Lucy nodded. ‘I’m afraid there’s not a huge amount to tell, sir. She went missing last Thursday. She didn’t come back to the unit from school but that wasn’t entirely unusual.’
‘She was in residential care?’
‘Yes. Social Services contacted us and we started looking for her in the usual haunts: shopping centres, the Walls, places like that.’
‘Had she run away before?’
‘A number of times,’ Lucy said, nodding. ‘Initially we assumed it was more of the same. She usually came back the next day – often she’d spent the night with friends, boyfriends maybe.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘Nobody serious. Not that we know of so far.’
‘But she was sexually active?’
‘She was fifteen, sir,’ Lucy said.
Burns nodded, jotting down notes as Lucy spoke.
‘So you put out the press appeal?’
‘After she went missing, the social workers in the residential unit found her phone in her room which panicked them. They alerted us and we did the press release,’ Lucy said. ‘Then someone found out about the connection with her father yesterday and the papers ran with it.’
‘Any idea who told them? Could it have been one of us?’ He glanced around the room as he spoke. ‘One of you’ was actually what he meant, and Lucy knew it. PPU had been handling the case – herself and Tom Fleming essentially.
‘I wouldn’t think so, sir,’ she replied. ‘Derry’s a small city. Everyone knows everyone else here. You’ll find that once you’re here a while.’
‘Do you think she was targeted because of who she was?’ Mickey asked.
‘The father asked the same thing,’ Lucy said. ‘It seems unlikely. She wasn’t using his name. He did suggest the family of the bank man he shot in the robbery might have cause for revenge, but I’m not convinced.’
‘We’ll follow up on it,’ Burns commented. ‘Was anything useful found on the phone?’
‘Actually, I spoke with someone in ICS just before coming up here. She was befriended on Facebook by someone called Paul Bradley. He made first contact in September. About eight weeks ago they met and she seems to have managed to get an iPhone that she’s since kept hidden from the residential unit. ICS are trying to track Bradley through his internet address.’
‘Brilliant,’ Burns said. ‘I’ll need the details of the officer in ICS. Is Bradley known to PPU?’
‘Well, I ran him through the system based on the personal information on his Facebook page, but no luck,’ Lucy said. ‘It could be a cover name.’
‘He could be a known offender then,’ Burns said. ‘We’d best speak to the usual suspects first.’
Burns flicked through his notes, words forming silently on his lips as he read through what he’d written. ‘Was she using drugs?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Maybe a little – it wasn’t something we ever investigated. It didn’t seem relevant.’
Burns nodded. ‘Everything can be relevant,’ he said. ‘Toxicology will show if she was using prior to her death. How long had she been self-harming?’
‘It was first noticed when she was nine. She went into care about then after her mother was locked up to dry out for the first time. Karen had been looking after her for four years by that stage. The social workers asked Karen about when she’d started cutting herself, but she wouldn’t tell them. Still, she continued with it until ... well until she died, I suppose.’
Burns nodded. ‘Was she ever considered a suicide risk?’
‘Not to my mind,’ Lucy said. ‘Or Social Services.’
‘Despite the cutting?’ Mickey asked incredulously.
‘Self-harming, especially the type of cutting that Karen did on herself, is a way of coping with life, a way of surviving. She did it to make life tolerable, not to end it.’
‘Why?’
Lucy shrugged. ‘How else could she deal with adolescence and babysitting her alcoholic forty-year-old mother?’
‘Was there any history of alcohol abuse in the girl?’
‘The usual,’ Lucy said.
‘How did you come to know her so well?’ Burns asked.
‘I didn’t know her that well. I just met Karen at the residential unit a few times when I had to call up there about some of the other kids. We got on OK.’
‘Why?’
Lucy considered the question. ‘I just got her.’
Burns considered the response. ‘OK then, so who was she? Describe Karen Hughes to us. Help us better understand her.’
Lucy shrugged. ‘She was nice. She was caring, looking after her mother. She was patient, putting up with all the crap that she dealt with. She had a weird sense of humour. But she was troubled. She had ... she had very low self-esteem.’
