by Sam Blake
‘Do you think they’ll think it was me?’
Pulling her hair from her face, Zoë had looked up at him as he’d put the wine glass down in front of her, her grey eyes brimming with unshed tears. He’d frowned, not sure what Zoë was talking about. Did she mean they thought she’d broken into her own house? Or been involved in her grandmother’s death? That had sent a cold chill down his spine. She couldn’t be, could she?
‘What do you mean? Why you?’
‘Because the dress was in my house, in my wardrobe.’
Pouring himself a glass, sitting down opposite her, Steve had taken his time answering. But he wasn’t getting it.
After everything that had happened, from finding himself sitting in the back seat of a cop car with an incredibly beautiful girl whom he had only met that morning, to them arriving at her (wealthy and famous) grandmother’s house to find her dead on the stairs, Steve felt like he had definitely missed part of the story. After a few moments he’d given up. Zoë wasn’t making sense, and life had taught him that rather than make a prat of yourself pretending you knew what someone was talking about, it was always better to be straight.
‘What dress?’
Zoë had shivered then, taken a sip of her wine, her eyes fixed on the glass as she carefully put it back on the table, lining up one side of the base with the grain in the wood.
‘The one in my wardrobe. The one with the bones.’
It had taken him a moment to register what she’d said. ‘Bones?’
‘They found some bones, they said, in the dress.’
Had it been the way Zoë said it, ‘bones’, that had made Steve realise that the bones were human? Or was it just that the whole cop thing had suddenly fallen into place? Ever since he’d found himself in the back of Cathy’s boss’s car he’d been wondering why there had been so much activity at Zoë’s house, why Cathy had been so frosty. The last time he’d seen Cathy Connolly, at the launch of Pete’s new Temple Bar restaurant, La Calèche, she’d been looking a million dollars in a very short, very low-cut red number and the highest heels he’d ever seen, and she’d been sipping champagne like it was water, giggling, confessing that she’d had a huge crush on him when she was a kid. But this afternoon Cathy had been in full work mode, focused and efficient, apparently not in the least bit embarrassed about the way that night had turned out.
How could he have been so thick? A complete eejit would have realised something serious was going on at Zoë’s house. Behind him, Steve heard the kitchen clock ticking, the sound suddenly too loud, and with each movement of the hands it had all begun to click into place.
‘Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.’ Dr Seuss had it right. With a regular breakin the forensic lads turned up, dusted and if you were lucky you got a follow-up call from whoever had taken your statement. But at Zoë’s place there had been a Technical Bureau van, two patrol cars and that DI, Cathy’s pal O’Rourke . . . and he wasn’t the type you’d want to get into a row with.
Zoë Grant had the police crawling all over her house because they’d found bones in her bedroom. Human bones.
And suddenly Steve had realised, without question, that in her head at least, Zoë was definitely living in a different world – and it wasn’t one orbiting in this solar system.
‘What dress was it?’ The words fell out, badly organised, full marks for interview technique.
‘My mother’s wedding dress.’
Her wedding dress? What the hell? Her wedding dress?
‘And where were the bones?’ Steve said it tentatively, disbelieving, not much more than a whisper.
‘They said they were in the hem.’ She took another sip of her wine.
Steve knew he was a bright guy, had scored ten A1s in his Leaving Cert, breezing into medicine like it was the easiest subject in the world – almost as easily as he’d breezed out of it, in fact. And that had been before he’d set up the band, or thought of developing the magazine. But he still wasn’t getting it.
‘Why on earth would there be a pile of bones in the hem?’
The shrug again.
‘Can’t you ask her – your mother, I mean? She must know what they are, where they came from.’
Zoë shifted in her seat, pulling at the ribbons on her blouse. Steve could hardly hear her when she spoke. ‘I can’t . . . I don’t know where she is.’
Weird, and getting weirder. Maybe he’d wake up in a minute and it would all turn out to be a dream. ‘You must do. She’s your mother.’
