‘Eh… nothing much. Same stuff,’ I say.
She looks at me with a funny face then shuts the door.
‘Don’t give me that. You can’t lie to me, Ingrid. I can see right through you. It’s this boy, isn’t it? What-his-name again, funny name he had?’
I look at Ciara, then rub at my nose.
‘Stitch,’ I say.
‘That’s it! Stitch. Because he had one stitch in his lip one day in school that was hanging out, right? What did he do on you?’
I look at Ciara again. I’m not sure what to say. Or really, I’m not sure how much to say.
I can see Ciara tapping her shoes off the carpet. She’s nervous too. Maybe coming to say goodbye to Harriet wasn’t the best idea. She might get everything out of us. She’s too bloody clever.
‘G’wan,’ Ciara says sighing, ‘tell her what happened with Stitch last night.’
21:10
Ciara
Shit. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Harriet is too intelligent. She might make Ingrid cave in and tell her everything.
I can feel Ingrid staring at me; trying to get a hint from me about how she should answer Harriet’s question. So I look back at her and before I can even stop myself, the words come out of my mouth.
‘G’wan, tell her what happened with Stitch last night,’ I say.
Bleedin’ hell. I hope she doesn’t tell her everything. Because Harriet will talk her down; will make her feel better. Ingrid will refuse to do this… refuse to kill herself with me. And we need to do it. We need to do it tonight. We can’t let anyone change our minds.
‘We were at a party last night. He made fun of me in front of everybody in our school year,’ Ingrid says.
‘The little bollix,’ Harriet says. I laugh. Then hold my hand up in apology to Ingrid. It’s the way Harriet says things sometimes.
Ingrid sits herself on the edge of Harriet’s bed. ‘Me and him, we were… we were supposed to go to the party together to let people know we were… y’know…’
‘Boyfriend and girlfriend?’ Harriet says.
As Ingrid nods her answer, I sit beside her.
My head is talking to me as I sit. In fact, not just talking to me. It’s screaming at me. It’s telling me I should interrupt Ingrid. She might say too much. I know what Stitch said last night isn’t the only reason she wants to kill herself. But it is the reason she finally agreed to do it. So talking about it — giving Harriet the chance to mend her broken heart — might make Ingrid change her mind about ending it all. Only I don’t know what I can say to stop her.
‘He wouldn’t even look at me the whole night. He was too busy mucking around with all those eejits he hangs out with.’ I look up at Harriet and notice she is pulling one of those faces. Like a sympathy face; her lips closed tight, her eyes squinting. ‘And when I tried to talk to him, he just sort of hushed me away. He was like… I don’t know… he’s a different person when it’s just me and him.’
‘Boys,’ Harriet says. ‘They’re all like that. It’s not just when you’re thirteen. Boys are different around their mates than they are their girlfriends their whole lives. All my fellas have been like that. Boys are dopes.’
‘How many boyfriends you had, Harriet?’ I ask. I already know the answer. She’s on her fourth. She told us that before. But maybe asking this will help change the conversation.
‘Four,’ she says. ’Just finished with Conor there a couple weeks ago.’
‘Finished?’ I ask.
‘Same thing. Too immature. Was always changing plans when we were to meet up and stuff. Did me head in in the end. He started crying like a baby when I dumped him. Told him it was all his own fault.’ She turns to Ingrid and rubs at her knee. ‘This won’t be your first heartbreak, honey, trust me. Specially someone who looks like you.’
I look down at my lap. It’s always awkward for me when people mention looks. I know I’m not the prettiest. Never will be. But sometimes I think the better looking you are, the more attention you get from the boys. And who would ever want that?
‘Boys don’t notice me,’ Ingrid says.
Harriet tips her head back and laughs.
‘Yeah right? Ciara, do all the boys fancy her or wha’?’
I shoot my head up and twist my neck to look at Ingrid. Then I laugh a little and nod my head.
