The Dead Ground (24 page)

Aidan was still looking at Paula. ‘I was going.’ He nodded. ‘Good to see you, Inspector.’

‘And you.’ As much warmth between them as two icebergs. Aidan turned away into the dark, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands in pockets.

Guy blinked away snow. ‘It’s really coming down. You shouldn’t be out in it.’

‘No. OK.’ She made herself go in, though not looking back at Aidan was as difficult as not breathing. Inside was warm and noisy. ‘What’s happening?’ She unbuttoned her coat.

‘Avril’s had a bit of good news – she got engaged last night.’

‘Oh yes?’ They were in the corridor by Guy’s office.

‘Yes, I think her boyfriend’s a church pastor. Alan, is that it?’

‘Think so. What’s that?’ She indicated the cup.

‘I got us some fizz. It’s nice to celebrate good news, I think. Everything’s been so difficult of late.’

‘Sure.’ She looked up at him and he paused at the corner before the main office, awkward.

‘Are we all right?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I wish you’d told me about Tess being back.’

‘I wanted to. I’m sorry. It’s – well, I can’t really talk about it. It’s harder than you know. I’m very, very sorry.’

Could she really be angry, with all she wasn’t telling him? ‘All right. I’ll try to get over it.’ There was more to say and they both knew it, but it seemed impossible to broach. ‘Is it – is it going OK?’

Guy clammed up. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now.’

‘No. OK. Well, let’s go in.’ She turned into the light, smile pasted on ready to congratulate Avril, and left behind the stricken look on his face.

Avril’s face was flushed as she took tiny sips from her plastic cup. She wasn’t much of a drinker, Paula knew. She wore wide grey trousers and a pink cardigan, her fair hair plaited like an angel’s halo. One finger rather self-consciously bore a medium-sized solitaire diamond. Pretty. Unimaginative. Paula, feeling frumpy in her jeans and thick grey jumper, did what was expected of her as a slightly older woman who wasn’t engaged or married herself: she gushed. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful! Congratulations.’

‘Generous,’ commented Helen Corry, who was there for some reason, power-dressed in a purple suit and boots. ‘He must be fond of you, your fella.’

Avril blushed, turning the ring, which was too big for her finger. ‘It was last night, after church group. I didn’t see it coming.’

Corry swigged her champagne, or whatever it was that Guy had bought in the corner shop. ‘We have to say that round the fellas, but I think we always have an idea.’

‘I didn’t,’ Avril said, somewhat anxious. ‘Really, I didn’t.’

Corry smiled. ‘I’d have been a shite detective if I didn’t figure out mine was up to something. He had the ring in his sock drawer. Dozy bastard.’

Paula, who’d never been proposed to, said nothing, regarding the fizzy gold liquid in her cup. Why was everyone suddenly pressing booze on her? ‘Have you set a date?’ She was racking her brain for girl-talk clichés. Overhead, the office Christmas decorations, put up by Avril, swung in the current of warm air trickling from the ceiling vent. Tinsel and glitter, sad and cheap in the fluorescent lights, reminding you the year was nearly wrung out and everything you’d meant to do was now too late.

All the men in the room, unit staff plus a few of the PSNI officers she knew by sight, had clustered around Gerard’s desk in the corner, and were loudly discussing football. Gerard was deep in chat with one of the other DCs, his tie over one shoulder and a cup gripped in his large first, while Fiacra was perching on his own desk, swilling his drink round in an absent-minded way. Paula wondered about what his sister had said. If Fiacra had a wee notion of Avril, this would be hard for him. Bob, who was of course Avril’s uncle, had been hovering near the edge of the men, but now detached himself and went over to Guy. He didn’t drink at all – ran the local abstinence group, in fact – and had no fizzy wine in his hand. Guy met Paula’s eyes with a sad, twisting smile. She wished so much she could down the contents of her plastic cup, try to forget all the thoughts crowding in on her.

A while later, things were winding down. Corry, who had sunk a fair bit of the first bottle and produced another, more expensive one from her Mulberry handbag, had engaged Avril in a long discussion about marriage and what concessions she must and must not make. ‘Do not wash his socks. Do not pick his socks up off the floor . . .’ Avril listened, nodding like a sort of dejected dog and taking larger gulps of her drink.

Feeling uninvolved, and trying to hide her own sudden teetotalism, Paula drifted over to Fiacra. ‘All right?’

He blinked. ‘Me? Oh aye.’

‘How’s your sister?’

