Little Girl Lost

by Brian McGilloway

  Lucy was finishing her statement when her phone rang. It was the desk sergeant in Strand Road. Chief Superintendent Travers wanted to see her to debrief her about the events.

  Despite the breaking of the case, and the positive press attention he had received in the aftermath, he was still angry at what had happened.

  ‘I’m not blaming you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘But Tom Fleming should know better. He took you into a house without proper support. If he’d been killed or incapacitated more severely, you’d have been on your own.’

  ‘Inspector Fleming was afraid that Mullan would kill Kate if he realized he was surrounded; that he would have nothing to lose.’

  ‘It’s admirable to see you sticking up for him, Lucy,’ he began.

  Lucy looked down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

  ‘Still, I’d say you’ve earned your way back into CID if you want it. I don’t think anyone would argue with me on that one.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Though, obviously, when you get back from suspension. Take the few days, spend time with your father,’ he added generously, as if gifting her the time off.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

  The hospital was quiet, visiting hours long since over. She visited the post-surgery ward first, to see Tom Fleming, though was told that he was only just coming round from his surgery. The doctor suggested she call back in an hour for a brief visit. Without fully intending it, five minutes later, Lucy found herself back on Janet’s ward. The nurse on the ward would have refused to allow her in, were it not for the fact that Janet was causing so much trouble, she was glad of something to distract her, even gladder when Lucy revealed she was a policewoman.

  ‘I want to leave!’ Janet shouted when she entered the room. ‘Those bitches won’t let me out.’

  ‘The doctor wants to see you first,’ the nurse said. ‘To check everything.’

  Lucy looked at the woman, could imagine the worms wriggling under her skin as she endured another day of sobriety.

  ‘Janet, you can go any time,’ she said. ‘You know that. You’re not a prisoner. But the doctor wants to make sure you’re OK, first. If he thinks your arm is healing well, he’ll let you go.’

  Janet stared at her, teasing out whether there was any ulterior meaning in what she had said.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Lucy glanced at the nurse, hoping that the woman would understand that she wanted some privacy. For her part, the woman seemed grateful for the relief and excused herself before leaving the two of them alone.

  Lucy approached Janet. ‘I wanted to see you before you left,’ she said. ‘I wanted to say sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For my father. For what happened to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lucy swallowed hard. ‘I think … I believe my father was the policeman you knew.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You were his informant.’

  The woman regarded her coolly.

  ‘Do you know who I mean?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Yes!’ she snapped.

  ‘He wants to be forgiven. I think he’s truly sorry for what happened.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Lucy nodded, embarrassed herself.

  ‘Kevin Mullan,’ Janet said suddenly.

  The shift in conversation disconcerted Lucy, and she immediately felt herself on guard.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw you on the news,’ Janet explained, pointing towards the TV in the corner. ‘You were there with Kevin Mullan. How did he die?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Lucy said, shifting back in her seat, away from the woman.

  ‘You asked what you could do. I want to know who killed Kevin Mullan.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘Did you see his face? The burns.’

  Lucy nodded, uncertainly.

  ‘I’m not the only one who got burned that day.’

  The comment shocked Lucy. She had assumed Mullan was burned planting one of his devices.

  ‘Mullan blew up the Strand Inn,’ Janet said. ‘The one the woman died in.’

  ‘Michael McLaughlin’s wife?’

  Janet nodded.

  ‘How do you know?’

  She laughed scornfully. ‘Everyone knew. The whole town knew. The word was that it was an insurance scam; that McLaughlin was in on it with them. He didn’t know his wife would be there that night.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have just been town gossip?’ Lucy suggested softly.

  ‘My cousin was in on it. He told me.’

  ‘Who was your cousin?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Billy Quinn,’ Janet said, raising her chin slightly.

