‘Was there anything strange, Mrs McDermott, in the last while, did you notice anything queer?’ Slattery asked.
‘Queer about what?’ She couldn’t quite get a grip on the conversation. Her eyes had drifted off into memories or perhaps longing. She pushed herself away from the heavy sideboard, knuckles white against the polished wood. Standing straight-backed, she cleared her throat a little. She was silent, waiting a second, perhaps hoping they’d repeat the question. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you said.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs McDermott, it’s the worst news and impossible to take it in. I wondered if there was anything unusual in your daughter’s behaviour over the last number of days, if she said anything, maybe she had a run-in with someone.’
‘You think someone meant to kill her?’ The words came high-pitched, startling them all. ‘You didn’t know her at all, did you? She was a good girl, kind and generous to a fault.’
‘We don’t think anything yet. We just want to build up a picture of Rachel.’ Iris’s voice was gentle. ‘Look, Mrs McDermott, I’m sorry we have to ask, but we’re only trying to figure out why your daughter has died, and anything that would help us find the missing girl.’
‘Little girl.’ She misheard them, repeating the wrong words. ‘A little girl has gone missing…but you said…’ Her voice trailed off. She clasped her hands tight, hot tears were welling in the corners of her eyes once more.
‘I said a girl was missing, that was all I said. Please, Mrs McDermott, was there anything troubling your daughter of late?’
‘Nothing. What can I say? Look, it’s just… I’m not myself. Rachel is a good girl, she is just a normal girl.’
‘Can we get a list of some of her friends, Mrs McDermott?’ Iris had her pencil poised.
‘You’ll have to ask Tim, I’m afraid. I’d be no good and I get them confused. Of course, she had friends, why can’t I think?’ She began to cry again, great big sobs that wracked her body as if they might empty her out. Iris found herself looking away. It was too heartbreaking to watch what a mother felt when they lost their own child. ‘Sorry. You might talk to Nate Hegarty, they’ve been friends, he might know if… or Tim, of course…’
‘And Tim is?’
‘Tim is my son, Rachel’s older brother.’
‘Of course.’ Iris went back through her notebook again. ‘He lives with you too?’
‘That’s right. He’s not here at the moment though.’
‘At work?’
‘Em, no, he’ll be back in a little while, you might catch him before you leave.’
‘Where does he work, Mrs McDermott?’
‘He’s a musician, so he’s… Well, here, for now.’ Imelda McDermott smoothed downy hair into place needlessly. ‘Oh God, I only have Tim left now.’ She shuddered, a pathetic tremble that shook her whole body.
‘Please, take your time, Mrs McDermott.’ Iris looked at Slattery. They should offer to make tea, but neither wanted to break the tension of her thoughts. Perhaps, too, they knew that Imelda McDermott wouldn’t want anyone making tea in her kitchen and with that she rose from her seat and filled the kettle with water.
‘Where…where is Rachel now?’ she half whispered. She placed the kettle on top of a gas ring, lit it and blew out the long match.
‘She’s out at Curlew Hall. The county coroner will arrange for her remains to be brought to Limerick hospital later today. You’ll be able to see her tomorrow if you’d like,’ Iris said kindly, moving a strand of burnished-copper hair from across her forehead.
‘Tea, I think, would be good now. Tea is fine for both of you?’ After murmurs of agreement, she took down a large cream earthenware teapot, patterned over in bright burgundy and orange flowers. Her stubborn, slightly arthritic fingers worked their way across the lid and down the raised flower pattern. It was a handshake of sorts with an old ally, providing not just tea but comfort too. On the first whistle from the kettle, she scalded the inside of the pot, returning the water to continue boiling until a chorus of shrieks filled the air. The ritual of making a simple pot of tea seemed to calm Imelda. Waiting for it to brew, Slattery took the opportunity to look over the various framed photographs on her walls.
‘Sugar?’ she asked as she poured the tea through a weary metal strainer.
‘Ta.’ Slattery reached across for a deep brown mug in the centre of the table. ‘I’ll help myself. Long time since I’ve had proper tea.’ He nodded towards the pot.
