The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  ‘That was quick. They’ve arrested her already?’ Paula had been at the station for barely an hour when she saw Dunne’s round face through the glass at the custody desk. The sound of raised voices reached into the main station. She left her desk and caught up with Guy, who was walking quickly down the corridor to the interview suites. Tiled in squares of grey carpet, it effectively muffled you from the world.

  He kept walking. ‘Corry leapt at it when I went to her. She was desperate to make an arrest, especially with a second child missing. The feedback from up above is Not Good.’ He seemed to almost relish this for a moment, then his face turned sober again. ‘Let’s hope we get something from her.’

  ‘Will she cooperate?’

  Guy moved with long, purposeful strides. ‘I doubt it. She’s saying we need a warrant to access her computer files.’

  ‘And you really think it’s her?’

  Guy slowed as they approached the incident room, lowering his voice. ‘You know what I think. I agree we should talk to Mrs Dunne, but it’s madness not to check up on Magdalena Croft. Corry’s got a blind spot there.’

  ‘Maybe she just trusts her. The Gardai did have success using Croft.’

  ‘I don’t see it. I feel like we’re ignoring basic policing here – if someone knows exactly where to find a kidnap victim, chances are they must have helped put them there, not that they have psychic visions.’

  Paula shrugged; she’d largely given up trying to translate it for him. ‘It’s Ireland. I’m sure Corry has her reasons. She doesn’t believe for sure the cases are linked, so it makes sense to bring in the person who threatened Dr Bates.’

  ‘But if she’s wrong—’

  ‘We don’t exactly have anyone else. Come on, we’ll be late for the briefing.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ‘Yes. DC McGivern. What have you got for me?’

  The middle-aged detective quailed under Corry’s stare. ‘Uh – we’re still working through all the hospital staff – nearly a thousand of them. I’ll reckon we’ll know soon enough who was there that day on the ward.’

  ‘Good. Liaise with Dr Maguire to set up more cognitive interviews if you need them, and check all the alibis for when Dr Bates and Darcy Williams were taken.’

  The long conference table, four times the size of that in the MPRU’s pokey unit, was surrounded by detectives and uniformed officers – rumour had it even the Chief Constable might be coming down to meet with Corry. The case, like Paula’s ‘situation’, was spiralling. Two missing kids. A dead woman, and another gone too.

  Corry was in her element addressing the room. She prowled back and forth near the large whiteboard, the leather of her expensive brown boots making a creaking sound. ‘Melissa’s not saying a word, but we’ll soon have a list of all her Life4All group members, and then we can cross-check with the DVLNI to see if any of them drive Jeeps or similar vehicles. Melissa herself has a Land Rover. Unregistered – she claims it’s off the road, but it hasn’t been logged as such. It’s impounded and being tested for DNA.’

  ‘Has she an alibi?’ asked Gerard, who was leaning on the table with his sleeves rolled up as usual.

  ‘She claims she was at home with her husband the morning Dr Bates was taken. I’ve got him in another room, if you’d like a crack? I’ll send Sergeant Hamilton in with you.’

  ‘Me? Yes, ma’am.’ Gerard’s ears were going pink at the unexpected honour.

  ‘And if the alibi holds?’ Guy was against the wall, his arms folded.

  Corry flashed him a look. ‘We’ll let her go.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘What else would we do?’

  ‘It just seems we’re directing a lot of energy on this one lead.’

  ‘On the woman who sent death threats to one victim and fought online with two others? I’d say that was wise, Inspector.’

  Everyone was following the exchange, eyes flicking like children watching their parents fight.

  ‘All right,’ said Guy after a short pause. ‘Have we made any other progress?’

  ‘Nothing. So if you don’t mind, Inspector Brooking, this is really our best lead for now. I mean, who else is there?’

  ‘I have one suggestion,’ said Guy quietly. ‘This so-called faith healer, Magdalena Croft. She was able to tell us exactly where we’d find Alek Pachek. You don’t think that’s suspicious?’

  Corry said, ‘The Gardai have used Mrs Croft on a number of occasions, and she’s often been very accurate.’

