The Lost (36 page)
‘Aye, I’ll just mow the kids down, will I?’ He stopped. ‘Sorry.’
‘S’OK.’ She looked out of the window again, as pops of light illuminated gloomy streets. ‘Just get as close as you can, will you?’
But Gerard for once seemed unable to stop talking. ‘You think we might find her, then, if she went off by herself?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s a terrible thing. The boss . . . at first I was thinking, you know, who’s this English fella coming over here, telling us what to do. But he’s a good manager.’
‘I know. He is.’
Gerard was watching her closely. ‘You and him, you get on well?’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Hmmph.’
Paula dug her nails into her palms. ‘For God’s sake, Gerard. Just pull up here.’
Parking in a residential street near the centre of Ballyterrin, Paula and Gerard shrugged into their rainproof
jackets. Both black, plain, made to blend in. Gerard was nervously fingering his phone. ‘I hope there’s no trouble tonight. There’s going to be a lot of people in that square.’
As Paula and Guy made their way into town, most of the shops were closing up early for the big concert. Posters were plastered on every spare surface, a dove arising in a beam of light.
The Mission Prayer Concert.
‘They shouldn’t have posted those up,’ Gerard muttered. ‘That’s against town regulations.’
‘Yes, well, I think illegal fly-posting is the least of our worries now.’ He mumbled something more but Paula ignored him, saying, ‘Just let me talk to them. I know these girls. If you just provide’ – muscle, she’d been going to say, but he might take the hump at that – ‘if you can provide the official back-up. And, you know, charm them a bit.’
His brow creased. ‘Charm them?’
‘Yes. We’re talking convent-schoolgirls here. Nice friendly young policeman . . . do I have to spell it out?’
‘That’s not my job. I’m a trained detective, not, not – some gigolo.’ Was Gerard blushing? Either way, Paula didn’t have time for his coyness.
‘Just follow my lead, will you?’
They were now in the heart of Ballyterrin, in its main square, lined with shops, many boarded up since the recession hit. In front of the cathedral, dark and Gothic, a large screen was rising up from the back of a lorry. Inside was all incense-scented gloom. Men in headphones were doing sound-checks and switching on and off blinding lights.
Gerard and Paula made their way down the aisle. Everywhere was pre-show fuss, Mission leaders trailing guitar leads and tambourines, teens in school uniform exclaiming with nerves. The concert was going to take place around the altar, and be beamed out on a screen for the watching crowd. Picking through the chaos, Paula
enquired of a pale hippy-looking girl with a clipboard where they might find the pupils of St Bridget’s.
‘You can’t come in here.’ The girl had fair plaits and spots along her forehead.
‘Why not?’ Paula glared at her.
‘Performers only.’ She tapped a pen off her clipboard.
‘Well, are you aware the Mission is on the verge of being busted by the police –
again
? That won’t be so good for your standing in the local community. I assume you’re holding this event to drum up more business?’
‘We’re bringing God’s word to troubled young people.’
‘Sure you are. And we’re just wanting to talk to a few of those young people, see exactly why it is they’re so troubled.’ The girl hesitated, and Paula lost her patience. ‘Gerard!’
He stepped forward, pulling himself up to his full height. The girl backed away. ‘Miss, we’re with the police. Are you aware that this whole affair is breaking about a thousand event regulations? Now’s not the best time for a fire inspection, is it?’
The girl’s mouth was open.
‘Aye, didn’t think so. Now let this lady past.’
Paula flashed him a grateful look as they entered the small area of changing rooms behind the altar. The walls were damp and close, a smell of dust and snuffed candles in the air. She could already hear the sound of chanting, and followed it down the narrow corridor.
In a small room hung with robes, which Paula recognised as the sacristy, the nine girls were sitting in a circle on the floor. Siobhan was in the middle, her hands held out over the heads of the others, her eyes shut. A strange humming sound came from her, as if she was vibrating, not even using her mouth. The other girls had their heads bowed, eyes closed in prayer. Paula let the door slam and was
pleased to see the guilty expressions as their heads snapped back.
‘Sorry to interrupt, girls. DC Monaghan and myself have a few more questions to ask you.’
‘We answered your questions,’ said Siobhan stiffly.
‘We’ve got more. Gerard?’
