that seemed to be completely acceptable to men who could afford a five-star life style. If they didn’t get what they wanted, their patience ran thin. She’d learned her lessons the hard way.
Now it felt like a lifetime ago.
Forty-five. The figure leered at her. Almost forty-six and divorced. Single mother of an eight-year-old. Ex-wife of a philandering bastard whose main asset was his face. Rebecca sighed. She knew from the looks she got at the school gate that her private life kept the whole village in gossip, that marrying a younger man had been a bad idea from the get-go. Christ, if he’d only take his fast cars and cheap women and leave the country. But then he wouldn’t be able to see Jacob so often, or have the satisfaction of annoying the hell out of her with that slow grin of his. It was almost worse when she dropped Jacob off to see him, his satisfaction that he had her boy for twenty-four hours almost tangible. And of course Jacob idolised him, but what eight-year-old wouldn’t when he was given every piece of tech imaginable, allowed to stay up half the night and have chocolate for breakfast?
Rebecca turned back to the door and the empty village, fighting back the deep unease that seeped in whenever she thought about her ex. He was such a fool, took risks that could jeopardise everything in her life. His pretty face and family money had brought him everything – even her – but as she’d quickly found out, he was utterly unreliable. It had taken her a while to get used to being continually let down, but then she’d come to accept it, to expect it. Every single time she’d asked him to do anything when they were married – even put the bins out – she’d needed a back-up plan, needed to be prepared to catch the ball herself.
She’d drilled it into Jacob to call her every night before he went to sleep when he was staying with his dad, just in case – the iPhone he’d bought him had come in useful after all. Those few minutes – hearing his voice, knowing he was OK – gave her the strength to get through their time apart. Jacob might be challenging, but he was her boy and she loved every particle of his being. Everything she did was for him, to make sure he’d have all the advantages she’d never had growing up.
At least she felt they were comfortable here. She hated that her ex bought his clothes here, or at least chose what he wanted from the website and sent one of his people to collect them. If she could she’d have dropped the brand he wore, but it was one of her most popular lines and whenever he was pictured in the gossip magazines, her sales peaked. And he knew it. It gave him a feeling of control, he knew how she felt about making money, how every sale secured Jacob’s future that little bit more, how important that was to her.
Had she ever loved him? Rebecca wasn’t sure. He’d brought her everything she needed: a well-respected family, private school connections, a business she could develop and build on. But, in her experience, whenever there was a lot of money involved, things got messy. Now it was all about control.
And control was the one thing she needed in order to keep everything running smoothly. As if the past few days hadn’t been challenging enough, today had been one big mess from the moment they’d got up. Perhaps it was because she was keyed up, on edge – Jacob always picked up on her tension instinctively. And Mondays were usually stressful after the weekend, but today . . . Rebecca didn’t hear the movement behind her, but felt a sharp kick in the back of her leg. Oh dear God.
Behind her, Jacob was standing with a pencil in one hand, the detailed drawing he had been labouring over screwed up in the other. Shoulders hunched, glasses crooked, his face was a grimace of pure rage, his missing front teeth adding to the menace. He aimed another kick, but this time Rebecca was expecting it and managed to catch him around the shoulders and dodge
the sharp toe of his runner at the same time. He fought free of her hands. ‘You’re stupid and smelly. And this is a stupid, smelly place.’
And Rebecca’s heart broke all over again. Why the hell hadn’t they told her that his class were playing tag rugby today? His teacher was normally brilliant, knew Jacob had to be prepared, talked through any change in his routine.
He’d been like a demon since she picked him up from school, all the feelings that tossed like waves inside him whenever he had to cope with new things gushing out the minute he saw her.
His teacher had been all smiles, ‘He was a great boy today. No problems at all. He didn’t understand that he had to throw the ball to his team, to the ones in the yellow bibs, but once we explained it, he was grand . . .’
Oh yes, grand.
Today she’d managed to steer him across the road, smiling at the other mums waiting at the school gate like she was late for an appointment, like she didn’t have time to chat, and had got him safely through the shop and into the kitchen before he exploded.
‘They were playing a stupid game, Mummy. They all just kept bashing into me and shouting . . .’
He’d dropped his Batman backpack on the floor with a clatter, but before Rebecca could speak, suddenly picked it up again and hurled it across the kitchen with all his might, sending the vase on the scrubbed pine table flying. Shattering as it hit the tiled floor, water and the fading yellow chrysanthemums scattered like fireworks.
A moment later he’d vanished, the sound of the kitchen door slamming reverberating through the old brick and ancient beams of the terrace. Collapsing helplessly into one of the pine carvers, water dripping onto the terracotta tiles, Rebecca had put her head in her hands. At the top of the house, she could hear him sliding the furniture across the wooden boards in his attic room, barricading the door. Then it went quiet and she knew he’d buried himself in his sleeping bag and crawled into the dark space under the bed.
He hadn’t understood one minute of the rugby. Hadn’t grasped that the bibs meant there were two teams, that you had to toss the ball to the guys on your team. Mind blindness, getting the gist – all the phrases that the psychologist used, were the bits he didn’t get. Everyone knew that if two sets of kids were wearing different coloured bibs they were on different teams . . . but not Jacob, not a child on the autistic spectrum. He just about coped in school. But it was like he was a spring, tightening up as each challenge hit him. It was when he got home that he let it all out.