The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Yes. The injuries were all done pre-mortem, though he was likely dead by the time they cut through his oesophagus. Like Doyle, he seems to have been drugged. Too soon to say here, but the compound used on Doyle was a kind of animal tranquilliser. So anyone with access to a farm could probably get it.’

  They all fell silent. Avril was staring down at the laptop, pale, though her fingers never stopped moving.

  ‘We’ve also had the analysis back from the geologist,’ said Guy, after a moment. ‘I must say, he’s worked very fast.’

  ‘Is that what that rocks fella was doing there?’ said Gerard. ‘Taking wee samples of dirt – it’s a weird job.’

  ‘He gave out to me for stepping on a bit of ground,’ complained Bob in injured tones. ‘It wasn’t even cordoned!’

  ‘I know. He did seem to have rather a sense of entitlement.’ From Guy that was damning. ‘However, DCI Corry’s rather keen on him.’

  Gerard rolled his eyes. ‘She is indeed.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Guy pressed on, ignoring this. ‘It’s interesting reading, the report, if you could turn your attention to it, please.’

  The report certainly didn’t look interesting – a dry table of words and chemical compounds, and on the page after, a map with geological terms on it.

  ‘What is it?’ Fiacra was squinting. ‘Looks like my old chemistry homework.’

  ‘It’s the different rock compounds found on the victims’ shoes, and areas in this locality where these are found. It might lead us to the kill site.’

  ‘They weren’t victims,’ said Avril quietly, eyes on her laptop. ‘They were killers.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Guy severely. ‘They were acquitted in court, and even if they had been convicted they’re entitled to the same justice as anyone else. That is in fact the meaning of “inalienable rights”.’ There was silence around the table. ‘Is everyone clear on that? I don’t want any further discussion of this matter. We’re going to do the same for the Mayday Five as we would for anyone else. That’s the reason we have laws – it’s not up to us to decide on who gets justice, with all our own history and pain. OK?’

  No one said anything. He went on. ‘Now, the most significant compound is highlighted there. On page five . . .’ They all turned over, the sound like a brief flap of wings in the small room. ‘Dr Finney has highlighted where this mineral can be found near Ballyterrin. One site is the scree above the Drumantee mountains, and the other is the sea caves down by the coast. He feels the latter is more likely, as it’s very remote and it would be quite possible to hold someone there without detection. Apparently the IRA used to use the caves for smuggling arms.’

  The word IRA always sounded different in the mouths of English people. Round here they were the Provos or the Ra, familiar names to cover up the fear and pain they’d caused. Reducing them to a joke, like so many painful things in Ireland.

  ‘So are we searching the caves?’ Gerard pushed aside the paper, which he obviously couldn’t be bothered reading.

  ‘Yes. We’re going out as soon as we assemble a TSG. Paula, I’d like you to examine the scene too, see if there’s any cultural or ritual significance to the site. Even if they’re not there, we might find some leads to the other three.’

  ‘How will she get down there?’ said Fiacra bluntly. ‘I’ve been. You have to climb down a path, and look at the size of her.’

  ‘She’s not an invalid,’ said Avril, still typing.

  ‘She’s not deaf either,’ said Paula, glaring at Fiacra.

  Guy held up his hands for quiet. ‘If the caves are safe, we’ll approach via the beach. It should be doable.’ He turned to her again. ‘What did you find out from the relatives’ group?’

  ‘I’m not sure. They were reluctant to discuss it in front of me, but John Lenehan has stepped down as Chair – too sick, they said. And there was some kind of vote at their last meeting – about options for proceeding, they called it.’

  ‘John is over seventy,’ said Guy. ‘And it’s true, he didn’t seem in the best of health.’

  ‘And that group is all he has. His son was blown up, his wife hanged herself, and his farm’s gone to the wall. So why would he suddenly leave?’

  Avril spoke up. ‘Dominic Martin did make death threats after the trial collapsed – I found the video footage of it, what he said in the courthouse when they let the Mayday Five go.’

