Little Girl Lost

by Brian McGilloway

  At the end of the garden was an old gardening shed. From the light thrown down from the upper windows of the house she could make out the darkened figure of Quinn pulling himself onto the roof of the shed and then limping towards the alleyway beyond.

  He seemed to lose his footing as he neared the edge of the shed and fell off into the alleyway, the dull thud of his landing audible to Lucy even as she built up speed to give herself a running jump at the shed.

  She gripped the edge of the roof, the grit in the tar digging into her fingers even through the snow, and using the padlocked bolt as a foothold she pushed herself up to lie on her belly on the roof. She then scrambled to her feet and ran to the other edge from which Quinn had fallen. Looking down, she saw him gather himself as he got to his feet. The snow on the ground beneath him was caked to the front of his clothes. He looked up at her, his laboured breaths misting before his face, then he turned and ran again. His limp, which she had noticed earlier, was even more pronounced now.

  He ran out into Foyle Park, slipping off the pavement onto the road as he took a corner too fast. Lucy lowered herself down then dropped to the alleyway. Each breath burning within her as she inhaled, she set off in pursuit. Somewhere to her right she thought she could hear the raised voices of the other police officers. She tried to shout to them to alert them to Quinn’s escape route, but her voice failed her.

  Quinn crossed Foyle Park, hurdling over a low fence at the front of a property towards the end of the street and cut along the pathway to the side of the house. Lucy was gaining on him now, feeling confident enough to vault the closed gate herself, though regretted it when she slid upon landing and thudded against the front of a car parked in the driveway, setting off the alarm. The squealing was unnaturally loud against the sound of her own breaths and the crunching of the snow under her feet as she picked up speed again.

  She went into the back garden of a house. The snow-covered lawn was enclosed by large fir trees, their dense branches appearing black in the meagre illumination thrown by the street lamps outside. Quinn’s footprints led to the edge of the trees, then vanished as the ground beneath the branches was mostly free from snow. Unsure whether Quinn had shoved through the trees and out the other side, or had hidden somewhere in the shadows provided by the low hanging foliage, Lucy paused, using the opportunity to take a few deep breaths through pursed lips. Then she held her breath and listened.

  Somewhere nearby she could hear the slow rumble of traffic along the Foyle Road, one of the main arterial routes into Derry from Donegal. A dog barked a street or two across, only to have its chorus taken up by another in one of the adjacent gardens.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she scanned the trees and caught sight of Quinn, half hidden from her view, his legs visible.

  ‘He’s here!’ she shouted moving towards him.

  He cursed angrily, lurching out of the trees at her and knocking her to the ground. She screamed as he lifted his arm as if to strike, then heard a reciprocal shout from the front of the house. The other officers had caught up with them. Quinn heard it too; he spat at her, then turning, elbowed his way through the trees again.

  Lucy forced herself up, called to the officers outside, then pushed into the trees herself, their branches springing back in Quinn’s wake, cutting across her eyes, causing them to water. Wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, she climbed over the low fence at the other side of the trees and followed Quinn into Brook Street.

  He had regained some of his distance from her, and was hobbling downhill, towards the Embankment and the River Foyle. To reach the Embankment and the cover it offered, however, he would have to cross the Foyle Road when he got to the bottom of Brook Street. Lucy followed, trying to keep pace with him. She struggled to stay on her feet; even without a limp she knew they were running downhill too fast; how Quinn would stop himself before he came to the busy road was unclear.

  As he came closer to the bottom of the hill, he clearly began trying to slow down, angling himself to try to gain purchase on the pavement. Instead he slid further forward. Arms flailing, he grabbed at the lamp post on the bottom corner, hoping to use it to stop himself. He just managed to grip it, but his feet went from under him and the momentum he had built up in his descent pulled him with it. His feet slid off the edge of the pavement into the gutter and he fell head first into the road, straight into the path of an oncoming car.

