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Chapter One
You could say it began with a phone call. After all, that's the way most cases begin. And you'd wonder then, looking back, whether there was anything about it that warned you, that reached out and grabbed you, that said, Hold on a minute, this is serious.
But at the time it was just another anxious mother. Worried, embarrassed. Not sure she should be phoning. Not sure if she was doing the right thing. Her fear turning to anger.
"If she'd said she wasn't coming home, if she'd rung, if she'd let me know."
He'd heard it all before. Regularly. He doodled on the margin of the Ice-cream cones with pointed creamy peaks and pints of stout in ed glasses with the little bulge three-quarters of the way up the side. He wrote the time in the phone log. Twenty-one forty-eight. Twelve minutes to the end of his shift. Sunday, 6 August 1995. The middle of the bank holiday weekend. Still hot at this late hour. Too hot. Damp patches under his arms and an itch in his crotch. The hospitals would be filled with cases of sunstroke, and God knows how many fights there'd be in the couple of hours after the pubs closed. All those tempers, stoked by bare brown skin, arm against arm, thigh against thigh, hopes raised, desire rushing to the surface like the bubbles in a pint. And then the bright white neon light, flashing on and off. Time, gentlemen, ladies. Please. Cigarette butts scattered across a pockmarked floor. Lipstick smeared. Sunburn itching, already beginning to peel. His hand on her leg. You cunt, you. What the fuck do you think you're at? And that single moment of pure rage that brings the glass crashing onto the table.
"Are you listeningto me? Are you writing any of this down?"
He sighed, and stretched his aching back. He had a pain, midway between his neck and his waist. He thought he'd done it playing golf a couple of months ago. Not as fit as he used to be. Too much desk work. Not like in the old days. Stationed in Belmullet, rowing out into Achill Sound, the pale blue of the Iniskeen Islands, hazy shadows on the horizon, and the mackerel jumping into the boat. Bank holidays were different down there. It was always suicides. Someone would hear a shot. Bits of brain everywhere, strewn across the old dresser, and the dog whimpering in the comer.
"Have you tried all her friends? Rung round, asked them if they've seen her?"
That did it. He held the phone away from his ear.
"Look. You don't seem to be taking this in. We're visitors here. My daughter doesn't know many people. I've told you this already. She went into town yesterday evening to meet a couple of kids from her ballet class. She's been gone for over twenty-four hours. I wouldn't be on the phone to you if I didn't have a reason." And the voice rising in pitch and in volume. "There's something wrong."
"And how old did you say she was?"
"For the third time she's twenty."
He'd have to tell her. Not that she'd want to hear it. They never did parents, that is.
"There's just one thing. At her age she can, if she wants, leave home. There's not much we can do about it. She isn't a minor. I'm sorry, but people disappear all the time."
Silence. Then a deep breath. He screwed up his face in anticipation. He looked around the room. In the far comer, doddery old Pat Byrne lounged with his cap still on, reading the Sunday World, and biting his nails. Systematically. Crunching his way from finger to finger. Through the open door to the kitchenette he could see Nuala Kenny brewing tea. He waved in her direction, miming a drinking motion with his free hand.
"Look. I know what you're saying. But I'm worried. I want you to take down her details and do whatever you can to find her. Do I make myself clear?"
Fuck it. More paperwork. He pulled himself up off the high stool, feeling the catch in his back as he stretched for a missing person's form from the shelf above. His trousers were too tight. When he undressed at night there was always a red X-shaped mark from his belt buckle just above his belly button. How had it happened that he'd put on so much weight? Where was that skinny young fellow who'd graduated from Templemore thirty years ago?
He sat down again, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his car. "Okay, let's start at the beginning. Name?"
When he'd finished, he drank his tea. It was lukewarm, the sugar a thick layer, like fine river sand, at the bottom of the mug. He looked back over the page. He tried to imagine her, to conjure up the girl from his carefully printed words. Tall. Five feet seven and a half. Thin. Eight stone two pounds. Dark. Black curly hair, sallow skin with blue eyes. The form didn't have a space for pretty or plain or downright ugly. You didn't ask. But in this case he could guess. He knew how he'd feel if she were his child. The statistics for the year were frightening. Eight women murdered, nearly two hundred reported cases of rape, five hundred sexual assaults. Too many. Too many unsolved. He was glad, suddenly, that he was a desk man, that all he had to deal with were the black marks on the white paper, not the flesh and blood.
He filed away the report, and cleared off his desk. He had reassured her, told her not to worry. Said to leave it another twenty-four hours. If she hadn't come home then, to bring in a photo, and they'd get going on some publicity. He stepped out into the warm night and walked through the car park. He could smell chips from the van that was always outside the big pub on the comer. But he didn't feel hungry. He looked up at the moon, two days to go until it was full, still as beautiful as it had been when he was a kid, when it had followed him home down the lane, on nights so dark he could feel the blackness touching his face.
She was out there, somewhere, under the gray-blue light. Mary Mitchell, aged twenty. Black hair, blue eyes, slim build. When last seen she was wearing a black T-shirt, a red suede miniskirt, and a black denim jacket. Speaks with a New Zealand accent.
He started up the engine and drove slowly out of the car park onto the main road. Forget about it, he told himself. There's nothing you can do. And he sighed. Deeply. A long sigh of regret.
