Someone You Know

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘I really think you need to speak to Mr Martin,’ the girl said. ‘I’m not sure I can give that information out. How do I know you’re a police officer?’

  ‘You can call my station if you want,’ Lucy offered. ‘Look, tell you what, how about you give me his driving licence number? If I’m not police, there’s nothing much I can do with that, is there?’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ the girl said, and ‘Greensleeves’ clicked into action. After a dozen renditions, the girl’s voice cracked on the line.

  ‘There’s no one else here,’ she explained. ‘I’m not sure if ...’

  ‘Look, it’s fine,’ Lucy said. ‘All I need is the number.’

  She glanced at Fleming who rolled his eyes exasperatedly.

  ‘We have GB5786345 on record if that’s any good.’

  ‘That’s perfect,’ Lucy said, repeating it while Fleming copied it down. ‘Thank you.’

  Within minutes, they had called the number through to the station and been contacted to be told that Doherty’s last recorded address was in Norburgh Park. They were also told that he had a record for assault following a bar brawl in Belfast in the late eighties. Beyond that, and a few speeding tickets in the mid-nineties, Doherty had stayed off the system.

  They pulled up outside the house twenty minutes later. Initially, they believed the place to be empty. Lucy banged on the door several times while Fleming skirted the perimeter of the house.

  ‘All the ground floor curtains are drawn,’ he observed as he joined her at the front step.

  ‘One window up the stairs is the same,’ Lucy said, nodding up.

  ‘So someone’s probably home.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I’ve knocked a few times.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t hear very well,’ Fleming commented, hammering his fist against the door three times, so sharply it rattled in the frame.

  ‘I think the people in the next street overheard that,’ she said.

  ‘And success,’ Fleming added, nodding to where a figure could be seen moving down the hallway towards the door.

  They heard the click of the dead bolt being drawn back, then the door opened slightly. The man who peered out through the opening allowed by the security chain between door and frame had black hair. He pulled a blanket around his shoulders as he hunched over, clasping the gathered corners at his throat.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, nasally, before sniffing audibly.

  ‘Mr Doherty?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Seamus Doherty?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No. Ian,’ he said, straightening slightly. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You’re not Seamus Doherty,’ Lucy stated, though the young man misread the tone and responded.

  ‘No, I’m not. Why?’

  ‘We’re sorry to have bothered you,’ Fleming said. ‘We’re looking for Seamus Doherty. We were given this address as his last known residence.’

  ‘You’ve the wrong Doherty,’ the man said, standing taller now, his voice noticeably clearer.

  ‘Do you know the other Mr Doherty?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I bought the house last year,’ he replied. ‘I know the last owner was called Doherty. There’s some of his post lying in here. I gathered it up in case he ever called to collect it, but he never did. Junk mostly, I imagine.’

  ‘Can we see it?’

  The man glanced backwards, hesitating, then finally closed the door, undid the security chain and allowed them in.

  As Lucy followed him down the hallway towards the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of a second figure, female, turning quickly from the top of the stairs. She too had been wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘Your cold’s improved,’ Fleming commented, glancing around the kitchen as the man padded across to a black unit in the corner and began flicking through the piles of paper shoved into it.

  ‘I’ve thrown a sickie to be honest,’ the man said. ‘I thought you were someone from my work.’

  The creaking from the room upstairs as the man’s partner climbed back into bed made it fairly obvious why he’d thrown a sickie. He blushed slightly as he handed them a pile of white and brown envelopes.

  As he did so, Fleming’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen and, excusing himself, moved into the hall. Lucy heard him begin the conversation with ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Can you remember who sold you the house?’ Lucy asked as she glanced at the envelopes. The name on the address labels was Mr S. Doherty. ‘Was it an estate agent?’

  ‘It might have been,’ he commented at last. ‘O’Day, or something like that.’

  ‘If you could try to remember, maybe you’d give me a ring,’ Lucy added, handing the man her card with the PPU number on it.

