The Lost (24 page)

Mary pushed back her straggly hair with one reddened hand. ‘She told me she did, but no
one else was meant to know. I remember her putting her lipstick on that night, getting ready. She put a wee bit on me too. She was excited. Then her pals came to get her in their car, and she was out the door, and that was that. I never saw hide nor hair of her again.’

Fiacra was eating his way through a packet of Hob-Nobs. ‘You told the police this at the time?’

‘I tried, but they never paid me any heed. I was only a wean. Mammy had her mind made up that Rachel went off with a fella, and Daddy just went along with whatever Mammy said.’ Mary had been eight when her sister vanished, which made her thirty-three now.

Paula tried to subtly brush dog hairs off her black trousers. That had been a bad, bad idea, going to a farm in good clothes. PJ had raised his eyebrows at her when she clattered downstairs that morning.

She said, ‘It says in the file your sister’s friends confirmed Rachel went to the disco with them that night, but they didn’t see her after. Do you think she met her boyfriend there, maybe left with him?’

Mary rocked the child back and forward on her arm. ‘No. From what she told me, he never liked the dances. A sort of churchy fella, seemed like. Didn’t want her going out much.’

‘Do you know what church, by any chance?’

‘Aye, she’d started going to a kind of prayer-group thing, and Mammy lit out, said she’d to go to Mass like everyone else. I wasn’t meant to tell anyone about it. Rachel let on she was doing extra shifts in her job – she worked in the petrol station.’

Paula tried to keep her voice casual. ‘You don’t remember the name of the group?’

Mary shook her head. ‘Not after all this time. It was in town though. Ballyterrin.’

‘Hmm. So maybe she left the dance and
met the boyfriend somewhere else. Mrs O’Dowd, did you know the boyfriend’s name?’

‘No, I never did. She wasn’t meant to say his name to anyone.’

Paula tapped her notebook. ‘So when she went missing, they didn’t question this prayer group at all?’

Mary looked puzzled. ‘Well, no, she was at the dance when she disappeared. It must have been someone there who took her, I always thought. Everyone else just thought she went off on her own bat, but she never took any of her clothes, or her makeup, not even her wages from the petrol station. I never thought she ran away.’

‘I see. Mary? Do you have any pictures of Rachel?’

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. ‘Hold on a wee minute.’ The baby, grizzling and dribbling, was thrust in Paula’s arms.

Paula held the child’s sticky face away from her good coat. ‘There, there, Mummy’ll be back soon.’

‘You’re a natural so,’ said Fiacra, spraying crumbs. The baby promptly started to howl and Paula was glad to exchange her for the mustard-coloured album Mary brought back with her from the next room.

‘That’s our Rachel.’ A laughing girl in eighties stonewashed demin, bright strawberry-blond hair. Mary nodded to the baby. ‘I think this one has a look of her.’

‘She’s a beautiful girl,’ said Fiacra sincerely, and Mary’s face softened.

‘Aye, she was a good big sister. Wish the kiddies could of met their auntie.’ She said it matter-of-factly, long grown used to the routine of sorrow. ‘You’re looking into it again, then? You might find what happened? Only . . .’ she paused. ‘I’ve sort of buried it now. If you find something . . . you’ll let me know, so I can get ready, maybe?’

‘How come you wanted the photo?’ Fiacra lent Paula his hand as they picked their way over the muddy front yard through the drizzle.

‘I like to see as many as
I can. Get an idea of her.’

He nodded, opening the door. ‘Make her real, like.’

‘Exactly.’

He started the engine. ‘Aye, I do the same myself sometimes. You can get too used to things in this job. We need to remember why we do it.’

She said nothing, but gave him an impressed look as they drove on to the next family, in the continuing rain.

‘Is this definitely the right place?’

‘Aye, I think so. Look, it says it – Boyne Farm.’

‘It’s not exactly a farm though, is it?’ Having driven for some time south of the border, the driveway they were now on was flanked on either side by neat, empty fields, and led up to a large Georgian house, elegant and grey-walled. The family of Alice Dunne weren’t farmers, it seemed. More like Anglo-Irish aristocracy. So Rachel Reilly had been a Catholic investigated by the largely Protestant RUC, and Alice Dunne had been that rare thing: an Irish Protestant under the auspices of the Gardaí. Paula wondered if that had made a difference.

