Why She Ran

by Geraldine Hogan

  ‘So, busy day drinking tea with Mrs McDermott?’ she said, slipping easily into the long bench opposite Slattery.

  ‘Well, it was interesting,’ he said, pushing over a creamy glass of Guinness for her to sample. She was not a porter drinker, but Slattery insisted on buying her one whenever they were in a bar he considered could put up a decent sample.

  ‘You’re trying to get me hooked on this stuff.’ She grimaced as she tasted it. She actually liked the creamy top, but everything about the black Guinness, from its smell to its taste, reminded her of Jack Locke. ‘And I’m telling you now, it won’t work.’

  ‘Never say never,’ he said, leaning forward.

  They must have looked an odd pair, Iris thought, if anyone was bothered noticing them. Slattery hardened by life and fattened by too much time in the pub, while she had become a shadow of the woman she’d been only months before, reluctant to fill out the same big space that once seemed to be her right.

  ‘It seems that there is a connection between Rachel and Karena and it may go all the way back to Marshall,’ said Slattery.

  ‘Go on.’ Iris found herself taking another sip, although she’d had no intention of touching the drink before her again.

  ‘Well, you know there’s some confusion concerning the gap between Rachel’s date of birth and her father’s death?’

  ‘Yes, I knew that,’ Iris said softly, it was no big deal anymore… not like it might have been twenty or thirty years earlier.

  ‘Rachel was “overdue” by about three months. I suppose, back then, people just brushed it under the carpet. She was given her mother’s name, which was Imelda’s deceased husband’s name and they all got on with things.’

  ‘She’s not…’ Iris shook her head. She couldn’t imagine old Mrs McDermott having it off with Kit Marshall.

  ‘No, he’s not, but obviously she knew that William McDermott wasn’t her father from a young age and then at some point Kit Marshall called to the house. Imelda had won some sort of raffle at work, a Christmas hamper sponsored by Marshall – apparently, there was a photo in the paper. Knowing Marshall, it’d be milked for all it was worth. He made quite the impression on young Rachel, giving her a couple of bob on his way out the door and from then on, Rachel was convinced that Marshall was her father.’

  ‘Wishful thinking?’ Iris shuddered, because she’d never met a man she’d like less as a father. ‘Didn’t her mother ever sit her down and say, listen…?’

  ‘I’m sure she did, but I think by the time she realised, it was too late. Rachel had already built up this whole fantasy and Imelda thinks it was all tied into the reason she was so very fond of Eleanor Marshall. She thought—’

  ‘She thought they were sisters?’ Iris shook her head sadly.

  ‘Can we use words like illegitimate anymore?’ Slattery shook his head, as far as he was concerned it was a world gone PC mad. ‘Anyway, when she started working in Curlew Hall, her mother didn’t initially see the connection, but then one evening she mentioned something about Kit Marshall and she realised…’

  ‘Rachel had contacted them?’

  ‘Well, she believes she contacted Marshall, who of course would have denied responsibility, but she has no proof one way or another.’ Slattery traced the condensation down the side of his pint glass, it was almost empty but he was too pensive to register that he’d need another one soon. ‘Imelda said she came home one evening on a complete high, as if she’d just won the lottery.’ Slattery sighed.

  ‘The money in the envelope?’

  ‘Not exactly. She told Imelda that she finally had what he needed. Proof that – you’re not going to believe this—’

  ‘Come on Slattery, spit it out,’ Iris said.

  ‘She had managed to get proof that Kit Marshall was her father.’

  ‘And is he?’

  ‘Of course he’s bloody not. Her father was a man who had lived four houses down. He had half a dozen kids and a wife who worked herself to the bone. When Imelda was pregnant, he scarpered, leaving his own family and Imelda in the lurch. As far as Imelda knows, he never made any contact with any of them since.’

  Slattery nodded to the barman, just a pint. Iris still had most of her glass still to go. She’d have loved coffee, but knew it was unlikely they’d have anything bar tea bags and a kettle.

