The woman who greeted them had curly russet hair and a snub nose. ‘Ellen,’ she said, smiling. American. ‘I’m sorry, we’re kinda short-staffed today. The storm, you know. Most of the workers wanted to leave yesterday so we ran a boat over.’
Paula frowned. ‘Your staff left the island already?’
‘Well sure, we can’t keep them out here if the weather’s bad.’
Of course, they were perfectly within their rights to come and go, even if Matt and Fiona were missing. But it struck her as somehow off, like no one was really taking this seriously.
The man with Ellen was an erring-to-chubby type with a smiley, likeable face. He announced himself as ‘Dara’. Irish. From Galway, she thought. Neither of them older than thirty.
‘How can we help so?’ said Dara. ‘Matt’s dead popular at Enviracorp, he’s been doing a brilliant job. Is it looking like they’ve had some kind of accident?’
They were walking now, down a sealed-in metal tunnel that linked two of the company buildings. Lashed by rain on both sides, it gave the impression of being on a ship at sea. ‘Can we talk to the Head of Operations – Dr Monroe?’ asked Paula. ‘We met her yesterday briefly. I have some questions.’ Mainly, why were they so generous to random half-drowned sailors.
Dara soothed. ‘Of course, of course. We thought you’d like a bit of a tour of the place first. Get an idea of how we work, how Matt fitted in. These are the research labs.’ Behind porthole windows, rows of microscopes. No one in sight. ‘So in here’s where they find uses for the chemicals we extract.’
‘You see,’ Ellen enthused, in her all-American accent – Texas maybe? ‘There’s a lot more to seaweed than meets the eye. There’s the well-known uses, of course – thalassotherapy, edible weeds . . .’
‘Agar jelly,’ chipped in Dara.
‘. . . but we’ve also identified many uses in manufacturing and even biofuels. Seaweed is an excellent source of iron, iodine, and many other materials. Best of all, it’s eco-friendly and all there for the taking.’
‘We really have a garden under the sea, that’s hardly being used!’ Dara grinned. What were these two on? No one was that excited about seaweed. ‘Of course, Irish people have eaten seaweed for years – dulse is one kind – but it’s fallen off the menu a bit. We think the time is right to rediscover our underwater harvest.’
Underwater harvest? Paula gave a sceptical look to Rory, who was examining the labs with a blank expression. She said, ‘Your workers aren’t all islanders, I take it?’
‘No, we bring most of the research staff over on a boat during the week. Some of them actually fly in from all over the world, through Shannon airport. But we employ locally where we can – from builders to drivers to canteen staff.’ Dara looked at his watch, which Paula noticed was a very nice one. ‘Like Ellen said, though, most people have gone early today.’
‘And Matt Andrews? What was his role?’ She might have imagined it, but she thought she saw Ellen look to Dara for confirmation before answering.
‘Oh, we had Matt in to do some environmental impact studies. We’re very keen to work in harmony with nature here. Matt was keeping an eye on the seabirds, and the fish and seals . . .’
‘It’s a very diverse habitat!’ enthused Dara.
‘. . . and making sure they were all happy. We wouldn’t want our extractive technologies causing any problems.’
Paula thought of the questions in her coat pocket. She had to tread carefully, avoid putting them on their guard.
They passed labs and greenhouses, everything almost deserted. In one large, hangar-like room, a single worker in a protective suit was hosing down what looked like empty growing beds. ‘They’ve not all gone then,’ said Paula. Why was the place so quiet? It looked like a ghost town, not a functioning plant.
‘A few of our workers live in,’ said Dara easily. ‘We’ve dorms on site, so we do. But I’m afraid most of them don’t speak a whole lot of English. You know how it is. Overseas. Anyway, shall we keep going?’
Paula had seen the nurseries, the education centre, and even a prototype seaweed bath when she decided she’d had enough. ‘When can we see Dr Monroe?’
‘Just a minute. Would you like to see the drying and packing bays? Dried seaweed accounts for . . .’
‘I’d like to know if Matt Andrews found something,’ she said. ‘In his environmental impact studies. Did he find some impact?’
