Lucy saw again, unbidden, in her mind, the image of Sarah Finn she had seen earlier, the girl’s gaze not meeting that of the camera, her eyes downcast; a child already broken.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Foreglen, along which Carlin’s house was situated, was one of the main routes out of the city, heading first to Dungiven, then on over the Glenshane Pass and down towards Belfast. It was the same route along which Sarah Finn’s phone had been found.
Carlin’s house was a two-storey block affair, the yellowed paint weathered, blistering and crumbling off the walls. To the rear were a number of dilapidated farm buildings, dominated over by a rusted barn, the roof jousts visible through the wide gaps worn through the corrugated metal front sections. A wooden door slanted off its hinges, exposing the insides.
Lucy parked up behind a marked car whose lights still soundlessly flashed. Its driver was on the phone and waved a single gloved hand salute out at her as she passed.
Lucy looked around for someone from CID. Despite her best efforts, the whole way from Derry, she’d been unable to contact anyone who might be able to tell her for certain that the dead body that had been found was Sarah Finn. There was a uniformed officer standing at the main door of the house while Forensics officers moved in and out wordlessly. Despite the activity, Lucy was struck by how quiet the scene was. Those who passed did so without speech, their heads lowered, as if in show of respect to the one dead. It was always so when the crime involved children.
‘Is the Chief Super about?’ she asked the uniform, flashing her warrant card.
‘He’s at the scene.’
‘Is it inside?’ Lucy asked, nodding past the man towards the hallway of the house beyond.
The uniform shook his head. ‘There’s a pond up at the top of the next field across. They found a pit there where he’d been dumping stuff for years. She was in there.’
‘Is it Sarah Finn?’
The uniform shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea, Sergeant; I’ve not been up.’
Lucy thanked him, then cut round the side of the house in the direction the man had suggested. To the rear of the house, standing on bricks, was the wheelless chassis of a car, the frame exposed and, like the barn, brown with rust. Lucy glanced over her shoulder, observing the back of the house. She could barely make out any movement in the rooms, the film of dirt on the windows being so thick.
The uniform had told her that the site was in the second field across. The first through which she trudged was water-logged, her boots sinking into the ground, the beer brown water pooling around her feet with each step she took. Eventually, she worked out to walk the circumference, the earth being a little firmer near the hedge bordering the field. The sky above was clear, the sun low, the shadows of the trees stretching across the grass towards her.
She glanced around, attempting to gauge the distance to Carlin’s nearest neighbour, but there were none immediately visible.
She reached the top of the first field and, cutting across to the left through a gap in the hedging, saw in the distance a crime scene tape already tied between two trees. Beyond it, a team of people in forensic suits were moving about. Using the edge of the field again, she was halfway across when she met Tara coming in the opposite direction.
‘Is it Sarah Finn?’ Lucy asked as she drew near.
‘I don’t know,’ Tara said. ‘I don’t think so. Apparently it looks like it’s been there for some time. Years, like.’ Without stopping, Tara trudged past. ‘I’ve to get food in,’ she offered.
Lucy felt immediate relief at the news, then felt instantly guilty at having done so. That the dead girl was not Sarah Finn did not mean that there was not still a dead girl.
When she reached the crime tape, she saw Burns and Mickey standing to one side, watching the Forensics team working. She understood now Tara’s shortness; Mickey seemed to be constantly at Burns’s side, while Tara herself was being dispatched on minor tasks. Lucy reflected that at least with Fleming she had never felt under-appreciated.
Lucy flashed her card again at the officer standing at the scene tape and ducked under. ‘You’ll need one of these,’ the officer said, handing her a face mask.
‘You’re back,’ Burns said, unnecessarily, from behind his own mask as she approached him.
‘It’s not Sarah Finn?’ Lucy answered.
‘Seems not,’ he said. ‘This one is old. Could have been in there ten years, they think. They’ve found all kinds of stuff. The place was full of asbestos. You’ll need your mask.’