‘There’s a reason the ACC wanted you in PPU, obviously,’ Burns commented.
Lucy silently reflected that there was more than one reason her mother had pushed her into the PPU, but she did not speak.
‘These hairs Forensics pulled from Karen’s clothes. I don’t suppose Social Services have a dog in the residential unit?’ Burns said.
‘No, sir.’
‘What about known sex offenders? Have you followed up on those?’
‘Inspector Fleming and I had already begun interviewing known sex offenders in the area as part of the search for Karen.’
‘How many are there?’
‘In the Foyle Command area alone we have sixty-six. We’d seen most.’
‘Any black dog owners?’ Burns asked, with a laugh.
‘Actually one of the offenders we’ve yet to see has,’ Lucy said.
‘Maybe make him a priority for a visit. What’s he called?’
‘Eugene Kay. He prefers Gene.’
‘Does he, now?’ Burns asked, noting the name. ‘If you and Tom could follow up on it and let me know your thoughts, I’d appreciate it. The ACC has already approved your working alongside us on this.’
Lucy stood to leave, then stopped. ‘There’s something about the timing of the trains last night,’ she said. ‘The previous train passed there at ten, so the body would have been—’
Burns raised a hand to stop her. ‘We’re already on top of that.’
‘There’s also the metal theft,’ she added. ‘There’s every chance that whoever was cutting those cables may have seen who brought Karen down to the tracks. Considering the timing of the trains. The previous train ran—’
‘We’re on that too,’ Burns commented, smiling. ‘We’re following it up.’
‘A gang robbed the cemetery the night before, too,’ Lucy said. ‘They could be the same people.’
Burns looked at her. ‘That I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘But it could be useful. Tara, maybe you’d contact the local scrapyards and see if anyone’s been selling stuff they shouldn’t. Mickey, I want you to contact the school and see what you can find out about the girl from there. Ian, check if the CCTV system in the city centre picked up any activity around St Columb’s Park last night. OK?’
There were general murmurs of agreement as the team got up to leave. Lucy could sense Tara’s annoyance as she shoved her seat under the table and left the room.
Before leaving, Lucy approached Burns. ‘I’ll update Inspector Fleming, sir,’ she said.
Burns smiled. ‘That’s fine.’
Still she stood and did not leave.
Burns’s smile faltered a little. ‘Is there something you want to ask me?’ he said, uncertainly.
‘I was wondering about the state of the Alan Cunningham investigation, sir,’ she said, finally.
‘Remind me,’ he said, his fingers interlinking, his joined hands resting on the notebook in front of him on the desk.
‘He set fire to his partner’s house in Foyle Springs last year. The parent, Catherine Quigg, and her daughter Mary were killed. The baby, Joe, survived.’
‘I remember reviewing the file before I started here,’ Burns said. ‘My recollection is that it h
it the three-month flag without progress and was relegated. This Cunningham character went over the border, is that right?’
Lucy nodded. ‘To Donegal initially.’
‘I’ve a feeling I read there was intelligence on the ground that he’d settled in Limerick, but we asked the Guards to follow it up and they got nothing. The inquiries here hit a dead end, too. There was a suggestion that Cunningham was being protected. His family were well known Republicans.’
‘I see.’
‘Why?’
‘I knew the girl who died. She’d come to our attention in the days before her death. She called me on the night she died, but I didn’t get the call until ... until after.’
‘I see,’ Burns repeated.
‘I was just wondering if any progress had been made.’
‘None, I’m afraid,’ Burns said. ‘Nor will there be any until Cunningham comes back over the border, or makes a public appearance in the south so that the Guards can get to him. But I’ll double check for you. As I say, I just reviewed the more recent open files. I might have missed something.’
Somehow, Lucy doubted it.
Chapter Nine
Tara was waiting for her in the corridor outside the room when Lucy came out.
‘Schmoozing with the boss?’ she asked, a little petulantly.
