Hurt (DS Lucy Black)

by McGilloway, Brian

  Immediately, she saw the girl glance at the doorway, as if to reassure herself that there was a way out. She licked at her lips. ‘Can I get another Coke?’ she asked.

  ‘Why now?’ Lucy persisted. ‘Tell me that and we can take another breather if you need to.’

  Sarah Finn seemed to consider the offer. ‘The girl the first night. The one with the cider. I saw her a few times after that. At the parties. She was a nice girl. She looked after some of the others when they were hurting after ... you know. She took care of them. Even when she was being hurt herself.’

  Lucy could feel something gnawing at her insides, sensing already where the conversation was headed.

  ‘There was a party at the weekend. All weekend. I was there just on Saturday night. But she was there. She’d been there for a few days. She was out of it, completely. It was like she didn’t know where she was or what was happening. Well, I saw her again after the party.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She was the girl they found dead on the train tracks. Karen was her name, I think.’

  They left Sarah to have her Coke while Lucy went to the main office and called through for the Strand Road to fax through pictures of both Karen Hughes and Carlin himself. Though the quality of the faxes wasn’t ideal, both were still recognizable. ‘Is this the girl you met?’ Lucy asked, handing Sarah the image of Karen Hughes as she re-entered the room.

  The girl looked at the image, her eyes flushing once more. She nodded. ‘That’s her.’

  ‘One more question, Sarah,’ Lucy said. ‘This man.’ She handed Sarah the page with Carlin’s picture on it.

  ‘I know him,’ the girl said, dropping the page on the desk as if it had scalded her simply to hold it. ‘He was one of them. He was at the parties.’

  ‘One of them?’ Lucy said. ‘He was “Simon Harris”.’

  Sarah Finn’s eyes widened, her face paling under the harsh fluorescent glare of the strip lighting in the room.

  ‘That’s not “Simon Harris”. That’s nothing like him. Is he the man who died? This man?’

  Lucy glanced at Robbie, before nodding lightly.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sarah Finn keened, backing into the corner, balling in on herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘Jesus. He’s going to kill me.’

  ‘No one’s going to kill you, Sarah,’ Lucy said, moving to the girl. ‘I promise.’

  The girl looked up at her from where she sat, her face a mask of disbelief. Lucy could think of nothing to say that might convince her otherwise.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Despite their best efforts, neither Lucy nor Robbie could convince Sarah Finn that she was safe from ‘Harris’. Eventually Robbie agreed that her mother be allowed to spend some time with her in the interview room, though under his supervision, in the hope that her presence might help settle the girl a little. Lucy took Sinead Finn’s arrival as an opportunity to check how the interview with Seamus Doherty was developing.

  Burns was leading the interview with Doherty in Interview Room 2. He glanced round with some irritation when Lucy first tapped on the door, but upon seeing who it was, rose and came out to her.

  ‘Has she said anything we can use on him?’ he asked. ‘He’s saying nothing.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘She claims that she hid away in his lorry. She got out when she felt it stop, thinking she was on the ferry. Instead, he was parked up at the house. She was at a party with Karen Hughes the night before she died, during the time Karen was missing.’

  ‘Does she know if Carlin killed her?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘She says Carlin wasn’t “Harris”. He was one of the others.’

  ‘What others? Maybe she’s confused. Give her a breather and try again.’

  Lucy raised a hand to silence him, then realized the inappropriateness of the gesture to her superior.

  ‘She was groomed by “Harris”. They met up a few times in town. He eventually gave her the phone with some music on it, made a show of saying it was nothing too big. After a while he invited her to a party. He got her drunk, slipped her something in a drink and raped her. She says it happened several times after that, at other parties. Then, when she was passed out, she thinks other men raped her too. She recalls seeing at least one leaving her room as she came round from whatever “Harris” had given her.’