‘Ah, she’s grand. She was pleased to meet you the other day. They’re always on at me to talk about work.’

‘You’ve a big family, have you?’

‘Mammy and four sisters. Da’s dead.’ Fiacra took a swallow of drink, simply stating a fact of life. ‘He was a Guard too, you know.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know that. Was he – did something happen at work?’

‘No. Well, kinda. Heart attack, years back.’

It was a common ailment, carrying off many of those who’d survived the Troubles and their onslaught of bombs, bullets, and fire, only to keel over from delayed stress and fear. ‘I wonder did he know my dad,’ Paula said, putting down her untouched cup. ‘PJ Maguire. He was RUC.’

‘Mick Quinn, that was mine. Border areas. They’d likely have worked together, so.’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Mick Quinn?’ Corry had overheard, and paused her rant at Avril, who took the opportunity to slip from the room, muttering about going to the Ladies. ‘Mick Quinn was your father, Fiacra?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I worked with him. My first case with the RUC. I was at his funeral. Terrible thing, he was very young.’

‘Aye, a lot of people came.’

Corry was squinting at him. ‘You’ve a look of him, now that I think of it.’

Paula looked round, restless and sober. She saw Gerard was gone from the room too, and Bob had sidled off to his office, leaving Guy to jolly along the PSNI officers. They looked grim, huge country guys most of them, who could birth a lamb or dig a septic tank just as easy as subdue a suspect. To them, Guy was yet another Brit cop come to poke his nose in. Unwilling to watch his struggle, Paula decided she’d also slip out, and while she was at it, pour away her drink. She didn’t trust Corry’s gimlet gaze. ‘Excuse me.’

Paula had been at the unit for over two months now, and she’d yet to spend any time alone with Sergeant Bob Hamilton, who presumably would be her boss when Guy went back to whatever life he had left in London. This wasn’t an accident. She was aware of it, the nasty nugget in the core of herself, the same raw ore of sectarianism she loathed in others. What made her any different? Wasn’t she uncomfortable around Hamilton because she knew he marched in Orange parades, donned that sash and beat those drums? It was in everyone, however much you liked your Protestant neighbours and colleagues, however tolerant you liked to think yourself in this post-conflict society, shopping in House of Fraser and eating sushi. When it came down to it, down to bombs and shootings and blood running in the road, you had to pick a side. Yours, or ours. And Bob Hamilton made her want to draw up battle-lines. He was the man who’d been promoted over her father – unfairly, she was sure. Bob was at best semi-competent, and PJ, a brilliant officer according to everyone she’d spoken to, had been let go in 1998 after the Good Friday Agreement. But somehow Bob was also the person who might know what had happened to her mother. So here she was.

She tugged on her baggy jumper and knocked on the door of his office – a sort of converted supply cupboard linking to Guy’s larger one. There were no ornaments or decorations, just a scuffed desk and old computer, and hunched over it one even older-looking man. He’d been bald for years, ragged tufts round his ears as if someone had torn off a piece of paper. His eyes were pale and watery. ‘Miss Maguire?’

‘Sergeant, can I have a word?’

He looked baffled, as well he might. She’d never done anything but avoid having a ‘word’ with him. ‘Oh aye. Take a seat.’

The seat was a warped plastic one with wobbly legs, a cast-off like everything in here, including the occupant. ‘Busy?’

He made a gesture of weary resignation at the computer. ‘Trying to get the hang of this database yoke. Our Avril gave us a lesson, but sure I can’t take it in.’

She resisted the urge to show him. ‘Sergeant – you worked with my father, I think, way back.’

‘PJ? Oh aye. I worked with PJ on a lot of cases, until he retired. We were partners, for a time.’

‘He didn’t really retire though, did he?’

‘I don’t know—’

‘Bob.’ She sat forward, drawing her knees to herself. ‘I’m going to call you Bob, is that OK? And you call me Paula. We work together. Call me Paula, OK?’

He nodded suspiciously, scratching at the scurf in his eyebrows.

‘You were speaking to Aidan O’Hara earlier, from the
Ballyterrin Gazette
.’

Bob started to frown. ‘That’s confidential—’

‘I don’t know what he asked you, but I’m guessing it was about Sean Conlon. He wants to know what Conlon said, and how likely it is that he’ll be released. He went to you because you wouldn’t try to protect me. Because you’ve no loyalty to me.’

