One Bad Turn

by Sinéad Crowley

  ‘Tea!’

  Dillon leaned over and placed a tray on the coffee table. All of the cups matched, Claire noticed, and chunky chocolate-covered biscuits lay on a plate of the same design. She hadn’t had breakfast and hoped that by clanking her cup against her saucer she’d hide her stomach’s sudden growl.

  Heather picked up her own tea but didn’t drink it and continued to direct her words towards the garden.

  ‘I knew Eileen back in primary school. Funny, isn’t it? You see girls every day and they’re so important to you. And then you lose touch.’

  ‘So you hadn’t seen her since you were children?’

  With difficulty the other woman turned her head towards Claire. She was fighting her instinct, Claire realized, to run screaming out of the house, to look for Leah herself, no matter how fruitless that would be. The last thing she wanted was to be having this conversation, to be sitting inside talking while her child was out in the world, missing, and presumably in danger. But at the moment talking was the most useful thing she had to offer, and Claire had to persuade her of that.

  She reached out and touched the other woman’s knee.

  ‘You were saying, Heather, that you knew Eileen in school. Had you seen her since then?’

  Heather looked at her blankly, then shrugged and sighed.

  ‘We bumped into each other a few times over the years. But look, Claire, you must know what she’s alleging?

  Claire shook her head. From the snatches she had heard in the surgery and the discussion with the super the night before, she had figured out some of what was going on, but it was important that Heather did not try to second-guess her. Heather needed to tell her everything she knew, from the beginning, so that no part of the puzzle, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was ignored.

  ‘I know it’s hard but I think it’s best if you try to forget I was there yesterday, Heather. I’m here as a guard today. That’s the best way to think about it. So, if you can, just tell me what happened, or what you can remember, as best you can.’

  Heather’s hand shook as she replaced the cup, tea untouched, on the coffee table.

  ‘Eileen blames me – us – for her son dying. My ex, Marc, he did some financial deal with her and she lost her house. I’m not – I’m not entirely sure of the details. It was a terrible time for everyone, really awful.’

  Flynn coughed, and Claire knew, without looking at him, what he was thinking. Going by the house she was still living in, Heather Gilmore seemed to have come out of the financial crash unscathed. She might have split from her first husband, but her second marriage seemed to be working out pretty well.

  Ah, come on, Claire. As if the other woman had read her thoughts, Claire gave herself an internal reprimand for bitchiness. She had been a guard long enough to know you couldn’t judge someone’s mental state from their physical surroundings, even if those surroundings looked like something out of an interior design magazine.

  ‘What happened to her son? Why would she blame you for that?’

  Heather looked out into the garden, as if unable to meet Claire’s gaze.

  ‘The young lad killed himself. His body was found in the sea near here, just off Rua Strand. They reckon he must have thrown himself off the top of Kennockmore Hill, God love him. It’s beautiful up there, but steep and very isolated and he’s not the only person to have – well. To have made that decision, in that place.’

  ‘I see.’

  Claire gave an involuntary shiver and she knew, even if Leah’s parents were too wrapped up in their own misery to notice her reaction, that her partner had. Aidan, her first boyfriend had killed himself aged seventeen, two days before his final school exams were due to start. His death and its aftermath had played a big part in her decision to join the Guards and although Claire rarely spoke about him, she still saw his face every time she heard of a young life ending abruptly. She swallowed, and felt a sudden stab of sympathy for Eileen Delaney, despite what the woman had put herself and her daughter through. Then she shut the thought away. Leah was the priority here. She looked at Heather again.

  ‘I’m not quite following you. Why would Eileen blame you for her son’s death?’

  Dr Gilmore gave a deep sigh.

