The Lost (38 page)

She fell silent, clenching her fists. ‘I’m not that little girl now.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ He sounded sad.

‘You know what? Go fuck yourself, Aidan. It wasn’t just up to you. Maybe I wanted you to be the one. You ever think that? Maybe it was you I wanted. And then, you just ended it, and—’ She fought back the memory, the lights blurring in and out over her head, wondering:
Will I see her again, if this is it?
No fear. Just curiosity, and a terrible deadening peace. ‘You said I was the one who vanished. But you’d left months before. I lost you the day you went to Dublin.’

Aidan bowed his head. ‘What’s the point of all this?’ His voice was harsher than she’d ever heard it. ‘It’s all in the past. It’s dead and gone, Maguire.’

She stood quivering. ‘Then why the hell are we still fighting about it?’

He looked up, his expression surprisingly soft. ‘Because there’s no one in this world can annoy me like you can.’

‘And you me.’

Suddenly he laughed, and the tension between them fell down like a house of cards. ‘Fecked if I know, Maguire.’ He fixed her with his dark eyes. ‘I wanted to phone you, of course I did. Didn’t know what to say. After all this time—It knocked me for six, I won’t lie.’

‘You could have started with, “Hello, Paula, how are you feeling? How was your walk of shame?”’

‘Did your daddy catch you?’

‘Of course. It’s not easy to give him the slip.’

‘As I know to my cost. Well, is he gunning for my guts?’

‘I think he’s worried about you, to be
honest. So’s Pat. And so am I.’

His eyes were tired, but gentle. ‘Don’t be wasting your time on me. I’m fine.’

She looked pointedly at the JD bottle.

‘All right, all right. I might have had a wee slip. Gave me a hell of a shock, hearing that fella might be out soon, and then them busting in, taking the lot.’ He looked around the office where his father had died, spilling his life’s blood to defend the paper. Now it was a shell, ransacked and empty. ‘It’d kill my da to see this. Maybe it’s just as well he’s gone.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to slap you in a minute. Do you not see this?’ She waved the envelopes again. ‘People want their paper to tell the truth. God knows why, but they want you to carry on what your dad started. That and the car shows, of course.’

He picked up one of the envelopes she’d thrown at him and peered inside. It held a crumpled ten-pound note and had a scrawled message on the front –
For the paperman
.

‘Aidan?’

He was quiet, staring at it. ‘Aye. I see, Maguire. I’m not a total blind eejit. Even if I do act like one, on occasion.’

‘Come on.’ She bent a hand out to help him up from the floor, feeling the electricity between them as their skin touched. ‘Now’s not the time to get drunk and maudlin. I need you. I’ve a feeling things are about to come to a head.’

He was suddenly alert. ‘Something’s happened?’

‘Another girl’s gone.’

‘Shit,’ he swore. ‘But after the traveller girl wasn’t missing at all . . .’

‘I know, I know, we thought it was over. But now I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘Who is it, Maguire? Tell me.’

‘It’s Guy Brooking’s daughter,’ she said. ‘So you can see, this is no time for sitting round feeling
sorry for ourselves. We have to find her.’

‘Right. Shit.’ He got up, running hands over his face and giving the impression of trying to forcibly pull himself together. ‘Where do we start?’

‘I thought maybe with this.’ She felt in the back pocket of her trousers for the
Gazette
clipping from 1985. John O’Hara’s last year on earth. ‘Tell me what you know about Angela Carr.’

Aidan was pacing in front of her, tapping a chewed pencil off his thigh. Paula was sitting on the one chair the bailiffs had left, a broken-backed one with a wonky leg.

‘So explain it to me again,’ she said.

‘I’m not making much sense, am I?’

‘Maybe if you weren’t half-cut it’d be easier.’ She relented. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

‘Like I said, it was Dave gave me the idea in the first place – when he said they’d never had any files on the Carrs. Then I started thinking – what if there was something on the parents, before they married? Well, we know all about the fine Eamonn.’

She nodded. Eldest of eight, father shot on the doorstep, the family held together by a strong-willed matriarch who’d managed to salt away what remained of Patsy’s ill-gotten gains until Eamonn was old enough to take over, and funnel it into the property empire that had made his fortune.

‘So then I thought, What about the ma? This Angela. You said she was a wee bit funny when you met her. And then when we saw the lovely Rosemary, Eamonn’s fancy woman, she said something that jarred with me. Did you not notice?’

