Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (42 page)

And had died alone on the Wicklow hillside on the way.

Rita Forde was still speaking. ‘It wasn’t long after all that, that I confided in Miriam about Sarah. I didn’t know what else to do, she was only seven and …’ Her voice caught and she looked away. ‘I had to protect her. Miriam offered to take her in, at least for a while until I figured out what to do.  I made up this story to Pat about her disappearing, he phoned the police and somehow it all seemed to take on a life of its own.’ She sobbed loudly. ‘I’m so sorry, I never meant things to go that far …’

‘So you just left your daughter with your brother’s family?’

She looked at him. ‘It was better than having her here – with him.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You don’t understand … I had to do what was best for my child. I knew she’d be safe with David and Miriam.’

Chris’s voice was gentle. ‘Rita, if what Sarah said was true, why didn’t you report it?’

She looked at him as if he were mad, and he was immediately reminded of Brian McGavin’s wife and how she too was reluctant or more likely afraid to let the authorities deal with her husband. It was the same story the world over.

‘As the weeks went by it just seemed easier to let Pat think that she’d disappeared,’ Rita continued. ‘He never had much to do with my family anyway, would never have even suspected …’ She wiped her eyes. ‘But it went on for too long, and then a few months later, when Miriam was killed…’

‘You couldn’t very well just bring Sarah back.’

She looked pained. ‘I couldn’t even comfort David back then, in case Sarah saw me. She was only
small, and David insisted she was fine, she was happy. I couldn’t take her back here, back to him.’ She cried openly, remembering. ‘I knew my brother would take good care of her. And Sarah was fine; as far as she was concerned she was on an extended holiday at her uncle’s house. She’d always loved spending time there anyway. I had to be careful when I kept in touch, but a little while afterwards I got the impression that there were more children there, so I just assumed he’d started fostering again.’ She looked up at Chris. ‘Are you sure that’s not what happened? Why would he abduct children when all he’s ever done is look after them, protect them?’

Chris thought about McAllister’s words back in the interview room, about the childrens’ supposedly dysfunctional backgrounds.

Protect them? Granted it was a strange way to go about it. But in truth, perhaps it was
exactly
what the man been trying to do.

Chapter 45

I felt myself in the bosom of the waters, gently held, the light filtering through, green, translucent, slowly rocking me, washing my fears away.  The cold seeped into me, calming my nerves, soothing my tired limbs, singing to me like the sirens, sleep, sleep…

I close my eyes and sink, drifting downwards into the depths, surrendering to the cold allure, the chance to sleep and never wake – and then I felt its grip, its icy grip, pulling at me from below.  Down in the murk it waits, ever vigilant, always hungry; death incarnate, ready to wrap its fingers around you, hold you with an iron fist, never let you go.

I tried to fight, tried to force my limbs into motion, to fight the fierce hold it had over me.  My eyes burst open once more, peered through the gloom to the light above, so far away now, fading with each thrashing stroke as I was dragged lower and lower, until finally all light was gone, and there was nothing but darkness – eternal darkness.

My eyes opened from the dream, the nightmare, and I blinked at the darkness, grateful to be alive.  Is that what happened to you, my angel?  Did our protector turn on you as you lay in its cool embrace?  The lake is our barrier, our shield, our defense against the violence, ugliness and decay that lie on the other side, but it is also a protector with a mind of its own.  The dark depths of the lake hide their own secrets, their own desires.  Our isolation, our protection, come at a cost, and we must respect those. 

Did you betray that trust?  Did you yield to temptation, try to leave the family and discover what lay on the other side? I close my eyes, try to sleep once more, but when I do, I see your cold, green eyes staring up at me from the murky depths. 

O’Brien smiled as
the following morning, several microphones with the logos of TV and radio stations were thrust at him.  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m delighted to report that thanks to the courage and bravery of various departments of the Garda Siochana, three young abductees have been liberated, and their captor is now in custody.’

A cacophany of voices called out all at once.
‘Can you confirm there was a gun battle?’ asked one tabloid journalist.

O’Brien’s face was the picture of calm. ‘
There were shots fired from a recreational gun, but no officer discharged their weapon, and nobody was seriously injured.’

‘
Have you identified the abductees?’

‘
The investigation is still ongoing, and—’

‘Was it a paeodphile?
Did he harm the kids? Were they abused?’

‘
The children are uninjured but have been taken to a secure location for medical and psychological assesment with the assistance of Child Services. We would ask for some privacy for them while we endeavour to reunite them with their families. As you can imagine, it has been a very tough ordeal for all concerned.’ He held up his hands. ‘Thank you; that’s all we have for you just now. The press office will be issuing full details and further information as it becomes available.’ The chief walked away from the media scrum and back toward the CC van for the debrief, breathing a visible sigh of relief as he went.

The
children had been kept together following medical examination and spent the night under close surveillence. Special allowances were sanctioned given the strange circumstances surrounding their captivity, and their likely view on reality.

Three
senior social workers and a child psychologist had been fully briefed and had spent the preceeding evening assessing and trying to reassure them.

The team, including Steve Jacobs, were gathered at the incident room for a final debrief, with the exception of Chris who’d gone directly to the Health Services Executive offices first thing to try and speed up access to their records.

Based on the information he had received from Rita Forde, he was trying to access David McAllister’s fostering history, as well as that of the various children who’d been in his and his wife’s care.

