What had it snagged on? Leah sank to her knees, then noticed that a section of the carpet had balled up against the sofa leg. She wrestled with it, pushing the leg forward and back until she had freed it, then shoved the sofa back against the wall. Gotcha. But when she turned she saw she had now dislodged an entire section of carpet, leaving a floorboard exposed in the middle of the room. Still on her knees, she made her way over to the join. At some stage, a workman or someone must have needed access to the floorboards, but instead of lifting the entire carpet they had just sliced it down the middle, done whatever they needed to do and then reattached it again. With carpet tacks? Leah’s hopes rose, then sank as she saw that the carpet had instead been stuck to the floor with some sort of sticky tape. Nothing that was of any use to her. She’d better make sure it was all put back together properly though, or the man would know she’d been messing around. Extending her hand, she began to smooth the carpet back over the floorboards, then stopped when she felt one piece of wood give slightly under her hand. She pressed down again more firmly. Yeah, that was definitely a wobble. Silently, not sure what exactly she was looking for, she pulled at the carpet, exposing more boards underneath, noticing immediately that it wasn’t just the carpet that had been sliced through in the past, a number of the floorboards had been cut too.
Heart thumping now, Leah dug a fingernail into a gap, expecting resistance but receiving none, and almost tumbled backwards as the board rose smoothly in her grasp. As did the one beside it, and the one beside that. She rolled onto her stomach then, staring into the cavity beneath her. And, for the first time since this whole mess had started, Leah allowed herself a smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Claire didn’t go straight home after interviewing Heather Gilmore, of course. She dropped Flynn back to his house – her colleague was clearly in serious pain and wasn’t in any fit state to return to work that day. But after seeing him safely through his front door, Claire pointed her car in the direction of Collins Street. She had meant it when she’d told Matt she’d only work a half-day, but the ransom demand had added another layer of urgency to an already critical case, and at this stage she’d be lucky if she made it home before Anna’s bedtime.
Which was exactly what Matt had predicted that morning.
Claire pulled into the Garda station car park and frowned. Turned out that, when it came to her job at least, her husband knew her better than she did herself. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, actually, but she didn’t have time to worry about it now. Instead she killed the engine and sent Matt an apologetic text promising to be home at the vague hour of ‘not too late’. A large part of her felt resentment at having to include the apology at all – what was she apologizing for, exactly? Doing her job? Attempting to save a young woman’s life? But there was a time and place for righteousness and this wasn’t it. Her circumspection was rewarded when, seconds later, a text pinged back from her husband telling her not to rush and that he and Anna would stay at his mum’s for the rest of the day. There was no ‘X’, but no overt anger either, and Claire decided to quit while she was ahead, shooting her own ‘Thanks, X’ across the phone system. She slipped her phone back into her bag before she was tempted to say any more. Anna was fine, that was the main thing. She, Claire, was back in work and the fact of the matter was there was nowhere else on earth she wanted to be.
Most of her colleagues felt the same, Claire thought, as she walked through the public office and used her ID to get into the main body of the station. The air of excitement in the place was quite simply impossible to ignore. Did that sound insensitive? she wondered. But she couldn’t think of any other way to describe the heady mixture of anticipation, drive and focus that hung over an office where every member was working towards the common goal of finding Leah Gilmore. Besides, feeling excited about the task in hand didn’t mean they cared any less about the girl. It wasn’t as if anyone were celebrating that one woman was missing and another was in hospital badly injured. But they were at the centre of a case the whole country was talking about and it was hard not to feel invigorated by the energy and purpose hanging in the air. So, yeah, Claire thought, as she headed towards the conference room where Quigley had organized a morning briefing, she felt excited. Why wouldn’t she? Wasn’t that why she’d joined the force in the first place?
‘We’ll make a start, so.’
