The Lost (23 page)

‘But I really think this is the answer! If you’d let me explain – I’ve found out more about the Mission: they used to operate under a different name in Ireland. I think they were here in Ballyterrin! If we could find out when that was—’

He slammed his palm onto the desk. ‘For God’s sake, Paula! An officer was nearly burned to death! I’ve got potential lawsuits as long as my arm, a traveller girl missing, another girl dead, and no bloody clue what’s going on. I need you here, not messing about with some mad cult theories.’

‘It’s not—’

‘Listen to me. Cathy was taken from the street, OK? We know
that. She was nowhere near the Mission. They all have alibis.’

Paula kept quiet for a few moments. When she spoke, her voice was so soft he must have barely heard.

‘Pardon?’

‘I said, Katie goes there. I saw her.’

‘You – how dare you! How dare you talk about my daughter.’

She got up. Talk about burning bridges; she could feel the scorch from here. ‘It isn’t my place, but someone has to tell you. Ask her where she really goes, Guy. Ask her if she really has friends.’ And she went out without looking back at his furious face.

The fall-out from the Dockside incident was considerable. The media loved a good riot – it harked back to the golden years of journalism, when a steady stream of bombs, shootings, and stand-offs had kept the newswheels turning. The next day, all the national papers led with it, and the jerky amateur footage of the petrol bomb was shown again and again on TV and online; the men charging, the clang of sticks on metal, and the flames leaping up from Gerard’s car. Local politicians put their spin on it – Gerard was either a hero cop, or the police had been heavy-handed, intimidating a minority group. Either way, they were no further on in the case. The traffic cams and door-to-doors had thrown up nothing new on the mysterious silver car Cathy had possibly got into. The interviews in the traveller camp had also turned up nothing, and there was still no sign of Majella or any lead on who’d killed Cathy.

A gloom sank over the unit, as Avril passed round a get-well card for Gerard, a smiling elephant on the front. Paula couldn’t imagine Gerard smiling much. He’d been kept in hospital overnight for mild burns, and was on forced recuperation at home, much to his annoyance.

Guy
continued to ignore Paula, addressing her if necessary in a clipped tone that made her toes curl up in annoyance. She wanted desperately to talk to him, to explain that he’d got it wrong, that they had to check out the Mission again. Instead she sat at her desk and watched him from the corner of her eye as he slumped behind the glass of his office, often talking on the phone, exhausted, or pacing, or just staring at the photograph of his dead son. Sometimes, she caught him looking at her too, and both would quickly whisk their eyes away. If that was how he wanted it . . .

Living with her father wasn’t appealing either. PJ was the world’s worst patient, and when Paula came home he would just give her a look and carry on eating his toast or biscuits or sausage sandwich. She was sure she’d put on at least five pounds since being back in Ballyterrin. Many nights Pat came round too, forcing her to eat ever-more sugary cakes, and equally unhealthily, to think about Aidan. They hadn’t spoken since the evening at Saoirse’s, and Paula kept remembering Maeve, so beautiful and blonde, and what she’d said. But so what if Aidan used to talk about Paula ten years back – it didn’t mean he gave a damn now.

To ease her frustration, the mounds of reports to trawl through, the fact that Cathy and Louise were dead and Majella still missing, Paula turned to research. She wanted to follow up on what Maeve had told her.

It wasn’t hard to find information on Ron Almeira, Pastor of the God’s Shepherd Church, which had formerly held sway in dozens of Irish towns. She clicked through websites about him, of which there were many. He had devoted fans, scathing haters. The church was based on a charismatic style of worship, and Ron claimed direct visions of God, speaking in tongues, healing the sick. She gazed at a picture of Ron Almeira, this one in colour. Face ruddy with good health. And
all this had been going on in Ireland in the seventies and eighties, when the country had no money and no hope. It had blossomed here, in the rich soil of superstition and spirituality. And if Maeve was right, it was happening again.

