The Lost (12 page)

‘Come on, Dad.’ She escorted him near the front, crutches propped up against the old painted radiator, paint chipping off. The church was always freezing, women in good wool coats huddling to the ends of rows, suited-up thugs bowing their shaved heads to pray. It looked the same as it had last time she’d been in – for the service of memorial. Not a funeral, as such, since there was nothing to bury. There’d been prayers for the safe return of her mother, prayers that even then Paula had been sure would come to nothing. She’d sat breathing in the smell of polish and damp, watching the statue of Mary with her face full of mercy. Wondered how Jesus would have turned out if Mary had vanished when he was thirteen. After that, she hadn’t been able to go back. It wasn’t a conscious decision, to never go to Mass again. It was just that she couldn’t bear it, and then she’d moved to London, hiding herself in that pulsing crowd, and no one gave two hoots if she went to church or temple or mosque or nowhere at all.

The priest came
out in his ornate green surplice, white-clad altar boys following, their robes kicked up to show the latest trainers underneath. He raised his hands and everyone stood.

Paula saw her father struggle up with everyone else, and she put out her arm. ‘Would you ever sit down, Daddy,’ she whispered. She felt him bristle and then give in, and sink down. Instead she did the standing and kneeling for both of them, rising and falling along with the crowd, muttering the words that came back to her like breathing, as if she’d never been away.
Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy
.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Afterwards, there was Pat, bustling over in her good Sunday trouser-suit, navy-blue. ‘It does my heart good to see you with your daddy, Paula. And here’s Aidan with me.’

Oh God, there
he was, dressed up in a blue shirt and tie, shaved for once.

PJ grunted. ‘Don’t see you here often, Aidan.’

Paula smirked to herself. Trust her dad to puncture Aidan’s Holy-Joe act. But Aidan just smiled widely. ‘Sure didn’t Our Lord Himself welcome back the lost sheep, PJ?’

‘He did,’ said PJ coldly. He wasn’t a fan of using Scripture in this flippant way, and Paula was sure he’d prefer Aidan to call him
Mr Maguire
.

Pat was smiling between them all, kind and oblivious as Mary herself. ‘That was nice, wasn’t it, the prayers for wee Cathy? She’ll be at peace now, poor wean. Normally you’d see the Carrs all there, in the front row, all the wee ones washed and pressed. God rest her. Will we get our coffee, PJ? Your daddy comes round for a wee cup after Mass most weeks,’ she explained to Paula. ‘You’ll come too, pet?’

Coffee with Aidan and his mum and her dad, in Pat’s polished house with doilies under the cups? ‘I’ve a bit of work to do, actually, if you could get up the road with Pat, Dad?’

‘Don’t work too hard, love.’ Pat looked disappointed as she helped PJ to the door. Aidan turned and shot Paula a mocking backwards glance, dropping a pious genuflection as he reached the end of the aisle.

‘Fuck off,’ she muttered, then remembering where she was, crossed herself in some strange throwback gesture, and headed out to the car.

Ballyterrin was quiet on Sundays. Many shops were shut, everyone at home for their Sunday dinner, GAA on the TV. Paula drove the Ford down quiet streets, through the heart of town, past the Meadows shopping centre and the new cinema, past the identical housing developments which had made Eamonn Carr his fortune, up by the old swimming baths, near the hospital. There was the bus stop where she’d once waited for Aidan after school. There was the fast-food joint where Saoirse had gone on a terrible date with a meat-handed boy called Darren. The weight of memory, it almost seemed to crush her.

The Mission was
on a deserted street near the bus station. A shuttered bookies, a hairdresser’s called To Dye For, a sign swinging to and fro in the salted wind. Not a place with much life, it seemed.

But by contrast the Mission building, when Paula drew near, was glowing with light and music. Parking the car in the street, she crept round the side of the old pebble-dashed walls. It looked like a prison –
had
been a sort of prison, in fact – but now the high barred windows were lit up and song poured out. It sounded like normal rock music until you listened to the words –
let’s crush Satan, underneath our feet! Yeah!
People were singing, clapping. She could hear the high squeal of electric guitars.

‘Welcome!’

Paula tried not to look shifty as a man appeared in the porch. He was young – mid-twenties, she guessed – and had fair hair bound back in a ponytail. ‘Oh, hi, sorry. I just wondered what was going on.’

‘Would you like to come in? We’re open to all.’ He had an English accent; you didn’t get many of those in Ballyterrin. The Midlands, she thought.

