The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

Dominic Martin’s house told a sad story. It was the kind of large bungalow people bought round Ballyterrin when they started a family, but the windows upstairs were uncurtained, the place unkempt. A bachelor sports car stood in the drive, low-slung with a canvas top. In the back garden there was a swingset, the grass grown up around it.

Guy saw her look. ‘How old was his daughter?’

‘Two, or a few days off it.’

‘And the wife—’

‘She left, apparently. I heard she has a baby with someone else now.’

Guy pushed his shoulders straight. ‘It’s very sad – it’s tragic. God knows I can identify. But we have to do our jobs.’

‘I know.’ She tried to cover her bump, again feeling how much pain she must be causing to people who’d lost their own children.

‘What did you think of what Kenny said?’ he asked.

‘Slippery customer. He’d say anything to cover his own back. He must have known Flaherty, surely. He didn’t like you asking about it.’

‘Until we have proof, though, we have to play nice with him. Let’s go in.’

Dominic answered the door in a tracksuit and T-shirt, unshaven and bathed in sweat. His T-shirt clung to him. He just looked at them.

‘I’m sorry to call so early,’ Guy began.

‘I’m just back from a run,’ he interrupted. ‘Can you wait till I get a wee shower?’

‘Of course.’

‘In there.’ He lightly slapped the door of the living room and jogged up the stairs, making the roof shake. Paula was glad to sit down – even walking a few steps seemed too much effort now. The room was the same mismatch: a stained family sofa, but free weights on the floor and a jar of body-building protein on the table. On the mantelpiece was a corkboard tacked over with pictures of a small girl. She’d lost her front teeth in one, and smiled at the photographer with pink gums from someone’s arms. Paula recognised Amber’s mother from the files. She’d stayed at home that day, wanting a bit of peace, while Dominic took Amber into Crossanure to watch the parade. She’d never seen her daughter again.

Soon Dominic was back, in a different T-shirt and jeans. He smelled of some fresh lemon shower gel and his brown hair was dark with water. ‘Would you take coffee or something?’

‘No thank you.’ Paula indicated her bump. ‘Not supposed to.’

He nodded. His eyes seemed to trace the contours of her, but unlike most people, he didn’t make the obvious comment about her not having long to go. ‘What can I help you with?’ His tone was the same as at the meeting – polite and totally blank, while his eyes said something else that Paula didn’t want to decipher.

‘It’s about the Mayday case,’ said Guy. ‘I’m afraid we will need to interview some of the families.’

‘Is there any evidence pointing to a specific person?’

Paula said, ‘It’s the MO, you see. Certain . . . signs have been left that seem to clearly link the deaths to the bombing.’

‘We’d go to John Lenehan,’ added Guy. ‘But apparently he’s stepped down as Chair.’

‘Well, John isn’t as young as he used to be.’

‘Was that the only reason?’ In response to her question, he just stared back. He had green eyes, very clear and piercing. He was, she realised, a very attractive man.

‘I’m happy to give a statement,’ he said formally. ‘I run my own business, as you probably know.’

‘Green energy, isn’t it?’

‘Solar panels, wind turbines, consultancy. So I don’t have an alibi as such for the day they all went, if that’s what you’re after. I’m nearly always out on the road. Now I don’t have childcare to do.’

The room fell silent. Somewhere in the house, Paula thought she could hear music.

‘OK,’ said Dominic, as if they’d asked him something else. ‘I’ll speak to the group and explain you might be calling round. Some of us just can’t stand to talk about it at all, you should know. Not all the families even joined the group.’

‘Mr Martin,’ said Guy. ‘We’ve come to you first partly because you’re Acting Chair, but also because we’re aware of the comments you made to reporters after the trial concluded. You recall what you said then?’

‘I believe I said they should be strung up,’ he said calmly. ‘Something like that, anyway.’

‘As you know, Mickey Doyle literally was.’ Guy was hesitant. ‘He was hanged.’

‘In a better justice system he’d have been hanged by the state. Culled like a dog. But they failed us.’

‘Are you saying someone else finished the job then? Did what the state couldn’t?’

