Red Ribbons (16 page)

‘What’s that?’ Kate asked.

‘It’s too bloody short.’

≈

When Peter Devine opened the front door, Kate could see that he and O’Connor already had respect for each other – the way O’Connor shook Peter Devine’s hand firmly, holding on to it for longer than was really necessary, and how Peter, in turn, looked directly at O’Connor, his eyes asking all the questions he could no longer put into words. Not for the first time, Kate thought about how tragedy had a habit of turning people into fast learners, how victims and their families quickly became fluent in a whole new language of grief.

O’Connor had given her a copy of the report from Shelley Canter, the liaison officer, and so she knew the family’s back-story. At the beginning, when there was still hope for Caroline, Peter and Lilli Devine had been keen to do whatever was necessary to get their daughter back. They gave the gardaí every possible help – the school photograph and the public appeal had all been a means by which their energies could be channelled, in order to avoid that inevitable sense of helplessness that engulfs those left behind.

From the outset, Peter Devine had been the more proactive of the two parents, not only keen to give the police any information that could help but also being the one family member who had fought
back emotions in an effort to keep together whatever fragments of normality remained. From what Canter had seen of the father prior to the finding of Caroline’s body, he came across as a serious and quiet man and one who, although inwardly anxious, had been determined to maintain a strong stance under pressure. Lilli Devine, on the other hand, had completely caved in after the girl’s disappearance, becoming far too distraught to converse or engage with the case in any meaningful way. Although, like Peter, she would have done anything to help find her daughter, her distressed state meant a large burden of responsibility had been placed on Peter in the early stages of the investigation. It was he who became the lynchpin that held the family together. However, when O’Connor met the parents after Caroline’s body had been found, it was obvious their roles had changed dramatically. It was now Lilli who was taking the leading role.

This had come as no surprise to Kate as she had seen this type of alternating reaction before. The man, brought up with the emphasis on being the ‘strong’ one, very often held things together at the beginning. It was his coping mechanism, a means of finding respite and even comfort in being busy and proactive. The woman was often far more instinctual in her reactions, displaying the obvious outward signs of desperation after the initial disappearance. When the prospect of a solution to the status quo was no longer an option, Peter Devine hit a brick wall, no longer able to physically change things, the scale and acceptance of his loss finally registered, leaving Lilli Devine, who to some extent had already begun the devastating process, to become the stronger outwardly of the two.

Peter Devine held open the sitting room door and stood aside to let Kate and O’Connor enter. He didn’t ask who Kate was and didn’t seem to care. He shuffled after them into the sitting room where his wife and daughter were sitting with Shelley Canter. Emily, Caroline’s sister, was seventeen – five years older than Caroline, an age her sister would never reach. The atmosphere in the room was quiet and strained – like
everyone was holding their breath so they wouldn’t scream. Kate felt the emotions rising inside her in the face of their grief.

Once seated, O’Connor introduced Kate, who took the armchair opposite Lilli Devine. Emily remained standing by the door, never taking her eyes off Kate. It was Lilli Devine, though, who was the first to openly acknowledge Kate.

‘What’s she here for exactly? What’s a psychologist have to do with anything?’

Shelley Canter was quick to respond. ‘Lilli, Kate is here to help work out the type of person we’re looking for.’

‘Is she going to help find him, Shelley?’

‘We hope so. Kate brings a huge amount of profiling experience to the table, and has previously helped police solve other murders, both here and in the UK. It’s important that you talk to her as honestly as you can, Lilli, okay?’

Lilli stared at Kate with the kind of look that seemed to fight back any hope she might have that Kate could actually help.

‘I keep looking for him, you know, searching people’s faces, anyone I can remember, or anyone we met, even vaguely. All those faces, they keep going over and over in my mind like a revolving nightmare. Part of me wants to see him. I want to have him stare straight at me, so I can tear the bastard’s eyes out.’

‘Mrs Devine—’ O’Connor cut in, anxious to calm the situation.

‘Lilli, you might as well call me Lilli. It’s a bit late for social niceties, Inspector.’

‘Lilli,’ O’Connor said gently, ‘if you and Peter could answer a few more questions about Caroline for Kate, it could help us a lot.’

