He walked to the front door with Karl, a big man with bulk, all of it solid. Climbing ladders out of forbidden orchards was a far cry from the ladders he climbed these days. He was losing his hair but that just enhanced his masculinity, his sense of knowing his place in the world. A functioning alcoholic, who seemed capable of drinking through the night and turning up for work the following morning, clear-eyed and clear-headed.
Karl drove over the humpback bridge that spanned the marsh river and swerved as he turned too sharply into a bend on the road. The old house where Isaac Cronin had lived was visible in the headlights, the rusting gates once again padlocked. An image came to mind, a laser blast that seemed to explode inside his head. The sense of menace he had experienced in the basement. A feeling so undefined he had forgotten it until this instant. Graffiti sprayed on the raddled walls. Broken glass crunching underfoot. That smell penetrating through the mould and rot. Spray paint, faint fumes trapped in the turgid basement air.
He parked the car and took a torch from the glove compartment. Was he mad, he wondered, as he climbed through the gap in the wall and entered the old house. Apart from his footsteps, the house was steeped in silence. He made his way down the steps into the basement and shone his torch around it. He moved closer to one wall. The graffiti on display was a microcosm of the world outside. Undying vows of love, initials entwined. Hatreds twisted into tight, hard angles. Flourishes that promised to save humanity. Hammer fists that threatened to destroy it. And there, in the midst of this gaudy collage, Karl saw it. Blasted Glass’s new logo, the font softer and more curved than the splintered lettering the band had once used. Had Constance sprayed that logo on the wall? His mind seethed with possibilities. Had she broken her promise to him and, angry with her parents, taken on another challenge, lured by the thrill of danger and the secrecy it demanded?
Karl stepped carefully around the debris on the floor and moved closer to the wall. The paint looked fresh compared to the other drawings, the colours still vivid, no streaks of dust and mould. Who was with her when she sprayed that logo on the wall? Who was with her when she left – or was she still here somewhere, imprisoned? Dead?
The word lurched against his heart. He had to build that possibility into his consciousness but he was not prepared to go down that dark path, not yet. He searched the rooms, retracing the steps of the volunteers. They had found nothing so why should he? Yet he kept moving from one room to the next. A rat scurried past and disappeared into a crack in the floor. Stuffing spilled from sagging armchairs and a rusting saddle. A table lay on its side, two legs missing. A piano sounded a note when he hit a broken key. He went outside. Dawn was a sliver on the horizon and the pale moon had yet to fade. Sky graffiti, the symmetry of a pearled circle shining over a wretched house that offered nothing except an explosion of paint blasted against a basement wall.
Had the mobile cover found in a bed of thistles belonged to a secret phone The Fearless used to record their escapades? What cover had been on the phone Constance used when she showed him the video of the shack party? He couldn’t remember. He turned suddenly, convinced that someone was hovering on the periphery of his vision. He shone his torch into the tangled undergrowth but was unable to see anyone. He climbed the wall and slumped over the wheel of his car. Was he going crazy? Constance would never have come here. He had spoken to Tracey and Gillian at the community centre on the first day of the search. They had been just as bewildered as everyone else by her disappearance. Nothing in the texts they exchanged had suggested that Constance was preparing to do something so reckless. And yet… that logo. The same one she had doodled many times on copybooks and notepads.
The blinds were down on Cherrywood House as he drove past. Justin and Jenna would be sleepless behind them. Their silence was the deepest cut. A wound Karl feared would never heal. What would they think if they knew where he had been? If only she had left her name on the wall ― CONSTANCE WAS HERE – in three-dimensional boldness. But that explosion of colour he had seen – what did it signify? Nothing. Blasted Glass fans were numerous and the image of shattered glass had been merchandised on T-shirts, posters, mugs, anything with a surface that could be exploited to display the band’s symbol. His suspicion would only add to their fears, not their hopes. He was crazy, his imagination in overdrive. He drove past the high security gates of Cherrywood House without stopping.
Reluctant to return to his empty house, he continued driving until the lights of the city came into view.
Chapter Ten
Dawn rose above the Daniel O’Connell monument. Pigeons strutted past the bench at its base, ignoring Karl’s feet and fearlessly pecking at the night’s leftovers. The traffic was sparse, mostly taxis and some early-morning commuters heading across O’Connell Bridge. He dozed on the bench and was jolted awake by pedestrians hurrying past him. The pulse of the city had quickened and the early edition of Capital Eye was on the streets. A newspaper vendor walked past. The placard stuck to the front of his orange hi-vis jacket read Suspicion Grows as Connie Search Continues.
Karl bought the paper and returned to the bench. Amanda Bowe’s report was accompanied by the same photograph of himself and Constance at the Tin Toy Soldiers gig.
Fears grow as each day passes that Connie Lawson, 13, could have been abducted by someone she trusts. Gardaí leading the search for the missing schoolgirl are following a definite line of enquiry. They are appealing once again to the public to come forward if they have any information that can help them to trace the teenager’s movements on the night of her disappearance.
He pressed his hand to his forehead and stopped reading. The feeling that he was under observation intensified. Was someone watching him now? People ran for buses, pushed shopping trolleys, lingered in front of shop windows, and some, fugitives from this normality, shuffled by with glazed indifference. But even that could be a subterfuge. To hide among the homeless and addicted was to remain invisible.
‘Shocking tragedy.’ The man sitting beside him was also reading Capital Eye. ‘That poor kid’s dead, no doubt about it. I’ve a daughter that age myself. Jeeze… there’s times I want to lock her up in a tower like Rumpelstiltskin.’
‘Rapunzel,’ Karl replied.
‘Whatever.’ The man shrugged. ‘I reckon it’s the uncle what done it. Castration, that’s the answer. The bleedin’ hearts can shout all they want about their civil liberties but that’d take care of them sickos quick enough.’
The wafting smell of the man’s takeaway breakfast roll turned Karl’s stomach. Afraid he would throw up, he walked away without replying. He flagged down a taxi and directed the driver to bring him to Fitzwilliam Square. He desperately needed to talk to a solicitor.
Angelina Ward, Lar Richardson’s legal expert, kept him waiting just a short while before he was ushered into her office. They had worked together before on sensitive features he had published in Hitz and Karl respected her opinion.