by Hill, Casey
Obsession was not always a good thing, Reilly knew, but if managed correctly, it could sometimes be the difference between life and death.
‘What have you got?’ she asked Lucy now.
‘From the missing person records. A red-haired girl that fits the description of our hit-and-run victim went missing in Navan ten years ago, aged seven. Her name is Sarah Forde.’
Reilly mentally ran the calculations. ‘So she’d be seventeen now. The age seems right. What’s the background? She was hardly a runaway at that age.’
‘According to the report, the family maintained she was a bit wild but wouldn’t just take off. She’d done it before though, taken off after a family row only to turn up at her gran’s. It was called in, but reported as a false alarm as soon as she was found.’
‘I’m guessing there’s a reason it caught your eye …’ Reilly urged her.
‘Yes,’ Lucy replied, pausing. ‘She broke her right arm when she was five years old.’
‘Do we have the x-rays?’
‘Supposed to come through this afternoon.’
‘Excellent. When they do, let’s get Julius to take a look, him being the medical expert.’
Lucy groaned. ‘Please don’t let him hear you call him that – his head is big enough as it is.’
‘What are the chances of this guy being at home I wonder?’ Kennedy said, reaching into his inside pocket for a long overdue nicotine fix.
‘Don’t know but it’s worth a shot.’ Chris had been thinking about MacDonald’s theory since they’d spoken to him.
If the retired detective had been right all this time, and the unidentified girl from the cold case had indeed been an eco-warrior type, someone who’d dropped out of mainstream society, it would explain a lot. It would certainly explain why nobody had been reported missing, and no one had come forward to claim the girl’s body.
MacDonald had pointed out that they were a suspicious bunch that would not give the police the time of day, never mind answer questions about a potential member.
Kennedy leaned against the side of the car as he inhaled deeply on his quickly disappearing cigarette. ‘Just because MacDonald thinks this “Van Winkle” guy is still around doesn’t mean we’ll be able to find him.’
‘Look, if you don’t fancy the walk just come out and say it.’ Chris knew Kennedy wasn’t particularly fond of muddy forest trails, or exertion of any kind for that matter, so his partner staying behind would save his legs. Not to mention Chris’s ears. ‘MacDonald said you can still make out the old bits of canvas from the road, so it can’t be that far. I’ll be up and back in five if you want to stay here.’
‘Nah, it’s fine, the fresh air will do me good,’ Kennedy said, plumes of smoke escaping his nose and mouth as he stubbed the butt beneath his foot, propelling himself away from the car with his posterior as he did so.
Anybody who actually knew Rip Van Winkle’s real name was either long moved on or dead. The name had stuck after local school kids had christened him back in the eighties because of his long gray hair and beard.
When a particular part of the forest earmarked for road development had turned into a battleground between the ‘Friends of the Earth’ and local authorities, Rip had been one of the senior ‘warriors’.
MacDonald had been unable to shed any light on the man’s actual identity; the only thing he could say for sure was that if the girl had indeed come from the hippy encampment, Old Rip would know. Whether he’d be more willing to help now, given how much time had passed, was another question entirely.
Chris and Kennedy followed a path between two waymarkers through a grassy area of picnic tables and beyond under a canopy of leafless oak trees, the indigenous trees that had been the source of all the confrontation years before.
‘Think he’ll talk to us?’ Kennedy panted after a couple of minutes, as he struggled to keep pace with Chris.
‘Looks like we’ll soon find out.’ Chris indicated up ahead to a collection of faded tarpaulin sheets, wooded pallets and plastic, just as MacDonald had described.
‘Hello?’ Chris called out in a cheery, unthreatening tone.
No response. Several signs were nailed to posts around the camp, all with a decidedly ‘green’ message: He who Plants a Tree loves Others beside Himself, This is YOUR planet, SAVE it.
Mr Van Winkle clearly still strongly believed in the cause even if he was now fighting the battle alone. Chris and Kennedy stopped where they were, not wanting to intrude too much even though it was a public park. ‘Good afternoon, anybody there?’ Chris called out again.
‘If you’re calling about a television license, I don’t have one.’ The detectives both quickly whipped around at the sound of the voice behind them.
Walking towards them was an old, wiry-looking man dressed in shorts and a raincoat, pushing an ancient ‘high nelly’ bike. Trailing behind him was an equally aged black mongrel, its tongue nearly dragging on the ground.
‘How can I help you two ... walkers?’ the man asked, looking them both up and down suspiciously, his gaze resting on Kennedy who looked about as far away from a hillwalker as you could get.
‘Hello there, Mr …?’
There was a heavy silence.
Chris continued quickly. ‘I’m Detective Delaney and this is my partner Detective Kennedy. We were wondering if we might ask you a few questions in relation to a case we are working on.’
The man eyed them both again and put his bike up against a tree, but he remained silent, waiting for Chris to continue.
‘We are trying to establish the identity of a women found dead not too far from here several years back and we wondered if you might be able to help.’
‘Should I be asking for a phone call or a solicitor, Detective?’
‘No, no, not at all. We understand that you’ve lived around this area for some time, and so you might be able to help,’ Kennedy assured him.
