The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The hospital was a good place to talk secrets. Something about the hush of machines, the slow ebb and flow of life. ‘I haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘I have to feed Maggie.’ Already her breasts were aching, ready for the next feed. As if she’d become nothing but a sophisticated milk delivery system.

‘How is she?’ Guy’s awkwardness made her look down at the sheets, their ragged threads, washed over and over to softness.

‘She’s fine. I can’t – talk about that yet, OK? Can you just give me time?’

‘All right.’ He drank his coffee from a cardboard cup. She was sure he’d bought it for something to do. She just had a glass of tepid water. God, she missed using caffeine as a crutch.

‘So?’

‘Do you remember what you asked, before you went under? What you said to Saoirse?’

She nodded. It had come back to her in vague shreds. She recognised the voice he was using. It was his ‘giving bad news to relatives’ one. She had a version of it herself. She clutched the glass, feeling beads of moisture inch down the outside.

‘Well, I did some digging like you asked. Strictly off the record.’ He traced a pattern on the side of his coffee, scraping the cardboard sleeve. ‘You know I used to be in the Army.’

‘Um – I guessed.’ They’d never really spoken about this but it was obvious in everything he did, even the way he held himself.

‘It was only for a few years. But I have contacts, people who would have worked over here during the Troubles. Army intelligence. So I asked about your mother. If they knew whether anyone ran her as an informer.’

Paula flinched at the word. ‘She wasn’t an informer!’ A tout. Worst thing you could call a Catholic. That, coupled with her father’s RUC job, would definitely have made her family what they called a legitimate target. It was the phrase they’d found in Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s mouth. She shivered.

‘OK, informing is a very loaded word. But, Paula, this was five years before the peace process. There wasn’t some mythical freedom struggle. The IRA had been bleeding Ireland to death for years at that point. You know what I mean. I asked around, to see if anyone knew of her.’

‘And?’

‘Paula, are you sure you want to hear all this?’

She didn’t look up. ‘Tell me. Everything.’

‘My contact – he said there’d been rumours your mother was involved with someone at Special Branch in the town.’

‘Involved?’

She could tell from his voice he was blushing. ‘“Carrying on with” was the phrase he used.’

‘Oh.’

‘So, because of that, and her job at the solicitors, it was believed that Margaret was passing information to Special Branch about terror suspects.’

That was better. Call her Margaret. Keep her distant, just a name in a file.

‘Did they take her?’ she asked, under the gentle hush of the hospital. She wasn’t the first person to hear bad news inside these walls. They could absorb it. ‘Did they know if the IRA took her?’

Guy hesitated. ‘He wasn’t sure. But it was known that there were plans to kidnap her and her – contact at Special Branch. For interrogation. He didn’t know any more after that – he was moved to Kosovo.’

Contact. Her lover, that meant. According to Guy’s friend, her mother had been having an affair, passing on secrets from her work to him. Paula tried to fit this in with what she knew of her mother, homely and quiet, and failed utterly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Guy said.

‘It’s not your fault. At least it’s something.’ And it was, a bit of solid ground she could rest her feet on.

‘If it’s true. It was so long ago, and most of the files are classified.’

‘It fits, though. Her boss at the solicitors, Colin McCready, he’d heard some rumours too. And—’

And there was the man. The day before her mother’s disappearance – October, dark and cold already – Paula had come home to find her mother in her dressing gown. That was strange enough. Even stranger, she’d been talking to someone at the back door. No one ever came there. Her mother had closed the door rapidly as Paula went in, asking her normal questions and telling her not to make toast as dinner was nearly ready, saying she’d come home sick from work. Going past the kitchen window Paula had seen a man, an old-fashioned hat hiding his face. He’d gone down the narrow side passage and left. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Guy this, give him this private little memory like a thorn in her flesh. ‘It fits,’ she said again.

‘Well – that’s all I could find out. I hope it helps, in some way.’

Paula took a drink of her water, now muggy and warm, and nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Was she wrong to pry open this box, long buried? Sometimes she thought it was better not to know. But she couldn’t let it rest, not now she’d opened it a crack. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s OK. I want to help.’ The strained look returned to his face. ‘Can I see her, since I’m here? Please? I’d just really like to see her.’

