I push at my door and walk into the living room to see Gerry man spreading on my couch.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ he says.
‘Sorry, Gerry… that little girl, the chubby one, I helped raise her. She’s like a little sister to me. I feel awful that she saw the coke.’
‘What t’hell did ye have them in here for, anyway? Ye know I booked this time with you.’
I eyeball him. All of him. His horrible saggy neck, the matted grey hairs on his chest, his huge belly hanging over his yellowing Y-fronts. What the fuck am I doing with my life?
I’ve asked myself that question loads of times over the past year or so. But I need this. It’s only one hour. One hour every Sunday night for a hundred quid. It increases my income by twenty-five per cent. I’d barely be able to afford food for myself if I didn’t do this. The Joyces paid well… the Franklins just don’t pay the same. I need the extra income. So I signed on to be an escort. It’s not as if I’m out on the streets every night waiting on anyone to ride me for a few quid. I’m part of an elite escort agency that sends a man — mostly fat fuckin Gerry — to my house every Sunday night for one hour. They pay one-hundred and fifty quid for that hour and I ship fifty of it to the agency.
‘They just knocked on the door, Gerry. I thought it was you. I couldn’t just throw them back on the street, I invited them in for a drink until you came, and when you did, I kicked them out. What more do you want me to do?’
‘I’ll tell you what I want ye to do,’ he says, opening his legs even wider. Jesus, the fuckin state of him. ‘Do a line.’
I huff, then tut.
‘I don’t do fuckin drugs, Gerry, how many times do I have to tell ye? It’s your fuckin coke. And that’s the last time you leave it in my house, d’ye hear me?’
I unwrap my bathrobe, sit beside him on the couch and then sigh. ‘You do a line yourself,’ I say. ‘Then do me. Let’s get this over with.’
Helen is still pacing up and down Patrick Tobin’s tiny sitting room, her jaw clenching, when Charlie stands up and winks at her.
‘Okay, got it,’ he says.
Helen nods her head, then strolls over to Tobin.
‘Think it through, Patrick,’ she says. ‘And ring us if anything comes to mind.’
Tobin mumbles a worried ‘yes’ to her, then Helen cocks her head sideways to motion to Charlie that it’s time for them to leave. As they’re heading for the door Charlie scrolls his finger down the screen of his phone.
‘There’s a hundred and sixty-bloody-four names here, Helen. How the hell are we gonna find out which two are the girls we’re looking for?’
Helen makes a sucking noise with her mouth, then pops her lips.
‘We’ll find em.’
They both pace towards the police car; Helen still stewing their next move. They have a list of girls’ names that’s been emailed to Charlie’s phone, all of whom have been noted by the school as having symptoms of depression. And — of course — they have an image of the teenage boy who made the phone calls that started this whole investigation. It wasn’t a bad start, not by any means — and Helen was secretly quite chuffed that she hadn’t lost any of her investigative nous — but it was only a good start if they had time to investigate. With the clock ticking towards midnight, Helen and Charlie had it all to do. They didn’t have the time to trawl through the list of girls’ names; didn’t have time to go door-to-door asking the community if they knew who the young boy in the grainy CCTV image was.
‘Sirens?’ Charlie asks while both of them are pulling at their seatbelts.
Helen narrows her eyes then sucks her mouth again.
‘What would you do, Charlie? If you were the lead Detective in this case, what would your next move be?’
Charlie gently drums his two index fingers against the steering wheel as he stews his answer.
‘Ye think the two girls are on this list?’ he says, nodding his head towards the phone he dropped in the cup holder beside the gear stick.
Helen scrunches up her face.
‘Can’t be sure of it,’ she says. ‘I just… ugh… we just need more time.’
‘Let’s ask the local teenagers about the boy in our image,’ Charlie says, there’s a football club who play their games around the corner here. St John Bosco they’re called, there’s always lads hanging around that clubhouse.’
Helen swallows, then nods her head.
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
‘Sirens?’ Charlie asks.