‘He’s not my boss,’ Lucy commented. ‘I wanted to check up on something.’
Tara waved away the explanation. ‘Sorry. It’s bloody Mickey Sinclair. He’s the blue-eyed boy since he got DS. He gets to run down leads in the school, and I’m struck tracing thieved metal. This whole bloody unit is all politics. You’re lucky you ended up in PPU.’
Lucy grunted by way of offering sympathies for Tara’s complaint. ‘If you do find anything, I’d be interested in knowing,’ she said. ‘About the stolen metal.’
Tara frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Someone stole the metal railings off the grave of a friend.’
‘Scumbags. I’ll let you know what I hear. We’ve targeted a scrap merchant called Finn out in Ballyarnet. Apparently he’d been shipping metal with Smart dye on it from electric cabling. Whoever’s stealing is selling through him. He’s going to let us know when they bring the next load down to him to sell.’ She considered a moment, then added, ‘He’s a fence.’
Lucy smiled at the joke. ‘So you don’t like Burns then?’
‘He’s OK. Hard to impress. Mind you, do you know why he got where he got?’ she added, warming to her gossip.
Being based in the centre of town, Tara seemed to glean all the station gossip. Lucy, on the other hand, sharing a unit with Tom Fleming out at Maydown, heard nothing.
‘Why?
‘The ACC!’
‘What?’
Tara nodded, smiling. ‘Apparently. The two of them were spotted out having dinner in Eglinton.’
‘Said who?’
‘The community team was doing a drink-driving campaign, going around the local pubs. I know one of the fellas who spotted them.’
Lucy smiled, trying to remember the name of the man she’d met the one time she’d visited her mother’s house. Peter? Paul? She’d obviously moved on.
‘At least that explains his meteoric rise to the top,’ Tara said. ‘Eh?’
‘Mmm,’ Lucy agreed. Not for the first time, she felt awkward with Tara. By rights she should have told her about the ACC being her mother. But each time they discussed her, it was generally Tara being critical. To admit to the relationship would just make things awkward. Lucy knew though that whatever time the information became common knowledge, Tara’s seeming proximity to the grapevine would result in her being one of the first to know. How that would change their friendship remained to be seen.
‘That’s not all they saw,’ Tara went on. ‘Your man was spotted too.’
‘My man?’
‘Tom Fleming. He’s back on the sauce. Not that I blame him, mind you, the shit you have to deal with. Being an alco seems to be a survival technique.’
Like self-harming, Lucy reflected.
After stopping to pick up lunch of a sandwich and a packet of crisps from the supermarket along the Strand Road, Lucy headed back to Maydown to see if Tom Fleming had arrived in. At first, his office looked empty. Then Lucy noticed his keys lying on the desk and heard, a moment later, the flushing of the toilet behind the kitchenette. Because of the nature of their work, theirs was one of the few blocks in the station to have access to their own kitchen where juice and biscuits were kept for interviewees.
Lucy headed across to the kitchenette, just as Fleming came out of the toilet. He looked as though he had just arrived indoors, his face flushed, his breathing quick and shallow.
‘Afternoon,’ she said.
Fleming grunted. ‘I missed your calls.’
‘We had a meeting with Superintendent Burns earlier,’ Lucy explained.
‘Was he asking for me?’
‘I told him you had a few things to follow up.’
‘I was at the dentist,’ he explained. ‘How did the meeting go? Anything useful?’
‘They’ve found black dog hairs on Karen’s clothes, apparently. He asked about known offenders with black dogs. I mentioned we’d yet to see Gene Kay and he suggested that we make him a priority.’
‘Did he indeed? Giving orders to all divisions now? He’s really being groomed for greatness, isn’t he?’
Lucy thought again of what Tara had said about Burns and her mother. She also recalled the comments about Fleming himself, standing now, florid faced, his breath sweet with the Polo mints he was cracking between his teeth.
‘He said we were to work alongside CID on Karen’s case. The ACC approved it.’
