The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3)

by McGowan, Claire

  But it wasn’t until she saw Corry and Finney together that she made that wordless leap. Corry had been entirely professional throughout her work with him, addressing him as Dr Finney, deferring to his expertise while drawing her own conclusions. It was because he’d brought tea that Corry made the mistake. She picked hers up and sipped it, exclaiming, ‘Ah Lorcan, you know I don’t take milk.’ A short silence fell and in it Paula saw a momentary flicker on Corry’s usually impassive face, and knew – she is sleeping with him. Her skin grew hot. She was actually a little shocked, while chiding herself with the reminder that she herself had slept with her boss the first week on the job, and possibly was having his baby. But Corry had fought her way up through institutionalised sexism by being both tough as nails and rigidly by the book. If it got out she’d slept with one of the forensic experts, the whole case could be compromised.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, betraying nothing. ‘I’ve a rubbish memory.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Corry, too quickly. ‘Won’t do me any harm the once.’

  Paula reached for her own and made a slight noise on finding the cup was scalding to the touch. When she looked up, Lorcan Finney was watching her.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Finney,’ said Corry, very formally. ‘We won’t need you for now.’

  ‘Well, you know where I am if I can help.’ His smile was a dangerous thing. Paula was glad when he’d gone, but only for a moment, because Corry immediately launched another blindsider at her, as if to cover up what had just passed.

  ‘I know about your complaint against DS Hamilton. And I wanted to say . . . I understand, but you need to tread carefully. Are you even supposed to have that file?’

  Paula looked at her hands. Even she was surprised by what she said next. ‘I want to talk to Sean Conlon. Send me. He might know something about this case – he was in the IRA right up till he got arrested in ’ninety-nine. It’s a good lead.’

  Corry stared at her. ‘You must be joking me. This being the same Sean Conlon who said last year he might know something about your mother’s case? Sean Conlon the IRA terrorist who wants early release in return for maybe telling us where they buried their victims? You want me to send you to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And violate every ethical code and possibly get myself a Professional Standards Enquiry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pau-la.’

  ‘He-len.’ She wasn’t supposed to call DCI Corry that at work, but they’d become friends of a sort over the past while. ‘I’ve looked into every lead there was. I’ve asked everyone who used to know my mother. I went through all the case files. There’s nothing new. And now this, from my neighbour – I think DS Hamilton knows something that isn’t in the file.’

  ‘She’s been declared dead, Paula.’

  ‘Yes. My dad wanted to remarry. And I can’t blame him. It’s been seventeen years; he deserves some happiness. But – I’m pregnant.’

  Corry squinted in frustration. ‘Which is relevant how?’

  Paula thought how to say it. ‘I sort of feel . . . I need to know what happened to my mother, before I can become one myself.’ That was so cheesy she could hardly get the words out, but all the same fairly close to the truth of what was driving her.

  Corry sighed. ‘And what exactly is your plan, if I get you in to talk to Sean Conlon? What’s the connection? He’s been in jail for years.’

  ‘He said he knew something. It was in the file – when the Commission for the Disappeared went to interview him last year, he said he knew her name. It’s the only small link I have. Mum—’ Paula’s mouth still dried on the word. She swallowed. ‘My mother worked in a solicitor’s office where they defended Republican prisoners. Several years before she vanished, a British soldier died in her arms at a checkpoint. Sniper. She – I’m trying to piece it together, but I think it all just disgusted her. There was talk she’d leaked documents to Special Branch. And my father, as you know, was a Catholic RUC officer. They had every reason to take her.’

  ‘So you want to dander in there and ask Sean Conlon if he kidnapped your mother?’

  ‘I just want to see him,’ Paula said. ‘I want to look him in the eyes. And if I interview him, it’s non-binding. He can talk to me in confidence. Clinically. I can ask him about the Mayday case too.’

  Corry shook her head. ‘Most of these men are dead inside, Paula. They’re so sure of their cause they literally don’t care about who gets killed on the way. What makes you think he would help you?’

  ‘I have to try. I have to push at every stone.’

