The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  ‘We found this.’ Corry held up a small plastic bag with something inside. ‘It’s Fiacra Quinn’s address, written on a Post-it. It was on the floor and the bloody manager picked it up before I got here. I’ve half a mind to arrest him for obstruction, windbag that he is.’

  Paula looked at it. Blue biro. Handwriting. The person they were seeking, they’d written this, touched it. ‘Aisling’s been staying with Fiacra. She’s been going to Ballyterrin Hospital for her antenatal care. So if someone knew that . . .’

  Corry’s face was grim. ‘Exactly. They knew just where to find her. I’d guess she was waiting at the door of the flat when Aisling came out this morning, but then Fiacra was with her so she couldn’t strike, and she had to follow her here. I think this isn’t random at all, Paula. Heather Campbell, Caroline Williams, Aisling Quinn – she’s targeting them somehow. She’s choosing them.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  That night, before the shortest day of the year, as Aisling Quinn fought for her life in Ballyterrin General Hospital, needing three pints of blood on transfusion and crashing twice, and her widowed mother and her sisters and her brother Fiacra wept at her bedside; as the parents of Darcy Williams and the father of Lucy Campbell ended yet another day without their children being found; as the unit team faced up to their own utter failure to protect the town; the snow that had gripped Ballyterrin for weeks began to melt. Drains filled up, worn pipes swelled, and by dawn half the town was without water, a situation that would last weeks, leaving the population unwashed and thirsty, queuing in the cold like refugees, but strangely buoyant with the kind of crisis spirit which made the people of Ireland most happy.

  Paula had eventually gone to bed at one a.m., stiff and cold. Guy had to send her home in the end, from where she’d been stooped over a desk in the incident room. Forensics and CSIs had taken apart the bloody scene in the shop, trudging all night between the icy car park and the burnt-out lights of the store, the mannequins unblinking in the face of such carnage. Early results had yielded no prints again, though they were still hopeful some hair might be recovered from the tangle of threads and dust that littered the changing-room floor.

  Getting into bed swathed in layers, Paula had tried to read the letters from the beach, but they’d dried to a brittle fragility, and the rain had smudged the ink. She couldn’t see it in the dim light and she couldn’t stay awake. All she could make out was the opener to each one: My dear sister. No names on any of them. There were two different types of handwriting, she thought, though both very similar. Letters between Mary and her invisible sister? A quick scan showed no addresses or other details. Tomorrow, she would tell Guy and they’d go through them in depth. He’d be annoyed she hadn’t told him right away, but she’d have to face it.

  She wasn’t in bed long. PJ woke her at six, stomping in black welly boots. ‘Pipes are burst,’ he said succinctly. Water dripped off his boots onto the worn lilac carpet of her room, a relic of a ten-year-old’s taste.

  ‘What?’ She sat up, blinking. The room was Arctic. ‘Is the heating broken?’

  ‘Aye, it’s all off. No water either.’

  ‘I can’t have a shower?’ Jesus, that was all she needed. After the late night, she felt coated in the sweat and coffee fug of the station.

  PJ seemed oddly elated by these happenings. ‘No, you can’t, love. They say it might be off all week! I’m filling up the bath so we can boil some.’

  ‘I can’t have a shower for a whole week!’ Paula started to panic.

  ‘Never worry, pet, I’ll rig something up. We can still have our tea, anyway.’

  She pushed back her greasy red hair. ‘For God’s sake. Why’d you wake me up, then, if I can’t get showered? I may as well stay in bed.’

  ‘Oh, did I not say? There’s a phone call for you.’

  ‘Paula!’ Guy was on the other end.

  ‘What is it?’ She was in the hall by the phone, shivering in her pyjamas.

  ‘Is your mobile off or something? I’ve been calling you.’

  ‘Um . . . I switched it off.’ She didn’t want to think too closely about why she hadn’t wanted to sleep with her phone turned on next to her. Sending out radiation, possibly. ‘What’s wrong, anyway?’

