Unti Lucy Black Novel #3 (25 page)

 

Chapter Sixty-­Three

N
ASH SPOTTED THEM
at almost the same moment they saw him. He had been carrying a basin in his hands, which he dropped, then turned and sprinted away from them, hurdling his way through the thigh high grass around them.

“Stop,” Mickey shouted, ineffectively, for Nash didn't even look back. Mickey set off in pursuit, Tara following behind, but already they could hear the crash of Nash breaking through the treeline into the wooded area that shaded the river upstream of where they stood.

“Looks like we're at the right place,” Fleming said, leading the way toward the row of cottages. “Look for Sammy first.”

From outside, the cottages were clearly dilapidated. Like the main building, the roof showed gaps in the slate, the rough-­stone walls crumbling in places. They reached the door of the first cottage and found it bolted and padlocked. Fleming shoved it a few times, testing it.

“Stand back,” he said. He shouldered against it, once, hard, the padlock rattling off the wood as he did so. He stepped back and shoved again, harder this time. The door strained against the dead bolt but still did not shift. He tried once more, charging the door this time, his shoulder lowered. They heard the crack of the wood around the lock and the door flung backwards, the now useless lock clattering to the ground.

A waft of heat enveloped them as they stepped inside. The air here was thick and heavy, trapped in it the smell of sweat and damp and, above all else, the stench of feces.

Despite the gaping roof, the light inside seemed gray and still and it took them a moment both to acclimatize to it after the brightness of outdoors and to register that the object lying in the corner next to them was, in fact, moving.

Fleming pulled out his torch and directed the beam to the moving mass. It was a man, curled foetally under what looked to be coal sacking. Beneath him, serving as a bed, lay a scattering of straw. The man looked up at them, pathetically, from where he lay. His eyes were red, his face dirtied, his hair matted. He rubbed at the bristles of his beard with his right hand, as if stroking himself in comfort. His hands were thick and swollen with bruises. He raised his other hand, feebly, to shield his eyes from the light. In doing so, he dislodged the empty cider bottle that he had been hugging to him, which rolled onto the floor. He scrabbled to collect it up again, lest Lucy or Fleming tried to take it from him.

Lucy moved across to him. “We're with the police? My name's Lucy Black. Are you okay?”

The man stared at her, his head swaying slightly with the exertion of raising it from the ground. This close to him, Lucy could see his beard matted with saliva from when he had slept.

“Is there anyone else here?” Lucy asked, as behind her she heard Fleming calling for an ambulance. “We're looking for a man called Sammy.” The man held her gaze for a second, seemingly unsure if she was actually there, then lowered his eyes, directing her, she realized, to the next cottage down.

She followed his gaze and saw that, whether by accident or design, the internals walls, which would once have separated the houses, had fallen into disrepair, with the result that the entire terrace of houses was open from one to the next. As she looked, as if distilling themselves from the darkness of the rooms beyond, a series of figures began to emerge in the outer edges of her torchlight.

“Jesus,” she heard Fleming say. He had moved to the far corner and was directing his torch toward a bucket, the encrusted outer edges of which showed Lucy enough to know what it had been used for and helped explain the smell when they had come into the room. Fleming turned and saw now, too, the figures coming toward them from the rest of the building.

All were men, though ranging in age from one who appeared to be a teenager, to a man so old and weakened, he was leaning on two others, either side of him, to keep him upright.

“We're looking for Sammy Smith,” Fleming said, raising his torch toward the men who, almost in unison, retreated a step from the light.

“He's here,” someone from the rear of the group said.

Fleming moved toward them now, Lucy following. The men parted, allowing them through. As she passed, Lucy tried to do a quick mental tally: including the man lying on the ground at the entrance, she reckoned there were fourteen occupants of the cottage, so far.

As she followed Fleming further down the line of cottages, however, she realized that there were a handful more, lying against the walls, in stupors of either sickness or alcohol, visible in the constantly shifting beam of Fleming's torch as he scanned from left to right, trying to identify Sammy.

“Here,” he said, suddenly, rushing across to where the old man lay. He knelt next to him and gripped his wrist in one ungloved hand, taking his pulse, even as he checked his airways and, laying his head close to the old man's mouth, searched for signs of breath.

“Sammy?” Lucy said. “Can you hear us, Sammy?”

Fleming straightened, his face suddenly alert. “He has a pulse. It's very weak but it's there.”

Fleming pulled out a pen and, tugging at the high-­visibility vest which Sammy wore, exposed the soft skin of his belly and injected him. “Niall Toner left over a few insulin shots at the station,” he explained. “We need to get him to a hospital, though. Quickly.”

“I'll go out to the main road, see if the ambulance is coming,” Lucy said. When she turned again toward the entrance she realized that most of the men who had been in the cottage had already gone, leaving behind only those too drunk, or ill, to stand.

