The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  One day Kira came home from school and her bed was stripped and the article was gone, and Mammy never mentioned it and neither did she. It was too late anyway. She could see their faces when she closed her eyes. She was ready for it to happen.

  Other things went by. They announced the trial, and some of the families were happy and some said only hanging was good enough, but no one expected it would all fall through because of something Kira didn’t understand about warrants and phones and tampering, and she didn’t understand, honestly could not take it in, how the defence lawyers could find this out and why it mattered. She’d wanted to go in and shout at the judge – Come on! It’s not fair! One stupid hour out on the warrant thing!

  She hadn’t been allowed to go into the court, so on the day of the verdict she’d sat in the old-fashioned café in the courthouse and sprinkled too much chocolate on her cappuccino to make it less bitter, and watched people coming and going. When it all ended there’d been a big shout and people had started coming out, filling the space. Kira’s heart had started to hammer. She went out, pushing through the people, trying to hear what had happened. Tears on faces. She couldn’t see Mammy. There was lots of shouting and she was afraid, so afraid. Then she saw Dominic, behind a big crowd of reporters and cameras, and he was crying and shouting. ‘It’s a travesty. My daughter. They killed my daughter. They should be killed too. They’re like animals. They should be strung up.’

  Kira had pushed her way over to him, through all the scrum. He was trying to move to the door, some woman in a suit running after him. ‘Leave me! You’re as bad as the lawyers. Bloody vultures, feasting off our loss. Get away.’ He was walking away, almost running out of court. He just kept walking. Soon the reporters tailed off, muttering. But Kira could run. She had her trainers on. She followed him down to the waterfront and over the bridge. He was clutching the rails and his face was frozen. He saw her. ‘Kira— you shouldn’t be here.’

  She was panting. ‘I heard you. I think it too. They should be punished. Eye for an eye. We should punish them. We can. They got off. I agree with you. They say about God and forgiveness – well, I don’t want a God who forgives them. We should punish them, Dominic. We should show them what they did to us.’

  She could see he wasn’t listening. She realised she was crying. ‘I want to punish them, but I can’t! I’m too small, I’m not strong, I’m afraid – but I want to punish them. You have to help me.’

  Dominic put his hands over his face, scrunching them into his eyes. When he took them away, his face had a different expression.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘He’d made a bit of money for himself then,’ said Guy.

  ‘Must have done. Left his Beemer behind and all.’

  Flaherty’s silver BMW sat outside his house, collecting leaves and dust. The house was large, with white pillars at the front and a sweep of garden containing a wishing well and a pond with gnomes around it. Paula thought it pretty tacky, but it was clear that the man had done well for himself. It was less clear how – the other members of the Mayday Five were all struggling, working in dead-end jobs or not at all. After the bombing, the local Republican movement had made sure they were frozen out, unwelcome in their own town. But then every report on Flaherty had mentioned his charisma, the strength of his presence.

  Guy was snapping on gloves and handed her a pair. ‘Let’s go in. I want your first impressions on anything of note. We need to get inside his head.’

  She almost shuddered. A man who’d mastermind the murder of children, refuse to apologise for it, then fill his garden with plaster gnomes? She wasn’t sure she wanted to be anywhere near his head.

  Inside the air lay heavy, undisturbed for several weeks. It had been left clean, every item of furniture aligned, but dust was settling on the window blinds and hall table. In the kitchen, which was marble and steel, no dishes sat out. The fridge was empty, several letters pinned to it. Paula stood looking about her while the search team fanned out into the rest of the house, overturning cushions and pulling pictures away from the wall. There wasn’t anything much. An old map of Ireland, framed. There were no pictures of his wife or of Flaherty himself. The television was neat, all the leads tucked away in brackets, and one of the chairs still had its plastic covers on.

  ‘Any thoughts?’ Guy was standing in the bathroom door, a set of scales in his gloved hands.

  She shook her head and moved forward to open some of the cupboards, feeling her bump press against the counter. Not much in them – cereal, tubs containing teabags and instant coffee, sugar. Again everything was neatly arranged. She wondered if that was what made Flaherty so good at what he did. He was organised. He knew where to find things. He left no loose ends. And he’d killed; he’d killed so many people you would expect blood to drip from his feet as he walked.

  She turned to the notices on the fridge, pinned up with magnets, one in the shape of Ireland, made out of Connemara Marble. The kind of thing a grandchild might give, which made her wonder again about how much Flaherty had really seen his daughter over the years. One was a flyer about recycling collections. A library schedule – her mind failed slightly at the idea of Flaherty checking out large-print paperbacks – and the last thing had a logo on it that she recognised, having spent rather more time than she wanted looking at it recently. She ran her gloved fingers over the typeface.

  ‘Sir?’ she called. Best to call him by his title around the other officers, strange as it felt. He reappeared. ‘There’s a letter from the hospital here. An appointment for next week.’

  ‘Interesting. Could be proof he didn’t plan to disappear at all.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She examined it. ‘Dr Andrew Fuller. It says oncology department.’

  ‘Flaherty had cancer?’

