The Girl From Yesterday (11 page)

‘Hello,’ I said, feeling a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I suspected that I would be a much easier target.

‘You’re to stay away from the Blaney place,’ the man whom Jim Blaney had punched said.

Now I was confused. I was so befuddled, the feeling totally cancelled out any sense of fear or dread.

‘Why?’ I asked in genuine bafflement.

‘Just do as you’re told unless you want a beatin’,’ the other goon, the squat, fat one, said. He pronounced the word ‘beatin’’ to sound like ‘baitin’ ’.

‘Look, you can give me the hiding of my life, but if my boss directs me to go out there, then I’ll have to go. And it just doesn’t make any sense – I mean, if you told me to stop bugging
Gerry
Blaney, well, I could see how that would work. But to warn me away from the guy I
saw you
attempting to scare . . . boys, you’ve got me at a loss.’

The two glanced at each other and decided to cut their losses.

‘Don’t say we didn’t warn ye,’ the first guy said, grabbing me by the scuff of the neck and giving me a half-hearted shake.

‘All right, all right,’ I said as they headed off into the early evening. ‘You two have a good night.’

I walked home shaking my head. The Blaney situation was getting stranger by the day.

The warning made me want to drive out to the Blaney homestead immediately, but I managed to hold off until the following morning. This time I brought some sandwiches, fruit, biscuits and cartons of juice. Just in case.

It was one of those beautiful early autumn days when Ireland seems to be the best place in the world to be. The wild, rugged landscape about the Blaneys’ wild, rugged house was a deep gold in colour, the stubbled corn and untended reeds and grass grey and dark green against the sandy brown of the dried earth. Plovers nested amid the clumps and a kestrel hovered above, waiting for something to put a foot wrong.

Tom was not happy to see me this time either.

‘How many different ways do I need to tell you to leave us alone?’ he asked, barring the door with his big frame.

‘What’s the matter Tom?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you love me anymore? I would have thought that we would have had some kind of bond after what we’ve been through together. A band of brothers, isn’t that what they call it?’

‘You’re off your fuckin’ head,’ he snarled.

‘I was paid a visit last night by some of the goons you and Jim ran into before,’ I said. ‘They told me to keep away from you and your family. That sounds a lot like what you’ve just said to me. They working for you now?’

Tom blinked and suddenly looked deeply confused.

‘No – Jesus, no, of course not. You’d better come in after all.’

He brought me to the living area and we sat in more or less the same places we had last time.

‘I’m sorry you had to get mixed up in all this,’ he said. ‘I can look after me own, but I wouldn’t want you gettin’ hurt.’

I waved it off.

‘I don’t think they seriously meant to harm me,’ I said. ‘It’s a big deal to meddle with a journalist after that reporter Veronica Guerin’s murder. They don’t look like nice people, but they don’t look terribly professional either, do they? I mean, they must have known you’d have a gun and not be afraid to use it, but still they came with just . . . well, with big sticks.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Nothing. Continue to help Chaplin cover the story of the trial. Call out the odd time to see how things are going from your end. I don’t see there’s much else I can do.’

He nodded and hugged his knees, an odd gesture for a man so large. He suddenly seemed to be a big child.

‘My Emma is rightly taken with you. She said you were right nice to her.’

‘She’s a nice kid. It’s not hard to take to her.’

As if on cue, a knocking was heard from above us, and looking up at one of the small windows that had been set at irregular intervals about the top of the room, I saw Emma’s pixie-like face grinning down at me.

‘Do I want to know how she got up there?’ I asked.

‘Probably not,’ Tom said truthfully.

* * *

I went outside to find Emma and her older brother, Dom, sitting on the narrow ledge of the window. I reached up and lifted them both down, setting them on the ground in front of me.

‘You could have fallen and hurt yourselves,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could try and be a little bit more careful?’

‘He gived me sweets,’ Emma said conspiratorially to her sibling.

I couldn’t suppress a smile.

‘Oh, so you remember the sweets, do you?’

Emma nodded. Dom eyed me cautiously.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘You take me for a walk down to the beach and I’ll give you something nice that I have in my bag here. We can have a bit of a picnic. What do you say?’

There was no need for any discussion. The pair grabbed one of my hands each and we headed off at a canter across the field next to the house.

