Red Ribbons

by Louise Phillips

  ‘Lilli, you might as well call me Lilli. It’s a bit late for social niceties, Inspector.’

  ‘Lilli,’ O’Connor said gently, ‘if you and Peter could answer a few more questions about Caroline for Kate, it could help us a lot.’

  Kate took their lack of response as agreement. She looked over at Emily first. ‘Is it okay with you too, Emily?’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders, whilst tensing her facial features. ‘Sure, whatever.’

  There was no doubting the feelings of bitterness in the room, and Kate knew Caroline’s mother and sister were not going to be easy to deal with, but she pushed on, deciding to start with Lilli Devine.

  ‘Lilli, I think your instinct regarding trying to remember everyone who Caroline came in contact with is a good one. From what we have so far, there’s a strong possibility that whoever abducted Caroline may have met her before.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Peter interrupted, his voice sounding anxious.

  ‘Well,’ Kate said carefully, ‘it may well be that Caroline wasn’t chosen at random.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Lilli looked at Kate, her face displaying hostility.

  ‘Lilli, whoever abducted your daughter could have planned it, and for reasons that could have meant absolutely nothing to Caroline, but a lot to her abductor.’

  ‘But she … she was only twelve. How would Caroline have known anyone who would do something like this?’ Peter Devine looked devastated.

  O’Connor was quick to put him at his ease. ‘Peter, Kate’s not saying Caroline necessarily knew him, for all we know she might not have even spoken to him.’

  Both parents looked distraught at what Kate was suggesting, but she knew she had to keep going. She held her gaze on Lilli. ‘The important thing here is that we explore all angles. If Caroline did meet him at some point, there’s every chance she may have viewed their encounters as completely innocent. Your daughter was a clever girl by all accounts, but unfortunately that was not enough to protect her.’

  ‘Ask me whatever you want to know,’ Lilli replied, her voice stronger now. ‘I know nothing’s going to bring her back, but I want you to get him. I need to know he’ll pay for what he’s done.’

  ‘Lilli, tell me what type of things Caroline liked to do.’

  The woman’s demeanour changed perceptibly, almost as if revisiting her daughter’s memory somehow took away the pain.

  ‘She liked to read. When she wasn’t at school or swimming, her head was constantly stuck in a book. She thought about being a teacher. She was good with little ones.’

  Lilli Devine closed her eyes, knowing that teaching was yet another thing Caroline would never do.

  ‘What else, Lilli?’ Kate said, trying to keep Lilli’s mind on her daughter.

  Lilli sighed and started again. ‘She loved swimming and it was a great way to use up her energy – even from a small tot she was always full of beans. You could never keep her easy for long. She’d go to the Rathmines pool, the one nearest her school, at the weekends with her friend, Jessica. Sometimes she’d even go to the pool before school.’

  ‘So she was happy?’

  ‘Yes, of course, she was perfect.’

  ‘And what about her computer, did she spend a lot of time on that?’

  ‘Ah, you know what kids are like.’

  Kate looked over at O’Connor. She knew the Computer Crime Investigation Unit, CCIU, hadn’t turned up anything of value on it.

  ‘And her friend, Jessica, they were close?’

  ‘They were always together.’

  Lillie paused, and when she spoke again her voice was hard, the anger that had been hovering underneath rose to the surface. ‘She called in here with her mother when they heard the news. I couldn’t look at the girl.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t look at her mother either for that matter. I just kept thinking, you’re so lucky, so lucky to still have her. Almost as soon as they arrived, I wanted them both to leave. I kept thinking, what if it was the other way around, what if it had been Jessica who’d been taken? All I wanted to do was turn the tables, tell her she’d got it wrong, that it was her daughter and not mine who’d been buried in that hole up there.’

  Kate watched Lilli’s hands as she twisted them in her lap. She spoke as softly as she could. ‘Lilli, I know how hard this is.’

  ‘Do you?’ Lilli shot back at her. ‘Do you really know? Have you lost a child, Ms Pearson? Are you experienced in these matters?’

