The Killing House

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Guards didn’t know. There was some kind of incident on the wing, some fella stabbed him with a home-made shiv. No one’s talking. But one thing you can be sure of is that Paddy Wallace will have mates in there.’

  ‘You mean he might have got someone to do this? To his own brother?’

  ‘His own brother who was talking to the police. Nothing Paddy hates more than a tout, remember. He ran a punishment squad. If he hears Ciaran was helping us . . .’

  Paula fell silent. So this maybe was her fault too. They’d reached A&E now, and there was Saoirse’s locum, a tall, impatient man who greeted them perfunctorily. ‘We’ve stabilised him but he’s going straight up to surgery. No questions.’

  ‘When can we talk to him?’ said Corry.

  ‘I can’t say. Tomorrow, maybe, if he pulls through, but he has a head injury, a perforated liver and two broken ribs.’

  Paula had drifted over to the door to the private room, and through the glass plate she could see Ciaran hooked up to machines, his chest bandaged and his face purple with swelling. ‘God. Poor guy.’

  Corry gave her a sharp glance. ‘You feel sorry for him, after what he did?’

  ‘He said he was innocent.’

  ‘They all say that,’ Corry said implacably.

  ‘Yeah, but . . . I kind of believed him. He was set up, he said. He’d nothing to do with the IRA.’

  ‘That’s not for us to answer now, Maguire. But as soon as he wakes up I’ll have several questions for Mr Wallace. Such as where his brother might be hiding, and if he knows where either of his sisters might be.’

  Paula kept looking at him, trying to imagine the man she’d met as a killer. ‘Was there anything on the tape?’ she asked in a low voice.

  ‘I had Gallagher listen to it. Nothing much of use. It confirms Paddy Wallace had your mother at the farm, and that McCabe and Conlon helped.’

  ‘Any mention of Ciaran?’

  ‘Nothing. But it doesn’t prove he wasn’t involved.’

  There was a motion further down the corridor; someone arguing with the officer on duty. ‘Please, I need to see him!’

  It was Carly Jones, dressed in a grey sweatshirt and jeans, pale and tearful. Once again her make-up had been left off and she looked much younger, very alone and vulnerable.

  Corry motioned her past the officer. ‘Carly, you should be at the safe house.’ They’d moved her to another one now, with an officer always at her door. Paula could see one puffing after her down the corridor.

  ‘Sorry, boss, she ran off,’ he said sheepishly to Corry.

  ‘I had to come. He’s my uncle! He’s been hurt. My mum would want me to be here.’

  ‘But Carly, he’s been in prison, you know. He was convicted of murder.’ And her other uncle had kidnapped her. Yet it seemed she still craved it, a family around her.

  The girl was almost in tears. ‘I don’t care. Mum said he was OK, she said she never thought he did the murder. Please, will you let me see him?’

  ‘Of course we will,’ Corry soothed. ‘But he’s asleep now, you see. Why don’t you sit down here, and we’ll send McQuaid to get you a nice cup of tea.’ She directed a steely glance at Carly’s hapless protection officer, who bumbled off.

  Carly sank into a plastic chair, shivering. ‘Please. My mum . . . is there anything?’

  ‘We’re doing our best,’ Corry said gently. ‘We’ve had the helicopter up every day, we’ve got their pictures out everywhere, and we’re looking into everyone who might know your uncle.’

  Except most of them were dead, Paula thought. And even Ciaran, his own brother, was lying in a hospital bed.

  ‘It’s my fault.’ Carly’s tears brimmed and overflowed. ‘I should’ve done what she told me but . . . and now she’s gone.’

  Paula would have liked to say it was OK, they would find Mairead safe, but couldn’t. They had no way of knowing that. All they could offer, as so often, was sympathy and platitudes and cups of tea.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was still a novelty, joining the queue of women at the prison knowing Aidan would actually deign to see her. And there he was, behind the table, and when he saw her he smiled. She couldn’t believe the change in him – from crushing guilt and deadening acceptance to hope. Walking towards him, she felt like she had all those years ago, when she was seventeen and he was eighteen and suddenly he’d looked at her properly and everything was different, and he went from being Aidan, the aloof son of her mother’s best friend, to Aidan. Everything.