  ‘You believe she sees visions?’

  ‘I believe she helps find lost people. That’s really all I care about.’

  ‘I think it wouldn’t hurt to check out her alibi for the other cases.’

  Corry’s mouth hardened. ‘It’s not common practice to question police experts on where they get their insights. Is that how you do it in London?’

  ‘Experts? The woman’s a fraud! You must see that.’

  Corry’s face was impassive. ‘I mustn’t do anything, Inspector. We can certainly check her alibis. But I think Mrs Croft’s help has been invaluable. Alek’s back with his family now, safe and well. If there’s a chance to find Darcy Williams too, I’m not going to pass it up. Are you?’

  ‘I wonder—’ Paula began, then stopped. All eyes were on her.

  ‘Dr Maguire?’ Corry, frosty and unreadable. ‘Did you have something to say?’

  ‘I just wondered if maybe we’d made too much of an assumption. That it’s the same person, I mean, for all these cases. Alek, and Dr Bates, and Darcy Williams.’

  ‘I believe that was your hypothesis in the first place. I’ve never been sure it was, but I agreed to make use of your profile.’ Corry folded her arms.

  ‘Well, I did think so, because of the cutting, and the womb symbolism – and because of sheer probability too. I don’t believe there could be two isolated incidents of child abduction in a small town like this. But even if they’re connected it might not be the same person.’

  A heavy silence. Corry staring. Guy said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well – you said it yourself, Chief Inspector, you’ve got Melissa Dunne’s husband in for questioning to check her alibi. And we’re ruling out people because they have alibis for Alek, or Dr Bates – but if there were two people, or more even, we could be making a mistake. Do you see?’

  ‘And what do you suggest?’ Again Corry was unreadable. Paula felt sweat on her forehead.

  ‘Well – I’d say we keep following up all those leads – the hospital staff, the pro-life group, and the rest, traffic cams, CCTV. Whoever did this wasn’t invisible. But maybe we can make the link in a more creative way.’ Where was Avril? She found the analyst near the back of the room, hiding behind a computer. ‘A while back Avril, er, Miss Wright, was talking about this software you can get, you see, and it sort of maps people based on acquaintance. Like, if they’ve ever phoned each other, or been on an electoral roll together, that sort of thing. You can see all the data laid out like a web of connections. It might throw up something we haven’t thought of.’

  ‘And do we have this software?’ Corry fixed Avril with a glare. She cringed.

  ‘Er – no, ma’am. I put in a requisition, but it’s expensive.’

  ‘Send it to me. Will it work?’

  The girl blanched as heads swivelled towards her. ‘Y-yes. I mean, it should.’

  ‘Do it, then. Now can we get on and question our witnesses, please?’ She looked round the room at the mostly male faces staring back. ‘Who here has a kid?’ There was a surprised silence, then a few hands went up. Corry pointed to them. ‘Right, one of you can come in with me. I’m not having some ham-fisted batterer interview Dunne. You’d be lynched.’ She sighed at the blank looks. ‘Remind me to hire some women next time. That’s all.’ Corry looked at her watch as she dismisse
d them. ‘Dr Maguire, can you stay behind?’

  Oh no, what now? Paula tried to catch Avril’s eye to apologise for putting her on the spot, but she was gone in the sea of hulking policemen.

  When she was alone with Corry she started babbling, ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt; it was just I wondered if maybe I’d sent everyone down the wrong road, and—’

  ‘Paula, none of us have a bloody clue what’s going on in this case.’ Corry reset the clip that was holding back her blond hair. ‘We’re stumbling in the dark, and that’s the honest truth. So whatever insights you have, for God’s sake, share them, OK? That’s your job. There’s no point in having you if you don’t add anything.’

  ‘Um, OK. Sorry.’

  ‘Now come and observe this interview. I’ve no idea if she’s our woman or not, but at least we know she most likely sent those threatening letters, and that’s something we can charge her with. Right now that’s as good as we’re going to get, I think.’ She barrelled out, Paula tripping in her wake, always wrong-footed.

