Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5)

by Claire McGowan

  Funny how things turn out, as I say. But I can’t blame myself for what happened, not really. There are laws that go way beyond the ones we made in the light and on the dry land, for regulating our little modern lives. Laws like – get the hell out of here or you’re going to die. Laws like – fight, Fiona. Fight back or you’ve had it, and this time, this time as you’re drowning among all the pretty fishes, and the weight of the ocean is crushing you, this time Matt won’t be coming to save you, because he’s the one that’s holding you down.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Coffee for me. Three sugars. What buns have you?’

  The girl behind the counter of the Costa Coffee, a teenager with four rings in her ear, waved a disinterested hand at the display in front of her. Davey took a full twenty seconds to decide, standing with his lips pursed. Paula waited. ‘Give me the doughnut then, love.’

  ‘You getting OK?’ The girl turned to Paula, who shook her head. Seeing Davey Corcoran choke down a bun was enough to put her right off. Around them, the small concourse of Belfast City airport was constantly in motion, people landing and leaving, running into their family’s arms, waving them goodbye.

  She turned to the man as they sat down. ‘I haven’t long, sorry. I’ve to go down South on a case.’

  ‘That English couple on the island?’

  How the hell did he know that? It meant the Bone Island case was likely on the news already. Maybe it would turn out to be a decent one after all. ‘Yeah. Though I could do without it, in this weather.’ There was a small lie in there that she was allowing herself. Pretending she wasn’t dying to get down and see what was going on.

  ‘They’ll have gone in the sea, like as not. You’ll have a wasted trip, so you will.’

  Paula narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t have time to argue it with him. ‘Have you anything for me?’

  Davey Corcoran, private eye. About a million miles from Tom Selleck, more was the pity. He had ketchup stains down his beige jacket, and his stubby fingers were stained with fag ash. But he seemed to know his stuff, and that was all that really mattered. He came recommended by Colin McCready, the solicitor she’d hired to work on Aidan’s case, who had also once, in a different life, been her mother’s boss. Davey knew about the note, and he was the only person who did.

  He was hoovering up his doughnut, lips shiny with grease. ‘Which one do you want first? Now or then?’

  ‘Then, I guess.’ Of the two cases he was looking into for her, that was marginally less painful, if only because she’d had twenty years to get used to her mother’s continuing absence.

  ‘Subject One.’ He always called her that, not Margaret, not your mammy, and Paula was glad of it, despite the ridiculous pomposity. Oh, how she liked the comfort of official language. He was leafing through his file now, leaving oily prints on it. ‘Here we go. A recently uncovered note suggests subject left of her own accord on Thursday, 28 October 1993. Possible reason: fleeing IRA retribution . . .’ He droned on, reducing the raw facts of her mother’s life to dull paperwork.

  It was true the IRA had been watching Margaret Maguire, had come to the house that day looking for her. But a convict called Sean Conlon had told Paula her mother was already gone when they got there. Maybe a lie. She couldn’t ask him again, as he was dead, and Aidan awaiting trial for his murder. ‘I know all this,’ she interrupted. ‘Have you anything new for me?’

  Davey looked miffed. ‘I did find a wee record of an official car going from Larne to Stranraer on the ferry that week. No passport check done. They knew they weren’t meant to look too close at some of them, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘So they could have got her out. Her contact.’ Whoever it was her mother had been working for. There was an alphabet soup of undercover agencies in Northern Ireland at that time, the lines blurred and changing on a daily basis.

  ‘Could be. And this name you gave me – this Edward. He was real, all right. One of the top spooks in Army Intel back in the nineties.’

  The mysterious man in the hat. Her mother’s contact for passing on the information she stole from her job. Also her lover, if rumours were to be believed. ‘Do you know where he is now, this Edward?’

  Davey shook his head absently, eyes on his doughnut. Of course he didn’t, that would be too easy. ‘He’ll be living under some other name, if he’s even in the country at all. Lot of ex-spies go overseas, where it’s safer. The Ra would still love to put a bullet into anyone who touted back then.’

