I WAS LATE, SO Leah was in the office before me. She had turned on the heating, made herself a coffee and was sitting at her computer when I arrived. If it hadn’t been for the oversized penguin jumper she was wearing, you’d have thought it was an ordinary working day.
She looked up as I closed the door behind me. “Jesus, you’ve had an eventful Christmas, haven’t you?”
“I hope yours was quieter.” I nodded at her mug. “Do you want another?”
She shook her head. “It’s just made. I picked up some milk on the way and stuck it in the fridge. And there’s some of my mother’s Christmas cake if you can face it.”
“I might have some later … Bit early for me still. Thanks, Leah.”
I headed out the back to make myself a coffee. When I returned, the familiar blue masthead on her screen showed that Leah had logged onto Facebook. While not a user of the site myself – I’ve always been afraid of what I might reveal if I signed up to it – I do see its attraction. And I hoped it would be useful now. I perched on the reception desk beside her while I sipped my coffee.
“So, what have you found out about our prospective employee? Is she the trouble with a capital T I keep hearing she is?”
“Just give me two wee seconds.” Leah tapped some keys, then angled the computer toward me so I could see the screen. “Remember I told you she was a Facebook friend of my sister’s? That they were in the same year in school?”
I nodded.
“Well, it took a bit of persuasion, but Sinéad agreed to give me her password so I could log onto her page, which means I now have access to her friends’ pages.” She grinned. “Bribery always works with my sisters. Especially around Christmas.”
I looked at the page. Sinéad’s profile picture showed her somewhere hot, wearing a bikini and a broad smile and holding a cocktail. Leah clicked on her sister’s “Friends” and a series of images and names appeared. She moved the cursor down, selected an image of a monkey, clicked on the image and Susanne Craig’s Facebook page popped up. On closer view, the monkey picture was not a happy one. It had been taken from an anti-vivisection site, and the creature was the picture of misery, splayed on an iron frame, hooked up to wires and needles. I swallowed. It was one of those images of animal suffering that gets you in the gut and stays with you long after you’ve seen it.
“I thought she was supposed to be a party girl?” Sinéad’s page looked more like what I would have expected for Susanne, at least until I’d met her on Christmas Day.
“She certainly used to be,” Leah agreed. “Drugs, drink, dodgy boyfriends, the lot. But looking at this, she seems to have gone to the other extreme. Everything she posts is about listening to your conscience.”
“Amnesty International, that kind of thing?”
Leah’s brow furrowed. “Not so much human rights; more environmental issues and animal rights. Particularly animal rights. She’s a vegetarian, according to her profile …”
“Vegan,” I said.
“Sorry?” Leah turned to look at me in surprise.
I smiled. “She’s a vegan. I had Christmas lunch with her.”
“Jesus, you have been busy. Where did that happen?”
“Phyllis’s. I’ll tell you about it later. Anyway, what kind of work has she done? I suppose we need to know her employment history if we’re to think about giving her a job. She seems a bit old for work experience.”
Leah ran down through her page. “It’s not very clear. She describes herself as ‘a citizen of the world.’” She raised her eyes to heaven. “And she’s not on LinkedIn or any of those worky networking sites. The weird thing is that after posting nearly every day for ages, she disappears completely from view online about three months ago. Nothing since then, not a dicky bird.”
“I think she may have got herself into some kind of strife. I don’t know what. Phyllis said Tony had to go to Spain to bring her back. Has your sister had any direct contact with her, or is it just Facebook stuff?”
“Just Facebook, I think. I don’t think they even communicate on Facebook, just have access to each other’s posts. They were friends when they were kids, but that’s a long time ago.”
I leaned back and took another sip of my coffee. “So what do you think of giving her some work?”
Leah shrugged. “You could suggest a couple of days a week as a trial, see if she’s any use and if we have enough for her to do. Then if it doesn’t work, we have a way out.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. I wasn’t keen. “I’d be doing Tony a favor really. We don’t need anyone, to be honest.”
Leah raised her eyebrows, and I had a flashback of her buried behind a mountain of files the week before Christmas. But Christmas week was exceptional – there was a distinct possibility that by March we’d be painting each other’s nails.
“Okay, okay,” I said, my hands up. “I’m concerned about the confidentiality end of things, though.”
Leah grinned. “There’s always the attic.”
“Oh God, could we do that to her?”
