Crying in the Dark (21 page)

‘There are always choices, honey. That's something you need to learn. The trick is to know the right one when you see it. That'll be something for both of us to work on. We need to find the best option for you and that little girl in there. We'll work on it together, with my boss, and we'll get it right, I promise. And if we don't, we'll try something else, and we'll keep trying until we
do
get it right.'

‘Do you swear? Cross you heart and hope to die?'

‘Cross my heart.'

‘Okay then.'

My legs were cramping, but I stayed where I was. She was pressed tight into me, her fingers digging into my shoulders in a fierce grip.

‘Why are you helping me?' she whispered, her face against my hair.

I considered my answer carefully, knowing that she was terrified of what it might be.

‘Because you were my friend,' I said at last. ‘Back when you were only little, you were my friend, and I probably got a lot more out of that friendship than you did.'

‘How?'

‘I was only a student when I worked with you before. I was learning how to be a childcare worker. You taught me an awful lot just by letting me be around you. I left, and I don't think I even said goodbye.'

‘I don't remember.'

‘Neither do I, which makes me think I didn't. I was young, only a teenager, and I was probably afraid of making a dork of
myself
if I said goodbye to you.'

‘Really?'

‘Yep.'

‘I don't think I would have minded.'

‘I know that now. I guess there was a bit more for me to learn.'

‘It's nice you liked me enough to be worried about that.'

‘I did. I still do. I wouldn't be here if I didn't.'

‘I know. Thanks.'

And I half knelt/half crouched there, with her clinging to me for dear life and my legs going numb as night bore down on us and the city honked and hissed and blared beyond the window.

I went to see Mr and Mrs Byrne two days later.

They had been moved from the near-derelict structure they owned, where they had systematically tortured Larry and Francey, and placed in a small local authority house close to the city centre. I took a bus to the secluded estate and arrived shortly after ten in the morning. Loud country and western music was blaring through the front door, and I had to knock hard before I finally gained admittance.

Vera Byrne was probably not five feet in platforms. She had long, dishwater-blonde hair and prominent buck-teeth. Her eyebrows formed one single line of dense hair across her forehead, and she had a pronounced squint. There was about her a steely intelligence, though.

Malachi Byrne, on the other hand, was over six feet tall with a pendulous gut and an upper body so wide he had to turn sideways to get through most doorways. This great bulk sat atop two skinny, short legs, making him look like he was on the verge of overbalancing all the time. He had little hair, and what he did have was cropped close to his skull in a crew cut. His face, which was swathed in great rolls of fatty flesh, contained two small, round eyes that were set close together and gave him a slow-witted, indolent look.

‘Turn down the tape, Mal,' Vera roared over the noise as she showed me into the kitchen. ‘We've a visitor.'

The house was sparsely furnished and decorated. There were no pictures on the walls and no ornaments or oddments anywhere. I sat on a narrow couch and waited while they busied themselves making tea and laying some crumbly digestive biscuits on a plate.

‘I'm not staying long,' I said, as the pair pulled over straight-backed kitchen chairs and eyed me with open suspicion. ‘I just want to ask a favour, really.'

‘Go on, speak your mind,' Vera said, smiling in a way that was making me feel decidedly uncomfortable. It was how I imagined a fox would view a rabbit just before it sprang.

‘I was wondering if you could give me a loan of the keys to your place in Oldtown.'

‘Now why would you be wantin' those?' Vera asked, continuing to leer. She had a habit of breathing through her mouth rather than her nose, and the sound of her sucking air in and out over those incisors was horrible. Her breath was rank too. I could smell it from where I sat.

‘I want to bring Larry and Francey back there for a visit. I think it would be good for them.'

‘You're up to something,' Vera said, her smile broadening. ‘Have a bicky.'

‘Thank you, no.'

‘So why do you really want to go back to our home? Why should I give you the keys to the kingdom?'

‘Your children are trying to make some sense of what has happened to them, Mrs Byrne. I believe that returning to the place where they grew up would be beneficial. They might be better able to put things in context.'

She looked at her husband, smacking her thin lips and shaking her head in a mock of confusion. ‘He sure talks sweet, doesn't he, Mal? What do you think he meant by all that palaver?'

‘I don't know, Vera.' The big man's voice was deep and stentorian. He seemed to speak only when spoken to, and spent most his time in still silence.

‘What are you actually sayin', young fella?' Vera hissed.

