The Lost (26 page)
They sat, looking out at the desolate evening street, the dry breeze that blew rubbish across the train tracks. Aidan flicked the lighter over his Marlboro Red and breathed in. The faintly spicy smell took her back twelve years.
‘Who do you like for it, Maguire? The da, or the Mission? What does your gut say?’
She chewed on one nail, slightly regretting the attempted manicure. ‘They both seem sort of off. But I don’t know how, yet. The father’s dodgy, I’m sure of it, and the Mission gives me a very bad feeling, and of course there’s all those cases, and the links Maeve dug up, but as to which of them I like for it, I couldn’t say.’
‘Mm. I wonder if there’s even a difference, you know.’
She looked at him sharply. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘Never mind. Just a hunch, or something.’
She sighed. ‘Guy – Inspector Brooking – he’s told me to focus on Majella. I’m not sure I can go to him with this, Aidan. Not unless we find more, or if we can link the Mission to the ones from the eighties. I can’t even prove God’s Shepherd were here in 1985. I’ve found nothing so far.’
‘But I could look into it.’
‘That was my thinking. You are Ballyterrin’s premier investigative journalist, after all.’ But her heart wasn’t in the jibe, and both of them sat, lost in thought.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Aidan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘You know this fella Carr – it’s not just the council he controls.’
She didn’t understand. ‘Hmm?’
‘The paper. How’d you think I got it back on its feet?’
‘You mean—?’
‘Aye. I’m in hock to my
armpits, to a certain company owned by . . . guess who?’
‘Oh.’ She watched him fiddle with the keys. ‘Be careful, Aidan.’
‘Never wanted to be the type that cared about money. Publish and be damned, that’s my motto. But—’
‘But it’s your da’s paper. I know. Don’t risk it, Aidan. It’s not worth it.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ He turned the key in the ignition. ‘I’ll drop you back.’
Aidan started the car, and turned it round in the street in front of the Mission building. As the headlights swept the gloom, they saw it wasn’t entirely deserted. ‘Oops, looks like we’ve disturbed a courting couple.’ Aidan turned his head to reverse, but Paula saw the faces in the moment of dazzle. They didn’t turn in time to see her or Aidan, but she recognised the pair in each other’s arms, faces pressed together against the cold.
The first woman was Maddy Goldberg, the girl from the Mission band, dark hair blowing in the breeze. The second, huddled against the wall, was harder to see, but Paula could tell from the glimpse of pale skin and freckles that it was Sarah Kenny. The teacher who’d noticed Cathy crying, on the last day she was seen alive.
Maddy and Sarah. Sarah and Maddy.
It made sense, in a way – of course, the teacher had been the one to bring to the Mission to the school. Their relationship was unusual in Ballyterrin, perhaps, but they were doing nothing wrong. All the same, something about it made Paula uneasy as she plodded into work the next day. Maybe the idea of the two being close to Cathy, both being privy to her secrets, while hiding a huge secret of their own.
Unable to tell Guy what she’d seen, or what she’d learned from Rosemary, at least without getting into even bigger trouble, Paula did her best to understand the Majella Ward case. She was conscious that, as the girl’s family had protested, most of their time and energy had gone on Cathy. If she could link Majella to Eamonn Carr, it might be the break she needed, so she threw herself into learning about this other girl, who despite everything had remained something of an enigma.
Majella had also last been seen leaving school on a Friday, two weeks before Cathy’s disappearance. Wanting to get a sense of her, fix her in mind, Paula took advantage of a slack afternoon to drive up to Majella’s school. PJ had finally convinced her to take his Volvo, and leave the hire car back. Reluctantly, she’d done it. The costs were starting to spiral and there was no end in sight for this case. It didn’t mean she couldn’t still leave any time she wanted. Of course it didn’t.
Ballyterrin Institute was noticeably more rundown than St Bridget’s; there was graffiti on the beige walls and an unappealing seventies’ decor in the
echoing hallways. The Head was a tall stooped man in a stained red sports jacket, hair thinning on top. His hand when he shook hers was chilled. ‘The heating’s packed in. I’m Mr Campbell. I’m afraid we can tell you very little about Majella. Her teachers found her a pleasant girl, but unfortunately her parents chose to send her so infrequently, she never got the chance to shine. We see this all the time with the traveller girls. She’d have been married off very soon, in any case.’