Superintendent Quigley’s voice interrupted her thoughts and she grabbed the first free chair she saw, two rows from the table where her boss sat, a thick file open in front of him. To his left sat two officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, brought in to beef up the investigation, and on his right was the tall, well-groomed figure of Detective Inspector David Byrne who, it became apparent, was going to chair the meeting. Claire had never worked directly with Inspector Byrne. The closest their paths had come to crossing was when he had taken over the Miriam Twohy murder case after she herself had been signed off on pregnancy-related sick leave. Being signed off hadn’t stopped her working on the case, and she had heard through the usually reliable Garda grapevine that he had been one of a number of her colleagues who had thought that her subsequent actions had crossed the (thin blue) line. Given that her work had led to the resolution of the case, Quigley had let her off with nothing more than a verbal warning, but the last time Claire had spoken to the inspector he’d made a comment about ‘solo runs’ that clearly hadn’t been meant as a compliment. Well, she’d have to forget about that and make an effort to keep him onside.
In fairness to Byrne, though, he was clearly an officer who ordered his thoughts: he took the room quickly and clearly through the main points of the investigation so far, among them forensic analysis of the gun that had been recovered from the surgery, and the bullet that had been recovered from Eileen Delaney. They were hopeful, he said, that the gun would be traced.
As Claire frowned in concentration, she was jolted when a latecomer to the meeting squeezed into a chair behind her. Irritated, she moved hers forwards a little but she’d already missed the second half of the inspector’s sentence. A hissed ‘sorry’ came from behind but she ignored it, leaning forward to catch up with Byrne, who had now moved on to fingerprint evidence from the surgery, which hadn’t yielded any matches with known criminals.
The room was packed: members had been drafted in from all over the city to help with the investigation, not just the big guys from the NBCI but plenty of uniforms too, all doing the legwork that, it was hoped, would bring Leah Gilmore home. From what Byrne was saying, though, their legs might have been earning overtime, but their questions weren’t revealing much. Door-to-door interviews in Fernwood had done nothing other than confirm what they knew already: that Leah Gilmore had left her home to go for her usual jog around 10 a.m. and hadn’t come home again. One neighbour, driving by in her car, had seen her jog along the road leading to Rua Strand, but after that there was nothing, and Byrne didn’t try to keep the note of wry humour from his voice when he said that most Fernwood residents seemed more eager to convince the gardaí that ‘it couldn’t have been a local chap’ than give them any actual useful information.
It wasn’t unusual, Claire knew, for locals to insist a crime had been committed by someone from outside. Even when incidents happened in the roughest areas, those interviewed by guards were always at pains to point out that that ‘sort of thing’ didn’t usually happen ‘round here’, and that a suspicious-looking gang from ‘outside’ had been seen in the area – if the gang could be described as members of another ethnic group, so much the better. And Claire had no doubt that the good citizens of Fernwood would take that NIMBYism up another level. Homing pigeons, the lot of them, who would never move outside their precious village if they could help it. Even Fernwood’s youngest residents, if they couldn’t afford their own home in the area straight away, only went as far as a slightly less salubrious south Dublin suburb while waiting for their parents to do the decent t
hing and stump up a deposit or die. So, for something like this to happen to one of their own, literally on their doorstep, would have them baffled, Claire knew, and certain the misfortune had come from outside. And they were wrong to think that way. Claire had been a guard long enough to know that shit happened everywhere, but in some places people were more adept at scooping it neatly away.
Byrne was still talking in his accentless, classless drawl and, despite her interest, the events of the previous two days and the heat of the overcrowded room were getting to Claire and she was struggling to concentrate. Several vehicles had been reported as ‘acting suspiciously’ in the area, Byrne said, and were being checked, but so far nothing had come of the leads. Leah’s phone had been found, of course, and one officer had also found an area of disturbance in dusty ground just outside the entrance to the car park on the side of Kennockmore Hill.
‘Moving on now to technological analysis . . .’
Claire’s eyelids drooped, then sprang open as the chair behind her knocked into hers again. She sighed, then realized Byrne was looking over her left shoulder.
‘Perhaps you’d like to bring us up to speed, Sean.’
Wriggling around in her chair to see who was behind her, Claire did a double-take. Sean Gilligan. Good Lord. As he clambered to his feet, moving awkwardly in the narrow space she’d afforded him, she remembered the last time she’d seen him, up to his tonsils in a new recruit at a going-away bash in Templemore. The intervening years had been kind to Sean Gilligan, Claire decided, as he started to speak. What had been a rather lanky frame had filled out and he wore a suit well, unlike some of her plain-clothes colleagues, who looked as if they missed the days when the only choice they had to make was which pair of navy uniform trousers to pull out of the wardrobe.
