City of Lost Girls

by Declan Hughes

  The following morning at dawn, the National Drugs Unit launch a raid on the hotel in south Wicklow where Podge Halligan has been staying since his release from jail. In a wardrobe in his room, they discover a package containing 8.5 kilos of cocaine. Podge, who is immediately rearrested, insists the drugs have been planted. I ask Tommy Owens, who vanishes immediately after the hit on Mark Cassidy, if he knows anything about the raid. Tommy says all he knows is that Leo Halligan wants his guns back, as I won’t be needing them anymore.

  The Guards find the location of the garden in Milltown where the remains of Nora Mannion, Kate Coyle and Jenny Noble are buried. The bodies are exhumed and returned to their families for burial. I go to all the funerals, as do most of the Nighttown cast and crew. Tommy helps steward his grieving daughter, Naomi, through Jenny Noble’s funeral.

  In the cellar of Mark Cassidy’s house in Churchtown, the Guards find the corpse of a woman believed to have been his Brazilian wife; no passport or papers have been located, so as yet, no identification has been made. He left no documentation of any kind, no diaries, notebooks or computer records. We only have the notes he sent Jack Donovan.

  Details of Mark Cassidy’s life emerge. He was the only child of parents who died of cancer within a year of each other while Mark was at university. Former school friends and university colleagues line up to tell us nothing we didn’t know before: Mark Cassidy was a charming, intelligent attractive man who was difficult to get to know outside of a social or professional context. He never alluded to any experience of abuse or displayed signs of mental derangement, never spoke disparagingly of women. A woman he dated briefly at university said that he was very gentle and didn’t seem that interested in sex. None of it, and nothing else, explains why Mark Cassidy did what he did, or even what he thought he was doing. In many ways, how could it? Or to put it another way, what exactly could have? Family background, life experience, hard knocks and paths not taken: none of that is enough. At a certain stage, evil becomes a mystery, transcending all considerations of biography and motivation. Three-in-One, One-in-Three, it becomes a matter of faith.

  That doesn’t stop people trying; books and newspaper articles appear, some content to recount the mere facts of the case, others attempting to provide some insight into the psychology of the killer’s mind. The result: we know almost all the facts; we remain terrifyingly low on insight.

  The case slips out of my hands. I brief Kevin O’Sullivan and he deals with Coover and the LAPD and the FBI. They’ve only identified ten of the lost girls to date. On top of the three Irish victims, that leaves eight unidentified bodies.

  No one has seen Madeline King since Thursday afternoon, when she left the Nighttown set. There is CCTV footage of her at the airport, and her car was found in the short stay car park. Her mobile phone details show three missed calls from Mark Cassidy that afternoon, and one further call which needs to be traced. There is no record of her taking a flight that day, or at least, not under her own name. I go to Galway, to her family home, I talk to her friends in Dublin, I track down ex-boyfriends: no one believes she would have simply chosen to disappear, and no one knows anything else that can help me find her. Jack Donovan tells me their relationship had run its course, and while Madeline would have wished otherwise, she was resigned to its demise: disappointed, but cheerful, and certainly not despairing or suicidal. Even though Mark Cassidy broke his killing pattern at the end, it doesn’t make sense for him to have killed her. And his phone records show he was at his rented house in Milltown that afternoon, or on the Nighttown set, nowhere near the airport. It is as if she has vanished into thin air.

  Like me, the Guards don’t believe Madeline’s disappearance has any direct connection to the Three-in-One Killer case, but I press John O’Sullivan of the NBCI to pursue the service provider of the number that made the last call to her phone just the same. In the meantime, I work through all the numbers I have called while working the case, and before the Guards get the details released, I find a match.

  When I call to Marie Donovan’s house, she sits me at the kitchen table where we sat before. She doesn’t offer me tea this time; she simply takes a full bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge, fills a glass for herself and pushes a second glass in my direction, leaving the choice of whether to fill it or not up to me. The only other thing on the table between us is the Spanish Mission–style rough-hewn wooden cross I saw on a shelf here the last time I came. The kind of cross Mark Cassidy used as a tag, with the initials of his three victims marked on the reverse of the arms and head. Marie shows me that on the rear of this particular cross, there are three question marks, gouged deep in to the wood, stained red. Then she bursts into tears. By the look of her red eyes and puffy cheeks, Marie has been doing a lot of crying recently. I wait for her to stop, and to drink her wine, and to pour herself some more. Finally, she begins to speak.

