Who Took Eden Mulligan?

by Sharon Dempsey

  ‘So, what about you?’ she asked, turning the tables on Danny. ‘How’s married life treating you?’

  ‘Awk, you know me, old boring married man now.’

  Rose laughed. She knew Danny was far from being a player, but she didn’t see him being happily settled into married life either. She needed to readjust her image of him. Life had changed them both. Maybe when she met Amy she would accept that the Danny she knew from before had grown up.

  He swallowed the last of his beer. ‘Sure, drink up, Rosie. It’s time I hit the road or Amy will be sending out a search party.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Elsie and Oliver McGoldrick’s house was easier to find than the cottage. It was the type of estate you expected to be turned into a wedding venue to help with the cost of the upkeep. Rose drove up to the main house and parked the car to the side.

  ‘Maybe we should go around to the servants’ entrance,’ Danny said, doing his best downtrodden impression.

  Rose sighed. ‘Come on, let’s see what we can find out.’

  Oliver McGoldrick opened the door almost as soon as Danny rang the old-fashioned bell. He was every inch the country estate gentleman, from his fraying tweed waistcoat to the worn-in brown brogues.

  ‘I’m not sure if we can be of any help,’ he said, having shown them into the living room. ‘The cottage has been part of the estate for as long as I can remember. Every now and then we threaten to sell if off, but we don’t like to think of breaking up the estate. Instead, we rent it out. I’ve passed the details of the rental agreement on to your colleague DS Magee. The young people who took it on seemed responsible. The rent was cheap in exchange for them making some improvements.’

  ‘Yes, thank you for that. It appears the cottage had been unused for some time before Henry Morton had rented it. Do you know who would have had access to it?’

  ‘Just our staff. We have a groundsman, Brian Martin. He keeps an eye on the outlying buildings.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  Rose turned and saw Elsie McGoldrick standing in the doorway. She had steely grey hair cut into an austere bob, and was dressed in wool skirt with a cotton cream blouse. ‘I apologise for not being here to greet you sooner. I was sorting out the dogs.’

  ‘No problem at all,’ Rose said. ‘We were just discussing the cottage and who might have access to it.’

  ‘Brian sorts all that out. He’s worked for us for years and we’ve never had any cause for worry,’ she replied, sitting down on the sofa opposite Rose.

  ‘We will be speaking to Mr Martin. Anyone else who would routinely call to the house?’ asked Danny.

  Oliver McGoldrick looked irritated. ‘No, only family and friends. Really, detectives, we have been over all of this with your colleague. We are certain that whoever has committed this crime has nothing to do with us.’

  ‘Do either of you have any connection to the Mulligan family?’ Rose asked.

  Elsie shook her head. ‘None whatsoever. We can’t think why that graffiti would have been put there. It wasn’t there when I last checked on the cottage just before the new tenants had arrived. The whole thing is most upsetting. I can’t bear to think of those poor young people murdered on our property. It is a horrendous ordeal altogether.’

  ‘Can I ask what your occupation was before retirement?’ Rose asked Oliver.

  ‘I was a barrister.’

  ‘Must have been interesting work,’ Rose said.

  ‘Yes, at times.’ He didn’t elaborate.

  ‘And yourself, Mrs McGoldrick?’

  ‘Oh, I looked after the family and ran the estate. There was plenty to do, believe me.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a second.’

  ‘We may need to speak to you again, but that should do for now,’ Danny said. ‘If it’s okay with you, we would like to take another walk around the cottage grounds.’

  ‘Certainly. If you head out the side hallway you can take a left past the stables and the lane will take you to the cottage.’

  They made their way along the dirt track that Oliver McGoldrick called a lane.

  ‘This place is huge.’ Danny stopped and looked around, taking in the view of the house behind them.

  ‘It’s fairly isolated, too.’

  They walked on in the direction of the cottage grounds.