Kate took their lack of response as agreement. She looked over at Emily first. ‘Is it okay with you too, Emily?’

The girl shrugged her shoulders, whilst tensing her facial features. ‘Sure, whatever.’

There was no doubting the feelings of bitterness in the room, and
Kate knew Caroline’s mother and sister were not going to be easy to deal with, but she pushed on, deciding to start with Lilli Devine.

‘Lilli, I think your instinct regarding trying to remember everyone who Caroline came in contact with is a good one. From what we have so far, there’s a strong possibility that whoever abducted Caroline may have met her before.’

‘What do you mean?’ Peter interrupted, his voice sounding anxious.

‘Well,’ Kate said carefully, ‘it may well be that Caroline wasn’t chosen at random.’

‘Sorry?’ Lilli looked at Kate, her face displaying hostility.

‘Lilli, whoever abducted your daughter could have planned it, and for reasons that could have meant absolutely nothing to Caroline, but a lot to her abductor.’

‘But she … she was only
twelve
. How would Caroline have known anyone who would do something like this?’ Peter Devine looked devastated.

O’Connor was quick to put him at his ease. ‘Peter, Kate’s not saying Caroline necessarily knew him, for all we know she might not have even spoken to him.’

Both parents looked distraught at what Kate was suggesting, but she knew she had to keep going. She held her gaze on Lilli. ‘The important thing here is that we explore all angles. If Caroline did meet him at some point, there’s every chance she may have viewed their encounters as completely innocent. Your daughter was a clever girl by all accounts, but unfortunately that was not enough to protect her.’

‘Ask me whatever you want to know,’ Lilli replied, her voice stronger now. ‘I know nothing’s going to bring her back, but I want you to get him. I need to know he’ll pay for what he’s done.’

‘Lilli, tell me what type of things Caroline liked to do.’

The woman’s demeanour changed perceptibly, almost as if revisiting her daughter’s memory somehow took away the pain.

‘She liked to read. When she wasn’t at school or swimming, her
head was constantly stuck in a book. She thought about being a teacher. She was good with little ones.’

Lilli Devine closed her eyes, knowing that teaching was yet another thing Caroline would never do.

‘What else, Lilli?’ Kate said, trying to keep Lilli’s mind on her daughter.

Lilli sighed and started again. ‘She loved swimming and it was a great way to use up her energy – even from a small tot she was always full of beans. You could never keep her easy for long. She’d go to the Rathmines pool, the one nearest her school, at the weekends with her friend, Jessica. Sometimes she’d even go to the pool before school.’

‘So she was happy?’

‘Yes, of course, she was perfect.’

‘And what about her computer, did she spend a lot of time on that?’

‘Ah, you know what kids are like.’

Kate looked over at O’Connor. She knew the Computer Crime Investigation Unit, CCIU, hadn’t turned up anything of value on it.

‘And her friend, Jessica, they were close?’

‘They were always together.’

Lillie paused, and when she spoke again her voice was hard, the anger that had been hovering underneath rose to the surface. ‘She called in here with her mother when they heard the news. I couldn’t look at the girl.’

‘Go on.’

‘I couldn’t look at her mother either for that matter. I just kept thinking, you’re so lucky, so lucky to still have her. Almost as soon as they arrived, I wanted them both to leave. I kept thinking, what if it was the other way around, what if it had been Jessica who’d been taken? All I wanted to do was turn the tables, tell her she’d got it wrong, that it was her daughter and not mine who’d been buried in that hole up there.’

Kate watched Lilli’s hands as she twisted them in her lap. She spoke as softly as she could. ‘Lilli, I know how hard this is.’

‘Do you?’ Lilli shot back at her. ‘Do you really know? Have you lost a child, Ms Pearson? Are you experienced in these matters?’

‘No, Lilli, I’m not, and please don’t think that I’m trying to undermine how you feel in any way. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together, to find something that might stop something like this happening again.’

‘It won’t bring her back,’ Lilli said in a dead voice.

‘No it won’t, I know that.’

Lilli looked at Kate, and then nodded. ‘Go on, ask your questions.’

‘Was there anything about Caroline’s behaviour that had changed over the last while?’