Emma was a real chatterbox, while Dom, still a little unsure of me and my motives, was far more restrained. The girl wanted to sing the two songs we had learned on ‘that fancy damned radio thing’. So I sang the chorus of ‘Ob-La-Di’ again, and at first just Emma, but soon both kids, joined in merrily. Once we’d sang that a few times we tried ‘Bad Moon Rising’, and that was just as successful.

‘Can I listen to songs on your radio, mister?’ Dom asked as we walked.

‘Your dad wasn’t very happy about it,’ I said.

‘No, he weren’t,’ Emma said gravely.

‘So I don’t know if I can really do something your father wouldn’t approve of,’ I said.

‘I don’t know why he hates so much stuff,’ Dom said sulkily. ‘We’re never let do nuthin’. What’s wrong with just hearin’ a few songs, eh? It won’t hurt nobody.’

‘You’ll get in bad trouble again,’ Emma said, looking ominously at her brother. ‘You don’t want to get beat on again, do you? ’Cause that’s what’ll happen.’

I was bursting to intercede at this point, to question just exactly what ‘getting beat on’ might mean, but I held back.
That is not why you’re here! Get them talking about these threats, not about their domestic problems!

We got to the beach and I found myself very close to the place where I had taken my dip that first day in Garshaigh.

‘This is our beach,’ Emma said. ‘Nobody ever comes here. It’s just for us, so it is.’

We sat and I laid out the food, using my jacket as a table cloth. I had erred on the side of caution with the sandwiches, going for plain ham. The apples were Pink Ladies, crisp and sweet, and I’d brought a mix of biscuits – plain, chocolate, oatmeal, creams and marshmallows. I was not even slightly surprised when the whole lot disappeared rapidly.

‘That was lovely!’ Emma said, lying back on the sand.

‘I’m stuffed,’ Dom agreed. ‘Thanks, mister.’

‘Would you please call me Shane,’ I asked, playfully poking him in the ribs. At the barest touch, the boy cringed.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt you, Dom?’

‘No. I’m fine,’ he said, though he clearly wasn’t.

‘Why don’t we play a game?’ I suggested, wanting to take the focus off Dom.

‘What kind of a game?’ Emma asked, sitting up, excited already.

‘Well, we’re on the beach,’ I said. ‘How about we make the biggest sandcastle we can manage?’

‘But we don’t gots no buckets or shovels or nothin’!’ Dom said, obviously still a bit off colour.

‘Follow me, my young friends,’ I said.

Within seconds we had found three flat pieces of wood that more than adequately acted as spades, not to mention two plastic pots, one an old margarine container, the other an empty travel mug, which would do very nicely as buckets.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can’t construct the most amazing, fantabulous, coolest sandcastle that was ever built, on this or any other beach!’

‘Yeah!’

‘For sure!’

We worked hard on that castle for the next hour, and I can report that it was impressive. I would have had great fun had I not noticed, five minutes after we started, the deep, black bruises that could be seen whenever Dom’s T-shirt rode up as he bent or stretched to pat down some sand or to dig the moat. These were not bruises that a boy of twelve would come across in the normal rough and tumble of his life. Someone had beaten Dom badly, about the body, where his clothes would hide it.

I just wasn’t sure who.

But I could hazard a guess.

I caught Robert Chaplin just before he went home for the evening.

‘Where you been?’

‘Out at the Blaneys. Thought I’d tell Tom about the warning I received.’

‘I’ve called the boys in blue about that,’ Chaplin said. ‘They’re going to be watching the offices as we come and go for a bit.’

‘Good. Listen, Robert, there’s something I want to run by you, and I want you to think about it before you blow a gasket.’

Looking as if his gaskets were lining up ready for imminent explosion, Chaplin sat back behind his desk.

‘You will agree with me that the Blaney way of life is a little on the strange side. Not exactly conducive to comfort or even exemplary personal hygiene.’

‘Yes,’ Chaplin said, waiting for the hammer to fall.

‘It would be difficult to ignore the fact that the children are all fairly manky, their clothes are ill-fitting and unwashed, and they seem to be very small for their ages.’

Chaplin narrowed his eyes as if he were trying to work out my next step.

