The Girl From Yesterday (20 page)

‘This will run and run, Shane my lad,’ Chaplin said gleefully.

He even allowed me to write a few very short columns on some peripheral elements of the case. I knew this was my editor being unspeakably generous, but the truth was, I didn’t really care either way. I still felt guilty about what had happened and was worried about how the children were faring. I knew that their imminent removal from their home was pretty much a done deal, but I could not get little Emma’s face out of my head. I wanted to go out and see them, but was sure I would end up making things worse if I did.

‘You step back now and let the professionals do their job,’ Chaplin said when I told him what I was thinking. ‘God knows, they’ll do whatever they want anyway. It’s not like your opinion counts for anything.’

The fact that he was right did not help one bit.

I was at the local farmers’ market one Saturday morning in the middle of all this kerfuffle. As I settled into the house I was renting my mind began to drift more towards making time for the things I liked to do, and one of these was cooking. Since my arrival in Garshaigh I had been living on sandwiches, coffee and the occasional bowl of soup. I’d just had no interest in anything more elaborate. However, as spring came in and the sun began to warm the earth I started to feel the urge to tamper with recipes again.

The farmers’ market seemed a good place to start.

Millie and I wandered among the stalls, sampling this, smelling that and generally having a grand old time. I had the ingredients for a fish stew with saffron rice that I had been craving, and was sitting on a bench drinking a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice from a nearby stall when I felt a mild thud against the base of my seat. Turning, I came face to face with Jeff McKinney. He had piloted his chair so that it collided directly with the side of the bench. I wondered if he thought this would upset or discommode me. It didn’t. It just struck me as odd.

But then, Jeff McKinney struck me as an extremely odd person.

Neither of us said a word for a moment, simply eyeballing one another. Then Millie started to growl, which is extremely uncharacteristic of her – I placed my hand on her neck immediately to soothe her, but could still feel her shuddering. Her eyes were fixed on McKinney, her tail thrashing back and forth, her teeth bared.

‘What’s wrong with your dog?’ McKinney asked, though there was no alarm in his voice.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe she smells a rat somewhere hereabouts.’

He took the jibe in his stride.

‘You’ve been talking about me behind my back,’ he said.

‘Have I?’ I retorted. ‘What about?’

‘Don’t act all innocent,’ he said. ‘Mr Taylor asked me about some personal messages I’ve been sending. How did he know about those messages?’

‘Maybe the people you sent them to weren’t happy with their content,’ I suggested.

‘Or maybe someone who wasn’t supposed to read them went running to the headmaster to squeal.’

Millie had settled a bit, so I stopped holding her collar and just stroked her head. She was still staring at Jeff, but I didn’t think she was likely to try and pounce on him.

‘Look, what are you trying to say?’ I said, getting bored with the verbal evasion. ‘Did I get some complaints about messages you had sent to some of my students? Yes I did. Did I speak to Mr Taylor about them? Yes again. I’m sure you’re annoyed about it, but that really isn’t my concern. Make sure the person on the other end is open to that kind of interaction before you go sending explicit messages. It’s a basic courtesy.’

McKinney’s manner changed abruptly. He darted around the bench and made a grab at me. I slid sideways and Millie again growled, louder now, and lunged forward. I caught her just in time, or she would have ended up in my aggressor’s lap.

‘You stay out of my affairs!’ McKinney said. ‘I’m warning you now – I will make things very difficult for you if you keep annoying me. I promise you that.’

In a final act of defiance, he rolled off – right over my foot, which I thought was a nice touch.

‘That is one weird little guy,’ I said to Millie as we watched him trundle away.

She made a sort of snort of agreement, which I appreciated.

I left the school three nights later with Jessie, to loan her a book I thought was in the car.

‘I think this’ll give you a better picture of what I’m talking about,’ I explained. ‘It doesn’t have a lot of text, but the photos chart the first five years of Maria Montessori’s first school after the Vatican took an interest in her. The pictures are really remarkable.’

We rounded the corner to the school’s small car park, and I walked straight into someone – or rather that was what I thought had happened until I received a blow right into my solar plexus. I folded over like a sheet of paper and went down.

If that is Jeff McKinney again
, I thought,
he has really been working out
.

