The Ruin

by Dervla McTiernan

  ‘I need to speak to someone who met these children back in the early nineties. I’m told you worked the case. Really I’m just looking for background. Your impressions of the family. Whether or not you can remember any associates. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I really don’t think . . . I wouldn’t remember any details. Particularly without the files. I don’t think I can help you.’ She started to close the door.

  Cormac took a step forward. He didn’t smile, but lowered his voice and spoke very seriously. ‘Look, some questions have been asked about a suspicious death that took place in 1993. I’d like to speak to you now, informally, if that’s possible.’ The implication was obvious, and intentional, and she caught it. She hesitated.

  ‘Do you have identification?’

  He showed her, and she opened the door wider after a cursory glance.

  He followed her through the hall into the kitchen beyond. The house was warm and inviting, the hall tidy except for a bundle of coats slung over the bottom of the bannisters. The kitchen was a welcoming room too, bigger than the front of the house had led Cormac to expect. There was an oversized kitchen table, some good-looking if dated cabinetry, and glass doors that led into a small garden, which was dominated by a kids’ trampoline that had seen better days.

  Katherine took off her coat as she entered the kitchen, and hung it on the back of a chair. She was wearing jeans and an old college sweater underneath. Her fair hair was in a careless ponytail. She had to be in her mid-forties, but there was something youthful and outdoorsy about her.

  ‘My girls are playing in a hockey tournament,’ she said. ‘I was going to watch them. I don’t have too long.’

  Cormac nodded, but said nothing, and after hovering awkwardly for a moment, manners or habit kicked in, and Katherine gestured to him to take a seat, and went to put on the kettle.

  ‘When did you move to Galway?’ he asked.

  She added teabags to a teapot. ‘I met my husband when I was twenty-four. He’s from Galway. After we got married I moved here. I gave up work after I got pregnant. I was glad to give it up. I was burned out.’ She looked at him sharply, as if expecting criticism. ‘That’s not unusual,’ she said.

  The kettle started to whistle, and she leaned back against the counter, her arms crossed. ‘Which case is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Blake,’ said Cormac. ‘Maude and Jack Blake.’

  There was uncertainty in her eyes for a moment, and then her face cleared as recognition hit. She said nothing, but added hot water to the teapot, brought it to the table, then returned to the cabinets for teacups and sugar, and to the fridge for milk.

  ‘It was him then, in the paper. I saw his name, and wondered if it was the same Jack Blake I’d known.’ She sat at the table, her expression wary. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Cormac held her gaze. ‘Why weren’t the kids taken into care?’ he asked. It wasn’t the question he’d been intending to ask, but it was what came out.

  Katherine shook her head. ‘You’re a cop. I would have thought you’d know better.’

  Cormac raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Since 1996 there’ve been four public inquiries into child welfare in Ireland.’ She held up her hands. ‘I’m not saying they weren’t needed, and I’m not saying they didn’t expose terrible things. But the media. Jesus. They apply today’s thinking to things that happened twenty, thirty years ago, and they just stoke up outrage. And it’s all the fault of the social workers.’ Her face was flushed. ‘We didn’t even have the Child Care Act until 1991. And how long did it take them to implement that? Years. And the Children’s Referendum was only last year. That barely passed. People know. They know that we didn’t have the power. Before the referendum, the constitution put the family first. The best interests of the child came second. We couldn’t take the children out unless we had done everything possible to keep the family together. And even then half the time we’d get knocked back in the courts.’

  He’d jumped in too fast and now she was defensive. Still, Cormac didn’t soften his tone. ‘Is that why Maude and Jack stayed with their mother? Because of the Constitution?’

  She stared back at him, still flushed, breathing a little fast. ‘No,’ she said at last, then shook her head. ‘Maybe.’

  She still held the handle of the teapot in one hand, though she hadn’t poured. She stared at it now. Cormac reached over and took the pot from her, poured for them both.

  ‘Their mother wasn’t married,’ Katherine said. ‘Only marital families were protected under the Constitution, according to the Supreme Court. An unmarried mother – it should have been much, much easier to remove the children.’

  ‘But it wasn’t?’ Cormac offered her milk and sugar as he spoke, added it according to her direction, passed her the cup.

  She took it. Her phone, which she’d placed on the table, buzzed, and she glanced at it distractedly, then back at him.

  ‘The children were obviously neglected. I was the third social worker to see the family. The others had attended the family when they’d lived in Dublin, and later in Galway, but those visits were to do with helping the family with money – dealing with rent and electricity arrears, that sort of thing. The notes on the file make it obvious that the neglect had been going on for a while – mother advised about hygiene. That sort of thing.’

  ‘But neglect wasn’t enough to remove the children.’

  She shook her head. ‘Nowhere near enough. I’ve seen much, much worse cases of neglect where we continued to support the family.’

  ‘What was different about your visit?’

  ‘A teacher at the school called the office. Maude had a bruise on her arm, her forearm. It was a nasty one, and the teacher – her name was Carey, or Carew, something like that – she suspected abuse and called it in. The case was assigned to me and I called to the house.’