‘I’ve seen a lot of people come and go through here over the years, that’s for sure.’ He poured some water into a plastic bowl and the parched mutt threw his snout in it. ‘What makes you think I’d know this person?’
‘I’ll be honest, sir, we’re not entirely sure. Our interest in this case has recently been revived because of a similar incident and we hoped…’
‘Ah, I think I know where you’re coming from. I might live in a hut with no television but I do read the papers,’ Rip said, smiling at their obvious surprise. ‘Your comrades called here many times, flashing pictures and asking questions about a tattooed girl.’ There was a faint chuckle in his voice. ‘And now all these years later you’re back asking the same questions, because of another tattooed girl. Well I hope those two rest in peace, because if they’re waiting for justice from you lot it might be a while off yet.’
‘Sir, we are simply bringing ourselves up-to-date with the older incident to try and help with the latest,’ Chris said, taking a photograph of the cold-case girl from his pocket. ‘Some of the original investigation team believed, rightly or wrongly, that the girl may have been known to somebody from your community back then. We hoped to rule that in or out.’ He handed him the photo. ‘Could you at least take another look and tell us if you recognize the girl or the tattoo?’
Rip took the photo in his weathered hands and looked at the same image he’d been shown years before. ‘I still don’t know her, Detectives, and if there’s another similar case … well, take a look around here…’ He indicated the surrounding trees, completely empty apart from the fading remains of long-abandoned encampments.
‘The war is long over and there’s nobody left but me and Bertie,’ he said, nodding towards the dog lying with his head between his paws, his opaque aged eyes staring up mournfully at them.
There was no war left to fight, Chris thought. The motorway was long built but Rip had evidently fallen in love with the place and decided to stay on, long after the others had shipped off to some other battle ground, returned to college, or more likely, gone ove
r to the dark side and got corporate jobs.
‘What about the tattoo then? It’s quite distinctive. Did you ever notice any of your people sporting something similar?’ Kennedy coaxed.
‘Look, this place here…’ Rip scratched his head as if trying to explain something to people who spoke a completely different language. ‘This place was never about us; we were merely protecting this place for our kids, for your kids.’ His tone was completely sincere. ‘People like us don’t go in for collective ways of living, we’re all about being individuals, despite having a common cause. Sure, some of the folks who fought here might have had various types of body art, but it was individual to them and who they were – nothing to do with the cause. It’s not how we do things.’
He looked again at the photo. ‘I’d remember that, and I’d remember her too. If you told me a name I couldn’t be sure, a lot passed through, but a face … I always remember a face.’ He handed the photo back to Chris. ‘We told your colleagues the same thing before. I hope for her sake this time you believe me. You’re thinking that the tattoo might well be tribal, but believe me, this girl wasn’t one of our tribe.’
Chapter 16
‘We’ve had a hit for a possible match on our hit and run,’ Reilly announced to the lab team later that afternoon. Gary was inputting information into Pegasus while Julius was peering into one of the viewing lenses of the comparison microscope with Lucy close by. ‘Medical records are just in. I’d like to get some opinons on these x-rays.’
She clipped two pairs of x-rays on to a light box and flicked a switch to illuminate the images.
‘The set on the right are from a missing person report; the others recently taken from our hit-and-run victim during autopsy.’ She turned to Julius, who thanks to his surgeon’s training at Queen’s University was the most medically minded of the team. ‘Any initial thoughts?’
‘Well…’ He studied both sets of x-rays for a long moment before beginning his prognosis. ‘The young girl’s fracture is a closed fracture, probably caused by a garden variety trip and fall. It would have healed up nicely as it’s transverse. I’d imagine it was in a cast for a few weeks.’
‘By closed you mean simple, as in not a clean break caused by major trauma,’ Reilly put in by way of clarification.
‘Yes, looks like a minor injury, and I’m pretty sure it would have been classed by a physician as a Grade One.’
The team turned their attention to the x-ray taken from the hit-and-run victim.
‘Looks like a match to me given the positioning,’ Lucy said. ‘I can see evidence of trauma in the same area.’
‘Correct.’ Julius picked up a pen and lightly circled the area along the bone belonging to the hit-and-run victim. ‘There is an abundance of calcification in this area. When bones heal they overproduce additional bone, making the fracture site not only stronger, but also easier to spot in newer x-rays.’ He stood back a little from the lightbox. ‘If you compare where I’ve just traced that line halfway across that raised calcified bit, it certainly looks to be proportionately in the same spot as well as being the same shape on both sets.’
Reilly nodded. ‘Pretty conclusive then.’ She picked up the missing person file marked Sarah Forde and turned to look at the others. ‘So it appears our first Fallen Angel now has a name.’
[1 line break]
Later that day, Chris and Kennedy peered over Reilly’s shoulder as she inputted data into the PC.
Having discovered the matching x-rays, the detectives made their way to the GFU to oversee the final and possibly most decisive element of the identification exercise.
‘So how does this work?’ Kennedy asked her.
‘Don’t forget to explain it in one-syllable words for him,’ Chris chipped in, ‘and definitely no technical terms.’