  Today Melissa Dunne had dressed herself in what looked like a pyjama top covered in teddies, and a voluminous skirt over mud-encrusted wellies. The hairband and the Rose West glasses were still in place. Her hands were folded primly on the table. On the way down Paula had seen Michael Dunne, the husband, in another interview room, more smartly turned out in an old tweed suit. His lips were moving and he seemed to be praying as he waited for Gerard to interview him. He was an accountant, Paula knew, hence the big house and cars. A short, bald man, he was half the size of his wife. One of Corry’s DCs, a nervous-looking lad with a pronounced Adam’s apple, stood watch over Melissa.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Corry asked Paula, as they looked through the glass. ‘You’ve spoken to her. What will she do?’

  ‘She’s smart,’ Paula said. ‘She’ll seem very stupid, though. I think it’s her thing, to make you so frustrated you can’t put up with her any more. And she knows the law. Has she asked for a lawyer?’

  ‘She declined, I believe.’

  ‘Right. She’ll probably try to twist that round somehow. The main thing about her is she’s absolutely convinced she’s right and acting in God’s stead. So she isn’t a bit sad that Dr Bates is dead, even if she had nothing to do with it. She sees it as no different from the torments of Hell, where in her opinion the doctor most likely is now. You see? She feels no compassion.’

  ‘You’re saying she’s a sociopath?’

  ‘Possibly.’ Paula thought about the neglect of those kids she’d seen, shivering, noses crusty. ‘She’s an obsessive, for sure.’

  ‘OK. What’s your gut feeling, Paula? I mean off the record. Forget all your research and your personality types. Could she have done this?’

  Paula looked at the plump, blank-faced woman on the other side of the glass. Who’d rather save unborn groups of cells than care for her own living children. Who’d threatened to burn Dr Bates alive. ‘No,’ she said, finally. ‘She’s too controlled. That thing with Dr Bates – it was done from rage, not self-righteousness. Someone hated her. And Melissa has children, lots of them, so I can’t see her stealing one, I really can’t.’

  Corry said nothing for a moment, then placed her hand on the interview room door. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Do observe, please.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘We’re getting nothing from her,’ said Corry, several hours later. Tight-lipped, she was expressing her dissatisfaction by very deliberately poking holes with her polished nails in the sides of the polystyrene coffee cup she held. They were gathered in her office – Paula, Guy, Corry. An air of inescapable weariness lay over them all. Guy had his shirtsleeves rolled up as the overhead grilles pumped out stale, burnt air. The reinforced window gave out on the car park, dark already at three-thirty p.m., snow pale and scurrying beneath orange security lights.

  ‘It’s not her,’ he said, but the fight was all gone out of him.

  ‘We can hold her another ten hours,’ said Corry stubbornly. ‘I’m not letting her go.’

  ‘Was there anything on her computer?’ Paula asked. It had been sent up to Trevor for analysis.

  Corry shook her head slowly. ‘No. No, there’s nothing. No evidence she accessed Dr Bates’s files. There’s never anything in this damn case. But she knows something.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Guy, rubbing his hands over his face.

  ‘You can see the look on her smug wee face.’ Poke poke poke went the nails. The sound made Paula feel sick. She was so tired the orange lights cast shadows on her eyes. She wanted to say something, but had no words.

  The phone on Corry’s desk shrilled, making them all jump. Corry answered. ‘What? Oh for the love of God. Who arranged that? Jesus.’ She slammed the phone down and moved over to the TV that sat on top of her filing cabinet, beside a dying plant. ‘They’ve been on the bloody afternoon news.’ She started stabbing through the channels.

  ‘Who?’ asked Guy.

  ‘Jim Campbell. Caroline Williams. I’d like to know who put them up to this. I knew we should have let them have a bloody press conference.’

  She’d found the right channel. Jim Campbell was speaking outside a country bungalow, a people carrier parked in the drive. Beside him, thin and pale in a parka coat, was Caroline Williams, her bleached hair lank. She didn’t speak.

