by Finn Óg
Reference to the local cemetery was not lost on Sinead. “That’s what we’re here for,” she said soothingly. “You’re Clodagh?”
“Yeah.”
“Now, you know we’re having trouble placing people because of the virus, so these rooms are all we have just now. It’s a bit basic.”
“It’s grand,” said the woman. “I’m glad to have it. I’m glad to be out.”
Sinead could see that the woman was a keeper. So often women rescued from abusive situations willingly went back despite not having the slightest hope that the situation would improve. This woman had fly stitches on her right eye socket and bruising on her neck and upper arms – Sinead could see where the fingers of someone large had gripped her.
“Thing is,” Sinead began, “you could be here for some time.”
“Longer the better,” the woman said.
“Were you working?”
“No, he stopped that. Jealous, he was.”
“What did you do?”
“Cook at the local school. Three hundred lunches a day.”
“That could come in handy,” Sinead said, “if you’re willing?”
“Ah, yeah, course. Anything at all, really. Got to earn me keep.”
Sinead left Clodagh various forms to fill out, confident that the woman wouldn’t require guidance.
She worked her way around the rooms. Some of the women hadn’t been attacked but had been incarcerated. There was one young woman who had been manipulated and eventually assaulted by her girlfriend. Her hair had been torn in lumps from her scalp. She had been hard to reach, sobbing endlessly and explaining that her parents would never take her back because they objected to her sexuality in the first place.
The last room presented the greatest challenge, and Sinead got to it just before midnight. She knocked heavily and didn’t wait for a noise before she gently opened the door a little. “Hello?”
“What?” came an abrasive bark from the darkness.
Sinead stopped. “I’m the manager. I have some things to go through with you.”
“What time is it?” snapped the voice.
“It’s after eleven,” Sinead said, lifting her phone.
“And you want to do this now? I’m in here all day and you want to start the housekeeping now?”
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Sinead said apologetically.
“You didn’t,” growled the woman.
Then what’s the issue? Sinead thought. “I can come back tomorrow.”
“Ah, just come in now,” the woman said.
Sinead wished she’d closed the door and left it until morning. The room was black dark, not even a sliver of light from the high window.
“Leave the light off,” the woman said.
“But I have paperwork,” Sinead said, reaching for the ancient heavy thumb-flick of a rocker switch.
“Don’t you—”
The light came on and the woman swept a sheet up in front of her face as quickly as she could.
“Sorry,” Sinead said instinctively.
“What the fuck?” the woman said. “Turn it off.”
But Sinead’s patience was at an unnatural low. “I’m Sinead, I manage this charity. There is very little I have not seen or heard. Whatever your situation, I’m here to help – not to judge. We need to talk. It can be tonight or it can be tomorrow.”
“Then piss off and come back tomorrow,” the voice from behind the sheet snapped.
“Ok, see you in the morning,” Sinead said, berating herself for the things she was thinking.
Sinead slept on top of a fold-out camp bed she kept for such occasions in the small office, beside an electric fan heater. The deal the charity had with the nuns was that there would be someone on-site when abused women had to be accommodated there. There had been a time when the nuns had the woman-power to deal with almost any eventuality, but a fall in vocations had meant that their population had dwindled. The surviving flock were of a vintage that rendered them incapable of managing outbursts and even occasional violence when some disgruntled, drugged or drunken husband turned up at the door.
Curiously, Sinead slept quite well for a few hours – perhaps through relief at being back doing something useful. The creak of the heavy front door was what woke her, and she reached out to quieten the low hum of the heater.
She was sweating lightly in her sleeping bag as she unzipped it quietly – clicking slowly over one pair of teeth at a time, trying to remain silent. She swept her legs gently to the floor, reaching for her trainers and looking at her own door – part frightened that it might open, part hoping that whoever was moving around would try her room before any of the cells.
She crept behind it and listened, thinking immediately of Sam and the advice he had given her to place a small wedge beneath the door: Better than any lock. Means any intruder has to take the frame out in its entirety. He had given her a lump of rubber the size and shape of a small cake slice. She looked at it now, sitting on the shelf less than two feet from the handle. The thought hurt her heart a little as her hand pressed the noisy spring down and the latch flicked back into place with a thunderous click.
The corridor walls were clad solid in tile, and no matter how soft her trainers the echo bounded down the cold hall and back to her. She walked on the outsides of her feet, grimacing at each squeak on the polished floor. She hadn’t thought to bring anything with her – not that she had anything passable as a weapon in her office anyway. She was dressed, as ever, in black, and kept to the edges as she imagined Sam would, seeking cover and darkness. The thought of him somehow morphed from sadness to courage – a distraction. She hunted ahead for movement, scanning the cell doors, listening for any disturbance.
The end of the hall was a deeper black, the only light from an ancient overhead inspection hatch faded to black as the corridor extended. She crept on, her hand softly feeling the wall, open palmed, then leapt in fright as a door behind her opened.
