People in Season (23 page)

In this way, Ava’s temporary position at the head of ChatterFive became a permanent one, Joanne Victoria was imprisoned, and the key which locked her up was thrown away.

It had been raining then. Towns were drowned. Despite the country being destroyed by a similar storm six years earlier, there was no disaster prevention set in place when the worst of it struck. Cork was devastated. The dams had burst. People were evacuated and their houses were flooded. Firemen and Garda were moving the population. The army reserves were in place, setting up walls of sandbags in a futile show of holding back the deluge. In time, the waters receded, the walls rebuilt, and the people returned to their flood damaged homes. All was well until next time. Dylan can’t remember when the clouds had dispersed, so lost was he in the unfolding events. He felt powerless to stop any of it and tried to ignore the feeling. It remained in his chest as a damp patch, a murmur he would feel in deep breaths and neglect, counting on the problem to cure itself. He picked up smoking again and took more late shifts. The nights he spent at home were more often on the couch than in his bed and in spite of this, he didn’t leave homicide, but sits now, awake in the night, reading reports issued by ChatterFive. A phone interrupts his thinking. There’s nobody on the other end and the dial tone goes flat.

‘Francis,’ Dylan mumbles.

The sun has come out. This late shift has come to end, an uneventful one, thank god. In the morning light outside Pierce Street Garda Station, the roads are covered with vomit and urine. City cleaners are milling about, picking up the discarded packages of burgers and chips, littered by nameless drunks.

‘He must have swallowed his teeth,’ the realisation comes to the detective now, after everything that’s happened. ‘He swallowed them, and what? How does he get them back in? If a man is willing to practice regurgitating his own false teeth for the sake of a magic trick...’

It’s the second revelation he’s had tonight. Some hours ago, as he trawled through the articles on ChatterFive, Dylan found a piece of interest. It was a lifestyle profile on a man who found some success abroad and was now bringing the luck home to this country he felt was so starved of it. In a spread of photos he sat in his apartment, charmed and boyish looking, smiling at the camera. They seemed to be setting him up as a future medical consultant for the media’s ever hungry schedule gaps. It was Doctor Alistair Evans. The byline, unsurprisingly, was Ava O’Dwyer’s, contributing editor of ChatterFive. It’s building is an hour in the opposite direction of Dylan’s house, where his wife and child are no doubt awaiting his return. The detective grabs his coat as he punches out, determined. What’s one more place to add to his list of monthly visits? It couldn’t hurt anyway. All it could take from him is time.

Crumpled packages are scattered across the editor’s desk. The paper bag which the meal had been delivered in is ripped in two, spread under the eggshell casings that carried the food. Once, it all held the promise of treats to come, but since it was scoffed down in the privacy of her office, Ava is now irritated by the mountain of rubbish. She hates seeing waste, and though her new work space is twice the size of her old cubicle, the area seems to get littered just as fast.

‘Who is this guy anyway?’ A pad displaying the piece on Doctor Alistair Evans is pushed through the discarded packaging. ‘Why lower yourself to writing a puff piece for him?’

‘Don’t remind me,’ Ava coughs at the sight of it, dodging a lengthy explanation as to her previous relationship with the doctor. She can’t comprehend what she ever saw in the man. Superficial good looks and a path easily paved into the spotlight with him on her arm, it made a certain amount of sense at the time. All the trouble he exposed her to though. He was so uncouth and so coarse. Thank god she managed to find a more elegant fit in the end. Getting this far though, she supposes, was in small part thanks to Alistair. For those few weeks they partnered he was like a rocket she had strapped herself to and jumped from right before it exploded. She thought she’d gotten away with it. As breaks go it seemed a fairly clean one. If only. After the dust on the court case had settled, the doctor got around to calling her out on the fib of a recording, and reminded her of the suggestion she’d made. His violent tantrum having subsided, he didn’t seem upset about how things panned out, just interested in whatever last benefit he could gain from their history. When Ava trusted he wasn’t looking for anything more than that, she’d kept the promise she made in jest, and permitted her old lover the carefully designed introduction to their readership he so desired, setting him on the way to public fame. ‘I owed the guy a favour. Besides, he’s got the face for it. You build these people up so you can report on them some more. I’m sure we’ll knock him down one day. Meanwhile we’ll have earned back our work given with interest. It’s all business.’

An alert chimes on her screen, saving her from going into further detail. It’s the new assistant, whats-his-name? She can never keep track of the people that come and go, mere avatars that appear as faint blips on her radar.

‘That detective is still waiting.’

‘Detective?’ she asks the screen. ‘Oh that’s right. Give us a minute.’

