Whatever Happened to Betsy Blake? Read online

  Lenny Moon – Private Investigator.

  It’s written in black felt-tip pen on a blank A4 sheet of white paper.

  Pathetic.

  He closes the door behind him and sinks back down into his Ikea office chair. Aside from the laptop, the chair is the most expensive thing in the room. A hell of a lot cheaper than the chair on the other side of the desk; a fold-out seat his mother used to use in their old home to help her reach the top shelf in the kitchen.

  Lenny opens a Word document on his laptop labelled ‘Claire Jennings’ and types the word ‘complete’ at the bottom of it, all in capital letters. Then he highlights what he has just typed and changes the font colour to red before slapping his laptop shut and resting the back of his head on to the top of his chair. He always pictures his wife when he does this. Imagines her staring at him; her lips turned down. It’s almost impossible for him to picture her smiling anymore. When he’s intent on picturing her smiling, he has to close his eyes even firmer. By the time the lips in his imagination have turned upwards, Sally’s face will have turned into something else. Somebody else. He barely tries to imagine her smiling anymore anyway. He’s just content to picture her. To know she’s still around. Still alive.

  The noise of the phone vibrating on his desk brings him back to the real world. But he knows it’s not a massive deviation. The person ringing is most likely the person he has just been thinking about. Either that, or someone is ringing about work. The chances of that are slim, though – about twenty-five per cent. Only one in four phone calls are work related; the rest of the time it’s Sally calling. She rings three times a day.

  ‘Hey, sweetie,’ he says.

  ‘Busy?’ she asks. She always asks this. He always answers the same way; by sniffing a short laugh out of his nose.

  A silence rests from both ends of the line. This is not unusual. Sally mostly calls for no reason, other than routine.

  ‘You okay?’ Lenny asks.

  ‘Yeah – today’s a good day. I think. Been cleaning the house; put another load of washing on. Jesus, Leonard, do you have to change your boxer shorts so regularly?’

  Lenny sniffs again, but then stays silent. She’s often asked this question. It’s best he doesn’t answer, best he doesn’t try to justify that he changes his underwear every morning like most people do. Like most people should. Because if he did try to justify it, he’d get barked at. It would turn Sally’s ‘good day’ into a ‘bad day.’ And that’s the last thing he wants.

  ‘Spoke with Jared’s teacher this morning when I dropped them off… says he’s been doing well in class lately.’

  ‘Oh… good, good,’ Lenny replies. ‘Was that the classroom teacher or the SEN one?’

  ‘Eh… the short one.’

  ‘Yeah – Ms Moriarty,’ he says, ‘it’s Mrs Morrissey we need to get information from. She’s the one who keeps track of him on a daily basis. We must arrange a meeting with her soon.’

  ‘You’re always saying that.’

  Lenny nods his head. He’s well aware that he’s always saying that.

  ‘Okay – just thought I’d see how you were doing,’ Sally says.

  ‘Thanks, sweetie, talk to you later.’

  Sally hangs up after repeating the word ‘bye’ seven times, like most Irish women do when finishing a phone call.

  Rather than rest his head onto the top of the chair Lenny opens his laptop, scrolls down to the Solitaire icon at the bottom of his screen and opens up a game he had begun playing when he first entered the office just before nine o’clock this morning. He’s good at Solitaire is Lenny; gets lots of practice at it. But his meeting with Claire Jennings consumed his mind this morning and he didn’t get a good enough start at the game. And getting a good start at Solitaire is everything. He checks the clock ticking away at the bottom corner of the screen. Thirty-eight minutes.

  ‘Pathetic,’ he whispers. And he’s right. It is pathetic. Especially for someone who plays the game almost every day. His meeting distracted him. He wasn’t sure how Claire would react when he revealed to her that it was her line manager at work – Derek Murray – who had set up two fake online accounts to stalk her. The poor girl has been on edge for the past three months, even left home to live with her sister because of the fear it was causing. She turned to the cheapest Private Investigator she could find after the Gardaí told her there was nothing they could do about the fact somebody was bullying her online. Lenny liked Claire, felt sorry for her. He’d be intrigued to follow up the investigation, to confront Derek, ask him why he was reducing himself to such juvenile behaviour. But he won’t follow it up until Claire instructs him to do so. He needs the upsell. Needs the money.

