The Lost (4 page)

‘But nothing?’

‘Nothing so far. Both
girls have gone, and as far as we can see there’s no connection between them. They’d never even met.’

Paula nodded; she’d made it that far in her reading. ‘The original job offer was to review old cases. I need to ask – what’s changed now? Why is the unit leading on this?’

Glances went round the team. Guy answered quickly. ‘There’s a few reasons. They’re short-staffed at the main station right now – the DCI’s off with some family issues.’ From the corner of her eye, Paula thought she saw Gerard Monaghan frown, and wondered what the story was there. Guy went on: ‘And as I said, in such a serious case it was felt we were well-placed to co-ordinate, make sure the right organisations talk to each other from all over Ireland. You’d be surprised how much information got lost before.’

She probably wouldn’t be, Paula thought, but she let him explain.

‘There’s something else as well. Part of our task is to create a complete database of every missing person in Ireland, North and South, which we’ve now assembled, thanks to Avril’s hard work.’ The girl gave a tight little smile. ‘Well, to be frank – when we ran these new cases through it, we discovered it wasn’t the first time two girls have disappeared from Ballyterrin.’

Paula stared. ‘What?’

Guy moved his pointer again. The rest of the team looked glum. This was for Paula’s benefit, clearly, and they’d already had whatever bad news it contained. ‘This is a map of all the cases we’re currently considering, going back forty years. The dots represent one case each.’ On the screen was a map of Ireland, bisected by the border, and red dots covering it like the start of some pernicious disease. ‘Now if we look at 1985 . . . you wouldn’t remember it, but you might have heard.’ Two more faces had appeared on the screen. These girls were also pretty, also smiling, but their haircuts belonged to a different decade.

Paula breathed. ‘Yes. God. I
do remember now.’ She’d been very young, but the shadow of those disappearances had hung over the town for a long time, even in the middle of bombs and shootings and all the rest those years had brought.

Guy pointed at the screen. ‘These two girls, Rachel Reilly and Alice Dunne, went missing within months of each other, and they never found a trace of either.’

Paula was thinking hard. ‘Wasn’t there another case – a third one?’ She had a vague memory of fear, of everyone talking over and over and sending her out of the room when it came up.

Guy fielded this question too; he clearly knew his stuff. ‘There was a third girl, but she was eventually found hanged in woodland, so the RUC concluded it was an isolated case. Suicide.’

‘And is there any link between then and now?’ She was very aware of her heart, a sort of fuzzy whir like the noise of someone’s iPod through headphones. ‘Anything to say they’re connected?’

‘Not that we’ve found,’ said Guy reluctantly. ‘The ages of the girls, where they were last seen, there are similarities, but everything else is just circumstantial for now. Nevertheless we’re involved, and we’re taking it very seriously. As of now we have no other leads at all.’ He clicked one last time through the pictures, Rachel Reilly and Alice Dunne, Majella Ward and Cathy Carr, nothing in common except they were all from the same town, and they were all missing.

Guy Brooking wasted no
time; she liked that. She liked his clean, efficient movements as he passed them their assignments. Gerard, who was leading on the new cases for the local PSNI, would focus on the north, with Fiacra working south of the border. Avril would analyse the data, look for patterns. Check out the families. Look again for any connection between Cathy and Majella – they went to different schools, but did they have any friends in common? Belong to any clubs, do any hobbies? Anything that might lead to running away – problems at home, exams, boyfriends?

Guy leaned on the back of a chair and Paula saw the glint of a wedding ring. ‘This is a safe town. There’s a good chance, as Paula’s research has shown, that Cathy and Majella went missing voluntarily, independent of each other, and we’ll find them safe. But the clock is ticking, and the second disappearance does increase the likelihood of some foul play.’

The room fell silent for a moment. Paula felt it again, the pulse in her blood, the need to track and find.
Where are you?
They hadn’t just vanished into thin air. That was the thing, it always was. They had to be somewhere – but where?

Guy Brooking raised his hands, dismissing them. ‘OK, everyone. Let’s meet later and debrief.’ He had very nice hands, strong and clean, and Paula realised she was staring at them as the team filed out, the dark man and the girl ignoring her, the Irish guy giving a small nod, the sergeant hurrying past as if he couldn’t even look at her.

‘Paula?’ Guy was watching.

