The Silent Dead

by Claire McGowan

  She remembered, the church’s teaching that suicide was a mortal sin. It wasn’t long since people who’d died that way had been buried outside the walls of the graveyard. ‘I don’t believe that,’ Paula said. ‘I don’t think a just God would punish someone further.’

  Tears were leaking from his old eyes. ‘But that lot – these evil, evil people – they walked free. No punishment.’

  ‘They’ve been punished now,’ said Paula quietly. ‘Four of them are dead, John, even the woman. She won’t be coming home to her children – the youngest is only a baby.’

  He closed his eyes. His hand was cold in hers. ‘John,’ she said, ‘if you know something, please tell me now. Before it’s too late. If we can find Flaherty, even – if we can just know what happened . . .’

  ‘Already too late.’ His voice was exhausted, used up. ‘Was too late . . . long ago.’

  ‘I’ve got this problem,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘I’m no good at giving up. I can’t give up trying to find my mother, whoever I hurt in the process, and I can’t give up on this case. I need to know. I know it won’t do any good, and maybe they deserved it – but John, there was a reason you left the group. You couldn’t go along with their idea, could you? You knew justice was only God’s to deal out.’

  He muttered something. ‘C’mere.’ She leaned in close, so her ear almost touched his mouth. His breath was weak. He smelled of hospitals and old damp clothes. ‘The wee girl,’ he gasped.

  ‘Kira? Kira Woods?’

  ‘Aye. The wee one.’

  ‘What about her?’ One of John’s machines began to beep, and outside she could hear a commotion of feet. ‘John! Is she in danger? Tell me!’

  He pushed his head up, with great effort, like an old tortoise. ‘It was her idea,’ he said, right into Paula’s ear. Then she was thrust aside.

  ‘Let us work please, miss!’ John was swamped by nurses, and a terribly young girl in scrubs who was apparently the doctor. The machine kept beeping.

  ‘Are you family, miss?’ asked a different nurse.

  ‘No, there is no family.’

  ‘You’ll have to go then. Please.’ The curtains were swished around, and Paula got her last glimpse of his face, white as if he were already dead.

  ‘Is he dying?’

  Paula turned at the sound of the small, stricken voice. A thin, pale girl in school uniform was at her side – Kira Woods herself. ‘You shouldn’t be here, Kira.’

  ‘I heard he was sick – he’s not got anyone to be here with him. He wouldn’t let Dominic . . .’ She was shuddering. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own when you die.’

  ‘He’s all right, Kira. They’ll look after him.’

  Kira just looked at her. ‘He’s dying, miss. I know he is. Please don’t lie to me.’

  ‘Well, OK, but there’s nothing we can do. He’s old. He’s . . . he’ll be with his son and wife again, maybe.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, miss?’

  ‘I don’t know, Kira. There’s no way to know.’

  The girl was shaking. Paula looked at her watch. ‘Come on, I’ll wait with you.’

  It wasn’t long. They’d been in the waiting room for ten minutes when the young doctor came, reading from her clipboard. ‘I’m sorry, but he was very weak, and he did sign the DNR order . . . he wasn’t in any pain.’

  Kira was pale and composed. ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Are you his granddaughter?’

  Kira tutted. ‘He didn’t have any. His son died in the bomb.’

  ‘The bomb?’ The doctor looked tired, confused.

  Kira sighed. ‘Never mind.’ She looked at Paula, and her eyes were hollow. ‘Thanks for waiting with me, miss. It’s all right. I think he’s happier now, it’s just . . . I feel sad for me.’

  Paula had the car keys in her hand. She knew Maggie was waiting for her, needing a feed. She’d be starting her small snuffling noises, pulling at the top of whoever was holding her. Aidan, maybe still. She looked at the girl, who was slumped in her chair, head down. ‘Can I drop you somewhere, Kira? Do you not have school today?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t . . . I don’t want to go home yet. Mammy . . .’ She shuddered. ‘She’s cross with me.’

