The Killing House

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Yes, Mammy. I spoke to the woman about the flowers. I told her Auntie Samantha’s allergic to lilies. Yes, Mammy. YES.’

  Across the desk, Avril was rolling her eyes and miming strangling her mother on the phone. Paula smiled sympathetically. She’d had no mother breathing down her neck when her wedding was imminent, only her best friend Saoirse nagging her to get on and organise things. It still hurt to think of the dress, the crumpled ivory silk, in the back of the wardrobe. All of it such a stupid waste and humiliation.

  She was back at her desk now, having dispatched Mairead and a hostile Carly with a Family Liaison Officer to the secure flat they’d be using. There was not the same urgency there’d be for a high-priority missing person, and that made Paula sad in a way. This dead girl, whoever she was, had been killed and buried and no one was even looking for her.

  To flesh out her report, Paula had been researching Mairead’s brother, Paddy. The Ghost. What she’d found made her blink at her screen. The couple shot in their home, killed in front of their three small children, bullets landing in the baby’s cot. The victims of his ‘interrogations’, dumped with their fingernails pulled out, cigarette burns, brands all over their skin. The tapes made of ‘confessions’, dying screams sent to family members. Grim reading.

  ‘Dear God,’ Avril exhaled, hanging up the phone. She’d come a long way from the prim girl who’d started as a civilian analyst in the now defunct MPRU. Back then, when she’d never had a drink in her life and wouldn’t have dreamed of taking the Lord’s name in vain, she was engaged to an insipid youth pastor called Alan. Now she was a DC, she was marrying Gerard Monaghan despite his dodgy Republican family, and Paula counted her as a friend.

  ‘Mammy giving you grief?’

  ‘It’s going to be the end of me. I swear, there was less negotiation about the Good Friday Agreement than there is about this ecumenical wedding service.’

  Paula grimaced in solidarity. This was a long-running saga. Gerard’s priest cousin, Father Eamonn, was to celebrate the wedding, but in Avril’s father’s church, and many concessions had to be made so that the Reverend John Wright could be happy with such Popish ways. Avril was also Bob Hamilton’s niece on her mother’s side, so he’d be there. And of course Guy Brooking had been invited too. If he brought his pregnant wife along Paula was planning to get very drunk. ‘It’ll be OK. Afterwards everyone will just say how lovely it was.’

  Avril’s face darkened. ‘Paula, I’m an eejit, moaning away here to you when you’re . . .’

  She shrugged. If she didn’t let anyone see how much it hurt, her own aborted wedding, she could manage. Rewrite history. If she never thought about it, it never happened. She’d never agreed to get engaged and she’d never put on a stupid white dress or pinned flowers into her hair or seen Aidan dragged away as she waited in the church porch. It was hard to keep this up, however. For one thing, Maggie still sometimes slept with the headband she’d been bought to wear as flower girl, now mangled, its silk blossoms wilted. ‘It’s fine, honestly. It’s not like no one else is allowed to get married now, is it? Did Mairead and Carly settle into the flat?’

  ‘We’ve got someone down there. Keeping a wee eye on them, like. Mairead made three phone calls from the payphone in the lobby as soon as the FLO left. Not from her mobile.’

  So, she was trying to cover it up maybe. Paula gathered that Mairead was not supposed to know someone was keeping a wee eye on her. ‘Any idea who the calls were to?’

  ‘Nah, she one-four-one’d them, but our guy said she was crying afterwards. Then she went and sat outside the building for a while, smoking. I checked and the prison Ciaran Wallace is in got a phone call last night about the same time.’

  Mairead was trying to contact her brother. Interesting.

  ‘Oh, and our guy says he also saw her punching in the code for the South.’

  The South, where her other brother Paddy was rumoured to be hiding. ‘I see. And on that note – I’ve been away, can you explain to me the whole thing with the on-the-runs?’

  Avril still had data at her fingertips, as in her old job, but she was also tough now. The previous year she’d been attacked while undercover, drugged and almost assaulted, and Paula thought again how fond she’d become of the younger woman. She had no friends like that in London. Just nodding acquaintances, people to drink with after work, old university friends she kept saying she had to meet up with but never quite managed to. They’d all moved to South London now and bought houses, which they were slowly filling with retro furniture and babies. Avril said, ‘They’re terrorists hiding out from police, usually in the South. They got secret letters during the Good Friday Agreement to say they wouldn’t be prosecuted, but now it’s come out, people are saying the scheme wasn’t legal. So it’s all a bit up in the air.’

