Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5)

by Claire McGowan

  Margaret paused, wiping a hand over her bloody face. Making it worse. ‘Do me a favour, will you? Don’t tell PJ I was here. Don’t tell him anything.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘I’d hoped to speak to you at the plant earlier,’ said Paula. The nettle tea she was drinking was horrible, so she set it aside.

  Rory had gone off on ‘police business’, or so he muttered, which she hoped meant protecting the bizarre contents of the shed. They were sitting in the kitchen of Rainbow’s vast house, which had once been a convent until the last of the nuns gave up on the wind and cold or died off. Paula remembered: they’d come here, she and her mother and father. It was open to the public then, the nuns serving tea and rock-hard scones out of this very kitchen. She’d been bored, wishing they’d go on holidays to Spain or somewhere. Not knowing that would be the last one they’d ever have together, not knowing how little time she had left with her mother. Taking her for granted, as you did when you were twelve. The place still smelled of damp clothes and turf fire, a comforting smell Paula associated with those holidays in the west of Ireland, her in the back of the car, her mother and father in the front. Nineteen ninety-three, the last time they would ever be together like that.

  Rainbow swilled her own tea, which she’d served in lumpy hand-cast mugs. ‘It seemed more important to search for Matt and Fiona, not sit in work.’

  ‘Looked like the plant was closing up anyway.’

  She sipped. ‘Like I said. Finding them is our priority. And with this weather, we thought it best to send everyone else home.’

  ‘Except the ones on site.’

  ‘They can hardly go home, Dr Maguire. Some of them are from thousands of miles away.’

  Paula toyed with a crumb of oatcake. ‘You knew them well, then, Matt and Fiona?’

  ‘I do know them,’ she corrected. ‘Matthew and I had many areas in common. I may work on the business side now but marine life is still my first love.’

  Paula’s mind clicked. If Matt had concerns about the wildlife on the island, would he have spoken to this woman off the record, maybe? Would she know if he’d written the report, and what had happened to him after? ‘Do you – did Matt talk to you much about his work? What he was doing day-to-day?’

  ‘Of course. He loves it out here, loves talking about the wildlife. It means so much to him, this job.’

  ‘And Fiona? Did she like it here?’

  Rainbow considered it for a moment. ‘Fiona is more . . . cosmopolitan. I don’t know how well she fitted in out here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘People saw her as sticking her neb in, as they say. Interfering, you know.’ It was odd to hear the local idioms in the American accent.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Rainbow lifted a shoulder. ‘She’s a doctor. It’s her job to ask questions. And people here . . . they don’t like being told what to do.’

  Paula looked at Rainbow, who was dipping her biscuit in her tea, staring into the beige liquid. Her own drink had left a nasty metallic taste in her mouth, as if the kettle hadn’t been descaled in years. No surprise: the kitchen was dirty, dust ground onto the floor tiles and into the old wooden table. It seemed a strange place for a businesswoman to live, in this gloomy old hulk that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the nineties. ‘You like living out here?’

  ‘Love it. There’s nowhere else like it in the world. And I have roots here.’ She saw Paula’s surprise. ‘Oh yes. My great-great-great grandmother moved to New York in 1827. The women often went first, you know. To work as servants. So when the company wanted to put a base here, I jumped at the chance to come.’

  ‘You don’t find it . . . lonely?’ That wasn’t quite the right word. It was that sense of always being outside, not being in on the secret, that she got out here.

  Rainbow set down her cup. ‘Dr Maguire – do you know what people mean when they say there are “thin” places on the earth?’

  ‘Sort of magical spots, is that it?’

  ‘More or less. The Celts believed – and lots of people still believe – that in some places, the barrier between our world and Heaven is thinner. Closer. You can just feel it, a sort of atmosphere. This island is one of those places. There’s a reason this convent was built here. It’s worth putting up with some cold and isolation, anyway.’

