The Lost (30 page)

They sat in a circle. They had all kept on their robes and their pale stage makeup, which made Paula feel a bit freaked out. She wished she had opened the curtains to let in the light, as dark shadows still pooled in every corner. ‘So, the play’s nearly ready?’

The girl who seemed to be the ringleader said primly, ‘We’re doing the dress rehearsal soon, miss.’

‘And it’s for the big prayer concert – that’s on Hallowe’en?’

They kept their hands folded, heads down.

‘Well, it looked
very good from where I was.’

Some glances were exchanged. ‘It’s not ready yet,’ said another girl. Paula recognised her behind the makeup. ‘Anne-Marie, is it?’ Cathy’s best friend. The girl hesitated a moment before nodding.

Paula decided it was time to play hard-ball. ‘Girls. This isn’t a proper interview today – I’m just here to talk to you. To explain a bit about what’s going on. I know Cathy was meant to be in the play, is that right? What part was she going to have?’

The main girl lifted her chin. ‘It was a different bit. We took it out.’

‘And what was the topic?’ No answer. ‘I can find out, you know.’ Paula focused on Anne-Marie. ‘What was it?’

The girl seemed to squirm. ‘It was only a short bit. Sort of about peer pressure and bullying and that.’

‘And who was Cathy in it?’ No answer. ‘Girls. You need to tell me.’

The first girl spoke. ‘She was the one who was bullied.’

A heavy silence had settled on the group, and Paula felt her chances of getting them to talk were slipping away. ‘Listen. Cathy is dead, you know that. We need to find who did it, so they don’t hurt anyone else. You understand this? Now I need you to tell me if Cathy was in any kind of trouble. I know she had a boyfriend. Do you know who it was?’ Her eyes raked round the group, short girls, tall girls, spotty girls. None as pretty as Cathy had been.

‘If she did, we didn’t know,’ said the first girl again. She had bobbed fair hair held back in a clip, cat-like blue eyes. Paula remembered her name now – Siobhan. That was it. ‘I don’t think any of us knew, miss.’

‘Maybe she’d a secret boyfriend,’ ventured Anne-Marie. Siobhan looked at her and she dropped her head.

Paula groped in the depths of her brain for some inspiration. ‘Look – I know you don’t want to get in trouble. I remember what that’s like. But your friend is dead. Somebody killed her. She’ll never get to go to her formal, or get married, or have a baby, or—’ She broke off. One of the girls had started to cry, and then another two were scrubbing at their eyes.

Then Anne-Marie was sobbing
into her robe, tracks appearing in her white makeup. The girls next to her soothed her, rubbing her shoulders, as girls always seem to know how to do. ‘She’s upset, miss,’ said one reprovingly. ‘Her and Cathy were best friends from when they were little.’

Paula tried one last time. ‘Girls, tell me about the Mission. Please. Tell me about Ed Lazarus.’

The briefest ripple of a look went round the group, so fast she almost missed it. ‘What is it?’

Siobhan once again spoke. ‘He’s nice, miss. He listens to us. Everyone there is nice.’

A small dark girl piped up, ‘They really listen to you, miss. Everything that makes you sad—’

Suddenly they were all speaking at once.

‘If you feel fat, or ugly . . .’

‘If your teacher’s mean to you or your mammy shouts . . .’

‘They were so nice to me when my granny died, and I was sad all the time . . .’

‘They even talk about boys, so we don’t feel so bad and we don’t have to do things to make them like us . . .’

‘Respect, yeah, they teach us respect . . .’

‘Self-esteem . . .’

‘All right.’ She held up her hands to stop the chorus of voices. ‘All right, so you like it at the Mission. But listen, girls: if any of you want to talk – if Ed ever did anything that made you uncomfortable, or if you want to tell me something as a secret . . . you can talk to me. Ring me – reverse the charges if you need to.’ She passed out some cards and the girls took them dutifully, giving nothing away with their eyes.

‘What if
we don’t need to talk to you, miss?’ The main girl lifted up her cool face to Paula.

‘Well then – it’s Siobhan, isn’t it?’

The girl waited a moment. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, Siobhan, if you don’t, so much the better. But the offer’s there.’

‘Can we get back to our play now?’

‘Yes. Go on.’ She sighed at how quickly they got up. ‘Hang on a minute there, Siobhan.’

The girl hovered. For fifteen she was graceful, poised.

