The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  No money was coming in. Nothing. Even while I’d been too unwell to work, two and a half years ago, I’d turned a few quid because a couple of companies had me on retainer. But overnight, or so it seemed, I had no income at all. I’d been paring back on all my spending anyway. I’d let my office go, and when my annual home insurance bill had come round for renewal I’d skipped paying it. But everything changed drastically: luxuries like haircuts, scarves and expensive foundations had to stop; my washing machine broke and it had to stay broken; my electric toothbrush gave up the ghost and I couldn’t replace it. I got an eye infection and a visit to Waterbury was out of the question. The obvious solution was to sell my flat, until I got it valued and realized that I’d be in negative equity for the rest of my life.

  Like hundreds of thousands of others, I went to the social welfare and wondered which excuse they’d use to refuse me. They plumped for the fact that I was self-employed. But to be fair, if it wasn’t that they’d have found something else – that I had long hair, that I was born on a Tuesday, that when I was young I’d thought that all cats were girls and all dogs were boys and they got married to each other. The only way to get the social is to never get a job. My advice is to go straight from school to the dole and never come off it.

  Any odd little bit of money I earned, I prioritized: I had to pay my income tax because I didn’t want to be thrown into the slammer; I had to have my phone because it was my lifeline, more so than food and Diet Coke; and, if I could, I had to hang on to my car because I couldn’t do my job without it and, if the worst came to the worst, I could live in it.

  I did exactly what everyone is advised not to do: I used my credit card to pay my mortgage. When I reached my credit limit, I had to stop. In a small reprieve, I wasn’t in immediate danger of being turfed out on to the street; there were so many people in mortgage arrears that the government had given a temporary amnesty.

  Nevertheless becoming homeless was only a matter of time and I now owed a frighteningly large sum of money on my credit card and was unable to make even the minimum payments. That was so scary that I absolved myself from opening the bills. After a while, the bills stopped arriving and official-looking manila envelopes started coming in their stead. I ignored the first three until, in a fit of courage, I tore one open and discovered that I was being taken to court for non-payment.

  In a panic, I thought about asking someone to loan me money. The only solvent people I could think of were Margaret, my parents, Claire or Artie. But Margaret’s husband had just been made redundant, and Mum and Dad’s pension had been hammered and they were far from flush themselves. Claire managed to keep countless financial balls in the air, but if all her debts were added up she most likely owed more than me. Artie was probably financially secure, but it didn’t matter because I would never ask him for money. No, I was on my own in this.

  Even though my expectations were very low, I went to one of those government-sponsored debt counselling things. A bespectacled man told me – quite judgmentally, I couldn’t help but feel – that I’d been very foolish and my situation was dire, then he asked if I had any ‘assets’ that I could sell.

  ‘Assets?’ I said. ‘Well, I’ve a yacht. Only a small one, but worth a couple of million. And a house on Lake Como. Would they do?’

  He brightened up considerably, then his face fell. ‘Haha,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Haha, indeed,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think that if I was sitting on a pile of assets it might have occurred to me to sell them? What kind of cretin do you think I am?’

  ‘Please don’t use abusive language,’ he said primly.

  ‘What? You mean “cretin”? “Cretin” isn’t abusive language. “Cretin” is a medical definition.’ I managed to stop myself adding, in a voice dripping with scorn, ‘You cretin.’

  As it was, I’d tried flogging my surveillance equipment on eBay but the money offered was so risible that I decided I’d be better off hanging on to the stuff.

  ‘I suggest you write to your creditor and offer to pay off your bill in small instalments,’ the prim man said. ‘Now would you leave, please?’

  As I walked out of there I reflected on how easily I managed to make enemies. I hadn’t even been trying and now this man hated me. Nevertheless I did as he suggested and the credit card people replied and told me that my small instalments weren’t big enough and they were still taking me to court.

  Meanwhile, I kept on battling. I never stopped going after work and I was managing to get bits and pieces, but everyone was going out of business before they could pay me and I’d spent the past month just trying to track down people who owed me money.