  ‘No, Lilli, I’m not, and please don’t think that I’m trying to undermine how you feel in any way. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together, to find something that might stop something like this happening again.’

  ‘It won’t bring her back,’ Lilli said in a dead voice.

  ‘No it won’t, I know that.’

  Lilli looked at Kate, and then nodded. ‘Go on, ask your questions.’

  ‘Was there anything about Caroline’s behaviour that had changed over the last while?’

  ‘No, not really, other than—’

  ‘Other than what?’

  ‘Well, you know, it was nothing really. She was never overweight. I mean, she was a fit girl, what with the swimming and everything. But lately she’d started to go on about the types of food she wanted to eat – no carbohydrates, no bread, wouldn’t touch chocolate or any of “that rubbish”, as she called it.’

  Kate remembered how thin Caroline had looked, and what Morrison had told O’Connor about there being very little fatty tissue on the body, that it was practically skeletal-like in certain areas.

  ‘Do you think she felt under pressure to lose weight?’

  ‘No, no, I mean she wanted to be healthier, that’s all.’

  Kate could tell there was an element of doubt in Lilli’s last sentence, an anxiety that, as a mother, she might have missed something.

  ‘She’d lost lots of weight.’

  All four of them turned to the teenager standing by the door, surprised by her sudden contribution to the conversation.

  Kate didn’t waste any time. ‘Why do you think that was, Emily?’

  ‘Same reason as most, I suppose.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘To be like everyone else.’

  ‘Do you think Caroline worried about being like everyone else?’

  ‘Listen …’

  ‘Kate, call me Kate.’

  ‘I don’t see the point in all this. We’re not going to be able to ask her now, are we?’

  Peter Devine looked over at his daughter and then to O’Connor. ‘That’s the hardest part, Inspector, we all feel it, just the three of us here, it’s all wrong. Caroline should be with us, bounding in through that doorway. There’s always been the four of us and now she’s not here, she’s gone, and we can’t ask her anything, we can’t bring her back, no matter what we do.’ He broke off, crying, his shoulders shaking.

  ‘Peter, please stop.’ The softness had returned to his wife’s voice.

  Kate purposely avoided looking at either Peter or Lilli, and instead kept eye contact with Emily. ‘Emily, did Caroline say something to you about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About why she was losing weight?’

  ‘No, not about that exactly, but I knew she wasn’t happy.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Emily, if you have something to say, then for God’s sake just say it.’ The softness had left Lilli’s voice and she was looking at her eldest daughter with a look that was somewhere between fear and frustration.

  ‘She got fucked up. There, satisfied now?’

  Kate kept looking steadily at Emily. ‘And how did that happen, Emily?’

  Emily shrugged. ‘She started to think the way she looked was more important than all the other stuff. I told her she was being stupid. I mean, in a way I understood, it is hard.’ Emily looked over at her parents. ‘I’d talked to her a couple of times about it, nothing too heavy, just sister stuff. I kept telling her how great s
he was at the swimming and how I’d love to be as smart as her at school. I felt she was getting sense. I mean, the things she told me about what she was thinking were just daft.’

  Other than Kate and Emily, everyone else kept their silence. ‘And what were they, Emily, the things going on inside her head?’

  ‘Look, she thought lots of fucked-up stuff.’

  ‘But what specifically do you remember? It’s important.’

  ‘I can’t say it.’

  ‘It’s all right, Emily.’ Lilli looked at her daughter. ‘You don’t have to worry about your father and me.’

  ‘What does it matter now?’ Emily demanded, the rawness of her emotions clear in her voice.

  It was Kate’s turn to give support. ‘Well, it may not matter a whole lot, but, then again, it could help us find whoever did this.’

  Emily chewed a fingernail. ‘As I said, it was stupid. I kept telling her she was gorgeous, that she was wrong to think the way she did.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘And, well, it’s hard when someone doesn’t want to listen. No matter what I said to her, she kept thinking the same bloody thing.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Emily, just spit it out, please.’

