Blood Tide

by Claire McGowan

  Rory muttered something. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing before you run off, Dr Maguire? This isn’t London. Everyone knows each other, and things can be – tricky.’

  ‘Tricky why? Look what else I found.’ She showed him the list, which she’d bagged up and put in her pocket.

  Rory took a look. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It was in her office. In the desk. What is it?’

  A drop of rain fell off his hood and onto the bag, trickling down. ‘Bollocks. Well, I don’t know, could be anything.’

  ‘Do you know these people?’

  ‘Aye, of course, they’re all islanders. Matt obviously is Fi’s boyfriend. Jimmy Reilly – he’s a farmer. Niamh lives in the village.’

  ‘And Andrea? What’s the deal with her? Her husband wouldn’t tell me anything.’ Paula had a horrible thought. ‘Oh God, she’s not dead, is she?’

  Rory pushed back his hood, dripping more water. ‘She’s not dead, but you shouldn’t have just gone round there. Andrea – she got sick a while ago. She’s over on the mainland still, in hospital. And the baby – well. There was a wee accident.’

  ‘So this is, what, a patient list?’

  ‘I don’t know, I said. We need to go now, Dr Maguire. Please. The ferry won’t wait.’ He turned the wheel hard, rounding into the harbour again, where the boat bobbed uneasily on the waves. The ramp was still down, rocking as the waves spilled over it.

  She put the list away again. ‘All right, but I’d like to look into it. Don’t you think this is strange, having her boyfriend’s name on a piece of paper?’

  ‘How would I know? Is that not the kind of thing women do, doodle names on things?’

  ‘Er, when we’re twelve maybe.’ She looked at him curiously. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I just . . . it doesn’t feel right looking through her things is all.’

  ‘But we have to! She’s missing. We might still be able to help her, if we can find out where she is.’

  ‘I know.’ He almost pushed Paula out the door of the car. ‘I know, and you’re right, but for now you need to get on the boat. They’re waiting for you.’

  She could see Fiacra waving her over from the deck. It was hard not to feel a certain relief at the sight of the boat – and she picked up her pace, seeing the last passenger step on – as a way off this soaking, freezing island, but all the same, when she got on and the ramp raised up behind her, she couldn’t help looking back to where Rory stood on the dock, a lone figure all in black, receding further and further into the darkness.

  ‘So, do you not think that’s sort of weird? That he was so angry? And he shouldn’t have those dogs around young kids.’

  Fiacra leaned on the side of the boat. Their faces were numb and wet with spray, but the inside waiting area was full of islanders and day-trippers making their escape, and this felt like the kind of conversation you didn’t have in public. ‘I don’t know, Maguire. You shouldn’t have just gone. This place – it’s not like the mainland. There’s sort of a different code.’

  She sniffed. ‘It’s got the same laws as everywhere else. I want to know why Fiona had her own boyfriend’s name on a list in her office. And why Andrea Sharkey’s husband is so pissed off.’

  ‘Did you find out what was the deal with the other names on the list?’

  ‘Islanders, but McElhone wouldn’t tell me much. What do you think of him?’

  Fiacra shrugged. ‘Dunno. Seems good enough.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s keeping something back?’

  ‘Aye, maybe. But don’t be mistaken, Maguire – we need him, out there. People wouldn’t tell us a thing if we didn’t have a local with us.’

  ‘But he needs to help us, not keep things back. Two people are missing!’

  ‘Aye, and they’re not locals, either. Let’s not forget that.’

  ‘Fine,’ she sighed. ‘But I want to come back out here tomorrow.’

  ‘Thought you were going home?’

  ‘I can’t go home when we still don’t know anything. That list and the blood in the kitchen, the broken light – that’s enough for me. I can get a flight back tomorrow night.’

  Fiacra was shaking his head. ‘Like a terrier with a rat, you are. I forgot.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, how come you’re so keen to get home? Got a hot date waiting for you tonight?’ She elbowed him through his layers of raincoat and jumpers. ‘Another South American beauty?’

