‘Nah, not me. I don’t touch the stuff.’
‘Word on the street says otherwise.’
‘Well your sources are wrong. Ask anyone – I’m clean and I’m not stupid. Dealing is for wasters. I’m building a career, not playing.’
‘A career out of busting people’s heads with that dance crap music. Should be a crime against good taste. Bet you’ve never even heard of Nirvana.’
Conal Brady smirked. ‘Showing your age there, old man.’
‘We have it on good authority that you were heard slabbering about the Dunlore murders and that you’re involved.’
‘Seriously? Come off it! You shouldn’t listen to crap like that. If someone is trying to muddy my good name, then I want to know who it is.’
Danny looked at him with derision. ‘Your good name? Don’t make me laugh.’
‘I’d nothing to do with those murders. Fuck sake, I’m telling you the truth and the video proves my whereabouts.’
‘If you are found to be withholding anything of significance relating to the stabbings we will come down on you so hard that you’ll wish you were still sitting on your mother’s knee.’
‘Seriously man, I haven’t seen X-Ray for years. Not since school. We don’t mix in the same circles. Besides, I’m not into hurting people. My kind of rampage involves a party vibe.’
They let Brady go and headed back to the office.
‘Well, what are you thinking?’ Malachy asked.
‘He seems legit. Like a legit dickhead. Check out his alibi with the club and look into who was trying to make him look dirty. Might have been a ruse to take our attention elsewhere.’
Malachy nodded. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll speak to Henderson from undercover. He works a snitch known to frequent the kind of dives that pay Conal Brady to play his wee dance tunes.’
CHAPTER 27
Rose woke just after dawn, slick with sweat. The bedroom was suffocating. She got up and opened the window, but even the morning air felt stagnant. The heat wave didn’t seem to be breaking. The news was full of reports of threatened hose pipe bans and warnings not to leave dogs in cars. She was more accustomed to experiencing four seasons in one day in Belfast, not this interminable choking heat.
Returning to bed, she lay considering the case. Katy Carberry’s account painted Eden in a pretty good light. There was nothing beyond rumour to suggest she was anything other than a dutiful mother trying to care for her children without the support of her husband. Single mothers in a working class, conservative Catholic community would have been frowned upon. There was no doubt that in the eighties, Eden would have been a source of ridicule and gossip.
Then there was the priest Katy talked about, Father Ryan. Who was he in all this? A concerned man of the cloth looking out for a parishioner? Or was there anything more to his interest in Eden? Priests were bound by their vows to protect dark secrets whispered in confessional boxes. Maybe the priest knew Eden’s secrets. Had he revealed what she had told him and somehow put her life in danger? Maybe, given the passage of time, he would be willing to share his take on what happened to Eden. His leaving may have been a timely coincidence, but Rose needed to check it out. If the priest was still alive, that is.
She thought of the house at Dunlore and the remains of the half-burnt papers in the fireplace grate. She needed to see if Danny had anything back from forensics to help identify what the papers contained.
Oliver McGoldrick didn’t flag up on her searches of security and intelligence handlers. He seemed to have been a legitimate barrister working mainly medical negligence cases. Still, she wanted to make sure there was no possibility of someone carrying out the murders as a way of coming after the McGoldricks.
Her mind turned to her mother, Evelyn. She had last heard from her when she was nineteen. Rose had sent a letter to Kaitlin and Evelyn had intercepted it. She had written to Rose, calling her a traitor who had turned her back on her family. Hate-filled words that made Rose surer than ever that her leaving had been the right thing to do.
They were never going to have a close relationship. Whatever tenuous bonds they’d had, had been broken when Rose left. The memories had been hard to shake but she had worked hard at keeping them buried.
Now, though, the talk of the old Markets area in Belfast, where her mother and father had come from, had been needling at her. The idea that the close-knit community was a hive of shadows and secrets made her curious to know who Evelyn really was, and if she was as bad as Rose believed her to be.