  Even from halfway down the hill, Lucy saw the terror on his face caught momentarily in the headlamps. The car’s driver tried to brake quickly, which only served to make the car go into a skid. The front bumper caught the side of Quinn’s head as he struggled to move from its path. With Quinn caught on its front, the car spun on the road, mounted the kerb and crashed against the gable-end wall of the corner house.

  Lucy slid down towards the wreck as the driver stumbled out of the still running car, screaming as he did so.

  ‘He just fell in front of me!’ he shouted to Lucy, his hands covering his mouth as if he were going to be sick.

  ‘Police,’ Lucy said breathlessly.

  ‘Is he—?’ The man, his face drawn, turned towards Lucy. ‘Sweet Jesus. I tried to stop. I—’

  Lucy nodded, placed her hand on the man’s shoulder as his body began to shudder with shock.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she managed, taking out her mobile. ‘Call an ambulance.’

  She moved towards Quinn. Despite asking the driver to call for medical help, there could be little doubt that Quinn was beyond their help. He lay partially beneath the car, his head and shoulders visible at the front end of the car, his neck clearly broken, his forehead split where he’d been struck, the blood a black halo in the snow round his head, glistening beneath the orange of the street lamps.

  CHAPTER 20

  The snow meant that it took almost twenty minutes for the ambulance to make its way across the river to where Quinn’s body remained pinned beneath the car. The dead man’s eyes had lost their focus, the pupils wide and unshifting beneath the flakes of snow that had begun to fall again.

  Not long after, a fire tender arrived to support the paramedics in removing the body. By this stage, Travers had taken control of the scene. Uniforms had established a cordon at the bottom of Bishop Street, closing off the Foyle Road. Already, despite the cold, a group of onlookers had gathered, craning their necks to see the ghoulish sight of Billy Quinn’s broken body.

  Travers quizzed Lucy about how she had come to be on the scene in the first place. He understood, he said, that Fleming had told her to go home. If she had expected any praise for following the suspect in the manner she had, she was to be disappointed, he said. Quinn was dead and with him the only real lead in the Kate McLaughlin abduction.

  Soon after, the ACC arrived; her arrival heralded a significant change in the pace of those assembled. Even the Uniforms handling the cordon became more active in discouraging spectators from staying too long.

  Lucy sat on the corner wall and watched while Travers and her mother engaged in a brief conversation as they regarded the efforts to free Quinn from under the car.

  Her mother glanced over at her once, then said something to Travers and left. Lucy could just imagine the timbre of the discussion. And could guess the likely outcome too.

  Travers approached her, his face flushed, clearly angered by whatever had been said to him.

  ‘The ACC wants to see us. You’re to return to base immediately.’

  ‘Did she …?’ Lucy began, then thought better of it. ‘Yes, sir.’

  There was no secretary in the anteroom this time, the administrative staff had gone home long ago. Lucy knocked on the heavy door to her mother’s office and, thinking she heard a muffled response, opened the door and peered in.

  ‘Come in, Lucy.’ Her mother sat at the meeting table she had seen earlier, a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, a can of diet cola at her elbow.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said through a mouthful of bread, nodding to the free sea
ts beside her. ‘There’s tea in a flask there if you want a cup. Do you want half a sandwich?’

  Lucy was going to refuse, then realized that she had yet to eat herself, having been directed to Bryce’s house on her way to get food.

  ‘Thank you,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve not eaten yet,’ she added, as if she needed to explain this to her mother.

  ‘You shouldn’t miss meals.’

  Lucy arched an eyebrow at the crusts her mother had just laid on the cellophane packet in front of her.

  ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, drank deeply from the cola can. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ Lucy said, half covering her mouth with her hand as she ate.

  ‘Do you need to speak to someone about what you witnessed tonight?’

  ‘You mean apart from you?’

