The Lost (40 page)
Eamonn Carr’s shed, despite being used as a prison, did not have a sturdy lock, and Aidan was holding a crowbar he’d somehow acquired. Paula made a mental note to ask him where, then wondered how hard she’d been hit on the head. She focused. Aidan was swinging his weapon wildly at Eamonn Carr. ‘Get those ropes off her. What the hell are you playing at, man?’
Eamonn was now speaking calmly, but his hands were shaking. ‘She was trespassing on my property. I’ve a right to protect my family.’
‘Aye, we know what you’ve been up to with your
family.’ The crowbar was trembling as Aidan tried to insert himself between her and the man. ‘Wee Cathy comes home one day and then a week later she’s in the canal with her throat cut. Even the bloody useless Missing Persons’ Unit could work that one out eventually.’
Paula sucked all the air she could into her battered lungs. ‘Aidan!
Shut up!
’
Eamonn moved so quickly they hardly saw. He slipped his hand behind him into the workbench, and when it came up he was holding something black and solid. Of course, Paula’s dazed mind thought, his father – of course Patsy would have had a few round the place. Then she realised that where he’d got the gun from wasn’t what she should be worrying about, but rather the fact that it was pointing at Aidan’s head.
For a moment, the only sound in the shed was
the rain drumming onto the bitumened roof. Paula was twisted painfully in the chair, Aidan frozen between her and Eamonn, who was holding the gun out calmly, in the same manner with which he’d offered a cup of tea not a million years ago. Then the window was lit by a bloom of purple light and a bang which made them all jump – a firework. Eamonn fumbled the gun for a second, and she saw how close to the edge he was. Aidan took advantage of it to grab for the shiny black barrel; Paula squeezed her eyes shut as the men tussled, every cell in her body waiting for the bang, the smell of smoke . . . It didn’t come. She opened her eyes. Eamonn had righted himself and was still holding the gun at Aidan’s head.
Aidan, now backed into the corner, met her eyes and tentatively lifted his arms. ‘All right, no need to lose the head, Eamonn, or mine, ha ha. One of ould Patsy’s, is it?’
Eamonn sighed, as if irritated by this reference to his father. ‘You’re a cheeky fecker, O’Hara. Always were. Loudmouthed like your own da.’
‘And look what happened to him. Patsy know anything about it, you reckon?’
Oh shut up, Aidan, shut up, shut up!
Now wasn’t the time for this.
Eamonn shut one eye, either mulling things over or taking aim. ‘He got shot in the head, your father.’
‘Yeah. Didn’t think these things ran in the family, but . . .’ Aidan caught Paula’s agonised look and raised his hands higher. ‘All right, all right, let’s take it easy.
I’ll put down my offensive weapon if you do the same.’ He laid the crowbar against the wall with exaggerated care.
Eamonn held firm for a minute, then lowered the gun, rubbing the arm that held it as if it was heavy. It looked heavy, dull and black. ‘I never wanted any of this to happen. You should have let it be. It was all there for you, a suspect, a weapon in the travellers’ camp, for the love of God, but you kept poking your noses in. Why couldn’t you let it be? Close the case up? Jesus, if you’d any idea how much was let slide in the old days.’
‘But it’s not the old days,’ Paula said, hearing her own voice high and weedy. ‘You know it’s not. That’s all past. Your father died for it, and so did Aidan’s. Come on now. Think about your wee girls, and your boy, and let’s stop all this.’
Eamonn looked between them, the gun now hanging uselessly at his side. ‘I can’t.’ He sounded almost regretful.
‘Course you can. We can sort all this out, we can protect Angela, we can take care of the kids. It’ll all be fine. If we can just talk it over . . .’ Her hands were still tied. She was making frantic head-motions to Aidan to try to grab the gun. His eyes were dark, frightened. He shook his head.
No
. It was too risky in the small space.
She tried again. ‘Eamonn, my hands are really hurting like this. Could you let me go, do you think? Imagine if someone had Angela, hurting her like this. I know you want to protect her, but it doesn’t have to come out about who she is. No one has to know. Anyway it wasn’t her fault, whatever she did. She was only twelve. No one would blame her.’
He was shaking his head. ‘You don’t understand. You think you know it all, but you don’t know the half of it.’
‘Well, try me.’ She shifted her hands against the coarse ropes, trying to ease the pressure. ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt Cathy. She was upset, wasn’t she, when she found out
about her mother. She was going to expose her, was that it? A teenage girl, fighting with her mum, not understanding who she could hurt—’
‘No!’ The gun was up again. ‘I told you. You don’t understand.’