‘OK. I, er, I’ve got a teenage niece. I heard this was a youth club or something?’

‘Yes, it’s something.’ He smiled, ushering her in. ‘I’m Ed, the leader here.’

‘Paula.’ The only other name that came to mind was Petunia, for some reason. She didn’t think he’d believe that.

‘Welcome.’ She felt a light touch on her arm as he closed the door behind them, and she jumped back, shoving her hands in the pockets of her raincoat. ‘How old is your niece, Paula?’

‘Fifteen?
Yes, she’s fifteen.’ Crap, what was the imaginary niece called? Paula was an only child, so how old would her imaginary brother or sister be, then, to have a teenage child? ‘I’m sorry?’ Ed was speaking.

‘I just asked if you were a family of faith.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, we are.’

‘And your niece – what makes you think she needs a youth club?’

She was looking all around her. The walls of the corridor were lined in photos and posters; she tried to glance at them all but there wasn’t time. Several doors led off it, with its church-hall smell of paint and rubber. An office, door ajar. ‘You know how it is, she’s gone to a new school, a bit lonely, needs some friends.’

His smile grew even wider. ‘We’re very friendly here, Paula.’

‘That’s lovely.’ She ducked her head to peer into the open office. Cables, files, nothing sinister.

He was holding open a glass door for her. ‘Do come into the main hall.’

The noise grew louder as they went in, and she saw that a rock group were tuning up at one end of the room. There were guitars, drums, even a girl with a tambourine.

‘One, two, three,’ said the singer into the mike, and they launched into another song. This one also seemed to be about Satan.

‘Don’t mind the din, I hope? It’s part of what we do here. We’re practising for the Friday session.’

The rest of the room was filled with sofas, a pool table, a drinks machine. Like a real youth club, until you saw the posters.
Crush evil. Let God into your life
. ‘What sort of club is it?’

Ed rolled up the
sleeves of the ethnic tunic he wore. His eyes were very green, friendship bracelets twisted round his sinewy wrists. A sharp face, handsome but somehow not attractive. A line of spots marked his jaw. ‘We have a mission to bring God’s love to all young people, especially those most vulnerable to abuse and self-harm. Our programmes combat drug-taking, teen sex, and drinking, and give the young folk something to feel pride in. We communicate God’s message through song and drama.’ He reeled it off smoothly. ‘We’re not denominational Christians, we’re a cross-community venture. Equal opportunities.’

She nodded along. It reminded her of the old joke that wasn’t really a joke –
I don’t mind Muslims so long as they’re Catholic Muslims.
Or Protestant Muslims, depending on your point of view.

‘What’s your niece’s name?’

‘Oh, it’s eh . . .’ She’d been about to say Katie, since Katie Brooking had been on her mind – a teenager who really
had
just moved to a new school – but then the hall door opened and the girl herself came in. A look of horror crossed Katie’s face as she saw Paula, and the girl rapidly shot back out again. Ed was watching closely; Paula saw him frown.

She tried to gather her thoughts. ‘Oh, sorry, my niece’s name is, eh, Mary. So she could just come along, meet some people her age?’

He moved forward to fix a poster that was drooping at one corner, something about making Godly choices. ‘We always leave it up to the young person themselves. To really join us they have to be willing to say no to drink, to sex, to all those evils, and engage with our community here.’

‘Oh, of course. She’d never do any of that.’ In Paula’s head the imaginary Mary was turning into a right goody two-shoes.

‘You might be surprised. They’re under so many pressures now.’ He looked sad. ‘Mary’s welcome to come to our Friday-night open sessions – it’s sort of a taster. Or if not, we’re having a big concert in a few weeks, in the centre of town. All welcome.’ The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

‘Lovely.’
She pointed to the rock group. ‘Locals, are they?’

‘We’re from all over – Ireland, England, even the States. We get sent out as part of our training, to start missions in new places.’

‘Training?’ It sounded like the Mormons.

‘That’s right. We set up in new towns, and the young people come to us. Then we’re able to train more leaders, and in a few months there’s a functioning Mission here. We plant the seed, and it grows, and then we move on. This is our first one in Ireland.’

‘I see. You don’t mind being far from home? You’re English, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t mind at all. It’s very joyful,’ he said, his face revealing nothing. ‘Isn’t it joyful, Maddy?’ This was addressed to the tambourine player on stage, a tall dark-haired girl in a long print dress. She looked also to be in her mid-twenties, and stopped beating along when Ed spoke.