  ‘And Paddy Wallace, the brother, he was one of them?’

  ‘He was certainly wanted. A list of murders as long as my arm.’ Avril’s mouth compressed. Paula knew she had strong views on the ‘let’s forget all that nastiness’ spirit which had prevailed in Northern Ireland for the last twenty years. As did Aidan. It was one of the reasons she’d not been surprised to hear he’d beaten up Sean Conlon, the man who’d shot his father. Horrified and sickened, yes, but not entirely surprised. ‘He disappeared in the nineties, and I think we thought he was dead, to be honest.’

  Three out of four Wallaces gone away, two still missing. How could a whole family vanish into the air? It was highly out of character for an Irish person to leave their village, their homestead, and fall out of touch with their family. It just didn’t happen. It was a country where, if you didn’t take care, you’d put down roots as soon as you stopped moving.

  ‘And old Mrs Wallace, the mother? We’ll have to visit her, I take it?’

  ‘Yeah, but we might not get much from her. The farm came up for sale because she went into a nursing home a few years back, and her fees weren’t getting paid. The staff there said she’s never had a visitor in all that time.’

  Paula found that shocking. To have four children and still rot alone in a home. ‘Not a one of them visited? Not Paddy, if he’s at large?’

  ‘No. Might have been worried we have the place under surveillance or something. Someone’ll go out to her this afternoon, if there’s time.’ Avril nodded to her partition, over which Gerard Monaghan had stuck his excessively gelled head. ‘Mammy’s on the warpath again,’ she told him darkly.

  Paula smiled at Gerard. ‘Well, there’s the groom. How’s it going your end?’

  He rolled his eyes in an exact copy of Avril’s expression. ‘This better work out, Maguire, because I’d rather wax my balls than do it again. If you have the number for Senator George Mitchell maybe you could send it our way?’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘My mammy won’t stop crying every time we talk about the ceremony. It won’t be in God’s eyes! You won’t be properly married if it’s not in a Catholic church! Auntie Siobhan was going to sing Ave Maria and now she can’t! What is it about weddings that send people crazy?’

  ‘Dunno. Family. Emotion. All mixed up in a big expensive pot. Did you want me?’

  ‘Just to say Fintan McCabe’s mammy’s down at the morgue. Should have an ID soon, if it’s him.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ murmured Avril. ‘Must be awful, whatever her son did.’

  ‘You live by the gun, you die by the gun,’ said Gerard. ‘Anyway, he’s not the only murder I have on my desk. Another scumbag just got shot last night, so I’ll be working late again.’

  ‘Drugs?’ said Avril, with world-weary distaste.

  ‘Like as not. Still, you know what that means? Overtime pay.’ He made a gesture like someone firing two pistols, and loped off back to his own desk, making the partition wall shake behind him. Paula smiled after him, until the thought of the morgue made her frown again. Looking through glass, not knowing if you wan
ted to see the person you’d lost there or not. Something she might find herself doing again, if her mother’s body turned up at last.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Ooof! Take it easy, pet!’ Maggie had flung herself at Paula with full speed when she went to pick her up from ‘Auntie Saoirse’s’ house after work. Strange to think of her little baby as a sturdy child, one who could almost knock her mother off her feet.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, Auntie Saoirse has my Little Pony Canterlot Castle, come and see, come and see!’ The pink turreted monstrosity, a present from Saoirse and her husband Dave, had stayed behind in Ireland in the move. It was far too big to bring over to London and Paula had concocted an elaborate lie about how it had to stay here so Maggie could always come back and visit.

  ‘OK, pet, in a minute. I need to say hi to Auntie Saoirse first.’ Paula’s best friend from school, a doctor in Ballyterrin Hospital’s A&E, wore a loose white top and glasses. Paula hugged her briefly. It still felt stupid. She and Saoirse had been joined at the hip from ages five to eighteen, and back then they wouldn’t have dreamed of hugging or kissing cheeks or anything like that. Why would they, when they saw each other every day? ‘You’re looking well.’

