The first nod.
‘I need you to say it, Caroline.’
‘Yes. She went under. It was – I don’t know, less than a minute maybe. I took her out, and she was all wet, and I pressed on her . . . I blew. But it was too late.’
‘And you panicked – you put different clothes on her, and you hid her in the snow?’
‘I’d seen the news. There was someone going round taking babies. I don’t know, I just thought if I could hide her for a while, say someone took her – he wouldn’t blame me. I knew he would. I was useless as a mum. Useless.’
Paula looked at Guy. He cleared his throat. ‘Interview terminated. Mrs Williams, I think you might like to get yourself a lawyer now.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Paula didn’t sleep that night. Thinking of Caroline Williams, her white hands like little fluttering birds, the accepting nod as they’d taken her down to the cells and gone to tell the husband his wife had let their baby drown. Thinking of Aisling in hospital, clinging desperately to life, her child faltering inside her. Of Heather Campbell’s husband, both wife and child gone in a blizzard of blood. If it wasn’t Magdalena Croft doing all this, and it wasn’t Melissa Dunne, someone else was still out there, waiting for their next child. If they’d gone after Aisling’s baby, did that mean Lucy was dead? As they’d failed to get Aisling’s child, they’d be looking for another. That meant no pregnant woman was safe.
Including her. She was a pregnant woman. She had to face up to that. Sleepless, Paula got up and dressed warmly, ready for work. The cold seemed to have penetrated to her very bones, and she put on layer after layer. She’d misplaced her green scarf, absent-minded, so she rooted through the hall cupboard to find another, red and old and a little musty with perfume, winding it round her neck. ‘I’m off, Dad.’
PJ was still in bed for once, the cold making his bad leg stiff and sore. ‘It’s very early for you, pet.’
It was seven o’clock. Barely light. ‘I can’t sleep. I’m going to call at the hospital first.’ She went a little way into the room, the one her parents had slept in. Her mother’s perfume bottle still on the dressing table, with a thick coating of dust. She wondered why her father had never moved it.
‘Are you OK, love?’
Paula sighed. She sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, shoving her hands in her coat pocket, where they brushed something. The packet of letters, still unread. ‘I’d be better if we could get this case solved.’
‘Aye. And Christmas round the corner too.’
‘Dad – if I told you I did something a bit stupid, would you help me?’
‘What is it this time?’
‘Um – it’s these.’ She drew out the packet of letters, explained how the man had approached her on the beach and she’d taken them, but still not told Guy.
PJ, to his credit, didn’t tell her she was an eejit, though she was. ‘And you think he wanted you to have them, this fella?’
‘Yes. I think he followed me there, whoever he was, so he could give me these.’
‘You’ve not read them?’
‘I was going to, but then with Aisling, and now the Williams baby being found, there just wasn’t time. They’re hard to read.’ She showed him the spindly writing, faded and washed with rain. ‘I think it’s to do with our case though. Would you look at them for me?’
‘Aye, OK. What can I do, though?’
‘Just tell me if they’re important, or they’d help us find this Bridget. If I’m going to get in trouble, it may as well be for something useful.’ She stood up, weary.
PJ coughed, stretching his leg. ‘Take care, pet. Drive safe on that ice. It’ll freeze again tonight, I reckon.’
‘You be careful too. See you later.’
Do you have a baby, Caroline Williams had asked. And Paula had said – no. But she did. She did have a baby. And it was time to start doing something about that.
Paula’s first call was the hospital, sitting squat under its blanket of melting snow, grit scattered over the entrances and steps. She stopped at the gift shop, dithering over the tired selection of blooms, before picking a bunch of yellow roses, budding and beaded with dew. Yellow in the snow. Some kind of hope, maybe. After paying she made her way upstairs to Intensive Care, showing her ID to the officer on duty outside Aisling Quinn’s room. Through the glass she could see the girl connected to tubes, her eyes shut, arms hanging limp on the hospital cover. Beside her were an older woman and three other blonde girls, one pacing, one with her arm round Mammy, who was crying, and one hanging over Aisling, gripping her lifeless hand.
