Mary, Mary Read online

  JULIE PARSONS

  Mary, Mary

  PAN BOOKS

  To

  Harriet, Sarah and John,

  with all my love

  CONTENTS

  PART 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  PART 2

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  PART

  1

  1

  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 newspaper. Ice-cream cones with pointed creamy peaks and pints of stout in old-fashioned 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 listening to 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 corner.

  ‘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 corner, 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 fella who’d graduated from Templemore thirty years ago?

  He sat down again, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear. ‘OK, 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 foot 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 was 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 corner. 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 grey 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.

  2

  You could say it began with a phone call, but which call was it? The one she had just made to the Garda station or the other one, four months ago, dragging her out of her sleep, the red numbers on the alarm clock showing 01:02? She had put out her hand automatically, the years of being on call still dictating to the tendons and ligaments of her arm, the nerve-endings in her fingers. She picked up the receiver, the hard plastic cold against her ear. She stated her number. Her voice was steady, matter-of-fact, all traces of sleep gone. There had been a pause, and then the hi
ss like the sound of the sea from the inside of a shell. And the voice, querulous, but unmistakable.

  The same voice called to her now. ‘Margaret. Come here. I need you.’

  She put down the receiver. She looked at herself in the dusty gilt mirror, still hanging as always above the small table in the hall. She shook her hair loose from its wooden clasp, smoothed it down with both hands, then clicked it neatly back into place. She wiped away an imaginary smudge from the fine lines between her eyebrows. She tried to smile at the reflection before her, but her mouth trembled and the bright shine from her eyes hinted at the tears that lay just beneath the surface.

  ‘Margaret.’ Again the voice, louder. She turned away from the mirror and walked into the large room to the right just off the hall. A woman sat in a rocking chair beside a high bed. She was tiny, her body shrunk inside the red silk dressing gown, which was tied around her waist. Her white hair stood up around her heart-shaped face. She was rocking relentlessly, her slippered feet arched against the floor, the chair’s wooden runners drumming loudly through the silent house.

  Margaret walked to the bay window. She looked out at the sea. High up, to the east, the moon turned its shining face towards the earth. Low down near the horizon Venus flickered. She leaned her head against the glass. Behind her, the voice continued. A series of complaints. I have a pain in my back. Why don’t the pills work? When is my nice doctor coming? I don’t like the nurse from the hospice. I’m not dying. Why does she have to visit me? Can’t you do something? That was why I asked you to come home. To help me. I thought you’d help me.

  She turned away from the dark night. She leaned against the window sill and looked around her. When she was a child this had been their sitting room, bright and pretty, with pale yellow wallpaper and flowered curtains to match. Now it was her mother’s sanctuary and lair. Newspapers were piled in tottering stacks. Cardboard boxes covered most of the floor. She had tried a couple of times to tidy them away, but her mother had snapped and snarled, so now she left everything as she found it.

  Pushed into the corner was the bed her parents had once shared. It was covered with the same pink eiderdown, faded now and lumpy, the goosedown settled in clumps beneath the tattered satin. She remembered the smell of that bed. Her mother’s perfume, Ma Griffe, wasn’t it? and her father’s hair oil, and another smell that she only came to name many years later. She had crept into it on nights when the east wind banged against the windows and monsters from the sea threatened to rise up and invade the shore. She had slipped her cold body up against her father’s warmth, curving into him, making herself as small as possible. Always against him. Never against her mother. She would have sat up, switched on the bedside lamp and told her not to be silly, to get right back to her own bed, not to be waking them up at this ungodly hour. But he just wrapped his arms around her, his breath on her face.

  ‘Where’s John? Why isn’t he here? Why won’t you let him in?’

  Dead and gone, my beloved father.

  ‘You’re not listening to me, are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told you. The pain. It’s bad.’ Tears slipped down her wrinkled face, and a thin sound, like that of an injured kitten, came from her mouth. Still she rocked, backwards and forwards, her tiny hands holding tight to the arms of the chair. Margaret felt the same sound welling up in her own throat. She stood up and took one last look at the moon. Then she pulled down the blinds and shut out the night.

  3

  ‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said, winding a long strand around his fist and draping the end across his mouth like a moustache. ‘You’ll miss it.’

  The kitchen scissors with the orange plastic handle stroked her cheek. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor. The black curls dropped like feathers. Swansdown, she thought. Like Odile in Swan Lake.

  ‘Here,’ he said, when he had finished. He held her head tight with one hand and with the other pushed her face up against his cracked pocket mirror.

  ‘Why?’ she asked him, forcing the word out through a mouth sour with his taste and the taste of blood.

  ‘Why not?’ he replied, pushing her to the floor.

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Her voice broke, the words drying up, as her throat closed around her vocal cords.

  ‘Because you’re mine,’ he sang in a loud falsetto.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Ah.’ He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs and folded his arms. ‘Begging now, are we?’

  ‘No.’ She pushed herself up, looking into his eyes.

  He kicked her then, his foot driving into her stomach. She fell back, silent, the wind knocked out of her. Then she whimpered, lying like a baby in the womb, arms and legs crushed together.

