by Jo Spain
Ray leaned over to the phone on the desk and dialled the sergeant’s number.
Ian picked up on the first ring. ‘Hello?’
‘Ian, Ray here. I have you on speakerphone.’
‘No problem. What can I do for you?’
‘I have a chap here who’s giving me a hand with something. Did you get back on to the psychiatric unit about Margaret Downes’s family? Tom said you thought she’d had visitors.’
‘I spoke to them. It wasn’t a whole lot of help, though. They didn’t have a name. They have a visitors’ book and it had been signed, but the nurse said it was completely illegible.’
‘But they remembered seeing someone?’
Ray’s stomach was sick with anticipation.
‘Yes. A young woman. The nurse didn’t know if she was a daughter, a niece or just a friend, but said she turned up a couple of years ago, shortly before Margaret died. Said she was absolutely devastated when the woman passed. They hadn’t been able to ring or contact her when it happened because she hadn’t left a number – and, of course, they couldn’t read her name. She just turned up to see the old dear one day and they had to inform her she was dead.’
Ray sucked air into his cheeks. ‘Okay, Ian. Thanks for that. We’re trying to track down that woman. If you turn up anything else, let me know. In the meantime, could you get a warrant sorted so we can get access to adoption records in Limerick city?’
He turned to Ronan, whose California-tanned face was looking distinctly pale and worried.
‘We’re looking for Margaret Downes’s daughter’s adoption records?’
Ray nodded. ‘Can you do it? Ian will sort a warrant for us. But like I said, that will take a while. And if you can, I really need to find out everything that happened to the daughter after that.’
‘You’re the boss.’
Sometimes, Ray reflected grimly, the rules had to be bent ever so slightly to hurry things along.
He crossed the hall to the records room. He found the box he’d been looking in earlier and pulled out the photograph. It was the same group photograph that, unknown to him, Laura had been looking at yesterday. He turned it over and read again the names on the back.
The year was 1976. He scanned through the names corresponding to each woman’s row position. There it was – Maggie Downes. Second from the left, first row. Just a few faces along from Mother Attracta.
He looked at the picture again and this time focused on Margaret.
He had been right. He knew it.
He slumped on to the boxes behind him and put his head in his hands. Tried to rationalize what he’d just seen. He was still in denial.
His brain switched to automatic. He’d get Ronan to confirm it, then he’d act. There were police officers all over the convent, and all the nuns had been converging on the chapel for evening prayers when last he checked.
Everyone should be okay for now.
He pulled out his phone to ring Tom but stopped short. He couldn’t, not yet. Not until he knew for sure.
He did need to talk to someone, though – someone who might be able to help.
Chapter 54
‘Whoever did this had some energy.’
Emmet had traversed the entire floor of the unit, moving as fast as his knees would allow. Tom had been relegated to standing in the doorway and observing his colleague, to avoid further contaminating the scene.
The adrenalin rush he’d felt when they found the place had passed, and the plummeting temperature was getting to him.
‘Isn’t it unusual for a scene to be so clean?’ he stuttered.
Any longer out here and he’d have hypothermia. Emmet, on the other hand, was sweating profusely in his full white suit; the tech unit assigned to assist him was still an hour away.
‘Absolutely,’ Emmet replied. ‘Using plastic sheets – that’s somebody who has done their research.’
Tom was so cold his brain was starting to freeze. He had to keep moving and keep talking.
‘I was thinking of something when I was talking to Linda, Emmet.’
‘Please, stop mentioning that woman’s name. Every time you do I get a stabbing pain in my shoulder like I’m going to have a heart attack.’
Tom looked up to the heavens. ‘Give me strength.’
‘Just tell me what you’re thinking and leave loopy Linda’s name out of it.’
Tom sighed. ‘I’ll find out what happened between you two eventually. Anyway, I began this case wondering if our victim had been killed at random – if we had some maniac on our hands. When I found out she was a nun, I was concerned that somebody was making a statement about the Church. There’s been so much controversy in recent years.’
Emmet worked as Tom talked.
And as Tom laid out the bones of his theory, he temporarily forgot how cold he was.
‘I went to the convent and met all these nuns who’d had fractious relationships with Mother Attracta. Most of them seemed too old and none of them came across as unstable, but I ruled nothing out. It’s usually someone close, isn’t it? Even in gangland murders, it often turns out to be a cousin or an accomplice who ends up firing the fatal bullet – someone who could get close enough to the victim and knew the routine.
‘The evidence kept pointing to the sisters. And I’ve enough experience to know that there is no such thing as a cut and dry profile of a murderer. From the start, the laundry issue intrigued me. I was concerned it might lead the team off on a tangent. But it kept coming back up – especially when Father Seamus was killed. It just seemed obvious that revenge was the motive.’
‘What’s your point, old friend? You believe it was a woman from the laundry?’ Emmet stood up and looked at Tom. ‘You’d better stand in a bit, that snow is coming down again.’
Tom looked up at the sky and stepped over the threshold.
‘The age issue, of the nuns and former laundry inmates, concerned me. The person who killed Father Seamus climbed over a ten-foot wall.’