  ‘The Williams house. They’ve found something on the path behind the garden. The snow’s melted, and a dog walker turned it up.’

  Oh God. She could guess. It was one of the times she didn’t want to know; she’d like to retreat back, rewind, not hear what he was about to say. ‘Paula?’

  ‘I’m here. What was it?’ Don’t be what I’m thinking, please.

  ‘A baby’s body. You see? This could change everything. What if it wasn’t linked at all?’

  She couldn’t catch his excitement. Not about a baby in the snow. She felt weak.

  ‘Be honest,’ Guy was saying. ‘Tell me what you thought when we first saw Caroline Williams.’

  ‘Post-natal depression. Post-natal psychosis, even. The thing about answering the phone didn’t stand up at all. But then when we found the link with the forum, I thought I must be wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think you were.’ Guy was wired. ‘Croft had an alibi for the abduction, but maybe it wasn’t part of this anyway. If we can her get back in again I can break her, I know I can. That issue with the fingerprints, I’m sure she tricked us somehow. There must be an explanation.’

  Paula thought nothing could break Croft. You couldn’t break what was already long destroyed. ‘You know what you’re saying, Guy – sir? There’s a baby dead in the snow.’ The little dress. The ducks floating in her bath. ‘She’s dead, and you’re saying maybe her own mother killed her? Think what that means.’

  Guy paused. ‘I don’t know who killed her. I’m just desperate to find a way through this. The Williams case, it distorted everything. If we can find who did this – Heather and Dr Bates, and Aisling – if we can find Lucy safe, if she’s still alive—’

  ‘I know, but I can’t be pleased Darcy is dead.’ He said nothing. She closed her eyes. ‘I’m just – this case, you know?’

  ‘I know. It’s killing us all. That’s why we need a solve. Meet me there, anyway. At least we can try to find out what happened in the Williams house that day.’

  The place was exactly as it had been the first day they’d come – police vans lining the streets, yellow tape fluttering, officers outside the door. The parents were inside with Corry. There was a jumpy feeling in the air. Guy parked on the pavement. Paula had dressed in three jumpers and old, baggy jeans, and she’d plaited her dirty hair round her head as best she could, adding a grey knitted hat on top. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but didn’t care. She said, ‘You’re really going to take her to the station?’

  ‘Why, you think I should interview her here?’

  ‘No, but – I mean, they’ve found her baby’s body, and you’re going to arrest her? Where is she? Where is Darcy?’

  ‘At the mortuary. Gerard’s going to take the father to identify her, while we bring the mother in for questioning.’

  ‘So it might not be Darcy?’

  ‘Paula. We’re sure that it is. The clothes, you know.’

  ‘How could they have missed her, if she was here all the time?’

  ‘We were so stretched. You know that. They searched the lane, but the snow was so thick the search dogs would have missed it, and it was buried slightly. Only the thaw has exposed it.’ He looked at her. ‘I know you don’t want to believe this. But look at the evidence. Remember what you’re always telling me – the most likely people to hurt a child are its own parents.’

  ‘Right.’ She shut her eyes briefly. ‘I suppose we have to eliminate this case, if we can.’

  ‘We do.’ He was gentle.

  ‘I can’t watch you arrest her.’

  ‘All right.’ He undid his bel
t, passed her the keys from the ignition. ‘Why don’t you go back to the unit? Get the room ready. I want you to help me interview her.’

  This fucking job. Sometimes Paula felt like it was scraping her out, so she’d one day have nothing left at all.

  Caroline Williams sat very straight in her chair in the interview room at the MPRU. Her hands with their chewed nails were placed on the chipped table. She was dressed in the same pink velour tracksuit as the first day. ‘Did she come willingly?’ asked Paula, watching her from outside.

  Guy said, ‘She did. Though the husband tried to punch Gerard.’

  ‘Did he?’ Shane Williams was about a foot narrower than Gerard, as Paula recalled.

