She pulled herself to a kneeling pose and pressed her face against the slats, peering through them at the light. The sun was descending in the sky and filtering through dense spruce trees of varying heights. It was afternoon. And she was in a forest! How the hell had she got there? The last thing she remembered was sitting in her study at home, sometime after she’d left the CC’s office on Thursday morning. The answer came to her quickly; she’d been kidnapped. Who would be idiot enough to kidnap a member of the police? Lots of people, but they would call it daring, not dumb.
She turned her head to search the floor and a sharp pain shot through her neck. She put her hand up quickly and it came back with dried blood, telling her how she’d got there. She’d been injected with something. It still didn’t tell her where she was or who had brought her there.
A crunching noise outside the shed froze her in mid-thought. She held her breath as the sound of dried leaves cracking underfoot heralded someone’s approach. Did she trust that they were a stranger and scream for help, or risk antagonising her captor more? She screamed at the top of her voice and heard the steps halt. The noise they had made was replaced by a man’s sarcastic voice.
“Forget it, Melanie. No-one will hear. Or should I call you Mary?”
She sucked in her breath and prickles of fear ran down her spine. Mary had been her name for six weeks in1984 but never since. Just long enough to give birth and arrange the adoption, then Mary Wright had disappeared.
A mixture of fear and excitement ran through her as images long forgotten filled her mind. Her lover’s smile, soft and longing; the last time she’d ever felt overwhelming joy, before she’d made a choice to betray him for the life she had. A tiny hand grasping hers as she’d held her son and then handed him to a stranger so she could return to her career.
Her heart leapt unexpectedly and she longed to see the man’s face. She pressed her lips against the slats and spoke in a softer tone than she’d used for years.
“Are you my son? Are you my boy? Please, please tell me.”
Danny Foster stopped walking, frozen by her unexpected words. Confusion flooded through him, scattering his cold logic in its path. He had his plan and he knew what he had to do, feelings for the woman who’d abandoned him had no place now. And yet…
He pulled back the door of the shed urgently, peering into the darkness inside. His eyes adjusted slowly until he saw her face and she saw his. He watched her mouth fall open and tears smear the dirt on her cheeks as they held each other’s gaze in silence for too long. Melanie Trainor spoke first, her words tumbling over each other, colliding to make no sense. Only one word was clear. “Sorry.” Sorry, sorry, sorry. She said it a hundred times then more, until he could stand it no longer and he shouted. “Shut up!”
Her mouth closed then and she stared at him with sheer joy in her eyes. He looked like Jonno, exactly like her only love. The man she hadn’t been brave enough to be with or perhaps a different kind of brave woman who had wanted to be a warrior like the rest. But why hadn’t she kept her child? She’d asked herself that a million times, searching for him and begging to have him back. But no-one would talk, a sealed adoption was final. ‘For the best’. Really? For whom?
She stared at the young man and he stared back, his brown eyes all hers. In every other way he was his father’s son. He had his thick dark hair and his soft full lips. Ah, Jonno. Danny Foster stared at his mother, trying to shore up the fence round his heart that it had taken him thirty years to build. He placed the planks upright one by one only to find them falling again at her smile.
He shook his head hard and turned his back, striding into the cold autumn air to think. He stared at the sky through the trees, begging the God he didn’t believe in to tell him what to do. He couldn’t care about her. Wouldn’t. She’d left him alone at the mercy of the Fosters. She was a bitch and she deserved to die. He railed against the world and her and God for what felt like hours, screaming so hard that he thought his lungs would burst.
Melanie Trainor listened to his cries inside the shed, not caring whether she lived or died. She’d been numb for years, unable to show love to anyone after she’d betrayed them both. She’d prayed to see her son again and now she had. She could die content. Finally Danny Foster pulled out the gloves that signalled the end of her life and slipped them on before her lying words could change his mind.
***
“Andy’s got cars out looking and the C.S.I.s are at the house.”
Craig shook his head in irritation. “Don’t waste men on forensics. Time enough for that if she turns up dead. Get everyone out on the ground.” He turned towards Nicky. “Where’s Annette?”
Davy answered him. “S...She went to get the D.N.A. warrant and said she’d be back in an hour.”
He glanced at the clock. That had been two hours ago. Craig wrinkled his forehead and shot Davy a look he couldn’t quite read. It didn’t take that long to get a warrant. There was something going on in the squad besides the case. He’d get to the bottom of it if it killed him, but it would have to wait. Davy broke his stare and started reporting on the adoption file.
“The baby was adopted by a farming couple up near Limavady. They didn’t have children of their own and they were in their forties w…when they took the boy. Annette asked for them to be brought in downstairs. A car picked them up an hour ago. They should be here in ten minutes.”
“Good thinking, lad. Maybe they’ll be able to give us something on their son.”
Craig shook his head, distracted. He wasn’t disagreeing with Liam but whatever the couple could give them wouldn’t alter what they knew. Melanie Trainor and Jonno Mulvenna had a son who’d been given up at birth. Trainor had framed Mulvenna to get him out of the way and the boy hated her for it, possibly even hated them both, it would depend whether he thought Mulvenna had known about him or not.