  Tout. One of the worst words you could call someone, during the Troubles. So many theories, questions, mysteries. All Paula knew for sure was this: Margaret Maguire had disappeared sometime on the afternoon of 28 October 1993. And she had left a note for her daughter, then thirteen. Except the daughter would not find the note – knocking it down the back of the washing machine, carelessly sweeping her schoolbag onto the kitchen counter – and for almost twenty years she would think her mother had been abducted and murdered. Maybe by the IRA. Maybe by someone else. Sometimes Paula could hardly believe she’d found it – the first real solid thing in so many years. Maybe that was why she hadn’t told anyone but Davey, who couldn’t have cared less unless she’d coated it in sugar and deep-fried it. As soon as she did tell someone, as soon as she saw that knowledge on the face of someone she loved, she’d have to feel the full impact of it. And she wasn’t ready. Not until she knew more.

  ‘So what now?’

  Davey was picking up bits of sugar with a slabbery finger. ‘Still trying to trace your man. The Edward character. Got a few leads. Might have to go to London and do some digging.’

  Meaning, presumably, she would have to pay for it. So far, Davey had been suspiciously cheap, and Paula was just waiting for the huge bill. Maybe she’d have to sell the house after all to cover it. She nodded, noting with distaste how he’d spewed out sugar grains as he spoke. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Medical records.’ He said it so casually she almost didn’t hear him at first. ‘The subject’s, that is.’

  ‘You found her medical records? Er, how?’ They hadn’t been in the police file. She’d never been sure why, and her sneaky attempts to get them through other means had always failed.

  Davey shrugged and slid a piece of yellowing paper across the table. Paula scanned it quickly, seeing nothing of significance. ‘So she had some tests done the week before she vanished. What does this chemical name mean?’

  ‘Dunno. I’m not a doctor.’

  And Paula knew someone who was, but she couldn’t ask Saoirse without arousing suspicion. She picked up the sheets of paper, covered in the scrawl of their old family doctor, Dr Adams. Long dead now, even if he could have told her something. This didn’t tell her anything new, and the frustration of it made her want to tear the papers up, scatter the pieces. Where did you go? Why bother leaving a note at all, when it told them nothing? ‘So what about the other thing?’ she asked, as Davey signalled for another sugar-silty coffee. He seemed to run entirely on caffeine and refined carbs.

  He burped gently, into his hand. ‘Oh, right so. Subject Two.’ Otherwise known as Aidan O’Hara, possible love of Paula’s life. Not her husband, though he should have been by now. Not Maggie’s father, though Maggie believed that he was, and to all intents and purposes he was the only one available. ‘This is a sensitive one now, very sensitive. Tricky to get these Provo fellas to talk.’

  Tricky was another code-word for ‘it’ll cost you’. Davey had a reputation for digging up answers to such questions. Alibis, where it seemed there could be none. Witnesses, who miraculously remembered everything about the incident in question when previously they’d been sure they weren’t there, or equally miraculously realised they knew nothing, and indeed had been fifty miles away at the time, and furthermore that they really valued their kneecaps. That was why she’d hired him. Because if Aidan could be saved – if it could be
proven that someone else had come to that piss-soaked car park and kicked the man to death – Paula was sure the answers would lie deep within the Republican movement. But how to even start proving it?

  ‘I know it’s tricky,’ she said. ‘Aidan – Subject Two, that is – already confessed to beating Conlon up that night, for a start.’ Her mind still gave a shudder of horror when she thought of it. Aidan, celebrating his stag do and off the wagon he’d stayed on for two years, attacking Conlon – the man who’d likely killed Aidan’s father – kicking him and smashing his head off the tarmac car park. Aidan had come home with bruised knuckles and a bloodied T-shirt. She’d seen those with her own eyes. Paula was getting frustrated with the tangle of clues, every end leading back to the fact that Aidan was about to be in prison for a very long time. ‘So what can we do? How can we prove someone else went there to kill him that night?’