  ‘Maguire.’

  His thin arms went around her, and she was so grateful to hear her name in his mouth again that tears sprang to her eyes. She pressed her face into his shoulder to hide them, breathing in his smell, that was somehow still him under the unfamiliar prison washing powder and the staleness of cooped-up bodies. ‘You’re not hurt?’

  They sat down, reluctantly torn apart, but he held her hand across the table and she felt his rough knuckles, the callouses on his fingers from years of scribbling down notes at press conferences, then surviving in prison. ‘Ah no, it all kicked off in the other wing. We were on lock-down for hours, mind you.’

  ‘What happened? Do you know?’

  He looked around him warily, and she remembered the time he’d been beaten up too, his eye like squashed fruit. Aidan was not popular in here, after supposedly killing a Republican. ‘It was Wallace. Someone jumped him in the stairwell.’

  ‘But why? He seemed so quiet, just keeping his head down.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure.’ She had to lean forward to catch his voice. ‘They’re saying it was an outside order. Shut him up for a while, you know.’

  Paula bit her lip, pushing the guilt away. Someone didn’t want him to tell her something. But what? Was it something he’d already mentioned? Nothing stood out. ‘So people outside pull the strings in here?’

  ‘Course. There’s a few fellas with long sentences, see, so they don’t mind getting extra time if it gives them power. And you’d be amazed at what gets in here. Phones, drugs, you name it.’ He leaned even closer. ‘Listen . . . I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Wallace, me and him talk sometimes. He’s always saying he didn’t do it, that murder, that he’s innocent. And he seemed to have the idea I was in the same boat. So I wondered why he’d be so sure, like. That it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Did you ask him?’ she whispered.

  ‘Aye, eventually. We got to be friends, I s’pose, till they moved him to another wing. But he wouldn’t say much. Just that Conlon’s number was up, you know. That someone was out for his blood that night anyway.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me.’ But Paula could guess. The same person who’d framed Ciaran for murder in the first place.

  ‘Aidan. Be careful.’ Imagine losing him now, when he’d finally come back to her. She resisted the urge to kiss his scraped knuckles, which seemed to never properly heal. She didn’t want to know what that meant about his life in here.

  ‘How’s Mags?’ he said, deliberately adopting a cheerful tone, which she tried to match.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine. Had a good time at Avril and Gerard’s wedding, so much that she’s now accosting people asking if they can get married and she can be flower girl.’ She hesitated. ‘Should I bring her next time?’ There were kids who came, and various family programmes to keep them in touch. Even one where the inmates could record bedtime stories for their children. But Aidan had never wanted any of that.

  He shook his head. ‘I’d rather just wait. Maybe, if we can overturn it, she won’t have to see me like this.’

  He sounded so hopeful. Once she would have given everything for that, but she felt the pressure of it. No one else was looking into this. The evidence had been there to convict, and the PSNI were happy to let Aidan rot. It was all on her. ‘I think I know who did it,’ sh
e whispered. ‘Killed Conlon. But I can’t prove it. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘That’s always been the trouble, Maguire.’ His smile was strained, and she knew he was putting it on for her. ‘Here, I have to go. They’re giving us less time today. Loss of privileges, after the riot.’

  Then it was time, and she had to go, with one last fierce hug – both of them too scared to repeat the kiss from last time – and her last image was of him shuffling back to his cell, his shoulders bowed, his body shrunk, his hair shaved so close you could see the scalp. If she didn’t get him back for good soon, there wouldn’t be much more left to save.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘Someone to see you in reception.’

  Paula looked up from her desk, confused, at the DC who’d approached her. Someone new, whose name she didn’t know, filling in for Avril. Jennifer? Julie? God, she was bad with names. ‘You’re sure, for me?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’ The DC was already turning back to her own work, the mountain of papers on her desk. Paula got up and went through the alarmed doors, her lanyard swinging. She passed through the turnstiles and into the secure reception area. The desk sergeant nodded towards her visitor.