Emmet nodded patiently and returned to the floor.
‘Then we learned something else,’ Tom continued. ‘Father Seamus had raped girls in the laundry and made three of them pregnant. Laura and Ciaran are gone to interview one of those women tonight. She’d be well in her fifties now. Not exactly decrepit, but maybe too old to be scaling walls and carrying dead bodies into the Phoenix Park.’
Emmet nodded. He was half listening, trying to concentrate on what he was doing.
‘When I was talking to our mutual friend, the psychologist, I asked her if a family member of a laundry inmate could have carried out the murders. I was thinking a father or brother. She entertained the theory and suggested another angle. That maybe I should be looking at a child.
‘The more I thought about it, Emmet, the more it made sense. Can you imagine what it would do to you if you found out not only that you were adopted but how and why you’d been adopted? And worse, that you’d been the result of rape?
‘There are some people involved in this investigation who are just the right age to be a child of one of the rape victims. Sister Concepta is one. Hell, I’ve even given consideration to Jack.’
Emmet stopped what he was doing and looked at Tom.
‘Jesus, Tom, I know he’s useless, but it’s not Jack. I know Jack’s parents. I’ve known the chap since he was a kid. That’s some bloody conclusion you’ve jumped to.’
Tom looked at Emmet, snapped back from his train of thought.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, first your killer has to find out they’re adopted. Then they have to do this whole background search – which, believe me, is no easy feat. This state does not make it easy for people who’ve been adopted to find their birth parents. So, according to your theory, they defy all the odds and discover their adoptive mother’s history and by the close of that story you have them committing a double homicide? It seems like too much of a perfect storm for me.’
Tom chewed his lip and absorbed what Emmet had sa
id. What he wouldn’t give for a cigar right now.
‘I hear you, Emmet. But this crime is unusual. A nun and a priest killed within a couple of days of each other? The way that nun was left?’
Emmet shrugged. ‘But if you’re right and this is premeditated revenge, why did your murderer end up killing the priest when you were standing outside the bloody door? That doesn’t seem planned. It looks pretty ad hoc, if you ask me.’
Tom considered for a moment before replying.
‘We’ve already thought about that. The priest wasn’t there on Wednesday when the killer struck first. He’d travelled to Dublin. Ray went over his bookings in the brothel. They were erratic. If someone had been watching him, they probably knew he disappeared the odd day, but there was no pattern.’
‘Okay. You’ve an answer for that. To be honest, though, I don’t think you’ve any idea how difficult it is for adopted people to find their real parents. The further back you go, it’s especially hard. And where the nuns were involved, the state’s records are appalling.’
Tom was getting irritated with Emmet. This was the problem with scientists. They were finicky about facts – you couldn’t hypothesize without them ripping holes in your theories.
‘You’re very defensive of people who’ve been adopted, Emmet,’ Tom said. ‘I’m not claiming they’re all running around murdering the people who decided they should be given up for adoption. I’m just wondering if there wasn’t a strange confluence of events that ended up with this person deciding to take matters into their own hands when they discovered the truth. What’s the matter? Are you adopted or something?’
‘Yes. I am, actually. And you know others who are, too.’
Tom’s eyes widened as he stared at his friend.
‘I never knew you were adopted.’
‘Why would you? I never told you. It’s not something people generally talk about. Some people know I am, though – and I’ve tried to give them some help finding their parents, too. Adopted people tend to find one another.’
‘You sound like an authority on the subject.’
‘I am. I searched for my birth mother for years. Never found her. My records don’t go beyond my adoptive parents. I suppose I’m a suspect now.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Tom said, warily.
He’d already formed a theory, but he needed to hear Emmet confirm it. That had been his missing link – knowing who was adopted.
‘You said I know plenty of others. Who do I know?’
‘Well, there’s Bridget in your station, for a start.’
*
Ronan found Ray in the kitchen talking to Sister Gladys.
‘Detective, can I see you?’ he asked.
One of the other nuns bustled past him, and he gave her a broad smile. She’d brought him cake an hour ago, a delicious rich chocolate sponge with a hot raspberry filling.
Ray looked like he’d aged in the half-hour or so since Ronan had last talked to him. ‘Sure,’ he said, rising to his feet.
Sister Gladys grabbed Ray’s hand as he stood. She was sitting in her usual chair, her leg raised on a pouffe. The nun appeared to Ronan to have been crying.
Ray nodded to her, visibly dazed, before following Ronan out of the kitchen.
‘What was that about?’ Ronan asked, as they headed back to the computer.
Ray didn’t speak for a moment, lost in his thoughts.
‘Nothing. Just an old lady’s memories. I was asking her about some of the pregnant girls she attended. She . . . she saw a lot of heartache. She was with Margaret Downes when her baby was taken from her.’
Ronan looked closely at the young man beside him. Ray was attractive. Tall, dark, a chiselled face, lean. But he had none of the swagger that good-looking men his age generally had. His eyes were intense but kind.
Ray caught the other man staring, and Ronan blushed. He did that a lot in Ireland. He wasn’t openly gay here – it wasn’t like California – people knew, but it was unspoken. He’d developed the habit of being self-conscious around other men, even when it was unnecessary. It was a sad fact that, among certain Irish people, homosexuality was still considered contagious.