‘No.’ It was annoying, how he could recall verbatim large stretches of conversation. He’d used it to her great irritation when they’d gone out in their teens.
But Paula, you said you’d let me undo another button this time.

‘Are you listening?’

‘Sorry. What did she say?’

‘She said,
and then he came back with her, and I was surprised she could show her face in the town again.
’

‘So?’

‘So, it says on Angela Carr’s file, which you kindly showed me, that she was born in Dublin. Did you notice a Dublin accent when you met her?’

‘No, actually.’

‘No. She’s from Ballyterrin, or I’m an Orangeman. But she’s lying about it. I did a bit of digging, and I got hold of Angela Carr’s reference for her first job. She was cleaning in a law office in Dublin, and that’s where she met Eamonn. Well, the reference came from a Safe Harbour home.’

‘How the hell do you find out these things? No, don’t tell me. Go on.’

‘Safe Harbour homes were notorious for never keeping any records. There’s still no law in the South that lets adoptees find out their real names or birth parents. A disgrace.’ He went back to his pacing and tapping, in lecture mode. ‘So I just searched the archives for any mention of the home in Ballyterrin round that time. And there was Da’s article. The case was quite famous at the time, apparently. We were too young, they’d have sent us out of the room if it came on telly. Now, they kept the family’s name out of the news, but everyone in the town knew rightly who they were.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Usual. High-tech research.’

‘Bought some old soak a pint, you mean.’

‘Maybe. Would you shut up? The point is, the fella I asked told me the family was called McGreavy. And the girl’s name – it was Angela. You know she was pregnant, and they made her have the baby. Sort
of a
cause célèbre
. She was twelve at the time, so she’d be thirty-seven now. Angela Carr’s thirty-seven, as far as I can work out. That fits with the dates.’

And that meant the child she had been forced to have, who’d been adopted to America, would now be twenty-five. Another link to Safe Harbour. Another girl pregnant, the same year that Rachel Reilly and Alice Dunne had gone missing. What if Angela had also gone to God’s Shepherd? Also encountered Ron Almeira?

‘Maguire? Are you listening? You’ve a funny look on your face. Do you think that’s a pile of shite or something?’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m fairly sure you’re right that Angela Carr is Angela McGreavy. It all fits.’

‘So?’

‘The thing is, I think I know who her child is, too. Her daughter, I should say.’

‘But how—’ At that point they were interrupted by a loud burst of sound from the main square, as if hundreds of loudspeakers had been switched on. Light bloomed in the windows and Paula squinted, holding up her hands. A voice filled the room: ‘Hello, Ballyterrin!’ Screams. Hundreds of screaming girls.

‘Listen,’ Aidan said, cocking his head. ‘The show’s starting.’

Paula and Aidan crouched down by the broken window, peering out between the boards. ‘You see him there, that Lazarus fella?’

‘No. He must be lying low. They’ll arrest him if he shows his face again.’ Below them in the street passed clumps of teenage girls, threes and fours, twos and fives. No one alone. Dressed in short skirts, despite the chill October night. Witches’ hats, devil horns. Blue-tinged skin and high shrieking laughter. ‘They’ll hardly find him in this crowd. Please God they get him before he hurts anyone else.’

Aidan was staring down at
all the scantily-clad girls, a hounded look on his face. ‘Mmm. You think maybe he’s got her somewhere – wee Katie?’

‘He said he didn’t.’ Paula had her torch switched on, checking the face of each girl. ‘I don’t know what I think, and that’s the truth.’

The windows were shaking with the noise from the cathedral. The concert was already booming out of loudspeakers round the main square. A pale young boy, who Paula vaguely recognised as the guitarist in the band, was talking about the Mission. God’s love. Planting a seed in the town. The shops round the square were shuttered, white vans selling burgers and soft drinks out of shockingly bright interiors, steam rising with the smell of onions. Paula glimpsed stalls here and there for local charities, but more selling Mission goods. T-shirts. CDs. Motivational films and books. And everywhere in the square, moving like a dark wave over the sea, were the girls. It looked as if every teenage girl in Ballyterrin had come out. How many were there? Five hundred, maybe? Standing behind silver crash barriers, they filled the square, moving and calling and sighing as one. It was just like being at a rock concert.

‘So who is this you reckon we’re looking for?’