‘Paula!’ She turned to see Fiacra, shuffling with two paper cups in his hand. He looked grey and exhausted, his fair curls hanging limp with grease. He was wearing a dirty grey hoodie and jeans.
‘Fiacra. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to intrude, I just thought I should . . .’ She held out the flowers, awkwardly, and he took them under his arm. ‘I wanted to call by.’
‘Thanks. That was good of you.’
‘Is she . . . have they said anything?’
He shook his head. ‘They think she’ll wake up soon. We don’t want to leave, in case she does and no one’s here. We’re just trying to work out who’ll tell her she’s lost the wean.’
Shit. ‘I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’
Fiacra scrunched up his face. ‘He couldn’t hold on, not after what she did to him.’ He took a sip of his drink, seeming not to even taste it. His hand shook. ‘They said all the blood from the artery – the oxygen, like, it couldn’t get through to his brain for too long. Aisling didn’t even know it was a boy.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I keep thinking – what if it was that Dunne woman? And I had her there in the interview room, and I fucked it up, and she got our Aisling?’
‘No, no, Fiacra, it wasn’t her. You did your best. It wasn’t her. I never thought it was, you know that.’
He just nodded, staring through the window at his sister. ‘At least we’ll get her back. Our Aisling. But I don’t think she’ll be the same, Paula, not when I tell her. She wanted the wean so much. I mean she was scared at first, who wouldn’t be, but she didn’t deserve this!’
Paula realised he was crying, his shoulders heaving. She leaned forward to take the drinks and flowers, sitting them down on a chair bolted to the wall below the window. ‘Of course she didn’t. No one deserves this.’
‘She wouldn’t have had the abortion! She just wasn’t sure, that was all!’
‘I know. I know.’ She wanted to put her arms about him, but just stood awkwardly as he heaved and gasped. ‘Listen, she did what anyone would have done. I promise you.’
‘Who is it, Pau— Dr Maguire? Who’s doing this? Can we get her?’
‘We’ll get her,’ Paula said, hearing the doubt in her own voice. ‘We’re doing everything we can, Fiacra.’
‘I just don’t want any other family going through this.’
‘No. We’ll find her.’ But even as she said it she felt no hope. None at all.
She left Fiacra and made her way to the lifts. Sitting on a bank of chairs in the atrium was a familiar figure, unshaven, in a fraying grey T-shirt. She stopped in her tracks. He was staring at his feet. Maybe he hadn’t seen her. For a moment she thought about bolting.
Without looking up, Aidan said quietly, ‘Maguire.’
She walked towards him. ‘What are you doing here? Waiting for Aisling to wake up, is it? Didn’t think ambulance-chasing was your style.’
He ignored the cheap jibe. ‘I’ve been looking for you all weekend. Off with Brooking, were you?’
‘Yes.’ And he’d been practically living with Maeve in Dublin, by the looks of it. She had no reason to feel guilty.
‘How’s his wife feel about that?’
; She counted to ten, gave up at five. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Give them some privacy, for God’s sake.’
‘Maguire. I’m not here for them. Jesus. I was looking for you. PJ said you were here. I’ve got some information on your case.’
‘Oh really. Shame you couldn’t have helped out before two women got murdered. While you were playing about in Dublin.’
‘You think I wasn’t working on this?’
‘How would I know what you’re up to? Maeve might, but I certainly don’t.’
He ignored this too. ‘Your suspect. Mary Conaghan – you think it’s Croft, right?’
Maeve had been talking. Paula felt oddly betrayed. ‘We’re fairly sure it is.’
‘There’s inconsistencies, right? The prints didn’t match? Listen, I’ve found something out that might explain it. Mary Conaghan had a sister.’
‘Aidan, we know all this. Why do you think we were in Donegal? Bridget, her name was.’
He was taken aback for a moment. ‘Well, OK. Did you know a Mary Conaghan also got married in 1990? At a church outside Ballyterrin? I found it in the parish records.’
They hadn’t known this. ‘You think that was Croft?’