Craig wheeled round and left the floor without a word. Liam shrugged his shoulders at Nicky and followed, catching up with him at the lift.
“Mulvenna?”
“Mulvenna. If anyone can get through to the boy it will be him.”
“I thought you wanted to make sure with D.N.A. before you told him he might have a son?”
Craig shook his head. “No time.” Events had overtaken them and they had to move fast. Melanie Trainor might already be dead but if she wasn’t then Mulvenna was her only chance. He glanced at Liam knowing that he got the irony of the situation as well. The terrorist who’d killed so many police officers saving one of them. A lover saving the woman who’d betrayed him.
“Give me five minutes with Mulvenna then release the boy’s sketch to the media. We need to catch the evening news. Someone must have seen him.”
They exited the lift on the garage floor.
“Will do. I’ll stay here and help Annette with the parents and keep Andy up to date. You fine with Mulvenna by yourself?”
“Jake’s still at High Street, I’ll meet him there. See if you can get some idea where she might have been taken from the Fosters. It will be somewhere near the Trainor’s house. Somewhere quiet.”
They stared at each other for a moment and then nodded, knowing it was the end game in more than one way.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Danny Foster gazed down at his mother, flexing his fingers in the tight latex gloves. He was going to kill her, there was no doubt about that, but he needed to know first. What did he need to know? So many things, but the main one was why?
Melanie Trainor stared at the ground as he asked her the question repeatedly. Why? Yes, why, Melanie? Was it because you were ashamed of Jonno?
He wasn’t exactly a young girl’s dream of what she’d marry growing up. All those mornings at Sunday School, praying to a Protestant God, only to fall in love with a boy from the other side. She smiled to herself and her son watched her lips curl, wondering how she could smile this close to death. His fury grew. How could she smile when he been so unhappy all his life because of her choice? Then
he glimpsed her eyes and saw that she was recalling another time.
Why, Melanie? She shook her head. It hadn’t been Jonno’s religion, if anything that added to the romance; love across the divide. If only he’d been a nice ordinary Catholic boy and not a terrorist, killing her colleagues as if he had some sort of right. Was that why she’d betrayed him? It would have been understandable if it were. No. Tell the truth, Melanie, it wasn’t done for honour, or loyalty to a higher cause. It was done for your career. A job, a salary and a car. Respect in a small village called Northern Ireland 1983, where everyone knew everyone and you had to marry the right boy, sod how happy you were.
A job and she’d betrayed her love. A job and she’d given up her child, married a good man and made his life hell. A job and she’d lost her daughter. She stared at the young man in front of her, knowing he was going to kill her. Hating him and loving him with one breath. Answering him with her bewildered stare in a way no words could ever have done. He read the book behind her eyes and asked another thing.
“Did my father know?”
The question hung between them and she saw desperate hope cross his face. If she told him the truth he would hate her even more and her life would be at an end, but…He was her son, he had to know the truth.
“He didn’t know. He doesn’t even know he has a child. I framed him for Veronica Jarvis’ murder to get him out of the way before my pregnancy showed.”
She paused, waiting for his first blow. Or joy, his next word. A question or a tirade, she would take whatever she could get, anything to hear his voice. But there was nothing. Only a silence so heavy that she had to fight to breathe. She risked some other words and waited for him to react. The silence deepened further and she said them again as if she could somehow make him hear.
“He was the love of my life. He still is.”
He stepped towards her and she closed her eyes, waiting to feel his hands around her neck, tightening and wringing until her life was gone and he’d achieved some peace. The sound of the door being locked and his steps moving away from the shed took a while to filter through. She opened her eyes slowly and stared round the empty space, realising she was out of danger for a while. But there was no relief. Her ambition had made her turn her back on everything that she’d loved thirty years before, and it had ruined both her children’s lives. She closed her eyes again, trying to shut out the guilt and let the tears flow.
***
Mulvenna glared at them resentfully and Craig and Jake stared back. But only for a second. They had a life to save.
“I’m going to get straight to the point, Mr Mulvenna. I can’t be one hundred percent sure until we match the D.N.A., but I’m as sure as I can be. You have a son and he’s about thirty years old.”
Mulvenna stared at him incredulously and then shook his head. “You’re wrong. I would have known. I wasn’t promiscuous and the last woman I dated before I went to jail was in New York.”
Craig gave him a sceptical look then spoke in a tone to match. “That’s not true, and if you’re trying to protect Melanie Trainor, then don’t. We know all about your relationship. More than you do.”
Mulvenna looked shocked then he laughed. “I doubt it somehow.”
Craig continued unrelentingly. “She was running Declan Wasson as an informant and when he raped and killed Ronni Jarvis the powers that be decided he was too valuable to lock up. Melanie Trainor chose you instead.”
He leaned forward as Jake looked on and learned. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that you were a strange choice of patsy? You’d been in the States on and off since ’81. You were out of the game.”
Mulvenna nodded. He’d lost his appetite for killing and volunteered to go abroad. The only thing that had brought him back had been Melanie.
“I was still a wanted man. No-one was going to cry about me being sent down.”
