The Killing House

by Claire McGowan

  ‘And then what?’ said Corry, who’d been listening quietly, like a priest taking confession.

  Aisling shrugged. ‘I suppose we panicked. We had to shut her up – Paddy would have killed us all. He was . . . I can’t describe it. Ever since Mairead got away he’d been mad. Like she’d betrayed him. He used that word all the time. You betrayed me. See, the Army had been all over him that autumn. Everywhere he went they were waiting. He thought there was a tout in the group, he was obsessed by it, and . . . I . . . I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t even eighteen. I’d never voted or driven a car, even.’ Her blue eyes were faraway. ‘We were all there in the kitchen. Me, Mammy, Sean. Emer, shooting her mouth off, so happy people were listening to her. So Sean said, Emer can I talk to you. In private. She loved that. Being treated like a big grown-up girl. And he . . .’ She looked down at her hands. ‘You know what happened.’

  ‘He killed her?’

  She nodded, swallowing hard. ‘I . . . I didn’t see. But yes.’

  ‘Aisling, I realise this must be hard, but I have to ask, you’re saying Sean Conlon killed Emer? Can you tell us how?’ Corry’s voice was gentle.

  ‘He . . . he strangled her, I think. She was only wee.’ Aisling briefly touched her own throat, face pale with horror. ‘Wouldn’t have taken much.’

  Corry paused at this, the calm way they were discussing the murder of a child. ‘Your mother was there for this?’ Paula could hardly take it in, a woman standing back as a grown man strangled a teenage girl, one she’d raised as her own daughter. But this was the same woman who’d known they had her mother imprisoned, who’d have let them kill her. Who knew what she was capable of?

  ‘Sean told her it was a lie, that Margaret really was dead but he couldn’t risk Emer going to the police or the Army. I don’t know if she believed it, but what could she do, like? Paddy would have kicked off, probably shot Sean, and me, and then we’d have had the police at the door, she’d have gone to jail too, likely. And Emer . . . she was a liability, you see. She wasn’t right in the head. Mammy always kept her at home, so maybe that was why, or maybe she was just born like that. It was just easier to pretend, I suppose. Sean . . . well. He said she didn’t suffer.’

  ‘And then what?’ Corry was keeping her voice very steady.

  ‘Paddy came back.’ She couldn’t hide the shudder, even after twenty years. ‘He came back and there’s Sean and me digging another grave, this one for Emer. Well, you can imagine how that looked. And he doted on Emer. Of course he did, she was just like him. So Sean quickly says: it was Fintan. Fintan let Margaret go this afternoon, but luckily I was on the ball, I saw and shot her before she could run. Fintan’s the tout, Paddy, he must be. Look, he killed your Emer because she was going to tell you the truth. He’s away off now. He tried to run. We’ll get him. We’ll get him for doing this to your wee sister.’

  She described the hour after that. Paddy on the rampage, inflated with the rage he’d felt since his sister Mairead had run from him. Nothing to play with now Margaret was gone too, supposedly buried in the back field, but really escaped. Already on the ferry to England, probably. Asking Sean to tell him what had happened again and again, as he paced in the kitchen, his gun casually on the side.

  Aisling backing him up. She’d seen Fintan do it. She’d helped Sean dig the grave. Look. Holding up her small hands with red marks from the spade, dirt embedded round the nails. ‘I kept holding up my hands,’ she said. ‘Like that would convince him somehow.’

  ‘So then what?’ said Corry.

  ‘Well, then doesn’t Fintan turn up at the door in a panic; he’d been chased by an Army patrol half a mile away, and maybe he’d drawn the soldiers after him, maybe we’d all be caught now. He was an eejit, to risk throwing stones at them when there was so much else at stake. Poor Fintan,’ said Aisling with the ghost of a smile. ‘Useless, he was. And of course Sean and I are about ready to bust, knowing Paddy won’t believe us. If Fintan was the tout, why would he turn up at the farm like that?’

  ‘But he did believe it?’