Lucy quickly pulled it on, pulling the straps taut against her scalp.
The pit, beyond where they stood, was about twenty feet wide, though she could not from this angle tell its depth. A few of the CSIs, dressed in industrial protection gear, were already removing the asbestos, sealed in plastic, shifting it to one side to allow the officers access to what lay beneath.
‘They found a black dog in the house,’ Burns said. ‘We’re checking the hairs against those found on Karen.’
Lucy nodded.
‘They’ve found all kinds of stuff in the house,’ Burns continued. ‘Traces of fluids all over the place.’
‘Blood?’
‘And the rest,’ Burns added. ‘It looks like Carlin was doing all kinds of things to all kinds of people in there. An orgy site, one of the SOCOs said.’
‘I spoke with Noleen Fagan,’ Lucy said. ‘Carlin’s psychiatrist in the Mental Health team. She reckons it’s unlikely he would be our groomer.’
‘How had he not come to our attention before?’ Mickey asked. ‘Surely he should have been flagged up.’
‘He had dependent personality disorder,’ Lucy said. ‘It doesn’t mean he’s likely to be a criminal. In fact, Fagan reckoned he probably wouldn’t have been capable of grooming anyone.’
‘Is she sure?’ Burns asked. ‘The evidence is pretty compelling at this stage.’
‘He needed to be told what to do, by people whose approval he sought. He may even have been told to drive off the road the other night.’
‘What?’ Burns asked, exasperated.
‘He looked like he swerved off the road deliberately,’ Lucy said. ‘Fagan suggested he might have been instructed to do so by someone. Maybe someone he was speaking to on the phone.’
Mickey scoffed. ‘Or maybe he was on his phone and lost control. Nothing complicated about it.’
Lucy ignored him, addressing Burns. ‘Fagan reckons he’d be more a puppet than a manipulator.’
‘More puppets,’ Burns said. ‘This bloody case is built on puppets.’
Lucy shrugged and relayed the rest of what Fagan had said.
‘Then he must have been in cahoots with Kay. He does the arranging, Carlin does the dirty work. Then they used this place as their spot for carrying out the abuse,’ Mickey said.
‘I thought that too. However, Fagan reckoned Kay wouldn’t have been the type to work with others.’
Burns considered the comment, though Lucy could already sense without conviction.
‘We’ll wait to see what Forensics pull from the two houses. If we can connect one with the other, we’re sorted.’
One of the suited men approached them, a camera held in his hand.
‘This is what we’ve got, sir,’ he said, handing Burns the camera. ‘It’s the best I can get for you at the moment, until we get all the asbestos moved. She’s down near the bottom.’
Burns held one hand over the viewing screen at the back of the camera as he flicked through the images the man had taken. Mickey craned his head to see too. Lucy waited until he was done, then asked to see the images. Since she had started in the PPU, over a year earlier, four children in the area under the age of eighteen had gone missing who had never been found. That was low; she knew that there had been twenty-two missing across the North in a previous year alone. If this child had been in the ground for ten years, based on those figures, it could be any one of forty or fi
fty children in the Foyle district area who had been reported missing within that time period. That was assuming that the child had been reported missing in the Foyle district to start with.
Burns scanned through the images for a few moments, then handed the camera to Lucy. ‘See if anything stands out.’
The body was small, clearly a child, though the legs carried a good length. ‘What height is she?’
‘We think about five foot,’ the SOCO said. ‘She’s measuring four foot ten, so allowing for some curvature and that.’
She wore a T-shirt, yellowed and grubby with dirt, but originally white, Lucy guessed. She wore baggy jeans. Her hair seemed blonde. Her face, though wizened, was not decayed as Lucy had expected.
‘He buried her in quicklime, we think,’ the man said. ‘It helped preserve her.’
Lucy nodded. Contrary to popular belief, quicklime didn’t accelerate decomposition. Indeed, it was quite the reverse. She could understand why Carlin might have used it. If the farm on which he lived had been functioning at one stage, he’d have had to cover any of the animals that had died and been buried to kill the smell of the bodies.