‘She went to Paris when I was little. To be with my dad, Lavinia said. I haven’t heard from her since.’ Zoë paused, her voice catching like a silken thread on a nail. ‘I wanted to find her. I’ve always wanted to find her, but Lavinia said she hadn’t wanted us, that she’d gone. She wouldn’t help me find her.’
Steve could feel her sadness, dark blue, seeping out of her like spilled ink. Maybe Zoë wasn’t bonkers, maybe she was just a lost child, running wild. The half-remembered words of a song came to him. He stood up to refill their glasses, using the moment to try and make sense of what she was saying.
‘Someone must know where she is. Your grandmother must have had an address, even if they weren’t in touch?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know . . .’ Zoë sighed, a deep sigh that caught again as she exhaled. She rubbed her face with her hand. ‘I don’t think so.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘I’d just like to talk to her once. Find out why she left. Find out what she’s doing. See if I’m anything like her.’ She paused. ‘I really, really want her to come to the exhibition.’
The hoot of the incoming DART brought Steve back to his senses. He was really cold now, hands stuck into his jeans pockets, shoulders hunched against the dawn. He knew he should have said something when he left the house, but he’d knocked on her door gently, opening it a crack to see Zoë was fast asleep, the dreamless sleep of the exhausted, her hair splayed across the pillow like a streamer.
And Steve knew he’d have had no idea what to say to her. She was like porcelain, fragile, and with a hairline fracture running right down her centre.
So he’d scribbled a note, left it on the counter. Before she’d gone to bed Zoë said something about needing her cello, about needing to play if she couldn’t paint. So Steve had left a note saying he would check with the Guards when he collected his bike, would put it in a cab if they let him have it. He promised he would be back in time for a late breakfast, leaving his mobile number if she needed him.
And he’d slipped out of the house praying she wouldn’t wake, closing the front door firmly behind him, walking hard towards the DART station, trying to get his head together. How the hell had he got into this? Why the hell had he gone to Dalkey in the first place? But maybe he already knew the answer to that one. Max had sent him, but he knew he’d had his own reasons, had wanted to see Zoë again . . .
Relaxing into the caterpillar-green velour of the DART carriage, the interior lights comforting, bright, normal, Steve put his foot onto the seat in front and crossed his arms. They had found bones in the hem of a dress in Zoë’s house. Images careered around his head like something from a horror film – they’d have to be small bones to fit in a dress, wouldn’t they, so where were the rest of them? Where was the rest of the body? And who . . . ?
And why had he said he’d help her find her mother?
Whatever about keeping Zoë company yesterday, about giving her a bed for the night – he’d still only just met her. But she’d sounded so helpless, so lost, that it had just sort of slipped out. ‘I’ll see what I can do – she must be somewhere. I spend my whole life tracking down and verifying information about people. I’m sure we can find her if we try.’
Lost in his thoughts, Steve hardly heard his phone ringing, felt instead the vibration in his top pocket, the movement making him start. Panic flashed through his mind. Zoë must have woken up already, was upset that he’d gone. Was he ready to talk to her yet? Hauling
the phone out of his pocket, Steve checked the screen. And a surge of relief hit him. It was Max. Mad bloody Max.
‘What the hell happened to you? I thought you were coming back here yesterday.’
‘Sorry, mate, I was overtaken by events.’ That was an understatement.
‘You didn’t sleep with her, did you? Already? You’re some dirty dog, Steve Maguire . . .’
‘Me a dirty dog? No I bloody didn’t. And how can you talk?’
Max didn’t let him continue. ‘So what kept you?’
Jesus, where did he start?
16
‘What’s up with you?’ From behind her, O’Rourke’s voice cut through Cathy’s thoughts like a blade. She was sitting alone in what would soon be the incident room, fiddling with her mobile phone. Looking up, her eyes widened in surprise, like a child caught with her hand in the biscuit tin.
