The Broken Shore (25 page)

He’d hit one dead end after another until finally he’d found the only two women who matched. Mary Wright and Mary Donnelly. Neither of them existed anywhere. It was a stroke of genius to search under date of birth. One visit to the Register of Births and Deaths had worked it out. Then he’d bought the bookshop near her house and waited. Danny Foster was no-one’s fool. No, he wasn’t and the woman lying at his feet was about to find that out.

***

11 a.m.

They glanced at the clock in turn. First Jake, with the impatience of youth, then Liam and Craig. No-one said a word but they were all thinking the same thing. Melanie Trainor was late, late beyond passive aggression this time. Senior officers didn’t just ignore the Chief Constable’s demands and dander in two hours after the time, yawning that they’d overslept or the dog had eaten their homework. This was deliberate defiance and what had so far been kept low-key out of deference to her grief and rank was about to escalate.

Craig picked up his phone and nodded Liam and Jake to do the same

“Jake, phone her office and make sure she hasn’t just turned up there, ignoring her suspension. Liam, give Andy a call and ask him to nip round to the house and knock on her door. Just him, I want this kept quiet for as long as we can.”

He went to dial a number and Liam raised an eyebrow curiously. Craig answered his look.

“I’m ringing her husband. Not that I don’t trust you to be subtle, Liam, but…”

Liam made a face and turned to see the start of a grin on Jake’s face. He squinted at him in warning and they broke into different corners to make the calls.

Craig walked past Jack Harris, the long-time sergeant at High Street, and pushed through the back door into the cool morning air. Jack smiled. He got his weekly quota of excitement from Craig’s team using his station as ‘interview central’ for their murders.

Craig pressed dial and the call was answered quickly. Hugh Trainor came on the line with a welcoming tone. As welcoming as you could be to the man investigating your daughter’s death.

“Good morning, Superintendent. Have you made some progress on the case?”

It was an innocent question and just what a father would want to know but it took Craig aback. So much had happened since they’d spoken last and none of it was repeatable to this man. He fudged his reply expertly.

“Things are moving, Mr Trainor.”

Hugh Trainor interjected before Craig had time to twist more words.

“Good, good. What can I do to help?”

His openness and tone said he knew nothing about his wife’s interview the day before, or her suspension. It could mean several things but one question was top of Craig’s list.

“Could you tell me when you last spoke to your wife, please?”

There was silence for a moment and Craig resisted the temptation to leap into the gap. He wanted the truth from Trainor and he knew he’d get it if he was patient. He guessed why the politician was hesitating and he was right.

“I’m sorry, Mr Craig but I haven’t spoken to Melanie for several days.”

“You didn’t see her last night?”

“No. I called at the house and her car was in the drive, but we didn’t speak.” He paused long enough for Craig to finish the sentence in his head. “I’ve moved in with Darlene. I…it didn’t seem right to continue the lie, now that Lissy’s gone. It felt as if I was lying to her, somehow.”

“I understand.” And he did. Lissy’s happiness was the only reason Trainor had stayed with the ACC, now he could be happy elsewhere.

Trainor’s tone became anxious. “Is there something wrong, Superintendent? Is Melanie OK?”

Craig made placating noises and ended the call as quickly as he could, pushing open the back door. He joined Jack in the staff room. Liam and Jake were already there.

“Well?”

Liam took the cue. “Andy’s on his way there. He’ll call me back when he arrives.” He nodded at Jake.

“The ACC’s not at work, sir. They said they haven’t seen her since eight o’clock yesterday morning.”

Before she’d come down to Belfast for the meeting with Flanagan. The hairs on Craig’s neck stood up and he told them quickly of his conversation with the MLA.

“Man. It didn’t take him long to move out, did it? Makes you wonder how long the marriage had been dead.”

“Years.” Craig glanced at his watch. Eleven-twenty. He’d give Andy twenty minutes to call back then he’d have to ramp things up. He’d already accepted they weren’t getting their interview with the ACC that morning, now he was wondering if they’d get to speak to her again at all.

Just then Jack approached with a tray of tea.

Liam rubbed his hands. “Good man. Here, I hope you’ve got some decent biscuits this time. That last bunch were pathetic.”

