by Hill, Casey
‘Tír na nÓg was a paradise,’ whispered McAllister. ‘Those children have everything they could ever need, and now you’re trying to return them to this cesspit.’ He spat the word out, looking around the bare room, its dirty linoleum floor, and cheap plastic chairs.
‘I don’t know what their families are like,’ Kennedy was saying as Chris left the room. ‘But they are not yours to lock away. There is someone else out there who loves them and misses them…’
When McAllister looked at him, his gaze was one of sadness, tears brimming in his eyes. ‘There is indeed someone who loves them, someone who misses them, Detective. And you will have to live the rest of your days knowing that you succeeded only in taking them away from that one, perfect place.’
Reilly had remained in Avoca in an attempt to try and locate the children. She couldn’t believe it when they hadn’t been in the adjoining room of the smelting house. She’d naturally assumed that McAllister would want to keep them close to him.
A detailed search was being made of the outbuildings and surrounding area but to no avail.
She was frantically hoping that they could figure it out without having to rely on Chris and Kennedy to get the information out of McAllister. Who knew how long that would take. Especially when he was so reluctant to give the kids up.
‘I think I have an idea.’
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked Steve Jacobs now. She’d been searching through one of the old outhouses when he phoned her with a possible theory.
‘The driving force for McAllister’s world …’ She heard him flick through some papers back in the trailer. ‘It’s all based on this mythology, the story of Tir Na Nog. So why should that be different now? Yes, he might have had to move them from the lake house – from the enchanted land if you like – but think about how he did it?’
Reilly frowned, impatient. ‘In a boat … how is that significant?’
‘I’ve been going through the text again and according to the legend, you can only travel to and from Tir Na Nog over water. If you touch the ground, you will immediately wither and die, or like Oisin, become an old man. So I’m thinking,’ Jacobs continued, the words coming quickly, ‘that McAllister’s hidden the children somewhere their feet won’t touch the ground.’
Reilly’s brain raced. Won’t touch the ground? But where could …? Then it hit her, and she raced out the door and headed straight for the haybarn.
Chapter 44
For the second time in as many weeks, Chris knocked on the door of the Forde household in Navan. Mrs Forde answered, her features ghostly.
‘Mrs Forde? You got my message.’
She nodded and looked and down the street as if her husband would arrive home any minute.
‘Would it be better if we went somewhere else?’
‘No. It’s OK. Pat has his poker game on a Thursday night. He’s usually not back till after midnight. We won’t be disturbed.’
She shuffled through to the living room, and Chris followed, closing the door behind him.
He’d since heard from Reilly that the kids had been located. Three young girls of various ages, approximately six to eleven, had been hidden away in a nearby barn, huddled together up in the old hayloft.
According to her, they seemed in good health, but were understandably very frightened and asking for their ‘father’.
As much as he disliked the man, Chris had to give credit to Steve Jacobs for figuring that one out.
But now there was one more puzzle to solve.
He looked up as Sarah Forde’s mother sat across from him, her hands fidgety. He had refused the obligatory cup of tea, this time ignoring one of his own rules. This was not a time for relaxing; he wanted to get straight to the point.
‘Mrs Forde …’
‘Please, it’s Rita.’
‘Rita, like I said on the phone, I believe you haven’t been exactly truthful with us about the circumstances surrounding Sarah’s disappearance.’
She refused to meet his gaze. ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean—’
‘Your brother David was just arrested in Wicklow. He’s in a lot of trouble. You need to tell me what was going on, Rita. Are you involved in these abductions?’
She looked genuinely shocked. ‘Abductions? What are you talking about?’
Chris wasn’t giving anything away. ‘He’s been arrested for abducting and holding three young children at his farm in Wicklow, a place he refers to as Tir Na Nog.’ The mention of this meant something to her, he thought. ‘We were working on the assumption that your daughter Sarah had been one of abductees, but recently escaped. However, we now have reason to believe otherwise.’
She rubbed her sweaty hands on her thighs. ‘I don’t know anything about any other children, I swear. I haven’t seen David for years. I haven’t been able to … ’
‘Mrs Forde, Rita – your brother told one of my colleagues that you asked him to take care of Sarah some years ago, that you wanted to get her away from her father. Is that correct?’
Like Reilly, Chris had been gobsmacked by the revelation and had no idea what it could mean. Had Rita Forde lied about her daughter’s disappearance to not only the authorities but her husband too? And if so why?
Granted, on his recent visit, he’d suspected that there was more to the family dynamic than met the eye, but he could never have anticipated something like this.
Tears filled Rita Forde’s eyes. She had the defeated look of a person who’d been carrying a heavy burden for a very long time. ‘It was when Miriam was alive,’ she said with a sob. ‘Pat was …’ She took a deep breath, struggling, ‘I didn’t want to believe it, but Sarah came to me one day and told me what was going on. I didn’t want to believe it. I talked to David and Miriam about it, probably because they had experience with this kind of thing …’
Chris frowned. ‘How so?’
‘Well, with all the kids they used to take in … many of them were abused, some mentally, others physically … like Sarah.’
