‘He was probably part of the crew rioting at the top of the hill this morning,’ Lucy said. ‘I spotted him with them the other day.’
‘Great!’ Robbie said, sarcastically. ‘He’s only here a matter of weeks and he’s already found himself a gang.’
It was as she was hanging up that Lucy realized that if Gavin had been back at the unit just after seven the riot had not even started by that stage. In fact, the only petrol they knew of as having been used at that stage was the stuff that had been poured through Gene Kay’s letterbox before being set alight.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Gavin Duffy’s grandparents’ house was in Holymount Park, in Gobnascale. Lucy rang at the door and waited, but no one answered. She peered in the windows, smearing away the misting of rainwater that had gathered there, a result of the fine miasma which had swept up over the city from along the Foyle Valley. She angled her head to see through the cracks in the blinds, but the place seemed empty, the darkened outline of a small Christmas tree visible in the corner. Lucy considered that the couple would hardly feel like celebrating Christmas, having lost their son only a month earlier.
She was turning to leave when a couple came shuffling up the street under a black umbrella towards the house. The woman looked to be in her sixties, brown hair streaked with grey, her eyes rheumy. The man seemed older, balding with a grey moustache. He blinked at Lucy from behind rain-streaked glasses.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m looking for the Duffys,’ she explained.
‘That’s us,’ the woman answered, smiling uncertainly.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Black of the Public Protection Unit. I’m looking for your grandson, Gavin. He’s not turned up at school. They’ve been trying to contact you.’
‘We were at Mass, over in the chapel.’
They pointed towards the outline of the Immaculate Conception Church, across the road from the estate where they lived. ‘We went to the cemetery afterwards.’
‘It’s our son’s Month’s Mind,’ the man said. He shuffled past, pulling out his keys, and opened the door. ‘You may come in, so,’ he added.
The house was compact, three rooms downstairs – a living room, kitchen and cloakroom. The living room was cosy, the small fire smouldering in the grate surprisingly warming. The old man grunted as he bent and flicked on a switch at the wall, bringing the thin Christmas tree in the corner alight, throwing kaleidoscopic shadows on the wall.
‘You’ll have tea,’ Mr Duffy said, a statement not a question.
‘I was sorry to hear about your son,’ Lucy said, a little insincerely, to the woman, who sat next to the fire now. She twisted slightly to address the husband who stood in the adjacent room, filling the kettle. ‘It must be very hard. Especially at this time of the year.’
‘We wouldn’t have been celebrating it at all were it not for Gavin being here.’
Lucy heard a grunt of derision from the kitchen. ‘When he’s here. He was to be at the Mass this morning. His own father’s Month’s Mind.’
‘It’s a Mass for when—’ the woman began.
‘I know,’ said Lucy. Catholic families celebrated Mass one month after the death of a loved one in their memory. Lucy had attended a number herself over the years.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Duffy replied, understanding the implication. ‘He’d wanted Gavin to come. The wee boy didn’t know his father at all.’
‘Only his bitch of a mother,’ her husband said, passing Lucy a cup of black tea and handing a second cup to his wife.
‘Don’t say that,’ his wife commented, though without conviction.
The man reappeared a moment later with a small tray, a cloth doily on it, on top of which sat a milk jug, a sugar bowl and a plate of biscuits. Lucy took milk and sugar, declined the Bourbon creams, then regretted having done so having managed only a single finger of a Twix bar since breakfast.
‘She ran off the first time Gary went inside. Then she remarried. Do you know what the new one did to the wee boy?’
Lucy had heard when he’d first been transferred in. His stepfather, in order to teach him a lesson for accidentally breaking the wing mirror of his car with his bike, had beaten him with the flex of a games console. His PE teacher had noticed the shape of the bruises the following day when Gavin was changing for football, his T-shirt riding too high up his trunk as he pulled his shirt over his head. The doctor who examined him said there were injuries consistent with punches around the boy’s ribcage, in addition to repeated bruising from an electric flex.