Jack halted mid-step and was about to say something rude when Liam’s phone rang. He raised his hand. “Hold that thought, Jack.” He pressed a key, answering the call. “D.C.I. Cullen.”

The others watched as he nodded for a moment then he clicked his phone shut and turned to Craig.

“That was Andy. The ACC’s wasn’t answering so he walked round to the back. The patio door was open and the place was a mess, there was stuff smashed all over the place.”

“As if someone did it deliberately.”

Liam looked at Craig curiously. “Aye. How did you know?”

Craig was already on his feet and heading for the door. “She’s been taken. Liam, get back onto Andy and tell him to get an all-points bulletin out for the man in Jenna Farrelly’s sketch. And tell him to get a sample of Melanie Trainor’s D.N.A. from the house for John to match; a hair or toothbrush should do. Jake, push Annette and Davy on the adoption records. We need the names of the adoptive parents. Now. I need to tell Mulvenna about the boy. If the ACC’s son’s taken her then there might be only one chance of saving her life. We need Jonno Mulvenna to reason with the boy.”

***

Davy gazed at the records in front of him and then at Annette. The file looked old, and it was. Thirty years old. Its grey-coloured cover was curled at the edges and its yellowing official decals were peeling off. He turned over the top page and stared at the typewritten text beneath. The pre-word processor words were irregular; some of them jumping off the line below. Their unsophisticated presentation seemed to increase the pathos of the words even more.

‘Male infant. Healthy.’

It seemed so sad. A brand new life summarised in one phrase. Not ‘Baby Jack, welcomed by his loving family’ or ‘To Geoff, a son Ian, much longed for.’ Just sterile words that said exactly what he was; a healthy infant male.

He avoided Annette’s eyes, afraid that their sadness would increase his own, and read. The mother’s name was Mary Wright and she was a twenty-five-year-old civil servant. Not a helpless teenager living on the streets, but an adult woman with her own home. What could have prompted her to give up her child?

Perhaps she was afraid of going it alone, or the stigma of single-motherhood had made her feel ashamed? He stopped mid-excuse, knowing that neither of them applied in this case, and finally met Annette’s eyes. He was shocked by the anger he read there and heard in her voice when she spoke.

“She gave him away because she was worried about her career! Her precious bloody career.”

“W…we don’t know that for sure, Annette. She might have been afraid. You’ve all said it; being a single Mum in the eighties wasn’t an easy ride. Add to that she was in the police and he had a terrorist for a Dad.”

“She bloody well should have thought of that before she slept with him! It wasn’t the baby’s fault. There’s no excuse, Davy. God knows what happened to that child.”

She jabbed her finger at the file. “How long was it before he was adopted? He might have been in a care home for years.”

Davy turned the page and shook his head. “No, it w…wasn’t. He was adopted at six months old by a Mr and Mrs Foster. A farmer and his wife from near Limavady. They couldn’t have any children of their own.”

Annette stopped jabbing. “Well, that’s something at least.” She turned towards the door, barking an order at him as she did. “Find the Fosters and get them brought in downstairs. I want to know everything there is to know about their son. I’ll get the D.N.A. warrant and be back in an hour. I want them here then.”

***

Melanie Trainor’s fog lifted gradually, brief moments of clarity replaced by sleep again, until finally clarity became the norm and she opened her eyes. She expected to see her bedroom with the curtains that needed replaced, and the small TV on the chest of drawers switching on automatically to the morning news. They weren’t there. Instead she saw a wooden-slatted wall. She closed her eyes and shook her head then looked again. There was no mistake. Instead of the bedroom she’d slept in for twenty years she was lying in some sort of shed.

She pulled herself to a kneeling pose and pressed her face against the slats, peering through them at the light. The sun was descending in the sky and filtering through dense spruce trees of varying heights. It was afternoon. And she was in a forest! How the hell had she got there? The last thing she remembered was sitting in her study at home, sometime after she’d left the CC’s office on Thursday morning. The answer came to her quickly; she’d been kidnapped. Who would be idiot enough to kidnap a member of the police? Lots of people, but they would call it daring, not dumb.

