The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  He was in danger of being forgotten about, so great was John Joseph’s anger.

  ‘Roger.’ Miss Bossy-Boots Zeezah marched over to Roger, who had also landed on terra firma and was being released from his harness by more roadie types. ‘Give me a Xanax for Frankie.’

  ‘Where would I get a Xanax?’ Oh! The boldness of the man!

  Zeezah clicked her fingers – actually clicked her fingers! (I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone do that in real life before.) Meekly Roger trotted over to a jacket that lay at the side of the stage. He produced a wallet from one of its pockets, had a quick rummage, then placed a white tablet in Zeezah’s hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said smartly, closing her little palm over it. She called up to Frankie, ‘I have a Xanax for you.’

  ‘But how will we get it to him?’ someone said.

  ‘Someone needs to be hoisted up,’ Harvey said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Zeezah said. Already she was clipping on a harness. She was commendably cool-headed and capable. Brave, even. John Joseph was very lucky to have her, yellow jeans notwithstanding.

  I watched her ascend smoothly until she reached Frankie, where she handed over the pill. But instead of coming back down, she stayed up there, chatting quietly, clearly trying to calm him down. Fair play. Impressive woman.

  John Joseph abruptly stalked off to sit in the front row of the theatre. He went alone but all the energy followed him. You could see the crew were terrified. There were a lot of anxious sidelong glances in his direction as they waited for him to stop being angry and for things to get back to normal.

  Overhead, the Xanax had clearly started taking effect because Frankie’s cries gradually quietened down and his head began to loll to one side. Another modern art installation. This one could be called Lynching. I shuddered.

  Jay Parker was still standing next to me. I sensed a diminution of his life force. To put it another way, he seemed very depressed.

  ‘Can I ask John Joseph and Roger my question now?’ I said.

  He glanced down into the dark of the audience seats. You couldn’t really see John Joseph but you could feel him. ‘Good luck with that,’ Jay said. ‘By the way, here’s some money. Another two hundred euro.’ He slipped me a bundle of notes.

  ‘I don’t like doing it like this, Parker,’ I said. ‘This piecemeal approach. Give it all to me in one go. Go to the bank and get it out.’

  ‘Okay. I will if I can. On Monday. Just with time being a bit tight …’

  I stuck my fingers in my ears. ‘LALALALALALALAHHH! I can’t hear your whining. Okay, I’m off to talk to John Joseph.’

  I made my way down the stage steps and entered John Joseph’s formidable force field.

  I am not afraid of John Joseph Hartley.

  He was furiously typing something on his laptop. He looked up at my approach and said civilly, ‘Helen, hon.’

  I waited until I was right up beside him, then I threw a question his way. ‘Does Wayne have a friend called Digby?’ I watched him very, very, very closely. I was alert to the tiniest of gives – a flick of his eyelids, a contraction of his pupils, anything. I was looking for the way he’d reacted when I’d asked him about Gloria.

  He shook his head. Nothing. No shifty darting glances. No involuntary twitches. He was in his comfort zone.

  ‘You’ve never heard him talk about a man called Digby? You’re certain?’

  ‘Hundred per cent.’

  ‘Okay.’ I believed him.

  I went over to Roger, who was having his swan costume adjusted by Lottie, the wardrobe woman. She was on her knees with a mouthful of pins and he was using a stray feather to idly stroke her left breast.

  ‘Would you stop that!’ The pins fell out of her mouth. ‘And give me that feather. I’ll have to glue it back in.’

  ‘Roger,’ I said. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘But of course!’ He indicated the side of the stage. ‘Let’s just step into the shadows.’ He waved the feather at me with a flourish.

  No shadows. I needed to be able to see his face. ‘Over here,’ I said, leading him under a spotlight.

  ‘Roger, have you ever heard Wayne mention someone called Digby?’

  ‘No.’ He tickled my face with the feather.

  ‘Could you stop doing that?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sexually out of control. As I’m sure you’ve heard.’

  ‘Digby?’ I repeated.

  ‘Never heard of him. I’d tell you if I had. So … still no sign of Wayne?’

  ‘No.’