Paula spent some time trying to find out if, and when, God’s Shepherd had been in Ballyterrin, whether it might have coincided with Alice and Rachel going missing and never being seen again, but she had no luck. Even if she found something, how could she prove that either girl had gone to the church, twenty-five years ago? She jotted down the names of towns that came up. Dublin. Tipperary. Galway. None in the North so far. As for Annie, the girl found hanging, they’d had no luck with her either. The mother had quickly followed her daughter to the grave, heartbroken, and as far as Paula could see, there were some cousins in England and that was it. Fiacra was making enquiries, but Paula held out little hope of ever finding whether the unknowable Annie had been to God’s Shepherd. Newspaper archives turned up one old shot, blurred and fuzzy, of a girl with black hair and an easy smile. Nothing more. Some people left so little trace on the world it was as if no one had felt them slipping back out of it.

Around her, the office was still subdued. Gerard and Bob were at the main station; Fiacra was still going over the files on Alice, Rachel and Annie, while Avril cross-referenced everything they found to look for links. So far, with the exception of the Mission for Cathy and Majella, there was nothing. A stifled laugh came from Avril, as Fiacra asked her something, too quiet to hear. As she listened to their murmured chat, Paula remembered.

‘Avril?’ As casually as she could, she sidled over to the younger woman’s desk, passing Fiacra Quinn, who had quickly moved back to his terminal, where he was quite openly playing Solitaire. White headphones hung from his ears, and his desk was littered with plates and cups, the bin stuffed with takeaway cartons. Paula’s own was bare of ornament, disappearing under piles of print-outs, and ringed with tea-stains, but Avril’s was a paragon of office neatness. She had put up a picture of an elderly couple, in a diamanté frame – her parents? There was also a smaller passport-sized picture of a serious-looking young man, tucked in beside the computer as if Avril didn’t want it on display.

Avril
was swivelling between her large monitor and a laptop – she’d explained she needed both as most police databases weren’t compatible with each other. ‘You need me? Only I’m up to my eyes processing all the interviews from the traveller camp.’

‘I just wondered if you’d had time to do that chart we talked about. You know, from all the old cases on the database. The ones with the church keyword?’

Avril raised her head, rubbing tired eyes. ‘Oh right. I lost track, what with all this riot business.’ She reached into the top drawer of her desk – Paula caught a glimpse of neat paperclips, a packet of biscuits – and took out a blue plastic folder. ‘I found ten cases with a church or mission keyword, in the fifteen-to-thirty age range, took out a couple where it wasn’t relevant. Here they are on a map, and here’s the dates of the disappearances.’

‘Wow, this is great.’ Paula leafed through the neat diagrams. ‘Did you get the suicide data too?’

Without looking up, Avril reached into the drawer and drew out another piece of paper. ‘That should cover it.’

Paula examined the paper. The numbers were there in dry black type, each hiding some other family’s loss and pain, a wound that would never scab over. ‘Does it match up?’

Avril shrugged. ‘Hard to say. There’s obviously more suicides than disappearances.’

Paula was trying to puzzle it out. ‘But with each of these disappearances, there’s at least one suicide in the same area, same year, same age-group?’

‘Yes. I
couldn’t tell you if there’s a link though.’ Avril was all numbers and data, she clearly didn’t want to get dragged into interpreting it.

‘Thanks anyway. Really, I’m very grateful.’

‘Thank you.’ When she smiled, Avril looked like a different person.

‘I’m just not sure.’ Guy was frowning at the print-outs. ‘It could just be coincidence.’

‘Or it could be something else.’ Paula sat opposite him.

‘You’re thinking, what, some kind of serial killer, linked to this church group? What’s the name – God’s Shepherd?’

‘It’s not so far-fetched, is it? There’s convincing evidence of at least two in Ireland over the years. And the guy who ran it here, he’s up on rape charges in the States. He could have been over here in the seventies and eighties. Then there’s girls going missing, but he leaves the country before anyone makes the connection.’

Guy shook his head. ‘How could the police miss it, if all these girls were being killed?’

‘You know how overstretched they were in the Troubles, both sides of the border. They didn’t talk to each other, the forces. And in Irish towns – well, girls were always going off to England, or even the States. Like this one, look – Deirdre Murphy.
Known to have male acquaintances
, it says. Girl like that disappears, how hard will they really look? They’ll think, Oh, she went off with a fella. Or got pregnant, went to England. Or her family sent her to the Magdalene Laundries and hushed it up. And these are only the reported cases.’ She waved them at him. ‘There could be more.’

‘But someone would have spotted it, if they all went to the same church.’