It was clear from what Sean Gilligan was saying that he’d specialized in computer crime. As he continued to speak Claire found herself pinging awake. The ransom text had come from a pay-as-you-go phone, he confirmed, and cell analysis had shown that the message had been sent from the city centre and the phone itself dumped in a bin the same day. Not totally unexpected, Claire thought, but another sign that they weren’t dealing with a total eejit. Meanwhile, Gilligan continued, Eileen Delaney’s flat had been searched and her laptop seized. It was being examined for any record of communication with ‘Richard’ that might give them a clue as to who he was and, most importantly, where. The phone Eileen had been carrying, the one that had received the first picture of Leah was a new device too, Gilligan said: further evidence that no small amount of planning had gone into the kidnap.
Sean paused for breath and, without thinking, Claire addressed him directly.
‘Do you know if her son had a computer? Alan? And, if so, is it still in her flat?’
A look of recognition flickered across Gilligan’s face but his tone didn’t change as he answered her.
‘We haven’t found another computer, but—’
‘Have you something to add, Detective?’
Too late, Claire realized she should have addressed the question to the top table. As quickly as she could, and avoiding the look of irritation on Byrne’s face, she filled in her colleagues on her morning in Fernwood, explaining to them how the death of Eileen Delaney’s teenage son seemed to have been the catalyst for the woman’s rage and actions.
‘So I just think we need to look at Alan Delaney’s death too, you know? To cover all the bases.’
‘But he took his own life, yes?’
Byrne’s remark was less a question than a comment, and Claire felt her cheeks redden. Wretched blood vessels, letting her down when she didn’t need it. She took a deep breath before answering.
‘Yeah, he did, but I’m interested in what happened to him before that: whom he knew, why he did what he did, that sort of thing. His death is the only thing we know about Eileen Delaney’s motivation and—’
‘Thank you, Sergeant.’
Byrne gave her a quick nod of dismissal. After thanking Gilligan far more effusively for his update, he moved on to outline plans for a media conference, which, he said, would be held in the next hour to try to persuade witnesses to the abduction to come forward.
‘We want to concentrate on where she’s being held,’ Byrne said, palms flat on the table in front of him.
Claire had a sudden memory of someone, possibly Siobhán O’Doheny, telling her once that he had his nails manicured weekly. She tried not to look at them as he continued.
‘Someone might have seen her being picked up and driven away, or being brought into a house against her will, even. The ransom note is a complication, but at least it’s an indication that she’s still alive and that he has an interest in keeping her alive. We’re working with a psychologist on how best to respond to it, but, in the meantime, someone might have seen something and not even know its significance. We need those people to come forward, as soon as they can.’
A few clipped sentences later, Byrne brought the meeting to a close and there was a mass scraping back of chairs as the members went back to the job in hand. Claire sat still for a moment, the heat of the room anchoring her to the chair, then jumped to her feet when Superintendent Quigley, moving against the tide, came to sit beside her.
‘Sir!’
‘Sit down, Detective. It’s like a sardine can in here.’
‘Sir,’ Claire said again, wondering if she was going to be bollocked for not giving Inspector Byrne the respect he so clearly felt he deserved. But Quigley had other matters on his mind and smiled at her.
‘Well done this morning. It sounds like you got a lot out of Dr Gilmore, under difficult circumstances.’
As the bodies continued to flow past them, Claire had to move her chair slightly closer to Quigley’s in order to continue the conversation.
‘Thanks, sir, but we’ve a long way to go yet.’
Quigley nodded and Claire saw an opportunity to make her suggestion to a more receptive audience.
‘What do you think, sir, about Alan Delaney? About taking a look at his case, too? I still think that to fully understand what Eileen Delaney did, and who this Richard is, we have to understand everything that happened to her, and her kid.’
Quigley studied the floor for a moment.