  ‘I’m trying to, Mom.’ She stared hard at Kate. ‘If you must know, ever since she started changing, becoming aware of her body, well she talked rubbish about how her body was ugly, that she hated it. She didn’t want to grow up. It scared her.’

  ‘And what did you say to her?’

  ‘I told her that it would be okay, that I’d felt like that too at her age, and that she’d feel differently.’

  ‘Why do you think it scared her so much?’

  ‘Caroline was different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, Mom and Dad will tell you. Caroline cared too much about everything, always did. I mean, half the time I wouldn’t even notice things Caroline would pick up on as quick as anything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like anything. If someone was upset, or if a person needed help or something, Caroline was always the first to notice.’

  ‘She was sensitive, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Maybe. But lately when she was down and all, thinking those awful things about herself, no matter what I said, none of it made any difference.’

  ‘Emily, thank you. What you’ve said may help a great deal.’

  ‘She was very pretty, even if she didn’t know it.’

  ‘I know, and it sounds like she had a great sister, too.’

  ‘Not great enough.’ Emily’s eyes looked glassy, and it was obvious she was struggling to hold back tears.

  Lilli Devine walked over to her daughter, cradling her like you might a younger child. Peter Devine looked at both of them, a man in total despair. The viciousness of their loss was palpable, like a vacuum sucking them down, beyond reach.

  ‘Lilli,’ Kate asked quietly, ‘would it be okay if Detective O’Connor and I had another look at Caroline’s bedroom?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lilli answered, her voice weak and brittle.

  As Kate and O’Connor walked upstairs, Kate looked back down at Shelley Canter and the family, all of them looking like seasoned performers in the final act of some Greek tragedy.

  ≈

  When Kate and O’Connor entered Caroline’s bedroom, the first thing Kate noticed was the view of the canal through the window. The room was exactly as you’d expect any young girl’s bedroom to be – cheerful, bright bedcovers with matching purple curtains, an array of items on her dressing table from tweezers to a small heart-shaped frame with a smiling Caroline and another young girl. There was a portable television on a high bracket in the corner opposite her bed, and a white wickerwork laundry basket. To the right of the bed, there was a tower of schoolbooks, behind which stood a low wooden bookcase filled with books. The room smelled of freshly washed sheets and looked like a room the young girl might step back into at any moment.

  ‘I assume your guys have already examined this place from top to bottom?’

  O’Connor raised an eyebrow, as if her question was ridiculous. ‘You assume right, Kate.’

  ‘Nice view of the canal. I’ll want to step outside again after we’re finished here.’

  ‘Sure. But what are you looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know, at least not yet.’ She nodded at the heart-shaped photo frame. ‘Who’s that in the photograph with Caroline?’

  ‘Jessica Barry, I think.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  O’Connor was looking at the bookcase. ‘She certainly was a reader,’ he remarked.

  Kate knelt down to read the titles. ‘She liked to keep her books, look at the variety, probably every book she’s read in the last year or two.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m an expert on young girl fiction.’

  ‘It changes, O’Connor. There is a big leap at that age, moving from easy reading to young adult. Caroline has everything here from Anne of Green Gables to Pretty Little Liars.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, they all make sense, except for this one,’ she said, pointing at a particular book.

  O’Connor knelt down beside her to see. ‘The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe? What don’t you like about that one?’

  ‘Apart from it being unusual reading these days for a young girl?’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Edgar Allan Poe married his first cousin, a thirteen-year-old girl called Virginia Clemm. Some people believe the couple’s relationship was more like brother and sister than husband and wife, although he was fourteen years her senior when they married.’

  ‘Did he not write about a detective?’

  ‘He did, a character called Dupin, but he wrote many things, including poetry. If this is a full collection, it will include his famous poem ‘Eulalie’, which was about his wife.’

  ‘I thought you said her name was Virginia?’

  ‘I did, but he liked the ‘l’ sound.’

  ‘Anything else about it?’

