It was gone three on an April afternoon, a light rain falling. It was mild. Mild is the best we ever get. All our weather is varying degrees of mild. And not just the weather. Our mountains are mildly high. Our rivers never rage. Our wildest creature is a badger. A badger would roll a cigarette for you if you asked it nicely. As a people, it is our very mildness that prevents us from dealing with the very few nutters who screw up our country. In Northern Irish terms, shut the fuck up was pretty fucking mild.
The Malone Road is mild, and inoffensive. Malone and the various Deramores and Bladons that lead off it. The area is dominated by the Royal Belfast Academical Institution’s playing fields, by Methodist College, by people with more sports cars than they know what to do with. Malone is home to millionaire pop stars, celebrity chefs, heiresses and politicians. Home to Jack Caramac. A million and a half for a house in any provincial city isn’t bad going. Jack’s was north of that. Red brick, mature trees, rolling grounds.
I parked just around the corner, but in a position where I could just about see the lower half of his lengthy driveway. Ten minutes after I arrived, Jack drove out. I gave it a couple of minutes before starting up and driving in. There were still two other cars sitting on the gravelled forecourt, a BMW and a Mercedes. I was hoping to catch his wife, Tracey. I knew her of old. Jack spent so much time projecting his personality and opinions on the radio that when he was off air he didn’t have a huge amount left to say for himself; even with his child momentarily kidnapped, he had been vague on the exact circumstances, on the detail I needed to move forward. Jimmy was missing for a while, nobody seemed to notice, then suddenly he was back with the note. Tracey at least should be able to give me a little more detail. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. She was a motormouth.
I rang the doorbell. It played ‘Lady in Red’. For a long time. I wanted to smash it with a hammer. But I had no hammer. It would keep. After an eternity, a girl, probably no more than nineteen, twenty, opened up; she had Jimmy in her arms.
I said, ‘Hiya, Jimbo, long time no see.’ He gazed at me without any semblance of recognition. So I said, ‘Is Tracey in?’
‘No.’
I said, ‘Oh. I was hoping to catch her. You’re . . .?’
‘I am nanny.’
‘Is that your name or your occupation?’
Nanny the nanny wasn’t absolutely impossible.
Okay, it was going to be one of those ones. Her face was pale and expressionless. She was in tracksuit bottoms, a buttoned bally jersey and slippers. Every few seconds she gave Jimmy a little jiggle with her arm. There wasn’t a lot to pin her accent on, but it was probably somewhere west of Carnlough and east of Krakow.
I said, ‘I’m Dan – I’m working for Jack. About what happened to Jimmy . . . him disappearing?’
‘Not my fault.’
‘I didn’t say . . . Do you mind if I come in and have a wee word with you? I need—’
‘No come in. Come back when they are here.’
‘It’s just a couple of questions.’ I delved into my jacket and took out one of my business cards ‘That’s me, that’s my name.’
She looked at it, nodded and handed it back. ‘It is card. Anyone can have card. You could be serial killer.’
‘Well if business doesn’t pick up . . .’ I stopped that one almost as soon as I started. Talking to someone with only a basic understanding of English is like speaking to a moron. I said, ‘You haven’t noticed anyone hanging around, maybe checking the place out?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You.’
‘I mean—’
‘Come back another time. No thank you. Nice day.’
She closed the door. I stood there, mildly damp. I was not unused to rejection.
I walked back down the drive, past my car and out on to the main road. As a reporter, I had spent many unhappy hours knocking on doors asking questions. You get kicked back all the time. Reporters make Jehovah’s Witnesses look popular, and they’re a bunch of bloodless cunts. At least then I could legitimise my enquiries with a nice laminated NUJ badge. Now I was just being nosy, with only a dodgy business card out of a cheap machine to back me up. But it had to be done. Once in a very long while you hit paydirt.
To the left of Jack’s, there was a half-built house leveraged into what appeared to be a patch of ground that was too small for it. Certainly the outer edges of the building butted up against the perimeter trees and hedges of its neighbours. There was no sign of workmen, or large construction equipment; a cement mixer sat neglected, with weeds growing up around its base. Across the city there were many similar developments destined never to be finished. The world economy was in the shitter. Everyone had a different theory about who to blame. With my luck, I was surprised nobody had pinned it on me yet.
To the right, there was another large dwelling, considerably older than Jack’s, with a hint of neglect about it. Opposite was a row of six more recently constructed townhouses: I had a vague memory of the fine old house that had been knocked down to make way for them. C’est la vie.
I decided to try the townhouses first. My eyes were immediately drawn to the one on the far left with the silver car in its short driveway. I knocked on the door. An elderly man with wispy hair answered. I showed him my card. It seemed to confuse him. It seemed to confuse many people. But he was friendly enough. He lived alone. The car was his. He hadn’t noticed anyone lurking. Nobody was at home in the next four. The final door was opened before I knocked. A young woman, maybe thirty, in tight jeans and a white shirt with her hair tied back and sunglasses pushed up, was coming out in a hurry.
She said, ‘Oh!’ nearly bumping into me. ‘Sorry!’
Make-up perfect, lovely smile.
I gave her my card and asked if she’d heard that someone had tried to lure a child into a car across the road. It was close enough to the truth. She made a horrified face and said, ‘Here . . .? Oh my God! Where?’
I pointed to Jack’s house. ‘Their four-year-old. He’s fine, but it could have been worse.’
‘Wee boy?’ She was nodding across the road. ‘I see him running about their garden, and seen him out on the road a couple of times. Walked him back in once; it’s a busy road. They have like a young girl, teenager, walks him up and down in a stroller sometimes?’
‘Nanny,’ I said.
‘Yeah, she’s a strange one. I tried to talk to her once about the boy wandering and she didn’t want to know.’
‘She’s foreign,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I know, but still.’
‘So you haven’t seen anything unusual?’
‘Not that I can think of. Sorry, I’m in a bit of a rush.’
‘No problem. Sure, keep the card; if you think of anything, give me a bell. Or just give me a bell.’
She kind of half laughed, and looked at my card anew. ‘Dan Starkey? I know that name.’ She studied my face. ‘Didn’t you used to be big in newspapers?’
‘I’m still big,’ I said. ‘It’s the newspapers that got small. Tabloid, mostly.’
She nodded uncomprehendingly. ‘So what’s this? Like a wee retirement job?’
‘No,’ I said.