  ‘Ah no, I wouldn’t have the time for that sort of thing now. Too busy catching crims. Anyway, who’d I meet stuck out here in the arse end of nowhere?’

  ‘All those dangerous country crims. What is it, petrol-stealing and drink-driving?’

  ‘Hey, sometimes we get the odd bit of sheep-rustling too.’

  ‘This case must be a nice change. That why you wanted me down here – grab a bit of excitement while you can? Take your one chance of a proper investigation?’ She was pretty sure Fiacra had also got hold of that smell – the one that told you this was one of those cases where everything wasn’t tied up for you in a nice bow – but she wanted to be sure her instincts were right. Part of her wished it was simple, so she could get off home to Maggie. But a bigger, deeper part knew that it wasn’t, and was gearing up to meet it head-on.

  He scowled. ‘No. I mean, aye, it’s interesting for a change, but that’s not why. There’s just something strange out there. Did you not feel it? Like – I don’t know, we were just the thicko outsiders, and nobody was telling us the whole story? I dunno about you, but I didn’t fancy staying the night, case or no case. I don’t think they wanted us there.’

  Paula looked back as the island faded into the horizon beyond them. It was almost gone now, hidden in spray and waves and the darkening sky. ‘I’ve been here before,’ she heard herself say. ‘Holiday with my parents. Way back. Before my mother. You know.’

  Fiacra was squinting at her, his fair hair plastered to his face. ‘You have to find them all, eh?’

  ‘I have to try at least.’ Fiona Watts had left that list behind, an unwitting message from her to them, now that she couldn’t speak for herself. And Paula intended to find out why. ‘Those names on the list – any of them ring a bell, anyone you might have a file on?’

  Fiacra considered it. ‘I’ve hardly been here a month. But . . . Andrea Sharkey, was it?’

  ‘Yeah. Anything?’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll look into it.’

  She pulled her coat around herself. ‘I’m going in before I freeze to death. And listen, Fiacra – humour an old mumsy lady, will you, and get yourself back in the game?’

  ‘Ach, I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t really felt it, past while.’

  Because of Avril, she imagined, and the disappointment of it all. Paula knew what that was like too. ‘I know. But sometimes you just have to let people go, and trust that there’s someone else out there.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re one to talk about letting things go.’

  ‘Never mind me. Go on a date, for God’s sake. The women of Kerry deserve it.’

  Fiona

  The sea is full of blood.

  That was the phrase Matt used, back when we first met. He was telling me about Japan, a dolphin hunt he’d tried to stop, back when he was young and idealistic. Of course, Matt never stopped being idealistic. That’s the tragedy of it. The sea is full of blood, Fi, and I’m in this little boat, and the blood is everywhere, slopping in the sides, and it’s all over the oars and my clothes and my skin, and every time I touch something I leave these big bloody handprints on it. Like I’m guilty too – like we all did this terrible thing. Do you understand?

  And me – thirty-three, and still dressing like I thought I could pass for twenty-five, nodding madly. Of course. Jes
us.

  We’d been on the island for fifty days when Matt started saying it in his sleep. He’d come home early, refusing dinner, and I’d caught him glugging Gaviscon in the kitchen before bed. Stomach ache. Tired. Going to bed early.

  I woke him from his sleep-talking. ‘What’s the matter? Were you dreaming?’

  And him, confused, sweating in his sleep although it was December: ‘Don’t you see? The blood. It isn’t safe. Don’t you see it, Fi?’

  Me, soothing: ‘Of course I see. I see it, babe.’

  I didn’t. But now I do. Now that I’ve also had blood on me, leaving a trace on every surface you touch – doors, light switches, your own skin. I understand that feeling, the thing Lady Macbeth was on about. That you’ll never be clean again.

  When he started to say that phrase in his sleep – the sea is full of blood – I knew things were about to get very bad. I’ve always been a good diagnostician. What I don’t know in every case is how to cure the ill.

