The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  He made a noise of annoyance. ‘I know, OK? It was just a lot to take in. And him – you see him every day, like, you must be close.’

  She tried to explain. ‘He’s my boss. He – well, it’s complicated too. It’s not as if we’re—’ With spectacular bad timing, that was when her phone went, trilling in the depths of the (also lilac) clutch bag Pat had forced on her. ‘Oh, sorry. I better get this.’ It echoed in the silent church. She pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Paula?’

  Her heart sank at his voice. She could see Aidan had recognised the name which flashed up; he was once again scowling intently ahead.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I know you have the wedding today, and I wouldn’t bother you if I could help it, but—’

  ‘Something’s happened?’

  ‘There’s a body. I thought you’d be annoyed if I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Is it one of them?’

  ‘We think so, but—’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Creggan Forest. But listen, Paula, don’t—’

  ‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘No, Paula, that’s not what I—’

  She ended the call. The menu of Poached Salmon, Roast Beef with Julienne Vegetables, and Summer Fruits Pavlova would have to wait, and after the day she’d had she was almost weepingly grateful for the certainty of human flesh, a crime scene to analyse, a case to solve.

  Aidan spoke bitterly, still not looking at her. ‘You’re going then.’

  ‘I have to. It’s one of the Mayday Five, we think.’

  She offered it as a small sop – Aidan, editor of the local paper, knew the significance of the case more than anyone. But he didn’t budge. ‘If you think that’s more important than today.’

  ‘I don’t. I’ll be an hour, tops – anyway, they’ll be snapping photos for ages yet.’ He wouldn’t move to let her out, so she clambered awkwardly over him. ‘Aidan.’

  ‘Oh, it’s OK. Go to him. Don’t mind me.’

  She bit down the enraged retort that he’d ignored her for the best part of four months. ‘Where’s your car?’ she demanded.

  ‘You’re not really going to feck off during a wedding?’ But he sighed and slapped the keys into her hand, on a football key ring Paula knew had to have been a present from Pat. Unless someone was getting done on corruption charges, Aidan had zero interest in sport.

  ‘See you later. Look, I’m sorry – try to understand?’

  ‘You’ve made your choice,’ he muttered. She pretended not to hear. Then she ran down the aisle in her bare feet, shoes in one hand, bag and wilted flowers in the other, her lilac dress rustling around the folds of her unwieldy body.

  Soon she was heading out of town, on her way to a small village in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains. Stone houses, Lego-green fields, the sea opaque with light. As she drove she felt her shoulders, crunched up all the way through the ceremony, gradually relax.

  Her father was married. To Aidan’s mother. Even when he’d told her about it months back – told her he planned to have her mother finally declared dead so he could marry Pat – it somehow hadn’t sunk in until now, seeing them before the altar. Everyone else was moving on, and after seventeen years you couldn’t blame them. So why could Paula not give up? Why did she have her mother’s case file in her desk at home, full of questions and blind alleys and no answers at all, after all this time?

  The car park near the forest was full of police cars and vans. Paula was beginning to realise her bridesmaid’s dress was not the most practical of garments for a crime scene. No matter. She wasn’t going to miss this.

  She parked and staggered up to the police cordon on the path leading into the forest. DC Gerard Monaghan, an ambitious Catholic recruit in his twenties, was on his mobile nearby, and burst out laughing when he saw her. ‘Jesus, Maguire. Are you lost on your way to a formal?’

  She was panting already, slick with sweat under the man-made fibres. ‘You found something.’

  ‘A walker phoned in a body in the trees. Some local uniform was first on scene.’

  ‘And how did we get in on it, if he’s dead?’ They were walking, so she tried to tuck up the hem of her dress.

  ‘Well, Corry and Brooking are on bestest terms right now.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Paula wasn’t sure how she felt about this rapprochement between DCI Helen Corry, head of Serious Crime at the regular PSNI in the area, and DI Guy Brooking, their boss at the missing persons unit, seconded in from London. At first the two had thoroughly trampled on each other’s toes, but lately Corry had been nice as pie about sharing jurisdiction. Paula wasn’t sure why.

  But none of that mattered right now. ‘Is it definitely one of the Five? Which one?’