  “Mark Cassidy came here…a few weeks ago, when they were in preproduction on the film. He…we…we had a thing, years ago, not much of a…we would meet, for dinner, or drinks, and talk, about Jack, mostly. Bitch about Jack. I guess that’s what our bond was. And…anyway, this time he came here, brought me this cross, as a gift. And he seemed really, he seemed very angry. How he was destined to live in Jack’s shadow, how nothing he did received the proper credit, how he was a minor chapter in a book called Jack Donovan. And I…God forgive me…I rejoiced in his spite, I relished his bitterness, I encouraged him in his…hatred. I…I told him about the abortion…told him it was Jack’s…”

  “And so the letters…the drawing of the fetus…”

  “He used what I told him.”

  “When I called here and showed you the letters, did you know they were from Mark?”

  “I thought they probably were. I…but I didn’t know…you didn’t tell me the girls were missing. I didn’t know…”

  “Nora and Kate were already dead. But Jenny Noble was alive. And you could have spared Jack and Geri’s injuries, never mind what their children went through. And Anne Fogarty and her girls. If you had just told me about Mark sending the letters.”

  Marie Donovan begins to cry again. It seems to me that her tears are for herself alone, but I might be mistaken. In any case, she’s right: I hadn’t told her enough. That doesn’t absolve her though.

  I have one more question.

  “What did you say to Madeline King?”

  “I told her that Jack and I…I told her that I had an abortion. That the child was Jack’s. I told her she could not, should not love a man like that.”

  “And?”

  “And she…I heard her breath…it seemed to rattle in her throat…and she closed the call.”

  “Why did you call her? Why did you tell her that?”

  Marie Donovan looks me in the eye for the first time. It’s as if telling the truth at last will come as a relief.

  “I didn’t want her to be happy with Jack. And I didn’t want Jack to be happy. With anyone.”

  “Jack is going to be happy with Geri and his girls,” I say. “And no one has heard from Madeline or seen her since.”

  Marie Donovan shakes her head, looks at me as if perhaps there is something I can say by way of solace or comfort. There isn’t, and even if there were, I’m not sure I could rise to it. I know I’ll feel sorry for her in time. That time is not now.

  I rise to leave. As I reach the door, Marie Donovan stops me with her last revelation.

  “I lied though.”

  “What?”

  “I lied. To Madeline. I told her the baby was Jack’s. But it wasn’t.”

  “Whose was it?” I ask, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “It was just one time. It was…a drunken mistake. He never knew what happened. And I never told Jack.”

  “Whose was it?” I ask again.

  “Mark’s. The baby I was carrying was Mark Cassidy’s.”

  IN L.A., I made one stop between leaving Keith’s Comix and arriving at LAX. My ex-wife was in the garden o
f her house on Westminster, not far from where CJ Ramsey used to live. She was sitting in the shade drinking a glass of cold mint tea. I had not seen her since the day we cast Lily’s ashes onto the ocean at Santa Monica. There was a time I could not even speak to her on the phone, when her betrayal of me haunted my days and bled my nights white. Now I sat beside her, and while we talked, I noticed that my hands didn’t shake, that my heart didn’t race, that not once did I worry tears might spring into my eyes. Not even when she told me that her marriage, to the man who had been Lily’s blood father, was over. Not even when she said she still loved me, and asked if I thought I could one day find my way back to loving her.

  I didn’t say that for many months, that had been my deepest wish. I didn’t say that even though I had met someone else, I wanted to see her just in case I was still in love with her. I didn’t say that now, I knew my future lay with Anne. I didn’t say anything. I looked her in the eye, and I shook my head, and I took her in my arms, and we held each other, and let the sadness of our lives together drift away in the L.A. afternoon.

