Hidden ( CSI Reilly Steel #3) (39 page)

‘Together we made an informed decision,’ Jacobs went on smoothly, ‘and we both felt that given the trust established—’

‘
I thought
you
were the negotiator – how come she’s out there doing your job for you?’

‘Like I said, McAllister
trusts her,’ Jacobs replied. ‘She understands that, and is keen to do anything she can to get those kids out of there safely.’

‘
Including risking her life?’

‘
There’s a plan in place should she encounter hostility. And I’m sure you know she’s no fool.’

O’Brien
had held his tongue so far, but he clearly wasn’t happy either. ‘What the hell did all that talk on the phone mean?’ he asked Jacobs.

‘
You sent her in there, and now it sounds like it’s all gone pear-shaped!’ Chris reiterated.

Jacobs
managed to stay calm. ‘You heard her. We’ve got a situation that none of us could have foreseen.’

‘
A damned member of the press in there?’ Kennedy raged. ‘Somebody’s screwed up.’

‘
That’s one for you to deal with,’ Jacobs continued. ‘What we have to do now is help Reilly get things back on track.’

‘
She said she was OK though, didn’t she?’ Chris said, sounding desperate. ‘So that’s something at least.’

‘
She said she was OK – but there’s that shot… ’O’Brien liked plain talk, none of this trying to read between the lines bullshit.  ‘So what are you saying? Is she or isn’t she OK?’

‘
I would say that Reilly is OK, but I wouldn't count on the press guy being unharmed.’

‘
That’s it,’ O’Brien declared. ‘I’m sending in the Armed Response Unit. If he’s shooting people, we need to end this situation right now.’

‘
Wait a minute.’

‘There’s no time to waste
, Jacobs; we’ve got Reilly and the kids to worry about.’

‘
And she’s given herself a clever way of keeping us up to date with how things are going,’ he argued.

O’Brien
looked at him impatiently. ‘How so?’

‘
She said she’d check in within fifteen minutes. Let’s see how she’s doing then. The ARU is on standby, they’re ready to roll, but first give Reilly the respect of allowing her to rescue this situation.  It’s our only chance to end this thing peacefully.’

Chris paced the room. ‘Peacefully? The guy is a maniac!’

‘The angle that we’re using,’ Jacobs continued, ‘is to get McAllister to consider the welfare of the kids – the ones he’s already lost have got him thinking about the futures of the others, whether he can cope, whether he can continue looking after them. Reilly’s alluded to the fact that if he lets them go we’ll take proper care of them – I think we need to be clearly seen to be doing that in order for him to trust us.’

‘
What does that mean in practise?’ O’Brien barked.

‘I’d suggest that we offer a van with blacked
-out windows to get him and the kids out of there,’ Jacobs said. ‘He knows the press are sniffing around.’

‘
He’s a criminal,’ snapped Chris. ‘We can’t have him just riding away free in a van. They’re still digging up at the lake house, we could well have another Fred West on our hands here.’

‘If we leave him, there’s a danger that he could stay holed up in ther
e after the kids are let out,’ Jacobs pointed out. ‘He could be suicidal.’

O’Brien snorted.  ‘Frankly, once we have
the kids out safely, I don’t care what happens to him.’

‘We might need him,
though,’ Kennedy said.  ‘He’s the only one who knows where these kids came from, their real names and backgrounds, and like Chris said we’ll need to talk to him about what else we find up at the house.’

O’Brien gave
him a sharp look.  ‘Surely the kids will know?’

‘If he abducts them when they are young,
then brainwashes them for years, they might not remember anything about their former lives,’ Jacobs pointed out.

‘So we just let him come out a free man?’

The negotiator shrugged. ‘You’re the boss. I’m just suggesting what seems the most likely way to get everyone safely out.’

Back at the GFU lab, Julius
pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and got to work.

Inside the boxes were some of the items removed from
Tir Na Nog, McAllister’s house by the  lake. An old biscuit box caught his attention, and a memory from his own childhood filtered into his brain. USA biscuits to him meant Christmas and happy memories of eating all those chocolate rings with the jellies on while leaving behind the boring Rich Tea ones.

What memories did
this particular box hold? He was out of his comfort zone with this type of evidence – it was the smaller stuff that he preferred, a piece of glass, a strand of hair …

Breaking things down, using the smallest
molecule to build a bigger picture, that was Julius’s forte.

Here with boxes of everyday stuff that had been tucked into a cupboard years ago
, he wasn’t sure how to start to build any picture. Old books, little knick-knacks, he knew they told a story, but he couldn’t see it.

He opened
the biscuit tin and pulled out the contents. Lots of  individual items, documents, receipts, family photographs of McAllister’s family in happier times. He glanced at one of the photographs. It was a typical family scene, happy, smiling people on a warm sunny day.

McAllister
held his wife from behind with his strong, sun-tanned arms and a young redheaded child was in front of them both, grinning broadly.

How would
it feel for a man to hold all that was dear to him in his arms on a perfect summer’s day, then have it all stolen away with a swipe of Fate’s hand? If it was him maybe he’d end up creating a fantasy world too, Julius thought, empathizing.

He
tried to look at the photo differently in the hope that it might yield something interesting, but it was hard to pull focus away from the happy faces. He looked at the background; where was it taken? The lake house probably – he could make out trees from the forest behind, and they may well have been standing on the shore of the lake.

He set the photo aside, and hearing noises from the doorway, turned and saw that Gary and Lucy had returned from processing the house in Whitestown.

‘How’d it go?’ he asked as Lucy set her kitbag down and dropped into the chair beside him.