A pause. ‘I’m not saying anything. Just that it wasn’t undeserved.’ Another silence. Dominic broke it again. ‘I’ll assist you in whatever way I can, Inspector. Give me a day to talk to the group and I’ll send you a list of all the families. Some are very sensitive about certain issues – the compensation, for one. They didn’t understand why one life was valued more than others. It created . . . divisions. Let me just ring Ann and ask her to dig out the records for you. She has all the minutes, going back five years.’

He left the room, and Paula and Guy looked at each other. She opened her eyes wide to express helplessness. There was nothing they could say to this man. His loss made him invincible. There were light footsteps on the stairs, different from Dominic’s heavier tread, and a figure appeared in the doorway, wearing just a man’s T-shirt over long, lovely legs. Lily Sloane.

‘Hello,’ she said, rubbing her face. ‘I heard voices. Dr Maguire, isn’t it?’ She advanced on Guy. ‘I’m Lily. I was in the bomb too.’ She lifted her sweep of long hair to show her face. She wasn’t wearing a patch today, and so the hole in her face could clearly be seen, a red puckered mess.

‘I’m very sorry,’ said Guy, not flinching away from the sight. ‘We’d like to speak to you about the incident too, if we can. We’re speaking to everyone in the group.’

‘We don’t call it an incident.’ Her fingers, never still, raked through her caramel hair. ‘We call it the day, usually. Cos like we all know what day we mean.’

‘Of course. Lily, do you get on well with everyone in the group?’

‘S’pose. What do you mean?’

‘Is there any disagreement?’

Lily sighed. ‘Oh, you know what they’re like. It’s so boring sometimes. That trial. Years they were on about it. Blah blah blah judicial review.’

‘There was some issue about compensation, I gather?’

‘Mmm-hmm. I got money.’ She pointed to her eye again. ‘You see, they do it on like how much earning you might have lost. And I was going to be a model and actress, so Dad got them to give me more. I had a good lawyer.’ She said this like a child, mouthing words. ‘But some people didn’t get anything.’

‘Did it cause problems?’ asked Guy.

‘Dominic sorted it.’ Her face went gooey. ‘He always knows the right thing to do. He explained it was the law and it wasn’t meant to pay us back, nothing could, it was only meant to make life a bit easier. And he got us to agree that any money in the Victims Fund could be for families who didn’t get much. Fairer like. Most people were OK with that.’

‘You and Dominic—’ Paula began.

Lily looked wary. ‘Yeah?’

‘You’re together?’

She shrugged. ‘Whatever that means.’

‘He’s your boyfriend, is he?’

‘I don’t call him that. He’s special. We’re . . . close.’

‘Are you in a sexual relationship?’ asked Guy awkwardly.

‘Ew. Why does that even matter?’

Paula glared at him. ‘I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sure you think it’s none of our business. It’s just that, legally, if you were, we might not be able to use what you tell us about him.’

‘Why would I tell you things?’ She genuinely seemed puzzled. Paula turned to Guy again.

He said, ‘Ms Sloane, as you know, we’re investigating the disappearances of the so-called Mayday Five.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was cold.

‘Dominic previously said they should be strung up. After the court case failed. And we’ve not been able to get an alibi for him.’

‘You want me to be his alibi?’

‘No, that’s not . . . we want to know if you think he meant what he said.’

‘Duh,’ she exhaled. ‘They blew up his little girl. He loved her.
Loved
her. His stupid wife blamed him cos he was with her. It ruined his life. It’s only cos he’s so amazing he keeps going at all.’

Paula sensed a certain relish in Lily for the role of victim, supporting her broken-down man, nurturing the darkness in his soul. Was she exactly the same? She was very aware that Guy’s own loss of a child was what kept her stuck there, even though he was married, and Aidan’s brooding grief over his father’s death was likewise what made her chronically unable to get past him.

‘So do you know his whereabouts that day?’ Guy was saying.

‘No. I can’t remember, like.’

‘Ms Sloane, you really need to tell us the truth.’

‘I’m not NOT telling you the truth.’

They’d annoyed her. She turned her head away, revealing once again the raw, ruined side of her lovely face. She was very young, Paula reminded herself. No one could imagine what it had been like for Lily, so beautiful, to lose all that at just eighteen. ‘We didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said gently.

