The Dead Ground (14 page)

Corry was listening intently. ‘So it’s a control thing?’

‘Often, yes. They want a baby and can’t have one, so they take it instead. There’s one more thing. The vast majority of these women had made contact with the family first. So it’s worth asking the Pacheks and Williams again if they remember anyone being over-friendly, perhaps at antenatal clinics or just out and about. The women often pretend to be pregnant, even if they’re not deluded – so they can then pass the baby off as their own.’

Corry shook her head. ‘The Pacheks aren’t keen to talk. They’re too upset by the whole thing. We followed up the Williams link to the baby group, but everything seemed normal there. Apparently Caroline only came to a few sessions, then left. And we can’t find any connection between them and the Pacheks.’

‘What about the staff interviews?’ Guy asked. ‘Paula’s theory was the woman maybe worked at the hospital.’

Gerard confirmed this. ‘Part of the reason the father never looked at her right was she must have seemed like a real nurse.’

Paula said, ‘In these cases you also often get a dry run, preparing for it very carefully. If she doesn’t work there she’ll perhaps have been hanging round the hospital beforehand. Someone will have seen her, I’m sure of it. We just need to jog their memories.’

Corry examined the nails on her left hand. ‘Well, we’re talking to all the staff who were there that day and so far nothing suspicious has come up, no unexplained newborns in the family. We’ll move on next to those who weren’t in, or shouldn’t have been – sick leave and that.’

There was a short silence as they all considered how few leads they had in either case. Guy said forcefully, ‘This Melissa Dunne woman is our best link for now. We should discuss divisions of labour, DCI Corry.’

‘It’s a murder case now, so we’ll handle the interviews. I’m happy for you to look into the Williams case.’ She made it sound magnanimous.

Guy smiled tightly, but didn’t disagree in front of his team. ‘I think we have considerable expertise here that would help the Bates case – access to all Southern databases, and, of course, one of the few forensic psychologists in the country with the right experience.’

‘Of course.’ Corry smiled back, equally fake. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer. I’ll use what I need.’

‘That’s not quite—’

‘Thanks, Inspector.’ She pulled on her green leather gloves. ‘Best be off. The most important thing, and I’m saying this to all my team as well, is to keep the press out of it. We say only that we’ve found Dr Bates dead. No word on how or where or any possible link to the missing baby. Is that clear? They’ll have a field day on this one if we let them. Especially after what happened on the last big case we had.’ Paula looked down, taking this as a dig at her. She’d gone to Aidan for help on their last unsolvable case, getting herself in trouble in the process. And now where was he? Nowhere to be found. Corry turned to Paula. ‘Could you see me out, Dr Maguire? I’d like a quick word about those interview techniques you mentioned.’

They walked to the front glass doors, where an icy wind was blowing in from the car park. At the front gate, outside their high fences, several journalists were still toughing it out in the evening dark, shivering, wanting news of Darcy Williams and Dr Bates. Aidan was again conspicuously not among them, and that was strange. Usually he’d be in the centre of every scrum, with his difficult questions and his mocking smile. Perhaps he was off working on another exposé to discredit the unit.

Paula crossed her arms against the cold. ‘I was thinking of a technique for improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony – you could reinterview everyone on the maternity ward that day, and see if anyone noticed something which maybe didn’t quite register at the time. I could train the officers, if you like.’

‘That sounds useful.’ Corry was digging in her bag (Mulberry) for an umbrella, looking at the heavy sky. ‘We’ll have more snow soon, I’d say. Listen, Paula – is it OK to call you Paula? Would you have a drink with me sometime? I’ve something I’d like to discuss with you.’

‘A drink?’

‘Yes. Just a chat outside work. Glass of wine.’

‘Well, OK. Sure.’

‘Give me a ring.’ She slotted a card into Paula’s folded arms and trotted off to her car. As Corry drove past the journalists in her Merc, sloshing melting snow at them and ignoring their shouts, Paula shivered and went back into the warmth.

Back in the conference room, she saw everyone standing about the phone, their faces set and drawn. ‘What is it?’

‘That was Heather Campbell’s husband,’ said Guy, carefully. ‘Apparently Heather didn’t make it home from the mortuary earlier.’