‘Yes, miss?’

‘You wouldn’t be the Siobhan who has the sleepovers, would you?’

She frowned. ‘So do lots of people.’

‘You know Katie Brooking?’

‘Katie’s in my class, yeah.’ Her eyes were narrow.

‘And she goes to your sleepovers?’

She sniffed. ‘Mammy invited her one time. She felt sorry for her ’cos her brother’s dead.’

‘I see. Just one time?’

‘Yeah.’ The girl’s tone was high, defensive. ‘We’re not
friends
.’

‘Well, off you go. Thanks, Siobhan.’

As Paula left the school, it was four o’clock, shadows gathering around the street lamps. She’d parked her car outside the school gates, and as she walked down the now-deserted street, winter-dark, she was fumbling in her bag for the keys.

In retrospect, PJ would have killed her for ignoring all his rules. Her mind was full of the girls, and how on earth she was going to nail Lazarus if none of them would talk. She wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. She didn’t have her keys out and ready to use. She hadn’t parked the Volvo under the light – rather it was in a patch of darkness by a damp hedge. That was why she didn’t see the figure until it sprang out and was suddenly between her and the car.

‘Jesus Christ!’ She jumped.

‘You take
the Lord’s name in vain a lot, don’t you?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, they let me go. And they really should be more careful down at that station about what they say in front of prisoners. It wasn’t too hard to overhear that “Paula’s gone to the school”.’

Breathe, breathe
. She tried to slow her heartbeat. ‘You aren’t a prisoner, are you, seeing as you’re here.’

‘I’m a suspect though – thanks to you. I could lose my job for this.’ Ed Lazarus was so close she could see the dark centre of his eyes. ‘My job means everything to me.’

‘You must have known it would catch up with you sometime, Ed. You slept with minors. It’s a crime.’

He made a sort of impatient gesture, clutching at his head. ‘This country and its bureaucracy. Is there no such thing as a second chance any more? Jesus welcomed sinners; He forgave them.’

She made herself speak confidently, while wondering if she could feint round him and get inside the car before he grabbed her. ‘That’s true, but He also said “Go, and sin no more”.’ Finally a use for all those Scripture classes – arguing with sociopaths.
Thanks, Sister Carmel.
‘Why’d you come back here, Ed? Did you want to find your mother’s family? You know, they’ve no idea what happened to her. All these years, waiting. You should tell them who you are.’

His eyes flashed. ‘Everyone wants to know where they come from. I wanted to see it. That’s all.’

‘And your father?’

His voice had grown higher, almost child-like. ‘This is the last place he was. Do you understand that? I know he’s somewhere, but this is the last place he was when she knew him. She still loved him. All those years – she’d never go back to her family, never even contact them. He wanted her to give me up, and she wouldn’t, but she wouldn’t cause him any trouble either. So she just left. She gave all that up for him.’

‘That night – she hadn’t planned to
go?’

‘No. She told me – she said he was angry when she told him about me. She was frightened, so she ran away. Left everything, except me. See, she loved him.’

‘But Ed – you know he didn’t love her back. He was hurting her. Same as you’re doing with these girls.’

He laughed, catching at his head again. ‘They come to me, do you know that?’

She was perhaps a metre from the car door. ‘The girls?’

‘Yes. I give them self-esteem, I help them. I make them feel good. You find it hard to believe they’d come to me of their own accord?’

‘No, I can believe that. You’re a handsome man. And I do remember what it’s like to be a teenager.’ She could hear the steel in her own voice. ‘But these girls, they don’t know what they’re really offering. It’s up to the adult to turn them away, to help them.’

‘Of course they know. They know
exactly
what they want.’

Paula tried not to shudder. How many times had she heard those words from abusers, however young or vulnerable their victims?
They wanted it.
Grasping the cold metal of keys in her hand, she pulled them out and made her voice steady. ‘I said you were a handsome man, Ed. It’s true, but I don’t think you’ve got much else going for you. So you better step away before I use these to scratch your face up.’

He laughed. ‘You’re so tough, Paula, so good at rooting out everyone else’s sins. What about your own?’

‘I have
sins, of course – we all do. But I haven’t changed my name so I can get off scott free and abuse young girls.’

For a moment she was afraid he would lash out, but he moved back, giving her arm a brief spiteful push as he went, like a child might do. ‘This isn’t over, you know. You’ve cost me too much.’