The attic hadn’t been cleared out since I bought the place. It was crammed with junk that had belonged to the man who owned it before I did. He had fancied himself as something of an artist, and the attic was full of his paintings and sketches. I’d been tempted to throw the whole lot out, but so far I’d stalled, hoping to find the time or the enthusiasm to go through it and see if there was anything of value. Leah was right. It might be a job for Susanne, which would keep her away from anything confidential.
“I’ll give it some thought,” I said. “So who else can we spy on?” I asked, leaning in with interest.
“Ach now.” Leah settled back in her seat with her mug in her hands. “I think that now we have that sorted, you’ll have to tell me about your Christmas. What on earth happened to poor Carole?”
I told her as much as I knew. I trust Leah, but she is also bound by office confidentiality. A bibs-and-braces approach, if you like. It makes it easier for me to discuss things I wouldn’t with anyone else, and I expect it makes things easier for her.
There is no grey area.
“God, what a thing to happen at Christmas,” she said. “Those poor kids.”
“I know,” I said. Then something hit me. “Actually, I wonder if Carole had a Facebook page? Would we be able to see it if she had?”
“Depends on her privacy settings,” she said. “Although she was over thirty-five, and often the over thirty-fives aren’t too smart about that kind of thing. We might be able to see more than she would have wanted us to.” She turned back to the computer.
Just as she was about to type in Carole’s name and move off Susanne Craig’s page, something caught my eye to the right of the screen. It was a thumbnail picture of a man singing.
“Hang on a second. Isn’t that George Harkin, Carole’s husband?”
Leah looked. “Aye, it is,” she said. “It looks as if he and Susanne are friends.”
“Facebook friends?”
She nodded. “George would have taught Susanne in school. He taught my sister music too.”
“Is it not a bit odd to be friends with your teacher?” I asked.
Leah shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not sure I’d want to be friends with any of mine. But he’s her ex-teacher. And it would be a good seven or eight years since he taught her.”
“Can you click on his page?” I asked.
She did so, and a larger image appeared. It had been taken in a pub by the look of it; it might even have been the Oak. Beneath the image it said: To see what George shares with friends, send him a friend request.
“He’s been careful with his privacy settings so I can’t access his page fully because Sinéad isn’t a friend of his,” Leah said. “But I can see some stuff. It seems to be mostly about music. Maybe that’s why they’ve stayed in contact? Maybe Susanne is interested in music?”
“Maybe,” I said, although I still thought it was a bit odd. “What about Carole?” I asked. “Did she have a page?”
Leah scrolled down through George’s friends. “She doesn’t seem to have.” She threw me a look. “If she did, she wasn’t friends with her husband.”
I watched as she did a search using Carole’s name – there were a number of Carole Harkins, but none was the right one. She tried again using Carole Kearney, but had no luck with that either.
I sat back. “So Susanne and George know each other,” I said thoughtfully.
I remembered seeing her talking to him in the pub in Culdaff before Christmas, and racked my brain to see if I could remember anything unusual about it, but I couldn’t. It was the exchange with Ian Grey that I remembered.
“It might be just online,” Leah said. “Susanne sent him a friendship request and he accepted it.”
“I still think that’s odd for a teacher and pupil.”
“Ex,” she said again.
“Okay, ex. Let’s see if he’s friends with Róisín. Can you check that?”
Leah turned her chair to look at me, surprised. “Róisín McCann? Why?”
I nodded. “She’s Eddie Kearney’s girlfriend.”
“Really? She’s going out with Eddie Kearney?”
“Yes. Why?”
Leah shrugged. “I just wouldn’t have put them together. The druggie and the swot.”
“You make it sound like an American high school movie,” I laughed. “I met herself and Susanne on Sliabh Sneacht this morning. They seem to be friends.”
“Oh aye, they’d have been great muckers in school. Róisín McCann was a lot quieter than Susanne, though. Susanne was wild enough for the two of them.” She did a search, then shook her head. “No, Róisín doesn’t have a Facebook page. Although that doesn’t surprise me.”
“Why not?” I said. “Don’t most people your sister’s age have one?”
“Róisín was a real computer whizz in school. One time she hacked into the school’s system and generated a series of emails to parents telling them that the school was to close for a week because of burst pipes. There was chaos.”
“Wow. Was she expelled?”
“Suspended,” Leah grinned. “The school didn’t know how to fix it so they had to get her back in to do it for them. She’d encrypted everything. A bit embarrassing all round. I’d say she keeps her online activity fairly hidden.”
“I’ll bet.” I stood up and rubbed my neck. “Okay. Thanks for that, Leah.”