  ‘Must have. Or maybe he didn’t even care at that point, he was so angry. Paddy lifts up his gun and puts it right to Fintan’s head. Take a walk, he says, like he’s some kind of gangster or something. And they go outside and I can hear Paddy shouting, and I’m so afraid, my hands are shaking too much to keep stirring the stew. Then Paddy comes back in and he says, that’s that dealt with. And he picks up his cup of tea . . . I remember the blood all went on the wall of the house outside, and Mammy was raging. She was up all night cleaning it with bleach. That was all she cared about, the paintwork.’

  ‘So he thought Fintan had betrayed him.’

  ‘Yeah. Paddy was obsessed with touts. Saw them everywhere. Paranoid.’ She sighed. ‘God love Fintan. He was a bit gormless. I don’t think he really knew what he was caught up in.’

  Paula’s mind was racing. Did that mean Sean Conlon was really the one? The tout?

  Aisling had almost finished her terrible story. ‘So that was that. Fintan was dead, Emer was dead. So I ran, and Paddy had to run too. If the Army came, and they likely would, he couldn’t hide everything he’d done. We all just ran, never looked back. I packed a bag and Mammy drove me to the bus station that night. She never even said goodbye to me. Just drove off and left me there, said she never wanted to see my face again. I think she . . . all she cared about was the cause, you know, and she thought Margaret Maguire deserved to die. She knew something was up – that I’d betrayed them somehow. Their stupid cause. But she wouldn’t have Paddy kill me all the same. I suppose that was something. So I got away. No one looked too hard for Fintan. No one knew Emer existed to come looking for her. Until now.’

  It was late. So late Paula had lost all track of time. They were in Corry’s office, the lights burning her eyes, a tasteless cup of machine tea in front of her. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. It’s a lot to take in.’

  ‘Think she’s telling the truth?’

  Paula nodded. ‘The dead girl’s a relation, we know that. If we’d known there was another sister we’d have had our answer days ago.’

  ‘Not exactly a sister. The DNA tests on Carly confirm it, by the way. Close familial match with the dead girl.’

  Paula shuddered. Aisling’s story had been told in calm, factual tones. Her description of how Paddy acted towards his sister Mairead. Possessive. Jealous. ‘Like she belonged to him,’ she’d said, and Paula remembered that message he’d left for her. Just you and me. Emer, hidden from school and society, her whole life a lie. Mairead’s child. Not her sister at all. And Paula had sent Mairead right back into his arms.

  ‘And how did Mairead feel about all this?’ Corry had asked. ‘The way Paddy was, and her own child being brought up as her sister?’

  Aisling shook her head. ‘That’s what I don’t know. In the end, she wanted to run, sure. But it wasn’t so simple as that. Why did she hold off going till she was pregnant again? She was in her twenties then, she could have run long before that.’

  ‘Carly. Is she Paddy’s child too?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything, really. But there’s something between them. That’s why she’s so afraid to go near him, I think. And now he has her back.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Paula trailed home so late everyone was in bed. Crawling in beside Maggie, she felt guilty at leaving the child again, but told herself it was only for a few days. They were so close to solving this case, and as for her mother . . . Well. She wasn’t going to think about that right now. According to Aisling Wallace, she’d escaped. So she could be alive. In the morning, maybe she would call Davey again, see if he’d found anything. But how could you find one woman in a city of millions, someone who’d stayed hidden for twenty years? Or she might be dead now anyway.

  She sighed, stroking a lock of damp hair back from Maggie’s head. So much for
this little girl to learn about one day, her missing grandmother, her unwitting father. Her thoughts turned to Aidan, in his cell, maybe awake, the noise of the other inmates echoing around him. Was it possible she could get him out? And then could they have some kind of life together again, her and him and Maggie? Go back to pretending, to living a lovely lie?

  She closed her eyes and tried to make her breathing match the deep sleep of her child, and wished for oblivion to come. Tried to focus on what was good and pure, her daughter asleep, and block out all thoughts of bullets and graves and the dark heart of the Wallace family.