  The phone vibrates again.

  Fuck sake.

  ‘Yes, sweetie,’ he answers.

  ‘Sorry?’ a man says.

  ‘Oh… no, no, I’m the one who’s sorry.’

  Lenny sits upright, resting both of his elbows on his tiny desk. ‘I thought you were my wife. Eh… Lenny Moon, Private Investigator – how can I help?’

  ‘Is this Lenny?’

  ‘It is, Sir.’

  ‘Oh, good. I thought I’d get your secretary.’

  Lenny’s head pivots around his pokey room, wondering where a secretary would even sit. Atop the filing cabinet perhaps.

  ‘My name is Gordon Blake. My daughter went missing seventeen years ago. I’m dying. May not have long to live. How soon could you get to Tallaght Hospital?’

  Lenny squints his entire face; his eyes, his nose, his lips. When he started up his Private Investigating business, he had wishfully thought he would be inundated with calls such as this one. But none had ever come. Not one in the past six years. This is such an unusual call that Lenny immediately feels he is being played. Having a Private Investigating business listed in the Yellow Pages opens you up to a whole world of prank calls.

  ‘Eh… Gordon Blake, that’s B. L. A. K. E. – am I right?’ Lenny asks, tapping the name into a fresh Word document.

  ‘Yes… my daughter’s name was – is – sorry, is, Betsy Blake. She went missing in 2002. Was snatched from our street.’

  Lenny sits even more upright, his mouth slightly ajar.

  ‘Betsy Blake. I remember,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah – she’s my daughter. Please tell me you have time to give me today. I can give you one thousand euro for the next five hours of your life. If you can give me some answers, there’s more on offer. A hell of a lot more.’

  Lenny stares over his computer screen at nothing in particular. He’s trying to soak in the surreality of the call.

  ‘Let me, eh… let me just check my schedule, Mr Blake… it seems… eh…’ Lenny slaps away at his keyboard, just randomly typing nonsense into the Word document in an effort to sound busy. ‘I can push some things aside. And eh… that’s cash is it – the one thousand?’

  ‘I can transfer it into your bank account as soon as you get here. I’m in St Bernard’s Ward, Tallaght Hospital. Are you in your office? It’s close by right? You’re in Tallaght village…’

  Lenny takes the phone from his ear. Checks the time on the top of the screen. 10:19. Then he lets out a long, silent breath that almost whistles through his lips.

  ‘I’ll be with you just gone half past,’ he says.

  Seventeen years ago

  Betsy

  Daddy turns around and looks at me.

  ‘Don’t go far, Betsy.’

  Then he smiles. I like when he smiles. It means he is happy. When he is happy we play games. When we get back to our house we can play hide and seek or football. I like hide and seek best but most times I play football because I know Daddy will play that for longer with me. Football lasts longer than hide and seek. A lot longer. Sometimes we play until dinnertime. But that’s only on days when Daddy is happy. Like today. We’ll probably play football until Mummy calls us in for some stew or pasta. Today is Wednesday. It might be pasta.

  I smile back at Daddy and then he turns away
. That is okay. Maybe he is busy thinking about work. When he can’t play with me he says it is because he is working. But normally when he is working he is on the phone or on his computer. But now he is just looking out onto the road. I don’t know what he is doing. I do some dancing while I wait. I’m a good dancer. There is no music. But sometimes I don’t need music. Then a man puts his hand towards Daddy and Daddy puts his hand in his. I don’t know who the man is. It is somebody Daddy works with I think. They just stand there talking. And talking. And talking even more. I’m bored. Too bored to even dance anymore.

  I see a little wall at the end of the road and skip towards it. I am good at walking on walls. Mummy and Daddy say I should hold their hand if I’m ever walking on walls but sometimes I do it when they are not looking. I’m a big girl now. I don’t like holding Mummy and Daddy’s hands. Not all the time. My cousin Ceri doesn’t hold her Mummy’s hands anymore and she is five. I can’t wait to be five. But June seems a long way away. Even though Ceri is a bigger girl than me, I don’t think she is happier than I am. She doesn’t have a Daddy. I would hate to not have a Daddy. It would make me sad. Really, really sad. I would cry. A lot.