‘Well, you have.’ Lily’s voice was angry, with a telltale shake that made Paula want to give her a hug. There was silence, and Lily’s snuffling tears. Paula looked at Guy. He was glum. They’d made Lily Sloane cry, on top of everything she’d been through in her young life. She gave a trembling sigh and wiped her face with her hands, her T-shirt lifting slightly to reveal the edge of lacy pants. ‘Tell Dom I went upstairs.’ Her voice was thick.

Paula watched her slim long legs depart. ‘That’s a development,’ muttered Guy. ‘He must be twice her age.’

‘Not quite.’ Paula was thinking about Lily, and realising this: there was one way to get to someone who’d lost everything, and that was to give them something else that could be taken away.

‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he’ll get back to us.’ The house had taken on an uncomfortable air, naked and embarrassing. As they went out to the car she noticed Guy staring round the side of the house. ‘What do you see?’

‘The Lotus he drives . . . not very practical for a job putting up solar panels, is it? He’d need something else too, wouldn’t he?’

‘I suppose. Why?’

Guy nodded to what he was looking at, and she saw – parked around the side of the house, not hidden in any way, was a dusty white van.

Extract from
The Blood Price: The Mayday
Bombing and its Aftermath
, by Maeve Cooley
(Tairise Press, 2011)

Martin Flaherty was set on the path to murder almost as soon as he was born. Raised in a staunch Republican family in South Armagh, his father was killed by an Army patrol in 1971, right at the beginning of the Troubles. The soldiers responsible were not only not prosecuted, they remained on active duty. Young Martin quickly had to take on responsibility for the family. He joined the Armagh Brigade of the IRA in 1972, alongside many current Republican luminaries, including Jarlath Kenny, now mayor of Ballyterrin – although Kenny has officially denied any knowledge of Flaherty or of IRA membership. Flaherty called Kenny a ‘turncoat bastard’ after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

In 1999 Flaherty set up a splinter Republican group, calling itself Ireland First. They were on anti-terror radar from the beginning, but dismissed as a small operation, no more than ten people. However, sometime between 1999 and 2006, the group managed to get hold of large quantities of plastic explosive. During March and April 2006, unbeknownst to intelligence, they were building a huge bomb at Flaherty’s home near the border. On 1st May 2006 they drove this bomb into Ballyterrin and concealed it in a bin that was on the route of a planned Orange parade later that day. They put it there and walked away, planning to detonate the bomb by mobile phone at the moment the parade passed by. The aim was to kill members of the Orange Order, disrupting the peace process and taking down a Unionist politician who was leading the parade that day. However, the bomb went off ten minutes after they walked away – a vague warning had been phoned in, without any recognised code words. A car had also been parked haphazardly further down the High Street, and police efforts were focused on trying to move this. No one realised the danger was in the bin, near to where people were being evacuated. The bomb exploded at 11.17 a.m. on 1st May 2006. Ten people were killed instantly, hundreds injured. Six more died later in hospital.

The PSNI immediately suspected dissident Republicans, and the leaders of Ireland First were arrested within days of the blast. Despite Flaherty owning the mobile phone that was linked to the detonator, and there being clear traces of the agricultural products used to make the bomb in Lynch’s car, and the presence of Doyle’s van in the town that day, and DNA linking Ni Chonnaill to detonators found in other devices, Brady’s own semi-confession, and many other obvious clues, a series of procedural blunders and plausible deniability meant that when the Five were eventually brought to trial in 2010, it collapsed. It is now not possible to bring another criminal case against them. They have, in the words of Dominic Martin, walked down the street covered in blood and gotten away with it.

Chapter Thirteen

‘What did Corry say?’

They were back in the car. Guy hung up the phone and shook his head. ‘She says it’s too circumstantial – lots of people have white vans round here, and we never got a reg from either crime scene.’

‘Can we search it?’

‘Think how it would look. She’s not keen. I think we need to carry on with these interviews and see what else comes up.’

She sighed. ‘All right. What about the caves, did we find anything more? There was lots of DNA found, right, not just from the Five?’

She didn’t want to say what she was thinking, but he knew. ‘Corry won’t authorise DNA testing right now either. Not until we have a clear suspect in mind with other evidence to back it up. Same with handwriting samples.’

‘So what can we do?’ She was shaking her head in frustration.

‘Just keep looking. The other three must be somewhere, after all. The search team’s been out in the mountains – they must have been moved somewhere else after the caves. Let’s see if we can get any information today.’

