The Good Turn

by Dervla McTiernan

  ‘Can you stop off on the way in? It’s Reilly who’s asking, not me,’ Deirdre added hurriedly. ‘A call came in on 999. An eleven-year-old boy in Knocknacarra. He says he saw a girl his age abducted from in front of his house, about fifteen minutes ago.’ Deirdre’s tone wasn’t right for the news she was delivering. There was tension in her voice, but only a hint of it, not enough to suggest a major operation was about to kick off.

  ‘All right,’ Peter said. ‘What are you leaving out?’ He went to the kitchen. Leaned against the wall. Aoife was pouring cornflakes into a bowl. He mouthed a sorry in her direction – she responded with another eye-roll. Peter went into his bedroom, phone still pressed to his ear, and shut the door.

  ‘Well, he says he saw Slender Man do it,’ Deirdre said.

  Peter paused in the act of pushing off his shoes. He’d need to change out of his jeans if he was going to the station. ‘What?’

  ‘You know, the internet thing. Slender Man,’ Deirdre was saying. ‘Look, I didn’t talk to him myself, so . . .’

  ‘Right. So it’s a prank or a crank.’ He looked at his watch. It was early enough that the traffic on the road to Knocknacarra wouldn’t be too bad. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The boy’s name is Fred Fletcher. Address is Number One, The Rise,’ Deirdre said in a rush, maybe relieved he wasn’t making a bigger deal of things.

  They hung up, and Peter started to strip off his jeans and T-shirt. At least he didn’t have to go looking for a uniform. He was plainclothes now, had been ever since his transfer to the Special Detective Unit had been approved. SDU headquarters was in Harcourt Square, in Dublin, but these days the unit had personnel spread throughout the regions. Which meant he’d been able to transfer to detectives and stay in Galway.

  Peter pulled a clean T-shirt out of his wardrobe. The dress code of a detective depended on the nature of the work. On a standard day he aimed for respectability. That meant slacks rather than jeans, and a T-shirt with a collar on it. Being SDU meant that he also now carried a gun, something he still wasn’t used to. A Walther P99c to be precise. It was compact, as semi-automatic pistols go, but the weight of it felt strange, in the holster and in his hands.

  Peter wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but despite the fact that his day off had gone down the drain, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t now get to meet Niamh for the promised dinner, he still felt a flicker of pleasure as he made his way to his car. His job was difficult, sometimes dangerous and god knows it left him with little money in his pocket, but the truth was there was nothing in the world that he’d rather be doing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Peter didn’t bother with lights or the siren, other than giving them a brief flick to get through the tailback at the top of Threadneedle Road. He was in no great hurry to get into the station. This call-out to Knocknacarra was a reprieve and he had every intention of taking his time on the drive there and back. He wondered if the dispatcher had asked to speak to the boy’s parents. The Slender Man reference had to have had her thinking she was dealing with a crank.

  Fifteen minutes later Peter pulled in outside a mock-Tudor semi-detached. The house was painted a brisk white. A flowerbed planted with a random-seeming selection of clashing orange and pink flowers formed a border around a square of neat lawn. All the houses on the street were identical, some better maintained than others. The Rise was not a particularly apt name for the little cul-de-sac, which had no hill at all, and no view. As Peter pulled up in front of Number One, the door opened and a woman who looked to be in her late forties stared out at him anxiously. Peter climbed out of the car, reached for his badge, introduced himself.

  ‘I’m looking for a Fred Fletcher,’ he said. The woman nodded a yes and gestured impatiently for him to come inside.

  ‘He’s upstairs. I made him get into bed. Look, he’s not very well. You’ll go easy on him, won’t you?’ She led the way up narrow, carpeted stairs. The house smelled of baking, and Peter’s stomach growled.

  ‘Fred is your son, Mrs . . .?’ She obviously knew why he was there, knew that her son had called the police.

  ‘It’s Angela,’ she said. She reached the landing and opened a door into a small boxroom, very tidily arranged, furnished with a single bed made up with crisp white linen and occupied by a boy, small for eleven. He was wearing a pair of Harry Potter–style glasses which were slipping down his nose, and he had a tablet clutched in one hand. He looked flushed and unwell.