Dara and Ellen exchanged a lightning-quick glance. Paula recognised it – it was like the one she and Guy Brooking used to share, the ability to communicate whole thoughts without a single word. ‘Why don’t you come into the coffee room?’ Dara said, giving nothing away. ‘It’d founder you outside; nice warm drink’ll sort us all out.’
Paula followed them down the corridor, mostly because she was thirsty and dying for some tea, and they went into
a bright, warm room with windows looking out on the Atlantic. The walls were lined with watercolours and it smelled of coffee. Ellen went to the water cooler and filled a jug, then poured it into the kettle. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Paula asked for tea, but Rory just shook his head at the offer.
‘So . . . did Matt report any concerns?’ she asked, sitting down on a comfortable armchair. Enviracorp looked after its staff.
Ellen blinked. ‘As far as I know, Matt was satisfied that we met EU standards, isn’t that right, Dara?’
‘That’s right. I wasn’t aware of anything wrong at all, now.’
‘So if we needed to, we could see his reports, his data and that?’
Dara screwed up his face. ‘Aye, well, of course you could in theory, but the thing is, he didn’t keep his stuff here.’
‘Then where did he keep it?’ She narrowed her eyes.
Ellen shook her head. Paula could see a smudge of foundation on her chin covering a reddish rash; she looked tired and stressed. ‘He has an office here but he worked by himself mostly, all over the island. Sometimes he came into the canteen to say hi. Like Dara said, he was real popular. But recently – he didn’t come in so much.’
‘Maybe Dr Monroe would know more. When can I see her, please?’
Another little glance between them. ‘Oh, I’m real sorry,’ said Ellen in tones of aw-shucks sincerity. ‘I guess we didn’t explain. She’s not working today.’
‘Then where can I find her? Does she live on the island?’
‘She has a house here, yeah, but we don’t know if she’s about right now. She’s been helping the search teams, you see.’ Dara’s face was wide and guileless. ‘I can leave her a message.’
Paula looked round her at the coffee room, painted a pale apple green. There was free Nespresso, and baskets of wrapped chocolate biscuits, and the air was warm and cosy. She was trying to conjure the missing person, as she had so many times before. How could a six-foot-tall man, strong and healthy, be one moment safe here in this room with its sachets of UHT milk, and then the next just vanish? Be . . . nowhere? But he had to be somewhere. That was what kept her coming back to these puzzles, time and time again. People didn’t just vanish. They were always somewhere, and someone, some place, would know where. And why. And she’d done this long enough to know when she was being fobbed off. Outside, the wind had picked up, and the sound of it worrying around the flimsy tunnel was like banshees howling.
Chapter Fifteen
Paula buckled herself into Rory’s car, scowling at the building. ‘Is it normally that quiet in there?’
He started the car. ‘Must be shutting up shop for the weekend. Which way now?’ She felt he was humouring her again, and a small acid-blast of anger flared up in her chest.
‘Well, what do you think, Rory? Given the evidence. The blood in the kitchen – Fiona’s type. Missing couple, missing boat, smashed bulb? Why does nobody seem remotely bothered over here?’
Rory yawned
. He actually yawned. ‘Because. We’re used to it. The sea, it takes people. Every year, usually. It’s sad but it’s the way of things. Why did you ask about Matt’s data?’
‘Just wondered if he had a bolt-hole somewhere. Might give us some clues.’ She didn’t want to name it, even to herself, the vague niggle in the base of her spine that made her keep things from him. ‘I guess what we need is . . . God!’ She jumped as there was a thump, and a hand appeared outside the fogged-up window of Rory’s car, banging on it. Paula rolled down the window (budgets weren’t high in the island Gardaí, clearly).
‘Hello?’ A high, nervous voice. Female. They could barely see her face behind the scarf she wore. ‘You’re the police? I need to talk to you about Matt.’
Mary O’Neill was from Cork, she said, though the accent had almost been schooled out of her by stints in MIT and Cambridge. She was a research chemist for Enviracorp. She sat nervously in the back of the jeep, in her black puffa coat and woolly hat. ‘I’ve a place on the north side of the island. I don’t like staying in the dorms on site.’