She shut off all thinking about her messed-up origins and decided her next step was to track down Geordie Mulligan. If he had nothing to do with Eden’s disappearance then why had he never returned to look after his children? For the first time in her career, Rose felt that she was solving a mystery as much as a crime.
She tracked Danny down in the conference room, where he was busy covering the old-fashioned whiteboard with information pertaining to the case.
‘Hey, Danny, got a minute?’
‘Sure, what can I do?’
‘It’s about Geordie Mulligan. I think he sounds dubious.’
‘You know what they say, it’s usually the husband.’
‘I think it’s more than a bit suspect that he never returned to Belfast after Eden vanished.’
He turned around and set the pile of papers on a desk. ‘What would his motive be?’
‘That he was jealous of Eden. She was a good-looking woman who would have attracted attention whether she wanted it or not. Maybe Geordie suspected she was having an affair and in a drunken rage he killed her. The kids could have covered for him.’
‘Didn’t the initial police investigation say Geordie was working away at the time of Eden’s disappearance?’
Rose leaned against the wall. ‘Can we trust any of that though? The timelines are murky. It could be that someone said he was away and it became embedded in memory. We don’t even have an actual date for Eden’s disappearance. And he never returned to Belfast. Not even to take care of his children. Surely that has to raise questions.’
Danny agreed that she should get the go ahead to contact Geordie Mulligan, to see if he was still alive and to decide whether or not he had a hand in the mystery. If Katy Carberry was right, he could be still in England.
Back at her desk, she fired up her computer and checked her emails. It was full of the usual stuff from human resources about training opportunities.
It had been six days since Rose had walked into the station and become involved in the Dunlore and Mulligan cases. News of the graffiti left on the living room wall had been leaked to the press, and all hell had broken loose. The Stephen Nolan radio show had everyone and his granny phoning in with their opinion on what had happened. Some claimed that the murders had been the work of paramilitaries cracking down on drug suppliers, others claimed collusion and retaliation for Eden Mulligan’s disappearance. Funny how, in Belfast, nobody liked to talk to the police but plenty had an opinion they were happy to share on a radio show. An immediate inquiry had shown that the information had come from outside the force, most likely from the McGoldricks or their groundsman.
McCausland had scheduled a meeting with Rose, primarily to review her work to date. She was keen to press on and to be allowed to play a bigger part in the investigation. If her role was limited to interviewing an unreliable witness, she really didn’t need to be hanging around.
Rose knocked on the opened door of the ACC’s office and walked in. McCausland was sat reading a file of notes and didn’t look up. She stood for a moment, waiting for him to acknowledge her, and when she got no response, she spoke.
‘Sir, we have a meeting.’
He put his hand up to silence her as he read on.
‘Sit,’ he said, finally giving her his attention.
Rose knew it wasn’t necessary to get on with your ACC, but it would have been helpful. She disliked Ian McCausland. He had the air of a man convinced of his own importance, and it was clear he liked
to be treated with the respect he believed he deserved. Rank wasn’t enough for Rose to bow down to him. She had yet to feel he deserved anything other than polite courtesy. Once again, his neck spilled over his collar in a pink roll, and she wondered how he could stick the tightness of it cutting into his flesh.
‘Lainey, I gather you have been down to the Dunlore cottage?’
‘Yes, Sir. It’s useful to see the scene and to understand the larger issues at play.’
‘What issues would they be?’
‘I’m referring to the graffiti. It suggests that the stabbings were in some way connected to the previous missing persons case. I’m sure you know my background. I have experience in missing person cases and unreliable testimonies.’
‘And you think there is some sort of link between these brutal murders and a cold case going back thirty odd years?’ His tone let her know that he didn’t believe the two were connected.
‘That has to be established, Sir, but I’m sure you agree it must be looked at and there’s enough of a connection for me to be involved in a more all-encompassing role, don’t you think?’
