The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes Read Free Book Online Page A

mind?
    ‘And you didn’t think of setting it when you left?’
    ‘What am I? Securicor?’
    The funny thing was that I’d wanted to set the alarm on my own beloved flat when I’d left for the last time today. I’d wanted to protect it as best I could even if I couldn’t be therefor it any more. (All that stopped me was that the electricity had been cut off.) I’d felt as heartbroken as a woman in a crappy made-for-TV movie who is lying in bed dying of cancer, and giving her beloved eleven-year-old daughter life advice in a croaky voice. ‘Never …’ Pause for coughing. ‘Sweetheart, never … wear brown shoes with a black handbag.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘In fact never wear brown shoes at all, they’re rotten.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘My little darling, I must die now but please remember … aaahackahackahack … remember, never do an aerobics class after you’ve had a blow-dry. Your hair will go all frizzy.’ (Made-for-TV movies always took place in the olden days when they still did aerobics classes.)
    Jay picked up a few letters and flyers that lay on Wayne’s mat and immediately started tearing them open.
    ‘Fyi,’ I said, ‘it’s illegal to tamper with another person’s mail.’
    But he didn’t care and actually neither did I because I was overwhelmed with the beauty of Wayne Diffney’s home. Bearing in mind my own recent loss, it was no wonder I was mired in house-envy but Wayne’s place really was something special. Smallish but surprisingly tasteful.
    He’d done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I
yearned
for their colours. I hadn’t been able to afford them myself but I knew their colour chart like the back of my hand. His hall was in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room – unless I was very much mistaken – in Dead Whale. Colours I personally
very much
approved of.
    I made straight for the living-room sideboard – a beautiful built-in specimen in the alcove beside the dinky little 1930s fireplace – and started whipping open drawers. It took me roughly half a second before I slapped a little book on to the desktop and said to Jay, ‘Well, there’s his passport.’
    Jay coloured. ‘How did I miss that?’
    ‘So he’s still in the country.’ Or at least in the British Isles.They can say what they like about free movement of people in the EU but the fact is that if you’re not part of the Schengen Agreement you can’t get in anywhere without your passport. ‘That makes things a lot easier.’
    ‘What if he had a fake passport?’ Jay asked.
    ‘Where would he get a fake passport? You’re telling me Wayne’s an ordinary citizen.’
    ‘He could be a master criminal, a spy, a sleeper.’
    But it was unlikely.
    I checked out his passport photo. His hair – perfectly normal – was light brown and he was the good-looking side of ordinary. I liked the look of him. I threw the passport back in the drawer.
    ‘Who are these people?’ There were a few photos on the shelves above the drawers.
    Jay scanned a speedy eye over them. ‘His mum and dad, by the look of them. Wayne’s brother, Richard. I’ve met him. And that’s his wife – can’t remember her name, might be Vicky. That other girl, she’s Wayne’s sister, Connie. The kids? Nieces, nephews, probably.’ He shook his head. ‘Nobody.’
    ‘Wayne’s probably with that lot.’ I was irritated and astonished that Jay hadn’t spotted the blindingly obvious. ‘They look close.’
    ‘They
are
close. So close that Wayne’s mum rang John Joseph earlier this evening, worried because Wayne wasn’t answering his phone.’
    ‘Why John Joseph?’
    ‘He’s thick as thieves with the Diffneys.’
    ‘Where do they live?’
    ‘The parents and the sister are in Clonakilty in County Cork, the brother’s in New York State.’
    ‘I think Wayne’s in Clonakilty,’ I said stubbornly.
    Jay sighed. ‘Look, Wayne’s run away and he’s far from stupid. If he was with his family, he’d be too easy