The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  ‘His son,’ said Dominic, turning back. ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Early last year. Before he came here.’ And precipitating his family into crisis, his daughter lost and his wife deranged, and Paula making it all worse by having this child.

  ‘If he’d ever like a chat – you could tell him I’d be happy to. I mean, I learned a few things about it. Coping. I’ve had longer.’

  ‘That’s—’ Words escaped her. ‘That’s very kind. Thank you.’ She looked at him for a moment, so handsome, so sad. Could you really have done this? Are you the killer I’m hunting?

  ‘I’ll be off then. Hope you feel better.’

  He went, drawing glances from the women in the ward. Paula looked at the bright plastic toys, one with a scrap of wrapping paper still on it, and then at her own sleeping daughter, new-minted. She knew there was nothing she wanted to do less than give Maggie a dead child’s toys to play with – but also that when Maggie was old enough, that was exactly what she would do.

  Paula was eventually allowed out of hospital five days later, minus a lot of weight, plus one baby and thirty-five stitches. Her father picked her up, and she did her best to smile and act normally and not think about what she’d learned from Guy. Was it really possible her mother had been unfaithful? And had her father known, had he any idea?

  ‘Er, what’s this?’ As they drew up to the doorway of the house, she could see pink balloons on the gate. ‘Dad?’

  PJ was opening his car door. ‘It’s Pat – she wanted to do a wee thing to welcome the baby.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. There’s a few people round.’

  For God’s sake. The last thing she wanted to do was smile and chat to people, when she was still struggling to walk.

  Pat was delighted to see her. ‘There you are, both of you! Welcome home, pet!’ She cooed at Maggie in her sling.

  Paula was holding the baby in front of her like a human shield. ‘You didn’t have to do all this, Pat.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble. Just a few friends and family.’

  This translated to around twenty people – Paula’s aunt Philomena being one, the image of Paula’s mother but with the ferreting-out skills of a bloodhound, and her cousin Cassie, now a lawyer and correctly engaged to a man she wasn’t yet living with like you were supposed to, and Saoirse and Dave, loaded up with presents that Paula felt uncomfortably were meant to replace the joy her friend couldn’t feel for her, Avril in a pretty pink dress, finger still bare, plus assorted mates of Pat’s, who all wanted to devour baby Maggie. She was passed from arm to arm, luckily staying asleep, her face a crumpled rose petal. Thankfully, Mrs Flynn from next door was not there. Paula couldn’t have coped with that. There was pink everywhere – pink bunting, pink cupcakes (or ‘wee buns’, as Paula’s father insisted on calling them), pink wrapping paper, pink rosé wine, pink flowers. It was like an explosion in a patriarchal factory. Aside from the baby, all the talk, hushed in corners, was about the case and the four dead people turning up one by one. The case they still hadn’t solved.

  While Maggie was being cuddled by Cassie and Auntie Phil – ‘Who’s a lovely girl? Ah look, she has the family red hair and all’ – Paula followed Pat out to the kitchen, where she was putting flowers (pink) in a vase.

  ‘You’ll be glad to be home, love.’

  She’d have been gladder if said home were not filled with people, but said nothing about that. ‘Yeah. Listen, Pat – I need to ask you something. About Mum.’

  Pat’s face changed. ‘I’ll close the door over there.’ She did, the noise of the party receding.

  ‘The thing I always think about you is, you’ve always helped me when I needed it.’ Paula spoke looking out of the window; it was easier that way. ‘I’m going to ask you something, and I promise it will never get back to Dad, or to Aidan. I know things have been awkward because of Maggie—’ She could hear Pat start to make some protest, something no doubt about Maggie being the best and sweetest baby in the world, and she steamrollered on. ‘Sorry. I need to get through this. I’ve heard a few things now about Mum, and I think you’d have known best what she was up to that autumn she disappeared. And I’d like to ask, was there a man? Was she seeing someone?’

  Pat spoke carefully, arranging the flowers. ‘What do you mean, seeing?’

  ‘At first I thought it was something to do with her work, maybe she was informing, like they said, passing on confidential files. But now I wonder – was she seeing him as well? Like an affair?’ It almost killed her to say these words to Pat, the noise of the party next door, people gurgling at the baby, who mercifully stayed quiet.