  It was a strange thing for a scientist to say. With her long grey hair and clever, lined face, Rainbow looked more like some ancient priestess than the Head of Operations in a big company. ‘Did Matt and Fiona think so too?’

  ‘Matt did. As I said, I’m not sure Fiona found it so easy to adapt.’

  Paula didn’t respond for a moment. ‘Dr Monroe . . .’

  ‘Oh please, call me by my first name. If you can bear to. Hippy parents, I’m afraid.’

  ‘OK. Did Matt ever tell you he had concerns about Enviracorp? That he’d noticed any strange results in his work?’ Thinking of the seal, stranded and blind. The box of dead things. Trying to tread carefully.

  Rainbow set down the cup. ‘Look. I’m going to be frank with you, Paula. You seem like a frank kind of person. The last time I saw Matthew – and I hate to say this, he’s a good man and my friend – but he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He was . . . angry. Paranoid, I would say. Saying things about being watched and so on. And he hadn’t been in the office for days. I was concerned about him, to be honest. So whatever results Matt may have gathered in the last few weeks, I’m not sure if they can be taken at face value. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About a week ago. I asked him to come and see me, and he was ranting and making no sense, and – I can’t explain it. I just knew he was off.’

  ‘Off.’

  ‘Yes. Like when an animal is . . . When things aren’t working inside, and the behaviour is abnormal. We saw it all the time in the aquatic parks. You force the animals into an unnatural situation, the stress builds up, until finally it explodes in strange directions. I tried to make him see, but he said he had to go as people were probably listening . . . I mean, I ask you. Total paranoia. If I were you, I’d be trying to get his medical records. See if he had a history of mental illness. I even wondered if he’d taken something.’

  ‘Drugs, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. But I would be very surprised. Fiona, you know, she policed him. He couldn’t even eat a damn sandwich without her snapping about grains and refined sugars and his glycaemic index.’ She sighed. ‘I should have done something. I know that. But I thought it would all be all right. You just try to . . . you know how you explain these things away for as long as you can? Because when you do face them, nothing will be the same again. Do you know what I mean?’

  Paula thought of that night, before her wedding. The blood on Aidan’s bruised hands, the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes. How she’d persuaded herself – he’d cut himself shaving. He’d fallen over. Then the next day, in her wedding dress about to walk into the church, and Aidan arrested for the murder of Sean Conlon. Yes, she knew exactly what the woman meant.

  She prepared to ask her usual question – the one that was so simple, but could tell you so much about a person and those who knew them. ‘Rainbow . . . Where do you think Matt and Fiona are? If you had to guess?’

  ‘Well, my first thought was they went in the sea, of course. It happens all the time. Hence the search, though if the storm picks up again that’ll have to be called off. And then I did think, with Matt the way he was, maybe he was hiding somewhere . . . but then why haven’t we found them? On an island this size? And where’s Fiona? So. No. I think they must have come to some harm. Of one kind or another. You understand?’

  Paula nodded, thinking of the words smeared on the wall in that shed. Blood Tide. Something wasn’t rig
ht. A man who was raving, who’d keep dead things in a box, that was a man who was more than capable of hurting his girlfriend. And there was blood in the kitchen. She was starting to feel in over her head, looking at a surface far above her that was rapidly disappearing. And where was Rory? Why was he taking so long?

  ‘You’re a missing persons’ expert, yes?’ Rainbow said. ‘I looked you up. Some very impressive cases you’ve worked on. They wouldn’t have sent you here if they thought it was a straightforward accident.’

  ‘No,’ Paula admitted. ‘There are some . . . inconsistencies. But nothing concrete so far, so we may well be wrong.’

  ‘Well, I’ve told you what I know, and I hope it helps. Poor Matt. He’s a good guy. But even good guys can snap. And if you find those samples of his – we could really do with taking a look. Making sure things are OK. It’s our top priority – after finding Matt and Fi, of course.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, non-committal. Did Rainbow know about the boatshed? She might wonder what Paula and Rory had been doing there, put two and two together. If only they’d had the team to clear out the place right away. The forensics, the photographers, the uniforms. Without that back-up she was operating blind, feeling her way on instinct. ‘Will you be around if I need to speak to you again?’

