The Killing House

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Sorry for you,’ he said, gruffly. ‘Must have been hard.’

  ‘It’s still hard. The not-knowing, that’s what hurts. If I could get some answers, find out what happened to her, that would really help.’

  Ciaran seemed to think about it for a long time. Then he sighed. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about your ma. But I don’t know what happened to her. I told you, I went to London before all this.’

  ‘Before what?’ she said quickly.

  ‘Fintan and . . . whoever. He was grand when I left. Best pals with our Paddy, round the house all the time. I went off, lived my life, then next thing I know I’m being arrested for killing some fella I never even heard of. They’d evidence. I dunno how, but some things of mine were at the scene. My hoody and that. Then I was brought back here and banged up for years.’ As he spoke she saw the bitterness on his face, and imagined it for a second, serving all that time for something you hadn’t done. Would it be the same for Aidan? She shut it down. They always said they hadn’t done it. Didn’t mean it was true. He was getting up now, scratching at his thin, tattooed arms. ‘Sorry,’ he said shortly. ‘I can’t help you. Dunno where our Paddy would take someone.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried?’ she tried, desperate now. ‘She’s your sister.’

  ‘My sister who I’ve not seen in twenty years. And our Mairead and Paddy . . . well, it’s maybe not what you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She frowned, puzzled.

  He turned to go. ‘Dunno. Can’t help you. Sorry.’

  Paula stood up too, her heart sinking – she’d thought this was a good move, that he’d tell her more – and as she lifted her little plastic bag of possessions, she saw Aidan.

  He was sitting at a table, composed, and her heart gave out. Just the sight of his face, the familiar lines of it now more scored with age, his stubble grey round the edges. Oh, Aidan. She swallowed down her tears and before she knew it she was walking towards him. He sat very still, not running away this time. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hiya.’ For a moment they just looked each other over, taking in the way they’d changed, the way they were the same. ‘You look well,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Thanks.’ She glanced over at the guards, but they were occupied with seeing people out. Maybe she could grab a few minutes with him.

  ‘Being away from here suits you. I knew it would.’

  She looked at her hands. She hadn’t wanted to leave Ballyterrin, had hated him for suggesting it, but perhaps he was right. ‘It’s . . . well, it’s not home. But the job is good. Bit dull after here, but good.’

  ‘Dull is under-rated, Maguire.’ He paused. ‘Does Mags . . . does Maggie like it?’ He stumbled over the child’s name, and Paula felt it like a knife.

  ‘Well enough, I suppose. I feel bad taking her away from Dad and Pat, and Saoirse. Did you know she was having a baby?’

  ‘Aye, great news. They come in to see me the odd time.’ Aidan almost looked like his old self when he smiled. ‘God knows they deserve it.’

  ‘I could bring Maggie to see you,’ she said carefully, and he darkened again.

  ‘Come on now. She’s only three, she doesn’t need to be seeing me in here. With a bit of luck she won’t even remember me.’

  Paula said nothing, didn’t tell him Maggie still thought she saw him on the street, still asked for him. Maybe it comforted Aidan to think otherwise. She didn’t pretend to understand what it was like for him, locked up in here, the life he’d almost had gone in an instant of madness. ‘I hear Bob’s been in to see you.’ She wanted to ask who was visiting him today. Not Saoirse or Pat, they’d have told her surely; anyway, Pat was minding Maggie. Who?

  ‘Aye, he’s not such a bad old stick when you get to know him. He has some cocked idea that Conlon was a marked man and someone else was there that night to finish him off.’

  Paula too had always pinned her hopes on this. The problem was, how could they ever prove it? ‘Yeah.’ She waited to hear what had changed. Aidan had never believed this before.

  He shifted in his seat, not meeting her eyes. ‘Here’s the thing. You told me that last year and I never believed it, not really. I knew what I did to the man – punched him, kicked him, stamped on him even. He could have been dead when I left him. I don’t know that he wasn’t. But . . .’

  Paula’s heart, stupid as it was, leapt up.

  ‘. . . Maybe someone else did come and do it. And Bob, he had some ideas about who that could be.’