  I put one foot in front of the other and spread my arms out. I have seen somebody do this on the TV when they were walking on a rope. I don’t know how you can walk on just a rope. But this man did it. Way up high. Almost in the sky. He walked on a rope from the roof of a building all the way across to the roof of a other building. Mummy says the man must have gone to school for lots and lots of years to learn how to do that. That seems like a fun thing to do at school. I wonder when I am going to start learning how to walk on ropes at school.

  I put the other foot in front and then the other. Slow. I try not to look down because when I look down I feel a bit dizzy. The wall is big. It is about the same size as me. Mummy measured me with a measuring tape before. I think it was in the summertime. She said I was three foot, three inches. She said I was going to be a big girl soon. That made me happy. I can’t wait to be a big girl.

  I put the other foot in front. Then the other. I am getting close to the end of the wall. I turn back to see if Daddy can see me. I want him to smile at me again. But he is too far away. He is just like a small spot at the end of the road. There are two small spots. He must still be talking to the man that works with him.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ I wave.

  He doesn’t look. I am too far away. I should shout loud.

  ‘Da—’

  A man’s hand is on my face. He picks me up off the wall and then down behind it. He has one hand across my mouth. His other hand is around my legs. He’s holding me really hard. It hurts.

  ‘Don’t scream, Betsy.’

  I don’t scream because I am scared. But I want to.

  10:20

  Lenny

  Lenny snatches his bunch of keys from his desk, then pauses in the doorway. He’s trying to work out whether or not it’s appropriate for him to drive to Tallaght Hospital from here.

  It’s one of those in-between decisions most of us have to make on an irregular basis; take a fifteen-minute walk or be a lazy bollocks and take the car for a three-minute drive. The hospital is less than a mile away from Lenny’s office, at the far end of Tallaght.

  It’s a shared office block Lenny works from; nine small business all renting space within it. There is an array of ‘entrepreneurs’ operating here; two start-up tech guys, two freelance graphic designers, a photographer, a jeweller whose sewing machine can be heard stuttering throughout the building, a stationery designer, a copywriter – which is what Joe does when he isn’t being distracted by Lenny asking for Blu Tack – and, of course, a private investigator.

  Each of the office spaces are cramped; though cramped in different ways. Some of the rooms are square – like Lenny’s – some more rectangular – like Joe’s. But they’re all dingy, echoey and almost always cold – whatever the season. They are solitary though; allowing those who rent the spaces the opportunity to work undisturbed for most of the day and – more importantly – they are as cheap as chips to rent. Lenny pays two hundred and fifty euro every month for his space. A pittance in Dublin, even if it is for a room the size of an under-the-stairs bathroom. It’s fine for Lenny though, because aside from his advertising costs – which consist of an annual fee for his appearance in the Yellow Pages – Lenny’s overheads are minimal. He just has to make sure he brings in at least one-thousand four hundred euro every month to cover his outgoings; two hundred and fifty euro to pay for his office space, eight hundred and fifty to pay the mortgage on the family home along with utility bills, plus the three hundred he and Sally calculate they need for groceries each month to feed all four Moons.

  For the most part he just about manages to sneak in the required amount, but there are months when the family have to live on reheated stews and coddles for days on end when he comes up a little short.

  Lenny has tied himself to two insurance companies who use him on a regular basis to find out whether or not they are being scammed by people making claims from them. The money from these jobs is decent enough – about two hundred euro a go. But Lenny needs to ensure he picks up at least seven of those gigs a month. Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. There’s no projecting it. Though a new wave of clients seems to have evolved for Lenny over the past year; those who hire him to find out who’s anonymously bullying them online. This type of ‘crime’ is a growing concern in the modern world; but it’s not much of a concern for Lenny – it puts an extra few quid in his coffers. He likes this type of job, it’s less boring than sitting outside somebody’s house, waiting on them to come out so he can take a photograph of them that may prove their back injury isn’t as bad as they are claiming.