  Fleming reappeared in the doorway. ‘We’re wanted back in the station, DS Black,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Doherty.’

  ‘Bad news?’ Lucy asked, as they made their way back to the car.

  ‘When your mother phones it’s always bad news. They’ve been in Kay’s house. They found his collection.’

  Chapter Thirty

  The CID team was gathered in the incident room in the Strand Road when Lucy and Fleming arrived. A black bin bag lay on the table, on top of which sat a large metal security file box with a lock to the front. It had already been opened and some of the contents removed.

  The vast bulk of the images already arranged on the table were Category 9 or 10. The young people pictured in the ones Lucy saw as she glanced across the collection were girls, all teenagers. They were engaged in a variety of activities, the men in all cases unidentifiable due to the angles at which the images had been taken.

  ‘I take it they survived the fire because of the metal box,’ Fleming said, as he leaned over, scanning the images.

  ‘They survived the fire because they were in the shed,’ a voice said. Lucy turned to where her mother had entered the room. ‘I’d like to see you for a moment, Inspector Fleming.’

  Fleming glanced at Lucy and raised his eyebrows. She guessed why her mother wanted to speak to Fleming. The box was so big, Lucy wondered how he could have missed it when he’d claimed he’d searched Kay’s shed. She suspected her mother would want to know the same thing.

  She worked with the rest of the CID team, sorting through the images, attempting as best they could to organize them into piles, each one assigned to a different girl.

  Within minutes, Lucy had found a picture of Karen Hughes. Shortly after, someone handed her an image that, they believed, was of Sarah Finn. Lucy studied the picture, blanking out the background, the position in which the youth was pictured, focusing only on the girl’s face. She was pretty certain that it was indeed an image of Sarah. A second was handed to her; this time, it was a closer shot of the girl and there was no doubting her identity. Yet, while she was facing the camera, her eyes were downcast, as if unable to meet the stare of the one photographing her, his hand just visible under her chin as he tried to raise her head to take the picture.

  ‘DS Black. The ACC wants to see you,’ Burns called.

  Lucy put the picture down, nodding to confirm that it was Sarah Finn, then moved gratefully away from the images and in to her mother.

  ‘Sit down,’ her mother said as Lucy entered Burns’s office. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘The collection out there. It’s a little ... disturbing.’

  ‘We’re lucky we got it finally. We can catalogue Kay’s lists of abuse.’

  ‘It’s a little late,’ Lucy said. ‘Considering the bastard died.’

  ‘I agree,’ her mother replied. ‘In fact that’s what I wanted to ask you. We found the collection in the shed. Who searched there the day you were at the house?’

  Lucy held her mother’s stare. ‘I don’t remember. It could have been either of us.’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  The ACC nodded. ‘DI Fleming has already confirmed that he was the one who checked.’

  ‘Then why did you ask me?�
��

  Wilson ignored the question. ‘He’s also already accepted that he missed it.’

  ‘We all make mistakes.’

  ‘Indeed. Though had we found this yesterday, Kay would be in a cell and facing justice. Instead we have to deal with what he did, the fallout from his being torched alive in his house, and a second Ombudsman inquiry in so many days.’

  Lucy’s phone began to ring. She pulled it out and saw Robbie’s name on the caller ID. Apologizing, she switched it to silent and put it away again.

  ‘I’d like to know again what happened yesterday morning in DI Fleming’s house.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s relevant to what we’re talking about,’ Lucy said quickly.

  Her mother retorted, ‘I decide what’s relevant, Lucy. And I think it’s completely fucking relevant that Tom Fleming was so insensible with drink yesterday morning that you called an ambulance for him. So drunk he didn’t even hear his own burglar alarm going off. Yet he then comes into work and misses one of the biggest paedophile collections we’ve managed to find in years. Gene Kay is dead today because Tom Fleming was drunk yesterday.’