  Jim was surrounded by reporters and talking to the cameras. In his early thirties, he was a tall, good-looking man with sandy hair, dressed only in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms despite the snow. His eyes were red-rimmed and his voice shook in and out of clarity. ‘My wife has now been missing for three days. She is eight months pregnant with our first child. I’m begging anyone that might know something, please, please call the police. Please help me find Heather.’ His voice cracked. ‘I just want her back safe. It’s nearly Christmas. Please give her back if you know something, anything.’

  A reporter from the local news shoved a microphone in his face. ‘Mr Campbell, what’s your view on the police response to Heather’s disappearance?’

  He paused. ‘I’ll just say this. If you’re going to come to my house and suggest to me my wife might have gone off willingly and not told me, and her hardly able to move with the baby, well, you don’t have the first idea what she’s like. I wouldn’t trust them to find a lost dog, to be frank with you.’

  ‘Do you feel the establishment of a specialist missing persons’ unit in the town has helped at all?’

  ‘It hasn’t helped Heather,’ he said bitterly. ‘I honestly don’t know what they’re doing down there. My wife is missing and so is Caroline here’s baby.’

  The cameras trained on Caroline. Jim nodded to her, as if telling her to speak. On the screen came the caption: Families of missing unite to challenge police.

  Caroline’s voice shook. ‘My baby is gone.’

  ‘Mrs Williams, do you think the police have done everything they can to find your daughter?’

  She seemed to freeze. ‘I—’ She recovered a little. ‘Please. I need to go inside now. Please help find her. Thank you.’

  The piece ended and went back to the reporter in the studio, heavily made-up. Corry switched it off with a vicious swipe. Suddenly she was looking at Paula. ‘Tell me. How do I break her?’

  ‘Um – Melissa?’

  ‘No, the Queen of England. Of course Melissa.’

  ‘Well . . . let me . . . Emmm. I think she gets off on feeling superior, like I said. Like she pretends to be stupid, laughing at us the whole time. So . . . maybe we pretend to be stupider. See if she draws herself out.’

  ‘I tried that.’

  ‘Well – no offence, ma’am, but maybe you’re not the best at pretending to be . . . slow. You know?’ She waited to see how Corry took this. Could go either way.

  But Corry was nodding. ‘OK. So you’re saying we need so
me big, thick, country constable who can soft-soap her, oh Melissa you’re so smart, tell us how you got away with it, blah blah.’

  ‘Essentially, yes.’

  ‘So, who?’ The nails drummed on the desk.

  Paula and Guy looked at each other and she felt that surge, the joy of knowing someone was thinking exactly the same thing. ‘Can we do it?’ she asked him.

  Guy said, ‘I don’t know. I’d say so, since he’s officially on secondment.’

  ‘Who in God’s name are you talking about?’ Corry was irritated. ‘I don’t speak code.’

  Paula answered. ‘Um – we were thinking of Garda Quinn.’ We. The loveliest word in the English language. She didn’t trust herself to look at Guy.

  ‘You want me to let an Irish Guard interview my witness?’

  ‘Mrs Dunne does live over the border,’ Guy pointed out.

  ‘And can Garda Quinn put on a convincing bogtrotter act?’ Corry thought about it. ‘Never mind, I’ve answered my own question. OK. Get him in.’ She went to the door and shouted out. ‘Monaghan?’

  Gerard must have been hovering; he poked his head in. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Tell Dunne we’re taking a short break. We need a different approach to this.’

  ‘Em . . . her solicitor’s arrived.’

  ‘What? I thought she didn’t want one.’

  ‘Aye, she’s changed her mind, looks like. Will you let her see him?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Eh . . . Colin McCready.’

  ‘For feck’s sake.’ Corry swore and clacked out, her heels echoing. Paula and Guy exchanged a quick look, which for a second made her entire body ache.

  ‘That was a good idea about Fiacra,’ he said politely. He’d thought it too, she knew. He was just being kind, letting her have the credit. He was always so kind.

  ‘We should go,’ she said. ‘We’re running out of time.’ And she recognised the name of Dunne’s solicitor. She’d been reading it in her mother’s file just the other night.