Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3)

by Hill, Casey

  Kennedy stepped forward and quickly made the introductions.

  Mr Forde ushered them in. ‘We were told you were coming.’ Hope and anguish played across their faces and Chris didn’t envy the task Kennedy had chosen to take on.

  ‘This way.’ Mrs Forde was a small woman. She wore a pair of gray tracksuit pants and a pink ‘Pro-Sport’ fleece top. She led them into the lounge where a small gas fire was on, along with a massive flat screen TV which looked far too big for such a small room.

  ‘You will have a cup of tea, won’t you?’ she asked, her tone jittery as she ushered them to take seats.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ Chris replied smoothly when Kennedy hesitated.

  While Mrs Forde bustled about in the kitchen, her husband fussed around by the fire. ‘Is it too warm in here for you? I could turn down the heat if you like …’

  Chris shook his head as Mrs Forde returned to the room with a pre-prepared tray of cups, teapot and biscuits. ‘No, it’s fine. A bit wintry out there today.’

  The man nodded. ‘Wind from the east, whips in off the sea…’

  They all sipped their tea. A decidedly uncomfortable silence settled. Get a move on, Chris mentally urged Kennedy.

  His partner duly set his tea cup down on the table, and leaned forward. ‘Mr and Mrs Forde, we’re here about your daughter Sarah. I’m afraid it’s not good news.’

  Mrs Forde’s hand went straight to her mouth, and her husband automatically reached for the other one, squeezing it tightly.

  Chris knew that Kennedy needed to just keep talking, to move them through the shock, and not let them settle into their grief just yet. There would be plenty of time for that once they were gone and O’Neill had taken over with his training and bereavement pack.

  ‘An unidentified young lady was killed in a hit-and-run accident in County Wicklow approximately one week ago. Through matching up medical records, we now believe the young lady was your daughter, Sarah.’

  The Fordes looked at each other, completely lost for words.

  Kennedy pushed on. He reached for the file that Chris handed to him ‘This is your daughter, yes?’

  He held out the photo of Sarah aged seven – the one from the missing person file that they had used for the facial recognition match.

  Her parents both glanced at it, and nodded in unison.

  ‘And she broke her right arm when she was five, correct?’

  Again they both nodded. ‘Fell off a swing,’ added Mr Forde, clearing his throat.

  ‘Barely even cried when we brought her to the hospital,’ sniffed his wife. ‘Always so brave.’

  Kennedy reached into the file again, and pulled out a photo of the woman from the hit and run. ‘Based on her medical records – the x-rays of the broken arm – and facial recognition software, we believe that this is how Sarah would look now.’

  He held the photo of the hit-and-run victim – the adult Sarah – out to them.

  For a second neither of them moved. Finally, Mrs Forde reached out a trembling hand, and took the photo.

  The room was silent, just the quiet hissing of the gas fire, and Mrs Forde’s faint sobs as they looked at the picture. Eventually Mr Forde looked up at Kennedy. ‘You’re sure?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’ the mother sobbed. ‘There couldn’t be some kind of mistake?’

  ‘We can’t be one hundred percent sure until—’

  ‘So it might not be her then?’ Her voice rose a little. ‘She could still be alive?’

  Chris spoke gently. ‘Mrs Forde, the x-rays and facial recognition match mean it’s very likely that the girl we found is indeed your daughter. However, we would also like to take away some personal effects today for DNA analysis in order to conclusively validate our findings.’

  But Mrs Forde wasn’t letting go of her hope that easily. She had, after all, held onto it for ten whole years. It had become her life, her reason to continue. ‘I don’t think it looks like her all, Pat, do you? It couldn’t be—’

  ‘Don’t, Rita… Just don’t…’ Her husband cut her off and Chris was somewhat taken aback by the strength of his tone. He held the photo up in front of his wife and forced her to look at it. ‘That’s our Sarah. These men wouldn’t be here if they weren’t certain.’

