The Lost (19 page)

Chapter Eighteen

She
still wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. Did the good-quality bottle express how grateful she was for the invite? Or did it say,
here I am with my posh city ways and my dazzling knowledge of wine
? There wasn’t time to change it now anyway, because she was on Saoirse’s doorstep with the Pinot Noir clanking in her shoulder bag. She swallowed down a jolt of nerves as the hall light went on. It was ridiculous. She’d practically lived at Saoirse’s when they were teens, sprawled out in front of
Dawson’s Creek
while Saoirse’s mammy brought in trays of biscuits and tea. It was stupid to be this nervous going to her new house, meeting her new husband.

A huge man had opened the door, almost filling it, the hair on the backs of his hands and all up the arms exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his Ireland rugby shirt.

‘Hiya, I’m . . . er . . . it’s—’

‘Paula, is it?’ Then he was bending to kiss her cheek and she was flustered, accepting it. Surely no one had done cheek-kissing in Ireland in the nineties. ‘Come on in.’

She was holding out the bottle like a votive offering, and there was Saoirse in a striped apron, eyebrows going up behind her glasses. ‘Very nice.’ Sarcasm, or appreciation? Saorise had always been a sarky little cow, of course, but never directed at Paula.

‘Your house is lovely.’ Paula had a general blurred impression of beige carpets and tasteful grey furnishings.

‘It’s Dave, he’s a dab hand at decorating.’ Saoirse put her arms round her wide husband, who kissed the top of her dark head. Paula didn’t know where to look. Last time she’d seen Saoirse with a boy it had been shifting some farmer called Donal round the back of Ritzy’s nightclub. Afterwards, Saoirse had declared she’d rather snog one of Donal’s sheep than do that again.

Dave
was offering a drink. ‘Whatever’s going, thanks,’ Paula said. ‘I’m not fussy.’

‘It’s true,’ said Saoirse, smiling. ‘She isn’t.’

Paula realised she was sweating. ‘Can I do anything to help? Smells lovely.’

‘It’s all done.’ A smell of meat and herbs came out of the kitchen; clearly her friend’s culinary skills had moved on from Rice-Krispie buns. Saoirse beckoned her in. ‘Why don’t you sit down and talk to Dave, and I’ll finish it.’

But as Paula was about to move to the hessian sofa, the doorbell rang. No one seemed disconcerted; indeed, Saoirse smiled happily. ‘Aidan’s on time for once.’

‘Wha . . .’ Paula swallowed hard. ‘Aidan O’Hara? You invited him?’

‘He comes round most weeks,’ said Dave, who clearly didn’t know the backstory. ‘You were all friends back in the day, is that the way of it?’ He was moving to get the door.

As it opened, and she heard the rumble of male voices, Paula fixed her former best friend with a look dredged up from the past, the one you used when someone talked to you in class and you got in trouble, or boked on your dad’s front path. A look that said,
Saoirse McLoughlin, I am going to kill you stone dead. I will kill you like a dog in the street.

At least Saoirse had the wisdom to look abashed. ‘Come on.’ She nudged Paula into the kitchen. ‘Come in and give me a hand.’

‘I
suppose I shouldn’t have done that.’ Her friend had her back to Paula, cutting a fresh loaf with a long serrated blade. Paula was leaning against the granite worktop, head reeling.

‘Why did you?’

‘I think I wanted to show you that when you left, you left all of us – me, Aidan, your dad. And it seemed like you forgot all that, but we were still here, you know.’

‘How much did Aidan tell you about us – why it ended?’

Her friend turned, eyes bright as the knife. ‘Nothing. We don’t talk about you.’

That stung. ‘I see.’

Saoirse relented. ‘I mean, I think he doesn’t like to. But . . .’ She hesitated, wiping the blade gently against her apron. ‘When you went, I could tell he was confused. He said you just left, no goodbye, nothing. He said you ended it with him.’

‘And you believed him.’

‘Yeah, I believed him. Because you did the same to me.’

The words dropped into the kitchen, among the sound of the meat crackling in the oven and the men’s voices and soft rock from the other room.

‘Why did you?’ Saoirse’s voice was curious, neutral. ‘Just up and leave, I mean?’

Paula said nothing. To explain would mean having to tell all the rest, and no one knew about that except her father; and the doctors, of course.

Saoirse went on, ‘I remember you and Aidan had that big row at the end of school, when he’d done his first year at DCU, but you’d never tell me what it was over. I mean, you used to tell me everything . . . it was weird. And then you were sick over the summer, of course, but I still don’t see why you had to leave for England so soon. I thought we could hang out, have some fun before uni started.’

