With Our Blessing

by Jo Spain

  ‘Does Noreen look anything like Catherine Farrell?’ she asked Ciaran in hushed tones.

  ‘She could have been wearing a wig for the red hair, but no, she’s not tall enough. Catherine had about a foot on her.’

  ‘The woman in this photo has red hair, and she’s taller,’ Laura said. ‘Her daughter, maybe?’

  Ciaran stood up to look, and nodded.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said.

  The door opened and Noreen came in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits.

  She was smiling gaily, but Laura couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about the woman’s cheeriness. Was it a little manic?

  Ciaran stood up to help, taking the tray and placing it on the coffee table in front of the couch.

  ‘Family?’ Laura asked, indicating the photos.

  Noreen beamed even wider.

  ‘Yes. My son and daughter,’ she said. ‘Those are their children. They were here yesterday. That’s when we decided to turn the place into the North Pole. Well, it was my idea. They helped; they like indulging me.’

  She chuckled and sat down in the armchair nearest the window.

  ‘Please, try some of my biscuits,’ she said, as she poured the tea. ‘I’ve been fine-tuning this recipe for a month and I think I have them just right now. They’re chocolate-covered shortbread, but I’ve added a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon as it’s Christmas.’

  Laura sat back down next to Ciaran, propping herself up with cushions as he had done. She tasted one of the delicious-smelling biscuits and let herself drift to heaven for a moment.

  ‘I think you’ve nailed it,’ Ciaran said.

  ‘Oh, I’m glad. The children will love them.’

  ‘Noreen, we know from your file in Kilcross that you were forced to give up a child for adoption,’ Laura said. She glanced across at the photos on the mantelpiece. ‘Did you have more children after you left the laundry?’

  ‘No, but I did reconnect with my baby.’

  ‘Was it a son or daughter you gave up for adoption?’ Laura asked.

  Noreen’s smile vanished, replaced with a thin-lipped scowl. It completely transformed her face.

  ‘It was my son. That’s him in the picture, with his wife.’ She pointed at the mantle. ‘I didn’t give him up. He was taken from me. There is a very significant difference.’

  Her tone was bitter.

  Laura took a deep breath. They’d decided in the car that it would be better if she handled the conversation. She knew now that she would have to play her ace card to get Noreen to relax and talk to them properly.

  ‘Noreen, before I went down to Kilcross I found out something very distressing about the place. My mother’s sister was sent to its laundry in the sixties. I’ve seen her file and know what happened to her. I know what those nuns were capable of. And if I ask you something silly it’s because I don’t know everything, not because I have any preconceived notions.’

  Noreen observed Laura keenly.

  ‘Who was your aunt?’ she asked, suspiciously.

  ‘Peggy Deasy.’

  ‘Oh. I remember her.’ The woman looked at Laura sympathetically. ‘I’m not ashamed of telling you what happened to me there, though I cringe every time I think of the place. I want to tell people what happened. I’ve had a happy ending, but so many others haven’t. The truth needs to come out. You must realize that yourself.’

  Laura nodded. ‘You said your son was taken from you, that you hadn’t given him up. Your file says you signed the papers, if reluctantly.’

  ‘I didn’t sign the papers. I didn’t sign anything. I refused. And I wasn’t the only one. My signature was forged. And most of those who did sign were threatened into doing it. The only thing worse for your child than adoption was being taken into care and left in one of those orphanages. Everyone knew that.

  ‘We were nothing, you see. We were treated like dirt. It was hard for any woman in those days who got pregnant out of wedlock. Most were forced to give up their babies. We girls, though, who got pregnant while in the laundry, were treated as the lowest of the low. I wasn’t given any choice about keeping my baby. He was just taken.’

  Laura and Ciaran listened in shocked silence.

  ‘I didn’t even understand what was happening to me when I got pregnant. I’d been sheltered. They said things about my mother, but they weren’t true. I had that “prostitute” label rammed down my throat so many times. I remember my mother. She was a hard-working, loving woman who had the odd boyfriend. She just couldn’t escape poverty, and then she upset some married man’s family in the town and I was taken from her. I think he was my father and she asked him to help out. It didn’t go down too well. Right until her death she tried to get me back.’

