Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (24 page)

‘
Was she the oldest?’

‘
I guess so,’ said Conn with a shrug.  ‘She must have been, she was kind of like a mum. Used to look out for the younger ones, help us with our chores and stuff.’

‘
You had chores to do?’ laughed Chris. ‘I thought you said it was paradise.’

‘It was
fun, though, the stuff we had to do.’

‘
Like what?’ Now that Conn was talking about Tír na nÓg, his words were coming quicker, and Chris desperately wanted to keep him talking, keep the flow going.

‘
Cooking, washing up, and looking after the animals – that was my favorite.’

‘You had animals there?’

Conn smiled.
‘A few.’

‘
Like what?’

‘Sheep, goats
and chickens. The chickens were funny; they were my job mostly, wandering around everywhere. They used to come into the kitchen looking for scraps and Sarah would chase them out. But they weren’t scared, they used to chase the dogs too.’

‘
It sounds fun.’

Conn
smiled, the happy memories flooding back to him. ‘It was brilliant.  I used to get the eggs every morning, still warm they were.’

‘
So did you get most of your food from the land?’

Conn
thought for a minute. ‘Most of it, I think. We had a big vegetable garden – that was hard work – and lots of fruit in the summer and autumn. Father would be busy working on his
crois
, I would help him sometimes but it was very noisy and the dust used to make me cough.’

Chris was puzzled.
‘What’s a crois?’

‘
Oh they were beautiful, he made them from the giant rocks he’d bring home in the van. Sometimes he’d get even bigger ones – a big truck would deliver them or we’d get smaller ones from the mountain or woods. He  shaped them in the barn,’ Conn said, pride in his voice.

Chris thought about the trace evidence, Sarah’s silicosis
... Rock dust?

‘So these
crosses, what did he do with them?’

‘
Every so often he’d have to take a trip, he said if he didn’t make them and deliver them up to Balor we would no longer be safe from the demons that hid out beyond the woods and the water. Balor would no longer protect us,’ he said solemnly and Chris recalled that in Celtic mythology, Balor was the god of death. He could hear Conn’s tone change as he spoke. He obviously was still affected by what he perceived as a real danger from this demon.

Chris was beginning to understand a little better how the children were controlled
. Fear was a powerful tool when used against the immature minds of innocent kids.

‘
Can I ask you a question about Tír na nÓg?’

Conn
nodded. 

‘
You mentioned the beach. Was there water nearby?’

‘
Yes, a big lake.’

Which
of course tied in with Reilly’s freshwater algae, Chris thought, feeling somewhat guilty for dismissing it so readily before. ‘And it was big, this lake; you could swim in it?’

‘
You could.  But the others were afraid of Kelpie. I wasn’t though; I knew Balor would protect us from him like Father said, but I can’t swim so I just splashed about along the shore in the summer.’ He was lost in his thoughts for a moment.  ‘I always wondered what it was like on the other side,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we’d see things from a distance. But then when I got lost – when Father took me away – I just wanted to go back…’

Tír na nÓg‘Who is Kelpie, Conn?’ Chris asked.

‘
Kelpie is a sly demon who lives above and beneath the water,’ Conn said with apparent disbelief that the detective didn’t already know this. ‘We could hear his cries at night as he galloped above the water. Sarah saw him once and cried for days. Father said he was far more cunning than any being and could even turn himself into a handsome man to trick the girls into falling for him so he could steal them away and consume them.’

‘Yes
, girls can be scaredy cats sometimes,’ said Chris, his mind racing. Was this ‘kelpie’ the one who had impregnated Sarah perhaps? An outsider that had somehow managed to find his way into paradise?

‘I would have fought him though,’ Conn continued, all bravado. ‘I wanted to but
Father wouldn’t let me.’

‘Conn,’ Chris
said, remembering something Reuben had said the day before. ‘You said that your father banished you from Tir Na Nog. Why? What did you do?’

Like a sunny day suddenly turning to a thunderstorm
, Conn’s face changed in an instant.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you
.’

‘I’m tired of playing now. I want to go back to my room.’ And with that Conn got up and was gone.

Later that evening, Reilly was perched on a stool looking into the comparison microscope when Chris stopped by her office to update her on what he had  learned from Conn.  ‘Have you got a minute?’ he called out.

She nodded. 
‘Of course, come on in.’

He walked behind her, leaned over her to get a better look at what she was doing.  He could smell the subtle scent of
lilac in her hair, and had to resist the urge to reach out and touch it. He missed her, missed the easy relationship they’d once shared, yet had no idea how to restore it. Focusing his mind, he looked at the slide she was studying. ‘What’s that?’

‘I
had some water samples taken from a bog and a small pond on National Forestry land near where Sarah was hit. I just wanted to run some comparisons to the algae found in her hair,’ she said.

‘
Did you find anything?’

‘
Yes, unfortunately there was similar algae present in all of the samples.’ Of course conditions in that particular area at this time of year are perfect for spread and growth. Open up a bottle of mineral water up there and you’d probably have the stuff growing in the bottle before you’ve finished drinking it,’ she added, sitting upright on the stool.

‘
So there’s no distinguishing between the growth of it in one area to another?’ Chris asked.

‘
Well, the water samples themselves will have different content in relation to location, but we only have the algae itself, not the water source. The chemical make-up is identical, so there’s no way of pinpointing a particular area.’