They were standing in the lobby of the school, vast and cold, a staircase leading up to higher floors. Someone had put up posters, perhaps in an attempt to add cheer, but they sagged at the corners and flapped in the draught.
‘Did no one think it was strange, though, when she didn’t turn up for two weeks?’ Paula asked.
He saw her face. ‘Miss Maguire, you must understand that we have one thousand pupils here. The grammar schools cream off all those with good exam prospects, so we’re left with children who have little desire to be here, and will never progress beyond a HND in childcare, or a joiner apprenticeship, if they’re lucky. I do what I can for those who want to learn. A pupil who never comes to school, and will be married and likely pregnant by the age of seventeen – well, that pupil is already lost to us.’
She didn’t know what to say to that. ‘Majella was last seen leaving here?’
‘We always have a teacher on home-time duty, in case fights break out. Majella was noted walking out when the bell rang, and as far as I know hasn’t been seen since.’
She waited for him to ask if Majella was likely to be in danger. He didn’t. ‘I see. Thank you for your time, sir.’
‘I only hope it helps.’ He turned, tired and distracted, to bawl at two teenage boys dashing down the corridor: ‘WE DO NOT RUN IN THIS SCHOOL! My office,
now
.’
Paula slipped out. The schoolyard was
beginning to fill with children in navy uniforms, streaming out of their classes and down to the gates with the unfocused energy of puppies. In one clump of younger girls, arms crossed tight together over new breasts, she recognised a face.
Theresa Ward recognised Paula, too. ‘Miss? Did you find Maj? Did you come to get me?’ She detached herself from her cohorts and sidled over.
‘No, I’m sorry, Theresa, I’m just asking questions. What about you, anything new? You didn’t get hurt in the riot?’
‘Naw. Me brother got his finger broke by them peelers.’ The girl’s uniform was shabby, the navy leaving her pale face wan and washed out, so she looked very young and vulnerable. ‘Da’s on the booze most nights, Mammy’s on the warpath. All me da’s brothers and that are looking for Maj, but nobody knows nothing.’
The police knew little more. ‘Well, if you think of anything, you can always call me.’
‘Miss – Paula? You know that other girl, they found her and she was dead, like?’
‘Listen, Theresa – we’ve still no proof there’s any connection to Majella’s case. We just have to try not to worry until we know we should.’
Theresa nodded dubiously. ‘Somebody stabbed her, it said on the news. In her neck, like. That girl Cathy.’
‘Yes. But the best you can do to help your sister is keep your eyes and ears open. Anything you see, or if you just want to chat, you ring me.’
The girl still looked doubtful. ‘She’s been gone a month now, missus. How could she be gone a month and nobody’s seen her, like?’
That was the question Paula didn’t want to answer. ‘I don’t know, Theresa. Let’s both just keep looking.’
The next day, as is often the way, several
things happened at once. First, Paula spotted a familiar name in her inbox when she got into work that morning. It had been so long since she’d received an email from Aidan that it gave her the strangest sense of vertigo. For a moment, she was right back to that day when she was eighteen, when the message had come from him in Dublin –
I did something
. She shook it off, clicking on his name. Why was he emailing her, when she’d been ringing him for days with no response? He was always like this. You’d get close, and you’d think everything was fine, and then you wouldn’t hear from him for a month.
Found out Lazarus’s real name, it said succinctly. His ma was Irish, ran away from home in the 80s, turned up in Birmingham pregnant. Guess what her name was?
For a moment Paula thought he really wasn’t going to tell her, but then she spotted an attachment to the email. It was a scan of an old birth certificate, crumpled and handwritten.
Father’s name: unknown
. She glanced down quickly to see the mother’s name and there it was:
Rachel Reilly
.
A small noise escaped Paula’s lips. Had Rachel really been hiding all that time, not dead at all – pregnant like Dympna Boyle and so many others who’d been to God’s Shepherd churches? She remembered what Dympna had said to her father:
He’ll take her away.
She fired back an email to Aidan
: Is this for real?
Aidan must have been at his computer, because a reply quickly popped up. She clicked on it.
True as God, Maguire. I bet you’re wondering now who the da was. Remember Maeve’s idea about Ron Almeira?
Of course she did, the American pastor who’d been in Ireland in the seventies and eighties, the founder of God’s Shepherd.
Check out this pic. Handy to be sitting on newspaper archives sometimes.