‘Maybe
not. I’ve done some research into cults. Often what they do is disengage the person from their life, bit by bit. The girls might have been told to keep it secret, so the families wouldn’t have known they were involved. Like Dympna Boyle – her father had no idea how deep in she was.’

‘Hmm.’ Guy was still sceptical. ‘Going off to have a baby isn’t exactly foul play, is it? Who’s to say there’s even a crime here? And I don’t know why you think the suicides are relevant, if we’re looking at a serial killer.’

She paused. ‘That I don’t know. It’s just, this on top of what we know about the Mission . . .’ He was looking deeply unconvinced. ‘We’re meant to be investigating these old cases, is that right? Here’s ten with a possible link.’ She read out the names, leafing through the papers. ‘Deirdre Murphy. Susan O’Neill. Karen Courtney. Bridget Fintan—’

‘OK, OK.’ Guy held up his hands. ‘I get the picture.’

‘These cases are all in the South, but if there was a God’s Shepherd in Ballyterrin – and I think there might have been – maybe Alice and Rachel went there. It all fits, you see? Cathy and Majella at the Mission now, them in 1985 . . .’

He gave in. ‘Fine, have a look. Closest ones first – let me know if you’re going haring off to Galway or somewhere. Take Fiacra with you, I think he’s getting bored with desk-work.’

‘Brilliant! You’re great.’ She jumped up with a smile, and then it seemed that they both remembered at the same moment all the reasons they were angry with each other. ‘I mean, I appreciate it. Thank you.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘So
has anyone been to update the families, tell them we’re looking into the cases?’

Fiacra shook his head as he started the engine. ‘Boss said not to. Didn’t want to get their hopes up, like.’

Paula said nothing. Perhaps Guy was right. After twenty-five years, it was easier to tell yourself you’d given up, that there wasn’t any chance at all. Much easier.

They were starting their cold-case inquiry with the nearest on the list: Rachel Reilly, who in 1985 had failed to return from a night out at a disco. Rachel’s parents were long dead, but a sister still lived on the family farm near Ballyterrin, out in the real borderlands, where the line itself snaked through fields and houses, where it was hard to say which side things came down on. An area of almosts, of shades of grey in more ways than one. They had to cross and re-cross the border several times to get there, and when they did, the road signs suddenly became bilingual and the roads noticeably worse. Undaunted, Fiacra bumped the Gardaí car over the potholes. ‘Sort of ran out of the readies before they could finish it,’ he said, as Paula braced herself.

‘This is all new, is it? Do you not have to drive through Drogheda any more?’

‘Oh aye, it’s the bypass. They’ll do Ballyterrin one day and all, so it’ll be straight from Dublin to Belfast. But the EU money’s all dried up.’ He rubbed together the fingers of one hand, which he was able to do because he drove with only one arm, elbow draped over the window. Fiacra Quinn was clearly a prime example of what Paula’s father, a Belfast native, would call a
culchie
; or if you were feeling less charitable, a bogtrotter. The floor of the car was littered with rubbish, and open CD cases spilled from every orifice. Currently Paula was trying to block her ears to the banging sounds of gangsta rap. It was surreal to hear them parse on guns and hos, when out the car window all you could see was a cow peacefully chewing the cud. Jenny from the flock, more like.

To distract
herself from the road, the din, and the litter, she leafed through the case-notes. ‘So there was no real investigation into Rachel’s disappearance?’

He put on his indicator to turn right. ‘Aye, there was, but the parents didn’t seem too bothered. She was headstrong, they said, always fighting with her mammy, so they thought she’d run off, and so did the RUC.’ He saw her face. ‘Not to worry, Doc. We’re more up to date now. None of the ould sexism or racism now.’

‘Hmm.’ Paula looked up as they bounced over a cattle-grid and fields became visible at the side of the lane. ‘This must be it.’

They parked the car by the barn, and when they opened the door, the sweet reek of animals was thick in the air.

‘Ah, would you whist, Jade?’ Mary O’Dowd, née Reilly, jiggled her youngest child up and down. Two more had peeped round the door of the farmhouse kitchen; Mary was well on her way to reproducing the five children she herself had been the youngest of. Rachel, her long-missing sister, had been the eldest.

The baby hiccupped, and Paula tried to bring the conversation back. ‘So you said Rachel did have a boyfriend, in fact?’