The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) (20 page)

‘I’m not sure about that,’ Paula muttered.

She thought it was rubbish, in fact, but the assistant smiled slightly. ‘Until you’re in here, anyway, there’s always hope.’

Paula couldn’t face talking about it any further. It was there between her and her father, the dead woman on the table, her face eaten away, the nearness of it – today could have been the day they knew for sure, Margaret was dead. Today could have been the day they took her bones and buried them and sold the house, finally, and Paula got on with her life, had her baby, stopped digging up the past with its worms and dirt and secrets. But it hadn’t been.

She couldn’t bear the idea of going back home, her mother’s ghost still hovering, so she was glad when she spotted a familiar face in the waiting room on their way out. ‘Dad, would you mind getting a taxi back to Pat’s? I need to do something here. There’s a rank out the front of the hospital – do you mind? Sorry.’

PJ passed her the car keys. ‘Aye, OK, but pet, would you not be better off taking a break after that?’

‘No.’ A break would mean having to think about what she’d just seen. And not seen. ‘There’s someone I want to talk to.’

Lorcan Finney rose from the plastic seats as she went back into the waiting room. ‘Dr Maguire. I thought I should be here when you came, to explain what happened. We were able to locate the body using geothermal equipment, which shows up disturbed ground. We were thinking obviously it would be one of the bombers, but then a different suggestion was made. I’m sorry it wasn’t the right one. But we’ll keep on trying to find out who this is.’

She was nodding but she wasn’t listening.

Finney was watching her intently with his violet-blue eyes. ‘Look, if you don’t mind me saying, you seem like you should sit down. You’re as pale as a sheet.’

She let him lead her into a small private room and return with tea in Styrofoam cups, tasting of nothing but plastic. She felt the bland heat fill her mouth, providing some comfort, until she could speak again. Wordlessly, he reached out and took her wrist, feeling her pulse. She felt the warmth of his rough hand on her skin, smelled the citrus tingle of his aftershave. She wondered again about him and Corry. Was she right? Corry would never tell her even if she was. Gently, she disengaged her hand from his.

‘Sorry. You’re just so pale, and with the baby . . .’

‘I didn’t think you were a medical doctor,’ she said weakly.

‘I have some basic training. I was out in Afghanistan before I came here, helping to look for mass graves.’

That got her attention. ‘Really? So you do know all about disturbed ground.’

‘More than I’d like to. That’s why I’ve got some medical training – you need it somewhere like that.’

‘How long have you been back?’

He drained his tea. ‘Not long. Six months or so. There was a job going so I thought it was time to come home.’

Not long at all. She wondered how he was coping.

‘Dr Maguire – your mother – has the case been reopened?’

‘Not officially. There’s no new evidence, not really. I just . . . can’t leave it.’

‘The IRA disappeared my father,’ said Lorcan baldly. ‘In the seventies. I was six.’

‘I’m sorry. Did they ever find him?’

‘He was dug up in the eighties by accident, on a building site. It would have been like this, I suppose. I – they didn’t let me go to the funeral. My sister and I were split up when he died, put in care. She was adopted. They felt it was best.’

Paula fell silent. How lucky she’d been to have PJ, doing his ham-fisted best with school lunches and ironing her uniform. ‘I’m sorry. That’s awful.’

He just nodded. ‘It’s how it goes, isn’t it? There’s always collateral damage.’

She looked at him sideways, wondering if he’d used the phrase on purpose. ‘I suppose.’

He raised his empty cup to her ironically. ‘That’s us, isn’t it? Collateral damage in their bloody pointless war. And there’s Kenny and his like in their suits, collecting their thirty pieces of silver, and we’re just supposed to forget everything that happened back then.’

She stirred. ‘Dr Finney . . .’

‘Please, call me Lorcan.’

‘OK. You can submit evidence to the forensics lab for testing, can you?’

‘I can.’