‘All right.’ She turned a page in the file on her lap. Paula kept track of the interviews via a series of photos. On each page a dead person, and their immediate family or significant others. A map of loss, the dead and the roots still holding them in place. A map of devastation. Now they were at the Woods’ house – this was the family of the odd, helpful teenager, Kira. The father had died years before.

Like every house they came to, it seemed to be marked by an invisible sign of grief. The lawn wasn’t cut, and the paintwork on the door was peeling. It took a long time for it to be answered, by a shuffling middle-aged woman in a tracksuit. She had chipped red polish on her nails and they could smell alcohol on her breath. It was eleven in the morning. ‘Mrs Woods?’

‘Yes. Who is it?’ She was blinking as if she’d been asleep, squinting in the daylight.

Guy spoke. ‘We’re from the MPRU – the missing persons unit. I wonder if we might ask you a few questions?’

She moved to let them in. All the curtains were drawn, and the house had a foetid air, as if the bins hadn’t been taken out. ‘What’s it about?’ In the living room she sat down on the sofa, yawning.

‘About the Mayday case, Mrs Woods. May we sit?’

‘Oh. All right.’

There was a noise of light feet and Kira appeared in shorts and a T-shirt with a puppy on it. Her hair wasn’t brushed and she had a wary expression.

‘Hello, Kira,’ said Paula, sinking into a saggy armchair. ‘Are you off for your Easter holidays?’

She stood poised, as if ready to bolt. ‘Er – yeah. Why’re you here?’

‘We’re talking to all the families separately. This is my colleague, DI Brooking.’ She was slightly younger than Guy’s daughter, Katie.

He smiled warmly. ‘Pleased to meet you, Kira.’

Kira crossed the room to the sofa where her mother was. She was doing something furtive with her feet, which puzzled Paula, until she realised the girl was trying to hide her mother’s bottle of vodka from them. She averted her eyes. ‘Kira was very helpful to me at the group meeting, Mrs Woods.’

‘I don’t go there,’ she said listlessly. ‘It brings it all back, you know. It’s upsetting.’

‘Is that Rose?’ Guy indicated the large studio portrait over the TV. A pretty girl with a smile that suggested she’d tell you all her secrets and keep yours. She’d had that naturally fair hair which is so rare.

‘My little girl,’ said Mrs Woods, with a small sob.

‘I’m your little girl too,’ said Kira, too loudly. Her mother ignored her.

Guy pressed on. ‘Mrs Woods, we’re just doing routine enquiries to see if anyone in the group has knowledge about the disappearances of the so-called Mayday Five. I know this must be very hard, so if you could just tell us what you know, we can be on our way.’

‘What would I know? I don’t know anything. First I heard was on the news. They showed the pictures again – the petrol station burning. I can’t bear it. Every time I just think, that’s where my Rose died. That’s her dying, that smoke rising up.’

Kira rolled her eyes. ‘Mammy doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t go out. Do you want to see where we were on the day they went missing, is that right?’

‘Yes.’ Paula was impressed; the girl was quick.

‘An alibi.’

‘That’s right,’ said Guy. ‘We need to just collect them, then we can leave people in peace.’

‘Mammy was here,’ Kira shrugged. ‘She won’t have an alibi but she sometimes rings people during the day so you can check that.’

‘What people?’ Guy was writing.

‘Psychics and that. The government, to complain about stuff. The doctor.’ Kira’s mother was staring into space.

‘Thank you. Can I ask about your father, Kira?’

She started. ‘What?’

‘Your dad, Rose’s dad, he passed away?’

‘Yeah, he’s dead. I was like three. I can’t remember. I was at school that day they went. If you need an alibi for me too.’

Guy was almost smiling. ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful. Dr Maguire was right.’

Kira didn’t look pleased at the compliment. ‘Will you go to everyone? Lily too?’

‘Yes, we’ll see Ms Sloane.’

‘Even the McShanes? The Sheerans? Not everyone comes to the group, you know. Sometimes people get too upset.’

Mrs Woods seemed to rouse herself. ‘Are you trying to get the people who hurt my Rose?’

‘We’re trying to find them, yes,’ said Guy gently. It was technically true, after all, if not in the way she meant. She was crying again.

