by Des Ekin
‘Twenty-two. Eight years younger than me.’ Mags looked at Emma sharply. ‘And don’t say “is”, Doctor, it’s “was”. Kate is dead. I’m sure of it. I knew it the moment I saw her get into his car that night. I knew it would be the last time I saw her alive.’
‘You saw her get into Joseph Valentia’s car?’
Mags stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. ‘Yeah. It was a Friday evening. We used to meet for a drink around ten, because she got off early from the video store and I hadn’t started work yet. Afterwards, we walked part of the way together. We split up at Mellowes Road – she was sticking to the street, heading for home, and I was taking a short-cut across the park. I stopped just under the trees to light a fag. That’s when I saw him pull up in his car.’
‘Valentia?’
‘Yes. The Tánaiste. He wasn’t in the big Merc he usually gets ferried around in. No police minder, no security. He was just driving an ordinary Corolla, navy-blue, with a Clare registration. I took a note of the number. Here.’ She pushed a scrap of paper across the table.
Emma studied it carefully. ‘You’re sure it was him?’
‘Absolutely. It’s not a face you could mistake.’
Emma followed her gaze to another election poster and studied Joseph Valentia’s distinctive features. The cadaverous face, the cold, calculating eyes, the dense black hair with a hairline – an actual hairline, not a fringe – halfway down the forehead. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I see what you mean. Maybe he was just offering her a lift home?’
Mags shrugged. ‘Maybe, but her home was just down the road. With the one-way system, it would actually have taken her longer to get there in a car. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘And she never made it home anyway?’
‘No. I called around later that night. She hadn’t come back at all.’
Emma stared across the room. ‘At what stage did you contact the police?’ she asked.
Mags looked awkward. ‘At the start I didn’t. I was a bit pissed off, to tell you the truth. At first I thought she was having some sort of affair with this guy without telling me. And when I checked and found that she’d spent the night away from home, I was sure of it. So I didn’t try to get in touch with her for about a week. I was waiting for her to contact me first. But by that time, her photo was on an inside page of the Passage North News as a missing person.’
‘Which was the correct way to describe her,’ Emma reminded her. ‘Still is.’
Mags ignored her. ‘The problem is, they got the date wrong. Kate vanished when she got into Valentia’s car on Friday, 20 October, a few seconds before 11pm – I remember the exact time because my watch bleeped just afterwards. But she’s officially described as missing from the early morning of Sunday, 22 October, because that’s when the man in the video store said she hadn’t turned up for work.’
‘Well, there’s only one thing for it. You need to tell the police the true story,’ Emma insisted.
Mags shook her head. ‘I’ve already done that. I went down to the police station, met a Detective Sergeant George Arkwright, and gave him a full statement – names, dates, places, just like I’ve told you.’
She sucked savagely on her cigarette. ‘But it’s all been covered up. Someone, somewhere, has ordered that it should be suppressed. The official story is still that Kate must have disappeared sometime on the twenty-first or early on the twenty-second, and the name of Joseph Valentia has never even been mentioned.’
‘There could be a lot of reasons –’
‘Come off it. You know there’s only one reason. Power, influence. Valentia has been allowed to get away with murder. Literally.’ She turned to Emma. ‘You know what I need to do? I need to find a good investigative journalist who’s not afraid to stand up to people like him. Who’s not afraid to name names. Someone who’ll expose the whole scandal. Do you know anybody like that?’
Emma didn’t have to think. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I believe I do.’
Chapter Two
EMMA drove her silver BMW along the tree-lined avenue towards the clinic. Her windscreen wipers slapped against the glass in frustration as they fought a losing battle against a torrential downpour. The twenty-four hours which had elapsed since her last conversation with Hunter on Sunday had changed the weather for the worse, and rain-battered Passage North was settling with grim determination into the start of another working week.
She switched off the radio as her mobile phone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Emma?’ Hunter’s voice sounded faint and far away. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Just about.’
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way to work.’
‘Sounds like you’re in a car wash. How did you fare with the police?’
She grimaced. ‘Not a pleasant experience. They just didn’t seem interested.’
‘Really?’
‘They said they were very busy,’ Emma said. ‘And could I call back in a couple of days. So I made a formal appointment to see one of the detectives on Tuesday.’
She swung out of the avenue and parked her car in front of a stately red-brick building. A brass plaque beside the door read ‘The Athmore Clinic’.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this,’ Hunter said. ‘And especially about Joseph Valentia. He’s the guy with the bee in his bonnet about unmarried mothers.’
‘I know,’ Emma said. ‘He claims they’re responsible for all the ailments of modern society. Children being raised without male authority figures, that sort of thing.’
‘Yes. And he’s persuaded a lot of people to believe his theories. I find it all a bit sinister, to tell you the truth.’
‘You’re not the only one.’ Emma shivered as she stared out at the driving rain. ‘Remember, I’m a single mum too.’
‘Indeed.’ Hunter paused. ‘The big question is: why would Kate Spain get into the car with him?’
‘If you ask me, they were having an affair. No matter what Mags Jackson says.’