  ‘Was Carlin one of the ones who raped her?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘He was at the parties. We can assume if he was there, he was involved in some way. I need to get pictures of Gene Kay, too, to see if he was there. But she says “Harris” definitely isn’t Carlin. I think we’re looking for someone younger.’

  Burns swore softly under his breath. ‘We need to connect Kay. After the prick burning to death over it.’

  Lucy said nothing for a moment, guessing that his need to connect Kay had more to do with expediency than justice. ‘She says Karen had been at the last party for most of the weekend. She saw her there on the Saturday. I think she went missing on the Thursday because she was taken away to a house party for the weekend.’

  ‘Why did they kill her?’

  ‘Maybe she recognized someone she shouldn’t have,’ Lucy suggested. ‘But if she’d been there all weekend – been at the parties before – she’d presumably have encountered whoever it was before that.’

  ‘She was seen alive on the day before her death? On the Saturday?’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘Then what happened on the Sunday that would have caused someone to kill her?’

  Lucy thought about it. She had done the press releases about her being missing, but that had been on Friday and had been in the Saturday press.

  ‘Her father,’ she said suddenly. ‘The Sunday papers – one of them ran a story about her father. They’d connected her with Eoghan Harkin somehow.’

  ‘Whoever had her knew her father then?’ Burns offered.

  ‘Maybe,’ Lucy said. ‘Or maybe they were just afraid of what he’d do if he found out. Sarah said that “Harris” said he’d kill her mother if she told. That threat might have been a little harder to use about Eoghan Harkin.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been a message to him? Retaliation in some way?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘The body was set up to look like she’d killed herself on the train tracks. If someone wanted to send a message they’d want him to know she’d been murdered. In this case, they wanted to kill her and cover it up. Make it look like suicide.’

  ‘Which would only be believable if she was the type to kill herself.’

  ‘She was depressed,’ Lucy said. ‘She was struggling with self-esteem issues. She was the perfect candidate for it. And the perfect candidate for grooming, too. Lacking in confidence, open to flattery, unstable home life.’

  All of which applied equally to Sarah Finn, Lucy reflected. ‘The question is, how did the groomer know that they were perfect candidates for it?’

  ‘Ask the girl, see if she knows. See if he gave her any hints about where he first saw her. And get a description.’

  Lucy stopped at the main office again to phone through for a picture of Gene Kay. It took all of thirty seconds for Sarah Finn to confirm for her that Kay was not ‘Simon Harris’ either, nor indeed had she ever seen him at any of the parties.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Lucy asked. ‘Look again at the image. He might have been dressed differently.’

  The girl studied the image, examining the eyes and mouth, covering part of the face with the flat of her hand to better focus on particular features. Finally she shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen him before. I’d remember any of the people there if I saw them again. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘And the other man I showed you earlier, he was there but wasn’t “Simon Harris”?’

  Finn nodded her head. ‘I remember his face. Simon was younger than them, in his twenties maybe. Thin faced. Short dark hair. He wasn’t an old man.’

  ‘But this guy was definitely not involved?’ she asked, pointing to Kay’s
picture.

  ‘I never saw him. Not once.’

  If that was the case, Lucy realized, then how had the collection of images, taken from the parties, ended up in Kay’s house, after Fleming had checked it and found nothing there the day before.

  Chapter Forty-six

  Robbie eventually agreed that Sarah Finn be allowed home with her mother, though only with the understanding that they would be visited daily and that Sinead Finn was to agree to enter an addiction programme. The woman announced that Seamus Doherty was no longer welcome in her home, having lied to her and kept her daughter from her for so long. Having been the only person Sarah felt able to confide in, Doherty now found himself excluded from the girl’s life.

  Lucy drove back to the PPU struggling to make sense of all that had happened. Gene Kay had clearly been used as a distraction, a scapegoat on whom could be pinned the killing of Karen Hughes. The fact that he had died in the house fire prevented him being able to argue his innocence.

