One Bad Turn

by Sinéad Crowley

‘No.’

  Flynn leaned forward.

  ‘What was that, Mr Gilmore?’

  ‘No,’ Gilmore said again.

  ‘No, I didn’t leave the apartment because I was never there.’

  Heather’s head jerked upwards and she stared at her ex-husband, but said nothing as he continued.

  ‘What’s the point in saying otherwise? You clearly have it figured out, and if it’s in any way going to help us find Leah . . . Look, Guard, I lied about where I was that night and I got my daughter to lie about it too. That’s the truth of it. It was extremely foolish but I didn’t know how things were going to pan out. I was staying with – a friend, in her house, quite near here, as it happens, and I left Leah with the place to herself. It wasn’t the first time. I’m so sorry. I’m not sure if it makes any difference at this stage, but I really am.’

  He turned his head slightly and met his ex-wife’s gaze. As twenty years of history crackled in the air between them, Fergal Dillon might as well not have been there at all.

  Philip Flynn left it a beat, then spoke again.

  ‘Mr Gilmore, did you see or speak to Alan Delaney on the night he disappeared?’

  The big man tore his gaze away from Heather and glared at him.

  ‘No, of course not. I’m telling you, I was with my— Jesus, you don’t think I had anything to do with it, do you? With his death?’

  Flynn leaned forward slightly.

  ‘I’ve been looking back at Alan’s movements on the night, Mr Gilmore, and they don’t make sense. He left Leah’s party and headed back into Fernwood village, fine. But then he was spotted at the bus shelter, way over on the other side of the village. That’s not the road to Kennockmore, Mr Gilmore, but it is the road that leads to the beach, to this house, in fact, and also to the house where you say you were staying that night.’

  Gilmore stared at him.

  ‘I don’t – I can’t see— Jesus, all I want to do is help my daughter, but—’

  ‘We can find out, you know!’

  There was an edge to Flynn’s voice now.

  ‘Alan’s movements weren’t fully investigated at the time, that might have been a failing on our part, but it’s not that long ago, there are files we can reopen. There are plenty of avenues we can explore to figure out exactly what happened.’

  ‘He was with me.’

  The voice was quiet, but the words rang out crystal clear and everyone in the room turned to stare at her. Heather Gilmore’s hands were shaking but her voice remained steady.

  ‘I have to tell you everything now, if there’s the slightest chance it can help my daughter. The boy, Alan Delaney, was with me.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The house was on fire. Leah knew instantly what had happened. The man, the kidnapper had been afraid of being caught and he had set the house on fire to hide the evidence of what he had done. He didn’t want to kill her, he didn’t even know she was inside. But that might well be the result of his actions.

  She pushed away the carpet and lifted her head and shoulders into the room. The door to the hallway was open and she walked over to it, but the smell of smoke grew stronger as she approached and she could feel heat too. Acting on instinct, she slammed it shut and stood for a moment, breathing. Okay, the geography of the place, think, Leah, think, where did she need to go? Out of the door and left, down the hall and through the front door. It would take her, what, twenty seconds? Thirty? Just one more push. She had done so much, looked after herself so well. Just one more push. She took one lungful of musty, but mercifully smoke-free, air then held her breath, opened the door and ran. The heat was already intense, the smoke stinging her eyes as she darted down the corridor. Nearly there, nearly there – she thudded against the front door, grabbed the handle, then almost screamed as the metal seared her hand. She did scream when she realized the door had locked automatically behind him. The heat was blistering now, and the smoke was getting thicker.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The energy in the room had changed again, Claire thought. Now the air around Heather Gilmore was vibrating. You could almost see a cartoon crackle of electricity spark between herself and her ex-husband and it was obvious that, for them, everyone else in the room had disappeared.

  ‘You weren’t the only person who lied about that weekend, Marc. The kid, Alan, he came here.’

  Heather puffed out her cheeks then exhaled, slowly, as if preparing herself for a speech.

  ‘It was around a quarter past one. Fergal was asleep . . .’