  For a second it appeared that she was going to protest and continue to fight, but with a sudden sob her will collapsed and she rushed from the room.

  Pat Forde stared at the doorway, then stood up. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  They watched him hurry from the room after his wife, and could hear the quiet cooing of his voice from the kitchen as he tried to console her.

  ‘It never gets any easier, does it?’ Kennedy said sadly. ‘Those poor people …’

  Chris turned his attention back to the file and looked at the pictures of the tattoo on Sarah Forde’s back.

  ‘They won’t know anything about that,’ Kennedy said determinedly.

  ‘Still, we need to ask.’

  ‘What? And leave them fretting and worrying about it for the next ten years?’

  Chris met Kennedy’s gaze. ‘You know we have to follow up—’

  ‘And you always do what you’re supposed to do, don’t you?’ countered Kennedy angrily. ‘It’s not right, Chris. Not now. I don’t think they could handle—’

  ‘Handle what?’ Mr Forde had returned without them noticing, padding silently in his soft blue slippers.

  ‘We had something we wanted to ask you – something about your daughter…’ Chris looked past him but his wife was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘She’s gone to lie down.’

  ‘It’s a long shot …’ Kennedy interjected.

  Pat Forde perched himself back on the edge of the couch. ‘We have waited years for news of Sarah, thinking about all sorts of possibilities,’ he said. ‘We want to know absolutely everything.’

  Chris slipped the photo from the folder and handed it to him. Despite his assertions to Kennedy, he did have sympathy for the man.. Bringing up the tattoo was one thing, but the pregnancy was a different matter entirely.

  Sarah’s father gazed at it silently for a moment. ‘What is it?’ he asked finally.

  ‘That’s what we’re wondering. We’ve got two girls, bodies found ten years apart, both with red hair, both with that same tattoo. Have you ever seen it before?’

  Pat Forde gazed at the photo for a few seconds more, then slowly handed it back. Chris watched him closely for a reaction but his expression was blank. Kennedy was right; it meant nothing to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Detectives, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. What does it mean?’ Then the thought struck him. ‘Oh my … is that, is it Sarah …?’

  ‘Mr Forde,’ Kennedy continued quickly, ‘we’re so sorry to have to bring this up now, but we need to talk a little about Sarah before she disappeared.’

  Pat Forde nodded, but Chris thought he noticed something other than grief pass across the man’s face.

  ‘Was she a difficult child?’ he asked, and noticed Kennedy give him a surprised look at the directness of the question.

  The man sighed heavily. ‘She was the sweetest girl you could ever imagine. I adored her, we both did.’

  They talked some more about Sarah, and what her childhood was like, before touching on the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. ‘She never came home from school one day,’ he told the detectives. ‘We were distraught … didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘Yet she’d run away before?’ Chris said, referring to the incident in the file about her turning up at her grandmother’s house.

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that. Like most children of her age – any age, I suppose – there were some … discipline issues. There was an argument one time, and Sarah fled to her grandmother’s. Happens in every family, doesn’t it?’ Forde met Chris’s gaze.

  ‘Of course,’ Kennedy agreed. ‘My own are the same, I can’t keep up with them most of the time and …
’ He trailed off, reddening at his poor choice of words.

  ‘What kind of argument, Mr Forde?’ Chris pressed.

  He shrugged. ‘It was so long ago. Something about homework as I recall …’

  Something about homework? If it were Chris he was certain he’d remember every second of that argument, go back over every word, terrified that what he’d said might have been the cause of her disappearance. Yet Pat Forde didn’t seem to remember much about it at all.

  ‘I see.’ Chris stood up suddenly. ‘Mr Forde, again, you have our deepest sympathies.’ He indicated to the FLO who, up till now, had remained silently in the background. ‘Officer O’Neill will answer any questions you might have from hereon, but before we go, could we possibly have an item of Sarah’s with which to compare DNA? A hairbrush would be ideal.’