  Things continued to deteriorate. My cable telly got cut off and I was reduced to watching shitey terrestrial stuff. I could no longer afford for my bins to be collected and had to do the horrible, horrible job of bringing my rubbish round to Mum and Dad’s. My court date arrived and I didn’t show up because I felt there was no point.

  Ten days ago, in a different disaster, the final demand for my electricity bill arrived in my letter box. If I didn’t pay within a week I’d be cut off. Defiantly I decided I could live without it; it was summer, I didn’t need heating or lights and I never cooked. I could have cold showers and I could manage without a fridge. Granted, I wouldn’t be able to watch DVDs and – more importantly – I’d have to go to someone else’s house when I needed to charge my phone. Still, valiant to the last, I told myself I’d manage.

  The electricity people were as good as their word and after seven days my supply was terminated. Despite everything, it came as a shock; I’d thought that they might have a heart and turn a blind eye for at least a while. But no. So no lights, no hot water, no magic juice coming through the wall to give life to my phone.

  The following morning I was woken by a loud knocking on my door. Three burly men were outside; one of them presented me with a piece of paper. I took a look at it: a judgment had been entered in court in my absence and they were there to remove goods to the value of my credit card debt. It was all perfectly legal.

  There was no point resisting, so I invited the boyos in and offered them my broken washing machine. They spurned it, and they weren’t too keen on my oil paintings of horses either. In fact they seemed mildly freaked out by my entire apartment.

  I could have done what lots of people do. I could have attacked them, spat at them, tried to make them stop. But jostling and throwing useless punches wouldn’t make any difference.

  My couch, armchairs and telly, they had out the door with a speed that made my head spin. The men were looking around, wondering what to go for next and suddenly they perked up – they’d noticed my bed and they liked the look of it. Yes, they really liked it. They decided it might be worth a few quid. With extraordinary efficiency they produced a box of electric tools and dismantled my Mother Superior bed in jig time.

  Mute with humiliation, I watched them carry it away. They took the beautiful laquer-inlaid headboard and footboard, the mattress, the duvet and pillows – even the black covers that I’d gone to such trouble to procure.

  Fighting back tears, I said to one of the men, ‘How do you sleep?’

  He looked me in the eye and said, ‘With great difficulty, actually.’

  Then, as dramatically as they had arrived, they were gone and in the silence left by their departure I saw that I was in an apartment that had no electricity, no couch, no chairs, no bin collection, no insurance and no bed.

  That was the deciding moment. I gave up, gave in, whatever you want to call it. I’d been putting so much energy into pushing back the catastrophe, into striving to find new work, into trying to be optimistic and I wasn’t able to fight any more.

  I didn’t even bother to ring my mortgage company to tell them I was gone, they’d figure it out themselves soon enough, and I quietly organized two men and a van to parcel up what remained of my life and put it into storage.

  To banish these dark thoughts I sat on Wayne’s sofa and
enjoyed the experience very much. Then I sat on one of his armchairs and enjoyed that too. Then I sat on the other armchair and that was also very pleasant. I realized I was getting attached to the place and that could be a danger because I was on the rebound, having lost my own lovely home only a day ago. I’d want to take care, now that I had Wayne’s key and alarm code, that I didn’t find myself accidentally moving in.

  Right. I had a list of things to do.

  1) Find Gloria.

  2) Canvas the neighbours.

  3) Talk to Birdie.

  4) Find Digby, the possible taxi driver.

  5) Drive to Clonakilty and talk to Wayne’s family, but not just yet. Not until it stopped seeming obvious.

  However, instead of whirlwinding out through the door with my list of duties, I decided to lie on the living-room floor, on a very attractive rug, and gaze at the ceiling (painted daringly in Ennui). Aloud, I asked, ‘Where are you, Wayne?’

  So where was he? Driving around Connemara in a camper van taking photos of gorse? Or could he have been kidnapped? I hadn’t entirely taken it seriously because Jay and the other Laddz were so adamant that he was just throwing a strop, but suddenly I had a mental picture of Wayne thrown in a darkened lock-up, his legs and arms tied with electric flex.