  ‘Thanks! You too. The big city must agree with you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It isn’t home.’ It was a sore subject, the way Paula had fled when she was eighteen, dragged reluctantly back home three years ago. She hadn’t even gone to Saoirse’s wedding, unable to face a trip to Ballyterrin. ‘Thanks for minding her. Pat isn’t up to a full day any more, I don’t think.’

  ‘I saw her down the town the other day. She’s not too bad, a bit failed, maybe.’

  ‘I know.’ Another sore subject. She’d abandoned her father and stepmother right after Pat’s heart failed during chemo treatment. Taken away their adored only grandchild, fled to London for a new job. Trying to save herself, once again, by running as fast as she could from the past. ‘The place looks great. Puts me to shame.’ Saoirse’s house was always so neat, even after a day of Hurricane Maggie. Candles on side tables, framed pictures, tasteful cushions on the grey hessian sofa. She was good at life, unlike Paula. ‘Dave at work?’

  ‘Aye. Wait a second. I wanted to show you something.’ Saoirse had a secretive, pleased look on her face, and Paula’s heart lurched. It couldn’t be. Could it? Saoirse produced her phone from her pocket. ‘Look.’

  Paula squinted at the picture. ‘Is that . . . What is it?’

  Saoirse beamed. ‘Lines, Maguire. Two massive fat ones. On a pregnancy test.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘I know!’ Suddenly Saoirse had tears in her eyes. ‘Six bloody years I’ve been waiting to see those lines.’

  ‘I know! Wow! God, it’s amazing. How long?’

  ‘Not long. Four weeks maybe.’ She slipped a protective hand over her stomach. Paula remembered that – except when it happened to her she couldn’t tell anyone for ages, since she didn’t know who the father was. She hadn’t even been sure she was going to keep Maggie to start with – no father, not the right time, etc. – which was something she tried not to think about on sleepless nights, the child asleep in the next room. But God, if anyone deserved it Saoirse did. The latest round of IVF must have worked, finally.

  ‘That’s brilliant, Glocko. I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘Early days. I don’t want everyone to know.’

  ‘Maggie will be delighted. She’s obsessed with babies at the minute. I keep getting her these gender-neutral toys and all she wants is baby dolls with frilly pink dresses.’ She gave her friend another quick, hard hug. ‘I’m thrilled for you.’

  Saoirse’s face turned sombre. ‘If it holds. Christ, I’m terrified.’

  ‘Pat would tell you to say a novena. Does she know?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I thought she’d be a good person to tell, you know?’ Paula understood that. Her stepmother was kindness itself, and adored babies. She’d lost so many of her own, only her precious Aidan making it to birth, and now he was sitting in prison, his sentence stretching ahead of him. If her own pain was bad, what must Pat’s be? Saoirse put the phone away, snapping the screen off decisively. ‘Anyway. Let’s not talk about it any more. It’s bad luck. What is it has you back in town this time? The wedding?’

  ‘That and the Red Road case.’

  ‘No missing people there, though?’ Saoirse frowned.

  ‘Other way round. We’ve got bodies and no names. And worse, the Commission are involved. Corry’s raging.’

  ‘Poor people. Imagine being dead and no one knowing where you were.’ But despite Saoirse’s sombre words, there was a rare lightness to Paula’s friend, who spent most of her time, as she put it, up to her elbows in blood and guts. A giddiness that made Paula’s heart both glad for her and sad for herself, in a small selfish way. Could she ever feel that way again, after everything that had happened? She’d been right not to tell her friend what she’d learned about her mother. It was too much of a burden to place on anyone.

  ‘Tell Dave congrats from me. Maggie, come on, pet, we need to get home for tea.’

  Saoirse watched the child fondly. ‘Any time you need her minded, just shout. It’s good practice! We can even feed her here. Dave loves potato waffles and beans. He’s like a big wean himself. Otherwise, see you at the wedding?’

  ‘Avril and Gerard’s? Oh, yeah, see you there.’ She hadn’t even realised Saoirse was going. They only knew each other through Paula, surely. She forgot, sometimes, how small Ballyterrin was.