‘Croft was in Dublin at the time, plus she was already married. I think it was the sister, but she was using Mary’s name for some reason. Maybe because she never had a birth certificate, she wasn’t registered – you found no trace of her, right? She married a man called Brian Rourke. You ever heard your da mention that name?’
‘What’s Dad got to do with it?’ Paula was bewildered.
‘Ask him. Brian Rourke was executed by the IRA in the nineties. Your da was lead officer. Bob Hamilton told me as much.’
‘Again, what does any of this have to do with our case?’
‘The date, Maguire. It was October 1993. The twenty-eighth of October.’
She said nothing.
‘It’s when your mother went. The same day.’
‘You think I don’t know—’
‘You don’t think that’s a bit coincidental? Just ask your da, Paula. I think he knows something. He’ll maybe be able to tell you who the sister is. I think we can work it out between us, or maybe he’d recognise a photo, or—’
‘For fuck’s sake, Aidan. What are you even doing? My mother is none of your business and neither is my case. Just leave, will you? No one needs you here. You’ve done nothing but obstruct this case, then fuck off when we needed you. Just like you always do.’ For once it was easy to walk away from him. Because now, every time they talked, it was hard to tell who she was more ashamed of – him, or herself.
The office was quiet when Paula made it in, Fiacra’s desk glaring in its emptiness. The sad Christmas decorations drooped, as outside melting snow dripped a constant tattoo down the window. Guy was in his office as she unwound her scarf and took off her many layers. ‘I heard Aisling Quinn lost her baby,’ she said, low-voiced.
Guy rubbed his face. ‘Yes. Poor kid. There was no chance, really. Our killer nicked the uterine artery. It’s really a wonder Aisling didn’t bleed to death.’
‘God, what a thing to wake up to. Where are we with everything?’ She leaned in the doorway of his office, adjusting her posture so her stomach was tucked in as much as possible.
‘Where are we? Nowhere, pretty much. We’re back on the hospital staff, going through alibis, trying to break one, fingerprinting them all, checking all the timesheets for that day. It’s going to take forever. And Avril’s having no luck finding any Bridget Conaghan. It’s possible her birth was never even registered.’
Just like bloody Aidan had said. ‘And Mary Conaghan’s child? If she had one, that is.’
‘Nothing. No trace.’
‘Was there anything useful from the last scene? Any prints? Anything?’ Even as she asked she knew there wouldn’t be.
‘No. Even the CCTV was broken in the stockroom. Same as before – she just vanished.’ He ran his hands through his hair, distracted.
Paula sighed. ‘Well – the computer files? Aisling went to visit Dr Bates at the clinic, didn’t she?’
‘Yes. Aisling’s name was on the files, and Heather of course, but not Kasia Pachek. So it may be there’s no link at all to the clinic. What else? Did you ever get anything more from your Dublin contact?’
‘Maeve? Um . . . I’m not sure. She said she’d look into Croft further for me.’ She’d forgotten about that, in the isolation of Donegal and then the horror of what happened to Aisling. ‘Maybe she emailed. Let me check.’
Going to her desk, Paula fired up her old machine and waited for her messages to download. ‘There’s one from Maeve,’ she called. Guy came over to her desk. Avril, tapping away at her computer in the corner, looked up briefly. She still seemed to be avoiding Paula. No sign of Gerard or Bob, who were most likely up at the PSNI station.
‘Here we go,’ Paula said, scrolling through Maeve’s email. ‘So she’s tracked a Mary Conaghan to 1980, when she trained as a student nurse in Dublin. She’s fairly sure that was our Mary, at least. She found their graduation shot. Then in 1982 a Mary Conaghan also got the job at St John of God’s, where the Roberts baby went missing and was found dead.’
‘And that wasn’t our Mary.’ Guy frowned at the screen. She was very aware of how close he was, the faint lemon smell of his aftershave.
‘It can’t have been, if the prints were different.’
‘So who was it?’
‘Oh, look. Maeve says she dug up a picture. She went back to the hospital and basically bribed someone to get it out of the archives. Fair play. Here, she’s scanned it in.’