‘Says her name is Madeleine Goldberg. She’s one of the Mission staff. She knew Cathy quite well, it seems. She’d an alibi for the Friday, but – I don’t know.’

As they hunched down, Aidan squinted over the crowd. Already the street under people’s feet was littered with empty paper cups and popcorn holders. ‘Well, that’s most of the Mission lot up there, if I’m not mistaken.’ Indeed, the stage was filling up with young people, clear-skinned, glowing with righteousness. The boys wore billowing white shirts, the girls flowered dresses, hair in braids. Maddy Goldberg was so far nowhere to be seen.

‘I was trying for ages to work out
what she’d said that bothered me. She made a point of telling me she’d been born in Ballyterrin, then adopted to America. Like she wanted me to know for some reason. I didn’t understand, but then we found out about that McGreavy case, and the child she had to give up.’

‘How old is this Madeleine?’

‘I’ll give you three guesses.’

‘Right.’ He suddenly dropped to the floor, pulling her down by the ankle. ‘Get down!’

‘Ow! What the hell?’

‘Look.’ Aidan was whispering now, staring at the screen. ‘Switch that thing off.’ He fumbled for her torch and turned it off, so that the only source of light came from outside. There in the middle of the screen, stepping up to the altar inside, shaking hands with the band like a sad dad trying to be down with the kids, was local councillor and businessman Eamonn Carr.

It knocked the breath from Paula’s lungs. ‘Oh God. He’s here too? And with Cathy dead. I can’t believe it. I can’t understand why he’s supporting the Mission.’

Aidan shrugged. ‘He’s invested in them heavily.’

‘But that couldn’t be enough. There must be something else.’ She stared out of the window.

Up on the altar stage, Eamonn was waiting for the applause to die down. His face looked strained and old, his hair greyer than it had been a few weeks ago. But he wore a smart suit, a black tie, and he faced the crowd with a smile on his face.

‘Thank you, thank you, everyone. I’m here today because me and my family have suffered a terrible loss. I know you feel it with me, both the town and everybody at the Mission.’

There was a groundswell of murmuring. Behind him on the altar backdrop, a picture was projected. A girl with dark hair, a bright smile. Paula felt the hairs rise on her neck.

‘This concert is given in memory
of my daughter, Cathy. She loved the Mission, and I know they loved her too. We’re all here tonight to give thanks for her life.’

On screen, he turned and muttered something to the side of the altar. There was a reluctant motion, and out of the crowd appeared two familiar, skinny children: Anna and Sean Carr. They were dressed uncomfortably in a frock, and a shirt and tie. An older woman with rigid grey hair also came forward, holding one younger Carr in her arms and leading the other by the hand.

‘Who’s that?’

Aidan squinted. ‘That’d be the redoubtable Imelda Carr. Eamonn’s ma.’

The whole family were there, then. Except the mother, Angela. ‘Hey, if Eamonn’s here, that means he’s not at home.’

‘Top marks, Maguire. If you ever want a career in investigative journalism . . .’ They were still whispering.

‘Shut up! It means Angela’s on her own. Listen, someone needs to keep an eye on our friend Eamonn there, and also look for Maddy. She’s very striking, a big girl, lots of dark curly hair.’ Like Cathy, now that she came to think of it.

‘Fat, you mean?’

She swatted him on the arm. ‘No. Reckon you can do it?’

‘And what’ll you be up to, Miss Marple Maguire?’

‘I’m going to see Angela again. Maybe this time she’ll be able to talk to me.’

After a moment Aidan nodded. ‘You’re probably right to go yourself. But Maguire, it’s maybe not very safe. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking about who killed Cathy . . .’

‘I don’t know, I said. But he knows something, I’m sure of it. There’s something not right in that family. And if he’s out of the way, I have to try. You see? If Katie’s somewhere – if someone has her and I don’t try . . .’ She’d already let the girl down enough, she meant. She
couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try everything.

‘Fair enough. But maybe take some kind of weapon with you, just to be on the safe side.’

She looked sceptically round the ransacked room. ‘Just open up your gun cupboard there, then.’

‘Ah, don’t be messing, you know I’m right. Someone killed that wee girl – slit her throat, yes?’

Reluctantly she nodded. ‘All right. But do you even have anything?’

‘I dunno. Let’s look in the cupboard, they didn’t go in there.’