‘Wouldn’t have anything else inside the door. The kids give out sometimes, tell me I should join the modern world, but, well, it’s old dogs and new tricks, I’m afraid.’ She looked like a woman who always preferred the old to the new. The new was much too complicated.
‘Thanks, best cup of tea I’ve had in months.’ Iris sank back into the carver chair, notebook neglected for a moment. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the only punctuation coming from the Swiss carriage clock counting out the seconds with a loud tick-tock. The sound of the approaching hour was heralded by a tightening of springs and coils before it bellowed out loud gongs. The euphonious tones, echoed somewhere in the distance by church bells, brought them back to the present. Iris exhaled loudly in the silence, the marking of time struck her much more forcefully than it ever had before.
‘Mrs McDermott, can you tell us if Rachel went straight to work yesterday evening, or do you know if she was due to meet anyone beforehand?’
‘I really wouldn’t know. Why? What difference does it make now, if she went straight to work or if she was doing something beforehand?’ She could see the young detective had already moved on.
‘Was Rachel on any medication – did she take anything on prescription or otherwise?’ The pencil was poised once more.
‘Why do you want to know something like that?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Dermott,’ – it was Slattery again – ‘but it’s just for the autopsy, you know, to make sure we have everything accounted for.’
‘Of course, forgive me. These things…if it was anybody else…I’m just not thinking clearly.’ She glanced across at Locke who appeared to understand the muddle her head had become. ‘Of course, I’ll get you anything that she might have taken over the last few days. She’s had a touch of a head cold, so she’s been taking some kind of herbal remedy.’
‘She wouldn’t have taken anything else?’ The sergeant’s probing eyes searched her face and Imelda felt herself colour slightly under the scrutiny.
‘You mean was she taking drugs, Detective? The answer is no, not to my knowledge, but then these are modern times. I’m probably not the right person to ask.’ The tea, so recently hot and inviting, was now beginning to cool. Soon the heavy milk would make it cling greasily against the side of the cup and then form tidemarks, which would prove difficult to remove. A lot like life, Iris thought to herself.
‘Did she leave her computer here yesterday?’
‘Her computer? That laptop thing, is it?’ She looked across at their nodding heads. ‘No, she took it with her. She always took it with her, that and her mobile phone, never without either of them. Why?’
‘It’s not at Curlew Hall and we just wondered if maybe it was here.’
‘I can check for you, of course, but I’m sure she took it. If she hadn’t I’d have got a call to take it out to her, keeps her going, she does night shift, so…’
‘Of course, Mrs McDermott. I suppose our only other question really is if there was anyone else close to her, a boyfriend perhaps, someone she might have talked to if she was worried about something.’
‘There was no one. At least not as far as I knew, but there were boys in the past. No one I heard about, but a mother knows these things.’ She tried to stall them as they were getting up to leave. ‘The missing girl, do you think she might have…?’
‘No, we certainly hope not. She’s one of the kids living out there in Curlew Hall.’
‘Oh.’ Suddenly it seemed she couldn’t wait to get the two detectives
out the door. ‘Can you see yourselves out? I’m very tired, you understand?’
‘I’m afraid we’ll have to take a look at her room.’ Slattery managed to make this request sound like an apology. She motioned to the stairs and muttered directions. She had enough to take in for now, but there would be more questions; they didn’t need to tell her that.
Rachel McDermott’s room was the first at the top of a narrow dog-legged staircase. Upstairs did not disappoint in terms of being as stuck in the last century as the rest of the house. If anything, it looked and felt as if time had begun to stammer somewhere around the 1970s and hadn’t much progressed since apart from rewiring and a potted plant. The carpet was brown with a highlight of faded orange and on the walls a patterned paper that had to date back to long before Rachel was born. But still, everything was pristine and Iris wondered if Mrs McDermott patrolled up here on an hourly basis to defend against dust and cobwebs. Rachel’s room was far tidier than she’d have expected. Aren’t twenty-year-old girls, for the most part, meant to have mountains of cosmetics and clothes piled up on the floor? The bed covers had been screwed down with military tightness. Apart from a few photographs on top of a chest of drawers, there was little here at first glance to mark it out as Rachel’s room at all. Of course, her clothes hung in the old-fashioned wardrobe and tidied away in a drawer was a bag of toiletries that included expensive perfume, nail polish and a glut of mascara bottles, opened once and then discarded. The products belonged to a young woman, even if it appeared the room may not.