  The efforts to tame nature around the main house began to fade as they reached their destination. From this angle, the cottage looked less fairy-tale and more run-down out building. The police tape was still marking the area a no-go zone. Danny hopped over the tape and Rose lifted it to duck under. The cottage was all closed up and looked peaceful. Even peering through the dirty windows into the gloom of the living room gave nothing away.

  The tree where the hanging dolls had been found stood solid and reassuringly permanent, making Rose think of the decades of people passing through it must have been witness to. There was still something otherworldly about the setting. Something that made her skin crawl.

  ‘So, Rosie, do you think old man McGoldrick could have had background in military intelligence? He has that army look about him. All straight back and stiff. The barrister stuff could be a cover.’

  Rose shrugged. ‘I didn’t get that vibe, but we should check him out. He may have made a few enemies in his time as a barrister. Maybe someone has come along seeking payback. It’s worth digging to see if he has any skeletons hanging in his closet.’ Rose paused. ‘Listen.’

  They stood still, hearing nothing but birdsong.

  ‘It’s just occurred to me that no one would have heard their screams.’

  CHAPTER 25

  That evening, Rose let herself into the apartment. The sleek, modernist feel of the space suited her better than the old Edwardian terrace flat she had in London.

  She’d survived another day in Belfast.

  She kicked off her shoes and threw herself down on the sofa. In London, the place she had called home for so long, she had felt like an outsider. Now, after the death of her mother, everything was alien and draining. She couldn’t see a way to make life better. Maybe this posting offered her a way out. A chance to start over.

  Connecting with her family didn’t have to be as bad as she feared. She loved her work, even being in the ‘basement of doom’, as Danny called it. It suited her to take a step back from the research and policy and to experience the energy and excitement of regular police work. The careful, methodical examination of the facts, the unearthing of new information, and the need to formulate a narrative of the events surrounding Eden’s disappearance held an academic quality that suited her. Maybe she’d never get to find out the whole truth, but she was determined to find at least part of it.

  The evening was warm and muggy, so she had a shower, stretched out on the sofa and lay letting her skin dry in the warm air. Eden was on her mind. She couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe Eden had known her abductors, had been taken to her death by people she trusted in some way. People who lived among her community. What must the walk to the car have been like in the dead of night, knowing that she was possibly not going to see her children again?

  Rose resisted the urge to pick up her phone and check her emails. Instead, she dragged her hair out of her face and tried to put it in some sort of knot to keep her neck cooler. She thought of how her mother would have admonished her for her not worrying about her appearance, but the truth was it was hot and she didn’t care. Thankfully, the temperature had dropped a little and the promised storm seemed to be on its way.

  Her thoughts turned back to her family. All those years spent in exile. The tug of home had pulled at her sometimes, but it was more out of sense of duty to the others. Especially Kaitlin, who had every right to feel resentful that Rose had abandoned her, yet now, following their mother’s death, her sister was being so welcoming. She had to admit, she liked being home. Even if it did bring up questions that needed to be answered. Ever since Kaitlin rang telling her that Evelyn had died, Rose had been tormented by memories
of her childhood. Snatches of conversations that didn’t make sense, late night knocks at the door, her mother disappearing only to return in the dead of the night.

  There was one person outside of her immediate family who could throw light on what had gone on: Aunt Josie, Evelyn’s sister. Rose could remember the two of them being close when they were younger. Josie had been at the funeral. She had nodded hello to Rose but that had been the extent of their interaction. Now though, Rose felt it was time to pay her a visit.

  Josie hadn’t aged well. Her once dark hair was streaked with coppery highlights, probably added to hide the grey, and her skin looked as if it had been ravaged by time. She seemed smaller, slight even, and the delicate features, which were so typical of the women in their family, now made her look wizened and haggard.

  ‘Josie, thanks for seeing me.’ Rose hugged her aunt and felt the bones of her shoulders through her flimsy blouse.

