Elaine does that pursed lips thing again, then reaches her left arm around my shoulders as we continue to walk.
‘I’m so sorry, Gordon.’
She doesn’t know what else to say other than apologise for something that isn’t even remotely close to her fault. I wrap my arm around the small of her back and suddenly we are strolling as if we’re a happily married couple. I know it feels a little awkward for both of us, but I’m gonna take the slight intimacy while I can get it. After a few seconds, she relents, takes her arm from around me so that we’re just linking arms again.
‘So what do you do with your spare time?’ she asks.
I don’t have an answer. Not really.
‘I watch some TV and I eh… obsess about Betsy. Y’know… talking about Betsy is probably the only thing that would relax me.’
Elaine makes a slight pop sound with her mouth, then stops walking.
‘Okay, well… tell me all about Betsy.’
I raise my eyebrows, then let out a steady breath as we stand facing each other in the middle of a corridor.
‘She was the cutest little thing, y’know. Brown hair, a splash of freckles across her face. She had the smallest little nose too. Tiny it was.’
I already feel my shoulders relax.
‘I bet you doted on her, huh?’ Elaine says.
‘Yeah,’ I reply smiling. But my smile is disingenuous. I was a shit dad. And I know it. I was just too obsessed with work at the time to care for the little person who was turning our house upside down. Ironically, back then Betsy was second in my thoughts. Now I can’t stop obsessing about her. ‘I’d give anything to go back in time.’
Elaine takes a step closer to me, then places a curled knuckle under my chin and lifts my head slightly.
‘You’re supposed to be relaxing now, okay? Not evoking feelings of guilt. You shouldn’t feel guilt anyway. You are not the one who took her.’
That’s the first time anyone has agreed with me in years; that Betsy was taken… abducted.
‘Y’know the police don’t believe somebody took her. They think somebody knocked her down, killed her, then hid her body. All seems a bit convenient to me, that. It took them seven years to come up with that theory.’
Elaine stares into my eyes, intensely.
‘Gordon—’
‘It’s fine. I’m relaxed talking about her. Honestly.’
‘Okay,’ Elaine says, relenting. She links my arm again and we continue on our mission to walk up and down every corridor of floor three.
‘Y’know they all think I’m mad when I say she was taken. But I’m not mad, Elaine. I’m not crazy. I just have a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that somebody took her and that she’s still out there… out there somewhere. I just hope wherever she is, she’s happy; that she’s being taken care of.’
Elaine seems to have fallen silent, is either happy to just listen, or perhaps she agrees with the rest of them. That my theory is the one that’s wrong. I place my hand across her, stop her from walking and then stare into her eyes.
‘You don’t think I’m mad, do you, Elaine?’
She squints a smile at me, the tiny lines on the edge of her eyes creasing.
‘I think you’re being a great dad. You’re not giving up on your daughter. I know that if I was Betsy, I’d hope I had a dad like you who would never give up trying to find me.’
I step into Elaine, give her a hug and breathe in her hair. It feels so good to have somebody who’ll listen to me.
‘That’s why I have a private investigator looking for her now,’ I whisper into her ear. ‘I just couldn’t lie there on that bed after being told I may only have five hours left to live and not do anything.’
Elaine nods her head slowly on my shoulder. I know from a personal point of view she agrees with me, but I also know she’s conflicted; from a professional point of view she thinks I’m doing the worst thing I could possibly do given my situation. I hold her off me a little, so that we are facing each other.
‘Don’t answer this question as a nurse,’ I say. ‘Answer it as the beautiful human being you are, okay?’
She nods her head, then squints her eyes at me again.
‘I’m doing the right thing amn’t I?’
Elaine glances down at her feet, then back up at my face.
‘If I was your best friend, not your nurse, I would be giving you this advice, Gordon. Your best chance of finding out what happened to your daughter is by staying alive and giving yourself more time to look for her. Surviving the surgeries is everything to you right now. It’s all you’ve got. I’m sorry to say this, because I know it’s not the answer you want to hear, but… relaxing right now, not obsessing over finding Betsy, is genuinely the best thing for you to do.’
