The Dead Ground

by Claire McGowan

  Bollocks. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘I know. It’s an emotive subject and he shouldn’t have brought it up.’ She looked at Paula. ‘And it’s just as much my fault. I shouldn’t have put someone who’s pregnant on a case involving missing babies.’

  Long silence. The faint hum of the overhead lights, and outside the noise of the station. Corry went on. ‘You are pregnant, aren’t you? I’m asking as a friend, you understand, not an employer.’

  Paula nodded slowly. That was three people who knew now – Saoirse, and Tess Brooking, and Corry. Oh, and the midwife. It was spiralling. ‘Yes. I am. I’m pregnant.’ Saying the words aloud was like a release, a slow seep of air from the balloon of tension in her chest.

  ‘And you don’t know what to do?’

  ‘No. I – that’s how I got the Bates case so soon. I’d gone to see her that day.’

  ‘I wondered. How far along are you?’

  ‘Eight weeks. Ish.’ Again, she tried to do the maths in her head, and failed utterly. She’d been good at maths at school, but apparently this very practical application of it was beyond her.

  Corry said, ‘You’ve time. If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I don’t know what I want.’

  ‘It’s not so bad, if you decide you aren’t up for going through with it.’

  ‘Oh. You—?’

  ‘Yes. In the early nineties – I was at college, second year, and I didn’t want to get married. My mammy’d have gone ballistic if I’d told her I was pregnant. So I took all my savings from my summer job and went to London for the weekend. It was the right thing. I’ve got two kids now and I don’t regret it.’

  ‘But do you ever – you don’t think about it?’

  Corry shrugged. ‘Everyone’s different. You can’t tell how you’ll react. What matters is you have to choose for yourself. No one else’s experience will help.’

  ‘I’m thirty,’ Paula said, after a moment.

  ‘Yes. I was younger.’

  ‘This might be the only time. And what if I – I mean, I might not do all that. Wedding, husband, babies – I just might not.’

  ‘It’s not for everyone. I thought it was for me, and it wasn’t. Not the babies, I mean, I love them to bits, but the marrying. You have family?’

  ‘My dad.’ And Pat. But no mother. The scrap that was growing inside her, that was one more link to Margaret Maguire. Margaret, who’d untethered herself from all that, walked out the door, or been taken. ‘How do you decide?’ she burst out. ‘In this kind of situation, when it’s impossible? How do you choose?’

  ‘I think you already know. It’s just hard either way, so you stall, but you nearly always know inside you, if you’re really honest. It was the same when I kicked my husband out. Took me months, but I knew what I should be doing all right.’

  That wasn’t what Paula wanted to hear. ‘OK. So I just have to choose.’ Like it was really that easy.

  ‘If you need any cover for antenatal stuff, let me know. I presume you haven’t told Brooking.’

  Paula shook her head reluctantly, hoping Corry wouldn’t guess the real reason she hadn’t told Guy, and maybe never would.

  ‘OK. Well, take care of yourself. You did look a bit pale on those monitors.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll put some blusher on or something.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry I ranted at Alvin Laurence about feminism.’

  A brief smile tugged at the corners of Corry’s mouth. ‘It’s about time someone did. Now we’d better get to this briefing – I’m meant to be running it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Paula went home early that night, afraid to stay in the office in case her TV appearance sparked off protests. You could never underestimate the capacity of a Northern Ireland audience to get outraged. She was so tired it was almost too much effort to switch off her computer, stand up, and go out to her car. Guy was still in his office when she left, tapping at his keyboard with vicious keystrokes. She knew why he found it hard to stop working. Looking out at the night, where the wind whirled breaths of ice through the dark, it was hard to think a child could survive that, ripped from the safest place there was, bloodily birthed into this world of snow and gloom.

  Guy glanced up as she went past. ‘Heading home to watch your big interview?’

  She winced. ‘Yeah. Car crash TV, isn’t that what they call it?’

  ‘I only hope it helps.’ He looked at her. ‘Is everything all right, Paula?’

