Why She Ran

by Geraldine Hogan

  ‘Please.’ Iris said gently, and she leaned forward in the soft chair.

  ‘I’d got her some clothes, just a few bits and pieces to keep her going. Karena helped me pick out some designer bits, and we’d made a special trip to Limerick just to get a matching outfit. I was so happy taking it into Curlew Hall. They said she’d had a good day before that, and I thought it would be okay for us to go for a little walk. It was May and the woods were in full bloom, I remember feeling such hope.’ Susan looked out the window; perhaps returning to that far-off place for a moment. Sadness crept across her face. ‘One of the staff – an older lady, Mrs Brady, she still works there – said she’d come with us, just for a short stroll. We headed towards the lake, if you can call it that, it’s more like a large gully really.’ Susan looked to the floor, her voice dipped, weighing heavily under the memory. ‘Then out of nowhere, Eleanor just went wild.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Iris asked.

  ‘Well, when she lived here, her frustrations… you could see why she became upset. It was normally something very simple, like she wanted something she couldn’t have or there was that terrible possessiveness of Karena, but this – this was different. We were walking along, myself and Mrs Brady, and we were chatting about how Eleanor might celebrate her birthday and then…’ Susan lifted her head just for a moment; if her husband had been willing her to keep quiet, she wasn’t listening. Her gaze fell in an instant towards her hands, which she began to knead over and back across the soft fabric of her jeans. ‘I think it was the violence of it more than anything else that shocked us. The way she moved. She’d have hauled both of us into the water had she not lost her footing. There was no doubt in my mind it was deliberate and I’d never seen that before. Her rages had always been outbursts. I’m not saying she hadn’t managed to hurt people, but you always knew, you could see – there was a reason, be it jealousy or whatever.’

  ‘But that day?’ Slattery whispered gruffly, his words were hardly audible above the hissing and crackling of a fat log in the fire that had caught aflame suddenly along its surface.

  ‘I think that day she set out to push us into the lake. Maybe it was a prank. I’m not sure anymore. But, yes, I’m afraid that was when it became obvious that she was no longer the little girl she’d been at home.’ She shuddered then, as if the memory had washed over her once more. ‘Sorry.’ She reached for a tissue, perhaps trying to cover up the tears that might force their way to her eyes.

  ‘So they said you shouldn’t visit her anymore?’ Iris said gently.

  ‘Yes.’ Susan nodded. ‘But they’d said it a million times before, only I couldn’t just leave her there…’

  ‘It wasn’t an unusual request in the circumstances.’ Kit bit down on his words, perhaps attempting to keep the defensiveness from his voice. ‘Sending Eleanor to Curlew Hall is probably one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make. We sent her for her own good, not ours.’ Kit looked down at the fire; the flames were skipping high up the Victorian grate. ‘The behaviour experts said our visits were unsettling her, putting two worlds before her when she could hardly deal with one. They said that for whatever chance we had of getting her back on track to work, she needed time to find herself first.’

  ‘They’d been saying it for a while, saying it upset her too much, but yes, that was the day, that day in the woods, I knew they were probably right.’ Susan’s voice was barely an undertone.

  Slattery nodded, silently, as though he somehow understood the loss. It was an unspoken rule; they had to keep these people on side. Iris had to keep reminding herself that Kit Marshall was not an enemy you wanted to make, especially when you were looking for his missing daughter.

  ‘I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you.’ Compassion thickened Iris’s voice so her words were just a murmur lingering in the dead air.

  ‘The police aren’t interested in our sob story, Susan, they just want to do their job,’ Kit cut in, his voice even, his eyes on the two detectives. ‘Anyway, the people at the rehabilitation centre can probably tell you more about her now than we can.’ He held out a hand to Susan who reached across obediently. ‘Susan has a photograph somewhere around here. Maybe that would help?’ He looked across at his wife and it seemed that some unspoken words passed between them, but Iris for the life of her couldn’t imagine what they were.

  ‘That would be great, Mrs Marshall,’ Iris said. ‘We can return it later in the day if you want.’

  ‘You both understand that this is a murder case?’ Slattery asked, and his eyes floated absently from Susan to Kit.