  ‘Come on in. This heat’s powerful. I’m sure you could do with a cold drink.’ Rose followed her into the hallway of the red brick semi-detached house off the Rosetta Road. It was a tidy house, furnished to look like something straight out of a Laura Ashley catalogue, all cowslip sprigs and duck egg blue with plumped velvet cushions and pretty lamps sitting on side tables. Josie returned from the kitchen with a tray of glasses and a jug of lemonade. ‘I didn’t make it but it’s that nice stuff from the deli on the road.’ She poured Rose a glass and added a sprig of mint.

  ‘Thanks, it’s lovely.’ Rose sipped at the drink, glad of the coolness.

  ‘You must still be in shock about your mother. Terribly sad altogether. Sorry I didn’t get talking to you at the funeral, but I thought you needed to be with the family.’

  Rose nodded. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t ring you more and keep in touch. It just seemed easier that way.’

  ‘No need to apologise, you have your own life to lead. Sometimes it’s better not to look back.’ She peered at Rose, as if drinking in the details. ‘You look like her.’

  ‘My mum?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve her eyes and the cheekbones. Oh, how I envied her those cheekbones.’ They both smiled.

  ‘You’re here to ask about her, aren’t you?’ Josie said.

  ‘Is it that obvious?’ She tried to make her voice sound light and casual.

  ‘I’ve been able to see through you since you were no higher than my knees. What do you want to know?’

  Rose paused. She didn’t know how to frame the sentences, to put into words what she needed to know but didn’t want to hear.

  ‘Tell me about her. What she did. Was she involved?’

  ‘It didn’t start with your father, if that’s what you’ve been thinking.’

  Rose looked up, surprised.

  ‘No, her heart was hardened before then. He got shot because he was a Catholic, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Any political leanings she had had formed well before that. You can have three girls grow up in the same house and each one of them has a different interpretation of what’s gone on. That’s what your granny used to say. There was no explaining our Evelyn. She was one of a kind. A firecracker, reckless and passionate. Given a different situation, she could have done something totally different with her life. As it was, she found a purpose in politics, but talking shop was never enough for her.’

  The reality was that if Rose kept poking around in the detritus of Evelyn’s life, she knew she was going to find out things that would make her uneasy. Ashamed, even.

  ‘The thing is, I’d rather know who she really was than try to mourn my idea of who she was. Does that make sense?’

  ‘The truth is I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. Honest to God.’

  ‘I know she was connected in some way.’ That word – connected – held a power all of its own. Shorthand for so many things that covered up the brutal realities of what it meant to be involved with the paramilitaries.

  ‘Let the past die with her. There’s no good to come out of digging through the dirt.’

  ‘Tell me what she was like. How did she end up the way she did?’ Rose said.

  ‘When we were growing up in the seventies, everything was changing. The world was finding new ways to be. Our Evelyn loved to read, and every time she read something that incensed her or excited her, she would inevitably cast her eye around this place and see where we fell short.’ Josie laughed. ‘She was an idealist. Always seeking that something to make the world a better place, whether it wanted to be or not.’

  Rose sighed. ‘It probably doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I never really knew her. My own mother and I can’t say I had a handle on what made her tick.’

  ‘Do we ever really know our parents?’

  ‘I just thought if I asked what she was like back then, before we were born, then maybe I could understand her a bit better.’ Rose hesitated. ‘Sean Torrent, did you know him?’

  ‘We all knew of him. He was one of the lads, one of the “volunteers”, as they called themselves. Thought of themselves like the leaders in the Easter Rising, brothers in arms and all that carry on.’

  ‘He used to send for my mother, and she’d be at his beck and call.’

  ‘I’d say she probably worked as one of their couriers at first. Running secret messages between houses for fear of phones being tapped, and there was always money or guns to be moved around.’

  ‘He had some kind of a hold over her. I don’t know if it was fear or what, but if he came calling, we all knew to stay out of the way.’

