The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  She put on her seat belt, wearier than she wanted him to know. At least the puking had subsided. ‘I can’t be off now, can I?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘We’re running out of time with the baby, and if Dr Bates doesn’t turn up soon—’

  ‘You think it looks bad?’

  ‘I do. I don’t like the sound of those death threats.’

  ‘It’s an inflammatory issue here, abortion. And her living with a woman too – some would see that as deliberate provocation.’

  Guy did what she’d come to think of as his Ballyterrin look, a sort of ‘I can’t believe how backward these people are’ shake of the head. It made Paula bristle in defence of her home town, then realise sadly that some things were indefensible. ‘What were you doing there anyway?’ he asked. She froze. He retracted. ‘Sorry. It’s just you said you had a lead. I take it that’s why you knew her name.’

  She stared out the window and spoke carefully. ‘I had an idea that she might know about women who’d lost babies in the town – you know, if they’d had abortions. Then when I got there, she was missing.’

  As she’d hoped, he either bought it or didn’t want to ask further. ‘I suppose it was worth looking at. You should have told me, though.’

  They were pulling into her street now, snow suspended in the air beneath the street lights, a pinkish hue over all. ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s just – you remember what happened last time you went it alone—’

  ‘Do I remember having a gun held to my head? Yes. I do.’ An awkward silence fell. She could see her breath in front of her. ‘Sorry. Have they worked out who was on the ward that day?’

  ‘Not entirely, with the snow causing problems. They checked the Maternity leave records – that was a good idea of yours, thank you – but everyone’s child is accounted for. Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘There’s a technique called cognitive reconstruction. We might be able to take them back and recall who they saw. Our brains can’t consciously process everything we see, especially somewhere busy like a hospital, but it might be in there anyway.’

  ‘Good idea. Otherwise we have to hope there’s a response to the TV appeal.’

  ‘And Dr Bates?’ she said. ‘Will we start with the daughter?’

  ‘If we proceed. Maybe she’ll turn up tomorrow.’

  ‘Mmm. Maybe not.’

  ‘Let’s dig out those letters she received. They’ll be on the system, if they were reported. Can you knock up a quick victim assessment?’

  ‘I can try. She doesn’t sound the type to wander off. If it’s an extremist, they’ll let us know they have her, and soon. Otherwise there’s no point.’

  ‘Right. Oh – I nearly forgot.’ He made a face. ‘Listen, Corry wants you to see this faith healer tomorrow, if you can bear it. She thinks you can work out if the woman’s for real, or something. You can refuse if you want. It’s hugely disrespectful. I can’t believe she had the gall to compare you to some money-grubbing fraudster.’

  Paula didn’t mind. ‘The way I see it, if this woman knows things, if she’s getting so much right that she couldn’t know otherwise, she’s finding out somehow. And I’d like to know how that is.’

  He was smiling, very slightly. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  She had the door open and small flurries of snow were landing on her coat. ‘It’s really coming down out there.’

  ‘Be careful on the ice.’

  She paused. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me, earlier?’

  He opened his mouth, then seemed to change his mind. ‘You look tired. Tomorrow, if we get a chance.’

  ‘OK. Night.’

  As she crunched over the new-fallen snow in her boots, she knew with a certainty deep in her spine he was watching her, making sure she got to the door safe, but when she turned, his car was nothing but a ghostly set of lights receding into the pink-tinged dark.

  ‘Dad?’ She took off her coat and wiped her boots on the mat. ‘I’m home.’

  PJ was at the table, surrounded by official-looking papers, and seemed to jump slightly as she came into the kitchen. ‘You’re back late.’

  ‘We had another case come in. What’s up?’

  ‘What’s “up”? This isn’t America, Paula. Nothing is “up”. I’m going through some papers is all.’ Paula recognised the several small black notebooks PJ was now stuffing out of sight. He’d been looking through his old police notes. She knew he’d been doing this since he retired, going over past cases. Why, she hadn’t asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  ‘Why?’ She rummaged in the bread bin and slotted some white sliced pan into the toaster. She’d been running all day on tea and office HobNobs.

