The Lost (7 page)

‘But you don’t think so?’

‘Naw.’ She was scornful. ‘Hit the fecking roof, so he did. He’s not, what’s his name, Robert de Niro, y’know?’

Guy looked puzzled but Paula tried to decipher this. ‘You mean, he’s not much of an actor? So he must not have known where she was? I see. What about your mum?’

‘He says jump, she says how high.’ Theresa was going to have a really excellent sneer in a few years. ‘All me uncles are off looking for her round the country now.’

‘Did Majella have any boyfriends, anything like that?’

The girl’s tight ponytail swung as she shook her head. ‘No way, José. Mammy’d have skinned her alive if she went with fellas.’

‘Well, tell me more about her after-school courses – you said computers?’

‘Aye. Like when they reckon you’re too thick to get a job.’ Majella had gone to the high school in town, a non-denominational institute for those who didn’t make the grammar schools, so Paula was afraid there might be some truth in what the girl said.

‘Did she ever mention something about a mission?’

Theresa gave her a suspicious look. ‘You been doing your snooping, missus. Aye, she went there a few times. Mammy’d not have let her, so she never said.’

‘Have you been?’ Paula was aware of Guy’s warning looks, but ignored them.

‘Jaysus, no – load of Holy Joes clapping and singing about God and shite. Haveta be fourteen anyhow.’

Guy was frowning, so
Paula smiled at the girl. ‘Thank you, Theresa. We’re going to do our best to find your sister, I promise.’

Theresa nodded as if she didn’t quite believe this. ‘Missus? You reckon some pervert took her? Her and that other wee girl?’

‘Most people who go missing come back safe and sound,’ said Paula truthfully, and the girl relaxed a bit.

‘Mammy’ll feckin’ skin her when she’s back.’

Well, there was an incentive to return.

They were on their way to the car when a banging broke out and Paula flinched. ‘
Peeler peeler peeler, out out out!
’ From between the caravans came the slam of fists on sheet metal; the men were punching the sides.

‘What are they saying?’ Guy called out over the din.

‘That we should get out! We’re the peelers, apparently.’

‘OK. Well, let’s go then.’ His hand gripped her elbow, secure.

‘Aye, yis useless fecks, when you gonna find my Majella?’ The man who wobbled over had a dark moustache and ponytail. A tall man, and powerfully built, but his face seemed to be crumpling in on itself. You could smell the booze at ten paces.

‘Paddy Ward,’ said Guy quietly. ‘Jesus, he’s gone downhill.’ He raised his voice. ‘Mr Ward, we understand it’s a very upsetting time, but we are doing all we can.’

‘You don’t give a shite about a traveller girl.’ He swayed slightly.

‘I assure you we are taking it very seriously—’

‘Racist, that’s what you are,’ a woman in white jeans was shouting. ‘None of you care unless we’re after robbing your roof tiles.’

There was a chorus of assent, but Paula was looking at the man’s eyes. Glazed as they were with drink, he was in real pain. When she
spoke, it was to him. ‘Mr Ward – I know you miss her. I know you’ve been looking yourself, yes? We’ll help. We’ll do what we can. There’s every chance she’s safe somewhere.’

He swayed, the hand with the bottle of Buckfast dropping to his side. ‘My wee girl. You don’t give a shite.’

People were patting Paddy Ward, leading him away and casting angry looks at Paula and Guy. She felt a small tug on her jacket and Theresa was there. ‘Sorry about me da. His head’s wrecked over Maj. Thinks yis won’t bother, now this posh girl’s gone and all.’

‘I promise we will.’ But even as she said it, Paula’s heart sank. Could she promise that?

‘Jesus,’ said Guy as they reached the safety of the car. ‘Didn’t see that coming.’

Paula shut the door gratefully on the dry interior. ‘You know how for years we’d no ethnic minorities? ’Cos who’d want to come here, with all that violence? Well, the travellers were our only minority, the ones that got all our racism, and it turned out we had a
lot
stored up.’

He looked at her keenly again. His eyes were grey, she noticed; unreadable. ‘Why did you ask about the Mission?’

‘Just something Cathy’s friend said. It must be some kind of church group, meets on Fridays. A youth ministry.’

‘Cathy went there too?’

‘Her friend said so. It was all she was allowed to do, pretty much.’

He started the engine, looking out at the sleeting rain. ‘If that’s true, you know what it means?’

She did, but she said, ‘What?’

‘It’s the first link we’ve found between the girls.’

