Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 (24 page)

 

Chapter Sixty

F
IONA,
J
ENNY, AND
the children were in the kitchen, washing up after what appeared to have been an afternoon of baking. Two wire cooling racks sat on the table, both piled high with buns. One of the children, the youngest girl, stood at the sink with a plastic bowl encircled by her arms, running her small hand through the leftover icing, then sucking it nosily off her fingers, one by one. Two spots of icing dimpled her smile as she saw Lucy.

“Into the living room, kids,” Jenny said. “Let's stick on a movie.” She smiled lightly at Lucy as she passed.

Fiona stood, leaning against the worktop, a mug of coffee in her hand. “I said I didn't want to see you,” she said.

“I know. Fiona, I'm sorry I didn't mention I was a police officer. Growing up here, it's not the first thing you share about yourself with someone you meet.”

“I understand that,” Fiona said. “But you actively lied. You said you were a fitness instructor.”

“I was.”

“But not now.”

“No,” Lucy admitted. “When I met you, I did so as a neighbor. And a friend. Not as a police officer.”

“So which are you now?”

Lucy considered the question. “All three, I guess. Look, Fiona, I have some news about John.”

Fiona snorted. “Of course you do. What's he done now?”

“He's disappeared,” Lucy said. “We've been looking for him, but we think he may have done a runner.”

“Because of me?” Fiona asked, then her expression quickly darkened as she considered all the alternative explanations for what may have happened to him. “He hasn't . . . he hasn't . . . killed himself, has he?” Already the tears were welling in her eyes, her lip's quivering building.

“No,” Lucy said. “John has been under investigation for a while, Fiona. Nothing to do with you. Or me. The audit at his work that he was talking about to you? He was being investigated for fraud.”

“Fraud?” Fiona repeated, incredulously. “John?”

Lucy nodded. “He'd been writing cheques to be lodged in a dummy company—­£750,000 worth over the past few years.”

Fiona set the mug on the counter, its contents sloshing onto her hand as she did so, though she seemed not to notice.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“The Fraud Unit has a warrant to search his house. Your house. But it would speed things up
a lot
if someone who knew where he kept everything was able to check whether he was planning on leaving the country. You know, see if his passport, travel bags, bank books, that kind of thing, are missing or are still in the house. It means we'd know he was still alive. We haven't much time. You can help.”

Fiona shook her head. “No. Not me. That's not fair.”

“It means
you'd
know he was still alive, Fiona,” Lucy said, moving across to her. “Whatever happens to him as a result of this is on him alone. Not on you.”

“I'm not giving evidence against him,” Fiona said, staring at Lucy. “I'm not doing that.”

“You're not being asked to,” Lucy said. “All we need to know is that he's
chosen
to leave. Jenny can come with you, if you want.”

Fiona stared around her, as if seeing the kitchen for the first time. “No,” she decided finally. “I'll do it on my own.”

L
UCY SAT IN
the living room of the house Fiona and Boyd had shared while Fiona checked the bedroom. She'd been told by Marshall to make sure that she watched her as she searched, but, having already tested the limits of trust once with her failure to tell Fiona she was police, she thought standing watching her would suggest she didn't trust her at all.

The room was modern, the walls painted white, the suite cream-­colored cloth. Two pictures hung on the walls, in both of which red was the predominant color. However, Lucy would have struggled to say what the pictures were of, carrying as they did the appearance of a Rorschach.

She wondered how much of the decor reflected each of the ­people who had lived there. To what extent had Fiona sacrificed her own personality to accommodate John Boyd's.

There was one bookcase to the left of the fireplace. Lucy moved across and scanned the spines, recognized a few of the authors. The books, she noticed, had been arranged on the shelves according to size, the larger volumes together, the smaller paperbacks on a shelf of their own. It was only when she turned to sit again that she saw, on the small alcove between the door and the back wall, half hidden by the open door into the hallway, a studio picture of Fiona.

Fiona herself appeared a moment later, a small overnight bag in her hands.

“Well?” Lucy attempted a smile.

“He's gone. The folder with both our passports and bank stuff is gone. So is his toothbrush and razors. He's taken a bag of clothes with him, too. A ­couple of nice suits that he bought last year.”

“Anything else?”

Fiona shook her head. “Whatever he's done, he's chosen to leave. And if he's taken all that with him, I assume he's not planning on topping himself.”

The visit to the house seemed to have helped her steel herself, her concern for his safety replaced now with anger.

“He has my passport, too,” she said. “Everything.”

“Maybe he was in a rush,” Lucy offered.

“I'll need to get it replaced,” Fiona said. “And get the rest of my stuff from here. I've brought a few things I meant to take last night, but I left so suddenly. My own toothbrush and that.”