‘I’ve got another theory. Do you want to hear it?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘I had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t the first time Passage North had figured in connection with a missing person case,’ he said. ‘So since you phoned me yesterday, I’ve been going through the files in the office and searching on the Internet.’
‘Searching for what?’
‘For reports of missing women. At least, those that were taken seriously enough for the police to issue appeals to the media.’
‘Big job.’ Emma glanced at her watch. She was ten minutes early, and she was in no hurry to venture out into the downpour.
‘All-night job,’ he agreed wearily. ‘There were lots of them. It was even harder to update them. I had to eliminate the ones who subsequently turned up, either living overseas or floating in the nearest river.’
‘And the others? The ones who weren’t runaways or suicides?’
‘There were three that particularly interested me,’ Hunter said. ‘One, Kate Spain, of course. Two, a German silversmith called Frieda Winter who went missing from County Cavan almost a year ago. Third –’
‘Winter, as in summer? Sorry, it’s such a bad line.’
‘Yes, Winter. Aged forty-two. She went missing from Ballymillett in Cavan in December last year.’
‘And who did you say was the third?’
‘A woman named Karen Quinn, from the north inner city of Dublin. Thirty-one years old, vanished from the Liffey quays six months ago.’
‘Sounds to me like three totally unconnected cases.’
‘Bear with me, Emma.’ He sounded tired. ‘First, Frieda Winter. She created Celtic designs in silver. I’ve got her photo in front of me. Free-spirited artist. Red hair cropped tight. Tattoo of a hemp leaf on her neck. She’d apparently spent her entire adult life moving from one colony of artists to another, never staying anywhere for more than a year. She had two teenaged sons who lived with their aunt i
n Frankfurt. When she went missing from the artists’ colony in Ballymillett last year, the police went through the motions but, privately, they just shrugged their shoulders and said “So what?’’’
‘Not surprising. She’s probably just moved on to Glastonbury Tor or the Outer Hebrides or somewhere equally daft.’
‘No.’ Hunter was adamant. ‘She lived in Cavan, but she’d always had a dream of establishing a colony for artists in Passage North. Its remoteness appealed to her.’
‘Okay, but, again, so what?’ Emma glanced up at the thunderous black clouds. ‘She probably took one look at Passage North in the rain and decided to go to Tahiti instead.’
‘Perhaps.’ Hunter sounded unconvinced. ‘Anyway, that’s what struck a chord in my memory. Now, let’s look at Karen Quinn from Dublin. The two women couldn’t be more different.’
‘You’ve got a photo of her as well?’
‘Yes. Earth mother type, I suppose. Roundish face, frizzy red hair, warm friendly eyes. Nice smile. She did specialist catering work in Dublin, London and Liverpool. She had lots of friends all over England, and she tended to go over there at short notice to take the contracts as they came up. That’s why the police weren’t too concerned when she went missing from Dublin last May.’
‘Is there a point to all this, Hunter? Because it’s just gone nine o’clock.’
He ignored her. ‘I talked to Karen’s mother on the phone,’ he said. ‘Apparently Karen was getting fed up with all the travelling and wanted to put down roots in the country. She became deeply interested in the rural resettlement scheme. It’s a sort of –’
‘Yes, I know about it. It’s a scheme to encourage people from Dublin to move to remote districts in the west and keep the rural areas alive.’ She paused as the penny dropped. ‘You’re not going to tell me she wanted to live in Passage North?’
‘No. She wanted to go to Connemara. But what she was offered was a home in Passage North. The only thing stopping her was the size of the house she’d been allocated. She was holding out for something bigger.’
There was a long silence on the line.
‘So what you’re telling me,’ Emma said at last, ‘was that all three of them – Kate Spain, the German artist woman, and Karen Whatsername from Dublin –’
‘Karen Quinn.’
‘They were all trying in their different ways to get new homes in Passage North?’
‘Yes. That’s what they had in common. We know that for certain,’ said Hunter. ‘What we don’t know for sure, but what I’m willing to bet, is that it wasn’t working out for them; and that, as a last resort, they all went to Joseph Valentia for help. Remember, he’s the local politician and he’s got a reputation as a man who can fix anything for anybody.’
‘So he may have met them personally? All three of them?’
‘Yes. And that could explain why Kate Spain got into the car. I think he abducted all three of them in the same way.’
‘What do you mean?’
He paused before he replied. ‘I think they all fell into the same trap. I think they were all out walking near their homes when Joseph Valentia drew up alongside them in a private car. I think he probably led them to believe he had some news for them. In the circumstances, I think they would have got into his car without hesitation. And without fuss.’
Emma felt a chill deep inside.
‘What we need to do,’ Hunter said, ‘is ask ourselves what connects these three victims.’
A roll of thunder drowned out his last words.
‘Sorry? Give me that again?’
‘There was another thing these women had in common, Emma. I mean, apart from the place they wanted to live.’
Emma said nothing.
‘Kate Spain,’ Hunter said. ‘Remember? Her baby was taken into care by the health board because she couldn’t cope. Frieda Winter – she had two teenaged sons. Karen Quinn – she didn’t seem to fit the pattern at all, until I discovered she’d had a baby at the age of sixteen and had had the child adopted.’
