Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (23 page)

She finished her Coke, pressing on the two sides of the can, pinching with her fingers until it bent double in her hands.

‘He phoned me and said he was going to a party. Did I want to come with him? They’d be loads of people – girls my own age and that, so I’d not to be worrying.

‘I told my mum I was going out with my friends. She didn’t give a shit anyway. Half the time I was there she didn’t know it anyhow. She’d not care. Her and Seamus were out all the time when he was here.’

She placed the can on the table, moved it slightly until it sat just in the position she wanted it, a small act of control to compensate for the fact that the events she was describing would soon involve those over which she had had none.

‘He picked me up at the bus depot. Me and another girl. I didn’t know her. He said he would drop us off then he had to collect a friend. The other girl seemed to know him really well. He handed her a bottle of cider. She took some and gave it to me. I wasn’t going to drink it, but she looked at me like I was just a kid, like I was too young to drink. I’d had some before, at parties and that. So I took it.’

She swallowed. ‘When we’d finished that bottle he handed us back another one.’

‘Where was the party?’ Lucy asked.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It was dark outside of the car. And the cider was making everything weird. It was in the country somewhere because I asked him to stop. I thought I was going to be sick and he pulled in along the road. There were no street lights or anything. I could see cows watching me from the field beside where we stopped. They were just staring at me. I thought I’d be sick, but I wasn’t. Not then anyway. Later.

‘We arrived at this old house. It smelt bad, like it wasn’t being used all the time. There were loads of men in the house, all older than us. And a few girls sitting in the living room. I knew one of them to see, from about town. They were all drinking cider and beers. We went in with them and starting drinking.’

She paused again, moved the can again.

‘I didn’t notice that they were being taken out of the room. One at a time. Then “Simon” appeared. He was smiling. Said he had something to give me. A present. He didn’t want the other girls to see, in case they were jealous. We went into one of the rooms by ourselves. He took out something in a packet. Said it would give my drink a kick. He put it in the drink, gave it a swish around and then took some, to show it was OK. Except ... except I don’t think he took any at all.

‘I drank it because I knew he wanted me to. Then he started kissing me. I felt like I had to – he’d been so kind to me.’

The girl lowered her head, her tears coming freely now.

‘I don’t remember what happened after that. Only what had happened when I woke up again.’

She glanced at Lucy, scouring her face to see if she was being judged. She ignored Robbie completely.

‘What he had done. What he done to me.’

She shuddered now and she spluttered into sobs. Lucy moved from her seat, round to where Sarah sat, put her arms around the girl and held her while she cried.

‘Ssh,’ she said finally. ‘He can’t do anything to you any more.’

She looked up at Robbie, who was sitting, his hands folded in his lap, his expression studiously neutral. ‘Let’s take a break, shall we?’

As they sat again after a toilet break for Sarah, Lucy sensed that something had changed about the girl, that in the telling of what had happened, and perhaps in the knowledge that ‘Simon Harris’ – as she knew him – was dead, the girl had found some degree of comfort, a modicum of solace in knowing she had been heard and believed.

‘Will I start where I left off?’ the girl asked, sitting.

‘Please,’ Lucy said.

She brushed her hair from her face. Her cheeks were dry now, but the skin still flushed, the eyes red rimmed with crying, the whites of her eyes threaded with veins. She looked somehow younger than her fifteen years.

‘It happened a few times after that,’ the girl said. Lucy realized that far from Sarah feeling relieved at what had passed, she had instead simply been steeling herself for the rest of the story. ‘He’d invite me to a party. He’d pick me up with some other girls and we’d get drunk. Most of the time it was in the same house. A couple of times it was somewhere different. A bit nicer. Further away, though. Near the sea, I think. There was a room with an old pool table in it. We’d all hang around in there until he came back with more drink and ... whatever it was.’

‘Did he always rape you?’

The girl hesitated a moment before answering. ‘I didn’t know if it was rape or not. Because I’d had the cider and that. He said I’d agreed.’

‘You can’t agree, Sarah,’ Lucy said. ‘You’re too young. He knew that.’

