The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Was there anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, sighing internally at her own cowardice. ‘Night, then.’

  ‘You’re late, pet. Your dinner’s long cold.’

  PJ was sitting with his leg up on what he called the ‘pouffe’, applying Deep Heat to the wasted muscles. After so long in plaster the leg looked weak and goose-bumped, like a scrawny chicken. She’d hardly seen him for days, Paula realised. ‘Work’s just gone crazy. Where were you today, did you go out?’

  ‘I’d a funeral to go to.’

  ‘Who was that?’ She sat on the stairs to take off her boots, dog-tired and cold right through.

  ‘Old colleague of mine. You wouldn’t know him. Kevin Conway was the name – he was a young constable when your mo— hmph.’

  When your mother went, he’d been about to say. This close brush was enough to still her heart. They didn’t talk about her mother. It was a rule as binding as it was unspoken. ‘What did he die of?’ She moved them onto firmer ground.

  He put the cap back on the tube. ‘Cancer. Liver. Drank himself to death, God love him. Last time I saw him he was in so much pain he’d a mind to take all his pills at once and finish it.’

  ‘Sad.’ Ex-RUC officers battled booze and depression like the twin dogs of hell. She eyed her father, his craggy bent frame, his greying hair, thankful yet again he had Pat calling in, taking him out of himself. She’d likely driven him to the funeral, seeing as she knew every man, woman, child and dog in the town. ‘Listen, Dad, I’ve a bit of work to do, so I’ll be upstairs.’

  ‘OK, pet. Let me know if you need a hot water bottle.’ He picked up a notebook from beside the sofa – another of his small black ones from his policing days.

  Upstairs, she took off her jeans, wet through with melting snow, and pulled on her pyjama bottoms, washed to a comforting softness. Then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk, where once she’d kept secret notes from Saoirse and old diaries. Now it held just one thing.

  It was only an envelope. Dun-coloured, slim, dog-eared. It was exactly the same as all the others they handled at the unit every day. Except those were just names. This was blood and bone and the wrenching loss that woke you deep in the bowels of the night, grasping for something you couldn’t name. This was her mother’s file.

  Guy had given it to her a month ago, when word came that a jailed terrorist had information on various missing persons cases. Sean Conlon, an IRA leader, had gone to prison shortly after the Good Friday Agreement for his role in dissident terrorist acts. He was also likely one of the men who’d shot Aidan’s father, Pat’s husband, in the newspaper office where he was editor and seven-year-old Aidan was playing under the desk. 1986. A bad year, among so many other bad ones. He had been interviewed in prison by the Commission for the Disappeared. This was an organisation with the sole purpose of finding the remains of the missing IRA dead, and returning them to their families. The Commission ran on a strict amnesty basis – no one could face criminal charges, no matter what they told. So Sean Conlon had decided to talk, if they could promise him early release. During his interview, he’d mentioned the name of Paula’s mother. That he might have information about her.

  Paula took the envelope out. Margaret Catherine Maguire, said the scribble on the front. Whose hand had written it? In those days, in 1993, her father had worked in the old RUC station where the MPRU were now based. The slogan painted on walls then had been RUC: 98% Protestant, 100% Unionist. PJ Maguire was no Unionist, but he’d been one of the two per cent, a Catholic officer. Some people said that was why her mother had gone. Taken, as punishment. As a debt to be repaid.

  She took out the file and her mother stared out at her. Paula remembered this photo well. She’d taken it, in fact, as the blurring and red eye attested. It was at a harbour somewhere in the west of Ireland. Galway, maybe. Paula would have been ten or so.

  She noted, and set aside, her own detachment. It was just a picture. The dead and missing always looked that way. You’d see the photos after, examine them for some sign of the fateful unravelling, but really there’d be nothing. The truth is, everyone smiles for photos, even if they’re dying inside.

  On the back of the photo was a sticker saying where it had been developed – their local chemist, where PJ still went to get his painkillers. Below was a series of handwritten notes. Her mother’s background – the five children, the father dead at fifty-four, keeling over in the hay field. Education – local primary, then the nearest convent grammar. So that was Margaret Maguire, née Sheeran, the facts and figures of her life, but telling you nothing about who she really was, what might have made her go out on a blustery October afternoon in 1993 and leave the front door banging in the wind, never to come back to her silent husband and bewildered daughter.