The impression of subtle wealth was strengthened when they reached the glossy front door and rang the bell, in the shape of a lion’s head. The door opened into a hall lined in rugs and mahogany furniture, a smell of beeswax and expensive dust.

The man who’d answered the door was in his forties, dressed in a golfing jumper and slacks. ‘You must be the police.’ His tone was distant.

Paula held out her hand, surreptitiously wiping it on her coat first. ‘Hello, I’m Paula Maguire, I’m a psychologist working with the Missing Persons’ Review Unit in Ballyterrin. This is Garda Fiacra Quinn, who’s seconded to us.’

‘Roger Dunne.’ Alice’s brother, then. He shook her hand perfunctorily. ‘I’m very surprised you’d be looking into this again, after so many
years. At the time, we found the local Guards to be very unhelpful indeed. They seemed convinced my sister went off with a man, when we explained over and over that wasn’t the case.’

Fiacra stared politely into the middle distance. Paula forced a smile. ‘It must have been very difficult. Unfortunately, quite a few cases went unsolved during that time, so that’s why we’ve been set up. Even after so long, we can still find new evidence.’

The man had his hand on the handle of another door. ‘Obviously, we’ll tell you what we can. But please bear in mind that my parents were destroyed by what happened to Alice. Destroyed. Not just by her loss, but by the constant fear that not enough was being done to find her, when maybe she was still . . . Just please be gentle with my mother. My father’s been dead for several years. She won’t be able to stand much.’

‘I promise. Thank you so much for helping us.’

He opened the door through to another lovely room, wood-panelled, a fire flickering in the grate. The carpet was a soft, thick apple-green, and the room was once again lined in pictures of a girl who’d gone out one day and never come home. Alice Dunne had been nineteen when she went missing in 1985, back from her first year at university. A slight, fair girl; the pictures showed her playing tennis, fishing, cuddling up to a variety of large dogs.

‘Shut the door, Roger, the fire’ll go out.’ The quavering voice belonged to the woman on the sofa, a red setter stretched across her lap, its tail flickering lethargically.

Roger duly closed the
door, raising his voice. ‘The police are here, Mum.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

Paula moved closer, holding out her hand, then lowering it when the woman gave her a baffled look. ‘Hello, Mrs Dunne, I’m Paula. Er . . . Dr Paula Maguire.’

‘You’re a doctor?’ Sharp blue eyes narrowed.

‘A psychologist.’

‘Oh, I thought you meant a proper doctor. Well, sit down, sit down.’ Paula sat in an armchair across from Emma Dunne, whose white hair was coiffed from what looked like a recent visit to the hairdresser. She wore a lilac jumper and grey slacks; dog hairs were caught in the nap of the fabric.

‘Mrs Dunne. I’m sorry to disturb you like this, and reawaken all these sad memories, but we’re going through a backlog of missing persons’ cases, so we can prioritise those for re-investigation. Alice’s case came up as part of a series of possibly linked disappearances. At this stage, I can’t say more than that, but anything you can tell us could potentially be very useful.’

‘Linked disappearances.’ One hand, laden with heavy gold rings, scratched the dog’s silky ear.

‘That’s right. It’s only a theory at the moment.’

Emma Dunne raised her eyes. ‘You’ll have been to the Reillys then, I imagine. They’d be the nearest.’

For a moment, Paula wasn’t sure how to react. Fiacra was standing awkwardly behind her; she heard the creak of his uniform as he shifted from foot to foot.

Roger Dunne was annoyed. ‘Mum, they don’t need to hear about all that.’

‘All what?’ Paula looked between them, confused.

Emma Dunne kept stroking the dog. ‘Get the files, Roger, will you.’

‘But Mum—’

‘They’re in the bottom drawer.’

He sighed heavily, but crossed to the desk she was indicating, and returned to hand Paula a hefty purple box-file, fraying at the edges. On
the front had been pasted a strip of masking tape, and the words
CASES
1970–1990
were neatly inked on this. With misgivings, she opened the file. It was stuffed with paper, yellowing newsprint, old typed sheets, pages photocopied from reference books. She drew out a clipping, dry and fragile as butterfly wings under glass. The face of a girl stared out at her, smiling:
ROSCOMMON GIRL MISSING FOR SIX DAYS
. Bridget Fintan, one of those on her list. ‘What is all this?’ Paula asked.

Roger Dunne sat beside his mother, moving the dog’s tail aside with irritation. ‘After my sister went missing, as I told you, we were very disappointed in the police response.’

