The Mystery of Mercy Close

by Marian Keyes

  I was so fixated on Wayne that when my phone rang just after I’d got back into my car, and I saw that it was Antonia Kelly, I had a moment of blankness: who was she? Then I remembered.

  ‘Helen? You said you’d like a chat?’

  ‘Hi, Antonia. I mean, whenever, I know you’re busy –’

  ‘Is it urgent, Helen?’

  I thought about my visit to the hardware shop. ‘No.’ I had my plan and I wasn’t going to give up on it. Maybe last night Antonia could have rescued me, but I was on a different path now and it was one I liked. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered you. I was just having a moment.’

  ‘How bad is it, Helen?’

  ‘Not bad at all. Sorry for bothering you.’

  ‘Helen,’ she said gently, ‘you’re forgetting I know you. You’re the most self-reliant person I’ve ever met. You wouldn’t have called me if you hadn’t been desperate.’

  And, you know, something in that got to me. She knew me. Someone knew me. I wasn’t totally alone.

  ‘Are you feeling suicidal?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you acted on these impulses?’

  ‘I bought a Stanley knife. And other stuff. I’m doing it tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are you right now?’

  ‘In my car. Parked in Gardiner Street.’

  ‘Have you the knife with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you see a bin? Keep talking to me, Helen. Can you see a bin? Look out of your window.’

  ‘Yes, I can see one.’

  ‘Okay, keep talking to me. Get out of your car and throw the knife in the bin.’

  Obediently, I picked the bag off the floor and climbed out of my car. It was so nice to have someone else in control for a little while.

  ‘It says “Plastic Only”. The bin,’ I said.

  ‘I think they’ll make an exception in this case.’

  I slung the bag, with the knife, the Sellotape, the paper, the markers – the whole kit – into the bin. ‘Okay, it’s done.’

  ‘Right, get back into your car.’

  I got back in and slammed the door.

  ‘That takes care of the immediate problem,’ she said. ‘But obviously there’s nothing to stop you buying another knife. Do you think you can get through the rest of the day without doing that?’

  ‘Well, seeing as I hadn’t planned to go ahead with things until tomorrow, then, yes, I can.’

  ‘Is there anyone you could be with tonight? Someone you feel safe with?’

  I had a think about it. I could stay in Wayne’s. I felt safe there. It probably wasn’t what Antonia was getting at, but I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have a choice, then. Unfortunately I’m out of the country at the moment but I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I can see you then. Or would you consider – I know you hated it in there – but would you consider going back into hospit –’

  I couldn’t even let her say the word. I interrupted before she’d finished. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You’re a strong person,’ she said. ‘Far stronger, far braver than you think you are.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  I was almost annoyed with her for saying that because I felt I had to justify her faith in me. I couldn’t let her down.

  After she’d hung up I sat in my car for a long, long time. I felt … not peaceful, it was nothing as nice as peaceful, but resigned. The urge to end my life had gone off me, at least for the moment. It might come back – it had the last time – but right now I felt I had to take the tougher option: I had to live through this. I’d do what I’d done the last time: take millions of tablets, see Antonia twice a week, go to yoga, try running, eat only blue food, maybe go into hospital for a while to keep myself safe from any suicidal urges. I could make another bird box. You can never have too many bird boxes. I’d like to get a T-shirt saying that.

  My phone rang. It was Artie. Again.

  I could skip the conversation with him. Why put myself through something so painful? But – was it that I liked loose ends being tidied up? – I answered.

  ‘I need to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I thought you might.’

  ‘We can’t do this on the phone.’ He sounded very uncomfortable. ‘I need to see you in person.’

  I surrendered totally. Might as well get it over with. ‘When? Now?’

  ‘Now would be good. I’m at work.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes.’

