‘Where are you off to?’ Iris felt a sting of panic ripple through her – she couldn’t remember a day when June hadn’t been fielding the phone calls. This was grunt work, she could do it in her sleep, but today she hadn’t slept and today, she felt more vulnerable than she’d ever felt before.
‘Cinderella is off to the ball with me,’ Grady said, shaking his car keys to show they could take his car. ‘We’re heading off to see if we can’t track down a bit more about the Fairleys from an aunt of Anna’s who lives in a nursing home outside Galway.’
‘Yes, and we might call in to check over the farmhouse once more,’ June said. ‘I haven’t been out there and I just want to see for myself.’ She spoke softly and Iris knew it was working this case, it had probably become personal for all of them, and June too, gathering information about someone she couldn’t fully connect to… well, it was respect, wasn’t it?
‘Right, well, have fun,’ Iris said, but they all knew, the cottage would be a desolate spot on a grey day like today.
By eleven, she was alone, the incident room empty, bar her own voice, checking out the crazies and they just kept coming. June had drawn up a database, listed each name, number and a brief synopsis of what they wanted to report. Mostly, they had come flooding in after the media appeal. Probably, they weren’t worth the paper they’d been recorded on, but they each had to be double checked and then, if there was anything of merit within the threads of information, it would mean calling out and recording a formal statement. It was plod work, but it was important. Cold cases too often threw up instances where a crime might have been solved if the curtain twitchers had been sorted – because, occasionally, among the dross, there was gold.
‘You’re a busy beaver.’ Anita Cullen parked herself on the side of Iris’s desk just after lunch. ‘How come you’re here today…’ It was funny, but when she asked a question, Iris always had the distinct impression she already knew the answer.
‘Short straw and I got the crazies.’
‘Ah, the loony brigade, don’t knock them, they’ve made the difference in more than a couple of cases I’ve managed to crack over the years.’ Anita smiled wryly.
‘I’m hoping to strike lucky, but I’ve almost come to the end of the list and so far, everyone of them is a serial informer – they’d swear they saw Santa Claus surfing down the Shannon if they thought it would get them involved in a case.’
‘They mean well, any of them I’ve ever come across, mostly they just have too much time on their hands and not enough company,’ Anita said sadly. ‘Anyway,’ her features brightened up, ‘I’m off for lunch, fancy coming along?’
‘Aww, I’ve just eaten,’ Iris held up the bacon roll she’d bought in the nearby deli only half an hour earlier.
‘Not to worry, we can do it again sometime.’ She made her way towards the door, her steps deliberate, her head high. ‘Did you ever look into that old case, by the way?’ she asked, turning then with a quizzical look in her expression.
‘As much as I could, but there’s nothing to look at. The files must have been destroyed or released before they were committed to the system, it seems that my father is probably the best source of information now and he’s pretty certain that…’
‘It was terribly sad.’ Cullen’s voice dropped, so that there was a trace of something that might almost have been maternal. ‘That poor woman, she was hardly able to care for one child, there was never any doubt… she mightn’t have even remembered what she’d done and even the daughter… well, you don’t come through what that family went through without scars.’
‘I suppose,’ Iris managed, thinking of Anna Crowe that one time she’d met her. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe she could tell from one conversation how emotionally damaged the woman was; after all, she’d worked DV and she knew, victims hid their wounds expertly.
‘Some other time,’ Cullen was saying now. ‘Maybe later, dinner, I’ll drop you a text.’ She shook her head then and made her way out into the afternoon’s drizzling rain.
It was only bread and milk.
‘When I need groceries picked up, I’ll get them myself,’ Maureen fired at him and he knew she was reluctant to let him past the front door. All the same, she was still bandaged, moving about slowly and probably in more pain than even the Lord would expect from one of his most willing sufferers.
‘I just thought… if you don’t want them, I can bring them into the station and the boys’ll make short work of them in tea and toast at the end of the day,’ he grunted, laying the few provisions on the kitchen table. He knew better than to even suggest he might put anything into a cupboard or the fridge. ‘Anyway, how have you been? Sleeping all right?’
‘I’m sleeping as well as can be expected,’ she said shortly and Slattery knew that if the pain didn’t keep her awake, then the guilt of a young man’s death on her hands would be enough to drive anyone from ever sleeping soundly again.
‘You know, a lot of people, when they’ve been through… well, what you’ve been through, they go and talk to someone. There are groups who’ll listen and people paid to help you get over the trauma of it.’ He spoke quietly, and although the radio blared loudly from on top of the fridge, it felt as though he could hear her every heartbeat.
‘I won’t be needing any quack or touchy-feely group, thank you very much all the same. I’ve been through a lot worse than this and I’ll manage just fine,’ she said and turned her back to him, flicking on the kettle for a cup of tea neither of them wanted, but both of them hoped would be enough to move their conversation away from dangerous ground.
‘Has Angela been over today?’ he said looking up at the old plastic kitchen clock. She would finish work soon, but Angela was her mother’s daughter and there was a good chance she’d have been over cleaning the front step before she even set off for work at seven in the morning.