  As she nodded briefly in Fergal Dillon’s direction, Claire thought her use of his name sounded so flat, so much of an afterthought that she might as well have been speaking about a neighbour or a distant friend.

  ‘I was downstairs. I was finishing a glass of wine – I couldn’t sleep. We’d had bad news.’

  This time Heather turned fully towards her husband, but he didn’t seem to notice and remained hunched, staring at the floor, his elbows on his knees.

  You didn’t need a degree in body language, Claire thought, to realize that he would rather have been anywhere than in the room.

  After a moment, Heather looked back at her ex.

  ‘I’d found out that day that our second round of IVF hadn’t worked and we’d had a row. Fergal wanted to try again but I knew it was getting too late for me. Anyway.’

  Heather blew a strand of hair away from her face, a curiously girlish gesture.

  ‘When I heard the knock at the door I ignored it at first – I mean, who the hell was going to be calling at that hour? But when it came again, well, I was afraid the noise would wake Fergal.’

  She’d been afraid of igniting the row again, thought Claire, recognizing the feeling all too well.

  ‘So I peeped through the spy hole,’ Heather continued, ‘and it was this young chap, a skinny fella, soaking wet. I know it sounds stupid, but he looked harmless. He was only a kid of Leah’s age, so I opened the door. He asked me was I Leah’s mother, and I said I was, and he told me he wanted to come in, that he had information about her. That was how he put it, “information”. I got such a fright that I brought him in straight away. I was so worried. Did he mean Leah was hurt, or something? And he said, no, not yet, but that he needed to talk to me. It was such a strange thing to say so I brought him into the living room, and asked him what he wanted.’

  At this Dillon finally looked up and stared at her. She flushed.

  ‘He was only young, okay? You were fast asleep.’

  They had definitely been fighting, Claire thought, as Heather continued.

  ‘He pulled out a phone and I asked him what he wanted and he showed me these photographs.’

  The disgust in her voice was so strong that she had to take a moment before she could go on.

  ‘It was Leah and a boy. They were in the apartment, in her bedroom, and she was kneeling down, in front of him.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Marc Gilmore, who was still standing up, groaned. Heather looked across at him and nodded sadly.

  ‘Yeah. You can imagine how I felt. The boy said it was you he was looking for, really, but that it was easier to find me because the house had been in the paper so many times. He said he was good at finding things out, things like addresses. I thought that was such a strange thing to say, but I let it go because everything was strange, really. And then he said he wanted money.’

  She turned her head to address the guards again.

  ‘He said it was all our fault, mine and Marc’s, that he and his mother had ended up homeless and he wanted us to buy them a new place to live. He said that if we didn’t help him he’d share the photos online, that he’d put them everywhere and that Leah would be ruined. He said he knew all her friends, where she went to school and where she wanted to go to college. And he said he could destroy her.’

  ‘
Don’t say any more, Heather!’

  Fergal Dillon jumped to his feet and glared at Claire and Flynn.

  ‘Stop right there! We have to call you a lawyer, right now. Don’t say anything else . . .’

  His wife held up a hand to stop him. Her other hand, Claire noted with no great surprise, was now being held by her ex-husband who had moved to sit on the sofa arm nearest her.

  ‘I have to tell them, Fergal. If it will help us get Leah back, they need to know everything.’

  She squeezed Marc’s hand, then looked from Claire to Flynn in turn.

  ‘I told him to sit down and I called Leah’s mobile. It was as if she had been waiting for the call. She burst into tears the minute she heard my voice. She knew he had taken the pictures and she was terrified he’d do what he’d threatened. So I told her I’d sort it out. That’s what mothers do, isn’t it? They sort things out. I told the boy we were going to go over there. It seemed like the best thing to do. I thought if I could just get him to talk to her, to see what a good person she was, he’d change his mind. So that was what we did. It was no trouble getting him into the car – it was as if, once he’d made the threat, all the heat had gone out of him, almost as if he wasn’t sure what to do next. Anyway, when we got to the apartment Leah came outside to meet us. She’d sent her friends home, told them she was ill. She was quite drunk and I can only imagine they were all in a similar state. It was still raining so I told her to get into the car. We’d go and find somewhere private to talk.’