  ‘You can hardly blame him,’ said Fiacra, a little nastily. Avril bit her lip, dropped her head.

  ‘It doesn’t make everything allowable,’ Paula said. ‘Grief . . . it’s not an absolution.’

  ‘I think you’re right, Paula,’ said Guy. ‘We’ll have to interview the families. But it will be very difficult, both for them and for us.’

  ‘But you’re sure it’s justified?’ said Gerard. ‘You don’t reckon an IRA feud is much more likely than the families knowing anything about it? I mean, they’re just kids and old folks, most of the relatives – they could hardly kidnap five terrorists, could they? That fella Martin Flaherty, rumour has it he’d kill you as soon as look at you.’

  Paula sighed. ‘Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to pin this on Kenny and his ilk. It would give me the greatest pleasure to see him thrown into jail, Armani suit and all. But – everything I’ve said still stands. There was something going on in that meeting. Hopefully it’s not what I think, and we can clear them. But we need to speak to them.’

  Guy was nodding reluctantly. ‘It’ll need very sensitive handling.’

  ‘Yes.’ She could hardly imagine how she’d go about it.

  ‘Who would we start with?’ And there it was, the easy assumption, the knowledge that they worked in a perfect team, which meant she couldn’t walk away from him.

  She almost smiled at him. ‘We should start with Dominic Martin. He’s the ringleader of whatever’s going on, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘All right. Let’s pay him a visit then. But after the caves, if we don’t find anything, I think we should talk to Mr Kenny first. If local Republicans do have anything to do with this, he’s the man who’ll know.’

  ‘He’s agreed to meet us?’

  ‘Let’s just say he wasn’t given much of a choice. It’s ridiculous. If this was England he’d have been the first person we questioned.’

  Paula looked at Bob, who was staring at his papers, wondering what he thought of all this – the terrorists he’d spent his life hunting now running the town. He caught her eye for a moment, then averted his gaze. She knew he didn’t approve of pregnant women working – barely approved of women working at all, she suspected. But she could imagine how hard he was finding this, having been there that day, having walked down the street after the bomb went off and seen it running with blood. Paula was also thinking of Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s children. Left behind – forever, if they didn’t find her and fast. Like Paula, spending the rest of their lives asking questions into a silence that never answered back.

  Kira

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’ The funny thing was he didn’t even seem annoyed. He wasn’t surprised, she didn’t think. He was so tired, like the most tired man she had ever seen.

  ‘I’m Kira.’ Her voice sounded funny in the big marble silence. Echoing. ‘Kira Woods.’

  ‘And who might Kira Woods be?’

  ‘Rose Woods . . .’ Her mouth filled up with spit and she swallowed it down. ‘She died in the bomb. The Mayday one.’

  ‘Your sister?’

  She nodded. It was easiest.

  He looked at her for a long time. His hair was going white and his eyes were wrinkling. ‘And what brought you to my door, Kira?’

  ‘I want . . .’ She didn’t know, she realised. She didn’t know what she wanted. ‘I want you to do something.’

  He moved as if he was cross. ‘There’s nothing to be done. Your sister’s dead, you said. There’s nothing in the world can bring her back.’

  ‘I know that! It just isn’
t right. She was – the best person. Now she’s dead.’

  ‘These things happen. My da died when I was round your age. Brit soldiers, they shot him down in the street. Minding his own business, he was, on his way to mind his wee shop. Those fellas stayed in the army, not a bother on them. But you didn’t see me asking them to do nothing. What can you do when someone’s dead? Nothing.’

  Kira rolled up the sleeves of her school shirt. There was biro on the cuff. ‘Rose’s blood,’ she said. ‘It went on my face. In my mouth. And look.’ She showed him the scars – on her arms, silvery pink now, like drops of dirt except she could never wash them off.

  He looked. He did this, she told herself. He did this and he killed Rose. Her heart was pounding so hard it made her shake. He rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt. His arm was all tattooed, but at the top there was a big gouge out of the skin as if someone had bit him. ‘Hand grenade,’ he said. ‘UVF. You’d be Protestant, Kira Woods, with a name like yours?’