‘My poor Rose! She never hurt a fly. She made mistakes, but sure don’t we all do that! Please can you find them? Please.’ Her body had gone slack, knees gaping, mouth open and wet with tears.

Kira shifted over and patted her mother’s shaking shoulders.’ It’s OK, Mammy. They’re doing the best they can.’ She looked up, and her eyes were the oldest and wisest Paula had ever seen. ‘You should go.’

They rose, Paula with some difficulty. ‘I’m sorry.’

As they went to the car, she tried to identify the hard nugget that had lodged itself in her gullet. Shame. She felt ashamed. These people had the heart torn right out of them, ripped and gutted while still beating, and here she was smearing more blood on their door.

‘You OK?’ Guy was putting his seat belt on. ‘I must say, this is one of the most difficult cases I’ve ever worked on. I can’t keep track of moral north.’

He was being kind, giving her a chance to say she was also struggling, her system flooded with hormones, balanced herself on the edge of life and death. Instead she heard herself say, ‘I think we’re going to have to look at Martin’s van. It’s too much of a link to ignore. Can we try to persuade Corry?’

‘OK. I’ll try.’

Requisitioning the van of a grieving father. That would go down well. They drove back to the station, sunlight glinting off car windows and the dark river at the heart of town almost navy today. Paula found she couldn’t shake the image of Rose Woods, and the smile that said all she’d expected out of life was to love and be loved back.

Kira

The road to Rose’s place was along a street of houses. Ugly little ones, with bins in the small front gardens and those stones stuck into the walls. Rose had told her this was called
pebbledash
. It wasn’t where she’d have liked to go to chat to Rose. Ideally they’d have gone to the café Rose liked after school and had milkshakes out of the blender, or driven out to the beach and paddled their feet in the cold waves, or even just sat at home in the warm kitchen. But this would have to do as Rose could only be in this place from now on.

Rose loved flowers. Daffodils best. They look like hope, she’d say, cramming them into every glass in the house until Mum shouted to get those mucky flowers out of there. It was a kind of magic, how you’d put in tight buds and even if you stood there watching them you’d never catch the moment they opened, but they did. Magic. One of the houses on the street had some in its garden, all yellow and happy and with a smell that reached down the street. No one was looking. She put down her school bag and hopped over the low stony wall. The stalks of the flowers were thick and juicy, and she grunted as she snapped them, getting soil and sap on her hands. Was it like the flower’s blood? Did it hurt them?

Don’t be silly, pet.

OK, Rose.

She took them in one hand and walked to the end of the street, where she swung open the rusty gates of the graveyard. Rose was at the end of the row, next to an old lady who had high black walls round her, handy for sitting on, and those sort of green stones over her. Rose just had grass. At first, it got very long – Mammy never came, and Kira didn’t know how to cut grass. Then an old man saw her with some scissors, crying over it, and he did it from then on.

‘Hiya,’ she said out loud. ‘I got these. Do you like them?’

There was nowhere to put the flowers. She needed a jar or something. She made a little hole and stuck them in the ground, then took out the two Capri-Suns she’d brought from home. One she popped and one she left for Rose. She always brought one. It was always gone when she came back.

She drained the juice; it was a long walk from home. ‘They found one of the men,’ she said, hesitantly. But maybe Rose knew already. ‘It was on the news and Mammy sat in the bathroom crying all night. I couldn’t get in to pee. They said he hanged himself but it wasn’t that. You know.’ She’d told Rose before. ‘So what do I do?’

No answer, only the breeze through the graveyard, and far away, a family raking over the stones on someone’s grave. Someone they loved. That’s what you did when you loved a dead person. You put up shiny black stones and jewel pebbles and threw away any rotting flowers. Rose’s stone was grey, and unlike some it didn’t have a picture of her. It just said
Rose Sarah Woods. 1983–2006. Beloved daughter and sister.

She crouched down and pressed her head to the stone, until it hurt a bit. It was very cold. ‘I miss you, Rose,’ she whispered.

There was no answer. Sometimes, if she listened very hard, she could almost hear Rose in her head.

‘Will I do it? One of them’s gone. The rest will go too. And they want me to . . . will I? For you?’

No answer. In a tree at the corner of the graveyard, a bird began to sing, high and piercing.