  ‘I might redo my will, I was thinking.’

  ‘Why, see who gets custody of me?’ She nibbled a corner of bread.

  He looked irritated. ‘Don’t be putting crumbs all over the clean counter.’

  Paula ignored him. She was thirty and pregnant by one of two possible men. Surely she had the right to make crumbs wherever she chose.

  PJ was clearing away the papers and Paula caught a flash of green – her birth certificate. Paula Mary Maguire. Father, Patrick Joseph Maguire; mother, Margaret Catherine Maguire. Somewhere in there would be her parents’ marriage certificate, back when her mother had still been Margaret Sheeran. No death certificate, of course – there’d never been a body to bury.

  PJ stumped off towards the living room, the documents back in a taped-together manila envelope under his arm. ‘That snow’s lying. You may wear better shoes tomorrow, or you’ll be sliding all over the show.’

  She rolled her eyes, so hungry she took the toast upstairs, picking at it with her fingers instead of buttering it. In the cold little room where she’d spent all her teenage years, she turned on her laptop and called up the website of Magdalena Croft – psychic, visionary, and faith healer. The site contained a lot of interest about Mrs Croft, but nothing that made Paula feel better about the upcoming interview. The woman had been in Ballyterrin for a long time, it seemed, at least fifteen years, though she wasn’t a native – her accent on the site videos was not Northern. As well as having visions, during which she claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to her, she also held faith rallies in the barn behind her house, where, in front of hundreds of people, she healed the sick, helped ‘barren’ women conceive, and could even ‘drive out the demons that cause homosexual urges’. Paula couldn’t believe the size of the crowds pictured on the site – a video showed the scale of it, Magdalena Croft too far away to even see her face, laying hands on a child in a wheelchair.

  What interested Paula was the fact she seemed to have collected a lot of money from her followers to build a proper church behind her house, but five years on there was still no sign of it. There was also information on how to stay at the house for a ‘healing’ experience – for a lot of money – and a number you could call for phone or private psychic consultations. Paula was going to have to bite her tongue so hard it’d be hinged in the middle. Because there was no denying Croft was doing something. There were hundreds of testimonials on the site from happy customers.

  Realising how late it was, she turned off the computer with a sigh and lay down, hoping that her mind and stomach would stop churning and let her sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘It was very good of you to come in, Mrs Campbell. We didn’t realise about your condition.’

  Guy had Heather Campbell, Alison Bates’s daughter, installed in the interview room, in the most comfortable chair the unit could muster – still not great. Heather had her mother’s cool, unmoving face, and her hair, held up by a jewelled clip, was the same dark black the doctor’s might have been before it turned iron. She was also heavily pregnant, and wearing a crucifix around her neck. Her expression was sour and unhap
py, and the huge bulk of her stomach meant she couldn’t get near enough to the table where her cup of tea rested. There’d been a moment of consternation when she’d asked for herbal tea – the unit tended to live off dark stewed Barry’s – but Avril had come to the rescue with some sachets from her desk drawer.

  Heather frowned. ‘I’d rather come here than have you tramping all round my house.’ After giving Paula a first, suspicious once-over, from her shoes to her untidy hair, she had refused to look either of them in the face.

  ‘You live just outside Ballyterrin? How’s the snow been?’

  ‘Bad. Can we get on with this?’

  ‘I’m sorry if we’ve kept you from work or anything.’ Guy was trying his hardest with her, but it wasn’t being reciprocated.

  ‘I’m on maternity leave.’

  ‘I see. You’re due soon, then?’

  ‘After Christmas. I took some time off.’ She looked at him. ‘Look, it’s snowing out there, and I’d like to get home to my husband. You better ask me those questions.’

  ‘Of course. As I explained on the phone, your mother is currently missing – though we haven’t yet put out an official report. Ms Cole thought you might have seen her.’

  Heather scowled at Veronica’s name. ‘I don’t know why she’d say that. I haven’t spoken to my mother in months.’