‘Lainey, I think our missing woman is unlikely to turn up at this stage. Some cases are never solved. We do a review, satisfy our sense of duty, and move on. I’m sure you’d like to be doing some real work instead of sitting in that basement office, reading over old interview transcripts.’
Rose noticed tiny beads of sweat gathering on his forehead like little blisters. The heat was insufferable.
‘To ensure I do a full and proper review I need resources and support. If there’s a link between the Dunlore deaths and the Mulligan case, I need to be able to investigate freely.’
McCausland looked at her, fixing her with his steely gaze. ‘You are the support, Lainey. The answers needed to solve the Dunlore case won’t lie in the past.’
‘Sir, for all we know, the answer to Eden Mulligan’s disappearance lies in the present.’
‘Conduct your inquiry with due diligence and care, but wrap it up as quickly as possible. Then write a report and move on. Danny Stowe and his team are capable of ruling out any Mulligan connection with their case and they don’t need you trampling all over their crime scene and muddying the waters. That leak to the press shouldn’t have happened. I don’t want the Mulligan case being stirred up in the papers any more than it already has. There’s nothing to be gained in getting the family’s hopes up.’ He went back to his reading, effectively dismissing Rose.
‘One more thing, Sir, I need clearance to trace Geordie Mulligan, Eden’s husband. He never returned after Eden’s disappearance and I want to follow up on him. Iona Gardener is still off limits, so my hands are tied there. I can make better use of my time by helping DI Stowe review the Mulligan connection.’
He sighed. ‘Fine, do it, but cases from the past are never black and white. Sometimes we have to be prepared to leave the past behind.’
CHAPTER 28
Secrets rarely stay hidden unless those keeping them have something to lose. Rose had worked with enough victims and perpetrators to know that the worst kind of secret can burn deep and become a burden that few people want to carry to the grave. In Rose’s mind, whoever had taken Eden had murdered her. They wouldn’t be sleeping easily. Sooner or later, the shell of protection would fracture into tiny fissures and the murkiness below would ooze out into the light. Rose wanted to be the one who cracked it. She also knew that the best keepers of secrets were family members. A sense of loyalty often ensured silence.
Tracking down Geordie hadn’t been too difficult. He was living in north London, renting a small flat on the outskirts of Chalk Farm. Long since retired, he was claiming benefits and trying to make it through to his next birthday. The flight to London was brief and uneventful. It would be a quick turnaround, a meeting with Geordie Mulligan, with a return flight at seven in the evening. A quick visit to her flat before her appointment with Geordie had allowed her to collect some extra clothes and had been a chance to empty the fridge.
The meeting was scheduled to take place in a police station on Chalk Farm Road, north London, rather than at his house. She arrived early and found a café to sit in, sipping a coffee while people watching. A dark-skinned man with a shaved head and bright pink Adidas trainers was reading Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood at the table beside her. An American tourist was talking loudly into her mobile phone and an elderly woman was secreting sachets of sugar into her pocket. The vibrancy, the hustle – it all allowed for anonymity. A city of millions was easy to hide in.
At eleven, Rose made her way to the station. She wasn’t sure what she was going to get out of Geordie, but his absence from his children’s lives needed to be explained. She introduced herself to the desk sergeant and was shown into an interview room where Geordie was waiting. He had the look of a drinker, a man of slight build, almost entirely bald, with inflamed, scabby skin that looked as if he picked at it on a regular basis. A lifetime of labouring work and drinking had taken its toll and he was obviously in bad health. A junior constable was sitting with him.
‘Hello, Geordie. Dr Rose Lainey.’ She reached out to shake his hand as she approached him. As she sat back down Rose noted his spittle flecked lips, and rheumy eyes that gave the impression he was on the verge of tears.
‘Thank you for coming to meet me. Can I get you a coffee or tea?’
‘I’ll take a tea. And it’s not like I had much choice. Scared the life out of me when that police car pulled up outside my house. Didn’t know what they wanted.’ His Belfast accent had mellowed and was tinged with a London dialect. The constable offered to do the tea run and returned quickly with a tray set up.
