The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3)

by McGowan, Claire

  ‘Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there – I did not die.’

  Maeve had finished. She looked across the square to the memorial. Later, Paula would see it on TV, Maeve with her chin raised, her eyes blinking and one strand of hair falling over her face. Two uniformed men pulled the ropes on the black curtain and the shroud fell back from the memorial. It was twelve feet high, a column of glass etched with the names of the dead, so light shone through and they floated, casting shadows over the crowd in the sun. The names seemed to radiate out. It was too far away to read them. The crowd threw up a murmur, then a faint smattering of applause rippled and died, awkward. Jarlath Kenny took the microphone again. He hadn’t changed his expression at all during Maeve’s recital, and Paula wondered how it made him feel, knowing he’d caused equal loss to other families. If he even felt at all.

  He cleared his throat. ‘We will now have the laying of wreaths by the families.’ In front of the stage were piles of red roses. A walkway had been made through the crowd, fenced off with metal barriers. John Lenehan was just rising to his feet when there was a shout and sudden movement in the crowd. Something flew through the air – Guy was on his feet before anyone else, she remembered after. It sparkled, it seemed like a jewel in the bright sun, then you realised it was on fire – your body started to move before your mind caught up. More movement at the front of the crowd, confusion, people out of their seats, a child wailing somewhere. Guy was in front of Paula; he’d shielded her, she realised, he’d thrown himself in front of her. Then a metallic glint in the sun and a harsh fizzing sound and someone screaming, because everyone in Northern Ireland knew a bomb when they saw one.

  Then officers were jumping on someone in the crowd, pinning them down, and there was a loud, rocking bang that reverberated in your chest and the lectern was on fire and everyone scattering, and Paula turned back to the podium, too weak to run away, reaching out for Guy. Jarlath Kenny had been at the front, mouth open in shock, and had hit the deck seconds before the grenade landed. Behind him Maeve had been standing, rooted to the spot, and the force of it had hit her. She was lying on the ground, red blooming through her white shirt, her face pale. Someone was screaming, high and pure, and Paula couldn’t tear her eyes away from Maeve, as her blood ran out and pooled under her, the same scarlet shade as her trainers.

  Aidan and Maeve had been friends a long time, since their first year studying journalism at UCD in Dublin. Paula herself had been stuck in Ballyterrin, finishing her A-levels, and despite the promises they’d made, tearful and Boots-17-lip-gloss smudged, she was gradually noticing Aidan’s texts get fewer and fewer, and that it was a while since she’d had one of the spiralling emails he used to send her detailing the basement computer room with the smell of warm laundry from next door. Saying how much he missed her. That time of year was always hard for her anyway, the chilly nights of October leading up to the day she’d come home and her mother wasn’t there. The feeling that the year was about to run out from under your feet like the end of an alley. Another year over and they hadn’t found her mother. Maybe they never would.

  Then Aidan’s emails had stopped altogether, and he didn’t answer his phone though she let it ring for forty goes, and finally there was the email with the black typeface and the sick feeling in her stomach: she knew what was coming.

  She’d asked him, in one of the long, angry phone calls he’d allowed her, if it was Maeve. Was it the funny, cool journalism student he’d been mentioning a lot, was that who he’d slept with?

  No, he’d said. Weary. It was just some girl. It hadn’t meant anything. And she wasn’t sure if that was better or worse, because he’d thrown her away for someone whose surname he didn’t even know. Paula had staggered through the rest of the year, and then her results had come, a blaze of good A-levels as expected, enough to take her out of Ballyterrin to London, away from the house where she’d been waiting for five years for her mother to come back. That was when she’d realised none of it mattered, nothing was important, and she’d swallowed the contents of PJ’s medicine cabinet, all his painkillers and sleeping tablets, and been rushed to Ballyterrin hospital. Aidan still didn’t know about that. Glandular fever, they’d told everyone. A secret between her and PJ, never to be mentioned.

