All the Lost Girls

by Bilinda P Sheehan

  "And where's the van now?"

  "That's the not so great news," she said. "Two weeks after Clara's disappearance the van was involved in an accident and was written off. It was taken for scrap."

  "Son of a bitch." The words tripped out of my mouth before I could stop them. "I asked him in the interview room whether he knew anyone at the time that was driving a white van that matched the description we had and he swore he knew nothing."

  "He was lying."

  "It's enough to drag him back in here," I said.

  "This is good work, Claire," I said. "Really good work."

  I turned away from her as her face split into a wide smile. It wasn't going to be easy to get Sergeant Mills to agree to us picking Liam up once more. But there was no denying the evidence. He'd lied. And, politics or not, it deserved further investigation.

  46

  "Thanks for driving me home," I said, twisting in my seat as Declan pulled into the driveway.

  "You don't have to sound so formal about it," he said, keeping his hands firmly planted on the steering wheel.

  In the darkness of the car, I could only just make out his profile against the window; the rest of his features were hidden in shadow. How was I supposed to read his expression when I couldn't even see it?

  "I'm sorry about earlier, I—"

  "Don't."

  "You won't let me explain." I'd been mulling it over during the drive. He deserved what little of the truth I could share with him.

  "I don't need to hear it," he said, finally turning to face me. Not that it made a difference. I couldn't make his features out any better with him facing me. At least this way, I knew he couldn't read my face either.

  "It's not the way you think it is."

  Declan sighed and reached out in the darkness, his fingers brushing my cheek before letting me go. "It doesn't matter, Alice. It's not going to change anything, is it?"

  I hesitated long enough to make his shoulders droop.

  "I didn't think so."

  "What's made you so understanding all of a sudden?" I snapped.

  "I saw it then and I can see it now," he said softly. "You're too busy trying to save everyone around you that you can't see what it's doing to you."

  His words stunned me into silence. I sat there and not even the heated seat could stop a chill from creeping over my skin.

  "I'm not trying to save anyone," I said.

  Rather than see his smile, I could hear it in his voice. "It's all right, Alice. I get it. This is probably some misguided attempt at ridding yourself of the demons that came as a result of Clara's abduction."

  My continued silence seemed to be all the confirmation he needed.

  "I know because I've done it myself."

  His quiet confession filled the car faster than if we'd been submerged underwater.

  "You remember Geoff?" he said softly.

  "Your brother?"

  Declan nodded. "A year or so after you left, Geoff died."

  "Shit," I swore emphatically.

  "Yeah, shit," Declan echoed me sardonically.

  "I didn't know. I'm sorry to hear that."

  "So am I," he said. "I say he died but that makes it sound like he just dropped dead. What I really mean to say is Geoff killed himself."

  The tension thickened in the car and my hand crept toward the handle on the door. The urge to dive out into the crystal clear night air was almost overwhelming.

  It wasn't the topic of conversation that got to me. It was terrible and tragic and all those other words you insert into the platitudes that come after the death of someone, especially one so young. But that wasn't the reason I was feeling claustrophobic.

  No. It was the note of bitterness in Declan's voice, the rough edge of guilt that peeked through his words despite his best attempts to keep his voice flat and void of emotion. I heard it because I knew what to listen for. I heard it because it was the same tone of voice I heard inside my own head every time I thought of Clara and the night she was taken.

  "Why?" It sounded like a stupid question as soon as it left my mouth but I knew Declan would understand.

  "Geoff got himself caught up with the wrong crowd. Ended up getting into drugs and some other things he wasn't proud of." Declan trailed off and peered out the window.

  As I sat and waited for him to continue, I became acutely aware of the second hand on the dashboard clock as it moved steadily around. For such a new truck, it seemed like such an old-fashioned addition. Most of the newer trucks had digital displays and I would have expected Declan to want only the very best and most up to date mod cons.

  "That's a lie," he said finally.

  "Geoff was a good guy. He didn't just get in with the wrong crowd, that makes him sound like an idiot and he definitely wasn't the idiot of the family."

  He fell silent again and I waited patiently for him to continue.

  "I got involved with a bad crowd. I wasn't doing drugs or anything but it would have gone that route if I'd stayed." He sighed as though simply getting the words out had cost him something.

  "Geoff was the reason I got out."

  "He saved you," I said quietly and watched Declan turn his head in my direction. Even though I couldn't see his eyes, I could feel the weight of his gaze on my face.

  "You could say that," he said. "Yeah."

  "But he got sucked in instead?"

  "There was a job, I was supposed to do." Declan turned his attention back to the windscreen. Perhaps it was easier to tell me, when he didn't have to look me in the face.

  "Geoff told them, he would do it in my stead. They weren't best pleased, of course, but they agreed. I was pissed as hell. I thought I was the big man and that he was deliberately trying to steal my thunder. I was pretty dumb back then."

  "You definitely had your moments."

  Declan ducked his head, a small chuckle escaping him. "Geoff reckoned I was an eejit." He fell silent once more and I fought the urge to prompt him. One misstep and whatever he was going to say next would be lost. This was definitely a one and done story. I had a feeling that there would never be another time when Declan was willing to make himself as vulnerable as he was right now.