‘What?’ Cathy tried to make her voice sound light, like she had no clue what O’Rourke was talking about, prayed he couldn’t tell that her heart was hitting the floor, that a cold sweat was breaking out down her back. Did he know? The idea popped into Cathy’s head like a bubble of methane heading to the surface of a murky pond . . . surely not? But it was the way that he said it, ‘What’s up with you?’ Her Auntie Sinead could always tell when someone was pregnant just by looking at them . . . surely men couldn’t do that too?
O’Rourke towered above her, his broad shoulders blocking out the glare from the fluorescents bouncing off the bright cream walls. He reached out and tilted her chin, his touch gentle.
‘You look like you’ve been out on the tiles and are suffering for it, madam.’
Feck. Did she look that bad? After training this morning she’d put a load of foundation and extra concealer around her eyes to hide the broken veins. Thankfully there was rarely anyone else in the gym in Dún Laoghaire when it opened at six, so it didn’t matter how shite she looked going in. It didn’t exactly cater for competition athletes, but it had the equipment she needed to fill the gaps between proper training sessions over at Phoenix, and it was only five minutes from Dún Laoghaire Garda Station.
Cathy threw him a grin, sly and cheeky, she hoped. ‘I wish. Couldn’t sleep. Think the lads must have put a pea under my mattress.’
O’Rourke’s face broke into a smile, blue eyes softening for a split second. Then he shook his head as though Cathy was a hopeless case and stuck his hand back in his trouser pocket, jangling his change as he looked around the room. The night shift had pulled two huge sheets of ply over the snooker table, had rolled the round white melamine tables, which usually spilled out of the kitchen, back inside. It was a bit of a squash, but when the concertina doors dividing the recreation room and kitchen were pulled closed it would give them a semblance of privacy, give the impression, at least, of a high-tech incident room.
‘Anyone else coming, do you reckon, or are we running this one on our own?’ There was an edge of impatience to O’Rourke’s voice.
Cathy checked the time on her phone. ‘You’re early. It’s only seven thirty.’
‘You’re here.’
‘Yep, but I’m keen, I want promotion to ERU.’
He turned to look at her, surprised, his eyebrows meeting in a frown.
‘Emergency Response? You don’t?’
‘Don’t you think a Heckler & Koch would suit me? I look great in black.’
‘You have to be sane, you know. It’s a bit of a fundamental before they let you loose with a submachine gun.’
‘You’re right, and balaclavas give you terrible hat hair.’ Cathy threw him a grin then, stretching, yawned. ‘Christ, I’m knackered. Thought the walk from the gym and a bit of fresh air would wake me up.’
‘Too much training, it’s not natural. You know, you should dry your hair before you come up here. You’ll get pneumonia.’ He paused, a glint in his eye. ‘And where’s your car? Central locking broken again?’ She scowled at him; he sounded like her mother. Her retort was prim. ‘Life is too short to spend half an hour every day drying my hair. There are more important things to do. And my car is fine, thank you – the central locking works most of the time.’
O’Rourke grimaced. ‘Right.’ His pause was loaded. ‘So, any more thoughts about our friend Miss Grant?’
‘’Bout her granny carking it, or whether she murdered her baby and stitched its remains up in a dress?’
‘Either, both.’
Cathy slipped her phone onto the desk. She could feel his eyes on her. She pulled out her necklace, the dog tag catching the light, running the chain over her nose, considering what he’d said.
‘Well, I’d love to know more about Zoë’s relationship with Lavinia Grant – I can’t figure that out at all.’ Wrinkling his nose, O’Rourke nodded his agreement. ‘And I’d love to find out what the big secret is about Zoë’s mother. I was getting a lot of vagueness when we mentioned her. Zoë wasn’t comfortable talking about it.’
‘Reckon they’ve had a row?’
Cathy nodded, shrugging. ‘Know my mother would have a few words to say to me if I sewed the bones of my baby into her wedding dress.’ The words were out before Cathy realised what she’d said. She could feel her cheeks turning, she was sure, almost puce. Feck, why had she said that? And now her secret was written all over her face.
