The Gathering of Souls

by Gerry O'Carroll

  Laura was contemplative, narrow lines appearing in the smooth skin of her forehead. She frowned at Uncle Paddy out of half-closed eyes. ‘She’s not been happy. She’s not been happy ever since Danny was killed.’

  ‘She blames Dad,’ Jess said.

  Laura looked angrily at her.

  ‘It’s true,’ Jess repeated. ‘She blames him because Danny was knocked down by a car, and Dad’s a guard, and he couldn’t catch whoever it was that was driving. I heard Mam on the phone to Nanny; she said that to Nanny: she said she thought it was deliberate and whoever did it must have had a grudge against our dad because he’s a guard. Or something like that it was, anyway.’

  ‘Listen.’ Uncle Paddy took each of them by the hand now. ‘I know your mam thinks that, she’s said as much to me. You know that she and I have been talking. Your dad wanted us to talk; in fact, he asked me. I’ve known your mam as long as your dad has, and she’s a good woman, a lovely woman, and she loved Danny very much. Yes, she is blaming your dad, and there’s no reason for that, but she’s a mammy and sometimes the love a mammy feels is so deep that things don’t always seem as they actually are. What happened to Danny was an accident, and it’s not your dad’s fault, and deep down your mam knows that.’ He smiled gently. ‘You mustn’t blame her for it. She’ll get over it, and you’ll be back together again as a proper family.’

  Laura shot him a fierce look. ‘She left us,’ she stated. ‘First she sent our dad away, then she left us on our own. Me and Jess: she left us by ourselves.’

  ‘She’s not herself, love,’ Paddy said soothingly. ‘Your mam is not herself.’

  ‘And what if she doesn’t come back?’ Laura demanded. ‘What if she dies, Uncle Paddy? What will we do then?’

  Monday 1st September 6.30 pm

  From three directions they converged on Harcourt Square: Quinn heading back from Blackrock beach with Murphy just behind him, Frank Maguire from Rathmines, and Doyle from the quays. Four cars sweeping past the massed ranks of reporters, the TV vans crowded along the street. The justice minister had expressly requested that the press keep away from Quinn’s house in Glasnevin, and so far at least, that wish had been respected.

  Quinn called home and spoke to his daughters: they wanted him with them, and he knew he ought to be there, but he couldn’t just sit in the house while every copper in the country searched for his wife. Patrick told him he was happy to babysit for as long as he wanted, and his sister-in-law had been on the phone telling him that she might drive up from Kerry and take the girls to their nan’s house. Hanging up, Quinn called ‘Busy’ Phillips. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked him. ‘I need information.’

  ‘Inspector, I’m sorry, but I’ve not heard so much as a whisper.’

  ‘Who’s out there, for God’s sake? Who is doing this to me?’

  Busy was a runner for Trisha ‘Grace’ O’Malley, the mother of all gangsters. She had been nicknamed ‘the Pirate Queen’ after the sixteenth-century Grace O’Malley, who ruled the islands off the Mayo coast. She pretty much ran Limerick, and Quinn had a soft spot for her.

  ‘I’ve no idea, Mr Quinn,’ Busy was saying. ‘Truly I don’t. Right now there’s not a lot being said, and I think that’s because genuinely nobody seems to know anything. Believe me, if they did I’d know about it, and of course then so would you.’

  Quinn believed him. ‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘Keep me posted.’

  ‘I will, Mr Quinn. I will. And I tell you what, everyone is up in arms about this. Miss O’Malley; your man down there at the Moorings; I’ve heard whispers from the southside that even Minty is offering to help.’

  ‘That tattooed fuck! His days are numbered. You can tell him that however this turns out, he’s leaving these shores, even if I have to commandeer The Jeanie Johnston and ship him out myself.’

  Quinn paused for a moment, thinking. ‘What about McGeady?’

  ‘I’ve no idea about him, Mr Quinn. You’d need to be talking to someone else.’

  Quinn made a mental note to go to Mountjoy and see ‘the Crawthumper’. Hanging up again, he sat there gathering his thoughts. He was still holding his phone when it started ringing. ‘Quinn,’ he said. For a second there was nothing. His heart began to pump. ‘This is Moss Quinn,’ he stated.