  She scanned the letter. ‘Stage four, Guy. He was dying.’

  Guy was digging out his phone. ‘This could change things.’

  Her mind was racing. She knew they’d find no more from this sterile house – someone had left the place clean, swept, locked up. But this, leaving a letter out, with something so red-hot on it . . .

  ‘I think we were meant to find this,’ she said.

  Guy nodded. ‘I think you’re right. But why?’

  ‘Someone’s trying to send a message. Add this to what the Walshes had to say about there being four bombers in the van . . . Maybe that Flaherty wasn’t kidnapped at all? Maybe he’s out there, on the run?’

  ‘So why was his DNA in the caves then?’

  She shook her head, frustrated. ‘I don’t know. But I think this is deliberate.’

  ‘So do I. And if so, I wonder how much of the rest we were meant to find as well.’

  Paula’s father was in the kitchen when she got home that evening, brushing the floor up into a dustpan. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, with your leg.’ He looked well, she thought, his face fuller than it had been when she’d moved back eight months ago to find him living alone in the gloomy terraced house, existing on toast and biscuits. Though it wasn’t very flattering that he seemed to think she couldn’t so much as wash up a cup by herself – even if it was close to the truth.

  ‘Well, pet.’ He emptied the dustpan into the bin. ‘What were you about?’

  ‘Just work.’ She busied herself putting away some dishes from the rack – she knew he’d have dried them up and put them away immediately. ‘Long day.’

  ‘You’re still looking for those Ireland First scumbags then?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, the ones that haven’t turned up dead yet. How’s Pat?’

  ‘Ah, she’s grand. Young Aidan was down for his tea the other night. Seems the paper’s doing well again.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘You’ve seen him yourself?’

  ‘The odd time.’ She kept her voice light. PJ didn’t seem to know what to say. She wondered if Pat had sent him on a fishing expedition. ‘What brings you over?’

  ‘Oh! I thought I’d measure up for the builders.’ She saw th
ere was a tape measure on the side.

  ‘Are they actually going to do it then?’

  ‘Who knows with those fellas? They’re all working in Dublin these days.’

  The long-term plan was to get the cupboards replaced, rip up the old lino and put in wooden floors. All the things a young family would expect if buying it, and hopefully they’d not remember what had happened there in 1993. After that Paula didn’t know what she’d do – move somewhere else in Ballyterrin, or go back to London with her baby. She couldn’t seem to think beyond her due date.

  She took her jacket off and put it on the chair; then thought better of it and picked it up again before her father could make a comment about hanging it on the proper peg. ‘Is . . . do you know if Maeve is OK? I mean, I thought Pat might have been down to see her.’

  ‘She’s much the same, I think. No worse, anyway.’

  ‘That’s good. I need to go, but . . . work . . .’

  Her father seemed to understand. ‘She’ll be grand, I’m sure.’

  ‘How’s life at Pat’s?’

  ‘It’s grand. Haven’t seen you for a while. You never call down.’

  ‘Busy with work.’ The truth was that the more time she spent in their house, the more Pat would then start acting like the coming baby’s grandmother, and Aidan would be hanging around, and then the blissful denial she’d been keeping up about the paternity test matter would crumble apart. ‘Did you come up just to clean the place?’

  Looking around, it did need a good scrub, but she had neither the time nor the energy. She thought about what had happened that week – she’d got one of her colleagues suspended while they looked into the possibility he’d deliberately kept back evidence in the case of Margaret Maguire, aged thirty-seven, who’d gone missing on 28th October 1993. If only she could keep it behind those words, safe, screened off. She couldn’t begin to tell her father. He didn’t officially even know she had the file, except he probably did, in that space somewhere between people who know each other too well.

  ‘Not really. I needed to talk to you. You better sit down, pet.’

  Nothing good was ever prefaced with those words, you better sit down. It was as bad as ‘we need to talk’. Paula folded her arms. ‘It takes me five minutes to get up again. I’ll stand. What’s wrong?’

  ‘I had a call from the PSNI this afternoon. About the case you’re working on.’

  ‘Oh yeah? You’re lucky, they keep trying to send me home.’

  PJ leaned the brush against the wall. ‘They found a body,’ he said.

  ‘Another one? Flaherty?’ She was getting annoyed. ‘I can’t believe they didn’t tell me after last time. I was only at his place today as well.’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘Oh no. It’s Catherine? Is . . . is she dead?’

  ‘It’s not her. Paula, it’s an older body. They phoned me.’

  It took a long time for the understanding to travel up her spine and into her brain. They thought it was her mother. A body the right age. ‘Where?’ she asked, when she could speak.

  ‘On the beach at Mallin sands. The search team were looking there for your other two bombers.’

  A well-known IRA burial place. A car park development ten years before had yielded up two decomposed bodies, bound and gagged, shot in the skull execution-style. Families pleased to have answers at last. It was a fucked-up world when you were glad to find the mutilated body of your loved one. It was a fucked-up Northern Irish world. Paula realised she hadn’t said anything for a while. PJ was brushing non-existent dust off the counters.

  ‘I want to see,’ she heard herself say. ‘I want to identify her.’

