The Lost (10 page)

She smoothed at her dress, not looking at him. ‘I can get a taxi, if you want.’

He passed a hand over his face. ‘It’s late for taxis. I’d worry about you.’

‘I suppose it is late, yeah.’

‘There’s plenty of room – let me show you.’

For a moment, she paused again. It felt like the edge of some tiny slippage, the roll of the pebble that starts the avalanche.

Guy stood in the
doorway, face drawn with tiredness. ‘Coming?’

She picked up her bag. ‘OK.’

The upstairs, shrouded in gloom, was empty. It was as if no one lived here. Paula saw a closed door, the sign in pink curly writing –
Katie’s Room
.

‘Here you go.’ Stumbling a bit, Guy switched on the lights in a neat, anonymous guest room. No way had a man selected this flowered cover, put ornaments on the windowsill. It must have been recent, the departure of his wife.

‘Anything you need, I’m just along here.’ He was turning to go.

‘Wait.’ She held out her hand. ‘You’re leaving me?’

His face when he looked at her was tired, hopeless. ‘I’m sorry, Paula. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m struggling, I won’t lie to you. The town, it’s so – like I’ll never understand all the history, the past. And at home, with Tess – it’s knocked me for six. I never thought it would be us, you know? Katie – I don’t know how to reach her. I can’t be father and mother to a teenage girl. I don’t know how. I don’t know what went wrong.’

Paula remembered her own father saying the same, all those years ago when everything had happened. She held out her hand again and Guy sat down heavily on the bed.

‘You shouldn’t have to hear all this – you’re young, you’ve got time. Not all this mess, this – failure.’ He looked down at the blue carpet.

Paula was close enough now to smell his aftershave, the sweat of his tired body. His hair grew pale at the temples, almost grey. He’d look good grey. She realised she was staring at his mouth again. ‘You think I don’t know about mess?’

‘You’re so young. It’s all ahead, your life.’

She reached for his
hand, strong and warm. ‘You’d be surprised, what I know.’

Around them the house was quiet, the hum of a fridge, distant traffic. The town huddled below, lights burning orange, a young girl’s body at the heart of it. She put her hand up to his face, tracing the outline of his mouth, the small notch of the scar. ‘How did you get this?’

‘It’s nothing. Accident.’ He took her hand away. ‘I want to say – maybe I shouldn’t, but – how much I think of you, Paula. Already, I mean. You’re—’

‘Sssh.’ She moved her hand up to the vulnerable back of his neck, which she’d been wanting to touch all day. ‘Come on,’ she whispered close to his ear. ‘Stay here. Stay with me.’

Chapter Nine

The light was so
harsh. God, the light! Her eyes were breaking, surely. The time – her heart turned over and calmed as she remembered it was Saturday. But when she opened one eye to see where the assault of light had come from, Guy was standing there fully dressed, in a sober black suit and grey tie. She sat up, her voice croaky. ‘Working at the weekend?’

Gently, he sat on the bed. ‘I have to attend the autopsy in Belfast. And there’ll be a press conference later. The Superintendent’s still on his golfing holiday, and as the DCI’s off, I have to do it.’

‘Could I go – to the conference, I mean?’

‘If you like.’ He looked awkward. ‘Er, Paula, last night?’

Her mouth felt dry and sour. ‘What about it?’

He was blushing to the roots of his hair. Paula had trained herself not to do this, as it wasn’t a good look on a redhead. ‘I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I let that happen.’

Paula stared fixedly at the duvet. She was naked underneath, and her mum’s silk dress lay crumpled on the floor. No. She wasn’t going to blush, even if she’d just slept with her boss and he was now clearly drowning in regret.

He stood up, the suit shifting over his muscles. ‘What’s wrong?’ He caught her looking.

She blinked. ‘Nothing. Just – the suit.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘No. I do. Really.’ She looked at the long lines of his body.

He rubbed his face. ‘I’m sorry, Paula. I never should have – it was extremely unprofessional. There are protocols for this sort of thing. If you wanted to make a complaint, I’d completely understand.’

‘Complaint?’
She pulled the duvet round her naked chest.

‘Sexual harassment.’ He lowered his eyes.

She stared at him. ‘I asked you to stay, didn’t I?’

‘Well, yes, but I never should have let this happen.’