He arrived at the office unannounced some while ago, but lunch had been served, and well, the day just got away. Embarrassed by the rubbish in front of her – it looks like she’d eaten a family sized meal – she glances about for a dustbin in the sparsely furnished office and hurriedly sweeps the packaging into an empty drawer of her desk instead. She’s just caught a scrap of noodle on the side of her lip when the door opens and quickly guzzles it down before Detective Wong has a chance to notice. She can feel the meal swelling the stomach on her slender frame. Conscious of bulge, she walks over to cordially welcome him. ‘Dylan Wong. I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again.’

‘Ms. O’Dwyer,’ he says, cautious.

‘What a nice surprise.’

‘I was in the neighbourhood. Feels like I never left–’ he stops himself.

By the desk, Agent Myers has risen.

‘Long time,’ the social agent smiles. ‘What brings you here?’

Dylan, surprise manifest in a stunned moment of silence, finds himself wondering if he should be reaching for a gun. In a double-take, he sets his feet apart, bracing himself for the impact of whatever’s to come. Slowly, he comments, ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

Hostess skills in full effect, Ava covers the lull that follows. ‘It’s like a little reunion.’

‘It’s certainly unexpected,’ Dylan fails to recover his cool.

‘Well, I’m glad you dropped by,’ and she remains unflappable in hers.

Pleasantries exchanged, they stand, door ajar so that the sound of the newsroom trickles through a gap. Agent Myers, strolling over, ignores Dylan, explaining to Ava that he has a meeting to get to and will leave them alone to catch up. Leaning toward her, he finds the curve of her waist as he kisses her goodbye, then he shakes hands with Dylan, ‘Sorry I have to rush off. You know how it is,’ and winks, as if he’s just let the detective in on a delicious secret.

Dylan finds himself nodding in agreement. The room spins around him when he turns to watch the social agent depart. His hand feels oily after the shake and he wipes it on the side of his coat. As they’re left alone, Ava looks over Dylan’s shoulder to an intern, who understands the signal and closes the door. Twitching as it’s shut, Dylan is suspicious that with the sound of the latch he’s been caught in a trap.

‘Let me take your coat,’ Ava suggests.

‘I shouldn’t be here long,’ he stares at her.

Ava wonders if there’s another piece of food stuck to her cheek, or perhaps ink from a pen. ‘It’s roasting in here,’ deftly stepping behind him, her hands go up to his shoulders to pull the coat off. ‘Sit down. Make yourself at home.’

‘You said we should have a chat sometime...’

Did she? It would have been months ago if she had. Another life, before she was editor. Hanging the coat on a hook behind her desk, Ava tries to recall when it might have been. Dylan follows the journey the rag of a thing makes, feeling all the more cornered now that it’s in her possession. He won’t be able to leave without having to ask for it.

‘I suppose Agent Myers took you up on the offer before I did.’

Feigning a blush, Ava replies, ‘I don’t know, things just seemed to have worked out this way. He’s a nice guy. A real gentleman.’

Dylan flinches. ‘I see you’ve made some changes.’

‘Changes happen,’ Ava looks around the room. ‘I can’t take credit for them all.’

‘You’ve got yourself a bigger office than Joanne had anyway.’

There’s an accusation in the way he makes the remark.

The office they’re conversing in is what used to be the conference room. When Ava was promoted to editor she’d claimed it for herself, giving the smaller office that Joanne once occupied to the new assistant editor. That was the pretence for it. An AE should have their own space, she insisted, I worked for years keeping this newsroom together sat amongst the chaos and it’s a miracle I managed anything at all. If that meant taking the conference room for herself, well, they could just talk around the water cooler if need be. ‘Joanne was always dashing about on her feet. You’d be lucky to get a sit down with her. She didn’t really need an office at all.’

‘The cubicles are gone too.’

Another accusation.

Ava doesn’t reply. The entire newsroom has had a makeover. Gone are the walled boxes in which Joanne kept her people. In their place, bean bags and an open plan, desks that nobody can claim as their own. A shared work space, but for the segregation of boss and employee. The carpets are a startling bright red. On the wall are spreads of photos from popular stories ChatterFive has broken over the past decade. The young girl from the riot article proudly hangs among them, accepted as the victim of a flash mob as Joanne was accepted as the agent of Francis Mullen’s demise. Behind Ava, her office window overlooks the distant city where the spire rises among a spread of low buildings, the peak of it at level with her sprawling view. She was right about the heat. The sun blasts over her shoulders so the detective has to squint as they talk.

‘And Barry Danger. Gone back to London, isn’t he?’

Amused, Ava teases, ‘You don’t seem to deal with change very well. We were actually thinking of moving the whole setup. Seems a little silly having a news service operating on the outskirts of town. Joanne liked cheap rent. I think we could afford something a little closer to the centre though.’

The topic has no traction. The detective seems unsettled by the suggestion. There’s an awful stickiness in the air. Neither of them rush to find a point of conversation to justify their sitting together.

‘Agent Mullen’s anniversary mass is coming up,’ Dylan informs her. Is that spite in his voice? ‘I told his family I’d be there.’

