The Dead Ground (35 page)

‘Miss Quinn is her name,’ Corry supplied.

‘I sort of looked at her ’cos on the course they tell us people sometimes hide stuff up their jumpers, like they’re not really pregnant at all. I was in Shoes that day. Then I saw someone else go in the changing rooms after her – Miss Quinn.’

‘A woman?’

‘I thought it was. Men’s is on the other side. She’d no clothes in her hands, though, so I sort of go to see do they need any help, like, keep an eye out, and when I get there—’ Her voice hitched. ‘I – the first lady, the pregnant one, she was on the ground, unconscious like, and her, her—’ Michelle indicated her stomach. ‘She was all cut there and the blood – there was blood everywhere, Miss.’ She sobbed. ‘It wasn’t like in the films. It was
awful
.’

‘It sounds it,’ murmured Paula. ‘Did you see the other woman, Michelle?’

‘I don’t know.’ She balled the tissue in her fist. ‘She’d her back to me, and sort of like a scarf round her face. She ran out the back door – that goes into the stockroom, no one’s meant to have the key except Mr O’Leary. But it was open. I never saw it open before.’

Paula looked at Corry, who nodded. ‘The stockroom leads out to the street. It’s usually locked but they were expecting a delivery, apparently, so someone left it open. She got out that way, we were too late. She must have had a car nearby. We’ll check the CCTV.’

Michelle was staring dolefully at the floor. ‘It was just so fast. She had a long coat on and flat shoes, and this like big black bag. Like for PE. But the blood was everywhere, so I went to help the poor lady; she was out cold and there was like a needle in her arm, sticking out of her, and she’d been trying on a red maternity dress – it’s nice that, a good seller – and her hair was all round her and her eyes were rolling. So I pressed the dress on her tummy and I shouted out. I mean, I had to help her, didn’t I? I couldn’t go after the other woman?’

‘You did the right thing, pet,’ Corry soothed. ‘You’ve saved Miss Quinn’s life.’

‘Will her baby be OK?’ Michelle was anxious. ‘Only there was all the blood.’

Corry hesitated for less than a second but Paula caught it, and the life inside her seemed to burn in protest. ‘They’ll do what they can,’ said Corry neutrally. ‘Now is there anything else you can tell us about the other woman?’

Michelle shook her head. ‘I don’t remember her face. She was tall – like a man, almost – and that big long coat, and the bag, and scarf round her head. That’s all.’

‘Well done, Michelle. You’ve been a big help. Your mum’s here, I think, if you want to go out to the door.’

Michelle hauled herself to her feet with a weariness beyond her years, and Paula saw that her white shirt was marked with a bloody handprint. Corry saw it too as the girl moved off. ‘Poor wean. She’ll not be the same after this. They need to keep telling her she saved Aisling Quinn’s life.’

‘Did she?’

Corry inclined her head. ‘Too soon to say. The killer had already cut into the womb, they said – all that blood, it was the uterine artery being severed. Place is like a damn slaughterhouse. I’ll show you.’

Paula didn’t want to be shown, but also knew she couldn’t not see it. They started to walk through the eerily empty shop, mannequins watching them through painted eyes. Over the tannoy, ‘Frosty the Snowman’ on pan pipes. ‘You reckon it’s her then? The same woman?’

‘It must be. Christ, I hope it is. There can’t be two.’

‘Will there be any prints?’ Paula thought of the blood on Michelle’s shirt. Who’d left that – Aisling, clinging to life? The killer?

‘Maybe. There’s enough blood.’ Corry stopped at the entrance to the changing rooms. Dust in the corners and racks of cheap, glitzy clothes. One grey curtain was pulled down, fallen like a shroud, and a security door at the far end of the cubicles stood open, leading into a darkened space that seemed to be the stockroom.

The changing rooms, the walls and ceiling, and the grey carpet and curtains were patterned all over in blood. Long sprays of it, bright red, still wet. A larger amount had soaked into the carpet in a spreading stain – where Aisling had fallen, Paula guessed. On the door, bloody handprints like those on Michelle’s shirt. Paula tried to stay on her feet at the sight of it, flashing red before her eyes, and the smell of the place, rusty and rotting in the heat that blew out from a dusty overhead grille.

‘Don’t go in. We’re still waiting for Forensics.’ Corry held her back at the entrance.