  65

  As I drove, I began to cry. Passively at first. Silent tears poured down my face without any input from me. Then, as chunks of grief broke free from my core and shuddered their way up to my throat, my sobbing gathered pace, until I was actually making choking noises. Stalled at traffic lights, I no longer had to keep my body upright and I was able to lay my head on my steering wheel and fully give in to the convulsions. I became aware of someone watching me – a young man in the car in the lane beside me. He rolled down his passenger window and, looking really concerned, he mouthed, ‘Are you okay?’

  I wiped my face with my arm and nodded yes. Yes, fine, thank you, grand.

  Artie was waiting for me by the double doors that opened on to his office floor. He looked like a man in torment. His eyes flickered over my tear-stained face, but he didn’t make any remarks.

  I started making my way towards his glassy office, but he stopped me. ‘No, not there. Too public.’

  ‘Where?’

  He took me into a special office, one that had no windows.

  ‘Will we sit down?’ he said.

  I nodded, mute with grief, and lowered myself on to an uncomfortable office chair. Artie took another one and we sat, facing each other.

  ‘I’ve thought long and hard about this,’ he said.

  I was sure he had.

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ he said.

  ‘Then don’t.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘It’s done. Can’t go back now. The damage is done. It’s been a really tough decision. I’ve been torn in two. But …’ He lapsed into miserable silence, his elbows resting on his knees, his hand over his mouth.

  I couldn’t take the waiting any longer. ‘Right, just say it.’

  ‘Okay.’ He stopped staring into the corner of the room and made eye contact with me. ‘I got a look at that contract. Obviously I couldn’t take a copy of it. If it ever came out that I even saw it … Anyway, the gist of it is that John Joseph Hartley is up to his neck in it.’

  ‘His neck in what?’

  Artie looked surprised. ‘Investment in the Laddz gigs. And he’s not insured. He couldn’t afford the insurance. If the gigs don’t happen, he’s scuppered. He badly needs Wayne Diffney to come back.’

  It took a few seconds to find my voice. The information about John Joseph was useful – although no longer revelatory – but it wasn’t that that had silenced me. It was that Artie had taken such a risk for me. ‘That’s what you brought me into this scary room to tell me? That you put your career on the line to scout out a private contract for me?’

  ‘There’s more,’ he said.

  Yes, I’d thought there might be.

  ‘Your pal Jay Parker is also implicated.’

  ‘My pal?’

  ‘Yeah, your pal.’

  ‘He’s not my pal.’

  Artie watched me in silence. ‘Isn’t he?’ Artie was no fool. ‘I was … concerned that he was. That you and he had unfinished business.’

  I shook my head. ‘No unfinished business. My business with Jay Parker is all … completely …’ What was the best word? ‘… finished.’

  ‘I’m … relieved about that.’ So much subtext, myself and Artie. We really were like a Jane Austen book, as my mum kept saying.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said.

  ‘Go on …’

  ‘Harry Gilliam has invested too. Obviously he’s hiding behind a holding company. It’s clever and messy, but the
details aren’t important. What is important is that he’s a dangerous person, Helen. It’s not for me to tell you your business but you really need to stay away from him.’

  ‘Okay. I will. And …?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to tell me?’

  He seemed a little surprised. ‘Ah … yes. Should there be something else?’

  ‘I thought you brought me here to break up with me.’

  He stared at me for a long time. ‘Why would I do that?’ he asked softly. ‘When I love you.’

  66

  ‘You do?’ Christ. I hadn’t been expecting that. He was watching me warily because now it was my turn.

  And how easy it was in the end. ‘I love you too.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He seemed to collapse into himself with relief. Then a smile began to inch across his face. God, he was beautiful.

  ‘There’s just one thing –’ I said.

  ‘Vonnie. I know,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’ve talked to her. It’s got to stop, her coming and going like she still lives in the house. And I’ve talked to the kids; I’ve told them that I love you, so we can give up on the pretence that we don’t sleep together. We can see more of each other.’