Chapter Fifteen

The news about Heather Campbell was worrying, but when they got Corry on the phone in her car she was reluctant to start another investigation. ‘It’s only been a few hours. She likely went to see a friend or something, needed some space. She’d just come from seeing her mother dead.’

Guy sat on his desk, talking into speakerphone so they could all hear. ‘But with this snow, her husband is very worried. It’s getting dark now.’

‘We’d have heard if there’d been an accident. Let’s leave it till morning. Not a word to the press, remember! I have to go, I’m about to get penalty points for being on my mobile.’ Corry hung up.

Guy held the phone, as if trying to decide. ‘I suppose she’s right. It will have to wait till morning. I’ll send someone round to the husband if she hasn’t turned up.’

Paula was packing up some notes to take home with her. ‘You think it’s worrying?’ Guy had made no motions to leave, though it was gone seven p.m. and the others had departed for the night. Paula wondered if Tess was waiting for him at home, dinner perhaps ready on the table. A cosy family scene.

He stretched, weary. ‘I hope she did just go to a friend. She was very upset – in fact she collapsed in the mortuary when she saw the body.’

‘How pregnant is she? Eight months or something?’

‘Yes, I’d say she’s quite far along.’ They were both silent for a moment, not wanting to say or even think of the possibility taking horrible form in their minds. ‘I’ve asked the husband to call us first thing if she’s not back. It’s not unusual for someone to take off, after such a shock.’

Paula looked uneasily out the window, where snow gave the street a rosy glow under the street lights. Where would a heavily pregnant woman go all night, in that? She could imagine all too easily how it was for Heather Campbell, the sheet drawn back on the familiar face, a little older, set in new, stiff angles by the force of death. Your belly swollen in front of you, kicking with new life. She realised she was holding her own stomach and quickly took her hands away. ‘If I can do anything . . .’

‘Go home, Paula.’ He gave her a tired smile. ‘Get some rest. We need to get started on all Corry’s extra work tomorrow. I’d like you to go and see this Melissa Dunne too, when Fiacra does. If we get a jump on it Corry can hardly protest.’

‘OK.’ She lingered for just a moment. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home too?’

Guy didn’t answer, just turning back to his desk. He looked so worn out, dark circles under his eyes, hair greying over his ears. She had an urge to touch the back of his neck as he sat there. Say –
Guy, guess what, I’m pregnant. You remember, that night when we
 . . .

‘Was there anything else?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said, sighing internally at her own cowardice. ‘Night, then.’

‘You’re late, pet. Your dinner’s long cold.’

PJ was sitting with his leg up on what he called the ‘pouffe’, applying Deep Heat to the wasted muscles. After so long in plaster the leg looked weak and goose-bumped, like a scrawny chicken. She’d hardly seen him for days, Paula realised. ‘Work’s just gone crazy. Where were you today, did you go out?’

‘I’d a funeral to go to.’

‘Who was that?’ She sat on the stairs to take off her boots, dog-tired and cold right through.

‘Old colleague of mine. You wouldn’t know him. Kevin Conway was the name – he was a young constable when your mo— hmph.’

When your mother went
, he’d been about to say. This close brush was enough to still her heart. They didn’t talk about her mother. It was a rule as binding as it was unspoken. ‘What did he die of?’ She moved them onto firmer ground.

He put the cap back on the tube. ‘Cancer. Liver. Drank himself to death, God love him. Last time I saw him he was in so much pain he’d a mind to take all his pills at once and finish it.’

‘Sad.’ Ex-RUC officers battled booze and depression like the twin dogs of hell. She eyed her father, his craggy bent frame, his greying hair, thankful yet again he had Pat calling in, taking him out of himself. She’d likely driven him to the funeral, seeing as she knew every man, woman, child and dog in the town. ‘Listen, Dad, I’ve a bit of work to do, so I’ll be upstairs.’

‘OK, pet. Let me know if you need a hot water bottle.’ He picked up a notebook from beside the sofa – another of his small black ones from his policing days.

