Who Took Eden Mulligan?

by Sharon Dempsey

  Danny looked at the neat incision before walking around the three bodies. He could tell Lyons was enjoying his work. Pathologists gave him the creeps. He was sure they were only one step removed from being psychopaths.

  ‘One interesting aspect to note is that the number of stab wounds is higher than necessary to kill the victim. Overkill, as we call it. This may point to a strong emotional conflict between the perpetrator and the victims.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘From looking at the angle and the depth of the incisions, the perpetrator appears to be left-handed and at least five feet ten in height. And yes, he is male.

  ‘The bodies were checked for signs of rigor mortis and lividity at the initial crime scene examination to determine time of death and whether or not the victims had been before or after death. In this case, the bodies were moved post-mortem and deliberately staged by the killer.’

  ‘So, the perpetrator was playing out a precise scene or perhaps wishing to convey some sort of message.’

  ‘That’s for you to work out, Detective.’ His smugness irritated Danny.

  ‘What else can you tell me about the murderer?’

  ‘In a frenzied case such as this one, it is impossible for the murderer not to leave behind trace elements of their DNA and even fibres of their clothes. We do have some traces for you to run through the system but considering the nature of the attacks and the feverish pattern there are surprisingly few.’

  ‘An absence of data can often be significant in itself. Shows how prepared and precise the killer was. Are we certain that there is only one attacker?’

  ‘One knife man, but I would guess he could have had someone to help him move the bodies.’

  Had Iona been the accomplice? Could she have aided the killer in moving and staging the bodies on the bed? She was slightly built and didn’t look like she’d the strength for the job, even as a helper, but Danny knew that in times of high stress people can find reserves they didn’t know they had.

  He left the morgue knowing that despite their best efforts, they were left with a crime scene that gave little away. The killer had been thorough and particular in the staging, despite the murders themselves being feverish and furious. It was a contradiction that bothered Danny.

  CHAPTER 33

  Danny sat nursing a hand-warmed glass of whiskey. He’d made the mistake of going into McCann’s before going home. There was something niggling at him about the case and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  The bar was filling up. Too many cops and too much work talk for his liking, and now Constable Tina Ward was making a beeline for him.

  ‘So, Sir, how’s it going on the slasher case?’ she asked, lifting herself onto the barstool beside him. She was a constable with high hopes of making it into the Serious Crime Unit. Attractive, tall, slender and blonde, she kept her hair in a neat pleated construction at the back of her head that made him think of sexy librarians.

  ‘Now Tina, you know what they say. Say nothing, in case you put the scud on it. What are you drinking?’

  ‘I’ll have a prosecco if you’re buying.’ Her perfume made him think of something sweet and cloying, like fairground candyfloss.

  ‘Is the case going well for you, though? I hear there’s no weapon found, and that the slasher arranged the bodies.’

  ‘Never believe what you hear in the canteen. Unless you’re working the case, all the rest is pure speculation, so it is.’

  She nodded and took a sip of her drink, her fingers stroking the stem of the glass like she was thinking.

  ‘I’d love to be working a murder case. Is it as cool as they say?’ she said, sounding very young and inexperienced to him. He could remember that feeling of being on the outside looking in though. When working on the Serious Crime Unit was the pinnacle of his career dreams. That anything else was just chasing road traffic accidents, burglaries and paperwork.

  Danny shrugged. ‘It isn’t exactly a bed of roses. It’s not like on the TV. These are real lives we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Sure, I know. I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful. I just think that it would feel like we’re making a difference. Going after the really bad guys, you know?’

  ‘Sometimes the bad guys win.’

  Danny drank the last of his whiskey and decided to call it a night.

  ‘You’ll get there one day. In the meantime, keep your nose clean and learn on the job.’

