Stolen Child (20 page)

An early-morning haze hung over the canal and a barge, making slow progress through the water, flitted in and out of view in the gauzy air. Carla poured coffee from the cafetière and carried the mug to the balcony. A siren sounded, then another. Looking down to the street, she became aware that other Garda cars were parked nearby. The peak-hour traffic, always heavy, was being diverted and further along the bank of the canal yellow tape fluttered.

By the time she reached the cordoned-off area, a group of people had already gathered. She recognised Bev, an older prostitute, who always kept an eye out for Anita. Four days previously she had stopped Carla when she was leaving her apartment and asked if Anita had been in touch with her.

‘I saw you and her in Naffy’s the other night,’ said Bev. ‘I’ve checked all her usual haunts but no one’s seen sight nor sign of her since.’

Carla had gone with Bev to the local Garda station to report Anita’s disappearance. The guard who took the details believed it was too soon to start a full-scale search, considering Anita’s usual pattern of behaviour.

Now, as Carla hurried towards the canal, she recognised Bev’s distinctive red hair among the crowd.

‘Is it Anita?’ she asked, knowing it was a rhetorical question.
One look at Bev’s raddled face had given her the answer. The crowd were already being dispersed by the guards. As they were herded back from the scene, Carla noticed a television van parked nearby.

‘Let’s go to Naffy’s,’ she said.

Bev nodded and they pushed free from the onlookers. As they walked swiftly along the canal bank, they passed the statue of Patrick Kavanagh. The poet’s arms were crossed in his reflective pose, his wish granted. No tomb…just a seat where he could stare forever into still waters, mouthing splendid words into the green morning. Carla thought back to the night she had first met Anita and how the young prostitute had crossed her arms in the same way. She had clasped her thoughts deep into her skinny body, a pied piper, leading Carla towards Naffy’s and sanity.

‘It wasn’t the cops that found her,’ said Bev. ‘It was a woman out with her dog. The dog found the shoe, you know the red pair she loved, and brought it back to the woman. Then she found Anita…half in and half out of the water, she was. Been there since Sunday night, I reckon. A knife he used, the bastard, and all because she owed him money.’ Tears puddled Bev’s eyes, streaked her cheeks with mascara. ‘They’ll probably want to talk to you, the cops, I mean. Looks like you were the last one to see her alive.’

Bev was right. The guard who had originally taken the details interviewed Carla that afternoon. She was unable to add anything further to her original statement. The only time she had seen anyone else with Anita was the first night they met.

‘He was outside the café,’ she told the guard. ‘I wouldn’t be able to identity him. But a man rang her on her mobile on Sunday night. I don’t know if he was the same person.’

‘Was she a close friend of yours?’ The guard made no attempt to hide his curiosity.

‘She was a friend when I needed one. I wanted to help her too. But I couldn’t. I let her walk to her death and did nothing to stop her.’

‘From what I can gather, she was too far gone for help.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ Carla replied. ‘She was lost. But as long as she was alive, there was hope.’

She had examined the identity files without success and left the Garda station. A group of photographers and journalists were waiting outside. She recoiled from the flash of cameras, the shouted questions.

‘Carla, how did you know Anita Wilson?’

‘Did you realise she was a prostitute?’

‘Did you know she was a drug addict?’

‘Why were you with her on Sunday night?’

‘Do you know many prostitutes?’

‘Do you know her supplier?’

‘What information did you give to the police?’

‘Do you still believe your child is alive?’

The questions hit her like bullets and her anger had a velocity that forced her through the milling journalists towards her car. When a photographer ran alongside her, she screamed and lashed out at him.

‘You fucking vultures, why can’t you leave me alone? Leave me alone…leave me alone…’ She ran to her car and tried to zap it open. The zapper fell from her hands and was kicked aside by someone’s foot.

‘I have to open my car.’ Anger gave way to fear. There was nothing between her and them now except the lens, a scalpel, cutting deep into the brittle veneer she had built around herself. Tonight on
The Week on the Street
and tomorrow in the newspapers, she would be laid bare; cleanly sliced for consumption.

Colin Moore bent down and picked up the zapper. He zapped her car and opened the door, assisted her inside.

‘I’m sorry, Carla,’ he said. ‘It’s a lousy job but someone has to do it.’