‘That your children need to get back into the house where it seems some frightening things happened to them. You would be doing them a great service, and showing yourselves willing to help with their recovery, by giving me the keys.'

She leaned close, her brow almost touching mine. I held my breath against the reek of her.

‘Tell me now, young man. What do you think happened to them?'

‘It doesn't matter what I think, Mrs Byrne,' I said through gritted teeth, trying hard not to retch. ‘It's what I
know
that counts.'

‘And what do you know?'

I thought about laying my cards on the table. It would have been good to freak the harridan out by telling her exactly what I knew of her. But I held back. I realized that there was much I still did not know. The children had given us only hints, allusions, hazy phantoms of what they had experienced. The way to break through the barrier of fear and suppression was to bring them back, and to do that I needed their parents' permission. My great fear was that the twins weren't ready, that making them relive their experiences would be too much. I did not want to shatter the tenuous equilibrium they had achieved.

‘I don't know anything, Mrs Byrne. The children have said very little.'

‘Humph,' she grunted and sat back.

I shuddered, not caring if they saw it or not. ‘Can I have the keys, then?'

‘Give them to him, Mal,' she snapped.

The huge man stood up and stomped from the room.

‘When do I get my children back?' she hissed at me when we were alone. ‘They belong to me, and I want them.'

‘I have no say over that. It's up to the courts.'

‘You tell them I want my children back, and I shall have them, come hell or high water. You can't keep me from what's mine.'

‘It's not as simple as that, Mrs Byrne.'

‘Oh, it is.' She raised her hand to shush me, displaying long, cracked fingernails. ‘It
is
that simple. Give them to me, or I'll come and take them. I don't care which way it goes. Either is just grand with me.'

‘Do you realize what you're saying, Mrs Byrne? You have just told me you intend to abduct your children unless they are returned to you.'

She suddenly burst into a gurgling, throaty cackle, tossing her head back and slapping her bony knees, spraying me with foul saliva in the process.

‘Oh Christ, d'you hear him? Now I may well have said that, but there's nobody here but you and me, and I don't recall sayin' anythin' of the sort.'

‘I just heard you.'

She leaned in close again, and this time I pulled back from her proximity.

‘Well, isn't it an awful pity you didn't have a tape recorder with you?'

Malachi Byrne lumbered back in with a huge bundle of rusted keys on a metal loop. He tossed it at me, and they hit the back of the couch where I sat with a heavy thud.

‘Go on,' she said. ‘Play your games. Get those keys back to us by next week, no later. That's still our house, and we'll be returning there one of these days. I'll be having those two little ones back soon enough, too, so make the best of them while you can. Show him the door, Mal, my love.'

A hand like a shovel made to grab me by the shoulder, but I twisted away and shot out of his reach.

‘I can find my way, thank you.'

My phone rang as I walked back to the bus stop. I looked at the display, but the number had been withheld.

‘Yes?'

‘It's Devereux. I think I may have something.'

‘Go on.' Mina had been missing for three days, now, and the chances of finding her were getting slimmer by the hour.

‘I have the name of someone with the particular … propensities we discussed. He fits the description of the man you encountered in The Sailing Cot.'

‘Do you have an address?'

‘Not yet. But I will. Probably by this evening. We should move as soon as possible.'

‘Agreed. Call me.'

‘We'll talk later.'

Olwyn seemed to have abandoned the Goth look completely. She was not due on shift that morning, and I met her at an Internet cafe near where she lived. She told me airily that she was a huge fan
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
and had developed several websites which she spent nearly all her free time maintaining. But the coffee was very good and the geek factor was always entertaining, so I didn't complain.

‘Why
Buffy?
' I asked out of idle curiosity as she tapped away at the keyboard, her eyes glued to the monitor.

‘Because it's the best thing on TV. And it speaks to me. I see a lot of my life in there.'

‘Ah, but is it better than
The Simpsons
?'

‘Different types of shows. I don't really watch cartoons.'

‘Do you watch anything other than
Buffy
and
Angel
?'

‘Um … no.'

‘Hard to make any comparisons, then.'

‘S'pose.'

I watched her continue to post whatever comment she was broadcasting across the globe via the world-wide-web. A skinny kid sitting on the other side of me puffed on an asthma inhaler. Two pre-pubescents across the room were arguing the relative merits of Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings
versus Ralph Bakshi's cartoon version. The fact that I actually knew what they were talking about made me wonder about my own nerd credentials, which caused me to feel a bit uncomfortable, so I stopped listening. Finally, Olwyn swung her chair away from the screen and smiled at me. ‘So, what's up?'

