Lying in Wait(22)

‘I agree with Ma. What if she’s in some bad situation? She’s not on a bender. If the people she’s with know that the guards are looking for her, they might send her home.’

‘We don’t even know that she hasn’t gone off somewhere –’

‘We do know, Da. All her stuff was still there. She wouldn’t have taken off and left her stuff behind.’

We went back to the garda station in the afternoon. Dessie came with us, though he sat at the back of the room. I’d told him about the drugs and prostitution. He was utterly shocked. ‘Jaysus,’ he said, ‘I never knew she was that bad.’ He shook hands firmly with my dad, as if it were a funeral. ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’

Da just glared at him. Da was still unenthusiastic about meeting the reporters, and Ma was really nervous. O’Toole said, ‘Don’t worry if you break down and cry when you’re talking about Annie,’ and I thought that was a strange thing to say because he was almost hinting that we should cry. Detective Mooney told us, ‘Just be honest, tell Annie that you want her to come home.’ Da said, ‘I do want her to come home,’ as if the guard was challenging him. ‘It’s OK, Da,’ I said.

We were brought into a bigger room with a big conference table and sat on one side of it with O’Toole. I couldn’t call him Declan. I noticed that he had had his hair cut since that morning. I guessed he didn’t give a damn about Annie and just wanted to be in the papers. He’d been so pleased with himself about being on the telly. When a photographer requested our photo, O’Toole jumped up and stood between us with his arms out, like Jesus in a holy picture of the Last Supper. A few men scribbled into jotters and clicked their cameras as Ma and Da talked about Annie. O’Toole looked meaningfully at me, urging me to say something, but I just sat with my head down and said nothing. I didn’t want to cry in front of strangers.

I had information too that I had not shared with my parents; it would have hurt them too much. Earlier, before the press conference, O’Toole had taken me aside. He put his arm around my shoulder in a way that was supposed to be comforting, but I felt like gagging from the smell of his overpowering aftershave.

‘Karen,’ he said, ‘if there’s anything I can do, you know? I hate to see you suffering, like.’

‘Don’t you have any leads on where she went? Any clue as to what might have happened to her?’

‘Afraid not, but we’ve tracked down her pimp. He thinks she was seeing fellas on her own for the last few months. She wasn’t on the streets like she’d been before, but she seemed to have money for heroin. Sometimes, you know, a girl is better off with a pimp because he’ll offer her some protection.’

‘And did you arrest him?’

O’Toole seemed perplexed. ‘For what?’

‘For being a pimp! Isn’t it illegal?’

He actually laughed at me. ‘Now, don’t be getting upset, a pretty girl like you. Pimps are useful to us in other ways.’

I was livid. ‘I bet they are.’

He released me from his grip then. ‘I’m on your side, you know. I wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you, if I were you.’

I was shocked by how threatening he was. I needed to play along with him or he wasn’t going to help us.

‘I’m sorry, it’s just that … I’m worried … we’re close, me and Annie.’

‘I suppose it hurts that she kept secrets from you.’ He rifled through his desk and pulled up a copybook, like an old school jotter. ‘We found this with the syringes under the mattress. It’s not of any use to us, but maybe you’d like to keep it?’

I reached out to take it from him, but he held it aloft. ‘What do you say?’

‘Thank you, Detective Sergeant.’ I smiled sweetly.

‘Declan.’

‘Declan.’

‘She’s not great at writing, is she? Did she go to school at all?’

I tried not to glare at him.

‘There’s some large cash amounts listed in there. We don’t know what they refer to. If you can shed any light on them, let us know? Prostitutes would never make that amount. The going rate averages at ten pounds for full sex,’ he said. He suggested that she must have been providing ‘very special services’ for the amounts listed in the notebook. It took me a few moments to understand what he was getting at. I thought of my sister, who I had shared a room with throughout my childhood. I was still trying to take in the fact that she might be a prostitute. He insisted that the addresses and phone numbers had all been checked and led to nothing.

He wrote his own phone number on a piece of paper. ‘Ring me any time. Any time you want to talk.’

‘About Annie?’

‘About anything.’

I recognized Annie’s scrawl at once. It was a diary of some sort. Her handwriting and spelling were terrible. But it was so … Annie, and when I read the contents, I felt sick. Sick about reading her personal stuff, but heartbroken for what she’d written. The first entry was a letter, dated shortly after she came home from St Joseph’s four years earlier.

Dear Marnie

I bet theve givin you a new name but youll allways be Marnie to me couse of that film. she was gorgues in that film and I think youll be gorgues like her wen you grow up. Your the mort buetifull thing I ever seen. I hope your new family are treeting you good. They wouldent tell me were you was going and I dint want to leave you but they said that Id be looked up their for ever if I didt sign the papers I wish I could have stayed and bawrt you home with me but my Da wouldn have it. He said i was a discrase to the famly. I dont want to be a discrase to you. I will come looking for you some day soone. I wish i new wher you are because I really miss holding you in my arms and cuddeling you. My sister asked me about you but i cant say anything becuse i am the bad one who left you behinnd and now I wish Id stayed and they hadnt sent you away. I am sorry with all my haert and i promise ill find you.