‘No, I told her not to bother.’ She took down two cups, recognisable because it seemed they’d been here forever and yet unfamiliar in this surreal moment. There was a time when Slattery couldn’t have imagined standing in this kitchen again drinking tea with Maureen. ‘Of course, she’s a good girl, you can’t keep her away; she’s worried sick about me, even if she doesn’t say it.’ Maureen sighed. ‘And there’s really no need, apart from a few cuts and bruises and they’ll heal.’ She scalded the cups, reached up for the biscuit tin, there were only sugar-free treats for her now, but still, she was of the generation that couldn’t put a cup of tea before a visitor without something on the side. Suddenly, it struck Slattery that he had become a visitor in his own house. This was his house, his name on the deeds and his chair by the fire, even if he was glad to see the back of it all.
‘She is a good girl,’ Slattery agreed and stared into his tea, counting off the awkward seconds until he could leave again.
‘You don’t need to check up on me either, Ben. I’m fine, there’s not a lot you can do for me anyway,’ she said, but there was no accusation in her voice. She sipped her tea and examined her hands. They were old-woman hands now, much older than the rest of her. Of course, she’d spent a lifetime washing and cleaning: between here and the nearby church, Maureen Slattery had made sure that every surface she came across was as shiny as any soul in heaven. In the background Slattery heard the drone of the radio host and he wondered if Maureen listened to this every day and maybe, for the first time ever, he wondered what she did all day long. This house, well, when he looked about him now, there was no more cleaning left to do here.
‘I always believed… or I convinced myself at least,’ she said, her voice a fragile whisper, ‘that He gave us the back to carry our cross.’ She looked now at Slattery. ‘You know, if I prayed hard enough, I could wipe the slate clean.’ A small tear ran down her cheek and she rubbed it away with the viciousness of a nasty stain.
‘I’ve seen too many terrible things to ever believe that, Maureen,’ he said sadly.
‘The thing is, I’m not sure my back is broad e
nough to carry this cross too.’ Her words drifted from her softly. ‘With Una…’ She stopped.
It was the first time his sister’s name had been uttered between them in years. Now, in the silence stretching between them in this claustrophobic kitchen that should have been theirs, it lingered unevenly, as though it might open up some long-forgotten box and unleash an ocean of memories that Slattery knew neither of them could handle. After a minute, he managed to graze his eyes away from examining the table to look at Maureen’s face. He expected her to be crying, instead the expression was one of complete serenity, as if she had stepped into a completely different world and something about her sent a cold shiver rippling to Slattery’s core.
Veronique shook her head, enjoying the sensation of clean, newly coloured hair. It had taken almost two hours to get roots and ends perfectly matching and now the aroma of ammonia and peroxide and sickly sweet apple pervaded every dank corner of the cottage. Better than the smell of wet dog – which was what had been the backdrop to Kilgee since she’d arrived here. Colouring her hair, picking up new lipstick, packing her bags – these were all steps in preparing for her new life. She didn’t exactly have a plan, apart from getting out of Limerick, but she dreamed of making a fresh start, somewhere she wasn’t known, somewhere warm and not so expensive to live. It wasn’t a lot to start out with, but she would have enough in her pocket to get settled in a little flat somewhere cheap and maybe she could get a job, working in a bar or waiting tables. The first thing she had to do was get the cash in her hand and then she could make her way to the airport and out of this godforsaken country. She poured herself her second glass of vodka for the day.
She hated Limerick, the way everything about it made her feel like an outsider. From what she could see, it was a place built on secrets and lies. Even Ollie – he had his own secrets, him and Anna Crowe. She’d heard them together, their great big reunion. Fat lot of good that had done either of them, after twenty years apart. Of course, Veronique wasn’t one for friendships much, but she figured whatever Ollie thought there was between him and Anna Crowe it had been all one-way traffic. Asking him to take care of her deepest secrets, indeed. Veronique had been itching to get a look at that box of treasure, knew instinctively that it was worth something more than just Ollie’s sentimental gratitude for a friendship rekindled.
And she’d been right. Searching the house and every outbuilding had paid off handsomely. Five thousand euro and there would be more where that came from, she was certain of that. These people, they may not have been enormously wealthy, but a couple of thousand euro was nothing if it kept them out of jail.
The knock on the door when it came was exploratory, more than explanatory – as if someone was tentatively checking that anyone could live in this rundown cottage. Veronique checked her appearance before she answered, catching the backdrop of neglect and decay in the dark room behind her reflection.
‘I am coming,’ she yelled at the door and swung it open with a customary anger in her movements. ‘Yes, what is it?’ she asked automatically, but then stopped for a moment; she had no idea he was about to kill her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
If this is what Cullen meant by taking it easy of an evening, Locke was glad they weren’t house-sharing. The living room was like a mini incident room, all of the details played out on sticky notes against any surface that might hold them. She’d even managed to bring home pictures of Anna Crowe and her two kids. Unsettling pictures, photographs that let you see their personalities; photographs that made their deaths seem unimaginable. The photographs made them real and reminded Iris that once she’d met this woman, before these terrible things had happened. Once they’d been the same. Once this woman had held her hand for a long moment and looked into her face, as though they’d known each other a lifetime. Once there’d been a frail connection that Iris felt might grow into friendship. But then, the unimaginable had happened. Iris had seen their remains, smelled the odour of skin burnt, saw the three matching bullet holes where someone had callously stood over them and pulled a cold trigger, stopping the clock for them once and for all.