  ‘Ah, pet. You’re about ready to pop. You don’t want to be standing around the morgue in your condition.’ But she could tell his heart wasn’t in dissuading her. He knew it wouldn’t work.

  ‘I mean it. I’ll be fine. I need to know.’

  PJ just nodded. ‘We’ll both go then. First thing tomorrow.’

  Paula had been to the morgue a few times before, supporting families, watching their reactions when they were suspects, and on training. She was well used to the smell of bleach and blood and told herself she was just going to find it all interesting instead of upsetting. Posters on the wall. Grime on the windows of the waiting room, a cross on the wall. A prayer room provided, in case you were of different faith. They were very modern in the Northern Ireland Forensic Pathology Service.

  PJ sat two seats down from her, arms folded, eyes on the grey-tiled ceiling. One tile was missing in the corner, like a knocked-out tooth. Paula’s fingers roamed over her stomach, trying to cling to the solidity of it. She was grimly aware that Maeve was upstairs in the hospital, still in the ICU, and Aidan probably hanging over her bedside. On the table in the waiting room was a folded newspaper. The front cover carried the faces of the Mayday Five – three of them dead now. Paula turned her head back to the ceiling.

  ‘Mr Maguire. Miss Maguire.’ The attendant wore scrubs, and spoke in the hushed tones of a top-end spa employee. She thought about saying, It’s Doctor, just to be a bitch. How dare she, with her kind brown eyes behind glasses and her little ponytail. How dare she be nice.

  PJ was up. Shit, she had to get up too. She found the corridor endless and at the same time nowhere near long enough.

  The chief pathologist, a white-haired man, knew PJ, it seemed. He was shaking hands and murmuring. ‘Paula,’ he said, turning to her. ‘I remember you when you were wee.’

  What to say to that? They were outside a room with a long window like they had at the station. Inside something lay on a gurney under a blue sheet. A white-masked attendant stood by.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asked the pathologist.

  What a question. As if you could ever be ready to see a dead body that was possibly your mother. It was all happening so fast. She’d expected a fair amount of bureaucratic faffing around. But it was happening. Right now.

  The sheet was going back. PJ gripped the windowsill. Paula tried to take it in from the head down.

  The hair was red, but with a ginger tint. Hard to tell if it could have turned that way after death.

  The face was gone. A brown, gaping skeleton, scraps of leathery flesh still attached.

  One ear remained, in it a hoop earring.

  The body was emaciated, some skin remaining, pale as maggots.

  Paula had braced herself for the moment when something she saw made the realisation come. It’s her, it’s her. It didn’t come. She stared at the body, frustrated. PJ caught her eye and she shrugged. He twisted his mouth. ‘I’m afraid we can’t say for sure, Simon.’

  ‘We can let you see her clothes, if that would help.’

  Do I have to, Paula wanted to say. I’ve already looked, I already faced the prospect it could be her. But they were uncovering another gurney and again she was looking. As soon as she saw the clothes, a wave of relief swamped her. She didn’t know these things. Any of them. A denim skirt, torn bomber jacket. The items cheap, sad and soil-stained. Paula shook her head. ‘I don’t think she’d wear anything like this.’ Have worn. Hard to know what tense to use.

  ‘She had her ears pierced,’ said the assistant, reading from the clipboard. ‘And she’d broken her left arm some years before.’

  Paula looked at her father, who shook his head. ‘She never broke her arm that I knew of.’

  ‘So . . .’ Paula was reluctant to let herself say it. ‘No, then?’

  ‘From what you’re saying, it’s unlikely this is the body of Margaret Maguire,’ said the assistant. And why would she say it any differently? The name meant nothing to her.

  ‘Who is it then?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  Paula was so used to it the other way around – someone went missing and you didn’t know where they were – that this baffled her. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘It happens a lot. Some we never identify at all.’

  ‘But aren’t people looking for her?’

 
; ‘You’d be surprised. People wash off boats, for example, or they drift about the continent. If they have families, sometimes they’ll have no idea the person was even in Ireland. You can’t look for someone when you haven’t the foggiest what country they’re in.’

  PJ was buttoning his jacket. ‘Let’s go, pet.’

  ‘OK, but—’ She looked back at the forlorn array of clothes. ‘What will happen to her?’

  ‘We’ll carry on looking. Sometimes we can source the clothes to another country and look in their files. She’ll stay in the morgue for now, and at some point maybe we’ll bury her.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘I know. I can’t think of anything worse than being lost and no one even looking for you.’ The assistant pushed back her glasses. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t find what you needed, Miss Maguire. But there’s always hope.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Paula muttered.

  She thought it was rubbish, in fact, but the assistant smiled slightly. ‘Until you’re in here, anyway, there’s always hope.’

  Paula couldn’t face talking about it any further. It was there between her and her father, the dead woman on the table, her face eaten away, the nearness of it – today could have been the day they knew for sure, Margaret was dead. Today could have been the day they took her bones and buried them and sold the house, finally, and Paula got on with her life, had her baby, stopped digging up the past with its worms and dirt and secrets. But it hadn’t been.