‘Course they do,’ I say. But I’m lying. The boys don’t fancy Ingrid. I don’t know why. She’s probably the prettiest in the class. Either her or Tiffany Byrne. But the boys never seem to mention Ingrid. Or notice her at all. I think it’s cause she hangs out with me. We’re seen as the two little quiet weirdos.
‘No they don’t,’ Ingrid says, making a funny face at me. I just shrug my shoulder. I wasn’t really sure what to say. The truth? That my fat cheeks puts all the boys off her too?
‘So where were yis last night?’ Harriet asks.
‘A guy in our year had a free house; his mum and dad were away for the weekend,’ Ingrid says. ‘Mum took a lot of persuading to let us go, but she did in the end. Told her it was a normal birthday party and that his parents would be there. About fifty people from our year turned up. We weren’t really invited. Stitch and his mates were, so I asked Stitch if it was cool if we went too, so me and him could kind of…’
‘Come out?’ Harriet says.
Ingrid nods her head.
‘But it just ended up with me and Ciara standing in the corner all night, eating bloody Cheesy Puffs.’
‘I love Cheesy Puffs,’ I say, before I realise what I’ve said. Harriet looks at me and laughs a little through her nose.
‘So, what happened… did you confront him?’ Harriet asks, turning back to Ingrid.
‘It was when the slow music came on, wasn’t it?’ I say.
Ingrid nods.
‘Yeah, the fella whose gaff it was, he had music playing all night. Then it switched to slow songs, so that the boyfriends and girlfriends could get up and dance together. I didn’t know what to do. I was really nervous. And the room was so quiet because the music was so low. I just… I just walked up to him and tried to hold his hand.’ I can feel Ingrid’s insides cry, she almost bends herself over in two while sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘He just looked at me as if he hated me. “What the fuck are ye doing?” he said. “Get your bleedin’ hands off me you… ye fuckin smell like fish fingers”.’
I look up at Harriet and notice her face go all funny.
‘Fishfingers?’ she says.
‘There’s always been this thing,’ I say, ‘that Ingrid smells of fish fingers because she’s half Swedish. It’s been going on for years… from when we started Primary School.’
‘Fishfingers?’ Harriet says again, this time really high-pitched.
‘We don’t get it either. It doesn’t even make any sense.’
Ingrid sniffs some wet snot back up her nose.
‘And then everybody just laughed. Really loudly,’ she sobs.
‘Ohhh… Ingrid.’
Harriet walks over to her, kneels down and gives her a big hug.
I hope she doesn’t make Ingrid feel better. Well… better enough to not want to do what we plan to do. We better not have said too much already.
Charlie has to almost jog to keep up with the wide-open strides of Helen.
‘Jaysus, I hope he knows this kid,’ he says, bounding up behind her.
‘If the kid is from this area, then he’ll definitely know him. We just needed to find the right Headteacher is all. We had the wrong area earlier on. But now we’ve got it. I’m sure of it.’
They cut through a narrow side entry — squeezing up a gap between an overgrown bush and a semi-detached home — and on towards the laneway the neighbour had pointed them to.
Then Helen stops, bends over slightly and holds her hands to her knees.
‘Sorry, Charlie, I’m moving too fast for a woman of my age.’ She looks up at him, still bent in her own unique way, and then sucks a large breath in through her nostrils. ‘How
old you reckon I am?’
Charlie’s eyes widen a little. He pivots on his heel, swaying one way, then the other.
‘Jee, I don’t know…’ he says before blowing out his cheeks. ‘Fifty-odd, mid fifties?’
‘Ha,’ Helen shouts out, almost too loudly. ‘Nope. Sixty-three. Can you believe that?’
Charlie can believe it. He politely aimed low with his estimation. Her face looks every inch the face of somebody in their sixties, perhaps even in their late sixties. There are heavy lines around her mouth, two rows of bags under each eye.
‘Really? Wow. You don’t look it. And your… eh… movement, sure, Jaysus, I have to run to keep up with ye,’ he says.
‘Well, you don’t have to run now, do you? I’ve stopped. Gimme a second to grab my breath.’
