The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Maguire? You need to get off the line, I’m waiting on the boss ringing through.’ Behind him Paula could hear phones and voices, as if it was four p.m. not four a.m.

  ‘Why did no one ring me?’

  ‘Boss said not to.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Look, I’m not getting involved, OK? I have to go.’

  ‘Wait, Gerard – is it one of them? It’s not a woman, is it, it’s not Catherine?’

  He’d hung up. Fuming, Paula slammed down the stupid smartphone. They’d found one of the Five and no one had even told her. Well, she would see about that. She couldn’t face getting out of her cosy maternity pyjamas in the frigid room, so she pulled on a hoody and Ugg boots. They’d pass for tracksuit bottoms at this hour. She wound her long red hair into a plait, noting in the mirror her dark eye-bags and pallid skin. Wasn’t it meant to be after the birth that you couldn’t sleep?

  She thought of how Saoirse would scold her for getting out of bed in the middle of the night. Saoirse with her birth plans and morbidity studies. Paula would have just liked to crawl away on her own in the dark and deliver, like a cat under the stairs. She grabbed her car keys and headed out.

  Extract from The Blood Price: The Mayday

  Bombing and its Aftermath, by Maeve Cooley

  (Tairise Press, 2011)

  Dominic Martin was the most difficult of the families and survivors to interview. Some, like the Presbyterian family of Constable Sheeran, would not speak to me at all – they have retreated into their faith to deal with what happened. This is not what I mean by difficulty. When I rang Martin first, he asked who I was. He said was I at the trial. Yes, I said, I’d been covering it for my paper, the Daily Tribune. One of the vultures, he said, repeating what he’d said that day, when he’d made the comment about feasting on their pain. I’ve had this reaction before, of course, all journalists have, now that door-stepping and chequebook journalism are so rife. Mr Martin, I said. I want to write this book to give a voice to the victims.

  My daughter didn’t have much of a voice, he said. She wasn’t even two yet.

  Three days short, I said; he went silent and I wondered if I’d gone too far.

  What’s the point of a book, he said. More slow-motion tears, sad music? What does any of it do? Nobody needs to remember Amber except her mother and I. Well, I think of her every minute of every day, and her mother does too, I imagine, though she hasn’t spoken to me in some time.

  I’m going to name the bombers, I said. All five.

  You’ll be sued, he said. Impatient.

  I hope so. That way we could maybe get a libel trial going.

  We, I’d said, by mistake, and I wondered if he’d be angry, me jumping in on their grief.

  Come round, he said, instead. I’d give you the address but you most likely already know it. He put the phone down.

  I have decided not to transcribe my conversation with Dominic Martin. It’s rare for a journalist to be reminded that we are nothing in this – we’re just a conduit to twist words, and arrange them convincingly, and ultimately to sell papers.

  When I spoke to Martin I realised he’d been twisting me. And it was no more than I deserved. It’s unusual for a group of victims to have such an articulate and active spokesperson. The media have tended to gravitate to John Lenehan, the group’s Chair, a grave and measured man, suffering etched into his face. He’s a good victim – praying and accepting and urging peace. Dominic Martin is not accepting anything. He is angry, furious, protesting at the obscenity of a world where his child could die beneath him on a sunny May day. I was struck by one thing he said during our talk – I can’t even call it an interview. What’s the point of all these words? It can’t be understood in words. When is someone going to do something?

  I couldn’t answer this and I still can’t. We failed Amber Martin and the other silent dead – we failed to do anything, to save them or punish their killers. This book, such as it is, is my own paltry attempt at doing something.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Outside dawn was creasing the sky, breaking pale blue in the east. She could see her breath. There was little traffic and the drive through town was peaceful until she reached the unit, where she found the whole team, dressed hastily and running about between phones and computers. Even Avril was wearing jeans, an unheard-of event. ‘Paula,’ she said, covering her phone headset with one hand. ‘I thought you weren’t coming in?’