  Paula quickly put away a typed manuscript she recognised as her own confused teenage ramblings. She remembered in a flash the constable they’d got to interview her, a large woman with a farmer’s build and thick-as-mud Armagh accent. Have a wee think, pet. What did you see when you came in from school?

  Nothing. She wasn’t there.

  Did you not think that was a wee bit strange?

  I dunno. Maybe she had to work or something.

  She’d have known even then this wasn’t true. Her mother had only worked mornings, so as to be home for Paula, who until that day had never even had to make herself a cup of tea. A physical shudder went through her, and she set that aside too.

  Next, leads they had followed. Interviews with sex offenders in the area, statements from the neighbours. Every single one said they’d seen nothing. And that was strange in itself. The house was on a narrow street of cramped terraced houses, some with alleys between them. People saw everything – you couldn’t even drive two cars abreast. If you’d left your front door open, as Margaret had that day, they’d be onto you like a shot to see what was the matter.

  There was nothing else to know. Trains, buses, and planes all drew a blank, ferries too. Margaret’s passport had still been in its holder along with PJ and Paula’s, in the special travel folder they’d got for their one overseas holiday to the Isle of Man. Her purse was gone, but her handbag was there on the peg as always. Neither had been able to say what clothes were missing, if any.

  As Paula had told Guy when he’d given her the file, there was nothing in it, no new leads. Interviews and public appeals had all drawn a blank, and the two women’s bodies discovered over the years had turned out not to be her. Nothing, nothing, nothing. As if her mother had opened that front door and vanished before she even had time to shut it.

  Except for the man.

  Of course, the man. He’d been so debated and discussed that at times Paula almost wondered herself if she had just imagined him. The memory had the fake, sweaty quality of a dream.

  It was the day before her mother had gone. A normal day. I came home from school and Mummy was at the back door (had she really said Mummy? At thirteen?). There was a sketch of the house, the kitchen door giving out onto a small back yard and lawn with a whirligig washing line. She was talking to someone. She shut the door and then I saw a man going past the window down the passageway (sketch of how the narrow alley led down the side of the house and into the main street). I didn’t see his face, he had a hat on.

  What type of hat?

  I don’t know. I don’t know.

  A memory popped up, as if things moved and breathed beneath the surface – her mother had been in her dressing gown that day. She remembered it now, her mother shutting the door, a flash of leg as she turned, Paula already opening the fridge, warning don’t make toast, you’ll spoil your dinner. She’d have asked, surely. Wouldn’t she have asked why her mum was in her dressing gown at four in the afternoon?

  Paula remembered nothing about that evening, the last one she and PJ would ever have had with her mother. What h
ad been on TV on Thursdays? X-files, ER? She’d lived her thirteen-year-old life around school and TV, and now she remembered nothing, as if those years had pressed on her as blank and suffocating as a pillow.

  Below the case notes was the list Paula had begun when Guy had given her this file a month before. Just names, meaningless on their own.

  The first name: Colin McCready. Her mother’s boss at the solicitor’s office where she’d worked part-time. Paula remembered him, a soft-hearted man who’d once given her a packet of Minstrels when she went to the office after school.

  The next name was this: Auntie Phil. Her mother’s family were dimly recalled from Christenings and Confirmations, all ties severed after Margaret went, during those weeks when her father was suddenly at home, and then his own colleagues came round one day to arrest him. Yes, those memories were all still there, under a barely healed scab.

  She’d also written: Pat. Her mother hadn’t had other friends, and even with Pat it had been a couple’s friendship, forged in PJ and John O’Hara’s shared pursuit of what they called justice, while their wives stayed at home and worried about phone calls, balaclavas, shots ringing out.

  Another familiar name below: Bob Hamilton. She’d copied that from the front of the file, Lead Officer, Detective Sergeant Robert Hamilton. Sideshow Bob had led the hunt for Margaret, wife of his own former partner, even coming round in person to arrest PJ.