  She shook her head sadly.

  Until her death, Laura thought. Obviously the mother and daughter had never reunited.

  Noreen sighed and drank her tea.

  ‘It’s been on my mind so much recently,’ she continued. ‘I got out as soon as I could. Came up here. Made a life for myself. Travelled, everywhere I could. Had boyfriends, but could never get married. I felt dirty. Soiled. Couldn’t settle with anyone. I nearly went mad.

  ‘Then I realized that I would never be happy until I found the baby they had stolen from me. You know, I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl because they never let me see him. They just whipped him away as soon as he was born.

  ‘I didn’t care that he was the result of . . . of what had happened to me. I had felt him moving inside me. All I wanted to do when he came out was hold him.’

  She shook her head. Her eyes glistened with tears.

  ‘It took so long to find him. I got very depressed. Drank, lost my job. Then it happened. Ten years ago. He was looking for me, too. He doesn’t know who his father was. I would never, ever tell him. I told him I was an innocent and a local boy got me pregnant and that I didn’t even know his full name.’

  Noreen sat quietly, staring into her teacup.

  Laura was perched on the edge of her seat.

  ‘You said you didn’t know what happened to you when you got pregnant,’ Laura said. ‘What do you mean?’

  Noreen blushed but held her head high.

  ‘Like I said. I was an innocent. He told me to lie there and be quiet or he’d get angry. He’d give me sweets afterwards. Like that made it better. And I didn’t know that was how you got pregnant. I told Sister Clare everything that had happened and she just slapped me in the face.’

  Laura paled. ‘So you were raped?’

  Noreen looked her straight in the eye.

  ‘Yes. Me and others. By that . . . man. Don’t ask me to say his name.’

  ‘If I say his name, will you nod if it’s correct?’

  Noreen pursed her lips. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Father Seamus.’

  The woman’s face flushed, and she nodded.

  Laura exhaled. ‘Did the nuns know what he was doing all along?’

  ‘We told Mother Theresa, Clare, Attracta . . . all the ones in charge. That made it worse. They’d been letting him take us up to his house for years. No one believed us when we said what he was doing. They beat me while I was pregnant, for making up “lies”. But after a couple of us got pregnant, one of them kicked up a fuss. Gladys. She was the only decent skin there.’

  Laura could feel the tension in every part of her body.

  ‘How did your son react when you found him?’

  Noreen smiled. ‘Very well. His adoptive parents were elderly when they got him and had died two years before I found him. He never would have looked for me if they’d still been alive. He had a good life, and I’m grateful for that. His name is Padraig. It took me ages to get used to that. I’d picked Matthew for a boy or Roisin for a girl. Even now, sometimes I think of him as Matthew.’

  She smiled. ‘But you’ll be wanting to know about the woman who came to find me. So full of anger. So full of hurt.’

  ‘The woman who came to find you?’ Laur
a parroted.

  ‘Yes. I thought that was why you were here. It’s hardly to hear my story. After I heard about those two being murdered, I thought, she’s done it. She’s taken her revenge.’

  Noreen crossed herself.

  ‘You mean Mother Attracta and Father Seamus’s murders?’ Ciaran asked, feeling stupid even saying it.

  The woman they’d come to see clicked her tongue.

  ‘You can use their titles but there was nothing religious about them, I can tell you that. If ever two people deserved to die, they did.’

  Chapter 53

  The additional police presence from Kilcross had created an even tenser atmosphere at the convent – and word that a crazy woman was calling the nuns in for second interviews in the sitting room hadn’t helped.

  The sisters were nervous. Were they suspects or potential targets?

  Michael had gone to talk to Sister Gladys while Ray went out to lock the front gates for the nuns. He needed a break from watching everyone and fetching things for Linda McCarn. There’d been a few phone calls to the convent from reporters who’d arrived in the village, and he didn’t want to risk them getting to the front door.