Paula said nothing.

‘I know you’re not ready to find out.’ He spoke in a rush. ‘I do understand, it’s best for her, and to be honest, I think Tess – well, it would be very hard on her right now. At the moment she’s managing to pretend it isn’t happening. But I haven’t even seen Maggie. I’d like to. Is that OK?’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I need to feed her anyway. Stay.’ It wasn’t as if he’d given her much choice.

‘Thank you.’ He looked intensely relieved. ‘I wanted to tell you what’s been going on with the case, anyway. If you’re interested.’

‘Are you kidding? I want to know everything.’

‘Well, there’s not much to tell. No sign of Kenny or Flaherty, though we’ve thrown all our resources at the search. You can imagine the media interest since the notes were released. We’ve also not been able to trace the source of the leak, so all information is being restricted. Corry’s been interviewing to see if it’s an internal leak but we haven’t found any evidence yet.’

She was pleased he was telling her; that meant she was no longer under suspicion. ‘OK. Listen, you know how Fiacra’s been lately . . . Did you ever think, you know?’

He said nothing for a moment. ‘I know what you mean. But like I say, we’ve found nothing. One other thing is that Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s mother has given consent for a DNA test on the child. The youngest one.’

Peadar. She pictured him, snotty and bewildered, and remembered that despite her best efforts, his mother was never coming home to him. ‘Is she allowed to do that?’

‘The mother’s dead, and we don’t know who else has parental responsibility, do we?’

It was close to the bone. ‘OK. And what did it reveal? It definitely wasn’t Lynch?’

‘No. And here’s the interesting thing – he wasn’t the father of the girl, either. The older boy, yes, but not the girl.’

‘And who was? Do we know?’

‘Same as Peadar. Turns out we already had his DNA.’

She was growing impatient. ‘Tell me, Guy.’

‘The father of Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s two youngest children was Martin Flaherty. We’ll need to ask his older daughter for a comparison to make sure, but the lab is pretty confident it was him.’

Paula had to assimilate this. ‘They had a relationship? Ni Chonnaill and Flaherty?’ He was fifteen years older than her.

‘Looks that way. And at the same time as she was with Lynch.’

‘I suppose that’s why he called her a whore in court.’ The topic seemed to become too heavy, and she fell silent, fiddling with the drip. ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’

The silence was broken by the nurse bustling in with Maggie in her cot. ‘Here we are! Here’s Mummy.’

Paula froze for a second, then breathed in. It had to happen sometime, after all. She accepted the baby into her arms, and tried to cut short the nurse’s curious glances. ‘Thanks. Could I just feed her by myself today? I’ll call if we have trouble.’ She knew there was fierce speculation on the ward as to who might be the father of the wean – was it the cop who’d brought Paula in that day, or the angry-looking man in the band T-shirt? She’d have told them the truth if they’d asked – she had no idea.

Guy stood by the door, where he’d moved to let the nurse in. ‘That’s her then.’

‘No, it’s another random baby.’ But there was no sting in her voice.

‘I’ll leave you.’ He got up, buttoning his suit jacket.

‘You don’t have to. It’s a bit dull. Talk to me.’

She tucked the sheets up to hide her breasts – ridiculous, he’d already seen that and more besides – and gasped as Maggie latched on. ‘Good girl. She’s getting the hang of it. They struggle sometimes, when they’re premature.’

Guy watched her from the door.

‘You don’t mind?’ she asked, for form’s sake. She didn’t care if he minded.

‘Of course not. I always thought – it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I envy women that. The bonding. It can be hard for men. You just know they’re yours, don’t you?’

‘Well, that and she came ripping out of me, yes.’

The silence shrouded them, soft and warm. Paula let herself breathe. Knowing he was watching her. She said, ‘Would you like to hold her? When I’m done?’

He said nothing for a while. ‘I – another time, maybe. I should go in a minute.’

She nodded. She felt Maggie’s mouth sag and transferred her, the scrabble and pop as she latched on, the relief of it.