  ‘They say the boy killed himself because he and his mother had become homeless, and he didn’t see a way out for them. They lost their house after my ex involved Eileen in a business deal that went wrong. I’ve a feeling – well, put it this way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Marc used my name when he was convincing Eileen to sign up with his project. I had no professional involvement with his firm but it would be like something he’d do, to say I approved, if he thought it would get Eileen on board. Marc can be very persuasive when he wants to be and, towards the end, when things were getting bad, he wasn’t exactly ethical in all of his dealings. A lot of people lost money because of what he did, friends of ours among them. It was what drove us apart in the end.’

  She shot a look at her second husband.

  ‘There were people phoning up at all hours, journalists at the front door – one even came to the surgery, pretending to be a patient, and asked me all sorts of awful questions. It was dreadful, really dreadful, and that wasn’t what I signed up for, I’ll have you know.’

  Her eyes flashed and Claire could see that the anger that had ended her first marriage was still pretty close to the surface.

  ‘I worked my arse off to go back to college, to graduate with a medical degree, while I had a young child at home, and then to set up my own practice. I did not do that just to see Marc Gilmore piss away my good name! Anyway.’

  It was as if, for a moment she had forgotten why the guards were there. Then, remembering, she sank back into the sofa.

  ‘You must know all this, Claire, everything Marc did, it’s all in the public domain. Eileen lost her home, and I guess the young lad just couldn’t deal with it. My heart went out to Eileen when I heard what had happened, it really did. But that doesn’t make it right!’

  Her voice rose and she looked directly at Claire.

  ‘That doesn’t make right what she’s done! It’s not fair, it’s not right, whether she blames us or not. She can’t do this!’

  Her voice broke.

  ‘Take a minute, Heather, you’re doing great.’

  Claire sipped her tea and allowed the room to fall into silence. She needed the break too: she had reached the stage where the case was like a bundle of knotted threads in her head and it was up to her to untangle it without snapping anything.

  After a moment, when it was clear Heather needed more prompting, Flynn leaned forward.

  ‘It’s an extreme thing to do, though, to kidnap your daughter. I mean I understand how devastated she must have been about the young fella, but it doesn’t make sense to blame you for it, surely?’

  Heather looked at him, her freckles standing out starkly on her pale face. Her husband reached out and kneaded her shoulder, but her body didn’t yield under his touch and she didn’t appear to notice he was there as she continued to speak.

  ‘The young lad, Alan, was at a party in my ex-husband’s apartment on the night he died. It’s complicated, but I’ll tell you what I do know, okay? Leah was living with her dad at the time. She was going through a bit of a phase, if that’s not too stupid a word.’

  She pulled herself up straighter on the sofa and her husband’s hand fell away, unnoticed.

  ‘I suppose I’d better go back a little bit. Leah moved in with her dad when I married Fergal. It was a difficult time for her. It had been the two of us for a long time and she didn’t take – she wasn’t keen on Fergal. She didn’t . . .’

  In an awkward gesture, her husband reached for her again, this time giving her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

  ‘It’s all right, love. They said to tell them anything that will help. I don’t mind.’

 
Heather tugged a tissue out of her cardigan pocket, blew her nose and continued.

  ‘She was a bit resentful, just stupid, childish stuff. It hadn’t occurred to her that I might need a relationship too – her dad had loads of girlfriends after we split, but that’s not Mum’s job, you know? Mum is supposed to be just Mum. Anyway, I got pregnant before Fergal and I were married – I seem to make a bit of a habit of that – and then we lost the baby and I suppose Leah just felt a bit lost herself in the middle of everything. I didn’t have much time to give her, to be honest with you. I was quite ill and low after the miscarriage and I was trying to keep my practice going at the same time. So when she asked to move in with her dad I didn’t argue with her. I thought it might do us all good to have a break. We hoped – Fergal and I – that we might have a baby, even at that late stage.’

  The look she sent in the direction of the nanny’s apartment in the garden told Claire all she needed to know about the unhappy outcome to that plan. The doctor took a sip of tea.

  ‘Marc lives just down the road. But you probably know that.’

  Claire nodded, but didn’t say anything. Instead, resisting the urge to look at her watch, she nodded at her to continue with the main point of her story.

