The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Well, I didn’t see you going up to look,’ she fired back.

  Guy ignored their spat. ‘Can you handle it, Paula? You looked rather faint. I don’t want you coming out if it’s too much.’

  ‘I’m fine! It’s just cold.’

  ‘I hope it is fine. Because DCI Corry’s taking over this case now, but she wants you on it too.’

  There were always mixed emotions at the start of an inquiry. A certain pulse of energy as you pieced the clues together. It was sad, but it was also your job, and you wanted to be good at it. So sometimes a feeling of near excitement could kick in. But this was always tempered when it came to telling the family.

  Around three p.m., pushing past the band of journalists who’d gathered outside already, shivering in the snow – no sign of Aidan – Gerard arrived in the PSNI Reception with a pale and waddling Heather Campbell. She would fill in some forms and then be taken to the mortuary to identify her mother’s body. Heather was apparently listed as official next of kin.

  ‘Is that wise?’ Paula said to Guy, watching the woman through the glass walls. ‘Could the partner not have done it?’

  ‘Ms Cole can’t face it, it seems. And Heather insisted. I think she wants to punish herself, you know.’

  ‘Mm.’ Paula did know. If it happened now, if they found something that could possibly be her own mother’s remains, she would go, no matter how awful it was. To be there. To bear witness, in a way, with her own eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry, she’ll only have to see the face.’ And that had been unscathed. The same features, just stiff and waxy, as she’d imagined herself so many times. Except that’s not how it would be, would it? Paula’s mother had likely died seventeen years ago, if she was indeed dead at all. She’d be nothing like herself. It was pointless to keep imagining those well-loved features, frozen in time. She had to stop.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later, in the storm’s eye between phone records and press calls and door-to-doors and tyre-track analysis and the body being moved to Belfast for a post-mortem, Paula tried to put what she’d seen and heard into some kind of pattern. Often, she felt her job was like turning over a piece of embroidery, feeling along the stitches of the thing that had been left. The dumping in the stone circle, that had a certain flair to it, a dark theatricality. From what the CSI said, Dr Bates had probably been marched there, bound at the wrists, then forced to kneel in the snow, and – what? You wouldn’t get someone to kneel if you were going to slash their stomach. The height, the angle, it was all wrong. It was a classic paramilitary execution pose – walked to some lonely place, then the shot to the head. But she hadn’t been shot. Had she been made to do the slashing herself? It was a horribly fitting end for an abortionist, who many in Ballyterrin would consider to be a cold-blooded murderer of innocents, and one who’d had the gall to charge for her crimes. The more Paula thought about it, the more the staging reminded her of another tableau recently left for them. Baby Alek, waving his hands and legs in the wooden manger.

  ‘I want us to consider the possibility the cases are linked,’ she announced. ‘The baby abductions and Dr Bates, I mean.’

  Around the conference room table came the silence she’d expected from the team, the faint tut from Gerard, who didn’t approve of wild theories. Helen Corry, who’d reluctantly agreed to have the meeting at the cramped MPRU offices, put her chin in one hand. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, really. But she was slashed low down, you said. Not the stomach, but where the uterus would be. It’s very odd, and not an efficient way to kill someone. Plus, she was maybe forced to do it herself.’

  ‘Ritual suicide?’ Fiacra perked up. ‘That there Japanese thing – hara-kiri?’

  ‘There could be something in that – I don’t know. I know it’s a tenuous link, but the odds on two random abductions in this town are very low.’ Paula struggled to marshal her thoughts. ‘I just think it’s all connected somehow – babies, abortions . . . you know. They gave Alek back, then took Darcy. What if the doctor was involved too?’

  The DCI gave Paula an appraising look that made her heart sink. ‘You don’t think it’s much more likely she’s been targeted by extremists? You’re maybe not aware of it, Dr Maguire, but over the past few years the pro-life movement in Ireland has become very radicalised. They fire-bombed a pregnancy advisory service in Dublin last year. Go into town any Saturday and you’ll find them on the streets, with their flyers and their stalls. That’s why I leaned towards the idea it was someone posing as a patient, if we could find her laptop with the records. The woman offered abortion referrals. It’s hard to explain how angry that makes people here.’