  ‘All right. I’ll try to help you. On two conditions. One is that you do nothing unprofessional. You don’t tell him who you are. You may speak to him generally and assess him – we’ll say it’s a function of the MPRU. A chance for him to confess in confidence and help any families of the missing. You do not tell him you’re her daughter.’

  ‘OK,’ Paula nodded. ‘And the other?’

  ‘You give me an answer on the job once and for all. I want to know if you’re ever going to come and work for me.’

  ‘But I . . .’ She indicated her stomach. ‘It’s not the best time, surely, even if I were going to move? I’ll be on leave at least for a while.’

  Corry hesitated. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but – the MPRU. I don’t know for sure, but there’s a good chance it won’t get funded next year.’

  ‘Really? Does Guy know? DI Brooking, I mean.’

  It was the wrong thing to say. ‘Of course he knows. Why do you think he’s been away at all these meetings?’

  He knew their jobs were all at risk, and he hadn’t told her. Paula thought about this for a moment. ‘He never said anything.’

  Corry gave her a hard stare. ‘He doesn’t tell you everything, you know.’

  ‘No. I suppose not.’ And she didn’t tell him everything either, of course.

  Corry looked impatient. ‘I didn’t officially tell you that. It’s only a possibility for now. But be smart, Paula. You need to think of that wean now too. There’s a job for you here, if you want it. And it would be good for you – you’re far too emotionally involved in missing persons. You could do a much better job on other cases. Think about it.’

  ‘OK. I will. Thank you.’ She was speaking mechanically, trying to process it. ‘But you’ll help me, anyway?’

  ‘And what if Conlon does know something? If he says he had a hand in killing your mother in 1993, and you have to sit there and write it all down, knowing you can’t pin a single charge on him?’

  ‘That might be the case.’

  ‘You could handle that, could you, knowing the man will likely be free in a few months and you might bump into him in Dunnes?’

  ‘I usually do my shopping in Sainsbury’s,’ said Paula vaguely.

  Corry gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I wonder why it is, Dr Maguire, that you seem to continually get away with poking at the rules.’

  ‘You know how it is,’ said Paula riskily. ‘Some rules are more like guidelines anyway.’

  There was a long, dangerous pause. Could have gone either way. But she was getting to know Helen Corry better, and suspected there was nothing that warmed the DCI’s heart more than an equally bolshie woman on her team. ‘Dr Maguire,’ she said levelly. ‘Go home. You’ve been overdoing it and I haven’t the budget for washing afterbirth out of the carpet.’

  She got up, slow and ponderous as a ship turning in harbour. She’d pushed her luck too far. ‘Thank you for helping me. With Conlon, I mean. I know it’s caused some problems.’

  ‘Hmph. I meant what I said. I don’t want to see you hanging round here trying to pretend you aren’t massively pregnant. Get some rest, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Paula said, knowing that she couldn’t. She had the sense that time was running out, that perhaps she’d had the first chance in seventeen years to find out what happened to her mother, and it was about to slip through her puffy pregnant fingers.

  She
flexed them as she got up, seeing only dark branches and the gleam of moon on bone, feeling the grit of soil in her nails. I have to find her. I have to keep digging.

  As Paula lumbered out of the room, about to follow Corry’s advice and go home, she was intercepted by a sweaty Gerard, jogging down the long carpeted corridor towards the interview rooms. ‘Hey Maguire. I was looking for you. We’ve found the fella who threw the grenade.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘It wasn’t hard. They handed themselves in.’

  Paula frowned at him in puzzlement. ‘They?’

  ‘Come on. I’ll explain on the way.’

  ‘So they’re twins. I guess that explains how the same man was seen in two places at once.’

  ‘Yep. Joseph and Danny Walsh. Danny has a scar over one eye, see. Otherwise they’re dead-on identical.’

  In two adjacent interview rooms, the same man was sitting. He was dressed in two variants of a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and the tattoos on both arms were different, but the cropped sandy hair and eyebrows and narrow, suspicious faces – those were exactly the same. Twins.