  ‘Men like Sean Torrent positioned themselves in the community like overlords. They acted like they owned the place and everyone in it. Called themselves heroes of the cause.’ Josie looked Rosie in the eyes. ‘Don’t waste your energy on someone like him.’

  But Rose believed Sean Torrent was more than a cold-eyed commander to Evelyn. He either had something on her or they had been in a relationship. There was an energy about them that suggested either fear or lust. Rose just didn’t know which.

  In the end, she left Josie’s none the wiser. If Josie knew anything, she wasn’t saying.

  CHAPTER 26

  The air in the office was stagnant. Someone’s significant birthday had called for birthday cake and the sweet, cloying smell of icing and marzipan was tickling the back of Danny’s throat. It was all off kilter. He could never accept the need to be joyful and over familiar in the office, especially in the midst of a big case. When his head was full of autopsy reports and evidence bags, he had little space or tolerance for colleagues blathering on about being fifty and nifty. He’d signed the office card and stuck a tenner in the kitty, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to sing ‘Happy Birthday’.

  He glanced around the office, willing himself to give them ten more minutes before losing his shit and telling them to all get back to f-ing work. At least Magee seemed to be working. He was talking intently into his phone and taking notes. Danny went back to his computer screen and tried to block out the cake sharing.

  A few minutes later, Malachy sat down in front of him.

  ‘A new lead. It looks like one of the victims, Dylan Wray, had history with a known drug dealer, Conal Brady. According to our inquiries, they went to school together and were good friends up until Dylan went to university and Conal launched his career as a DJ, with an active sideline in dealing.’

  ‘And nobody picked this up before now?’

  ‘Dylan was clean. We’d no reason to think he’d been using – or any of them in the cottage, for that matter. Their toxicology reports came back clear, and we found no traces of drugs in the house.’

  ‘So, how did it get flagged up?’

  ‘Conal Brady had been reported as mouthing off in a club in Belfast, suggesting he knew who did the stabbings and that it was at his instigation for drug debts not paid. And he’s form too. He was arrested last year for assault but got off with a slap on the wrist. There had been some sort of altercation outside the Hatfield bar. A student ended up with half of his ear bi
tten off, but Brady’s barrister argued that there was no evidence he was the one responsible. There were five of them involved in the scrum.’

  ‘Bring the wee shit in.’

  ‘Already on it.’

  Conal Brady was a big lad, bulky, with a tough attitude that could be seen in his walk. All slouched shoulders, rough gingery stubble and a snarl, his bearing suggested he’d been disturbed from his sleep to come down to the station at the ungodly hour of 1 p.m.

  ‘Mr Brady, good of you to come in.’

  ‘I haven’t done any fucking thing, so I don’t know why I’m being harassed. I’ve rights, you know. Rights to be left in fucking peace.’

  Danny stared at him. The big fecker was mouthing off before they’d even begun. He didn’t need this.

  ‘Mr Brady, there’s no need to take that tone. This is a friendly chat to help us with our inquiries.’

  ‘No such fucking thing as friendly when it comes to coppers. Am I going to need to ring my solicitor?’

  ‘That’s your right to do so, Mr Brady, but for now all we want to do is ask you how you know Dylan Wray?’

  ‘X-Ray? I knew him at school. That’s all. We’re not mates or anything. We used to hang out together back in the day, but that’s it. I’d nothing to do with him ending up in hospital, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘We’re going to need to know where you were on the night of the twenty-eighth of June.’

  He took out his phone and opened up his Instagram account, hit the profile icon and turned the device around to show them a video of himself behind a mixing desk, bass heavy, the thumping music and flashing blue strobe lights whipping a crowd of drunk teenagers into a frenzy.

  ‘Doing a gig at Red Star nightclub. I’ve five hundred odd party goers who can vouch for me.’

  ‘You like to do a bit of under the mixing desk dealing, I hear. Good business strategy to sell to the revellers. They can’t get the stuff past the bouncers, but you can.’