‘Why not?’ asked Paula, wondering what the woman wanted.
‘It’s just . . . you can’t say anything against the company while you’re in there. Not even a moan about the canteen or the computer systems. It’s almost like a cult, they all love it so much. Like they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Isn’t that what people say? I need a bit of space sometimes.’ Her eyes darted around the jeep. Rory hadn’t even turned to look at her, but was staring out the blurred windows at the fogged-in landscape. They could have been on the surface of the moon, for all they could see.
‘What did you want to tell us?’ Paula checked the time on the dashboard. The last ferry was in three hours. She had to be on it, to get back to Maggie. Home seemed a million miles away right now.
Mary bent over in a lung-rattling cough before she answered. Paula winced; she really couldn’t afford to catch a cold. ‘Well, Matt and I were friendly. We’d chat about work and that, have a coffee. So it was me he came to when . . . he found things.’
‘Things?’ Paula tried to stay calm. Everyone on this island seemed terminally afflicted by talking-slow disease.
‘The research he was doing. It’s not true what they’re saying, that everything was fine. He found abnormalities. Puffin eggs, too fragile for the chicks to stay alive. A seal pup with no eyes. And the seaweed . . . well, the levels of phosphate and nitrite were off the chart. He was afraid of a bloom, even.’
Paula looked to Rory for support: none came. ‘Can you explain that a bit, Mary?’
She spoke impatiently, as scientists often did to lay people. Paula was sure she was sometimes guilty of the same. ‘An algal bloom. We’re pumping all these nutrients into the sea, you see – all the by-products of the processes we do here – and Matt thought it was causing . . . something.’
Rory cleared his throat. ‘Mary, listen, maybe you can cut to the chase for us. What is it you’re on about?’
She blinked, then set her jaw. Her eyes were fierce and beady behind her steamed-up glasses. ‘Matt thought there was something wrong. On the island. That it had to do with the plant, with the chemicals we were using.’ She looked at them.
Paula wished she could ring Maeve. ‘I see. Mary – does the name Puffin the Magic Dragon mean anything to you?’ From the corner of her eye, she saw Rory frown.
The scientist smiled, automatically, a warm and unfeigned smile, and Paula wondered exactly how friendly Mary O’Neill was, or wanted to be, with the missing ecologist. ‘That was Matt’s little joke. Hiding his identity. He loves the puffins, you see. He hated to see them suffering.’
‘He wrote a report, yes? An anonymous one?’
She nodded. ‘I think so.’ Another cough tore into her for a moment. ‘Sorry. I’m coming down with something, I think.’
‘Tell me, Mary – why would he send it to a paper, instead of telling his bosses? That was his job, wasn’t it, to look for abnormalities and monitor them?’
‘Well, that’s the thing. He did tell them.’
‘And what, they didn’t listen?’
‘Oh, they listened all right. Why do you think they’ve shut the place down? Trying to clear out any trace of whatever chemicals we’ve been using. Cover it up.’
Paula digested that. Matt, knowing more than he should. Matt, now nowhere to be found. ‘But why would he use a code name?’
‘Because,’ Mary said matter-of-factly, ‘they listen in. They’re tracking our emails. Why do you think I’m talking to you out here? They can hear everything in there. It wasn’t safe.’
Paula glanced at Rory, who gave a small shrug. Outside, the wind was worrying around the car, and in the back of her mind an anxiety about the ferry was growing. They listen. What to say to that? It was the same thing Andrea Sharkey had told her. Who did they think was listening? ‘You mean . . . the company are spying on you?’
Mary nodded emphatically, making the bobble on her hat nod up and down, throwing herself into another short coughing fit. It would have been comical if Paula didn’t feel an uneasy chill crawling down her spine. She wished Fiacra had been able to come with her. ‘I see. So Matt wrote the report, and then – what?’
‘They’ve taken him,’ she said, as if this should be obvious. ‘They want to keep him quiet. About what he found.’
