The Lost (25 page)

‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Corry was saying. ‘Do let me know the outcome.’

‘Of course, of course. Drive safely now.’ Guy handled her out of the door with his usual smoothness, but his jaw was tight. He looked
into the main room, where everyone was suddenly typing with great industry. ‘Paula. A word?’

Paula gaped at Guy as if she hadn’t understood what he’d said. ‘Nothing?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He looked impossibly tired. ‘It just isn’t enough.’

‘But – it’s all of them! All the girls had something to do with a church group.’

‘I know. I know. But like I said, it could just be co—’

‘You don’t really believe that.’

He bristled at her tone and she forced herself to shut up. ‘It’s not enough evidence, Paula. Not unless we can prove a link between this God’s Shepherd lot and our boys at the Mission. There are other leads to follow up first.’ He looked round him at the office, which was overflowing now with files and paper and photographs, all so far going nowhere. ‘I need you back on Majella’s case full-time. Go over it, see did we miss anything. We’re under a lot of fire now since that riot. We need to look harder.’ To be seen to look harder, he meant.

‘You’re really not going to do anything?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘They can just go on with their prayer meetings, or whatever it is they do, while more girls die.’

He ran his hands over his tired face. ‘I’ve told you before, all the Mission staff had alibis for when Cathy vanished. The last anyone saw of her was walking up her own street. We’ve no proof that this Mission is even linked to the one in the South.’

‘But the journalist—’

‘Yes, I know what the journalist turned up. I’m talking about evidentiary proof. As for Louise – well, it’s obvious no one else was involved in her death. What can I do?’

‘But—’

‘I know.’ He spread his hands. ‘I know, Paula. As a theory, it’s not implausible. And it’s awful, yes. I get it. When I think about those girls, and only in their teens . . . well, I get it, OK? But unless we
find more evidence, there’s nothing I can do.’

‘You told Corry about the Carrs moving house? I smelled fresh paint, I told you.’

‘Yes. Yes, I told her. She won’t search the family home until we get more. Think of how it’d look.’

‘Well – you’ll look into Ed Lazarus? I’m sure that isn’t his real name, he must have another. And if we can find anything on him, any priors . . .’

‘Corry’s not keen on this angle at all. And we have to be careful. They have lawyers all over them, these American churches, and if we put a foot wrong and the case collapses, we’ll have nothing.’

‘We’ve got nothing anyway.’

‘I know. I know, OK?’

Paula thought of the pictures in the box file on her desk, Alice with her fair hair and warm smile, Majella’s worn jumper and bright eyes. So many of them gone. She could feel it too, the mood spreading through the team. The slump, the hopelessness. A murder that wasn’t solved within weeks wasn’t likely to be solved at all. And the idea of never finding out who’d killed Cathy and dumped her body in the dark water . . . Well. She wasn’t giving up that easily. If she had to prove a link between the Mission and God’s Shepherd, then that’s what she’d do. There was another person she could try, even though he hadn’t been in touch. She’d swallow her pride and ring him.

As she went out, Guy had his head propped in his hands, as if he couldn’t lift it up.

‘What was it you booked in for anyway, Maguire? A full Brazilian, or just a tidy-up?’

‘Don’t be so bloody cheeky.’ Paula glared at Aidan as he parked the Clio behind the To Dye For salon. Over on the desolate end of town, near the train tracks and post office depot, it was clear this wasn’t a classy establishment. Across the road, the
Mission was shuttered up for the night, but Paula still got out carefully, fearful of being seen.

‘I’m only thinking of you. Don’t want to catch you in an awkward situation.’

‘As if. It’s only a manicure.’ She regarded her bitten fingernails. ‘Which I could sort of be doing with. Wait until I call you, anyway. I don’t want her taking revenge on my cuticles.’

‘It’ll be grand. You said there was something weird about the family, and she’s the best person to ask, I’m telling you.’

‘But . . .’ Paula looked across the street to the Mission. That was where she really wanted to be looking, not at other angles. ‘Just let me handle it – it’s a bit dodgy legally.’

Paula felt oddly nervous as the teenage receptionist urged her to ‘take a wee seat’ in the beauty salon. Beauty treatments were far enough out of her comfort zone, but confronting the mistress of Eamonn Carr, going against Guy’s explicit orders – that was whole other world of trouble. Flicking through out-of-date magazines, she looked round her. They’d gone for a spa-like atmosphere, with some twigs in a vase and a bowl of smooth round stones, but there was no disguising the cracks in the floor tiles and patches of damp on the wall. So perhaps she shouldn’t have been so surprised when the beautician came out and she saw how the woman looked.