  ‘That’s a little unfair,’ Lucy countered.

  ‘It’s very unfair,’ Wilson agreed. ‘On you, and me, and the rest of the teams working these cases.’

  Lucy looked down at her hands folded in her lap. ‘Looking at the images out there, I’d say Kay got what he deserved.’

  ‘That’s not our call to make,’ Wilson snapped.

  Lucy shrugged.

  ‘Inspector Fleming will be suspended pending an investigation,’ her mother said.

  Lucy glanced up sharply. ‘That’s not fair. He needs help.’

  ‘You’re not the only one who cares for Tom Fleming, Lucy.’

  ‘You’ve a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘I remember the first time he went through all this,’ her mother snapped. ‘I saw what it did to him. He needs time to go and get himself sorted out. That’s what he’ll get. Do you think sitting out there looking at that filth is going to help him dry out? It’s no wonder he drinks.’

  ‘Yet you put me in the PPU when I asked to go to CID,’ Lucy retorted. ‘So it’s OK for me to look at them, is it?’

  ‘Don’t make everything about yourself, Lucy.’

  Lucy swallowed her immediate response, not trusting that her mother wouldn’t have her punished for insubordination. ‘So what do I do while he’s off?’

  ‘The Finn case dovetails with the Hughes murder,’ the ACC said. ‘Continue to work the case and report to Chief Superintendent Burns.’

  Lucy stood, saying nothing.

  ‘I admire your loyalty, Lucy. In this case, though, Tom needs more than loyalty.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ Lucy replied. ‘After all, loyalty was never one of your strong suits, was it?’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Burns was waiting when Lucy came out of the office.

  ‘You’ve heard about Inspector Fleming, I assume,’ he said.

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘Look, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’d appreciate your help with following up on Carlin. Was he known to PPU?’

  Before I drove him into a lough, Lucy thought, bitterly. ‘I’d not come across him before last night, sir,’ she said. ‘Inspector Fleming is the obvious person to ask though.’

  ‘We already have,’ Burns said. ‘He’d not heard the name before either.’

  Lucy folded her arms across her chest, then, being suddenly aware of the defensiveness of the gesture, unfolded them, before finally clasping her hands behind her back.

  ‘We know he was being supported by the Community Mental Health team. I’d like you to speak to his care worker there and see what you can find out. To fill in the background, you know.’

  ‘What about the house, sir? Has anyone found anything there yet?’

  ‘Forensics are doing a full sweep. It’ll take a while before we get any results.’

  The Community Mental Health team worked out of Rossdowney House in the Waterside. Lucy knew most of those who worked there, not least because many of the children in the residential unit had been referred to them at one time or another. When she arrived, she was told that she’d best speak with the unit psychiatrist, Noleen Fagan.

  ‘Good to see you, Lucy. Long time,’ Fagan said as she brought Lucy into her office. ‘Grab a seat.’

  The room was small, the walls lined with bookcases, the desk – a modern beech affair – overloaded with green and red files, many of them bulging to the point that elastic bands wrapped around them had been knotted together.

  ‘How’re things?’ Lucy asked. ‘I’ve not seen you in a while.’

  ‘The Trust took all the older kids’ cases off us,’ Fagan said. ‘A few years back, they widened the remit of the children’s team to take up to eighteen. We’re adult only now.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘That must make things easier.’

  ‘No change ever makes things easier,’ Fagan laughed. ‘You must know that. How’s the PPU treating you?’

  Lucy thought of the images she had been examining half an hour earlier. ‘The same as always,’ she said. ‘I’ve been dispatched to find out about Peter Carlin.’

  Fagan nodded. ‘I heard this morning. He drove into Enagh Lough, is that right?’

  ‘By accident. We were pursuing him and he lost control, I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘His car swerved. The road was a little slippy ...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He was on a straight stretch.’

  ‘You think he drove off deliberately?’