  But who would kidnap him? Why would someone kidnap him? It’s not as if he had any money. Or had he? Had I missed something in my quick scan of his finances? I needed to go back upstairs to his office for another look because there are usually two reasons people go missing: money and honey.

  And if not for a ransom, I realized there were other reasons he could have been kidnapped. Someone might want to sabotage the Laddz comeback. Someone who had it in for Jay (surely hundreds of people?), or who had it in for the promoters. But it didn’t make sense to abduct Wayne so far in advance of the first gig, if only because the longer you hold someone the higher your chances of getting caught.

  If someone was serious about sabotage, they’d have grabbed Wayne on Wednesday, the day of the first concert. Then there would be no time to find him, to manage the press, to issue refunds … it would be utter mayhem.

  Of course there was always the random nutter factor. A besotted fan – ‘window lickers’ I believe they’re called – could have tipped over into Misery-style devotion and grabbed Wayne. Right this minute, Wayne could be wearing an ill-fitting white suit and be shackled to a rose-pink loveseat in a soft-furnished dungeon, singing Laddz’s greatest hits over and over, while his mystery abductor (I suspected a female) shouted, ‘Again, again, more, more!’

  Or could the whole thing be a ruse orchestrated by Jay? To fire up ticket sales?

  (So how were ticket sales? I wondered. I must find out.)

  Could Jay be double-bluffing me? Could he have temporarily ‘disappeared’ Wayne? And hired me to ‘find’ him? But really hired me because I was crap?

  Could all that stuff about keeping it out of the press be a sham? In a couple of days would details of ‘missing Wayne’ be leaked to a tabloid? Followed by a massive run on tickets to see if Wayne would actually turn up on the night?

  I mean, look at how resistant Jay had been last night when I’d wanted to install the monitors on Wayne’s house and car. Okay, it was late and he was knackered and what difference would a few hours make? But if he’d really been frantic with worry, wouldn’t he have wanted it done straight away?

  The reason I was so suspicious was because I’d been set up like this before. A few years back I was hired to get photo evidence of a woman playing away. However (for reasons too complicated to go into), the person who hired me didn’t actually want the reveal, but they needed to be seen to be going through the motions. Basically I was given the job because they thought I was too much of a lightweight to be able to pull it off.

  Even now it stung to think about it and if Jay bloody Parker was spinning my wheels in the same way, I’d … I’d …

  Anger tipped over into desolation. I’d find some way to punish him, but I wouldn’t think about it now. I’d think about Wayne.

  I didn’t know why, seeing as we’d never met, but I wanted to help him. I guess I thought he looked nice.

  Which is actually a very poor way to judge someone. I mean, think about Stalin. If you didn’t know what a badzer he was, you might think, with his ’tache and his brown bear eyes, that he was nice. Something about him reminded me of this man who ran the taverna that Bronagh and I used to go to, that time we were on holiday in Santorini. He was like a cuddly uncle and often gave us drinks on the house.

  So whenever I see a picture of Stalin I get a warm feeling and think, ‘Free ouzo!’ – instead of recoiling and thinking what I should be thinking, which is, ‘Paranoid despot responsible for the deaths of twenty million people.’

  I could be as wrong about Wayne as I was about Stalin.

  All the same, I decided it was worth exploring the possibility that Wayne hadn’t disappeared voluntarily but had come into contact with some nasty types.

  I had one contact in the criminal world, Harry Gilliam. We’d met a few years back when his assistant had hired me to work a case (the same case, coincidentally, for which I’d been hired for my crapness). Both Harry and I had come out of the whole sorry business bruised and battered, quite literally in my case. I’d been bitten on the bum by a dog, but that wasn’t why I hated dogs. I’d always hated them. So, luckily, no lasting trauma.

