When had she gone off the sound of chiming clocks? She had loved them before. She wasn’t sure if it was because they managed to keep her awake now, like just about everything else in life. She suspected it was the clamour of time that they balefully announced. It was no longer just the ticking of minutes, the background music of her life – suddenly it was a booming orchestra. Her whole world had changed utterly, and every second was taking her further away from everything that had been familiar and the tantalising whisper of a connection that might have made a difference, if only she had known the truth before it was too late.
Damn it anyway, there would be no sleep tonight. She threw back the covers, walked to the window. Limerick brooded in the moonlight. Far off, she knew there would be sirens, Gardai walking the streets, the sound of their shoe leather imposing some sense of security in a city that was driven apart by gangs and held together by tribalism. She turned back to the room. She was on duty in three hours, but in the meantime, all she had was this space.
She’d booked into Mrs Leddy’s boarding house after her apartment had become a crime scene. She couldn’t face going back there again and so she was living like a first-year college student: room and board and no access to the kitchen or the garden. Sometimes, she thought of Woodburn, the generous Georgian country house she’d grown up in – it was only a dozen miles away, but it was a million years from the way her life had turned out. It was no good thinking of that life now.
She walked into the small ensuite and splashed cold water on her face. These days, catching her reflection in the mirror always made her start. It seemed she was looking at a faded version of herself: gone was the confident smile, the full cheeks, the clever green eyes. Now she wore her hair neat; there was no need to style it when you just scraped it back in a ponytail. Her eyes, once dancing, held a grim determination. Slattery would have said ‘haunted’ – but then, that was the poetic licence of a drinker for you. Ben Slattery. She smiled now as she thought of the rumpled grouching sergeant that she’d warmed to in spite of herself. She had a suspicion the feeling was mutual; they were oil and water and yet somehow their weaknesses bonded them in a way that defied her explanation.
Her skin was bare of make-up – she just scrubbed it clean these days – and she wouldn’t know where to put her hand on a dangly earring if lives depended on it. She was smaller too, everything in her wardrobe looked as if it had been handed down to her from an older sister, or maybe a well-fed aunt. The expensive suits and perfumes were left behind in her old apartment; they were part of a life that was no longer hers, it seemed. She’d have to sort through all of it, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. She had three T-shirts and a couple of blouses on strict rotation. She was on first-name terms with Alesha in the nearby launderette, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d stepped inside the dry cleaner’s.
She pulled on her running gear, then let herself out of the boarding house as silently as she could. Soon she was running along Athlunkard Street, her breathing the only sound in her ears, elevated to a universal rhythm in the darkness of her thoughts.
Iris knew that no matter how hard she ran, there was no getting away from the reality of it all, but still, the pain in her chest, the burning up of her muscles, even the hunger pangs in her stomach distracted her from the memories that lingered always at the back of her mind.
She turned into the People’s Park. This was a nice part of the city, overlooked by grand houses that nodded to times long gone. Because the weather had not yet turned too cold, one or two of Limerick’s poorest had chosen to spend their nights sprawled across the benches and she made every effort to sprint as noiselessly as she could past them. There was no justice in this city; she had learned that the hard way. It was dispiriting, having spent her life wanting to be a detective, to realise that maybe, no matter what you did, it might not make any difference in the end. She drew herself up at that thought, her feet in harmony with her soul, pulled to a stop and then walked slowly towards one of the old trees, leaned against it while she doubled over. She wanted to cast it out of her – this despair needed somewhere else to be and she knew it. It could not reside within her for much longer before causing her some real sickness.
Overhead, ominous clouds were rolling into each other, giving off some hint of light beyond them. Perhaps, if she walked slowly back to the boarding house there might be a hint of dawn to redeem this unsociable hour. Mrs Leddy had stopped asking her how she’d slept – perhaps she feared it reflected badly on her hospitality. Instead, she looked at her with an assessing eye, as if she could tell one way or the other how the night had gone.