‘Great. If you think finding an attic full of creepy mannequin heads is fun…’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Mannequin heads?’

She sighed, and waved him away. ‘Don’t ask. Any word from Avoca?’

‘Nothing yet, but we need to be on standby,  just in case.’

‘Bloody hell, it’s nearly eight o’clock on a Thursday evening. Why did I ever think a job like this was a good idea?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So what are you up to?’

‘Just sifting through more of that stuff taken from the lake house.’ Julius picked up the photograph and showed it to her. ‘Who’d have thought a normal-looking guy like that would turn out to be such a nutjob?’

She looked at it. ‘It’s sad
, isn’t it?’

‘Even sadder for the poor misfor
tunates he kidnapped,’ Julius said.

‘He really was trying to replace them,’ Lucy said sympathetically. ‘His little girl is the absolute image of Sarah Forde.’

Julius looked again at the girl in the photograph, who looked to be about nine or ten years old.

‘Hold on,’ Lucy said, sitting up straight. ‘I think that
is
Sarah Forde.’

‘What? How could it be? Didn’t he only start abducting kids after his family was killed?’

Lucy was shaking her head. ‘I’ve spent the last week practically memorizing those files, and I would know that little girl’s face anywhere, especially that gap in her teeth.’  She looked at Julius. ‘It’s Sarah Forde; I’m telling you. Which means …’

Nodding, he quickly reached for the phone. ‘I’ll call Reilly.’

Chapter
41

Reilly sat in a rickety chair, watching McAllister looking lost and helpless.

But
the sight of O’Connor lying on the table was a reminder that while the abductor may be struggling to know what to do at this point, he could still pack a punch.

She
looked at him. ‘The kids, they must be scared by what’s happening,’ she said gently. ‘Where are they?’

He glanced over at
the photographer lying on the table. O’Connor looked as though he was asleep, but his occasional groans suggested otherwise. ‘I don’t want them anywhere near him.’

‘Are they in the next room?
I could go and talk with them; I’m sure they must be scared …’

‘
I’m not stupid!’ he snapped. 

‘I
wouldn’t do anything to—’

‘
Right now I’m not sure what you would or wouldn’t do.’

Reilly
fell silent, thinking, trying to regain his trust.

‘You don’t
understand what it’s like out there,’ he continued, sounding exhausted, ‘why I brought them to me, why they need my protection.’

She sat forward. ‘
I understand entirely what it’s like out there. I’m just not sure that I agree with your solution.’

He looked puzzled.  ‘But if you understand …
if you know what a hateful, wicked world it is out there, how can you not see that the one I created was right, the best possible thing for these poor souls?’ His voice was full of passion, brimming with emotion. He nodded over her shoulder to the outside world. ‘Out there they would be chewed up, devoured, defiled.  I can protect them. You saw the lake house. Our Tir Na Nog is truly a paradise, a Nirvana.’ He leaned towards her, the fire burning bright in his eyes. ‘Tell me, Miss Steel, be honest with me. Have you ever seen a better place for children to grow up?’ His face was bathed in missionary fervor as he gazed at her, his eyes like glowing blue chips in the gloomy air.

‘It’s
beautiful, yes,’ she began, ‘so much care and love, that’s  easy to see on the surface. But all swans eventually want to fly the nest,’ she went on, ‘and what then?  What happens when the children want to leave?’

His
beatific smile faded,  to be replaced by a scowl. ‘Why would they want to leave? They have everything they could possibly want.’

‘Except freedom.’

He gazed at her for a moment, then looked away.  She watched him carefully as she delivered the next piece of news. 

‘
I’ve met Conn.’

Her words caught him off guard and
she heard a sharp intake of breath.  ‘Where? How is he?’

‘He’s in a children’s home.
They can’t find a family for him.’

McAllister nodded, as if this made sense. ‘He was always a wild one.
Always challenging me, challenging everything. Miriam would have been better at getting through to him. When I rescued him I hoped I could change him, but in the end he was just too disruptive for our family, and I had to admit defeat…’  His words faded into nothing.

Miriam... Reilly’s ears pricked up at the mention of the name.
One of the other children?

He sniffed,
and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘We were so happy. We loved caring for the kids, giving them a home, a place to feel safe.’

Reilly frowned. What was he talking about? Who was ‘we’? Was there somebody else involved in this too? 

His voice had fallen very quiet. ‘My favorite time has always been tucking them in at night. It’s a magical time. All the energy and excitement of the day has passed, they’re all clean and soft and tucked up in their beds, smelling of soap and toothpaste … The way it’s supposed to be.’  He suddenly looked up at Reilly. ‘You don’t have kids, do you?’

She shook her head.

‘They are such a gift. Miriam always used to sing a wee song, and I’d tell stories. Ellie’s favorite was always the Swans of Lir.’

Reilly’s mind was racing. She wasn’t sure whether McAllister was mixing up actual reality with the one that he had created since the death of his family. But now with the way he was talking, she was wondering if  Miriam might have been his wife and Ellie – had that been his daughter’s name?

‘I’d sit on her bed and tell her the story, listening to her breathing as she slowly drifted off to sleep.’ He looked up again. ‘She loved that story so much she wanted wings of her own.’

Wings of her own …

‘The tattoos,’ Reilly asked. ‘I wanted to ask you about those. Do all your swans have them?’

He looked at her. ‘Only the older ones, if they want them. Conn was a bit young but insistent because Sarah had hers. I only gave them to her because … I was afraid they would take her, like they took Ellie.’