  ‘I don’t know anything for sure.’ Pat’s voice was very small. ‘But one day when I called round, there was a man there, yes. I don’t mean – not like that. She was in the kitchen with him. I went to the back door, like I normally did – she wanted to borrow a cookbook I had, to make a cake for your birthday.’

  That placed it as September then, around a month before the disappearance. Paula remembered the cake well, two records on a turntable, shaped in liquorice laces. She’d thought it was pretty cool, and it was a good thing she did because it was the last birthday cake she’d ever had. The following year PJ had mentioned something about it, and she’d said she was too old at fourteen, even though she didn’t think this at all, just to save him having to think of one more thing.

  ‘Anyway, your man was there clearing up his papers. He’d a briefcase with him. She was all flustered, I remember, but he was the calmest thing you’ve ever seen. She never told me who he was, and that wasn’t like her, she was always polite, you know. He shook my hand. “Hello,” I said. “I’m Pat O’Hara. I’d better be off, Mrs Maguire,” he said to her. “Lovely to meet you, Mrs O’Hara.” I didn’t realise until after he’d never said who he was, and she just started talking about your party and how you wanted a sleepover and what did I think about that.’

  Paula’s head was bowed. How little she’d known, consumed by teenage worries, such as would she be allowed to stay up to watch The X-files that week and would a boy ever talk to her. Even Aidan had totally ignored her back then, for all their mothers were best friends. Actually, he was still ignoring her now – no sign of him at the party, of course.

  Pat was biting her lip. ‘The thing is, pet – I didn’t mean to snoop, honest I didn’t, but I saw his papers when he put them away, and there was an Army crest on them. And the way he walked, and shook my hand all firm like – I think he was one of them. I worried about it after. That I’d shaken his hand. Whether someone might find out. It was daft, but that’s how things were then.’

  ‘He was English.’

  ‘Aye, I think so.’

  ‘Did he have a hat? A sort of old-fashioned one?’

  She could see Pat frown in the reflection of the window. ‘I think he did, now you mention it.’

  The same man she’d seen at the door the day before it happened. When, crucially, Paula had come home to find her mother in her dressing gown at four p.m.

  ‘OK,’ she said heavily. ‘I won’t ask you any more. Thanks.’

  Pat was twisting her wedding ring – the one she’d so recently had from PJ. She’d moved the one from John, Aidan’s father, to her right hand. ‘I keep thinking I’d know,’ she said distractedly. From the next room came the noise of the party, chatting, laughing, cooing over Maggie. Paula was like a tuning fork waiting for the smallest cry.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘If I did the right thing. Marrying again. It took me a long, long time. But PJ needs someone to mind him, with that ould leg, and it just – I was selfish, I suppose.’

  Paula leaned away from the counter. ‘You’re allowed to be happy, the two of you.’

  ‘But I see how you are, running round trying to find her, and you and my fella don’t even talk any more, and I think what if it was meant to be you two wed? What if we took your happiness, us old ones? Just being selfish, looking for a second go.’ />
  Paula sighed. ‘It’s nothing to do with that. Honest it isn’t. Aidan and I always had our differences. This is nothing to do with you and Dad. I’m happy for you. I just needed to try and find out. I can’t explain it. I need to know I did everything I could to find her. Her bones, even. Pat – they were after her, weren’t they? They knew there was a man she was . . .’ She groped for the right word, a minefield of meaning – ‘talking to. They came for her, didn’t they? The IRA.’

  Pat was turned away, filling the kettle at the sink. Paula saw her eyes reflected in her glasses. ‘That’s – that’s what I always thought. But who knows for sure?’

  ‘So she’s probably – gone.’

  ‘I don’t know, pet. I never did. But . . .’

  ‘But you married Dad. And that’s why. You think she’s dead.’ Suddenly it was all so clear. There was no way Pat would have done that, married PJ, if she thought there was any chance at all his wife was still alive. Pat, the good Catholic, who’d deny herself any happiness if she thought it was the right thing to do. Standing in the kitchen, looking at the pink cake, smelling the sugar-pink roses, it hit Paula like the world was slowing down and stopped. Pat and her father thought her mother was dead, long dead. They’d thought so for a long time. There was no one but Paula who still had the hope to look.

  She pulled herself together. ‘Listen, I need to go out for an hour or so. Would you look after Maggie for me? I’ll feed her first, so she shouldn’t be any trouble.’

  ‘Of course, pet.’

