Dark Mirrors (38 page)

They were right. He was easy. Within an hour of spotting her mark she was sitting knee to knee with him at his table, having danced the Lambada and established a shared love of Jack Daniels. He was surprisingly good company. She didn’t have to work too hard – in fact, she kind of enjoyed his company and kissing him was thrilling. If she could only enjoy all her nixers this much. Pity she had to put him out: she suspected he’d be great in bed.

Another life, she mused, dancing provocatively against his hips, disappointed by the idea that in this one she wouldn’t get to follow through. So she was happy to gyrate a little longer, but when he suggested they leave, she didn’t protest. They laughed the entire journey home and literally fell out of the taxi at the heavy gates that opened onto paved steps up to the villa door. Aware of the van, she manipulated her hair, arms and hand gestures so that her face was never in clear sight. Inside the door he was putty in her hands.

“A drink?” she suggested.

“Sure. Champagne?”

“Only the best!”

The powder effervesced to nothing almost immediately. Not a trace. Although she imagined she could taste it on his lips. Turning on the music, he invited her to dance and they sashayed over the short-pile rug, moving well in the beginning of the synchronised seduction, while he nibbled at her sweet-smelling neck only to, little by little, stagger and lurch clumsily as the drug took hold. His wandering hands missing their target, flopping limp by his side, as her neck morphed from nectar to night nurse. Sleep followed a blurred stupor and then he was cold. Stroking his face tenderly, she gave him one last kiss before turning on the TV, draining her own glass and waiting for her signal to leave.

The text came no more than an hour later and, as instructed, she left from the kitchen and followed the path that led past the pool to the bottom of the garden, where a faint track guided her towards the back wall of the garden next door. Taking a deep breath, she gingerly walked the narrow rough trail between it and the steep drop into the valley below. She felt rather than saw the track even out and, reaching out to her side, felt leaves instead of stone. Bending to her hands and knees, she tentatively felt out the discreet gap in the shrubbery she had been assured was there and, shimmying through it, found herself in a large garden and in no time was back onto the road, out of sight of the van she knew she had to avoid. Scanning left to right, she fixed her dishevelled skirt then walked the distance into the town centre to pick up a cab home. She was tired and had an early start in the morning.

Laying her head on her pillow before switching off her nightlight she wondered about poor Philip and what might become of him. She had learned not to ask. He didn’t get another moment’s thought and she was, in minutes, sleeping like a baby.

* * *

Like smoke they arrived, filtering without a sound, slowly spreading their deadly touch as they swept the house. Fully clad in black from head to toe, with soft soles and gloves, they moved through the villa, six in total. They crept through the house like ninjas, silently and methodically wiping every surface of all evidence of both its tenant and his guest. Without words they moved from room to room, communicating with their hands in a sharp military language learnt at a camp deep in the countryside.

When they were sure that all traces were eradicated they turned their attention to Philip, sleeping soundly now, on a plastic sheet in the centre of the living-room floor, naked except for his Armani boxer shorts. He was picked up and thrown over a shoulder and carried towards the back of the house, through the kitchen out to the rear yard, and placed carefully into the tall black-plastic waste bin. One of the intruders pushed the heavy container towards the side passage and down toward the service gate where he positioned it and then
waited, deadly still but listening.

Inside the house the collected items were bundled into black rucksacks and positioned comfortably on the backs of the remaining ninja sweepers, leaving hands free, just in case. Then they walked to the service gate where they too waited.

They felt the truck first though their feet, then heard its trundle as it rode slowly over the uneven surface of the road, pausing every few minutes to pick up its next load. As the decibels increased and the vibrations intensified, one moved forwards and silently unlatched the gate, as another pushed the bin forward, then retreated around the corner and again, waited.

The refuse truck coasted slowly past the surveillance van, coming to a stop at each villa gate to collect the bin. The occupants of the van did not heed the faces of the grimy council workers as they lugged the heavy vessels to the truck, hooked them to the mechanical arms and watched as they were hoisted and tumbled in mid-air, meeting the ground again with a heavy thud. Nor did they heed the bin that was lifted but never returned, nor the bins beyond Villa Mena that were never collected.

The shadowy figures left the way they had come, moving gracefully despite their heavy loads along the perimeter hedge, blending into the shrubbery and down the cliff face into the valley and the awaiting Land Rover.

Chapter 26

Not for the first time the security guard ran the kids off the land. These abandoned sites had become their playgrounds through the recession. Between them and the scavengers hunting for valuable trash, he had his work cut out for him. At one time there was money in these wastelands with long-since-forgotten machinery and equipment fetching hundreds, sometimes the odd thousand, euro. But these were nothing but material graveyards now, their wealth long since plundered. There was nothing left but relinquished dreams and unfinished grey and seamed concrete skeletons.

Wandering aimlessly, doing his rounds in the blistering heat, he lamented the good old days when opportunities were plentiful and dreams actually came true. In the far right corner, a wet patch, like an oasis in the desert, caught his eye. He couldn’t explain to the authorities later what made him investigate – maybe it was his naturally curious spirit that instinctively told him something wasn’t quite right – but whatever it was that lured him to it, he soon found himself digging away wet clay and loose rubble that filled a deep perimeter trench. The sun beat down on his sweating back as he cleared the hole to find, at its bottom, what looked like an old white chest, face down, its edge piercing an old water main. The trench had obviously started its life as a small hole, made bigger over time as the water seeping slowly out gradually eroded the disintegrating cast-iron pipe. The chest was heavy, but not so much that he couldn’t move it, and heaving it slowly about he realised it was an old fridge. He let it drop back onto its proper base then stepped back for a breather. The force of its drop as it hit the ground and bounced a little broke the seal to let the old door open to a crack. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he put his foot to the door, fitting the steel toe of his boot between the door and the frame, pushing its rusted hinge with little difficulty. The stench that followed pressed hard into his chest, stealing his breath. Falling back, putting his hand against the dirt trench walls
to steady himself, he couldn’t have been less prepared for the contents that spilled out in lumps over his feet. The heat, combined with the moisture, obviously had been a pure breeding ground for the array of insects that poured like lava from the sarcophagus that had
remained shut for months. His screams carried well in the still shimmering heat of the afternoon air, all the way to the village. Heads turned briefly in the direction of the echoing hills only to turn back again, disinterested, to the activity at hand.