  The sea is full of blood. I was thinking that as well when it all ended, as I sank over the side and into the silky black water. How remarkably little blood there was this time, but what a stain it leaves all the same.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Paula directed a hopefully professional smile to the nurse on reception. ‘Hi, yes, I’m looking for an Andrea Sharkey? I think she’s a patient here. Could you tell me what ward she’s on?’

  ‘Let me take a wee look for you.’

  On reaching the mainland after a fairly hair-raising boat ride, the waves rising higher and higher and the loos out of use after ten minutes as people puked their guts up, Paula had asked Fiacra to drop her at the hospital while he went to the station to do some digging. A quick trip to A & E told her that the fisherman was stable but out cold, so she’d decided to dig a bit herself. On the TV in the waiting room, a drenched reporter did a to-camera from Bone Island earlier that day, dodging waves on the dock. The words scrolled across the screen: search suspended for missing couple. Meaning everyone thought they were dead, drowned. Which made sense. Except that it didn’t, not to Paula.

  The nurse, a freckle-faced Kerrywoman, had gone to her computer affably enough, but when she pulled up the record she frowned. ‘Oh. Andrea’s on restricted visits, so. Are you family?’

  ‘I’m with the police.’ Paula hoked out her ID, with its underexposed photo that made her look like the Bride of Frankenstein. ‘Can I ask, what’s the matter with Andrea? Is she sick?’

  The receptionist bit her lip. ‘You better go to the ward and they’ll explain. If they’ll let you in. Second floor, turn left at the lifts.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ Mysterious. Paula took the stairs instead of the lift – she still hadn’t lost that last stone of baby weight and the baby was nearly at school now – then walked briskly down the yellow-painted corridor, glass-walled wards going off on either side. Outside, the rain still washed the windows, and the hospital seemed almost cosy, evening drawing in fast. This impression was almost, but not quite, carried up to the last ward in the corridor, which had no glass, and thick security doors. Paula stopped, puzzled, and counted again. Yes, she’d come the right way. And now she was standing in front of a sign that read: PSYCHIATRIC INPATIENTS.

  ‘Why is it you want to see Andrea?’ A doctor, white-coated and severe, had been summoned from the depths of the ward. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in about two years.

  ‘I’ve just come from Bone Island. The local doctor and her boyfriend are missing, and I found Andrea’s name on a list in her surgery. So I need you to tell me what happened to her, please. I think it could be connected.’

  The doctor once again scrutinised Paula’s ID, but could apparently find nothing wrong with it. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘You really know nothing about the case?’

  ‘I work up north mostly. Why, what happened?’

  ‘Well. Andrea came in just before Christmas, and I diagnosed her with post-partum psychosis. Do you know much about that?’

  Paula had read several studies, but understanding of the condition had changed a lot since her research days. ‘An extreme form of post-natal depression causing dissociative episodes, hallucinations, that sort of thing?’

  ‘More or less. They’re really quite different illnesses, but you’re not far off. I actually spoke to the island doctor about it on the phone – Dr Watts? She’s the one who’s missing?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Paula’s pulse began to quicken. So there was a connection. ‘She’d diagnosed the condition?’

  The doctor, a brisk woman with a lined face that spoke of deep exhaustion, shook her head impatiently. ‘Not at all. She said she’d seen no signs – she’d actually been on a home visit to Andrea and her baby the week before it happened. Well, you can imagine I had to report it. It’s easy to miss this kind of thing, especially if you have lots of patients and you aren’t familiar with the condition. It’s sufficiently rare that you might not be. But Dr Watts was adamant. There’d been no signs, Andrea was fine when she saw her. But then it happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What happened?’

  The doctor raised her eyebrows. Her glasses were smudged, her eyes tired. ‘You really don’t know. Huh. OK. Well, Dr Maguire, Andrea tried to kill her baby. She put her in with the farm dogs. Into their kennel.’