She blinked. ‘Sorry. What did you want me to do?’

‘Come with me a minute.’

The unit was housed in the town’s old police station, where the former RUC had been based before they were burned out during the ’96 Drumcree riots. It had been spruced up with new paint and some second-hand, mismatched office furniture. Paula understood. The idea would be to give the unit a different location, an identity apart from the regular police on the hill above town, where the PSNI were based in a nice modern building but still behind their high security fence. New name, but everything else the same.

Guy’s office was
small but neat, a framed picture of two children on the desk. Boy, girl. Paula scanned the room for insight. West Ham calendar. Books on Ballyterrin. Every inch the hardworking career policeman. He was following her eyes so she stopped nosying and snapped on a smile. ‘So here I am.’

His hands were steepled on the tidy desktop. ‘Do sit down, Paula. I’m sorry you didn’t get much time to prepare before you came. Things rather escalated when Cathy went missing and we realised Majella had too, so we needed you here as soon as possible. How is your father?’

‘Ah, he’ll do. Not used to being dependent.’ That morning, PJ had fallen over in the bathroom and not been able to get up – it was this rather than traffic which had really delayed her.

‘There was something I needed to discuss with you, actually, about your family.’

Not already. She should have been ready for this.

‘Your father. He was an RUC officer, I understand.’

‘Oh,
that
. Yes. Why?’ Maybe he didn’t know the rest. How nice would that be, to meet someone with no preconceptions.
Oh, she’s
that
Maguire girl.

‘I’m new to the area, of course, but as I understand it the Catholic officers had a hard time of it. They were seen as traitors, almost, by the locals?’

‘Stooges, scabs, legitimate targets, yes.’ Bricks in the window, bullets in the post, graffiti on the door. She said, ‘But that’s in the past now.’

‘Hmm. The past
seems quite . . . present round here, I must say.’

‘It does.’ She was thinking of the slogans she’d seen the day before.

‘Do you know why you’re here, Paula?’

‘To make up the Catholic numbers?’ She saw his face and backtracked. ‘You can tell from the names. Irish thing. Bad joke, sorry. I’m here because you’ve got two missing girls, I suppose. That’s my main research background.’

He moved some papers aside and laid his hands on the desk. He had a small scar on his upper lip, she noticed, drawing the eyes to his strong mouth. ‘I saw you speak at that conference in York, you know. “
Psychopathology of the Lost
”.’

‘You did?’ She could feel herself redden.

‘Very impressive. I asked for you on the strength of that – and your background, of course.’ Which made her even surer he knew very little about her ‘background’. ‘You did very well on that Morris case. You seem to have something of an affinity with teenage girls.’

She stopped herself from making a flip remark about boy-band crushes. ‘Most likely group to go missing,’ she said, looking at his lapels to avoid his face. ‘Girls aged thirteen to seventeen, and men aged twenty-four to forty.’

‘I didn’t know that. See, you’ll be an asset.’ Again the neat compliment, and the snap into business. He was a sharp customer, this Guy Brooking, with the wedding ring and no picture of his wife. ‘We’re under pressure for funding here already – I had to work quite hard to get you in. We need to prove we can function cross-border – it’s never been tried before – and we need some quick wins. I don’t know if you’ve followed it,’ he lowered his voice, ‘but since Cathy Carr went missing, there’s been a lot in the media. Her father’s Eamonn Carr – you know, he’s a town councillor, and a very prominent local businessman.’

But no outcry for
the Ward girl, the traveller. Paula said. ‘I notice you didn’t spell it out in the briefing, but you must be thinking about a connection between the old and new cases – some kind of forced abduction, a serial offender?’

Guy winced. ‘We’re doing our best to stop that speculation. Panic won’t do any good. But I must admit, when we realised the pattern it was very worrying. For two girls to go missing is unheard of here – and for it to happen twice . . .’

‘OK. I assume you want victim analysis, risk assessments on all of them. Is that why I’m here?’

‘Yes. But today I’d like you to come with me. We’ll set off in ten, if you’re ready.’ He stood up and held out his hand for her to shake, and when she took it, it was strong and warm, just as she’d imagined.