‘I see your point, Sergeant. But our arses are to the wall, quite frankly, with this thing. We’ve officers walking the streets, huge searches going on across the country, others going through hours of CCTV. We don’t have the resources to deal with what we have in front of us, let alone to bring in another element.’
Claire nodded, but she’d anticipated his reluctance.
‘I know, sir, but I was thinking, maybe Flynn?’
Quigley raised one eyebrow, but remained silent.
‘His rib, sir. I dropped him home earlier – he’s not up to much door-to-door work. I doubt if he’s even supposed to be driving at the moment. I just thought, if he’s going to be based in the office anyway . . .’
Quigley reached for his phone, which was buzzing angrily in his breast pocket.
‘All right, Sergeant, I take your point. You can direct Detective Flynn to look into Eileen Delaney’s background and her son’s death if you really think it’s relevant. But if at any stage Inspector Byrne or I need him for other purposes, he’s to drop it immediately, okay?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
Claire kept her face neutral, but Quigley was too busy reading a new text message to notice. When he had finished, he looked up at her again.
‘How about you, Detective? You’d be entitled to take a break yourself. Have you plans for the rest of the day?’
‘I’m staying here, sir.’
‘Well, then.’
Quigley replaced the phone in his pocket and gave her the ghost of a grin.
‘Seeing as you’ve already spoken to the ex-missus, Marc Gilmore has just arrived into
Dublin on a flight from China. Do you want to sit in on the interview?’
‘Try stopping me,’ was what she wanted to say, but, thinking better of it, Claire kept it to a simple ‘Yes, sir.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
A crawl space, wasn’t that what it was called? Leah wriggled forward on her stomach until she was lying directly over the hole. She’d heard the term in an American movie but had no idea they had them in Irish houses. She narrowed her eyes but it was impossible to see anything down there. She’d no torch, of course, no phone to use as a torch, and the room itself was too dim to allow any light to spill into the space. Leah swallowed. In the movie, the ‘crawl space’ had been filled with spiders, which had then invaded the house above. Then again, she’d take spiders over being locked in here any day. Okay, so, enough messing. She sat up, swivelled, then lowered her legs into the gap. Wished she still believed in God, because it would be nice to have some sort of prayer to offer to the universe right now, then took a deep breath and jumped.
Her feet found the floor too soon. Standing up in the space still left her head and shoulders sticking out into the room. Shit. How wide was it, though, and where did it lead? She bent her knees, crouched low and immediately a feeling of intense claustrophobia came over her. Mustn’t panic, now. Must move.
Keeping her eyes closed, because she couldn’t see in the dark anyway and it seemed less scary that way, Leah extended her hand and began to move forwards. Actually, now she was down there, being underground wasn’t as bad as she had feared. Airless, yes, but not damp, and with rather a musty smell not dissimilar to the one up in the room. A cobweb brushed her face and she shivered but didn’t stop moving, then swore as her outstretched hand struck brick. She opened her eyes but couldn’t see anything and used her hands to explore the wall. Brick after brick after brick. Less hopeful now, Leah turned and moved back in the opposite direction, pausing to open her eyes when she passed under the gap in the floorboards, then walking forwards again. Her back was aching with the effort of moving at a crouch but it would all be worth it if— Shit. Another brick wall. Tears sprang to her eyes as she sucked her grazed knuckles. What had she been expecting? A tunnel, leading over the hills and far away? No, but something . . . Almost groaning in frustration, Leah walked back to the gap in the floorboards and then stood, rigid when she heard the key in the front door. Crap, he couldn’t find her, he mustn’t. Moving as quickly and as silently as she could, she raised herself up by her arms and replaced the boards. His footsteps sounded in the corridor outside and she froze, but then she heard him clattering up the stairs. Okay. He wasn’t coming in. Shaking now, Leah pulled the carpet back and smoothed it down as best she could, then crawled back to the sofa, not sure her legs would hold her up if she tried to walk. There was dust in her hair and quite possibly a cobweb in her mouth, but she didn’t have time to worry about that now. Calm down, it’s okay, calm down. She sat on the couch, put her head between her legs. She didn’t have an escape route. But she had something. Surely she had something to work with now.
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