  ‘I doubt they can tell.’ He was leading her to the cordon and nodding to the uniformed officer at the tape. ‘Here’s Cinderella, late for the ball.’ She glared at him and he laughed. ‘She’s with us, pal. Dr Maguire, forensic psychologist.’

  The officer eyed her sweaty face and bulging belly, but let them pass.

  ‘Why can’t they tell?’ Paula asked, as they trotted up the forest path. Dappled sunlight fell on them, and a warm pine scent filled the air. She knew that Gerard, six foot four in his socks, was shortening his stride for her, but even so she felt dizzy with the effort. Around them was the silence of the forest, small clicks of insects and leaves rustling.

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Gerard. ‘It’s a grim one. You don’t have to be here, you know.’

  ‘I do. I can’t get a sense of it otherwise.’

  ‘All right.’ Gerard gave an on-your-head-be-it eye roll and directed her down a small side path. She lifted her skirt to step over roots, her flimsy shoes already in flitters. This was stupid. This was, in a competitive field, one of the more stupid things she’d ever done.

  Trees parted to reveal a small gap in the woods, and a cluster of CSIs and detectives surrounding something she couldn’t quite see. Corry and Brooking had their heads together, looking at a piece of paper.

  ‘Look who turned up,’ said Gerard cheerfully.

  Helen Corry was the type of woman who, whatever they had on, you looked at it and realised – that’s exactly what I should have worn. Her short-sleeved white shirt and grey trousers were cool and fresh. She wore gloves, and a stern expression. ‘So I see. Being seven months’ pregnant can’t detain you from crime scenes, Dr Maguire?’

  ‘Or being at your father’s wedding?’ added Guy.

  Paula sighed. They were awful united, much worse than any of their disagreements. It was like being looked after by an extra set of cool, young parents. ‘Who is it?’

  Corry peeled off her gloves. ‘We think it’s Mickey Doyle. Hard to tell from the face, but we’ll know soon enough.’

  ‘So they didn’t leave the country then, the five of them? Do we think they were kidnapped?’

  ‘Should you really be here, Paula?’ Ignoring her question, Guy moved towards her. He too looked cool in a blue shirt and red tie, his fair hair brushed back from a stiffly controlled face. ‘I mean, the baby—’

  ‘The baby’s fine.’ She pushed forward, irritated. ‘Let me see him.’

  Then she did.

  Hanging victims all had a look in common. Eyes popping, tongue protruding, face red and livid. That would be why they couldn’t identify him yet. Also common was the loosening of the bowels, which Paula could now smell on the fresh pine breeze. She’d seen it lots of times, so it was strange and very bad timing that this particular victim should cause her to black out suddenly, the forest floor swimming up to meet her.

  ‘I told you.’ Guy had caught her before she fell. ‘Look, you’re not up to this. Sit down.’ He marched her to a tree stump. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

  Paula acquiesced, breathing and blinking hard. His expression, she realised, was exactly the same one Aidan had adopted towards her, stoical and distant, with just a touch of resentment. Perfectly timed to remind her th
at, while the pregnancy had granted her a temporary reprieve, as soon as this baby was out, all three of them were going to have to find out which of the two men was the father.

  Kira

  When she woke up, she was covered in blood again. In that second when you’re still mostly asleep, when you’re sure everything you’ve dreamed is true – like when you look in a mirror and can’t recognise your own face – she could only see the blood all over her arms and feel it warm on her skin, going into her mouth even, metallic and hot.

  Rose’s blood.

  She put on the little light beside her bed. She’d tried to sleep with it on after what happened, but Mammy said she was too big for it, and always came in to turn it off. Mammy and her slept at different times now, as if they couldn’t both be awake at once. She imagined that even now, as she staggered up, heart hammering, Mammy’s eyes would be closing in front of the TV. She’d find her there when she got up for school, the bottle of vodka slumped so low it would be spilling on the carpet.

  In the light she could see herself in the mirror. No blood. She’d just been crying in her sleep again, big, spurty tears that drenched her pyjamas. And her arms, it wasn’t blood on them, of course, it was the scars. She was glad about the scars, even though people made comments behind her back – oh, poor wean, she was the one, you know the sister, blah blah. She was glad of the scars because it showed she survived.