  Her heart beat even faster, but she wouldn’t deny it, like St Peter in the garden. ‘Yes.’

  He just nodded. ‘Have you a mammy, Kira?’

  ‘Yes. She’s – not too good now. Since Rose.’

  ‘Then that’s a shame, but you should go on home to her anyway. A nice girl like you shouldn’t be breaking into people’s houses.’

  ‘I didn’t break in! The door isn’t even shut.’

  ‘And the gate?’

  She said nothing. He nodded again. ‘Kira, go home and look after your mammy. Do your qualifications. Get off this bloody island. That’s my advice. Go on now.’

  She moved to the door. He held it open. She was rooting in her bag, her hands shaking. Her fingers closed on it, all clammy over Rose’s face. She took the picture out and held it up to him. In the picture Rose was being a bridesmaid for their cousin Shelly, who’d been in bad form all day because everyone said Rose looked like a model and people said Shelly looked lovely but only to her face and you could tell they didn’t really mean it. In it Rose had on a pink floaty dress and flowers in her hair, all blonde and pretty. She was smiling in a way that made you know she was laughing at the state of the dress and the long, boring ceremony where the minister had a lisp.

  ‘Look at her,’ said Kira, holding it up. ‘I want you to at least look at her picture.’

  The man almost pushed her. ‘I mean it now, girl. Go on home. Don’t make me phone someone.’

  She thought he meant the police, but later she thought he probably didn’t mean that.

  Mr Collins was Kira’s favourite teacher at school. He thought she was ‘very bright’, he’d once told Mammy, and he lent her books and didn’t make her talk out loud in class or feel sorry for her. Or not too much. One day he had looked at her a bit funny and said: ‘Kira, I think you’re very brave. I just wanted to tell you.’

  She’d have liked to say that was silly. It wasn’t brave to have something bad happen to you – you didn’t get any say in it. One book he gave her was about religions of the world, and how they thought about death. It was very interesting. There was one bit that said in India, if someone did you wrong – stole from you, say, or killed someone in your family – you went and sat outside their house for days and days until they gave you some kind of restitution. It was called dharna. In other countries, if someone killed you they could pay your family a thing called blood money. She asked Mr Collins what restitution meant and he perked up like a dog and started explaining it was when someone had taken something off you, or done something wrong to you, and they had to make amends for it. Restitution. She liked that word, rolling it over and over in her mouth, and the next day she read it again. And again.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘It’s empty. The TSG have searched it. You can go in.’

  As Paula moved from the warm, windy beach, April sun sparkling on the waves, into the cool drip of the caves, she felt a chill descend and couldn’t hide her shudder. Her feet slipped on seaweed and she heard the bladders pop under her feet. She’d given up any concession to fashion and was wearing walking boots and old tracksuit bottoms with the elastic all gone.

  ‘How far back do they go?’ She vaguely remembered learning about the sea caves in Geography at school.

  ‘We’re not sure.’ She could feel Guy’s hand almost brush her arm – as if he desperately wanted to take it, and in truth she wanted him to, but neither of them would move the extra inch. That seemed to sum up their relationship at the moment. ‘Dr Finney says it’s not all been explored and it may go back for miles. So don’t wander off.’

  After high tide the only way into the caves would be by boat, or risking a very cold swim. The entrance was a shallow plane of rock, treacherously slippy, and as they moved in it opened up into a gloomy natural hall. Paula felt her heart quicken as the daylight receded and the only light was from the wavy halogen lamps the team had affixed. Corry was there shouting at everyone, zipped up like Lara Croft in black trousers and a jacket. ‘Careful of the walls! If there’s damage the council’ll have my hide.’ She rolled her eyes at Paula’s approach. ‘Is it too much to ask that you might just look at photographs, Dr Maguire?’

  ‘I need to see it with my own eyes. Let me take a look?’

  ‘If you must. Up here.’

  Paula climbed another PSNI walkway into a slightly higher part of the cave. Below her it opened out into a sort of room. A room people had been living in. Clutching the stone walls, she peered down at Corry. ‘What is it?’