She had no intention of going in. They stood in the door by the racks of security tags, numbered 1 to 6. She’d never seen a crime scene like this, not yet cleared up by professionals, only the victim moved out to safety. The slashes of rage still hanging in the air as if you could breathe it in. Evil. You could feel evil in this room, gone out on a blast of cold air. On the ground rolled a syringe, as Michelle had said.

‘She drugs them. That must be how she stops them fighting back.’

‘We thought as much from Dr Bates and Heather. Why here, do you think?’ Corry had her hands in the pockets of her grey wool coat, trying not to touch anything.

Paula looked round them, the large shop, cameras in the corner of the fitting rooms, a long way out through the pan-piped be-tinselled shopping centre. ‘I’ve no idea. It’s the worst possible place, you would think. If all she wants is a baby, there’d be much easier ways to get one.’

‘We found this.’ Corry held up a small plastic bag with something inside. ‘It’s Fiacra Quinn’s address, written on a Post-it. It was on the floor and the bloody manager picked it up before I got here. I’ve half a mind to arrest him for obstruction, windbag that he is.’

Paula looked at it. Blue biro. Handwriting. The person they were seeking, they’d written this, touched it. ‘Aisling’s been staying with Fiacra. She’s been going to Ballyterrin Hospital for her antenatal care. So if someone knew that . . .’

Corry’s face was grim. ‘Exactly. They knew just where to find her. I’d guess she was waiting at the door of the flat when Aisling came out this morning, but then Fiacra was with her so she couldn’t strike, and she had to follow her here. I think this isn’t random at all, Paula. Heather Campbell, Caroline Williams, Aisling Quinn – she’s targeting them somehow. She’s choosing them.’

Chapter Thirty-Six

That night, before the shortest day of the year, as Aisling Quinn fought for her life in Ballyterrin General Hospital, needing three pints of blood on transfusion and crashing twice, and her widowed mother and her sisters and her brother Fiacra wept at her bedside; as the parents of Darcy Williams and the father of Lucy Campbell ended yet another day without their children being found; as the unit team faced up to their own utter failure to protect the town; the snow that had gripped Ballyterrin for weeks began to melt. Drains filled up, worn pipes swelled, and by dawn half the town was without water, a situation that would last weeks, leaving the population unwashed and thirsty, queuing in the cold like refugees, but strangely buoyant with the kind of crisis spirit which made the people of Ireland most happy.

Paula had eventually gone to bed at one a.m., stiff and cold. Guy had to send her home in the end, from where she’d been stooped over a desk in the incident room. Forensics and CSIs had taken apart the bloody scene in the shop, trudging all night between the icy car park and the burnt-out lights of the store, the mannequins unblinking in the face of such carnage. Early results had yielded no prints again, though they were still hopeful some hair might be recovered from the tangle of threads and dust that littered the changing-room floor.

Getting into bed swathed in layers, Paula had tried to read the letters from the beach, but they’d dried to a brittle fragility, and the rain had smudged the ink. She couldn’t see it in the dim light and she couldn’t stay awake. All she could make out was the opener to each one:
My dear sister.
No names on any of them. There were two different types of handwriting, she thought, though both very similar. Letters between Mary and her invisible sister? A quick scan showed no addresses or other details. Tomorrow, she would tell Guy and they’d go through them in depth. He’d be annoyed she hadn’t told him right away, but she’d have to face it.

She wasn’t in bed long. PJ woke her at six, stomping in black welly boots. ‘Pipes are burst,’ he said succinctly. Water dripped off his boots onto the worn lilac carpet of her room, a relic of a ten-year-old’s taste.

‘What?’ She sat up, blinking. The room was Arctic. ‘Is the heating broken?’

‘Aye, it’s all off. No water either.’

‘I can’t have a
shower
?’ Jesus, that was all she needed. After the late night, she felt coated in the sweat and coffee fug of the station.

PJ seemed oddly elated by these happenings. ‘No, you can’t, love. They say it might be off all week! I’m filling up the bath so we can boil some.’

‘I can’t have a shower for a whole
week
!’ Paula started to panic.

‘Never worry, pet, I’ll rig something up. We can still have our tea, anyway.’

She pushed back her greasy red hair. ‘For God’s sake. Why’d you wake me up, then, if I can’t get showered? I may as well stay in bed.’

‘Oh, did I not say? There’s a phone call for you.’

‘Paula!’ Guy was on the other end.

‘What is it?’ She was in the hall by the phone, shivering in her pyjamas.