  Suddenly all the swagger went out of Roger and beads of sweat burst on to his forehead. ‘You know, we really need to find him. You saw what a joke this thing is shaping up to be. Without Wayne we’re fucked.’

  ‘I’m doing my best. I’m just wondering …’ I said. I wasn’t really sure where I was going with this.

  ‘Wondering what?’

  ‘About John Joseph. Wondering if he has something to hide?’

  ‘Something to hide?’ Roger looked at me as though I was an idiot. ‘Of course he has. John Joseph has plenty to hide.’

  ‘Has he indeed? Like what?’

  ‘I mean, everyone has something to hide.’

  ‘What are you not telling me?’

  ‘Nothing. Believe me, I’m not not telling you anything. I want Wayne found.’

  I sighed. ‘Okay. Ring me if you think of anything.’

  ‘I might ring you anyway,’ he said, in a low tone of suggestion.

  ‘Ah, would you stop!’

  ‘Can’t,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘Sexually out of control.’

  I turned away from him and ran into Jay. ‘I might as well ask you while I’m here. Do you know if Wayne has a friend called Digby?’

  ‘No. But like I keep saying, I don’t know Wayne that well. What did Roger have to say for himself?’

  ‘I’m not saying that Roger St Leger is a serial killer,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Because, really, I’m not. But he’s on the same continuum as one.’

  Jay’s eyes lit up. ‘I know what you mean. He’s the type who’d be on death row and loads of women would be in love with him.’

  ‘That’s it! Sending him saucy photos of themselves –’

  ‘– and writing to the governor, asking for his sentence to be commuted. Hey, here’s Frankie!’

  Finally poor Frankie was being lowered to the floor, Zeezah descending smoothly alongside him.

  People rushed to help him out of his harness, but he was in a very, very relaxed state and couldn’t even stand up. It was obviously some super-strength Xanax that Roger had provided.

  ‘Thought I was a goner,’ Frankie whispered, lying on the floor. ‘Every spray-tan I’ve ever had flashed before my eyes.’

  I knelt over him. ‘Frankie, open your eyes. Does Wayne have a friend called Digby? Have you ever heard him talk about a Digby?’

  ‘No,’ he said faintly.

  ‘And you, Zeezah?’ I asked. ‘Ever heard Wayne mention someone called Digby?’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly, giving me the steady eyeball and looking truthful and pure and decent. It was different from the time I’d asked her about Gloria; that time she’d been rattled, this time I believed her.

  I believed them all. Wayne did not have a friend called Digby. Digby had not featured in Wayne’s life before he rang him at one minute to twelve on Thursday morning. So Digby must definitely be the fiftyish, heavyset, baldy man who had driven Wayne away.

  That tidied that up.

  So what did I do now?

  39

  I considered driving to Clonakilty but there wasn’t much point if I had to be back in less than two hours for John Joseph’s barbecue, so I returned to Mercy Close. I just couldn’t seem to stay away from the place. On the way I stopped off at a garage and bought Diet Coke, enough to replace the stuff I’d stolen – yes, stolen; I might as well say it like it was – from Wayne and another four litres for myself. I liked Diet Coke.

 
At the garage I forced myself to focus on food. There were a few wretched-looking sandwiches in a chilled cabinet, featuring a greyish meat that made grandiose claims to be ham. I knew my stomach wouldn’t be able for it. A box of Cheerios. That would do, and some bananas, if they had any, which they didn’t, so just a box of Cheerios, then.

  I got a parking spot almost right outside Wayne’s, let myself into the house, turned off the alarm and felt myself exhale. It was so nice here.

  Ten seconds later I got a text alerting myself to my own arrival. ‘Yes, I know I’m here, thank you, yes.’ It was all so nice.

  In the kitchen I put the replacement Diet Coke in his fridge and put my own bottles in beside it, then I wondered if that was being a bit cheeky. I was using up Wayne’s coldness, the coldness he was paying for through his electricity bill, which I knew for a fact he paid in full and on time. It felt a little disrespectful so I took the bottles back out again.

  I went into the living room and sat on the floor and ate seven fistfuls of Cheerios, then, surfing the sugar wave, I stood up and I girded my loins for a fresh search of the house. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just knew I had to keep at it. I decided I probably had my best shot of uncovering something new and exciting in the living room because up until now I hadn’t done much there other than lie on the rug and stare at the ceiling.