  ‘Fred?’ Peter asked.

  The boy nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice not much more than a whisper. He coughed.

  ‘You’ve been sick, Fred?’

  A shrug. ‘First bronchitis, then tonsillitis, now bronchitis again. No school for two weeks. Mum’s had to stay home from work to mind me.’ The boy managed to look pleased and worried at the same time.

  ‘All right,’ Peter said. ‘Look, Fred, I’m here because you called 999, and told the dispatcher that you’d witnessed an abduction.’

  A vigorous nod, no signs of embarrassment. Peter felt the first stirrings of concern in his gut.

  ‘You told the dispatcher that you saw Slender Man abduct a girl . . . Is that right?’

  Confusion passed over Fred’s small face. ‘No,’ he said. For the first time his eyes went to his mother’s face, but it wasn’t the guilty glance of a little boy caught out in a lie.

  ‘You didn’t say anything about Slender Man?’ Peter asked. ‘Do you know what Slender Man is?’ If the boy denied it Peter didn’t relish the task of explaining. His own knowledge was limited to what he’d picked up from a few newspaper reports about a stabbing in North America. Slender Man was a sort-of digital urban legend, as best as he’d been able to make out. Something born in a photoshop challenge run on a message board that morphed into an entire mythology, given fresh impetus when two teenage girls stabbed a third to the brink of death, then claimed that Slender Man made them do it.

  But Fred was nodding. He half lifted his tablet towards Peter. ‘I was playing Slender Man’s Forest,’ he said. ‘The app. That’s what I told the dispatcher. I was playing the app before I looked out the window and saw what happened.’

  Oh Christ. ‘And what did you see, Fred? Tell me exactly.’ Peter kept his voice very calm. He could almost feel the thrum of Angela’s anxiety from the doorway behind him.

  Fred glanced towards the window. ‘I saw a girl, walking her dog. Then a car came and parked a bit down the street.’ Fred made a vague gesture towards the window. He was really struggling to get the words out, his voice a rasping whisper. ‘A man got out and walked towards her. I thought he was going to go into the house next door. But then . . .’ Fred aimed another glance at his mum.

  ‘It’s all right, Fred,’ Angela said from behind Peter.

  ‘He punched her in the stomach. Really, really hard. She fell down and let her dog’s lead go. The dog just yapped and yapped until the man kicked it and it sort of crouched down and backed off. Then he picked the girl up from the ground, and he put her into the boot of his car, and he drove away. The dog ran after the car. I don’t know where it is now.’ Fred leaned back on his pillow, gasped in a deep breath. There was a light sheen of sweat on his pale face.

  There was absolutely no doubt in Peter’s mind that the boy was telling the truth. The dispatcher had screwed up, she’d misheard the boy, which, given the state of his voice, might be understandable. Why the hell had his mother let him make the call himself? Peter cringed inwardly at the thought of his leisurely drive in the sunshine. How much time had passed since the call came through? At least half an hour.

  ‘What kind of car was the man driving?’ Peter asked.

  A shrug. ‘I don’t really know cars,’ Fred said. His voice broke on the last word and he coughed, a nasty-sounding rattle. He pushed his tablet across the bed towards Peter. ‘It was black,’ he said. He gestured at the tablet.

  Peter’s mouth went dry. ‘Did you get a picture?’ he asked.

  Fred seemed to feel the
futility of trying to speak. He woke the screen of his tablet, tapped on an app, tapped again, and turned the screen to face Peter. Peter watched as a short video played out and looped. Fred had taken it from his bedroom window. The glass through which he’d shot the video was grubby and the video itself was innocuous enough. It showed a black Volkswagen Passat, parked about fifteen metres down the street, pulling away from the curb and driving off, leaving a barking little white terrier in its wake. Peter couldn’t make out anything of the driver but he could make out at least part of the registration.

  Peter looked at Fred, and two red-rimmed blue eyes looked back at him.

  Peter stood. ‘You did brilliantly, all right? And don’t worry, we’re going to find her.’ The boy held the tablet out to him, and he took it. ‘I’ll get this back to you as soon as I can,’ he said. Fred shrugged.