Fleming allowed himself the briefest flicker of a smile. ‘Of course she did.’
‘Should we do it, then?’
‘Have we a choice?’ Fleming said. ‘I’ll get my coat.’
Chapter Ten
Kay lived in Gobnascale, in the Waterside. A staunchly Nationalist area, it abutted the equally hard-line Unionist area of Irish Street, the interface between the two marked by the point where the alternating red, white and blue paint on the kerbstones changed to green, white and orange ones. Kay’s terrace house was the end one of four. The front garden was small, the scrap of land thick with grass, trodden down in narrow lines by his dog, presumably.
As they stood at the front door, Fleming nudged Lucy and nodded towards the end of the street. ‘We’re being watched,’ he said.
Lucy followed his gaze to where a half-dozen youths stood at the corner, staring across at them. ‘They’ll hardly start anything,’ Lucy commented. ‘It’s still early.’
They heard the dead bolt click and the door opened. Gene Kay was short, not much taller than Lucy herself, but stocky, broad-shouldered. His face was jowly, his hair and moustache white. He glanced past them at the group of boys.
‘You may come in,’ he said, without looking at either of his visitors, then turned and moved back inside the house.
Kay led them into the lounge. Two brown tweed armchairs faced a small TV jabbering away in the corner, tuned to a daytime chat show. In the other corner, a glass cabinet stood, its shelves empty of anything but dust. Behind the furthest armchair was a small drop leaf table with two wooden seats placed either side of it. A computer sat on the table, the screen black.
‘What do you want then?’ Kay wore jeans and a red sweater. He was barefooted. His hand shook as he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from a tin on the mantelpiece and lit it. Flakes of flaming tobacco fluttered to the ground and he stepped on them with his bare foot.
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Gene. As part of an ongoing inquiry,’ Fleming began.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ Kay said, sitting on the armchair in front of the table. On the wall behind him was a painting of a child, a single tear perfectly formed on his face, his doe eyes, huge and brown, stared down beneath a ragged blond fringe. He held a cap in his hand. Lucy had seen similar pict
ures before, remembered in fact a newspaper story that suggested they were cursed in some way.
‘That’s your right, Gene,’ Lucy said. ‘But at the moment, we’re just hoping to eliminate you from our inquiries. Do you know this girl?’
She handed Kay a picture of Karen, which Social Services had provided, taken from her care plan. He studied the face, before handing the picture back.
‘I think I saw her picture on TV earlier. Didn’t catch her name. She’s missing or something, is that right?’
‘She’s dead, Gene,’ Fleming said. ‘She was found last night.’
Kay nodded. ‘Well, it had naught to do with me. I’m sorry for the wee girl.’
‘Where were you yesterday morning, Gene?’ Lucy asked.
Kay considered the question. ‘I was at church at eleven,’ he said. ‘Then I went straight to my sister’s for Sunday lunch. I took a taxi to church, so I left here just after half ten. I didn’t come back until about six.’
‘Did you go back out again last night?’
‘I don’t go out at night,’ Kay said. ‘That group of thugs out there hang around the streets drinking every night. It’s not safe. Not that the police do anything about it.’
‘You didn’t have anyone here with you, who could confirm that you were at home?’
‘What do you think?’ Kay snapped. ‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘What about last Thursday? Do you remember where you were on Thursday?’
‘I was in bed sick most of last week,’ Kay added. ‘I’ve a prescription from the chemist’s to prove it. I can get it if you want.’
Fleming nodded. ‘That would be helpful. Nothing serious, I trust.’
Kay hoisted himself out of the armchair and padded out to the kitchen. He returned with a small bottle of cough mixture, dated the previous Thursday.
‘Does your pharmacist deliver?’
‘No. I had to go out with a dose to get it.’
Fleming glanced at the bottle. ‘Of course, that doesn’t prove you were in your bed sick.’
‘Well I was,’ Kay said. ‘You people are torturing me, you know that? That gang out there, seeing you coming here. They’ll be attacking me while I sleep.’
Someone You Know Page 4