  Then he heard it, the same gravelled tones from his son’s grave. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, or so the story goes. A maggot in her head, that’s what they said, but only Mary knows.’

  The line went dead, and Quinn sat there, his skin crawling and sweat moving as if it were alive in his hair. He was upstairs in a flash, and he handed his phone to a young guard named McKinley. ‘Get this checked,’ he said. ‘The last call. It’s an unknown number, and I want to know where it came from.’

  Maguire was in the inspector’s office with Doyle and Murphy. Quinn strode across the room and opened the door. ‘I’ve just had another call,’ he stated, ‘and he all but named Conor Maggs.’ He told them what the caller had said, and then he turned to Doyle. ‘Is Maggs in London? Do we know that for sure?’

  ‘I’m pretty certain he is, yes.’

  ‘Can you find out? Make a call or something? We need to know, Doyler. We need to know for sure.’

  Doyle went over to Murphy’s desk and picked up the phone. Quinn sat down heavily, the words working again through his head. A maggot in her head, that’s what they said, but only Mary knows. He snapped a glance at Murphy. ‘Get me Mary Harrington’s file, would you?’ She went to the filing cabinet at the far end of the incident room and, looking beyond her, Quinn spotted a young man with a ponytail and jeans, sitting in a chair against the wall.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  Maguire lifted one eyebrow. ‘A feller from Trinity, Geological Studies. I got him over to look at the picture.’

  The academic’s name was Townsend, and he taught geology, though he had a passion for Irish history. He told Quinn that the physical land was as much a part of the history of Ireland as the people who lived on it. They sat him down, closing the door against the hubbub of voices.

  ‘What can you tell us, Dr Townsend?’ Quinn asked. ‘We’re up against the clock here.’

  Townsend nodded. ‘Is the picture all you’ve had? I mean, is it in isolation?’

  Quinn shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. I’ve received two phone calls.’

  Lips pursed, Townsend looked very thoughtful. ‘Is this person just taunting you, or do you think he really is giving you a clue to your wife’s whereabouts?’ Murphy came in with Mary’s file. ‘What difference does it make?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, it’s probably not my place to say, but if he really does want you to have a chance of finding her, then what that Polaroid depicts might be as simple as what you see.’

  ‘We thought it might be a beach,’ Quinn told him. ‘So far we’ve searched every stretch of sand within a thirty-mile radius of Dublin.’

  ‘A pebble on a beach,’ Townsend nodded. ‘It could be. The stone is dark, so I imagine you already thought about Blackrock.’

  ‘We’ve just got back from there,’ Murphy told him.

  ‘What else could it mean?’ Quinn was sitting forward now.

  Townsend gestured. ‘It could be as simple as the two words indicated. Sand and stone: sandstone.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There’s not much sandstone quarried in Ireland, and most of it is the red colour you see in the mountains in the south-west, but there is grey sandstone in County Clare. It’s referred to geologically as Liscannor, and of course there’s a town over there of the same name.’

  ‘County Clare?’ Maguire looked doubtful. ‘Eva was abducted in Dublin, Dr Townsend. Are you telling me she was taken all the way to Clare?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Townsend shrugged. ‘Is it possible?’

  Quinn was on his feet. ‘Anything is possible.’

  Townsend continued: ‘Well, there is an old Liscannor quarry that’s not been used in years. It was run by a family called Scanlon but clo
sed in the 1970s. I’ve been there on field trips with my students. It’s on the cliff and there’s an ancient derrick for loading the stone straight onto ships. There are also a couple of ruined buildings.’

  Picking up the phone, Maguire spoke to the crew of the police helicopter at Baldonnel. Doyle was waiting for a callback from London, so Murphy suggested she go with him.

  ‘Tell them to pick us up from Phoenix Park,’ Quinn instructed Maguire. ‘They can land with no problem, and it’s only five minutes with a blue light from here.’

  ‘Keep me posted, Moss,’ Doyle told him as they headed for the door. ‘Eoin Slattery’s your man down there. I’ll talk to him and get a team out right away.’ He turned to Townsend.

