‘And I’m Bob,’ #2
‘And without a body,’ Bob says, ‘a stain is just a stain. So I wouldn’t take much notice unless you already know that someone died in the house. Or that someone who used to live there is missing.’
That’s when Richard says, ‘You didn’t just buy a house in Dundrum, did you?’ and the air leaves my lungs like someone’s flipped a switch.
Bob shakes his head. ‘It can’t be One Delaney Row.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she said she just bought a house. That place didn’t sell. It was withdrawn, remember?’
My whole body is in such a state of alert, of anticipation, of fear, that I feel as if it’s audibly humming.
Steve, meanwhile, has set his mouth in a tight line.
I look questioningly at Mikey, then Richard, then Bob in turn.
‘Delaney Row,’ Bob begins, ‘is just off the main street in Dundrum. Looks like an alleyway. There’s a terrace of three cottages, built in the late eighteen hundreds.
Ask anyone who grew up around there – of a certain vintage, anyway – and they’ll have heard the same story about number one.
Seems like it started back in the late sixties.
Sixty-eight, I think it was. Young couple move in.
Mr and Mrs Creen. Newlyweds, already pregnant.
Screaming and roaring, all hours of the day and night.
She always has bruises, sometimes a black eye.
Billy has to be thrown out of the local pub most nights.
Then, one day’ – Bob snaps his fingers – ‘he’s gone.
Disappeared. The neighbours think he’s abandoned her.
The guards assume he staggered the wrong way home, fell into a river or something.
She gets on with things, draws her widow’s pension.
If anything, it seems like it’s all been for the best. But then his mother starts knocking on doors, asking questions.
She’s convinced that her son was murdered.
That the daughter-in-law snapped. And that Billy is still inside the house, buried somewhere. ’
I nod because I’m afraid to speak, afraid that if I open my mouth at all, the words you’re talking about my house will rush out of my mouth.
‘She moves out, new tenants move in. A few years later, it’s sold to a family.
Four teenage boys. The mother dies suddenly and then, soon after, the dad dies at the house.
A tragic incident, the guards say, which usually means suicide – but the word on the street is that one of the sons was involved.
All four sons – young adults by now – inherit the place, but can’t decide what to do and start fighting with each other about it. It’s years before it’s sold again.’
‘The last time it changed hands,’ Richard says, ‘was nearly ten years ago. But no one moved in. The neighbours assumed the guy who bought it was going to renovate and sell it on again. It was in fairly bad nick by then. The photos were pretty grim. Then one night, a few weeks after the sale, the woman in number two hears glass breaking next door. She looks out, sees nothing, calls the local Garda station – and they say they’ll check it out. She thinks no more of it.’
I brace myself, as if for impact.
‘Until the middle of the night, when she hears a woman screaming. From inside number one.’
I want to get up and run, to flee, but I have no faith that my legs will oblige me.
‘Again,’ Bob says, picking up the story, ‘she calls the guards – and finds out they didn’t bother going round the first time.
They’ll come now, they say. She goes to the window to keep a lookout and sees a woman running away from the house next door, covered in blood.
’ He turns up his palms. ‘And she never sees the owner again.’
I don’t know what to say, how to react.
‘And it’s been vacant,’ Mikey says, ‘for the last six years, at least. And this in one of the most sought-after locations in South Dublin. Practically on the Luas line.’
‘How do you know that?’ I ask. ‘That it’s been vacant?’
‘Because that’s how long we’ve been watching the place,’ Richard says.
My cheeks flare.
When Bob asks, ‘Have you ever been to Alcatraz?’ I’m so relieved by the change of subject, I don’t question what the hell that has to do with any of this.
I shake my head.
‘That was what got me interested in all this,’ he says.
‘Went there on a holiday with the family and I’d never experienced anything like it.
There was such a feeling there, something palpable.
Like a chill but not one that had anything to do with the temperature.
There was one spot in particular, where the cells faced these huge windows that looked towards San Francisco.
The prisoners could see the world they were kept separate from and, apparently, sometimes they could hear it, too.
If the wind was right. I don’t go in for anything airy-fairy, but you could feel the despair.
I think it’s like a radiation. When it gets released, the walls absorb it.
Then, forever more, it’s leaking back out. ’
‘And it can really have an effect on people,’ Mikey says.
‘We’ve seen it time and time again. Perfectly happy people move into a place that makes them feel bad, and then bad things start to happen.
They buy a house with a history and, within months, they’re fighting, someone’s depressed, lives start crumbling.
It’s like a corrosion. Or an infection, these bad feelings.
’ He pauses. ‘That’s what we thought was happening in One Delaney Row. ’
‘Until last week,’ Bob says, ‘when it’s put up for sale.
We’re thinking, Here we go. A chance, finally, to go inside.
We get new interior photos, of course, from the estate agent, but pictures don’t tell you anything about how a place feels.
But three, four days later, it was gone again.
The agent wouldn’t tell us anything except that it was’ – he makes air quotes – ‘withdrawn from the market. We thought maybe she was on to us and didn’t want to show us the house, so I got my wife to ring. But she was told the same thing.’
‘They never said it was sold, though,’ Richard says. ‘And they never put “sale agreed” online – or on the FOR SALE sign, for that matter. The sign just disappeared. And then yesterday, the guards were there.’
My heart is racing. I feel like my secrets are written all over my face.
‘We wonder if they’ve found something in there,’ Bob says.
‘Have you gone there?’ I ask. ‘Have you tried to go in?’
‘No,’ Steve says, loudly and firmly.
The other three turn to look at him.
And now, finally, I do too.
Tall. Forties. Balding. That was Alex’s description of the man he ran off on Sunday, and it’s also a good description of Steve. But what’s better evidence of him being at least one of my intruders is the way he’s staring at me.
Glaring at me, really.
Does he know who I am? Was he the one watching the house? Did he see me, standing outside it, with the guards yesterday?
The heat of his attention is starting to burn my skin.
Abruptly, I push back my chair and stand up on jelly legs. I mumble something about needing the bathroom and then scan for where that might be. I find a sign pointing down a corridor and head that way.
In the bathroom, I lock myself in a cubicle and take what feels like my first deep breath since I entered the bar. Then I take out my phone and see that Alex has tried calling me four times in the last ten minutes.
Five. He’s calling me right now.
‘Ellie,’ he says, sounding breathless. ‘Where are you?’
‘My phone was on silent. What’s going on?’
‘You’re not at home?’
‘No.’
‘Shit.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘There’s someone in your house,’ he says. ‘I can hear them. Through the wall. Breaking things. They’re in there right now.’
‘What the …? What?’
With the phone still to my ear, I unlock the cubicle door, hurry out of the bathroom and back into the bar.
And see that the Murder House Club table is empty, abandoned.
All four men are gone.