  ‘Did you know the girl?’ Peter asked. ‘Did you recognise her, or the man?’

  A shake of the head. No.

  ‘Could you describe him to me, Fred?’

  In his strained whisper, every second word lost, Fred described the man as tall and thin, dark hair, a beard. He’d been wearing slacks, and a navy puffa jacket, just like Fred’s dad wore sometimes.

  ‘What about his age?’

  The boy hesitated, unsure.

  ‘Older or younger than your dad?’

  ‘About the same, I think,’ said Fred.

  ‘And the girl?’

  Fred shrugged. ‘She never turned around. She had long dark hair. A blue coat down to her knees.’

  Peter turned to Angela, gave her the nod, and she followed him out to the landing.

  ‘What age is your husband?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Ex-husband,’ she said. ‘He’s forty-two. What was all that about a slender man?’

  ‘Just a misunderstanding,’ Peter said. ‘The dispatcher couldn’t quite make out what Fred was saying . . .’

  ‘He called you lot before he even told me what had happened. Then he came and found me in the kitchen, bawling his eyes out. Poor kid. He’s a really good boy, you know? A really good boy.’ She hesitated. ‘Don’t go getting any crazy ideas about his dad either, right? It wasn’t him. Fred’s dad lives in London, he’s blond, and only a few inches taller than I am.’

  ‘All right,’ Peter said. ‘Can you give me a minute? I need to make a call but I have a few more questions for you.’

  Peter took the stairs, went outside and dialled Cormac Reilly directly on his mobile.

  ‘Reilly.’

  ‘It’s Fisher. I’m in Knocknacarra. I responded to that call.’ Peter wanted to sound cool and in control, but there was more fear and excitement than professionalism in his voice. He took a breath, tried to slow himself down.

  ‘Okay.’ Reilly sounded distracted.

  ‘Uh . . . the reported abduction,’ Peter said. ‘A young boy – Fred Fletcher – called it in. He spoke to control in Dublin and there was a mix-up. Some confusion. His call wasn’t taken seriously but I think this is the real deal. He has video of the car driving away. I’ve got his tablet here with the recording on it. The recording isn’t perfect, but I can read a partial.’

  ‘Tell me the story from the beginning.’

  Quickly, Peter ran Reilly through everything he knew. His report was briefly interrupted when Reilly took a few seconds to pass on the partial plate and to issue instructions to the officers in the squad room.

  ‘I’ll be with you soon,’ Reilly said. ‘They’ll get to work on the partial but see if you can email the video directly to tech. When you get that done, start on the door-to-door. We’ll be with you in twenty minutes.’

  Reilly hung up, and Peter turned to see Angela Fletcher watching him from her front door. Peter held up the tablet.

  ‘Can I use your Wi-Fi?’ he asked. ‘I need to email the video to the station.’

  ‘Of course.’ She stepped back, made room for him to enter the house.

  It only took Peter a minute to log into his own email account, attach the video and send it off marked urgent, and for most of that minute he was mentally berating himself for not having done so before he called Reilly. He’d been worked up, maybe not thinking straight. Well, that was the last mistake he was going to make. From now on, he was keeping his head. He waited for the confirmation that the email was received, then turned to Angela.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll need to keep the tablet, I’m afraid, but we’ll get it back to you as soon as possible.’

  She nodded.

  ‘What can you tell me about the neighbours?’ he asked, already moving towards the door. She followed.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll get much out of them,’ she said.

  Peter reached the open front door. He stepped outside. There were twelve semi-detached houses in total in the little cul-de-sac, six on one side of the street, six on the other. Signs of life were minimal. Angela stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

  ‘Mrs McCluskey across the road will have been at home. She never goes anywhere but she’s as blind as a bat and sleeps half the day. You might get a few others. But if anyone saw it they would have called you, wouldn’t they? It’s not the kind of thing you ignore.’

  ‘Okay, thank you.’ Peter was halfway down the driveway by now, still looking back towards Angela. Movement from the bedroom window above caught his eye. He looked and saw Fred standing there, staring down at him, looking half afraid and wholly sick. He was so pale, with great dark circles under his eyes. Peter thought of Reilly mobilising the few officers they had left. Thought of the video, which, after all, had shown nothing much.