I hoisted the keys up onto the desk in front of her. She stared at them.

‘What are those?'

‘The keys to the Byrne homestead.'

‘Why are you showing them to me?'

‘I want to bring Larry and Francey back there.'

She turned pale. Without the make-up she was actually quite a pretty girl. My heart went out to her. She knew what I was about to ask, and I watched her struggle with the desire to tell me to go to hell.

‘Why are you telling me this?'

‘I want you to come with me.'

‘But … but I'm a screw-up. I'm no good, Shane. Take someone else.'

‘Who?'

‘Karena. Bríd, maybe.'

‘There's no bond there. The twins haven't shown any affection or interest in anyone else. You're the only person on the staff team either of the twins has formed an attachment to. Which makes you the obvious choice.'

She was still gazing at the keys. I had to admit, they were quite a sight; these were not the modern type, but the big, ornate pieces of ironmongery from the doors of an old home with ancient, heavy locks. There was a weighty symbolism at play. I was aware of it – how could I fail to be? Here were the keys to these tormented children's souls. We were about to open Pandora's Box.

‘I … I don't want to go. I'm sorry. I just can't.'

‘Why?'

‘I'm afraid of what we'll find.'

‘Me too.'

She reached over to touch the keys and pulled back, as if they were conducting an electric charge.

‘Do you really think going out there will do any good?' she asked, looking at me at last.

‘I don't know. I hope that the children will take us on a kind of tour, tell us what their lives were like when they lived there. I'm going to ask them to show us where they slept and ate and played, and we'll just have to see what comes out. I imagine it'll be fairly unpleasant stuff, and that they'll maybe freak out a little. But the precise details … we'll just have to wait and see.'

‘But you must have some idea.'

‘Yes, but only suspicions. I think that it's going to be a difficult, horrible experience for all four of us. But I firmly believe – no, strike that – I
know
that it's the only way we're ever going to get through to the twins. I can't do it on my own, and I need someone with me they'll respond to if it gets rough, which it probably will.'

‘When do you want to go?'

‘This afternoon.'

‘Oh God!'

She buried her face in her hands. I knew how she was feeling, because I was feeling it too. I didn't want to do this any more than she did. But there was no other way.

She spoke through her fingers, as if confining herself to darkness would make it somehow easier.

‘All right.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Tell me it'll be okay. That we'll be fine and they'll be better afterwards.'

‘I can't. But whatever comes, we'll deal with it as best we can.'

‘I don't think I really want to know what happened to them. I think I'm better off not knowing.'

I looked about us at the acned, greasy-haired, bespectacled young people, engrossed in their sci-fi and role-playing games and cult television shows.

‘It's part of our job, unfortunately, to know things that other people don't,' I said. ‘It's the toughest part of what we do, without a doubt. You're right, you probably
are
better off not knowing. You could live the rest of your life in perfect happiness without ever giving it another moment's thought. By going with me this afternoon, you'll see things and hear things that will stay with you and haunt your dreams and maybe a little bit of you will remain in the old house with whatever we find there. I'm not going to lie to you about that. But by doing it, we're giving Larry and Francey a chance to heal. With a bit of luck, they'll come out the other side happier and more at peace, because we'll have helped them to exorcize whatever demons are inside them. And that's what makes it worthwhile. That's how you do it, see? By remembering
why
you do it.'

She sighed deeply and spun back around to the computer and its glowing screen.

‘I'll be at work this afternoon,' she said. ‘I need to finish this now.'

I nodded and stood up, taking the heavy bundle of keys with me.

‘I'll see you later.'

She didn't look at me or respond. She was back where she was happiest, in a place where the monsters weren't real.

The Byrne house nestled like a tumour into the hustle and bustle of Oldtown. It had been there before the ghetto had developed, a remnant from another time, somehow still clinging to its otherness. An ugly wreckage, it was a three-storey townhouse, surrounded by walls on three sides and with iron railings out front. An overgrown field of maybe half an acre backed onto the property – had probably belonged to it at some point in the past. I wondered who owned it now. It made no sense that no one had built apartments or an office block on it. But then, who would want to live or set up a business next door to this nightmarish house? It exuded a palpable atmosphere of being somehow off-kilter. I was reminded of the house of cake in
Hansel and Gretel.
This structure was just as strange and out of place.