  ‘I know that.’ Of course she knew; she might have been away twelve years but she did grow up in the province. ‘I can’t explain what I think, really. It’s just that the mode of death is very unusual.’

  Guy looked to be thinking hard. ‘As a theory it just about holds up, I suppose, and I agree the odds of two abductors are very slim, but what link could there be? Does it give us any fresh leads we can pursue?’

  ‘No.’ That was the frustrating thing. ‘But I would continue the lines of inquiry we have open – the hospital staff, and the death threats to the doctor. Cross-referencing might throw up something that gives a breakthrough.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt to look for any links, I suppose.’ Helen Corry was watching her. She hadn’t taken any notes throughout the briefing. ‘You still think it’s a woman? Dr Bates was strong and healthy. Not easy to overpower her.’

  ‘It’s always women in these types of abduction cases – unless they have a man as an accomplice, to help them get a baby away.’

  ‘What a world,’ muttered Bob, who’d been in the RUC for forty years, but still considered Ballyterrin the last bastion against a rising global tide of sin.

  ‘So we could be looking at a couple?’ Fiacra’s question made everyone groan. Conspiracies were deadly to solve, even harder to prove.

  Paula shook her head. ‘Like I say, I really don’t know. It’s just an idea.’

  Corry was looking sceptical. ‘I’m far from convinced by random hunches, Dr Maguire, but I’m open to trying this approach, since we have basically nothing else.’

  Paula subsided, chewing her lip. She desperately wanted to bring something to Corry and Guy, impress them, but all her insights had deserted her, like looking at a crossword upside down. ‘Did we find out anything about the Williams family?’

  Gerard answered briefly. ‘They’d money troubles. The phone call from the bank checks out – apparently they’re this close to losing the house.’ He rubbed his fingers together. ‘So she probably did leave the wean alone to answer it.’

  This had been Paula’s theory, but something still didn’t feel right. ‘OK. So if someone approached Caroline, seemed friendly, she might have admitted she couldn’t cope.’

  Guy placed his hands on the table. ‘Where have we got to on the death threats to Dr Bates? DCI Corry, you’ll want to get your team on this, but we did some preliminary inquiries into who might have wanted to harm her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Easier to say who didn’t,’ piped up Fiacra, and then coloured. ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Go on,’ Guy encouraged him.

  ‘Avril and me went over the threats the doctor received – well, there’s a load of them. She’d been denounced by everyone from the Catholic Archbishop to the Presbyterian Chief Moderator.’

  ‘Also by Magdalena Croft,’ Guy added. ‘Your expert, DCI Corry. She spoke against Dr Bates at one of her rallies.’

  Corry didn’t react. Fiacra glanced at Avril, who took over seamlessly.

  ‘But most of the threatening phone calls came from the one number, which I’ve managed to trace. It’s registered to a Mrs Melissa Dunne, who lives near the border. She runs a pro-life group called Life4All. The �
��for” is like the number four, though.’

  ‘Is she North or South?’ asked Corry. The question you always asked on a border. The border itself was nothing – only a line on a map, no longer anything physical to show for it. All the same, you could stand as close to it as you liked, but you were still on one side or the other.

  ‘South. That’s why Fiacra was helping. We also have her prints on file – she got arrested a few times at demos, so she did. We could run them against the letters to Dr Bates, see if we can get any prints off them.’

  ‘Why wasn’t this done at the time?’ Guy was frowning. Everyone looked down.

  Helen Corry answered. ‘Unfortunately the death threat is something of a staple of Northern Ireland life, Inspector. Ask any of our local councillors. If she’d been sent bullets in the post, or got followed home, we’d have been more worried. It happens.’

  ‘Well, can we run the prints like Avril suggests? We should get this Dunne in for questioning, I think.’