‘I’ll grant you’re right about all those points, yes,’ he said. ‘But I bet you’ve seen similar things in the children of hippies and new agers. It’s not a crime to be a bit mucky.’

‘Mmm. But I don’t think Emma even owns a pair of shoes,’ I said. ‘I’ve certainly never seen her wear any.’

‘Means nothing,’ Chaplin said. ‘My own daughter wouldn’t wear anything other than a pair of shorts and some pink Wellington boots for three months when she was two. Had her poor mother driven to distraction.’

‘I was out there two days ago and Emma told me that she hadn’t had lunch since the first day we went out. She was half-starved. She nearly took the hand and all off me when I offered her something to eat.’

‘What’d you give her?’

‘I had some sweets in the car ’

‘Sweets? She took the hand off you when you offered her some sweets? Shane, I don’t doubt for one single second that those children are starved of sweets and popcorn and I am certain they have never been to the cinema and are never going to see the hallowed halls of Walt Disney World. I’ll bet she grabbed those sweets and tried to horse them down her before her parents arrived. God knows when she’ll see something sugary again.’

‘It’s more than that,’ I said, feeling like I was being made fun of. ‘Those kids are genuinely hungry!’

‘Really? How do you reckon?’

‘I brought sandwiches and biscuits and some fruit out today.’

‘You brought mass-produced bread slathered in butter and chocolate biscuits. Yet again, what do you expect the children to do? They’ll be on a sugar high for a week.’

‘Dom has bruises, Robert. I saw them myself. And Emma talked about him being beaten.’

Chaplin sighed and tutted, rattling his pen off the desk top.

‘I might not like Tom Blaney. He is a nasty piece of work, and I believe that whatever is going on over this land sale is crooked as a pretzel. But I do not believe he is in any way neglecting or physically abusing his children. He dotes on those kids. What you’re describing can be explained in half a dozen totally plausible ways.’

‘I’m not sure I agree with you, Robert,’ I said. ‘I used to do this kind of work, and I know neglect when I see it. I also know, without any doubt, that Dom was beaten. It may not have been Tom. Remember, those gorillas were threatening the children, too.’

Chaplin considered that.

‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘But it’s possible. I’ll put it to Tom the next time I’m out there.’

‘Thanks, Robert,’ I said. ‘One final question.’

‘Shoot.’

‘You told me that the kids were all home schooled.’

‘Yeah.’

‘All of them?’

Chaplin paused, chewing his lower lip and thinking.

‘If I remember correctly, Jim, the eldest boy, went to primary school for a bit locally, but they took him out before he made his confirmation.’

‘That’s great. Let’s get out of here before those cops get bored waiting for us.’

‘And before you start to suspect Mrs Chaplin is mistreating me.’

‘Well who could blame her,’ I said, and we left the office laughing.

As I said goodbye to Chaplin, I noticed Jeff McKinney parked across the road, watching us. I made to cross over to speak to him, but he rolled off at a tremendous speed before I got through the home-time traffic.

I rang George Taylor and asked him if he happened to know the principal of the local primary school.

‘I used to work there,’ he informed me.

‘Could you effect an introduction?’

‘Do you propose to do some teaching there also?’

‘No. This is purely an act of pastoral care.’

‘Oh.’

‘When you let your colleague know I will be calling, could you stress my previous child protection credentials?’

‘I will certainly mention them. Shane, is this something I need to be concerned about?’

‘I don’t think so. Thanks for your help, Mr Taylor.’

‘Well. All right. I shall see you tomorrow night then.’

‘I’ll be there.’

The principal of Garshaigh National School was a woman named Nathalie Lassiter. She was about forty-five with brunette hair and was dressed in a dark purple trouser suit. She shook my hand and offered me coffee from a tray on her desk.

‘George tells me you are a former child protection worker,’ she said when we were seated.

‘He lets you call him George?’

‘No. I just do it behind his back,’ she said with a grin.

‘I feel less marginalized with that knowledge,’ I said.

‘How can I help you, Shane?’

‘I want to begin by asking that whatever is said in this office remains here.’

‘I have no problem with confidentiality under the correct circumstances. I believe that – as well as teaching on George’s night school, you also work for the local newspaper . . .’