Why She Ran

by Geraldine Hogan

  Harry peered into the half-empty mug before him and then looked hopefully across at Iris. Slattery’s low cough reminded him to think better of it. The days of sending the woman to make the tea were well and truly at an end and it was no secret that Harry didn’t think all change was necessarily good change. He swished the fast-cooling liquid around the cup before draining it dejectedly.

  ‘So, no drugs, unless pathology comes back with something recent,’ Iris said, although she hadn’t expected to find anything in Rachel’s bloodstream. ‘How long will the reports from the technical bureau take?’ she asked Slattery. Almost all the fingerprinting was completed now; hundreds of sets of prints, including some that they believed may be from Eleanor Marshall.

  ‘Well, Kenny sent the fingerprints out earlier. They’ll start analysing them today, so… I’d say within the next three days. All things considered it shouldn’t take too long, the samples are fairly straightforward. It’s just the large quantity that are going to cause delays.’

  ‘Yes, yes…’ Ahmed raised his head from the notes before him. ‘Yes, beyond that, on her arms and abdomen there are a number of bruises, about a week old, you might want to check those out, but otherwise it’s down to that trauma to her head.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Slattery said.

  ‘Of course, the Marshall girl is still implicated at this rate. I haven’t uncovered much to help you there. Are you any closer to finding her, do you think?’ Ahmed rested his glasses across the notes.

  ‘No, we’ve a huge search party in the woods but—’

  ‘What about the marks?’ Iris looked across at Ahmed, ignoring Harry. ‘You said there were marks on her arms and stomach.’

  ‘The marks could be from anything, but they look like they could be blows or bruising from some kind of fight.’

  ‘Self-defence?’

  ‘I can’t say for definite, you know that, sergeant.’ Ahmed smiled.

  ‘I suppose that Marshall girl would have known how to use her fists,’ Harry said flatly.

  Iris cast a dark eye at Harry. ‘Less of the past tense, if you don’t mind.’ She wanted to rage at him.

  ‘All I’m saying is that Rachel McDermott doesn’t look like the kind of girl who went in for boxing or street fighting. It’s going to be easy enough to see if they were inflicted by Eleanor Marshall, places like Curlew Hall always keep a record of any kind of physical outbursts, especially if it’s against staff – I’m sure they’ll have had their fair share of insurance claims over the years.’

  ‘Those marks, the bruising – they could have been there a while, don’t just presume they happened yesterday.’ Ahmed looked across at Prendergast now. ‘They could be picked up from a fall – she was a fit young woman, who’s to say she wasn’t hill walking or mountain climbing on her days off.’

  ‘Well, it’s something for us to look into anyway.’ Slattery glanced towards Iris meaningfully. We can follow it up. He didn’t need to say it aloud. They planned to go back to the residential unit anyway; interviews were being set up with every staff member who had worked with Eleanor and Rachel. They could check it out then. The kids would be more difficult, they’d need parental permission and a social worker present; Iris wasn’t having a statement pulled just because they hadn’t done things by the book. She planned to do a lot of the questioning in the unit itself. Thankfully, Byrne had not yet begun to tie her up in budget meetings or the many other desk-bound duties that he’d foisted on Grady over the years. Most of the team had been allocated to searching the woods. The main objective now was to find Eleanor. Within the search team, hope was fading fast that they could find her alive, but they had to keep going, stay optimistic. Without hope there was nothing.

  ‘It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?’ Slattery was fingering the mug of cold coffee before him, delicately, the action out of sync with his voice and posture. Something in his words made both Iris and Ahmed lean closer to hear what he had to say next.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harry leaned back in his seat, awaiting words of wisdom from a fellow philosopher on the sometimes abrupt ending of life.

  ‘Well, you know who she is, don’t you?’ He looked at Harry.

  ‘Rachel McDermott?’

  ‘Yes, Rachel McDermott. You do know who she is, don’t you?’

  ‘Not the foggiest.’

  ‘She’s Imelda McDermott’s girl, well, you know…’

  ‘Imelda McDermott. There’s a name I haven’t heard for a while.’

  ‘I bet you haven’t thought about her in years.’