‘I see.’ She pulled the cover tighter. ‘Any other morning-after classics you want to trot out? It’s not you, it’s me, and so on?’ He looked even more stricken, and she sighed. ‘For God’s sake, Guy, you’re not really my boss. I’m not on the force. And you know as well as I do that officers are always at it with each other. So stop torturing yourself – you’re not even Catholic.’

‘I’ll try.’ Awkwardly, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. ‘I have to go. But do have a shower, help yourself to food. I’ll call you later.’ He went, and soon afterwards she heard the front door close.

Paula felt like a thief sneaking down the corridor to the bathroom. Done up in yet more florals, it was another room where his wife – ex-wife? – was all too present. However, the shampoo bottle she tried to use was nearly empty, and the bath showed signs of limescale. So all wasn’t as immaculate as it seemed.

Scrubbed clean of mascara and with her hair heavy and dripping, she got back into her creased dress and crept downstairs. No sign of any teenagers. She opened cupboards at random, finding most bare, eventually locating one tea-bag and a mug. As the kettle boiled, she peered round her. A cork noticeboard was covered in shiny photos – someone had selected these with care. There were none of Guy, but lots of Katie and another child, the boy she’d seen in Guy’s office. She smiled at his gap-toothed grin and sticking-up hair. And in a few pictures there was a tall dark woman, black curls falling round her face. This must be Tess Brooking. Had she taken her son back to England with her?

‘My mum’s
really beautiful, you know.’ Paula jumped as the kettle snapped off. In the doorway stood Katie Brooking. She looked awful – skin grey and pasty, hair greasy, a baggy tracksuit covering all of her except bare feet with chipped red nails.

‘Oh, hi, Katie. It’s Paula – we met the other day?’ No point in making up an excuse for why she was there. The girl was fifteen, and not a Ballyterrin fifteen either. ‘You’re back from your sleepover already?’

‘Felt sick.’ Katie opened the fridge.

‘I’m sorry. You heard about Cathy – did you know her well?’

She shook her head.

‘Well, I’m sorry anyway. It’s very sad.’

The fridge closed loudly and Katie emerged with some ham, peeling slimy slices from the packet and eating them from her fingers.

‘I think I used the last tea bag.’

‘I don’t drink tea. Anyway, Dad forgot the milk again. He always does.’ The girl stared at Paula, chewing with her mouth open.

‘Never mind. That’s your brother, is it, in the picture with your mum?’ Paula had thought it a neutral question, but the effect was bizarre. Katie’s face contorted, turning an even worse shade of grey, and she bolted from the room. Paula heard her feet pounding up the stairs and then the sound of a toilet seat banging up and violent retching. She called, ‘Are you OK, Katie?’

A groan. ‘Just go away, for fuck’s sake! Why are you even here?’

A good question. Could there be anything more embarrassing than getting caught by your one-night-stand’s child? Maybe walking through your hometown in last night’s clothes. Paula saw at least ten people she knew on her way down from Guy’s, into town and up the hill where PJ Maguire lived, in the same terraced house as years ago. Old schoolmates, her former dentist, the man who drove the school bus. Everywhere changes – a Starbucks, a new nightclub – but everything so much the same too. The lonely car park down by the weed-choked canal, where she used to go with Aidan. The bus station where they’d hung out after school. The traffic-light where she’d failed her first driving test, back when she was seventeen. A lifetime ago. The town even smelled the same, the salt ozone tang of the mudflats, the meaty reek of the dog-food factory on the outskirts. This was home, and like it or not, the map of it seemed to be etched into her skin, indelible.

PJ was at the
table when she went in, and she saw it flare in his eyes for a second – a red-haired woman coming in the door. Even after so long you couldn’t stop your heart lifting up. Even when you knew it couldn’t be her.

Suddenly she was flooded with shame. Why hadn’t she called to say she was safe? Didn’t he deserve that much? ‘Sorry, Dad, it was a late one.’ She tried not to blush – it wasn’t easy to lie to a policeman father. ‘We found the Carr girl.’

He swallowed his toast. ‘Aye, it was on the news. Poor wean. Have they any leads?’ It didn’t go away, the instinct to seek, to find. To punish.

Paula sat at the table, weighed down by the knowledge of what had happened to Cathy. No more hope now. No way to bring her back alive. ‘Not sure. What do you reckon to this Eamonn Carr character? There wasn’t much in the file, but he’s the one built all those housing estates, is he?’