She opened the attachment and as it loaded, found herself looking at another
old newspaper clipping. The date on the top was May 1985. Two months before Rachel Reilly went missing, three months before Alice Dunne.
Pastor Ron Almeira meets Ballyterrin businessmen. Church group to open in town.
There were lots of men in suits standing round, but her eye was drawn by the one in the middle. His face slowly took shape as the picture cleared.
Come on, damn you.
There he was. For a moment she was confused – what was
he
doing there? He’d hardly have been born in 1985 . . . Then she understood.
Holy Christ, Aidan, what have you found?
‘Avril?’ Paula kept her voice steady.
‘Mm?’ The analyst looked up from her desk.
‘You’re still looking into the Mission staff, are you, for any prior convictions?’
‘Well, I did, but there’s nothing coming up. They’re all clean.’
‘Try the name Ed Reilly. That might throw something up.’
Avril looked curious, but nodded. ‘OK.’
‘And Avril – if there’s nothing there, you could try another name too. Ed Almeira. Try that and see.’
She’d barely had time to let this sink in – Rachel Reilly alive, and possibly the mother of Ed Lazarus – when Fiacra came sloping in, late as usual. Avril made a great show of typing fast and Paula smiled at him distractedly.
He yawned, dumping his sports bag on the desk. ‘Hey Paula, guess who rang me back yesterday.’
‘Who?’ Paula was still staring at Aidan’s email.
‘Annie Miller’s cousin, that’s who.’
She glanced at him sharply. ‘And?’
‘Well, not much. She lives in Liverpool now – Fiona’s her name. Nice girl, sounds like. A physiotherapist.’
Paula wondered if she should say something about flirting with witnesses. ‘How old is she? Does she remember her cousin?’
‘Ah, not that well. She was three or four when Annie died, and then her ma – that’s Annie’s auntie – moved the family to England. But she did say they’d talk about it a lot, and that her ma always said
Annie was very holy. Like the kind who’d be licking the altar rails, you know.’ He was fiddling with his keyboard, extracting it from under the mess of paper on his desk.
‘And did she go to a church group?’
‘Well, Fiona didn’t know that. Just that Annie’d have been the type. And her ma remembered Annie having a big row with her own ma, the sister, just before she died. Sarah said it would always come up if she wanted to go out to something and her daddy wouldn’t let her. Her ma would say, look what happened to our Annie. Let the child live her life, that kind of thing.’
Paula took this in. ‘OK. Well, that’s sort of useful, I suppose. Thanks.’
‘No bother.’ Cheerfully, he unwrapped a sausage roll and began cramming it in his mouth. Avril tutted, very quietly.
Paula had thought over this new piece of news for a while, and concluded it told her nothing definite, when her phone rang, and the next thing happened. At first she thought she was hearing a seagull screech down the line. ‘Hello?’
‘Missus, is that you?’
‘Yes, this is Dr Maguire – who’s that?’
‘Theresa. Theresa Ward, yah know?’
She sat bolt upright at her desk. ‘Are you OK, Theresa?’
‘Missus, is it all right to be phoning you? Is anyone listening?’
‘No, it’s just me.’ She glanced round the office. Just Avril in one corner, her brow furrowed at the computer, and Fiacra in another one, slumped in his seat, a
tinny sound escaping from his headphones.
‘You said I was to ring you if I heard anything, aye?’
‘And did you?’
Silence from Theresa. ‘Missus, you know what a matchmaker is?’
‘I think so. A lady who comes round when you want to get married?’ Sort of a dating service for travellers, Paula thought.
‘Aye. Some ould busybody. Well, missus, she came round last night, when Da was in the pub, and she was in talking to Mammy for ages. They sent me out. I mean for Jaysus’ sake, I’m not a wean.’ Theresa’s voice stung with indignation.
‘But you heard something?’
‘Course I did. Walls is like cardboard. I heard them saying about our Maj.’
Paula frowned. ‘Majella? What about her?’
‘Who she’d be wed to. And I heard her say – missus, I couldn’t hear the lot, but I’d swear blind Mammy said Rathkeale. Me Auntie Jacinta lives in Rathkeale, doesn’t she?’
Paula was trying desperately to understand. ‘Theresa? Do you mean . . . do you think your mum knows where your sister is?’ Silence. ‘Theresa?’