‘No smart comments today, paper boy?’

I rolled over and saw that my assailant was the one I had come to think of as the leader of the local goons – the group who had tried to run Tom and his family off their land, and had also asked me to stop visiting them. By twisting about I could see the other three gathered about my car. I tried to tell Jessie to run, but I couldn’t get any air into my lungs to fuel speech. Lip-reading the words as I mouthed them, though, the girl got my meaning and took off.

‘So, we need to have a little chat,’ the man said, picking me up under my armpits and dragging me over to his cohorts. ‘God, you’re a heavy bastard, aren’t you?’

‘He is weighty with his own self-importance,’ the broad, squat one said.

The others laughed at that. I didn’t think it was very funny, but kept my opinion to myself. I didn’t think my input would be welcome.

They propped me up against the car and, when they were sure I wasn’t going to fall over again, the ringleader said: ‘You’ve been asked nicely. We’ve given you ample opportunities to do the right thing. I mean, I don’t think anyone could say that we’ve been anything other than patient with you. But no, you had to be a stubborn class of a fella and make life difficult for yourself.’

‘It’s a character flaw,’ I said hoarsely. ‘I’m working through it with my therapist.’

‘There you go again with the smart commentary,’ he said. ‘Do you realize that you are leaving us no choice but to inflict quite a serious amount of pain upon you?’

‘What do you want?’ I asked, my voice starting to return to its usual timbre.

‘Okay, okay. You wish to establish a dialogue. That’s a good start. Well, since you ask, our goals have altered somewhat since our last exchange. Previously, we wanted you to keep away from the Blaney household. Now we would add to that the wish that you do all in your power to prevent social services from taking the Blaney children into care.’

‘I already told Gerry that I have no influence at all with child services. You’ve got the wrong guy.’

‘That,’ my captor said, seizing my chin in his hand and shaking my head from side to side, ‘is a very defeatist attitude. I mean, we know you were at the case conference, and that you get regular updates from the social worker on the case, a Mr Doran. That would suggest at least a
degree
of influence. Maybe we need to teach you some self-belief. Baz, come over here and give Mr Dunphy some motivational instruction.’

Baz never got to move, because the sound of an engine starting caused everyone to spin around. Standing at the corner, dressed in his grey suit (tie tucked safely into his shirt front), with a set of goggles covering his eyes and holding his trusty blade strimmer, was George Taylor principal extraordinary. He revved the power tool a couple of times, then allowed it to go into a gentle idle.

‘Get off my grounds,’ he said, and I sensed each of the four shrink slightly – his voice held in it not a trace of doubt. This was a man who expected utterly to be obeyed.

‘Now, you run along Mr Taylor,’ the ring leader said. ‘You don’t want to get involved in this.’

George laughed brusquely and began to walk towards them, revving at every step.

‘You are in my school,’ he said, ‘so I am already involved. You are threatening violence upon one of my staff team, a person who it is my duty to support unequivocally. Now . . .’

He switched off the strimmer and tossed it aside, pulling the goggles off and putting them on a windowsill out of the way.

‘There are two of us and four of you. Do you wish to throw down fisticuffs?’

Baz was starting to look very unsure of himself.

‘Look – you got no part in this.’

Taylor poked him hard in the chest with his index finger.

‘You brought me into it when you walked through that gate over there,’ he said, and he was angry now. His voice and body language seethed with it. ‘How do you want to do it? One on one until we knock one of yours down, and then the other steps in, or just all pile in together?’

The four looked very bothered. They had not expected anything like this.

‘Oh, and Shane,’ Taylor said, incidentally. ‘Try not to let the side down, will you? There is a security camera up there,’ he pointed to a pole just behind us, ‘over there,’ – when I looked I could see one set on the eave of the building to our left – ‘and over there.’ This time he pointed to a spot on the roof of a building across the street, but right opposite us. ‘When I look back at this with the police, I want to be able to hold my head up in the knowledge that we gave these yobs as good as we got.’

‘Fuck this, I’m out of here,’ Baz said. ‘I’m not fightin’ that guy. He’s off his feckin’ head.’

‘Me either,’ the squat fat one said.