  There was no CCTV in the bar, and the clientele were all selectively blind or blind-drunk, and wouldn’t have seen someone slip into the back car park. Davey didn’t look too cast down, however. ‘What we need is a tout.’

  She flinched at the word – memories of her teenage years, rumours spreading round school that this was why her mother had gone. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Some fella who’s being done for something else, who’ll give us a name. Who’ll talk.’ He leaned over the table for another packet of sugar. ‘That’s if you really believe Subject Two is innocent.’

  Did she? She believed there was a chance he’d left Conlon alive, and someone else had come and finished the job. She also knew how easy it was to kill someone in a fight, the wrong punch or kick shattering the brain, held in its cradle of bone like a ripe plum. ‘There’s a chance,’ she said. ‘But how would we find someone? Willis Campbell won’t allow any further investigation. He thinks Aidan did it.’ Willis did not want the scrutiny of the world on the town – after all, if the IRA had disbanded, how could their members still be executing old grudges? – so he was happy to take the obvious culprit, standing there with blood on his hands. It was a world of trouble otherwise. And there was enough evidence to convict Aidan all right, more than enough, and Aidan himself had confessed, given up.

  Davey said, ‘Just need to wait for the right person. And Colin’s the boy they’d go to, you see, if they need help. As long as the PSNI would listen, there’s a chance.’

  It seemed the slimmest thread of hope imaginable. ‘Is that all? We just have to wait and see if someone gets caught?’

  ‘Well. There’s this too.’ Casually, Davey slid over another piece of paper, slightly dog-eared.

  Paula looked at the official stamp. ‘The autopsy report? On Conlon?’ She’d never seen this before. For obvious reasons she was not allowed anywhere near the case file.

  ‘Look at the cause of death there.’ He pointed with a greasy forefinger; she pulled the page out of his way.

  ‘Asphyxiation? But . . .’ She thought Conlon had died of a cerebral haemorrhage. Beaten against the tarmac until his brain exploded. His liver had also been bleeding from where it was stamped on – Aidan’s distinctive Converse sole print clearly visible on his body. Her mind was racing. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could mean he’d choked on his own blood. It could mean he’d suffocated, with broken ribs weighing him down. But it could mean . . .

  Davey explained. ‘See if someone’s lying there on the ground, seven shades of shite kicked out of them? You come along, and instead of helping them up, you just put your hand like so.’ He brought his towards Paula as if he might demonstrate, and she moved sharply back. ‘Only takes a few seconds, and they can’t get a breath, and then they’re gone and nobody even knows you were there. See?’

  She did see, finally. ‘So maybe . . . Aidan didn’t do it?’

  Davey shrugged. ‘There’s a chance. That’s all. If you want to take it.’

  ‘I want to take it.’ What else could she do?

  ‘All right so. Just so’s you know, it won’t be easy.’ He nodded to the departures board. ‘You better go and get your flight. Though like I say, they’ll be in the sea.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ she said, annoyed. ‘So you’ll keep looking? For this Edward and for . . . someone to inform on the other case?’

  ‘Aye, I will. On you go now.’

  Paula gathered her wheely case and passport and scarf and coat, hustling to the security gates. She just wanted to go, scratch the itch of this case, and come home and sort her life out. Help Aidan, if any help was possible. And hopefully overturn another of the stones that covered her mother’s grave. If she even had one, somewhere, anywhere.

  Bob

  ‘What did she say?’

  Davey Corcoran broke into phlegm-ridden smoker’s coughs, and Bob Hamilton held the phone away in disgust. The man was a wreck, but he was meant to be the best. He could find things out, they said, like a ferret in a rabbit warren. Things people would really rather you didn’t know. ‘She’ll go for it. I told her we need a name for who was after Conlon. That we’d have to try and get it from a tout.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell her I’m involved?’

  ‘I’m discreet, Sergeant Hamilton, like I told you.’ Bob was not a sergeant any more, not since he’d retired two years before, but he still liked the sound of it. As if he still had authority, and power, and knew something or anything at all about what was going on. ‘You’ll let me have those names then?’ Davey said.