  He threw the scissors across the room. They landed with a loud clang on the stone-flagged floor. A shaft of sunlight glanced across the open blades and winked invitingly at her.

  He got up and went over to the large enamel sink. He turned on the tap. Water gushed out. He filled a cup. He walked back and squatted down beside her. He cradled one arm around her shoulders, lifting her up until she could drink. Now she began to cry, the salt of her tears burning her lip where it was cut and swollen.

  ‘What do you want? My mother, you know she’d give you anything. She’d do anything you asked.’

  He pulled a tissue from his pocket and dipped it into the water. He dabbed gently at the blood caked around her nose and mouth. His breath was heavy on her face.

  ‘Anything now. Would she? And would you? Do anything I asked?’

  A long sigh, which ended in a sob. ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Oh, we all have a choice. That’s what separates us from the beasts of the field. Makes us human.’

  ‘Human.’ She struggled to get to her feet, pushing herself up with her manacled hands, but her legs buckled beneath her and she fell back, her naked knees banging on the hard floor, bringing more hot tears to her eyes.

  He prodded her with a bare foot, scraping the soft skin of her cheek with his toenails. ‘On second thoughts, you don’t look very human so maybe, after all, there is no choice for you.’

  She tried to pull away, but he grabbed her hair and dragged her down beside his chair.

  ‘Now. Your mother. A pretty lady. A very pretty lady. And plenty of money too, is that right?’

  She nodded, her eyes closed.

  ‘And did she make it all herself or is she like one of those in the song?’

  ‘The song?’

  ‘You know.’ He let go of her hair and she fell once again to the floor. He stood up and took a deep breath, miming holding a microphone. He closed his eyes and swayed. His voice rang out clear and tuneful.

  ‘Them that’s got shall get,

  Them that’s not shall lose,

  So the Bible says and it still makes news.

  Mamma may have, papa may have

  But God bless the child that’s got its own, that’s got its own.’

  He bowed deeply towards her as he finished. ‘Hey, what about a bit of applause, a bit of appreciation.’

  She raised her hands and tried to clap, the metal of the handcuffs catching and pinching the skin of her wrists. ‘Take them off. Please, Jimmy. You know it’s been much more fun without them.’

  ‘Fun, is it? For who, or should I say for whom?’ He grabbed hold of her wrists and pulled her, dragging her behind him as he walked towards the other, smaller room. He lifted her onto the bed, pulling the cuffs up and over the brass post.

  ‘You know what, little Mary, I think I’m going to give your mother a present. You say she’s a psychiatrist. She helps people with problems. People like me. People with psychoses and neuroses. So I’m going to give her a little puzzle to solve. And it’s all to do with the word “why”. Why do I do what I do, and why do I do it to you?’

  A sound filled the room. The sound of a cornered animal, a rabbit screaming as the ferret squeezes its narrow mus
cled body down the hole. A rabbit, frozen, immobile, its eyes unfocused, as the ferret bares its pointed teeth, and the darkness spreads. Slowly.

  4

  The phone rang loudly through the silent house. Margaret listened but didn’t move. Twice already that morning the phone had rung, but when she picked it up there was no one there. So she sat where she was, on the floor in Mary’s bedroom, a pile of coloured leotards on her lap. Mary had left them, discarded, when she rushed out of the house that evening. ‘I’m late, I’ll tidy my room tomorrow,’ she had called back over her shoulder as she grabbed her bag and slammed the front door.

  Margaret had picked up the scraps of cotton and Lycra. Red and blue, purple and green. Like the flowers that Persephone gathered the day Hades stole her away to the Underworld, she thought. Six months before Demeter saw her again. Six months of every year that the world mourned the loss of her daughter.

  Four days since Mary had gone. Margaret buried her face in the soft pile of clothes. Mary’s familiar smell surrounded her. She breathed in deeply. How long would it be before the smell would fade, before all trace of her would be lost? She slipped sideways onto the worn carpet and curled into a ball, conscious suddenly that the phone had stopped ringing and the house was silent once again.

  A new routine had taken over her life. Normal time had been suspended. She measured her days now in accordance with the change of shift in the Garda station. She allowed herself one phone call for each eight hours. Six a.m. to two p.m. Two p.m. to ten p.m. Ten p.m. to six a.m. She played games with herself, worked out ways of delaying, set up arbitrary rules. I’ll have a cup of tea first, then I’ll phone. I’ll read the paper, then I’ll do it. I’ll make sure Mother takes her pills, then I’ll dial the number. She ate sparingly, intermittently. Cups of coffee and pieces of bread and cheese were her staple diet. Sleep was haphazard, snatched in minutes rather than hours, never in bed, sometimes at the kitchen table or on a bench in the garden. Once in the rocking chair in her mother’s room. Outside the sun shone, a perfect ball of fire glittering in a sky that mirrored the cornflower blue of the sea below. The little beach at Seapoint was packed. They straggled down the road past her windows from the DART station, the mothers and children, friends and lovers, a brightly coloured caravan of happiness. She stood at the gate and watched, so close she could have reached out and touched them, yet a million light years from the cold dark world in which she was living.