  ‘And don’t tell Dad where I’ve gone,’ said Paula. ‘If you don’t mind, I mean. Tell him I just went to get nappies or something. He doesn’t need to know any of this.’ Pat thought about it for a minute, and then nodded. Paula thought she looked relieved.

  She rescued Maggie from grasping arms and took her upstairs, relaxing as she breathed in the smell of the baby’s head. In the bedroom were Dave and Saoirse. Saoirse was sitting on the bed with Dave bending over her.

  Paula blundered in the doorway. ‘Oh God, sorry.’

  ‘Sorry, Pat said we could come up. It’ll only be a minute.’

  As Paula watched, unable to look away, Dave lifted Saoirse’s wool jumper and rubbed at the soft white skin of her stomach with cotton wool. Then with surprising force he stabbed her in it with the needle. Paula flinched. Saoirse didn’t move. The syringe of drugs flowed into her with several breaths and it was done.

  ‘You do that every day?’

  ‘Every day, sometimes twice.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘No choice,’ said Saoirse grimly, then forced on a smile. ‘Not if we want one of our own. There’s wee Maggie. How are you, sweetheart?’

  Paula’s hands tightened on Maggie’s little body, so much more skin than mass, almost missing her even though she was in her arms. She thought that her body would never forget having the child within it. But she had to leave her now, because there was something that needed to be done.

  Kira

  Kira was trying to spell the words out. They’d asked her to write the notes, she thought probably so she wouldn’t see what was going on down the back of the cave.

  U-N-F-O-R . . .

  She focused on the page in front of her, the sheets of the exercise book a bit damp from the cave and the sweat off her hands. She tried to keep writing and not look.

  She could hear it, though. A noise like in a butcher’s shop, a sort of horrible crunching, and a smell coming on the damp cold air of the cave. At least it was dark, and with the torches you could pretend you hadn’t seen anything in the shadows. They’d said he wouldn’t feel a thing. They’d given him an injection. The others were out too, slumped in their chairs with the ropes pulled tight. Except for the first, who was already gone. This one would be gone soon too when they’d finished. And then, she supposed, the others.

  She hadn’t really imagined it getting to this point. She hadn’t known what they would do once they had them. But she should have. Oh, she should have and it was all her fault.

  She just had to concentrate on the writing. E-S-C-A-L. She realised that her hands were shaking so much she could hardly move them over the page.

  Afterwards, no one was sure how the woman got away. It seemed like Dominic hadn’t tied her up as tight as the others, maybe he felt sorry for her or something. Anyway they were all busy trying to deal with the man over in the corner, and the noises he was making. She was busy pressing her pen into the paper, writing the note for him, then suddenly there was a movement and the woman was out of her seat. She lurched forward, then fell over on her knees on the dusty cave floor, making a little noise like she was hurt. Then before anyone could stop her she was out the front and into the woods.

  That was the worst night. The idea that she might get away, tell people what had happened – no one could look each other in the eyes, as if they were only just realising how it seemed – the people tied up, the man in the corner who had stopped shouting, and she didn’t want to look over into the darkness and see why. They spread out into the woods to find her. Calling her name. Kira realised when she was deep in the dark trees she wasn’t even afraid. That the woman was probably afraid of her. Things had changed that much.

  In the end it was easy to find her, she made so much noise in the bushes, and the crying, wheezing sound of her voice. She was caught onto some trees by her hair and couldn’t get free. They took her back. They tied her up again. The main man had woken up by then, sitting tied onto his chair, and the woman was shouting Martin Martin help me don’t let them do it, and also My baby, oh my baby. Nobody listened. Kira caught the man’s eye for a second, and she had to look away or she thought she might fall down herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Conlon was in his cell, a space about three metres across, with small dirty windows. He was sitting on his single bed, writing in a notebook. Paula couldn’t speak for a moment – she didn’t want to call his name, not Sean, like a friend might say, not Conlon like calling a dog. ‘Hello,’ she said. He looked up, freezing slowly with the pencil in his hand. She could see the reactions were still there, the stillness of a warrior. She was glad of the door between them. It had been easy enough to get in, with her PSNI credentials and Corry’s previous introduction. Of course, she wasn’t supposed to be here at all. No matter. She didn’t care any more.

  ‘Dr Maguire,’ he said cordially. ‘Back again.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice wavered.