Chapter Seven

‘As
you can see, my analysis of Cathy suggests she has a very restrictive home life, with no room for transgression. At fifteen that often leads to rebellion – self-harm, drinking, early sex. This would support the hypothesis of voluntary absence, or running away. But if she didn’t take any clothes or money, that’s a negative indicator. I think there’s a good chance she will have had a boyfriend – perhaps an older man. She has a phone her parents don’t know about, so we can check the records for that.’

It was the next day, and following another night of rubbish TV (PJ refused to get more than four channels), Paula had woken up early and with a sense of purpose. A few hours in the office had given her time to prepare full risk assessments on each of the girls, which she was now outlining in the meeting room.

Avril Wright was looking disgusted again. Her blond bob was neatly combed, ankles crossed in unladdered tights. ‘Cathy seems a lovely girl. You can’t assume things about her.’

‘Well, you’re right that so far we’ve seen no evidence – except for the fact she’s gone. On the balance of probability, I also think we should be looking more closely at the family, specifically her father.’

Bob Hamilton was apoplectic. ‘Eamonn Carr is a pillar of the community!’

‘Sure – and they never abuse kids, right?’ Everyone fell silent. She ploughed on. ‘Majella Ward has on the surface more vulnerability indicators than Cathy; she’s one of ten children, and no one reported her disappearance for several weeks. Her school is equally out of touch. I’d say it would have been very easy for Majella’s life to fall apart and no one to notice.’

Guy was watching
her across the table, his expression impassive. ‘Have you found anything to suggest the disappearances are linked?’

Paula scrunched up her face. ‘The most likely thing is they’re not, that both girls ran away. But in a town this size, two random cases – well, it’s not very common.’ There was a sort of shift round the table; no one wanted to think what it meant if they weren’t random. ‘Given that the only link we’ve found between the girls is this Mission, I’d recommend starting enquiries there.’

‘OK,’ Guy said, again betraying nothing. ‘You say two cases – you won’t have had time to look into the 1985 ones?’

‘Not much, yet. Were there any similarities with what I’ve outlined?’

‘Some. It’s tenuous – Bob’s going to bring us up to speed.’ He nodded to his deputy.

Bob Hamilton stood up, buttoning the jacket of his straining suit, and started clicking through a PowerPoint to get past the slides they’d had the first day. White-haired, solid, Paula could practically see the Orange sash round his chest. Be nice, she chided herself as the screen warmed into colour. Just because he was probably an Orangeman didn’t mean he wasn’t also perfectly pleasant.

Bob spoke to Guy – conspicuously not to Paula. ‘Alice Dunne and Rachel Reilly both went missing round about the end of summer, 1985. Alice lived just over the border, so her case was handled by the
Gar-da Síoch-án-a
.’ He pronounced the words carefully, with a small glance at Fiacra Quinn. ‘Rachel lived outside town, on a farm. She went for a night out to the disco – never got home.’

Paula was making notes. ‘And she was seventeen?’

‘Aye. And Alice, she was nineteen. Away at university in Dublin.’

‘Hmm.’ That was a big difference, psychologically. A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and a university student. ‘I’ll need to look at all the case details. How did Alice disappear?’

Bob clicked again, getting stuck on the same screen. ‘Er – can’t get this yoke to work.’

Guy said, ‘She went out for the evening to see friends. They found her car by the side of the road, abandoned.’ Paula thought she could hear a hint of irritation in his voice. Just the tiniest hint, like a ripple on water, but nevertheless there.

‘And they never found anything?’

‘Nothing. No trace of either girl, no leads. It doesn’t give us much to work with. There were also some . . . er . . . cross-community tensions in both cases.’

Paula looked at him enquiringly. ‘You mean because Rachel was a Catholic, with the RUC? And Alice—’

‘Alice was
Protestant, living in Éire,’ Guy finished. Nothing marked him out as an outsider more than the fact he called it ‘Éire’.

‘Sergeant?’ Paula put her question to Bob Hamilton. ‘You know that map of cases we had the other day – can you cluster it according to demographic criteria?’

He looked surprised. ‘Religion, you mean?’

‘Not really. I was thinking more of age.’

‘Oh aye.’ But he looked helplessly at the machine until Paula jumped up.

‘Mind if I . . .? OK.’ She fiddled with it for a moment, pressing buttons on the Excel sheet until a bar chart was generated. ‘So, this is the data from around Ballyterrin, see? We have just four teenage girls missing over the past ten years, and all found again quite quickly. So two in a month – that’s big spike. And it’s happened twice now. That’s doubly unusual.’