Only one thing to do, thought Carla. She must become invisible to remain visible.

The hairdressing salon Carla entered was suburban and unassuming. A notice in the window offered ten per cent discount to senior citizens on Thursdays. The atmosphere suggested efficiency rather than the hyped glamour of the salons she had once frequented.

The Polish hairstylist who flicked her fingers through Carla’s hair was called Florentyna. ‘You need just a little trim to mend broken ends, yes?’ she stated in her precise Eastern European accent.

Carla stared back at her in the mirror. ‘Cut it all off,’ she ordered.

Florentyna looked as if she had been asked to perform an amputation.

‘Cut it
all
off?’ she exclaimed. ‘Please, Madam, do I understand you to tell me that your beautiful hair is to fall on the floor?’

‘That’s precisely what I’m telling you,’ replied Carla. ‘I want you to cut it as close to my scalp as possible without making me bald.’

‘But blondes…they have the fun.’ Florentyna looked shocked. ‘You have most beautiful hair. Irish women, they are blondes, many of them…so many. But not natural like you. Why you want it so short?’

‘It’s a long story, Florentyna. I also want you to dye my hair black.’

‘Black!’

‘Jet black.’

‘But you have one Sinéad O’Connor. You cannot have two.’

‘Please, Florentyna, I’ve had a very difficult day. Do as I say.’

‘Black is dull and not interesting, yes?’ said Florentyna when the transformation was complete. ‘You change your mind, please, you come back to me and be a fun blonde again.’

‘I won’t change my mind.’ Carla stared at her hair, tight as a skullcap, and felt the satisfaction of a snake shedding the last of an old skin.

When Janet called in to her apartment the following afternoon, she greeted her daughter’s new appearance with a mix of horror and disbelief.

‘How could you do something so drastic?’ she demanded. ‘I’d pass you on the street without a second glance.’

‘That’s the idea, Mother…and this is only the first step. I already use a pseudonym. I’m going to talk to Leo and change my name to Clare Frazier by deed poll.’

‘A name change?’ Janet sank into the sofa. ‘Did I hear you correctly?’

‘Yes.’ Carla sat opposite her and tried to calm her down. ‘As long as I’m Carla Kelly, I’ll never be left alone.’ Frazier was Gillian’s maiden name and Clare is my second name, so it’s a family name.

‘You may think so.’ Janet’s voice rose. ‘But I hope you don’t expect me to call you anything except the name I gave you at birth.’

‘No one outside my family is to know otherwise. Do you understand, Mother? This is very important.’

Janet leaned closer to Carla. ‘What in the name of God have you done to your eyes?’

‘Contact lenses. Purely cosmetic.’

‘But they’re
green.
’

‘An appropriate choice, don’t you think?’

Janet’s lips tightened. Her red lipstick had blurred into the lines above her mouth and Carla had a sudden impression of how her mother would look when she was an old woman. Time was laying stealthy hands on all of them. Six years…and Carla was still upright, still fighting.

‘I did warn you about Robert,’ said Janet. ‘Now you’re facing into a divorce, and he’s facing into a new life with that one…that
strap
of a one who threw herself at him as soon as your back was turned.’

‘What do you want, Mother? Marks out of ten for being right?’

‘I take no pleasure in being right. I’d give anything…’ Janet’s eyes watered as she stared at Carla. ‘You were so beautiful. And now…your father will be heartbroken. He loved your lovely hair.’

‘Dad will understand. He always does.’ Carla handed her a box of tissues. ‘I need to protect myself—’

‘But you ask for trouble. Honestly, Carla, what do you expect when you hang around with prostitutes?’

‘Anita was a child, Mother. And I didn’t
hang around
with her. She was my friend.’

‘Your friend?’ Janet was becoming increasingly agitated. ‘You can see why the media would want to know
those
details.’

‘There were no details. But that’s never stopped them writing about me. I’m selling my apartment and buying one
on the other side of the canal. I’m moving on, Mother. Isn’t that what you keep asking me to do?’

‘Yes. But not by changing into a green-eyed
man.
Honestly, Carla, this is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done. I wish I hadn’t been right about Robert. But he made a decision to get over things and now he has a son. What do you have? Tell me, what do you have?’

‘A daughter who is waiting for me to find her.’