She turned her head to search the floor and a sharp pain shot through her neck. She put her hand up quickly and it came back with dried blood, telling her how she’d got there. She’d been injected with something. It still didn’t tell her where she was or who had brought her there.

A crunching noise outside the shed froze her in mid-thought. She held her breath as the sound of dried leaves cracking underfoot heralded someone’s approach. Did she trust that they were a stranger and scream for help, or risk antagonising her captor more? She screamed at the top of her voice and heard the steps halt. The noise they had made was replaced by a man’s sarcastic voice.

“Forget it, Melanie. No-one will hear. Or should I call you Mary?”

She sucked in her breath and prickles of fear ran down her spine. Mary had been her name for six weeks in1984 but never since. Just long enough to give birth and arrange the adoption, then Mary Wright had disappeared.

A mixture of fear and excitement ran through her as images long forgotten filled her mind. Her lover’s smile, soft and longing; the last time she’d ever felt overwhelming joy, before she’d made a choice to betray him for the life she had. A tiny hand grasping hers as she’d held her son and then handed him to a stranger so she could return to her career.

Her heart leapt unexpectedly and she longed to see the man’s face. She pressed her lips against the slats and spoke in a softer tone than she’d used for years.

“Are you my son? Are you my boy? Please, please tell me.”

Danny Foster stopped walking, frozen by her unexpected words. Confusion flooded through him, scattering his cold logic in its path. He had his plan and he knew what he had to do, feelings for the woman who’d abandoned him had no place now. And yet…

He pulled back the door of the shed urgently, peering into the darkness inside. His eyes adjusted slowly until he saw her face and she saw his. He watched her mouth fall open and tears smear the dirt on her cheeks as they held each other’s gaze in silence for too long. Melanie Trainor spoke first, her words tumbling over each other, colliding to make no sense. Only one word was clear. “Sorry.” Sorry, sorry, sorry. She said it a hundred times then more, until he could stand it no longer and he shouted. “Shut up!”

Her mouth closed then and she stared at him with sheer joy in her eyes. He looked like Jonno, exactly like her only love. The man she hadn’t been brave enough to be with or perhaps a different kind of brave woman who had wanted to be a warrior like the rest. But why hadn’t she kept her child? She’d asked herself that a million times, searching for him and begging to have him back. But no-one would talk, a sealed adoption was final. ‘For the best’. Really? For whom?

She stared at the young man and he stared back, his brown eyes all hers. In every other way he was his father’s son. He had his thick dark hair and his soft full lips. Ah, Jonno. Danny Foster stared at his mother, trying to shore up the fence round his heart that it had taken him thirty years to build. He placed the planks upright one by one only to find them falling again at her smile.

He shook his head hard and turned his back, striding into the cold autumn air to think. He stared at the sky through the trees, begging the God he didn’t believe in to tell him what to do. He couldn’t care about her. Wouldn’t. She’d left him alone at the mercy of the Fosters. She was a bitch and she deserved to die. He railed against the world and her and God for what felt like hours, screaming so hard that he thought his lungs would burst.

Melanie Trainor listened to his cries inside the shed, not caring whether she lived or died. She’d been numb for years, unable to show love to anyone after she’d betrayed them both. She’d prayed to see her son again and now she had. She could die content. Finally Danny Foster pulled out the gloves that signalled the end of her life and slipped them on before her lying words could change his mind.

***

“Andy’s got cars out looking and the C.S.I.s are at the house.”

Craig shook his head in irritation. “Don’t waste men on forensics. Time enough for that if she turns up dead. Get everyone out on the ground.” He turned towards Nicky. “Where’s Annette?”

Davy answered him. “S...She went to get the D.N.A. warrant and said she’d be back in an hour.”

He glanced at the clock. That had been two hours ago. Craig wrinkled his forehead and shot Davy a look he couldn’t quite read. It didn’t take that long to get a warrant. There was something going on in the squad besides the case. He’d get to the bottom of it if it killed him, but it would have to wait. Davy broke his stare and started reporting on the adoption file.

“The baby was adopted by a farming couple up near Limavady. They didn’t have children of their own and they were in their forties w…when they took the boy. Annette asked for them to be brought in downstairs. A car picked them up an hour ago. They should be here in ten minutes.”