  ‘It’s not that. Although – and you know I’m really fond of them all – maybe you and I need more alone time. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not feeling too good. Like, in my head.’

  ‘I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Have you?’ I was surprised.

  ‘I love you. Of course I’ve noticed. You’ve stopped eating. You don’t sleep. I’ve tried talking to you about it, but you’re so self-contained –’

  ‘Is it the smell?’ I blurted. ‘Am I smelly? I’ve tried to take showers; it’s just that I need a bit of help having them –’

  ‘You smell lovely. What I’m trying to say is: how can I help you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t know if you can. It’s like being on some horrible roller coaster. I don’t know where this is going to take me, I don’t know how bad I’m going to get. I’ve spoken to a woman who helped me in the past. I suppose if you’d just bear with me.’

  ‘I’ll bear with you.’

  ‘Even if I have to go into hospital? I mean, a psychiatric hospital.’

  ‘Even if you have to go into hospital. Any kind of hospital.’

  ‘Why are you so nice to me?’

  ‘Like I said earlier, I … hold you in very high regard.’

  That made me laugh. ‘Look, I have to go now.’

  Quickly he stood up. ‘Do you?’ He sounded alarmed.

  ‘I’ve got to see this thing with Wayne through. I’m going to keep at it until ten o’clock tomorrow morning – that’s when they’ll issue the press release cancelling the gigs. After that I’ll focus on the … my … other stuff, the hospital and all.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Really, Artie. It’s okay. I’m not going to do … anything. I thought I might but the urge has gone off me.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Back to Wayne’s, I suppose. I don’t know what else to do. It all seems a bit … like it’s not going to happen. But I’ll go there anyway.’

  I’d just let myself into Wayne’s when John Joseph Hartley rang me. Now, there was a first. He didn’t bother with pleasantries. ‘Have those phone records come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What kind of useless fucker did you pick?’

  ‘Language!’ I tutted. ‘And you so devout.’

  ‘When they come,’ he said, ‘you’re to share them with Walter Wolcott.’

  ‘Grand.’ Not a chance. I’d just lie and say they hadn’t come.

  ‘And you can’t lie and say you haven’t got them when you have. Jay Parker paid for that information. By rights, it’s his, not yours.’

  Fine. I’d just edit the report so that Wolcott only got the obvious numbers.

  ‘You’ve to email Walter Wolcott exactly what you get.’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ I said. ‘I’ve to protect my source.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me. I know you can send the info without showing where it came from.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Anyway, it hasn’t arrived yet.’

  I waited for John Joseph to shout and yell and demand urgent action, but he said nothing. I think we all knew it was too late.

  And then, not ten minutes later, the information arrived!

  Tons and tons of it. Jesus Christ, it was mind-boggling. As the information unspooled on to my phone’s little screen, I considered driving to Mum’s so I could download it on to a proper computer in order to read it better, but I was too excited. I couldn’t bear the wait and I didn’t trust myself to drive with due care and attention.

  Telephone Man had provided an entire transcript of all the texts Wayne had received and sent for the full calendar month before he’d disappeared. There were literally thousands, and reading the back-and-forth between himself and Zeezah was as compelling as a soap opera. There were hundreds of other texts too – arrangements made, quick hellos and no end of random stuff: ‘wot about d apron?’ ‘haha! who ate my cheese!’ ‘watching it now! hard 2 beleve!’ ‘Mary Popins muz b spinin in her grave!’ ‘tink is 17’ ‘mudder o divine lol’.

  Eventually I had to make myself stop because what was really important was the number that Gloria had called from. It was a Dublin number and its first three digits indicated it was probably made somewhere in the region of Clonskeagh or Dundrum.

  I rang it and an automated voice said, ‘The person at extension Six. Four. Seven. One. Is not available.’ Then a different automated voice broke in, and said, ‘The office is now closed and will reopen at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  What? What time was it? I checked my phone: it was a quarter past six. Where had the day gone?