  No. ‘It’s fine. I’m just, you know – this is all overwhelming.’ This wasn’t the right time to tell him. Not when two children were missing. Not two weeks before Christmas, the first since his son had been killed. She forced on a smile. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Night, Paula. Take care driving.’

  Her father was waiting for her when she turned her key in the lock. She hadn’t been planning to watch the interview herself, but she could hear the strains of the early evening news in the next room. She hung her bag over a chair and leaned against the sink. Her father lingered, waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘You look awful tired, pet.’

  ‘I am. We’re all working flat out on this case.’

  ‘It’s a bad one. The baby was cut right out of her, was that it?’ He squeezed out the teabag and carefully added it to the new compost bin under the sink – Pat’s influence.

  ‘Yeah. Did you ever see anything like it before? The only cases I can find are in America.’

  ‘Not exactly like it. Not trying to steal the baby. But I’ve seen something, aye, something a wee bit the same . . . well, never mind, pet. I saw some bad things in my time on the force. Nothing you need to know about.’

  ‘We were having a party when the call came in about Heather Campbell. It was awful. We were all just standing about chatting, while she was dying.’

  ‘You can’t stop living. That’s what your mother always used to tell me. They’re dead, but you’re still living.’

  Paula blinked. He’d actually just mentioned her mother, as casually as anyone. She decided not to acknowledge it, make it weird. ‘Dad, did you ever work with a Mick Quinn?’

  PJ gave her an odd look, shutting the cupboard door again. ‘I did. Mick was my opposite number in Dundalk. Any cross-border stuff came up, he’d ring me. I knew him well. Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason. One of the guys in work is his son.’

  ‘That’s right, he’d a young fella and a whole clatter of girls too.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Paula thought of Aisling Quinn, so excited, her belly blossoming out in front of her, and how she’d patted it. It wasn’t a good time to be a pregnant woman. Your stomach made you a walking target. Thank God she wasn’t showing yet – yet? What did that mean?

  ‘Are you coming?’ PJ was headed to the living room. ‘It’ll be on in a minute. They’ve just finished a piece on this fella in Strabane who’s been sent to prison for all the Christmas lights on his house. He tapped into the local grid, so they said. Eejit.’

  ‘I can’t watch,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You tell me what it’s like.’

  Paula hid in the bathroom while it aired, but she couldn’t escape a glance at the TV in the time it took to flee upstairs. There she was, pale and squeaky-voiced, her Ballyterrin accent pronounced, her hair carroty under the lights. She took refuge in the lime-green soap-scented bathroom, examining her puffy face in the mirror. She looked awful, pasty and exhausted. Maybe the TV people had been right about the extra make-up.

  ‘You can come down, pet,’ PJ shouted up when (in about five seconds) it was over.

  As she came downstairs, Paula couldn’t resist asking, ‘Was it awful? Did they edit me all weird?’

  ‘Not a bit of it, it was just you saying about this woman that might be on the loose. Then you were cut off awful sudden like.’

 
‘I was cut? Oh good.’ She was relieved. She didn’t want to think about the consequences had she been captured on local TV giving a pro-choice rant, in a country where most of the population opposed abortion, and it was one of the few issues that hardliners on both sides might unite on. Get together, picket a clinic, that sort of thing. ‘So it wasn’t a complete disaster.’

  ‘Well.’ PJ hesitated. ‘Could they not have put a taste of make-up on you? You were as white as the walls.’

  ‘We’ve had a hit on Mary Conaghan.’

  Avril’s face glowed with purpose as she stood in front of the team the next day. ‘As we saw, Mary was born in an isolated part of Donegal.’ She called up a map on screen, the craggy coastline sparse and green. ‘There are hardly any records – I’m not sure she even went to school most of the time. There’s a birth certificate with her mother’s name, but no father mentioned. When Mary was fifteen she was sent to Letterkenny to stay with her mother’s cousin. She’d been there several months when the youngest child in the family went missing.’ Avril pointed her clicker and the screen changed. ‘The Gardai had this shot on file so I got them to fax it over.’ A family gathered, the picture taken in the seventies by the look of the clothes. The mother with stiff, bouffant hair, five children around her, a baby on her lap. Avril pointed. ‘That’s Mary, off to the side there.’ A dark girl with coltish legs, a summer dress. ‘The baby was called Michael. Michael Gillan. He was apparently abducted from the house in 1975 – Mary was supposed to be minding him.’