‘Pity
,’ Chris said. ‘Even a rough idea would’ve been some way helpful. In any case,’ he continued, ‘I spoke again with Conn this morning. Seems they were definitely being held near water;  a big lake according to him, though I’m not sure what constitutes “big” for a ten year old.’

He
lowered himself into a nearby chair and gave her a brief rundown on what else he’d learned. ‘Conn mentioned a couple of things, old Celtic fairytales … monsters that he said he and the other kids were scared of. He spoke like they were something he’d actually witnessed himself, genuinely feared.’ He sat forward.  ‘He said his father made crosses out of stone to ward off Balor. First thing that jumped into my head was rock sculpting…rock dust…’

‘Sarah’s silicosis,’ Reilly
said and Chris nodded.

‘This Balor is some sort of mythic monster that lives in the darkest depths of water. He also mentioned that if Balor was not kept happy, they would not be safe from all manner of demons that roamed the woods and mountains.’

Reilly bit her lip.
‘Fear and love …’

Chris nodded.
‘These are no ordinary abductions, Reilly. This guy’s a clever fucker – he takes them young, brainwashes them and has them want for nothing. It’s the perfect recipe for Stockholm Syndrome.’

‘Perhaps, but
if he’s really that clever why did he let our two girls go?’

‘
I thought we were working on the assumption that they had escaped?’ he said, trying to see Reilly’s angle.

‘Exactly – it was an assumption, mostly based on the fact that Sarah was pregnant. We have no idea how the other girl ended up where she did.’

‘That reminds me of something.’ Chris explained the bit about Kelpie, the outsider who’d supposedly made Sarah cry.

‘You’re thinking a third party might be responsible for Sarah’s pregnancy?’

‘Why not? We keep saying that it’s unlikely the guy himself is responsible, and if he’s not abusing them, then it would have to have been an immaculate conception.’

‘Perhaps
, but regardless of who the father of the baby was, the abductor would have known that a pregnancy would be a major threat to him. Unless you know what you’re doing, childbirth requires outsiders, help … complications he doesn’t need.’

‘
And it’s not as though he  hadn’t cast one of his swans out before,’ Chris said, taking up the thread. ‘So maybe after learning about the pregnancy our guy took control, took Sarah somewhere far away from base, somewhere she wouldn’t draw the heat.’

‘Yet she wasn’t showing,’ Reilly pointed out, remembering that she herself hadn’t spotted any visible signs of pregnancy on Sarah’s body.

‘There are other signs though: morning sickness, cravings …’ Chris scratched his stubble. ‘So what are you thinking? He pushed her into the path of the van?’ He thought back to the interview with William Connolly. ‘The driver did say she’d just appeared from nowhere, like a ghost …’

‘
I don’t know but I don’t think we’re seeing the full picture. She was struck from behind while walking away from civilization, dressed in minimal clothing on a cold, damp night. If she’d just escaped from somewhere she’d surely be heading towards the lights of a village or another house for help. Yet she wore no shoes and her feet were in good condition.’

Then Chris thought of something, something he hadn’t remembered until now.

‘She was hit from behind because she turned around,’ he told Reilly, telling her about the interview with William Connolly. ‘The way he described it, it sounded to me like an attempt to protect the baby.’

They both paused
, thinking about it.

Reilly shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I guess until we find the place, all we can do is surmise. But my instinct is that
, paradise or not, Sarah escaped. The fact that the van driver saw her turn to save the baby suggests that even more. Like Reuben said, maybe as she got older she realized that paradise wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and was hoping to take her chances with the baby in the outside world.’

‘And look how that worked out,’ Chris added sadly.

‘I know.’

‘
So it seems the more we dig the further we seem to get from the truth.’ She went over to her desk, picked up an official- looking document, and laid it in front of him. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘The exhumation license for Swan number one, aka Jennifer Harrington,’ Reilly told him. ‘More digging, but of the literal kind.’

Chapter
24

I stare into the lake.  It is our protection, it gives us life, its green depths providing food and safety.  It moves constantly, gently, pulled by the moon and caressed by the winds, kissing the shore like a hand gently rocking a cradle.

In summer, it is a place of fun, the water retreating to offer a beach for play in the shallows. In winter, it rises high, claws at the bank, seems to threaten us, its fingers longing to crawl up the land and invade our home as we huddle round the fire, listening to the storms raging outside.

The swans fear it, as they should.  They know it protects us, but there is als
o a place in their hearts that senses that this is how we arrived in the first place, born on magic hooves across the cold depths.  And if it is the entrance to our world, it is also the escape, a way to leave…

Is that what called to
her?  Did the water call to her?  It is a spirit, has a life of its own, not malicious but capricious, a bringer of life and a protector, but also a bringer of death, and a weakness in our otherwise impregnable stronghold.

Did the water call to
her that night? Was it seductive, offering an escape to her troubled mind, already turned by the worms that had crept within?  Did she succumb?  Was she dragged down, her cold eyes staring upwards through the green murk to the world she had left behind?

Does she lie there still, a prisoner for
ever? 

On the evening of the exhumation Reilly and the GFU team made their way out to the cemetery.

‘
Ever done one of these before?’ Gary asked her from the passenger seat of the van.

‘Not here but a few
in the States,’ she told him, visions of the excavation work on the burial plots at New Eden flashing into her head.