  The snow was starting to fall again and he half skated, half fell back to the convent.

  Jack opened the front door for him.

  ‘When did you get here?’ Ray asked, suspiciously.

  He hadn’t seen the other man arrive. That didn’t augur well, considering he was meant to be watching all the toing and froing at the convent.

  Jack shrugged. ‘About an hour ago. Figured I’d stay here and give Ellie a hand instead.’

  ‘Ellie’s back? Where is she?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Michael had just come out of the kitchen.

  ‘Find anything?’ Ray asked, crossing the hall.

  ‘I just talked to Sister Gladys. She confirmed that herself and Sister Clare helped deliver some of the babies, and said they had some medical training. She said Concepta would have known that.’

  ‘Let’s ask Concepta why she didn’t tell us. I’m meant to be keeping an eye on her, anyway.’

  Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘She was in the chapel, last time I checked. Probably praying for all this to be over. Shall we?’

  Ray opened the door to the corridor, and bumped into Ellie.

  She smiled with genuine pleasure when she saw him.

  ‘God, I’m glad to see you,’ she said. ‘I wish I could get out of this place. I’m sick of it. Where have Tom and Emmet gone, anyway?’

  Ray was about to tell her when Michael interjected.

  ‘There she is,’ he said.

  Sister Concepta had just rounded the corner at the end of the hall.

  Ray turned apologetically to Ellie. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to see a nun about a dog, but I’ll come find you.’

  Her disappointed look was like a dart to his heart.

  He was about to say something comforting but didn’t get the chance. Sister Concepta had clipped up the length of the hall and was eyeing him and Michael expectantly.

  Ray had remembered something – something so important and so explosive he couldn’t quite believe it. And what Tom had said before he departed now made sense.

  *

  Working fast, Emmet managed to carefully scrape a large section of the new paint from the ceiling.

  ‘Plaster, you see, can be washed, but it tends to just spread the stain,’ he said. ‘Some stains are harder than others to shift. If I were the killer, I’d have cleaned the ceiling as much as possible then given it a couple of fresh coats of paint.’

  Underneath the top layer of white paint was another, dirtier layer. But it wasn’t the grimy grey colour that caught their attention. It was the light brown stains that someone had tried to scrub off.

  ‘Is it . . .?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I’m pretty sure. I’ll need more technicians here.’

  ‘Headquarters are sending some of your team.’

  Emmet took scrapings of the old paint, putting them into a bag.

  ‘I imagine we’ll confirm easily enough that this is Mother Attracta’s blood,’ he said. ‘I’ll go over this room and the chairs as best I can. Though I’ll be shocked if there’s anything else. Taking the time to paint the ceiling, after washing it . . . that’s efficient. I suspect your killer probably covered the floor and walls, then bleached the place afterwards for good measure.’

  The lock-up was chilly, but neither man was feeling the cold at this point. Tom knew they were standing in the room where Mother Attracta must have awoken after being bludgeoned and kidnapped from the convent.

  Freezing, in shock, tied to one of the chairs and placed in the centre of the room. What had been said to her before she was killed? Had her attacker told her she was going to die? Was murder the intention, or had the killer wanted to force the nun to confess to something? Or even just apologize? Was that why her tongue had been cut out – because she refused to comply?

  It was imperative now that they move fast.

  Something had started in this room. But was it finished?

  *

  ‘So who came to see you, Noreen?’ Laura asked, her stomach awash with butterflies.

  She had spent hours in the records rooms and had read every file from the mid-seventies period. Sister Clare had told them the names of the three women who’d been made pregnant by Father Seamus, but they knew he had also molested others. Was it one of those women who had sought out Noreen Boyle?

  ‘I assumed you had come here because you already knew,’ Noreen said. ‘She said it was her mission. I thought that rather apt. A mission from God. If I hadn’t found such happiness, I would have been tempted to do the same. That’s why she opened up to me. She could see I’d suffered, too.’