  Iris looked between the two men, bewildered. ‘Well, is this a secret? Was she an old girlfriend or something?’

  Harry smiled. ‘Not quite, but we did cross paths at one point, that was back in old Professor Waddington’s day. I’d say Ahmed here was still in primary school last I heard of Imelda McDermott.’ Harry looked at Iris, seeing beyond this case to a post mortem that had taken place many years ago. ‘Healthiest man in Ireland,’ he announced to no one in particular, or maybe just thinking aloud.

  ‘Who is the healthiest man in Ireland?’ Iris asked.

  ‘Not is, was. Imelda’s husband was the healthiest man in Ireland, bar the fact that he was dead of course.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Iris set down her notebook before her.

  ‘It’s a long time ago, or at least if feels like it now anyway. A fine woman in her day, good-looking—’

  ‘Ah come on, Harry – she had a face like a poker,’ Slattery interrupted.

  ‘Not to my memory. She was hardworking, but a tough woman. There was harshness in her that you don’t generally see in mothers and certainly not in widows.’ The smile was beginning to vanish and Harry closed his eyes, perhaps to get a better picture in his mind. ‘William McDermott died from no apparent cause; he was only thirty-nine, with the healthy heart of a twenty-year-old. The usual suspects – heart attack, disease, trauma of any sort, none applied. The professor even tested for poisons, thinking maybe he decided to end things quickly himself – men of a certain age, and all that – but there was nothing, no apparent cause of death. It was a mystery to this day…sort of.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, everyone dies of something. Some people are lucky enough to die of old age, with some it’s an aneurysm, with others I think it can genuinely be a broken heart, but not with Mr McDermott.’ His fingers stretched across the desk, and he paused a moment, seemingly wondering how to phrase his next sentence. ‘I believe Mr McDermott, the healthiest man in Ireland, died of marital problems.’

  ‘Hold on a minute, you’re not saying you thought Imelda McDermott killed her husband?’ Iris held her hand up, this had come completely out of the blue.

  ‘It’s what we believed at the time,’ Prendergast said slowly.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you mention this to me before we went to see her?’ Iris turned on Slattery.

  ‘I didn’t want us both to have a clouded judgement.’

  ‘So, I can’t be fair-minded now?’ Iris wanted to hit him over his fat head with the nearest thing to her, but she knew she couldn’t let her temper boil over here; apart from all the professional reasons, she was not giving Slattery ammunition so he could wind her up at a future moment when he felt the need to amuse himself.

  ‘I never said that,’ Slattery replied softly. ‘To be fair, Iris, there was no case to bring against her, nothing to prove.’

  ‘Slattery’s right. If Imelda McDermott killed her husband, there wasn’t a shred of evidence, that’s why we often joked he died of connubial complications.’

  ‘Is it possible the daughter died of maternal complications?’ Of course, that was madness. She could no more imagine Imelda McDermott taking a hammer to her daughter’s head than she could imagine her murdering her husband all those years ago. But then again…

  ‘I can’t see her as a murderer, never did, not from the start, but it’s a very unfortunate coincidence, don’t you think?’ Slattery hated coincidences almo
st as much as he hated pioneers.

  Eight

  The forecast for the next few hours was not good. They had to find Eleanor, and soon, as dark clouds were rolling across the sky by lunchtime.

  ‘We need to talk to Hegarty – he was there on the night, if not in that unit, he was certainly within the grounds and he has to know something more than I got out of him that first morning.’

  Slattery had started the car before Iris had even managed to properly get into it. Iris sensed that Slattery’s mind was racing ahead. The search team working under Sergeant Tony Ahearn in the woodland surrounding Curlew Hall had only a limited number of daylight hours, and the next few were crucial. The people at the care home estimated Eleanor could have had at least one grand mal seizure at this stage and that was assuming she was getting her medication properly. The truth was, that just because the meds were gone, it didn’t mean that Eleanor had them, nor did it mean she would actually take them in time. Grand mal, the words raged through Iris’s mind. From what little she remembered from learning French at school, she knew they meant big and bad. The staff at Curlew Hall said that’s exactly what they were. Eleanor would lose consciousness and of course she could injure herself as she fell to the ground. There was a high possibility that she could die either by choking or from the seizure itself. They didn’t hold out a lot of hope for her without those crucial pills, Iris could see it in their eyes. Please find her soon.