“And you just accepted it without a word, knowing how you’d be treated in prison. Were you really that tired of life? Or was it because you were protecting someone you loved?”
“If you know about me and Melanie then you already know the answer to that. She needed a patsy and I was close at hand. It was the least I could do for jeopardising her career. She’d worked too hard to throw it away on a loser like me.”
“But you loved her.”
Mulvenna nodded. “And I could show that by getting the hell out of her life and keeping quiet.”
Craig shook his head. “Her career wasn’t the only reason she wanted you off-side.”
Mulvenna shot him a questioning look.
“She was pregnant with your son and she didn’t want you to know. She gave him up for adoption a week after he was born.”
They watched as shock and disbelief rushed across Mulvenna’s face. It changed swiftly to anger and he sprang to his feet. Jake leaped up too, ready to move. Craig waved him back down and listened as Mulvenna called him a liar and a bastard until he was tired, then he slumped back in his chair and Craig saw realisation dawn. The room was silent for a moment then Craig started to speak. He quickly outlined their suspicions about Lissy’s death, the sketch of the man seen talking to her on the front and the D.N.A. from the hair found in her hand. He ended with the biggest shock of all.
“He’s kidnapped ACC Trainor. She was taken sometime last night. We believe he’s going to kill her for having him adopted. We need your help.”
Mulvenna stayed mute as competing thoughts deepened the lines on his face. Craig could almost hear them from where he sat. How could she? What is he like? He’s turned out to be a killer, is that my fault? What do I care if she dies, she lied to me? And more. Craig urged him out of his thoughts.
“Her time is limited. Either she’s dead or they’re talking, and if they talk he may find out that you didn’t know and get even angrier with his Mum. You’re our one hope of stopping him.”
“How can I stop him? He’ll be ashamed. A mother who gave him away and a father who was a terrorist. At least if he didn’t know who his father was, he could imagine a better man.”
Craig brushed his self-pitying aside.
“You’ve served your time and you’re an artist now. There’s a future for you; and for him, if we can stop him now. Are you going to help us? I need to know now.”
Mulvenna hesitated then nodded once and Craig headed for the door, signalling Jake to un-cuff him and bring him along. He needed a conversation with the Chief Constable then they were going on TV. He just prayed that Annette had got something useful from the Fosters or they’d be hunting nationwide.
***
The elderly woman sat in the C.C.U.’s relative’s room hunched on the edge of the black leather sofa, clutching her shabby leather handbag in her hands. She was around seventy, older than Annette had thought. A glance at the adoption file told her why. Adele Foster, forty-two-years-old, wife of Nigel. Unable to have children of their own, they’d finally approached the church elders for their help. They ran a small adoption society for their congregation, supplying babies to God-fearing couples whose options were running out. Six months after joining it was ‘To Adele and Nigel, a baby son’ and rejoicing all around.
Annette scrutinised the woman in front of her, taking in the tired tweed coat buttoned up to the neck and her sensible shoes. She looked like she had a matching approach to life. It must have been a barrel of laughs for the kid. She tried to picture his loneliness. A solitary child making its own fun on the farm, in between chores and prayers. And beatings no doubt. She added them mentally one by one, picturing the hard-handed farmer, beating the fear of God into his son for his own good, ignoring the frisson of pleasure he got with every stroke.
He was dead now, but not soon enough to prevent the stain of fear and submission that indelibly smeared his wife’s face, even after his death. She pictured her weak attempts to temper his father’s ire when the boy inevitably did something wrong. He was a child and children aren’t privy to the harsh standards their parents judge them by. They play an
d laugh until it’s beaten out of them.
Annette pushed the tea tray across the table until it touched the woman’s knees, rousing her from her trance. She dragged her eyes up slowly to meet Annette’s, letting her glimpse a semblance of regret before she brushed it away, afraid to betray the husband who was dead. Annette read her instantly and altered her pose from one of sympathy to an interview. This woman would concede nothing about the blame she held for the tragedy unfolding miles away. She wore her guilt like a metal cilice, tightening it with every blink. She was a hostile witness now and that made her fair game.
***
Craig was driving blind, pointing the car north on the A26 towards the Atlantic coast and hoping the phone would go any minute and Annette would give them something to put in their G.P.S. Finally she called.
“The mother says Danny used to go orienteering with his school in Downhill Forest. There was a small hut there that he used to run to when he was upset.”
That would have been pretty often if her instinct about his childhood was right.
“It’s somewhere off the Ulster Way, sir. She doesn’t know any more than that.”
“Good work, Annette, get Andy to head there now and we’ll meet him. And tell him he’ll need Armed Response.” He paused then added more quietly. “They called him Danny?”
“Yes. After Daniel in the Bible.”
Craig watched Mulvenna’s expression change from the shock he’d been wearing for the past half hour to a softer surprise. The son he hadn’t known existed had a name. Danny. Craig was about to cut the call when Annette had another thought.
“What if he’s found out about Mulvenna not knowing, sir? He’ll either have killed the ACC already and left to find him, or he’ll go looking for him then head back later to finish her off.”
The Broken Shore Page 28