  Rainbow made a gesture that encompassed her gloomy kitchen, the island around them. ‘Where else am I going to go, Dr Maguire?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Can you hear me?’ She was shouting over the crackly phone line in Dunorlan’s, gawked at by the villagers who’d gathered there for an afternoon pint or something stronger. This was ridiculous. It was the twenty-first century. How could she be stranded on an island with no reception and hardly any landlines? ‘Fiacra?’

  ‘Aye, I hear you.’ Fiacra sounded grouchy. ‘They’re keeping me in overnight. The ligament’s damaged, they said. Might not be playing any rugby for a while.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but what am I supposed to do? I can’t just leave it, we need some kind of police presence here. There’s a potential crime scene sitting open for anyone to tamper with.’ She’d already told him about the boatshed, and the seal, Rainbow’s description of Matt, paranoid and agitated. And then there was Mary O’Neill’s story, of the company hunting him down, covering up their mistakes. They listen. She suppressed a shiver that ran down between her shoulder blades. ‘And I can’t stay out here by myself either. I need to hand it over to someone.’

  ‘You’ve got McElhone.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ She didn’t know how to say she didn’t trust him. He was at the bar talking to Colm, not far enough out of earshot. ‘Listen,’ she said quietly. ‘Should he have a gun out here?’

  ‘McElhone? Not Garda-issue. Suppose he might have a private licence but he shouldn’t be carrying one, no.’

  ‘So you see what I mean. Someone else needs to come. Someone from outside.’

  ‘They’re working on it, far as I know. Weather doesn’t help matters. How is it out there?’

  ‘Not too bad, I guess.’ By the standards of an Atlantic island, heaving seas and relentless rain were indeed not too bad. ‘The ferries are still running, at least. Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  ‘Well, I managed to chat to one of the doctors here. You were right, Andrea Sharkey’s family were out for Fiona’s blood.’

  A common enough reaction. Looking for someone else to blame, so you wouldn’t have to believe that the woman who laid her children to sleep at night could be the monster under the bed as well. ‘I don’t get the impression Fiona was that well liked out here, even before that. Seems like she found it hard to fit in.’

  ‘Right. So that might be a motive for someone to hurt her – getting revenge on the outsider.’

  Paula pressed a hand over her ear – the noise in the bar seemed to have risen. ‘Did you find out anything else?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Behind Fiacra she could hear hospital sounds, voices echoing, the beep of machinery. ‘Guess who paid for Andrea’s transport to hospital, and who’s been shoring up her husband’s farm in the meantime? Enviracorp.’

  ‘Why would they do that? He doesn’t work for them, does he?’

  ‘Good question. Taking CSR to the limit, isn’t it? And that fella from the boat – he’s not the first foreign worker from the island that they’ve had to treat over here.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘They’d three women brought in back in November. Chemical burns of some kind, to the face and hands.’

  Paula thought of the worker she’d seen hosing down the factory, in a rubber suit. ‘From the plant?’

  ‘They wouldn’t say, and they discharged themselves soon as they could walk – the doctor sounded raging about that – but she said she recognised the logo on one of their coats. Enviracorp.’

  Overseas workers. Doing the worst jobs, the ones no Irish people wanted, gutting chickens and pulling potatoes out of freezing soil, and yes, steeping themselves in chemicals all day. ‘Can we find them?’

  ‘Doubtful. They’ll likely be long gone by now, off on another job, fishing boats or factories or who the hell knows.’

  She sighed, looking at ancient messages scratched in the metal surround of the phone. ‘So we’ve got islanders angry with Fiona. We’ve got Matt possibly losing it. And we’ve got this company with their fingers in everything. So what am I meant to do now?’