Seeing them now, Anna with her hair long and heavy, Sylvie snuggled safely against her smooth neck, Martin, his face a map of freckles and missing teeth, his eyes bright, filled with laughter and expectation, well, it was heartbreaking. None of it would mean anything, of course. Iris got that now, even if they managed to find their killer, it would mean nothing. Anna, Martin and Sylvie Crowe were gone, a whole family wiped away in one dark night, in one dark deed. They’d died, all the potential drained from them in a breath, and for what? Sure, maybe that was as much as they needed, to find out why they died, if they found out why, well, then they’d have a better idea who had done this terrible thing. And it was a terrible thing. Iris knew that she’d been so shit-scared of whatever had been lurking about that cottage, she’d lost sight of Anna Crowe and that was something she couldn’t afford to do. She was reading transcripts now, carefully typed-up notes from the interviews with neighbours both in Kilgee and in Limerick city.
‘So, maybe it’s the Asperger’s you were picking up on?’ Cullen had the transcript from the interview she and Slattery had carried out earlier.
‘Maybe.’ She’d known a girl at school with Asperger’s syndrome – Sandra. She was remote in the same way she’d found Adrian Crowe. Maybe her reaction would be similar if she heard her nearest and dearest had just died. She might have judged him differently if she’d had a different label for his apparent coldness. The thought didn’t make her feel any better. At least the interview gave them something to follow up with the Department for Defence. Even ten years ago, there had to be some transparency around how people fared in competition for cadetships. ‘So now we look at this Kerr guy?’
‘Yeah, we look at him, sure. But the Baby Fairley case has been closed for over twenty years. If he had something stuck in his craw, I’d say he’d have choked on it well before now.’
Cullen hadn’t wanted to consider a link between the two cases all along. Iris thought she could see why. It was old ground. Her father’s case. Some cases are better left closed. That’s what her father had said when she asked him about it. It was Anna Crowe’s mother; they were all convinced of that. Jack Locke had looked at her and seen his own wife – the slow descent into a world away from reality. Maybe there was a tincture of vanity too. If he couldn’t solve it, he sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone else coming along and pulling his work apart, pulling his memories apart, pulling his reputation apart. Iris knew that no one would want to discredit her father; no one would want to upset the old man.
‘But if she believed the baby was buried in the copse – it’s not a huge area, shouldn’t we at least…?’
‘You’re out of your mind, Iris.’ Cullen’s scorn-filled words threw her back to feeling like a newbie again. She felt the resentment bubble, and something build up inside her that made her want to run from this apartment, straight back to the station and pull every file on Baby Fairley and read right through till the morning. Except, of course, she couldn’t, because at the moment there were no files. They had nothing. ‘You know what the budgets are like now. You know how we’re fixed. I can’t open up an investigation based on a few words by a man who may just be trying – not very cleverly, mind – to get himself out of the eye of the storm.’ Her face was white now, as if she’d just come face to face with too many buried ghosts; that’s what missing kids did to you.
‘Listen to me, just for a second. I know it was your first case of sorts. I know you were thrown it as part of your probation under my father. No one expected you to solve it then; he wouldn’t have given it to you if he thought there was a hope he could solve it himself first time round.’
‘So what makes you think we’ll solve it now?’ She was tapping her fingers against the side of her cold coffee mug. ‘What makes you think it will actually improve anything for anybody by solving it now?’
‘Jesus, you don’t real
ly mean that?’
‘Of course I do. Think about it, the kid is dead – you said so yourself. What’s to be gained from putting the likes of Kerr away for it now? He was only ten years old, if even that, when it happened. If he did it, if we could even prove that he did it – has he done anything since that makes you think he’s a threat to any other kid? Has he done anything that makes you think that this was anything more than one stupid mistake by a kid who was jealous of a new baby? Think about that kid in Donegal. They created monsters by putting his killers away. Who won out there?’ Cullen stopped; perhaps she knew she had said too much. One thing was certain, she had thought about this for a long, long time and maybe in her mind, she already knew what had happened to Baby Fairley. It was obvious; the one person they’d never pointed the finger at, Ollie Kerr was the person she held responsible.
Iris shivered, knowing it had to have been Ollie Kerr who she had fought off that night at the cottage also.
‘There’s never going to be any winners here, Anita. We know that, but wouldn’t it be good to know that at least Anna could be buried with her sister – that even if they were separated in life that they might be…’ Iris kept her voice even, not giving away anything, even if she was sick to the pit of her stomach beneath her calm voice.
‘Don’t give me that bullshit, Iris. It makes no odds to Anna Crowe now. The only one this is going to help is you and we both know it.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean, you get to solve the one case your father couldn’t. You get to walk about Corbally station thinking that you are better than him – you’re not working in his shadow any more. You solve this and you’re your own woman.’
‘I can’t believe you’d think that.’
Silent Night: An absolutely gripping crime thriller Page 18