‘If I gave you a sample of handwriting, would you be able to have it analysed against the notes in the mouths?’

He looked at her, his eyes framed by sandy lashes. ‘Did you get it through proper channels?’

‘What do you think? I just want to check something. It’s not official. We wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.’

‘All right.’ He fished out an evidence bag from the pocket of his waterproof jacket, and she opened her notebook and tore out the strip that had Kira Woods’ number written on it, in her loopy schoolgirl script.

Paula finished her plastic-tasting tea, and with difficulty, stood up. ‘Thanks for this. And for listening. I have to be somewhere now.’

He watched her with his strange eyes. ‘All right. Just look after yourself, Paula.’

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

In the course of writing this book, I have tried to interview each of the alleged bombers, in order to see how they can justify carrying on a struggle that has killed so indiscriminately. Last year I attended a fundraising meeting for Ireland First, which was held in a pub in County Monaghan. I there encountered Brady and Lynch, both trying to drum up cash and support. The former was intoxicated and shouted at me to ‘Eff off, you Mexican bitch’ (Mexican is what some residents north of the border call Southern Irelanders). Lynch was more persuasive, taking time to explain that they were defending Ireland from ‘London rule by stealth’ and honouring the legacy of the Republican dead. He is superficially plausible, and it’s easy to see why many have fallen for his tall, fair good looks. I also spotted Doyle, who was chain-smoking outside the door, and refused to answer any of my questions or speak to me.

I asked them about the Mayday bombing, and Lynch simply said they had no comment on that. They’d been acquitted in court, and legally they had nothing further to say. I asked again how they could carry on fundraising after so many people had died. At this he became angry, pointing out there had been no ‘evidentiary proof’ of their involvement and that ‘justice had prevailed’. I asked about the statement, where they used the words ‘collateral damage’, and he tried to remove me from the premises. I stood my ground, asking my questions again. We were then approached by a tall, grey-haired man, who I recognised as Martin Flaherty. ‘Is there a problem?’ Flaherty asked. Lynch said that I was a journalist who had come to ‘spy’ on them and ‘write lies’.

Flaherty looked at me. He is very softly spoken, powerfully built for his fifty-five years. He could have been handsome in other circumstances. ‘Ms Cooley, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It would be wise if you would leave now, please. This is a legal political meeting and your presence would not be welcome. Don’t make us remove you.’ I have interviewed many killers in my time, but I would be hard pressed to think of one more chilling than Flaherty, with his quiet voice and neatly pressed polo shirt. I left.

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was easy enough to find Bob Hamilton’s address on the database. Security had eased since the days of regular car bombs, and the unit was considered something of a backwater. Bob lived in a white-washed bungalow in the Protestant end of town – the kerbstones painted red, white and blue and the Red Hand of Ulster flag flying over the nearby housing estates. She told herself not to be silly as she went to the door, down a neat garden path, garden gnomes fishing in a little pond. Just like at Flaherty’s.

There was a ramp leading up to the frosted glass door, and Paula suddenly realised she had no idea who else Bob lived with. She remembered there was at least one child, but in truth she’d never really thought of Bob as a person with a life. She was vaguely ashamed of this fact as he opened the door, in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks. She’d never seen him before out of the suit he wore like uniform. ‘Miss Maguire?’ He looked baffled. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Sergeant, I’m so sorry to land in on you. I need a quick word.’

She waited in the living room while he went to get her some water. It was very clean, a glass carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticking away, a piano in the corner left sitting with music on it. She wondered who played. She sat awkwardly on a velvet sofa, her feet digging into the thick cream carpet. It was a warm day and she could feel sweat patches seeping out from under the arms of her shirt.

She smiled uncomfortably as he came in, placing a glass of water on a coaster on a small table. He had nothing himself. ‘You’re feeling well?’

‘Ah, I’m not too bad. Hot. You’re all right?’

He looked blank. ‘You know how it is. Lots to do round here.’