  ‘And they’re confessing to the attack on Maeve?’

  ‘They were aiming for Kenny, apparently.’

  ‘But – I thought all the Provos loved him round here?’

  ‘Something shifted. I did say it was coming.’

  ‘Yeah yeah, you’re amazing.’

  ‘I know.’

  She elbowed him in the side.

  ‘Ow! Don’t be jealous of my awesomeness.’

  Corry and Guy appeared, walking briskly down the corridor, deep in conversation. ‘Right,’ said Corry. ‘These two clowns want to confess to everything back to the kidnap of Shergar, it seems. Let’s try to get the truth about why they targeted Kenny. Monaghan, you’re with me. DI Brooking will have one of my team. Dr Maguire . . . I thought I sent you home?’

  ‘I got waylaid. Can I observe?’

  ‘If you must. You can listen for any inconsistencies between the two.’

  Paula tried to switch between both rooms, putting the earpieces in and out and sometimes getting muddled. Joseph Walsh’s first comment was, ‘I want to go into that there protective custody. Someone’s trying to kill me.’

  Danny’s was: ‘Where’s my brother?’

  ‘We have to interview you both separately, Danny.’ Guy took a seat beside one of Corry’s constables, a DC Ryan from deepest South Armagh. Paula wondered was that deliberate – it was the last stronghold of diehard Republicanism.

  In the next room, Corry said, ‘So Joseph. Tell us what happened. You threw a grenade at the mayor, hitting Ms Cooley instead?’

  ‘Well, our Danny threw it. But aye.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘We never meant to catch the wee blonde girl. Just that bastard Kenny. He’s trying to kill us, so he is.’

  Paula tuned in to Danny’s account of it. ‘. . . We was heading back from the pub earlier when this van comes flying back, tries to flatten us. I says to Joseph, hit the deck! And we both lepped over a wall and ran. Next thing someone’s shooting at us.’

  ‘Which pub was this?’ asked Corry. Paula tried not to think about the fact they’d almost killed Maeve, then merrily gone for a drink.

  ‘Wolfe Tone’s.’ The very pub where Gerard met his informants. She wondered if he’d spoken to these two.

  She went back to Joseph’s interview. He seemed a bit more with it.

  ‘And why did you try to attack Mr Kenny?’ Corry was asking. ‘We understood you two were associates of his. “Fixers” was the word used.’

  Joseph became evasive. ‘I want assurances. We’ll give him to yis but I’m not going down with him.’

  Corry didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Mr Walsh, you came to us for protection. I will have no qualms in booting you out on the street if you don’t answer my questions. Whether you incriminate yourself or not is a side issue – we’ve already got you on attempted murder.’

  ‘All right,’ he said sulkily. ‘We done a wee job for him recently.’

  ‘How wee?’

  ‘Em . . . he wanted some people picked up and dropped off.’

  ‘I assume you’re not talking about a taxi service,’ said Corry severely. ‘Who are we on about here?’

  ‘That Ireland First lot. The ones that got done over – but it wasn’t us, I swear. We just dropped them off. At them caves down by the beach.’

  Paula could see Corry trying not to react. ‘You’re saying you abducted Callum Brady, Mickey Doyle and Ronan Lynch, who have since turned up dead?’

  ‘Aye. Kenny asked us to. Said he’d pay us and all.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  Joseph shrugged. ‘Naw. I never asked no questions.’

  She tuned in to Danny, who was telling the same story. ‘. . . Kenny said we’d to meet these two other fellas who’d have a van, and they’d be under the Old Mill Bridge.’

  ‘What kind of van?’ Guy asked.

  ‘I dunno. White.’

  ‘And who were the two men?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, boss. They had on masks, like, and so did we. One was driving and the other fella – when we got them in the van he gave them a shot of something and they was out like a light.’

  ‘Danny. These are very serious allegations. You’re saying Jarlath Kenny paid you to meet two other men and abduct the Mayday bombers?’

  ‘Aye. ’Cept he never paid us yet.’