  The woman in reception had her back to the desk. Paula’s heart failed for a second – she was so like Mairead Wallace, with the same glossy black hair, same hunched shoulders. She turned. Not Mairead, but someone very like her, younger, in skinny jeans and a black polo neck. ‘Hello?’

  The woman was staring at Paula now. ‘Dr Maguire?’

  ‘Yes. You asked to see me?’ And why would someone do that when she didn’t even work here?

  ‘I saw you on the news. The press conference. I knew it was you.’

  Paula frowned. Had she met this woman before? Was it more than the resemblance to Mairead that was jogging her memory? ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘You look just like her. Your mum. I knew you were her daughter, you see, when I saw you.’

  Right there in the reception of Ballyterrin police station, with the desk sergeant surreptitiously eating a chip butty under the counter, Paula was sure she was going to pass out. Blood roared in her ears. ‘You knew my mother?’ Past tense. Safer to keep using it, until she knew otherwise.

  The woman – she wasn’t that much older than Paula herself, she realised now, late thirties maybe – just smiled, a little sadly. ‘I was with her. When they took her to the farm. I helped her get away.’

  Get away. Those magic two words. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who you—’

  ‘I’m Aisling Wallace. I think you’ve been looking for me?’

  Corry watched her through the glass of the interview room. Aisling Wallace sat neatly, her legs crossed and arms folded away from the table, as if it was dirty (which it likely was). ‘It’s really her?’

  ‘I think it must be. No one else would have known . . . the things she knew.’

  ‘Huh. Well, there you go. I’d have put money on her being the one in the morgue, God love her. Question is, who’s that if it’s not Aisling?’

  Paula was watching her too. This woman had seen her mother after she’d disappeared on that day in late October. She might know what had become of her afterwards. The truth was so close she could almost close her fingers over it. ‘She asked to see me,’ she began, but Corry interrupted.

  ‘You can’t interview her. You don’t even work here, Paula.’

  She sighed. It had been worth a shot. ‘I can watch?’

  ‘If you must. It might not be what you want to hear, though. Willis has given the go-ahead to question her about your mother. It’s a step closer to re-opening the case.’

  Poor Willis. All these crimes he’d thought neatly sealed away, and here was Paula digging them all back up again. No wonder he didn’t like her. ‘I’ll watch, then.’

  Corry looked at her keenly. ‘Leave if it gets too much. I mean it, Maguire. I can’t have you messing this one up for us. I know it’s hard, but this is just the way of it. Understand?’

  She nodded. It was indeed the way of it in Ballyterrin, where everything was always too close to home. Corry opened the door, took a second to straighten her neat trouser suit, and went in to talk to the woman they’d thought dead until ten minutes ago.

  Aisling frowned when Corry went in, shortly followed by the other DC, her smooth, dark hair bent over a laptop. ‘I wanted to speak to Dr Maguire. Paula. That’s her name, isn’t it?’

  Corry sat down. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. She doesn’t officially work for us any more, and since the anonymous call about her mother’s remains, the cases have become linked.’

  ‘They weren’t her mother’s remains,’ said Aisling, a touch impatiently. ‘That’s what I came to say. She got away. I helped her, I untied her.’

  Corry kept her cool. ‘Just let us set up the tape, Ms Wallace, so we can get all this.’ The new officer read the details into the recorder, announcing herself as DC Jennifer Gallagher and explaining Aisling was not under arrest, it was a voluntary interview. ‘Now. As you know, we’ve been trying to find you in relation to the discovery of two bodies on your family’s farm. We subsequently received a tip-off that Margaret Maguire was also buried there, but we’ve found no evidence of that.’

  ‘It was a sheep,’ Aisling said. ‘It’d died that day. We had to bury something, you see, for Paddy to believe she was dead, she’d been shot trying to get away. I’m not sure he did even then. I’d see him looking at me afterwards – like he knew.’ She shivered, drawing her sleeves down over her hands. ‘I know he has my sister. I want to help you catch him. Paddy, my brother – he’s a psychopath, you see.’

