‘I wanted to leave him with you,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t answer your phone. You were meant to be working from home today, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. No one in your office has seen you for weeks.’
He mumbled something in reply.
‘I don’t know where you’ve been for the last fortnight.’ There was exasperation, even anger in her expression. ‘What are you not telling me, Harry?’
‘It’s not important right now. Let’s talk about it later.’ He glanced at Daly with a look that said they were working something out between them.
Accustomed to seeing the effects of stress on the parents of missing children, Daly moved away. He spoke to Commander Sinclair, on the phone, apprising him of the situation.
‘OK, Daly, set up the search party as you see fit,’ said Sinclair. ‘Tell me what help you need and I’ll see you get it.’
‘What about the Internal Affairs investigation?’
‘I’ll have to check with them, but in the meantime you’re the lead detective on the search.’
Daly slipped the phone away and glanced over at the couple. A coldness had come over Rebecca, the coldness of loss. He looked at her husband. He had walked away, and was holding his phone to the side of his face, not speaking but smoking. Daly got the impression that he was using the phone as a mask. He began to feel genuinely uneasy. This was how family tragedies began, with strangeness and moments of standstill, parents waiting for the carefully maintained balance of their lives to tip into chaos.
It began to rain. Figures bustled along the fringes of the court grounds, searching for cover. Only the mother and father kept their ground, standing to attention, their coats flattened against their bodies by the wind and the rain. Harry kept glancing around him, a reflex gesture. Was it to keep looking for the boy or to check who was watching them?
For a moment, Daly felt swamped by concern for Rebecca, thinking of her anxiety and how in her stricken state she had called upon him to play a part in this unfolding drama. He was no longer a stand-in or a spectator. He was the lead detective. He felt hot with a sudden rush of emotion. What’s got into me? he thought. He wasn’t the leading man in the tragedy, that role belonged to Harry Hewson, but part of him wanted Rebecca’s eyes to seek him out again and hold his gaze, her trusting, desperate eyes.
He turned to walk away, but then Veronica O’Neill, one of the junior detectives at the court, rang through on his mobile phone. She had been going door to door along the road, interviewing householders, searching for possible eyewitnesses. Her voice spelled urgency. By a stroke of luck, she had got talking to some workmen who were doing a job at number 31. From the windows, they had a clear view of the car park.
‘They were taking a tea break about an hour ago when they saw a group of young men escort a child into the back of a white Mercedes van,’ she told Daly. ‘The vehicle pulled on to the road so quickly it hit the pavement. Thankfully they thought it suspicious enough to take down the van’s registration.’
Daly strode over to the Hewsons and kept talking. ‘Did they give a description of the suspects?’
‘Thin build. Medium height. Dark-haired. They’re sure they were travellers.’
‘Send out an alert and trace the owner’s address.’
The couple were staring at the patch of empty tar where the dogs had been sniffing around, as if they still might find a trace of their child’s presence there. Noticing Daly’s confident walk, they looked at him with hope in their eyes.
‘We now have a lead on the vehicle that took Jack,’ Daly told them. ‘There’s a suspicion the occupants might have been travellers. Officers are checking for the owner’s address. In the meantime it would be best for you to come down to the station where we can keep you informed of the search.’
He offered them a lift.
‘It’s OK, Inspector,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll drive my wife there.’
‘No. I want to take my own car.’
‘Then I’ll go with you.’
Again, Daly noticed the moments of blankness in the way they communicated with each other, anger flickering between them like a set of faulty light bulbs. The stress of their predicament or some deeper marital tension? he wondered.
‘It’s better that we drive separately,’ she told him.
‘Don’t make me suffer any more, Rebecca.’ His voice was resentful. He tried to get closer, took her hand.
However, she didn’t reply. She brushed him off and pointed her keys at her vehicle and the lights flashed back. She planted her hands in her coat pockets and walked to her car. Daly saw Harry’s face transform momentarily with a look that expressed inner torment or anger. He had lost his air of self-assurance. His frozen stance suggested defeat.
‘We’d better go now, Mr Hewson,’ said Daly. ‘Time is of the essence.’
As Daly climbed into his car and placed a warning siren on its roof, he felt a sense of release. Was this what it felt like to be freed and rehabilitated, he wondered as he accelerated out of the courthouse car park, to be singled out by an intensely gazing woman for exoneration, to be relieved of an insufferable burden, to be given the chance to discharge the ills of his mind and the sins of the past?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Even though the traveller camp had been quiet throughout the night and his dog had not stirred once, Samuel Reid had felt compelled to rise several times and switch on the security lights, scanning the yard for intruders. He walked up and down the old plank landing, unable to sleep. He checked the locks on the front and back doors. He turned the kitchen light on and off and checked the yard again. He prowled from room to room, sniffing, on the alert for travellers. He switched on the radio, and slept for about an hour. His dreams were brief and sudden, bits of the past gusting up like scraps of paper, flashing their terrible messages at him, overwhelming him with their secrets. Afterwards, he lay on his narrow bed and waited, his eyes wide open.