  On her dresser was the photo of Rose and her. Rose was hugging her tight in it, the two of them on a sea wall down on the coast. After that they’d had salty chips and ice creams with flakes in, two each, because Rose said sure why not?

  Today was the day. Today it was finally going to happen. She knew she wouldn’t sleep again, so instead she sat cross-legged on the carpet in the dark and wondered when it would start.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Come on, everyone, shake a leg!’ It was Monday morning and the small team that made up the Missing Persons Response Unit was filing reluctantly into the conference room, cups of coffee in hand, suppressing yawns. It had been a long weekend – it had been a long week, in fact, ever since the disappearances.

  Guy waited until they were settled. His deputy, Detective Sergeant Bob Hamilton, ex of the RUC, still of the Orange Order, was blowing his nose loudly on a cotton hankie, the others reluctantly shuffling papers and slumping in seats. Guy frowned. ‘Where’s Avril?’ He looked at Fiacra Quinn, a young Detective Garda from over the border who was their liaison with the South.

  ‘How would I know? Got her nose in some wedding magazine again, no doubt.’

  ‘Would you fetch her? We need to start.’

  ‘Monaghan can go,’ said Fiacra grouchily.

  Gerard, sleeves rolled up and tie askew, gave a sort of grunt. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry!’ Finally in came Avril Wright, flustered and dropping papers, revealing the magazine she was carrying in among her briefing notes. A woman in lace and silk smiled out, radiant, and Avril hid it, blushing. The young and pretty intelligence analyst, who did her very best to overcome the disadvantage of being Bob’s niece, was getting married in the summer and had gone from being efficiency itself to an airhead with her nose never out of bridal magazines. Between her and Pat, Paula never wanted to hear the words ‘three-tier red velvet cake’ ever again. She herself was the sixth team member, though the bump of the baby was so huge it could probably count as a seventh for health and safety purposes. As Avril sat down, both Gerard and Fiacra shifted slightly in their seats, Fiacra to watch her, Gerard to pointedly ignore. Several months before, Paula had caught Gerard and Avril in some kind of strange, intense moment in the corridor. She’d never got to the bottom of it, and didn’t want to.

  It was no accident that this joint team was situated in Ballyterrin, biggest border town in the North, a crossroads of smuggling, terrorist activity and general shiftiness. No-man’s-land, they called it. The team was supposed to coordinate missing persons’ cases north and south of the border, make sure the right people were looking for the lost, see that no one fell down between the imaginary lines of the border. But sometimes, as with the case in front of them, it was difficult to understand why anyone would want to look for those who were gone.

  Guy gripped the back of his chair and launched into it. ‘Mickey Doyle.’

  A small sigh went round the room. Relief, maybe, or something else.

  ‘Definitely?’ Gerard.

  ‘He had his driving licence in his pocket.’

  ‘Did he hang himself?’ asked Fiacra, who hadn’t been at the scene.

  ‘He died by hanging in Creggan Forest Park, yes. But whether it was suicide or he was forced we don’t know yet. The car park has CCTV, which shows a white van driving up into the forest around two a.m. last night. It left again half an hour later, and Doyle certainly wasn’t driving it. No number plate visible, but it’s a start. There’s also this.’ Guy switched on the projector, illuminating something on screen. ‘The autopsy hasn’t been done yet, but the FMO found this in Doyle’s mouth.’

  On screen was a scrap of lined paper, and written on it in big, shaky capitals were the words: COLLATERAL DAMAGE. ‘Does anyone recognise that wording?’ asked Guy.

  ‘It was in their statement,’ said Avril, with her forensic recall of documents. ‘Ireland First. They made a statement after the bomb saying it wasn’t them, but even if it was, some loss was always inevitable in a war, something like that. Collateral damage, they said.’

  Bob Hamilton was shaking his head. ‘Terrible thing. Terrible, terrible thing.’ Paula knew he’d been working on the day it happened, back in 2006. So had Helen Corry, for that matter. Everything about this case was too close to home.