‘I know it’s not over. In fact, I promise you it isn’t.’

As soon as he’d stepped back into the shadows she was scrabbling the key into the lock. Missing it. Finding it, fumbling the door open, and inside with her heart racing.
Jesus
. She heard the doors lock behind her and let all her breath out in a rush. As she drove off, she could see his green eyes gleaming in the darkness.

When Paula parked outside her dad’s house and saw every light was blazing, a cold pocket settled in her stomach. Opening the front door, she saw Pat sitting on the sofa in the front room. PJ was opposite, patting the edge of the chair as if he didn’t know how to comfort the woman beside him. For a moment Paula had the mad idea they knew Ed Lazarus had followed her.

‘Dad, what is it, is something wrong?’

PJ gave a brief shake of the head. ‘It’s all right, pet. Pat’s had a wee shock.’

‘What’s happened?’

Pat wailed. ‘Oh Paula, my heart’s scalded. It’s Aidan. We just got word that fella’s getting out of jail. Sean Conlon – you know who he is.’

‘I know.’ No one had ever been convicted of killing John O’Hara, but everyone in Ballyterrin knew who they suspected. Of the three men who’d most likely shot Aidan’s father, one had skipped the country and was believed to be hiding out in South America. One had been convicted of other crimes, got out after just five years under the Good Friday Agreement, and was promptly shot by a Loyalist gang on his way to the dole office. And the third, that was Sean Conlon, who had now served ten years in jail for his part in a post-Agreement shooting that killed two soldiers. ‘What happened?’

‘Aidan was over
for his tea. I made shepherd’s pie, his favourite. But then the phone went and it was the police liaison saying that fella Conlon’ll be free by next year. Good behaviour.’ Pat gave a small sob, mashing a tissue between her hands. ‘I’ve made my peace with it, love, but Aidan . . . he was never right. Him being there when it happened, I suppose.’

Paula cut in. ‘Pat. Where is he?’

‘He just took off, down the pub no doubt. Oh, love, he’s been doing so much better! He was really off the booze and the paper was going so well, and . . . and . . .’ Pat gave way to noisy tears.

Paula met her father’s eyes over Pat’s head. ‘I’ll go.’ She had barely got in and it was so cold and dark out. ‘Never mind, Pat, I’ll find him. Don’t you worry.’

She waited for them to stop her, but her father just nodded slowly. ‘Aye, he always listened to you, pet.’

He did? She was shrugging her coat back on, and as she went out again, PJ had finally managed to touch Pat’s hand, and she heard him say something about a nice cup of tea.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was funny how you could
know someone, Paula thought, as she restarted the car. Know them in the sense that you’d no idea had they a girlfriend, or what went on in their mind on any given day, but still after twelve years be sure where they’d go when their whole world had been reduced to the bottom of a glass.

True enough, Aidan was slumped over the bar in Flanagan’s, the seedy old-man pub where he’d first started drinking at fifteen. His black shirt was rolled up at the arms, eyes half-closed as he nursed an empty bottle of beer.

‘Well, Aidan, what’s all this?’ She was counting the glasses in front of him. He’d had, what, five whiskeys? Not beyond hope, then. ‘No more for him,’ she said to the barman, who was watching hurling on the TV with a
not-my-problem
air.

Aidan stirred. ‘Give us another, Trevor.’

‘You better bloody not.’

Trevor, the antiquated owner of the pub, gave Paula a bloodshot look. ‘I remember you. It’s the wee Maguire girl, is it?’

‘I’m not a wee girl now. I could have you shut down.’

He gave a dry chuckle. ‘Never bothered you when you were in here at seventeen, drinking lemonade Hooch and all that shite.’

Paula tried not to react to that. ‘Please, Trevor. He’s in a bad way. He’s had a shock. Give me a hand with him, will you.’

Aidan was much bigger than Paula, and not inclined to leave, so even with her and the old barman, it was a struggle to get him out to the car.

‘Hey, what’s this! Lemme
go, Maguire. I wanna nother drink.’

‘Well, you can’t have one. Come on.’ As Aidan sagged briefly, she took advantage of the moment to stow his legs into the footwell of the car, and slam the door. His dark head slumped against the glass. Turning to Trevor, who’d seen it all before, she said, ‘If you see him in that state again, would you ever think about not serving him, maybe?’

‘It’s a free country, love.’