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

  ‘I told then too. That’s why I really got this,’ she said, gesturing towards her chest where the scar tissue could be seen above the dropping neckline of her gown. ‘They said it was about the Brits, but Billy told me it was ’cause they knew I was a tout. Mullan knew. He was the one who stripped me.’

  Lucy felt her face flush, felt as if the air around her was being sucked from the room. Her chest hurt when she tried to breathe.

  ‘Why didn’t you come forward? Tell somebody.’

  ‘Tell somebody? That’s what got me punished.’

  ‘Who did you tell about Mullan doing the Strand Inn?’ she finally asked, dreading the answer, already knowing what the woman would say.

  ‘My handler. Your da. That’s why he wants forgiven. Because of what happened to me. Because he let it happen.’

  The complaint sounded absurd, yet clearly Janet felt its sting. Lucy could not explain it, could not offer any justification for her father’s arguments, though she sensed that Janet wanted some explanation for her abandonment.

  ‘So. Who killed Kevin Mullan? Did you do it?’

  Lucy straightened herself up. ‘I’m sorry for all that happened to you, Janet. And for my father’s role in it, in particular. And I understand your feelings. Kevin Mullan died. That’s all I’ll tell you.’

  She turned and walked down the corridor towards the door, Janet’s shouts echoing in her wake.

  CHAPTER 44

  Fleming was lying up on raised pillows when she went up to his room. His shoulder was heavily bandaged, his arm in a sling despite his claim that the wounding was superficial.

  ‘Hit the bone apparently,’ he said sheepishly, raising the other arm in greeting. ‘Shattered it.’

  Lucy placed the bottle of lemonade she had bought on the bedside cabinet. ‘Thank you for saving my life, sir,’ she said.

  ‘No problem, Lucy,’ Fleming said, attempting a shrug, which caused him to wince. ‘How’s it falling out?’

  ‘Kate is back safely. The kidnappers are dead. Travers is glad of the result, I think.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Suspended until the shooting is investigated.’

  Fleming nodded. ‘A formality. It was me that killed him.’

  ‘I went to see Janet. She mentioned Mullan to me too,’ she said. ‘She said that Mullan was connected with the Strand Inn bombing that killed Kate’s mother. And that McLaughlin had arranged the bombing for an insurance claim on the building. The wife’s death was an accident.’

  ‘That’s news to me,’ Fleming said. ‘And I worked the bloody case. She’s about twenty years too late with the information.’

  ‘She claimed she told my father. Is that true?’

  Fleming looked upwards, as if visually sifting through his memories. ‘Certainly it was never mentioned to me. We never looked at McLaughlin.’

  ‘Why did my father not tell anyone?’

  Fleming started to shrug again, then thought better of it. ‘Maybe he thought she was unreliable? I don’t know.’

  By the time she got home, her father was lying curled on the sofa in the living room, having clearly decided against trying to climb the stairs. His coat was spread over his upper body.

  Lu
cy went and gathered blankets, covering the man up to his chin. That done, she gathered together her notes and sat at the table to work. She reconsidered Janet’s story again, recalled the date of her being tarred and feathered in June 1994. Lucy recognized it as being the day after the attack on her own family home. Her parents’ marriage, and to a degree her childhood, were both in tatters by Christmas of that year.

  She needed to check the veracity of Janet’s claim that she had told her father about Mullan and nothing had been done. She considered waking her father and asking him why he hadn’t passed on the information, but knew that, given his condition, any response he could give would be unreliable. Finally, she recalled his boxes of notebooks upstairs, lining the wall of her room, arranged in order in a futile attempt by her father to hold back the progress of his own senility.

  She went up, a mug of tea in hand, and settled down to begin picking through the folders. One set of boxes in particular looked sun-faded, the labels peeling and yellowed. She was able to work out that the notebooks at the bottom of those boxes were the oldest, dating back to the mid-seventies.

  She began working through the boxes, one by one. Lucy recognized some of the place names from cases she remembered from her own childhood. Coshquinn, Greysteel, The Rising Sun. The passing years were marked only by the changing names of the dead.