He got up and switched off the radio. The dog was still fast asleep, a sign that all was well. He checked the doors and the view from the kitchen window. He now lived in a zone of heightened suspicion, one from which it was impossible to escape. He took out his brother’s rifle and made sure it was in working order. His movements were his way of controlling his fears, giving him a sense of purpose and destiny. He placed the gun back in the cabinet and checked the view from the upstairs window.
In the fields beyond, the traveller camp lay in silence and complete darkness, with no sign of its swarming life. He sighed. Its nearness had placed an unbearable mental strain upon him. In his imagination, it represented all the nagging squalor and entanglement of the past. Yet, staring out at the shrouded encampment, he felt as though the gypsies had helped him understand something important about the past. Within that murk, a fabric of connections was beginning to emerge, a network of clues that led straight to his brother and the Strong Ulster Foundation.
As soon as it was light, he drove down to the site to see if he could locate the journalist. He was convinced that the only way to end his anxiety and the dragging nights was to tell Hewson everything he knew about Mary O’Sullivan. He stopped at the gates and shouted the journalist’s name, but there was no sign of him, or any answer from the camp. The dishevelled caravans lay still and exposed in the morning air, their doors and windows wide open. It looked as though the place had been ransacked.
He got back in his car and headed home. Along the lane, he met a throng of traveller children with their dogs. As he drove past them, the front of his car connected with something and rose slightly into the air, the wheels bouncing as though he had hit a hidden pothole. He heard a cry of pain, half-human, half-animal, but drove on. What had he hit? A dog or a young child? He dared not think that he might have harmed a human being. He glanced in the mirror and saw the children standing in the middle of the road, waving at him to stop. He felt the past eddying around him, and a sinking feeling inside. His mind went blank and he drove on, suppressing his memories. He no longer felt like
hiding at his farmhouse. He drove in circles along the border roads, skulking between the high hedges, drawing close to his familiar fields and then speeding away. The roads were winding and dangerous but he no longer cared. He hit the accelerator pedal as though he had reached the end of his tether, swerving along introverted little lanes at the very edge of the country. His entire life, he’d been meandering along the border like this, he realized, with no proper goal or destination in sight, as though what he was looking for had always been moved somewhere else, the track leading up to his hill top farmhouse a dead end for his lost and restless spirit.
By the time he felt calm enough to return home, it was late afternoon. The fields lay empty and lined with shadows. In the distance, the sun rolled its bleak rim towards the horizon. He stood in the farmyard. A sound rose and fell with the wind, like the sound of an angry sea gathering in strength, darkening the air. It seemed to be coming from the traveller camp. He looked in its direction. Still absent were the smoke of the gypsies’ fires and the sound of moving vehicles. He walked across the potato patch and listened. Loose noises drifted across the fields – the sound of someone singing or lamenting, but the wind kept pulling it apart. He clambered through the mud to the camp, and gradually the sound became unmistakable. It was the sound of someone wailing bitterly, a high-pitched keening sound that came and went in gusts of emotion.
Almost in a trance, he walked through the gates and past the empty caravans searching for the source of the moaning. He came across the figure of an old woman bent over a burnt-out fire, her creased face full of tears. She gave him a look that was inscrutable, neither friendly nor hostile.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.
From her voluminous skirts, she removed a photograph. It showed a young woman, her image already stamped indelibly in his memory. He felt relief that this was the source of her grief. Perhaps he had run over no one that morning. He could not resist taking a longer look at the picture: the corners of the girl’s smiling lips; the darkness of her eyes. Come closer, her wronged ghost seemed to beckon him. These photographs are the only evidence that I ever walked the earth, these and a handful of newspaper clippings.
But what about your baby, he wanted to ask her ghost, was that not your continuance, your revenge? They never found your body but yet you live in the minds of those who have not forgotten, like this old woman, and in the fitful dreams of those who have tried to forget but failed. He turned to look at the old woman, noticing that her lips were blue and trembling.
‘It’s wet and cold. Shouldn’t you go inside?’
‘If it’s wet and cold for me then it’s worse for her. Think of her lying out there along the border with no one to comfort her.’
‘Was she a relative?’
‘She was my daughter.’
A cold chill ran up his spine.
‘Why are you here?’ she asked, scrutinizing him closely.
‘I wanted to see the journalist. He believes I’m the only person left who can help solve the mystery of her disappearance.’
‘You’re the farmer Reid, aren’t you?’ she said, the look of recognition lighting up her dull eyes. She leaned forward and gripped him by the wrists as though she might fall to the ground. He recoiled slightly, afraid that her grief might travel like a current through her bony fingers. She looked to be barely breathing. Her eyes were shut and her mouth had folded in upon itself. She seemed about to collapse but, in reality, she was gathering strength for what was coming next. Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth, revealing the black gutters of her toothless gums. A long undulating wail rose from the back of her throat. The intensity of her emotion shook Reid, and left him panting with anxiety. It was the most impressive display of sorrow he had ever witnessed. He grew afraid of her, and the vehemence of her grief, which veered between doleful and angry, tender and bitter, the tears streaming down her face, her cries rising into the air and echoing harshly against the dark hills. He wrenched himself free from her grip and ran homewards, feet splattering through the mud.