Charlie swallows, then pivots again on his heels as he waits on Helen to stand back up.
‘I won’t move so fast this time,’ she says, holding out a hand to Charlie. He grabs it, allows his weight to help Helen to straighten up.
‘People always say I look younger. I think it’s the hair.’
Charlie swallows again, then stares at the back of her hair as she walks on. He still hasn’t worked out what colour it’s supposed to be.
‘Yeah… it’s cool,’ he says. ‘Bet you’re a really cool grandmother.’
Helen balks a little, but keeps walking.
‘Never got a chance to be a grandmother,’ she says.
A cringe runs down Charlie’s spine. He slaps himself in the forehead, then sets off after Helen, trotting again to keep up with her.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I eh… I want you to know. I am just as determined as you are to find these two girls before they do the wrong thing. We’ll save their lives, okay? We’ll save their lives in Scott’s memory.’
Helen stops walking to glance back at Charlie.
‘Thank you,’ she says. Then she paces again, forgetting that she said she’d slow down.
‘Never in a million years would I have thought he’d do it. I mean suicide… Scott? And every parent I’ve talked to since, who has had a child who has done the same thing, they say exactly that. Not in a million years could they have even guessed their child would end it all. I bet… I bet you any money that the parents of these two girls haven’t one darn clue what’s going on tonight.’
Charlie stretches out his arm and gently pats Helen between her shoulder blades as he catches right up to her.
‘You never get over it, y’know? Well, I didn’t anyway,’ she says.
Then she stops walking again and pinches the top of her nose.
Charlie pivots on his heels, then winces a little before wrapping his two arms around her.
Neither of them say anything as he hugs her in the middle of the dark laneway. Then Helen swipes her nose with the sleeve of her leather coat, pushes Charlie gently away and walks on.
‘C’mon, let’s get to this Headteacher. What time’s it now?’
Charlie reaches for his phone and stabs at the screen so the light comes on.
‘Just gone quarter-past nine,’ he says.
‘Fuck sake. Not that long to go. Right….’ Helen says, blinking her eyes as she continues to walk. ‘If we can get a name for this boy from this Headteacher, we’ll be fine. We can get to him, get the names of the girls out of him, track them down. If he knows they are gonna kill themselves, then he’ll likely know where they’re planning on doing it. We’re going to stop them from doing what they want to do.’
Charlie nods his head, though his instinct is telling him Helen’s plan doesn’t sound particularly genius. There are no guarantees to any part of what she’s just said. He squelches up his face, then decides to talk.
‘But, Helen, why didn’t he leave all that information… the girls’ names and everything else… why didn’t he share everything he knew when he made the calls?’
Helen twists her head to face Charlie, still striding forward, then shrugs her shoulder.
‘It’s happened thousands of times before, people ringing in to the station and offering up tiny bits of information.’
She notices Charlie’s face contort.
‘It does, Charlie. Happens all the time. I don’t know whether these guys just like to get their kicks from it… or… I don’t know. He’s a young kid. He’s probably frightened. Maybe he’s the reason they’re planning on killing themselves… there might be a lot of guilt on his part, that’s why he rang it in. And perhaps he’s too frightened that it’ll all come back on him.’ She stops walking and holds a hand out towards Charlie. ‘Listen; the psychologist will have a field day with this boy after we bring him in. But we’re not the psychologists are we? Our job is to investigate and act. And that’s what we’ll do.’
Charlie swallows again, then nods his head. And they both walk on, past the last of the bush that squeezed them into the laneway and out into an open road.
‘Where the fuck is this pub?’ Helen says, spinning around, her palms face up.
Charlie takes a few steps forward and peers around the bush.
‘Here it is,’ he says.
The pub looks like a large cottage house, topped off with a hay-brush rooftop.
‘Jaysus, never knew there was a pub around this neck of the woods,’ Helen says before swiping some of the bush away and forcing her way through a gap.
She puffs out her cheeks as they cross the small car park and towards a lit open porch.