  The final box of notebooks ended midway through 1992. She had not seen mention of Janet in any of the books she’d checked despite the fact that she had been an informant for him. Lucy wondered if she had missed a box but checked through a second time with no further success. She began to wonder if her father might have destroyed the notebooks relating to Janet.

  She hefted the boxes back into the corner, lifted the mug of cold tea and carried it downstairs. The tips of her fingers were red with flicking through the pages, her hands dusty with the grime the books had gathered in storage. As she passed the living room she glanced in at her father’s sleeping form. He had only begun speaking of Janet over the past week. Had it been prompted by his sorting out the notebooks? He’d been working on a box in the living room. She went in and checked. Sure enough, the edge of a box showed from beneath the sofa where her father lay sleeping.

  She lifted the box without disturbing him and took it to the table. She knew immediately that this one was different. There were more notebooks in this box than the others, ranging from 1992 to 1994.

  She opened the first one and began thumbing through each page slowly, scanning through the notes line by line, looking for mention of Janet. Her name first appeared after about ten pages of the first book. She was mentioned infrequently over the course of a few weeks. Then her name began to appear every few pages. Increasingly her father had used a form of shorthand and her presence was denoted with a single J. Sometimes he had written reminders to himself to consult her: ‘Ask J if she’s heard?’ appeared a number of times.

  Three pages into the final notebook, she saw mention of Kevin Mullan’s name. It was circled in red, with J printed in black ink at the top of the page. Below Mullan were the words: Strand Inn. Orchestrated. McLaughlin Insurance scam??

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She looked up. Her father was sitting up on the sofa now, the blanket she had put on him gathered in a pile on the floor.

  ‘Those are mine,’ he said. ‘Put them back.’

  ‘I need to see them, Dad,’ Lucy said, embarrassed at having been caught reading her father’s notes.

  He struggled to his feet, holding the arm of the sofa to keep himself steady. ‘Put those back!’ he snapped.

  Lucy glanced down at the page again. ‘I’m nearly finished. I need to know about Janet and Kevin Mullan.’

  Her father lunged at her then, grabbing his arm in hers.

  ‘Give me my bloody books!’ he shouted, raising his hand.

  Lucy tried to pull herself away from him, dropping the book she held on the floor.

  ‘Look what you’ve done. Pick that up.’

  Lucy stood. ‘Daddy, I’m …’

  Her father lashed out with his open palm, smacking her hard on the side of the face. She felt her teeth cut her lip, tasted the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.

  Her father stopped what he was doing and his gaze shifted, as if he was seeing her for the first time.

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus, love. I’m sorry,’ he said, his eyes already weeping. He placed his hand to his mouth, his fingers, thin and feminine, covering his quivering lips.

  Then he reached out to her. Determined not to cry, she pushed his hand away.

  ‘You’re not my father,’ she said. ‘I don’t know you any more.’

  She pushed past him, out of the room and went to the bathroom. She stood under the fluorescent glare and stared at herself, her reflection pale, save for the red of her bleeding lip. She turned on the tap, stared into the water as one drip of blood after another fell from her mouth into the water, diffusing in clouds at the centre of widening concentric rings.

  Only when she was sure that the noise of the running water would cover her sobbing, did she allow herself to cry. She sat at the edge of the bath, her arms wrapped around herself and cried for her mother.

  She stayed there until she heard the creaking of her father’s footfalls outside the door. He knocked softly, whispered her name so quietly it was little more than a dull murmur through the wood. When she did not answer he padded into his room.

  After waiting for another twenty minutes, she quietly unlocked the door and went downstairs. She felt the urge to pack her bag and leave, but had no idea where she could go.

  In the living room, the notebook she had been reading when her father struck her still lay on the floor. She lifted it to put it on the table. Then she saw at the bottom of the page the words: Passed to IO.