‘Well, that evens it up,’ Taylor smiled, advancing on the leader. ‘Queensbury rules?’

Before he could take up his stance, the final two ran for the gate.

‘Cowards,’ Taylor said, then turned to me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I got sucker punched,’ I said, rubbing my abdomen. ‘I’ll live.’

‘What did they want?’

‘For me to try and prevent the Blaney kids being taken into care.’

Taylor nodded.

‘Well then I am doubly sorry we did not have the opportunity to teach them a thing or two.’

‘Mr Taylor,’ I said, slapping him on the back. ‘You really are crazy.’

‘And don’t you forget it,’ he said, picking up his strimmer.

I was out at the Blaney house when they came to take the kids.

I had tried to keep away, but two things drew me back: number one, every time I put any food into my mouth, I wondered when Emma or Dom had eaten last, and what their repast might have been. This began to be something of an obsession: I would try to imagine the circumstance – where would the children be? Would they have purloined some food or would their mother or father have given them some? Would it be some crusty bread, or a piece of fruit, or perhaps some cured meat as I had been given for lunch my first time there? Would there be enough to go around or would someone be left hungry? Would it be nothing but a tantalizing taste, just enough to torment the starved palate, or a gut-stretching feast?

I also needed to see Emma. Her terrible anguish that day at the medical centre haunted me. Of all the kids, I had bonded with her the most, and I found the idea of her feeling so upset, so helpless, to be quite unbearable. I was fully aware that any pain I was experiencing was nothing compared to what the children were going through, but that didn’t help.

I decided to bite the bullet and drive out.

When I arrived, I found the children had been forbidden even to leave the house. Tom was certain they would be snatched if caught out of doors, so he reasoned that it was best to keep them inside. He was down in his war room, and had no interest in talking to me.

‘Dora has taken to her bed,’ he said. ‘Stay for a bit if you want. I have work to do.’

I sat with Jim, Winnie, Dom and Emma in the living area. The kids seemed to eschew the furniture: we all sat cross-legged on the floor in a loose circle.

‘I brought you these,’ I said, handing out ham salad rolls.

They were taken without question and attacked immediately.

‘So what’s been going on since I saw you last?’

‘Mammy sick,’ said Emma through a mouthful of food.

‘Is she?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She gotta pain in her belly,’ Dom said. ‘She won’t get out’ve her bed. Bad Daddy shouted at her, and hitted her, but it don’t make no diff’rence.’

‘Will you stop talkin’ about Bad Daddy,’ Jim snapped. ‘That’s what has us in trouble in the first place!’

‘You think you’re in trouble?’ I asked. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘Good Daddy told us some men might come and put us in jail,’ Emma said. ‘We has to keep an eye out for them, ’cause if they come they gonna take us and bring us some place far away from Mammy and Daddy and our house. I don’ wanna go t’ prison. I wouldn’ like that, bein’ in with all them bad people.’

‘But you’re not in trouble,’ I said. ‘No one wants to put you in prison.’

‘No, we are in trouble,’ Dom said. ‘Why did that man hurt us that day in the health centre? He did awful bad things to us – things like Bad Daddy does. Good Daddy said that people done heard about Bad Daddy, and they thinks we done somethin’ to make him bad like that, and we has to be punished for it.’

‘But you didn’t make your dad do anything,’ I said. ‘He did bad things because he’s a little bit ill in his head. You are not, and will never be, to blame for that.’

‘We shouldna telled nobody though,’ Emma said, leaning her head against my arm. ‘That’s what has all this trouble comin’. We telled and now they want to lock us away. Thas what happens. One of the kids in school tole me.’

‘That kid is wrong,’ I said.

Sometimes fate is perverse and enjoys dramatic effect.

At that precise moment there was a loud knock on the door. Jim got up to answer it. I heard muffled muttering from down the hallway, a muttering that gradually built to an angry exchange, and which ended with Jim screaming:

‘Dad! Daddy – they’ve come! They’ve come to take us away!’

It took me a second to register the information. The children looked at me open-mouthed. I grabbed them to me in a fierce hug and said: ‘It’ll be all right – you’re going to be scared and your dad is going to be very angry, but I will stay with you – I promise.’