  The obvious starting point was the built-in sideboard. The unit was divided into two, the higher part made of shelves (which housed the telly, the Sky Box and other pieces of technological hardware), and the lower part made up of five drawers. I was fairly sure I’d already checked the drawers. I’d definitely checked the top one – it was where I’d found Wayne’s passport – but could I have forgotten to check further down? It wouldn’t be like me, but perhaps, in the smugness of finding the passport and swanking about in front of Jay Parker and generally savouring his failure, could I have dropped the ball?

  I started opening and closing the drawers at high speed and discovered cable leads, battery chargers and other items of mind-crushing dullness. But in the bottom drawer I found a video camera. Just sitting there, all by itself, managing to look both innocent and remarkably guilty.

  The unexpectedness of it caused me to recoil halfway across the room, then I tiptoed my way back and peered in at it. Small unremarkable little yoke, but all the same I felt a bit queasy. Video cameras are the Holy Grail. Well, they can be. You never know what you might find on them. All kinds of incriminating kinky nudieness if the stuff ‘leaked’ on the web is to be believed.

  I liked Wayne, I didn’t want to find out he’d been up to incriminating kinky nudieness, but I had to do my job.

  I lifted the camera out of the drawer, opened the little screen and hit play. A list of files came up, organized by date. I picked the most recent one, which had been filmed ten days ago, then I squeezed my eyes shut. Not a nudie flute, I begged the universe. Spare me a home movie of Wayne’s nudie flute.

  Or of his pubic hair. I simply felt too fragile to be looking at a stranger’s pubic hair. Then I started to wonder what Wayne’s pubes were like and all of a sudden I’d veered off on a mental tangent. What if he got his ‘region’ styled to look like the Sydney Opera House? Like, to match the hair on his head? Not that the hair on his head was like that any more, but maybe once in a while he’d get both lots done, perhaps as a special treat for Gloria?

  However, judging by the noises coming from the camera, we weren’t in nudie flute territory. It sounded more like some happy family occasion. There was laughter and voices speaking over each other and when I squinted one eye open I saw the lens advancing on Wayne’s mum – I recognized her from the photos on the shelves. Wayne’s voice was saying, ‘So here’s Carol, the birthday girl. Have you a couple of words for us on this momentous occasion?’

  Carol was laughing and waving her hand at the camera and saying, ‘Stop, stop, take that thing away.’

  ‘Okay,’ Wayne’s voice said. ‘Rowan, do you want to take over filming?’

  After a quick blurry shot of the floor, Wayne appeared on screen with a young boy, maybe aged about ten. ‘We’re filming ourselves,’ the lad – Rowan? – said. ‘I’m Rowan. And here’s my Uncle Wayne. He’s my favourite uncle, but don’t tell Uncle Richard.’

  Richard was Wayne’s brother, so Rowan must be Wayne’s sister’s son.

  ‘It’s Grandma Carol’s birthday today,’ Rowan said. ‘She’s ninety-five.’

  Was she? I thought, startled. She looked decades younger. There they were, at it again with the fish oils.

  ‘I am not!’ a disembodied voice said. ‘I’m sixty-five.’

  ‘I’m dyslexic,’ Rowan said.

  ‘You’re cheeky.’

  ‘You take over filming,’ Wayne said to Rowan. I was treated to another view of the floor, as the handover to Rowan took place, followed by a marked decline in camera steadiness.

  With Rowan at the helm, we advanced through the house – I was assuming it was Wayne’s parents’ place – into a kitchen. ‘Here’s my mum,’ Rowan’s voice said. ‘And my Auntie Vicky.’

  Two women – Wayne’s sister, Connie, and Wayne’s sister-in-law, Vicky – were sitting at a kitchen table. They were drinking red wine and leaning in to each other and we got close enough to hear one of them say, ‘… so she can’t make up her mind between the two of them.’ Suddenly Connie sat up straight and looked right into the camera. ‘Christ, is that thing on?’

  ‘Turn it off!’ Vicky said. ‘We could be sued!’

  But it was all very good-natured.