  Lucy shrugged. She’d not mentioned it to anyone; there seemed little point. Still, she had wondered how he could have lost control on a straight road.

  ‘Why were you chasing him? What had he done?’

  ‘We think he was grooming teenagers online. Someone online who had created a range of sock puppet accounts groomed Karen Hughes, the girl found dead on the railway tracks. That same person arranged to meet another girl last night at eight o’ clock. Carlin turned up at the meeting, then did a runner when he spotted us.’

  Fagan listened, threading the pen in her hand from between one finger to the next as she did so. ‘How many accounts?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. Certainly more than a dozen.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Peter Carlin who arranged all this?’

  ‘It looks that way. We think he was working with Gene Kay.’

  ‘The fire in Gobnascale? I heard that this morning, too.’

  ‘They unearthed a collection of images in his house. Including some of both Karen and the girl Carlin had arranged to meet.’

  ‘That might make more sense,’ Fagan commented. ‘Carlin had paedophiliac proclivities, certainly. But Peter Carlin couldn’t have arranged a dozen fake identities, let alone have been able to manipulate a child through a process of grooming. Carlin had a fairly extreme dependent personality disorder.’

  ‘A personality disorder? Would that not predispose him to something like this?’

  Fagan shook her head. ‘Carlin was intellectually limited, to put it mildly. More importantly, though, he displayed almost all the defining features of dependency: extreme passivity, tolerating abusive relationships in order to feel wanted; not trusting his own judgement on anything. He was pathologically indecisive, unless someone told him what to do. He’d come in here some days with two pairs of socks and ask me which I thought he should wear for the day. He’d never be able to start something off his own bat. He’d need to be told what to do, to the letter.’

  ‘And he’d follow the direction because ...?’

  ‘Because he had a need to be accepted. If Carlin was involved in what you’re saying – and I’ve no reason to doubt you – then someone was telling him what to do. Someone powerful in his eyes, someone whom he trusted and whose approbation he needed. If anything, Peter Carlin would have been just another puppet.’


  ‘Could it have been Gene Kay?’

  ‘Maybe. I spoke with him a few times to do a psychiatric evaluation after his release from prison a few years back. He wasn’t the most charismatic or trusting. He didn’t strike me as the type to work with others. They’d make an unlikely pairing. That said, stranger things have happened.’

  ‘So it’s possible that Kay controlled Carlin?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Fagan conceded. ‘Anything is possible. But I’d be fairly certain that the idea of Carlin grooming someone is a non-starter. Though if he did deliberately drive his car off the road, it would have been because someone told him to. There was no one in the car with him?’

  Lucy shook her head.

  ‘He wasn’t on the phone with anyone? Perhaps he’d tried to contact someone if he was being pursued. He’d have needed someone to tell him to run.’

  ‘And if they told him to drive his car into a lake?’

  ‘If he admired them enough – was controlled enough by them – he’d do it.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Lucy said, standing. ‘I almost feel sorry for him now. Almost,’ she added.

  Fagan smiled lightly. ‘I was sorry to hear about Karen Hughes. I worked with her over the self-harming before she was transferred to the children’s team. She was a lovely girl,’ Fagan added, standing to see her out.

  Lucy nodded, not trusting herself to speak. ‘She was,’ she managed finally.

  After leaving the block, she phoned through to the Incident Room to speak with Burns. She wondered if she should mention her doubts about whether Carlin going off the road was an accident. If he’d been on the phone, it would have been recovered when the car was pulled out of the lough. Unless he had been told to toss it out the window. It might explain why he’d had the driver’s window down when he hit the water, despite the cold of the night. If that was the case, it would never be found.

  ‘The team are out,’ the officer who answered the call told her. ‘They’ve gone to the Carlin house. Forensics have found a body. A young girl.’

  ‘Is it Sarah Finn?’ Lucy asked quickly, hoping that it would not be and yet aware that, even if it wasn’t, it would still be someone’s daughter. Another lost girl.