‘You had new friends to make. We were both moving on.’

‘But you were my best friend.’

Paula
swallowed again, remembering all the times Saoirse had come to the house the summer Paula stayed in with the blinds drawn against the light. How her friend had tried to coax her to concerts and beach trips and discos, and PJ’s rumbling voice in the hallway.
She hasn’t the strength, pet. She can’t get up off the sofa
. And she couldn’t, but not for the reason they’d given. Of course, Saoirse would still believe it was glandular fever that had stricken Paula in the summer of her eighteenth year, in that shadowy borderland between school and university.

‘I’ll just say this,’ Paula said quietly. ‘I had reasons. I can’t tell you – I couldn’t – but I had them. And if you were hurt by that, all I can say is how sorry I am.’
But I can’t take it back
, she meant.

Saoirse set down the knife, and although her friend now wore her hair in loose waves, and had silver earrings, designer specs, and a wedding ring, Paula could still only see the skinny bird-like girl she’d swapped her sandwiches with for years. ‘I’m sorry I brought him here. I didn’t realise till I saw your face – well. I thought you were OK with him.’

‘I was. I am.’ She tried to smile. ‘Dave seems lovely.’

Saoirse’s face softened. ‘Ah, he is that. Come in and we’ll get you a drink.’

Aidan had brought a pack of imported beer, and to Paula’s surprise there were still four left. Perhaps, as Pat said, he had changed his ways. ‘Hiya,’ she said forcedly, gulping red wine. Saoirse was drinking the same and the men had beer. She put on a smile. They were chatting about work, traffic, Gaelic football. Aidan supported Down, Dave the neighbouring county of Armagh, and there was some good-natured banter, while Saoirse slipped in and out of the kitchen. When she came back in she was carrying a great side of beef, steaming with herbs.

Aidan
clapped Dave on the shoulder. ‘You’re a lucky man, fella.’

Saoirse was flushed from the praise and Paula felt a stab of – what? Wishing she’d learned to cook instead of jogging to crime scenes at dawn, staring at sociopaths across prison interview rooms?

Dinner was nice. She’d wanted to ask Saoirse and Dave how they met, what they were like together, but felt ashamed that she didn’t know these things. Once, she’d known everything about Saoirse, what mark she got in history, when she had her period, which of her brothers she hated the most. Everything. Now she didn’t even know the man her friend shared her life with.

But Saoirse perhaps sensed this. ‘You won’t know how me and Dave met, will you, Paula?’

‘No.’ She gulped more wine to cover the taste of shame.

‘You remember I wrote to you about my foundation course? You do all these rotations, see, when you’re training to be a doctor.’

‘Mmm.’ The many letters sent by Saoirse, never answered.

‘Well, I was in A&E for a time – Jesus, that’s tough, I’m telling you. No fear of gruesome stuff now. And this fella here comes in, and as you can probably tell from the cut of him, Paula, he’s into the GAA.’

A Gaelic football player then, not rugby. She should have realised.

‘And he’s his shoulder shattered across, blood pouring down his face, but clamouring to get back to some stupid game.’

‘It was the Ulster Youth Final,’ said Dave peaceably. It was hard to imagine him streaming with blood. He took up the story. ‘There I was, Paula, all battered and blue, and some wee besom of a doctor poking me full of needles, eating the head off me. “I’ll sedate you”, says she, “if you move a feckin’ muscle.” Nice talk for a doctor, eh?’

‘Don’t
tell Mammy,’ Saoirse laughed. They passed the baton of the story between them. ‘I read him the riot act, basically, sitting his arse down till I was finished – and the next day don’t I walk into a case conference and who’s sitting there, a bandage round his head. “Oh,” they goes, “this is Mr Garvin, the hospital’s social worker.” Well, I was scundered.’

Scundered
. Paula hadn’t heard that word in years.

‘Lucky for her I like a woman who can stitch me up like a jersey,’ said Dave, moving over to kiss his wife, who flushed again. Paula met Aidan’s eyes briefly and looked away. She wondered in that moment was he seeing anyone. Surely he’d have brought his girlfriend, if he had one.

Aidan was chewing. ‘So, Saoirse, I see you got in the paper for being first on the scene with the wee Carr girl’s body.’

Paula flinched, but the other two went back to eating their beef. ‘Yes. Unusual case, the water aspect. Very hard to tell how long she’d been in for.’ Then Saoirse saw Paula’s face and laughed. ‘We’re a bit of a cabal here. Journalist, social worker, old ghoul like me – it takes a lot to shock us.’