  Okay. Basically everything was still grand. I’d just do a reverse search on one of my directory sites, where I put the number in and instantly Gloria’s full name and address would appear. So I did … but nothing happened.

  Now I was worried, properly worried, because I knew what was going on: the telephone providers routinely sold bundles of numbers, under one umbrella number, to businesses. This gave the companies the ability to customize their phone system, so that they could set up internal extensions and give private lines to people. Obviously the company was free to release the private number to the public – but only if they wanted. Like, if they wanted to run an ad giving a number for their sales department or their HR department, or whatever. But if they decided not to, nothing would show up on a sneaky reverse search such as I was doing. The only number that would display a company name was the original umbrella number, the ‘head’ number that all the other numbers branched off from. If I could deduce that, I’d at least find what business Gloria had called from – my instinct was telling me it was either a car or a phone company. Maybe Wayne had bought a new phone the morning he’d disappeared …? What were the implications of that? I didn’t know, not yet.

  I took the first three digits of Gloria’s number and added four zeros to it – that was often the format of an umbrella number. But it hadn’t been allocated to anyone. Christ. Again, I typed in a number – the first three digits, then one, zero, zero, zero. That hadn’t been allocated to anyone either. I kept trying, adding two, zero, zero, zero. Three, zero, zero, zero and so on, up to nine, zero, zero, zero. Nothing. All I could ascertain about the number Gloria had called from was that it was part of a big organization.

  Then I started thinking about things from the opposite direction: Wayne might have made a call to Gloria, which triggered the call from her. And sure enough, on Thursday morning at 9.17 a.m., Wayne had made a call from his mobile to a number with the same first three digits as Gloria’s number. The last four digits were different but I reckoned it was definitely the same company. I rang it and got another recorded message about t
he office being closed and that it would reopen for business at ten tomorrow morning. Just as I expected, the reverse search produced nothing.

  For hours I fiddled around, reverse searching with different combinations of digits, trying to find the umbrella number that would unlock Gloria’s identity, but it never happened.

  At some stage John Joseph rang. ‘Have they arrived? The phone records?’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s nothing in them. Well, obviously there’s loads, but nothing that helps.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Oh … okay …’

  ‘Forward them to Walter Wolcott.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I would. Tomorrow.

  WEDNESDAY

  67

  I was woken at 7.01 a.m., by the sound of my phone ringing. It was Mum. She hardly ever rang me. Someone must have died.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Helen. Where are you?’ Her voice sounded packed full of stuff, like she was going to burst.

  ‘Nearby.’

  ‘You need to get over here right away.’

  ‘Why? Has someone died?’

  ‘No.’ She sounded startled, yet vague. Definitely weird. ‘It’s not like that. But you have to get over here right now.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’ I had a sudden vision of one of Harry Gilliam’s ‘associates’ holding the point of a knife at her Adam’s apple.

  ‘Will you just, for once, do as your mother asks and get in your car and drive.’

  ‘Should I break the speed limit?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’ Then she added, ‘But don’t get caught. And if you do, tell the guards it’s an emergency.’

  An emergency. That was reassuring. ‘Mum! Tell me!’

  ‘Someone’s here to see you.’

  Wayne. Oh thank you, God. He’d finally come up for air and just in time.

  ‘Is it a man?’ I asked, just to be sure.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he aged between thirty and forty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he work in the entertainment business?’

  ‘There isn’t time for this, Helen!’

  ‘Okay. I’m on my way.’

  I drove like the clappers, but I would have anyway. I don’t believe in speed limits. At least not on proper roads. Housing estates, grand. Places where children live, I’m perfectly happy, nay delighted, to go at 10 kilometres an hour. Do I want the guilt of killing a child loaded on to my already banjaxed psyche? No, indeed I don’t. But on proper roads, on the very rare day that Dublin isn’t seized up into total gridlock, I should be allowed to drive at a proper speed.