  Now it was thirteen years later and Maeve was the one in the hospital bed, hooked up to tubes and drips. Her face was grey and still. Aidan was at her bedside, holding her limp hand.

  ‘How is she?’

  Aidan didn’t look up. ‘Holding on. That’s what they said. Her ma’s on the way from Dublin.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  He shook his head. ‘Just have to wait.’

  ‘Aidan.’ He raised his face and she saw he’d gone. Her stomach fell away. She knew this look – the one he got when it was all too much and all he could think about was being seven years old and hiding under the table at the newspaper offices as masked IRA gunmen shot his father in the head. The one that meant he was already in his mind turning to the bottle, the dark bar, the oblivion at the bottom of the glass.

  ‘She’ll be OK,’ Paula said. ‘They got her in time—’

  ‘And you know that, being medically qualified? That’s not the kind of doctor you are.’ He stared at Maeve’s face, the slow mechanical rise of her chest. Her hair was still shining and blow-dried for the occasion, spread out around her. Lying there, she looked tiny.

  ‘Saoirse said she’d come. She’ll be able to tell you more.’

  She wanted to say ‘us’, but this loss was not hers to claim. Maeve was only her friend through Aidan. She had little stake in the chest of that lively, talented beauty continuing to rise and fall.

  ‘This keeps happening,’ Aidan said quietly. ‘It’s me, I think.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me. I must be cursed or something. Dad – and you, at Christmas when she stabbed you, that woman – I thought that was it and I’d fucked it all up, you’d be gone and I’d never have— Now Maeve. I’ve no one.’

  ‘I’m here. I’m fine, Aidan.’

  ‘The baby’ll come, and who knows what’ll happen?’

  ‘She’ll be fine too. Everything’s OK.’

  ‘Don’t even know if she’s mine, but I couldn’t bear it. If she wasn’t OK.’

  ‘She will be. Aidan!’

  But he wasn’t listening. She was about to go over, put her hand on the pale back of his neck, maybe, press his face into her vast bump, but then there was a clatter of feet and an older woman burst in. She wore a navy gilet and had fair hair in a feather cut, and she was sobbing. ‘Oh God. Oh – sweetheart.’

  Aidan got up and put his arms round the woman, pinning her. ‘It’s better than it looks, Sheila. They said she’ll likely be OK.’

  This must be Maeve’s mother. Paula knew the father had died when Maeve was ten – it was something that linked her to Aidan.

  ‘Oh look at her, my poor wee girl.’ Sheila was sobbing. ‘Let me see her.’

  ‘OK, but they said we have to be careful, the tubes and that are a wee bit fragile.’ He stood back to let her get to her daughter.

  She stroked Maeve’s hair, touched her forehead. ‘It’s Mum, love,’ she said, voice shaking. ‘Can you hear me? I know you can. You’ll be OK, sweetheart. You did so well today. And your hair looks lovely, did you get it done like I said? You’ll be OK.’

  Paula was backing off to the door, letting them be. She caught Aidan’s eye and he followed her out. Those hospital sounds, rattles and squeaking feet and hearts breaking. She hated it.

  ‘Will you let me know how she is? Please?’

  ‘If I get time.’ He was still watching through the glass of the door.

  ‘Aidan – if you go home tonight, maybe you’d – I’d like to see you. I don’t want you being alone.’ She put both hands on her stomach. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’

  ‘Thought you loved it.’

  ‘Please. This, being pregnant – it leaves you totally vulnerable. I�
��d like you to come round.’

  He looked back in to Maeve. ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘Well. Think about it.’ Her phone beeped. ‘Shit, it’s Corry. I have to see what she wants. I’ll go now. Take care.’ She drew him into a clumsy hug, her all curves and softness, him angular, unyielding. She felt his hand on the small of her back for a moment and realised he was moving her away.

  ‘Go on, Maguire,’ he said, distracted. ‘You’re no use to anyone here.’