‘It really crept up on us. I’ll be there too.’

‘You will?’ he asks, tiredly bewildered.

She wants to snap at him for it. Why shouldn’t she be there? She knew the man better than anyone else involved. Dylan never even met him. He couldn’t even solve the case! And here he is making a vulgar show of mourning. Hiding these thoughts, she says instead, ‘I think Francis was a bit lost. I tried helping him find his way, but, well, it’s pointless to regret things that can’t be altered. I don’t know if we should cover the mass for his anniversary or not. Would that be tasteless? I feel like we owe it to him. He was doing his work for us, for ChatterFive, when he died.’

Still, the detective looks at her, trying to see something. Can he smell the lingering scent of the food she’d been eating? She’ll have to get one of the interns to bin it for her when he leaves. She can’t think of anything to prompt him with, to find what it is he wants. The nicest social protocol to get her out of the situation is to stand and explain she’s busy, that they should have a chat again sometime. He’s only been here a minute, so it might seem rude, but really, he’s the one who’s acting strangely. She’d be justified in walking him out. Not convinced of this herself, she wanly sits, waiting for him to get to whatever issue it is that’s bothering him.

‘It must have been difficult, taking over under those circumstances...’

Referring to everything that led to Ava becoming editor.

‘I always knew I’d get the job someday. It’s not the route I would have taken, given a choice,’ she says sadly. ‘But we’re here now.’

‘Yes,’ Dylan agrees, ‘we are.’

As he goes to rub the stubble under his nose, his hand seems to get lost along the way.

‘Would you like a glass of water, Dylan?’

Not responding, he considers her suggestion as though it were a puzzle, some riddle from which he has to decipher a hidden meaning. Scrutinising her, he’s struggling to see to the back of her head and doesn’t notice that she’s addressed him.

‘Detective Wong?’

Ava has seen the look he wears before, that night on the steps of Francis Mullen’s building. She’d thought that it was desire but she gathers now, in the face of the detective, that it is something completely different. Like the man who came before him, she expects him to keel toward her, until, as his lips peel apart like old wallpaper, a thought seems to pull him back from the edge. Whatever it is that’s been bothering Dylan Wong, she’s about to find out. Peeved that it’s taking so long to get to it, she fixes her hair, preparing on herself the appearance of a person who listens with a compassionate ear.

‘You know, my wife and I have had our fair share of problems,’ taking a deep breath, he readies himself to expel his thoughts. ‘My work really gets to me. More than most cops I think. The other guys, they seem to be able to shut down a part of themselves just so they can get on with the job. I don’t know how to manage that. I can’t get past the horrible things people do to one another. Finding out the motive seems to help. It’s a way for me to make sense of it all. Usually people have their reasons, even if they don’t know it themselves. I almost hit her one time, you know. My wife. We were arguing and I raised my hand. I stopped myself before I did anything. But the damage was done, she’d seen it. Ever since then we’ve both lived in separate rooms. Went through the motions of marriage. The fights are just scripted, like we actually care that things are falling apart. I don’t think she hates me. But she sees I hate myself. The only reason we stay together is for the boy and sometimes I even wonder if he’d be better off if we separated. I don’t know. Is what I do worth it? There have been eighty murders in Dublin since that social agent died and I have to ask myself would the world be a different place if I wasn’t the one who was on those cases? I really don’t know.’

That’s it. All he wanted to say. Ava is flabbergasted, not knowing what she’s supposed to do with the information or why it’s been given to her. She could console him, she supposes, say the world isn’t a horrible place, good things happen, after all, look at the lovely office she’s gotten. But that doesn’t seem to be what he’s seeking. She could ask him to leave now. He’s made things uncomfortable enough, that’s for sure.

‘Did you like Francis Mullen?’ he asks. ‘Did you think he was a good guy?’

Feeling that she’s threading on thin ice, Ava tiptoes into a reply. ‘He was a caring man. Confused maybe, but always had the best of intentions.’

Dylan recognises the sentiment from ChatterFive’s obituary for the social agent and can’t figure out whether it’s something she believes, or just an idea that lets her get on with her day. By the way she talks, you’d think that Francis had been dodging falling piano’s unawares and was simply a fool for not having noticed them.

‘Well,’ he relents, rubbing his eyes, ‘ I’m going to go home now. My family will be wondering where I’ve been.’

The detective swallows, and Ava shifts in the black leather chair, waiting for him to explain why he told her all of this. There’s nothing more to say though. It was a confession, an admission of guilt, and an explanation of surrender. She doesn’t understand any of it, and she despises the mystery that she’s been handed.

‘Everything will be fine,’ she says, making sure to use the most tender smile in her repertoire. Taking his coat in her hands, she walks around the desk now and gestures for him to stand. As she slips the thing back onto him, she gives his arm an affectionate rub. ‘Go home. Tell them you love them. That’s all they need from you.’