  ‘Marc swore he had changed and, fool that I am, I believed him. He said everything that had happened, with the business and everything, had taught him a lesson. Yeah, right!’

  She looked at her husband for the first time and gave a half-smile.

  ‘You’d think, after everything, that I would have learned, wouldn’t you? But I really thought he meant it. He said he wanted to be a dad again. He’d worked all hours when Leah was small and said he wanted to make it up to her. So I let Leah move in with him. Look, Claire, the fact of the matter was it suited all of us. Teenage girls aren’t easy to deal with – you’ll find that out yourself soon enough. And it was nice for me and Fergal to have some time alone. But in the end, it turned out Marc was only in it for himself, as always. He was trying to rebuild a business and his reputation and it was vital people started trusting him again. Looking back, I think he was just using Leah, really. He still got invited to a fair number of social events, film premières, that sort of thing, and it did him the world of good to look like the doting dad. He was far from doting when she was in nappies, I can assure you.’

  Heather sniffed and gave Claire the ghost of a smile.

  ‘So, yeah, it was all about what he could get out of it. No change there. And then one day he rang me to say Leah was in a bad way, that he was worried about her. I couldn’t believe the state of her when I called over – I could have killed Marc! Her skin was in bits, and her hair. The two of them had clearly been living off takeaways and she’d been having parties too, every weekend, and I just know there was drink at them. Bloody Marc, he couldn’t look after himself, let alone a teenage girl. And to make matters worse, poor Leah had just found out that a boy who had been at one of the parties had taken his own life. It was nothing to do with her, obviously, but Leah felt awful about it. He’d left the party drunk and alone, and the next thing she knew the guards were at her door telling her he’d been found dead and asking about his last movements. My poor girl was heartbroken over it. It wasn’t her fault, of course, but still, it was a dreadful thing to happen. And as for study! It was clear she hadn’t a hope of passing her exams. So I insisted she come home here to us again. Fergal agreed, didn’t you, love? We told her she could live here, study and get her head together again. That was why she took up running – I encouraged it. She needed something to focus on. To be honest, it was only later when I read the inquest report in the paper that I realized it was Eileen’s child who had died. Leah was my priority, you know?’

  She shot Claire a fierce look. ‘I made some terrible – what do they call them now? – life choices, when I was nineteen. I didn’t want my daughter going the same way. She was all I cared about, do you understand?’

  Claire held her gaze. There was no mistaking the compassion in Heather Gilmore’s voice when she spoke about her daughter. An emotion that had seemed to be completely lacking when she’d spoken of the woman who had lost her child.

  ‘And did you contact Ms Delaney at all? Eileen?’

  Heather looked suddenly guilty.

  ‘I didn’t. I meant to send a card or something . . .’

  Her voice tailed off as she looked out into the garden again, and Claire felt a flash of exasperation. It was all about her: her husband, her daughter and her beautiful home. Nothing on her mind other than getting them back together.

  The doctor winced, as if the same thought had just occurred to her.

  ‘She’s punishing us, isn’t she? Eileen? Is that why all this is happening?

  Claire held her gaze.

  ‘We don’t know, Heather. Yes, it makes sense to assume there’s a connection, but we haven’t been able to speak to Ms Delaney, to Eileen. She’s very unwell.’

  ‘She lost a lot of blood.’

  Heather might have been in the midst of a personal nightmare, but she was still a doctor and Claire knew she could be more open with her than was usually the case.

  ‘She did. She was taken to theatre, as you know, but as yet she hasn’t regained consciousness.’

  Heather nodded. The earlier anger she had demonstrated when speaking about her ex-husband had evaporated and her energy was visibly fading. Claire turned to Fergal Dillon, who was nibbling a biscuit without seeming to taste it.

  ‘Can I ask what you were doing yesterday?’

  He looked at her, puzzled, but replied, without hesitation,

  ‘I was at work all day out in our head office in Tallaght.’

