As Cormac hesitated, Healy broke eye contact, and started gathering up his files. At the same moment, a trio of uniforms came in, one of them almost taking out Cormac’s rapidly cooling coffee. The moment had passed, and Cormac wasn’t even sure what it had been. He left the room before Healy, returned to his desk and made short work of the sandwich. He was finishing his coffee when Fisher appeared at his desk, some printed pages in his hands.
‘I found him,’ Fisher said, without preamble. ‘Timothy Lanigan. He did go to Massachusetts, but he didn’t stay there. He moved to New York State. Taught in . . .’ Fisher paused to look at his notes. ‘St. Boniface Catholic Academy. Private school. He taught English and coached soccer. He married one of the other teachers, had two kids, and stayed there for ten years. In 1985 his marriage broke down and he moved away. His wife – ex-wife – still works at the school.’
‘And?’ Cormac said.
‘And, it looks like he’s pretty clean, don’t you think? Taught for ten years, no scandals. He got divorced in 1985 and left the area soon after.’ Fisher shrugged. ‘Law-abiding citizen. Not much to work with.’
‘Where is he now?’ Cormac asked.
Fisher made a helpless gesture. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I found him online, some old soccer reports, photos. Called the school, got the secretary talking.’ His expression said he thought he’d done well. ‘I didn’t take it any further.’
‘I asked you to find him. Don’t stop until you do.’ Cormac made a mental note to make a phone call or two to his own contacts. Fisher was good, and he wanted to push him, but getting information from the States quickly would require a bit of pull.
Fisher opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself.
‘Ask,’ Cormac said.
‘It’s just, what’s the point of it?’ Fisher asked. To his credit there was no complaint in his voice, just honest curiosity. ‘There’s no DNA, no new evidence. Isn’t this a waste of time?’
Cormac smiled, and the smile turned into a yawn, which he smothered with one hand. ‘If you start thinking like that all you’re doing is shutting yourself down. When you’re investigating, you follow the questions until you have answers.’ He picked up the Blake file. Fisher took the hint and left.
Cormac’s little lecture to the younger man had been a timely reminder. He needed to press on. He found the number for Child and Family Services in Castlebar and picked up the phone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aisling didn’t get home that night until after eight o’clock. After her conversation with Mary she’d turned her tired mind from the questions she’d raised and refocused on her work. After her A&E shift she’d made a round of every surgical ward on her floor. She’d read the charts of eighteen patients, spoken to those who were awake, had a chat with family members, and caught up with colleagues, until she finally felt that everything was as it should be. Her finger was back on the pulse of the hospital, and for the first time since Jack died she felt a little in control. She was also exhausted. Her feet hurt; the pad of her right foot ached like a bruise every time she took a step. Her back was tight and her eyes were burning. Her stomach felt hard and raw with hunger. She hadn’t had a chance to eat since breakfast, thirteen hours earlier. She was struggling with the lock on her door – trying to see the keyhole in the dark – when a voice spoke from behind her.
‘Aisling.’
Aisling knew who it was before she turned, and she closed her eyes briefly. Shit. She didn’t have the energy. Then she turned, and found a smile from somewhere.
‘Aggie.’ Aisling hugged the smaller woman. ‘Have you been waiting? You should have called. I would have come home earlier.’
‘I knew you were working.’ Aggie gave Aisling a searching look. ‘You’re tired, and I’ll bet you haven’t eaten. Well, I can solve one problem.’ She raised the carrier bag she held in one hand, and looked beyond Aisling to the front door.
They sat in the kitchen and ate together. The contents of the carrier bag turned out to be two lunch boxes filled with brown stew and mashed potato. Aisling plated them, nuked them, and offered Aggie a glass of wine, which she refused.
‘I’ll have water, love. I’m driving.’
They ate in silence for the first few minutes, Aisling with an urgency that she knew Aggie wouldn’t miss. She slowed herself down after the first few mouthfuls, became conscious of the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, the single brown banana in the fruit bowl, the clothes still hanging on the clotheshorse, which included two of Jack’s T-shirts. She hadn’t done any laundry since the day he died. Aisling glanced at Aggie, half-expecting to see those grey eyes taking in the mess, or watching her, measuring the degree to which she was falling apart. Except that she wasn’t falling apart, or no more than should be expected. She was just bloody busy.