She turned, pacing backwards – her back arched and hands outstretched. Even as she did so she thought, what are you going to do with those paws?
“Is there someone there?” a firm voice rasped, making a good job at masking any fear.
Clodagh, the school cook. Sinead tried to gather herself.
“It’s ok, Clodagh, honestly. Go back to bed.”
“Sinead? What are you doing creeping around? You’ll scare the life out of the women.”
“Sorry, I, I thought I heard someone.”
“Yeah, yer one down the hall. She was up.”
Sinead instinctively knew who she was talking about. “Well, where is she?”
“I dunno.”
“I need to find her. We can’t have the nuns woken or there’ll be hell to pay.”
“I’ll come with ye,” Clodagh said. “Sure, I’ll not be able to sleep knowing you’re skulking around.” Sinead was about to argue but felt buoyed by the company.
They walked more confidently now, comforted by one another’s presence. They headed up to the nuns’ quarters, all the way into the convent and as far as the chapel. Sinead guiltily checked the altar and the locked cabinets, fearing any intruder may have had an eye on the gold candlesticks, or worse. She lifted the Trócaire box – it was still heavy.
“Occupational hazard, I’d say,” Clodagh said wryly.
They made their way back down the corridor, past the cell doors once more, half expecting some man to leap out at them. Then they crept down the stairwell, keeping eyes on the enormous, heavy front door, where their fears were confirmed. It stood, just slightly ajar.
“Shit, we’d better check her room.” Sinead turned and began to run – up the stone stairs and down the hallway, Clodagh pattering and panting at her rear. Sinead saw the door she was looking for in the gloom and stopped, unsure as to what she would do if the woman’s partner had her by the throat or had harmed her.
“Mind yourself,” Clodagh said, somehow giving her strength, and she plunged the handle down an
d pushed the door inwards.
Silence. Stillness. Darkness.
Sinead thought of Sam again, and placed one foot forward lest someone should jam her arm in the door, and reached around for the heavy light switch.
The room lit up, disturbed. A choking mixture of perfume and cigarette smoke filled the otherwise empty room.
“She’s gone,” Sinead said.
Doors were cracking open down the hallway; some lights came on and filled the corridor with streaks of yellow.
Clodagh turned around. “You’re grand, ladies. Someone just left in the night,” she said. “Go on back to bed. Everything’s grand.”
Sinead stood motionless, surveying the room. The woman had used the small mouthwash glass as an ashtray, despite having been told by posters and laminated notices on the wall that there was to be no smoking in the rooms. There had been no smell of smoke earlier, but night time made fag breaks outside less attractive. There was a burn on the sheet she had used to cover her face when Sinead had tried to do her induction. The pages she’d been supposed to fill out lay untouched on the end of the mattress.
“Tramp,” muttered Clodagh, which surprised Sinead.
“She’s probably had a rough time,” she replied distractedly.
“Or caused one,” Clodagh said.
Sinead didn’t think to inquire what she meant. She was staring at the one thing the woman had left behind – large and expensive looking. “She’s left her phone.”
“And a mess.”
“No. She must have been scared. If she left it behind, she must have been in a hurry. A panic. Ach, I hope she’s ok.”
“That one will be fine,” Clodagh said, turning towards her own room once more. “I wouldn’t worry about her.”
“How do you know?”
“I knew her a bit. Back in the day. She was in me brother’s year at school. She was never any good.”
Sinead set about drawing the sheets off the bed, noticing a dark red staining on part of them. She sniffed it at a distance – blood, she thought, with something else smudged into it. She was familiar with drug users, needles, nosebleeds and all the usual excretions, but this stain baffled her.
Sinead sent Clodagh back to bed, secured the front door and returned to her own room. She found her own phone and called the police, but once the preamble began she knew it would prove a waste of time.
“So was there a forced entry?”
“Not so far as I can tell.”
“Sign of a struggle?”
“Not really.”
“Yes or no?” said the surly guard.
“No, just a mess.”
“Well, we can’t send a car out on the strength of a woman leaving a mess.”
“I know,” she said, exhausted, sitting again on the camp bed.
“Is the front door secure?”
“Yes, it is now,” Sinead said, thinking of Sam’s wedge currently kicked firmly under it.
“Any way of identifying the woman?”
“We hadn’t had a chance to do the paperwork.”
“Busy are ye,” it wasn’t so much a question as a snarl.
“She didn’t give an address, just a first name,” Sinead read from a sheet and her heart sank.
“Which was?”
Grace would have not have known to question it, she had no point of reference.
“Alexa,” Sinead sighed.
“Alexa,” the guard repeated, her voice laced with irony.
“I know. They often give false names. But if you see anyone walking the streets, she may be bleeding a little.”
“How?” the guard sounded interested for the first time.
“There was blood on the sheets.”
“From an attack?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What does she look like?”
“I don’t know.” Sinead sighed. “She held the sheet in front of her face. I didn’t push it.”