  ‘Was he ever found?’ Guy leaned in.

  ‘Yes.’ Avril consulted her notes. ‘He was found safe in his crib the next day. Mary claimed she’d gone to the shop and left the door open, but it seems the Guard in charge suspected her of something. He did quite an in-depth interview with her. But they couldn’t prove it, and anyway the baby was returned safe, so they let it drop. Very similar to Alek Pachek, in fact. It didn’t come up in my child-abduction searches because it’s outside the time frame.’

  ‘I knew it.’ Guy looked excited. ‘I knew she had to be mixed up in it somehow. Any other links, Avril?’

  ‘I’m still going through the files. If we can prove she was involved in another child disappearance, can we arrest her?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s almost identical to Alek Pachek. A baby taken then left back safe. That doesn’t happen often, does it, Paula?’ He looked at her.

  ‘Not according to the case files, no. But sir – what about what DCI Corry said? Magdalena Croft is one of her accredited experts. We can’t just arrest her unless we have a lot of evidence.’

  ‘I know.’ He thought about it. ‘Let’s dig a bit more before we move. Anything else that ties her to either case, Alek or Dr Bates. Let’s also use Paula’s profile – Magdalena Croft is the right age and build. Is there any connection to the hospital? Would she know its layout well enough to walk in and abduct a child? Has she ever lost one herself?’

  ‘Maybe we can send Paula round to shout at her,’ said Fiacra innocently. Gerard and Avril immediately hid their faces, and Paula knew they’d all seen last night’s news. She glared back at Fiacra.

  Guy ignored the remark. ‘I want to know as much as possible about her. Fiacra, see if you can find any retired Guards who might remember her as a healer – there might be something that’s not in the files.’

  ‘Sir?’ Paula was tentative. She didn’t usually call him sir – after they’d slept together that time it had just sounded odd, and not a little kinky. ‘You seem very sure she’s involved.’ It was out of character. Usually she’d be the one jumping at hunches, and he’d be saying show me the evidence, don’t get blinded.

  Guy seemed to understand her concern. ‘We should explore all the other avenues, of course, but I’ve got a strong feeling on this. I can’t stand these charlatans. They prey on the weak, and pretend to help them, all the while taking all their cash.’

  ‘There’s plenty of rumours about her,’ said Fiacra. ‘She’s never been prosecuted, but her Southern tax records showed up loads of donations. Thing is, she never actually built the church people gave money for. So where did it go?’

  ‘Good, good.’ Guy turned over a paper on the table. ‘Follow up all of that. Now, there’s a bit of good news – they may have got a usable print off Heather Campbell’s body.’

  ‘Really?’ Paula was surprised. ‘But the killer was so careful before – I mean, assuming it’s the same person. There was no forensic evidence at all, was there?’

  ‘No. Even if there were, the snow would have pretty much destroyed it. So this is a turn-up. It looks as if she was drugged, too – there’s traces of the same barbiturate that was in her mother’s system.’

  ‘Where was it?’ she asked. ‘Where was the print?’

  Guy checked his notes. ‘On a piece of jewellery round her neck, apparently.’

  Paula remembered. The crucifix Heather had been pulling at, as if it would save her. But nothing had, in the end. ‘It couldn’t have happened at the hospital?’

  ‘Apparently the paramedics cut it off at the scene, and they were wearing gloves. It’s promising, anyway.’ Guy was finishing up. ‘Anyone else have an idea?’

  ‘Well – I did turn up something else.’ Gerard was busting with pride. Good boy for teacher. ‘I thought it’d be worth getting onto some of our regular PSNI, er, contacts, see if they might know anything.’