‘It’s amazing.’ Guy was watching, not averting his eyes politely from her breast. It would be worse somehow if he looked in the middle distance, as other people did. ‘How do you know how to do it?’

‘It’s not that easy at first. After all, I never saw my own mother feed. I’m an only child.’ That she knew of. She quailed suddenly. Thinking of what the murderous psychic had told her months before, when Maggie was just a whisper inside her –
your mother’s alive. Alive over the water. There’s another family. She’s forgotten about you.

It wasn’t true. How could she know? But on the long winter nights, as Maggie turned over inside her, Paula had found herself worrying over the details of other things the woman had known, or seemed to know – that she was having a baby, that it was a girl, that Guy might be the father. Now she found herself looking from the curve of Maggie’s face to the broad sweep of his forehead, the high cheekbones. ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ she asked. How could she not know this about him, when they’d worked together so closely they could almost hear each other’s thoughts?

‘A sister,’ he said. ‘We’re not that close.’

‘OK.’

‘Was I right to tell you all that? I wasn’t sure if I should.’

‘Guy. Will you please stop trying to protect me? I’m a grown-up, I’ve been without my mother now for longer than I ever had her.’

‘I can’t stop,’ he said simply. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Even if you don’t want to be protected, I have to try. Was it really worth it? To find out – that?’

‘Yes.’ She answered right away. ‘I decided a long time ago I had to know. Whatever the truth was, it doesn’t kill like lies do. Like you said – there’s a law for a reason.’

‘You do listen, then.’

‘On occasion.’

He shifted. ‘I must go. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do, at all.’

‘Bring me work. Anything. I’m mad with boredom.’ But she knew that wasn’t at all what he’d meant.

‘I’ll leave you two in peace. I’ll do my best to look into that for you, I promise.’

You two. She wondered if there would ever be three.

‘Guy?’

‘Yes?’ He stopped in the door.

‘When I’m out of here, do I need to look for a new job?’

‘What?’

‘The unit – if it’s going to be axed, you need to tell me. I’m on my own now with Maggie.’

‘It’s not going to be axed.’

‘But they’re discussing it.’

‘I won’t let that happen. I didn’t want to worry you with it. It will be OK.’

‘Just please – tell me, if there’s anything I need to know.’

‘I promise. And since you mention it, when you’re out, when things are a bit settled, maybe . . .’

‘Yeah?’ She waited. The silence between them stretched.

Guy was staring at his feet. ‘Things are different now. You have the baby. And you and I . . . well, I think we need to decide what we’re going to do.’

Paula spoke carefully, looking at the baby and not at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s talk when you’re out.’ He crossed the room swiftly and planted a quick kiss on her forehead before she could react. ‘Look after yourself.’

When he went, she felt strangely bereft, his kiss still burning on her skin. She couldn’t even begin to process what he’d almost said, or not said. And it reminded her once again that Maggie was now three days old and Aidan, who at the very least was her step-uncle, still hadn’t even come to see her.

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

On the day of the verdict Ni Chonnaill was all in black, her lipstick like a scar across her face. Her lawyer asked if she could stay seated for it as her legs were painful, and this was agreed to. The men stood, as if preparing to take a penalty shoot-out. The jury was, by its very nature, made up of ordinary people. Eight women and four men. Almost all white, given the area. The youngest was nineteen, the oldest seventy. The foreman was a middle-aged woman in a suit, by day a civil servant.

She said they had reached a conclusion. The judge asked what it was. She hesitated. The judge asked again, a little tetchy. The families were all on their feet, except those too old to stand. She said,
Not guilty.
For Brady. For Doyle. For Lynch. For Ni Chonnaill. And for Flaherty. She said not guilty five times in all. The evidence had not been enough. The flimsy case of the police and CPS, error-ridden and bungled even before the bomb stopped smoking, had not been strong enough. As she sat down, the forewoman looked up to the gallery, as if to say she was sorry.

I don’t think any of the families ever blamed the jury. They knew the case didn’t hold. After all, they’d sat through every word.