‘I can follow up on the clothes,’ Lucy said. ‘See if it matches any Missing Persons investigations.’
‘And the shoe,’ the SOCO said. ‘I’ve a close-up of it further on.’
Lucy scrolled through the images. One of the last was indeed close up on the girl’s shoe. She wore a chunky black shoe, whose sole was almost three inches thick. At the strap, Lucy could make out an off-white skull and crossbones motif.
‘Just the one shoe?’
‘So far,’ the man replied.
‘I’ll run both through the older cases.’
‘Do that,’ Burns said. ‘What about the Finn girl? Any luck tracing the stepfather?’
‘He’s not ...’ Lucy began, then decided better of it. ‘The last address we had for him was sold a while back. He didn’t leave a forwarding address, but I’m going to try the estate agent who handled the sale to see if we can track him down through them.’
‘What about the phone we found yesterday? Have ICS found anything on it?’
‘I’m not sure, sir. I’ve not had time to check.’
‘Get a press release out this evening asking for the stepfather to do the right thing and hand himself in. Then organize for the mother to do an appeal tomorrow morning for the news.’ He held out his hand, looking for the camera to be returned. ‘You need to stay on top of it, Lucy. Let me know if the techies find anything.’
Lucy demurred from pointing out that she and Fleming had been following it up when Burns had had them called back to the station to see the collection found in Kay’s shed. For the foreseeable future, he would be her superior and she saw little value in unnecessarily antagonizing him. Instead she handed him back the camera with a simple, ‘Yes, sir,’ then ducked back under the tape and began picking her way back to the farmhouse.
‘Sergeant?’ the uniform called after her.
Lucy turned expectantly.
‘Your face mask? I need it back,’ the man said, smiling.
Lucy handed him the mask, then stopped, glancing back up to where Burns stood. Something struck her about the clothes of the child. Not the clothes. The shoe. She remembered again the shoe found in Gary Duffy’s garage, which had provided the evidence that led to his imprisonment. The distinctive skull and crossbones motif.
‘Sir,’ she called, moving past the uniform. ‘Sir!’
Burns turned towards her.
‘It’s the shoes. I think I know who the girl is.’
Mickey glanced at her, his face sharp.
‘I think she’s Louisa Gant.’
Burns angled his head slightly. ‘We’ll check it up. Thank you, Sergeant,’ he added, turning from her again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
After pulling up in front of the PPU block, Lucy thought better of it and drove across to the ICS block. She buzzed at the door and waited, studying her reflection in the foiled glass of the door, fixing a stray hair behind her ear.
Cooper opened the door. He wore a black shirt, open at the collar, and jeans.
‘Lucy, come in,’ he said, holding the door open so that she could pass.
‘I’ve been sent to find out if you got anything on the phone we recovered yesterday.’
‘Not even a good morning?’ Cooper smiled, leading her towards his workroom.
‘Sorry,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s not been good. More a fairly shitty one, to be honest. But good morning,’ she said, then glanced at her watch. ‘In fact, good afternoon. I didn’t realize the time.’
‘You’ve not had lunch then,’ Cooper said. ‘I’ll make tea. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Both,’ Lucy said, sitting down heavily on the stool by the workbench where she stood.
‘So what’s happened?’ Cooper asked.
‘My boss has been suspended,’ Lucy said. ‘Both suspects in our case have died so far, we’ve not found the one girl we lost and I think we’ve found a girl that went missing years ago and whose killer is also dead.’
‘That is fairly shitty,’ Cooper agreed.
‘Actually, it’s probably business as usual, if I’m honest,’ Lucy conceded. ‘I just feel bad for Tom Fleming.’
Cooper carried across two mugs of pale liquid and handed one to Lucy.
‘When you asked about milk and sugar, I assumed I’d not need to specify I wanted actual tea in my tea too,’ she said, peering doubtfully at the mug.