  ‘Yeah. Rather unwise of him, poor man. We have him in with Bob, but I seriously doubt he knows anything.’

  ‘Has she a lawyer?’

  ‘She said no to one.’

  That was often the way when people were inexperienced with police stations. They thought getting a lawyer made them look guilty. ‘So that’s your theory – she did it alone?’

  ‘It happens, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but—’ But Paula couldn’t get the idea to fit into her brain. A mother killing her child. Was that what she’d been like, when she looked up those flights to London?

  No, for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t the same. She had to believe that. ‘OK.’ She shook herself. ‘If Caroline is like most infanticidal mothers, she may actually be keen to confess. It was either an accident she’s tried to cover up, or a genuine psychotic moment where she felt Darcy had to die for some reason. Though in those cases the mother almost always kills herself too. Plus any family pets, for some reason. Did they have a dog, a cat?’

  ‘I don’t think so. What about that thing, that proxy syndrome?’

  ‘Munchausen’s by proxy? We tend to call it Fabricated Illness in the UK. It’s rarer than you’d think from watching films. In that case she’d have courted publicity, got herself on TV, no doubt, all that. They do it for attention.’

  ‘She did that press conference,’ Guy reminded her.

  ‘That’s true. OK, it’s possible, but there’s another option too.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She didn’t do it at all. Someone really did come and take Darcy. Someone else, I mean.’

  Guy scoffed. ‘A dingo ate my baby? In Ballyterrin?’

  ‘Er, wasn’t the dingo case recently proved to be true?’

  He paused. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘And they pilloried those parents. So let’s be careful, OK? Let’s not jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions is what’s sent us wrong from the beginning.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He turned to look her full in the face. ‘We’re good, you know. Me and you.’

  A flush moved up from her neck to swamp her face. We. The loveliest word in the English language. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘On cases. You keep me tempered. I couldn’t do it without you, you know. This one – it would have broken me otherwise.’ She stared at her feet. ‘Paula. I’m aware that we still never did talk properly, after Katie went missing, and all of that.’ She presumed ‘all of that’ meant that they’d slept together and then he’d cut her off, terrified of prejudicing the case, and then his daughter had gone and he’d fallen off a cliff of grief, and she’d slept with Aidan and ruined everything.

  She said, ‘Tess came back.’

  ‘Yes. I – what could I do? Katie needed us. And Tess, she – she isn’t coping very well at the moment. I can’t say more. But it’s not been easy.’

  ‘She’s your wife.’ They were speaking quietly, both of them looking in the window where Caroline Williams sat, a pale, silent wreck of a woman.

  ‘I know she is.’

  ‘So why don’t you go back? Why don’t you go to London, all of you? I’m sure Tess would be happier, and Katie hates it here, and you – the rain, the ignorance. I know you’d be better off. There’s nothing for you here.’

  Paula knew he was looking at her. ‘You know why I’m still here. At least, I hope you do. I’d have been long gone, if it weren’t for you.’

  She regarded the splintered frame of the window until the prickling in her nose subsided. Timing. Bloody timing. It was timing that brought you to your knees, crushed your pathetic human plans under the wheels of minutes and weeks and years. A day either side, and she’d maybe not be in this situation. She could go away herself and Guy could stay. She could get off this island, where the rolling land would never yield you up again. And for Caroline Williams, maybe a second here, a second there, and her baby would still be alive and she wouldn’t be sitting in a small room with peeling grey walls, initials scratched into the chipboard table, surveying the end of her life.

  ‘You better go in,’ said Paula. ‘Don’t keep her waiting. Whatever she did – she’ll be in hell. Either way, don’t make her wait.’

  ‘Come in with me.’

  ‘But Corry—’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about enough of Corry for one lifetime. I need you. Come on.’

  Caroline started as they came in the door. She was rigid, ready to strike. Who knew what she was expecting.

  Paula went towards her with an outstretched hand. ‘Caroline. I know nothing can make it better, but please let me tell you I’m so sorry about Darcy.’

