Red Ribbons (7 page)

He had reflected long and hard about their first encounter and was quite sure, irrespective of what his prior expectations had been, that he had been very much surprised by Ellie Brady. Sedatives used in institutional care were not uncommon – the majority of his patients were on benzodiazepines, and night sedation ran to about 65 per cent of the patients at the hospital. But he sensed a spark about Ellie yesterday, bubbling just below the surface, a kind of feistiness that gave him hope. He was glad he had made the decision to tweak her medication. The alteration would have gone unnoticed, other than by those in the hospital pharmacy. He had not mentioned it to Ellie purposely. It wasn’t always a good thing to advise a patient of such a change, especially a long-term patient who might fret, impacting on any benefit there might be.

Although at first glance Ellie’s appearance had been drab, as was the case with most of the inmates of the institution, and she undoubtedly looked every bit her forty-seven years when she walked into the room, the remnants of her youthful beauty were still apparent to him within moments of meeting her. It was one of the first things that had struck him about the old photograph in her file – how attractive she was,
and how alive and vibrant she seemed. He had been taken aback by her remarkable bone structure, both in the photograph and then in real life. But there was something else. It was in the way she looked at him, how she seemed to lock onto his face, unusual for someone of her condition, leaving the distinct impression that when she stared at him, she did so with the knowledge that she had seen a great many things which he had not.

Re-examining the case notes, he went to the last entry written by his predecessor, Dr Norris.

His predecessor’s assessment confirmed Samuel’s suspicions about the entire file: many of the reviews of the past few years had achieved little more than repeating the same things that had been stated previously.
If anything, the assessments were nothing more than a recording of what seems to have been accepted as the status quo when it came to handling Ellie’s case.

The only reviews of any difference were those recorded when Ellie was first admitted to St Michael’s. She was undoubtedly a very sick woman from the outset, willing to take her own life by whatever means had been open to her. Once the initial danger Ellie posed to herself had passed, it seemed that what had been adopted was little more than a desire to keep her condition stable.

Samuel had been struck by something else during his encounter with Ellie, apart from her feistiness. There was no denying that she had made direct eye contact with him, in fact she had no problem on numerous occasions attempting to outstare him. This was unusual for someone who supposedly had withdrawn inside themselves, even given the slight adjustment to her medication. More importantly, it caused him to question if Ellie Brady had not been leading them all a merry dance.

Flicking through the file, he picked up the photograph of Ellie with her daughter. When he had studied it before, he had wondered about how both mother and child had looked at the camera, smiling in great amusement. The girl’s smile was not unusual, but there was something about Ellie, as if she displayed more than the normal level of affection one might have expected when someone was posing for a photograph, almost as if Ellie’s smile was for the photographer alone. The photograph was taken before she had arrived at the hospital. The girl was probably about ten at the time. She had the same hair as Ellie, only longer and it was tied in two plaits. On first reading the file, he had been rather taken by the case, not just because all his predecessors had seemed to fail in its regard, but also because there were a great many aspects to it that didn’t make sense – and it was Samuel’s experience that if something didn’t make sense, there was usually a very good reason for it.

THE INCIDENT ROOM IN TALLAGHT WAS FULL TO capacity, every stacked black plastic chair had been taken down and occupied. The atmosphere felt tight; a cauldron of manpower and resources that could tip at any moment, depending on what fresh information was fired into the mix.

The occupants of the top table were already seated, except for O’Connor, who took his seat to the right of Chief Superintendent Brian Nolan, whispering, ‘Hiya, Boss’, before nodding at the bookman, James Donoghue.

As was customary at this point in the investigation, all key posts had been allocated and although these had been made primarily by O’Connor as the Senior Investigating Officer, others had had their say too. DS Dermot O’Brien had been put in charge of CCTV footage, Tom Byrne was the DS for records on preservation of the crime scene and protection of evidence, DS Brian McCann was heading up the house-to-house enquiries and DS Martin Pringle had been made overseer of witness statements.

When it came to the multiple interactions within the Incident Room, the engine of any investigation was the bookman. In this case, it was James Donoghue who would call the shots. There was never any doubt about who would be appointed. Donoghue was at the height of his career, he knew more about many members of the district than Nolan, and had more experience behind him than half the people in the room. It was his job to see links or inconsistencies within
the information collected, and it was up to the detective sergeants, detective inspectors and everyone else to get that information filtered through the tried and tested hierarchical system, a system to which every single one of the fifty-plus people in the room would strictly adhere. The bookman was the one person who saw everything worth seeing, and by noticing an association that might otherwise have been missed, he could change the course of a case in an instant.

O’Connor had already mentioned to Donoghue that he was not happy with DI Gunning remaining as part of the team, but Donoghue, had agreed with Nolan. Gunning may have been a thorn in O’Connor’s side, but Donoghue knew that if you wanted someone to play hardball then Gunning was the man, and it was better to have him in rather than out.

Having got everyone’s attention, Donoghue set about his task like the seasoned master of proceedings that he was.

‘Job 11. O’Brien, what’s the update on CCTV?’

‘We’re still going through everything sent over from Rathmines. We’ve new tapes just in from Gunning, along with fresh local stuff.’

‘From where?’

‘Shops and businesses down at the main junction, security footage from the GAA club and church grounds, and a couple of the bigger houses on the way up the hill have their own CCTV cameras.’

‘Right, I want a complete overview by tonight’s meeting for O’Connor here. McCann, you’re next: house-to-house, who saw or heard anything out of the ordinary?’