  But the idea of Bob working on it, or any case, made doubts worm in her mind again. She tried to focus.

  Guy was nodding. ‘So this seems to rule out suicide, and also the idea that the Five skipped the country together.’

  ‘It was kidnap then,’ said Paula. ‘I thought it must be. I knew Catherine Ni Chonnaill wouldn’t have left her children like that.’

  Finally, Guy looked at her, in that sideways manner he’d developed, as if holding up his fingers to block out her bump. ‘I agree. But who took them? With the memorial service coming up too, I don’t like the timing.’

  Gerard leaned back in his seat. ‘I guess Jarlath Kenny’d want them out of the way. Talk is he’s going to run for Westminster.’

  Paula saw Bob’s face contract at the mention of the name. The fact that Kenny, Ballyterrin’s Republican mayor, was a former member of the IRA did not sit well with her either, even though you weren’t supposed to mention these things in this post-conflict, all-friends-here Ireland.

  ‘What about other dissident Republicans, sir?’ asked Fiacra.

  Guy said, ‘You know what they’re like. One mad man and a dog, some of them. No one’s claimed responsibility.’

  They all considered it for a while. After the ceasefires and Good Friday Agreement of 1998, when Paula had been taking her A-levels, the Republican movement in Northern Ireland had fractured into several smaller groups, intent on keeping up the fight which the IRA had stopped. The peace of those past years had wobbled several times – defused bombs, shootings of police officers, the odd riot or two – but had held, so far held, thank God, and they did every day, whichever God you believed in or even none. It was over. They weren’t going back.

  But for the people whose pictures Guy now showed on screen, the past was still alive, and pumping hot as fresh blood.

  Guy switched the projector off, weariness sounding in his voice. ‘Corry’s team are treating Doyle’s death as murder. Our priority is to find the other four, and fast. It seems likely they’ve been taken together. So the question we now have to ask is, if Republicans aren’t behind this, who else would want them dead?’

  And the answer, Paula thought, and the particular problem with this case, was who wouldn’t?

  Paula managed to escape to her desk after the
briefing without being alone with Guy – her main objective at work these days – and for what felt like the thousandth time since the Mayday Five had gone missing a week before, she read the case notes.

  Nearly eight months since she’d come home to Ballyterrin, determined to consult on just one case then leave, but ending up pregnant, trapped, tied down by silken threads of family, friends, obligations. Love. It was hard to believe that for years she’d managed an almost nun-like life in a Docklands flat in London, working on missing persons with a big inner-city unit. That was where she’d been when the Mayday bomb exploded in a small village outside Ballyterrin – on 1st May 2006 – and she’d sat disbelieving before the TV all day as the death toll went up. Some man had been there with her, some transient bank holiday boyfriend – Adam? Alan? – and he’d been bewildered at her shock and horror. ‘Did you know someone there?’

  She’d been unable to speak, explain how it was. That you grew up holding your breath while shaky ceasefires lasted a year, eighteen months, then exploded into shootings and bombs, that you hardly dared hope 1998 could be the end, but it was, after the stinging final horror of the Omagh bomb, biggest death toll ever in the Troubles, and still it held, five years, six years, eight years, and you’d let your breath out and it was going to be OK, almost.

  Then it wasn’t. Another bomb in a small town, a vague warning, going off too soon. Sixteen dead. Babies blown up in the street, teenagers, old people. Paula had never met any of them but she knew their faces, she felt it like a slap from someone you had come to trust, and she went to bed that night crying angry tears, the blundering boyfriend sent home. We thought it was over. You told us it was over. And determined: I’m never going home to that. Never.

  And here she was.

  The facts of the case. Mickey Doyle, now deceased, had gone missing a week before, on 1st April. On that same day they had received word of a further four missing people – Callum Brady, Ronan Lynch, Martin Flaherty, and one woman, Catherine Ni Chonnaill. Ni Chonnaill had texted her mother to pick up her children, as she’d be late home from work. Except she’d never turned up. Lynch had similarly not arrived at his job. Brady’s flat had been in disarray, furniture knocked over as if he’d left in a hurry, a half-eaten breakfast of microwave burger sitting on his fold-up kitchen table.