She watched their faces as Gerard came in, squeezing his broad shoulders round the plasterboard door. He fixed them with a fierce stare. ‘Girls,’ he said in a growl. ‘Ms Maguire has some questions to ask you, and if you don’t help her out, I’ll be getting on to your parents. I’m sure nice girls like you wouldn’t want to have criminal records at the age of fifteen.’
It was working. Several of the girls were exchanging looks, biting their lips. They hadn’t put their makeup on yet but they wore the white robes. Only Siobhan stood firm. ‘We have to go on stage soon. We’re one of the main acts.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Paula, sitting down on a plastic chair. ‘If you tell me the truth, this won’t take long at all.’ She looked round at the nine of them, at the expressions ranging from shifty to defensive to scared. ‘Girls. You better tell me what you know about Katie Brooking.’
Siobhan wrinkled her nose. ‘Katie?’
‘Yes. Start talking.’ Gerard glared at her but she raised her chin.
‘She was new this year so Mammy said I should invite her round. She came to one sleepover and she went to Miss Kenny’s group a few times, but she was a bit weird.’
‘Weird how?’
One of the other girls piped up – Anne-Marie, Cathy’s best friend. ‘She was sad all the time. We watched this film and she started crying when a wee kid died in it. We asked her what was wrong but she wouldn’t talk to us.’
Perhaps because her brother had died just months before.
‘And she never let any of us go to her house. I mean we go to Siobhan’s all the time, and mine all
the time. It’s not fair. She wouldn’t say why.’
‘Katie’s got a massive house. She’s just being selfish.’
Or more likely, she couldn’t stand for her friends to witness the destruction of her family, how her father barely noticed she was there, and no one remembered to buy her lunch. ‘Well, girls,’ Paula said. ‘You might get to see the inside of the house, after all. Katie went missing this morning.’
An hour later, Paula pushed her way out of the room, and once she was a few feet away, banged her fists against the old peeling walls, muffling a scream of frustration in her throat.
Gerard came behind her, treading heavily on the stone floor. ‘Bunch of hard-faced Hannahs in there all right.’
‘The maddening thing is, I’m sure they must know something. You saw their expressions.’
‘You think they were bullying her, Katie?’ Gerard was fishing his phone out from his trousers and turning it back on, as they walked out of the cathedral and onto its wide stone steps.
‘I’m sure of it. But there’s no way I can prove anything if they stick together.’
‘And it’s no crime, bullying another girl. Else the whole school’d be behind bars.’
She sighed in annoyance, but knew he was right. ‘You better get back to the house, see if there’s any luck at the bus station or on the trains. Katie may well have gone to Belfast, or Dublin. She wouldn’t have needed much cash for that.’ If she said it often enough, she might actually start to believe Katie was safe somewhere.
Gerard was holding the phone to his ear. ‘Hold on, there’s a voicemail.’
‘Is it—’
He held out his hand to shush her while he listened, and Paula, who did not enjoy being shushed,
tapped her foot in annoyance.
‘Well?’
‘They checked the Mission but no one’s there. Bob says I’ve to get on over to the main station for a briefing – sounds like they’re going to arrest Lazarus, if they can find him. This concert’ll be crawling in officers soon.’
‘I’ll see you later then.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Gerard looked at her suspiciously.
Paula was peering past him to the other side of the square, where the newspaper building stood, one of the lower windows smashed by the bailiffs into a helix of fractures. ‘What am I going to do? Well, Gerard, I guess I’m going to put the investigation at risk again. Sorry.’
‘Paula, if you find wee Katie, I’ll never bring it up again.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’
He looked at her a moment, and she wondered had he heard what she’d said to Guy. That was why she never told anyone. Couldn’t bear how it made them look at her, like she was weak, like she was vulnerable. Nothing worse. ‘Listen—’ He stopped, scratching at the still-healing burn on his neck. ‘You wanted to know what was up with me. To be honest, I thought everyone knew. The name Pauric Monaghan mean anything to you?’
For a moment it didn’t, then it did. ‘Wasn’t he—’
‘Yeah. My uncle.’
‘Oh.’ Pauric Monaghan had served twenty years in jail for planting a bomb in an Army barracks in England – except he’d never actually been anywhere near the place. Two decades of appeals had finally released him from high-security prison, a broken and bitter man.