Helen shakes her head this time.
‘Not if you still want the teenage boys to be hanging around when we get there.’
Charlie holds his eyes firmly closed as he cringes a little. He should have known. That was quite an amateur question.
He drives off, rounds the first bend and by the time he’s approached the roundabout, both he and Helen can see a group of lads sitting on a small wall next to the dressing-rooms of the football club. Some of them stand, bracing themselves to run as the police car edges up beside them. But when Helen gets out, her hands held in the air as if to call for peace, they all seem to relax.
‘We’re only looking for a bit of help,’ she says as she inches towards them; her hands now back in her pockets, the leather coat open, making her look like a character from The Matrix.
‘Need you to identify a boy of your age. He’s not in trouble, we just need to find him.’ She looks behind her at Charlie fumbling with his phone, then rolls her eyes because he’s not prepared. He was supposed to show the image bang on cue. Now she thinks he’s made her look uncool to the boys. As if her leather overcoat and orange hair hadn’t already done that.
‘C’mon, piglet, hurry up,’ one of the boys shouts to a ripple of laughter. Helen offers the boy who yelled a stern gaze. He just stares back.
Then Charlie holds his phone towards the pack and they circle in.
‘Ah yeah — that’s Mike Hunt,’ one lad says.
An ounce of excitement forms in Helen’s stomach, until she hears the rest of the boys laughing again. Mike Hunt. My cunt. She should have copped it; had been fed that fake name a few times when she used to do routine beat work back in the day.
‘Boys, lemme ask you this,’ Helen says, stepping in to the middle of the group. ‘Any of you got sisters?’
One boy cocks his head up, a couple others mumble a ‘yes’.
‘You,’ she says talking to the boy who cocked his head. ‘Your sister younger or older than you?’
He swallows.
‘Younger.’
‘So about… twelve, thirteen?’ Helen asks.
The boy cocks his head again.
‘Well let me tell you this.’ Helen takes her hands out of her pockets. ‘Two thirteen-year-old girls are planning to die by suicide tonight, somewhere in this area. We don’t know who they are or where they are. We just know they are alone, and they want to end their lives. The boy in this photograph is the only person who can lead us to the girls. Guys… they’re only young. Same age your sister. Please,’ she says, holding her palms out, ‘no more messing; we need you to be serious. Do you know who the boy in this image is?’
Charlie stretches the phone closer to the boys and they shuffle their way for a closer look.
Helen winces when she notices the beginning of a Mexican wave of heads shaking from side to side.
‘Sorry,’ the boy who had called Charlie a piglet says, ‘we don’t know him. He’s not from round here anyway; we’d know.’
Helen spins on her heels, pivots her head backwards and offers a silent grunt towards the sky.
‘Thank you, boys,’ Charlie says, before he trudges after Helen and into the car.
Helen is snarling as they both reach for their seatbelts again.
‘We’ve enough information to find these girls, don’t we?’ Charlie says as he repeatedly knocks the butt of his phone off his bottom lip. ‘It’s just we don’t have enough to find them before midnight tonight. We’d need a team of officers, woul
dn’t we? Calling around houses, showing neighbours this image. Calling around each of the girls’ homes that are on our list.’
Helen nods her head slowly as she stares out of her passenger window.
‘Yep,’ she says. ‘If we were to take the time to ring each girl’s home on that list, and spent just two minutes on each call, that’d take us over five hours.’
Charlie digs the phone into his lip, then looks over at Helen.
‘It’s stupid that it’s just the two of us out looking for these girls. The rest of em are all obsessed with tracking down whatever it is they think Alan Keating is up to.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Helen says, still staring out the passenger window.