Just as she walked through the North Gate, her phone rang.
‘You in the scratcher?’ It was Slattery, sounding rough. Slattery was an old-fashioned Irish garda through and through, the notion of being a cop or even a detective sat unevenly in his cynical eyes. Pick any time, day or night, and his voice was gravelly, his stare unnerving and his brown eyes inscrutable in that clear face.
‘I should be so lucky. No, I’m not sleeping much these nights.’ Time was, she’d have taken his grumpy tone personally. Now she wondered if perhaps he was just irritated by the whole world or if he used it to cover up his own self-loathing. Jack Locke had said the drink does that to every alcoholic. It wasn’t much helped by the guilt Slattery was carrying about now he could blame himself for one more cross his wife had to carry. After her last and only case with him, she knew the sharpness was just raw appetite.
‘Right.’ He had no interest really in how she was sleeping; he was more likely asking about the spectres they probably shared, if either of them ever opened up enough to admit it. ‘We have a case; I thought you’d like to be in on it?’
Maybe he knew she needed something to sink her teeth into also.
‘Of course I’m in, Slattery, I’m still a detective.’ As if there was a choice and she was going to sit on the sidelines at this stage. It was bad enough that it seemed as if Coleman Grady had wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool, it didn’t mean she had to let Slattery try to do it too.
‘Good, I’ll swing round and pick you up in about twenty minutes, okay?’
‘What’s up?’
‘It sounds like murder. I’ll tell you when I get there…’ His voice was distant, competing with radio static in the background. When he hung up, she knew she’d have to move as fast as she could.
Sometimes she thought investigative work was like a progressive illness. There was no shaking it off, there was no antidote, only retirement or death. She tiptoed back upstairs and slipped into the shower, then she pulled out jeans, boots and a heavy fleece – hardly her usual office attire, but these last few weeks had seen more than just her wardrobe slide. The main criteria at this hour of the morning were warmth and comfort; ‘fitting’ and ‘matching’ had managed to fall way down her list of priorities recently.
She was standing on the street steps when Slattery swung by in a dark unmarked police car.
‘Hungry, are we?’ He handed her a paper bag which told of his stopover at the garage on the way, probably for fags or coffee strong enough to push aside the hangover before it landed. The bag had been scrunched down tightly. Inside were two slightly squashed doughnuts.
‘Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,’ she said as she threw them onto the back seat. He was volleying along the empty road as she struggled between sitting down, placing her bag in the footwell and fastening her seatbelt. ‘What have we got?’
‘We have one dead body out at Curlew Hall and a missing girl who looks like our suspect, that’s what we’ve got.’
‘Curlew Hall?’ she asked trying to place the name.
‘Yep, it’s a fancy detox centre, Limerick’s answer to the Priory, only for kids. It was on the news recently. It’s the kind of place rich people send their kids to get them back on track.’ Slattery stared ahead; his face inscrutable.
‘One of the residents?’ Iris asked, faintly. She hoped it wasn’t some kid that n
ever stood a chance. She wasn’t sure either of them could take a murdered child again, not so soon, not yet.
‘No, the victim was a young woman called Rachel McDermott, early twenties, from what I can gather, she was working there.’
‘And the suspect?’
‘Well, now that’s where it gets a bit tricky. McDermott was on night duty with just one kid – Eleanor Marshall…’ Slattery let the name hang between them for a second.
‘And that should mean something to me?’ Iris asked eventually.
‘It should, her father is Kit Marshall.’ Slattery didn’t need to say anymore. Everyone knew Kit Marshall – he owned half the city and then some.
Slattery turned the car through tall pillars. On one side a hand-painted sign pointed you towards Curlew Hall. From the long, winding avenue, it could be a country club or top hotel for all you knew. ‘The thing is, it’s not going to be straightforward.’ Slattery slid a look towards her as if gauging her readiness. ‘All that money, he’s going to be torn between finding that daughter of his quietly and making sure we don’t hang a murder charge on her.’
