The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) (4 page)

Yet these five people conspired one bright summer day to blow up sixteen men, women, children, and babies, with a bomb so massive it destroyed a whole street, tore the heads right off some victims, and produced so much blood it fell down on the High Street like a red rain for a full ten minutes after the blast.

What can we say in the face of such horror? What the Five have said amounts to – we were not involved, and even if we were involved, we didn’t intend to kill civilians, and anyway, some must always die in the war for freedom. We know the story. As I will show in this book, the guilt of the Five is indisputable, yet a series of legal and policing errors mean they have not been brought to justice. For the families of the sixteen people who died that sunny spring day, and the dozens maimed, blinded and paralysed in the blast, the end of the road has been reached.

If you ever ask yourself the price of peace, then this is it – to go out in your home town and see the man who murdered your child filling his car with petrol, whistling a Republican tune, free and alive and getting off scot-free. Ask yourself – is that a price you’d be willing to live with?

Chapter Three

Paula returned to an empty house that night. The idea was that now Pat and PJ were married, he would move into her bigger and nicer house across town, where the bathroom could more easily be adapted to his bad leg. Injured in an accident years before, he’d been badly wounded again just before Christmas, when a killer had broken in looking for Paula. Since then the locks had been replaced by shiny new bolts, but still she didn’t feel safe until she’d checked all the doors and windows every night.

Having completed the rounds, she stood in the kitchen. Under her loose maternity top, her hand found the scar on her abdomen, where an insane woman had tried to cut her baby out. But the baby was still in there, safe for now. A girl. Paula hadn’t wanted to know, but the woman’s sister, who claimed to be psychic, had told her, and now she knew it was hard not to picture the child. Would she have red hair? Paula sighed. Seeing Guy every day, his features were too easy to picture, the fair hair swept back, the rigid bones of his face. She remembered what the psychic, Magdalena Croft, had told her, seeing her with Guy:
oh, he’s the one, is he?
It wasn’t true. The woman didn’t have visions, it wasn’t possible. She was a fraudster, a liar, and she deserved the prison sentence she was now serving.
But was she right?
And then there was Aidan, of course, dark, angry, whose face she saw every time she shut her eyes.

Paula touched her stomach and spoke aloud in the silence. ‘It’s OK. We don’t need either of them. We’ll have each other.’

It was strange she should feel lonely here. She’d loved living alone in London, shutting the door and keeping out friends, lovers, would-be boyfriends. Waking to the river’s shifting colours, running along it at night with her breath in her ears and the pounding of her own feet the only sounds. Sitting in her window seat watching the lights of boats go past, perfectly happy in her own company, working on missing persons for a big station in Rotherhithe. Work had mattered, and nothing else.

Then she’d come home, and got stuck here. And this house was haunted. There in the kitchen, that was where her mother had stood the last day, rinsing off breakfast dishes. Paula, then just thirteen, had eaten her porridge without looking up, school uniform on and eyes bleary. When the police asked about it later, when she’d been home for hours and no one had come and she had to give in to her rising panic, she’d not even been able to remember what her mother was wearing.

Her mind turned, restless, to the doubts that lurked at the back of it. Several months ago Guy had handed her the file of her mother’s case. A jailed IRA member had suggested he knew something of the case, and might even talk if he could get early release. And then there was Magdalena, whispering more of her poison:
your mother’s still alive. She’s alive, and over water
.

Bob Hamilton had been the lead officer on her mother’s case, back in 1993. Paula remembered him coming to the door, her father’s former partner, there to arrest him for the possible murder of his wife. Of course PJ had been released, but his job had never been easy again, and he’d been let go for good in 1998 after the Good Friday Agreement. Bob Hamilton had been the one to deliver the news. Forced to work with him, Paula had asked him to reopen the case, but he wouldn’t talk to her about it. She’d spoken to everyone who might know something, anything – her mother’s old boss, Pat, Bob himself. She’d learned nothing concrete, but still the doubts would not go away. Had they done everything they could? Was the psychic right, had she really seen something?
What if?
The what if, it could drive you mad if you let it.

Restless, Paula checked her phone – nothing. Nothing from Aidan, nothing from Guy. Nothing from Saoirse, her best friend – or she had been before Paula left town anyway, who knew now – who’d been strange with her since the pregnancy. There was no one else. Her London life, her friends there, her colleagues, it had all been washed away in the move across the water.