The officers who had questioned his mother and stepfather, separately, said that the mother had accused the boy of injuring himself because he didn’t like her husband. It was only after she read the extent of the injuries that she admitted what had happened. She claimed that the boy was uncontrollable, and that she could no longer look after him. At the age of twelve, Gavin had entered residential care and there remained, until his grandparents had asked to have him brought nearer their home after his father’s death.
‘What’s he done then?’ Mr Duffy asked.
‘Nothing that I know of,’ Lucy said. ‘He’s just not in school.’
‘We hardly see him,’ the man commented.
‘We need to give him space,’ his wife countered. ‘It’s been difficult for him.’
‘He should have been there this morning,’ the man repeated, earning a roll of her eyes from his wife.
‘He wasn’t at the Mass?’ Lucy asked.
The woman shook her head. ‘He’s like his father. Wayward. Gary was the same. Even after he got out. He was so angry all the time when he was younger. Then they lifted him for that wee girl’s killing – all the people who’d been his friends would have nothing to do with him. They wouldn’t let him onto their wing in the prison. For his own safety. Then he became withdrawn, wouldn’t talk about anything. We couldn’t get through to him. We asked him to say where the wee girl’s body was, to admit if he’d done it.’
‘Did he?’ Lucy asked, having debated whether to mention the body that had been found on Carlin’s farm. There was no point. She’d still not heard whether she was right in believing it to be Louisa Gant.
The woman shook her head. ‘He said he was innocent of it.’
‘But you didn’t believe him?’
The woman’s eyes filled. ‘That’s a terrible thing for a mother to say. That she didn’t believe her own son. But he was a bad boy. From he was a teenager, it was like something was broken inside him.’
‘He’d his mother’s heart broken before he ever went inside. Then, when he did, they all abandoned him. All the ones he ran with. He’d no one left in the end. Nowhere to go.’
‘He even moved back here; we made him, to be near us,’ Mrs Duffy added.
‘For all the difference it made in the end,’ her husband muttered.
‘He went down to the river,’ Mrs Duffy said. ‘To spare us finding him. His father always brought him up his breakfast in the morning. He didn’t want him to see him ... you know.’
They sat in silence, watching the flames curl round the briquette the woman had thrown on the fire when they’d arrived in.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy repeated again.
‘We thought having Gavin around would help,’ Mr Duffy said. ‘But he’s out with that crew more often than not.’
‘The street gang?’
‘Local lads is all,’ Mrs Duffy said, quickly. ‘He’ll be out running around somewhere.’
Lucy drained her tea then placed the cup back on the tray. ‘I’d best take a drive around and see if I can find him. Would they be anywhere in particular?
‘I’d try the back of the shops,’ the man said. ‘That’s where they normally be.’
The couple saw her to the door, where Lucy thanked them for the tea and offered her condolences once more.
‘Gavin’s very lucky he has you,’ she said. ‘He showed me the iPod you got him. You’re very good to him.’
‘What’s an iPod?�
�� Mr Duffy said, his face creased in bewilderment.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lucy drove across to the parking bays outside the shops where she and Fleming had gone looking for Sarah Finn. She jumped out of the car, the air heavy with the smell of hot grease from the local chip shop reminding her she should eat. She had no time, for now, she decided.
Lucy had considered whether it might be best to call for backup, but if there was a gang of fellas standing, bored, in the rain, a Land Rover-load of PSNI officers pulling up would be the perfect entertainment to keep them occupied after the events at Kay’s house. She thought she would try to get Gavin’s attention and take him away quietly, rather than having to take a heavy-handed approach.
As she opened the boot to take out her coat, she caught a glimpse of a red car parked at the outer edge of the bays. A stocky man, wearing a brown overcoat and a black beanie hat sat in the driver’s seat while, at the open door, two younger boys, in their late teens at most, leaned in. She recognized one of the boys as Tony, the leader of the gang with whom she had spoken about Sarah Finn. For a moment, Lucy thought they were robbing him, until the three of them started laughing. The man seemed to sense her watching, for he stared across at her. It took her a moment to place him as Jackie Logue, the community worker who’d helped calm the riot during Kay’s burning.
