The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  ‘Really? I thought they never found anything.’

  ‘They didn’t. But there’s a prisoner, ex-IRA – he said he might tell something, if he got let out early. He hasn’t talked yet but I might – I might go and see him. He said maybe he knew her name. Mum’s.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Who is it, Maguire? Someone local?’ She didn’t want to tell him. He knew anyway. ‘It’s Conlon, isn’t it? Jesus Christ. You’re going to talk to the man who shot my da right in front of my eyes?’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Course we fucking know. I was there, Paula.’

  He never called her Paula. ‘It’s my mother, Aidan! He might know something. I have to at least try.’

  ‘And why are you telling me?’ She hesitated. ‘Fuck off. You want me to help you?’

  She nodded slowly. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? ‘I need you. I can’t do this without you.’

  Aidan put his head in his hands, making an odd sound. It took her a few moments to realise he was laughing. ‘You’re something else. You sleep with me, then you ignore me for weeks while you prance about with fucking Brooking, and now you want me to help you free the terrorist who murdered my dad?’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Save it. You and me go back a long way.’ His eyes were very dark. ‘There’s a lot I’d do for you. But you ask too much sometimes. You ask too much, Paula.’

  He turned and went back into the pub, and not knowing what else to do, Paula left.

  When she turned her key in the lock at home she realised someone was there. The good teapot was out on the table and a plate with biscuits arranged on it – bourbons, custard creams. From the living room came voices, her father’s deep rumble, and someone else. A woman, her face turned away. Paula pushed the door. The woman had once been a redhead, you could tell – the exact shade of the plait coiling over Paula’s own shoulder. ‘Dad?’ Her voice stuck in her throat.

  Light was falling from the lamp, pale and indistinct, and for a moment she couldn’t see the woman’s face. She wasn’t tall, around five-five, her body compact under a North Face raincoat, hair short and greying. ‘There you are, Paula. I knew you’d look exactly like that. Do you remember me?’

  She did. She did. Her hands steadied on the wooden lintel of the door. Not her, no, not her, but close. ‘Auntie Phil?’

  ‘That’s me. Philomena.’ Her mother’s sister moved towards Paula, assessing critically. ‘I knew it had to be you. At the home they said one of Mammy’s granddaughters visited. Well, I knew it couldn’t be our Cassie because she’s in court weekdays – she’s a lawyer – and it can’t be Mairead since she’s off travelling in Australia. There’s only one other granddaughter, you know; it was all boys otherwise. And I knew you were back. I saw Pat O’Hara in town when I was doing my Christmas shopping.’

  Paula stood speechless during this stream of information. Her father shifted to his feet. ‘You went to see your granny then?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s been too long.’

  ‘I’d have brought you, if you wanted to go.’ He manoeuvred past Paula, gently holding her elbow. ‘Will you take more tea, Philomena?’

  ‘No thanks, PJ. I’ll be on my way, with all this snow.’

  ‘Shocking, isn’t it? You’d think they’d get the gritters out.’

  ‘Well, what I heard was, PJ, the council have let all the stocks run down and now there’s no more to get, so we’ll have to sit it out. They’ve to order some in from China or someplace like that.’

  ‘Awful. I can hardly step out the door, with this leg.’

  ‘I’m sure, God love you.’

  There was no indication that the two hadn’t spoken for nearly twenty years. Did they know? Had someone passed on that Paula had openly declared her pregnancy, and her intention to start looking for her mother again? There was no sign they were interested in anything other than biscuits, and the perfidy of the local council.

  When Philomena went, making a big show of thanks, and goodbye, and come out to the house sometime, sure Cassie would love to see you, Paula stared at her father. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘She called by. She must have been in town to get her shopping.’ He began putting the biscuits back into an old Quality Street tin.

  ‘Called by? Dad, she hasn’t been here in, like, seventeen years.’

  He shrugged. ‘Aye, well, we both said some things. ’Twas a bad old time. But it’s water under the bridge.’