  Paula bundled Maggie out under extreme protest and bribing promises about coming back tomorrow, thinking how happy Saoirse looked. Please God it would last. Not that she even believed in God, but something about being in Ireland meant she found herself praying all the same, in a vague, scared way. Today had made her ache with homesickness, somehow, after the months she’d spent in London, anonymous. Everyone in Ballyterrin was tied together like the trees in a forest, an unbreakable tangle. She’d run away from that once before, from being ‘that wee Maguire girl’, the one whose mother was a tout. Could it be that she’d actually missed it?

  ‘Mummy, can we have a new baby too?’

  ‘What?’ Startled, she peered back at Maggie in the car mirror.

  ‘Like Auntie Saoirse’s baby you were talking about. Can we have one too?’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be listening in, Miss Big Ears. Now come on. Back home for tea.’

  Another baby, she thought, pulling away from the kerb. How and when would a thing like that even happen? Her life seemed to have frozen the day Aidan was arrested, and yet now it was a year later, and Maggie would be at school soon, and life was moving on whether she liked it or not.

  On her way home she drove past the block of flats they’d put Mairead and Carly in, and Paula wondered about the strange mysteries this case was throwing up. Where the remaining Wallace siblings had got to. Why both brother and sister had at first appeared unsurprised by the discovery of bodies, but been upset all the same when told one was female. As she took her child home to bed in a house where she’d be safe, and loved, and cosseted, Paula made a silent promise to the dead girl, unnamed and forgotten in the ground, that she would do her best to find out what had happened. Not that it would make any difference to her now.

  Margaret

  What she hated most, apart from the cold and the smell and the welts in her arms and back from sitting, was the way she’d become like a lab rat. Whenever the door rattled up, she tensed. Fear flooding her. What would it be today? Yesterday – or another day, maybe, she was losing track – he’d held a lighter to her face. The heat singeing her nose, making her struggle backwards, panicking while he laughed, dancing the flame around her. ‘Same colour as your hair,’ he’d said, fondling it. Her red hair that was now so dirty and matted it looked brown.

  Today, it was one of the other men. Sean, she th
ought he was called. He was carrying a bucket of water and he set it down beside her. Caught her eye quickly with a guilty look. As if to say I’m sorry. Then there was the sound of whistling and Paddy strolled in, slamming the door down behind him. ‘Margaret. Good morning.’

  Sean stood aside, fixing his eyes to the floor, as if he wanted to pretend he wasn’t part of this. An innocent bystander.

  She looked at the water. A red shiny bucket, like the kind PJ used to wash the car. Water sloshing in it. Were they going to help her wash? She was very dirty, after all. She looked up at Paddy, to see the smile curving his lips. He knew what she was thinking. It wasn’t for washing.

  Suddenly, he’d seized her by the hair and forced her face down into it. She hadn’t time to take a breath. She clamped her mouth shut but it was filling up her nose already, burning, freezing. She struggled under his hand. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. Just a warning just to scare her just to – Christ! She was drowning! Margaret’s eyes opened in panic, filled with fractured light. Water in her nose, her eyes, her mouth. One clear thought in her panicked mind.

  I’m going to die.

  Then she was out, gasping in the air of the dank barn. She was crying, spitting out water, snottering down her face. Her hands not even free to wipe it. ‘Please . . . please . . . why are you doing this?’

  ‘You know why, Margaret. You’ve betrayed us, and you won’t tell me anything. You leave me no choice.’

  ‘I’ve a family . . . a family . . .’ Her voice was drowned in tears. A storm of coughing.

  ‘You should have thought of your family when you were opening your legs for that Brit bastard.’ He leaned towards her, reached out his hand to grab her hair again. She screamed. He sat back, as if satisfied. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. You don’t want the bucket again?’

  ‘Please, no. No. I’ll talk.’

  ‘You’ll tell us what you know about lover boy. Who else he’s using as his wee spies. I want names, Margaret.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll talk. I’ll talk!’ She didn’t know any names. Her mind was trying to work, think of something she could tell them that sounded true. But inside her head she was screaming, in terror and panic. It was all she could think about. Not the bucket again. Please, not the bucket. And under that was another thought, a lurking shameful one she didn’t want to look at. If Edward had not come for her, had given her up, why should she not give him up too?