  The Marshalls had rung every other hour at this point; June was fending off their calls, but really, it was a matter of turning over every branch and bush until they found her. It was as if she’d disappeared into thin air and that thought bothered Iris more than anything. After all, surely, someone would have spotted a girl on foot in the woods? Then she would toss over the idea of a ransom, but with the Marshalls checking up so regularly, she had to assume that there had been no contact from a potential kidnapper. They’d organised a press conference for later and Iris could only hope that involving the general public might be enough to track Eleanor down.

  ‘Pardy?’ Iris shouted into the phone, her patience a skinny wedge. ‘I want you to pull any information Curlew Hall has on Eleanor Marshall – her personal file, psychology reports, behaviour reports, everything. I want to know all we can about her.’

  She looked across at Slattery. This case had to be especially hard for him. Everyone knew about his murdered sister. He never talked about it, but it went with the territory of the Murder Squad, there were no secrets here. Una Slattery had been just nineteen when she was beaten to death in a little flat in the centre of Limerick. At the time Slattery was still at school – powerless, really. The family had neither money nor knowledge to track down the killer after the investigation had drawn a blank. Whatever had happened to his sister, Iris knew, as sure as she was sitting here, the spirit of that young woman infused this and any similar investigation with Slattery. We’ve all got our demons, he had once said, and she’d wondered just how far into her soul he had seen.

  ‘Well,’ she said flatly, ‘so much for records… they don’t seem to be able to locate her file… apparently, they’re looking for it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be the one telling Kit Marshall that.’ Slattery shook his head ominously. ‘I wonder how Ahearn is getting on.’

  ‘Next call,’ Iris said, scrolling down to find the sergeant’s number. Tony Ahearn answered on the second ring, as if he’d been standing poised over the phone waiting for her call.

  ‘Nothing. We’re fanning out the search further, the chances of damaging the ground are lessening with the rain we’ve just had on and off out here, that’ll do enough damage all on its own. Now, we’re looking for anything: a catch of hair on a branch or a discarded bag, anything that might point us in the right direction…’ His voice trailed off. They really had nothing, and depressing and all as that was, it was even more disheartening to think that they were looking for traces rather than the girl herself. ‘Anyway, it’s getting darker now, so we’ll be calling a halt pretty soon,’ he continued. ‘They’ve set up a table here, with hot soup and rolls for the searchers…’

  ‘Who organised all that?’

  ‘Some of the people from Curlew Hall, I think,’ Ahearn said absently.

  ‘No, keep them searching, try not to break until the light has gone. Spread it out as far as possible. Bugger the overtime, I’ll worry about that.’ She jammed a thumb against the red button of her mobile and ended the call.

  ‘Anything?’ Slattery asked. He knew, of course, that there was no sign of Eleanor Marshall. He was asking only out of commitment to the vague hope.

  ‘No.’ Iris flicked into her emails. There at the top was a message from Byrne – well, she might as well get used to it. It went with the territory when you were in charge of an investigation, maybe more so when that investigation had an impact on someone as well connected as Kit Marshall. ‘Byrne wants to meet,’ she said eventually. She’d scanned through the email twice, drawing as much from its tone as the words. Marshall had made it clear he wanted to control how the media was involved and Byrne was passing on the message as neutrally as he could, but only because he was too wily to confer his opinions on written correspondence

  ‘Budget?’ It usually was. Still, they weren’t spending anything that didn’t need to be spent. These were difficult times, as Byrne liked to remind them with regular memos and lectures.

  ‘No, not the notorious tighten-the-purse-strings sermon. I’ve a feeling it’s something I’m going to like even less than that lecture.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Kit Marshall.’ It was all she needed to say. Marshall was friends with the commissioner, probably had the minister for defence on speed dial; they were all in the same big boys’ club. She looked across at Slattery now, knowing only too well that he couldn’t give a damn what Marshall or anyone else thought of him. ‘I think he wants to make sure he finds Eleanor, but doesn’t want her disappearance linked to the death of Rachel McDermott.’