  Hesitation. Caroline bit her lip. Her hand in Paula’s was limp and cold. Her nose was red, blond hair lank.

  Guy followed Paula’s lead. ‘It’s a terrible thing, to lose a child. In fact I lost my own son earlier this year. It’s devastating.’ He meant it, too. And that was why Paula couldn’t tell him to leave, go back to London, take his wife away and forget her. Because he thought this woman had killed her baby, and lied to them, and derailed their investigation, but he could still bring himself to shake her hand with compassion.

  Caroline looked at them with pale faltering eyes.

  ‘You’re probably wondering why you’re here,’ said Guy, sitting down.

  Nothing. She knew why she was here.

  ‘I’m afraid now we’ve found Darcy, we have to open a murder inquiry.’

  The hands convulsed. Caroline put them under the table, very carefully.

  ‘Now, it can’t be linked to the other cases, I’m sure we can agree.’ Guy was leafing through his notes. Paula remained standing, so Caroline had to swivel to see both of them. ‘Do you agree with that, Caroline?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  Guy said, ‘Well, those babies are alive. Alek was given back, Lucy we hope was taken alive, and the pattern showed our suspect was moving onto younger babies, unborn ones. We never understood why they’d take one who was three months old. I don’t think it fits at all. So what happened to Darcy?’

  ‘I – someone took her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone else. I don’t know.’ Her voice was small and cold.

  ‘Caroline. Do you know the odds of another random child abduction in Ballyterrin? It’s minuscule.’

  She dropped her eyes.

  ‘You said the phone rang,’ said Paula, more gently, going over and sitting down. ‘You had Darcy outside. I don’t think she had her coat on, like you said. We found the coat buried in the snow beside her. Why would you have her in the snow?’

  ‘Well – it wasn’t that cold. It’s so stuffy in the house. She needed air.’

  ‘OK. So you went outside. I think you’re a tidy woman, Caroline. I think you had the phone back on its hook in the kitchen, and so when you went in to answer it, you could easily have seen Darcy out the window. I think you weren’t outside at all. No one hangs out washing in the snow, do they? It’d freeze. Then takes it back in, after their child has gone missing?’

  Nothing. Head down.

  ‘The bath.�
�

  Caroline’s head snapped up.

  Paula went on, her voice quiet but merciless. ‘There was water in it, when I looked in the bathroom. It seemed odd, when your house is so clean. That’s how it normally happens, you know. You leave the baby for a minute, answer the phone, and then you get talking – the mortgage people, you said. Money troubles? You needed to take that call?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Was she in the bath, Caroline?’

  ‘She’d been sick on herself.’ Caroline’s voice was small. ‘She was always sick. She’d boke up her lunch every day on her clean clothes.’

  ‘So you put her in the bath.’

  ‘Of course. She was disgusting.’

  ‘And you were only away a minute – but when you went back, she’d slipped, is that right? Under the water?’

  Caroline looked at Paula. Her eyes were leached of colour. ‘You don’t have a baby, do you?’

  The worst possible question. ‘I – no.’

  ‘Then you don’t know. When Darcy was born, I didn’t sleep for a second. Not a second for months. If you breathed on her, she’d cry. The car, the stairs, the knives – everything could hurt her. I was so exhausted. And she was sick all the time, you know? We practically lived in Casualty. And every day he comes home from work, it’s where’s this bruise from, why didn’t you watch her, and he’s in his office all day, where people don’t puke on you or scream in your ear for hours. And he can’t even do the one thing he’s meant to, and pay the bloody bills.’ All this was delivered in a flat monotone. Vicious in its quietness. ‘I tell you, miss. When you have a baby, it’s like someone turned you inside out, so all your skin’s on the inside. You’re raw. Totally raw. Like every single thing can hurt you, and you’ll never be safe again.’

  Paula reached over the table and took the woman’s limp hand. She gripped it tight. ‘It’s nearly over, Caroline. You just have to tell us. She drowned in the bath, was that it?’