  So far, that was all she had for her list of people who might know something about her mother. Her boss, her sister, her friend, and the investigating officer.

  Slipped into the file was an extract from a longer interview transcript, with several lines highlighted in yellow. Paula made herself read it.

  Commission for the Disappeared (CD): And those missing people we showed you, did any of the names ring a bell? There’s a lot of families looking for some answers, Sean.

  Sean Conlon (SC): I need assurances before I talk. I’ll not answer for legitimate wartime acts.

  CD: As we’ve made clear, Sean, there will be no recriminations for pre-Good Friday Agreement actions. We just want answers, for the families.

  SC: [Pause] This name. Margaret Maguire. I remember her

  CD: Yes? She’s the only woman on the list, you’ll see.

  SC: Husband was a peeler, I mind. A Taig and a peeler.

  CD: And was she targeted because of that?

  SC: I’m not saying that. But I heard other things about her. Like she used to help out the Brits. Worked in some solicitor’s, so she did. She’d have had access to things. Information, on Republican soldiers.

  CD: Can you tell me more, Sean?

  SC: Not till I get my assurances. I want protection, if I talk to you. I won’t say any more.

  And he still hadn’t spoken, but the hint was there, the sly half-moon promise of the truth after so many years.

  Paula set down the paper, the edges sharp as a knife, and with an old chewed biro added the man’s name to her list, though it felt like a malediction. Sean Conlon. That’s who she had to speak to.

  Getting into bed, shivering with cold, she realised again there was only one person who could help her draw this into order, tell her what to do. One person who’d understand what it would mean for her to speak to Sean Conlon, knowing he might be behind her mother’s loss. No matter what was between them and whatever he’d done, she had to speak to Aidan. The simple fact was she couldn’t do this without him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Are you sure this is her?’ Paula looked askance at the large detached house they’d drawn up to.

  Fiacra obligingly checked the map, where Gerard would have just told her he knew how to read a bloody GPS, thanks very much. Fiacra was very restful to be around, in fact, like the happy-go-lucky younger brother she’d never have. ‘It is, so.’

  ‘I suppose nutcases can live anywhere.’ She shouldn’t be using words like that. It was rubbing off on her, being around the police so much, and there was something about these pro-lifers that really put her back up. Melissa Dunne lived right over the border, in one of the oversized mansions that littered the no-man’s-land there, farm vehicles parked up in their back gardens beside BMWs. It was technically in the South, hence Fiacra instead of moody Gerard. When Fiacra rang the doorbell they heard a rough chorus of dogs start up. Paula backed away slightly.

  The door was opened by a small child of about seven or eight, unsuitably dressed for the cold in leggings, bare feet, and a pink scalloped T-shirt with what looked like ketchup down the front. Paula hoped it was ketchup, anyway.

  ‘Is your mammy in, pet?’ Fiacra bent down to the child, who he seemed to think was a girl. She had limp fair hair, unbrushed and hanging down her back.

  ‘She’s busy.’

  ‘It’s very important. Tell her the police are here and we need a wee word.’

  The child called out, ‘Mammy!’ and the dogs started up again from deep in the house. Paula looked about her as they followed the child in, drawing her coat tighter. The house was very cold, and quite dirty, though the family clearly had money – there’d been a Mercedes and a Range Rover parked in the drive, and they glimpsed a huge TV set in the front room, playing Finding Nemo, with a collection of different-sized children and dogs watching it. Christmas cards were displayed haphazardly along the mantelpiece of the unlit fire. Paula tried to remember if it was the school holidays. ‘Shouldn’t at least some of the kids be in school?’ she said to Fiacra as they went down the hall, wood floor stained with paw prints. There was a greasy smell in the air, mingled with what seemed to be dirty nappy.

  ‘Mrs Dunne?’ Fiacra tapped on the ajar door of the dining room. The carpet was napped in dog hair, and the room was dominated by a huge scuffed table which looked antique. Underneath it lay three dogs, a Jack Russell, a large black Lab, and an indeterminate terrier-type thing with beady eyes. Fiacra was polite. ‘Can we have a word, Mrs Dunne?’