‘The bag’s in there,’ Cooper said. ‘You can stir yourself.’
He pulled a Twix out of his coat pocket, opened the packet and handed Lucy one of the two fingers.
‘I couldn’t work out if you liked it weak or strong,’ he added. ‘You strike me as strong.’
Lucy pulled the bag up with her spoon and squeezed out the tea. ‘So, any luck with the phone?’ she asked, before lifting the finger of Twix and taking a bite.
‘The same as with Karen Hughes,’ Cooper said. ‘Almost an identical pattern. “Harris” started contact with her on Facebook. She befriended him the same as Karen, they batted some comments back and forwards. She mentioned her favourite band was Florence and the Machine. Then when she changed her profile picture from a puppy to a shot she took of her garden, he posted a comment “Dog Days are Over”.’
‘One of her songs,’ Lucy said, nodding.
‘I had to google it,’ Cooper admitted. ‘Sarah got the joke though. She agreed to meet him not long after.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Ten weeks ago,’ he said. ‘Their first contact was on 9 October. Their first meeting was in early November. They seemed to meet up for drinks or coffee a few times, then he suggested they go to a party. It quietened down a bit after that, then they seemed to make contact more frequently, another party, now she’s vanished.’
‘Can you find out who “Harris” is? Assuming it’s not his real name.’
‘I thought “Harris” was lying in a morgue with two lungs full of Enagh Lough.’
‘Regardless,’ Lucy said. ‘Has there been any activity on the accounts since?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘Not a peep. Certainly none of the identities that I’d traced.’
Lucy supped at her tea, washing down the last of the chocolate, the taste cloying at her throat.
‘Thanks for that,’ she said.
‘The first contact with Sarah Finn was on 9 October, right?’ Cooper said. ‘The first contact with Karen Hughes was on 18 September. We know that Bradley or “Harris” or whatever his name is selected these girls for a reason, groomed them online to meet them in the real world. Assuming that something made Bradley target these specific girls online, then he must have encountered them in some way in the real world prior to that first online contact. It might be worth looking at where the girls were or who they met in the days prior to the two first contacts. If you find something the two had in common, you’ll not have far to look for Bradley, I�
��d have thought.’
Lucy felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and, pulling it out, saw Robbie’s name on the caller ID. She realized that he had left her a message earlier which she hadn’t listened to yet. She hesitated answering, feeling absurdly guilty, then excused herself and, moving out of the office, answered the call.
‘Hey, Lucy,’ Robbie said when he answered. ‘I’ve been trying you and Tom all morning.’
‘We’ve been busy,’ Lucy said quickly, despite the fact there had been nothing accusatory in his comment.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s about Gavin. He skipped out in the middle of the night. He didn’t arrive back here until just after seven this morning. I got him out to school. He signed out of school at eleven to attend a Mass for his father with his grandparents. He’s not come back to the school yet and I can’t get in contact with the grandparents.’
Lucy exhaled deeply.
‘I’m sorry to land this on you,’ Robbie said. ‘You know the protocol, though.’ If a child in care didn’t return to the residential unit when expected, Social Services were required to inform the PPU.
‘It’s no problem,’ Lucy said. ‘Why didn’t you contact us last night when he went out?’
‘I didn’t know,’ Robbie replied sheepishly. ‘I fell asleep on the sofa in the common room. He’d already gone to bed and I’d the place locked up for the evening. I got up to wake him this morning and saw he was gone. I was about to call when he arrived at the front door.’
If Gavin had been missing during the night there was every chance that he, and his new gang of friends, had been part of the recreational rioting that Lucy had witnessed in Gobnascale earlier. ‘I’ll get onto it as soon as I can,’ Lucy said. Despite her caseload, she would have to follow up on it, especially without Fleming to handle it.
‘There’s something else,’ Robbie said. ‘I stuck on a washing load after he went to school. When I gathered up his clothes, they were stinking of petrol. Especially the sleeves of his hoodie.’
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