AARP Hearing Center
ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE LAM
Chapter 35
Saturday, June 4, 2016
CONOR AND I STAY in bed all morning, fortified by room service coffee and scones.
We watch the news, our legs entangled under the covers. The newscasters remind viewers that Niamh Horrigan has been gone for fourteen days now. They’re trying not to say it, to say that Teresa McKenny was held for fourteen or fifteen days before she was killed, June Talbot for sixteen or seventeen. Instead they say, “The Gardaí are concerned about the length of time Niamh has been missing. In Wicklow, surrounded by family and friends, her parents wait for news. And pray for her safe return.” I imagine Roly and Griz and Joey and Regan and everyone, following up on the Herricks lead, getting CCTV footage, checking whatever alibi he might have given them.
We walk out to Sandymount Strand and have lunch at a little café on the green. Conor buys papers and I read the Independent while he looks through the Irish Times. Stephen Hines has a story with some good scoops in it in the Independent. He knows about Robert Herricks and though he doesn’t name Herricks, he writes that “gardaí are also searching the home of a Baltinglass man said to be a person of interest in the Horrigan disappearance.”
Conor drops me at Grand Canal Dock and I sit on a bench in the sun, returning emails from home. I’m meeting Emer at her office at two.
The Triventa building is huge, the front made up of windows. There’s a coffee shop next door and outside, a small group of young people stand around, speaking English with different accents, drinking coffee from paper cups.
I stand near the entrance and a few minutes later I hear a voice calling, “Maggie!”
It’s Emer, her blond hair short now, her face thinner. She’s wearing a black blazer and jeans. She gives me a quick hug and stands back. “You look just the same. Let’s get coffee. I’ve been working today to catch up from my trip but it’s always like this on the weekend. This lot have no lives to speak of.”
We get lattes and find a table. I say, “That’s your office next door? It’s amazing.”
“I know. I’ve been here a couple of years and I still have to pinch myself sometimes. I’m seriously one of the oldest people here.” We sit down and she waves at someone across the room.
Finally she says, “So ... ?”
“Sorry, as you probably know, I’m over because they’ve found some new evidence in Erin’s case,” I say.
“I saw. Do they think it’s connected to this other woman who’s missing?”
“They don’t know. I assume the Guards have gotten in touch with you a few times over the years?”
“Yes. Not as recently, though. Detective, uh, McNeely, I think her name is. She rang me up a few times, to ask me if I’d ever heard a name or of a restaurant or pub. I assumed they were following up on tips.”
“And you never did?”
“No.”
“What about Daisy? Did they ask her?”
She hesitates, frowns, then says, “I think they did, yeah. They must have done.”
“And you didn’t think of anything or remember anything more that could have helped? It’s funny. Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about Erin’s decision to go down to Glenmalure. It just seemed so ... sudden, as though someone must have called her and told her to meet them down there or as though she met someone. But in your statement, you said there weren’t any messages. So why did she go down there?”
“I don’t know, Maggie. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve given out to myself about not ringing her da earlier. I just keep thinking that if we’d rung him up the first night she didn’t come home, then ...”
“I didn’t mean that at all,” I tell her. “She’d done it before, so it didn’t seem strange to you. She was an adult. She wasn’t in the habit of telling you where she was going.”
She smiles gratefully. “As my friends have had kids, and the kids have become teenagers, I just keep thinking about how the parents know where they are every second, with mobiles and social media, like. I don’t even know if you could disappear like that again. If she’d gone traveling, she would have been posting pictures of her trip on Instagram and we would have been liking them and telling her to have a pint for us.”
“It’s true. You can’t imagine how social media, camera phones, all that have changed police work.” I take a sip of my coffee. “There isn’t anything else you’ve thought of over the years, is there? We’re a bit desperate. If we can figure out what happened to Erin, we may be able to help find Niamh Horrigan.”
“So they think she ...” Emer’s eyes dart away, troubled.
“It’s the logical assumption. Erin didn’t ever talk about being afraid or thinking someone was following her, did she?”
I can see Emer thinking. “I ... don’t think so, but ... you might want to check with Daisy. I have this memory of her saying something to Daisy, but I can’t think what it was. It must not have been anything very important or Daisy would have said at the time.”
“Maybe it was about Hacky O’Hanrahan? It was Daisy who spoke to him when he called, right?”
“Maybe.” She doesn’t sound convinced, though. “It’s funny about him. I was in a meeting with him a few years ago and I remembered that he’d maybe been seeing Erin. He was putting together some deal with an American technology company and I was brought in to talk about the developers.”
“Did you say anything?” I was curious how he’d reacted if she’d asked about Erin.
“No. It would have seemed mad. It wasn’t my meeting.”
“But you never met him, right? He never came to the house?”
“I don’t think so. But I remembered the name. It was funny to be sitting across from him.”
She tells me about her job as a programmer and I tell her about Lilly and my job. We’re like two old friends, catching up. For a little bit, we forget why we’re talking.
“How is Daisy?”
Emer drains her coffee cup. “She lives in Germany now. Her wife is German and they have a lovely little boy. I get cards from them, but we haven’t talked in years.”
It’s the way she says “wife” — a little hesitant, a little challenging — that makes me search her face. There’s something there that makes me realize what I’d missed twenty-three years ago.
“Hang on, were you and Daisy a couple?” I ask her. “You were.”
She laughs. “Oh God, it must have seemed so odd to you. I’m sure it did to Erin, too. Yeah, we were in love. Or lust, I suppose. No, love.” She smiles a little. “We came to Dublin and got the place together because we wanted to be together for school. But neither of us was ready to be out yet, so we snuck around. Poor Erin. I think we made her really uncomfortable. She must have picked up on something, but we were so closeted — I was terrified my mam and dad would find out — and I think we gave her the idea we didn’t want her around. I’ve felt badly about that, that we weren’t friendlier.”
I’m surprised, but it instantly makes sense. The silences, the way I always felt like I was intruding when I was at the flat. I had been intruding. They just wanted to be alone.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” I say. “It’s terrible, but I had no idea. I overheard you whispering once. You spoke in Irish and I understood a few words. Something about a secret and wondering if Erin knew.”
“We couldn’t tell if Erin knew,” she says. “Or if she’d told you. We didn’t know what to do. I didn’t come out for a good five years after that. I think Daisy was longer. Her parents are really conservative. But they’re fine now. She fell in love with a German woman at her first job out of college. They got married a few years ago and live in Aachen. They have a little boy. He’s darling. Her mam and dad love him.”
“And how about you? I was happy to see the news on marriage equality.”
“Yeah, it was fantastic, wasn’t it? My girlfriend and I have been together ages but we haven’t taken the plunge yet. We’ll see. It’s amazing to me to think how far this country’s come in twenty years. Are you married? You didn’t say.”
“Divorced. I got Lilly out of it, though. My ex and I get along well, so it’s okay.” I almost tell her about Conor.
And then she says, “I’ve wondered over the years how you were, whether there was anything new. I wonder and I . . . like to think she did just take a ferry or a plane somewhere and that she’s happy. Really happy. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I like to think that, too,” I say. “Erin could be so ... You never knew what to expect. But when she was happy, she was like a beautiful kite on a perfect day, you know? She could be filled up with joy.”
“I saw that once,” she says. “Not long after she moved in. She’d been out for a walk and she came back, her cheeks pink, her hair all blown by the wind. She was laughing and she said, ‘Emer, I love Ireland! I love it here!’ It was so American, you know? That’s what I thought at the time. But that’s how I like to think of her. That happy and all.”
She walks me to the main door and tells me goodbye. When I turn around to wave, she’s smiling sadly.
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