  Paula stared at her. She couldn’t help thinking of Maggie, how helpless she’d been as a newborn, totally dependent on Paula to keep her alive. ‘And the baby . . . ?’ Was that what had happened to the child she’d seen, with the ravaged face?

  ‘Oh, wee Mairead survived, somehow. Her older brother heard her crying and dragged her out – got a nasty bite himself in the process. When I say older, the wee boy is no more than four. Terrible thing, he’ll likely be traumatised for life. And then they found Andrea round the back of the farm, calmly feeding the chickens.’ The doctor took off her glasses and rubbed them on her coat. ‘All the signs were there – confusion, delusions, dissociation. It’s my belief that Dr Watts missed it, and was trying to cover her tracks.’

  And now Fiona Watts was missing. Paula thought of Andrea Sharkey’s husband, the spitting rage of him. ‘I see. We’ll look into that.’

  ‘I hope someone does. You can speak to Andrea if you want, she’s pretty lucid now. I’m not sure she’ll ever get over it, though. Mairead will have permanent facial scars, and I doubt Social Services will let Andrea anywhere near the kids again.’

  ‘Was this reported in the press?’ Paula couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard about it.

  ‘It was hushed up. There were kids involved, so they didn’t release the full names. And they’re close-knit on that island. No one would breathe a word to the press. Anyway, she’s over there by the window if you want to see her. You’re a psychologist, you said?’

  ‘Yes. Forensic rather than clinical, but I did psych rotations while training.’

  ‘OK. Don’t upset her, then. She’s made a lot of progress since she’s been here. With a bit of luck, she might still be able to have some kind of life again one day.’

  The psychiatric ward was sparsely populated that evening. A TV played the news, watched by a teenage girl with bandaged wrists and a sad older man, and over by the rain-soaked window, a woman sat looking out. She looked even younger than thirty, with pale hair pulled back from a smooth, blank face. In her blue dressing gown, she was gaunt. But someone had brought her things. The magazine that sat on her lap, unread, and the pretty flowered pyjamas she wore. Someone still cared for Andrea, even though she’d done the worst thing society could imagine.

  ‘Hi, Andrea. I’m Paula – I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.’

  Andrea seemed to stir herself. ‘Oh! Hello, sorry, I was miles away. Are you a doctor?’

  ‘Yes, but not medical. I work with the police, actually.’ She sa
w the look in Andrea’s eyes and said hastily, ‘I’m not here about you, though. I’ve just come from Bone Island.’

  ‘Did something else happen?’ Andrea turned her eyes to the window again.

  ‘Well, yes. I’m afraid Dr Watts is missing, and Matt too, her boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Andrea whispered it. ‘I got her in trouble. It wasn’t her fault, any of it.’

  Paula sat down on the padded chair opposite, hands in the pocket of her coat. ‘Whose fault was it, Andrea? Do you know?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t remember any of it. They said I hurt Mairead – but I can’t remember that day at all. I just remember loving her, feeling happy, glad I had my wee boy and my wee girl too. Then – I don’t know. It was like a red fog.’

  ‘You don’t remember thinking anything bad about Mairead?’ Paula tried to ask the questions gently. She knew that in these cases mothers often thought their children were evil, or sometimes the opposite, that they were sacred, that whatever you did to them they’d not get hurt. She tried to push away the thought of Maggie’s limp, warm body in her arms, trusting, helpless.

  ‘No, but – they read me what I said when they came to the house. I was feeding the chickens, they said. I don’t know how I could do that if I can’t remember anything, but – there you go. And then Garda McElhone came and I said – I said . . .’

  Rory had been the first on the scene? Why hadn’t he mentioned that? Why hadn’t he told her the woman she was asking about had tried to kill her child? ‘What, Andrea?’

  ‘I said the baby was the devil. I said I had to get rid of the devil. With dogs and fire. I said the dogs would eat her and we’d be rid of her.’ Andrea’s voice was small.

  Paula stared at her, the thin, meek woman, with her hands folded on her Take a Break. She still wore her wedding ring. ‘But you don’t remember?’