Paula clicked on the link, and slowly the picture downloaded. ‘Come on,’ muttered Guy, as they waited. She wondered if this would be a good moment to ask for a better computer.
‘There!’ A picture had formed, grainy, much enlarged. A girl with bobbed dark hair and a pleasant smile. But not the Mary Conaghan they knew. Someone else. Someone they’d seen recently.
‘It’s the sister,’ said Guy, slowly. ‘It’s the sister, isn’t it? Bridget.’
It was. Several years older, the young nurse in the picture was still clearly recognisable as the girl in Eilish’s album. ‘They must have swapped identities,’ Paula said, dazed. ‘Why the hell would they do that?’
‘Christ, who knows? Bridget needed a job, or they needed to hide . . . could be anything.’
Paula was trying to piece it together. ‘So she took her sister to Dublin with her when she went – after their grandfather died. Then, what – at some point she lets Bridget pretend to be her? God, the sister must not even be qualified as a nurse.’ And Aidan had been right. She almost told Guy, but couldn’t bring herself to say Aidan’s name.
‘That doesn’t matter. We just have to find her now.’ Guy was already moving away. ‘Avril, this is urgent, please – we need to double our efforts to find any references to a Bridget Conaghan, or a Mary Conaghan. Even if they don’t fit our timelines, we need to work out where our sisters went after 1982.’
For the rest of the day, Paula worked in silence, barely exchanging two words with Avril. She was checking and rechecking everything, all the possible leads, the avenues that seemed to loop back on themselves. Bridget. Mary. Mary and Bridget. Which was which and who was who? She stared at the picture of ‘Mary’, who was really Bridget. She’d have been about twenty when it was taken. Could Paula have seen her in the present day, under their noses somewhere? The killer, whoever she was, seemed to be able to vanish, pass through locked doors, escape from snowbound hillsides, leave no trace. Like a hungry ghost, leaving nothing behind but blood and loss.
She looked up the name Aidan had mentioned, and found that a Brian Rourke had indeed turned up dead in 1993 – she tried to blot out the date, which was hard seeing as it had been the worst day of her lif
e – and that he’d most likely been made to kneel before being shot in the head. The kneeling was the same as Dr Bates, but it could just be coincidence. A wife was mentioned very briefly in the news reports, but with no name given. Bridget Conaghan, using her sister’s name, her birth not even registered, had also been like a ghost.
Eventually, when the long evening dark outside had settled, Avril got up to pull on her neat cream coat, settling her fair hair over the collar. ‘It’s coming down again out there.’
‘Yeah.’ Paula looked out the window, where flurries were once again whirling in the gloom. ‘Have you water in the house?’
‘We do, thankfully. It was off for a few hours but that was all. You?’
‘We’ve nothing. Dad’s busy rigging up something to harvest the rainwater. He loves it, I think. I’ve never seen him so happy.’
Avril looked as if she were going to say something else, opening her small mouth and shutting it again. Paula knew they were both thinking of the same thing, of the night Heather Campbell had been found, and Avril and Gerard were pressed up against the wall by the Ladies. ‘Wedding plans going OK?’ she said hurriedly. I won’t say anything. It’s not my business.
‘Yes.’ Avril played with her diamond ring. ‘We’ll set a date over Christmas sometime, I suppose. I—’
Paula looked down at her desk. She didn’t want Avril’s secrets. Secrets were like stones in your pockets. The more you carried, the harder it was to swim away. ‘Night, Avril. Safe home.’
Avril paused. ‘Goodnight.’
Then it was just Paula and Guy left in the office. She stretched, feeling all the exhaustion settle in her bones. ‘Not going home?’ Guy had come out, his coat in his hand.
‘I will in a minute. Aren’t you?’
He was the one with a wife to go to, but Guy didn’t put the coat on. He looked at her. ‘Is everything all right, Paula?’
She thought about that for a moment. Over the past few weeks they’d had two women die, horribly, bleeding into the snow. One child was still missing, one was dead, and one had just been killed in the womb. Her own father wanted to declare her mother dead, and there she was still searching for her. Nothing had been all right for a long time.
The Dead Ground Page 30