  ‘Where is it, exactly, this place?’

  ‘It’s on the coast; I can give you the details.’

  Doyle was scratching his jaw. ‘Scanlon, you say. That rings a bell, I swear it does. But for the life of me I don’t know why.’

  Quinn grabbed the Harrington file and stuffed it into his bag.

  ‘Are you taking that with you?’ Maguire asked him.

  ‘Only Mary knows, Frank: that’s what he said.’

  ‘Then what about the others? If Eva’s abduction is linked to Mary’s murder, what about the others?’

  Quinn lifted his shoulders. ‘The others were single mothers.’

  ‘And Mary was pregnant.’

  ‘Six weeks, the pathologist said. None of us believed she knew.’

  Maguire nodded.

  ‘He referred to her on the phone, though, so we can’t ignore it, can we?’

  Monday 1st September 8.30 pm

  The closer they got to the coast, the darker it seemed to become, and the engine noise, the whistling whine of the rotors, filled Quinn’s head. Through their headphones, the pilot told them they were almost at the coordinates, and before they knew it, the land was gone and they were above the sea, with the tail of the helicopter swinging round in an arc. Now they were nose-in to the cliffs, buffeted by the wind, with thirty million candles worth of searchlight playing across slabs of stone that fell in steps to a sheer face and white-capped waves below.

  Quinn could see a multitude of bobbing yellow lights, guards on the ground with torches, dogs barking in silence at the massive black bird hovering above them. The whole side of the cliff looked as though it had been quarried: on the southern stretch, the staggered walls were serrated. Directly below them, the hillside sloped in banks of gravel to where the rock was cut into the stripped plateaus. They could see the ancient rusting derrick Townsend had mentioned, its hook and cable high above the sea.

  Quinn’s gaze fixed on the shabby-looking machine shed that dominated the open ground. Beneath them, where the sea broke, was a cave: a gaping black maw barely visible in the darkness. The sea itself was littered with rocks that broke the surface like teeth from some monstrous creature crawling below.

  ‘Mother of God,’ Murphy’s voice came through Quinn’s headphones. ‘It’s a hell of a place, isn’t it?’

  ‘Think about the boats, Murph,’ Quinn pointed down. ‘Imagine trying to take on a load with rocks like those itching to scythe through your hull.’ He spoke to the pilot then. ‘Can you land?’ he asked him.

  The pilot peered through the windscreen, the searchlight picking up two rank-looking boats lying upturned by the machine shed. He shook his head. ‘Not there, I can’t. It’d be too unstable. I might be able to set you down on top of the hill maybe, let’s see.’

  They climbed above the cliff face and the derrick and the ruined building. Staring down at the gaping holes in the roof, Quinn could feel the ache in his gut and his pulse rushing with blood. Murphy was in radio contact with the guards below; turning to Quinn, she gave a short shake of her head. ‘They’ve found nothing so far,’ she told him.

  On the ground, they procured torches and fluorescent jackets from two guards, who had guided the pilot to a safe spot. The guards repeated what Murphy had heard over the radio. Upending a three-cell torch, Quinn led the way down. It was awkward and slow, the land slippery and sloping sharply, littered with a million holes that were potentially ankle-breaking. Taking Murphy’s hand, he guided her across some loose shale, and then stopped for a moment. Murphy knew what he was thinking; she knew what he was feeling, and she was feeling it too.

  The wind had lifted, and the salt spray seemed to tighten the skin of his face. Quinn could see more lights where dozens of guards were working their way across the cliff with poles and sticks, one or two carrying shovels, just as they’d done at Blackrock.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Murphy said. ‘It’ll be OK, Moss. It will.’

  He didn’t reply, but he let go of her hand now and continued down to where the boats lay in ruins next to the shed.

  A guard in uniform came up to meet them: dogs were barking, voices echoing across the open cliff.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Slattery,’ he told them. ‘You must be DI Quinn.’

  Quinn peered into his face. ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘No, inspector, not yet.’

  ‘It was a long shot, a hunch: we knew that.’ Quinn was talking as if trying to convince himself. ‘We’re clutching at straws, we know we are, but that’s the way it is.’