  "I didn't want to listen to him, I thought I knew better. But the bastard wouldn't tell me what the job was. Even afterwards, he still wouldn't tell me."

  "So he did it for you?"

  Declan nodded. "It was bad," he said. "I know it was. Geoff wouldn't talk about it but when he got back that night. I'd never seen him so pale in all my life. It was like he'd seen a ghost. He locked himself in his room and wouldn't come out."

  "Did he ever tell you?"

  Declan shook his head and gripped the steering wheel in both hands. "He wouldn't talk about it, but I knew it was bad." He sucked in a deep breath and let it out in one long whoosh of air. "He hung himself two weeks later."

  I felt the shock of his words settle over me like a cold blanket. It took me a second to realise he was still talking to me.

  "You remember the shed out back where we used to meet up?"

  His question brought back a flood of memories. Mostly ones I would rather have left buried.

  "Yeah."

  "He hung himself in there. I found him. His note said I wasn't to blame myself but..." he trailed off. Without pausing to think about it, I reached out to him and pressed my hand to his arm.

  "I'm so sorry," I said, my words falling so far short of my true feelings. That was the problem with telling someone you were sorry for their loss. The words were never really enough. But it was all I had to offer.

  "If I hadn't gotten so wrapped up with the lads, he wouldn't have needed to step in like he did. And he'd still be alive."

  "You can't know that for certain," I said, regretting the words the instant they left my mouth. No matter how true it might be, it wasn't what Declan needed to hear.

  "I do know for certain. He hung himself because I was a fool. Because he had to save my ass and do something he couldn't handle."
His voice cracked over the words.

  "So when I say I know what it's like to carry shit like that, I'm not kidding."

  "Geoff knew what he was doing," I said. "He loved you. He wanted to help you."

  "And it got him killed." There was no mistaking the bitterness in Declan's voice now. "I'm the reason my brother is gone."

  "And Clara is gone because I couldn't hold onto her," I said.

  "You know that's not really how it was."

  "Just like you know, you're not the reason your brother killed himself?"

  Declan's laughter was short. "Touché.”

  "I know neither of us are responsible," I said. "But I know it doesn't feel that way."

  "It definitely doesn't feel that way."

  "How are your parents coping?" The question made me think of my own parents and my mother's inability to deal with the idea that Clara was really gone.

  What would she do if they ever found a body? Would she find a way to blame me for that too?

  "About as well as you could expect," he said. "They don't understand and I think that's what eats them up inside. He'd always gone to them in the past and then this time..."

  "It's normal to look for a way to understand such a senseless tragedy," I said. It made me sound like some sort of useless self-help book.

  "It is," he said. "Doesn't mean you'll find one though." He hesitated and then leaned across the divide between us. His hand cupped my cheek before he drew me in for the second kiss of the evening.

  I was too shocked to move away. Not that I really wanted to. Being with Declan made me feel alive in ways, I hadn't felt for far too long.

  Perhaps, there would be a day when I was ready to let go the suffocating grief and guilt that had kept me stuck all these years.

  Slowly extricating myself from his kiss, I pressed my hand to his chest. "Thanks for driving me home."

  He nodded. "Don't be a stranger, Alice."

  There was an unspoken promise in his words. He wouldn't wait forever for me. And I could understand that.

  Pushing open the car door I stepped out. The wind had picked up since we'd left the pub and it whipped my hair about my face, making it difficult to see. It took me a moment to get it under control enough to see where I was going. I turned and watched as Declan reversed back out onto the road, leaving me alone in the driveway.

  The house behind me was dark as I trotted up to the front door.

  From the corner of my eye, the flicker of something white caught my attention and I turned toward the side garden.

  White papers were strewn through the hedgerow, the wind catching them and ripping them into the air in some sort of complicated dance.

  Hurrying up the path at the side of the house, I scooped up the nearest piece of paper and stared down at the picture of Clara. Her smiling face peering back up at me from the page, eyes crinkled, head thrown back in a full abandon as she laughed at something only she knew. Except there was something wrong with her eyes. They were black, as though the printer had screwed up somehow.

  And that wasn't the only thing.

  My heart came to a stuttering halt in my chest as I stared at the image. I knew this picture from my old photo album.

  Just like the rabbit, it had disappeared all those years ago. I’d assumed Mam had tossed it out during one of her cleaning bursts. I'd asked her and Clara at the time but they'd both denied seeing it...

  Grabbing another page, I found myself staring down at a picture of Clara and me. She was chasing me across the sand. Dad had taken the picture during one of our trips down to TráMór one summer when we'd both still been kids. But instead of Clara's smiling face as I remembered it, someone had taken a black marker to her face and blacked it out. Making her a faceless void that chased me.

  I glanced back at the other one still clutched in my hands and realised that was why her eyes had appeared black. Someone had erased them.

  And whoever they were had printed the pictures in black and white and dumped them in the garden. Turning the page over, my eyes raced over the words printed there.