‘I don’t understand. Are you saying that your brother and his wife used to act as foster parents?’ Chris asked, bewildered. Why hadn’t this come up on McAllister’s background search? But thinking about it, they’d only checked with Land Registry and motor records. Tax records were minimal because of his artist’s exemption, and there was nothing of a criminal nature in the system. Notwithstanding that such information would have been with the Health Service Excecutive, a completely different department. Good old public service records. Like O’Brien had said, the left hand never seemed to know what the right was doing …
‘They were so good at it’ Rita Forde continued, ‘and so good with the kids. It was such a shame they’d never been able to have any of their own…’
Chris was baffled. ‘But I thought your brother lost his wife and kids in an accident many years ago?’
‘No, it was only Miriam. None of the kids were in the car at the time, the foster kids I mean. Although I’m not sure if they had any with them at the time. There was a bit of a problem after Ellie and the tattoo…’
‘Who’s Ellie?’
‘She was one of the girls who used to come to them on and off. She was the oldest, and was definitely David’s favorite too. He used to tell her all his stories, the ones about Oisin and Tir Na Nog.’ She smiled. ‘He was always fascinated by them, even as a child, and he passed a lot of it on to Ellie over the years. But then one day she turned up with this huge set of wings tattooed onto her back, and the social services people weren’t happy. They blamed David for it, and wouldn’t let Ellie go back to them after that. The poor child, she was devastated. I don’t know what happened to her; if they got her another family or something. I doubt she’d have settled, she adored Miriam and David and the place in Wicklow.’
Suddenly the pieces were beginning to click. Chris realized he knew exactly what had happened to Ellie.
And once again he realized that they’d got it all wrong. Ellie – their cold case – hadn’t
been trying to escape from Tir Na Nog; she’d been trying to get back, despite the authorities.
And had died alone on the Wicklow hillside on the way.
Rita Forde was still speaking. ‘It wasn’t long after all that, that I confided in Miriam about Sarah. I didn’t know what else to do, she was only seven and …’ Her voice caught and she looked away. ‘I had to protect her. Miriam offered to take her in, at least for a while until I figured out what to do. I made up this story to Pat about her disappearing, he phoned the police and somehow it all seemed to take on a life of its own.’ She sobbed loudly. ‘I’m so sorry, I never meant things to go that far …’
‘So you just left your daughter with your brother’s family?’
She looked at him. ‘It was better than having her here – with him.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You don’t understand … I had to do what was best for my child. I knew she’d be safe with David and Miriam.’
Chris’s voice was gentle. ‘Rita, if what Sarah said was true, why didn’t you report it?’
She looked at him as if he were mad, and he was immediately reminded of Brian McGavin’s wife and how she too was reluctant or more likely afraid to let the authorities deal with her husband. It was the same story the world over.
‘As the weeks went by it just seemed easier to let Pat think that she’d disappeared,’ Rita continued. ‘He never had much to do with my family anyway, would never have even suspected …’ She wiped her eyes. ‘But it went on for too long, and then a few months later, when Miriam was killed…’
‘You couldn’t very well just bring Sarah back.’
She looked pained. ‘I couldn’t even comfort David back then, in case Sarah saw me. She was only small, and David insisted she was fine, she was happy. I couldn’t take her back here, back to him.’ She cried openly, remembering. ‘I knew my brother would take good care of her. And Sarah was fine; as far as she was concerned she was on an extended holiday at her uncle’s house. She’d always loved spending time there anyway. I had to be careful when I kept in touch, but a little while afterwards I got the impression that there were more children there, so I just assumed he’d started fostering again.’ She looked up at Chris. ‘Are you sure that’s not what happened? Why would he abduct children when all he’s ever done is look after them, protect them?’
Chris thought about McAllister’s words back in the interview room, about the childrens’ supposedly dysfunctional backgrounds.
Protect them? Granted it was a strange way to go about it. But in truth, perhaps it was exactly what the man been trying to do.
Chapter 45
I felt myself in the bosom of the waters, gently held, the light filtering through, green, translucent, slowly rocking me, washing my fears away. The cold seeped into me, calming my nerves, soothing my tired limbs, singing to me like the sirens, sleep, sleep…
I close my eyes and sink, drifting downwards into the depths, surrendering to the cold allure, the chance to sleep and never wake – and then I felt its grip, its icy grip, pulling at me from below. Down in the murk it waits, ever vigilant, always hungry; death incarnate, ready to wrap its fingers around you, hold you with an iron fist, never let you go.
I tried to fight, tried to force my limbs into motion, to fight the fierce hold it had over me. My eyes burst open once more, peered through the gloom to the light above, so far away now, fading with each thrashing stroke as I was dragged lower and lower, until finally all light was gone, and there was nothing but darkness – eternal darkness.
My eyes opened from the dream, the nightmare, and I blinked at the darkness, grateful to be alive. Is that what happened to you, my angel? Did our protector turn on you as you lay in its cool embrace? The lake is our barrier, our shield, our defense against the violence, ugliness and decay that lie on the other side, but it is also a protector with a mind of its own. The dark depths of the lake hide their own secrets, their own desires. Our isolation, our protection, come at a cost, and we must respect those.