  MINDFUL OF THE appalling crimes committed by its cinematographer, the studio decides to cancel the entire Nighttown project. However, it soon becomes clear that the Three-in-One Killer is the biggest media story of this or any other year, with many newspapers running a front-page story every single day. “The best publicity money doesn’t need to buy,” as Todd and Ben apparently tell Maurice Faye. Jack Donovan’s entire oeuvre, or at least those parts of it shot by Mark Cassidy, attains a ghoulish allure. Demand for the films on DVD soars; in the press, there is condemnation of the societal decadence thought to underlie this demand, and celebration of the supposedly “transgressive” qualities the films are now considered to display. Jack leans heavily toward the first reaction and wants all the DVDs to be withdrawn from circulation. When the studio proposes a reshot version of Nighttown “to vindicate the artistry and dedication of the surviving members of the Gang of Four, and as a memorial to Nora, Kate and Jenny,” Jack declares that it will happen over his dead body.

  And then, about forty minutes of Nighttown footage, as shot by Mark Cassidy and featuring the three murdered girls, appears on the Internet. It is never clear who leaks it—Jack blames the studio; I have my doubts about Maurice Faye—but it quickly goes viral. Soon it’s being mashed up with satanic heavy metal, horror movie soundtracks and extracts from Wagner’s Ring cycle. The girls’ deaths dwindle into just another slice of Hollywood Gothic; Mark Cassidy’s murderous insanity is transformed into entertainment.

  Jack is distraught. Finally, he makes a deal with the studio: if they use their legal muscle to cleanse the Internet of any trace of the Nighttown footage, he will reshoot the movie from scratch.

  It takes a year.

  The film opens at the Savoy in Dublin, with press and TV cameras gathered from all over the world. It is a strange and macabre night. The film, sombre and savage, makes uncomfortable viewing in itself; knowledge of the appalling circumstances of its birth make it almost unbearable to watch. No one knows quite how to respond until the very end.

  Jack has crowded all the production credits into the opening of the movie, to a particular purpose. The closing shot of Nighttown is a cityscape: Dublin, looking upriver from the bay, the Four Courts a smoking ruin behind the Ha’penny Bridge, the sun setting, the world on fire, the screen fading to black.

  Then, over sepia-tinted footage of Nora Mannion, Kate Coyle and Jenny Noble retrieved from the original shoot, and used with the assent of their families, who are here tonight, as Jussi Björling sings Recondita armonia, the names of the lost girls roll:

  Rebecca Tull

  Unknown

  Unknown

  Desiree LaRouche

  Janice Holloway

  Polly Styles

  Kim Kovnick

  Unknown

  Madison Berkley

  Unknown

  Brianna Corbett

  Unknown

  Unknown

  Alyssa Parsons

  Lauren Bergeren

  Unknown

  Morgan Waxman

  Unknown

  Nora Mannion

  Katherine Coyle

  Jennifer Noble

  THIS FILM IS DEDICATED TO THEIR MEMORY

  AND TO OUR FRIEND

  MADELINE KING

  WHO IS LOST.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks first and foremost to Julian Plunkett Dillon; and then to David Highfill, Danielle Bartlett, Gabe Robinson and everyone at William Morrow; Roland Philipps, James Spackman, Anna Kenny Ginard and everyone at John Murray; Breda Purdue, Margaret Daly, Ruth Shern and everyone at Hachette Ireland; Alan Glynn; Sheila Crowley and George Lucas. Above and beyond to Kathy, Isobel and Heather.

  About the Author

  DECLAN HUGHES is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and the cofounder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. He has been Writer-in-Association with the Abbey Theatre. The first Ed Loy novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood, was nominated for the CWA New Blood Dagger and won the Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel. His second novel, The Color of Blood, was also nominated for a Shamus, and his third, The Price of Blood, was nominated for the Edgar, Shamus, and Macavity Awards for best novel. Hughes lives in Dublin with his wife and two daughters.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  ALSO BY DECLAN HUGHES

  All the Dead Voices

  The Price of Blood

  The Color of Blood

  The Wrong Kind of Blood

  Credits

  Jacket design by Mary Schuck

  Jacket photograph by Will & Deni McIntyre/Getty Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  CITY OF LOST GIRLS. Copyright © 2010 by Declan Hughes. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hughes, Declan, 1963-

  City of lost girls / Declan Hughes.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-06-168990-1

  1. Loy, Ed (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private Investigators—Ireland—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6058.U343C57 2010

  823'.914—dc22 2009041251

  EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-198532-4

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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