But Aggie’s eyes were on her own plate, and it was Aisling who started doing the noticing, the measuring. Aggie had been crying. And recently – her eyes were still puffy. Her soft grey hair was tidy, and her blouse and cardigan had been neatly pressed, but there was a little stain on the lapel that was very un-Aggie, and she looked tired.
Aggie finished her food, then reached out a hand and softly squeezed Aisling’s.
‘I’m sorry we left it to you,’ she said. ‘The guards. Unforgivable. But I wasn’t thinking straight, Aisling. I hope you’ll forgive me.’
‘Not at all . . .’ Aisling started to rattle off an automatic denial, but a second squeeze of her hand and the expression on Aggie’s face stopped her.
‘I’m sorry for it,’ Aggie said. ‘If I could have the time over I’d do it differently. But I felt Brendan needed me and I used it as an excuse to turn away.’
Aisling stood and went to the kettle. She filled it, turned it on, then started to clear the plates. ‘I don’t blame you for anything,’ she said. ‘Losing Jack. I know it broke your heart. You’re doing the best you can.’ When she looked back at Aggie she saw eyes filled with unshed tears, and wanted to cry herself. Aggie was the warmest of women. Utterly practical, hard-working, she’d loved Jack fiercely and welcomed Aisling with a kind word and a warm hand when he’d first brought her to the house. They were such different women on the surface, and Aisling had wondered if Aggie would have preferred a different kind of woman for her son. But Jack had only laughed when she’d said this to him.
‘She’s not that sort of person,’ was all he had said, and in time Aisling had come to see that Aggie had wanted only happiness for Jack, and if Aisling made him happy that was good enough for her. Now Aggie blinked back her tears and took a cup, poured tea for them both.
‘How are you doing?’ she asked. ‘Working hard, I know. But are you looking after yourself? Have you seen much of Mark and Fergus? Have they been around?’ Jack’s friends. They’d both called, Fergus more than once. She hadn’t answered the phone, hadn’t called them back, hadn’t seen them since the funeral.
‘Maude was there. At the garda meeting.’ Aisling blurted the words out. ‘She came back. She’s been in Australia, all this time.’
Aggie put her cup down on the table. ‘Maude? Jack’s sister Maude?’
Aisling nodded, and took a seat opposite Aggie. She held her cup in her hands, wrapped her fingers around its warmth. ‘She looks like him.’ Did she? Not at all really. Not when Aisling thought about it. Maude was small, slight, where Jack had been tall and athletic. Maude was older, and there was nothing of Jack’s laughing eyes about her. But it was in her eyes that Aisling saw Jack. Something about the set of them, the stillness of her expression. That had been Jack too, in a moment of distraction, when his mind was far away.
‘She came home? When?’
Aisling shook her head. ‘I don’t know. She must have heard about Jack, come for the funeral. She was there, you know? On Prospect Hill. But I didn’t recognise her.’
It was Aggie’s turn to shake her head. ‘Poor, poor girl,’ she said. ‘She finally came home, and Jack is gone.’ There were no tears in Aggie�
�s eyes now. Her face was grey, her lips bloodless. She took a sip from her cup, closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Will she meet us, do you think? I’d like to see her. I want to show her the photographs. She should know that Jack had a happy life. That coming to us was a good thing for him. That it wasn’t all a waste.’ Confusion crossed her face, and tears welled again. She blinked against them. ‘Well, I always thought it wasn’t. But perhaps . . . perhaps we were wrong about that.’ She turned eyes filled with pain to Aisling. ‘Did he talk to you, Aisling? Do you know why he would do this terrible thing?’