  ‘You’d been drinking too.’

  Dillon’s voice was dull and toneless and his wife nodded, but didn’t look at him.

  ‘Yes, I had, and it was stupid of me to sit into the car, I know that. I couldn’t be sorrier, but I was just thinking of Leah, trying to get her out of that horrible situation. And because I was drinking I drove us up Kennockmore – you know the back road to the summit, on the other side of the village? I was afraid, you see, that there would be guards out doing breath tests at that time on a Saturday night. So, we drove up there. Leah and I, well, we tried to persuade the boy not to do what he was threatening to do.’

  Her voice had become lighter again, Claire noticed, as if she were telling a story, someone else’s, not her own.

  ‘But he kept saying he wanted money, that he wanted himself and his mother “looked after” – that was the phrase he used. He had the phone in his hand and we were begging him not to post the photos, to delete them, but he wouldn’t do it. And then he jumped out of the car and ran up the hill. I got out and ran after him.’

  She pulled a tissue from a decorated box on the coffee table in front of her and dabbed her nose.

  ‘I ran after him, but he was very quick. He was only young, and it was raining heavily. He just disappeared into the woods ahead of me. I was calling him, but he wouldn’t come back, and after a few minutes, I just decided to let him go. I thought he’d come to his senses, that he’d do the right thing once he’d sobered up and made his way home. So I went back to the car and I drove Leah back to the apartment, then I went home myself and to bed. When I heard what had happened to him – well, it was dreadful, really awful. But I suppose in a way I wasn’t surprised. He had been terribly upset and boys of that age . . . I’m a doctor. We see a lot of suicide in young men. The poor boy. I felt so sorry for him but, to be frank, I don’t think there was anything else I could have done.’

  ‘You left the boy up there? To die?’

  Marc Gilmore dropped his ex-wife’s hand and rose from the sofa. ‘He was seventeen years old, Heather. And you left him up there? Up Kennockmore, at that time of night, in the rain? Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?’

  Heather sat back on the sofa and folded her arms.

  ‘I didn’t leave him up there to die. God, Marc, that’s an awful thing to say. I had no idea he was going to do anything stupid. I was just thinking about Leah, about our daughter. About what was best for her.’

  In the charged silence that followed it took Claire a moment to realize that her pocket was vibrating. She pulled out her phone and saw she had missed four calls from Collins Street in the last three minutes. Nodding at Flynn to keep an eye on the others, she stepped back into the main kitchen and pressed redial.

  Siobhán O’Doheny answered on the first ring.

  ‘Sergeant Boyle? Sorry for interrupting you, but we’ve had a call from Perth. I think we might know where Richard is.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  She had run out of options. Leah butted the heavy wooden door with her shoulder one last time, then dropped to her knees. The hall had filled with smoke now and it was impossible to see from which direction it was coming. She pulled the neck of her top over her mouth and crawled forward blindly. Should she try to go upstairs? A blast of heat from the stairwell put paid to that idea. Should she go back into the sitting room? But there was no way out of there – she was sure of that, at least. She sniffed and began to choke as thick, gritty smoke filled her nose and lungs.

  Desperate now, she stretched out a hand, found the smooth edges of a wooden door and hauled herself upright. The knob was red hot and seared her hand, but she twisted it anyway and fell into the downstairs cloakroom, the one she had used before. It was windowless, of course, but there was a toilet and, without thinking, she stuck her head into the bowl and flushed. Water. Not caring about the filthy surround, not even seeing it, Leah sucked the liquid in, relishing the taste and feel of it on her face and lips. But once she had had enough she felt despair return. Was this it, then? Was this where her story was going to end? Even as her brain formed the thought she heard a loud bang and the light overhead went out. In the blackness, Leah Gilmore threw back her head and howled.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  ‘This exit – no, the next one! Yeah. Stay left. Okay.’