  The woman at the table was large, a size eighteen or twenty at least. She had thick seventies glasses and mousy hair held back with a hairband, drooping over the shoulders of her jumper, on which was knitted a flock of woolly sheep. ‘Can you not see I’m busy?’ She could barely be made out behind stacks of envelopes and pamphlets, the latter of which she was stuffing into the former. Paula moved closer to look at one and flinched. Anti-abortion leaflets. They’d spared no detail in their rendering of the mangled foetus. The red ink had been most liberally used. Paula had done some research after the briefing with Corry and it was true – Dunne’s group and others had grown increasingly active in Ireland. There was money coming in from somewhere; as well as the leaflets there were billboards, even TV ads.

  Fiacra said, ‘Mrs Dunne, I’m Garda Quinn and this is my associate Dr Maguire. We’re after looking into a case, and we’d like your help. You’re the secretary of a pro-life group. Life4All, is that right?’

  Melissa stopped stuffing and pushed aside her little netbook, which was cherry-red, and reminded Paula they still hadn’t found Dr Bates’s missing computer. ‘I am. What’s it to you? We’ve no government funding – too scared to stand up to the lefties and save our children, they are.’

  ‘Well, do you know the name Alison Bates? Dr Bates?’

  Melissa spat. ‘That murdering bitch. Don’t you say her name in my house.’

  ‘We have it on file that you phoned the doctor up a few times. Threatening sort of calls. Maybe sent her a few letters too. Is that so?’ Fiacra made it sound as if they’d been pen pals.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a busy woman, I don’t have the time to be writing letters.’

  ‘On your website, you mentioned the doctor, and you said, I think I have this right, “She’s headed straight for the fires of hell”? Is that so?’

  Melissa was unmoved. ‘That’s nothing but the Gospel truth.’

 
‘Well, thing is, the doctor’s been killed, Mrs Dunne. And seeing as you may have threatened to do her some harm, we’d a notion you’d be a good person to ask about it.’

  The woman was on her feet in an instant, despite her bulk. ‘I most certainly did not threaten her. If I explain the consequences of her actions, it’s a warning, surely. I was trying to help her.’

  ‘You said she would “burn in hell”, did you?’ Fiacra soldiered on.

  ‘As she will, for the souls of all those babies she murdered.’

  ‘Someone murdered her, Mrs Dunne. That’s the thing.’

  The woman paused; Paula saw with a lurch that she was smiling. ‘I can’t say I’ll mourn her too much. That woman has the blood of innocents on her soul, and she’ll be answering for it now.’

  Paula broke in. ‘Do you remember where you were last Thursday, Mrs Dunne? That’s when Dr Bates went missing.’

  ‘How would I remember something like that? I’m a busy woman, like I said.’ Melissa Dunne met Paula’s eyes, bullish.

  Fiacra cut the tension. ‘Ah . . . OK. We’d also like the names of your fellow group members, Mrs Dunne – we need to know who might have targeted Dr Bates.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Nearly anyone, Garda. She didn’t exactly make friends. And if you think I’m giving you anything without a warrant you’re sadly mistaken. It’s not right to be persecuting God-fearing Christians. We’re only trying to warn people, help them turn away from sin.’ With one chapped hand, Melissa took off her glasses and cleaned them on her jumper, exposing her saggy stomach. Paula looked away and the woman caught her aversion, addressing the next remark to her. ‘You know what they do to the babies during an abortion, Miss?’

  Paula struggled. ‘I – eh. Yes.’

  ‘Do you? They rip their wee heads off and they suck them out with a vacuum. Now you tell me that’s right to do to a woman when she’s vulnerable, tear the innocent life right out of her.’ Paula stared at the dirty carpet, willing the woman to stop talking. She didn’t. ‘You look at this. Take some away with you. Tell your friends.’ She was shoving some pamphlets at Paula, who backed away. ‘Look at what it is they do.’ Paula found one in her hand. The hollow eyes of the foetus seemed to stare at her, accusing.