  ‘Well, a friend’s, maybe? I can’t leave you here on your own. I’d stay but I really have to get back to my baby.’ She could all too easily picture herself. In her maroon school uniform, the same age, thirteen or so, answering all their endless questions in the police station, sitting in this same hospital waiting for PJ to identify a body they’d found that might have been her mother. Did your mammy say anything to you? Did you see anyone near the house? At least she hadn’t had to watch her mother die in front of her, covered in her blood, as this girl had watched her sister Rose. She thought of what John had said – what did it mean, it was all her idea?

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Get your coat on. I’ll drop you wherever you want.’ And maybe on the journey she could find out what Kira knew.

  Kira seemed to relax as they moved out of town in the early morning traffic. The streets were full of kids in uniform, the navy of Kira’s Protestant school, the black of the Catholic boys, the maroon of Paula’s own convent school and the pale blue sweatshirts of the integrated high school. The girl sat quietly beside her, school bag on her knee. ‘Where is it you want to go?’

  ‘Can we go out of town, miss? Like in the country, in the hills.’

  ‘You have a friend there?’

  ‘Yeah. A few friends.’

  ‘OK. And you’ll call your mother and tell her you’re there?’

  ‘I already did. Earlier, I mean.’

  ‘OK. Good.’ She found herself taking looks at the girl, with her scars and slightly unnerving silences – she wasn’t pretty, as Rose had been, but there was a steel core in there, a tough little nugget that hadn’t shattered when her family did.

  ‘Kira – John said something to me, there now . . .’

  ‘How’s your little baby?’ Kira asked suddenly. She was still looking straight ahead.

  ‘Oh – she’s OK, thanks. Very little still. I’m not sure she even knows who I am.’ She glanced at the dashboard clock; she really had to get back. The traffic was awful.

  Kira was saying, ‘I bet she does. People always know who their mum is. I did.’

  Paula frowned. ‘Your mother? But . . .’

  ‘Not her. I knew she wasn’t really. She didn’t love me.’

  ‘What do you mean, Kira?’

  Kira looked at her in the car mirror. ‘Rose was my real mum. Did you not know? Mammy isn’t my mum at all.’

  Paula stalled for time. ‘Er – what makes you think that?’

  ‘I just knew. Mammy used to say things, when she’d drunk too much. So I asked Jamesie – that was Rose’s boyfriend. I knew she used to go out with him way back. He said he was my dad. Rose was having me, only she was too young, she was fifteen, so they pretended I was Mammy’s and Rose didn’t see Jamesie again for years.’

  ‘Oh. That must have been very difficult.’ Paula’s mind was racing. It was a common practice in Irish families, the youngest member actually being the first grandchild. She looked at the road ahead, now empty as the bog stretched out on either side, heather and gorse blooming. They hadn’t seen another car in some time.

  ‘Not really.’ Kira’s chin was raised; she looked different. ‘I knew it, you see. I could tell Rose loved me. She talks to me sometimes, still. She said she’d have gladly died like that, instead of me, if that was the choice she had to make. You’d do the same, wouldn’t you, miss? For your little girl? You’d die for her. That’s what it means when you really love someone.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Maggie.’ Kira flashed her a look. ‘You named her for your own mammy, Dominic said. I bet she didn’t want to leave you, miss. Like Rose didn’t want to leave me. I bet she didn’t go by herself.’

  ‘Kira—this isn’t . . .’

  ‘Can you slow down,
miss?’

  She was so flustered she did hit the brakes, and the car slowed right down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kira, and then she was wrenching open the door, tumbling out onto the road, hitting it knees first. Paula slammed on the brakes and the car stopped, but Kira was up, rubbing her cut legs, and sprinting with surprising speed over the bog.

  Kira

  It was something that, when she knew for sure and no messing, she realised she had always known. Like there being no Santa Claus. For years you didn’t want to know the truth, trying to hold yourself away from it, and then it hit and it was OK. It was something solid to stand on.

  There were little things. Rose’s story about Daddy almost kicking her out for something she’d done. The comments Mammy used to make about being sinful and no better than she should be. There were no pictures of herself and Mammy in hospital, but there was a picture of Rose holding her that she’d seen in Rose’s sock drawer. Rose looked fat and shiny and Kira had thought at the time this was why it was hidden.