‘Bar or lounge?’ Charlie asks.
‘Locals always drink in the bar,’ Helen says, pulling at the door to their left. She steps aside, allowing Charlie to enter first.
The murmuring of chatter she heard as she opened the door immediately stops.
‘We are looking to talk to Brother Fitzpatrick,’ she says to the dozen people sitting at low tables.
Heads pivot around the room.
‘He was here a minute ago, hardly did a bleedin’ runner did he?’ an elderly man says.
A mumble of laughter sounds out before the man behind the bar, drying a pint glass with a stained tea towel, cocks his head at Helen.
‘He’s in the Gents, Guards. Be out in a minute.’
Helen and Charlie take one step backwards and then both clasp their hands in front of themselves in unison as they stand still. Nobody’s eyes divert from them and only the hum of a distant hand dryer creates any sound at all.
‘Can I get yis a drink?’ the barman, still drying the same pint glass, asks.
Helen waves a ‘no’ at him, almost managing a smile in the process.
The sound of a door creaking turns everybody’s heads in the opposite direction. Then the door with ‘Gents’ written on it swings open and a bearded man limps into the bar; suddenly stopping upon noticing all faces staring at him. Then he spots the two strangers — one in a Garda uniform — and he staggers backwards, resting his shoulder blades against the wall.
‘You’re in trouble, Brother,’ one man calls out. Most of the other patrons laugh. But their laughter sounds cautious, non-committal.
‘Brother Fitzpatrick, I assume?’ Helen asks, taking a stride forward towards him, staring at the clerical collar that she can see behind thin strands of his beard.
‘Oh sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Fitzpatrick says, blessing himself.
Helen squints her eyes when she gets closer to him, can tell by his glazed look that he’s had a few too many already.
‘We eh… we need to speak with you as a matter of urgency.’
Helen points her hand towards the door behind her.
Fitzpatrick doesn’t move.
‘Unless you would eh… like us to talk to you here in front of everybody, Brother?’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ he says, raising a palm to the air. ‘Gimme a second.’
He steadies his feet, sucks in a stuttering breath, then exhales slowly before leaning off the wall and walking, one foot in front of the other, as slowly as he can — past Helen, then past Charlie and finally ou
t the door.
He’s leaning against the porch wall when Helen and Charlie get outside.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I eh… it’s all really innocent… it’s…’ he shrugs his shoulders.
‘What are you sorry for?’ Helen says, folding her arms.
Fitzpatrick stares at her, then eyeballs Charlie before repeatedly blinking.
‘Huh?’ he says. Helen looks back at Charlie and whispers a ‘fuck sake’.
‘What are you saying sorry for?’ Charlie asks.
‘I…. I… need to speak with a what’s-it-called? A eh… someone who eh… a legal thing?’
‘A lawyer?’ Charlie steps forward so that he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Helen.
Fitzpatrick nods his head, burping quietly as he does so, then re-steadies himself against the porch wall in an effort to rid himself of the swaying motion that’s going on inside his head.
‘How much you had to drink?’ Helen asks.
‘Eh… few pints. Just a few. I’m not driving. I just live down… see that lane way over there?’ he says, almost tripping over his own feet as he turns to point.
‘We know where you live, Brother Fitzpatrick. We’ve just called by. A neighbour said we’d find you here.’ Fitzpatrick turns back slowly. ‘Now before we tell you why we’re here, mind telling us why you feel you need a lawyer… why you are apologising to us?’
Fitzpatrick tries to focus on both faces by repeatedly blinking again.
‘I think I need a lawyer,’ he says.
Helen holds her fingers to her forehead and stares down at her red Converse trainers.
‘We don’t have time for a lawyer,’ she says, ‘and we don’t have time to deal with, well… whatever it is you are sorry about. We believe two of your students are in grave danger tonight and we need to track them down as quickly as possible.’
She looks up to see Fitzpatrick readjust his standing position, a hint of relief causing his brow to straighten.
The Tick-Tock Trilogy Box Set Page 60