“Sounds more like one of your people just got up and left of her own free will.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want a reference number for the call?”
Sinead scribbled the number down, ended the call and clambered back into her sleeping bag, setting an alarm to raise her before the nuns got up. It would give her less than two hours’ sleep. On the floor beside the camp bed was the woman’s phone, in case anyone should call looking for it.
She closed her eyes and thought of Sam. She was drifting when it came to her – his overbearing worry for his daughter exemplified by his last job - babysitting an undeserving heiress. He’d been thinking of her father when, prudishly, he’d gone to great lengths to prevent the woman getting a tattoo. She knew he’d been imagining how he’d feel if his own child had returned branded. And then she knew what had caused the stain. The woman behind the sheet hadn’t been injecting needles, she’d been marked by one.
4
Sinead heaped herself wearily into the luscious sofa of the apartment. Her sister heard the puff of the cushions and came out from her office to lean on the door frame.
“Coffee?”
“Too tired. Need sleep.”
“Tough few nights?”
“We’re understaffed and over capacity.”
“Whiskey?”
“Maybe one. Maybe that will put me out.”
Áine clattered in the kitchen. Sinead heard the spin of a bottle top, the glug of two pours and she returned with two measures large enough to tranquillise a horse.
“Slàinte,” Áine said. Sinead braced for the burn.
“So how was it?”
“Ah, you know. But I was thinking, could you check Isla’s school?”
“Sinead,” Áine groaned. “I thought work might be a distraction from all that.”
“All what?”
“You know – finding a fella who doesn’t want to be found and is well able to keep below the radar. Literally, as it happens.”
“You don’t think it’s a good idea?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“Just that, well – I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
“You don’t think you can find him?”
“That’s not what I meant. I just, well, I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“About whatever he was before. I didn’t realise you knew so little about his past.”
“Why does it matter?”
“You know why!” Áine suddenly barked. She hadn’t intended to say it, but it had tumbled out and it was too late now. Sinead retracted, her head sinking into her shoulders. Áine scrabbled to atone. “What is it you think her school could tell you?”
Sinead was silent for a while and took a long draw of Jameson. “Stupid idea, really. She’d missed so much school already I doubt he’d have bothered.”
“Bothered what?”
“Notifying them that Isla was leaving, or would be absent or whatever.”
“Not a chance.”
“But what, like, if the school had emailed him or tried to call him?”
“So what?”
“So what if he opened the email out of, like, curiosity? Or to tell them she wouldn’t be back? Or to even ask for homework? Whatever you might think of him, he wasn’t negligent about her learning – even if it wasn’t in school.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he was determined she would get a good education, but a lot of what she learned was, you know …”
“How to kill people and get away with it?” Áine scoffed, immediately regretting her snide remark as she looked at the empty glass that had loosened her tongue. “Sorry.”
“Isla was never exposed to that.”
Thanks be to God, Áine thought, but said nothing.
“I meant the education she got wasn’t on the curriculum – he taught her history, reading, told her stories. Literature.”
“Literature?” Áine tried not to sound mocking.
“Yeah,�
� said Sinead defensively. “He’s mad about books.”
“Well, there you go,” said Áine, baffled.
“And he taught her how to use her hands. There was barely a tool on the boat she didn’t know the name of. She understood how to do stuff with the engine, she could sail the boat, steer it. He taught her about the sea, tides and stuff, astronomy.”
“Astronomy?”
“I think so,” Sinead closed her eyes in recall. “The moon and the pull of the sea. Sums to work out – I don’t know, depth or something.”
“All sounds like perfect preparation for the Inter Cert.”
“They do GCSEs up there.”
“Maybe celestial navigation’s on the physics course in the United Kingdom, eh?”
“Ah, Áine, give it a rest.”
Áine fell silent. Sinead knew her sister was waiting for her to calm, as she always did – which had taught Áine that she could get away with almost anything.
“What if,” she said after a silence, “you were to take a look, and if the school emailed him, or called, and he replied – or even if he didn’t, you might be able to see where he was when he got the message?”
Áine pursed her lips, her head gently rocking from side to side. If, if, if, she thought. “Ok, I could take a look,” she said absently.
“Now?” Sinead sought to capitalise on an apology she knew she was due.
“Ok,” Áine sighed. “Come into the control room, so. And bring the bottle.”
The two women stared at the screens; Sinead hunting for something she might understand, Áine humming gently.
“Ok, so they did ping him. But only once. About seven weeks ago”
“What did they say?”
“Does it matter?”
“Eh, well, I don’t know?”
“Here.” Áine opened a Word document and pulled it onto a screen closer to her sister.
Dear Mr Ireland,
I am required to write with regard to the continuing absence of your daughter Isla as I now have no choice but to inform the authorities. I do hope that all is well with Isla, and would note that her period of recorded unattendance at school now exceeds forty days this academic year. I would be grateful if you could revert soonest.