  Extract from The Blood Price: The Mayday

  Bombing and its Aftermath, by Maeve Cooley

  (Tairise Press, 2011)

  The date 19th October 2010 was perhaps the most significant one since the bombing for the Mayday families. After more than four years of disappointment and waiting, they would finally hear the verdict on the terror suspects accused of murdering their loved ones. Throughout the trial, the five accused had reacted in different ways. They were held in separate docks, but the size of Belfast Crown Court meant that by necessity they were seated very close together while on trial. Lynch and Ni Chonnaill, who’d broken up the month before, traded insults several times and were held in contempt of court. Several times he was heard to call her a ‘slut’ and a ‘dirty cheating whore’. Ni Chonnaill was five months pregnant at the start of the three-month trial, growing visibly bigger throughout, and her lawyer Grainne Devine used every advantage this offered when seeking a recess or deflecting difficult lines of questioning. Doyle wept several times, mentioning his wife and children. Brady appeared confused, addressing the judge at times as ‘Sir’, and once ‘Your Majesty’, which caused a rare burst of laughter amid such grim testimonies. Flaherty alone had refused to recognise the court or engage a solicitor, and simply ignored every question put to him.

  Not all the families attended throughout. Some had nothing to do with the case. Some had planned to attend, then found work getting in the way, or couldn’t sit through hours of brutal testimony on how their loved ones had died. John Lenehan was present on every day of the trial, taking the bus forty miles from his home in Ballyterrin, which may have contributed to the stroke he suffered on the day of the verdict.

  As the jury came back, most of the families had gathered. Dominic Martin had also been there almost every day, despite needing to sustain his freelance energy business. Ann Ward, the group’s secretary, also came, making copious notes where she could. Also present were the Woods, the Sloanes, whose daughter Lily was badly maimed in the bomb, Tom Kennedy’s widow, the Connolly family, and the Garstons. The grandfather of Daniel Jones had attended much of it, although he was in his eighties. The sight of Mr Jones and John Lenehan, leaning on canes to listen to the verdict, brought tears to many of the jurors’ eyes.

  Throughout the trial much interest had centred on the figure of Catherine Ni Chonnaill. A strikingly beautiful woman with long blonde hair, at five-eight taller than many of the men in court, she drew the eyes in the succession of colourful dresses she chose to wear in the dock. Scarlet and pink, vivid patterns, heavy necklaces and every day a slick of red lipstick she reapplied after eating her courtroom lunch in the cells. The lipstick was commented on widely at the time. Red as the blood on her hands, said one commentator, who shall remain nameless, violating somewhat the principle of sub judice. She kept drawing attention to the bump of her baby, stroking it and sometimes shifting or wincing as if in discomfort. A member of the jury afterwards told me in confidence they’d found it extremely difficult to sit in judgement on Ni Chonnaill. We were listening to the most awful stuff, wee babies blown up and that, and she was sitting there obviously expecting herself, looking so happy and calm. It was hard to imagine sending her to prison like that.

  On 19th October 2010, the jury was due to give their verdict on the Mayday Five.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The door of Corry’s office opened with a snap. She was still dressed in what she’d worn to the memorial, the sober black suit. Her fair hair was loose, still neat despite everything that had happened that day. Paula sighed at her own sweaty, unravelling self.

  ‘Dr Maguire, come in.’

  She gathered her papers and blundered in to the pin-neat office. Even the office plants were alive and blooming on the windowsill, which gave an uninspiring view over the reinforced car park with its bombproof walls.

  Corry had settled herself behind the desk. ‘I thought we should talk, after today. I hear there was some trouble down at the station yesterday. A complaint about intra-office relationships.’

  That could have been either herself and Guy, or Gerard and Avril. Paula answered very carefully. ‘There was some mention about it. I don’t know, I’ve been so busy with the case.’

  ‘There are rules, of course, on that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Though I’ve often felt they were more like guidelines. People are only human.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just as long as it doesn’t interfere with work.’ The message was clear – sort it out or get off my case.

  ‘It won’t.’

  Corry had settled behind her desk. ‘How is your friend?’

  ‘Not great. They say she should pull through, but . . . it’s difficult. The grenade exploded right in front of her, and they think the blast damaged her heart. She has burns too.’