‘You just had to protect Angela, so you followed Cathy home when she ran out of your office, and there was a row in the kitchen, and then . . . you never meant to do it, did you?’
‘
No!
For God’s sake, do you ever listen?’ She flinched as his voice rang out. ‘I know you think it was me – that
I
did it to her. My wee Cathy.’ He paused for a moment. ‘She was my first baby, you know that? I thought, when she came, everything would be all right, all the problems – my da, Angela being so strange sometimes . . . I thought it’d all be OK. She’d be the first Carr not hiding under her bed from the men at the door with guns.’
‘Eamonn—’
‘
Shut up, will you!
You never stop talking, and everything you say is wrong. I didn’t hurt my Cathy. I’d say it was me, if it’d help, I’d do that. But it’s too late now. Too late for that.’
Paula stared at him. From day one, when she’d first come to the house, the suspicion had been growing in her like a hard kernel, how his wife had sat on the sofa, catatonic, how she’d flinched when he put his arms round her, how terrified she’d been when Paula tried to talk to her at the house. Then finding the knife at the traveller site – and the missing cat – she’d been sure it was Eamonn. Not Ed Lazarus, although he’d certainly played his part in the destruction of Cathy and other girls in the town. The girl’s own father.
Now she looked into Eamonn’s eyes and she wasn’t sure any more. Why would he lie? He was the one holding the gun. ‘Then what . . .’
‘Paula,’ Aidan interrupted softly, his hands still aloft.
‘That’s why I came. She was gone, when I went to look for her.’
‘Who?’
‘Maddy Goldberg. She saw me in the crowd and she ran. I chased her but she got away. She had a car – a silver Polo.’
‘Oh my God. Really?’
Eamonn was looking blank. Was this one piece of the puzzle he didn’t know?
Paula looked away from the gun’s dark muzzle and tried to explain. ‘Eamonn, did you ever wonder about the baby – Angela’s baby?’ She saw his face contract, remembering that Cathy had been his first child, but not his wife’s.
‘No. She never talked about it until – until Cathy showed me all that stuff.’
‘I think Angela’s daughter – it was a girl, Eamonn, I’m sorry – well, I think she was trying to find her birth mother. I think she came to find Angela.’
Confusion crumpled his face. ‘But I thought . . . it said in the papers the wean went to the States, to be adopted.’
‘She did. But she came back to Ireland, to Ballyterrin. I’m fairly sure, anyway. Eamonn, I think she was working at the Mission.’
He made a strangled noise in his throat.
‘I think she made friends with Cathy – on purpose, trying to get close to the family. I think it was her who told Cathy’s friends about Angela, and gave them the papers. You said you wondered where she got them, didn’t you?’
‘Oh Christ.’ Still holding the gun, he clawed at his head. ‘Oh good holy God. That’s why – we could have stopped it then. Maybe my Cathy would still be alive.’
This time Aidan interpreted Paula’s frantic eye-signals correctly. He moved forward and touched the man on the arm; Eamonn shrugged him off violently, catching Aidan’s face with the end of the gun and Paula shut her eyes
again, every muscle rigid. But Aidan didn’t flinch, even though she saw that the metal had broken the skin of his cheek and blood oozed.
He said, ‘I think she went to find Angela, this Maddy girl. She’s very unstable, maybe violent – so I’m thinking we should go and find your wife. Where is she, Eamonn? Where’s Angela?’
The man looked round at them. ‘I never wanted any of this to happen.’
‘We know. But we need to find Angela now. So if you’d just let Paula there go . . .’
Eamonn swung the gun round, eyes narrowed. ‘You have to come with me. I can’t just let you walk away, after all this.’
‘We’ll come,’ said Paula quietly. ‘We’ll find her. Just please, let me go. I can’t feel my arms.’
He held the gun trembling in one hand as he felt behind him in the workbench again. For a moment a knife blade flashed green as another firework went off, and they all jumped. Then Eamonn passed it to Aidan. ‘Cut her free.’
Outside, the air was damp and clean, spiced with smoke and sulphur. Paula took in deep lungfuls, trying to work some feeling back into her arms. Eamonn still gripped her left elbow, pushing her over the lush wet grass, where her boots left deep, damp footprints. The security light came on, dazzling, illuminating their strange procession. The man with the gun, dressed in a crumpled black suit. Aidan in front, walking backwards so he could watch Paula, still in his old T-shirt and jeans, skin pale in the darkness. And Paula herself, stumbling in the wet as Eamonn pushed her along.