  ‘Different times, Iris, those were different times.’ He shook his head.

  ‘So how could she have proof that Kit Marshall was her father?’

  ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? But when she found that file in their spare room, Imelda said she just had a funny feeling that it – or something in it – must be connected to these notions Rachel was having.’

  ‘It’s a big leap from there to blackmail, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know it’s only a very tenuous connection, but there’s no way that the Marshalls are going to pay out money to someone just because they’re making a wild claim which is easily refutable with a simple DNA test. I can’t see how it fits, apart from the fact that it does give us a connection of sorts.’

  ‘It’s a pretty big coincidence all right.’ Iris sighed, sitting back for a moment against the uncomfortable bench.

  The barman had left Slattery’s pint to settle on the bar and she was struck, not for the first time, that it was something of a ritual, pouring what Slattery considered a decent pint. He turned, following her eyes.

  ‘In some ways, it’s like she’s the third of his daughters to be caught up in this, even if she’s not.’ She let her words drift off between them.

  ‘Would you have wanted one?’ he said, his gaze falling back down to the hardly touched glass before her. ‘I’m sure they have crisps and soft drinks here.’ He shook his head, just his luck to get stuck with a lightweight drinker.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, although she could feel her stomach rumbling and couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

  ‘Iris, you’re many things, but at this moment in time, you’re not fine,’ Slattery said softly, ‘but we’ll get you there yet.’

  Something in his eyes made her feel as if there was the smallest chance he might be right.

  Thirty

  Day 7

  Iris rubbed her tired eyes. She should go for a walk, move around, she knew that. She was almost drifting off now – the second time reading the case book wasn’t throwing up anything she didn’t already know. The clock told her it was three twenty in the afternoon, but she’d pulled down the blinds earlier in an attempt to stop her mind drifting out across the city. Now, it might as well be the middle of the night. It was all the same at this point. At night, in Mrs Leddy’s uncomfortable bed, she’d just toss and turn, and during the day it felt as if she was pushing herself through a concrete wall just to hit some kind of normal pace. She needed sleep, proper sleep – she knew now it was never going to happen until she found Eleanor Marshall. Maybe, she knew too, here in her sleep-deprived state, that she needed a home, somewhere to call her own, that wasn’t tainted by the past and didn’t feel like a halfway house. She needed to move on in some way. This never-never land she’d been existing in – a kind of holding pen between past and present – she would have to find some way of breaking out of it. She would, she promised herself then, just as soon as this case was finished. She’d go and look for a new flat, maybe a small cottage, near the water. Somewhere with an open fire and the sound of the waves in the distance; she’d have to rent, of course, idyllic hideaways don’t come cheap.

  She shook her head – the reality of the incident room outside pulling her from her daydream. Iris swung her squeaking chair about and pulled the blinds up once more, revealing a cloud-covered Limerick. This window looked directly down on the car park below, but ahead, she could see the slates of a thousand roofs stretching out towards the skyline. The car park was fenced in on all sides, between Corbally and the administrative branch buildings for the Mid-West region. She’d completed a work experience there many years ago as a student; it seemed
like a lifetime ago now. She couldn’t imagine actually working there, insulated from the fabric of what it really meant to be a garda.

  She turned back again to the file, flipped it closed. She would check Rachel’s bank accounts. They were lucky, the bank had been very forthcoming, working with the McDermott family. Iris could log into Rachel’s accounts and see every single transaction on both her debit and credit card. Iris had changed her passwords; the original hadn’t matched the string of numbers they’d found taped to the back of the picture in her bedroom. Now, the pass code was her case-file number, prior to this, Rachel had used her phone number. Those numbers on the picture still gnawed at Iris, but at least they’d managed to track down every other payment Rachel had made from her wages over the last six months. One of the uniforms was still working through records prior to that, but she couldn’t imagine there being much there to see. Rachel had been a cash girl. She’d withdrawn two to three hundred euro every time her wages hit her account, presumably, she paid for all her running expenses in cash. The only real payments from the account were bills like her car loan, her Netflix and a couple of subscriptions to animal welfare sites that she donated to.