  Cormac waited. Katherine took a sip of tea, then continued.

  ‘As I’ve said, it could have been worse. The little boy, Jack, was okay. There was some food for him. It was the young girl, Maude. She looked after him, though she tried to deny it at first, claimed her mother did most of it. When I got there Hilaria was asleep in bed. I tried to wake her and couldn’t.’ Katherine wrinkled her nose. ‘She was in a state. That sour smell, of old sweat and stale vomit. God, it was awful. She had urinated on herself. Probably wasn’t the first time. There was an empty vodka bottle beside the bed, another on the floor. God knows how much she was drinking a day. I gather that’s where most of the dole money went. Eventually Maude admitted that she cared for Jack after school, did the food shopping, cooking, cleaning. Everything really. She claimed that Hilaria stayed off the booze during the day, that she minded Jack while Maude was at school. But I’d say the poor little fella fended for himself. He was so small, only a toddler really. Later I found out that Maude had been a good student, but had started to miss more and more school. I suppose she’d begun to realise that she couldn’t leave Jack at home alone with her mother. I suppose she would have been twelve, maybe thirteen?’

  ‘When was this?’ Cormac asked. He took his notebook out.

  She thought for a moment. ‘I think towards the end of 1990.’

  ‘Twelve, then,’ Cormac said.

  Katherine nodded. ‘She was such a serious child. She didn’t trust me, or distrust me. She was just . . . indifferent. But she held that boy’s hand every minute I was there. And when I asked about him she was intent on showing me that he was well taken care of. She showed me his few clothes, and the bits of food she had put away for him. It nearly broke my heart.’

  ‘Did you talk to her about the bruises?’

  Katherine’s brow was furrowed. ‘Is she all right, Maude? Have you seen her?’

  Cormac nodded slowly. ‘She’s all right.’ He said nothing more, and after a moment Katherine continued.

  ‘I asked her about the bruise, made her show me. The bruise was nasty, but she told me she helped out a neighbour with the milking some
times, and she’d had a kick from a cow. She was adamant that it was an accident, that no one had hurt her.’

  ‘Did you believe her?’

  ‘No. She had that look about her. I wasn’t very experienced, but I was experienced enough to know what I was seeing. And the little boy was afraid of me. Not just shy. Genuinely afraid.’

  ‘Did you . . . you left them?’ Cormac asked in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

  ‘I didn’t have a mobile and there was no phone in the house. I took the kids back with me to the office. Put them in the family room. I went to my desk to call the doctor for Hilaria, for the kids too. My boss was there. Someone had called him, told him where I’d been. He had a shit fit. Said removing the children was totally over the top. Unwarranted interference. Something like that.’ She rubbed at her forehead, smoothing her left eyebrow hard with the index finger of her left hand, again and again. ‘I tried to tell him, I really did. He wouldn’t listen. Said whether or not the mother was ill we had no legal right to intervene. He said that the children were in good shape, and that there was a neighbour, a good Christian woman, who was heavily involved with the family and was providing adequate supervision.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me but I found out later. Her name was Keane, I think. Mrs Keane. I think she must have called him, must have known somehow that I had taken the children.’

  Cormac shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Even in the context of the times, surely temporarily removing two young children from a house where there was no responsible adult was the necessary thing to do. Not to mention seeking medical help for Hilaria.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. My boss was very involved with the church, and Mrs Keane seemed to have a lot of influence with him. But they were all like that. There were three others in that office and none of them would even discuss the case. They just blocked those kids out. You have to understand, we were all so overworked. And there was this mindset that the standard of proof the courts required was so high. So we focused on keeping families together, even when the children might have been better off in care.’

  ‘What happened then?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘He told me to bring them home to their mother.’ She wiped a tear away with the back of her hand.

  ‘Did you?’

  She shook her head. Then nodded.

  ‘I promised them I’d be back. Swore I would. Said I would be back before it got dark. That I would bring them food. McDonald’s, I think I said. Maude wouldn’t even look at me. They just sat in the back seat, holding hands. The little boy was so scared.’

  ‘But you didn’t go back.’

  ‘No.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I called Dublin the next day. Left the office to do it because I was too afraid, didn’t want to be overheard. But I called head office. They said that they would send someone down, probably the next day, maybe the day after. I felt sick, thinking of those kids in that house, alone with their mother. I called again a few weeks later. But no one ever went. And by then I had twenty cases and more on the way. I was overwhelmed. So I . . . did nothing.’

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. He wondered how often she had woken in the night, how often she had held her own children to her and had thought about the two she left behind.

  ‘Did you see any sign of drugs in the house, any heroin?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that. I was surprised when I heard. But I suppose I was mostly relieved. And I heard that Jack was fostered almost immediately, which was very good.’

  ‘You kept track of the children?’ he asked.

  But she looked away. ‘Not really. Just heard a few things from an old colleague.’ After a moment she stood and walked to the sink, taking her cup with her. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go,’ she said.

  ‘The neighbour, Mrs Keane. Did she stay involved with the family?’

