The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  He rounded a sharp corner to the nurses’ station. ‘We need the CCTV. We can’t hold people here indefinitely. Unless it shows something, we’ll have to let everyone go.’

  ‘We’ll interview the staff?’

  ‘If Corry lets us.’ He turned to her suddenly and the force of his grey eyes hit her like a punch. Paula skidded to a halt, boots slipping on the polished hospital floor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You should go home.’

  ‘Why?’ She bristled.

  ‘Because you threw up on my shoes earlier.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re as white as a ghost, Paula. There’s nothing you can do here.’

  ‘But—’ She looked back to the room where the couple sat, stunned by the loss of what was so recently acquired.

  ‘We’ll do everything we can, I promise. Why don’t you make a start on an offender profile? Corry’s going to want one asap.’

  ‘OK.’ She stopped suddenly. If she was white as a ghost, there was one coming right towards her. A ghost that refused to stay laid.

  Guy followed her gaze and gave a grunt of indignation. ‘For God’s sake, I told everyone not a word to the media.’

  ‘He always knows,’ said Paula wearily. ‘I don’t know how. He sniffs it out like a dog.’

  Aidan was several yards down the cordoned-off corridor, which was crowded with police and patients. He was talking animatedly to the officers at the barrier, and hadn’t seen her yet. She knew right then she couldn’t face him, not with Guy there too, both of them and the secret ticking away inside her like a bomb. She looked at Guy helplessly. ‘Can I get out of here? I can’t—’

  He seemed to understand. ‘There’s some stairs round the corner. Show your ID card and say I sent you. I’ll handle O’Hara. He has no right to be here.’ He hesitated. ‘Listen, when you feel better, Paula, I think we should talk. About – everything. About what happened with us last month.’

  She froze for a second. He couldn’t know, could he? No, she hadn’t told anyone and the only person who’d guessed was in London. She forced a smile. ‘Sure. Soon.’

  Paula ducked around the corner, just in time to see Aidan O’Hara, editor of the local paper and also her ex-boyfriend, stride up to Guy waving his press card. He’d shaved since she saw him last, a month before, bleeding on a stretcher, shot through the arm by a desperate man. Halloween night, the air full of smoke and danger, and Paula and Aidan almost getting themselves killed trying to find out what had happened to a local girl pulled dead from the canal.

  He looked different now. He looked sober, healthy, full of energy. Her hands crept over her stomach. Damn you, Aidan O’Hara. Damn and blast you to hell. Then she turned and almost ran before he saw her.

  Chapter Two

  Paula took the stairs at a gallop all the way down to the ground floor, which was also swarming with officers, everywhere people asking questions about what had happened and when they could leave. Flashing her police ID, she pushed through the springy doors to A & E. There was only one person she could think of who’d help her now.

  She was no longer sure how to think of Dr Saoirse McLoughlin. Best friend once, yes, for the whole of primary and secondary school. But then Paula had turned eighteen and left Ballyterrin, determined never to go back. It would take a while for Saoirse to forgive those years of absence, but they were at least back in a sort of strained contact.

  Paula spied her friend coming out of a cubicle, drawing back the blue plastic curtains. She saw Paula through the crowd and came towards Reception, hands in the pocket of her white lab coat. Its sleeves were turned up to leave free Saoirse’s small hands.

  ‘I’m taking a break, Ricky,’ Saoirse told the young man behind the counter, whose nose ring was glinting under the strip lighting.

  ‘Any word of when people can go?’ He indicated the waiting room, where every seat was occupied, some people with clean white bandages on, others bloodied and bashed-up, children chasing between the seats. The din was terrible. The unexpected snow had brought its usual quota of twisted ankles, tobogganing accidents, car skids. Coupled with the fact police were sealing every exit, the place was heaving.

  ‘I’ll get onto them. It’s unacceptable to impede our work like this.’ Saoirse glanced at Paula, who as one of ‘them’ looked awkwardly about her. Saoirse inclined her head. ‘Come on, I’ve got five minutes, if no one’s allowed in or out.’