  Iris trawled through the older transactions, skipping over mundane occasional debit-card spends for things she assumed to be fuel and just before last Christmas a large payment to a local clothes shop – probably enough for a suit or a jacket– and then there was PayPal.

  She searched through the case book once more. There had been no mention of a PayPal account among the myriad other details. Of course, most people use PayPal on their laptops, she reasoned, so it wasn’t necessarily an account they’d have come across immediately. Iris sat for a moment, wondering about this – there was nothing sinister in it, but it needed to be checked out. It was just one payment, insignificant over the course of the investigation, just thirty-five euro, but there was no room in this case for dark corners or unanswered questions. She picked up the phone immediately and rang a detective she’d worked with a few years earlier who had gone into the fraud squad and was always happy to help out if she needed it.

  ‘Ciara, I need to track down a PayPal account, can we do that?’

  ‘Sure. How are you keeping? I heard about… well, you know.’ Ciara sounded tense; Iris was getting used to it now. People didn’t know quite what to say to her after the death of Jack Locke and then when details of the lies around her whole identity had emerged.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m fine, just getting on with things.’

  ‘I wanted to call, but…’

  ‘It’s okay, I know, people don’t know what to say…I get it, really. I’ve been trying to get things straight in my own head. I can’t imagine anyone else being able to find the right words.’

  ‘Well, at least I can do this for you,’ Ciara said brightly, ‘shout what you know of the account holder’s details.’

  ‘It’s a case I’m working on at the moment,’ Iris said and then gave Ciara Rachel’s bank account details and her email address.

  ‘This is going to be easy – you have almost everything, leave it with me, I’ll be back to you within the hour.’

  Iris rang off and, not for the first time, wondered what her life might have become if she’d done as Jack Locke had always wanted for her and joined a nice white-collar unit instead of choosing to get her hands dirty in the Murder Team. She managed to nod off with these thoughts careering around her sleep-deprived brain, only to be woken minutes later by the shrill of her mobile.

  ‘Right, back again. Now, they’re lovely in PayPal – I’ve got a contact there and he’ll just give you anything with the tap of a couple of keys.’ The fact that Ciara had buckets of charm probably didn’t hurt, Iris thought. ‘He’s sent me on a statement of everything that’s come out of that account, but it’s not much. It looks like your girl used it to buy a piece of vintage jewellery on eBay and then there’s two more payments, both of them to a crowd who rent lockers. They’re based in Limerick and it looks like she’s had it for about a year. Any good to you?’

  ‘Yes, I think it might be, can you send on the statement with…’

  ‘Already in your inbox,’ Ciara said brightly. ‘Now, when you’re up to it, we’ll have to meet up, promise?’

  ‘Next time I’m in Dublin, that’s a promise,’ Iris said, hanging up the phone.

  When she looked at her emails, there was a list of half a dozen transactions sent directly from Ciara. She tracked down a number for ‘Lockerby’ easily and rang to see what she could find out. Suddenly the day ahead seemed to brighten just a little.

  Slattery was soaked when he came back from wherever he’d been hiding for most of the day. Iris hoped that his disappearing act had something to do with helping Maureen, but she wasn’t in the mood for having her head eaten off by asking, so instead she told him he could come with her if he felt like it. He didn’t need to be asked twice.

  Limerick University is one of those strange combinations of dynamic campus in an almost rural location. It’s located on the River Shannon, far enough away from the city to be picturesque, close enough to be bustling. Iris cut through the drive, turning off into a parking area just short of the Glucksman Library. Almost every building on the campus is relatively ‘new’. Iris felt it was something to be thankful for, she’d never found the realms of academia particularly welcoming and the smell of old buildings now would remind her too much of days spent trawling through museums and country houses with her father.

