How can she deny the evidence of the camera? It never lies. Except that, of course, is the greatest lie of all.
She doesn’t close her eyes throughout the night. She takes no sleeping tablets to dull her wits as she waits for the coup de grace. Which one of the morning newspapers will deliver it? She knows how much patience is needed to organise the type of exposé that took place at the boatyard. The level of information necessary to ensure that everything works according to plan. Shane is versed in night photography. She’d been with him in the past, waiting patiently to capture such a moment. Together, they shared the exquisite relief when it succeeded. Her arms around his waist as he shifted gears on his motorbike and they were gone before those they’d stalked realised their souls had been stolen.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The weather has remained mild and bonfires are blazing across the country. Faintly, he hears a fire truck’s siren. A bonfire is out of control somewhere nearby. Hallowe’en is a dangerous night, filled with folklore and superstition; he shivers, though his disguise is light and breathable. Spiderman threads. He remembers the guitarist’s comment and smiles. He would take it off but Marcus is on high alert in case evil should enter Plinkertown Hall. He needs to be careful. The boy wandering at night is not a good idea. What had he seen when he looked out the window? A robber, he’d said, sobbing and clinging to Super Plink. Leader of the plinks, sworn to protect small children from danger.
He was okay today, his excitement building as the time came to leave Plinkertown Hall in his Bravo costume. The crowd at the book launch had been larger than expected. Small bodies heaving to get close to him. He’d almost lost Marcus in the crush. Still they kept coming to meet Super Plink until Margaret, the owner of Browse Awhile, locked the door and organised an orderly queue outside.
‘The children miss you on television,’ one of the mothers told him when he was signing her daughter’s book with his plink fingerprint. ‘The animated series doesn’t have the same appeal as the original. They felt they were part of the story’s creation when they drew the pictures with you.’
That day on Grafton Street when he’d sketched the boy, Amanda Bowe had asked him how the plinks originated. He had muttered something about doodles, and there they are in his journal. The journey of the plinks. An idea that originated in a prison cell had outgrown him, or so she’d claimed when she insisted the rankings were dropping. Children had stopped watching his programme and, as he was no longer needed at the LR1 studio, he had removed the cumbersome Plinkertown set to its new location.
His skin feels tight, a throbbing sensation in his upper lip. A phantom pain, now. But pressure is building, as it did so often in the past. As it did when she leaned towards him in a coffee bar and touched his scar. As it did when he saw her and her husband on the front cover of Business Font, a Richardson publication read by corporate tycoons. A two-page feature on the inside had outlined their investment in the plinks and their future plans to develop the brand.
When does wealth satisfy, he’d wondered as he read the article. Does it reach a plateau or became an unassailable mountain? And what is its value against the life of a child?
Revenge has a strange taste, not sweet, nor nasty, just unpalatable, like prison food.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Day Six
The sun rises. Clouds trail across the sky, red and bloodied as opened veins. The digital editions have gone online. A fireman was seriously injured by a flying bottle while he was extinguishing an out-of-control bonfire last night. A stabbing took place at a fancy-dress party and a young man is critical in hospital. On the front page, there’s a photograph of all the plinks in the Browse Awhile bookshop, waving at cameras and holding up Ben Carroll’s new book. Then, there is the Daily Orb. Any hope Amanda had nurtured that the story would have been pulled for the sake of Marcus and all she is enduring is immediately quashed.
Their faces are slightly blurred but recognisable through the front window, as is Hunter’s car registration. In the second photograph, Amanda is reaching towards the passenger door. Her expression reminds her of how her mother’s face used to freeze in that lurching instant before she was struck by a fist.
Collusion between Cop and Telly Babe
Lucy Knight
As the hunt for Marcus Richardson, the missing schoolboy, enters its sixth day, startling information has come to light regarding collusion between his mother, telly babe, Amanda Bowe, 32, and Detective Sergeant Jonathan Hunter, 43, one of the chief investigating officers into the disappearance of Constance Lawson six years ago.
After the tragic discovery of the schoolgirl’s body, a garda enquiry was launched into the leaking of confidential information to Bowe, who was a crime reporter with Capital Eye at that time. Hunter, who is stationed at Glenmoore Garda Station, has always strenuously denied knowing her. He repeated this claim yesterday during an official garda investigation, instigated by an anonymous tip-off that claimed there was a link between the missing schoolboy and the disappearance of Constance Lawson.
Despite this denial, the highly respected and newly promoted detective sergeant was caught on camera last night in his car with Bowe. ‘Knight on the Tiles’ has been reliably informed that he will be suspended from the force pending further investigations.
Gardaí have yet to discover if these two disappearances are connected and the search for Marcus Richardson continues. The substantial reward offered by Lar Richardson for the safe return of his only child has failed to cast any further light on the boy’s whereabouts. Apart from the anonymous tip-off that claims this is a revenge kidnapping, the disappearance of Marcus appears to be a crime without a motive.