  Her mother inhaled, held the breath as if considering her response carefully. ‘You saw a man killed, Lucy. That’s not an easy thing to witness. If you need time off, that would be understandable.’

  Lucy smirked, laid down the sandwich. ‘I was waiting for it.’

  Her mother looked confused. ‘Waiting for what?’

  ‘I saw Travers talking to you. You want me out and now you’ve the perfect excuse for it.’

  Her mother’s expression hardened, her upper lip tightening. ‘If I wanted to get you out, I wouldn’t need an excuse. I’m offering you a breather if you need it.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lucy said, a little sullenly.

  ‘Good. Bill Travers was complaining that you drove the only lead in the case to his death. Is that right?’

  ‘He was McLaughlin’s driver. I chased him on foot. I went to keep an eye on the house till Response got there. He came into the shop where I was standing and saw the team arrive. They had the flasher on.’

  Her mother tutted disapprovingly.

  ‘He went out the back of the shop. I called to the Response team and followed him on foot. He ran too fast down that hill; he couldn’t stop at the bottom and went out into the road.’

  Her mother watched her for a second. ‘You’ll need to write up an incident report.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Finish your sandwich too.’

  Lucy smiled despite herself. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have gone after Quinn on your own. Nor should you have gone to Bryce on your own either; Tom Fleming told me about that.’

  Lucy tried to speak through a mouthful of food, but her mother silenced her with an upraised hand.

  ‘That said, I did point out to Travers that you were the only one to date to have created a lead in the Kate McLaughlin kidnapping. If Travers can link Quinn directly to the girl’s abduction, it should give the investigation a sense of direction. You didn’t kill Quinn, any more than the moron who turned on the blue light outside his house did.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lucy said quietly.

  ‘But you are PPU, Lucy, and that’s where you stay for now.’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘Anything more on the girl you found?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is it true that you spent the night in the hospital with her?’ her mother asked. Lucy could not discern if her tone was one of admiration or admonition.

  She took a mouthful of tea and chose not to answer.

  ‘How’s Jim?’

  The shift put Lucy on guard. ‘They’ve kept him in. He’s got very confused. He doesn’t always know who I am.’

  Her mother nodded, crumpled up the packet, gathering up the bread crusts in it as she did so. She stood, wiped the crumbs into her hand. Lucy, taking the gesture as a sign that she should leave, stood and did likewise.

  ‘Thanks for the sandwich.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Go home and sleep in your own bed tonight,’ her mother said, moving back behind her desk and opening a folder that lay there.

  Lucy stopped at the door. ‘Who’s Janet?’

  Her mother blanched momentarily, then used the act of putting on her spectacles to cover her expression.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dad keeps calling me Janet. Who was she?’

  ‘No one. He must be confused.’

  ‘The name meant something to you when I said it. I’m not a child any more. Who was Janet?’

  ‘She was someone your father knew when he was a DS.’

  ‘Why would he still be thinking about her now?’

  Her mother’s expression told her all she needed to know. ‘You’ll need to ask your father that.’

  ‘Well, I can’t, can I?’ she snapped, then regretted doing so. ‘What was she called?’

  ‘Janet.’

  ‘You don’t know her surname?’

  Her mother shook her head curtly, forcing herself to look at the folder before her rather than at Lucy.

  ‘Where did she live?’

  ‘Derry somewhere. She was in care, I believe.’ She looked up at Lucy, her features pinched, her lips tightened again. ‘She was one of your father’s informants before the attack on our house. Before … everything fell apart.’

  Lucy could have sworn that, in that final statement, she saw a glimmer of pain in her mother’s eyes.

  ‘I have work to do, Lucy. Go home.’

  CHAPTER 21

  Her father was dozing when she dropped in to see him. In addition to the cut he’d suffered when he fell in the alley, the skin beneath his right eye now carried a livid bruise, at the centre of which were two stitches. Lucy drew back the blankets, noticing thick bruising on his forearms too.