‘Miss Maguire, I—’

‘I’m here about my mother,’ she said, deciding just to launch into it. ‘I know you worked on her case. I know Conlon’s been talking about her.’

‘I—’

She talked over him. ‘It’s been a long time, and we never found anything, and now there’s this unit that actually does that, actually tries to find the people we gave up on. I know what that feels like. It’s terrifying. It’s like someone’s dead and buried and you wake up one day to find them ringing on your doorbell. Do you understand?’

‘Miss – Paula – I’m sorry about your mammy but—’

‘I want us to look at her case. I want to know if something was missed.’

He froze.

She went on. ‘I know that may be hard for you, to admit you might have been wrong, but I have to not care about that. I have to know if you did everything you could.’

‘There were no leads. We can’t reopen if there’s no new evidence—’

‘Look.’ She removed the file from her bag and set it down on his desk. ‘That’s what was done in 1993. And it was you who led it, you who said, that’s it, we’ll stop looking. You who came round and arrested my dad – your own partner – and you who said dig up the Maguires’ garden, and search the house and make sure you take the wee girl’s diary too, I mean, she’s thirteen, she probably knows something. Imagine that, if you can, Bob, you’re a thirteen-year-old girl, and the police come round and root through your stuff, and they say your mother’s likely dead and maybe your father did it . . .’ She stopped. ‘Do you have any kids, Bob? I never knew.’

He looked down at his hands, which were shaking. ‘We’ve one boy. He . . . he’s not well.’

‘I’m sorry. But you can imagine how that was. I’m asking you as someone’s father, look at that file again and tell me you did everything you could.’

‘I – I can’t reopen a case with no evidence. You know as well as I do I can’t use any evidence from Conlon if he talks to the Commission for the Disappeared. It’s part of the Act. It’s not admissible.’

‘I’m not saying reopen. I’m just saying look at it. Please, for me, and for my dad. I don’t know if you liked him, but he’s a good man, and it broke him, what you did, and he’s never been fixed.’

Bob stretched out one hand to the file, as if it might burn him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said shakily. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you. A lot of things happened in those years, bad things. Bad things to a lot of people. We were just doing our best, you know.’

She stood, with some difficulty. ‘I know. But we’ve got a chance to do something about it, maybe. Please take it.’

She went out, barrelling into the corridor with shaking legs towards the Ladies, where she planned to empty her plastic cup.

Avril was not in them. Instead she was pressed against the noticeboard, up close to the health and safety signs and the holiday rota. In front of her, his hand resting on the wall by her head, but not touching her at all, was Gerard Monaghan. Seeing Paula, Avril made a small noise, darting out from the circle of Gerard’s arms and slamming the door to the Ladies.

Gerard ran his hands over his face. ‘Bollocks.’

Paula stumbled back, spilling her drink over her wrist. ‘God, sorry, I—’

Then they heard the noise – twin beeps starting up, a fraction of a second after each other. Guy came into the corridor holding his pager, coat over his arm, and just behind was Corry, the relaxed, amused look entirely gone from her face.

‘What’s up?’ Gerard moved forward, straightening his tie, ignoring Paula.

Guy said, ‘Who’s sober enough to drive? We need to go out.’

Paula said, ‘I should be. Why?’

‘Heather Campbell. She’s been found.’ He was already walking, and drawn into his wake Paula followed, before turning back for her coat, pushing her cup into the bin. ‘Do we know what’s happened?’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Is she OK?’

Guy held the glass door open, so crystal-cold air poured in on their heat and light. ‘No. She’s not OK.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was full dark when they reached the place, high in the Mourne Mountains. The hills, normally green and wet and rolling, smothered in white. Snow falling thick and fast.

Paula parked the car at the edge of the forest path, stopping as the wheels began to spin in banked snow. The trees were so close they scratched the car window. ‘I can’t get any further. It’s blocked.’ Slightly further up, police vans were drawn across the narrow path that led into dark fir trees, illuminated in cold snow light. Paula had gone with Guy to the lonely spot, her driving his car, Gerard with the PSNI. Fiacra and a rather teary Avril had remained behind at the unit.

‘You know this place?’ He was unbuckling, zipping up his North Face coat and rubber boots.

‘It’s the old Mass rock.’ He looked blank. ‘When Catholicism was banned – Cromwell’s time, yeah? – they had Mass in secret places, like this. Every year they do a service up there at Easter, I guess to commemorate it.’ She had also zipped up her coat, tucked her hair away. ‘We don’t like to let go of stuff round here.’