The Lost (18 page)

‘I will. Sir.’ He
didn’t react to the ‘sir’, and as she went out, she saw he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Back at her desk in the corner, Paula sat down with a sigh. Avril was labelling the bags of porn, eyes averted, back turned on Gerard, who was at his own desk typing so hard the keystrokes sounded like cracks. Fiacra met Paula’s eyes as she went in, with a small shrug: bad times.

She looked
around in her heap of papers and took out the newspaper clipping of Louise McCourt, teeth crooked in a pretty face, smiling. The picture of Cathy Carr, dark, some mystery in her eyes. And lastly Majella, with her shock of hair and hoop earrings. All of them lost, in their own ways.

Chapter Seventeen

The Family Liaison Officer was cut from the same cloth Paula had seen a thousand times. Any age from thirty to fifty, running to plump, a sensible haircut. A woman, always a woman. She was having trouble remembering this one’s name. Mairead, something like that? Another new Catholic recruit.

‘It’s just that they’re very upset,’ said Mairead, if that was her name. She was standing in the Carrs’ porch, almost barring Paula’s way. Behind her the house looked shrouded, Venetian blinds drawn.

‘Of course, I understand that. I just need a word with the siblings.’

‘And you’re trained with child witnesses?’

Paula made herself smile and said as she had many times before, ‘I’m older than I look, Officer.’

The woman eyed her dubiously, chunky shoes still firmly planted on the doorstep. ‘The parents can’t cope with more intrusion in the house.’ And again the implication –
you don’t have children, do you?

Paula looked around her. It was a bright autumn day, the rain had finally let up, and it was not too cold for Ballyterrin. ‘I can talk to them in the garden, if that’s easier. Out of the house, in nature . . .’

The FLO put on an expression of
what-is-this-carry-on
. ‘I suppose if the Inspector sent you . . .’

‘He did. He wants the children assessed.’

The woman
was wavering, Paula could tell. Her hand was on the doorknob. ‘Just the two oldest, was that it?’

Angela and Eamonn Carr had spaced their children neatly. Two years after Cathy there was Sean, and after another two, Anna. Then a gap of four years, and two smaller children aged seven and five. Paula wondered how she’d even go about talking to those kids who’d lost so much. It was true. She didn’t have any of her own.

Cathy’s nearest sister was coming towards her now, hesitantly crossing the lawn to where Paula sat on the garden bench, Mairead hovering disapprovingly nearby. Even the lawn was neat, the toys tasteful and wooden, the grass mown. Paula didn’t know much about grass – had they done this since Cathy was found?

The girl was joined by her brother, a gangly boy of thirteen in the school uniform of the local boys’ grammar. Where Aidan had gone, in fact. Constellations of spots marred his cheeks. Paula arranged her face into a smile as they came over in a nervous clump, knocking their limbs off each other.

‘Hello, Sean, Anna.’

Neither spoke, pressed closer together than she’d bet they’d been in years. Kids never got on at that age, or so Paula had heard. Because as well as no kids, she also had no siblings of her own.

‘How are you both feeling?’

They looked away, Sean flexing his bony knuckles, Anna biting a chapped lip. At eleven she was still child-like, legs coltish, face chubby. Her St Bridget’s uniform was also too big for her. ‘Are you in first year, Anna?’

A brief nod.

‘I’m
not a police person, but I work with them. My name is Paula. My job is to find out as much as I can about Cathy and how she was feeling, to see if I can understand who . . . hurt her.’ She was picking her words very carefully. ‘Can you try to help me with that?’ More faint nods.

‘Nobody knows who did it,’ Sean muttered, gnawing his finger.

‘That’s true. But we’re looking.’ She smiled, trying to find a rapport with them. ‘Sean, I hear you’re into computer games, is that right? Which ones?’

His sister elbowed him sharply. ‘He doesn’t have any. Da doesn’t let him.’

‘Shut up, Anna Onion. I play them at school.’ They scuffled briefly and Paula wondered if she would have to physically separate them.

‘So you’re not allowed games at home?’

‘Mammy says they rot his brain,’ said Anna, in tell-tale fashion.

Sean just rubbed at his eyes, as if they were irritated. Paula tried to pull the conversation back. ‘So your mammy and daddy, are they sort of strict compared to your friends’ ones?’ A few metres away, she saw Mairead shift uncomfortably on the lawn.

She’d expected a resounding yes to that, but the two exchanged a quick glance.

‘Dunno,’ Sean said, quietly.

‘They let you go out with your friends, or hang out downtown?’