  ‘Of course.’ Corry still wasn’t even making notes. Paula wondered what it would take to really rattle her. ‘What about the Pachek and Williams cases – you said you were looking into the files?’

  Avril answered again. ‘We ran all the child abduction cases for the past ten years, north and south of the border. There weren’t many and they’ve all been resolved.’

  ‘We could go back further,’ Gerard suggested. ‘She’s, what, in her late forties by the look of the tape. Could have been younger when she first did it.’

  Avril’s fingers were poised over her laptop. ‘So, what, twenty years?’

  Paula was thinking about it. ‘Typically this kind of behaviour is triggered by a woman losing their own child, or not being able to conceive. There are some cases of younger women doing it but usually not. I’d say twenty years back would do it. Check all unsolved abductions – even if the child was returned safe, like Alek – and anything involving women.’ Once again she felt Helen Corry appraising her, nodding as if pleased. ‘I can’t add much to my profile of the abductor, I’m afraid. There is some professional literature on it, which suggests they are often overweight, for some reason, or otherwise lack control over some area of their appearance. Sometimes they actually believe they are pregnant – this is a condition called pseudocyesis. False pregnancy, it means. They can even have all the symptoms – weight gain, no periods. But then when there’s no baby at the end of it, they find one somewhere else.’

  Corry was listening intently. ‘So it’s a control thing?’

  ‘Often, yes. They want a baby and can’t have one, so they take it instead. There’s one more thing. The vast majority of these women had made contact with the family first. So it’s worth asking the Pacheks and Williams again if they remember anyone being over-friendly, perhaps at antenatal clinics or just out and about. The women often pretend to be pregnant, even if they’re not deluded – so they can then pass the baby off as their own.’

  Corry shook her head. ‘The Pacheks aren’t keen to talk. They’re too upset by the whole thing. We followed up the Williams link to the baby group, but everything seemed normal there. Apparently Caroline only came to a few sessions, then left. And we can’t find any connection between them and the Pacheks.’

  ‘What about the staff interviews?’ Guy asked. ‘Paula’s theory was the woman maybe worked at the hospital.’

  Gerard confirmed this. ‘Part of the reason the father never looked at her right was she must have seemed like a real nurse.’

  Paula said, ‘In these cases you also often get a dry run, preparing for it very carefully. If she doesn’t work there she’ll perhaps have been hanging round the hospital beforehand. Someone will have seen her, I’m sure of it. We just need to jog their memories.’

  Corry examined the nails on her left hand. ‘Well, we’re talking to all the staff who were there that day and so far nothing suspicious has come up, no unexplained newborns in the family. We’ll move on next to those who weren’t in, or shouldn’t have been – sick leave and that.’

  There was a short silence as they all considered how few leads they had in either case. Guy said forcefully, ‘This Melissa Dunne woman is our best link for now. We should discuss divisions of labour, DCI Corry.’

  ‘It’s a murder case now, so we’ll handle the interviews. I’m happy for you to look into the Williams case.’ She made it sound magnanimous.

  Guy smiled tightly, but didn’t disagree in front of his team. ‘I think we have considerable expertise here that would help the Bates case – access to all Southern databases, and, of course, one of the few forensic psychologists in the country with the right experience.’

  ‘Of course.’ Corry smiled back, equally fake. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer. I’ll use what I need.’

  ‘That’s not quite—’

  ‘Thanks, Inspector.’ She pulled on her green leather gloves. ‘Best be off. The most important thing, and I’m saying this to all my team as well, is to keep the press out of it. We say only that we’ve found Dr Bates dead. No word on how or where or any possible link to the missing baby. Is that clear? They’ll have a field day on this one if we let them. Especially after what happened on the last big case we had.’ Paula looked down, taking this as a dig at her. She’d gone to Aidan for help on their last unsolvable case, getting herself in trouble in the process. And now where was he? Nowhere to be found. Corry turned to Paula. ‘Could you see me out, Dr Maguire? I’d like a quick word about those interview techniques you mentioned.’