‘Aggie,’ Aisling said. She pushed back her chair and stood, glanced to the kitchen. She wanted to be doing something, felt an urge to wash up the dishes – anything to break the tension of the moment. What should she say? Would it be wrong to give false hope? Mary thought it was all a sort of mad denial, but she hadn’t been in the meeting, she hadn’t seen the CCTV footage. And how could it be false hope, to tell someone that maybe their son hadn’t killed himself after all, maybe he’d just been murdered? Jesus. She sat again, took her cup in both hands, held it and looked down, concentrated on the grip of her fingers, the lightening of her flesh as she tightened her grip, the encroaching pink as she loosened it. ‘Aggie,’ she said again. ‘Maude doesn’t think, I mean, I’m not sure.’ She forced herself to look up. ‘I’m not certain that Jack did kill himself.’
Aggie stared back at her, mouth slightly open as if she were about to ask a question. ‘Tell me,’ she said in the end.
So Aisling told her the story, starting with the CCTV footage, then doubling back to the meeting with Rodgers, then back again to her conversation with Maude in the hotel room. In the end the story was so muddled she didn’t think that Aggie would be able to make anything out of it. When she finished, Aggie sat back, cup of tea forgotten, her cheeks flushed. She said nothing for what felt like a long time, and when she spoke she blurted the words out.
‘I want to meet her,’ Aggie said.
‘What?’
‘Maude. I’d like to meet her. I always wanted to meet her. Can you call her? Bring her for lunch. On Saturday. Or Sunday if you’re working.’
Aisling wondered for a second if she should start again, make a better effort of it this time. But Aggie reached over and took her hand.
‘I want to believe he didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘The world would make sense again. Even though that means someone else hurt him. Killed him. But it’s all too much. I don’t know where to start with it. But I know I want to see Maude. So I’ll start with that, and see where to go from there.’
Aisling found herself agreeing, promising to call Maude in the morning, try to set up the lunch, whenever it suited the older woman. And after that Aggie insisted on washing up, tidying the kitchen, folding the clothes. She was flooded with a sudden energy, and sent Aisling, protesting, to the shower. By the time Aisling came downstairs again, dressed in her last pair of clean pyjamas and her hair wrapped in a towel, the kitchen was cleaner than it had been in weeks, and Aggie was packed up and ready to go. She kissed Aisling briskly on the cheek.
‘I’ll see you on Saturday,’ she said. ‘Don’t be late, or be late. It doesn’t matter.’ She laughed an uncharacteristically nervous laugh, then cut it abruptly short. It occurred to Aisling that maybe Aggie had had those moments too. Those moments of horrible self-consciousness, of guilt, of self-censorship, as if outward grief were a borrowed suit that never quite fit. But she was too tired to follow the thought through. Too tired to do anything more than hug Aggie goodbye, and shut the door. She was too tired even to climb the stairs and face her empty bed. She went to the living room and lay down on the couch, pulled a blanket over herself and fell asleep there, wet hair and all.
Wednesday 27 March 2013
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Children and Family Services didn’t return Cormac’s call on Tuesday, and his second call on Tuesday evening had gotten him nowhere. His third call, on Wednesday morning, got him an answer, if not the one he was looking for. The voice on the other end of the phone was still chirpy, efficient.
‘Oh hi, Detective Reilly, I was about to call you. Yeah, there’s no file I’m afraid. I mean there was one but it was in the flood.’
‘The flood?’
‘Yeah. In Castlebar. 2009. The storage facility was out by the river and it burst its banks, flooded the place. They did try to recover the files, but then there was some sort of problem with mould, so they had to be destroyed.’
‘You don’t have copies, scans?’
‘Not of stuff going that far back I’m afraid.’ There was distraction in her voice, and he could hear conversation in the background. A moment later she apologised briefly again, and hung up.
Cursing, Cormac left the station and walked into Galway, waiting until he had crossed the bridge and found a doorway that offered enough shelter from the wind for a phone call. He dialled a number he hadn’t called in nearly five years. She answered after two rings.
‘Cormac?’ Surprise in her voice, a hint of concern. ‘Everything all right?’ She’d recognised his number. But then, he would have recognised hers.
‘Tara. How are you?’