I look up to the ceiling. Then rub my thumb firmly across my forehead, as if I’m erasing what I’ve just heard from my memory.
‘It’s just the detective who looked after the case is currently talking with the private investigator I hired this morning. What if… what if somehow—’
‘Gordon,’ Elaine says, just like a school teacher would say to a student who’s rambling on too much about nothing. ‘It’s been seventeen years. The fact of the matter is, Betsy is not going to be found in the next hour or two. I mean, what more can I say? You have to agree with me on that.’
I look back down at her, stare at her entire face.
‘I do agree – of course I do. It’s just… if I do die today… I wanna give it my all until my last breath. Like you said, if you were Betsy, you wouldn’t want your dad to stop looking for you, would you?’
I can spot a moistness form in her eyes. I’m not the only one close to tears. She removes her old-school pocket watch from the top of her scrubs and sucks at her own lips.
‘You’re going for make or break surgery in the next hour and a half. I’m going to be straight and honest with you. You’re not going to get any information in the next ninety minutes that you couldn’t find in the past seventeen years. I’m sorry if that’s a hard truth for you to take; but I owe it you to be totally honest.’
I thumb the tear that has just fallen out of her eye away from her cheek, then grab her close. The two of us sob in unison in the middle of the corridor; her sobbing with pity for me, me sobbing because I’m being pitied. Again. Surely there can’t be anything more pathetic than strangers pitying you a couple of hours after they’ve just met you for the first time? But everyone pities me. I am the living, breathing definition of a loser. I literally lost everything I ever had.
13:25
Lenny
‘Independent House, how can I help you?’
‘I need to talk with Frank Keville please?’
‘Frank Keville – and which newspaper does he write for?’
‘Ah… I don’t know, doesn’t he write for them all? Surely you know Frank Keville, the guy in the wheelchair, does all the crime stuff?’
‘Hold on one moment, Sir.’
Lenny tenses his jaw, his eyes focused and controlled by his deep thoughts. He can’t even feel the rain anymore; the weather a concern deep beneath him now. He continues to walk towards the main Terenure Road where he told the taxi company he would be waiting.
‘I’m afraid Mr Keville is busy right now; is there anybody else you can speak to?’
Lenny takes the phone away from his mouth and exhales a disappointed grunt.
‘I need to speak to Keville urgently. It’s an emergency. Can you ask him to ring this number as soon as he can? My name is Lenny Moon; I’m a private investigator and I need to talk to him about a story he spent years working on.’
Lenny listens in as the receptionist mumbles back his name and number, then politely says goodbye before hanging up.
A small ball of excitement has resurrected itself within him. He knows quite well that he’s not going to solve the case of Betsy Blake’s disappearance, but that’s not his task. All he has to do is bring something different to the table, t
hen Gordon Blake will sign off on the will.
Lenny bites his bottom lip as his selfishness calls out to him. It’s becoming more and more apparent to him that he may be an hour away from hoping a man dies; a man that has already given him a thousand euro. A man who’s had an awful life. Poor Gordon Blake.
But Lenny can’t allow sentiment to get in the way; there’s fuck all he can do about Gordon’s chances of surviving the surgeries. All Lenny has to focus on is the task in hand: speak to Frank Keville, find out who the other suspect was that Ray De Brun had alluded to. Gordon mustn’t be aware there was another suspect. Otherwise he would have named him in the note earlier. If Lenny finds out who the other suspect is, then that’s brand new information. That should be enough.
Lenny picks up his phone, dials Gordon’s number and waits. But the tone is dead. He tries again. Same result. He’s gurning and tutting to himself when he hears a car horn. A maroon-coloured taxi has just pulled up outside the Centra and is awaiting his fare.