  ‘Of course.’ Sarah’s father duly shuffled away again to another room of the house.

  When he was gone, Kennedy frowned at Chris. ‘What’s with the attitude?’

  ‘What attitude? I was simply trying to draw out whether there were any family issues related to her disapperance.’

  ‘It hardly matters now, does it?’ Kennedy retorted, and Chris guessed he was projecting again. He could hardly blame him, but unlike his partner, he wasn’t going to let the tragic circumstances color his thinking.

  Mr Forde returned with a hairbrush that had once belonged to his daughter.

  Kennedy went to shake his hand. ‘Thank you again, Mr Forde, you’ve been most helpful. Please pass on our sympathies again to your wife. Officer O’Neill will be able to make the necessary arrangements for you both to see your daughter soon.’

  Pat Forde nodded. ‘Thank you, Detectives. The last ten years have been … a living nightmare, to say the least.’

  Chris was deep in thought as he shook the man’s hand. It all sounded fine on the surface, but for some reason he didn’t believe that everything had been hunky-dory in that household.

  He’d interviewed enough grieving families over the years to spot the signs.

  Sarah Forde’s father was hiding something.

  But what?

  Chapter 17

  How did the infection come in? That is the question that haunts me. The outside world is always trying to find a way through our defenses; I must remain vigilant, watch constantly for attempts to breach our walls, to get among us, to spread poison.

  I have my suspects, those close by who have cast covetous eyes upon us. Do they think I didn’t see the way they looked at her, the lust and longing her beauty provoked? Her long limbs, her proud gait, her flaming hair, all these things and more they wanted.

  I tried to keep them away, but I cannot be everywhere at all times. Did one of them turn her head, whisper poison in her ear, infect her mind with thoughts of the other world, the one we have sought to keep from us?

  She had everything here, but like Eve, honeyed words made her want more, want something beyond love and happiness. And so she left us.

  So now I must again head out into the wicked world to find another, guide them to our home, and welcome them to the bosom of our family.

  Reilly phoned Chris’s mobile while he and Kennedy were on their way back from the Forde house, explaining that she had a new theory.

  ‘I was thinking again about the whole cult angle. Right from the start I was never convinced it had legs. However, I did have another thought.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It struck me when I was going through Sarah Forde’s file after you left earlier. Sarah was reported missing in early 2002, yes?’

  Chris nodded, momentarily forgetting that she couldn’t see him. ‘According to the records, yes.’

  ‘And the body of our cold-case victim was discovered late the previous year – end of October to be exact.’

  ‘Right ....’ Chris frowned. ‘What of it?’ he asked, trying not to sound short, but it had been a very long day, and he wasn’t really in the mood for one of Reilly’s famous theories.

  ‘So what if Sarah was some kind of replacement for the girl who died?’

  ‘Replacement …’ A automatic chill ran down Chris’s spine.

  Alongside him in the driver’s seat, Kennedy frowned at his reaction. His mind reeling, Chris took a moment to explain her theory to him.

  ‘Holy shit …’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the implications of that,’ Chris said to Reilly.

  ‘I don’t like any of it, but you have to admit it has a sort of warped logic to it,’ Reilly continued.

  ‘You make it sound like someone's collecting these girls.’

  At this, he heard Kennedy emit another low curse.

  ‘Sarah went missing when she was seven years old. There’s no way she would have ended up in a cult … or hippy camp or whatever … of her own accord at that age. So we can only conclude that somebody else was involved, somebody responsible for the tattoo and perhaps the pregnancy too. Which means that we need to be looking at an abduction situation.’ Reilly took a deep breath. ‘Viewing it from that perspective, I’m having a hard time believing the date correlation is just coincidence. It would make sense if losing one girl would prompt whoever is behind this to find another for the camp or cult or whatever.’

  ‘But that’s exactly it – for what? What would an abductor want them for?’ he said, asking the obvious question. ‘There were no signs of sexual abuse or anything like it on either girl.’