  ‘Angela, what are the chances that Fred made this up?’ Peter asked. ‘In a bid for attention, maybe?’ Fred’s dad lived in London. How often did they see each other?

  ‘Jesus.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve been hovering over him for the last two weeks. How much more attention do you think he might need? No, I’m telling you, he’s not the type. My son’s a smart, capable boy who does well in school and is well liked by his friends. There’s no way he would do something like that.’ She paused, glanced up at the boy’s window.

  Angela didn’t seem to be the rose-tinted glasses type. On the other hand . . .

  ‘That video game . . . the app that Fred was playing. It’s definitely not suitable for an eleven-year-old.’

  Angela Fletcher looked surprised, then gave him a hard glare. ‘Jesus. Everyone’s a parent, aren’t they? Haven’t you got bigger problems right now?’

  Peter flushed, nodded, and got on with it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘I need a team. I need experienced officers, on the phones and out on the ground. We’re talking about a child here.’ Brian Murphy, safely ensconced behind his desk, frowned and looked down at the pen he held in his right hand. Cormac felt a strong flicker of personal dislike, and tried to suppress it.

  ‘The task force—’

  ‘The task force is sucking up resources we badly need. Things have gone too far there.’

  A flash of anger in Murphy’s eyes, quickly muted. Cormac took a breath. He needed to go more slowly at this, step more carefully. But there was no time. And he’d tried diplomatic methods. Had pushed for months to get some resources and gotten nowhere.

  ‘Sir, virtually every officer we have has been out on surveillance for months now, spread halfway across the county, from Westport to Clifden, and we don’t have anything to show for it. In the meantime, things are going to hell here in Galway. Street assaults are up – we’ve no one in the Square on Saturday nights. At best we can put together a skeleton crew but that pulls our last few officers out of the station. And it might not be showing up in your stats yet, but I’m telling you, another couple of months like this and your ratio of detected versus recorded crime is going to plummet. The Assistant Commissioner will be on the phone asking questions.’

  ‘My ratio?’ Murphy said, one eyebrow raised, a stain of red appearing high on each cheekbone.

  ‘I meant the station. The station�
�s ratio.’

  ‘All I’m hearing from you is excuse after excuse, Reilly. When it operates in Dublin the task force asks for and gets exactly this level of support.’

  ‘With respect, sir, Dublin’s a completely different story. When the task force is in Dublin they lean on local stations for support, yes, but they take up what? Ten per cent, maybe twenty per cent, worst case scenario, of local resources. Here we’ve had nights where fully sixty or seventy per cent of our officers are off on surveillance. And I have to say again, we have nothing to show for all of this. Not a single arrest or a useful piece of information in six months. Morale is down. We are inundated with complaints from local people because of all the minor offences that are going un-investigated.’

  Murphy sighed. ‘We are all working in a constrained environment, Reilly. That’s just part of modern policing. Good officers adapt. They innovate. They don’t waste time moaning about the efforts made by others to make our world a safer place.’

  A safer place? Christ almighty. There was a knock on the door behind him. Trevor Murphy, garda sergeant, second-in-command of the task force that was the subject under discussion, and Brian Murphy’s first-born son, put his head around the door.

  ‘Am I interrupting?’ Trevor said. ‘If you have a moment, I need to run you through a few details about tonight’s surveillance before we head out.’

  Brian Murphy waved his son into the room and Cormac shrugged back a flare of irritation. Trevor Murphy shouldn’t even be in Galway. It was against garda regulations for son to report to father. Under normal circumstances Trevor would be stationed as far from his father’s command as was reasonably practicable. They only got away with the current arrangement because, technically, the drugs task force reported through the Assistant Commissioner, Special Crime Operations, whereas Superintendent Brian Murphy reported up through the Assistant Commissioner, Western Region. Two different reporting structures meant that, officially at least, Trevor Murphy was not in his father’s chain of command. The reality, however, was that Trevor had been working out of Mill Street Garda Station for nearly six months, and his father did not hesitate to provide him with everything he asked for and more.