  She went into the corridor, checking each room as she passed until she found the nurse, a tall, muscular man she reckoned to be in his thirties.

  ‘What happened to my father?’ she demanded.

  The man shushed her, indicating with a nod the elderly lady lying in the bed in the room.

  ‘Wait at the desk, please,’ he said, pointing to the corridor.

  A few moments later he came out to the corridor, paused at the hand sanitizer, then approached her, rubbing alcohol gel into his hands.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t disturb the patients when we’re trying to get them settled,’ he said tersely.

  ‘What happened to my father?’ Lucy said, leaning her hand on the counter of the reception, struggling hard to hide her mounting anger.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jim Black is my father. He has a bloody great black eye. What happened to him?’

  ‘He fell out of bed earlier today. He needed stitches.’

  ‘So I see. No one thought to contact me?’

  ‘He only needed two stitches, Janet.’

  ‘My name’s not Janet,’ Lucy managed through gritted teeth.

  ‘My mistake. He’s been talking about Janet all day. I guessed you were her.’

  Lucy could think of nothing suitable in reply. She could hardly tell him that her father was asking for a tout from almost two decades ago. Nor did she want to acknowledge the pang of jealousy she felt at his having done so.

  ‘It’s part of his condition,’ Margaret said to her over tea in the sister’s office later when she went up to see Alice. ‘He doesn’t mean what he’s saying. You need to learn not to take it personally.’

  ‘I know,’ Lucy said, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees and allowing her head to sink down, her hair hanging over her face. She straightened up, rubbed her face, shrugged her shoulders a few times to dissipate the tension.

  ‘So, who is Janet?’ Margaret asked, blowing on the surface of her tea. There were just the two of them this evening. One of the staff nurses who had been sitting with them had been called out when an alarm had sounded further down the ward.

  ‘Someone my father knew when he was working,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Not a girlfriend, then?’ Margaret smiled gently, watching Lucy’s reaction.

  ‘God, no,’ Lucy said.

  ‘You said your parents were divorced. Maybe Janet was someone your father dated.�
��

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Lucy said. ‘Though she must have been important enough for him to think of her all these years later.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Margaret said. ‘It could just be random fragments of memory firing off. Maybe he’s living in the past. Let’s face it, it’s the national condition in this country.’ When Lucy did not share her smile at the comment she added, ‘Don’t let it bother you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve had a shit night. I was contacted with a lead about Alice, but it turned out to be about Kate McLaughlin. I ended up chasing a suspect to his death.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He ran into the path of a car.’

  Margaret’s eyes widened with recognition. ‘I heard about that on the radio. You were there? I’m sorry to hear that. No wonder you’re feeling rotten.’

  ‘It goes with the job, I suppose,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I saw you on TV earlier, by the way,’ Margaret said. ‘My hubby saw it on the news. He was talking about Mickey McLaughlin’s reward and I saw you. I made him shut up and turn the volume up instead. You did very well.’

  ‘The reward was something, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It looks like he’d planned on more. My husband works for his accountant.’ She leaned a little closer to Lucy. ‘He wanted them to free him up ten million. They couldn’t do it; Ian doesn’t even know where he’s going to get one million. He’s almost broke.’

  ‘He’s getting twenty-five million for the docklands,’ Lucy said incredulously.

  ‘No, he’s not. He can’t sell it,’ Margaret said, warming to the gossip. ‘Apparently he put out feelers a few years back and was offered forty-five million for it then.’

  ‘I wish I was that broke.’

  ‘But the bubble burst,’ Margaret continued. ‘The value of the place collapsed, according to my Ian. McLaughlin’s been offered five million for it, not twenty-five. He leaked that story himself in the hope that it would push the investors into offering more. But they’re sticking at five. He paid more than that when he first bought it. Ian was saying it’ll be a miracle if he has the cash to pay a reward, never mind a ransom for that poor wee girl if they ever ask for one.’