  In her small office, she shut the door and sat at her desk. ‘Bit of a disaster, this. Management are going mad.’

  ‘Mm.’ Paula leaned against a filing cabinet, heart still hammering from the run downstairs. ‘At least in cases like these the baby usually isn’t harmed. Not on purpose, anyway. Do you have anything I can add to my profile? What do we need to look out for?’

  Saoirse’s face changed. ‘He’ll be cold, and hungry. They go downhill very fast if they’re not kept warm and fed. Do you really think they’re still here?’

  ‘No, they’ll be long gone. I’m sure we’ll lift the restrictions soon. They’re just checking the CCTV, I think.’

  ‘You think it was staff? A nurse took him, I heard.’ News travelled fast round the hospital.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s easy enough to steal a uniform, or just wear something that looks like one. I’d say it was someone who felt at home here, though. They knew the procedures, and how to get out quickly, and that they’d not be stopped.’ And it was most likely someone who desperately wanted a child, but she didn’t say this. Paula didn’t need to ask how Saoirse’s own pregnancy quest was going. She could see the answer in her friend’s drawn, set face.

  ‘I can’t believe it happened here.’ Saoirse was shaking her head. ‘It’s so busy today – how could they have got out with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. We think they just walked straight out. I mean— Oh.’ Paula stopped.

  ‘You OK?’ Saoirse was up, doctor face on. ‘You’ve gone green.’

  ‘Yeah, I just—’ Oh God, it was happening again. She gestured blindly. ‘Have you a bin, quick?’

  Saoirse snatched her small metal bin, and Paula threw up in it, a neat gob of bile landing on top of a tissue. No food in her left to come up.

  Saoirse was watching her strangely. ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘I’m OK.’ Paula wiped her mouth with shaking hands.

  ‘Has this happened before?’

  ‘A few times.’

  ‘Since everything?’

  Saoirse knew Paula had been having trouble getting over that night the previous month. She’d called in several times while Paula was recovering from the shock and bruises she’d sustained. Bringing chocolates, cheer, kindness. Saoirse did all these things properly, in her quiet way. Her mammy had reared her right.

  Saoirse was still watching, and Paula could feel it spurting up in her. Not vomit this time, but the urge to tell. ‘I saw Aidan,’ she said. ‘Upstairs. Just there now. I ran away.’

  ‘Not again. What’s with you two now?’

  ‘Nothing! We just – we had words.’ In fact the lack of words was the problem. ‘We’ve not really spoken since – you know, everything.’ Everything meaning that night in the lonely farmhouse, fireworks outside, gunshots inside. She pushed the memories away.

  ‘Why not? I thought he was helping you with that case.’

  ‘He was. But something happened with us just before, and we never really talked about it.’

  ‘You slept together?’

  Paula was embarrassed; how stupid. They were thirty, not twelve. ‘Little bit.’

  Saoirse sat down on her desk, hands in her pockets. ‘So?’

  ‘So, I’ve been boking my ring up ever since.’

  The shift in her friend’s expression was very subtle. You’d have to know her very well to notice the tightening r
ound her mouth. ‘I see. Well, that’s great news.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Is it not?’ Saoirse frowned. ‘I know you and Aidan have your differences, but there must be something there, if you keep going back. You were eighteen when all this started and it’s still going on.’

  ‘You’re right. There is something. I just don’t know what. Thing is – I’m not actually sure he’s the father. There was someone else. Round the same time. Ah—’ she indicated a vague upwards direction. ‘The, ah, the Inspector.’

  ‘Brooking! Jesus, but he’s old!’

  ‘He’s forty!’

  ‘He’s married!’

  ‘Separated!’ Though actually she wasn’t even sure if that was true now. They’d been getting a divorce, she’d thought, at the time, but since then she’d had a run-in with Guy’s wife Tess, who was very definitely not happy about the fact Paula had slept with him.

  ‘Right.’ Saoirse tapped her small foot on the floor. ‘You know, you can actually buy condoms in Ireland these days.’