Frank’s reaction was equally disbelieving when he called to Carla’s apartment the following evening. Her initial embarrassment over her behaviour in Kim’s Cave had been swept aside by Anita’s death and all that had followed. When he had phoned in the morning to discuss a new commission she had invited him to dinner on an impulse.

‘Even your own mother wouldn’t recognise you,’ he said when he had followed her into the kitchen.

‘I should be so lucky,’ Carla replied.

He placed a bottle of white wine in the fridge, uncorked a bottle of red. ‘You’ve had a terrible week.’ He pulled a high stool over to the counter and handed her a glass. ‘You really socked it to those guys.’

‘I lost control, Frank. I’m not proud of how I behaved. As for last weekend…’ She blinked her eyes against the pungent smell of garlic rising from the wok. ‘This is my apology.’ She gestured towards the dining area where she had laid the table for two. ‘I dread asking this question, but what happened when you brought me back to the apartment?’

‘I carried you to your bed, resisted, with great self-control, your request that I join you, and left you snoring into your pillow.’

‘This is
so
embarrassing.’ Carla added chicken to the wok
and stirred it vigorously into the sautéed vegetables. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I enjoyed every moment of it. But as you have absolutely no recollection of the night, I think it’s best we both put it behind us. Just one question.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who’s Sharon?’

‘My husband’s partner. The mother of his son.’

‘I see.’ Frank nodded thoughtfully. ‘That would explain your desire to hack her body into very small pieces and feed them to crocodiles.’

‘Is that all I wanted to do?’ Carla laughed and lifted her glass in a half-salute. ‘Just shows how much self-restraint I have, even when I’m drunk.’

Later, when they had eaten, she carried two glasses of brandy to the living room. He slid his arm along the back of the sofa and rubbed the stubble at the nape of her neck. ‘Was Anita’s death the reason you did this?’

‘Yes. That media scrum triggered everything off again. I’m not able to cope with it any more. Drastic situations call for drastic remedies.’

‘I wouldn’t call it drastic. Striking and quite beautiful, actually.’

‘Thank you, Frank.’ His beard brushed against her lips when she leaned across and kissed his cheek.

‘Frank Staunton is a single-minded warrior,’ Leo warned Carla when he heard she would be writing for him. ‘He’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with his authors when they have stories to tell. But when it comes to emotional involvements he’ll always put himself first. Don’t get involved.’

But Carla did not want commitment. Nor did she want love. She simply wanted to forget and Frank’s touch, easy and undemanding, was a spark she could ignite and change
everything. As he waited for her to make the next move, she drew back and held his gaze. She had never noticed his eyes before, would previously have been unable to tell their colour. Dark hazel and questioning, they demanded a response. Desire, when it came, was swift and sudden.

They undressed each other, flinging clothes to the floor, kicking off shoes, stopping to kiss deeply then to separate and free another piece of clothing. She stretched beneath him and he, holding himself back, stared down at her and said, ‘I’ve wanted to do this from the moment I first set eyes on you.’

Her lips silenced him and he moaned as her body yielded beneath him. Head to toe, mouth to mouth, she moved into a sphere that was sweetly familiar yet startlingly different. He stopped and reached into his jacket for a condom. She closed her eyes, willed herself to stay with him, to forget everything in the melding of passion. But she could feel it draining away, and he, sensing the change in her, collapsed at her side and cradled her against him.

She traced her lips over the bony arch of his shoulder and kissed his throat. He had pale skin, almost like porcelain, and the hair matting his chest was a deep auburn.

‘I’m sorry, Frank,’ she said.

‘So am I, Carla.’ He lifted his shirt and spread it over them. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We don’t do anything,’ she said. ‘That would be nice for a change. Just to do nothing.’

‘My mind agrees,’ he said. ‘But my body tells me that that would be quite impossible.’

‘I’m the last person you need in your life, Frank.’

‘Let me be the one to make that decision. All you have to do is decide whether or not
you
want to be in my life. But this is obviously the wrong time. When you come into my bed, I don’t want anyone else sharing it.’

He dressed quickly, without self-consciousness, and left. She smiled wryly as she switched off the bedroom light and pulled the duvet over her. She should have asked him to stay, scratched and clawed her way to oblivion. He would not have known what hit him and she would probably have ruined her career as a ghost.