‘No, not really, other than—’

‘Other than what?’

‘Well, you know, it was nothing really. She was never overweight. I mean, she was a fit girl, what with the swimming and everything. But lately she’d started to go on about the types of food she wanted to eat – no carbohydrates, no bread, wouldn’t touch chocolate or any of “that rubbish”, as she called it.’

Kate remembered how thin Caroline had looked, and what Morrison had told O’Connor about there being very little fatty tissue on the body, that it was practically skeletal-like in certain areas.

‘Do you think she felt under pressure to lose weight?’

‘No, no, I mean she wanted to be healthier, that’s all.’

Kate could tell there was an element of doubt in Lilli’s last sentence, an anxiety that, as a mother, she might have missed something.

‘She’d lost lots of weight.’

All four of them turned to the teenager standing by the door, surprised by her sudden contribution to the conversation.

Kate didn’t waste any time. ‘Why do you think that was, Emily?’

‘Same reason as most, I suppose.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘To be like everyone else.’

‘Do you think Caroline worried about being like everyone else?’

‘Listen …’

‘Kate, call me Kate.’

‘I don’t see the point in all this. We’re not going to be able to ask her now, are we?’

Peter Devine looked over at his daughter and then to O’Connor. ‘That’s the hardest part, Inspector, we all feel it, just the three of us here, it’s all wrong. Caroline should be with us, bounding in through that doorway. There’s always been the four of us and now she’s not here, she’s gone, and we can’t ask her anything, we can’t bring her back, no matter what we do.’ He broke off, crying, his shoulders shaking.

‘Peter, please stop.’ The softness had returned to his wife’s voice.

Kate purposely avoided looking at either Peter or Lilli, and instead kept eye contact with Emily. ‘Emily, did Caroline say something to you about it?’

‘About what?’

‘About why she was losing weight?’

‘No, not about that exactly, but I knew she wasn’t happy.’

‘How?’

‘Emily, if you have something to say, then for God’s sake just say it.’ The softness had left Lilli’s voice and she was looking at her eldest daughter with a look that was somewhere between fear and frustration.

‘She got fucked up. There, satisfied now?’

Kate kept looking steadily at Emily. ‘And how did that happen, Emily?’

Emily shrugged. ‘She started to think the way she looked was more important than all the other stuff. I told her she was being stupid. I mean, in a way I understood, it
is
hard.’ Emily looked over at her parents. ‘I’d talked to her a couple of times about it, nothing too heavy, just sister stuff. I kept telling her how great she was at the swimming
and how I’d love to be as smart as her at school. I felt she was getting sense. I mean, the things she told me about what she was thinking were just daft.’

Other than Kate and Emily, everyone else kept their silence. ‘And what were they, Emily, the things going on inside her head?’

‘Look, she thought lots of fucked-up stuff.’

‘But what specifically do you remember? It’s important.’

‘I can’t say it.’

‘It’s all right, Emily.’ Lilli looked at her daughter. ‘You don’t have to worry about your father and me.’

‘What does it matter now?’ Emily demanded, the rawness of her emotions clear in her voice.

It was Kate’s turn to give support. ‘Well, it may not matter a whole lot, but, then again, it could help us find whoever did this.’

Emily chewed a fingernail. ‘As I said, it was stupid. I kept telling her she was gorgeous, that she was wrong to think the way she did.’

‘And …’

‘And, well, it’s hard when someone doesn’t want to listen. No matter what I said to her, she kept thinking the same bloody thing.’

‘And what was that?’

‘Emily, just spit it out, please.’

‘I’m trying to, Mom.’ She stared hard at Kate. ‘If you must know, ever since she started changing, becoming aware of her body, well she talked rubbish about how her body was ugly, that she hated it. She didn’t want to grow up. It scared her.’

‘And what did you say to her?’

‘I told her that it would be okay, that I’d felt like that too at her age, and that she’d feel differently.’

‘Why do you think it scared her so much?’

‘Caroline was different.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Mom and Dad will tell you. Caroline cared too much about
everything, always did. I mean, half the time I wouldn’t even notice things Caroline would pick up on as quick as anything.’