  ‘Did they—’ She paused. ‘You know when they – because you were suspended from work, did Mum’s family think it was you who maybe – that you had something to do with it?’

  He said nothing for a moment. ‘It’s what you do. If a woman can’t be found, you always have to look at the husband.’

  ‘But you’d an alibi. You were working on a case that day. Weren’t you?’ She hoped it wasn’t obvious she’d been rereading the file very recently.

  He closed the biscuit tin. ‘I was. But they’d only you to say she was here in the morning, pet. You see? And you were just a wean.’

  ‘Oh.’ That silenced her. How much of a lynchpin she’d been in the case, the last person to see her mother alive and well in her proper place. ‘What did she want, Auntie Phil?’

  ‘I think she wanted to bury the hatchet. I’m glad, to be honest. It was wrong of me to cut you off from them. You need your family. I won’t be around forever.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ He moved towards the living room, gathering his tea and paper. ‘Maybe if you were married or something, pet. But I worry about you. You can’t be alone in this ould world. You need people round you.’ He stumped past her again, the limp making him seem older than his sixty years. She wondered if he was right. In London being alone had seemed like a luxury, an escape, something to be hoarded. It was only in Ballyterrin that it seemed like a disease.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Paula? You busy?’

  Paula looked up, confused. She was at her desk, the cursor blinking on a blank Word document, and she had the sliding sense that time had rushed past her. ‘Um, no, just researching, why?’

  It was Fiacra who’d spoken to her, coming in with a sprinkle of snow on the shoulders of his trendy reflective jacket. ‘Boss wants you to go to the station, he’s up there.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ Paula rubbed her face, trying to hide her confusion; she was just so tired, day and night.

  ‘Computer techs found something, he said. He wants you.’ Fiacra was settling down at his desk with a jam doughnut, flipping his tie aside and turning up his iPod.

  Avril gave a little tut from her own neat desk. ‘Not Kanye again, please.’

  ‘Who’d you want? Jay-Z?’ Fiacra thumbed through the display.

  ‘I don’t mind him so much, I suppose. If Beyoncé likes him he must be OK.’

  Paula left them to it and went out to her car, huddling into her coat for the short walk across the parking area, riven with icy winds.

  She’d spent the morning updating her profile of the abductor, though it was difficult. You had to imagine that shadowy figure they’d seen taking Alek Pachek, tall and dark in the nurse’s uniform, doing all these other crimes too. Leaving the baby in the church and slipping out again unnoticed, onto a busy rush-hour street in town. Abducting Dr Bates, a strong and determined woman, keeping her for days, then forcing her to march in the snow and cut her own stomach open with a scalpel. Lurking on the path behind the Williams house, unseen by any neighbour or passer-by, waiting for the mother’s back to turn for a moment, then seizing the child and making off with her.

  It was hard to believe the same person could have done all those things, have the patience to wait, the strengt
h to overpower. Sighing, Paula had discovered herself clicking through the archives to check which cases Magdalena Croft had worked on in the South. All children, all missing. Little faces and little lost bodies. All found, though some sadly when it was already too late. But could she possibly know, when all the police and experts hadn’t a clue? How could she trace a four-year-old to a windswept beach where his body lay hidden in a cave by the sea? She remembered the woman’s words. I’m not required to understand. When things were so far beyond what you could take in, it wasn’t so surprising people made their own answers. Miracles. Visions. Psychic powers.

  She pulled into the PSNI car park showing the pass she’d been grudgingly allowed, now she was working on the Bates murder case too. Guy must have found something important to call her up there.

  Trevor the computer tech had to all appearances just recently finished primary school. He had pink cheeks and wore a suit his mum must have bought for him. Paula remembered the heady days when she’d always been the youngest on every team, fresh from her post-doc at Greenwich University. Not any more.

  ‘So he’s accessed Dr Bates’s files?’

  ‘They were stored online, apparently, and he’s managed to access them finally.’