‘I’m sure. The garden. It looks like it keeps you busy.’

‘That’s mostly Linda. The wife.’

Paula had a vague memory of Linda Hamilton coming when Paula’s mother had disappeared, bringing buns or a casserole or something. Pretending her husband, PJ’s former partner, wasn’t the one investigating him. ‘I’m sorry for what happened.’

He looked away. Said nothing.

Paula had drained the glass of water already. ‘Bob – can I call you that? I really am sorry. It wasn’t my intention. I just had to try everything, and you know – the baby coming, it makes it more urgent—’ She stopped, a little ashamed of herself for playing the pregnancy card. Even if it was true. ‘When Mrs Flynn told me what she’d seen, and that she’d made a statement – I just had to know if everything was done. Please believe me. I didn’t mean it personally. At you, I mean.’ Guilt was making her inarticulate.

Bob still wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Can I get you anything else, Miss Maguire?’

‘Please, it’s Paula. Will you call me that?’

He nodded stiffly and she knew he’d call her nothing at all now. ‘I remember you back then. Your daddy and me – we spent a lot of time together and you’d be with him the odd time, in the car, you know, or if I had to call round to the house. You were just the same as you are now.’

She wasn’t sure what this meant – angry? Difficult? ‘You knew my mother, then? I mean before . . . all that.’

‘A wee bit. To say hello to.’

‘Did you – what did you think, when she went?’

Pause. ‘I don’t remember. We did our best for her. You have to remember, miss, the nineties, back then, it was very bad again for a while.’

‘I do remember. I was thirteen.’ It was the year before the IRA ceasefire. A last hurrah of shootings and bombings. She remembered only too well the sense of things falling apart, the backsliding, the helplessness.

‘A lot of people go missing. You know that. Usually, they have their reasons. We had to do what seemed right at the time.’

‘But why would she go?’ Paula burst out. ‘She was just a wife, a normal person. She was my mum.’

He examined the carpet closely. ‘Sometimes, miss, the families aren’t the people who can see the reasons. But the reasons are there all the same.’

She opened her mouth to say: what is it you’re not telling me? He met her eyes and she saw it very plainly:
please don’t ask me.
She swallowed. ‘Look, the reason I came here – it’s not right, that this happened. So I thought I could tell them. I’ll tell Corry and Brooking, say I made a mistake, there was no statement from Mrs Flynn. I just – I just needed to know. I’m sorry.’

‘We did what we thought was right at the time. That’s all I can say.’

‘Let me talk to them. Please.’

‘There’s no point. I’m getting on. I been working for the police forty years now. Seen a lot of good people die. Seen two police forces. Maybe it’s time I called it a day.’

‘You mean . . . you’d resign? But we need you at the unit.’

‘The unit. Miss – I don’t want to speak out of turn, but you know as well as I do the unit’s on borrowed time. Even now, this is our job, and have we found any of the Mayday lot? We have not. They’re turning up dead. And why are we even looking for them? You weren’t there that day, were you?’

‘Mayday? No – I was in London.’

‘Then I’m glad for you.’

‘Was it as bad as they say?’

Bob didn’t speak for a moment. ‘No. It was worse.’

‘Oh.’

‘I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, the things I saw that day. Linda . . .’ He stopped. ‘It took weeks to even wash all the blood off the floor, I’d walked in that much of it. So. You see. Sometimes you just have to say enough.’ He got up. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I need to get on. Linda would like to say hello, though, before you go.’

She lumbered after him, mind swirling, noticing in distracted passing the Orange sash framed on the wall. Linda Hamilton was in the kitchen, which was filled with light. She was sitting down with a man in a wheelchair, feeding his lunch to him off a spoon. His head drooped onto his chest, hands curled in his lap.

Linda jumped up, setting down the bowl and spoon, which Paula saw now were plastic and decorated with cartoon characters. For a child, but this was a man. ‘Hello, Paula!’ She shook Paula’s hand with her cool one. ‘Look at you, all grown up.’