  ‘You’re not sticking around? Go on, let me buy you another.’ It was tempting. She placed her hand on his and he felt that flicker of connection, that desire to lose yourself in someone else for a while. Sadly, the only relationship he was in these days was with a bottle of Jameson’s, and he was determined he wasn’t going to complicate matters by bringing a woman into it, even if she was as attractive as Tina, with those blue eyes imploring him to hang around.

  ‘Sorry Tina, I’ve a big day on tomorrow. Another time, maybe.’

  He left her to it, heading out into the still night air and walking towards his apartment building. The whiskey sloshed around in his stomach, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. He knew he’d have to knock the drinking on the head soon. He didn’t want to end up being a walking cliché – the divorced cop with a drink problem. No, he knew his limit and it was somewhere close by. He resolved to get cleaned up and hit the gym the next day. A few rounds sparring in the ring would clear his head and help him think. It would be good to sweat the hangover out and hang out where no one gave a shit about his job or his failed marriage.

  In the meantime, he had to find what was connecting the Dunlore murders to Eden Mulligan. Why had the killer directed them to re-examine Eden’s disappearance and what did that tell them about what had happened at Larchfield?

  CHAPTER 34

  With Iona still under the auspices of the psychiatric unit, Danny had suggested Rose focus on the Eden Mulligan case.

  ‘See if you can uncover some new angle,’ he said. ‘There must be something we haven’t seen yet.’

  Somewhere in the recesses of her brain she remembered Katy Carberry mentioning Father Ryan and the hold he had over the community. How they loved him. A charismatic figure of authority like that could influence someone as lonely and vulnerable as Eden. The parish priest had seemed like a good place to start but she knew that the chances of tracking him down were slim. He could be dead or based anywhere. She knew priests rarely stayed in one parish for too long.

  An hour later, she pulled into a church car park with neat hedging all around and a statue of some saint standing in the centre of a mini-roundabout, surrounded by a well-kept flower bed of brightly coloured plants and shrubs. From the church, she drove down the adjacent Carlisle Street until she pulled up at number forty-nine. The parochial house was a large, red brick double fronted Victorian building. It stood in a mature garden alive with bees and the odd bird flitting around in the early morning sunshine. The forecast had warned of thunder and heavy rainfall, but it was hard to believe the heat would dissipate any time soon. Rose rapped on the front door with the huge brass knocker and was greeted by a woman in her sixties with wiry grey hair and a bustling demeanour. She had a yellow duster in her hand and smiled at Rose. ‘Hello, come in. Dominic is expecting you.’ She said Dominic with a kind of emphatic hushed reverence, as if she was at once both honoured to be on intimate first name terms with him and also respectful of his status as priest.

  ‘Father Dominic is just through here in his study. He’ll be delighted to see you. He loves to get visitors.’

  There was something over-friendly about the way the housekeeper spoke to Rose and she kept touching Rose’s arm as she guided her down the hallway.

  Rose followed the housekeeper into the book-lined study, where she found Father Dominic working at his computer. The shelves held books of a philosophical nature, tomes on Descartes and Kant and Thomas Aquinas.

  He looked up as they entered.

  ‘Detective Lainey, is it?’

&nb
sp; ‘No, Dr Lainey, actually. I’m consulting on this case as a forensic psychologist.’

  ‘Dr Lainey it is then. Please come in. Forensic psychologist – that must be interesting. You might be surprised to hear I’m partial to watching murder mysteries myself.’

  ‘I can assure you that my job isn’t as exciting as the TV shows may portray it.’

  ‘Still, it must be interesting. Isn’t this weather something else? Simply amazing. We don’t know ourselves at all having such a great summer. Trouble is we will be expecting the same again next year.’ He laughed.

  Rose agreed with him. She didn’t like to mention that the spike in high temperatures had given rise to a spike in so-called recreational rioting. The good weather seemed to bring the worst out in the youth of Belfast.

  He got up from his desk and shook Rose’s hand. ‘It’s like being in the south of France. Hannah, could you bring us coffee? Or would you prefer tea, Dr Lainey?’