  Guy and Paula were outside the interview room where Trevor had been working on Dr Bates’s system with Erin, the doctor’s unhelpful receptionist. She was a lot more helpful now, letting out bursts of laughter that could be heard down the corridor. Through the room’s window they could be seen looking at something on Trevor’s laptop – what appeared to be a video of a dog on a surfboard.

  ‘Kids,’ muttered Guy. When he went into the room Trevor quickly minimised the window on his computer.

  ‘Inspector Brooking. Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’ Guy shut the door. ‘Hard at work, are we?’

  ‘Yeah. Erin’s been very useful. She’s the only other one who ever went on the system, see, so we had to get her in.’

  Erin smiled to herself, playing with the ends of her long black hair.

  ‘How are you, Erin?’ asked Paula. She hoped the girl wouldn’t reveal exactly why Paula had been at the clinic that day. Her lie about checking out a lead was flimsy in the extreme.

  Erin looked martyred. ‘I’m all right. We had her funeral the other day, Dr Bates. Humanist, but it was really nice. Sad. Poor Missus Cole.’

  ‘What have we got?’ asked Guy, impatient.

  ‘Well!’ Trevor beamed. ‘It’s a tough system, sir. Designed so not many could crack it. I mean, I could, but it took me a while.’

  ‘So you have her patient records?’ Guy asked.

  ‘I’m getting there. Lots of names. But guess what, if you look at when the data was last accessed, it was the second of December.’

  Guy took this in. ‘You mean after she went missing? Erin, did you access them on that date?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve not been near the thing. I got signed off work with shock after Dr Bates died.’

  She didn’t look very shocked, Paula thought, but whatever. Guy was frowning. ‘So what happened, Trevor? Did they know the password or was it hacked?’

  ‘They must have known it, I’d say. There’s no evidence of hacking.’

  ‘But she’d never tell it to anyone, surely – oh.’ Paula was realising one situation in which Dr Bates might have been forced to yield up this information.

  She looked at Guy quickly; he got it. ‘Erin,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Could you give us a minute, please? Thank you.’

  She went, with a fair amount of hair flicking and a backwards smile at Trevor. ‘You’ll email me about that thing?’

  ‘I will, of course.’ But he had the grace not to stare after her.

  ‘That’s why,’ Paula said, when the girl had safely gone. It was all very clear. ‘That’s why they took her. They wanted the password to her files, she wouldn’t give it to them – that’s why they kept her for three days. That was as long as she could hold out.’ She remembered the autopsy report. ‘Those cuts and injuries, the drug in her system. They were torturing her.’

  ‘This is very troubling,’ Guy was twisting his mouth. ‘Are you saying someone out there now has access to all Dr Bates’s records, Trevor? All the women in Ballyterrin who might have wanted an abortion?’

  ‘Pretty much. They could get all the addresses, even. I already ran a search through, and guess what, Heather Campbell’s in there.’

  Guy’s eyebrows went up. ‘But she wants her baby. She told us she’d been trying for years.’

  But Paula understood. ‘That’s not it. Do you remember, Heather told us her mother had added her onto the system like a patient appointment, when she went to see her? It seemed to especially hurt her. So her name would be in there for that reason.’

  Guy asked, ‘What about Caroline Williams or Kasia Pachek?’

  ‘Not that I can see,’ said Trevor. ‘I’ll take another gander.’

  ‘Do. And see if you can find out what appointments Dr Bates had on the day of her disappearance. Maybe one of them was our killer. Anything else for us?’

  ‘Yes!’ He almost bounced in his seat. ‘This is good, boss. Caroline Williams, the mother of that other baby who got taken – she was involved in some baby-breeding group, yeah? Little Monkeys?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that way, but essentially, yes.’

  ‘Well, turns out they’ve a discussion forum online. Nappy rash and crayons and all that. Guess who else went on there for chats?’

  ‘Who?’ Guy sounded wary.

  ‘Heather Campbell! We took her laptop in when she went missing and it’s all on there, under her own name. Amazing how many people do that. Anyway, it turns out her and Caroline Williams got involved in a sort of online spat on there, and that’s what made them both leave the group. So guess who that was with?’