‘Well, you could warm me up with an ice cube,’ Slattery whistled, stretching blue examination gloves over his large hands. ‘If I’d ever given any thought to what Rachel’s room would look like, it wouldn’t have been this. The only thing here that seems to belong to her is that make-up bag – not so much as a fairy light or a scented candle in sight.’
‘God, Slattery, you have a very narrow imagination when it comes to women’s boudoirs.’ Iris tried to make light of the moment. ‘Still, it’s a bit creepy, isn’t it? It’s almost as if she was expecting someone to come in and check things over.’ Iris ran a finger along the rim of the window. ‘I mean, it’s like she’s ghosted herself in and out of here, she’s certainly neat.’ She shook her head.
‘I wonder if Imelda came up here when she went to work and gave this place a going over with her feather duster?’ Slattery jerked his head towards the stairs and by extension Imelda.
‘Hopefully not, although…’ Iris wasn’t sure which would be worse for them, if not so much as a stray hair could be found in the place because Rachel was organised enough to go about her business leaving no trace behind her or if she’d tidied things away because she wanted to hide things from her interested mother. Either way, there seemed to be little here that would point to a motive for her death. Slattery pulled out a drawer, sifting through matched socks and folded underwear, before checking the drawer beneath it.
‘Pockets are probably our best bet now.’ Iris dug into the wardrobe and began to check the pockets of the clothes hanging there. ‘Nothing,’ she said, moving towards an old framed picture of the holy trinity that might have been a wedding gift to her grandparents. It was hung with that same neatness as everything else in the room, perfectly level as if it had been measured at all corners to make sure it was straight; it was the only picture to adorn the walls. Iris examined it for a moment; it was old, but hardly worth a lot, the frame was plain, the print faded. As she moved past it something caught her eye – there was a tiny inconsistency between the lower corners, perhaps something at its back. She examined it again, tracing her finger along the side, then she lifted the frame out, just a fraction, and the movement was enough to dislodge a small card.
‘Well done,’ Slattery said, but his voice held no enthusiasm, as if he’d just been on his way to check it out himself. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a note, just numbers.’ Iris examined it. ‘Could be anything really. We’ll run it through the system back at the station and see what it throws up.’ She placed it gingerly in a plastic evidence bag. At least it was something.
Five
Iris needed coffee and sugar to dispel the light-headedness that was making her ears buzz and sapping her eyes so they felt as if they’d receded about six inches into her fatigued brain. She’d gone through the timeline a thousand times in her mind. Now it felt as though she’d actually been in that small kitchen all night and watched the clock insistently passing each minute above Rachel McDermott’s head.
Tony Ahearn was running the search party. She should have been pleased, another sergeant on board to take some of the flak. The truth was, she wasn’t sure whether she’d prefer him far away from the incident room where he couldn’t cause her any grief or right here, under her nose, where she could keep a close eye on him. They’d never hit it off, he’d always been a smarmy wanker as far as Iris was concerned. Too much talk and not enough work. He’d been tipped as a potential highflyer from the day he left Templemore, didn’t mean he was any better at his job than anyone else. Sell his granny for a promotion, Slattery had said, and Iris knew he was spot on the money there. From day one, Tony Ahearn had been welcomed into the clandestine ‘boys’ club’ that runs the guards. Iris, on the other hand, had to slog her way through, work for every stripe despite the fact that her colleagues believed she’d be fast-tracked thanks to her father Nessie Locke. In some ways, their relationship – such as it turned out to be – had hindered her progress far more than it had helped her. There was little doubt that if she’d set her sights on a nice, safe job in the press office, she’d probably have been made up to inspector in record speed – but Nessie hadn’t wanted her in Murder.