Did you betray that trust? Did you yield to temptation, try to leave the family and discover what lay on the other side? I close my eyes, try to sleep once more, but when I do, I see your cold, green eyes staring up at me from the murky depths.
O’Brien smiled as the following morning, several microphones with the logos of TV and radio stations were thrust at him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m delighted to report that thanks to the courage and bravery of various departments of the Garda Siochana, three young abductees have been liberated, and their captor is now in custody.’
A cacophany of voices called out all at once. ‘Can you confirm there was a gun battle?’ asked one tabloid journalist.
O’Brien’s face was the picture of calm. ‘There were shots fired from a recreational gun, but no officer discharged their weapon, and nobody was seriously injured.’
‘Have you identified the abductees?’
‘The investigation is still ongoing, and—’
‘Was it a paeodphile? Did he harm the kids? Were they abused?’
‘The children are uninjured but have been taken to a secure location for medical and psychological assesment with the assistance of Child Services. We would ask for some privacy for them while we endeavour to reunite them with their families. As you can imagine, it has been a very tough ordeal for all concerned.’ He held up his hands. ‘Thank you; that’s all we have for you just now. The press office will be issuing full details and further information as it becomes available.’ The chief walked away from the media scrum and back toward the CC van for the debrief, breathing a visible sigh of relief as he went.
The children had been kept together following medical examination and spent the night under close surveillence. Special allowances were sanctioned given the strange circumstances surrounding their captivity, and their likely view on reality.
Three senior social workers and a child psychologist had been fully briefed and had spent the preceeding evening assessing and trying to reassure them.
The team, including Steve Jacobs, were gathered at the incident room for a final debrief, with the exception of Chris who’d gone directly to the Health Services Executive offices first thing to try and speed up access to their records.
Based on the information he had received from Rita Forde, he was trying to access David McAllister’s fostering history, as well as that of the various children who’d been in his and his wife’s care.
The couple’s qualifications to foster would have automatically ceased after his wife’s death, and Reilly guessed that losing his wife, coupled with the loss of his ability to care for disadvantaged children, would have been enough to trigger his eventual descent into fantasy, and the creation of a ‘safe’ world he could control.
‘How are the kids doing?’ Kennedy asked Reilly, who’d called to the center earlier that morning to check on how they were doing.
‘As well as we could expect, really,’ she said. ‘They’ve been through a lot. The older girl, Lisa – assuming that’s her real name – is very much in charge and decidedly hostile, and they’re all very suspicious. They keep asking for McAllister – their father, as they call him.’ She supposed that this was to be expected given that they’d been brainwashed into thinking all strangers were not to be trusted. ‘The psychologist reckons gaining their trust will be a huge challenge. I’d imagine the two younger ones will be easier, but for now they are very much under influence of the older one.’
Kennedy nodded. ‘Well, the sooner we know who they really are, the sooner we can locate their families and set them on the road back to normality.’
Reilly wasn’t so sure. McAllister’s words suddenly flashed in her mind: Why don’t you ask Lisa about the beatings she got from her father when she was drunk? Ask Eve about all those ‘uncles’ sneaking into her bed when her mother was passed out on the couch…
Had they done the right thing here? Or would it have been better if they had not figured out where Sarah had been, if McAllister and his little swan
s had been left in peace at Tir Na Nog, their earthly paradise?
‘They certainly have a long road ahead, even after their families are found,’ Jacobs ruminated. ‘Especially seeing as they already think they are a family, and think McAllister is their father. I suspect it will be a long time before they are ready to go home to their real parents, whoever they are.’
McAllister certainly seemed insistent that the children he’d ‘saved’ were from dysfunctional backgrounds. If so, chances were they were already in the social services system.
The department were also currently trying to track down any records of Ellie in order to see if they could confirm her as being the unidentified girl found in the mountain, trying to find her way back to paradise.
Given the remains found at the lake house, McAllister had obviously become aware of her death at some point after the investigation and subsequent burial, which prompted him to uncover the grave and bring her ‘home’.
The investigation was as such effectively over, but for her part Reilly didn’t take any comfort in it.
For whatever reason, Sarah Forde had wanted to escape Tir Na Nog.
Perhaps she’d understood that things at the lake house weren’t quite right, and the stories her uncle were spinning weren’t healthy. Her pregnancy may well have been what prompted her to make the break … either to make a new life for herself and her child, or even to try and make her way back to her own mother. At this point they could only speculate.
But as Reilly was beginning to discover, the true definition of ‘home’ wasn’t just about location, it was about people, and being with the ones you loved.
And like Conn, she also knew that the other children didn’t feel liberated now because of their efforts, they felt imprisoned.
Reilly couldn’t deny that lately, she could almost understand the feeling.
She thought back to Chris’s rough-handling of McAllister at the house the night before, and figured that while he may have been somewhat reserved towards her recently, evidently he was still concerned about her welfare.