  She said it matter-of-factly. Paula could see Corry trying to get the interview back on her preferred tracks. ‘Ms Wallace, could you start by taking me through the events of October and November 1993? From when you first became aware of Margaret Maguire, to the date of your leaving Northern Ireland.’

  Aisling nodded. Paula had never seen someone so composed in an interview room. There was something about the lighting, the lack of windows, that made even the innocent twitchy. Then she leaned forward, the shadows striping across her pale face, and she started to tell the story Paula had waited twenty years to hear.

  They’d been in there for some time when Aisling stopped and said, ‘A cup of tea or something would help now, do you not think?’

  Corry was leafing through her notes, as if she could scarcely believe her ears. ‘Of course, Aisling. Let me just confirm what you’ve said so far. Your brother Paddy brought Margaret Maguire to the house for interrogation and held her there for four days, during which time you provided food and water.’

  ‘I helped her. I was only young, but I did what I could. I’d never seen a woman out there before and I couldn’t believe what they were doing to her. They tied her up, beat her. Paddy cut all her hair off. I was . . . it scared me, that he could act this way. In the past I always thought it was bad people he brought in, people who’d betrayed us, our side. But her . . . she kept talking about her daughter. It made me realise Paddy was off the rails.’

  ‘And at the time you were just seventeen?’

  ‘That’s right. And in our family, the girls didn’t get much say. Mairead and me were expected to do everything – cook and clean for the boys and their mates. Mammy knew exactly what they were up to in the barn and she didn’t care.’ Paula thought of that old woman, sunk into her own decaying flesh. Carrying on her daily life knowing that another woman, someone’s mother, was tied up in her barn. It was hard to imagine it now, but they’d been in the middle of a war then. People felt justified, all their rage and hate channelled into the cause. Still. That didn’t make it any easier, to think of her mother held there for days, afraid for her life.

  Aisling was still talking. ‘So one day I decided I’d get her out. I wasn’t going to let Paddy kill her. I untied her, told
her to run over the fields and escape.’

  ‘And did she?’ Corry’s voice was calm. Paula was straining, almost touching the video screen in the hot little room she was sitting in, watching. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well. Sean caught her.’

  ‘Sean Conlon?’

  Oh, that name again. He’d shot Aidan’s father, almost for sure. Aidan had beaten him half to death, if not all the way. The cycle just went on and on.

  ‘Aye. I thought he’d kill her for sure – he was as bad as Paddy, nearly – but he let her go too. He helped me make the plan, afterwards. See, if Paddy came back and just found her gone, he’d know we did it. Sean said he’d kill us. Even me, his wee sister. He was already obsessed with there being some kind of tout in the squad. So we buried the sheep. Paddy never paid any heed to the animals. Ciaran did but he’d gone by then.’ It was hard for Paula to get her head round all this. Aisling was not much older than her – she’d have been going through all that while Paula was at home watching ER and trying not to think about her mother.

  ‘He’d gone?’

  ‘Yeah. He went to London, I think it was the day before it all kicked off. It was the last straw for him, having a woman there. He didn’t like what they were doing, but he’d never have stood up to Paddy.’ So Ciaran had not been involved in torturing her mother. But he’d known she was there, and he hadn’t done anything to stop it either. He’d lied.

  Corry tapped her pen against her pad. ‘Sorry, Aisling, I just need to make sure I’ve got this clear. Sean Conlon and you both helped Margaret Maguire get away?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Far as I know she made it. Dunno what happened after, course.’ Aisling sat up, her eyes looking round as if for a camera. ‘The thing I never understood was why he’d do it. Sean. Why would he save her, after what she did? She’d admitted she was a tout but he let her live. It just didn’t make any sense.’

  Paula was in the ladies, splashing cold water over her face. She wasn’t sure why. It seemed like the kind of thing people did when they’d had a shock. A tiny bit more of her mother’s trail uncovered, only to run out again. Where had she gone after escaping the farm? On the ferry to England – Davey had found a record of an official car leaving that night – then to London? Living with Edward, and maybe their child? She wondered had he found anything else in London, the wife and child mentioned in the obituary. He’d have called if so, surely.