  ‘No sign of abuse, but at least one of them was sexually active, and may have been for some time,’ Reilly said, truly hoping that they weren’t talking about some kind of paedophile ring. ‘It’s already been suggested that the tattoo could be viewed as some form of branding. Your hippy friend insists that this doesn’t happen amongst them, that any such collectiveness is anathema to their way of life.’

  ‘I get what you’re saying but—’

  ‘And I had another thought.’

  He gave a deep sigh. ‘Go on then, this day is shot to hell anyway, why not ruin it further,’ he said, his tone softening. She truly was like a dog with a bone. And that was part of the problem between them just now. ‘What else has been brewing in that brain of yours?’

  Chris could see that Kennedy was trying his utmost to keep his eyes on the road and not be distracted by the conversation, and was almost tempted to tell him to pull over. But it was late, and they were still a good hour away from base.

  ‘Well, if we go along with the notion that somebody is abducting these girls for whatever reason – is it one at a time, or are there several?’ Reilly posited. ‘Remember all those missing person hits that fitted the pale skin/red-haired description?’

  Chris rubbed his face at the idea of a full-blown abduction scenario. ‘Ah hell …’ The very idea was turning his brain to ice. Yet he had to admit, it made some sense.

  ‘We can’t overlook anything. So I’m thinking, instead of going back over missing person files,’ Reilly continued, ‘we need to narrow it down a little more, and concentrate on searching for missing children. If, like Sarah, red-haired pale-skinned girls are being abducted when they are young, it means our cold-case girl would have gone missing back in the nineties.’

  ‘Which means this has been going on for a long while …’

  ‘Too long. And he may well be on the hunt for the next addition.’

  ‘Doesn’t even bear thinking about,’ Chris replied, deeply unsettled by the notion. ‘But for the moment, it all comes back to the same thing – where did Sarah and the other angel come from?’

  ‘Or to put it another way,’ Reilly said ominously, ‘if there are more, where is he keeping them hidden?’

  The following morning, Kennedy stood at the back of the queue at Starbucks.

  He watched the various characters in front of him, all desperate for an early morning caffeine hit before heading off to various cubicles in office buildings around the Interational Financial Services Center.

  As he daydreamed he became aware of the car horn beeping outsid
e. He turned to see Chris with one hand holding a phone to his ear and the other beckoning him back to the car. Whatever it was, it better be important, he thought, reluctantly giving up his place in the queue; going without his morning fag and cuppa was not the way he wanted to start the day.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked, opening the car door. Chris held up a hand to silence him as he finished the phone conversation. ‘On our way now, we’ll be there in five.’

  Hanging up the phone, he turned to look at Kennedy. ‘Guess who walked into Pearse Street station this morning?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Young William Connolly. Looks like the old man came through. He’s been charged and remanded.’

  Nice one, Kennedy thought, as God only knew how long it would have taken the UK authorities to track him down and escort him back. ‘Is he on his own?’

  ‘No, his father showed up with him for moral support.’

  They breezed through the early morning traffic using the siren and lights, taking only a couple of minutes to travel the short distance to Pearse Street station. Inside Fitzmorris, the senior officer on duty who had made the formal arrest, greeted them and led them up to the interview room where Connolly was being held.

  ‘No solicitor?’ Chris queried.

  ‘Not present, but they’ve indicated that they had consulted with one during the arrest. He knows his rights.’

  ‘OK, let’s go.’ Chris nodded to Kennedy before turning back to Fitzmorris.

  ‘Have you got the video set up?’

  ‘Everything is ready to go. Brady here will take the notes so you can get him to sign the statement afterwards.’ He indicated a young female officer who waited outside the interview room as they approached.

  William and his father stood up nervously as they entered and Chris was taken aback at how young the kid looked. His complexion was pale and tired, acne scars still visible across his cheeks a reminder of his young age, and the black lines under his eyes telling of recent sleepless nights since he’d run poor Sarah Forde down.