  Informants, he meant. Many of them redundant now the Troubles were mostly over, but they still tended to have their ear to the ground in the town. Guy didn’t like using them, with his London by-the-book sensibilities. ‘Oh yes?’ he said, warily.

  ‘Turns out Mrs Croft was involved in a case last year – but she was the accuser, not the suspect. She had an odd-job man at her house doing work, a bit of building and so on, and she said he was stealing from her. Got him fired from that and his other job at the council. He used to cut the grass in parks and things like that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, my contact, he says the guy – Duggan’s his name, Patrick Duggan – hasn’t a good word to say about Magdalena Croft. Which is unusual, you know, since everyone else seems to think the sun shines out of her . . . well.’

  ‘Get him in. Soon as you can. That’s very useful indeed.’

  ‘Will do.’ Gerard was red with smugness. Paula rolled her eyes at Fiacra, who shook his head. Avril was looking down at her laptop. Ever since the night of her engagement, when they’d found Heather Campbell’s torn body, she’d been very careful not to get caught alone with Paula. Paula wasn’t sure what she would ask anyway. Is there something going on with you and Gerard? Did you know Fiacra’s got a crush on you? Who was she to be delving into other people’s patchy love lives?

  Guy was pleased with Gerard’s information. ‘This is exactly what I mean. Get me some dirt on her – any other case she was linked to involving a child, any convictions – a speeding ticket, even, I want to know about it. So you all know what you’re doing, yes? Let’s stay on top of this. We’ve had two deaths already. If we don’t find Lucy or Darcy, it will be a tragedy, but it’s also going to reflect on us very badly indeed.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘What do you reckon?’ asked Gerard.

  It was later that day and Patrick Duggan was seated on the other side of the reflective glass in the interview room. He looked nervous. It was hard not to look nervous when you were in there, the door shut, only the blank walls to look at, the lino floor and chipboard table. Paula understood that.

  Gerard was pumped to go in and crack him; she could practically see the muscles rippling under his thin blue shirt. His tie was cast over his shoulder again. ‘He’ll talk. My contact says he’s been bad-mouthing Croft all round town ever since she fired him.’

  ‘He looks scared.’ Paula watched him. A ratty-faced man of around thirty-five, his light brown hair was p
atchy, as was his beard. He kept scratching at it, eyes darting about the room, and occasionally peering through the window, where they would disconcertingly seem to catch hers. He wore a farmer’s uniform – combat trousers, paint-stained boots, a thick and oily green jumper. ‘Should he not have a lawyer or someone in with him? An advocate, even? I mean, Corry gave us our assignments, and hauling him in definitely wasn’t on the list.’

  ‘Get a grip, Maguire, he’s not been arrested. We only want to have a quick word.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘He’ll talk,’ Gerard insisted. ‘Anyway, the boss is coming.’

  Guy strode towards them, his own expensive tie swinging with purpose. ‘All right? Are you observing, Paula?’

  ‘I think he’s very frightened,’ she said again. ‘Maybe you should go easy on him.’

  ‘He’s a petty crook. Five convictions for theft in the past three years alone.’ Guy adjusted his shirt cuffs. ‘I’m sure he’s more than used to the inside of a police station.’

  Paula said, ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ The two men exchanged a quick glance, which wasn’t lost on her. ‘I just get the impression he maybe has learning difficulties. I mean it – go easy. If you get something from him it might not even be admissible.’

  Guy was irritated. ‘I’m not in the habit of intimidating witnesses, Dr Maguire, and I’m perfectly entitled to bring him in. We’re just asking him for some information. Come along, DC Monaghan.’ They went in and seated themselves, the door snicking shut. The red light illuminated to show sound was on. Tapping her feet anxiously, Paula looked in through the two-way window.

  ‘Mr Duggan,’ Guy began, after setting up his recording equipment and explaining who they were. ‘I’d like to remind you that you aren’t under arrest. Myself and DC Monaghan here are aware of your record, but we want to talk to you about something else today.’