‘And Fiona?’
Mary wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, her. I don’t know about her. Maybe she knew something too. But she didn’t believe him, you see. Even when it was staring her in the face.’
Rory was no help, looking out the window again and clearly communicating without saying a word that he felt this whole thing was ludicrous. Paula didn’t know what to say. ‘Right, Mary. Thank you for this. Can we . . . come to you again if we find out more? You’d be a witness?’
She hugged her coat around her like a bird fluffing up its feathers. ‘A witness to what? I didn’t see anything. I just know Matt was worried and he planned to blow the whistle. I better go, I can’t let them see me with you. What you need to do is find his work.’
‘His work?’
‘He had samples, data, that sort of thing. It’s in his boatshed. Have you not found that yet?’
Rory shifted in his seat. He knew where it was, clearly. Why hadn’t he suggested looking there?
‘We’ll go there next,’ Paula said firmly. ‘Just in case we need you, though – you live on the north side?’
She nodded reluctantly. ‘Pebble-dash cottage on the beach. You can’t miss it.’
‘Thanks. Are you going back to the mainland tonight?’ asked Paula.
‘No, I’ll be staying, helping with the search. I consider here to be my home. Though I don’t think the islanders agree. Please find Matt. Please help him.’ Mary opened the door, letting in a blast of icy sea air, tinged with rotting fish, and vanished into her own car, a lime-green Honda that seemed more suited to a city than this bleak countryside.
Rory turned to Paula, leaving a moment of eloquent silence. ‘Be handy if you’d have told me about that report.’
‘I needed to check it out first. Think she’s telling the truth?’
‘Dunno. She sounds like she’s away with the fairies. Load of nonsense.’
Paula wasn’t so sure. Why would Andrea have said the same thing? And would Matt really have fabricated a whole report? ‘How come it’s not been searched already, this boatshed?’
Rory gave his trademark shrug, the one that suggested if he was any more laid-back he’d have trouble staying upright. ‘Didn’t think we’d need to, it’s only a wee damp place. I’ll take you there now if you want.’
Bob
1986
‘Well, Sean. How you doing?’
Sean Conlon – twenty-five but looking more like forty, surly and watchful as a fox. He lolled in his chair in t
he interview room, very much at home. Quite the ladies’ man by all accounts, but all Bob could see was the arrogance, the slackness, the straggly hair and pierced ears and tattoos up his arms. ‘I’m saying nothing till my lawyer gets here.’
He’d engaged Colin McCready as his solicitor, of course, like all the Republicans did in Ballyterrin. And Bob happened to know that Margaret Maguire worked for McCready, as a receptionist. The thought of it made his chest sore. ‘Aye, he’s on his way. Just wanted to have a wee word with you first. Man to man.’ PJ Maguire was off the O’Hara case, luckily. Too close to the family, though he was raging about it, had barely spoken a civil word to Bob in weeks.
Conlon sneered. ‘Look, I know nothing about O’Hara. I’ve an alibi.’
‘Aye, Sean, I’m sure you found some woman to alibi you. But maybe you’d like a wee look at the footprint we got at the scene.’
Some stirring then, a vague wariness. He glanced at the two bits of paper Bob slid over the table. ‘So? You’ll not find any pair of shoes on me that match those, Sergeant.’
‘No, I’m sure I wouldn’t. Long burned or bucked in the canal, I don’t doubt.’
‘No comment.’ He smiled. The wee bastard.
‘See that print on the left, though? That’s not from John O’Hara’s murder. That’s from another wee case we had a few years back. Do they look like the same shoes to you, Sean? Because they do to me.’
‘No idea. I’m not a detective.’ But Bob had seen it, the involuntary curl of the feet under the table, even though he’d be wearing different shoes today.
‘Know what case that was, Sean? You remember somebody shot Paddy Dunne during the Hunger Strikes, 1981? Remember the big riots? Dunne was about to come out against the strikes, and somebody didn’t want that, so he got shot. His wife found him when she brought his youngest back from nursery. Four, he was, the wee lad.’
Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5) Page 10