  ‘We’re getting reports that it was thrown by a fair-haired man, later seen running in two different directions out of the square – so God knows what that means. There was a lot of confusion.’

  ‘Were they aiming at Maeve? Because of her book?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. Could have been Kenny, especially if he had something to do with these murders. But you’re still convinced there’s a link with the families?’

  ‘It’s clear someone is doing this for punishment. Even the staggered release of the bodies – this wasn’t done to get rid of the Mayday Five. They’d have been quietly disappeared if Kenny wanted a clear election run. No, I think it’s vindictive, rage-filled – but at the same time very ordered. I want us to keep looking at the relatives. After all, they had the most reason to hate the bombers. And there was Martin’s van, of course. Did we take the writing samples?’

  ‘Yes, we got samples from all the adults in the group, but none matches the writing on the notes. The type of notebook Ann Ward uses matched the one found in the caves, true enough – but you can get those anywhere. So, a dead end again.’

  ‘You were working that day,’ said Paula. ‘The day of the bomb.’

  Corry nodded slowly. ‘I went straight to Crossanure when it happened. We had to help dig out the bodies. There was a wee boy, he was about nine or ten. My Connor was the same age then. Daniel Jones, I think it was. I helped get him out from under a wooden door. Not a mark on him but he was dead, white as a ghost with plaster.’ She stopped. ‘It’s hard to forget things like that.’

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ Corry called, switching back to a brisk tone of voice. ‘This is why I asked you here. I want you to hear Dr Finney’s take on it.’

  He was standing in the door, dressed in a heather-coloured jumper and jeans. He carried three polystyrene cups, which was easy because his hands were huge. Paula noticed what looked like a fresh burn on the side of one. ‘I thought some tea would help.’ He placed them on the desk. ‘Hello, Dr Maguire.’

  ‘Hello.’ She had an odd feeling seeing him, some kind of aversion mixed with something like excitement. She tried to focus on what Corry was saying.

  ‘The samples don’t match then, Dr Finney. From Dominic Martin’s van.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Of course, there was extensive charring, but I was able to take samples from what was left. There’s no trace of this particular mineral in his vehicle. Whoever did the killings would almost certainly have picked up some of it from the sea caves while transporting the bodies.’

  Corry was frowning. ‘But there’s clearly a second site – two of the bombers are still missing, so they must have been moved
elsewhere. Isn’t it possible he wasn’t at the caves?’

  ‘Did you test his shoes?’ Paula asked. She saw Finney look annoyed for a moment; perhaps he thought she was questioning his judgement. ‘That can be useful, both for forensics and analysing footprints. The pattern of wear, and so on.’

  ‘We can send casts off to a lab in London that does podiatry stuff,’ said Corry. ‘I’ll see if we can get a warrant for Martin’s shoes too. It’s sensitive. We can’t push the families too far – the press are all over me as it is.’

  Finney sipped his drink. He seemed to fill the small room, giving off a warm citrus smell. ‘Is there any need to involve the families at all? It must be devastating for them. I think this has all the hallmarks of IRA punishment, to be honest. And I found no traces, as I said. The van had been reported stolen anyway, hadn’t it?’

  It wasn’t his job to say what he thought and Corry knew it. She said, rather stiffly, ‘We aren’t ruling anything out yet. I’d like your team to carry on searching the bogland, look for any disturbed ground. There are two other potential bodies, let’s not forget. If we can find them alive, that would be something.’

  Intuition was a funny thing. As a clinically trained psychologist, Paula told herself it existed in some way science hadn’t yet mastered – a leap between neurons, a message in the air between people. She’d had an ancestor, her mother had once told her, with the second sight. Officially Paula did not believe in second sight, but she believed there were powerful currents between people, ways to know things without words. She knew there was something about Finney that made her uncomfortable – a way of standing too close, holding your gaze for too long with his pale eyes. He was attractive. She knew this in her bones, so she was rude to him just to be safe.