Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

I followed him blindly out of the park on to Grafton Street. He took my arm and guided me gently towards the pub, asking no questions while I tried to compose myself. He gave me a freshly laundered handkerchief. In the pub, Laurence installed me in a corner and went to the bar. By the time he came back, Bridget had arrived.

‘Who was he?’ said Bridget.

‘Karen doesn’t have to say if she doesn’t want to.’

‘He… he’s a detective who was supposed to be investigating my sister’s disappearance, but he never gave a damn about her…’

Throughout my marriage to Dessie, we lived in a kind of a bubble. We hardly hung out with other people at all. We were content just being the two of us, and sometimes going for a drink with the couple next door. Dessie didn’t like me to go and meet friends in town at night, because he didn’t think it was safe, and on the rare occasions that I did, he would collect me at ten o’clock, when the night was just getting going. So after a while, my friends stopped inviting me out. When I left him, I realized that I no longer had friends of my own. The girls I had been pally with in the dry-cleaner’s still worked with Dessie, and I hadn’t really kept in touch with them since I’d started working with Yvonne. That was my fault. So really, I had no one to talk to. But now, here in front of me in this pub were two people my own age who were good company and decent types. Laurence seemed a good bit grander than Bridget, but it obviously didn’t bother him. She was just an ordinary girl like me, with an office job, hoping to make something out of her hobby. I felt that I could trust them, so I told them everything.

I watched their faces as I told them the story of Annie. Her learning difficulties in school, her pregnancy, and St Joseph’s taking baby Marnie away from her, her drug addiction and prostitution, her disappearance and probable murder, O’Toole and his disgusting attitude, my investigation into the old car, and Mooney’s impression that the murderer was a high-profile man who had died shortly afterwards.

Bridget was utterly horrified, her mouth hanging open and her eyes widening, but Laurence’s reaction surprised me. At the beginning of my story he just stared into his pint, but as I continued my sorry tale his shoulders began to shake, and when he looked up at the end, his eyes were wet with tears.

‘Oh my God, that is just awful!’ Bridget said, hugging me. ‘I’ve never heard anything so bad. I don’t know how you can have coped all these years. Oh my God!’

Laurence simply said, ‘I am so, so, sorry. It’s… horrendous. I am so sorry.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘it’s not your fault. It’s a tragedy, but I can’t let it go. The guards are not interested in helping me, so I have to do it myself.’

‘Oh God, we’ll help you, won’t we, Laurence?’ said Bridget. ‘We have office phones, we can ring around all the other garages at lunchtimes, can’t we? And, Laurence, you’re always at the library – couldn’t you find out how to look up newspaper archives and see what important people died in the weeks after Annie disappeared?’

I hadn’t even thought of doing that. Laurence nodded and got up to go to the bar again.

‘He’s pretty sensitive, don’t mind him. But we’ll help you, I promise. I can’t believe that detective spoke to you like that, as if you were…’

‘A prostitute?’

‘What an absolute bastard. You should complain about him, or write to the papers – something, you know?’

‘I did at the time. He got promoted. And now my agent thinks it would be bad for my career if I were to go public about any of this, but if you two could help like you say, that would be amazing!’

‘Of course we will.’

Laurence came back with drinks. I toasted Annie and they joined me. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had friends, allies.

‘He can’t have recognized you. You were three stone heavier and five years younger then.’

‘He couldn’t place me, but he knew me, I know he did!’

Laurence had been keeping secrets from me. It was profoundly disturbing. He arrived home one night pale-faced and shaking, having been out with Bridget. He admitted that he had made a friend out of the dead whore’s father and, worse, her sister, who, he insisted, was investigating Annie Doyle’s disappearance herself. Laurence was petrified that she was close to the truth.

‘She’s going to find out it was Dad. She knows a lot of stuff already.’

He had left Bridget and the girl behind in the pub. I tried to ascertain what she knew. Laurence had just met the same detective, O’Toole, who had questioned him at the gate of Avalon all those years ago. It seems his sidekick, Mooney, had suspected Andrew but the whole matter had been dropped when Andrew died.

‘But how did you even meet this girl, or her father? And why didn’t you keep away from them? They are not the sort of people you should be mixing with.’

Laurence was taken aback, and I realized I had to check myself.

‘Mum, don’t you see? We should be doing everything we can to help Annie Doyle’s family. Dad killed her and she is buried behind our kitchen wall and I put a concrete shelf and a bloody bird bath on top of her grave. I try to forget about it, and most of the time I’m fine, but over a year ago Annie’s dad came to sign on in my office and I recognized him. I got to know him a little bit, and he’s a decent man, Mum.’

I handed Laurence a glass of whiskey.

‘Darling, you really should not consort with these people, drug addicts and prostitutes, they are beneath us. Do you understand?’

‘And what about murderers? Are they beneath us?’

I would have loved to have explained to Laurence that his father was not just a common murderer, that he had merely made a mistake under pressure and that the girl was of no consequence. If she had lived, she would have made no contribution to the world. Her family were obviously layabouts too, if the father was on the dole. Of course I am not saying that she didn’t deserve to live, I’m not saying that at all, but who really missed her?

‘Laurence, whatever happened, you must remember that your father was a good man. I’m sure it was a silly accident that led to the death. I very much doubt that your father would ever have gone with a prostitute. He just wasn’t the type, and he loved me , you know he did. You must not think of him as a murderer. Who knows what type of trouble that girl was involved in? Wasn’t she a heroin addict? Heroin is a terrible, terrible drug. It is quite possible that your father was trying to help her. He often helped people but he kept his charity work very quiet. I’m sure he was only trying to help her when she died, perhaps of an overdose, and to avoid a scandal he just buried her here.’

Laurence sat looking at me. I know he was thinking that I was in denial, I know he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but I also knew that he would go along with it for my sake.

‘But this girl Karen, Annie’s sister, she’s not giving up, Mum. She’s going to find out. And she is so—’

‘You must find a way to stop her.’

‘Bridget has said that we will help her.’

‘Well then, you’re in the perfect position to find false information and throw her off course.’

‘Mum!’

I raised my voice in anger. It is something I do very seldom. ‘Laurence. I am trying to protect you. If this gets out, you will go to jail.’

He shut up then, realizing I was right. I used softer tones.

‘Darling, let us think about this. Annie Doyle has been missing for nearly six years?’

‘Five and a half. Yes.’