‘Has a Miss Maguire been in?’

The receptionist nodded. ‘It’s this wee girl here.’

Paula bristled – she was about twice the receptionist’s age – but then she looked at the beautician and her mouth fell open.

The woman was probably in her forties, but looked a decade older. Brassy blond hair twisted up into hairdressing clips, face lined from smoking,
huffing as she walked. Nails chipped pink and hands gnarled – Paula tucked her own under her arms, protectively. For a moment she thought they’d made a mistake, but the woman’s badge said it quite clearly:
Rosemary
.

Paula had been worried Rosemary Mulvany would see right through her, but luckily the woman barely stopped to draw breath as she ushered her into the inner room. ‘Ah now you’d be PJ Maguire’s wee girl, would you, I do be talking to Pat O’Hara at times she’s a lovely woman she’s always telling me Paula this, Paula that, she’d a notion of you for her fella, Aidan is it you call him, and he does be running the paper now – is that right?’

‘Eh – yes.’ Paula’s hands were soaking in a plastic bowl of acetone and she was already regretting the whole thing. ‘And what about yourself, Rosemary? Are you from Ballyterrin originally?’

‘Oh aye, born and bred. Did my training at the college over there.’ Pink tongue poking out from her chapped lips, Rosemary was bending to file Paula’s nails with vigorous strokes.

Paula winced; it was like being assaulted with an emery board. ‘Now, you’re not the Rosemary who’s married to a Mick, are you? Pat mentions a lot of people.’ She could see Rosemary’s left hand was bare.

‘Oh no, love, footloose and fancy-free, me.’ She gave a tobacco-rattling laugh. ‘Never been married, no weans. Just this place.’

‘Oh right? Because Pat was telling me you used to step out with someone, who was it now . . .’ Paula trailed off. Outside she could hear voices.

‘Excuse me, miss, I have every right to get a pedicure.’

‘You can’t be going in there! It’s ladies only!’

‘You can’t discriminate by sex, it’s Article Something of the Human Rights convention . . .’

Oh Jesus. Aidan, already. She’d told him not to do this. Paula pulled her hands back out of the
solution, and met the woman’s eyes. Kind, bloodshot. Puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, Rosemary.’ That was all she had time to say, because at that point Aidan burst in through the bamboo curtains.

‘Is this where I can get my legs waxed?’

Rosemary pushed back her stool and stared from Paula to Aidan. She looked at the little receptionist, who was desperately wringing her hands. She sighed. ‘Never worry, Aimée. Why don’t you go on home early, pet.’

After the girl had gone, and the spilled manicure solution had been wiped up, Rosemary seemed upset most of all by the fact that Paula had booked her appointment under false pretences. ‘I was all excited, love. You’ve not had a manicure since the day you were born, that’s easy to see. I’d have done you some lovely acrylic tips.’

‘You’re very kind, Rosemary, and really, I’m sorry we did it this way.’ Paula was going to kill Aidan for his amateur dramatics. ‘We just wanted to ask you some things.’

‘You want to know about Eamonn, is that it?’ Rosemary looked between them. ‘Well, this day was always coming. Don’t know about yousuns, but I need a wee drink.’

Having filled three glass beakers from the whiskey bottle stashed in her beauty cabinet, Rosemary sighed and swilled hers round. ‘You’d hardly credit it now, but I was the belle of the ball when I met Eamonn Carr. Seventeen years old. Size six, lovely red hair, I had. Everyone said, oh, the Carr boy’s off to law school, he won’t want some girl who’s doing beauty therapy and working in her mammy’s corner shop.’

‘But he did?’ Paula spoke gently. Aidan kept quiet, mercifully, nursing his whiskey very
carefully. She watched from the corner of her eye to see did he drink it.

‘Aye, for a time. He was at the university, then doing his law training down in Dublin, but he got with me every time he came home. Then one day he comes back and she’s on his arm instead.’

‘Angela, you mean.’

Rosemary’s face twisted. ‘She’s lovely-looking. You’ve seen her? I was surprised she could show her face back in the town again, poor girl, but I knew I was beat. Well, I never set my cap at him again. But a few years on, didn’t he come knocking on my door. Missed me, he said. All the usual, she doesn’t understand me and she’s so cold and – well, the usual shite.’

Paula listened closely.