No answer.

‘Do you do things after school, yes? What days?’

‘Every day,’ said Anna, in a ‘duh’ tone of voice, twirling a bit of hair. ‘Judo, band, Irish dancing . . .’

‘What about Cathy? Did she ever go out with her friends?’

‘I don’t like her friends,’ declared Anna. ‘They’re mean. Sometimes they hide my things and then I hear them all laughing their heads off.’

‘Did you ever go into Cathy’s room?’

‘She said
she’d skin me.’ Anna bit her lip again, as if remembering her lost sister.

‘You,
Sean?’

He hesitated.

‘You can tell me. It’s OK.’

‘One time. Just to read her diary. She was pissing me off. I didn’t mean to upset her.’ He stared at his shoes.

Paula’s heart beat faster. ‘What did it say?’ There’d been no diary, according to the parents.

He shrugged. ‘She liked a fella but some other girl was after him, blah blah, her friends were being bitches – being bad to her, all that.’

‘And where is it now, the diary?’

He shrugged again. Anna wasn’t even listening, just picking at the skin on her fingers. Paula tried another tack. ‘Do you know if Cathy had a phone?’

Another glance between them, quick as a bird skimming water. ‘She’s not allowed a phone,’ said Anna uncertainly.

‘OK. Listen, guys – did you see Cathy that day? The day she went missing, I mean.’

‘Some bad man took her.’ Another look went between the two. ‘Daddy said we don’t know who.’

‘I meant – did you usually walk home from school with her, Anna?’

‘No, she doesn’t let me. Anyway, we always have activities.’ They still used the present tense, though their sister was dead and buried.

‘Cathy didn’t have anything after school on Fridays, is that right?’ Nods. ‘What about you two?’

‘I go to speech and drama, he goes to chess.’

Sean made a deep noise of irritation as his sister spoke. He rubbed at his eyes again, clenching his hands into fists.

‘Your mum picks you up?’

Anna shook her head so the ponytail flew. ‘Not on Fridays. We get lifts home, ’cos Mammy’s here with the wee ones.’

‘And
what time do you get home?’ Shrugs. ‘What’s on TV when you come in?’

‘We’re not allowed TV.’

Sean volunteered, in a small voice, ‘Mammy has the news on sometimes.’

‘So if you can remember back to that Friday, you came in about six, and Cathy wasn’t back?’ Paula had re-checked the interviews with the parents. Angela Carr said she’d been expecting Cathy back around four, but the girl had never arrived. Eamonn had come back at five and gone out in the car to look for her.

‘S’pose so. Dunno. She just never came back. She wasn’t there.’ The boy was blinking hard. ‘Miss, can we go now?’

‘Well, OK. Thanks very much for your help.’

Mairead stirred. ‘Come on, pets, let’s go inside and get a sandwich.’

‘Miss?’ Sean stomped off, but Anna lingered. ‘Does Cathy know I’m sorry?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I didn’t show love to her like the priest said. I pulled out her hair one time and called her a bitch. Does she know, like, that I didn’t mean it?’ Her eyes were huge and dark, shadows marking the young skin underneath.

What to say to that? ‘I’m sure she does, Anna.’

The girl nodded, clearly unconvinced, and was gone, like a gawky bird. Paula was about to get up when she realised that two new pairs of eyes were watching her. ‘Hello.’

The children flitted away at her voice, but soon popped their heads back round the shed. Of course Eamonn Carr would have a capacious shed.

‘You must be Ciara and Niamh?’ All the Carr children had good Irish names. These would be the youngest two.

Ciara came out first. In jeans and a pink sweatshirt, she was a bouncy little girl. ‘Are you the questions lady?’

‘Hmm?’

‘The
lady who does be asking all the questions.’

‘I suppose I am, yes. You’re seven, is that right?’ Ciara nodded, but like her sister Anna, watched Paula with a dark gaze. Cathy seemed to have been the only one with those sharp green eyes, which must have come from her mother. ‘What’s that you’re doing?’

The girl had a piece of paper in her hand, an orange blur crayoned onto it and
LOST CATT
written across the top. ‘Daddy told me to go out and play with Niamh, but she doesn’t know the rules – she’s a baby.’

Niamh was five, Paula knew. As the youngest Carr emerged from behind the shed Paula saw she still had a toddler plumpness to her cheeks, and was dressed identically to her sister. Same jeans, same sweatshirt, same Clark’s shoes. Did Angela Carr like order even in her children? ‘Where’s your mummy?’