The evening has turned to darkness; the moon forming full in the navy sky. Not a good sign for Helen. She believes in all that quirky shit; is convinced bad things are more likely to happen when a fuller moon makes an appearance. She’s also one of those who believe that the horoscopes printed in the Irish Daily Star every day are genuinely accurate. This morning’s horoscope suggested she should be looking at taking every opportunity by the scruff of its neck as it will lead to a brighter future. She’s now wondering whether the horoscope meant she could get back on the force if she were to save these girls’ lives. That’d certainly offer a brighter future for her. Though maybe the future the horoscope was referring to was the future of these two girls. If Helen can stop them, she can turn their lives right around. And that’d mean more to Helen than getting her job back. Saving people from the brink of suicide would be a lottery win for Helen Brennan. A goal she wishes she could have achieved twenty-two years ago.
She moves her head for the first time in a couple minutes to snatch Charlie’s phone out of his hand and then presses at the screen to view the time.
‘It’s almost nine o’clock,’ she says. ‘We need to get a move on.’ Charlie looks at her, his eyes squinting. ‘You’re gonna have to ring your SI; tell him that you need more men to carry out door-to-door enquiries,’ Helen says.
She hands the phone back to Charlie and notices him swallow hard as he grips it.
‘He’ll just laugh at me, Helen. I’m just… I’m just—’
‘You are a police officer doing his job properly,’ Helen says. ‘Put him on speaker phone. And remember… don’t mention you’re with me. I’m supposed to be off duty.’
Charlie holds his eyes closed in frustration before he scrolls at his screen.
A ringing tone eventually sounds and both of them cock their ears towards the phone Charlie has held between them.
‘Yello,’ a voice says.
‘Superintendent Newell it’s eh… Charlie, Charlie Guilfoyle.’
‘Ah, howaya, young Charlie, Everything alright?’
‘Yeah… it’s just, I was asked to look into the possibility that the anonymous phone call made earlier about the suicides was well… well…’ he pauses, looks at Helen. Helen nods her head, then waves her hand in a motion that suggests he should just get the fuck on with whatever it is he’s trying to say. ‘Eh… well, I’ve been asked to look into the phone call as if it was legitimate and I’ve found something interesting.’
A snuff of a laugh crackles down the line.
‘Y’know the call’s not legitimate, young Charlie, yes? It’s that fecker Keating playing games with us.’
‘Yeah… yeah, I know,’ Charlie says, looking at Helen again. ‘It’s just… my job was to look into the call as if it was legitimate and well… I have a list, a list of girls in the vicinity who suffer with symptoms of depression. I got them from the local school’s Headteacher.’
Charlie stops talking, then squints his entire face in anticipation of a response. But no sound comes down the line.
‘Sir,’ he says, reprompting Newell.
‘Well, I’m glad you are taking your work very seriously, Charlie. And that is… that is fine investigating indeed. Really impressive outside-the-box thinking. But ye know… this is Keating. We’re one hundred per cent certain of it. I’ve got five Detectives sniffing their noses around — so do Rathmines station — and we really need to get back to the invest—’
‘Sir, I need help. I need more manpower to try to locate the two girls from this list. I’m sure the two girls who are planning to die by suicide are on it.’
As the line cackles with laughter Helen grinds her teeth, itching to get in on the conversation. But she manages to bite her tongue. If her husband found out she was investigating behind his back, that could spell the end of their marriage. It’s surviving on such tenterhooks as it is. They’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms for the past fifteen years; Eddie accepting that they will stay with each other forever, but their marriage — in a traditional sense — well and truly ended the day Scott died. Helen’s been waiting on Eddie to retire, so that they can move to Canada. He promised her — on the evening before Scott’s funeral — that they’d both retire to Toronto when the time was right. That dream is the only thing that’s kept Helen going over the years. She’s desperate to move away from Dublin; desperate to move on from Scott’s death. She nags Eddie about his retirement on a regular basis; but has a horrible feeling the move will never happen. She thinks Eddie loves his job a little more than he loves his wife. She couldn’t be more wrong.
‘Listen, young Charlie, you keep following up your leads, I’m glad you are taking the role you’ve been given as seriously as you can, but… I’ve gotta go.’