Chapter Four

Ballyterrin meant ‘Border
Town’ in Irish, the place names mangled and anglicised from long centuries of colonisation. The border ran a mile outside the town, an invisible line cut through fields and farms and EU-financed roads. Sunk for years under the weight of violence, the town had ridden high on the peace dividend and Celtic Tiger economy. But then the recession had come, and now many of the tawdry pound shops and casinos stood empty.

Paula looked out of the window of Guy’s car – his own, very clean, BMW – as they drove down through the town, cradled in the hollow between sea and hills; the docks, the terraced houses, the shuttered-up shops and graffiti. It was all as familiar as the palm of her own hand. She clenched her fingers shut.

Guy was filling her in on the diverse business interests of Eamonn Carr, father of the second missing girl; he was also deputy leader of the local council. ‘But I’m sure you know this?’ He glanced at her as he waited correctly at the Market Street box junction, ignoring the hoots of the locals, who interpreted traffic law as loosely as they saw fit.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve been away twelve years. I don’t follow local news.’

‘No?’ He was surprised. Well, he didn’t know she had her reasons.

The family of Cathy Carr lived on the hill above town, in a street where each house spread itself out for room and the driveways jostled with cars. If Cathy was found, if she came home safe, Paula had no doubt she’d get her own car for her seventeenth birthday.

Guy slid her in past the
camera crew from a local TV station, which was doing a broadcast on the street outside the house. The blonde reporter flicked her hair at him. ‘Any progress, Inspector?’

Guy was charming with them. ‘We’re proceeding. We’d like to thank all the press – especially you, Alison – for your sensitivity at this difficult time. Excuse me.’

Paula cringed behind him. It was a side-effect of the job, sometimes, but she hated seeing herself on TV or in the paper. It brought back too many memories. Guy was leading her up the crushed-gravel path to the front door. Neat lawn, children’s shoes lined up in a rack on the porch. The windows seemed to have been recently cleaned, and through the frosted glass of the door Paula saw the dark shape of a man approach. She smoothed down her shirt as the lock clicked open.

‘Inspector.’ Eamonn Carr wore jeans and a golfing jumper, an expensive watch on his wrist. He was going grey at the temples – a handsome man.

Guy was shaking hands. ‘Good morning, Eamonn. This is Ms Maguire, the psychologist I told you about. Can we have a quick word?’

He shook her hand in a powerful grip, and gave her a slightly doubtful look. Paula was used to this, and met his gaze full on. ‘Mr Carr. I’m very sorry for what you’re going through.’ She could hear that her accent had already compressed, flattened back to its Ballyterrin tones, shaping itself unconsciously to the landscape.

He nodded, still watching her. ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’

‘Lovely, thanks.’

A ginger cat shot past
them as they went in, heading for the safety of upstairs. Despite the damp weather of the past few days, the hardwood floor bore no trace of muddy childish footprints. It reeked of newness – the furniture gleaming, the walls white, even a fresh smell of paint. Paula heard noise from the living room, and as they were led in saw that the huge TV was on, blaring out a daytime programme where people sold stuff from their attics.

‘Angela,’ said Eamonn gently. ‘The police are here, love, will we put that off?’

It took the woman on the sofa a few seconds to react. ‘Oh! I just had it on for the news, in case . . .’ She looked vaguely round for the remote control, until her husband found it and switched off the TV. Silence poured into the room. Irrationally, Paula thought of the playground rhyme:
Silence in the courtroom, silence in the street, the biggest mouth in Ireland is just about to speak
. . .

‘Tea then? Sugar, milk?’ Eamonn Carr took charge as his wife stayed seated, twisting the gold rings on her thin hands. She had on a silk top, expensive jeans, very heavy makeup for a weekday. She looked to be younger than her husband, in her thirties, slim and dark-haired. Paula watched her closely.

Guy smiled at the woman as they sat down on the stiff leather sofa. ‘The kids at school?’

‘Oh.’ Angela Carr seemed to think about this. ‘Yes. Yes, the weans are out.’ Over the fireplace was a large family portrait, Angela sitting with Eamonn behind, and around them five children. An upwardly mobile Catholic clan, nothing strange there.

‘This is Cathy?’ Paula got up and examined the face of the eldest child – a dark-haired girl, neatly dressed in a maroon school uniform. Bright smile, concealer caked on a few pimples. ‘She’s at St Bridget’s?’ You had to be tactful, with missing persons. Always use the present tense unless you knew otherwise.