‘She’s sleeping,’ said the youngest, then retreated with an embarrassed giggle.

‘She sleeps in the day?’

Ciara gave a worldly shrug. ‘She’s tired now because of our Cathy. Daddy says we have to leave her be. He shouts if we make noise.’

‘Does he? Ciara, do you remember when you saw Cathy last time? Was it here?’

Ciara nodded but Paula wasn’t sure she’d understood. Did time even have a meaning when you were seven years old? Ciara said, ‘Mammy shouts at Cathy. She’s a liar, Mammy said.’

‘How come?’

‘One time I was bad and I bitted Niamh, but she did it to me first.’

‘Really. Did your mammy shout at Cathy in the house?’

‘In there.’ The child pointed to the latticed window of the kitchen. ‘Then Mammy cried and Daddy came and we had to stay in the family room for hours and hours. Niamh falled asleep.’

From
her hiding place, Niamh said something incomprehensible.

Ciara went on, ‘Niamh thinks Cathy’s coming home. But she’s not. Is she? She’s away to heaven, and you can’t come back, not unless you’re Jesus in the cave. I don’t know if she’ll find us, miss, when we go to the new house. Will she find us, if she comes back?’

New house? Paula was sitting very still, and thinking carefully what to say next, as if the child were some rare skittish bird, when Mairead the FLO appeared at the back door of the house to shepherd the girls in.

‘Come on, pets, it’s getting cold.’ She gave Paula a reproving glance. ‘They’re too wee to be questioned, Miss Maguire. They can’t understand it, poor weans.’

‘They said something about moving house. Do you know anything about that?’

Another suspicious look. ‘The family were building a new house out in the country – needed more room for all the weans.’ Mairead shook her head. ‘When they had the five, of course. It’s a terrible thing.’

It was. But why, if they were planning to move soon, had Paula smelled fresh paint the first day at the house?

As the girls fluttered off, Paula noted how they stopped at the front door and carefully took their shoes off, Ciara helping her sister. Then, with unusual care in such young children, they slotted them into the rack there, which held neat rows of kids’ footwear.

Paula stood for a moment wondering if Cathy, like most girls, had worn the same pair of shoes to school each day. St Bridget’s had been strict in her day, so you bought good school shoes, made to last, to fit the rules. To grow into. She called, ‘Excuse me? Sorry, do you think I could use the bathroom before I go?’

Mairead
looked unsure. ‘There’s one under the stairs. I’ll just give the kids something to eat.’

On her way in, Paula examined the shoe rack. Cathy had been a size five, she remembered. The only pair that seemed like they could have been hers were patent, with heels and a Mary-Jane strap. She wouldn’t have been allowed to wear those at St Bridget’s, surely. If only they’d been able to find the ones she wore to school.

Inside the house, which was still spotlessly clean, Paula decided she was going to deliberately misunderstand what the FLO had said. She could hear Mairead in the kitchen talking to the children as she crept up the cream-carpeted stairs. A TV was blaring in the front room. She made her way along the upstairs corridor, which was lined with more posed family portraits, all of them dark-haired, all smiling. There was the sound of a flush and a door opened, revealing Angela Carr in a silk dressing-gown. Without the heavy makeup of the first day, her face was lined with grief and worry.

‘I’m sorry,’ Paula said quickly. ‘I was just . . . how are you, Mrs Carr?’

Angela brushed past her, not making eye-contact.

‘If you ever want to chat, you know – you can talk to any of us. If there’s anything I can do to help.’

Angela paused with her small hand on the ornate handle of another white door.

For a moment she looked up, and Paula saw her eyes were indeed green, a deep and mossy shade that gave nothing away. ‘You can’t,’ she said finally. ‘Nobody can help. It’s too late.’ Then she went inside and closed the door behind her. Paula heard a creaking on the stairs and turned to see Eamonn Carr standing a few steps below her. He was dressed in a suit, tie pulled tight to his neck.

‘What
are
you
doing here?’ he demanded. ‘I was told you were going to talk to the children outside.’

‘I – I was just looking for the bathroom.’

He came up a step or two, drawing level with her. ‘Leave my wife alone, Miss Maguire. I don’t appreciate you trespassing in my home. Please go now.’ He brushed past her and went into the room Angela had just entered, sliding round so Paula couldn’t see in. She thought for a moment, about that rack of shoes and what the kids said. About the padlock she’d seen on the door of Eamonn’s shed. Looking at the closed door, she realised she’d pushed her luck with the Carrs far enough for one day.