  Though neither of these gigs have anything to do with the reason Lenny became a Private Investigator in the first place. He assumed he would be playing detective; solving proper crimes; murders, kidnappings, thefts, larceny. But that was slight delusion, borne from reading too many crime fiction thrillers over the years. He never got a call asking him to solve such a crime… until three minutes ago.

  He nods his head, decision made. He’ll drive over to the hospital. That way if he needs to get on with the job immediately, he’ll have his wheels close by. Lenny grabs at his yellow puffer jacket and Sherpa hat, then pulls the office door behind him and sets off down the rickety stairs.

  During the months of October through March Lenny always wears a Sherpa hat; he needs the fur inside to protect his bald head from the elements. Lenny lost his hair in his early twenties. Aside from the fact his head is always freezing during these months, losing his hair has never bothered him. He has the right shaped head to carry it off. He offset the baldness by growing out some stubble on his face. The stubble irritates Sally – she finds it discomforting to kiss her husband – but they both agree that a full beard doesn’t suit him; it hides his jaw line, while a fully-shaved face makes him look like a twelve-year-old. And that’s not a good look for somebody who wants to be taken seriously as an investigator. So they both decided stubble was the best option for him. Even with the stubble, Lenny still looks much younger than his thirty-three years, but at least he has the maturity to pass himself off as a man in the middle stages of life.

  He thumbs his dated mobile phone as he paces his way to the car, trying to remember the images of Betsy Blake that were plastered all over the media many years ago. The most prominent picture used was a school portrait; her beaming a gummy grin at the camera dressed in her navy-blue uniform. The nation was obsessed with the story of Betsy Blake. Lenny was only a mid-teen when the story blew up. Over half his life-time ago. His memory is letting him down. If he had a smart phone, he’d be able to recall that image now. But what would it matter? Betsy isn’t four-years-old anymore; she’d be twenty-one now. A woman. Lenny shakes his head and puffs out his cheeks as this reality hits him.

  He throws his phone on to the passenger seat of his car, turns the key in the ignition a
nd pulls out of his parking space without hesitating. He sings along to the Little Mix song that blasts from his stereo. This is always a tell for Lenny that he’s in a good mood. He’s excited about this job. The one thousand euro on offer from Gordon Blake is definitely playing a part in dictating Lenny’s positivity, but it’s more the job that has him buzzing. Trying to find a girl who’s been missing for seventeen years. That sure as hell beats filling in paperwork for an insurance company.

  He drums at the steering wheel, imagining the press he would receive if he were to somehow make a breakthrough in the Betsy Blake case. Though Lenny’s not stupid; he’s aware he’s day-dreaming. He’s a decent private investigator – more often than not his clients are pleased with his work – but he has never achieved anything of note that would suggest he’s capable of making even the smallest of dents in the highest-profile missing person’s case the country’s ever known. Anyway, he assumed Betsy was dead. Was certain the Gardaí closed the case about ten years ago.

  Soon he’s turning right into the hospital grounds and circling the parking lot. When he finally finds a space he can fit his tiny Nissan Micra in to, he leaps out of his car, trudges down the brick staircase and finally across the zebra crossing that leads to the hospital entrance.

  He takes in the stench of antibacterial soap immediately, can almost taste it on his tongue.

  ‘St Bernard’s Ward?’ he asks the man sitting at a rounded reception desk.

  ‘Floor three.’

  Lenny sprint-walks towards the elevators and then pauses after pushing at the button. He watches the digital numbers above the doors click upwards, from three to four, then eyeballs the staircase behind him. He knows he would get to Gordon quicker if he used them. But he can be a stubborn fucker sometimes, can Lenny. So he stares back at the digits, taking seconds to will them to count downwards. But they don’t. Both lifts are now on floor five. He huffs, spins on his heels and makes his way to the stairs, striding up them two at a time. He’s almost out of breath by the time he reaches a sign that reads St Bernard’s Ward. The hospital corridors are overly bright, the yellow glare constant, regardless of the time of day. Lenny knows the hospital quite well. Has spent many hours in here, sitting next to Sally.