  They walked to the front glass doors, where an icy wind was blowing in from the car park. At the front gate, outside their high fences, several journalists were still toughing it out in the evening dark, shivering, wanting news of Darcy Williams and Dr Bates. Aidan was again conspicuously not among them, and that was strange. Usually he’d be in the centre of every scrum, with his difficult questions and his mocking smile. Perhaps he was off working on another exposé to discredit the unit.

  Paula crossed her arms against the cold. ‘I was thinking of a technique for improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony – you could reinterview everyone on the maternity ward that day, and see if anyone noticed something which maybe didn’t quite register at the time. I could train the officers, if you like.’

  ‘That sounds useful.’ Corry was digging in her bag (Mulberry) for an umbrella, looking at the heavy sky. ‘We’ll have more snow soon, I’d say. Listen, Paula – is it OK to call you Paula? Would you have a drink with me sometime? I’ve something I’d like to discuss with you.’

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘Yes. Just a chat outside work. Glass of wine.’

  ‘Well, OK. Sure.’

  ‘Give me a ring.’ She slotted a card into Paula’s folded arms and trotted off to her car. As Corry drove past the journalists in her Merc, sloshing melting snow at them and ignoring their shouts, Paula shivered and went back into the warmth.

  Back in the conference room, she saw everyone standing about the phone, their faces set and drawn. ‘What is it?’

  ‘That was Heather Campbell’s husband,’ said Guy, carefully. ‘Apparently Heather didn’t make it home from the mortuary earlier.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The news about Heather Campbell was worrying, but when they got Corry on the phone in her car she was reluctant to start another investigation. ‘It’s only been a few hours. She likely went to see a friend or something, needed some space. She’d just come from seeing her mother dead.’

  Guy sat on his desk, talking into speakerphone so they could all hear. ‘But with this snow, her husband is very worried. It’s getting dark now.’

  ‘We’d have heard if there’d been an accident. Let’s leave it till morning. Not a word to the press, remember! I have to go, I’m about to get penalty points for being on my mobile.’ Corry hung up.

  Guy held the phone, a
s if trying to decide. ‘I suppose she’s right. It will have to wait till morning. I’ll send someone round to the husband if she hasn’t turned up.’

  Paula was packing up some notes to take home with her. ‘You think it’s worrying?’ Guy had made no motions to leave, though it was gone seven p.m. and the others had departed for the night. Paula wondered if Tess was waiting for him at home, dinner perhaps ready on the table. A cosy family scene.

  He stretched, weary. ‘I hope she did just go to a friend. She was very upset – in fact she collapsed in the mortuary when she saw the body.’

  ‘How pregnant is she? Eight months or something?’

  ‘Yes, I’d say she’s quite far along.’ They were both silent for a moment, not wanting to say or even think of the possibility taking horrible form in their minds. ‘I’ve asked the husband to call us first thing if she’s not back. It’s not unusual for someone to take off, after such a shock.’

  Paula looked uneasily out the window, where snow gave the street a rosy glow under the street lights. Where would a heavily pregnant woman go all night, in that? She could imagine all too easily how it was for Heather Campbell, the sheet drawn back on the familiar face, a little older, set in new, stiff angles by the force of death. Your belly swollen in front of you, kicking with new life. She realised she was holding her own stomach and quickly took her hands away. ‘If I can do anything . . .’

  ‘Go home, Paula.’ He gave her a tired smile. ‘Get some rest. We need to get started on all Corry’s extra work tomorrow. I’d like you to go and see this Melissa Dunne too, when Fiacra does. If we get a jump on it Corry can hardly protest.’

  ‘OK.’ She lingered for just a moment. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home too?’

  Guy didn’t answer, just turning back to his desk. He looked so worn out, dark circles under his eyes, hair greying over his ears. She had an urge to touch the back of his neck as he sat there. Say – Guy, guess what, I’m pregnant. You remember, that night when we . . .