At the gate he let go his grip, training the gun on her. ‘Don’t move.’ With his free hand he reached into his trouser pocket, then threw something at Aidan. The
gleam of keys in the air. ‘You – drive. I’ll say where. Don’t try anything. If you’re smart– and if you’re half the man your da was you’ll be doing well – just do what I say. If I have to hurt you, I will.’ She imagined Eamonn’s father saying the same words to hapless informants, teenage tearaways. That ruthlessness, bred in the bone. But this wasn’t the time to think of the past.
‘Don’t speed,’ Eamonn instructed Aidan as they climbed into the car. He sat in the back with Paula, the gun pointed at her. ‘We don’t want to get picked up by any patrols. Nice and steady. Head out to the bypass and then I’ll tell you more.’
It seemed to take forever to drive the black people-carrier through Ballyterrin, the streets crowded with revellers in costume. There was a heavy police presence outside the bars and clubs, and Paula could feel the tension coming off the man, the gun poking into her side. Sometimes Eamonn would let it drop, and she would hold her breath, trying to catch Aidan’s eye in the mirror. Then he would remember and grip it firmly, making her gasp and bite her lip. They were nearing the outskirts of town when a shrill noise made them all jump. The gun pushed into Paula’s neck, right over where the blood pulsed fast, and she smothered a cry. ‘It’s my phone. I’m sorry. It’s ringing.’
Eamonn withdrew the gun. ‘See who it is.’
She fumbled in the pocket of her black jacket. The screen was flashing up Guy’s name. ‘It’s my boss.’ Finally, and too late.
‘Answer it and tell him you’re fine. I don’t want them looking for you.’
‘I can’t!’ How could she lie to Guy, at a moment like this?
‘You’ll have to.’ He pressed the metal in harder to her skin and she gulped.
‘Hello, Inspector? Is everything
OK?’ Surely he would hear how hoarse she was, how terrified.
‘Oh, there you are.’ She could hear the relief in his voice. ‘Listen, Katie’s been spotted. The woman at the bus station remembered selling her a ticket to Dublin. She paid in fifty-pees, apparently. Must have raided my change pot.’
‘She’s OK then?’
‘She was OK earlier today. Fiacra’s at the ferry office now. We think she was going to travel to England, to her mum.’
She tried to keep her voice steady. Eamonn was silent, and she could feel the tension in his arm. In the front, Aidan’s eyes were fixed on the road. ‘That’s great, Guy, really great. I’m sure she’ll turn up safe and sound.’
‘I hope so. I’m onto the police on the other side. Got a few contacts. The other news is we arrested Lazarus. Found him skulking round the concert in town as you said.’
She closed her eyes. ‘Oh. That’s good. He give you anything more?’
‘Well, he denies having anything to do with Katie, of course, but we won’t let him go just yet.’ Guy’s voice hardened. ‘Corry’s working on him now. I reckon he’s got a lot to tell us about his dad too, and why his mother was so scared she had to run away and hide herself for years.’
‘He won’t like being in with Corry. He’s not a fan of women in authority, I don’t think.’ Amazing how normal she could sound, with Eamonn quietly listening, gun gripped tight.
‘No. But what I wanted to tell you was we’ve busted the Goldberg girl’s alibi. That teacher at Cathy’s school – Sarah Kenny – apparently she had a fit of conscience when she heard Katie was missing too. She admitted she’d lied – it
was
her car, the one we were after. A silver Polo. She lends it to Goldberg sometimes. What we think happened is that Maddy picked Cathy up that Friday afternoon, when she got out of Crawford’s car.’
‘Oh.’ Timing. Wasn’t it everything? If only
she’d known this a few hours before, things could have been so different. But that was always the way. ‘You think she was the killer, then?’ She was very aware of Eamonn listening.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure what her motive would be, but we’ve a warrant out for her now – she’s to be approached with caution. She’s definitely mixed up in it somehow. Where are you, anyway? Gerard said he left you at the cathedral.’
‘I’m . . . I was checking out a lead I got from one of the girls. I’ll be a few hours.’
‘Of course. You should go home. I’m sorry I dragged everyone out. I was just so worried. I started thinking maybe we were wrong about Cathy, maybe there really was a serial killer out there. But hopefully Katie’s not in danger. God, I hope so.’