  Together, he and Murphy descended the last few paces. Then they were on the flat step with gravel underfoot and the rotten walls of the shed climbing in shadow before them.

  Inside, it was one cavernous space, with some rickety iron steps leading up to two rundown offices, which were silent, dark and cold. Quinn climbed to a door where the padlock was hanging off. Forcing the door open, he could smell salt, and damp. There were a couple of desks, a battered filing cabinet and an old typewriter sitting on top of it. Everything was covered in dust, and cobwebs hung in tattered strings, shrouding the window. Quinn poked under the desks, but the office was tiny and there was nowhere to hide anyone. Outside again, on the gantry, he gripped the iron rail.

  ‘Eva!’ he called. ‘Eva, can you hear me?’

  The shout echoed across the empty space, the floor patched by bits of old machinery, a conveyor system, winches and pulleys, lengths of chain link chewed ochre by the salt. Nothing but his words came back to him; nothing but the howl of the wind, the sound of crashing waves. Standing there, he passed the beam of his torch across the concrete floor, where there was nowhere to hide anyone. There was nowhere for a tongue to swell or lips to crack; there was nowhere for blood to weep from broken veins. He covered every inch of the floor, the walls; he even shone the light at the ceiling.

  But there was nothing.

  Eva wasn’t there.

  Monday 1st September 8.45 pm

  In her hole in the ground, Eva managed to work herself onto her knees. It wasn’t easy, with the weight of the boards across her; the weight of old linoleum; the weight, it seemed, of the sky.

  She may have slept; she may have been delirious; she didn’t know. She had no idea of time. But she dreamed of her children, of Jess and Laura; she dreamed of Danny. When she opened her eyes through the blindfold, she thought she could see them.

  All she could think about was water.

  She was desperate now, her tongue filling her mouth, so thick and dry she could barely breathe.

  She’d bitten through the tape, a tiny hole. She’d managed to drag the sticky mess past her lips, suck it in, tease it with her teeth.

  Now she was on her knees with her arms locked, she had no balance, her face against earth and a terrible ache in her neck. Using her forehead to support her, she was trying to suck up the trickle of rainwater where it had gathered beneath her.

  A tiny dribble, no more than a taste. Her tongue ballooned in her mouth. Gagging, she coughed into tape. She couldn’t breathe. She was sobbing, her eyes burning up with tears that were not there.

  And the cold seeped into her bones. She asked herself if she would die of cold first or would the thirst get her?

  Using all her strength, she tried to force the floorbo
ards up, heave back the weight so she could work herself out of this grave. But she slipped and slithered, cocooned like a larval fly. She thought of Danny. When would she see Danny? Was he calling? Was that his voice she could hear? Was that her only son who’d been lost to a man who drove too fast, a man her husband couldn’t catch?

  Would catching him bring Danny back?

  Would it bring back her husband?

  She swore she could hear voices. And frantically, she tried to cry out, to let them know she was there. But her own voice was a murmur, a gurgle. A tiny sound barely audible, it was lost to the world and to her.

  Listening hard, she was drifting. The voices seemed to drift. They were getting weaker and weaker now, and when they died finally, there was only the clock.

  Suddenly thinking clearly, Eva realised what she had heard. There was no one out there calling. It was only the cry of a gull; solitary, mournful as the wind.

  Monday 1st September 11.55 pm

  The helicopter dropped them back at Phoenix Park, and Quinn felt weak now, empty, as if the life had been hollowed out of him and all that remained was a shell.

  Lights burned in the incident room, and upstairs another shift of detectives was manning the telephones. To a person, they looked up grim-faced as Quinn and Murphy walked in. Maguire came out of the office with his jacket hung over his shoulder.

  ‘Where’s Doyle?’ Quinn asked him.

  Maguire shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. He went out not long after you two.’

  ‘Did he hear back from anyone in London?’

  ‘If he did, he didn’t tell me. But then he only ever seems to tell me what he thinks I need to know.’

  Quinn managed a smile. ‘It’s not personal, Frank. You should know by now: he’s like that with everyone.’