Upstairs, she took off her jeans, wet through with melting snow, and pulled on her pyjama bottoms, washed to a comforting softness. Then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk, where once she’d kept secret notes from Saoirse and old diaries. Now it held just one thing.

It was only an envelope. Dun-coloured, slim, dog-eared. It was exactly the same as all the others they handled at the unit every day. Except those were just names. This was blood and bone and the wrenching loss that woke you deep in the bowels of the night, grasping for something you couldn’t name. This was her mother’s file.

Guy had given it to her a month ago, when word came that a jailed terrorist had information on various missing persons cases. Sean Conlon, an IRA leader, had gone to prison shortly after the Good Friday Agreement for his role in dissident terrorist acts. He was also likely one of the men who’d shot Aidan’s father, Pat’s husband, in the newspaper office where he was editor and seven-year-old Aidan was playing under the desk. 1986. A bad year, among so many other bad ones. He had been interviewed in prison by the Commission for the Disappeared. This was an organisation with the sole purpose of finding the remains of the missing IRA dead, and returning them to their families. The Commission ran on a strict amnesty basis – no one could face criminal charges, no matter what they told. So Sean Conlon had decided to talk, if they could promise him early release. During his interview, he’d mentioned the name of Paula’s mother. That he might have information about her.

Paula took the envelope out.
Margaret Catherine Maguire
, said the scribble on the front. Whose hand had written it? In those days, in 1993, her father had worked in the old RUC station where the MPRU were now based. The slogan painted on walls then had been
RUC: 98% Protestant, 100% Unionist
. PJ Maguire was no Unionist, but he’d been one of the two per cent, a Catholic officer. Some people said that was why her mother had gone. Taken, as punishment. As a debt to be repaid.

She took out the file and her mother stared out at her. Paula remembered this photo well. She’d taken it, in fact, as the blurring and red eye attested. It was at a harbour somewhere in the west of Ireland. Galway, maybe. Paula would have been ten or so.

She noted, and set aside, her own detachment. It was just a picture. The dead and missing always looked that way. You’d see the photos after, examine them for some sign of the fateful unravelling, but really there’d be nothing. The truth is, everyone smiles for photos, even if they’re dying inside.

On the back of the photo was a sticker saying where it had been developed – their local chemist, where PJ still went to get his painkillers. Below was a series of handwritten notes. Her mother’s background – the five children, the father dead at fifty-four, keeling over in the hay field. Education – local primary, then the nearest convent grammar. So that was Margaret Maguire, née Sheeran, the facts and figures of her life, but telling you nothing about who she really was, what might have made her go out on a blustery October afternoon in 1993 and leave the front door banging in the wind, never to come back to her silent husband and bewildered daughter.

Paula quickly put away a typed manuscript she recognised as her own confused teenage ramblings. She remembered in a flash the constable they’d got to interview her, a large woman with a farmer’s build and thick-as-mud Armagh accent.
Have a wee think, pet. What did you see when you came in from school?

Nothing. She wasn’t there.

Did you not think that was a wee bit strange?

I dunno. Maybe she had to work or something.

She’d have known even then this wasn’t true. Her mother had only worked mornings, so as to be home for Paula, who until that day had never even had to make herself a cup of tea. A physical shudder went through her, and she set that aside too.

Next, leads they had followed. Interviews with sex offenders in the area, statements from the neighbours. Every single one said they’d seen nothing. And that was strange in itself. The house was on a narrow street of cramped terraced houses, some with alleys between them. People saw everything – you couldn’t even drive two cars abreast. If you’d left your front door open, as Margaret had that day, they’d be onto you like a shot to see what was the matter.

There was nothing else to know. Trains, buses, and planes all drew a blank, ferries too. Margaret’s passport had still been in its holder along with PJ and Paula’s, in the special travel folder they’d got for their one overseas holiday to the Isle of Man. Her purse was gone, but her handbag was there on the peg as always. Neither had been able to say what clothes were missing, if any.

As Paula had told Guy when he’d given her the file, there was nothing in it, no new leads. Interviews and public appeals had all drawn a blank, and the two women’s bodies discovered over the years had turned out not to be her. Nothing, nothing, nothing. As if her mother had opened that front door and vanished before she even had time to shut it.

Except for the man.