‘Who’s the officer in charge or do we not have one?’
‘Well, with a bit of luck they’ll send Grady back to us. In the meantime, Byrne has asked for both of us to get to the scene and set the ball rolling, no doubt he’ll have managed to get Grady back in time to take over.’
‘Good.’ Iris meant it. She enjoyed working as part of the Corbally Murder Team and even if that team was in place long before she arrived, their first case together had been enough to cement her to its centre. Coleman Grady had convinced her to return to Corbally after the unthinkable, she hoped he’d be here for this case, if there was one to work on.
Iris sank deeper into the passenger seat, admiring the sweeping drive winding through dense woods for almost a quarter of a mile. Through the thicket, she spotted a range of native oaks, ash and rowan, swaying like a drunken chorus line against the approaching morning, their near naked branches eerie in opposition to the darkness of the evergreen foliage around them. The road veered onto a gravel driveway, down a small incline onto the forecourt of the ruins of what had been an impressive four-storey house. The remains of Curlew Hall stood surveying the surrounding countryside forlornly. It had probably been impressive before it was pulled down and razed by land agitators – she thought of the saying, baby and bathwater – now a monument to what was lost in the land struggles.
‘It’s around the back here.’ Slattery swung the steering wheel sharply, narrowly missing stone chunks of old walls that had once surrounded a garden. He parked away from the yellow tape marking out where the crime-scene people were gathering every particle that might help illuminate their search for answers. Several officers were visible moving across open pastures. Their bright-yellow jackets bobbed occasionally in the distance as if to announce to anyone interested, even if it was only the dairy herd, that they were police.
‘Anything?’ Slattery nodded at Joe Kenny. The younger man was down on all fours combing methodically through grass on one side of a small path leading into the woods and from there into acres of mountain lands.
‘Too early to say. It’s difficult yet to know what we have, but it looks like lots of people come through this place every day so…’
‘What’s the story with the other residents?’ Slattery asked.
‘It’s okay – it’s just the one here. There are kids in one of the other units.’ Kenny was standing now, arching his back like a great ginger cat, probably just thankful of the excuse to be upright for a few moments. He waved his hand around the courtyard. ‘Each unit is separate, they call them bungalows – there’s no access between them, other than via the courtyard – and everything, so far as we can tell, was locked up securely for the night. It’s a sad do all the same,’ he said almost to himself. ‘Looking at that place, it’s a sad do.’ He shook his head balefully.
‘How do you mean?’ Iris asked.
‘Ah, ye’ll see for yourselves…for a kid that came from so much money, she didn’t have much of a life there all on her own.’
‘No one wants to think of a kid ending up here, but let’s face it, there has to be a reason, doesn’t there?’ Slattery took out a packet of cigarettes.
‘I’m sure we’ll find out, soon enough,’ Iris said, mentally thanking Slattery for not smoking in the car. She looked around again; a place like this would have so many people coming and going: staff, deliveries, maintenance. Iris thought it must be like sifting through Piccadilly. ‘So, we think there was a break in?’
‘Hmm, it looks more like someone broke out,’ Kenny said, savouring the opportunity away from searching on all fours.
‘Eleanor Marshall?’ Iris asked.
‘Yeah, the one and only daughter of our very own local mogul.’ Slattery had turned now to look directly at Iris while he continued. ‘The man who gives to foundations and charity, a real crusading do-gooder. Butter wouldn’t melt.
‘Yeah, well, there’s tax breaks for everything these days,’ Kenny cut in sarcastically.
