The Mountains Wild

by Sarah Stewart Taylor

  I squeezed past him into the phone booth. Roly Byrne answered on the first ring. It might have been my imagination, but I thought he was waiting for something.

  “It’s Maggie D’arcy,” I said. “William and Gerald Murphy were definitely supporters of the IAFNI. They definitely fundraised for the Provisional IRA. Why would they be interested in Erin?”

  “How the fuck did you get all that in the last couple hours?”

  “What are you doing about it? What if they tried to recruit her or something and she said no and they were worried she’d tell someone so they”—I couldn’t say it—“did something to her?”

  “Jaysus. Look, get off the phone. I’ll meet you in St. Stephen’s Green in an hour. By the famine statues. Okay?”

  “Okay. Did you get some of this, too?”

  “Not on the phone.” He slammed it down. I stood there for a minute, my heart pounding, listening to the beeping dial tone. The handset was cold on my face. It smelled metallic, faintly like blood.

  He was already there when I reached the statues, thin gray figures, their suffering evident even from far away. As I got closer, I could see that one figure was feeding another from a round spoon, filled with rainwater.

  Roly Byrne didn’t see me coming along the path but he was alert, checking in all directions, looking suspiciously over his shoulder. I found myself following his lead, pausing and checking to make sure no one was tailing me before I came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Christ!” His hand came up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Let’s walk.” He set off at a fast pace, but I matched him step for step, even though his legs were longer than mine. He was breathing hard before I was.

  “Right. You can’t be going around asking questions about this.” His eyes were hard, ice blue. I suddenly had a sense of what it would have been like to be on the other side of an interview table from him.

  “But what if they know where Erin is? What if they kidnapped her or something? Doesn’t everyone understand that we might not have a lot of time if—”

  “Look, I don’t want to sound harsh here, but this is something bigger than your cousin. This is…” He trailed off as a man in a black leather jacket came along the path in front of us.

  “What?” I whispered, once the man had passed.

  “Politics. You have to let this go for a while.”

  I stared at him.

  “Well, what else is going on? Did you go down to Glenmalure to talk to Gary Curran?”

  “Yes. His mother swears he was there all morning, but I’d say there’s something off about that fella. We’re looking into it. We’ll talk to the young one who made the complaint back when they were at university. You may see something on the telly tonight,” he said. “We want to know if anyone saw her after she came back, if she came back. We’ll be putting up posters and doing some canvassing in Ringsend and around Busáras and Connolly station.”

  “Okay, makes sense.” I hesitated for a moment and then I said, “I talked to her friends, the ones who visited back in the summer. They said Erin was trying to talk to them about some riots or something. She seemed frustrated when they weren’t interested.”

  “When was this? August?” I nodded. “There were riots for marching season earlier in the summer, up in Belfast. Jaysus. You really think she’d get herself wrapped up in all this shite?”

  “I don’t know. What does Detective McNeely think about all this?” I asked him.

  “Ah, you can bet she’s as bewildered as I am.”

  There was something else there, in his voice, something that made me ask, “You said it’s a long story why she doesn’t like Americans. What is it?”

  He hesitated. “Look, Bernie was reared up in Armagh, in the north, right?” he said, and I nodded. “That’s only 120, 130 kilometers from here, but when she was a kid, it might as well have been fucking Vietnam or something, a world away. One of her uncles was interned after a bombing near a police station. I don’t remember when. It was a fucking jungle up there, D’arcy, snipers on street corners, shooting at the RUC on patrol. Loyalists killing people in the night. They brought the British Army in in helicopters. She grew up hating it, came here as soon as she could, joined the Gardaí. But, couple of years ago, one of her brothers got shot at a checkpoint by the Royal Marines. He was nineteen. Her favorite brother. They ambushed him.” He was still whispering.

  “So, why does she hate Americans so much? I understand she might hate the British, but…”

  His eyes flashed. “She thinks they’re paying for the fucking guns that keep the whole thing going up there? She hates the fucking violence. She hates the killing. We all do.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry too. This shite has my head done in. I’d better get back.”