‘Grand. I’m grand.’
He’d heard through the grapevine that she was married now, to a guy who worked in banking. The marriage hadn’t surprised him, the banking part had, a bit. Tara’d never been a big fan of suits. She was bloody good at her job, but as she’d advanced up the ranks she’d never let go of the fact that she’d started in the trenches, while so many of the middle and upper management types she encountered had no clue what it was like on the front line. Maybe she’d gotten over her aversion, now that so many of them worked for her. Her last promotion had made her Director of Policy and Strategy at the Child and Family Agency.
‘I heard you got married?’ Cormac said.
‘Yes. Paul. Lovely guy. I think you’d like him.’ She spoke a little awkwardly, then rushed out with, ‘We’re expecting.’
‘Congrats, Tara. That’s great news.’ He was genuinely happy for her. It was what she’d wanted, from the beginning really. She’d never pretended otherwise, and he’d always felt guilty that it had taken him so long to realise he didn’t feel the same way.
‘And you?’ she asked.
He really didn’t want to get into it. ‘Tara, I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this. But I’m working a case, and I’m hoping you can do me a favour.’
‘Yes?’ There was caution in her tone, but she wasn’t pissed off.
So he told her about the case. That he’d put in a request for a file, an old one, from twenty years back, but it had been destroyed. Did she have access to any information from Dublin that she could pass to him?
Silence for a moment from the other end of the phone. ‘Cormac, you should be able to get that information through the proper channels. You don’t need to come through the back door.’
Meaning that the back door was now closed? ‘It’s important. I know it seems like it shouldn’t be, with a twenty-year-old file, but I think there’s urgency here. The boy is dead, and something from his past may be relevant.’
‘Cormac . . .’
He cut her off. ‘Tara, there’s something off here. I have a feeling.’ He cursed himself inwardly. His feelings had been the cause of more than one argument when they prompted his early departure from one special occasion or another. But instead of hanging up on him, she paused for a long moment, then asked for a name.
He heard the click of keys on a keyboard, then silence as Tara read whatever she saw. ‘You’re telling me that this boy is dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Death doesn’t bring an end to our confidentiality obligations,’ Tara said. ‘I’m not going to give you anything that would cross that line.’
‘Of course,’ Cormac said. She had once before, when a child went missing and Cormac hadn’t wanted to wait on a court order. But that was a different case, and those were different times.
Tara went silent again. More reading, or second thoughts?
‘There was a file,’ Tara said. ‘According to the system it’s in storage in Castlebar.’
‘I was told there was a flood. In 2009. That the file was destroyed along with others.’
More keyboard clicking down the phone. ‘There was a flood all right,’ Tara said. ‘The file is probably gone. But I think they did manage to scan at least some of them before the originals were destroyed. There’s a reference number here. You could put in a request through Dublin. I’ll keep an eye on it for you, see what comes up.’
It would take at least a week, maybe more. ‘Is there anything you can tell me now?’ Cormac asked. ‘Was anything scanned into the system? Or if there’s a name, a social worker I can track down locally?’
Another pause. ‘There are a lot of names here. A lot of different case workers. I can give you the most recent.’
Cormac blew out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. ‘Thanks Tara. I appreciate it, very much. I’ll owe you one.’
She gave him the name. ‘You were always a good cop, Cormac. If you’re asking, I’m sure it’s for good reason.’ He was surprised how good it felt to hear her say this. They said their goodbyes and he hung up, then immediately dialled again.
Thirty minutes later he pulled in outside a neat detached house in Knocknacarra, the heart of suburbia. Identikit houses stretched away in either direction. There was a small, landscaped park opposite the house. Someone had installed a swing set and a miniature set of plastic goals. He knocked on the door and a moment later it was opened by a woman who was in the process of shrugging on a coat.
‘Katherine Shelley?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly,’ he said. ‘I’d like to talk to you about a case you were involved in when you worked out of Castlebar.’
Her face stayed blank for a long moment. ‘I’m not a social worker anymore,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been one for a long time. You should call the office. Someone there will speak to you.’
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