  ‘She knows about the baby?’

  Heather was rubbing her stomach in slow, firm circles. The bulge of it under the maternity smock and layers of scarves and coats had Paula transfixed, as she sat quietly beside Guy. ‘I went to see her when we found out. I told her I didn’t want to see her any more. I mean, I don’t talk to her much – the odd time maybe. But not after this.’ She looked Guy straight in the eyes. ‘She helps kill babies. She did it herself when she lived in London and she’d do it here if they let her. So why would she care that I actually want mine? It didn’t mean a thing to her.’

  ‘Was she upset when you told her?’ asked Guy.

  ‘How would I know? She never shows any emotion. She just said, “Well, Heather, you’re an adult; you can make your own choices.” Choice. It’s all she ever talks about. I was upset – but Jim – that’s my husband – and Daddy, they convinced me it was for the best. I don’t need her.’

  ‘How old were you when your parents divorced?’ Paula asked, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Fifteen.’ Heather twisted her own wedding ring, which dug into her swollen finger. ‘Daddy’ was Roy Bates, one of Belfast’s top cardiologists, Paula knew. A typical marriage of doctors, career equals – except it hadn’t lasted.

  ‘And was it acrimonious?’ Guy took over again. ‘Is it worth contacting your father?’

  ‘Only if you’ve time to waste – they haven’t talked since. Daddy hates me being in touch with her. He says she walked out on us. I mean – I understand, it happens, you fall in love – but how could she marry Daddy and then go off with a woman?’

  ‘You don’t get on with Ms Cole?’

  ‘I’ve never met her. But it must have been her fault. They say they can’t help what they are, the gays, but my mother, she loved Daddy before. She could have helped it. She’s always on about choice – well the way I see it she made hers, and it was that kind of life over Daddy and me. Maybe she was making some kind of feminist point, I don’t know. All I know is she left me.’

  Guy let that one subside for a moment. ‘So, Mrs Campbell, can you give us any idea where your mother might be, or who she’d go to?’

  ‘No. She had no friends, just that woman.’

  ‘You have an aunt, I think?’ he persevered.

  ‘On her side, you mean? Yes, Auntie Angela. She didn’t talk to Mum, either, but we’re in touch a bit. Facebook, you know. I’ll have to tell her Mum’s missing. She lives in Norwich.’

  ‘Heather,’ said Guy gently. ‘You realise that if your mother hasn’t gone to a friend or relation, that could mean something has happened to her?’

  It seemed to register. ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘Well, perhaps she’s been taken ill, or hurt somewhere, or—’ he stopped.

  Heather was biting her lip. ‘Those letters. She didn’t tell me, but that – Veronica wrote to me about it. She was scared.’

  ‘Did you write back?’

  ‘No.’ Heather grasped at the crucifix she wore around her neck, gold cutting white against red chapped skin. Suddenly she looked up. ‘You know what she did to me, my mother? When I went to see her that day, where she works, she’d put me in the system as an appointment. Just like anyone who goes to her. Like I didn’t even want my baby. Like I hadn’t been trying for three years, and . . . Have you any idea how hurtful that was? Her own grandchild and she just sees it as . . . well. I couldn’t believe she would do that. But that’s her. That’s the kind of person she is.’

  Guy broke the awkward silence. ‘Well, we’re already looking for her, so just be on the alert, and do let us know if you hear anything at all.’

  ‘Can I go?’ Heather was pushing against the table with all her might. ‘I want to go home to Jim.’

  ‘Of course. Are you OK to drive, because—’

  ‘Just let me go.’ She pushed out, walking tired and heavy, her shoulders softly heaving. Guy met Paula’s eyes and subtly shook his head; they’d get nothing from her.

  ‘I’ll see you out, Mrs Campbell.’ He followed her to the corridor and Paula began gathering her things.

  ‘Tough one?’ She jumped as Gerard opened the door into the room, eating a bag of bacon-flavoured crisps. ‘Not sure we should be hauling in pregnant women for questioning. She looks about ready to pop.’

