All the Lost Girls

by Bilinda P Sheehan

  With a sigh, I bit my tongue. I had expected them to be awkward, to chafe against my presence, but I wasn’t expecting outright obstinacy.

  I pushed on the car door, the wind sucking it out of my hand so that it flew open. The sergeant said nothing as I climbed out and started over the car park toward the path and the police tape. Reaching down into my pocket, I swore softly. I’d left my notepad and pen in the car along with the rest of the files.

  Good job, Siobhan. You’re off to a cracking start here.

  Ducking beneath the tape, I followed the path into the trees for about a hundred yards. It was easy enough to spot the burial site; the forensics had cordoned off the area with metal posts and more tape. The tent was gone now, along with the body. And where it had lain there was a gaping wound in the earth. Fresh dirt exposed to the elements had turned to mud under the rainfall of the last twenty-four hours.

  I turned around and stared at my surroundings. It was close enough to the car park. An easy dump site, really. Just a short walk to the tree line. Something niggled at the back of my mind as I studied my surroundings.

  “Solved it yet?” An unfamiliar male voice cut through my thoughts and I jumped. As I whirled around, my foot slipped on the path and I felt myself tip towards the open hole in the ground.

  A strong arm wrapped around my bicep, halting my forward progress toward total humiliation.

  “Sorry, I thought you were examining the scene and not the natural beauty of the area.” The man standing before me gave me a small smile, a bare curling of the corners of his mouth. His red hair was cut short, clearly to keep the natural curl in his hair from getting out of hand. His blue eyes were striking in their icy colouring, emphasised further by the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks.

  He looked like he belonged in an advertisement for Irish Tourism, not half way up the side of a mountain next to a killer’s dumpsite.

  “Who are you?” I could tell he was Gardaí but he’d deliberately crept up on me so I wasn’t going to be nice to him.

  “Jee-zus,” he said, placing a strange emphasis on the word. “Take a joke would you?”

  Narrowing my gaze, I folded my arms over my chest and waited.

  “Fine. I’m Ronan McGuire,” he said. “Garda detective hereabouts. And you’re Detective Siobhan Geraghty, right?”

  “Does everyone know who I am?”

  “Mostly,” he said. “We don’t get many of your sort down here. There’s the local lads like me but you’re a bit more special, what with you coming all the way down from Dublin to hold the hands of us country bumpkins.”

  “Well, thanks for the welcome wagon,” I said, moving back down the track to the car park.

  “If you’re looking for the sergeant, he’s already left.”

  His words halted me in my tracks. “What do you mean already left?”

  “Something about wasting his time…”

  “My stuff is in his car.”

  “Nah, it’s in mine now,” he said. “He chucked it all in my boot before he high-tailed it out of here back to the station.”

  “So I’m supposed to get a lift back with you then?”

  “Suppose so,” he said. “Unless you fancy hiking back down.” He scrubbed his chin as he took in the view. “Bit of a stretch though.”

  Irritation sharpened my tongue and it took every ounce of resolve I had to stop me from turning on him. Banter was one thing but whatever he was doing was something else entirely.

  “What do you make of it then?” he asked, falling into step next to me.

  “This wasn’t where it was originally buried,” I said, picking my way over the loose stones that were spread haphazardly over the pathway.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Shallow grave out here in the wilds and no wildlife disturbs it in the twenty-two years it was here for? Fat chance.”

  From the corner of my eye I watched him absorb what I’d said. “Suppose you’re right,” he said. “Why move it now? Why not leave it, wherever it was?”

  “Because they wanted it to be found.”

  “Now that sounds like a leap,” he said, chuckling. “Who murders someone, buries their body, and then after a while digs it back up only to plant it out here so it’ll be found?” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and depressed the lock. His cherry red Ford across the car park beeped cheerfully and the lights flashed in response. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “I never said it had to make sense, just that it’s my theory.”

  He shrugged and tugged open the driver’s door. From where I stood, I could see my handbag and travel bag on the backseat. They’d been tossed inside so carelessly that some of the contents from my purse had spilled across the seat.

  “Well your theory sounds like it’s got plenty of holes in it.”

  “Have you got a better one?”

  He fell silent and slipped into the car as I rummaged in the backseat and replaced my belongings in the bag. When I finally climbed into the front seat, I turned to face him.

  “Well, have you?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t have a better one.” There was a bitter note in his voice, as though he were a naughty child who’d been caught him out in a terrible lie.

  “How many murder enquires have you worked?” I asked.

  “One,” he said, “but it got passed over to your lot from Limerick because of a drugs connection.”

  It was my turn to fall silent as he put the car in gear and spun the car round out of the car space. The motion jolted me against the door and I swallowed back the rush of nausea. What was it about this area that made everyone drive as if they were taking part in an off road rally?

  “How many murders have you worked?” he asked.

  “Twelve,” I said. “This is the first one where I’m working independently.”

  “Off the ol’ teat then,” he said. I shot him an incredulous look and he had the good grace to colour, his face flushing a rather becoming strawberry that clashed brilliantly with his hair.

  “I heard there’s another girl missing,” I said, changing the subject abruptly.