The girl flushed, her eyes brimming again. She inhaled, held the breath a moment, then let it go. ‘Sometimes others did it. I woke one time and there was someone leaving the room that I didn’t know. It wasn’t “Simon”. But I knew what he’d done.’

Lucy pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the table. Sarah took them and rubbed at her nose. She raised her head a little, as if to stymie her tears.

‘How often did this happen?’ Lucy asked.

‘Every week,’ Sarah said. ‘We’d go every week.’

‘Always to the same house?’

She shook her head. ‘Two different places. It was like taking turns week about week; one week in the smelly house, the other in the place with the pool table.’

‘Were the men there always the same?’

She shook her head. ‘Some.’

‘And what about your mum? Did she not wonder where you were all night?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘She’d be out of it when I got home. She’d not even know I’d been out to start with.’

Lucy paused as she considered how best to word the next question without sounding accusatory. ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Sarah, but I need to know. Why did you meet with him again, after the first time he raped you, Sarah?’

‘He said if I didn’t, he’d hurt my mum.’

‘Did you ever try telling your mother about what was happening?’

The girl shook her head. ‘He said if I told her, they’d kill her. He said he knew who she was. They’d ... he said he’d ... shoot her.’ Though the girl paused as she spoke as if to give the impression that she was too upset to speak freely, Lucy wasn’t wholly convinced.

‘What did he really say, Sarah?’

The girl stared at her, her mouth hanging a little open. ‘He said he knew who sold her stash to her. That they’d put something in it if I told. She’d just not wake up again, he said.’

‘But you told Seamus? Your mum said you didn’t get on.’

‘We didn’t,’ the girl conceded quietly. ‘I didn’t mean for him to find out. I just wanted to hide in the van. But I’d no choice. He wanted to take me back to my mum, but I knew Simon’d think I’d told her when I hadn’t answered his messages and that.’

Lucy considered what the girl had said. ‘Did Seamus ever try anything on with you?’

‘God, no,’ she replied. ‘He made me up my own room. I didn’t know he’d another house.’

‘Did he tell you why he lied about going to Manchester?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘He said Mum’s using got to him. She was fun to be about for a while, then she started all that shit and he needed to get a breather from her for a few days. I know how he felt.’

‘Why now?’

Sarah rubbed at her nose, balled the tissues in her hand and buried it deep in the pocket of the hooded top she wore. ‘What?’

‘Why leave now? What happened? Why not run away weeks ago?’

Immediately, she saw the girl glance at the doorway, as if to reassure herself that there was a way out. She licked at her lips. ‘Can I get another Coke?’ she asked.

‘Why now?’ Lucy persisted. ‘Tell me that and we can take another breather if you need to.’

Sarah Finn seemed to consider the offer. ‘The girl the first night. The one with the cider. I saw her a few times after that. At the parties. She was a nice girl. She looked after some of the others when they were hurting after ... you know. She took care of them. Even when she was being hurt herself.’

Lucy could feel something gnawing at her insides, sensing already where the conversation was headed.

‘There was a party at the weekend. All weekend. I was there just on Saturday night. But she was there. She’d been there for a few days. She was out of it, completely. It was like she didn’t know where she was or what was happening. Well, I saw her again after the party.’

‘Where?’

‘She was the girl they found dead on the train tracks. Karen was her name, I think.’

They left Sarah to have her Coke while Lucy went to the main office and called through for the Strand Road to fax through pictures of both Karen Hughes and Carlin himself. Though the quality of the faxes wasn’t ideal, both were still recognizable. ‘Is this the girl you met?’ Lucy asked, handing Sarah the image of Karen Hughes as she re-entered the room.

The girl looked at the image, her eyes flushing once more. She nodded. ‘That’s her.’

‘One more question, Sarah,’ Lucy said. ‘This man.’ She handed Sarah the page with Carlin’s picture on it.

‘I know him,’ the girl said, dropping the page on the desk as if it had scalded her simply to hold it. ‘He was one of them. He was at the parties.’

‘One of them?’ Lucy said. ‘He was “Simon Harris”.’

Sarah Finn’s eyes widened, her face paling under the harsh fluorescent glare of the strip lighting in the room.