O’Rourke didn’t seem to notice. Sitting down sideways to the desk, he had thrown one ankle over his knee, was focusing on his sock, navy blue and red argyle, jiggling his foot up and down impatiently. Cathy could feel his tension, knew he was worried about the still-missing Angel Hierra as well as the ramifications of the Dalkey baby case. Just because the Grants had money didn’t mean something similar couldn’t have happened there.
‘Saunders is doing Lavinia Grant’s PM now – I just spoke to him. He reckons, off the record, that it could be natural causes.’ O’Rourke paused, his contempt for Saunders and his theories written across his face. ‘But obviously the PM isn’t going to tell us if there were suspicious circumstances leading up to the onset of “natural causes”.’ He paused, scowling. ‘I’ve asked him to send the bones over to the UK for DNA analysis when the lads here have finished with them. He was pontificating about them being too degraded to extract anything significant, but I’m pretty sure he was talking out of his hat. Mitochondrial DNA was identified in bones found in the sewer of a Roman bathhouse, so it’s entirely possible that the guys in the UK will find something. With luck we should get enough to either identify or rule out Zoë as the mother, and find out the sex of the child too.’
‘Any idea how long it’ll take?’ Cathy asked.
‘Weeks, I’d guess. But I don’t get the feeling that there’s going to be a quick solution to this one.’
She nodded. It wasn’t exactly a case that had presented a mass of leads. ‘Has house-to-house turned anything up?’
‘Nothing significant. They were going softly-softly but no one saw anyone acting suspiciously in the area prior to the breakin, and there don’t appear to be any sightings of a baby in or around Zoë Grant’s address, nor children unaccounted for in the immediate area. We’ve a request in with Missing Persons to see what the story is with missing babies. Can’t say I remember any in the last twenty years to be honest. Be helpful if we had a more specific time frame, of course . . .’
Her head on one side, pulling at the roots of her hair, Cathy wrinkled her nose, thinking.
‘Maybe no one knew.’ She paused, a sick feeling worming its way through her gut. ‘Maybe Zoë didn’t go to the doctor, maybe she didn’t tell anyone, delivered it herself, just like Cynthia Murphy. Or that woman in France – she had eight kids, murdered them all at birth, hid the bodies around the house.’ Cathy paused, running her pendant along its chain once more. It helped her think. ‘If Zoë was the victim of rape or abuse, she might have hidden the whole thing, pretended nothing was wrong until the baby arrived. It wouldn’t be the first time. And there’s always a chance it was premature or stillborn. Presum
ably the techs in the UK will be able to give us an idea of how old the baby was too?’
‘Saunders said one of the bones was a femur, and a very small one at that. He reckons it was newborn.’
‘Good.’ Was that good?
Cathy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She needed to change the subject.
‘Any news on Hierra?’
O’Rourke was staring into the middle distance, ran his palm across his face.
‘Nope. Seems to have disappeared into the ether. I’m rather hoping he’s moved on.’
Before Cathy could answer, behind her the swing doors to the stairs banged open. O’Rourke looked up, flashed her a grin.
‘Looks like the troops are here, let’s get started.’
‘Settle down everyone. I want to keep this short, get you all out there.’
A buzz crossed the incident room, fourteen carefully selected faces looking expectantly towards O’Rourke. It was a small team for this type of investigation, but a tight one, and that was how he wanted it. Behind him a whiteboard had been set up: date, incident and crime number written haphazardly across the top on one side with a dark blue marker. On the right-hand side, photos of the scene, of Zoë’s bedroom, long shots of her cottage, close-ups of the wardrobe, of the dress. Of the bones. On the other side, photos of Lavinia Grant lying at the top of the stairs.
‘Right, you all know why we’re here. So first off, let me be absolutely clear: none of this goes out of this room. The press will have a field day if even a sniff escapes. We already look like prats after what happened at Whyte’s Villas with the Murphys – those of you who are local will be familiar with it. Those who aren’t, look it up. It’s one of the worst cases of abuse I have ever had the misfortune to learn about and no one was prosecuted. And not only was no one prosecuted, but there were serious questions asked about the chain of evidence, lost files and the like. That doesn’t happen here. We do it right.’