  Then the time a neighbour calling in said he’d got his car fixed by ‘that fella Jamesie you used to go with, Rose’ and that he’d done a good job. And everyone had gone quiet and Kira had remembered the strange meeting in the hotel. But she didn’t really know it until the night of Rose’s birthday, just before the last bomb anniversary. Rose had only turned twenty-three when the bomb happened. She’d have been twenty-eight now, nearly thirty. On her last birthday they’d gone out to a pizza restaurant in town, and Mammy had sighed that there was no boiled spuds, but Rose and Kira had put on party hats and made each other laugh, and like always, it didn’t matter how Mammy was.

  Mammy got drunk this year on Rose’s birthday. Whiskey this time, mixed with Fanta. Kira could smell it on her breath. ‘I’d have thrown her a party, she’d have had weans, her own proper weans. She’d have been wed. Making something of herself.’

  Kira had been trying to help. ‘She did make something of herself. She had a boyfriend. I think she liked him.’

  Mammy stared at her, her eyes bloodshot.

  ‘Jamesie. You know, he fixes cars. I think she might have married him.’ This was after she’d seen Jamesie at the garage, after all the plans were in place, when it was too late to turn back or change what she’d done.

  The finger pointed. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

  ‘I met him.’

  The whiskey was dripping out of Mammy’s glass. ‘That dirty wee slut. She promised me you’d never meet him.’

  ‘She’s not a slut! You take that back!’

  ‘And what would you know about it? Having a baby at fifteen years of age, so I could hardly hold my head up in church?’ Mammy started to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. I was hard on you. But you sinned.’

  Kira was counting in her head, and feeling odd, like sinking down into the bottom of the sea. ‘Mammy?’ She gasped. ‘Mammy?’

  Mammy just stared at her. ‘What’s the point of you calling me that? I’m no more your mother than I am the dog’s. Get out of my sight.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Shit. Shit! Paula looked at the clock. 8.36 a.m. Maggie flashed into her mind, the small, compact body, the lullaby of her cot mobile. That was where she was supposed to be. Maggie might be still asleep, but she’d wake at some point, howling for the mother who wasn’t there.

  ‘Shit,’ she said again, parking the car up beside the road. She took off her seat belt and set off after Kira. It wasn’t easy. The birth had left her out of shape, and she could feel every step as she herpelled through the sticky bog. Bog cotton waved in the breeze and the ground squelched underfoot – step in the wrong place and she’d break her ankle, get stuck out here. Her breasts ached with milk. Maggie, Maggie . . .

  ‘Kira!’ she shouted. The girl had vanished into trees up ahead. ‘Please come back! I can’t go after you – I need to go to my baby. Kira. Kira!’

  Nothing. She somehow made it to the trees, where the ground was harder, paved in pine needles. The morning sun slanted through the trunks like pillars in some enormous cathedral. She was glad she’d at least worn ankle boots with flat heels. ‘Kira! For God’s sake, please come back.’ She followed the girl’s progress onto the pine track, trying to listen for breathing or running teenage feet. There was nothing but her own panicky wheeze, and distant birds way up high.

  ‘Help!’ she shouted, she wasn’t sure who to. But someone stepped onto the path ahead of her.

  ‘Paula!’

  ‘Dr Finney?’ She ran to him. ‘What are you doing here?’ He was dressed in jeans and a light red rain jacket.

  ‘I’m out with the search team – are you all right?’ He took her arm. ‘You look pale.’

  ‘Just too soon to be running, after the baby. I was driving Kira Woods home and she ran off on me. I can’t just leave her out here.’

  He nodded. ‘Look, I think there’s something going on – there’s a sort of hut up here. Let’s look.’

  She was panting. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘You’ll be safe with me. I think Kira went there.’ Still breathing hard, she let him lead her to the end of a path, where a wooden hut sat in the trees. It was small – no more than ten metres long.

  ‘What is this place?’ Paula stopped.

  ‘I think it’s an old forestry hut. Come on, she went in here.’

  ‘What did you say you were doing here?’

  There was a moment when she could have run, maybe even got away, had it not been twelve days since she’d given birth, and she wasn’t thinking straight. Most of her brain focused on her baby needing to be fed across town. Then it was too late anyway. His hand closed on her arm, hard this time, and he pushed her in.