  The next day Paula was up early, before her father even, and sat in the cold kitchen eating toast spread with margarine – Pat was always on some kind of diet. The sky over town was streaked pink; it would be a nice day, finally. She was unlikely to see much of it, as she’d be in the station all day, making the most of what time she had left. She checked in on Maggie and saw she was still asleep, her fists clutching handfuls of her pillow, so she made sure the stair gate was in place and slipped out. Pat would get her up. Here, at least, she had people to take up the slack.

  Her car was parked in the street, and as she went to it, bleary-eyed, something caught her eye. She didn’t know what it was at first. She scanned it – bonnet, wing mirrors, the body of the rental covered in mud already from the week of bad weather. Something was written in the dirt on the driver-side door. She looked at the four letters, in neat capitals: TOUT. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she stepped back instinctively, looking around her. But of course there was nothing, just the quiet suburban cul-de-sac, the houses still shuttered up from the night. Feeling stupid, she hunkered down and looked under the car. The car bomb was a staple weapon of terrorists, and although she wasn’t sure what one would look like, she could see nothing strange. Had it just been some passing kid, knowing she worked for the police and her father had too? Or someone else, tracking her here, making her aware they knew where she lived?

  She was holding her breath as she turned the key in the ignition, but nothing was wrong, and as she drove she felt her heart rate gradually settle. It was like the tapes. A warning. But from who? Her mind turned to Paddy Wallace, a man only seen in out-of-date pictures, a voice on a tape, and she shuddered. Remembering Bob’s advice: these fellas, they don’t mess around.

  With time to spare before work, and feeling jumpy and afraid, Paula found herself back in the hospital, sitting by Ciaran Wallace’s bedside. Something about him inspired pity. His chest rose and fell softly, as if he was unaware in sleep that he was shackled to his bed or that an armed guard waited outside his room. What must it be like, being the younger brother of the Ghost, your two sisters gone, your family shattered?

  His bruised eyelids fluttered. ‘Hello,’ she said awkwardly. Not knowing how he’d react to her, if he’d even want to speak to her.

  ‘Dr Maguire.’

  ‘That’s right. How are you, Ciaran?’

  He swallowed hard. ‘Sure it makes a nice break from prison.’

  Paula paused. ‘We spoke to Aisling. She told us what happened that night. Everything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You knew?’

  He nodded slowly, wincing as the movement hurt his face. ‘Not for sure till yesterday.’

  ‘So when we asked you about the dead girl, you weren’t sure who it was?’

  ‘Could have been Aisling. She could have been dead for all I knew. We all just ran, you see. Couldn’t stay, couldn’t be in touch. Our Paddy—’

  ‘You had my mother there. At the farm.’

  He winced. ‘I never had nothing to do with that. Didn’t think it was right, taking a woman, a mother, but Paddy made us. He thought there was a tout, you see, in the squad, and he thought if we took her it’d flush them out. If her handler came to get her out, see, Paddy would know someone had blabbed. Someone on his squad. Sean let her go, then he killed Emer to shut her up about it.’

  ‘And Sean told Paddy the tout was Fintan.’

  ‘So Aisling says. To save his own skin.’

  ‘Because it was really him.’

  Ciaran shrugged, with difficulty. ‘Seems that way.’

  Sean Conlon had played so many different sides it must have made his head spin. No wonder he’d asked Bob for protection. His old handlers must have turned their backs on him, unwilling to be associated with a terrorist. And there was no doubt Sean Conlon had killed people, many people. Choked the life right out of a young girl, even. Yet had he also saved lives, like he’d saved her mother? Passed information to Army Intelligence or MI6? ‘So what’s Paddy doing now? Why is he after Mairead?’

  Ciaran sighed. His voice was hoarse, used up. ‘He wants her to himself. Always did. And he always wanted to know who Carly’s da was.’

  Not him, then, clearly. ‘Do you know, Ciaran?’

  He said nothing for a time. ‘Conlon, probably. Saw them together once. Always thought it was him. She was stuck on that farm all the time, under Mammy’s thumb. It had to be one of Paddy’s lot.’

  So Carly was maybe Sean Conlon’s daughter. Another of his children with a different woman. She’d never know her father now. Maybe that was for the best. Imagine finding out your father had killed so many people, then been stamped to death in a car park. ‘Ciaran . . . did Paddy have anything to do with Sean Conlon dying?’