  ‘Coffee is fine, thank you.’

  ‘Why don’t we sit in the garden? Hannah, could you bring the coffee out to us, please? And some of those lovely biscuits you buy me.’

  Hannah nodded and left them to it. He opened the French doors that led out to a large walled garden. A massive willow tree stood in the far corner, draping its long branches over the lawn, while neat borders of rhododendrons, roses, azaleas, and other shrubs and bushes Rose couldn’t name, all fought for space, teeming with colour and life. A painted, green, cast iron table and two chairs sat on a stone patio.

  A few phone calls making enquiries about Father Ryan had led Rose here. While she wasn’t sure what she would discover she still felt it was worth having a conversation with him.

  He pulled out a chair for Rose. ‘Please rest yourself here. Now, isn’t this better than having a chat at your police station?’ He’d been reluctant to meet her at the station and she’d no reason to insist.

  ‘We may need you to speak to us in a more official capacity at a later date. A visit to the station could be unavoidable.’

  Rose sat and took in the view. It was a beautiful spot.

  ‘Isn’t this a beautiful place?’ the priest said, almost as if he’d read her mind. ‘I just love to spend part of my day contemplating the beauty of God’s creation. How fortunate am I to find myself here?’

  Indeed, thought Rose. She had an innate distrust of the clergy. That self-righteous do-gooding didn’t sit well with her, but she did envy their faith, that certainty of knowing there was something beyond this world.

  ‘So, Dr Lainey, Father Ryan brings you to me, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, I was told that you and he were friends.’

  ‘Colleagues, religious brothers, even, but I wouldn’t say friends.’

  Rose made a note of that.

  ‘I was a young priest when I first met Edmund. He would have been in his fifties by then. You see, my work brought me into contact with priests who had been involved in the Troubles.’

  Belfast loved its euphemisms, thought Rose. She’d spent the previous evening trawling through old cases of disappeared women, trying to find a connection with Eden Mulligan, and had found herself reading about the notorious ‘Romper Room’, where victims were taken to be tried at a kangaroo court and beaten to death.

  ‘I was tasked with correlating and recording the part that the Catholic Church had to play in orchestrating peace. We were there at the table, helping to ensure that the church and the people worked together for the greater good. Life in those days was difficult. Sometimes people were compromised, or, morally conflicted, shall we say. Demands were placed upon them that in normal circumstances they would feel strong enough to avoid. Father Ryan found himself caught up in such a dilemma, playing devil’s advocate. A treacherous path to take, no doubt.’

  He swatted a wasp away and turned, smiling, to Hannah as she returned with the coffee. A jug of cream and a pile of chocolate chip cookies, arranged on a decorative china plate, were placed in front of Rose.

  ‘So, you were saying Father Ryan was compromised? In what way, exactly?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, well, Edmund was one of the priests I undertook interviewing about the Troubles. Normally this information would remain protected by the auspices of the church. In this case, Edmund left instructions that in the event of his death I was free to share his part in the war.’ He clasped his hands together as if he was about to pray.

  ‘Make no mistake, it was a war of sorts. History will judge these men less harshly than those of our own time. Anyway, I shall hand a copy of the transcript of the interview over to you to read, under the understanding that it is not released to the press. Edmund died a good few years ago so I am permitted to share this, but we don’t want this falling into the wrong hands.’

  He handed Rose a brown A4 envelope.

  ‘Now, coffee first, and then you can take that away with you.’

  It was an hour before Rose was able to return to the coolness of her office to read the transcript held within the brown envelope. She unfolded the two pages and began.

  I, Father Edmund Ryan of Boston’s Saint Aloysius Catholic Church, wish to confess to my sins. This document is my sworn testimony, which should remain confidential in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church until such time of my death.