  A young articulate porter dressed in khakis and fleece happily escorted them to the lockers. The company who leased the lockers had obviously told him they were on their way. He led them eagerly, talking about the building and the fact that he’d always assumed the lockers were only held by students. Perhaps he expected a grisly find when Rachel’s locker was opened, but Slattery had barked at him to leave them alone when they arrived in the bright but empty corridor filled on one side with the row of red doors crammed together, as much a statement of modernity as of security. Sure enough, each of the lockers was secured with a numbered padlock. Number ninety-four was halfway along, on the bottom row. Iris quickly took out her phone, and bent down to the locker.

  ‘I’m not sure we’re meant to be doing that now,’ Slattery said, but there was a catch of playfulness in his flat voice.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Storing evidence photographs on our personal phones. Haven’t you been banging on about GDPR louder than any of us?’ He shook his head, mock ruefully. ‘Tut, tut.’

  ‘Well, let’s keep it as our little secret, yeah?’ Iris said. Of course, she could have taken the photo of the numbers on her police phone, perhaps she’d get used to using it before Grady returned to take it over again. She dialled out the code on the lock with her examination-gloved fingers, waiting a beat for the tiniest click at the end. Slattery too was down on his knees now, waiting to see what this would yield. Iris slid the lock off and drew open the door. Almost empty, apart from a shopping bag containing about a hundred euro worth of hash, a cheap mobile and a single sheet of paper that looked as if it had been ripped from a file. Iris dived on the paper first, while Slattery had to make do with choosing between the bag and the phone.

  ‘It’s a social-work report,’ she said, scanning the page. ‘It goes back over twenty years, look, Slattery,’ she said, holding out the page for him to read the words.

  ‘Well, we have our motive for blackmail now, I suppose,’ he said softly.

  Thirty-One

  ‘It’s only made calls to two numbers,’ June said, ‘and the good news?’ They had charged up the phone when they got back to the incident room. The tech boys had all gone home for the evening, apparently, some of them had lives.

  Slattery flopped down in the chair opposite June. ‘What we wouldn’t give for a bit of good news at this stage.’

  ‘We have both numbers on file, both of them linked to…’

  ‘Marshall?’

  ‘Spot on. We even have logs o
f when the calls were made and how long they lasted. There were no texts, no further usage. There’s no browser, as you can see, it’s cheap as chips and not as cheerful. It’s a burner phone, she was only using it for one reason.’ June shook her head.

  ‘So, she thinks she’s Marshall’s daughter and she was trying to get what? Recognition or money out of them for her silence?’ Iris asked.

  She was reading between the lines, all they had was a report written up years earlier by a social worker who’d sat down with a very distraught Susan Marshall. At the time, Susan had talked about counselling for Eleanor because her family was in crisis and the child was coping badly. This was teased out two lines later, with the additional information that Kit had fathered a child through an affair some years earlier and the papers were on the brink of running the story if something couldn’t be done about it. Of course, when they’d checked, the dates would pass for working out with Rachel’s birth.

  ‘Can’t be that simple, there’s something not feeling right about this,’ Slattery said, and he had the good grace to put up his hands, aware he was being a killjoy. ‘Well, for one thing, why would they pay out?’

  ‘Because maybe they just wanted to keep it quiet?’ June said and shook her head.

  ‘Yes, or maybe she blackmailed them with something else? Who knows, but this is what she was holding onto like gold – so we’ll have to assume, for now, that it was what she was blackmailing them with.’

  Iris looked at the clock. It was almost six. She picked up the page again, it was still sealed in plastic, although they’d made a copy of it. She understood what Slattery meant. Everything about the report felt wrong. The paper was too fresh – yes, there were marks and creases but it looked as if it had been aged on purpose, a coffee-cup stain and scratched-out ink – it almost looked stage-managed. It was handwritten, on an A4 sheet, pulled from a yellow refill pad. Was this how social workers had reported case visits back then?