‘Is your mobile off or something? I’ve been calling you.’

‘Um . . . I switched it off.’ She didn’t want to think too closely about why she hadn’t wanted to sleep with her phone turned on next to her. Sending out radiation, possibly. ‘What’s wrong, anyway?’

‘The Williams house. They’ve found something on the path behind the garden. The snow’s melted, and a dog walker turned it up.’

Oh God. She could guess. It was one of the times she didn’t want to know; she’d like to retreat back, rewind, not hear what he was about to say. ‘Paula?’

‘I’m here. What was it?’
Don’t be what I’m thinking, please.

‘A baby’s body. You see? This could change everything. What if it wasn’t linked at all?’

She couldn’t catch his excitement. Not about a baby in the snow. She felt weak.

‘Be honest,’ Guy was saying. ‘Tell me what you thought when we first saw Caroline Williams.’

‘Post-natal depression. Post-natal psychosis, even. The thing about answering the phone didn’t stand up at all. But then when we found the link with the forum, I thought I must be wrong.’

‘I don’t think you were.’ Guy was wired. ‘Croft had an alibi for the abduction, but maybe it wasn’t part of this anyway. If we can her get back in again I can break her, I know I can. That issue with the fingerprints, I’m sure she tricked us somehow. There must be an explanation.’

Paula thought nothing could break Croft. You couldn’t break what was already long destroyed. ‘You know what you’re saying, Guy – sir? There’s a baby dead in the snow.’ The little dress. The ducks floating in her bath. ‘She’s dead, and you’re saying maybe her own mother killed her? Think what that means.’

Guy paused. ‘I don’t know who killed her. I’m just desperate to find a way through this. The Williams case, it distorted everything. If we can find who did this – Heather and Dr Bates, and Aisling – if we can find Lucy safe, if she’s still alive—’

‘I know, but I can’t be pleased Darcy is dead.’ He said nothing. She closed her eyes. ‘I’m just – this case, you know?’

‘I know. It’s killing us all. That’s why we need a solve. Meet me there, anyway. At least we can try to find out what happened in the Williams house that day.’

The place was exactly as it had been the first day they’d come – police vans lining the streets, yellow tape fluttering, officers outside the door. The parents were inside with Corry. There was a jumpy feeling in the air. Guy parked on the pavement. Paula had dressed in three jumpers and old, baggy jeans, and she’d plaited her dirty hair round her head as best she could, adding a grey knitted hat on top. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but didn’t care. She said, ‘You’re really going to take her to the station?’

‘Why, you think I should interview her here?’

‘No, but – I mean, they’ve found her baby’s body, and you’re going to arrest her? Where is she? Where is Darcy?’

‘At the mortuary. Gerard’s going to take the father to identify her, while we bring the mother in for questioning.’

‘So it might not be Darcy?’

‘Paula. We’re sure that it is. The clothes, you know.’

‘How could they have missed her, if she was here all the time?’

‘We were so stretched. You know that. They searched the lane, but the snow was so thick the search dogs would have missed it, and it was buried slightly. Only the thaw has exposed it.’ He looked at her. ‘I know you don’t want to believe this. But look at the evidence. Remember what you’re always telling me – the most likely people to hurt a child are its own parents.’

‘Right.’ She shut her eyes briefly. ‘I suppose we have to eliminate this case, if we can.’

‘We do.’ He was gentle.

‘I can’t watch you arrest her.’

‘All right.’ He undid his belt, passed her the keys from the ignition. ‘Why don’t you go back to the unit? Get the room ready. I want you to help me interview her.’

This fucking job. Sometimes Paula felt like it was scraping her out, so she’d one day have nothing left at all.

Caroline Williams sat very straight in her chair in the interview room at the MPRU. Her hands with their chewed nails were placed on the chipped table. She was dressed in the same pink velour tracksuit as the first day. ‘Did she come willingly?’ asked Paula, watching her from outside.

Guy said, ‘She did. Though the husband tried to punch Gerard.’

‘Did he?’ Shane Williams was about a foot narrower than Gerard, as Paula recalled.

‘Yeah. Rather unwise of him, poor man. We have him in with Bob, but I seriously doubt he knows anything.’

‘Has she a lawyer?’

‘She said no to one.’

That was often the way when people were inexperienced with police stations. They thought getting a lawyer made them look guilty. ‘So that’s your theory – she did it alone?’