‘First-round statements taken, all given over to Pringle, but we still need to catch up with a couple of stragglers, especially Matt Long, owner of the land where the girl was found.’

O’Connor nearly jumped from the top table in frustration. ‘Why? Where is he? What’s the delay?’

‘The man is nearly a hundred. He’s been unwell, bedridden.’

‘But he’s at home?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Send Hyland up there immediately. We need a statement from him, and with Hyland’s medical background it should be a doer. Just make sure he takes it nice and slow.’

Donoghue, who was busy recording the next job number to Hyland, looked to Pringle. ‘What’s the story with the statement from the woman who saw the car at the canal?’

‘Statement says she remembers being annoyed when she had to walk out on the road in order to pass a navy Toyota Carina parked on the footpath. It was parked on one of the smaller roads off the canal, around the time the girl was last seen. She’d noticed it on another occasion, earlier that same week, but hadn’t seen anyone in it. She was positive it was a Carina because she used to drive the same model, but hadn’t taken note of the registration plate.’

‘Anyone else notice it?’ Donoghue looked out over his glasses.

‘No.’

‘What, is she the only person with eyes?’ He turned from Pringle to McCann. ‘Look at the times when she saw it, we need to know who was at home, who else could have seen it. Maybe someone else might remember more.’

‘Before you do, McCann, let me have another look at that house-to-house sheet.’ O’Connor looked over at Donoghue, who noted the request. ‘We’ll need to put something more specific in there about unfamiliar cars parked in the area.’

Chief Superintendent Nolan turned to O’Connor. ‘Right, bring us up to date before we start the visuals.’

‘Okay,’ O’Connor said, standing up so everyone could hear him. ‘We’ve extended the search area, but it’s still too early to send in the tracker dogs. Hanley and the tech team need time to make sure they’ve picked up everything. The photographs, which will come up now in the visuals, reflect the general terrain, access roads to and from the area, Montpelier, Glenasmole, all the way up to Military Road.
We are concentrating the search in the area to the left of the main Bohernabreena Road, the side the girl’s body was found.

‘A cast impression has been made of the boot print found at the scene, using the usual Crownstone. The size of the boot is between a nine and a ten and, judging by the depth of the impression, our guy is in and around the twelve stone mark, certainly not too heavy on his feet. Other points about it – tiny particles of gravel, more than likely built up over time, were found in the indentions or grooves on the sole of the boot. We’ve checked with the sheep farmer, Murphy, the only other person who walked in the vicinity, and the print is not his. The impression is from a left boot, showing excessive wear on the left-hand side, meaning the wearer had an inclination to lean more on the far left of his left foot. Pattern not unusual, could be found in many makes of hiking boots, but based on the cast taken it is likely that this boot was put to frequent use.’

‘Update on forensics?’

O’Connor turned to Nolan. ‘Yeah, sorry, Boss. Hanley has confirmed that we are probably dealing with a secondary crime scene, no blood splatters found. As of right now, the body is giving us very little. We’ll know more when Morrison does the postmortem this evening, and we have a better handle on the whole thing.’

‘O’Connor, put pressure on the labs if you have to,’ Nolan ordered. ‘We’ll need those toxicology reports pronto, you know how they like to take their time.’

O’Connor turned to Gunning. ‘Caroline’s friend, Jessica Barry – what’s the story with her?’

‘I interviewed her when the initial missing person’s report came in, and she’s been interviewed again today by one of McCann’s team, both times with mother present. So far, she knows nothing other than the details of the last sighting.’

Nolan pushed his chair back and the castors creaked into motion. ‘This is starting to sound like an investigation where nobody knows
anything. We have to get the information in guys, pull the people, neighbours, the postman, anyone on that CCTV footage, get talking to them all, we need to ask the right people the right questions before the Chinese whispers start taking hold. O’Connor, are you listening?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘What’s the story on known paedophiles?’

‘I’m going to handle that line myself.’

‘Good. Now, Matthews, pull those blinds down and let’s look at these visuals. O’Connor, you have a captive audience.’

When the room darkened, everyone knew what to expect. Ordinarily the slide show would start with images and data from the main crime scene. But with no primary crime scene, the first of the images came from the burial site, taken at bird’s-eye-view level, including mapping and markings done by the forensic team. This would create a three-dimensional reproduction of the crime area – in this case, the burial site. This was O’Connor’s starting point.

‘Hanley examined a number of ways of gaining access to this area. It’s open terrain and the bad weather has probably eroded any clues that could have led us to the likely entry point the killer used. In the final analysis, Hanley concluded that there was no way to establish with certainty where the perpetrator gained access to the site. This had delayed things considerably, as his team had to use galvanised steps to examine the area, minimising any potential damage to possible entry points.’

‘Who was deployed to examine the roads leading to the scene – the main roads and walking tracks?’ Nolan looked to O’Connor, but Donoghue already had it covered.

‘Burke, anything of interest turn up there?’

‘No CCTV up that far. You reach a point halfway between the turn off for Friarstown and the climb towards the Military Road, and there isn’t even any road lighting. There was a guy hanging out at one of the
lay-bys, sleeping rough in a car for a time earlier in the year, but he’s well gone.’

O’Connor moved on to the next set of images, those taken from the grave area, with the young girl still lying in it. There was a concentrated silence as everyone in the Incident Room maintained what might appear to others as a cold, clinical approach to the evidence, but it was an approach that they had been trained to apply. O’Connor paused for a couple of seconds before continuing, knowing everyone was taking in the image of the schoolgirl dressed in her uniform. In death, her slim arms and tiny legs made her look even younger than she had been.