‘Milk?’ he asked.
‘Aye, please.’ Geordie accepted the mug of tea and stirred it, waiting for Rose to start.
‘I’m sorry about the police car, but I’m conducting the investigation from Belfast, and it was easier to send an officer round to verify you were the correct Geordie Mulligan before I hopped on a plane to come over here. We need to make it official, so I will be recording this interview.’
The constable pressed the record button. ‘Interview conducted with Geordie Mulligan at 12.20 p.m., Constable Khalid in attendance with Dr Rose Lainey acting on behalf of the PSNI.’
‘Fair enough. So, this is about Eden, isn’t it? After all this time, have they found her body?’ His voice cracked as he spoke.
‘No, we haven’t found a body, but I’m looking into her disappearance. There was never any evidence to say she was killed, so what makes you think there’s a body to be found?’
‘Oh, come on. What else could it be? In those days, people disappeared for looking in the wrong direction. I always figured that Eden had crossed someone – someone connected – and she paid the price. Either that or she was killed because someone had the wrong idea about me. I thought maybe someone had pointed the finger. Marked me out as a tout or something.’
‘When did you first know Eden was missing?’
‘Not for a while after. I was never in one place long enough to settle in those days. Went wherever the work was.
‘A fella, originally from Antrim, who worked the building sites with me said he’d heard about it when he was back in Belfast. He’d seen the story covered on the local news. Knew she was my wife. I was always the one to phone home from whatever digs I was staying in, so the kids didn’t have a number to get hold of me.
‘At first, I didn’t know what to do. I thought about the kids, but selfish bastard that I am, I didn’t have it in me to go back and look after them. Seemed too big a job for me.’
‘Did the police or social services never track you down?’
His head dropped to his chest. ‘Yeah, eventually they caught up with me. Asked me what I wanted to do about the children.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Told them they weren’t my concern any longer. That I wanted nothing to do with them and that they’d be better off in care.’ He lifted his head. �
�Then one night, must have been five years later, I saw it on the TV. They were doing some programme about the Troubles and the Disappeared. Christ it stopped me in my tracks all right. They had a photograph of Eden. God, she was a looker.’ He stopped to wipe at his eye.
‘By then I was living in the Isle of Man. Belfast seemed like another lifetime ago.’
‘Neighbours on Moss Street said you always returned to see the family regularly. That is, until Eden disappeared. What made you suddenly stay away?’
He leaned back on the chair and sighed. ‘A couple of months before Eden disappeared, I received a letter telling me not to return to Belfast, and saying that if I did, I would be executed. No reason given. Signed P. O’Neill. Just in case I hadn’t got the message loud and clear, they’d sent a bullet along with it. For a while, I thought Eden was behind it, thought she’d gone to the paramilitaries and told them I’d beat her, or worse, raped her. God knows I never put a finger on that girl without her say so. She’d a way of making me feel like I didn’t deserve her but I loved her. Loved the bones of her. The trouble was, she knew she could have done better than me. Much better.’
Rose knew that it wasn’t unusual for letters of the type Geordie described to be sent as warning to anyone falling on the wrong side of the paramilitaries. P. O’Neill was a cover name for the IRA army council.
He stopped for a moment and took a sip of his tea, cupping his hands around the red mug.
‘Eden could’ve had her pick of men and she deserved more than I could give her. It was easier to lose myself in the drink, or run away to work, than to live with the fear that one day she’d tell me to go for good.’
Rose nodded to encourage him to keep talking.
‘I always carried a photo of her, showed it to the lads on the building sites, made them all jealous. God, she was a beauty.’ He looked away, as if embarrassed by the force of his feelings.
‘In those days, if you were warned to stay out of the country you heeded that warning. As far as I was concerned, there was no going back. I would have risked a bullet in the back of my head.’
Who Took Eden Mulligan? Page 13