  ‘I know. He had a list. Sean Conlon gave it to him.’ Did Aidan know that, that Bob had been working with the man who’d likely murdered his father?

  It seemed he did, because he didn’t react like she expected. As if it had drained out of him, all the rage and loss that had led him to beat Sean Conlon to a pulp while he lay on the dirty ground of a pub car park. ‘There’s a lot of bad blood, Maguire. Conlon and my dad. Me and Conlon. Ould Bob and Conlon, and I don’t know what they had between them . . .’

  ‘My mother,’ she said. It was surreal, how they were speaking to each other, laying the truth out between them on the scuffed table. ‘Bob knew something about where she went. Why she was taken, or had to run, or . . . whatever happened.’ She couldn’t tell Aidan everything yet, about her mother being pregnant, that her mother’s handler and lover had been living in London in the nineties, with a woman and baby. Because Pat was Aidan’s mother, and it would destroy her if she thought PJ’s wife might be alive after all. ‘He loved her, I think. My mother. He did something for her. I don’t know what exactly.’

  ‘That’s why he hushed up all the reports, bungled the investigation?’

  ‘I think so.’ Poor Bob. Being thought a failure all this time, when he’d only done it to bury Margaret Maguire’s lies. ‘So. What now?’ She faced him across the table. His eyes were so green. She wanted to touch his face, smooth away those new lines, run her hands through his newly short, newly greying hair.

  ‘If I could find some proof another fella went after Conlon that night . . .’ Aidan murmured.

  ‘A witness?’ They were almost whispering now.

  ‘Maybe. But if I could, would they reopen the case? The PSNI?’

  Her heart was hammering. It was happening, actually happening. Aidan was going to fight, at last. ‘They’d have to. There’s no proof you were the one killed him. If someone could say he was alive when you left . . .’ But who would do it? She looked quickly round the room. ‘Is it someone in here? Someone talked to you?’ That would explain his sudden change of heart.

  ‘Shh. Not a word, Maguire. It’s delicate.’

  ‘But you’ll try?’

  ‘Let’s see. Will you back me?’ His words were rough, awkward.

  ‘Will I . . . God almighty, of course I will. I’ve been saying that all along. What’s changed?’ The guard was looking her way; she hooked her bag over her fingers. ‘Why now?’ she said quickly.

  ‘Well, I suppose . . . With you being gone. I thought you’d have your own life now, without me holding you back, good job, better life for Mags . . . And then I started thinking, maybe actually I didn’t want to sit in here for years, if it wasn’t me who did it after all.’

  ‘Oh.’ So all this, the desperate atonement, the refusal to provide mitigation, had been to make up for what he did to her. The lie about being Maggie’s father.

  ‘Did you tell him yet? Brooking?’ As if reading her mind.

  She sighed. ‘He’s having another baby. With his wife. It didn’t seem right, not yet. But I will. I’ve promised myself I will, when the time is right.’

  He nodded. ‘You and him—’

  ‘Colleagues. We always worked well together. Should have left it at that.’ Both of them were speaking lightly, but her chest was fluttering like a bird. Was this really happening?

  ‘I’m sorry, Maguire. I’m so bloody sorry I didn’t tell you about
the DNA test. It was unforgivable. I just . . . I wanted you. And Mags. I wanted us all together.’

  The guard was unlocking the door. Almost time to go, the seconds trickling away. Paula gathered her bag close. ‘What you didn’t realise,’ she said quickly, ‘was that it would have made no difference. Even if I’d known you weren’t her dad. It was always you. Always. There’s nobody else, Aidan. There never will be.’

  ‘Time to go now, folks!’ The guard was calling over.

  Aidan stood, his face blank. ‘I . . .’

  ‘Just try, please? For me? For us?’

  He nodded. She turned to go, and then she was back, hurling herself at him, and his arms were around her, stronger than before, wired with muscle, and her lips were on his, just for a moment. ‘I will,’ he said fiercely, into her mouth. ‘I will. I promise, Maguire.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Paula almost floated out the gate. She’d spoken to Aidan, for the first time in months, and he’d kissed her. It was unbelievable. Something had changed. She wished she knew what. It couldn’t just be Bob’s visits, surely. Someone in the prison, perhaps, helping him. Someone with information.