  ‘She wanted to come in. Didn’t fancy having your size twelves on her good carpet.’

  Gerard harrumphed. But having spent an entire winter with police ripping through her own home, searching for any clues about her mother’s fate, Paula understood Heather’s impulse. ‘Got something?’ She’d seen the piece of paper in Gerard’s greasy hand.

  ‘I’m telling him first,’ said Gerard stubbornly. ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yes?’ Guy reappeared in the doorway, back from seeing Heather out.

  ‘We’ve just found Dr Bates’s car. Other side of the market near the clinic – so she most likely did head to work that day.’

  Guy thought about this. ‘But the clinic hadn’t been opened when the receptionist arrived – so something happened to her in between parking and arriving there.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Paula asked.

  ‘We’re going to have to officially declare her missing, I think.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Not a bad place she’s got,’ Gerard observed as he powered the police Land Rover down the country lane. It wasn’t strictly necessary to drive an armoured Jeep in these days of peace, but he seemed to like it. He also liked playing Bon Jovi at high volume in the car. It was disconcerting to go to crime scenes with ‘Shot Through the Heart’ ringing in your ears.

  It was snowing again, and Paula watched uneasily as the first soft flakes began to settle. ‘She’s loaded, by the sounds of it. Her supporters give her all their dosh – usual story.’ Paula wasn’t at all surprised at the large house they were drawing up beside. Set outside Ballyterrin in the countryside, it was the kind of pillared and posted, overly large mansion that proliferated in the borderlands. The smell of money all about. The countryside around was barren and beautiful, white as bone under the fallen snow, green and wet where it had melted over the day.

  Gerard was shaking his head as he manoeuvred the car over a cattle grid towards a paved courtyard at the back of the house, where several other cars were parked. ‘Can’t believe the boss is making us do this. Interview some mad old biddy when we should be finding the doctor?’

  ‘He’s just trying to keep pace with your other boss.’ Paula undid
her seat belt.

  At the mention of Helen Corry, Gerard looked wary. ‘You’d be wise not to try and take her on. She’s a tough one.’

  ‘What’s her story, Corry?’

  ‘Divorced. Some kids, I think. The guys moan about her – say it’s no wonder her fella left when she’s such a ball-breaker. But she’s good. Expects a lot, but then she gives you a lot back. She’s put me up for the DS exams next year, even though I’m only twenty-eight.’

  ‘She’s good all right. It’s quite crafty, sending us here, when Croft sees a lot of women who want to get preg—’ Paula stopped. ‘Oh no,’ she groaned, seeing a battered red Clio parked in the courtyard. On the bonnet was perched a dark-haired man in ripped jeans and a grey AC/DC T-shirt. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Not him.’

  Gerard wound down the window and growled at the man. ‘What are you doing here, O’Hara?’

  Aidan smiled widely. ‘So you are meeting with the faith healer. Now there’s a story.’

  Paula got out, slammed her door shut. ‘Let me guess – taxpayers’ money wasted, unemployment levels high, why don’t we close down all public services and make you Pope. I could write these stories for you, Aidan.’

  His dark eyes were amused. ‘I’d not be the best Pope, Maguire, as you would know.’

  Bloody Aidan. She looked at her feet. Gerard glowered out the window of the car. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You nearly derailed our last investigation with your rag of a paper.’

  ‘I’m hurt, DC Monaghan. The Ballyterrin Gazette is the best paper in town. Well, it’s the only paper, but still.’

  Grunting in irritation, Gerard put up the window and turned off the engine. Aidan seemed unmoved by their attitude. ‘What’s up with your man – was he off sick the day of the “good cop” training module or something?’

  ‘Leave him be. He’s right, you’ve no business being here.’

  ‘Maybe I wanted to see you. Seems I caught a flash of red hair at the hospital the other day – avoiding me, are you?’

  ‘If you wanted to talk I’m sure you knew where to find me for the past month, when you’ve not been in touch.’