  “But you can’t just let it go,” I said. I could feel the panic starting. “She’s out there and it’s your job to find her.”

  “We’re not fucking letting it go. Mind yourself, now. Ring me if anything seems weird to you.”

  The summer after Erin’s seventh grade year. We’re walking home from the beach when she starts crying. We’re walking and talking about what we’re going to do over the summer and then suddenly she makes a gasping noise and she’s sobbing. I don’t understand why.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “Nothing.” But the tears are rolling down her face. She’s wiping them away. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you okay?” I whisper. You can’t push too hard with Erin. I know this already. If you say the wrong thing, she just … disappears. She shuts down and she’s not there anymore.

  She turns away from me, her shoulders heaving and shaking.

  I don’t know what to do. I stand there, looking out to make sure no one comes along and sees her. The sun is hot. I can feel a thin layer of sweat on my forehead. Finally, when she doesn’t stop, I go over and put an arm around her. Erin and I used to hug and touch each other all the time. We used to stroke each other’s hair, we used to give each other back scratches. But for the last few years, she’s only touched me once in a while. When I try to touch her hair, she pulls away. I’ve felt the loss of that touch so sharply that it hurts sometimes, a barely healed burn on my skin.

  I wait for her to push me away, but she doesn’t. She leans into me, crying, and I hug her, for a long, long time. We can hear kids shouting and laughing down at the beach. After a while, she stands up and walks ahead of me as though it never happened. I’m left watching her disappear up the road and into her and Uncle Danny’s house.

  24

  MONDAY, MAY 30,

  2016

  The parents are camped out at the hotel with some extended family and family friends, Roly says, far enough from the search command post that it’s not in their face all the time. He says it’s a new place, built during the boom, and they were able to clear out most of the other guests so the Horrigans could be in peace.

  “Thank God they’ve got some dosh, like,” he says. “When the poor family’s got no money you always think about how the week in the hotel is going to bankrupt them. And then if there’s a funeral, too.” He shakes his head.

  “How are they holding up?” I ask him as we drive down.

  “They’re doing okay so far. The local lads have been the ones spending time with them. But we’re getting to the point where desperation will start to set in. You’ve got to be careful not to get them upset, D’arcy.”

  He turns onto a narrow drive marked with gray stone pillars. There’s a fancy sign reading “Wicklow House Hotel and Spa Resort.” “Ah, isn’t this nice now?” Roly says, looking delighted.

  The room is small, an events room off the main dining room. In addition to Roly and Griz from the Serious Crimes Review Team, there are a couple of other guards from the team that’s trying to find Niamh. Roly introduces me to a compact older guy with a luxurious gray moustache. “Superintendent W
illiam Regan,” he says, nodding at me. The room is tense but under control. It feels good, familiar to me from well-run investigations. Everyone’s putting aside their egos to focus on the objective, for the moment anyway.

  As we drove into the parking lot, I caught sight of Stephen Hines’s lurking frame, hunched over his cell phone by the back door. There are other reporters outside, a few television cameras and more print reporters clustered by the front entrance to the hotel, and a hotel employee comes in and shuts all the drapes. The room is painted pale lavender, the walls covered with watercolors of irises.

  Niamh’s mother is thin, well-dressed, her face drawn in worry. She looks fit and prosperous, her short, frosted blond hair expertly cut but left unstyled, her athletic frame too thin for the navy blue pants and blouse that are hanging off her. I’m betting she’s lost ten pounds over the past week.

  Mr. Horrigan is tall, his hair still mostly brown, only peppered with gray. He’s the first one to speak, to step forward to shake my hand and say, “Thank you so much for meeting with us, Miss D’arcy.” His hand is large and warm and he reminds me of my father.

  “Maggie,” I say. “Please. I’ve been thinking about you so much, and about what you’re going through. My uncle sends his best, too. We’ve been praying for Niamh.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Horrigan says, stepping forward to take my hand. “It’s the waiting, as you know. It’s driving me mad. How do you stand it?” Tears fall out of her eyes. She’s not even aware of them. Her husband rubs her shoulder.