The couple’s qualifications to foster would have automatically ceased after his wife’s death, and Reilly guessed that losing his wife, coupled with the loss of his ability to care for disadvantaged children, would have been enough to trigger his eventual descent into fantasy, and the creation of a ‘safe’ world he could control.

‘
How are the kids doing?’ Kennedy asked Reilly, who’d called to the center earlier that morning to check on how they were doing.

‘As well as we could expect,
really,’ she said. ‘They’ve been through a lot. The older girl, Lisa – assuming that’s her real name – is very much in charge and decidedly hostile, and they’re all very suspicious. They keep asking for McAllister – their father, as they call him.’ She supposed that this was to be expected given that they’d been brainwashed into thinking all strangers were not to be trusted. ‘The psychologist reckons gaining their trust will be a huge challenge. I’d imagine the two younger ones will be easier, but for now they are very much under influence of the older one.’

Kennedy nodded. ‘Well, t
he sooner we know who they really are, the sooner we can locate their families and set them on the road back to normality.’

Reilly wasn’t so sure. M
cAllister’s words suddenly flashed in her mind:
Why don’t you ask Lisa about the beatings she got from her father when she was drunk? Ask Eve about all those ‘uncles’ sneaking into her bed when her mother was passed out on the couch…

Had they done the right thing here? Or would it have been better if they had not figured out where
Sarah had been, if McAllister and his little swans had been left in peace at Tir Na Nog, their earthly paradise?

‘
They certainly have a long road ahead, even after their families are found,’ Jacobs ruminated.  ‘Especially seeing as they already think they are a family, and think McAllister is their father. I suspect it will be a long time before they are ready to go home to their real parents, whoever they are.’

McAllister certainly seemed insistent that the children he’d ‘saved’ were from dysfunctional backgrounds. If so, chances were they were already in the social services system.

The department were also currently trying to track down any records of Ellie in order to see if they could confirm her as being the unidentified girl found in the mountain, trying to find her way back to paradise.

Given the remains found at the lake house, McAllister had obviously become aware of her death at some point after the investigation and subsequent burial, which prompted him to uncover the grave and bring her ‘home’
.

The investigation was as such effectively over, but for her part Reilly didn’t take any comfort in it.

For whatever reason, Sarah Forde had wanted to escape Tir Na Nog.

Perhaps she’d understood that things at the lake house weren’t quite right, and the stories her uncle were spinning weren’t healthy. Her pregnancy may well have been what prompted her to make the break … either to make a new life for her
self and her child, or even to try and make her way back to her own mother. At this point they could only speculate.

But as Reilly was beginning to discover, the true definition of ‘home’ wasn’t just about location, it was about people, and being with the ones you loved.

And like Conn, she also knew that the other children didn’t feel liberated now because of their efforts, they felt imprisoned.

Reilly couldn’t deny that lately, she could almost understand the feeling.

She thought back to Chris’s rough-handling of McAllister at the house the night before, and figured that while he may have been somewhat reserved towards her recently, evidently he was still concerned about her welfare.

That thought
, at least, heartened her, although it didn’t do much to counter the feeling of not belonging that she was experiencing.

As the meeting broke up, Steve Jacobs caught up with her outside in the hallway. ‘Again,
I’m sorry you ended up in that position yesterday,’ he said. ‘It really should have been me in there.’

She
gave an embarrassed half-smile. ‘I’m sure you would have handled it very differently.’

‘Not really – we got everyone out alive which is always the best possible outcome. But it was a very difficult situation nonetheless. You have great natural instincts, Reilly. If you ever fancy a change of career, let me know.’

She shook her head
. ‘No thanks, way too stressful. To be honest I much prefer the lab.’

As she and
Jacobs said their goodbyes, she thought back to the case she’d been working on just before this one.

Based on her evidence, Brian McGavin had been arrested and charged with attempted murder for leaving his wife in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Following her examination of the house and the bloody fingerprint she had found, the local police had
since uncovered the bloody end of a milk bottle underneath a patch of shrubs behind the house. 

That felt like a win, and technically it was no different from following the evidence from the hit
-and-run site and winding up with McAllister in custody and the girls in the hands of Social Services.

She
tried reminding herself of what she had been taught from day one – her job had nothing to do with the morals of each case; nothing to do with right and wrong.  She just followed the evidence, and let the judges and the courts decide who was guilty and who was innocent.

So why did it all feel so pointless?

As it was, the events of the last week had convinced her of one thing
– she needed a break, needed to put some distance between herself and the job for a while, be it to join Mike and Maura on their trip back home next month or maybe take Daniel up on his offer of a visit to the Gulf Coast.

The question was, could she do it? Was she actually capable of turning her back, albeit temporarily
, on the only thing that seemed to give her life meaning?

Reilly took a deep breath and got in the van to head back towards the GFU, where it seemed another conundrum awaited, this one at the home of a man who made a living out of making wigs out of human hair. Whether the donors were willing or otherwise was yet to be determined.

One investigation over, another already in the pipeline.

Story of her life.

Chapter 46

The following day, Reilly stood outside the small terraced house. She had driven out there on her own, the windows of the car rolled down, the throttle pushed hard despite the slick, wet roads. In truth she was glad to get back to the ‘normality’ of working a crime scene, even though it was still a mystery as to what crime had taken place.