  ‘We don’t know. Go up and take a look.’

  Up there the floor was sandy and dry, and she felt safer walking. The space was about four metres high and twenty across, vanishing at the back into a darkness full of drips and echoes. Five chairs had been put in a semi-circle. Ordinary chairs with wooden legs and arms, like you might get in a school. From the arms of each sagged heavy ropes, nylon ones like you could buy in B&Q, looping all the way down the legs and on to the next chair, so they were tied together. The other furniture in the room was a table, of similar dull office stock, and three chairs behind that.

  There was a bucket underneath the table which gave out a very bad smell, and on top of the table was a ruled exercise book, the shreds of a few torn-out pages clinging to it. Several officers were walking about in white suits, taking pictures and dusting the items of furniture.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ said Corry, scrambling up behind Paula.

  Paula ignored her; of course she wasn’t going to touch anything. ‘They were kept here? All five?’

  ‘We think so. It’ll be easy to check for DNA. The bucket is full of faeces and vomit, and look.’ She pointed to the arms of the nearest chair, which was crusted with a dried rusting substance – blood. Now Paula looked, she could see the sandy floor beneath each chair was also covered in dark stains.

  She turned back to Corry. ‘Any prints?’

  ‘Loads. The whole place is full of them. Local kids come down here sometimes to drink and get up to no good – explains the stink of booze and piss.’

  ‘And the other three bombers?’

  Corry shrugged. ‘You can see for yourself. Five chairs. Two bodies. There’s no sign of the others.’

  ‘The exercise book – is it the same one?’

  ‘We’ll be able to reconstruct from indentations, we hope, but yes, it looks like the same one used for the notes. There’s been several pages of dense writing on top of it.’

  Paula turned and scanned the space, the expanse of dark rock overhead, full of moving shadows, and in the middle the dusty, nondescript chairs and table, their odd vines of rope and what she assumed was blood underneath. Her hands crept under her waterproof jacket to find the mound of the baby – warm, alive. In the dark, she could make out something stuck to the walls. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Take a look,’ said Corry.

  Paula stepped forward uncertainly, peering at the damp walls. It was pictures, fixed onto the walls with masking tape. The edg
es of the photos curling up. Faces and faces and faces. She counted – yes, sixteen. ‘All of them.’

  ‘Yes. Every victim of the bomb. A picture of each one.’

  ‘What do you think happened here?’ she asked Corry, after a moment taking it all in.

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me. That is your job after all.’ Corry sighed. ‘I just don’t feel right bollocking you when you’re the size of a house. Can you not just have it and come back?’

  ‘I’m trying. I think – this is just a first impression.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It reminds me of a courtroom. You know, the trial.’ She pointed. ‘A small person’s been tied to that middle chair – see the ropes are looser. In court, during the trial, they sat with Ni Chonnaill in the middle.’ She counted it off, squinting as she tried to remember the illustration in Maeve’s book. ‘From left – Flaherty, Brady, Ni Chonnaill, Lynch, Doyle.’

  ‘A courtroom.’ Corry was nodding. ‘I can see that. Passing judgement. Giving them the proper trial the government failed to provide.’

  ‘Yes. So this is our kill site, we think?’

  ‘One of them, anyway. There’s a large amount of blood in that corner there, consistent with Brady’s head being removed here.’

  ‘I’d agree.’ A white-clad figure was tramping across the floor to them, putting down its hood to reveal sandy hair and a handsome face. ‘Dr Maguire.’

  ‘Dr Finney.’ Their greetings were about as warm as the chill from the walls of the cave. She wasn’t sure what he was doing here – surely finding the site should have been the limit of his involvement.

  He went on. ‘This is one of the few locations of the mineral we found on Brady and Doyle, so coupled with the odd set-up and obvious signs of restraint, this is the kill site.’ He pointed to the mouth of the cave. ‘There’s a large number of impressions there. It’s highly likely we can still find deposits on the shoes of the killer, or killers, and match it to those from the original crime scenes.’