  ‘I know! Christ, sometimes they break, OK?’ Not that she’d even used one with Aidan, carried away with lust and fear and sadness. God, she was an eejit.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. What can I do?’

  ‘Keep it. Don’t keep it. Choices are pretty limited.’

  Paula recoiled slightly, but then leaned into the blow. What had she expected, coming to her Catholic friend, who’d been trying for five years to have what Paula had stumbled upon after a few stupid nights? ‘If I didn’t want to . . . what can I do? I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to ask.’

  Saoirse sighed and opened her desk drawer. ‘This is the best place to go.’ She passed over a green-coloured leaflet. ‘They’ll be able to tell you what the options are.’

  Ballyterrin Women’s Centre, Paula read. Choices for women. Dr Alison Bates, owner/operator. A picture of a severe-looking woman, grey hair pulled back, white coat on. ‘But – it’s illegal here.’

  ‘Duh. She doesn’t do them here, obviously, but she’ll refer you to England. She’s English herself, actually. Been over here for years. Drives both sides mad, you can imagine. The hard-line Taigs and Presbyterians – you see them both on the pavement most days outside the clinic, blocking the way.’

  Paula could feel the shiny paper between her fingers. ‘I don’t know if I – I don’t know what I want.’ Abortion. She couldn’t even say the word.

  Saoirse moved her mouse to bring her computer to life. She seemed to feel the need to do things, offer solutions, be a doctor and not Paula’s friend. ‘I can make you an appointment. Do you want me to make you an antenatal appointment too? That way you’ll have options.’

  Options. Choices. That was what everyone said. So why did she feel she’d no choice at all, like walking down a corridor with only one locked door?

  ‘Um, no. Not yet.’

  ‘But you need to—’

  ‘I can’t, Seersh. Not yet.’ She put the paper carefully into the pocket of her wool coat. She felt unbearably ashamed. ‘I appreciate it, though. I mean, especially with—’

  Saoirse stood up abruptly. ‘How far along are you? I mean, at a guess.’

  ‘About two months, I think.’ In fact she knew exactly. It was either eight weeks or it was six, depending on the man.

  ‘Hmm. Decide soon, will you? Either way it’s only going to get worse.’

  When Paula got back from the hospital she felt exhausted, bone-tired and cold. The CCTV had apparently been viewed, and revealed that the abductor had left the building immediately after the incident, so when the exits were opened she thought she might as well go home and actually follow Guy’s instructions for once. Her father was in the kitchen, putting the kettle on, a Tupperware container of iced biscuits open on the counter.

  ‘Pat make those?’ Paula’s depleted stomach growled.

  ‘Aye,’ said PJ Maguire, hobbling on his crutches. An old injury had left his leg stiff, and he’d broken it badly again some months before, the plaster just off. ‘You never went out in suede boots in that snow, did you?’

  Paula rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah. So?’

  ‘You’ll catch your death. You were down at the hospital, I take it.’

  Paula dropped her coat on the stairs and lifted two biscuits. She’d long since accepted that her father, who’d been in the RUC for thirty years, knew everything that went on in the town. ‘It was on the news, was it?’

  He swallowed his tea. ‘Aye, God love them. It’s a terrible thing.’

  ‘This kind of case, you’ve seen it before in Ireland?’ She accepted the thick brown mug of tea he offered and dipped a biscuit into it.

  ‘Once or twice.’ He stumped over to the table. ‘If it’s like this, a wee baby gone, it’s usually a woman. They only want to love the wee one, but sad thing is, sometimes it dies since they’ve no idea what they’re doing. You need to find him soon.’

  ‘They want a profile already,’ Paula sighed, pushing back her red hair, where snowflakes had settled in the short journey from the car to the door. It was going to lie overnight, she thought. ‘It’s all very well they ask for one, but then if it’s in any way out they eat you for breakfast.’

  ‘Profiles,’ PJ scoffed. ‘Common sense is what it is.’