They walked around the perimeter of what had surely once been a very impressive garden and orchard. Two tall doors broke up the bulwark, the first facing east, the second facing north, both wooden. They reached to over nine feet in height, four foot in width, and the second swung open with relative ease. A squat building, once a series of generous stables, sat at the end of the concreted garden; there was a claustrophobic feel about the place. Perhaps, a long time ago, when it had been bursting with life, it might have been idyllic, but now it had been moulded into a long, low construction of mean modern windows and a door on either end with keypads instead of bells or knockers. It was the kind of building that would be dark even on the sunniest days, with eighteen-inch-thick walls and windows too small to let in anything more than meagre light.
Iris looked around the deserted courtyard. A cold shiver ripped through her, reminding her to pull close the light jacket that encased her shoulders. She puffed out warm air, but she knew that the icy fingers working their way around her heart had as much to do with the loneliness of the place as its temperature. Suddenly, the chilly air bit in between the folds of her clothes so that she felt perished right to her core. The small bungalow might have been a shed, so functional was its exterior. Iris had never seen a building so devoid of character. The buildings stood crouched and bare, without the adornment of moulding or dash, ridge tile or chimney pot, there was neither a flower nor curtain in sight. The only nod to personality, a solar-powered dancing fish, which sat on a windowsill, in what from outside looked like the kitchen.
‘Aye, safe as houses all right.’ Slattery sighed. It was hard to miss the sarcasm.
Yellow tape sealed off the kitchen and a young garda stood at the entrance. Beyond, the accommodation ran via a long narrow corridor, small windows in deep walls permitting minimal daylight to knock aside the gloom. ‘Is this really the best that we can offer to keep kids from going completely off the rails?’ Iris whispered to Slattery as she took in the austerity of the place. He didn’t answer, Iris supposed he probably couldn’t. Along the hall, she could hear sobs, low and determined, echoing against the emptiness of the cold walls. Shock.
Slattery nodded at Iris and she walked in the direction of the sound. Inside, the building was a series of rooms leading into each other and in the second from what she presumed was the end, an interminable murmur of grief cancelled out the low buzz of a crime scene crawling with a life of its own. Her feet made no noise beyond the pinching cushion of leather on the rubber floor covering, and when she turned into what looked like a sparsely furnished sitting room, the crying girl flinched.
‘Hi,’ Iris said in her gentlest voice. She nodded towards Detective Jo Pardy who was guarding a packet of chocolate digestives. There was just something so wrong about munching your way through tragedy on this scale. For a second, Iris wanted to grab the biscuits and tell Pardy to clear out immediately, but of course she didn’t. P
ardy was here to make up numbers, she’d never worked Murder before and she was no substitute for Grady, no matter how the bums on seats fitted. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Locke.’ She held out a cold hand towards the white-faced girl.
‘Morning, Iris.’ Pardy cleared her throat and popped the remainder of a well- nibbled biscuit into her mouth. Even the way Pardy pecked her way around her food got right under Iris’s skin. Never trust a woman who doesn’t enjoy her food, or a woman who wants sergeant stripes so badly she’d walk over anyone to get them. Jo Pardy ate like a mouse, rationing it out in tiny bites, a speck here, a crumb there; at times almost bovine-like back chewing went on, and sometimes it was all Iris could do to stop herself force-feeding the girl a half a dozen biscuits at once just to get it over with. Iris wondered if her new-found obsession with the flaws of others might be an undocumented side effect of her own despair; it was certainly making her consider terrible acts of vandalism to church clocks and unsuspecting colleagues. Iris looked at Pardy now: short, broad and badly dyed blonde. She managed to make her way slowly, but determinedly, through almost a full packet of biscuits a day, as if sugar was going out of fashion.
The sobbing girl on the chair fell silent, her face damp and blotchy from salty tears that had been left to sit, save the odd rub with an overlong woollen sleeve.
‘This is Julia Stenson– she was due to come on shift this morning with Eleanor Marshall and take over from Rachel McDermott.’ The girl returned her stare to the middle distance, abandoned mugs of unctuous cold tea littering the floor at her feet. She shivered, her whole body wracking a half sob and caught breath as Iris sat next to her.
Why She Ran Page 2