Emma opened her car door, braced herself against the driving rain, and hurried towards the entrance of the clinic.
‘All three of them, Emma,’ Hunter said, spelling it out as though she didn’t know what he meant, ‘all three of them were unmarried mothers.’
‘But why would –’
‘I don’t know. But it’s more important than ever that I get to interview Mags Jackson. What time will she arrive in Dublin tomorrow?’
‘Not until late in the morning.’ She dived into the shelter of the porch. ‘That’ll give you a chance to check her out in advance. Have you got her address?’
‘Yes, you gave me it yesterday: 15 Ardee Terrace, Passage North.’ There was no disguising the excitement in his voice. ‘If she’s on the level, Emma, and if I’m even half right about the link with the other women … this could be the biggest story of the decade.’
‘It’s more than just a story,’ Emma said sharply. She glanced around and lowered her voice. ‘We could be talking about the deaths of three innocent women here.’
‘You’re right. Sorry.’ There was a long pause. ‘But, Jesus, Emma, it’s still a great story.’
She raised her eyes heavenward. ‘I’d better let you go,’ she said. ‘Battery’s running low.’
‘Sure. And Emma?’
‘Yes?’
Hunter hesitated.
‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘There may be nothing behind all this. But if this is true, and it’s a damn big if, then you’re the only one in Passage North who knows of this connection. Take care. We’ve no idea what we could be stirring up here.’
Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I will, Hunter. Goodbye.’
Chapter Three
THE photographer took the snatch shot in the textbook manner, camera slung low over his left hip as he leaned forward pretending to inspect the chattering inkjet printer in the corridor of Street Talk magazine.
His hand lay on top of the heavy metal camera, as though to stop it swinging forward and getting in his way, but apart from that, he hardly seemed aware it was there.
He didn’t even glance at the woman as she walked towards him along the corridor; he just aimed his hip vaguely in her general direction and trusted the wide-angle lens to do the job. The printer’s noise would disguise the clicking of the camera’s shutter. Within a couple of seconds, he’d shot off six rapid-fire exposures.
Martin Slade was one of the best news photographers in the country, but right now he was bored. It was a quiet morning: there were no fraudsters to doorstep, no drug barons poised to sprint out of courthouses towards waiting limousines. But that could change at any moment.
In the meantime, Martin was keeping himself occupied by testing a new digital camera to see how it would cope with snatch shots in low-light conditions. He didn’t know much about digital cameras, just that they didn’t use film. They captured electronic images and stored the data on a card, which could then be downloaded on to a computer.
But what really interested Martin was that they were now becoming as fast as most conventional cameras. This model, a Canon Powershot Pro 70, was capable of taking four frames a second in burst mode, up to a maximum of twenty continuous shots. Photos taken surreptitiously – snatch shots, in the jargon of his trade – could be taken at high speed and verified almost instantly.
He spent ten minutes snatching pictures of unsuspecting colleagues at close range. To his immense satisfaction, none of them noticed a thing.
And when a hard-faced woman in a black leather jacket walked down the corridor, he took half a dozen snatch shots of her, too. That was the other great thing about digital cameras. You didn’t have to worry about wasting film.
THE woman in the leather jacket walked straight into the editor’s office without knocking.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Mags Jackson. You must be Hunter.’
Hunter looked up sharply. He hadn’t been expecting Mags for at least another half-hour.
‘Yeah. Up at five to catch the early express bus. It took six hours, and believe me, you can count every bump and pothole on the road.’
‘Tell me about it. I’ve travelled it often enough.’ Hunter glanced up at the map on his office wall. County Athmore, to the northwest of Donegal, was the most remote county in Ireland. And farthest-flung of all was the fishing port of Passage North, stuck on the end of a peninsular finger that pointed defiantly across the Atlantic towards Greenland.
He glanced back in time to see the woman wiping beads of sweat from her forehead. She was still wearing the heavyweight jacket over a thick black T-shirt, and was obviously sweltering in the warmth of the office.
‘Please.’ Hunter moved towards her, arm outstretched. ‘Let me take your coat.’
‘No!’
The reply was almost a shout. Hunter immediately recoiled.
‘I’m fine.’ Mags’s voice was defensive. She clutched self-consciously at the sleeves of her jacket and tugged them downwards to cover her wrists. But not before Hunter had caught a glimpse of the ugly track-marks left by a dozen hypodermic needles on the bruised skin of her lower arm.
He kept his distance.
‘Listen, Mags,’ he said softly, ‘I talk to heroin users all the time. It would take a lot more than that to shock me.’ He shrugged casually. ‘Besides, I’m in no position to judge anybody. I’ve had my own problems in the past.’
Mags didn’t move. Hunter sat down behind his desk.
‘All I’m saying is, keep the jacket on, take it off, whichever you like. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be comfortable.’
She smiled ruefully and removed the coat.
‘Okay, I’m a user,’ she admitted. ‘And I’m a working girl, too. I’m not saying I’m any kind of saint, Mr Hunter.’
‘Just Hunter.’
‘Is that your first name or your second name?’