Lenny opens the back door, slides into the seat.
‘Thanks. Independent House, ye know it? On Talbot Street?’
‘That’s where all the newspapers are, mate?’
‘That’s the one.’
Lenny chews on the butt of his mobile phone as the taxi man pulls away. He’s cursing, under his breath. The fact that Sally has always dismissed his need for a smart phone is grating on him now more than ever and it’s always grated on him in some way.
Lenny looks up, realises the taxi man’s smart phone – resting in the small cradle on the dashboard – is not currently in use.
‘Guess you don’t need the satnav to get to Talbot Street, huh?’ he says.
The taxi man looks in the rear-view mirror, offers a polite laugh.
‘Course not,’ he says.
Lenny grinds his teeth together, blinks rapidly.
‘Any chance I could take a look at your phone. I don’t need to call anyone, but I need to check something online. My phone’s a piece of shit and… look, you can add an extra fiver to the journey fare.’
The taxi man sniffs.
‘Make it an extra tenner and I’ll give it you, but I’m locking the doors.’
‘Perfect,’ Lenny says, shifting in the back seat. He reaches forward, takes the phone from the taxi man.
He immediately presses at the internet browser and then hesitates, biting his lip.
He types the words ‘Betsy Blake Dead’ into the search bar. The first option that pops up is an article from the Irish Independent. Lenny speed reads it, finds out little information than he had already been given. Ray De Brun closed the case in 2009 after a Toyota Corolla that had been used in multiple robberies over the years had been found with Betsy’s DNA inside it. Lenny shakes his head, realises it was ridiculously farfetched to conclude that the cops made all this up just to close the case. It has to be true. Betsy must be dead. He continues his internet search, desperate to find out why the owner of the car hadn’t been charged or even arrested over the findings, but the report was void of these details. He swipes out of that story, into the next one. Ironically, it was written by the man he was hoping to meet in the next few minutes: Frank Keville.
This article included more detail. It suggested the car wasn’t specifically registered to anyone on the date Betsy was supposedly killed, and that it had been swapped between many different arms of criminal gangs over the years. It had once been owned by a woman called Sandra Wilson who had reported it stolen in 2000, but since then it was off the grid until the cops found it abandoned almost eight years later. It was suspected of being involved in a post office heist and when the cops carried out tests on it they – rather surprisingly – answered the question a whole nation had been asking for years: whatever happened to Betsy Blake?
‘Fuckin hell,’ Lenny mutters to himself.
The taxi man twists in his chair.
‘Y’okay, mate?’
‘Sorry – yeah. Just having one of those days.’
Lenny tilts his head down, gets back into the information on the taxi man’s phone. He decides to Google ‘Frank Keville’.
Like most people in the country, he’s aware of what Keville looks like. Aside from writing the news, Keville had also become the news. He often appears on TV chat shows and has a picture by-line in the newspaper that’s ridiculously oversized. It’s Keville’s professional mission to rid the streets of gangland crime. And he’s good at his job; so good in fact that a gangland member tried to assassinate him. Lenny was aware – as was most of the country – that it was most likely Alan Keating who ordered the failed hit on him – but trying to prove that was an impossibility.
Lenny smirks to himself at the craziness of the underworld he has somehow found himself entangled in today; mucking around with The Boss and now Ireland’s best crime reporter all in the space of a couple of hours. He’s still smirking when the taxi man spins around to him again.
‘Can’t get fully down Talbot Street, mate; I’ll leave ya here. Independent House is that one there on the left-hand side, can ye see it? The one with the glass shelter outside it.’
Lenny looks up, can just about see the building the taxi man is pointing at through the greyness of the rain, then hands the phone back to the driver.
‘You’re a legend,’ Lenny says, tapping him on the shoulder.
‘Well that’s eighteen euro for the ride, plus the tenner you owe me for using the phone.’
Lenny fumbles in his pocket, takes out a few of the notes he had withdrawn from the ATM at the hospital, separates a twenty and a ten and then hands them over to the taxi man.