  Inside the hut was dark, and for a moment she couldn’t see who was there. Then faces emerged – Dominic Martin was standing over someone in a chair. Kira was there, and Lily Sloane. Tied to the chair, apparently unconscious, was Jarlath Kenny. And in the corner, in a sort of makeshift cage created by bars set into the wall, was a very much alive man she recognised from pictures as Martin Flaherty.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Maguire. It’s nothing personal.’ Lorcan had turned. For a long moment, maybe for five seconds, she genuinely didn’t understand what had happened. There was a gun in his hand, pointed at her.

  Then it all fell into place, beautifully, horribly. The way they’d been led straight to the sea caves, but no one was there. The fact that Dominic Martin’s van had, against all common sense, shown no traces linking it to the murders, yet his shoes – sent to London – had. The fact that Finney also drove a white van, which he’d been standing beside when she’d first met him. He had been tampering with the evidence. He was the leak. She remembered, vividly, handing him that scrap of paper with Kira’s writing on.

  ‘But – why you?’

  He shifted the gun. ‘One of the dead women. Lisa. Do you know her maiden name?’

  Paula mentally leafed through the file she’d committed to memory. All the dead, their faces, their lives. Their names. Lisa McShane, dead in the car park, her hands clasping forever onto the man she couldn’t bear to let go.

  ‘She was your sister? Lisa McShane was your sister? But how . . .’

  ‘No one knew. I’ve been away in England for years. Like you. We were separated when the terrorists disappeared our father. They tore my family apart, and then they killed Lisa too. Even now they’re destroying her. The things they say about her! So ugly. It isn’t fair. I came home for the trial, hoping I’d see some justice – well, you know how that ended. So what choice did we have?’

  Paula looked round at them. The man in the cage, sitting on the ground with his head bowed, unmoving. The teenage girl, blank-faced, and Dominic, and Lily, weeping. Ordinary people, brought to this crazy place. ‘So you lifted them – you went in the van with the Walshes, and you?’ She looked at Dominic, who lowered his head. She looked at the gun in Finney’s hand. ‘You shot at the Walshes too, I take it? Not Kenny. He was already gone by then. Did
you . . . was it you who hurt Gerard?’

  Lorcan shifted on his feet. ‘He’d worked out it was me. He was looking for proof. We couldn’t let him get any closer.’

  ‘You put him in the hospital. You almost killed him. And now you’ve kidnapped me too.’

  Dominic spoke. ‘We haven’t . . . There was no other way, Dr Maguire. We know you saw John before he passed, and it was you picked up DC Monaghan too. We knew you were getting close to us when you gave Kira’s writing sample to Lorcan.’

  ‘So what happens now? You kill me?’ She gestured to Flaherty. ‘I guess this was some kind of vengeance. You can’t kill me. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I have a child at home.’ She turned to Dominic. ‘You came to see me in hospital, when I was holding my baby – why did you do that?’

  He lowered his head. ‘I . . . I wanted to show you we aren’t bad people. We’re the victims here.’

  ‘And what’s your plan now you have me?’

  ‘You can let it go,’ Lorcan said. ‘No one has to know. I’ve got Corry exactly where I want her – especially when she finds out the leak’s been coming from her all along.’

  ‘What?’ said Paula.

  ‘Let’s just say she isn’t as careful of her BlackBerry as she should be when I’m distracting her. So look. We can pin it on Kenny. It’s all set up.’

  ‘You kidnapped him too? Why?’ She looked at the unconscious mayor. A bubble of blood sat near his mouth.

  ‘He was getting spooked. He was happy enough when we went to him and asked if he could help us out when we lifted this lot and got them out of his way too. That was Kira – she persuaded him. No one could know I was involved. Then when you started figuring it out he’d have shopped us. Didn’t want to get his hands dirty, now he could be an MP.’

  ‘But he had nothing to do with the Mayday bomb!’

  Lorcan made an impatient gesture. ‘He’s just as bad. He’s killed people, and not only is he free, we’ve elected him mayor of our town! It’s a joke, it really is. He thought he could do whatever he liked and walk away. He’s a liar and a hypocrite.’