  His expression instantly changed, growing almost guarded. “Yeah, family lives local but she was in college down in Cork. Came back for the weekend and vanished.”

  “Any theories?”

  “Why?” His sudden defensiveness caught me by surprise and I found myself floundering for an answer.

  “Well you’ve got a body turning up here and from what I’ve read in the file, there’s already a preliminary ID from a missing persons case twenty-three years ago. The description of that missing person matches the description of the girl that went missing recently.”

  “There’s no link between the two,” he said, sounding decisive on the matter.

  “Isn’t that up to me to decide?”

  “Actually,” he answered, “no, it’s not. We’re looking at the boyfriend as a suspect. Fella’s been acting off since she disappeared and in most cases of missing persons that are deemed suspicious, those closest to them know what happened.”

  “Most,” I said. “But not all…”

  I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself. I’d been naive to think it would be easy to walk in and work the case without any pushback. The locals never liked it when someone came onto their turf and stepped on their toes.

  Nobody liked an outsider and right now, I was that outsider.

  8

  My body slammed into Zoe’s and I took her to the ground, curling my body over hers protectively.

  Warmth spread across the front of my shirt and I stared down into Zoe’s wide-eyed stare.

  There was another gunshot. It happened on the very edges of my mind, as though I was suddenly detached from the situation completely.

  I lifted my head, the pain in my shoulder only vaguely registering as I noted the pulsing blue and red lights and the way they danced across the trees.

  Police officers exploded from the tree
line on the opposite side of the play area, their shouts somehow muffled.

  I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see Dan standing over me, the gun aimed at my head. But he wasn’t there. My eyes caught sight of the edge of his boots and I followed the line of his prone body on the ground. Even from where I sat half propped on the rain-soaked ground with Zoe still in my arms, I could tell he was dead, his eyes already glazed with the kind of grey that only death could bring, the gun still gripped in his hand.

  He’d shot himself. Tried to kill Zoe and then killed himself.

  Rachel stood a few feet away from him, her screams the reason everything else was so muffled.

  Zoe moved, her tiny body trembling as I held her pressed against my chest. Pushing her away, I stared down at the blood that was soaking across the panda on her chest, his cheery grin stained, giving him an altogether much more macabre expression.

  Zoe’s teeth chattered in her head as she stared up at me, her face shock white and it was then I started to scream.

  The burning in my shoulder increased, my focus slipping a little as I tried to search her for injuries.

  Strong arms lifted her away from me. “I think she’s shot,” I said, managing to get the words out as the world tilted dangerously around me.

  The adrenaline I’d been feeling was beginning to fade, leaving me exhausted and lightheaded. Fingers probed around my shoulder and I grimaced, feeling bile rush up the back of my throat.

  “Can you understand me?” The voice came from above. Moving my head only resulted in the world breaking apart into streamers of light. The burning in my shoulder reached fever pitch as the last remnants of my adrenaline faded.

  Someone tried to peel my coat away from my body, jostling my arm in the process, and I cried out. Darkness ate at the corners of my vision as I caught sight of the paramedics loading Zoe onto a stretcher.

  I tried to tell the man kneeling next to me that she needed her doll. It was her favourite and I could see it lying on the ground nearby, abandoned. He nodded and shone a light in my eyes as another woman tried to coax me to lie down.

  Alice…

  Clara’s voice called to me. The sound was terrifying. Fighting against the darkness that sought to suck me under, I tried to hold onto the pain in my shoulder but the world slipped through my fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass.

  My sister was gone. She couldn’t be calling me. She wasn’t here…

  Alice, where are you?

  I fell into the darkness, the cold cocooning me against the pain.

  There you are…

  Her cold lips pressed against my cheek and then there was nothing.

  9

  August 24th 1996

  It’s strange. Life, I mean. Never turns out how you want it to. Best laid plans and all that. Or maybe it’s just me. Perhaps my luck is fucked.

  I’m not very good at the whole making plans thing anyway. Every time I do, every time I think I have every possibility nailed down tight, something else comes along to screw it all up.

  I’m not supposed to be seventeen and pregnant. I had plans, a life all mapped out for myself. I was going to get out of here, escape this place and live a life unfettered by the bullshit-small-mindedness of the back-end-of-nowhere-ville.

  I’d go to college, study social work. I love the idea of working with kids, pulling them out of desperate situations, setting them on a better path. Watched a program on telly, a Prime Time special on the issues facing youngsters. And before the baby, I was going to help them change their lives, make sure they got a good education, found a family that loved them.

  I’m one of the lucky ones. Mam and Dad are a little bit fuddy-duddy about things but they love Ali and me. We don’t always have the latest gadgets but that’s not really the point of family. We’re happy.

  And then I met Liam. Our fathers have been friends for donkey’s years and the last time I saw him he’d been gangly, all legs and arms, made me think of the Daddy Long Legs that throw themselves at the kitchen windows during the summer nights.

  We don’t move in the same social circles. He goes to the private school, Rockwell college, super elite. Just stepping inside the door of that place costs an arm and a leg, or at least that’s what Dad reckons. I tried for the scholarship but missed it by a couple of points. Irish isn’t exactly my strongest subject. Not that I really care.