She offered the bag for Lucy's inspection, its opening unzipped. Again, Lucy felt that to check the contents would further damage their already fragile friendship.

“You can search it,” Fiona said, as if sensing her discomfort. “That's your job after all. That's why you're here.”

Lucy felt herself redden. “That's a nice picture of you,” she said, gesturing to the alcove behind the door. “Why did you put it in there? No one can see it.”

“John put it there,” Fiona said, simply. “I hate the sight of it. He insisted I get it taken and insisted that it hang up there.”

L
UCY PHONED HER
mother after she had dropped Fiona back at Jenny's house in Prehen. “It looks like a planned disappearance,” she said. “His passport and bank stuff is all gone. And some of his clothes and toiletries.”

“We'll get an alert out to the ports and airports,” Wilson said. “And hope he's not already out of the country,” she added. “How's the girl?”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “He took her stuff, too. Passport and everything.”

“She wouldn't be planning on going with him, would she? Stringing you along, then vanishing herself and joining him somewhere?”

“I doubt it,” Lucy said, unconvincingly, unwilling to admit that she'd thought exactly the same thing the moment she'd seen Fiona holding the travel bag in her living room.

“We'll keep an eye on her movements, too,” Wilson said. “Just in case she's planning on traveling anytime soon. You need to come back in; I believe the Chief Super is assigning search areas. You'll not want to miss that, now, will you, Lu?”

Her mother hung up before Lucy could register the warmth in the woman's use of the nickname that both her parents had called her when she was a child. Since their conversation about her father's deteriorating state, she'd sensed more than once that her mother was attempting, in some way, to rekindle their relationship, perhaps even going so far as to move Lucy back into CID as Burns had suggested, if Lucy so wished. It disconcerted her; at least they'd both known where they stood when she was simply Lucy's superior officer. Now, Lucy couldn't help but wonder for whose benefit was this attempted reconnection most intended: her own or her mother's.

 

Chapter Sixty-­One

A
S IT TRANSPIRED,
Lucy was too late for Burns's meeting. The team was filing out of the room when she arrived, loosely pairing up as they did so, presumably into the teams Burns had assigned.

Thankfully, she and Fleming had been put together. He was still sitting in the incident room when she arrived, flicking through the maps that they had been given.

“Sorry, sir,” Lucy offered to Burns as he passed. “I was tied up with the ACC.”

Burns grunted an acknowledgment and moved on out of the room, not looking at Fleming.

“What's up with him?” Lucy asked.

“He's feeling the pressure,” Fleming said. “He requested Police 44 to do a flyover the city, check out the various bridges, but both helicopters are being deployed in Belfast, trying to get pictures of protesters. He had to use Google Maps in the end.” He held up one of the sheets in evidence.

“So, where are we?”

“Drumahoe outwards,” Fleming said. “We're with Tara and Mickey.”

“Does he not trust us to do it ourselves?”

“Clearly not,” Fleming said. “I think I know where the men are being held, too. Here.”

He handed Lucy a map. She could see the curvature of the river, could see to one side what looked like a housing estate. A narrow line traversed the river.

“What is it?”

“Green Road,” Fleming said, “in Ardmore. So called, because that collection of buildings you can see is in an area called Bleach Green.”

“
The Green,
” Lucy said. “Moore said they'd carried the dead man ‘over the green.' I thought he meant the grass.”

“It's an abandoned bleach works,” Fleming said. “Thus the name. The river was used to power a flax mill nearby and the linen was taken to the bleach works to be bleached. They left it lying out on the grass area to dry in the sun: Bleach Green.”

“Why do you think that's where they are? Did they have stables?”

Fleming shook his head. “No. But they did have a row of old terraced cottages where the workers lived. They've fallen into disrepair now. Maybe Moore was confused.”

“And that's a bridge, I take it,” Lucy asked, pointing to the thin line.

Fleming nodded. “A very short metal bridge. Plus it's near where the Nash family live.”

“Sounds like a good place to start,” Lucy said.

“Burns didn't agree,” Fleming said. “Not when I suggested that sending us out to every bridge in the city was a waste of time and we'd be better concentrating our efforts on this one. What with Sammy running out of time.”

“Thus the doubling up with Tara and Mickey.”

“As a sop; he knew I was right but didn't want to be seen to be backing down.”

Lucy gathered up the sheets. “He must love you,” she said.

“He's only human. Any word on Boyd?”

“Fiona checked the house for us. He's taken his stuff with him: toiletries, passport, and that.”

“At least it means he's still alive,” Fleming reasoned.

“For now,” Lucy said.

The door opened and Tara leaned in. “We want to get started. Are you two ready to go?” she asked, then left again without waiting for them to answer.