  ‘And that’s why you hurled a bomb at him?’

  ‘Well, sorta – he was after us, swear to God. Earlier on, that wasn’t the first time. Me and Joseph been followed since it happened. Same ould white van with the plates covered up.’

  ‘You can’t tell me anything about the two men?’

  ‘Naw. The one who drove, he wasn’t a pro. He was all over the road – nervous like. But the one with the injections – he knew what he was about. His hands never even shook.’

  ‘Right.’ Guy took a deep breath. ‘For the tape, talk us right through it. Who exactly was in the van that day?’

  He counted it off laboriously on his fingers. ‘Me, our Joseph, them two guys, the four we lifted . . . that’s it.’

  Guy paused with his pen over his pad. ‘Four? You don’t mean five?’

  ‘Naw. Them fellas that are dead and the woman. I’d tell you where she was if I knew. Don’t hold with killing women.’

  ‘That’s . . . noble. You didn’t pick up Martin Flaherty?’

  ‘No way.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d not go near him. Man like that, you’d need a SWAT team to get him in the van.’

  ‘And you left the other four at the caves?’

  ‘Aye. They was all out of it, me and Joseph dragged them in. The two fellas tied them up, then off we went. It was a long ould walk back through them woods.’

  ‘These men . . . were they local?’

  ‘Aye. Local accents. Tallish fellas. I couldn’t tell you anything else, they never said much. ’Cept one was really nervous.’

  She buzzed into Corry’s earpiece. ‘Ask him how many people were in the van.’

  Corry blinked, but picked it up seamlessly. ‘How many people did you abduct that day, Joseph?’

  ‘There was four,’ he said immediately. ‘Three fellas and the girl. We was a bit squashed up in the van like.’

  ‘So four, plus you two, and the two men who drove. Nobody else?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘Right. Is there anything you can tell us? If you help us find the men, it would be advantageous for you. Try to remember.’

  Joseph creased his face, identical to his brother’s. ‘One thing . . . in the van, there was this weird thing, like a big massive bit of dark glass.’

  ‘Dark glass?’

  ‘It looked like one of them, whatcha call it. Solar panels.’

  Kira

  Kira had always been a bit afraid of John. He’d been their obvious leader since the group started, when Kira was too young to go. He was the one who could stop
Dominic from shouting and punching the wall, or Tom Kennedy’s wife from turning up drunk and crying, and even make the Presbyterian Sheerans sit in the same room as the Connollys, who’d been a Sinn Fein family for years, everyone knew. When he looked at her, under his bushy white eyebrows, she felt all the words she had pile up in her mouth and clump there.

  After the last meeting – the one where people had said yes or no, and taken their pick, and made their promise not to say anything about it ever again, whatever they decided, and John had looked at them all in silence, and then said he was stepping down, he’d been the last one left in the hall. The others had gone to Dominic’s for a drink – people seemed almost excited at first, crying and then laughing too, like they’d had too much alcohol already. Kira was too young to go, of course. She hung back, helping John pack up his papers. He wasn’t good since the stroke, but that day he seemed to be going as slow as possible, touching every page as he put it away. John had been Chair for nearly five years. There was a lot of paper.

  She held the door as he stumped out on his stick. He looked her right in the eye. ‘You’re too young to be involved in this.’

  ‘They killed Rose!’ She didn’t like the way he looked at her, cross but sad too.

  ‘It won’t bring her back, your sister.’

  ‘I know.’ Stupid. ‘But it’s what they deserve. They’re bad people.’

  ‘Who are we to sit in judgement?’

  She’d turned her head, annoyed. ‘We’re exactly the ones. The judge and jury people, they don’t really know, they get to go home to their own families and forget. We can’t do that. I’m never going to see Rose again and it isn’t fair!’ She felt her voice go funny, which was annoying, because after five years you’d think she would be done crying about it.

  John put his hand on her shoulder, almost like he was so unsteady he had to lean on her. ‘You’re only young, pet. None of this was your fault. They took so much. Don’t let them take your heart too.’