‘Here, take thirty – and cheers for lending me your phone. It’s been very helpful.’
The taxi man unlocks the doors and Lenny pops out, then runs towards the building with the glass shelter. He’s not running to get out of the rain – Lenny’s already drenched to the bone. He’s running because he’s in such a hurry. He’s aware, because he looked at the taxi’s dashboard before he got out, that it’s just gone half one. Time isn’t on his side. Gordon Blake will be going under the knife in less than an hour and half.
Lenny tries to push at the door at the entrance to Independent House but is stopped in his tracks, his face almost squashing up against the glass. He then waves at the security man inside and, after being eyeballed, the security man reaches for a button under his desk and presses at it to release the door.
‘Thanks,’ Lenny says, as he scoops the drenched hat off his head and steps inside the marble reception area. ‘I need to speak with Frank Keville as a matter of urgency.’
‘Ah – you were the man on the phone to me about fifteen minutes ago, huh?’
‘Yep, that’s me,’ Lenny says, almost dancing due to his lack of patience. ‘I’m in a real hurry and need to speak with Keville straight away.’
The security man picks up a large black phone receiver and then dials three buttons.
Lenny stares around the reception area, notices the list of newspaper brands encased in glass frames on the wall. Six national newspapers are all produced from this one building in the heart of Dublin’s city centre.
‘Sorry, no answer from his phone,’ the security man says, placing the receiver back down.
Lenny takes a moment to stare at the nametag on the security man’s navy jumper.
‘Gerry… please, I need to speak with him as a matter of urgency. I don’t have time to waste.’
Gerry stands up, showing not only his height, but his weight; his belly hanging over the waist of his trousers as if it’s eager to touch the floor. Then he shrugs his shoulders and places a red lollipop in his mouth.
‘Sorry – there’s not much else I can do if he’s not answering his phone,’ he mumbles, before popping the lollipop out of his mouth. ‘Would you like to take a seat over there?’
Lenny glances over his shoulder at the green sofa in the corner of the reception area, next to a glass table adorned by a helping of the day’s national ne
wspapers.
‘Please keep trying his number,’ Lenny says after sighing. Then he solemnly walks towards the sofa, ringing the hat through his hands with impatience. He sits, observes Gerry picking up the phone receiver, holding it to his ear, then placing it back down again. He watches as staff come in and then out of the elevator. When one stands at reception, blocking his view of Gerry, Lenny walks slowly to the elevator and waits on the doors to slide open. When they do, he steps inside, stares at all of the buttons and shrugs his head before deciding to start by pressing number one. But even after pressing the button the doors remain open, the lift not interested in taking him anywhere.
‘Fuck sake,’ he mumbles to himself.
‘Sorry?’ a woman asks, entering the lift.
‘Oh – was just talking to myself. One of those days,’ Lenny replies.
The woman laughs, then lifts her security pass to a reader above the number pad on the elevator and presses at the number three. The lift doors close at the same time Lenny’s eyes close. He mumbles a quiet thank you under his breath and when the doors open he steps out with the woman.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, offering his gentlest smile. ‘I might have got off on the wrong floor. I’m looking for Frank Keville. I have a meeting scheduled with him and I’m running a tad late.’
‘No,’ says the woman. ‘You didn’t get off on the wrong floor. His desk is through that door, on the left side.’
Lenny bows as a thank you, turns on his heels, then presses at the door release and walks through to be met by a young woman sitting behind a large mahogany desk.
‘I’m looking to speak to Frank Keville,’ he says. The young woman smiles back at him, then stands up and tries to peer over the top of a tall fake plant by the side of her desk.
‘He should be just behind that,’ she says, pointing her pen.
Lenny thanks her, walks around the plant to find an empty desk. He lets out a dissatisfied sigh and then rings his wet hat in his hands again, his knuckles turning white with frustration.
The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 38