  ‘Did you have your baby?’ His eyes were moving over her, framed in the hatch of the doorway. ‘Looks like you did. Boy or girl?’

  She was trembling. Her hands holding the latch were slippery with sweat. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I’m just going to ask you one thing. Then I’ll go. If you do know anything about those other missing people, maybe you’d see your way to telling someone. Even if you think it’s too late to make a difference – well, take it from me, it would. To have them back. Bury the bones. That’s all people want.’

  ‘Easy to say,’ he said idly. ‘People always want more. Dr Maguire, have you ever heard that thing people say, the past is another country?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I believe that. Soon as you start poking too far into who did what back then, it’ll all come crawling out. People always want more. My sorry wouldn’t be enough for them.’

  ‘We don’t want sorry,’ she burst out. ‘We just want to know what happened to our goddamned families.’

  ‘Dr Maguire, if I knew where your mammy was, I’d tell you.’ He spread his arms. ‘I’ve not much to lose and lots to gain. I don’t know if she’s even dead. And that’s the truth.’

  ‘But there was an order given. To take her for interrogation.’

  His face was impassive. ‘There may have been.’

  ‘I know some people went to the house. They were there that day. I know it. Two men. Maybe you were one – it doesn’t really matter now, as you said. But I know they went.’

  ‘Well well, you’ve been p
laying detective.’

  ‘Was she there? Did they take her?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Look. Just say yes or no. You don’t know what it would mean to me. Did they take her?’ Paula remembered the haste of the last morning she’d seen her mother, the snatched plate, the last hug. The sense of a clock ticking, though she hadn’t realised it at the time.

  Sean Conlon said, ‘I don’t know. All I can say is I don’t know if anything was done to your mother.’

  ‘And would you have known, if it was?’

  ‘Aye, probably. Can’t say for sure. Now that’s all I know, miss.’

  ‘I—’ She wanted to say thank you, but couldn’t. ‘That’s what I needed to know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything else. There were orders, and you went and did things, and that was all. It’s hard to remember sometimes.’

  Paula stepped back from the door, holding the flap. ‘Well, you’ll have a lot more time to remember now, Mr Conlon. I’m afraid that in light of your inaccurate information I won’t be recommending you for early release.’ She dropped it back and walked off, her steps echoing, but she could feel his eyes on her back all the way through the concrete and stone that kept him in.

  ‘You can do this. How hard can it be?’

  Paula looked down at the baby wriggling on the changing mat. She had no idea what time it was, three a.m. possibly. She thought she had slept for a while but couldn’t be sure – the hours seemed to blend into each other. She’d changed Maggie’s nappy again, maybe for the tenth time since coming back from the prison. She’d fed her. But the baby was still crying, a desperate, choking wail as if her tiny heart was breaking.

  She scooped her up, feeling the little pulse fluttering like a trapped bird. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. What’s the matter?’ She walked her to the window, where the sky was lightening over the shrouded rooftops of Ballyterrin. ‘Look, it’s night-time still. We should be asleep. Sleeping!’

  Maggie continued her ragged cries. Paula walked her between the kitchen and the living room, keeping up a monologue as she went. ‘Look, there’s a picture of Granddad. That’s Granny with him. Other Granny. She isn’t here any more. We don’t know where she is. And that’s your toy that Granny Pat gave you.’ Which just reminded her there was still no word or visit from Aidan, and resentment boiled up in her stomach like acid. ‘Well, this is it, Maggie.’ She showed the baby the living room, the seventies-style velvet couch, the cabinet of glass and silver knick-knacks, the silent TV coated in a layer of dust. She’d switched it off after the news channels rolled with endless updates on the Mayday case and the missing mayor. ‘I’m sorry it isn’t much. Maybe you’d rather go to London, what do you think? They have big red buses there. And nightclubs and bars and stuff. But you’re maybe a wee bit young for that.’ She sat down on the sofa, allowing herself to think briefly of her London life – transient men, long drinks in dark bars, running at night along the river, the city’s slowly pumping heart. That was all gone now. Now she had this instead – her parents’ sad old house, a town where everyone knew her name and her story, and this little baby, tangling angry fists in Paula’s hair and jumper. ‘What is it, love? Do you want more food?’ She tried latching the baby on, but Maggie turned crossly away. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t wet. Maybe she was just really, really annoyed. Paula would sort of understand that.