  In January 1975, I was moved from the Holy Trinity Parish Church in Newcastle, County Down to St Malachy’s, in the Markets area of Belfast. It was an area of much impoverishment. Unemployment was high and housing needs relative to family size were not being met by the local authorities. The existing housing conditions were substandard. I found my parishioners requiring political and economic support as much as moral guidance. They needed social justice as much as religion and, inspired by our liberation theological brothers in Latin America, I sought to help them achieve this. In my quest to help the people I worked among I engaged in somewhat morally questionable activities, namely storing weapons and allowing the sacred confessional box to act as means of passing on vital information. Occasionally, I was requested to provide safe passage for comrades needing to cross the border.

  During one episode of particular difficulty, a young man of sixteen years was caught, tried and held accountable for trying to rob IRA funds from a local public house. I was called upon to give him the holy sacrament of penance and the last rites. When I arrived at the designated location, I found the lad on his knees, his hands placed behind his head. I had been instructed to attend to him, counsel him in his final moments and to hear his final penance before he was executed.

  When he had told me his sins, admitting to stealing from the IRA-owned bar, he was told to say the Lord’s Prayer, before a gun was held to the back of his head. The impact of that pulled trigger will stay with me to my dying days. I am not afraid to admit that I was a changed man having witnessed that young man’s death.

  The following evening, I was called to the home of Eden Mulligan. One of her children had been in trouble at school. Eamonn was a handful for her and the headmaster had summoned her to his office. Eden, in desperation, had asked to see me. I arrived at her home that evening hoping to offer some consolation and guidance, and perhaps to talk to the boy and set him on the righteous path again, so to speak.

  That evening came at a time when I was facing much turmoil. The impact of my pastoral work in such a difficult time was wearing me down. Instead of me comforting Eden that evening, I found myself drawn to her and unburdening myself. I didn’t tell the details of what had occurred the night before, but like everyone in that small community, she had heard of the execution and knew the young lad by sight. Eden became a great source of solace to me.

  In time, well, we became close friends. She was struggling to raise her five children during a difficult winter. Her husband was a worthless drunk who, under the guise of looking for work, left her at regular intervals, sometimes for up to three or four months at a time. We both had needs that our current situations could not meet, and I have to say we found refuge in each other.


  Rose put the page down. It was half a story. She checked in the envelope to see if she had missed some pages, but it was empty. Father Ryan’s relationship with Eden was intriguing. The testimony seemed to suggest that it was more than platonic without categorically saying so.

  He was involved in paramilitary activity and he had a close friendship with Eden. The priest had navigated dangerous territory.

  Rose’s mind trawled through the various scenarios where a priest would be called on to hear confession. There were so many dark stories relating to Belfast’s troubled history. In taking lives, how many men had turned to their priest to lessen the weight of their transgressions?

  She thought about Eden’s children, left to fend for themselves, and the sense of abandonment that they must have felt. How they had been dealt a lousy hand in life. As bad as Evelyn was, at least she’d been there for Rose and her siblings.

  CHAPTER 35

  When Rose arrived at her office the next morning, Danny was already sitting at her desk reading the Belfast Telegraph.

  ‘Have you nothing better to do than read about what a terrible job you’re doing on the Dunlore case?’ she asked, throwing her bag on the desk and taking off her jacket.

  ‘Very funny, Rosie. If you must know, I was reading about Eden Mulligan – they’re dredging up all the old stories again. Going back over the files. There’s even talk of a new site being excavated. Have you heard?’

  ‘Yes, I got wind of it yesterday from Malachy Magee.’

  ‘Apparently, the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains – the ICLVR – is going to announce that a new site has been identified. It’s on Tyrella beach in County Down,’ Danny said.

  ‘I know it well. We used to go there as kids.’

  ‘Aerial footage taken by a drone has shown a scorched plot. Lots of prehistoric sites are being rediscovered but they could tell that this site was created more recently. Plus, they’ve had a tip-off that there could be one of the disappeared buried in it.’