‘Well, wait until you see what I’ve found,’ Ronan said. ‘Talk about heartache.’
‘You’ve found something already?’ Ray said, amazed.
He opened the office door and stood back to let Ronan pass through. Ronan took up his seat at the computer screen.
‘I’ve found everything. It was a piece of cake in the end. In relative terms, this was a modern adoption. Further back and we’d have had trouble. Margaret Downes’s daughter was born and adopted in 1975. Adoption became legal in Ireland in 1952, so the records are better from the late fifties on.’
Ray stood in front of the desk, fidgeting nervously.
‘It was easy to find the birth and adoption certs because I knew where the daughter was born and from where she’d been adopted. The Health Service Executive in Limerick has all the files that were once held in this convent. After that, I tracked where she’d gone in the system. If she’d had an easy life it would have been harder, but this girl kept popping up. To a point, anyway.’
‘What do you mean by “if she’d had an easy life”?’ Ray asked. ‘What happened to her?’
‘What didn’t happen to her would be a better question. This girl really got the shit stick. The couple that adopted her were not suitable. They were in their early fifties – too bloody old to adopt, but obviously well connected and moneyed. But they clearly couldn’t cope with a small baby. She ended up in care when she was two. There was a series of foster homes, and it appears from her file . . .’ Ronan stopped.
‘What?’ Ray asked, unable to keep the tremor from his voice.
‘She was abused as a child. In one of her foster homes. It must have been pretty horrific because the adults were struck off the fostering register. I bet that doesn’t happen too often in Ireland.’
‘Go on,’ Ray said, his voice strained.
‘There’s not a whole lot more,’ Ronan continued. ‘She was in care until she was fifteen and finally got some decent foster parents. They seemed to be involved in local religious groups and charities. Good people. When she turned eighteen she went off the health service’s radar.’
‘What age was she when she was abused?’
Ronan swallowed. ‘Seven. To nine.’
Ray nodded but said nothing.
‘Do you want to know her name?’
Ronan realized he’d gone from being thrilled at having unearthed so much in such a short time to feeling like he’d just told Ray that everyone he loved had been killed in a car crash.
‘Yes. Tell me her real name,’ Ray whispered.
*
‘I don’t understand.’
Laura stood up, agitated. In that moment, the beautiful Christmas tree, the sparkling ornaments and lights, the candles and the smell of shortbread faded into the background. All she could focus on was Noreen, tiny in her huge armchair, giving the detective a perplexed look.
‘You said it was a child who came looking for you?’
‘Not a child,’ Noreen shook her head vigorously. ‘She’s an adult now. But she was Maggie’s child. Maggie Downes.’
Laura brought her hand to her chest, where her heart was beating like that of a racehorse. She forced herself to sit down again and take a deep breath. She even managed a sip of tea.
‘Maggie’s child came to find you. How did she know to look for you?’
Noreen sat back, a little uncertain now, but willing to proceed.
‘Maggie had brought only one thing to that hospital of any importance. A diary. That was the key to the whole thing, really. I suppose if she hadn’t brought that, Liz would never have known—’
‘Did you say Liz?’ Ciaran spoke before Laura had a chance to react.
That name had been playing on his mind ever since he realized the mistake he’d made in not taking the phone call from Liz Downes seriously.
‘Why did she come to you?’ Laura asked, impatiently.
‘She’d done the research and found her mother. But when she finally came face to face with her, she met a woman so far gone she couldn’t even speak. Liz said the hospital room had a bed and a little locker and that the diary was the only personal thing the woman possessed. God, it’s depressing. It was exactly like that in the convent dormitories.’
Laura’s mind was spinning. ‘And the diary – what did it say? Did it say she’d been raped?’
Noreen shook her head. ‘Good gracious, no, it didn’t say that. The nuns wouldn’t have let her keep it. It didn’t even mention Liz. But Maggie did write about the other girls in the laundry. My name was one of them, and Liz found me. She knew nothing about her mother except that she’d been in Kilcross. Of course, I remembered Maggie. She was such a lovely girl. But after what happened to her, she was never the same.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘She lost her mind. God, the trauma I went through when they took my baby from me. But Maggie never recovered. She obsessed about it, couldn’t think of anything else. Then she couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat. She was full of hate. She just kept repeating that they all deserved to die. She loved Liz so much, but then when her girl found her they couldn’t even be properly reunited. Her body was there but her mind was gone.’
Noreen sniffed and extracted a white lace handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbing her eyes and nose.
‘I told Liz everything I could,’ the woman continued. ‘I was so happy to meet her and be able to tell her how much she was loved, what Maggie had been like before it had happened. So beautiful, Maggie was. Just like her daughter . . .’
As Noreen talked, a theory was slowly forming in Laura’s head. She realized why she had thought of it – a photo she had been looking at in the convent but to which she hadn’t given enough attention. And names. At some point, she’d meant to ask one of the nuns about their names – obviously the saints’ names they took weren’t their actual names.