‘They tried to say she ran away.’ His mother curled her lip. ‘She would never have gone off without telling me. Never, ever. Alice had everything to live for – she would have been starting back at Trinity in just a few weeks. She was only nineteen, a beautiful girl, clever, kind. She would never have gone off.’

‘OK, Mum. Let me tell her.’ The son reached over and patted his mother’s gnarled hand, which was resting on the dog’s head. ‘After a while, my father engaged a private detective to try to trace Alice, if indeed she had gone off. There was no sign of her anywhere and all her friends said the same – she would never have run away. She didn’t even have a serious boyfriend. So it was something of a dead end. Then, my mother started to believe that, well . . .’

‘She was murdered,’ said Emma Dunne calmly. ‘She must have been murdered. It was the only explanation.’

Roger went on, ‘But there was no body, nowhere to start looking. Alice said she was going out with friends in Ballyterrin that night, and
she left about seven, and that was the last we saw of her. I’ll never forget. I was fourteen. She came in to say bye before she went, ruffled my hair up, laughed. She was happy.’ His mother’s hand tightened on his. ‘None of her friends had planned to meet her, they said.’

Paula remembered the details – Alice’s car had been found the next morning, abandoned at the side of the road. The keys were gone and so was she. Nothing more had ever been found of her. No body, no signs of violence, not so much as a hair from her blond head.

Mrs Dunne said, ‘Then I thought, this kind of man, who’d kill a lovely girl like Alice, it wouldn’t have been the first time, would it? So I kept notes. Any other girl who went missing. Any old cases you hadn’t solved – I went and looked them up. I went to court hearings, even. Maybe some of the girls did turn up, I don’t know, but I noted them all down. And there they are. Can you use it?’

‘You want me to take this? Well, it might be helpful, if you didn’t mind.’ Paula leaned forward. ‘Mrs Dunne, I need to ask you something about Alice’s hobbies at the time. Did she ever go to a kind of church group, or a youth ministry, anything like that?’

The woman looked puzzled. ‘Oh yes, there was one thing, at the start of the summer. She only went the once that we knew of. It was a new church starting up in town, in Ballyterrin.’ She looked at Paula with alacrity. ‘Is it them then? That American crowd? I saw they got put out of Ireland a few years later, but I never thought – none of her friends said she went there. All those times she used to go out – no one said she was going there. Is it something to do with them?’

‘I – we don’t know yet. It’s just one possible link.’

‘And the other cases? The other girls, had they gone there?’ Mrs Dunne sat bolt upright.

Paula looked at Fiacra. ‘I – some of them, maybe. We aren’t sure.’

The woman was quivering. ‘It’s been over twenty years, Dr Maguire. Alice’s father died not knowing. I don’t want to die not knowing. Please. I
just want to know where my Alice is. I want to know if her bones are at rest.’

Paula swallowed hard. ‘We’re doing our best, Mrs Dunne. You can be assured we haven’t forgotten her, however long it’s been. She isn’t forgotten. She won’t be.’

‘Thank you.’ Tears were pooling on the woman’s lined cheeks.

Roger Dunne got up and put his arm round his mother. ‘I think that’s enough for today, please. She can’t take it.’

‘All right. Thank you, and – I’m sorry.’ Nodding to Fiacra, Paula slipped out of the beautiful, sad house.

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Who d’you reckon’ll crack first, him or her?’

Avril said, ‘I don’t think she could get
one over on him. He’s tough, the boss.’

Gerard was shaking his head. ‘It’ll be him. Trust me, she doesn’t back down from anyone.’

‘Why was she off all that time? Seems weird.’ Avril looked curious.

‘I heard she was getting divorced. Kicked her husband out, people were saying in the station.’

Fiacra agreed. ‘I’d believe it. She puts the fear of God in me, she does.’

‘She’s got lovely shoes.’

‘Christ. What is it with you women and shoes?’

‘Shut up, Gerard, I’m trying to hear.’

Paula was pretending not to listen to the others as she sat at her desk, but she was just as agog. Helen Corry had been in Guy’s office for over an hour now, and no sound was emanating out from the closed blinds. She had a horrible feeling they might be discussing her, too. Then everyone scrambled back to their seats as the door opened and the two came out, Helen Corry wrapped in a long grey coat with a faux-fur collar. Paula thought it was from Jigsaw, she’d seen one like it in Pat’s
Easy Living
magazine.