‘And do you – do you talk about work?’

They glanced round at each other. Saoirse answered cautiously. ‘Not the really confidential stuff. But often it helps, you know, if you have a problem you can’t solve.’ Was that a hint?

‘I was hoping Saoirse and Dave might shed some light on our current conundrum,’ said Aidan, raising his eyebrows at Paula across the table. She felt annoyed. Wasn’t it for her to ask Saoirse, if she wanted help?

Saoirse set her plate aside as if she’d been waiting for the chance to speak. ‘I read the autopsy report on Cathy. The way I see it, what’s significant is that blade. It was something very sharp, very long. Not a street knife.’ She reached out and lifted the blade they’d used to carve the beef, wicked-shiny. ‘These are a set we got for a wedding present. They had to be ordered special from Dublin. Mammy thought we were mad – course, she thought a list was the height of rudeness anyway.’ She rolled her eyes at Dave, and Paula realised she’d never even sent them a wedding gift. What was wrong with her? But she’d been young, thoughtless, thinking only how to get away, how to survive.

‘So
you’re saying someone owned a dear knife,’ Aidan was saying.

‘Right. It’s not some gurrier. It’s someone with money, I think.’

Dave coughed politely. ‘I’d not say this if there was . . . but, well, we had no files on the Carrs. No suspicion of anything.’

Paula wondered did they have any files at all on middle-class families.

‘But it’s weird—’ Saoirse stopped herself. ‘You didn’t make it public that Cathy was . . .’ She looked significantly at Paula, who shook her head. Of course they hadn’t put out that the girl had been pregnant.

‘They told her dad, when he identified her, but that’s all.’ She wondered again how Eamonn Carr would have reacted to that news. Had he told his wife, who seemed to have such a fragile hold on the world?

Aidan was frowning between them, puzzled. Saoirse seemed to think about it, and then said, ‘We’re all friends, Paula. He’d not tell anyone.’

‘But—’

‘Cathy was pregnant, Aidan. Two months’.’

There was an odd movement from Dave, and Saoirse put her hand on his arm.

Aidan’s face was a picture. ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. That puts a different light on things.’

‘Dave’ll tell you this, but round here teen pregnancy’s about as low as you get. And for girls like Cathy . . .’ Catholic girls, Saoirse meant. Wealthy, controlled. Never allowed out.

‘Everyone
said she’d no boyfriend,’ said Paula, when she’d got over the shock of breaking confidentiality. It was Saoirse, sensible Saoirse. She must have a reason. ‘There’s the obvious random abductor theory, but there was no element of sexual assault in her death. And the way she was wrapped up so carefully, almost like protecting her . . . well, my theory was that someone killed her to hide the pregnancy. It wasn’t sex at all. It was damage control.’

‘Are you thinking—’ Aidan broke off. None of them wanted to say what they were all thinking. ‘Am I right?’ he continued heavily. ‘Would this be the time to bring up our friend Eamonn Carr?’

‘Poor wean,’ said Dave, suddenly running big hands over his face. ‘God, the poor wean.’ Did he mean Cathy, or the child she’d never had time to grow, or both? His voice broke.

Saoirse stood up quickly. ‘We’ll start the dishes. Why don’t you two discuss it.’ And she shut the kitchen door on her and Dave.

Paula looked askance at Aidan, who shrugged. ‘Will we go, Maguire? I can drop you home and tell you what I’ve found out on the way.’

She looked pointedly at his beer bottle.

‘Only the two,’ he said virtuously. ‘Come on, the taxis in this town’ll rob you blind.’

‘Should we not—’

‘It’s best to leave them. Honest, it is.’

‘OK.’ Reluctantly, Paula found her coat, casting curious looks at the kitchen.

Outside, she hesitated before opening the door to his battered Clio.

‘In you get, Maguire, it’d chill you tonight.’ Inside smelled the same. Tobacco, and mint, and his sweet aftershave. When she was eighteen it had been the most exciting smell in the world. Aidan hadn’t switched on the engine. ‘I was telling you about Eamonn Carr.’

‘Oh
yes.’ That was safer, the Carrs, the present. ‘Well, what’s he been up to? Apart from trying to turf the travellers out so he can put up some tatty old MDF flats.’

‘Turns out he’s got a fancy woman.’

Her jaw sagged. ‘No! Mr Family Man Moral Majority?’

‘It’s a well-kept secret, as you can guess. Luckily you’re talking to Ballyterrin’s finest investigative journalist.’