Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I had never realized. Nobody had even mentioned Annie in the last few years, so I assumed it was old news. I had never thought how Annie’s reputation affected Dessie.

‘What do they say?’

‘I wouldn’t repeat it. Disgusting stuff. About you. I landed one fella in hospital over it. I was nearly fired.’

‘Oh God.’

‘You see, that’s why I’m saying, look, you just can’t do stuff like this.’ He stabbed the page of the brochure so violently that it tore. I started to cry and he realized that he had rattled me. He took me in his arms then and rubbed my back. ‘I’m just trying to protect you, love.’

That was the first time I felt a stab of resentment towards Annie. Whatever had happened to her, her behaviour had ripple effects that were still causing upset and grief nearly five years later. Of course, I still loved her, but I wanted her in the room so that I could yell at her.

I told Yvonne the following week that she had to be more selective about my assignments.

‘Darling, what are you talking about? That shoot was really tame, if not demure. It’s early days now, don’t throw it all away out of prudishness.’

‘I’m not a prude.’

She was steely. ‘If you want to continue in this career, you have to be reasonable. I have invested in you already. Do not let me down.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Then why don’t you explain it to me?’

My voice choked and I tried to stem the tears.

‘What is it?’

‘You’re going to be so furious with me. I’m so sorry.’

‘What have you done?’ Yvonne was alarmed.

‘When you asked me about my lifestyle…’ I told her everything, about Annie, her drugs, her ‘clients’ and her disappearance, about Dessie, about how it had destroyed my parents’ relationship.

Yvonne sank into her armchair. ‘Oh my God, I remember that case. My son was working on it.’ Her eyes dropped to the desk.

‘Your son?’

‘Yes, he was a detective, James Mooney – you must have met him.’ She took a photo out of her wallet. I had only ever seen him in uniform, but I remembered Mooney well. He was O’Toole’s sidekick. He always seemed vaguely embarrassed by O’Toole.

‘Yes.’

‘They never found her body, did they?’

‘Well, there’s no proof that she’s actually dead.’

‘I thought they had a suspect?’

‘What?’

She got flustered then. ‘Oh, don’t mind me, I’m probably thinking of another case he was on.’

‘You think they had a suspect? For her murder?’

‘Well, yes, the odd time he’d talk about cases, but honestly, they all get jumbled in my mind and I get them confused.’

Yvonne was not the type of person to get confused about anything. She was incredibly sharp. Her son had told her something about Annie’s case, something that had been withheld from us, Annie’s family.

‘Please, Yvonne, you have to tell me, if you know something? If James knows something?’

‘I… can’t.’

I was frantic now and almost hysterical. ‘You think she’s dead! You have to tell me. You have to. She’s my sister. I’ll go to the garda station and find James myself.’

‘You can’t. He died in a car accident two years ago.’ She reached for a file and raised it in front of her face, but I could see her hands were trembling a little. The wind was taken out of my sails. I sank back into my seat, ashamed.

‘Oh no, Yvonne, I am so sorry, how awful! I thought he was really good, and decent. He treated us with respect.’

She lowered the file and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘Thank you for saying so. He was my only child. I miss him every day.’

‘I felt like he was the only one who cared about Annie. The rest of them didn’t help. They didn’t even look that hard. They wrote her off.’

‘James didn’t.’

She stood up and turned her back to me for a moment. I thought she was going to tell me to leave, but then she grabbed her bag and her coat.

‘Let’s go for a drink.’

We went to a hotel off Grafton Street. ‘I don’t do pubs,’ she said. On the way, she chatted about the new fashion lines, her doubts about shoulder pads – ‘too masculine’ – her belief that cheesecloth was ‘over’. I said nothing. In the hotel, we sat in armchairs in a wide lobby and she ordered us gin and tonics. I leaned forward in anticipation, but she downed half her drink and placed the ashtray between us. She gave me a cigarette and I took it.

‘I don’t have a name for you. But I can tell you what James told me.’

‘Please, everything.’

‘There was a suspect, somebody well known and respectable.’

‘Who?’

‘That’s what I’m saying – I don’t know. James never told me.’

‘Suspected of… killing her?’

‘Well… that’s what James thought, but he couldn’t get his boss to take him seriously – that buffoon, what was his name?’

‘O’Toole?’

‘Yes. O’Toole didn’t believe James, but James thought the man was definitely worth investigating. He might have been a senior guard or a politician or something like that. His car was unusual – a vintage Jaguar, I remember that. It had been seen outside your sister’s flat. James went to question him in the early days of the investigation, but the man was very defensive and pulled rank on him. James went back with O’Toole to see him, but they only got talking to his son, a young boy, who provided an alibi, but James didn’t believe him. I can’t recall… There was something about a hat, a trilby hat. I’m sorry, I just don’t remember the details. I know the investigation stopped very quickly after a few weeks. I don’t know why. James moved on to another case, and he never mentioned that one again. It was strange because normally he would be quite dogged. O’Toole was lazy. James wasn’t the type to give up.’

I racked my brains to remember exactly what had been said during the search. There had been mention of the car, but no suspect was ever mentioned. Not to me.

‘Do you know if he, the suspect, was a… if he used prostitutes?’

‘I think that’s what stumped James. He talked to some street girls that worked the same area as your sister, but they didn’t know him and she hadn’t done street work for months before she disappeared. I don’t know why James was so convinced about that man. He accepted that they had no evidence.’

‘Do you remember any more details? Where he lived or worked?’

‘I’m sorry, Karen. James only told me that much because he was so frustrated with the O’Toole fellow. He would never have been deliberately indiscreet. But, Karen…’ she took my hand in hers and grasped it, ‘he was convinced that Annie was dead.’

I had been in denial for so long, but I knew she was right.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m sorry about James.’

She exhaled a long plume of smoke. ‘We can’t let these tragedies stop us living. We’ll never forget our loved ones, but they would want us to be happy, darling. Your career is beginning. Let’s keep this to ourselves. Tell Dessie to be a man. You have to be allowed to move on. With or without him.’

I was shocked by her words. None of this was Dessie’s fault. It was this man, this suspect that James had identified, who had caused all the anguish and fear. I was going to find him, with or without the guards.

The time after Andrew’s death when I was forcibly removed to a psychiatric institution was not the first time I had been taken from my home against my will. I spent nearly a year in an aunt’s house directly after my ninth birthday. It was because Daddy didn’t want me in Avalon after the accident.

It was just two years after Mummy had caused a scandal by running off with a plumber. She wanted to take us with her, but Daddy forbade it. He said he should never have married beneath him and that he would never get over the humiliation that Michelle, my mother, put him through.