  “You keep hoping,” I tell her. “But I know, it’s awful. It’s a place no one would ever want to go. I’m so sorry you have to spend time in this place.”

  She keeps patting my arm and then she says, “We don’t have much time, if what they say about the other girls is true. We heard … we learned about your career in the States, about Andrea Delaurio, about what you did. Detective D’arcy, we don’t have a lot of time.” She sits back and now she’s all strength. “What do we need to do to save my daughter?”

  Everyone in the room turns at her words.

  She isn’t nervous. She isn’t scared. I’m not a person to her—I’m a means to an end, and she’s going to use me however she needs to to get what she wants. “You know what to do. If there is any chance you can help save her, you must do it. You know what this is like. You know how this feels. Detective D’arcy, how can we save my daughter?”

  Regan stands up. “Mrs. Horrigan, it’s much more complex a—”

  She’s just staring at me, not letting me out of her gaze. “How, Detective D’arcy? What do we need to do?”

  I look up to find Roly watching me. He knows he’s been played. He’s just not sure if it’s by me or Stephen Hines or the Horrigans. I ignore him and try to look humble and disinterested. Griz is pretending to inspect her nails, but she’s hanging on every word. I have to do this right.

  “Mrs. Horrigan,” I say. “You have the best people working to find your daughter. I can tell you that with absolute confidence. They have done everything according to the absolute highest standards of best practice. They have run an exemplary investigation, both into your daughter’s disappearance and also in the reviews of my cousin’s case and the disappearances of the other women. Of Teresa and June.”

  “We know that,” Mr. Horrigan says. He looks up at the guards standing around. “We are incredibly grateful. We know we have the best here. But we are desperate, Detective D’arcy. We are absolutely desperate. If there is anything that you can bring to the table, a new look, an outsider’s eye. You found that girl, in the States. Andrea.” He looks directly at me when he says it, when he says her name.

  “Mr. Horrigan.” I breathe through the flash of panic and surging adrenaline. “That was a very different set of—”

  “The FBI couldn’t find her and you found her! Please, Detective D’arcy.” He’s crying now, too. He looks up at one of the guards, a middle-aged guy in a red sweater. “What would you need, Detective D’arcy? What would you need to do a review?”

  “Please, Mr. Horrigan.”

  “Just … What would you need? Just tell me that?”

  A long silence. I start, “A review of the case files, a visit to the scene of Niamh’s disappearance, would be the way I would start to create a picture. But, as I said—”

  “Can she do that?” Mrs. Horrigan asks. She stands up, turning to Regan and Roly and Griz. “Can she look at the files? Can you take her up to Drumkee? When can she do it?”

  Roly looks panicked. “Mrs. Horrigan,” he says, “there are protocols, there is the Official Secrets Act. I don’t even know how we would—”

  “Detective Byrne,” she says, in a strong, even voice. She is standing so still she could be a statue. There is not a trace of weakness or emotion in her voice. She will not be denied. “There is my daughter. There is her life. Next to my daughter’s life, there is nothing. There is nothing.”

  We’re all watching her. We can’t look away.

  “Give us a minute,” Regan says finally, gesturing to Roly. “Everyone just stay right here.”

  Through the closed drapes, we can see the silhouettes of the reporters crossing back and forth outside the window.

  * * *

  I have forty-eight hours.

  “That’s not what I wanted to happen,” I tell Roly when we’re in his car again, on our way back toward Glenmalure.

  “Really?” He draws it out and raises his eyebrows at me. I try not to blush.

  “Look, D’arcy.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “We’ve got Regan on board. We’ve got Wilcox on board. If you can help us find Niamh Horrigan, then it’s grand. You’ve got two days—from tomorrow morning—to review the files. Griz will be with you at all times. You are not to be alone with them and you are not to discuss anything you read with any other person. That is absolutely non-negotiable. And nobody can know you’re doing this. If there’s even one fucking story about how we had to call in the Americans because we weren’t up to the job, they’ll have my head and Regan’s head and Wilcox’s, too.”