Gerard Monaghan
was sceptical. ‘But surely girls go missing all the time – it’s the most common group, you said.’

‘That’s right. But for this area,’ she pointed to the screen, where red dots represented each case, ‘it’s a lot, you know?’ Risking more cold looks, she took a deep breath and said, ‘Any chance we can get the same data on suicides?’

‘Lord help us,’ muttered Hamilton, and Paula saw the girl, Avril Wright, look horrified.

‘Er, why?’ Guy asked quietly.

‘Well, there was a suspicious death over the summer, another girl from Cathy’s school called Louise McCourt. Louise also went to the Mission, it seems. So if we can find out more on her—’

Bob’s face was red with outrage. ‘That child’s hardly cold in her grave!’

‘But they might be connected, maybe. There’s a lot of new research coming out that suicide and self-harm can function almost as a trend among teenagers – so if Louise
did
kill herself, perhaps it would give us some insight into Cathy and Majella, their state of mind . . .’ There was a pause where she felt just how far out of line she’d stepped. ‘What about the suicide from 1985 – do we have her name?’

Silence. ‘We’ll get it,’ said Guy, shooting a glance at Bob.

Paula nodded. ‘We should. I think it could be quite significant. We should pull all the data we’ve got on suicides and suspicious deaths, back to and including 1985.’

Bob Hamilton coughed. ‘Suicides aren’t in our remit, God rest them.’

But Guy said, ‘If it can be done quickly. Avril, have you got time to do that?’

Avril pressed her pretty lips together. ‘Well, sir, I am very busy, but—’

‘Excellent,
I’m sure you’ll manage. Now, we’re under a lot of pressure, as Bob says. Not only in finding the missing girls, but also, I suppose, in justifying our existence as a unit.’

A strange kind of sigh went round the table. Avril Wright looked at her neat cuticles; Gerard Monaghan pushed back his chair, and Fiacra Quinn thumbed his eyes. Bob held his laser pointer, crestfallen. Paula looked up enquiringly.

Guy said, ‘There’s been some– criticism. Some people think the money would be better allocated elsewhere – they don’t see missing persons as a priority. And there’s been comment in some sections of the media about the balance of cases we’ve re-opened. Whether it might be . . . weighted more towards one side of the community than the other.’

Paula wasn’t surprised; it was a standard Northern Ireland response. ‘So the funding’s not secure.’

Gerard gave a bitter laugh. ‘When’s it ever? I s’pose you’re used to London. There’s no money round here.’

She decided not to retort that her car had been tail to tail in Jeeps that morning. ‘Well, we’d better get results then.’ No one responded to this peppy statement.

Guy moved on. ‘So Avril and Fiacra, you’re looking into the older cases – make lists, identify areas for review. Lots of the documents are on microfilm, I’m afraid, but we need a complete record. You can call in Paula if you want her input.’ He smiled at her briefly. ‘Gerard’s leading on Cathy and Majella for the local PSNI, and we’ll help where we’re needed. Let’s look at Paula’s finding about the Mission, but we also need to focus on getting through the interviews on the traveller site. We’re looking at a lot of people there, and a lot of criminal records – not necessarily the kind we’re after, of course.’ He cleared his throat to mark a change in tone. ‘Now. I thought it might be nice to welcome Paula with an after-work drink – anyone?’

Avril said primly, ‘I don’t drink, sir.’

Gerard shook his
head. ‘I’ve a football match.’

Fiacra looked as if he might be convinced, but seeing the expressions of the others, he said, ‘Better get home for me dinner.’

‘Well – Sergeant?’

Bob looked shocked. ‘I have my church duties, sir.’

‘Oh well.’ Deflated, Guy turned to Paula as the others filed out.

‘I’d love to, really – but maybe some other time?’ she said. ‘It’s just my dad, I don’t like to leave him . . .’

‘Oh, of course.’ Guy looked disappointed. Paula thought fleetingly of the children in the picture on his desk, the wedding ring. There was nothing she could offer him. Better to say no. She turned to go with an apologetic smile.

Paula was set up on a very old computer in the corner, listening to the younger team members settle in around her. Avril and Fiacra had a hushed, slightly stilted discussion about a TV programme from the night before, and Gerard coughed at one point and asked Fiacra did he follow the football. None of them spoke to Paula. She’d do her reports, but she wanted to look into this Mission herself too. Anne-Marie had said it was on Flood Street, near the hospital. Who would know about it? She lifted the receiver of her desk phone.