PJ swept the crumbs from his
Irish News
. ‘He’s a slippery one. A cute hoor, as they say in South Armagh. He’s got the council all sewn up, anyhow. Deputy leader indeed! It’s well seen no one remembers his da ran all the operations round the border for years.’

‘Hang
on, is he
Patsy
Carr’s son?’

‘The very same.’ Patsy Carr had been a major IRA commander in the border areas, until the day someone rang his doorbell, posing as a collector for St Vincent de Paul. When Patsy came into his glass-sided porch and opened the door, the man had shot him dead right there beside the potted fern. All eight of his children had been in the house at the time.

PJ gulped his tar-like tea. ‘So you’ve your eye on him, have you?’

She yawned. ‘I just have a sense it’s close to home, somehow. Course, Bob Hamilton won’t hear of it. Pillar of the community, blah-blah.’

Her dad gave a dry chuckle. ‘You’re never working with old Sideshow Bob? Well, well. If he gets up off his knees long enough to catch anyone, it’ll be a miracle indeed.’

She laughed, and then fell silent, rubbing her tired eyes. The kid was dead. That was it. She’d never get moved to the found pile.

PJ went on. ‘Thing about yon Eamonn Carr is, he’s got the Prods and the Taigs eating out of his greasy hand. And on the Ballyterrin council, there’s not much else to stop him.’

‘Where’d he make his cash? Not off Patsy, surely.’

‘Patsy hadn’t 2d when he died. No, Eamonn’s built most of the new houses in this town, and now there’s this development they want down where the travellers are.’

‘They’re building something down there?’ Her ears pricked up.

‘Oh aye, it’s been all over the papers. They want to put in luxury flats and shops and that. “Waterside regeneration” me arse. Eamonn persuaded the council to give the travellers the boot, but they put in a High Court appeal, so he’s not had his way yet. But he will, the same fine fella.’ PJ looked at Paula over his paper. ‘You don’t follow the news over here, then.’

‘No.’ Silence.

‘Will you
take a cup of tea?’ PJ fumbled for his crutches.

‘You’re not really letting me look after you, are you.’

‘I’m not decrepit yet, Paula.’

It was nice, sitting in the kitchen. A typical father-daughter chat about tea, the IRA, and dead bodies. For some reason, this was how she felt closest to him. ‘I’m heading out again in a bit, anyway. Remind me I need petrol for the Ford.’

He handed her a mug of tea. ‘I wish to God you’d take the Volvo, Paula. Shocking waste of money, that hire car.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s grand.’ As long as she had the hire car, she could get out of here anytime she wanted. Get behind the wheel, drive to the airport, and hop right off this flat green island, where the past still gripped like bindweed.

A few hours later, freshly dressed in jeans and a warm jumper, Paula was parking very badly at Ballyterrin General Hospital, a big square building which had been the town’s workhouse until the early 1900s. She got into the space, missing a doctor’s Mercedes by millimetres, and struggled out. She was going to be late, and wasn’t entirely sure what had made her take this stop on the way to the press conference.

God, she hated hospitals. Nothing good ever came of them, least of all this one. As she jogged down the squeaking corridor, following signs for A&E, she tried to suppress the reaction that came with the smell of bleach. Memories, buried somewhere inside her. The first body, coming down here in her school uniform, running and slipping on the plastic floor. PJ sitting outside the mortuary with his head bowed.

‘
Da – duh –
’ She’d lost the ability to speak.

‘
It isn’t her. It isn’t her, Paula
.’

Vomiting into a bin right there and then. With relief, or maybe disappointment, because at least then they’d have known.

She pulled herself together and went through the reception desk to ask for Dr McLoughlin. When she was shown in to a small consulting room, the short doctor from the crime scene was ostentatiously tidying papers on her desk. ‘If you’re here for more, I can’t tell you anything, like I said to the Inspector. You’ll have to wait.’

Paula ignored this. ‘It’s still McLoughlin, is it, not Garvin?’

‘You did read the wedding invite, then. Shame you didn’t reply.’ Saoirse turned, slamming a drawer shut.

Paula said nothing for a moment. Sometimes, there was so much to apologise for, it was easier not to start. ‘I didn’t know how to explain.’

‘Explain why you couldn’t be bothered coming to your best friend’s wedding?’

‘No, explain that I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t come back.’ She spoke quietly. ‘I’m sorry, Saoirse. I heard it was a lovely day.’

Dr Saoirse McLoughlin looked at the discreet gold band held on a chain round her neck. ‘You’ve never even met Dave.’