But still Super doesn’t come for him. When the woman with the Children’s Cave banner on her dress says, ‘Oh dear! Do you know who’s collecting you, Bravo?’ he takes out the plink card that Super gave him with Mammy’s phone number on it and says, ‘My name is Marcus Richardson. Can you phone my mammy, please?’
Her name is Candy and he cries when she tries to take off his costume. She lets him leave it on and lifts him up on a high stool at the desk where people pay money and popcorn pops. Marcus colours with pencils and the popcorn is popping when the policemen come in big cars with lights and sirens. And Mammy, too, running all round the Children’s Cave like someone is chasing her, and she keeps crying. She doesn’t know Marcus. All she keeps saying is where’s my son, where’s my son… and Daddy’s here too, shouting like he has snots in his nose, and no one knows it’s Marcus because he’s Bravo.
Candy lifts him up in her arms and says, ‘It’s time to be Marcus again. Your mammy and daddy have come to bring you home.’
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The television cameras and press arrive right on cue for the breaking story and the country rejoices. Amanda carries her son from the Children’s Cave, her head averted from the questions being hurled at her. The media quieten when Lar delivers a brief statement. He thanks the police and the volunteers for the unstinting efforts they made to find his son. He asks for privacy so that he and his family can recover from their ordeal. His expression hardens when a reporter asks if Marcus was kidnapped by Ben Carroll, the creator of the plinks. And isn’t it true, another reporter shouts, that he and his wife concluded a business deal that cheated Ben Carroll of potential earnings from his creation?
The days pass. In the bath, Marcus sings ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ and plays with the water plink. He holds shells to his ears and tells Amanda he can hear Super speaking to him. Her skin crawls when she sees him staring at the sky, searching the horizon for bubbles. At night, he refuses to sleep until she reads his plink books to him. He throws a tantrum when she tries to remove the dolls from his bed. They remain there, still sitting in the same position, staring at her with those flittering eyes that seem to follow her around the room. He wants stars on the ceiling and rainbow arches above the doors. In effect, he wants to turn Shearwater into Plinkertown Hall.
According to the child psychologist, who counselled him after his release, his childish belief in fantasy, and his unique exposure to it, will have helped to promote his personality and social interaction skills. He believes it will encourage Marcus to explore complex issues later in life and view them through an imaginative and creative prism. Amanda has paid a handsome fee to listen to such psychobabble.
Accompanied by his parents and the police, he returns to the old house. He stares at the white, antiseptic walls and stamps his foot, bewildered, and says, ‘No… no… no. It’s not Plinkertown Hall.’
She holds tightly to his hand as they descend the stairs to the basement. Here, also, the walls are pristine. No graffiti, no clutter, except for a broken saddle, the horsehair stuffing removed from its interior.
He recognises the apple trees and leads them to a small mound of mud where a bird is buried. The grave is exhumed and the bird taken away by the forensic team in the vain hope that it will provide them with a clue as to the disappearance of Ben Carroll.
‘You’re crazed,’ Lar says whenever she tries to discuss his double identity. ‘You’re crazed,’ he says when she shows him a copy of a birth certificate with Karl Benedict Lawson written on it.
‘Crazed’ is an innocuous term. Not as defined as ‘mad’, and suggesting that soon, when her shock has abated, she will become rational again. Marcus has been returned to them. For now, nothing else matters. Their marriage, and the question as to whether it can be healed or ended, must wait until the police have flushed Ben Carroll from his lair. Lar is convinced it’s bound to happen soon.
Marcus returns to school. Each morning Amanda escorts him to his classroom. She is waiting outside when school ends. Strictly speaking, parents are only allowed as far as the reception area, but she is a mother crazed over her son’s security. Parents and teachers hover at a distance. They know too much about her to be comfortable in her presence.
Mandy Meets has been taken off the air. She accepts the corporate decision. How can she conduct interviews with celebrities when she is too jittery to walk a straight line along the red carpet?
He is watching her, she is sure of that, yet the police admit they are no closer to finding Ben Carroll. As for Karl Lawson’s whereabouts? Sergeant Moran is firm with Amanda. They have absolutely no evidence to link him to Marcus’s disappearance. Ben Carroll is their only suspect. Vengeance and resentment were his motives. They have a trail of evidence that will put him behind bars for a long time. The sergeant’s hostility is hidden behind a thin veneer of politeness. It’s obvious she blames Amanda for shattering the life of Jon Hunter, who is under investigation for releasing unauthorised information to the media, and whose wife has ordered him from the family home. His phone records, as well as Amanda’s, are being checked for evidence but all the police have traced is the one phone call Hunter made to meet her in the boatyard.
A phone call Sylvia overheard. Lar has spoken to her. No anonymous tip-off from Karl Lawson on this occasion. Just a wife, tired of her husband’s infidelities, seeking retribution.
Circumstantial evidence. Journalists are feasting on it, and yet they shy like startled horses when Amanda contacts them about Karl Lawson. She is an unreliable source. When they write about the search for Ben Carroll, they abide by the information that comes to them from the Garda Press Office. Those who are willing to speak to her demand to know what evidence she has to back up her preposterous claim. She destroyed Karl Lawson once, then campaigned for his release; and now, for reasons that make no sense, she wants to lay waste to him once more.
Plans to feature a Shroff exposure on Behind the Crime Line have been put on hold. Eric has moved to France, or, maybe, he’s in Germany. No one seems certain where he is hiding. Amanda has no desire to contact him, even if she could rouse herself to passion. All she can think about is the story under the skin.