Whereas I’m actually here on a mission. My distress over Joe had finally woken me up to the fact that my blood father Danny may have been manipulating me all along. Why else would he have instructed Miriam to contact Joe to persuade him to get me to take a DNA test? A test that inevitably leads to Danny. My mind sees the plaque I found in the fire at the former Suzi Lake Centre proclaiming that its founder and Danny Greene had opened the centre. He had an excuse for that too. Now my suspicions are back full-blown. I might be wrong about Danny but I need to find out. And if he is playing me I’m hoping I’ll find the answers here.
On the landing, I can’t hear any snoring or sleep-like sounds from Danny’s room. But the same light that threw his shadow through the crack in my door is enough for me to see that the door to his bedroom is open. He might be awake and if I go past he’ll see me. I can’t take the chance of that happening; I’ll need to find another way to get downstairs.
I shift back deep into the shadows and look over the banister. I don’t have a choice. Silently I hitch my leg over the top of the handrail, then the other one. My arms hurt as I hang suspended in the air. I manage to swing my legs to reach the banister and stairs below. For a time I hush my breathing and still. Listen for any sounds of life above. When there are none I step into the hall and head for his gallery of pictures.
The strangest thing happened while I sat on the stairs, head in my hands, feeling defeated after Joe had left. Maybe it was the stillness around me, the way the world seemed to have vanished that gave my mind the time it needed to think. The time it needed to see things that kept eluding me before. And that’s when I registered what was on this wall.
The framed document in Danny’s gallery that I fleetingly saw during my first visit here.
My torch scans the items in the gallery. Despite Danny telling me that he’d only realised too late how meaningless all these meetings with famous people and charity gigs are, he’s obviously proud of them. Otherwise why are they here and so prominently displayed? Is he so proud that one of these photos gives something away?
My hope starts evaporating because, firstly they are all photos and they are as anodyne and unrevealing as thumbing through a celeb magazine. Towards the edge of the gallery, I find a photo that stabs me in my guts. It’s Miriam and Danny together on a beautiful tropical beach. Danny’s all brilliant white teeth, blond hair, no silver back then, smiling in the breeze, an arm casually draped over his daughter’s shoulder. Miriam stares off into the distance. The two images don’t belong together. It’s almost as if the photo has been conflated from two different images.
But there’s something else about this photo that doesn’t fit.
All the others are in matching gilt frames. But this one has been hastily fitted into a clip frame. I take down the photo and find the clear outline of another frame that hung here long enough to leave the wall behind it a different shade. Where is the original picture that hung here? The one I saw on my first visit. Danny obviously doesn’t want me to see it again.
I sweep the hall with my torch and notice that the door to his ‘operations room’ is closed whereas earlier it was open. I try the handle. Locked. An attempt to get my crowbar in to force it open fails. You’d need an explosive to open this door. To use the expression he recently taught me, Danny has cleaned house while I lay upstairs. Anything that might have helped me is gone. It was me arriving here at this ridiculous hour that gave me away. I should have waited until the morning and then announced my arrival by phone and searched while he was relaxing in the garden.
I’m not giving up.
My tread becomes heavier as I hunt downstairs through the rooms. In the library my glass of whisky lies on the table, and I’m tempted to knock it back in one as a consolation. At the end of my search is a closet where Danny’s cleaner keeps her extensive range of products. Brooms, brushes, mops, polishes, sprays, they’re all neatly lined up like soldiers on parade. But at the back is a junction box that looks big enough to hide certificates, awards or photos in. Inside it though, I find something far more valuable. On a hook is a key ring that has so many keys attached it wouldn’t disgrace a jailer. Carefully, I unhook the set of keys.
I hurry back to his operations room. Try a key in the lock. Doesn’t work. Another. The same story. And another. My heart is going to bang out of my chest any second now. The lock turns. The room is very different to the one and only time I was in here before. The desk was neat and tidy and now it’s a mess. And that’s where I head. There’s a mountain of paperwork which I sift through. At the bottom I feel it before I see it, a picture frame. I shove the paper it’s buried under aside.