  ‘Well, that’s fair enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yep, I suppose it is,’ she said softly, but what she was thinking was: if Eleanor had already tried to hurt her sister and set fire to a house with someone inside, managing to avoid any major court case thanks to her daddy’s money, did Kit Marshall think he could brush the death of Rachel McDermott under the carpet as easily?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Iris, but remember, all we need to do now is find her alive. We’ll worry about charging her with murder after we question her and put a case together. If she killed Rachel McDermott, well, we have a job to do and that’s all we have to worry about.’ Then he smiled a little wryly. ‘Well, that’s all I have to worry about, now you’re the officer in charge, you might have to think about how we’re handling him.’

  ‘You think Byrne asked me to lead this out because I’d do what I was told?’ That rankled with her too: did he think she’d roll over for Marshall when it came down to it?

  ‘I didn’t say that, but let’s face it, I wouldn’t exactly be renowned for toeing the line just because Byrne told me to.’

  ‘Christ.’ Iris felt a trickle of sweat run down her back. Was that what they really thought of her? That she so badly wanted into the Murder Team and promotion that she’d do anything to get ahead? ‘And if I don’t, what’s the worst they can do to us? Take us off the case? Move the investigation to another team?’ She was thinking out loud, trying hard to remember Byrne’s words – all he talked about was making sure that they followed procedure, nothing more.

  ‘Why would they, Iris? Why would they?’ He paused and she willed him not to say what they were both thinking. He did. ‘She’s probably dead anyway.’

  ‘But we don’t know that. They don’t know that,’ Iris said. They couldn’t give up, not while there was still a chance.

  ‘Look, the people who know her well, you can see it in their faces. You saw it for yourself, Iris, they believe they’re searching for a body.’

  ‘So
? They could be wrong.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Anyway, we both know that Kit Marshall doesn’t want a daughter with a criminal conviction, we’ve seen that already.’ A small smile played around Slattery’s tired mouth. ‘They won’t take us off it, because look at us – you’re damaged goods and I’m the legendary Corbally waste of space. In some ways, we’re both dead men walking, aren’t we?’ His voice was low, not defeated, but smelling a struggle.

  ‘If that’s what they think, they’re sadly mistaken.’ Iris sounded more confident than she actually felt. Finding Eleanor Marshall was like searching for a mackerel called Mary in the Atlantic. They both knew that as each minute ticked by the chances of her safe return diminished enormously.

  ‘Anyway, it’s not all down to Kit Marshall,’ he said before glancing at her. ‘The girl has a mother too, doesn’t she?’

  ‘What about Susan though? She’s a funny fish…’ Instantly Iris regretted the words. Susan Marshall was in shock; she’d probably spent a lifetime missing the daughter that had been sent away ostensibly for her own good. But then, Iris knew, it was the way they spoke about their two daughters – Karena so perfect, Eleanor painted as the black sheep. ‘She’s a mother. Surely she wants more for her daughter than always being the almost ran?’

  Susan Marshall had hardly said a word during their meeting at the grand house. Her empty eyes had searched the room for somewhere to land without staying too long in one spot. Iris had never met such a shadow of a person. It was as if she had always been only the wife of a wealthy man – there didn’t seem to be any other dimension to her. But that was unfair, she was judging her on what she’d found online about the couple. Susan Marshall had come from one of the most deprived council estates in Limerick – the Cloisters. She’d managed, somehow, to dig her way out and had been lucky enough to fall into the path of Kit Marshall. Theirs seemed to be a stable and happy union, with plenty of evidence across the local papers of them at various fundraisers and charity galas. Long gone was the girl from the Cloisters, it seemed, in almost every way – her voice, her appearance and, of course, her social standing, all a million miles from where she’d started out. As they’d got up to leave, Susan had tugged her sleeve, her deep-green eyes piercing through Iris. ‘You find her, find her for me.’ She felt sorry for Susan Marshall for so much more than just her missing daughter.