‘How are you, Mrs Hamilton?’

‘Oh, keeping well. And your daddy?’

‘He’s all right. Grand.’ She didn’t want to say he’d remarried, as that in itself raised a number of difficult questions.

‘He must be glad to have you home from England.’

‘Oh yes, it’s lovely.’ No mention was made of her bump – Bob had likely briefed her on the lack of father situation. Linda indicated the man in the chair. ‘I don’t know if you’d remember our Ian? I think you’d have met him once, there was a party at the station way back.’

She didn’t. ‘Hello, Ian.’ Could he understand? There was no reaction. A thin stream of drool trailed from his mouth.

Linda beamed. ‘You two are the same age and all.’

She remembered it vaguely now – the suggestion that Bob’s son wasn’t ‘well’ – something genetic, wasn’t it, meaning there were no other kids, just Ian in his wheelchair?

‘Well . . . I best be off now. Bye.’

After that Paula went. A heavy feeling dogged her steps to the car, and she remembered its taste in her mouth – shame. She was ashamed. Bob walked her out, courteously, shading his eyes in the sun. ‘Take care driving now. I’ll see you soon.’

She got into the car, leaving the door open. ‘Was there a statement?’ she asked, looking out at the road. ‘Just tell me yes or no. I won’t ask again. I promise. I can see that I . . . well, there’s a lot I don’t know, obviously. But I want to. I’m trying.’

‘Sometimes it’s better not to know.’ His voice was neutral.

‘Please,’ she said again. ‘I just need to know the statement existed, that it’s not just . . . a lonely old lady getting confused. I need something concrete.’

Nothing. She looked up at him; he nodded shortly, almost looking away. Paula’s hands contracted on the wheel. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice shook.

He stepped away. ‘Safe home now, Miss Maguire.’

Paula jumped as the prison gates buzzed open, trying to stand up straight, her heart thudding as the locked-up bleach smell of the place surrounded her. She’d visited prisons many times before, of course. She’d even spent a year doing doctoral research in a high-security hospital. Men who’d grab you if you dropped your guard for so much as a second, men whose eyes crawled over your chest, who’d speculate in front of your boss about what your breasts looked like. This prison – a medium-security one for prisoners reaching the end of their sentence – should have been easy. But she’d never gone to one when heavily pregnant. And she’d never come face to face with the man who’d possibly been responsible for the disappearance of her mother.

The security guards of the prison, all cut from the same cloth of small-hard-Ballyterrin-man-with-moustache, did not know what to do with Paula at all. Trailing cardigans and scarves, red hair escaping from a plait, and her bump held out in front of her, she didn’t quite fit in. They took a look at her and retreated for a lengthy discussion, which seemed to be about whether or not she could safely pass through the metal detector.

‘Wait there a wee second, love,’ one told her, sweating under the arms of his epauletted workshirt. Eventually a grim-faced woman was procured, who patted Paula down as if she might be smuggling Semtex in her belly.

‘When are you due?’ It seemed more of a test than a kindly enquiry.

‘Er . . . in June.’

The woman’s hands probed her stomach, stretched so tight now that a foot or hand could often be detected emerging from the thin drum of skin. It was very unnerving.

‘On you go,’ said the guard, stepping back. ‘Good luck.’

Paula wasn’t sure if she meant for the baby or for what she was about to do. She was given a temporary ID badge, and arranged her clothing as the first set of doors buzzed open. Her Virgil through the inferno was a white-haired prison officer, his belt jingling with keys. ‘Never worry, he’ll be on his best behaviour. He wants out, our Sean. You’re here to give him the say-so?’

‘I’m asking him what he knows about some missing persons’ cases. I work with the MPRU in Ballyterrin.’