Along the lane, the shadows of trees swam all around him, leaving him dizzy and disorientated. He leaned over at the side and saw the girl’s ghostly face pour itself along the watery bottom of the ditch. He looked again, but the ditch had thickened with darkness. By the time he got to the farmyard, he was shaking with exhaustion and fear.
He was in such a hurry to get indoors that he failed to notice the signs that he had a visitor, the fresh tyre tracks in the mud and the marks of forced entry at the back door. Believing he was all alone, he sank beside the fire and began to cram turf into the grate. He lit the pile, and watched the flames take hold, warming his numb hands. He listened to the licking sounds of the fire and the wind shaking the loose doors of the outhouses.
He turned around suddenly and stared into the gloom, distracted by the sensation that someone was watching him. He did not trust the instinct at first, but eventually he could no longer ignore it. Making his way into the kitchen, he saw, at the periphery of his vision, a figure in a soldier’s uniform in one of the barns outside. It was standing on top of a stack of hay bales, its head hidden from view. He could see that it was his brother’s uniform that the figure had donned, the jacket hanging slightly askew, the buttons unfastened, and a pale hairless belly poking through. He thought some tramp must have crept into the house and stolen the uniform. He watched the figure for several long moments, as it remained motionless, hanging in the space above the hay bales.
His incredulity edged towards anger. How dare someone break into his house and steal his brother’s precious uniform. He hurried upstairs and located his gun, and then he stepped outside and crossed the yard. The figure was hard to make out, unmoving and half-hidden under the rafters. There was something confrontational, almost mocking about its pose. He stood below and stared upwards. Was he seeing things? He strained to make out the face of the figure, but there was no face, at least not one that was recognizably human. Barbaric, he thought, the blood draining from his face. He could now see that someone had dressed a dead pig in his brother’s uniform and hoisted its carcass from the rafters. He pondered the dummy’s design. Like a bizarre animal suicide. He could see the pig’s face clearly now, the dirty snout and gaping mouth, the blood-black tongue, the flaps of cheek and neck slobbery and raw against the collar of the uniform. The feature that most fixated his attention, however, was the slitted eyes, through which something malevolent seemed to be peeking at him.
Whatever the motive for placing the pig there, it was the contempt that disturbed him the most, the disregard for the honour of the uniform. He felt aggrieved by the grotesque way in which it had been displayed for him. He wanted to demonstrate his defiance towards the hidden enemy that had desecrated the uniform of his brother’s regiment and killed a dumb creature in the process. Leaving his gun behind, he clambered up the bales of hay and hauled himself level with the figure. He reached up to untie the ropes that were suspending the dead pig, but his movement caused the carcass to swing through the air and butt against him. He gritted his teeth and cursed, shooing it away with his arms as though it were a living thing with a mind of its own.
A sound like someone suppressing a snigger came from behind. The tower of bales swayed underfoot and Reid cursed, teetering for a second, and then regained his balance. The dead pig swung against him again, a block of lifeless flesh, its eyes rolling in its head. Reid turned and squinted at the darkness towards the back of the shed. He could make out the dim outline of the rafters, the straggles of old rope, the cobwebs and birds’ nests, but something was different about the alignment of shadows. He peered closer, trying to make out the details in the gloom. The little piggy eyes loomed again, and the dead creature leaned against his shoulder. Reid bullied it away and craned his neck. There was another figure there, alive and watching him, but he could not make out who or what it was. He felt terror tug at his guts. What sort of trespasser lay there waiting for him, having lured him to this dangerous brink?
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CHAPTER NINE
The lead on the van that had taken their son provided only a temporary suspension of the Hewsons’ anxiety. Within minutes of arriving at the family suite in Dungannon police station, the tension had returned to breaking point. Daly watched them through a window in the door, sitting at a table as stiffly as a condemned couple. As a solicitor and journalist, they were used to taking notes when visiting local police stations. They had built their careers on what was transcribed in interview rooms like the one they found themselves in, but now, relieved of such duties, they clenched their hands tightly, wringing their fingers together, unsure of what to do with them.
Daly brought them in some tea and biscuits, and felt their fear and confusion fill the room like a heavy gas. Their eyes fastened greedily on to him. He groped for some fresh words of reassurance, but was unable to think of anything that might resolve their anxiety.
‘I’ve two questions I need to ask you straight away,’ he told them. ‘I want you to think carefully. Do you remember seeing a large white van in the car park?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it there before you arrived?’
She paused. It was an effort to recall the world that existed before the boy’s disappearance. ‘I think so,’ she said eventually.
‘OK. How many people knew you were going to court this morning?’
‘No one. Like I told you, I just popped into court to give a file to a colleague.’
‘Now I want you to think back over these past few weeks. Has anyone visited your house and given Jack more attention than you felt they should have? Looked at him or talked to him in any way that made you feel uneasy or worried?’
She gave him a blank look.
‘What about when you were at the local park or shopping centre. Did anyone approach him there?’
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