 

Chapter Sixty-­Two

B
LEACH
G
REEN WAS
much bigger than Lucy had expected. They'd driven past Ardmore graveyard, and the Beech Hill Hotel to their left, through into Ardmore itself, almost missing the turning to the left, down toward the river. After a few hundred yards, they spotted the first of the large gray buildings appear through the trees which lined the roadway and obscured much of the place from view.

They drove around the building itself, then pulled into an area of waste ground at the far end of the bleach works, next to the short iron pedestrian bridge which Fleming had mentioned. As they got out of the car, they could hear the rush of the river next to them. Lucy ventured across and, leaning over, looked down to where it had swollen almost to the limit of its banks. The river here was narrowed, meaning that the water traveling through the space did so with much greater pressure than at other spots along its length where men fished its meandering current.

“The rains must have flooded it,” Fleming offered.

They turned to the building itself. Nearest them squatted a long, low, red-­brick building, the plaster crumbling from the sides, its low roof tiled but gaping with age and weathering. Next to it was a longer, wider building, its entrance closed off with sheets of corrugated metal that bore a
NO TRESPASSING
warning sign. High above this part of the works towered a red-­brick chimney, its sides veined with tendrils of ivy, long since dead.

“So, how do we get in?” Mickey asked.

They approached the corrugated sheets; Fleming pulled on a pair of gloves and peeled back one of the sheets. It swung back fairly easily, grinding only slightly on the ground as it did so.

“Someone has been in here,” he commented.

The first room they stepped into was dark and, despite the heat of the recent days, the ground damp beneath their feet. The space itself was empty save for rubble lying scattered about. To the left, in the far corner, stood a ladder, which reached up to the ceiling above their heads. As they moved further into the room, they realized that the ceiling was actually the underside of a makeshift mezzanine level to which the ladder reached. From this angle, Lucy couldn't see what was above them. Following Fleming's example, she pulled on her gloves and, moving across, began climbing the ladder.

She'd climbed six rungs before her head was level with the floor above. The upper floor was unoccupied at present but, in addition to more rubble and three rusted iron girders, a stained and sodden mattress lay on the ground.

“Anything?” Tara called up.

“An old mattress,” Lucy said. “It doesn't look like it's being used to be honest; it looks like a sponge it's so wet.” She glanced up to where the gap in the roof showed through to the afternoon sky, heavy-­bodied clouds gathering above them.

“Come down and we'll check some of the other rooms,” Mickey said.

The next space they moved into was a wide, open corridor. The roof had completely gone here and the two sidewalls were bridged by a series of metal joists above their heads. The ground was concrete at one stage, but was thick with vegetation now. At various intervals, shafts of thick ferns curled upwards from the floor.

They moved along the length of the room. The walls were covered in graffiti, most proclaiming nicknames or political affiliations. As Lucy was reading one particularly lengthy proclamation, she felt the floor suddenly drop from under her as she fell off-­balance. Fleming, who had been alongside her, gripped her arm, quickly, with enough force to make her exclaim.

One foot dangled into the space below and she could feel coldness envelop her boot, could feel something leaking in around her feet, through her boots.

Mickey and Tara ran across and, grappling with her, managed to heave her back onto solid ground. Catching her breath, she looked down to realize that in front of her was a square hole in the floor, about two foot square, which dropped down to a lower level that, she could now see, was flooded with water.

“What the hell's that?” she managed.

“Are you all right?” Tara asked, her arm still around Lucy's shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“Embarrassed,” Lucy said. “I should have been looking where I was going.”

“There are a series of them,” Fleming said, having moved further up the room. “Every few feet, on either side of the floor. They must have been drains or something. It must feed down into the river.”

Lucy could see now, once Fleming pointed them out, that the holes were present, at intervals of about six feet, the entire way along the corridor. As they moved along, more carefully now, they glanced down into each. Two of them, toward the end of the corridor, showed metal barrels, some lying on their sides, leaking oily fluid out into the water around them.

“Fuel laundering waste,” Mickey suggested, moving on.

“Are you okay?” Fleming asked, touching Lucy on the elbow.

“I feel stupid falling like that.”

“Easily done,” Fleming said. “Forget about it.”

They moved on through the building, in places being able to step through the gaps in the walls where the brickwork had collapsed. Finally, they moved out into the evening sunlight again. Ahead of them, across a meadow, thick with grass and wildflowers, they could see a second building, lower than the first, stretching in behind the treeline.

“Those must be the workers' cottages, from when the bleach works was running. Families lived on site,” Fleming explained.

It was then that they spotted a figure approaching the cottages from the river. It took Lucy only a second to recognize him as Padraig Nash.