  He named a company Claire had never heard of, which usually meant they specialized in something she didn’t understand. And, judging from the vibe she was getting in the house, he was probably being paid vast sums of money. But that wasn’t relevant right now, she thought, as she continued to question him.

  ‘Did you talk to your stepdaughter at all?’

  ‘No, but that wouldn’t be unusual. She rarely rang us during the day. She had her routine – she went out on a run, came back, showered. Sometimes she’d do a bit of shopping, cook us dinner. She’s really settled down, hasn’t she, love?’

  He glanced across at his wife, but she was staring out of the window and didn’t seem to have heard him. After a moment, he shrugged.

  ‘Yes, well, she’s been much, much better these past few weeks. The running seemed to have really helped – she gets almost animated when she talks about it.’

  ‘And when did you—?’

  Claire’s next question was interrupted by the bleep of an incoming text. Heather looked towards a phone that was charging on the kitchen island.

  ‘People keep calling, texting, but your colleagues said I had to leave it on, in case he made contact again.’

  She made a move as if to get up from the sofa, but Dillon had already leapt to his feet. He carried the phone back to his wife, arm outstretched, as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Heather reached for it almost absent-mindedly. As she began to read the message, however, her face turned grey.

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Claire. He wants money. Oh, Leah. Oh, my baby.’

  Beginning to sob, she handed the phone to Claire who took it and squinted at the screen. The message contained just one line:

  I want 300K and I’ll text you later about where to send it.

  But it was the attached photograph that had brought Leah’s mother close to hysteria. Aware that the others were monitoring her own reaction, Claire tried to keep her face straight as she scrutinized the image, but she felt a jolt of fear in her stomach as she took in the details. Leah was wearing the same clothes as she had done in the previous photograph, but otherwise the images could have been taken months apart. This girl looked years older than nineteen, cold and utterly exhausted, crouched
in the corner of a dark room with smears of what looked like dried food on her mouth and cheeks.

  Heather Gilmore’s voice rose in panic. ‘Oh, Jesus. What are we going to do? I want my daughter back, Claire. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’d do anything to bring her home safe, Claire, you have to believe me.’

  I do believe you, Claire thought. And Eileen Delaney had felt the very same way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  She’d had what her mother referred to as ‘a good cry’. The cure for most ills, if you were to believe her, along with early nights and Lemsip. You’d never guess the woman had a bloody medical degree. And after she had finished crying, Leah wiped her eyes with the tail of her running top and decided there would be no more tears. Tears wouldn’t get her anywhere and, besides, she was running low on water. She couldn’t afford to waste any more.

  She had been close to getting through to the kidnapper, she knew she had, but now it seemed she was back to square one with all this talk of ransom notes and photographs. He was a moody bastard too. He hadn’t touched her or anything, at least no more than was necessary to keep her locked in the room, but she’d seen a look in his eyes a couple of times that had made her wonder if that might change. It was best, she reckoned, to assume she hadn’t any time to waste. Sure, things were probably being done in the outside world. Her mum must have gone to the guards by now so there might well be search parties and all sorts going on, but Leah wasn’t going to sit back and be rescued. That wasn’t her style.

  So, what to do? First, she needed a weapon. She stood with her back against the wall and looked around the room. There was nothing in it other than that bloody sofa. She walked over to it, dragged it away from the wall. Nothing behind it, either. Maybe she could break it apart, use it that way. But the sofa, although old and worn, had been sturdily built, and as Leah ran her hands down the sides and across the back it was clear she’d need equipment to dismantle it, which of course she didn’t have. Marvellous.

  She took a step back, then noticed that the carpet directly underneath the sofa was a totally different colour from that in the rest of the room. He was such a pig, this guy. Hadn’t he ever heard of a hoover? Anyway if he walked in and saw the clean spot it would be a dead giveaway that she’d been trying something. She walked back to the sofa, pushing and tugging at it to get it back to exactly the same spot it had stood in before. But as she gave it a final shove forwards it stuck tight, sending a jarring pain up her arm.