‘Training? It’s awesome. It’s, like, the most totally spiritual experience, you know?’ Maddy seemed to be American. Her voice rose up at the end of her sentences and there was not a trace of irony in her words. Her eyebrows were heavy; her face not entirely pretty, but striking.

Ed introduced them. ‘This is Maddy Goldberg, one of our missionaries. Paula might be sending her niece along to us.’

‘Awe-some!’ Maddy high-fived Ed, who returned it with alacrity.

Paula tucked both hands under her armpits in case they tried to engage her in this frankly unnatural behaviour. ‘That’s great, great. I best be going.’ In the corridor, where Ed followed her out, she tried to buy time to search the photographs on the wall. ‘These are nice, aren’t they?’

Ed said nothing.
She felt him watching her, a certain tension vibrating from his muscles. ‘If there’s nothing else . . .’

Paula was scanning the pictures. She couldn’t spot Cathy or Majella in any of them, but there was a face she recognised at the end, shaking hands with Ed and holding up a sign that said
St Bridget’s Mission Group
– Sarah Kenny, Cathy’s form teacher, a huge beatific smile on her face. Paula tried to give no sign of recognition.

‘Shocking, wasn’t it,’ she said conversationally, as Ed led her out. ‘The girl who died. Did you see it on the news?’

He looked blank, then nodded. ‘Oh yes. Terrible. That’s why we’re here, of course, to help the young people before it comes to that.’ They were outside now, in the chill afternoon, and Paula hadn’t managed to spot where Katie Brooking had gone. Something told her Guy didn’t know his daughter was here.

‘How do you mean?’

The man hesitated just for a second. ‘I assume she ran away. I think that’s what they said on the news.’ Ed was firmly directing Paula to her car – seeing her out politely, or making sure she was gone? ‘I hope we’ll see Mary soon, then.’

‘Mary?’ She’d forgotten, and she saw from his eyes he knew she was lying. ‘Oh yes, thanks very much. Did she come here, by the way?’ Paula said it casually, as she unlocked the car. ‘Cathy Carr, I mean. The girl who died.’

‘I don’t know. We get so many young people.’ Bland. Uninterested.

She was glad to get into the warm car and drive away.

Chapter Twelve

On Monday the team gathered back in their own unit, which bore a stale fug from a weekend of work: sweat, old coffee, lost hope. Paula still felt exhausted, as if experiencing some strange kind of jet lag between the two parts of the same country. Avril was neat as usual but pale and quiet, Gerard scowling at the table with a fierce intensity, his body coiled, and Bob Hamilton was popping indigestion pills like Smarties. Fiacra hadn’t even turned up yet.

Everyone was silent, reading the photocopied pages of the autopsy report Guy had given them. It was all there in stark detail, how this girl had met her end. Not the why, or the who, just the aftermath, a fraction of the puzzle. Guy stood watching them in a grey suit, his shoulders held rigid.

‘The pathologist estimates Cathy had been dead a week,’ he told them. ‘It’s harder to be sure because of the water being cold, but it’s likely she was dead when we started looking for her. She’d been stabbed in the neck. At the moment we’re looking for a sharp knife, with a long, slim blade.’

Bob Hamilton coughed. ‘The divers never found anything in the canal, so that’s a priority, locating the weapon.’

Guy went on, ‘Aside from the wound, there were no other signs of violence, and no ligature marks except post-mortem.’

So it looked as if she’d been killed right away, not held somewhere, not tied up and made to suffer. In cases like these you could find comfort in the strangest things.

Guy glanced
at Paula and she started, a trill of embarrassment making her hands shake. ‘Paula, when you talked to Cathy’s friends, none of them mentioned a boyfriend, anything like that?’

She spoke to his lapels. ‘They said no, but I got the feeling it might not be true.’

‘You might have been on to something.’ He tapped the next sheet of paper. ‘Cathy was two months’ pregnant.’

It was as if he’d dropped a bomb into the room. Bob Hamilton’s face flushed red and he muttered, ‘Ah, God have mercy.’

Gerard’s brow furrowed. ‘That’s a motive, then,’ he said heavily. Avril dropped her eyes, suddenly glassy. Paula met Guy’s gaze until they both looked away. She’d been sure there was a boyfriend – or if not quite a boyfriend, something else going on. Once again, it wasn’t pleasant to be right.