Shooting Star

32

Lauren Geary stood in the library doorway holding the envelope, uncertain of whom to give it to. It had been delivered just after 10 a.m. and brought from the gatehouse by a waiting security man.

We had been in the library since 9.30 a.m., Tom and Barry, Stephanie, unable to meet my eyes, Graham Noyce. Pat Carson was next door, waiting to be told. Orlovsky declined to be present. ‘I hate stuff like this,’ he said.

‘Frank,’ said Tom.

He was in his position, standing behind Stephanie. This morning, he was smoking cigarettes, had smoked three while we waited.

My duty. I made the demand, I could tell them the result. I had no quarrel with that, only regret and fear.

I took the envelope from Lauren Geary, got a finger in behind the seal, ripped it open, took out the contents, a photograph, not a big print, a 4 x 3, something like that.

I turned it over.

Anne Carson, Anne Carson’s head above the copy of the previous day’s Age she was holding under her chin. Both her little fingers were visible, her left one in a neat, clean bandage. She looked clean too, her hair damp and combed off her face, comb marks showing, clean and unafraid, something unfocused about her eyes.

But alive.

‘She’s alive,’ I said.

‘Thank God.’ Tom closed his eyes, brought his hands up and made a steeple with his fingers, put his forehead to his fingertips for a second. Then he touched Stephanie’s shoulder, a father’s touch.

‘Tell your grandfather,’ he said and held out a hand for the photograph.

‘Good call, Frank,’ said Barry, not loudly, moving to look at the photograph.

‘She looks fine,’ Tom said. ‘She’s okay, we can get her out of this. Get her out. Yes.’

I left the house, walked slowly back to the Garden House, enjoyed the misty rain on my face, the smell of the newly dug beds on either side of the brick path. The gardener I’d seen the day before was resting a foot on a fork sunk deep into the dark soil.

‘Good soil,’ I said. ‘Making the beds bigger?’

‘Mr Pat Carson went to Ireland last year,’ she said, as if that were explanation enough. What did that mean? Corin would know.

Corin. I hadn’t phoned her the night before. I’d said, I’ll phone you tonight. Why had I said that? What would I have said to her? After one sandwich, one round sandwich with a hole in the middle, eaten in her vehicle?

Not hearing from me wouldn’t have bothered her. She probably thought: Thank you, God, the psycho hasn’t called. Soldier-cop psycho killer. Self-confessed.

I stood on the terrace at the French doors, cleaning my shoes on the bristle mat. Orlovsky looked up, put the phone in his lap. He was sitting in the Morris chair with the leather cushions, portable phone in his hand, ashtray full of no-name butts on the coffee table in front of him.

I opened the door and stepped into the warm, bright room.

‘Alive,’ I said. ‘Yesterday afternoon, anyway.’