‘He’s black,’ the boy had said, referring to Scarface’s hair and not, as Amanda now realises, to his skin colour.
She digs her nails into her palms as she recalls that haunting sense of awareness she experienced on the few occasions she had seen Ben Carroll without his costume. His pallor emphasised by that matt, black sweep of hair falling over his forehead. His face disfigured by that scar and those glasses, the blue hue obscuring the clarity of his eyes. His accent, the drawling vowels and soft Ts reminding her of New York, so that it was his accent, not his voice, she always heard.
This is a preposterous thought, impossible. The raucous crow, as if sensing her outrage, flies above her head in a flurry of wet feathers.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Lar is speaking to Detective Garda Newton when Amanda runs towards the old house. The rain has stopped but the trees are still weeping. The door knocker shines with brassy newness. She bangs it repeatedly. The sound that echoes back belongs to empty spaces.
At the back of the house, the blinds are drawn and she is unable to see inside. She rattles the handle on the door. To her surprise, it’s unlocked. She steps into a spacious kitchen with white walls and modern, built-in presses. The marble surfaces are bare and gleaming. The presses are empty and spotless, not even a crumb or a spill to suggest they’d ever held food. She moves through the downstairs rooms. Sterile, impersonal surroundings, no photographs or bric-a-brac to give them a sense of ownership. One room has a child’s desk with two bright red chairs, the only splash of colour in this stark, white space. Another room is clearly used for sleeping and has two beds, both stripped of bedlinen. Upstairs, the rooms are spotless but empty, the walls also painted white.
She returns to the bedroom. Marcus has been here. She feels this certainty on her skin, tingling. In her heart, pounding. In her brain, spinning. She kneels beside the nearest bed and closes her eyes. Come to me… come to me, she calls to him from the depths of her soul – yes, her soul, that only he has ever managed to unearth and touch. He is so close. She can smell his sleepy muskiness, feel his dewy warmth when he awakens in the mornings. She opens her eyes and sees it – a sliver of amber between the mattress and the wooden base of the bed. She thinks about the sliver of her flesh captured on camera as she ran from her car to his school. It revealed everything, laid bare her guilt… and this, now, this sliver of evidence is within her grasp.
She slides her hand under the mattress and draws out the crumpled piece of fabric that carries her son’s sweat, carries the imprint of his body. The Super Plink T-shirt he was wearing under his uniform on the afternoon he disappeared.
Someone knocks at the front door, the sound urgent, demanding. Lar is outside with the police, a huddle of them searching for her, drawn to the house by the lights. Wordlessly, she holds Marcus’s top out to Lar, but it is taken from her by Detective Newton and bagged as evidence before he can touch it.
In Glenmoore Garda Station, she sips hot tea and shivers under a blanket someone has found for her. Facts have come to light. The house belongs to Ben Carroll, who had located Isaac Cronin’s next-of-kin and bought it shortly after he signed away his rights to all plink merchandise. Burned out fragments from the set of Plinkertown Hall have been discovered in the orchard. A new investigation is beginning and, once again, Amanda can do nothing but wait.
Back at Shearwater, she switches on her laptop and studies photographs of Karl Lawson. He is angry in each one. That was what she’d always thought until now. Angry and aggressive, guilty too. But, now, she sees his fear, his bewilderment. His struggle to grasp what was to come. She searches for photographs of Ben Carroll and finds only a few. They have been taken mostly from oblique angles, so that his face is shadowed or the brim of his hat shades his eyes. She studies his angular cheeks, the disfigurement of what was once an arrogant mouth, and knows that her suspicion is right.
Lar acts as if she has taken leave of her senses when she insists that Karl Lawson and Ben Carroll are one and the same. His eyes bulge with disbelief; in the midst of his terror, he now also has to deal with a crazed wife. Everything has changed with the discovery that Ben Carroll is responsible. When Lar thinks it through, he understands why. Resentment over a business deal. He has been there many times in the past, when those who believed he’d pulled the wool over their eyes raged and threatened legal action against him. None had dared to do what Ben Carroll did – Lar is prepared to accept that fact – but to suggest he’s been hoodwinked by a man with a double identity is ludicrous.
They are still arguing when Amanda’s phone rings. An unknown number appears on her screen. A woman speaks her name.
‘Mrs Richardson, is your husband with you?’
‘Yes, he’s with me. What do you want?’
‘Please put your phone on speaker,’ she says. ‘And listen carefully to what I have to tell you.’
Super makes pancakes with Nutella for breakfast. Marcus eats three and Super says, ‘Whoa there, little man. If you eat any more you’ll never fit into your Bravo costume.’ He laughs real loud when Marcus sticks out his tummy like a kangaroo but then his face is sad again, like when he told Marcus that their Plinkertown adventure was over.
After breakfast, Marcus puts on his Bravo costume. Super was wrong. It zips up real easy.
The rain is still falling when they reach the big city. Super shelters Marcus under an umbrella and they run all the way to the Children’s Cave so they don’t get wet.
Marcus loves the Children’s Cave. It has trampolines and slides and a swimming pool and a stage with lots of little chairs in front and a place with buns and cakes and crisps. A plink poster is on the wall outside the acting cave. Super reads the words out loud. Final Performance of PLINKERTOWN HALL.
He brings Marcus to the front row and says, ‘You’re a very special boy, Marcus. I’ll never forget you.’ He gives Marcus a plink lollipop and popcorn and goes behind the curtains on the stage.
The plinks come out and shout hello to the boys and girls. Super looks smaller than he does in Plinkertown Hall. His voice sounds different when he shouts, ‘Have we any children here from Dublin? Have we any children here from Cork? Have we any children here from Galway?’
Marcus puts his hands to his ears to shut out the YES screams from the children. Then everyone stops shouting and the plinks do adventures.
Afterwards, Marcus jumps on the trampoline. He takes his banana and nuts and grapes from his plink backpack and drinks his orange juice.