  On her way out she saw a familiar figure hobbling towards the visitors’ centre, stick in hand. ‘Ah, did I miss it?’ Maeve said. So that’s who was visiting Aidan. ‘Got held up at a bloody press conference. Hope he won’t be raging.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll mind too much.’

  Maeve saw her face, which Paula knew was impossibly flushed. ‘You spoke to him?’

  ‘Maeve, he talked to me! He’s really going to try and fight!’

  ‘Well, I know that, sure aren’t I helping him?’

  Paula squinted at her. ‘You what?’

  Maeve sighed. ‘Come on. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.’

  They sat in Maeve’s car, which as always was a skip on wheels. Paula had to move three crisp packets and a cat collar before she could get in. Rain skiffed against the windows as she told Maeve about the possible link between Paddy Wallace, Mark O’Hanlon and Prontias Ryan. Maeve listened, nodding along.

  ‘So. Why’d they get shot now, with Wallace back? Seems too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘It’s a huge story,’ said Maeve, propping her crutch against the window. ‘Been rumbling on since that informer got shot last year, down in Donegal. If it’s proven that the IRA are still active, ordering executions, the DUP have said they’ll leave the executive. Then the whole thing collapses. So the police have to turn a blind eye, kind of. Write it off as just random murders.’

  Paula was silent. The peace process had been in place since she was seventeen. A part of her life she’d taken for granted. It was sobering to realise how fragile it was. ‘So it’s simpler to pin Conlon’s death on Aidan, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m sure Willis Campbell is straight. But if he can make it a nice clean normal murder, a drunken fight, why would he go digging to find out if the IRA are involved? The IRA who officially disbanded years ago? You see what I mean. Why upset the whole house of cards?’

  Paula nodded. ‘And if I find evidence someone else did the murder, and Aidan gets out – it could spark off an almighty row?’

  Maeve nodded. The grey light picked out the scars on her face – marks from a petrol bomb, thrown by members of the Republican movement that officially didn’t exist. She’d been caught in the crossfire when someone tried to kill the former Sinn Fein mayor of Ballyterrin, himself ex-IRA. He was dead now too. A lot of people were dying, even decades after the Troubles. ‘It’s no exaggeration to say it could take us back to civil war.’

  ‘I see.’ It would be so easy to give up. Even Aidan accepted he’d probably killed Conlon, or at least that he could have. No one else cared if he spent the next few years in prison. But Paula had never been good at giving up on lost causes. ‘What would you do? If you were me?’

  Maeve made a face. ‘Aidan’s my friend, as you know. I love the bones of him, useless bastard that he is. I’d find someone to confess to killing Conlon. But why would they? And how could you ever get close to these guys? They don’t just talk to anyone, and you’re police, and they know who your mammy was.’

  Paula nodded. She knew that was a non-starter. Besides, it was too risky, and for Maggie’s sake she had to be careful who she sniffed around. ‘I need some kind of leverage. Someone with something to lose, or gain.’

  Maeve fixed her with a stare. ‘You got someone in mind?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She was thinking of Ciaran Wallace. He was still a young-ish man. He wanted out of prison, sooner rather than later. Did he even know anything? And could she trust him – was he lying about not being there when her mother was taken?

  ‘Be careful,’ said Maeve. ‘I know I’m one to talk but – take it from someone who knows. When we have this baby, I’m going to ask for a transfer.’

  ‘What?’ Paula stared at her. ‘What to?’

  Maeve sighed. ‘Features.’

  ‘My God.’ Investigative reporting was in Maeve’s blood. Hunting down criminals, exposing conspiracies, slamming the corrupt – this was what she did. To hear she was thinking of giving it up was shocking. ‘Seriously?’