Iris closed her eyes, trying her best to shove memories of the father she thought was hers to the edge of her thoughts. It was actually preferable to think about Tony Ahearn and she liked him about as much as a wasp likes winter. The fact that he’d so obviously already set his sights at the DI’s job didn’t do a lot to change her mind. Detective inspector posts didn’t come up that often. As bad and all as it was to be losing Coleman Grady to the lure of Cork’s biggest Murder Team, Iris didn’t want to contemplate working under Tony Ahearn for the foreseeable future. She needed to make the grade on this case, the alternative was unthinkable.
‘You should apply for it,’ Slattery had urged her a few weeks earlier when they were both pissed and Grady had told them he’d be heading off to Cork. Slattery had held his gaze steady. ‘You’d be well fit for it, you know.’
‘I’d be really popular. Old Nessie’s daughter who couldn’t see a mystery even when she was in the middle of it…’ she said.
They both knew that she wanted to apply for the post. But in her head, she wasn’t near ready to fill Coleman Grady’s boots, no matter what cajoling Slattery did on her. Then again, neither was Tony Ahearn; he would be insufferable, she could just imagine him swaggering about, leering over the young female officers’ desks. The more thought she gave to the job, the more she wasn’t sure anyone ever really could fill the space if Grady left.
They drove almost a quarter of a mile north of Curlew Hall to a clearing in the woods that afforded parking for most of the volunteers and all of the Gardai vehicles. Tony Ahearn was walking purposefully around the clearing, sly eyes watching as Iris and Slattery made their way from the car. He was tall and perhaps, a decade earlier, had been good-looking, but now his dark hair was thinning and Iris had a feeling he might be dyeing it in some vain attempt to hang onto a youthfulness that had long since been driven away by cigarettes and fast living. His loud voice alternated between barking into a hand-held radio and guffawing inappropriately into the mobile he held close to his ear. Iris wondered if he was sharing dirty jokes with yet another girlfriend.
‘His poor wife,’ Slattery whispered to Iris, his eyes studiously ignoring Ahearn while he said it. ‘She’s the pity of it all.’
‘She should leave him.’ Iris knew she sounded hard, but no one could wa
rn Rita Ahearn, she’d made her bed, and she seemed happy to lie in it. Busy man, Iris thought cynically and she wondered idly if he’d managed to get his shoes dirty in the active search yet.
Ahearn had deployed the team in four basic directions. An experienced garda led each team of searchers, the volunteers silently bringing up the rear, checking beneath undergrowth, perhaps hoping to find a sleeping Eleanor in their path. There were two dogs available locally and he sent one east and the other north. ‘I just figured that at five o’clock in the morning she’d either head for the sun or head straight on from the door she’d exited,’ he said self-importantly.
Cocky as ever, Iris thought. In fairness, there was nothing at the scene to indicate any particular route Eleanor might have taken.
‘How’s things?’ Slattery asked Ahearn as they made their way back towards one of the parked Gardai vans. ‘Any sign?’
‘Well, it’s early yet, and the volunteers are just getting into it…so…’ He was competing with static from the radio. He turned it down, blocking out the constant updates from the various search teams, an in-joke already doing the rounds. Ahearn looked ahead, blue eyes finding it hard to focus too far into the distance. The thicket was as heavy here as in the height of summer, darkness snatching any view from you within yards. It made trying to find Eleanor Marshall here, if she did not want to be found, a complete nightmare.
‘We’re sure she came into the woods?’ Iris asked.
‘Forensics are looking at the prints bordering the edge of Curlew Hall. They’re pretty sure she didn’t travel through the gate headed towards the main road, so she must have headed back through the unlocked door that brings you directly into the woods. She certainly travelled this way at some point. It seems they bought her a couple of pairs of identical wellingtons recently; fresh prints are a perfect match, made after yesterday’s rain. We could only track her as far as the old pillar.’ Ahearn cast his eyes towards the woods behind Slattery. The pillar stood at the entrance to the woods proper, beyond this point the mud ended and a carpet of fallen leaves left little opportunity for muddy tracks.
Why She Ran Page 5