  ‘Yes, it’s very sad. Of course, we’ll be sending our condolences to the family of the poor woman who died.’ Kit Marshall’s voice was smooth, intense and almost honourable.

  ‘Are people looking for Eleanor now?’ Susan asked shakily. ‘They’ve told you about her epilepsy, you know she could…die in one of those seizures?’ Her voice had risen, so there was no mistaking the panic that she was otherwise managing to keep under her well-polished reserve.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Marshall, we’ve a huge team of Gardai out since first light and…’

  ‘Can I join them?’ Her words were a whisper of hope.

  ‘Oh, Susan, I really don’t think…’ Kit Marshall stood abruptly, almost springing from his seat, when Iris cut across him.

  ‘Of course, Mrs Marshall. We have a group of volunteers working with our own team of experienced Gardai searchers; some of the people who worked with her are giving us a hand too. The more people we have searching the better; come along in the morning.’ She paused briefly before adding, ‘But hopefully, we’ll have found her by then.’ Iris tried to sound reassuring and Susan nodded, a small tear scudded past her hand. Her ‘thank you’ was almost silent, caught up so deeply and almost wholly in the anguish of a mother’s grief.

  ‘Do you think that she might try to return here, to her home, to find you both?’ Slattery asked.

  ‘I can’t see that… I mean, if she’s decided to run away, surely home is the last place she’d turn up. What makes you think she might?’ Kit said lightly, but there was a tinge of worry in his expression as he glanced across at his wife.

  ‘Well, it’s the only other place she knows beyond Curlew Hall.’ Slattery sat watching their faces intently for a long silent moment. ‘Either way, be aware that it’s a possibility.’

  ‘Are you telling us to be careful, Sergeant? Are you worried she might try and harm us?’ Kit asked.

  ‘You tell me – do you need to worry?’ Slattery said.

  Kit Marshall shivered and bent to stoke up the fire, sending a rasp of blue smoke into the room.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, have you not listened to a word I said?’ Kit Marshall shouted now, the fear of losing face obviously having lost out to a very different kind of fear. ‘She tried to hurt Karena… Do you not understand…?’ He turned to his wife, as if sharing their stupidity with her. She was at his side in an instant, her hand on his shoulder, it seemed to calm him, his breathing slowed down and he wiped his brow as if he’d just done a hard day’s work.

  ‘Of course we don’t need to worry,’ Susan said sharply. ‘If she comes back here, we’ll let you know. That’s all that there’s to be done. I’m sure it’s all just a big mix-up and when she turns up, we’ll have it all ironed out very quickly.’

  ‘Now.’ Slattery smiled; a complex contortion of his features that held no joy, but had just enough warmth to alert them that he was moving on. ‘We’ll need to speak with Karena next.’

  ‘Karena? I hardly think that you’ll learn anything more from her, after all, she’s only a child.’ Kit Marshall folded his arms stubbornly.

  ‘Even so.’ Iris nodded towards the door and, with a sigh, Susan Marshall walked towards the hall and called the child in. It took only a few seconds for Karena to appear in the doorway, a frightened expression in her eyes.

  ‘We just need a few words, pet,’ Slattery said.

  ‘Is she all right? Are you
here about Eleanor? Have you found her yet?’ Her voice was a tremble, just about holding back from falling into an emotional abyss that was far too complex and deep for any kid to navigate.

  ‘We’re searching the woods for her now. A huge team of people, all doing their best to find her,’ Iris said gently. ‘We just need to know if you can tell us anything.’

  ‘Me?’ Karena was perched on a sofa, as if ready to take flight at any moment. Everything about her was dainty, doll-like and expensive. Her ash-blonde hair fell in loose waves about her delicate features. China-blue eyes, whiter-than-white teeth and tanned limbs combined to make her the slightly lighter, brighter version of her beautiful sister. ‘But I… I was here; I haven’t seen Eleanor in over a year… I haven’t a clue about any of this.’ She gulped then, a huge tear making its way down her cheek.

  ‘It’s okay, we know that, it’s just…’ Slattery leaned forward.

  ‘Look, you’re the only one she talked to each week. Your phone call each weekend was the only contact she had with the outside world, so far as we can tell.’