  ‘Well, Poe had a recurring theme in his poetry – the death of a beautiful woman. He believed that was the most poetic topic in the world. Perhaps if Caroline had started to believe she wasn’t attractive, it could be that her killer sensed her anxieties, might even have used them to his advantage to gain her trust. Perhaps this was his way of reaching out to her.’

  ‘And what about the wife? What happened to her?’

  ‘Died of TB in her early twenties.’

  ‘Cheerful fellow, no doubt.’

  ‘Well he may not have been cheerful, but if Caroline had a copy of his work then there is a strong possibility our killer gave it to her.’

  Was Kate kidding herself or did O’Connor actually look slightly impressed?

  ‘Right, don’t touch it. I’ll get Hanley to go over it again, page by page. Are you finished here?’

  Kate took a last look around Caroline’s room. ‘Think so. Let’s step outside.’

  ‘You go on. I need to have a quick word with Canter before I leave.’

  ≈

  From the footpath on the canal side, Kate took in the view of what she now knew was Caroline’s bedroom. Stepping over the low wall running along the canal bank, she stood on the grass verge facing the house, her back to the water, then walked farther along the bank until she stood directly under the bridge. As the grass verge neared the canal bridge, it lowered by about a metre and a half, which meant Kate could still see the Devines’ house while being all but completely out of view from above.

  When O’Connor crossed over to join her, she realised that at first he couldn’t see her. Eventually he spotted her under the bridge and came down. He looked around the spot where she was standing. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t think of a better viewing point than right here,’ Kate replied. ‘If he stalked her, O’Connor, he got to know her movements, followed her home. What better vantage point could there be than
watching her in the safety of her own home?’

  O’Connor looked up at the bedroom window, just like her abductor might have done. ‘So, Kate, if he was stalking her, why take her now?’

  ‘That I don’t know. He could have felt it was time to move their relationship to another level. Fantasising about Caroline, watching her, following her home, they all fed into some need he had, but it’s a bit like an addiction, it doesn’t remain stationary. He wanted more.’

  ‘This grass verge gets plenty of traffic, Kate. Look at it.’ The verge was littered with cigarette butts, sweet papers, even a couple of empty vodka bottles. ‘It could have been used by under-aged drinkers, someone homeless looking for shelter, even lovers. But if our Peeping Tom did use this area to keep an eye on Caroline Devine, then Hanley will be kept busy when he gets here. I’m not sure what he’s going to find after so much time, but if there’s something here, I’ll be damned if we’re going to miss it.’

  Ellie

  I THOUGHT OF WEXFORD THIS MORNING. THAT LONG, hot summer in 1995 – the last year I considered myself a free woman. The good weather was part of the reason why Joe had pestered me for so long: ‘It would do us all the world of good,’ he kept saying, ‘especially Amy.’ But what he really meant was that it would do me the world of good.

  Joe, I realise now, was handicapped when it came to dealing with his feelings towards me, especially where my bouts of depression were concerned, being a man with a mind that never entertained self-indulgent notions. With Joe, it was always about finding solutions, moving forward, no need to dwell on anything for too long, too much thinking can cloud your brain, no point in letting all that ‘overanalysing malarkey’, as he called it, get in the way of things. At times, especially near the end, he became more like a surrogate father than a husband. I guess, though, that was as much my fault as his. By the time of Amy’s last birthday, our daily conversations had slid into the type of exchanges you would normally have with neighbours or mild acquaintances. But, in fairness, I should shoulder most of the blame. I was the one who married him on false pretences. At least at the time, Joe was honest in his belief about loving me.

  The drive down to Wexford was tedious. I felt locked in – with my own husband and daughter. What kind of person feels that way about her own family? Joe’s positivity irritated me, too. The music was loud, him singing at the top of his voice, getting Amy to join in from the back seat whenever a song came on they both knew. Now, when I remember back then, I know if I had the ability to turn back time I would go back to that very moment, stop it right there and ask both of them what they were thinking. I could probably guess at Joe’s thoughts, but Amy’s thoughts – what were they?