  “Of course, Roly.”

  He sighs again. “Mr. Horrigan’s brother is best friends with a fucking TD and pressure was placed upon Wilcox. Don’t make him sorry. Just mind yourself and work as quickly as you can, right?”

  “Right. Thanks. I’ll do anything I can, though as I told them, there may be nothing else to find.”

  He raises his eyebrows again. “There’s always something else to find,” he says ominously. “I know that better than anyone.”

  We park in the turnoff where he brought me the first day and start walking back along the road toward Laragh. We walk for thirty minutes before he says, “This is Drumkee.” I’d been expecting a town, but it’s nothing more than a stretch of land on either side of the road, a few outbuildings reaching up into the hills. A few driveways hint at cottages somewhere in the trees. “Right about there is where the button was found.” He points to a spot on the other side of the stone wall. “Up there, into the trees.”

  “So she’d completed the walk and was walking back towards Laragh,” I say. “And he drove up and pulled the car over. She must have realized something was wrong. Otherwise, the struggle would have been right here by the road. She must have started running back towards the trees, but he came after her.” I climb over the wall. “Where is it? How far?”

  Roly directs me to the spot. We walk for a couple of minutes into the trees.

  “He’s strong and able for the run,” Roly says.

  I look around. “It’s not far from Glenmalure and Laragh, but it’s pretty desolate here, isn’t it? There hasn’t been a car since we’ve been here. And those cottages are too far away to see anything. You wouldn’t worry too much about being seen.”

  “But you wouldn’t be sure,” Roly says. “It’s pretty brazen, taking her next to the road.”

  “What’s on the CCTV?” I ask. “Anything?”

  “You’ll be looking at it soon
enough,” he says bitterly. “Ah, no, nothing good. Regular traffic on the lodge security camera and one on a house further up the road towards Laragh.” We stand there for a few more minutes and then walk back toward the Wicklow Way signposts.

  “I just want to walk up a bit,” I tell Roly. “To remind myself where I found the necklace.”

  It doesn’t take us long to reach the spot. “I think that’s it,” I say. “I recognize that tree.” I suddenly remember drawing a little map that I handed over in the Irishtown Garda Station and I wonder if he ever saw it.

  We stand there for a minute. I try to picture Erin, walking along: The necklace snagging on a tree branch, falling silently to the ground, Erin walking on. Or, another image: Erin, running, someone chasing her, grabbing for her, the necklace torn, forgotten on the ground as Erin is lifted and carried …

  Except that’s not what happened. So … Someone pulling the necklace from Erin’s throat, Erin looking down at the woman on the ground.

  I shake the image from my head. “Okay,” I say. “I’m done here. Let’s go back to the city.”

  25

  TUESDAY, MAY 31,

  2016

  It’s eight a.m. before they can get all the files set up in the conference room at Pearse Street and get the necessary people to sign off on me looking at them.

  I down an espresso and Griz and I wait while people scurry around, bringing in boxes and laptops. Roly made me come in a back door; there’s a scrum of reporters along the narrow sidewalk by the main entrance. Looking out the second-story window, I can see Stephen Hines, the great bulk of him leaning casually against the wall. He’s looking at his phone, waiting there as if he has all the time in the world.

  “Where do you want to start?” Griz asks, once we’re alone. It’s a gorgeous day, the sun streaming in the windows. I move my chair into a beam of light flopping across the conference table.

  “Explain the system,” I tell her. She goes over the evolution of Garda investigation recordkeeping, typed and signed statements from interviews in the ’90s, casebooks with all the relevant information included, files and files of paper. Then there are recorded and transcribed interviews and some digital records for more recent cases. It’s a hodgepodge, like the records for any law enforcement investigation spanning twenty-three years. But I’m lucky—because of the task force and cold case review, almost everything I want to look at has been copied and is stored together in neatly labeled files.