‘But . . .’ Paula was struggling to get her head round it. ‘You still joined the police, even after what they did?’ She remembered now. It had been several
corrupt RUC officers and their trumped-up evidence that had condemned the innocent man to years in jail.
Gerard shook his head impatiently. ‘I’m no Provo. Uncle Pauric, maybe he didn’t do the bombing, but he did other stuff. He wasn’t a good man, and I’ve no time for the IRA. They ruined more people’s lives than the police ever did.’
‘OK.’ She was trying to understand.
He sighed. ‘It’s what I was trying to say the other day, like. You can’t go haring around. Else innocent people get put behind bars, and guilty ones walk free. We have to try to be rational. We have to do it right, you know? We have to be the impartial ones.’
‘And you can do that, can you?’ With his background, she’d meant. But couldn’t someone say the same about her? And clearly, the answer would be: she couldn’t.
He shrugged. ‘I have to try. You’ll be careful?’
‘I’m grand. Now go – at least one of us should do the job we’re actually paid for.’
Paula watched him go, shoulders pumping ahead towards the parked car. She felt strangely desolate without him. A good man to have on your side, Gerard Monaghan.
‘Miss?’
She turned back to the cathedral. A small figure had emerged from the heavy doors onto the steps, shivering in a thin white robe. ‘Anne-Marie, you’ll catch your death. What is it?’
The girl hesitated. Her skinny arms were wrapped round her in the gathering gloom. ‘Miss, will I get in trouble? If there’s something I didn’t say, when you asked us before?’
‘Is there?’
Anne-Marie nodded slowly. Her face twisted and a sob tore out of her. ‘I’m sorry, miss! I didn’t know! I didn’t know she’d get killed!’
Paula took the girl back into
the cathedral, where it was warmer, into a side pew filled with shadows. With voices lowered, no one could hear them over the din of preparations for the concert, the lights flickering on and off and the sound system booming every few minutes as it was tested. Anne Marie was still sniffing and wiping her face on the sleeve of her robe; Paula wished she was the kind of person who remembered to carry tissues.
‘Are you going to tell me the truth now, then?’
The girl nodded shakily. ‘I don’t know where to start, miss.’
‘Start at the beginning, I’d say.’
‘OK.’ She took a deep breath in. ‘Miss Kenny started it.’
‘Miss Kenny? Your form teacher?’
‘She took us down to the Mission first, a group of us. She’s friends with the lady there, the American lady.’
‘Maddy, you mean?’
‘Yeah. Maddy – we liked her. She was nice to us all, especially Cathy; she was really nice to her. And then Cathy; she . . . You know Ed? The leader?’
‘I know Ed.’
‘Everybody said he was going out with one of the girls at the Mission, in the year above us. She’d been going there since the summer, since the Mission started.’
‘Who was she, Anne-Marie?’ Paula asked gently.
Anne-Marie sniffed loudly. ‘Louise. Everybody said it was Louise. But then, she didn’t come any more. And Ed, he was with this other girl from
a different school.’ She looked up. Her eyes were miserable. ‘Miss, I said I didn’t know Majella. But I did know her. We all do. She was at the Mission too. I’m sorry I lied.’
‘It’s OK. Tell me the rest. What happened with Majella?’
Anne-Marie spoke reluctantly. ‘In the summer, he liked Louise. Then Louise – one day she just didn’t come, and next thing we heard she was dead. People said that maybe she was going to have a baby.’ She bit her lip.
‘It’s all right. Go on, if you can.’
‘One day Ed came in when we were doing Group Talk with Maddy. And he saw Cathy, and he talked to her, and then – he was sort of going out with her. Not Majella any more. He was nice to Cathy all the time instead. Some of the girls were jealous.’
‘Siobhan, you mean?’
Anne-Marie wiped a hand over her face again. ‘She said Cathy was a slut. That we shouldn’t talk to her any more. We weren’t very nice to her. We made her not be in the play any more. Then one day, Siobhan, she came into school and she had all this stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Old papers and stuff. Like newspapers. And she said – she said it was about Cathy’s mum. That she’d been a slut too and they’d sent her away to a home to have a baby, when she was only wee. Siobhan was going to tell Cathy.’
‘And where did Siobhan get this stuff?’
‘Someone gave it to her.’ Anne-Marie stared at her hands with their small bitten nails.
‘Who gave it to her? You can tell me.’