  ‘Oh,’ Karena said and her expression dissolved into the tears and worry she’d been working so hard to keep at bay. ‘We spoke every Saturday,’ she said between sobs, glancing for a moment at her father. ‘Not about anything really, just about how she was feeling, what she’d done all week. Sometimes, she’d tell me about some of the girls who lived across from her.’

  ‘Did she ever mention Rachel McDermott?’

  ‘She liked her. I think she liked her a lot. Rachel was kind and I think she was younger than some of the staff there, so they sort of clicked.’ She smiled then, a convoluted movement of her pretty features as it fought against the tears. ‘Yes, I think she was really fond of Rachel.’

  ‘Is there anywhere she’d be likely to go?’ Slattery asked. ‘If she got out, did she ever mention anywhere she’d be likely to run away to?’

  ‘No,’ Karena said a little too quickly, her eyes searching the carpet for too long and Iris, for one, had the distinct impression that this was a conversation the sisters had had quite a number of times.

  ‘It’s important, Karena, really important. It could mean the difference between finding her alive and well and…’ Iris let her words trail off, she didn’t really need to explain about Eleanor’s epilepsy or the fact that it was possible that whoever murdered Rachel McDermott could be out there, right now doing their best to find Eleanor.

  ‘Don’t you think I know that, Inspector?’ the girl said and then she looked towards her mother with an unreadable expression that Iris had a feeling meant she was lying through her perfectly straightened teeth.

  Seven

  The coroner’s office had transferred Rachel McDermott’s body to the county hospital and there, in the near-empty morgue, Harry Prendergast had started his day’s work early. A mortuary assistant, he’d seen as much as any of them and probably far more than he ever wanted to see. Harry had been around as long as Slattery and these days he shuffled about slowly, eyeing the door, as if perhaps waiting for the day when he could walk out of there into retirement.

  ‘Busy day.’ He smiled happily from the opposite side of the desk and Iris wondered if she and Slattery looked anywhere near pleased to be here. They knew each other of old, and time was precious, so their small talk was brief. Iris looked at Harry’s yellowing teeth and grey skin. He cleared his throat and placed his hands together, cracking eight fingers one after the other away from his torso. Whether he was gearing up for a day’s work or for eating the mammoth beef roll that lounged in cling wrap before him, Iris couldn’t say. ‘Hungry work.’ He smiled at her, and not for the first time she wondered if he could read her mind.

  The gentle click of the door at Iris’s back announced the arrival of Rafiq Ahmed, the pathologist and someone Iris had warmed to from the first moment they’d been introduced. Ahmed was around her age, early thirties, thin and symmetrically featured. He might have walked off a movie set, but for the fact that he was a little short to be considered a leading man. Always dapper, Ahmed was one of the few medical men Iris had ever met whose scrubs looked as if they had been designed by a couture house. He was the antithesis of Prendergast who, after pulling out the rough notes that had been hastily put together to brief them and laying the five handwritten sheets of paper in a line on Ahmed’s desk, unwrapped his sandwich.

  ‘Miss McDermott was in overall good health for her age,’ Ahmed began.

  ‘What age was she?’Prendergast asked.

  ‘Just twenty,’ Slattery said. ‘Bloody awful waste.’

  ‘She obviously looked after herself, there’s no sign of any damage to organs due to lifestyle choices.’ He glanced across at Prendergast.

  ‘What the good doctor is saying is that she neither smoked nor drank and she kept herself fairly fit. There’s no sign of any drugs yet, but we have to get the pathology results back to confirm that.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Slattery cleared his throat. ‘And yet, here we are.’

  Rachel McDermott was dead and the only thing Iris wanted to hear was that she hadn’t been killed by Eleanor Marshall. She and Slattery had argued it over and back on the journey from the station. He, in typical Slattery humour, refused to see beyond the fact that Eleanor had the opportunity and perhaps a motive. Iris tried her best to argue that at just about five feet, she would have to have phenomenal strength to wield a sledgehammer with the force that it took to inflict those injuries.