Her guide paused by the last door. ‘He’ll tell you whatever you want, miss. But I’d believe him as far as I could throw him, the same fella. He’s not got a truthful bone in his body.’ They were now at a small interview room, the pane of glass webbed in protective wire, the walls and floor bare, echoing concrete. ‘Maguire,’ mused her guide as he swiped a key card. ‘Catholic Maguire, is that?’

‘Yes,’ she bridled.

‘Ah, you’ll be OK then. Just don’t trust him.’

‘Thanks.’

He opened the door and she stepped into the comfortless room. There was a wall of reflective glass, and a bare fluorescent light. There was a chipboard table and two plastic chairs. On one of them sat a middle-aged man in a sweatshirt. He was paunchy and pale, his dark hair thinning, and with manacled hands he was scratching at his nose. Paula felt the horror go through her – here was the man, the actual man she’d seen on TV and in mug shots, who’d most likely shot Aidan’s father in front of him back in 1986, and maybe her own mother too.

Sean Conlon was now fifty, Paula knew. He had three children with two different women and he’d not seen any of them in twelve years. He’d joined the IRA at fifteen. Allegedly he’d helped shoot John O’Hara when he was twenty-five. Planted the bomb he was doing time for at thirty-eight. But he looked like any man you’d see on the poorer streets in town, a little chubby, a little pasty. Tattoos up and down his arms. Wary. When she came in he gave her a weary nod. He’d done this a hundred times before.

‘Hello. I’m Dr Ma—’ She stopped. Swallowed. ‘I’m a forensic psychologist.’

He nodded. ‘You’d be with the missing persons crowd?’

‘Yes. Our remit is to open old cases, look for new evidence, as well as coordinating new ones. We don’t have a specific political focus but we do work closely with the Commission for the Disappeared.’

Sean moved, the metal of his handcuffs making a tinkling sound that was oddly cheerful. He knew the drill. ‘My assurances?’

She was ready for this. ‘We’re an independent commission, so not part of the CPS. However, I am authorised to report back to the parole board if you’ve been helpful or not. I understand you may not have any knowledge of these specific cases.’

Again he just nodded and held out his cuffed hands. ‘Let me see.’

She rooted in her bag for a few moments, willing the surge of blood to her face to subside. She had a bundle of printouts, each one with the name and picture of a missing person, carefully screened for all staples, clips or rogue pens. She knew a psychologist who’d lost an eye that way in one prison.

Sean Conlon leafed through them with one hand. The fingers were squat, hairy, a tattoo on the back of a Celtic cross. Around his neck a crucifix. He read in silence, Paula watching. She was as jittery as the man was calm. His eyes flicked to her when she adjusted her jumper over her bump. ‘When are you due?’

She flushed. ‘June.’ She wanted to hide it with her arms.

He turned a page. ‘Not a nice place to come when you’re expecting.’

She said nothing. He cleared his throat. ‘You could save your time, doc, if there’s any of these you think I might be linked with. We didn’t always know their names, see. It’d be dark and we’d have masks on too.’ He pushed some away. ‘No weans. Never got involved with no weans.’

‘Women?’

He didn’t flinch. ‘The odd time.’

Paula reached for the pile of papers. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her several goes to find the right one. Averting her eyes from the familiar photo – she’d taken it, for God’s sake, playing with the camera as a kid – she placed it before Sean Conlon. He studied it, then put out one stubby finger and framed the face, squinting as if trying to see something. His lips pursed. Paula realised she was holding her breath.

‘Hm,’ he said. ‘I know this one. She was from Ballyterrin.’

‘Y-yes. She was.’

‘The nineties.’ He said it oddly, almost nostalgically. ‘’Ninety-nine it was they got me.’ It explained why he was still in prison while so many equally notorious terrorists were free and walking the streets. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 had been seen as a watershed, and everything before it was supposed to be washed away, forgiven. But people could still be convicted for anything that happened after. ‘Can I hold on to these?’