  Ignoring the horn blaring from the car behind her, Claire veered back into her lane, then exited the dual carriageway at the next junction.

  Her colleague looked down at the handwritten notes in his lap, and frowned. Claire knew her handwriting was almost impossible to read but that didn’t matter: she remembered everything the woman had said on the phone and had only passed the notes to Flynn so that he had something to distract him during the journey. If the woman was right – and, Christ, Claire hoped she was – they had a thirty-minute journey ahead of them. And that was starting to feel like a very long time.

  Abandoning all attempts at deciphering her scrawl, Flynn folded the paper neatly and peered through the windscreen.

  ‘She was absolutely sure the girl will be there, yeah?’

  Stuck behind a people-carrier, Claire shifted gear and waited till the road ahead was clear before answering him.

  ‘Yeah, she was sure.’

  As sure as she could be, from fifteen thousand miles away. Olivia Raydell, Richard Fallon’s ex-wife, had sounded nervous when she answered the phone, even when Claire explained why she was calling. Innocent people often felt nervous when talking to police, Claire had found, in the same way they double-checked their seatbelts when coming up to checkpoints. But once Olivia had grasped that she wasn’t in trouble, she had given Claire the answers she was looking for. Yes, she had been married to Richard Fallon, but they had separated two years before. A son? No, she’d had no idea . . . Her voice had faltered and Claire remembered what Eileen had said, about the marriage ending because there had been no children.

  But there was no time to sympathize with the woman now. Instead she pressed her on Richard’s whereabouts. Did she know he was in Ireland? Had he spoken about a trip? Did he have a house here? Did she have any idea where he might be staying? The answer when it came was glorious in its simplicity. Richard’s mother had died recently, Olivia told her. She had been a bit of a recluse, living high in the Wicklow mountains, fields away from anyone else. Richard had often said he’d like to live there one day.

  Claire wasn’t sur
e if she’d even said goodbye to Olivia before snapping at Flynn to get into the car. Two units from Collins Street were dispatched as well, but Fernwood was just minutes from the main Wicklow road, and there was little doubt they would be first on the scene. The further they travelled, the more convinced Claire became that they were on the right road. County Wicklow was close enough to Dublin to allow the kidnapper to drive in and out and make his phone calls, or whatever else he needed to do, yet parts of the county were as rural as anywhere on the west coast.

  Olivia Raydell had said the house was on its own land, deep in the countryside.

  ‘I don’t think satnav would get you there,’ she’d said, with a nervous half-giggle, ‘but I went with him a few times to visit his mum and I think I can direct you.’

  As the miles disappeared under the wheels of the car, Claire thought Leah’s life might well be dependent on those directions. They were moving deeper into the countryside now and, although they were still less than twenty minutes away from salubrious Fernwood, she could see sheep grazing in a field on the left-hand side.

  The road in front of her narrowed suddenly and she flinched as a bramble scraped the side of the car.

  ‘The road is really narrow for a few minutes,’ Olivia had said. ‘Then it opens up again and you’ll come to a crossroads with a metal farm gate on the right. Go straight through that junction, and take the second right. Go down that little road – it’s a dirt track, really – and keep your eye out for a gap on the left. There’s no gate or anything, and you can’t see the house from the road, but if you take that turn . . .’

  ‘It’s there.’

  Claire exhaled as she slowed the car and looked down the lane towards the small, unkempt two-storey farmhouse. Then she saw smoke curling under the front door and slammed down hard on the accelerator again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Leah was still screaming when she heard the banging on the door. She screamed even louder when she heard a sudden splintering noise, then feet and voices rushing in. She was still screaming when the door to the toilet opened, and yelled even louder as she was dragged out of the house and flung onto the grass outside. And then a woman wrapped her arms around her and told her she’d be okay. And as she buried her face in the woman’s shoulder Leah Gilmore stopped screaming and allowed herself, finally, to cry.