The dismembered body tumbled from the box as he clambered from the hole, shrieking like a banshee. He had never experienced anything like it, not in his forty-five years, nor was he likely to see anything like it again. The image would haunt him: the sight of the decomposed body parts, putrid and decaying, and among them a band of rotting elastic bearing the name of Armani.

Chapter 27

One year later

Matthew stood like an angel on the altar of the church. His hands were held in prayer and his eyes were closed in semblance of deep concentration as he waited for his name to be called in the roll call of First Holy Communicants. He opened one eye, just a bit, to see if his mum was watching and seeing that she was smiled a big grin down at her. As his name was called he snapped shut the peeping eye and promised God to be a good boy. He looked so grown-up standing up there in his navy pinstripe suit – his choice, wanting to look just like James Bond – with his hair perfectly brushed and white rosette gleaming on his lapel. He was so handsome and such a great kid. Esmée felt so proud she could have burst. He had coped so well these last few months and had, through school and his First Holy Communion classes, appeared to have found solace in God, which, given his age and her own feelings on the Catholic Church, she found difficult to deal with. She supposed it was because through his innocent faith he still felt a connection to his father who was now, apparently, an angel in heaven, or so Matthew insisted. If only he knew. Matthew prayed to his angel father each night before bed and each morning as he rose. It repulsed Esmée to listen to his gentle mumbling but, despite her disquiet, she couldn’t and didn’t discourage this one comfort he had found.

“I wouldn’t worry, sis – it’s just a phase – he’ll grow out of it,” Penny had remarked when Esmée mentioned it to the girls. “It could be a boy thing too, you know – girls tend to be more open and talk about their feelings.”

“I’m not worried, really, it’s just an . . . observation more than anything else.”

“Would you two ever leave the boy be?” her mother scolded, listening to them chatter. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with him – he just misses his dad who, you two need to remember, in his own little world was perfect.”

Looking at him now beaming down at her, she agreed with her mum: she didn’t need to worry. He was doing just fine. Thankfully Amy was just that little bit younger and more interested in her Barbie than what was going on around her.

She felt awkward sitting in the pew. The last time she sat in a church had been for Matthew’s First Confession. How ironic, she thought to herself: confession! She felt uncomfortable then and even more so now. She could almost feel the crucifix vibrate overhead. But the shameful thing was that she felt no guilt. She wasn’t sorry at all. Defiant in the face of her spiritual accuser, she was more than happy to justify her actions. Sitting there watching her son and seeing how like his father he was, both in looks and mannerisms, she thought about Philip. It used to be that she thought about him several times each and every day, mostly in anger. But that had passed and he had only recently stopped being her most frequent thought of the day. After her encounter with Brady she knew he’d turn up, one way or the other, but she didn’t think it would take as long as it did. For three long months she had waited for news. Every knock on the door, every ring of her phone set her nerves on end. When word eventually came it was a relief.

* * *

As soon as she opened the door to him, she knew why he was there. Even though Maloney had become a regular visitor to the house, finding one excuse after another to call on her, this time his body language gave it away. Everything screamed ‘sorry’ from the get-go: from the stiff upright crane of his neck to the submissive lowering of his eyes. Before he’d even opened his mouth she could tell his first words were going to be “I’m sorry” and he didn’t let her down.

“I’m sorry, Esmée, but it’s not good news. Can I come in?”

Then it was over. Philip was dead. For real this time. Like she knew he would be. She didn’t ask how but she knew why.

He mistook her tears as those of grief rather than relief, and instinctively went to wrap her in his arms, but her impulse was to jump and pull back. Maloney wasn’t subtle, his intentions were becoming more than a little obvious . . . but she couldn’t go blundering into any relationship just now . . . she needed time to find her bearings, to heal.

Humbled by her rebuff, Maloney faltered and offered only a brief description as to where they had found him, thinking she didn’t need to know the gruesome details, but when she did eventually ask weeks later he told her what he knew. She felt nauseated at how he had ended up and disturbed by how little remorse she actually felt. She was responsible. But, she justified, Brady would have found him regardless sooner or later – she had just cut short the wait. Was she really that kind of person, the kind who could commit hideous acts but still sleep at night without
feeling culpable in any way? If she was, then really she was no better than Brady, although her motives were far more noble, and she had two: Matthew and Amy. They were the antidotes to her remorse; she just needed to remind herself of that as often as she could.

“Does Julie know?” she had asked Maloney that evening as they waited for Tom and the girls to arrive to “comfort’” her.

“Dougie is on his way there now,” he replied, still feeling foolish from her earlier rejection.

* * *

The day after receiving the news that Philip had been found dead she had gone to see Julie, who’d opened the door with a weak smile.

“I was thinking about you this morning,” she greeted her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

They shared a brief hug, a small gesture to their token grief, which neither really felt but both were obliged to pretend.

“There isn’t anyone else I can talk to about Robert,” Julie said after they had settled down in the living room with coffee. “Do they know how it happened or who did it?”