  ‘Well, no one told me,’ she said shrewishly. ‘Was that DI Brooking’s decision?’

  ‘Maybe he thought you’d need to rest.’

  Paula humphed. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In his office, but . . .’

  She stomped off, but found her feet were taking her past Guy’s closed office door and into the small cubby beside it – Bob Hamilton’s office. Little more than a cupboard. She opened the flimsy door without knocking. He was at his computer, staring at the screen. He’d never mastered the new databases they used to log missing persons.

  ‘Miss Maguire?’

  It was too much suddenly. The number of times she’d asked him to call her Paula, or even her proper title of Doctor, but he insisted . . . the way he averted his eyes from her belly, as if she revolted him . . . ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming—’

  ‘Not about this.’ She shut the door behind her, so it reverberated through the chipboard walls. ‘About my mother.’

  ‘Miss—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know you don’t want to talk about it, I know the case was closed – but tell me this, Bob. Tell me what you did with Mrs Flynn’s statement.’

  He looked uncomprehending and that just made her angrier. To forget something like that, a key piece of the puzzle that had consumed her all her life . . .

  ‘Our next-door neighbour. Nosy lady. She said you interviewed her, back in ninety-three. She said she saw men at our house on the day Mum went – why’s it not in the file, Bob?’

  He looked slowly down at his hands, the fingers red and chubby, on the keys of the old computer. She waited. He said nothing. The silence grew and thickened. Paula opened her mouth and was horrified to feel tears swell in her throat. ‘I . . . please tell me. You must know something. Why isn’t it there? What did she tell you?’

  Bob looked away from her as he spoke, his voice dry as papers in a filing cabinet. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss. And I don’t think you’re supposed to have a copy of the file, are you? It was a long time ago.’

  He wasn’t going to tell her. But she could sense it, feel it between them that he knew something all the same. She could almost grasp the contours. Her voice shook. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. Did you have something against my dad? You arrested him – but maybe Mrs Flynn could have proved it wasn’t him? I mean, you only arrested him because we couldn’t prove Mum was there in the morning, wasn’t that right?’

  He said nothing. Paula took a deep breath. ‘Right. You aren’t going to help me. But I’m not giving up. So . . . just thinking about what I said. Try to do something right, for once in your life.’

  She stormed out, bumping into Fiacra in the corridor, who was also visibly gloomy. ‘Are you not meant to be off?’ he said.

  ‘Did everyone get this memo except me?’ she exploded. ‘I’m still working, aren’t I, I’m not an invalid!’

  ‘Jesus, OK, don’t shoot the messenger. We thought with the wean—’

  ‘It’s none of your business, Garda Quinn!’

  He pushed past her, muttering that she’d made it his business.

  Paula blinked. ‘What was that?’

  He turned. ‘How is it not our business, OK? You ride the boss and prance about here with your belly out and we’re supposed to ignore it? My sister lost her baby. She nearly died and she was only going shopping, and there’s you running about with not a thought for your own safety!’

  Paula’s mouth fell open at this unexpected savaging from the sweete
st member of the team, and to her horror she felt the tears gather in her nose. ‘I . . . I just couldn’t sit at home with all this going on.’

  ‘Well you have to. You’re having a baby. Even I know you can’t carry on the way you do.’

  ‘Here, wait there, son.’ Gerard, a mere year older than Fiacra, had come out of the main office to shove his oar in. ‘Leave her be.’

  ‘You can stay out of it. Seems myself and ould Bob there are the only ones who stick to the rules round here. There’s a reason you’re not supposed to sleep with your colleagues, you know.’

  ‘Hey!’ Gerard shouted. There was a crash behind them in the main office; Avril had knocked over her keyboard. ‘What are you trying to say, son?’

  ‘Don’t call me son, you fecking eejit, you’re no older than I am. You know rightly what I’m trying to say.’