  Paula didn’t say this meant a lot of her job would be pointless. She crunched a biscuit. ‘These are nice. Thanks to Pat I’ve put on about a stone since I’ve been here.’ Immediately she wished she hadn’t drawn attention to it. If anything she’d lost weight, with all the fun puking she’d been doing.

  ‘She was asking after you today. You should call in with her.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Paula loved Pat O’Hara dearly – her mother’s best friend, she’d known the woman all her life. But Pat was also Aidan’s mother, and that was something Paula just couldn’t cope with right now.

  ‘I—’ She was going to say something else about the case, ask her dad’s opinion, when she felt the biscuits make an unwelcome reappearance. Christ, not again. ‘I – just – hang on.’ Hands over her mouth, she bolted up the stairs and retched on her knees before the toilet. When the nausea released its grip, she leaned her head against the porcelain of the nasty lime-green bath.

  ‘You OK, pet?’ PJ was calling up the stairs, worried.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice sounded weak and weedy. ‘I just – I had something bad for lunch.’ How many people was she going to say this to today?

  She felt his silence all the way up the stairs. PJ wasn’t a man you could easily lie to. ‘Well, come down and I’ll make you a hot water bottle.’

  Paula closed her eyes, thinking of Guy Brooking, so tall and straight-backed in his grey suit, striding down corridors, handing out orders. Of Aidan O’Hara, in his ripped jeans and Springsteen T-shirt, pen behind his ear, chasing stories. Wishing she’d never set eyes on the pair of them.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Morning, everyone. Briefing packs.’

  As the staff of the MPRU trooped into the office early the next day, kicking dirty snow off their shoes and unwinding scarves from cold necks, it was no surprise to see Guy there already, shirtsleeves up, briefing sheets printed out and neatly stapled in a pile on the conference room table. Since his lapse at the end of October, when his own teenage daughter had run away from home and been thought kidnapped, Guy had seemed keen to reassert his authority and race through the backlog of missing persons’ cases the team had been tasked with clearing. It had been a month of long days, going through files, chasing up old leads, interviewing slightly stunned families of the long-missing, jumping on any new case that came up, even though they were mostly schoolkids who’d fought with their parents and were back after a night. Nothing high-profile until the missing baby, and sometimes Paula wondered were they doing more harm than go
od. If they couldn’t find these people, why stir up the past, like poking a stick into a murky pond?

  Sitting down, she noticed a dark stain on the carpet, and tried not to meet anyone’s eyes. Please God she’d manage to hold onto the contents of her stomach today. The others were settling into their seats, Avril ready with her laptop, Fiacra fiddling with his iPod, Gerard drumming his fingers on the table in impatience, while Bob Hamilton blew his nose on a cotton hankie. Their small team had been in place only a few months, but faced a daily barrage of funding issues, local hostility, and competition from the regular police force, the PSNI, a sort of slick reanimation of the old RUC.

  Guy had put up a picture of the lost person on the projector, as was his habit. It focussed the team on what really mattered. ‘This is the only photo so far taken of Alek Pachek,’ he said briskly. ‘The father took it on his mobile minutes after the child was born.’ In the blurry shot, the baby’s eyes were shut, mouth open in a wail. He was clasped in someone’s arms – his mother’s, probably. Paula recognised the pink fabric of her pyjamas. ‘Can you give us an update on the PSNI’s actions, Sergeant Hamilton?’

  It always took Bob Hamilton just a moment too long to have the facts to hand. An old-school officer of the former RUC, he was supposed to take over the unit as a putting-out-to-pasture role when Guy eventually went back to London. Whenever that might be. ‘Eh . . . right. After the incident, the hospital was sealed and searched, so it was. The child and his abductor had clearly left the vicinity, so it was subsequently reopened. The cameras in the lobby showed the attacker exiting the area into the car park. So far nothing has been reported from traffic cameras and no one on the ward saw anything happen. Miss Wright has the footage, I believe.’ You’d never know from his dry delivery that Avril was in fact his niece. She caught Paula’s eye and smiled fleetingly. Typical Bob.