 

Chapter Sixty-­Four

O
UTSIDE, SHE CAUGHT
sight of a pair of stragglers from the cottage, making their way across the iron bridge that, she reckoned, would eventually bring them out onto the main Glenshane Road. Presumably the others from the cottage had already made it across. She took out her phone and called through for any available cars to be on the lookout for the men. They would at least need to be taken to the hospital to be checked over and, she suspected from the state of their living conditions, deloused.

To her left, Tara was moving back toward her, taking long strides to make her way through the thick grass. Mickey was trailing in her wake, visibly puffing for breath.

“He's vanished,” Tara said. “Mickey went the whole way up to the road, but he's nowhere to be seen. Did you find anything?”

Lucy nodded. “Take a look. There were over a dozen of them here, but most of them have scarpered. I've asked for support.”

“Are you going after them?”

“No. DI Fleming's called for an ambulance. I'm going out to meet it; we found Sammy in there.”

Lucy felt she should ask Tara to come along with her, as a sign of friendship, but she knew that Fleming would need help inside, too. In the end, it was irrelevant, for Tara moved on into the cottage as Mickey drew up behind.

“I can see how the little shit got away from you, too,” he said breathlessly.

L
UCY RETRACED HER
steps toward the car, back through the main building. She was rounding the corner of the long central corridor, when she saw someone shifting suddenly to one side, through the gap in the wall leading to the adjoining room. Assuming it to be one of the homeless men, she stepped through, shining her torch onto the ground rather than at eye level so as not to startle them.

“Hello—­” she began.

Padraig Nash exploded out of the corner where he had been trying to hide, knocking Lucy off-­balance. She stumbled over a scattering of rubble lying at her feet as she turned to try to follow, twisting her ankle as she did so, the pain shooting up her leg.

Nash rabbited his way through the gap in the wall, back out onto the main corridor, turning right in the hope, Lucy guessed, of making it to the bridge. Once across, he would have a range of directions he could run.

She pulled herself up quickly, using the wall for support, then wincing both as she put weight on her foot and at the thought of another chase with Nash, began the pursuit.

As she emerged through the gap, she shouted after him. He was halfway along the corridor now. Hearing her voice, he glanced around, for a second, clearly trying to ascertain how close she was to him.

Lucy knew what was about to happen the moment she saw him break through the line of ferns ahead of him. Almost instantly, he dropped, falling face forwards. From the sharp, wet crack of bone, she guessed he had struck his face on the concrete around the edge of the hole through which he had fallen as he disappeared from sight.

“Jesus!” Lucy shouted. “Help!”

She struggled, as quickly as she could, across to where she had last seen Nash. The thickness of the vegetation growing around the holes made it impossible for her to see anything until she was almost upon it herself. Then she realized that the hole into which Nash had fallen was one of the ones that had contained the barrels of waste. And Nash was trying to claw his way back out of the hole, balanced precariously on the edge of the barrel beneath him, his head just below the level of the floor.

“Help me!” he spat at her, a bloody globule of saliva running down his chin. His nose had clearly been broken by the impact with the concrete, his lower face bearded now in his own blood. His hands clawed at the edge of the hole for purchase, but the damp had left the concrete slimy with moss and he couldn't get sufficient grip to pull himself up.

Lucy knelt at the edge carefully, her ankle still aching, stretching out her hand to grip Nash's.

“Pull me up,” he commanded.

Instead Lucy relaxed her grip. She knew how this would go. If she pulled him up, he'd run again and she was in no state to follow him. Even if he were caught, he would say nothing, feeling he had nothing to lose.

“What happened to Terry Haynes and Kamil Krawiec?” Lucy asked, sitting back.

“What? Help me out, you fucking bitch!” Nash shouted, struggling more wildly now to escape, then suddenly realizing that the more erratic his movements, the greater the chance of the barrel on which he stood toppling and his going under the water. Even he must have been aware that whatever was leaking from the barrel beneath him, it was probably not suitable for swimming in. Besides, he'd be trapped beneath the floor, in a flooded cellar.

“Terry Haynes. Someone killed him with a hatchet. Cremated him in another man's coffin. Why?”

“Fuck!” Nash screamed now, making one last effort to lift himself free. Finally, exhausted, realizing his efforts were in vain, he let go, almost as if to fall into the water below.

Lucy gripped his hands sharply, preventing him from falling. “What happened to him?”

“Lift me out and I'll tell you,” Nash said, his eyes flickering past her toward the doorway that would lead out to the river beyond.

“Tell me and I'll lift you out.”

Lucy was kneeling low now, partially hidden from view by the ferns around the hole. She was using both hands to hold Nash, which meant she couldn't phone for help.