‘It’s facial recognition software,’ Reilly said. ‘Using a photograph of someone’s face, the software analyzes the person’s underlying bone structure and projects what they would look like at different ages.’
Chris glanced sideways at Kennedy. ‘We should put a photo of you in there, see what you’ll look like when you’re at retirement age.’
‘Another few years working with you and we’ll be able to see it already,’ Kennedy muttered.
Reilly clicked on the program and a childhood photo of Sarah Forde from the missing person report appeared. They all fell silent as her sweet angelic features lit up the screen.
All this time she had been alive, so close and yet so far from those who’d waited in hell for some good news. Now, a decade later, when the breakthrough was finally made it would destroy any last hope they might have retained.
Reilly set the program to project what Sarah would look like at seventeen. Spread out on the desk alongside them were the photographs of the hit-and-run victim’s face taken post mortem.
There were a few moments before an image of a beautiful woman with thick, long red hair appeared. As they waited for the program to finish, rendering the image, the room stayed silent.
‘Well, there we have it,’ Reilly murmured eventually.
‘That’s freaky…’
Looking at the images side by side, there could be little doubt that the elfin features of seven-year-old Sarah Forde had developed into the fragile beauty they had found lying on the road near Roundwood.
Chris straightened up. ‘So now we know who our victim is.’
Kennedy nodded. ‘I only wish that thing could tell us where the hell she came from that night, where she disappeared to for all that time, or what the heck that tattoo means.’
Chris looked pensive. ‘I guess the next step is to break the news to the family.’
Kennedy’s miserable expression showed what he thought about that. ‘God, the thought of it – and after so many years. What must it have been like for them, wondering every day whether she was alive or dead, and what might have happened to her?’
‘Well, if nothing else,’ Reilly said, glancing sadly at the childhood photo of little Sarah Forde, ‘at least now we might be able to give them some peace.’
Kennedy gazed out of the window at the rolling fields as he and Chris headed north up the M3.
‘It’s hard not to imagine it happening to you,’ he said, eyes staring vacantly at the sky. ‘I think of my two and wonder what I’d do if one of them went missing,’ he added. He doted on his daughters Amanda and Jo, who were seventeen and fourteen years of age respectively. ‘It would be living hell.’
Chris glanced across at him. It was rare for his partner to be so serious, but the prospect of telling Sarah’s parents that after so long their missing daughter had been finally found dead was not an enticing one. Nor was the suggestion that while she was alive she may have been kept by some kind of cult.
To make matters worse, they would need to ask about the circumstances of her disappearance, rake over old ground at the very worst moment of their grief in order to attempt to find some kind of link to the other girl with the same mysterious tattoo.
‘I’d move heaven and earth trying to find them. But have you ever looked at the statistics? Tons of young kids go missing here every year, and most never show up again.’
‘I know.’
Although he didn’t have any children of his own, Chris was very close to his two-year-old god-daughter Rachel, the daughter of his best friend, and he took the role seriously, having seen firsthand how having a child had changed his friend. He could only imagine what it must be like to have the incredible responsibility of a child yourself. Not to mention such unbelieveable love. He wondered if he’d ever experience it himself.
Kennedy glanced across at him. ‘Let me do the talking for this one,’ he said suddenly.
Chris was surprised. It was generally agreed that he had the gentler touch in such situations, and was usually able to summon up more affinity than the often brusque Kennedy. ‘You sure?’
His partner nodded. ‘I think I’d rather be the one to tell them than just stand by, feeling
helpless. Parent to parent.’
The Fordes lived in a small terraced house in the suburbs of Navan. According to the records, it was the same house they had been living in when Sarah had disappeared.
Chris parked four doors up from the house, while they waited for the Family Liaison Officer. The local station had called ahead to ensure that the Fordes were home and to arrange an FLO, but had not told them what it was about, simply that they had some questions. Protocol demanded that a professional be on hand to talk to the parents after the detectives had finished their questioning.
As he looked around Chris realized it would be hard to imagine a more boring place to grow up – small-town Ireland, endless rows of streets that looked the same. Had Sarah been happy in these quiet streets?
Kennedy was already out of the car, smoking his obligatory JP Blue, something to calm his nerves before they spoke to the Fordes. The breeze whipped the smoke from his cigarette and swirled it up past his face.
Spotting the FLO pull up behind them, Chris closed the car door and locked it. The air was cold and went straight through his thin jacket. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
Kennedy dropped his cigarette, ground it beneath his heel, and walked towards the bereavment officer.
The man introduced himself as Jeff O’Neill. ‘I’ve only just got the brief on this one.’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody tragic. Anything else I should know before we go in?’
‘Not especially. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are not exactly clear-cut, so we’ll need to see what their reaction is like.’
Chris moved toward the Forde house, followed by Kennedy and O’Neill. As they walked up the path he noticed the front curtains twitch, and an air of foreboding settled over him.
They were expected. Anticipated.
Mr Forde opened the door; his wife was right behind him, peering over his shoulder. They were both in their early fifties, but looked far older. Gray hair, sunken faces, defeat and despair written in the lines and wrinkles.