  Another pause. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen our Paddy in ten years. But he could have done. He had grudges, you see. He was picking off everyone from the old squad. Conlon, O’Hanlon . . .’

  ‘Prontias Ryan?’

  ‘Aye. Most likely.’

  Paula thought of the man shackled down in his dank living room, blood running from his severed finger. Was there anyone left to talk to? Then she realised something Ciaran had said. ‘Ten years?’

  Ciaran went still. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Before you went to prison. Paddy was in London that summer?’

  ‘No one knows that. He asked me to cover for him . . . so I did. Next thing you know I’m being arrested for murder.’

  Her mind raced. The DNA – so it could have been Paddy after all, mistaken for his brother.

  ‘There was that evidence,’ Ciaran said. ‘My hoody and that.’

  ‘How can you explain it?’

  He tried to shrug again, but winced at the movement in his shoulder. ‘Always thought the peelers set me up.’ It had happened before, of course, the Guildford Four sentenced to decades in prison on forced confessions and shaky evidence. But here there was another possibility.

  ‘You never thought Paddy might have done it, if he was in London?’

  Ciaran said nothing for a moment. ‘Maybe. I never asked what he was up to. I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Had you told him where you were living?’

  ‘Course not. I ran. We all did.’

  ‘But he found you.’

  ‘He’s good at finding people. Guess I wasn’t as careful as the girls. But he wouldn’t have let me take the rap, not for something he did.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  She saw Ciaran process this, think it through. ‘I’m his brother.’

  ‘Meant you came back to Ireland, didn’t it? He knew exactly where you were all this time. Punished you for leaving.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’ But there was a wavering there, a loss of certainty. Paula didn’t press it. The man was in pain, it wouldn’t have been right. She was surprised by how quickly she’d come round to the idea that he was innocent.

  ‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re a killer, Ciaran.’

  ‘I’m not. I always said I didn’t do it. They didn’t listen.’

  ‘They’d listen if we could catch the real killer.’ She let him think about it. ‘He has your sister. You know what he’s like – what he’s capable of. She must be so frightened – she�
�s been running from him for twenty years and now he has her. Can you help us find her, Ciaran? Is there anywhere they might have gone? Anyone who might know something?’

  He jerked his head, beckoning her closer. She leaned over, hoping the guard outside wouldn’t see, smelling his skin – bleach and cigarettes, as if he hadn’t been outside in months. ‘Tom Dunne.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Ciaran was tired now, she could see that. His voice was fading. ‘His da . . .’

  ‘His father?’ She didn’t understand.

  ‘Look him up. Tom’ll know something.’

  ‘He needs to rest, you know,’ Aisling said from the doorway. She was holding a paper cup and dressed in black jeans and a grey top. She was different to her sister, elegant somehow, contained.

  ‘I know. I was just going.’

  ‘Since you’re here, Dr Maguire, can you give me a lift? I don’t have a car. It was always too risky, getting a licence.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Where d’you think?’ Aisling threw back the rest of her drink, her long neck pulsing. ‘To see my loving mammy, of course. Will you take me?’

  Aisling stood over her mother, making no attempt to approach her. She hadn’t sat down or taken off her jacket. ‘I didn’t think she’d still be alive, after all this time.’

  Paula wasn’t sure what to say, so she stood by, holding her keys. The place gave her the creeps. Something about the smell, the floral notes of cleaning products overlaying death and rot.

  Aisling leaned in. ‘Mammy. It’s me. Aisling.’

  There was no reaction from the old woman. She didn’t seem to know anyone was there.

  ‘Mammy. Did you never wonder what happened to us all? All your weans, scattered?’

  There was a mutter from Mrs Wallace. Paula held her breath to catch it. ‘Ungrateful pack.’

  Aisling just nodded. ‘Aye, well, we did our best, Mammy. You weren’t much help. Anyway, I just came to see if you were alive and show you I’m OK. I managed fine.’ She set her shoulders straight, as if determined not to let it get to her.