  Avril was moving, a blur of anxiety. ‘Gerard, stop, I—’ She was in the corridor, wringing her hands. ‘Look, just leave it, OK?’

  ‘Quite the team, aren’t we?’ Fiacra looked between them nastily. ‘Very cosy indeed.’

  Bob came to his door, bewildered, refusing to look at Paula still. ‘What’s the racket out here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Fiacra sulkily. ‘I’m just sick of people not doing their jobs and I’m sick of pretending no one knows why she’s knocked up. We’re not bleeding stupid, you know.’ He turned back into the main office, giving the wall a frustrated kick as he went. Paula turned away; she couldn’t bear it if Bob and Gerard saw her crying. At that point Guy opened his door. ‘What’s going—’ He saw her face. ‘Back to work, everyone. Would you supervise, DS Hamilton? Thanks.’

  He indicated she should go into his office. As soon as the door shut she put her hands to her face, the tears flowing thick and fast. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Enough. Are you OK?’

  ‘No – I don’t know. It’s just. I can’t bear it, you know. You don’t even tell me you’ve found a body! You’re at all these meetings you won’t tell me about . . . I mean, what’s next, will I be fired?’ Then she’d be alone in the house, with just the baby and the ghosts for company.

  ‘Sit down.’ He motioned her into the chair, and she sat, wiping away tears and gulping as fast as they came.

  ‘Look. Paula. I’m in a difficult situation here. I can’t tell you what the meetings are about, not yet, but it’s nothing to do with you. And I know you want to keep working, and we do need you, but look at you. It’s difficult to have you at crime scenes – there’s the insurance for one thing. And for another, people aren’t stupid, they know you and I are – close. And now you’re pregnant.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone! No one knows it might be – you know.’

  ‘They can guess.’ He ran a hand over his eyes, and she saw the wedding ring he still wore, and her stomach heaved. It was too much. At least while there’d been work she could shut out the fact that she’d felt things for him, and then his wife had come back, but without work—

  ‘I found something out,’ she said, still blinking back tears, the grey squares of carpet dissolving into a blur. ‘My mother. Sergeant Hamilton was the investigating officer on her case – you know that.’

  ‘Well yes, but—’

  ‘There’s a statement missing from the file. Our neighbour, she saw some men come to the door the day my mother went missing. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that something like that would be in the file?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me. And yes, she’s not as young as she was, but she’d hardly make up something like that after seventeen years. Sergeant Hamilton took her statement. And it’s not there now.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he suppressed evidence?’

  ‘No.’ She thought about it. ‘Yes. I don’t know. I think he must have. I want you to look into it for me.’

  ‘Paula. Are you saying you want to make a formal complaint? As a relative, not as a member of staff?’

  Before this, everything had been done under the table, allowing Paula glances at files, whispers in corridors. But fuck it, they were freezing her out, and she didn’t have much time left. Panic seemed to grip her. ‘I am a relative, aren’t I? We always talk about keeping the families informed. Well, that’s me. And I believe the officer in charge deliberately hid information.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Guy was keeping his voice measured.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Had it in for my dad, maybe. There’s some bad blood between them, I never knew what. Maybe he lost the statement, then covered it up. But I want to know where it is and what happened to it.’

  ‘Paula . . . are you sure about this? It was a long time ago, and Sergeant Hamilton is a valued member of the team . . .’

  ‘Would you say that to one of the families, ask if they could be bothered digging it all up, finding out where their loved one disappeared to?’

  ‘All right. I’ll look into your complaint.’ He made a note. ‘I’m afraid in light of that, I will have to ask you not to work on your mother’s case any more. And certainly not to visit any witnesses.’

  She stared very hard at the carpet. Time was running out . . . the baby would be there soon . . .

  ‘Paula. I’m sorry. But you know it has to be this way. You’re . . . things aren’t the same now. They never will be again, when the baby comes.’

  She nodded dully, tears pattering onto her stupid hoody. ‘So what can I do?’