  Noreen looked down at her feet, ensconced in pink fluffy cat contraptions. Now they’d spent some time with the woman, Laura was starting to suspect the monstrosities were her own choice rather than a well-meaning gift from her grandchildren, as the detective had first assumed.

  ‘I knew they deserved it, but I hoped she wouldn’t go through with it, for her sake. If only she’d found her happy ending. Like I had. The more I got to know her, the more I liked her–’

  ‘Hold on,’ Laura interrupted. ‘Are you actually saying she told you she was going to murder people? Do you know what that means? You should have told the police.’ The detective shook her head, exasperated. She had been correct. There was something not right about this woman. ‘And you say you saw her more than once?’

  Noreen’s eyes widened. ‘Well, I wasn’t sure . . . I mean, I didn’t really think she’d do it. I saw her dozens of times and she was always fine with me. She wanted to know so much. And I have such an excellent memory. She even rented the house next to that beast to find out more.

  ‘I suppose I should have taken her more seriously, with all that planning. And she was in the perfect position to do what she needed to do. I presumed she’d see sense. But then she couldn’t have her happy ending . . . because her mother wasn’t like me. And then she died.’

  ‘What?’ Laura was struggling to keep up. ‘Sorry, who died?’

  ‘Her mother. She’d found her.’

  ‘But why was she looking for her mother? What do you mean? Do you mean she was a mother, looking for her child?’

  Noreen blinked. ‘Her child? Of course not. She was the child. It was her mother who was raped.’

  *

  ‘I just didn’t think!’

  Sister Concepta didn’t even try to hide her frustration with Ray and Michael.

  ‘Sister Gladys and Sister Clare weren’t proper midwives. I doubt they could even dress a cut at this point. I’m not trying to mislead you, I just forgot. I wasn’t here then, for goodness’ sake; I’m only thirty-six.’

  ‘Sister, when we met you first, you told us your parents had died,’ Ray said. ‘Who raised you?’

  ‘Why is that relevant?’

  ‘Answer the question, please.�
�

  ‘My aunt took me in.’

  Ray stood up.

  ‘Please stay where I can find you,’ he said.

  Michael followed him out.

  ‘What was that about?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m just wondering how much she’s been keeping back from us. Keep an eye on her, will you?’

  He found Ronan still in Mother Attracta’s office at her computer.

  ‘You need a drink or something?’ Ray asked, postponing the question he really wanted to ask.

  ‘I’m good, thanks. The nice nuns keep bringing me tea and snacks. They’re not sure what I’m doing on the computer but they don’t seem to realize I was complicit in having Sister Bernadette hauled up to the station. They keep giving out about you lot.’ He laughed.

  Ronan was enjoying being part of this fast-moving case. He’d no idea how slowly murder cases usually progressed, and what it was like to be involved in investigations that remained unsolved for years.

  ‘Ronan, could I ask you to do something important for me?’

  Ronan reacted to Ray’s solemn tone. He sat up straight in his chair, all smiles gone.

  ‘Sure. I’m just tracking this Farrell woman, but I keep arriving at dead ends. It’s obviously a pseudonym. I’d welcome a distraction.’

  ‘I want you to talk to my station sergeant, Ian Kelly. He’s looking into this already, but I’m going to give you a name. I want you to find out everything you can about that woman’s child for me. The difficulty is, the child was adopted, and I don’t know the gender or what it was named.’

  Ronan rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. ‘This will be tough. I’m pretty sure adoption records are tight in this country, and older ones may not be digitized. Unless it was in the last few decades?’

  ‘It would have been the mid-seventies.’

  ‘Well, in that case we could get lucky. Look, I’ll have to go into servers I really shouldn’t be in.’

  ‘That’s why I’m asking you,’ Ray said. ‘If we need to use it as evidence later, we’ll go through the proper channels, but right now I just need something confirmed. You can do this in one hundredth of the time it’s going to take us to do it. I’ll just ring Ian and see if he has anything.’