  Harry sort of owed me, but I was loath to call him on it. Favours are like currency; you can’t fritter them away on useless stuff. You’ve got to be really sure you want what you’re going to get. Wayne, I decided on balance, was worth it.

  I dialled Harry’s number and on the sixth ring, someone said, ‘Yeh?’

  ‘Harry?’ I asked in surprise. He never used to answer his phone personally.

  In a clipped, angry way, he said, ‘You know to never use my name on the phone.’

  ‘I forgot. It’s been a long time.’ I could have given some smart arse reply but it really wasn’t a good idea to piss him off. I’d always found him mildly risible, but the fact was that he was genuinely connected. He had information that I wouldn’t be able to get any other way. ‘I need to talk to you. Just a couple of questions.’

  He wouldn’t do any business on the phone. I used to think that that was hard-man nonsense, but now that I knew what I knew about the bugging of phones, I thought he was right.

  ‘Can I come to see you?’ I asked.

  I was mentally calculating how long it would take to talk to Wayne’s neighbours. Impossible to know. The unpleasant truth was that talking to the neighbours – any neighbours – was usually a bust. Either they were blank-faced automatons who ‘didn’t want to get involved’ and who closed the door on your foot, or, worse still, they got wildly excited about being part of a case and, even though they knew nothing remotely useful, engaged you in time-wasting chat and conjecture (‘Could he be a member of Al-Qaeda? I mean, someone has to be …’).

  Better to go and see Harry. Bird in the hand and all that.

  ‘Can I come now?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I’ll let you know. Someone will ring you.’

  After he hung up, I felt very, very low. I was suddenly acknowledging the fact that Wayne might never come back, that he might actually be dead. Most coppers will tell you that if you don’t find a missing person in the first forty-eight hours the chances are that they’re a goner. Obviously they’re talking about people who haven’t disappeared voluntarily and Wayne might just be hiding out somewhere, but all the same.

  To diffuse this depressing thought, I turned on the telly, which was housed in the elegant, hand-joined shelves in the fireplace alcove.

  In a coincidence that had me sitting up straight, who appeared on the screen? Only Docker! Some report on Sky News about himself and Bono and a couple of other high-profile do-gooders, handing in a letter to 10 Downing Street on behalf of some down-trodden nation. I studied Docker with great interest. So good-looking and shiny
and well made. Hard to believe he was Irish.

  20

  You know what? I still hadn’t heard from John Joseph Hartley and it was going on for midday. What was the story? Didn’t he want Wayne to be found?

  I turned off the news – somehow watching Wayne’s telly made me feel like I was trespassing – and John Joseph answered on the third ring. ‘Hey, Helen.’

  ‘John Joseph? Birdie Salaman? You were going to get back to me with her number and stuff.’

  ‘Sorry, hon, I don’t have anything for her. Thing is, I met her only a couple of times. I was living in Cairo most of the time Wayne was going out with her. We were never close.’

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘Northside. Swords, Portmarnock, one of those places.’

  Aw, come on, I’d never met her but even I’d found an address for her. ‘Any idea where she works?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘What does she do for a living?’

  ‘No idea, hon. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said evenly.

  ‘Yeah. Gotta go. Lunchtime, and here comes our cottage cheese. But anything I can do to help, any time, day or night …’

  I hung up, thinking:

  A) Don’t call me ‘hon’.

  B) Don’t take me for a moron.

  C) Don’t call me ‘hon’.

  Oh, and D) Don’t call me ‘hon’.

  Clearly John Joseph Hartley didn’t want me talking to Birdie Salaman and that was a pity because I’d liked him and now I didn’t. I suspected him of … what, exactly? I didn’t know. The wheels in my brain weren’t turning fast enough. All I knew was that I shouldn’t call him on it, not yet. I should wait it out for a bit. See if Birdie got back to me. And if she didn’t? Well, I knew where she lived. I could drive out and harass her in the comfort of her own home.

  While I’d been having my entirely unhelpful talk with John Joseph, I’d missed a call from Artie, so I rang him back. ‘It’s me,’ I said.