  When she reached the unit, instead of going into her own office, she cut across to Cooper in Block 10. He was working on a laptop, scrolling through a series of spreadsheets, when she came in, one of his colleagues having allowed Lucy into the block as he was leaving.

  ‘That looks interesting,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Serious or sarcastic?’ Cooper asked, leaning backwards to see who was talking to him. ‘Oh, hi, Lucy,’ he said, when he saw her. ‘Sarcastic then.’

  ‘That’s very cynical,’ she commented, pretending to be offended.

  ‘But probably very accurate,’ he countered. ‘I hear you found the girl. It’s been on the news. How is she?’

  ‘Useful,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Well, I’m sure that’ll be a relief to her parents.’

  ‘After “Harris” had won the girls’ trust, he took them to a house party and got them either drunk or high. They were raped while they were out of it.’

  ‘This is why I work with numbers,’ Cooper said. ‘Tax fraud doesn’t make you want to kill someone.’

  ‘The important thing is she saw “Harris”. And “Harris” is not Carlin.’

  ‘Really?’ Cooper asked, sitting up. ‘What about Kay?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘She’d never even seen him before. Carlin, at least, she’d seen at the parties. She thought he might have been one of the men who raped her. Kay, though, drew a complete blank.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it does mean he wasn’t “Simon Harris” and, therefore, not “Paul Bradley” or any of the other sock puppet identities.’

  Cooper pushed back from the desk he was working at and rolled his seat across to the opposite bench, propelling himself with his feet. He reached the large iMac and began clicking through folders.

  ‘What are you after?’ Lucy asked, joining him.

  ‘“Bradley” or “Harris” or whatever he was called was definitely using the free Wi-Fi in the Foyleside the day you went in. Kay was there obviously, but if he wasn’t “Harris”, then someone else in the restaurant must have been.’

  ‘What, and it was just a coincidence that Kay was there too and we went after him?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cooper said. ‘Or maybe not. Maybe Kay was set up. Maybe “Bradley” got wind that we were on to his account after Karen’s death and made a point of going on the accounts somewhere public, where we would find Kay. Regardless, we do know that whoever was on the accounts was in the restaurant, right?’

  ‘OK,’ Lucy said, pulling over a chair and sitting.

  ‘I had the CCTV footage for the day sent across after I couldn’t retrieve anything off Kay’s phone. I wanted to satisfy myself that he had been online. If Sarah Finn has seen “Harris”, or “Bradley”, then she might recognize him as one of the other customers.’

  ‘She might,’ Lucy said, approvingly.

  Cooper finally found the folder he wanted and opened up the footage. He played it through at half-speed, allowing them time to examine it in more detail, looking for possible candidates.

  ‘Do you remember anyone standing out, apart from Kay?’ Cooper asked.

  Lucy shook her head, but, as she considered it, she recalled a man she’d put in his twenties sitting by the window. He’d been with a woman and child though. She assumed that the perpetrator would be alone. She told Cooper as much.

  ‘If he was at the window, this camera angle will be no good,’ Cooper commented. He closed the image he was looking at and picked another from the folder. This time, the view was of the seating area, the main concourse of the Foyleside visible through the window beyond.

  Cooper forwarded the footage until the time counter in the corner read twelve, then continued at half-speed. Sure enough, some time later, a young man with thinning black hair appeared in the image, bearing a tray with a burger and drink on it. He sat alone at the window and, taking out his phone, spent some time seemingly texting on it. After ten minutes a woman and child arrived. Though there was no sound, Lucy could tell that the woman was asking if they might share his table. He agreed without even looking at them, his attention focused on the phone he held in front of him.

  Some minutes later, those in the seats all around him stood quickly, their attention directed off screen to where Lucy knew Kay had been. Sure enough, in the subsequent images, Kay could be seen running down the concourse outside the window, pursued by several officers, Lucy included.