  ‘I think you need to scale back. Work from home a bit, or at least in the office only. Nothing dangerous or stressful. And Corry . . . she’s concerned that your own experiences, with your mother and the attack last year – well, she thinks it’s impacting on you more than you realise.’

  ‘You said Corry. Is it Corry thinks it, or is it you?’

  He paused. ‘I agree with her.’

  ‘You’re so spineless sometimes.’ The words were out before she could stop them.

  He flinched. ‘All right, if you insist, I feel you’re not coping well at all. You almost died before Christmas, you almost lost your child then, but you’re still refusing to scale back your duties. Now, your work has been invaluable in the past, and we need you, but we can’t shoulder the responsibility of you at dangerous crime scenes. And the stress of this case . . .’

  She didn’t say that the most stressful thing was his presence. ‘Look. I have to keep working.’

  ‘But Paula – you won’t be able to. At least for a while. You must see that. You can’t imagine what it’s like with a baby – no sleep, no time at all to yourself. You’ll be exhausted. Naturally the force is very supportive of working mothers, but—’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Guy. Don’t talk at me like an HR manual. Like you’re not even involved.’

  ‘You won’t let me be involved!’ he snapped. ‘I can’t come to appointments, I can’t ask how you are, and I can’t even ask if I’m the father or not – and yes, I know you don’t know, before you say it, and I know it was an accident, but try to think how other people feel for a change. Am I supposed to care for this child, look after it like a father, or am I supposed to step away?’ He paused. ‘I can’t fail another child, but you’re giving me no option.’

  In the silence that followed this outburst, Paula tried not to look at the photo on Guy’s desk. Two children. His troubled daughter, now sixteen, and his dead son, who’d never be older than ten. ‘I’m sorry.’ She was trembling, her voice thick with tears. ‘I know it’s hard and I wish things were different, really I do.’ Fleetingly she thought of Aidan. ‘But if I can’t do this – if I can’t find people – then what can I do?’

  Guy sighed. ‘You can look after yourself and get ready for the baby coming. Rest. Eat ice cream. Just take it easy.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t like ice cream. It hurts my teeth.’

  ‘Well, whatever you like then. Someone should be looking after you. If you’d let me I’d—’

  She stood up, with some difficulty. ‘You’d be better off looking
after your wife and daughter.’ It was a low blow and he recoiled. ‘Tell me one thing,’ she said. ‘Who is it? The body?’

  He couldn’t look at her. ‘Lynch, we think. He was – his car was set alight, you know.’

  ‘He burned to death?’ One hanged, one decapitated, now one burned.

  ‘Yes. It was – really, I don’t want you there. It will be very unpleasant.’

  What was wrong with her, that she’d rather go in the middle of the night to a lonely spot where a man lay charred and smoking, than be asleep, cradling her unborn child in warmth and safety? ‘Please. I need to see it. Even from a distance.’

  He spoke stiffly. ‘If you feel up to it, I won’t stop you. But at least wait till morning – the site’s still on fire, for a start.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Should I have a word with Fiacra?’

  ‘No. He only said what was true. I just didn’t realise everyone knew.’ It was an awful thought, the details of their drunken night circulating as a dirty joke, that fragile bubble of intimacy they’d made, light against the dark.

  ‘You of all people should know that in this town, nothing’s a secret for long.’

  ‘I know. I just . . . hoped.’ She wiped her sleeve over her face.

  ‘Please . . . this is all for your own good. Will you stay off your mother’s case?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Not if you want to keep working.’

  She nodded. ‘Then I don’t have a choice.’

  It was horrible walking out, turning her back to the curious looks and ringing phones and buzz of a case to solve, and getting back in her car, but she did. Because deep down, she knew that everyone was right, and she was wrong.

  Kira

  The garage was quite a good one. It had spaces for six cars and there was pop music playing. It smelled of petrol, a smell Kira liked. Rose had sometimes smelled like that when she’d been out, on the back of a motorbike with one of her boyfriends.