  ‘Just tell us, Trevor.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. It was our friend Melissa Dunne. AKA Life4All. They have to give their real names on sign-up. I printed it all out for you, here. Melissa and Heather had some kind of row about hospital births. Heather it seems was all for them – babies died at home, she said, and it wasn’t safe. Her dad’s some bigwig doctor. Melissa of course was all in favour of dropping one in your kitchen. “Get that, darling!”’ He sniggered at his own joke. ‘So, it got a bit heated, and Heather deleted her profile.’

  ‘And Caroline?’

  ‘She chipped in about choice and “breastfeeding Nazis” and then deleted her account too in a huff. You know, it’s more and more common these days, online rows spilling out into real life.’

  Guy looked thoughtful. ‘It’s not implausible, I must say. Did Melissa Dunne seem the type to start online feuds, Paula?’

  ‘Yes, frankly. Obsessive, petty, lives her life on the internet. Exactly the type.’ Her mind was racing, fitting this information against the outline in her head, the shape of things. Caroline Williams and Heather Campbell knew each other. At least, online.

  Guy was saying, ‘Trevor, is there any way we could find out if Melissa was the one who accessed Dr Bates’s files?’

  ‘Oh yeah, if we had her computer. Even if she wiped it I can find the records. Very hard to wipe things entirely.’

  ‘God,’ said Guy. ‘There must be hundreds of names in those files. What if that’s it – the killer’s targeting women whom she feels didn’t want their child? If you find any more links between our cases and the files, Trevor, I think we should contact all the patients on there. Warn them, in case they went ahead with the pregnancy. They could be in terrible danger if the killer has access to these records.’

  It was then Paula remembered that her own name and address would be in those files, for all to see. Bollocks. She tried to keep her face neutral.

  ‘If you arrest your woman Melissa, I can requisition her comput
er,’ Trevor was saying. ‘I don’t think we can do much without it.’

  ‘OK. Thank you, Trevor.’ Guy was still looking troubled. ‘Let me see those forum print-outs.’

  They made depressing reading, misspelt and littered with smiley faces. Melissa Dunne, or Life4All, had used a picture of a foetus as her avatar. It appeared she had barged into a thread on hospital births and accused Heather Campbell, who’d started it, of trying to kill her baby.

  Mrs H Campbell: I’ve spoken to my father about this and he says hospital birth is much the safest and home births aren’t safe at all, what does anyone think about this? I’d like to have a water birth but maybe in the hospital. J

  Life4All: that is rubbish and the usual lies from the mainstream media. Having the baby at home is the BEST for the baby and the BEST for mum. You only have to look at the MRSA and all those other nasty bugs they have.

  Then Caroline Williams had also become involved.

  SnazzyCaz: Life is right, I’m sick of being told by the nurses what I have to do with the baby, forcing you to breastfeed even if you’ve no milk and the baby’s hungry, their like Nazis L

  Life4All: that is very dangerous, u must not give Baby ANY other food or else u will kill it

  SnazzyCaz: Er what r u on about? I COULDN’T feed my baby so I had to use formula

  Life4All: Laziness is all. U don’t see animals not able to feed now do you. People just cant be bothered nowadays is all

  Mrs H Campbell: I’m sorry but who are you to comment Life? My father is a famous doctor and he says babies die at home all the time. What medical qualifications do you have? But I agree we should all be breastfeeding for at least six months.

  Life4All: I have five healthy children at home all home births all breastfed. More than any of u stupid girls I bet

  SnazzyCaz: Mental cow

  Paula lowered the paper. Guy was staring at her, worried. Trevor was fiddling with his computer again. So. Melissa Dunne had fought online with two women; now one of them was missing and the other one’s baby had been taken. ‘We have to, don’t we?’ said Guy. Sometimes they could do this, talk without words. At first it had thrilled her; now it was just a reminder of everything that was gone. She nodded. They had no choice.