  Those inside watched as the events unfolded. Rather than following the events unfolding outside the restaurant, the man quickly put away his phone and continued eating. A few minutes later, a uniformed officer appeared at the table, paused for a few moments, clearly taking the names of all those there, then moved on. After a further minute, the man balled up the wrapping of his food, gathered his stuff and left, pulling the hood of his top over his head as he did.

  ‘Can you run me off the best picture of him you can find?’

  ‘The best? It’s all relative,’ Cooper offered apologetically. ‘I could try sourcing footage from outside, but with the hood up, he’ll be even more difficult to identify.’

  He moved back through the footage slowly until he found the best image he could. He was right about it being relative; the image was grainy, the man’s features blurred. Still, it would hopefully be enough for Sarah Finn to at least be able to confirm whether or not he was “Simon Harris”.

  Lucy drove straight up to the Finn house, having thanked Cooper for his work. Sinead opened the door, the action soundtracked by raucous laughter from the living room beyond. Sinead wore a black dress, low cut enough to provide Lucy with a view of her cleavage.

  ‘Is Sarah free for a moment?’ Lucy asked, stepping inside. In the confines of the hallway, she could smell the spirits off Sinead’s breath, sweet and sharp.

  ‘We’re having a party, celebrating her safe return,’ Sinead explained. ‘Sarah?’ she shouted.

  A moment later, Sarah appeared from upstairs. It seemed she was the only one not attending the party being held in her honour.

  ‘All right, love,’ Sinead said, rubbing her daughter’s arm a little too vigorously, smiling through the haze of her drink, a rictus that lacked all warmth. ‘Come in for a drink if you want one,’ she added to Lucy. ‘Or are you on duty?’

  Lucy wondered at the mentality of the woman, inviting an officer in for a drink hours after being told she would need to enter an addiction programme if she wanted to keep her daughter at home.

  When the door to the living room closed, Sarah seemed to slump against the wall.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I ... I don’t want to be here any more. Being away with Seamus, even for those few days, was so easy. There was no shit, no drugs or drinking or parties. It was like a normal life.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘That’s understandable,’ she said.

  ‘But how do you come back to this shit? At least before I didn’t know any different. I thought this was normal.’

  ‘I
can ask them to leave if you’d like,’ Lucy offered.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘They’ll leave in a bit anyway, once the carry-out is finished.’

  Lucy nodded, the folded picture in her hand, suddenly reluctant to ask the girl to look at it.

  Sarah, though, had already worked out the purpose of the visit. ‘Is this another picture to look at?’ she asked, gesturing towards the sheet.

  Lucy nodded. ‘Do you mind?’

  The girl shook her head, taking the page and opening it. She hissed a sharp intake of breath as she looked at it, then, handing it back quickly to Lucy, said, ‘That’s him. That’s “Harris”.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Lucy asked.

  Sarah Finn nodded her head. ‘I think that’s him.’

  Chapter Forty-seven

  ‘This is “Simon Harris”?’ the ACC asked. She was sitting in Burns’s office, having been called by the Chief Super.

  ‘According to Sarah Finn,’ Lucy said. ‘He was in the Foyleside at the time we picked up Kay. He was using his phone.’

  ‘He could be anyone,’ Burns said. ‘The image is so grainy, it doesn’t really help us move forward.’

  ‘It at least necessitates that we do move forward,’ Lucy said. ‘We know Carlin was involved in this ring, but we don’t have the ringleader. I think this is him.’

  Her mother held the picture at arm’s length, lowering her glasses to see if doing so aided her examination of the image. Finally she nodded, laying the picture on the desk.

  ‘So, what’s your next move, Superintendent?’ she asked.

  Burns was leaning against a filing cabinet to her right, biting on the skin around his finger, angling his hand to facilitate the process. He spat the small bit of skin he had removed from the tip of his tongue. Lucy watched the exchange between her mother and her lover with distaste.

  ‘If the girl says he was the one who groomed her, then we need to follow it up. I still think Kay is involved, though, regardless of what the girl said. Why would he have had pictures of her?’