After pulling her hood up enough to cover her face, she slammed the boot shut and headed across to the shops. Aware that she was still being watched, she instead went into the shop to buy a bar of chocolate, rather than heading directly around the back.
Two women served in the shop; one looked to be in her early twenties. She was loading the display in front of the tills with bags of crisps, while the older woman behind the counter chatted to a customer.
It was the younger girl that Lucy approached first.
‘Can I have a packet of those?’ she asked, only realizing after she’d done so that they were Worcester sauce flavour. ‘I’m looking for my nephew. I’m told he hangs around with a crowd of boys around here.’
The girl looked up at her, blinking against the strip lights above Lucy’s head. ‘What’s he called? I’ll know if he’s been in.’
‘Gavin,’ Lucy said, aware that the conversation at the counter had stopped.
‘He’s round the back, I think,’ the girl said.
‘They’re not doing any harm,’ a voice said.
Lucy turned. Both the woman behind the counter, and the older man to whom she had been talking, were now looking at her.
‘They’re all right out there. The back’s covered over, so they stand in there out of the rain. Besides, Jackie keeps tabs on them.’
‘Jackie?’ Lucy asked. ‘Jackie Logue?’
‘Gavin’s your nephew, is he?’ the woman said.
‘Gavin who?’ the old man asked in response.
‘Gary Duffy’s boy,’ she replied, as if Lucy wasn’t there.
‘The Duffys only had the one,’ the man commented.
‘That’s right,’ agreed his co-conspirator. ‘You’re no aunt. Police, is it?’
‘His grandparents are wondering where he is,’ Lucy lied. ‘I’ll take a Bounty too.’
‘He’s doing no harm out there. Leave him alone.’
Lucy said nothing further about the boys, thanking the woman and leaving, pulling her hood up again.
The area to the side of the shops was covered by sheets of corrugated metal, providing a smoking area along the entirety of the row, presumably for the staff of the various shop units who were being forced to smoke outside in the wake of the ban on smoking indoors. A group of around twenty youths were congregated there, a mixture of boys and girls, in half shadow, their faces faintly illuminated by the green emergency exit lights above the rear doors of each unit.
Four plastic dumpsters sat to one side, and it was against one of these that Gavin was standing, a cigarette in his hand, talking to a boy and girl of about the same age as him.
One of the kids shouted, ‘Five oh,’ quickly killing the conversation. They all turned to look where Lucy stood. She knew there was no way they could have made her out as a police officer so quickly, so guessed the Five-O reference covered all adults. It was hard not to find it more than a little absurd that the kids who used the designation probably had no idea where it came from. Unless they’d caught the remake or The Wire, she reflected.
The gathered kids stared from one to the other, as if trying to work out who Lucy was looking for, before turning defiantly towards her again. Gavin was standing with his arm around a thin girl, mid-teens, perhaps, her face, sharp featured, accentuated by the glow of the lights above them. He waited a moment, then pushed himself away from the dumpster and moved towards Lucy, drawing on his cigarette as he did so. The blackness around his eye shone beneath the green exit lights.
‘Is something wrong?’
Lucy turned to see Jackie Logue standing a few feet from her, Tony behind him.
‘It’s fine, thank you,’ Lucy said, turning towards the gathered group again. ‘Come on, Gavin.’
‘Are you a relative?’ Logue asked.
‘I know Gavin,’ Lucy commented. ‘Thanks for your concern.’
‘These kids have nowhere else to go, Officer,’ the man said.
‘Apart from school?’ Lucy countered.
‘We’re too old for school now,’ Tony muttered, earning a glance of rebuke from Logue.
‘They’re not doing any harm here, as you were told,’ Logue himself said, turning his attention again to Lucy.