She shivered and tugged her dressing gown round her bump. ‘You OK in there? This is where we’re meant to live when you come out. What do you think?’ She looked round at the brown seventies cupboards and patterned lino of the kitchen. ‘I know, not the best, is it? We’re getting it fixed up. Hardwood floors and that.’ Her dad was going to pay. The idea was Paula and the baby could live here ‘for as long as you want, pet’, and then it could be sold. Which was until when? Could she go back to London as originally planned, with a tiny, helpless baby, pick up her life of dark bars and late nights and always the escape of her empty flat? Could she stay here and live in her parents’ sad terraced house, a single mother in her thirties?

She wandered into the living room, itching with doubt and boredom. She picked up the local paper, but that only reminded her of Aidan, its editor, and anyway it featured a large profile of the Republican mayor Jarlath Kenny and the success he’d made of attracting investment to the town – something of a puff piece for Aidan, but no doubt he’d printed it for reasons of his own. Jarlath Kenny didn’t even try to hide his IRA past, as if everything that happened before 1998 had been wiped out by the Good Friday Agreement and no questions asked. Now he was launching a Westminster bid – the local seat was going to be vacant when the current moderate MP retired in September and he was widely seen as a shoo-in. It was strange that Kenny, once as much of a terrorist as the Mayday Five, was running the town, while the Five had disappeared. It was entirely plausible that the local Republican movement had dealt with them, bent as they were on derailing all the progress made since 1998 and stirring up awkward memories of the not-so-long-ago time when many politicians had themselves been no stranger to the detonator or the Armalite. And then there was the Mayday Victims Group, vocal, angry. Denied any justice since the trial had collapsed the year before.

But Paula didn’t want to think about that. Hopefully they would all have alibis. Hopefully the visit to the Chair would be just a formality.

She was actually glad when the phone rang and it was PJ checking up on her.

‘Make sure you don’t let that water heater overboil. It does be awful temperamental.’

‘It’s fine, Dad. Are you all right? How’s your leg?’

‘Ah, not too bad. Have you put the heating on? You don’t want to catch a chill with the baby.’

‘Of course.’

‘Don’t go out now and leave your straighteners on or anything like that. I put a new battery in the smoke alarm, but you never know. Oh, and the bins go out on a Tuesday.’

‘Dad! I’m not a kid!’

‘I know, I know. Listen, would you ever call in on Mrs Flynn next door if you’ve time?’

‘I’m so busy, Dad, I—’

‘Just for a minute, see she’s OK. Now I’m not over the fence she’s got no one. Her weans all went to England and sure they never make it back to see her.’

Had Paula chosen, she could have read books between the gaps in her father’s words. ‘OK. I’ll call in when I get a minute.’ Though the Lord only knew when that might be.

‘And you’re OK up there on your own, you’re not getting into bad thoughts or anything?’

Paula thought again of all the years she’d lived alone in London, barely seeing her father for months on end, just stilted phone calls straining across the water. But this house was haunted – for him, too. ‘I’m fine.’ She could almost have said it, said,
Dad, I know you think she’s dead, but I’m just not sure, and I have to keep on looking, whatever it means. Whoever it hurts
. ‘Honestly, I’m just going to go to bed. We’re so busy at work.’

‘Oh yes, with the fella in the woods. Can’t say I have too much sympathy for him. Well, goodnight, pet. You’re sure you’re OK?’

After assuring her father she was fine, she was thirty and had lived alone for many years, and hadn’t fallen down the stairs or electrocuted herself on the toaster, Paula took herself to bed to read a book published a month before, to much controversy, about the Mayday bomb. In it the author, a Dublin journalist, had publicly named the five people believed to be behind the blast, who due to various legal and jurisdictional blunders had never been convicted. Having followed the story with interest, Paula knew that Ireland First were in the process of suing the author and publishers, a small independent press – until the Five had vanished. And now Mickey Doyle had turned up in the forest with a rope around his neck.