Charlie stares at Helen as a dead tone echoes through the car.
‘The cunt!’ Helen yells. ‘Why are all Superintendents a bunch of fucking cunts?’
She clicks at the buckle of her seat belt, then opens her car door.
Charlie inches forward in his seat and watches as Helen screams into the sky.
‘Did the two girls kill themselves missus?’ one of the boys they had been speaking to a few minutes ago shouts over.
Helen doesn’t answer him; she pinches at the bridge of her nose, then tucks her chin into the collar of her leather coat. After forcing in and out three deep breaths, she takes her own mobile phone out of her pocket.
‘Guess I’ll have to make a call,’ she says to herself. She presses at the screen a couple times, then brings the phone to her ear and, as she does so, she walks slowly away from the car.
‘Hey,’ Eddie says. ‘We’re crazy busy here at the minute, what’s up?’
20:50
Ingrid
‘C’mon then, let’s catch the bus to Harriet’s. I promise I won’t jump out in front of it as it’s coming,’ she says, smiling. Typical Ciara. Running out in front of a bus one minute, joking the next.
So I smile too, pretending I’m not scared. And then we both walk, arms wrapped around each other, towards the end of the road where the bus that’ll take us to Harriet’s house stops.
Harriet is the only one I really want to say goodbye to. Apart from Ciara, she’s the one person who speaks to me like I’m me… not as if I’m somebody she wants me to be. My parents talk to me as if I’m another person altogether; like a daughter they wished they had instead of me. I feel like I’m bothering them anytime I have to ask a question.
My teachers don’t talk to me at all. Most of them don’t even know my name. I’m just another face in a room full of faces to them. In primary school, our teachers were great. I love Miss Moriarty with all my heart. But in secondary school it seems as if they don’t care. A little part of me was excited when we were getting old enough to go to secondary school. But I’ve felt so sad ever since we’ve gone there. I never wake up happy in the mornings. Secondary school has been such a let down.
We’re walking in silence when blue lights flash off the windows of the houses in front of us. Then I hear a car pull up slowly and I turn around to see a policeman with his head sticking out of his window.
‘Girls — stop right there!’
I look at Ciara’s face; wondering if she’s going to make a run for it and thoughts of whether or not I should run with h
er go through my mind. Running from Debbie is one thing, but running from the police… well… But Ciara doesn’t run, she just stands still beside me as the policeman approaches us.
‘Girls, a bus driver has just stopped me up the street there and said two girls fitting your description almost ran out in from of him.’
He frowns his forehead. His wrinkles are really deep. Like an old man’s. Only he isn’t really that old.
‘No… don’t be silly,’ Ciara says laughing. ‘I just nearly walked out in front of the bus by accident… my friend here pulled me back. I just wasn’t looking where I was going.’
He looks at my face, back at Ciara’s, then at mine again.
‘This true?’ he asks me.
I nod my head. This isn’t good. I’m lying to policemen now. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out a small notepad.
‘You two girls from around here?’ he asks.
Ciara nods her head before I have a chance to speak. Which is fine by me. I don’t even know what to say. I’m half scared, half-relieved that a policeman has come to save us.
‘Well, not far from here. We’d need to get a bus home,’ she says.
‘What’re your names?’ He clicks on the top of his pen and rests it against his pad.
‘Emma Brown,’ she says as quickly as she can, ‘and eh… Mel Bunton.’
I hold my eyes closed. The last thing I want to do is laugh. But I know exactly where she plucked those names from… it’s a mix up of two of the Spice Girls. Typical Ciara. Thinking on her feet. Making everything up as she’s going along.
The policeman looks at me when he’s finished scribbling.
‘Are you okay, Mel?’ he says. ‘You look a bit eh… ashen-faced, if you don’t mind me saying.’
I slowly nod my head, unsure what ashen-faced means exactly.
‘She’s not ashen faced. She’s just pale. Always has been. Has Swedish blood, don’tcha, Mel?’
Ciara nudges me.
The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 57