So the woman from the shop had gone out and told him Lucy was police. She could also hear the kids passing along word that she was a cop.
‘What do you want?’ Gavin said, standing a few feet from her, defiantly refusing to take the final steps towards her.
‘Robbie’s looking for you. Let’s go.’
Logue moved a step closer. ‘That’s not very helpful. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, Gavin.’
‘Yes, he does,’ Lucy said, turning to the man. ‘Mr Logue, is it?’
Logue raised his chin slightly but did not answer.
‘Gavin is still young enough that he should be in school.’
‘He told me he was allowed off to go to Mass for his father.’
‘He didn’t turn up at that either. His grandparents are worried about him.’
‘I am standing here, you know,’ Gavin snapped. ‘Stop talking about me like I’m not here.’
‘Let’s go, Gavin,’ Lucy said.
Gavin hesitated, as if considering returning to his friends. Lucy shook her head lightly. If he didn’t come with her now, it would be worse when a response team arrived for him.
‘Later,’ Gavin said, turning to the other kids. He winked at the girl with whom he’d been standing. ‘See you, Jackie,’ he added to the stocky man.
‘Mr Logue,’ Lucy said, as she passed the man, walking behind Gavin to stop him changing his mind and turning back.
Gavin barely spoke the whole way back to the residential unit, even when Lucy asked how he felt after the beating he had taken.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was nothing,’ he said.
‘Your grandparents seem very nice,’ Lucy said. ‘They seem really keen to have you in their family.’
Again, the boy shrugged.
‘They didn’t give you the iPod though,’ she added. ‘Did they?’
The boy twisted and glared at her. ‘Are you checking up on me?’
‘I want to make sure you’re OK,’ Lucy said. ‘Everyone just wants to help.’
‘You can help by not coming for me in front of my friends again. OK?’ With that he got out of the car and slammed the door, storming past Robbie where he stood at the unit entrance waiting for him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The night had already thickened across the city by the time Lucy made it back to Maydown again. She’d called in with Sinead Finn after leaving Gavin at the unit, but there was still no word fr
om either the girl or Seamus Doherty. The woman had agreed to do an appeal the following morning, wondering what she should wear.
‘Anything,’ Lucy had replied.
The Tactical Support Units had been doing further checks in the area, but it seemed likely that, by this stage, the girl had either been taken by Doherty, or had used his leaving as an opportunity to get away herself, having taken the money from her mother’s post office account the day before.
Lucy went up to her office and began typing up the press release for the late evening news. She mentioned both Doherty and Sarah Finn as being missing and encouraged either to contact home or the police as soon as possible. She also included a description of both Sarah Finn and Seamus Doherty and added that they could be travelling together or separately.
She called Communications to tell them the release was on its way and to book a press conference for the morning in the Strand Road should Sarah Finn not be located before then. She’d just emailed it through when she heard a thud from the office below. She went out to the top of the stairs and, looking down, shouted, ‘Hello.’
A moment later, Tom Fleming’s face appeared from the gloom of the corridor below. ‘I didn’t know you were in,’ he said. ‘I’ve called to collect some stuff.’
Lucy came down to him. ‘I’m sorry about the whole ... thing,’ she offered.
Fleming accepted the comment with a light nod. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I could maybe be doing with a breather from all this.’
Lucy nodded, unconvinced. ‘What are you planning on doing?’
‘Dry out,’ he said, without humour. ‘Then, I’m not sure. Bits and pieces.’
Lucy nodded again. She forced her hands into her pockets, wondering why she was struggling to find something to say to this man with whom she had worked for over a year.
‘I hear they found Louisa Gant,’ Fleming added.
‘Is it confirmed?’ Lucy asked, trying to hide her annoyance that Burns hadn’t come back to her to tell her she’d been right.
‘It’s on the news so it must be,’ Fleming said. ‘On Carlin’s farm.’
Someone You Know Page 15