  ‘Yes. Well, even Mr Incredible couldn’t survive the kind of attack that our victim received. Multiple blows, many after she’d fallen and probably already lost consciousness, but…’ Ahmed sent a ten-by-eight black-and-white photograph sliding across the desk. ‘This seems to have been the lethal one.’ He got up after they had a chance to examine it, leading the way into the autopsy suite where Rachel McDermott’s body lay on an examination table. ‘I completed the examination just half an hour before you arrived – I’m afraid I’m due to travel to Tipperary in the next hour…’

  ‘Can you tell from the blows if our killer was shorter or taller than the victim?’ Slattery put the question that Iris hadn’t wanted to ask.

  ‘You’re wondering if it could have been the Marshall girl?’ Ahmed smiled. ‘Ah, if I could tell you that, then I suspect it would take all the fun out of things for you, Sergeant Slattery.’

  ‘It’s possible so?’ Iris asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s possible. The first blow brought her down, she landed on her knees – from the blood spatter and prints – gripping onto the side of the sink. Then, with the remaining blows, she fell to the floor. The first blow wasn’t to her head, it was here—’ He pointed to the victim’s back on the X-ray screen. ‘At Rachel McDermott’s height, anyone over four feet eleven could have served the blow easily. So, yes, it’s possible that when you find the Marshall girl, you’ve found your killer,’ Ahmed said, switching off the X-ray screen with a resigned flick. ‘Now.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I need to be making tracks…’

  ‘Oh, that house fire?’

  ‘Yes. A couple and their grandchild, parents were away for the weekend and the fire officer is saying a candle may have been the cause of—’

  ‘Oh, how awful,’ Iris said and she exhaled deeply, the memory of death and fire too fresh in her mind not to send shivers through her. It was only weeks since Jack Locke had set fire to their home and himself and not much longer since she’d attended her first case with the Murder Team only to find that the victims were her own flesh and blood.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ Ahmed touched her arm.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine.’ It was a lie, but it was the one she was expected to say, and maybe if she said it often enough, it would become the truth.

  ‘Right.’ Prendergast pulled back the plastic cover to reveal Rachel McDermott’s bruised remains. Now, while the blood, vomit and fluids had been washed away, the bruising from earlier had settled in mottled patches around her upper body and most prominently around her hea
d. ‘It’s as you’d expect, the first blow probably put her down.’ He pointed to a deep bruise blackening the skin at the area of her back that coincided roughly with Rachel’s lung. It would have literally winded her. ‘The rest were inflicted doubtless in frenzy, but there was some force here…’ He paused for a moment. ‘This was inflicted with the force of a madman.’

  ‘Or woman?’ Slattery asked.

  ‘Yes, it could as easily have been inflicted by a woman.’ Prendergast nodded and Ahmed agreed.

  ‘Thank you for that helpful if perhaps graphic assessment.’ Ahmed stood at the top of the examination table; he took a laser pointer from his jacket pocket. ‘This wound, on her occipital bone, would have been enough to kill her within minutes. When we took a closer look, it struck directly into the centre of her brain – that would have rendered her unconscious almost immediately and instantly cut off oxygen to her brain, shutting down everything rapidly from her breath to her heartbeat.’

  ‘Anything you can tell us that might give us more than she was assaulted by a nasty brute?’ Slattery asked, peering closely at the victim’s face, which was still, thanks to the patchwork of black, yellow and blue bruising, all but unrecognisable.

  ‘We have a few occasions across the victim’s body where the weapon has imparted a print. Prendergast has traced those, so they’ll give you a copy of the weapon’s appearance – we can say that it’s certainly hammer-like in design and probably old. I checked with the lab. There’s no trace of the kind of finish you’d expect to have left had it been a newly minted hammer head. You’re looking for something that came from a tool shed, probably unused, as there are traces of rust here.’ He ran the laser along the temple bone, but all that was visible now was bruising and a series of neat stitches that had been carefully inserted to try and keep the victim’s face in as good a shape as possible for her family to view the following day. ‘And that’s about it.’ Ahmed flicked off his little red beam and placed it in his pocket again before leading them back to the adjoining office. ‘Of course, I’ll have the complete report for you hopefully by tomorrow morning. I’ll email it tonight when I get a chance to reread what I’ve just noted down today,’ Ahmed said, gathering up his notes and placing them neatly in his man bag.