‘But you go along with it, don’t you, love?’ She gave Aidan and Paula a keen glance, but thankfully didn’t ask about their relationship. Paula wouldn’t have known what to tell her. ‘So, there you go. Next thing you’re over forty and you’ve no man or weans of your own. But he still comes round, love. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘Ms Mulvany . . . Rosemary. I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but did you ever see Eamonn’s children at all?’

‘Oh aye, I saw them round the place with their mammy and that big jeep of hers. Off to ballet, tap, all that.’

‘And the oldest?’

‘Cathy.’ Rosemary nodded. ‘She was a pretty wee thing. I can’t get over what happened to her, I really can’t. Haven’t seen him since – well, I wouldn’t – but he knows how bad I’m feeling for him. I’m sure he knows that. I left some flowers, over where they found her. A wee teddy bear. God love her.’ Her eyes quivered with tears.

‘When did you last see Cathy? Do you remember?’ Aidan was leaning in. Paula was relieved to see he’d put the glass of whiskey down, untouched, on the side.

Rosemary wiped her eyes. ‘Course, love. I saw her at his office. I go in to see him sometimes in the Town Hall, bring him a wee bit of lunch.
She’s
always feeding him all that healthy stuff, salad and what-have-you. He’s a working man, for God’s sake. A sausage bap won’t kill him. But that day the wee one was
coming out of his office – Cathy. Looked upset. God help me, I just ran out, wasn’t sure if she’d know me, or maybe say something to her mammy. You know how it is.’

‘And when was this?’ Paula asked.

‘Well, that was the thing. I remembered after, when it was on the news. It must have been the last day she lived, poor wean.’ Rosemary crossed herself.

Paula and Aidan exchanged a quick pulsing glance. ‘You mean – you saw her that Friday? When she disappeared?’

‘Aye, that’d be it.’

‘And you didn’t come forward?’ Paula’s head was swimming with the smell of whiskey and acetone.

‘No, come on now, love. I didn’t want to make any trouble. How’d I explain what I was doing there? Anyway, she was only seeing her daddy, wasn’t she? I heard on the news it was later she disappeared, on her way home.’

‘And this was lunchtime?’ Please God she remembered the time.

Rosemary thought about it. ‘I’ve appointments through the day usually, so I don’t take my lunch till late. Hang on a wee minute.’ She got up and rifled through the A4 hard-backed notebook that lay on her counter. ‘Friday, Friday . . . Aye, there you go. I’d a one o’clock massage, so it’d have been, what, about half two by the time I went up there and brought his lunch and all, stood in that queue, it does be awful busy now in town, you wouldn’t believe it.’

So if Cathy had been at her father’s office at half two, why had her friend Anne-Marie apparently seen her leaving school at three? ‘Does he know – Eamonn? Does he know you saw Cathy that day?’

Rosemary shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him since, like I say. Did he not tell you himself,
that she was down with him?’

Paula and Aidan looked at each other. Aidan lunged forward for the beautician’s hand. ‘Thank you, Rosemary. You’re a godsend, do you know that? I’m sorry me and herself are after bursting in on you. We’re just trying to find who did this, you know?’

Rosemary pinked up. ‘Ah, now, you’re OK. I remember your daddy, son. He was a good man and all.’

Aidan’s face gave a brief spasm and he stood up. ‘Thanks. Paula, let’s go.’

She had to try. ‘Rosemary . . . I don’t suppose you’d tell this to the police.’

The woman smiled a little, tired, getting old. ‘Ah, love. What good would it do? I wouldn’t hurt them for the world, Angela and her weans. Not when they’ve lost the wee girl.’

‘OK. Thanks anyway. You’ve been a big help.’

Outside in the deserted street, they stood in the cold breeze. Seven o’clock, the long winter dark settling in, pools of orange light under street lamps. Paula wrapped her coat round her as Aidan opened the car door. ‘So?’

‘So what?’ He opened her side and she got into the tobacco-smelling interior.

‘Jesus, it reeks in here. When are you going to quit?’

He fumbled for his cigarette packet. ‘When I’ve rooted out corruption and scandal at every level of Ballyterrin society.’

‘You’ll be dead of emphysema by then. So, what are we going to do now?’

He frowned. ‘Cathy went to her da’s the day she disappeared. He never told the police that?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Exactly. Hmm. But I can’t tell Guy, can I? None of this is admissible.’

‘No, but she’d never have come forward
anyway. At least now you know.’