“You can't do this!” Nash protested.

“Do you see anyone to stop me?”

Nash lowered his head. The blood had begun to dry now, congealing around his lips.

“Why was Terry Haynes killed?”

“He wasn't who he said he was. We thought he was one of them. He wasn't. The Polish guy told him about the camp and brought him to the soup kitchen.”

“And?”

“He would have told someone. He knew things.”

“What things?”

Nash snorted.

“That you'd killed someone and dumped the body in the river here?”

She could tell from the flash of fear in the boy's eyes that Moore had told them the truth about the killing.

“So why hide Haynes's body? Why not dump it in a bin like Krawiec? Or in the river like the other man?”

“He knew ­people. Someone finds an alco sleeping in a bin, no one blinks. He wasn't an alco. It had to look like he done it all himself and then had done a runner. If he was never found then . . .” He grunted, shifting his weight as he struggled to stand. “Please let me up.”

“How did you do it? Swapping the bodies?”

“I knew Ciaran. I asked him to help. He brought the van with the body out here and we switched them round. He said the old guy in the coffin would sink so we dumped him in the water.”

“And you paid him for it?”

“Five grand.” Nash nodded, blinking furiously at the sweat stinging in his eyes.

“How did you know about Haynes? That he wasn't who he said he was? How did you find out?”

“Someone told me da,” Nash said, resignedly.

“Who told him?”

“Look, I don't know,” Nash said. “Pull me out, my arms are cramping. I can't hold on.”

“Who killed Haynes? And Krawiec? And your friend, Ciaran Duffy?”

“It wasn't me,” Nash said. “Please help me out.”

“Was it your father?”

Nash stared up at her pleadingly. “It wasn't me,” he repeated.

Lucy leaned back on her good ankle and, flexing, began pulling Nash up through the hole. By this stage, she reckoned, his arms and legs would be cramping so much, he'd not be in much state for trying to run.

Sure enough, as he reached ground level, he lay face down, seemingly accepting that the chase, for him, was over. Lucy straightened up to get plastic ties from her belt to cuff him and, in so doing, realized that Tom Fleming was standing a little distance back, watching her.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, blushing.

“A while,” Fleming said.

 

Chapter Sixty-­Five

“R
ORY
N
ASH AND
his wife were gone by the time a response unit made it to the house,” Burns explained an hour later. Padraig Nash had been brought to the station but had not requested he be allowed to contact his parents. Despite not doing so, half an hour after, just prior to Burns convening the team together, a solicitor had arrived and requested some time alone with the boy.

“We checked his phone,” Burns continued. “He called his father minutes before DI Fleming called in his apprehension, which suggests that he tipped the parents off that we'd discovered the labor encampment. The parents have done a runner, presumably.”

“And left the boy high and dry,” Mickey said. “Charming.”

“He knew what to expect,” Fleming commented. “The fact he didn't call for them when he was brought in; he knew they'd send someone for him.”

“What do you think his strategy will be?” Tara asked.

“No comments all round,” Burns said.

“Where have the parents gone?” Mickey asked.

Burns shrugged. “We've checkpoints on all the borders and we've contacted An Garda to check on their side.”

“Any luck with John Boyd?” Lucy asked.

Burns glanced to where ACC Wilson sat, at the back of the room, arms folded, watching proceedings.

“We believe he's made contact with the ex-­partner, Fiona,” she said, standing.

“Are we watching her phone or his?” Lucy asked.

“His,” Wilson said. “He made a call to her that lasted ten minutes. We were able to locate it to a bar in the city center, but by the time we got someone there, he was gone. My own feeling is that everything has turned to shit on him at the same time. First the audit, now his partner leaving him, and the Nash family being rumbled. I suspect he's running ragged at the moment, with no place to go.”

“Which makes him much more likely to implicate the Nash family than the boy is,” Fleming said. “If we could find him, he'd spill his guts to try to salvage whatever he could.”

Wilson nodded. “Of course, if the Nash family know him at all, they'll probably realize that. They know the son's not going to say anything, especially now that his lawyer is here. Boyd, on the other hand, is an entirely different creature. If they get to him first, he's dead.”

“Maybe the girl, Fiona, knows where he is?” Tara said. “If he was on the phone for that length, maybe he was asking her to come with him.”

“Maybe she's planning on going with him,” Mickey added, nodding.

Wilson shook her head. “We've been keeping an eye on her. She's not going anywhere by the looks of it. But I agree with DS Gallagher; I suspect Boyd was asking her to meet with him. Which means she may know where he is.”

“Do we bring her in?” Mickey asked. “Put some pressure on her.”

“I think there might be a gentler way to get her to speak,” Wilson said, staring at Lucy.