  The convent is grand. The nuns are strict. I’m pretty sure a few of them are actually mad. Not that I blame them. If I had to live their lives, I’d go mad too.

  Honestly thought, they scare the crap out of me. Alice isn’t afraid of them the same way I am, it’s something I’ve always envied about her. The ability to just switch off, ignore anyone who doesn’t measure up to whatever daydream she’s currently concocting.

  She doesn’t like Liam. Which might be funny if Mam and Dad didn’t use her as the third wheel to chaperone every goddamn date we go on.

  Sometimes, I wonder if maybe it was all Mam and Dad’s doing, if they tipped her off to get in the way as much as possible. Or maybe she has a sixth sense for it all, popping up whenever Liam and I were got close. The prerogative of the pain in the arse little sister…

  Of course part of me wishes now that I hadn’t tried so hard to slip away. That I’d listened to the voice in the back of my mind that whispered it was all too good to be true. And maybe if I had, it would be different now.

  I’ve tried to regret getting pregnant… Tried to regret the moments leading up to this but I can’t do it. I don’t know if I’ll be a good mother. I can’t help but feel I’m still too much of a child myself to look after a baby but it’s not like I have a choice now.

  But then that’s life for you… Never is how you expect it to be. Sure, I thought I loved Liam, thought we’d be together through this… Thought he loved me.

  It’s a bitter pill to swallow but people make mistakes all the time. And while I can’t regret this baby, I can regret giving Liam the chance to hurt me.

  I was wrong to trust him. He’s not one of the good guys. And the second I get a chance to get out of here, I’m gone. I don’t care what he thinks, or what he does…

  I owe him nothing

  10

  Waking up in the hospital is not as peaceful or calm as they pretend it is in books or movies. I didn’t open my eyes, see nothing but white, and wonder if I was in heaven.

  It started with the sheet underneath me, digging into my lower back because there was a gather in the material. The back of my hand begged to be scratched. When I opened my eyes, I stared up at the large off-white tiles on the ceiling. The one directly over my head had the yellow and brown tidemarks that came from a leak long-since dealt with.

  A metal trolley crashed in the hall outside my room and my heartbeat picked up speed, despite the painkillers coursing in my veins, making my head feel like it was stuffed with sawdust.

  I started to lift my arm and pain exploded through my right shoulder blade, splintering so that it spread its fiery ache across my back and down my arm simultaneously.

  “Shit!” I swore emphatically, my voice barely recognisable, sounding much more like it belonged to an old farmer with a forty cigs a day habit.

  The blue and orange geometrically-patterned curtains around the bed were closed but as I lay there and stared up at the stained ceiling tile, I became acutely aware of the presence of other people on the ward with me. The sound of heart monitors and the whispered murmurings of the patients as they spoke to each other, or maybe their relatives slowly came into focus. As did the memory of how I’d ended up here.

  Braving the pain, I lifted my arm once more. This time it was a little better; still painful but more manageable.

  It surprised me that I’d been shot. Dan had been aiming at Zoe and I was almost certain I hadn’t reached her in time. Had he changed his mind at the last moment and shot me instead? Or had I moved faster than I’d realised? Everyone knew about those cases where distraught mothers lifted cars off th
eir children in order to free them. Zoe wasn’t my child but I did care about her.

  “Alice.” Gerald poked his head around the edge of the curtain, the relief on his face palpable as he realised I was awake.

  Speak of the devil. My granny’s favourite saying popped into my head unbidden and I stifled a giggle.

  “Christ, Alice,” he said, pushing open the curtains and stepping inside. “When I was back at the house and I heard the gunshots, I was so worried he was going to come back to the house and—”

  Typical of Gerald to think of himself.

  “Officer Shaw?” The question in my voice was implicit and the moment I said her name aloud I could see a mental image of her lying on the ground, legs bent behind her crumpled body. Blood pooling underneath—

  “They discharged her a few hours after admitting her,” he said. “Bloody lucky she was wearing a vest. She’s got some bruising and they treated her for shock but…”

  Relief shot through me and I pushed the vision of her, dead, from my mind. She was fine. The shock had added details that weren’t really there at all.

  “Zoe,” I said, pausing to clear my voice. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine,” he said, laughing. The sound grated on me. “You know kids these days, they can bounce back from anything.”

  “Most kids don’t have a father who tried to kill them and then had to watch him blow his brains out.” My voice was harsh, harsher than I’d intended and Gerald’s expression faltered.

  “Christ, yeah, I know but…” he shrugged. “She seems fine. Police have spoken to her and everything. We’ve agreed that she’s probably blocking out a lot of the trauma.”

  “We?”

  A sour note rose in my throat.

  “Me and Jennifer,” he said.

  It always grated on me that he couldn’t just say, ‘Jennifer and me,’ that he always had to put it back to front. Not that it really mattered but years of having it drilled into my head in school tended to make me pedantic about the matter. It helped that at the best of times, Gerald wasn’t my favourite person in the world, Jennifer even less so.