  The silence stretched. Of course he would, or there’d have been no point in starting any of this. Working through the PI, feeding him information, so that hopefully Paula would never find out what Bob knew. But now it came down to it, Bob found it was hard. So hard to break a promise, after twenty years. ‘I’ll need to look for the list. Not sure where it is.’

  ‘Soon as possible, then, she wants me to get started.’

  ‘Aye. Right. You’ll have to let her pay for some of it, or she’ll get suspicious. But not a lot, aye?’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ Davey made a sort of snorting noise by way of agreement and they hung up. Bob stood holding the phone, lost in memories.

  In his time, police work had been a bit like chess. You couldn’t keep everything. You couldn’t possibly win with all your pieces safe. Friends were going to die; murderers were going to walk. Everyone was informing on everyone else, half the police were corrupt and half the terrorists secretly MI5 agents. So you did what you could. You held firm, to your own rules. And what you did was you kept a list of people who owed you a wee favour. It was what got you through the nights of black terror, crouched in the armoured jeep as it rocked with bullets and hoping to God the people outside hadn’t got a rocket launcher. It was what got you up every day, checking under your car for a bomb, looking over your shoulder for a gunman, saying goodbye to your wife knowing you might not make it back that night. You kept a wee list of favours, and you hoped that when it was needed, enough of the right people would owe you one.

  The clock ticked. He found he was haunted by her – the red of her hair, the smell of lilies on white skin, just as he had been these twenty years. You promised. Aye, he’d promised, and so far he hadn’t broken it. He waited for a moment, to be sure Linda wasn’t back from church, and then he went down on his knees and pulled out the bottom drawer of the sideboard. Where they kept the fancy cutlery, for if people came over. A wedding present, stored clean and tidy, even though no one had come since Ian was born, over thirty years ago. He took the drawer right out, and there it was, in the space between the frame and the carpet – a creased white envelope, and on it a scribbled list of names, written in the hand of a dead man.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ Holding her in-flight copy of Psychology Today over her head against the driving rain at Cork airport, Paula peered into the police car, which was marked Attending Official Business and parked in the t
axi rank.

  Detective Sergeant Fiacra Quinn turned down the car stereo, which was pumping out something waily with guitars (Paula couldn’t seem to keep up with young people’s music these days). ‘Amn’t I picking up our very important expert on missing persons? Have you a bag?’

  ‘Only a wee one.’ She hefted it into the back of the car and got in the front. ‘What’s this you’re listening to? Johnny and the Whingers?’

  ‘It’s Kodaline, duh. Kind of famous.’

  ‘These days, if it’s not on CBeebies, I won’t have heard of it.’

  Fiacra pulled out of the car park. ‘How is the wee one?’

  ‘She’s grand. Nearly three now.’

  ‘And what about . . . you know. Everything else?’

  She stared out the window at the rain. ‘No change. The trial’ll be next year sometime.’

  ‘Right.’ She felt Fiacra’s awkwardness. How did you, a police officer, broach the matter of your colleague’s fiancé – and was he still that if the wedding had been cancelled? – being charged with murder? ‘And have you heard from the boss at all?’

  Meaning Guy Brooking. When the missing persons’ unit was disbanded, Guy had gone back to London, working on gang crime. Fiacra’s tone was light, but Paula wasn’t fooled. Everyone knew she and Guy had not been able to keep their relationship strictly professional. ‘Not for a while, no.’ Last time she’d seen Guy, he’d offered her a job. London, a new start, more money, a chance to take Maggie away from Ballyterrin, a town that to Paula was like stepping in a puddle that turned out to be a chasm going down and down forever. But then she’d found the note, and so she was still stuck, unable to go, unable to make sense of her life there.

  He cleared his throat. ‘How’s everybody else up there, then?’

  ‘Well, Avril’s getting on great in CID. And . . . did you know they’d the wedding planned?’