  She knew that IO meant Investigating Officer. She assumed that that meant Tom Fleming. He had been working on the case. If so, he had lied to her about not knowing about this.

  She called Strand Road station and asked the desk sergeant if it would be possible to double check who the IO was on the Strand Inn case. She could tell from his tone that he was not particularly pleased with the task; nevertheless, he told her he would phone her back as soon as he knew.

  Ten minutes later her mobile rang. She recognized the Strand Road station number on the display.

  ‘DS Black,’ she said.

  ‘This is Travers.’

  At first Lucy assumed he was calling to see how she was doing. Then he said, ‘You’ve been asking about the Strand Inn case. Why?’

  ‘I’m following up on something, sir,’ she said, trying to keep the details vague.

  ‘What exactly? You are meant to be on suspension.’

  ‘An old informant of my father’s mentioned the case in connection with recent events.’

  ‘What events, Lucy?’

  ‘The kidnapping, sir. Mullan. She told my father that Mullan was connected to the Strand Inn case. My father’s notes say he passed on the information to the IO on the case. I think it was Inspector Fleming, sir.’

  ‘How did you get your father’s notes?’

  ‘I … he has them at home,’ Lucy said, then cursed herself for revealing this.

  ‘The McLaughlin case is over, Lucy. Mullan is dead. Enjoy your days off.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘But, just as a matter of interest, who was the IO?’

  There was the briefest pause on the other end.

  ‘I was, DS Black. Your father never mentioned Mullan to me.’

  CHAPTER 45

  The ACC half opened the front door, peering out through the gap allowed by a thick security chain. Lucy wondered why she bothered; she had already announced herself at the intercom embedded in the pillar at the front of the house.

  Above them, the rumble of a low-flying jet heading towards the airport a few miles further down the road shook the windows of the house.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ her mother asked, opening the door fully a
nd ushering her inside. She wore a dressing gown over her night clothes.

  ‘I’m sorry for coming here so late,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve no one else.’

  Her mother peered at her. ‘What happened to your lip?’

  Lucy gnawed at the wound. ‘He hit me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dad.’

  Her expression softened. ‘Oh, Lucy,’ she said. Lucy sensed that her mother wanted to embrace her, to comfort her. Instead, she laid her hand lightly on her shoulder for a moment.

  She heard the creak of floorboards and turned to see a man standing at the top of the staircase staring down.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ he called down.

  ‘Fine. Go back to bed,’ her mother said, raising her eyebrows in exasperation and leading Lucy down the hallway to the kitchen.

  Lucy allowed herself to be directed to a seat and waited while her mother poured them two glasses of wine. The glasses were large, heavy crystal affairs, and they were filled to the brim.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was looking through some of his old notebooks,’ Lucy said. ‘He lost his temper.’

  Her mother looked aghast at her. ‘That’s not like your father.’

  ‘I don’t know what he is like any more,’ Lucy said. ‘I found Janet.’

  Her mother’s features sharpened, her lips tightening to a white line. ‘Why?’

  ‘He was speaking about her. I needed to know.’

  As Lucy spoke the shaking of her mother’s head increased in intensity. ‘No. No you didn’t. I deliberately didn’t tell you. What would’ve been the point in you knowing?’

  Lucy drank half a glassful of the wine in one go, felt the bite of the aftertaste in her mouth.

  ‘Did you know she was a child?’

  Her mother looked into her own glass, drained a mouthful before nodding.

  ‘And you left me with him. I was a child myself.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Lucy,’ she said. ‘Your father loved you, whatever else about him. We discussed it. He had to leave anyway when he was threatened. If it had become common knowledge, he’d have been finished. I … I had worked hard to get as far as I had got. It wasn’t fair for me to give that up because of what he had done. And I couldn’t have done it with a child.’ She looked at Lucy, allowing a note of pleading in her voice. ‘Things were different for a woman then. It wasn’t easy for me, Lucy.’