Lying on her bed in the dark house, she tried not to see his mottled face. The book’s journalist author, Maeve Cooley, was a rising star in the South, loved for her cynical style as much as for her blonde beauty. She was also a good friend of Aidan’s, often helping him on stories, and by extension a sort-of friend of Paula. Except that the last time Paula had seen Maeve, Aidan had been in her bedroom in Dublin, wearing just a T-shirt and boxers. They were old friends. Could have been nothing. But she wouldn’t ask, same as he wouldn’t ask her if he was the father of her child, and this was the game they were playing, had been playing for twelve years, until they were so good it was hard to say if either had won or both had lost.

The cover was adorned with a picture of Maeve, soulful, lovely, clever. Damn her, she was funny too. You couldn’t not like her and Paula had done her best. She began to read.

Extract from
The Blood Price: The Mayday
Bombing and its Aftermath
, by Maeve Cooley
(Tairise Press, 2011)

No one got up that morning with any premonitions. Those who say they did are wrong, and worse, they do an injustice to the dead. For who would have gone into Crossanure that day if any pall or shadow hung over the bright sun, who would have strapped babies into buggies, taken elderly parents for a day out?

On a farm outside town, John Lenehan was up tending to his cows. He’d later send his son Danny into town, to buy animal feed and change some money for Danny’s upcoming holiday to Majorca – his first ever with friends. He’d got his passport the day before. All over town people got ready. They were there buying a Communion dress, getting a car serviced, picking up new glasses, changing library books. Hundreds of people were in Crossanure that day. A funfair had set up in the park, spilling out popcorn smells and disco music. The Orange parade was due at two p.m., the first of marching season. It was Monday 1st May 2006, a bank holiday. By the end of the day sixteen people would be dead and hundreds wounded, the still-beating heart of the small town ripped right out. In this book I will try to make some of their voices heard, through speaking to those injured and those left behind to grieve.

This is what happened. But no, that isn’t the right wording. It didn’t just happen. This is what someone did. And in this book I will go on to name them, in the hope that they may one day face the truth of the murders they committed.

Paula put the book down. It was all coming back to her: the death, the screaming, the shock. Blood misting the camera lens. In all the horrific litany of the Troubles, this bomb was somehow the closest to home, the nastiest last sting in the tail. And here she was trying to find the likely perpetrators, help them, save them. She didn’t want to think too much about that.

Chapter Four

Paula could hardly believe the change in John Lenehan – he’d suffered a stroke after the Mayday trial collapsed, she knew, but it was still shocking to see him, his hair turned entirely white, his back stooped. Despite being permanently confined to home, he wore a shirt and tie under his jumper. ‘Would you like me to get that, Mr Lenehan?’ He was struggling from the kitchen on a walking stick, but the look he flashed her as he put down the tray of tea was pure steel. ‘I’d be dead and buried before I’d let a woman in your condition serve me, miss. You sit down.’

‘Thank you.’

With much difficulty he arranged his own tea, the cup and saucer rattling, as he lowered himself into an old upright chair. Everything was near at hand, the crossword, the glasses on a string, the bottles of pills. The walls were lined in holy pictures and framed family shots of a handsome boy and a pretty woman in her fifties. Mary Lenehan had been thirty-five when she wed, nearly forty when Danny came. Several months after her son was blown to pieces on Crossanure High Street, her husband had found her body hanging on the landing of the house they now sat in. John Lenehan was seventy-three. Before Danny died, he’d been an active man in his late sixties, still farming, a Eucharistic minister and devout Catholic who got on well with his Protestant neighbours in the rural belt outside Ballyterrin. Now he was . . . like this.

‘What was it you were wanting me for?’ He had perhaps noticed Paula’s eyes wandering to the pictures. His words had a slight slur – you could hear him forcing them out.

‘You may have seen that a body was found at the weekend.’

‘Michael Doyle.’

‘Yes. Mickey. We’re sure it’s him.’

John nodded grimly. ‘He hanged himself, I heard.’

‘Well . . .’ Paula hesitated. Guy was still outside on his phone, chatting to his best bud Corry, no doubt. ‘He was hanged, yes. But we aren’t sure if he did it himself.’

The ageing man sat up very straight in his chair. He leaned forward and set the shaking cup upon the coffee table – old, scarred, just like him. The manoeuvre took a full fifteen seconds. ‘What is it you’re telling me, miss?’