  ‘Sit tight for a minute. I’ll see where they are with getting someone else over.’

  ‘I need to go home, Fiacra.’

  ‘I know. I’ll call them now. OK?’

  Paula thought of Maggie, safe, hopefully in Saoirse’s warm house. Or cuddled up on Pat’s knee watching CBeebies. She was fine – wasn’t she? And this was something Paula could do, try to untangle this mystery, even if she couldn’t help Aidan or find her mother or do anything useful at all back home. ‘OK,’ she said, guilt feeling leaden in her stomach. ‘Would you do me a favour and ring Maeve Cooley, see if she knows any more about Enviracorp?’

  ‘I won’t have to, she’s been in to see me already. With a fruit basket, can you believe. Bloody press.’

  Paula couldn’t help but smile. ‘They’re still keen on the story then?’

  ‘Aye, well, they’re all stuck here waiting out the storm. It’s as good a story as any, even if Matt and Fiona are in the sea.’

  ‘They’re not.’ She couldn’t be sure, of course, but she knew there was something else going on. There were just too many lies out here, so many that the clear air felt thick with them.

  ‘Aye, well. You need to get those samples secured and keep Matt’s data safe. Otherwise all we have is an anonymous report by someone who’s maybe off the rails.’

  ‘I know. All we can do for now is put police tape round it and hope it doesn’t blow away in the storm. Get better soon, Quinn.’

  She hung up, and stood by the phone for a minute, thinking. Rory had moved away from the bar, into the main part of the pub. She dug out her mobile – next to useless at the moment – and scrolled through to find the number for Fiona Watts’s doctor. She fed some more euro coins into the old machine, feeling once again how very far from home she was.

  ‘Sorry, Dr Michaels? You’re breaking up a bit.’

  Fiona’s doctor had the singsong accent of the region. ‘Hello, Dr Maguire? I was saying I saw Dr Watts a few times just – she has a specialist in London, of course.’

  ‘So I heard. Fiona was quite severely allergic to various things – her diet was very controlled?’

  The doctor made a slight sighing noise. ‘Dr Maguire – you’re not a medical doctor, I take it, yourself?’

  ‘No, forensic psychology.’

  ‘Well. I don’t wish to speak ill of my profession, but have you heard it said that doctors can be terrible patients? Dr Watts, she’
d been tested when she was wee and told she had intolerances to several things. Gluten, seafood, eggs, nuts – most of the common allergens, in fact. I redid the tests when she came to me and told her I thought most of them had cleared up to the point where she could eat normally again. That often happens with childhood allergies. Provided she had an EpiPen to hand, I thought at most she’d be at risk of a reaction maybe once every five years. I’d always lean towards normalising life as much as possible for my patients. It’s easy enough to steer clear of nuts and seafood, but the other things – you’re looking at buying all your food in ready-made, and it’s a wild price and not very good for you.’

  Paula’s mind was racing. If Fiona had started eating normally again, and it had triggered an attack – they could just be waiting to find her body. ‘And did she do what you suggested?’

  ‘Well, that was the strange thing. I thought she’d be pleased. Especially living out on an island, it can’t be easy to get the food she needs. But she was furious. Said she could die, did I not realise. She didn’t take a thing that hadn’t been guaranteed allergen-free, you know. It was costing her a fortune – she had it shipped in from America. Of course, being far away from medical care was a factor in case of an attack, but I thought all things considered there was more risk from the lack of fresh food. Her cholesterol levels were quite elevated.’

  Something about it didn’t quite make sense, though. ‘Dr Michaels – why did she have the tests redone, then, if she didn’t want to hear the answers? She asked you to run them?’ Paula pressed her finger in her ear; the noise levels were ridiculous.

  ‘She did.’

  ‘But why, if she didn’t want to start eating normally?’

  ‘Well now, it was because of the baby, I’d say. She wanted to know if it would be affected.’