  On it went. We met Granddad Alan (Wayne’s dad), who was wearing an apron and oven gloves and was ferrying sausage rolls out of the oven but paused in his labours to give an impromptu chorus of ‘When I’m Sixty-Five’ to the tune of ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.

  We met Baby Florence, who wasn’t really a baby, more of a toddler, and who threw a small plastic boat at us. We met Suzie and Joely, two little girls of about Bella’s age and pinkness. Well, we didn’t really meet them. As soon as they saw Wayne and Rowan, they shouted, ‘No boys!’ And the camera hurriedly withdrew.

  We met Ben, Rowan’s slightly older brother, who was being adolescent and disdainfully withholding his presence by reading a book. Wayne showed Rowan how to zoom the lens – we couldn’t see him but we could hear his voice – to bring the title of the book into focus.

  ‘The Outsider by Albert Camus,’ Rowan’s voice said. ‘Some stupid thing. All Ben does now is read books.’ The scorn in his tone couldn’t hide the fact that he was baffled and a little hurt by the changes in his brother.

  ‘He’ll grow out of it,’ Wayne said compassionately.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Rowan said.

  ‘Ah, I did really; it’s all just for show.’

  Then we had a cake, candles and everyone gathered in the kitchen singing ‘Happy Birthday’. We had claps and cheers and cries of, ‘Speech.’ By the time the little film came to the end, I felt quite weepy. And I understood something very important. I understood that Wayne Diffney was a decent man. He was kind to children, he let them roam freely with expensive video equipment and didn’t micromanage their work. He loved his family and clearly they loved him in return.

  For reasons of his own Wayne didn’t want to be in Laddz any more and that was his right.

  I was calling off the search.

  40

  I had to deal with Jay Parker mano-a-mano. If I told him over the phone, he’d keep badgering me, but when he saw the resolve in my eyes, he’d know I meant it.

  I gathered up my stuff, including my box of Cheerios, and just before I set the alarm, for the last time, I said goodbye to Wayne’s beautiful house. I already missed it with a horrific ache.

  I drove over to John Joseph’s compound and had to answer all kinds of impertinent questions from Alfonso before he let me in. A uniformed maid – not Infanta – led me through the house and out through the most enormous pair of glass doors I’ve ever seen, into an elaborat
e tiered garden.

  I stood on the patio and scanned the thirty or so people below me and brought Artie’s words to mind: ‘Anything is possible. Anything. The extremes of human behaviour … there’s no limit to what people will do and who they’ll do it with.’

  But everything here looked pretty tame. Any dark undertow I was feeling was in my own head, it was nothing to do with Wayne. Wayne – wherever he was and good luck to him – was okay. It was right to stop looking for him. I wasn’t abandoning him to some terrible fate.

  No one had been fed yet, I couldn’t help but notice. Trouble getting the charcoal to light. The grill was set up on the patio and Computer Clive and Infanta were desperately trying to get it going.

  I moved away from them because their craven fear was so dreadful. Sooner or later, we all knew, John Joseph would notice and he’d come and shout at them.

  But for the moment he was swinging a beer bottle and pretending he wasn’t a despot. Bending the ear of poor Harvey, though, and I’d say it wasn’t football they were discussing. Faults and Failings of Harvey looked more like the topic of conversation.

  I continued watching the people in the garden. If I was the barbecue inspector from the Irish government, I’d have to say that the conviviality levels hovered merely at ‘Adequate’. We were a long way from ‘Dangerously Messy’. (The highest level: it involved public urination. In theory, if you achieved that, you got a medal from the President of Ireland, but last summer so many people excelled that there was a stampede at the presentation ceremony so they’ve had to stop.)

  But this lot, here in John Joseph’s garden, they’d want to buck their ideas up a bit, if they didn’t want to be carted off in the green van to the re-education camp in Temple Bar, to be tutored in having ‘the mighty craic’. They really weren’t putting their backs into it. In fact – I narrowed my eyes for a closer look – I thought I saw someone drinking water. Water! Not alcohol! Oh, this wasn’t looking good for my report, not good at all. The water-drinker was Zeezah and maybe she had her reasons for staying off the beer, her religion perhaps. But we Irish are a very religious nation and it doesn’t stop us drinking our heads off.