  Maeve indicated her injured leg and wounded face. ‘I’ve sacrificed a lot for the job already. Sinead isn’t happy. She can’t do it all on her own, and I don’t think it’ll be fair to the wee one to keep on the way I’ve always been.’ She saw Paula’s face. ‘It’s different for you – it’s your mother. It’s all personal. But I just think it’s time for me to live the easy life. One where you’re not checking under your car every morning for a bomb, and you can walk through an underpass without running in case someone comes up behind you, not that I can run very fast these days. Where you don’t have your own police liaison for all the death threats you get. You know?’

  ‘I know. I understand, I really do. I’m just . . . surprised.’

  ‘We’re all growing up, I suppose.’ Except for Aidan, who hadn’t been able to restrain himself, and was now in jail. Except for Paula, who’d tried to make a new life in London and boomeranged right back here, as her dad said, up to her elbows in the muck of the past.

  ‘I’m just so close,’ she said. ‘To finding out what happened back then. To her.’

  ‘You could be inches away all your life and never get there. Fact is, people don’t want you to find out. You know that, right?’

  ‘I . . .’ She hadn’t wanted to admit it. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Listen. If the Provos killed your mother back then, they’d have dumped her body for you to find. That’s what they did. Unless she was involved in something else – or she was sacrificed to cover up someone else’s crimes. Ever wonder why no one even investigated it properly?’

  ‘Yeah. It drove my dad nuts. He thought they were incompetent.’

  ‘No one’s that incompetent.’

  She knew why Bob had botched it, but what about the people her mother had worked for? Why hadn’t the Army come to rescue her, their valued source? ‘Yeah. You’re right. Protecting another informer, maybe?’

  ‘That’s what I’d say. There was something else at stake – someone they didn’t want people to know about, and your mother was given up to protect them.’

  It all made sense, as if she’d always known it. ‘Another informer. Inside the IRA.’

  ‘That’s where I’d put my money. You can always sue, you know, if you have proof the Army ran her as an informer. Failure to protect her – a few families are doing that since the Stakeknife stuff came out. Might give you some answers, at least.’

  She shook her head. It couldn’t come out officially, not without giving up all her mother’s secrets. ‘I’m going to get there. I know it. I’m going to find the truth.’

  ‘Maybe, Paula. But will you be able to handle it when it comes?’

 
Everyone seemed to be asking her that. Stubbornly, she looked away. ‘Cross that bridge when I get to it.’

  Maeve smiled. ‘You’re just like him, you know. Like a pair of mules in harness. Here, hold this, will you?’ Paula grasped the crutch, and Maeve clasped her awkwardly with her free arm. ‘Maguire. You know I’m just looking out for you, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Doesn’t mean I can take your advice, though.’

  ‘I know. I know. Sure I never took anyone’s myself. But when you have a wean . . . isn’t it different?’

  Paula thought of Maggie. Who did the little girl have? Only herself and two increasingly infirm grandparents, one who wasn’t even a relation by blood. A missing grandmother, a father who didn’t know he was that. And Maggie was three now. For herself, she could go on living this half-life forever, waiting for Aidan, waiting to find her mother. But Maeve was right. It was different now. She had to sort herself out. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Maggie’ll be fine with Pat for another while. Let’s go and drown our sorrows.’

  Margaret

  Sean, that was his name. The one who came and went, who was higher up the food chain than Fintan, lower than Paddy. Everyone was lower than Paddy. The man was pacing up and down near the hedgerow, muttering to himself. ‘Feck this. Feck it.’

  Margaret had sunk down into the dirt, her knees and elbows red with it. She was so tired. Shouldn’t this be over by now? ‘If you’re going to shoot me you should just do it,’ she said. Her voice was like gravel. ‘It’s torture, this, keeping me here for days on end. I don’t know anything. I’m no use to you.’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ he said viciously, turning on her. ‘Should have thought of that, shouldn’t you, when you betrayed your country? Climbed into bed with that Brit bastard? Men are in prison because of you.’

  ‘It’s because they broke the law!’ she shot back. ‘You killed people, what did you expect? It’s not worth it. This, this, stupid idea of a united Ireland. Do you not see? Nothing is worth killing people for. It’s nearly over, for God’s sake. Just let it be over. Let me go.’