“No bother.” She glanced up. “So are we done? Is that all you need?”
“Yep. You can go back to enjoying your Christmas holidays.”
She sighed as she switched off the computer. “To be honest, I’m bored stiff. Wouldn’t have thought I’d be saying that last week!”
Before she put on her coat, I noticed that she couldn’t help tidying up a few things on her desk, and as I pulled on my own coat and scarf, she picked up a sheet of dictation, one that hadn’t been reached when we closed for the holidays. She showed it to me, pointing to one item on the list with a grim smile. “I presume I can cross that one out?”
It was a letter to Tony Craig. It took me a second to recollect what it was, and suddenly I remembered what I needed to do.
I said goodbye to Leah at the county council offices, where she had parked her car, then made my way back towards the square. Averting my eyes from the painful gap where the Oak used to be, I pushed open the door of Illusions Hair Design. I’d never been to Stan’s salon before, preferring the anonymity of Derry, so I felt a little apprehensive.
The sweet scent of shampoo mixed with the more chemical smell of ammonia greeted me immediately, the room I entered small but highly decorated: black wallpaper with red poppies covering one wall, while the others were white. There were two sinks in the center of the room and three circular mirrors along one wall, Hollywood-style lights surrounding each. Two women were engrossed in magazines under dryers, while another was having some complicated dyeing procedure administered by Róisín, who looked up and gave me a smile. The heating must have been on full blast, since all the windows were open. I wondered if they were still trying to clear an underlying smell of smoke.
Stan himself had his back to me and the drone of the hair dryers meant he hadn’t heard me come in. I watched while he moved from client to client like a priest offering benediction, clearly in his element. Finally, he turned, spotted me, and came over. I smiled. He was wearing black combats and a violet T-shirt with I am a Glendara girl! emblazoned across it.
“Are you lost?” he asked.
I ignored the dig. “I was wondering if I could make an appointment for a trim? Tomorrow, if possible?”
He gave me the quick once-over. “We can do you now, darling. It looks like it might be urgent.”
I flashed him a fake smile. “No, it’s grand. Tomorrow will do if you have the space. I think I can last till then.”
He pursed his lips. “If you say so. I’m not sure I would.”
He sashayed over to the desk, where Abby Grey was waiting to pay. I hadn’t noticed her till now.
“Four o’clock do you?” Stan asked when he’d checked the book.
“Great.”
“I’ll look forward to it. I like a challenge,” he grinned. Abby shot me a sympathetic look.
I was standing on the footpath rooting in my bag for my keys when she emerged, coat and scarf in hand.
“I suppose that’s Stan’s revenge for my never having come to him before,” I said.
“Yes,” she smiled, pulling on her coat. “He does seem to expect absolute loyalty. He’s worth it, though.”
“I like your cut,” I said, and it was the truth. Stan had managed to maintain Abby’s pixie style without making it seem too young for her.
“Actually, it was Róisín who did this,” she said. “I know it sounds pretty shallow, but it always gives me a bit of a boost having my hair done. I get it blow-dried about once a week. It’s been a rough old Christmas.”
She glanced towards the Oak. “The town looks so dreadful with that big hole in the middle of it. Stan’s not too happy about it.” She wrapped her scarf around her neck and knotted it loosely. “He was never awfully keen on Tony to begin with, and now this.”
“Really?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice, but failed.
Abby flushed. “Oh, maybe I got the wrong end of the stick,” she said hurriedly.
“I thought they rubbed along okay? I mean, I never thought they were bosom buddies, but …”
But it was no good. Abby Grey wasn’t going to say anything further. She was the out-of-towner who had said too much.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she said quickly. “I was probably putting two and two together and getting five. I’m sure it was just the noise he was complaining about.”
“He mentioned that?”
She bit her lip. “Just that he couldn’t sleep. I was in before Christmas and he said something about it.”
She couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. Even her body language was in retreat. I changed the subject. “Are you going to Carole’s funeral?”
She looked relieved. “Oh yes, we will, of course. She did some work for us, you know?”
“Yes, Ian told me.”
“I was fond of her.”
There was something about the way she spoke with her lips almost closed that made it sound as if she meant the opposite. It made me recall what Phyllis had said about Carole knowing things. There was no better way to discover things about people than to clean for them.
“Ian said she might have been going to work for you in the hotel?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she replied, her eyes gleaming, and then she was suddenly silent.
Abby Grey was not a good liar. It was clear that she had had no idea that her husband had offered Carole a job.