  My heart stuttered back to life as it picked up the pace and hammered against my ribcage. Almost as though it could escape if it just beat hard enough.

  —for this curious child was very good at pretending to be two people.

  "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"

  I knew the words almost by heart. Alice in Wonderland had been my favourite story as a child and whoever had printed off the pictures must know it. I flipped over another picture and the same quote glared up at me.

  Fanning the images out in my hand, I stared at the printed words each one bore.

  Fear clawed its way up the back of my throat like a living creature bent on escape.

  First the white rabbit alarm clock on the doorstep and now this. These were no mere coincidences, that much was certain.

  Whatever was going on, I was in over my head.

  47

  "What's this about, Siobhan?" Ronan asked, his groggy voice making me think I'd woken him up.

  "I got a phone call from, Alice McCarthy." I handed him a paper cup filled with black coffee. Luckily for us, the hotel had very graciously given us two take-away coffees despite the lateness of the hour.

  "Thanks." His gruff acceptance of the coffee made me smile. And I felt my smile stretch wider when he gulped the bitter drink and grimaced with distaste. "Would a bit of sugar have killed you?"

  "Won't kill me," I said. "It might kill you though."

  He grimaced and took another deep swallow. "What did she call you for?"

  "She wouldn't say on the phone," I said. "But something has definitely spooked her."

  "What makes you say that?"

  I climbed carefully into the passenger seat before answering him.

  "I could hear it in her voice."

  Ronan raised a skeptical eyebrow in my direction as he started the engine and put the car in gear.

  "I don't know how you do that," he said. "I've never been very good at reading emotions."

  "I've always been able to do it."

  Setting my coffee down in the cup holder, I grabbed the overhead handle on the door, my grip punishing as he spun out of the car space.

  "You don't like cars, do you?" The screech of the tyres as he tore out of the car park made me cringe.

  "Can't say I'm a big fan, no."

  "Why is that?"

  "Car accident when I was younger." I kept it deliberately vague. Talking about a car accident while I was currently the passenger in another car seemed too much like tempting fate. That didn't stop the memory from replaying inside my head though. The high-pitched crunch of metal as the cars collided. The wash of glass across my face as the window next to me exploded inwards like the hand of some great monster had punched it. The sound of my mother's scream cutting off abruptly.

  Opening my eyes once more, I stared out the window, watching the flash of the white lines disappear beneath the car.

  "Must have been a bad one," Ronan said, glancing over in my direction. "You're as white as a sheet."

  "I'm tired," I said. "That's all."

  Ronan indicated and we turned off the main road and onto the smaller one that led to the McCarthy's house.

  The house was in darkness when we finally arrived and I could feel Ronan's confusion when he glanced over at me.

  "I thought you said you got a call from, Alice?"

  "I did." Without waiting for him, I pushed the door open and stepped out, the crunch of the gravel ringing in the night air.

  From the corner of my eye, I spotted a loose paper sitting in the rose bush next to the driveway. Curiosity drove me across the gravel and I reached tentatively through the thorny branches, only snagging my coat on the wickedly sharp points once as I withdrew my arm.

  There wasn't enough light to see the image clearly. And I carried it back towards the car, studying it
once I was bathed in the brilliance of the headlights.

  "What is it?" Ronan moved around the front of the car and joined me in the glow of the high beams.

  "A communion picture," I said. There was nothing about the photograph that recognisably stood out to me. One little girl stood in the picture, her hands clasped in front of her in prayer. The curve of her smile told me that prayer couldn't have been further from her mind as the picture was taken. An older girl stood next to her, her face completely blacked out. Although the picture I held in my hands was nothing more than a copy of the original, I could tell that whoever had used the marker on the other girl’s face had done so savagely.

  The edges where her face should have been were frayed as though the pen used had gone through the page.

  "Well that's creepy," Ronan said. The porch light over the front door flicked on and Alice appeared in the doorway.

  "You want to tell us what this is all about?" I raised the picture so that it caught the edge of the light. The paper became opaque and it was then I noticed the writing on the other side.

  Flipping it over, I stared at the quote.

  "Alice in Wonderland," Alice said softly.

  "Just like the locket..." I met her gaze head on.

  "Shit." Ronan scrubbed his hand over his face. "I'm going to need more coffee. I'm not awake enough to deal with this freaky level of crap."

  "Come in," Alice said, directing us into the house. "The kettle is just boiled."

  Standing in the silent kitchen, I surreptitiously took in my surroundings. The bright yellow walls were covered in pine shelves. Small knick-knacks were cluttered together. Mostly rabbits. Some wearing clothes, some holding carrots. There was even one smoking a pipe. Despite the number of them, there wasn't a spec of dust in sight.

  "My mother collects them," Alice said, catching me eyeing the ornaments.

  "It's..." I fumbled for the right word. "Cute."

  Alice grimaced. "Clara bought her that one for her birthday before she disappeared." She gestured to the rabbit wearing a waistcoat. "Mam has collected them ever since. Every time she goes out, she comes home with another one to add to the set."