‘That’s not “Simon Harris”. That’s nothing like him. Is he the man who died? This man?’

Lucy glanced at Robbie, before nodding lightly.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Sarah Finn keened, backing into the corner, balling in on herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘Jesus. He’s going to kill me.’

‘No one’s going to kill you, Sarah,’ Lucy said, moving to the girl. ‘I promise.’

The girl looked up at her from where she sat, her face a mask of disbelief. Lucy could think of nothing to say that might convince her otherwise.

Despite their best efforts, neither Lucy nor Robbie could convince Sarah Finn that she was safe from ‘Harris’. Eventually Robbie agreed that her mother be allowed to spend some time with her in the interview room, though under his supervision, in the hope that her presence might help settle the girl a little. Lucy took Sinead Finn’s arrival as an opportunity to check how the interview with Seamus Doherty was developing.

Burns was leading the interview with Doherty in Interview Room 2. He glanced round with some irritation when Lucy first tapped on the door, but upon seeing who it was, rose and came out to her.

‘Has she said anything we can use on him?’ he asked. ‘
He
’s saying nothing.’

Lucy shook her head. ‘She claims that she hid away in his lorry. She got out when she felt it stop, thinking she was on the ferry. Instead, he was parked up at the house. She was at a party with Karen Hughes the night before she died, during the time Karen was missing.’

‘Does she know if Carlin killed her?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘She says Carlin wasn’t “Harris”. He was one of the others.’

‘What others? Maybe she’s confused. Give her a breather and try again.’

Lucy raised a hand to silence him, then realized the inappropriateness of the gesture to her superior.

‘She was groomed by “Harris”. They met up a few times in town. He eventually gave her the phone with some music on it, made a show of saying it was nothing too big. After a while he invited her to a party. He got her drunk, slipped her something in a drink and raped her. She says it happened several times after that, at other parties. Then, when she was passed out, she thinks other men raped her too. She recalls seeing at least one leaving her room as she came round from whatever “Harris” had given her.’

‘Was Carlin one of the ones who raped her?’

Lucy nodded. ‘He was at the parties. We can assume if he was there, he was involved in some way. I need to get pictures of Gene Kay, too, to see if he was there. But she says “Harris” definitely isn’t Carlin. I think we’re looking for someone younger.’

Burns swore softly under his breath. ‘We
need
to connect Kay. After the prick burning to death over it.’

Lucy said nothing for a moment, guessing that his need to connect Kay had more to do with expediency than justice. ‘She says Karen had been at the last party for most of the weekend. She saw her there on the Saturday. I think she went missing on the Thursday because she was taken away to a house party for the weekend.’

‘Why did they kill her?’

‘Maybe she recognized someone she shouldn’t have,’ Lucy suggested. ‘But if she’d been there all weekend – been at the parties before – she’d presumably have encountered whoever it was before that.’

‘She was seen alive on the day before her death? On the Saturday?’

Lucy nodded.

‘Then what happened on the Sunday that would have caused someone to kill her?’

Lucy thought about it. She had done the press releases about her being missing, but that had been on Friday and had been in the Saturday press.

‘Her father,’ she said suddenly. ‘The Sunday papers – one of them ran a story about her father. They’d connected her with Eoghan Harkin somehow.’

‘Whoever had her knew her father then?’ Burns offered.

‘Maybe,’ Lucy said. ‘Or maybe they were just afraid of what he’d do if he found out. Sarah said that “Harris” said he’d kill her mother if she told. That threat might have been a little harder to use about Eoghan Harkin.’

‘It couldn’t have been a message to him? Retaliation in some way?’

Lucy shook her head. ‘The body was set up to look like she’d killed herself on the train tracks. If someone wanted to send a message they’d want him to know she’d been murdered. In this case, they wanted to kill her and cover it up. Make it look like suicide.’

‘Which would only be believable if she was the type to kill herself.’

‘She was depressed,’ Lucy said. ‘She was struggling with self-esteem issues. She was the perfect candidate for it. And the perfect candidate for grooming, too. Lacking in confidence, open to flattery, unstable home life.’