  ‘I believe so. I heard that she collected Hilaria’s dole – I suppose it was the unmarried mother’s allowance, in those days. You could do that then. Hilaria was getting disability allowance as well, so she probably picked that up too.’

  Cormac didn’t close his notebook. ‘Do you think Keane would have bought alcohol for Hilaria Blake? She must have had a source, once she reached the point where she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get to the village herself.’

  Katherine hesitated. ‘I can’t imagine she would have. She was supposed to be very religious.’ She picked up her handbag from the countertop. ‘I’m sorry. I really do have to go.’

  Cormac stood. As he followed her to the front door he asked, ‘Did you know much about heroin use in the town back then? Was it much of a problem?’

  ‘Not that I can remember. Most of our problems were alcohol-related.’

  He followed her into the bright spring sunshine. It was still cold, but he welcomed the fresh air and sight of blue sky. The rain in Galway was so much more constant than in Dublin; it was hard to believe the cities were only a few hours apart. Suddenly he wished he were back in Dublin, in the grotty but familiar surroundings of Dublin Castle.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Will you tell her that?’

  ‘You mean Maude?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will,’ he said. But he didn’t mean it. Whatever else he had to say to Maude, he had no urge to remind her of another person who had failed her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cormac went for a run immediately after the Katherine Shelley interview. He needed to move, to push his body, to sweat out his frustration and anger. There was nothing he could do about what had happened to Maude and Jack. That was a twenty-year-old story, and he knew better than most that the system was still failing today. He also knew better than to let this sort of shit get to him. Getting emotional helped no one. It didn’t make you a better cop. It meant clouded judgement, it meant that you looked for evidence to justify your feelings, instead of pursuing the facts. But this case got to him. Maybe it was because it was a case from his past. At twenty years old he’d had no tough outer skin.

  His gear bag was in the boot of the car – he’d put it there on Monday morning but had gone to the pub after work instead of the gym. He didn’t feel like the gym now either – it was in the basement of the station at Mill Street, and the last thing he needed was to encounter Brian Murphy – but he used its changing room, then took his frustration outside. Cormac cut down Dominick Street and over the canal, its water murky in the heavy weather. Then down Father Griffin Road and onwards until he reached the sea. It started raining as he ran along the prom, and the ever-present walkers thinned out. Cormac kept his pace up until his heart thundered and his breath was tight in his lungs. It was about four kilometres to Blackrock Diving Tower, and he pushed hard until he got there, then turned and took a slower pace back to the station. His knees were complaining, but otherwise he felt good. Better.

  A quick shower and change at the station and he was back in the car, heading for home. His phone rang just as he pulled in and parked outside the little terraced house on Canal Road that he shared with Emma. The number was blocked.

  ‘Reilly,’ he said.

  There was a bustle of conversation from the other end of the phone. Background noise of a phone ringing.

  ‘Cormac?’ a voice said. ‘Hang on.’ The background noise retreated as the voice changed locations. ‘Cormac, you still there?’ It was Matt, an old friend and colleague. He worked International Liaison – essentially Interpol – and had contacts in the United States. He owed Cormac a favour or two.

  ‘Yeah. Still here, Matt.’

  ‘I have something for you.’

  ‘That was quick,’ Cormac said.

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s getting harder to get information from that side of the world, since 9/11, but what you’re looking for is pretty straightforward. Plain old uncomplicated murder.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You asked for anything that fit the profile between ’75 and ’85
. There was a murder in 1983. Sixteen-year-old student, attended the St. Boniface School. She went to soccer practice as usual, never made it home. Body was found the next day. She’d been raped and strangled. Her boyfriend was the chief suspect – she’d told a friend she was planning on breaking it off – but he was cleared eventually. Wrong blood type.’

  ‘Her body wasn’t hidden?’

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ Matt said. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Check something else for me?’ Cormac asked.

  Matt had no problem with that, and Cormac asked him to check if a Timothy Lanigan had been questioned in the disappearance. He almost rang off then, but something occurred to him.

  ‘Matt, what’s the word on the ground about Anthony Healy? Anything new?’

  A pause. ‘Why are you asking?’ Was there caution in Matt’s tone?

  ‘He’s working out of Galway, on the task force.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. Something feels a little off there, that’s all.’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything, Cormac, at least nothing more than the usual.’ The usual was the stuff that had been floating around Healy for years. That Healy might be inclined to take the odd short cut, might have a fondness for pavement hostesses, as Cormac’s old boss had called the working girls. That wasn’t great. Apart from the fact that prostitution was illegal, there was an inequality about that relationship that turned Cormac’s stomach.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah. Cormac, sorry mate, I have to go.’ And a moment later Cormac had dial tone in his ear.

  By the time Cormac made his way to the house, he’d cooled down and started to feel stiff. He was hungry, and pleasantly surprised to open the door to the smell of dinner cooking.

  ‘Em?’ he called.

  ‘Kitchen,’ she called back, and he found her there, cheeks flushed, the room warm from the heat of the oven. She came forward for a hug and a kiss. Her hair was still damp from the shower. He held her close for a moment, breathed her in. When he let her go she turned back to the food she was preparing. Cormac sat and unlaced his boots.