‘We think someone killed him. There were certain . . . signs that it wasn’t suicide.’ They’d agreed not to release information about the note in the mouth, as a way of weeding out confessions. ‘So I’m afraid we’re going to have to speak to the families. We need to eliminate them from the investigation.’

John was silent for a moment. She realised he was looking past her head, at the picture of his wife and son. He didn’t say anything for a while.

Paula spoke. ‘Mary . . . she couldn’t go on after it?’

He looked at her. His blue eyes were leached of colour, his eyebrows white caterpillars. Paula let him look at her for a long time. She didn’t need to say anything. Eventually he shifted. ‘You came to tell me it was murder, miss? If indeed it’s possible to murder a man like that. Do you need to have a soul to be murdered, or is it more like putting down a rabid dog?’

‘Is it?’

‘I’m a Christian, miss. Nothing that happened changed that. If we can’t forgive we have to endure. Now what did you want with me? The man’s dead, seems not much can change that.’ He paused. ‘That was their argument too, as I recall. The Ireland First lot. Too late to bring people back, so what was the point in a trial?’

‘The other four are still missing, and we think it’s now looking orchestrated – a mass kidnap, with the intent to harm.’

‘They said they had no intent,’ he said, still looking over her shoulder. ‘You remember that? Plant a bomb on a busy shopping street, but not meaning any hurt. There was a lot of talk about
intent
back then. What makes a crime. What makes a sin.’

‘Mr Lenehan . . . I understand not everyone is part of your support group—’

‘No. There were a few disagreements along the way. Human nature, sadly. Some wanted to fight in the courts, some preferred to get on with some kind of life.’

‘And you?’

‘It’s not much living when you’re like this.’ He indicated the walking stick, the house settled about him like an old coat. ‘As I said, I’m still a Christian.’

It wasn’t really an answer, Paula thought. ‘We wanted to let you know as Chair that we’ll have to speak to the families and survivors. We’ll be as tactful as we can, but we do have to speak to everyone involved and try to get alibis. If you could relay that message, it would be very helpful to us. Thank you.’ She went to get up, then realised she couldn’t. She was entirely sunk into the soft cushions. ‘Er . . .’

‘Here.’ Shifting to his feet, the old man helped her up. His hand was very cold. Paula righted herself. ‘Thank you. I’m a liability at the moment.’

‘When are you due?’ His voice was gruff.

‘In two months, God willing.’ Yes, she’d said God willing. Some atheist she was.

‘May God bless you.’ He said it like he had a direct line to the man himself.

The door opened and Guy came in, tucking his phone away. ‘Mr Lenehan, so sorry to keep you. I’m DI Guy Brooking.’

Paula and John Lenehan exchanged a look. ‘I’ve spoken to the doctor here,’ he said. ‘Get her to tell you what I said. Look after yourself, miss.’ He stumped off to the kitchen with their cups rattling a shaky fandango in his hands.

She indicated to Guy they should go out, shutting the door quietly behind him. ‘What was your call about?’

‘The autopsy’s been done on Doyle. Traces of a sedative in his system. They’re trying to isolate the compound now, as it could be a good lead. But one thing’s sure – it definitely wasn’t suicide.’

He opened the car door for her, unthinkingly courteous. ‘What do we do next, then?’ She got in, with difficulty.

‘We interviewed the families of the bombers when they went missing, but we better go back now we’ve found Doyle, see if they know anything else. Perhaps you’d go with Gerard – I’d like your insights.’ Guy started the car.

‘You can’t come with me?’

‘I have to go to Belfast tomorrow. Big meeting.’

She waited for him to tell her what the meeting was about, but he didn’t. ‘OK . . . who should I go to?’

‘We’ve spoken to Doyle’s wife already, and Lynch and Brady didn’t have close families. You should speak to Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s mother. She’s looking after the children.’

‘What about Flaherty?’ Martin Flaherty. Paula thought back to his picture. In it he was carrying a thin plastic bag from the corner shop which clearly contained a copy of the
Irish News
and a packet of ham slices. He owned a car dealership in town and had done well out of it. Yet this harmless-looking man had orchestrated the deaths of dozens of soldiers over the years, booby-trapped cars, bombed a pub in Manchester killing four students, and likely been the driving force behind the carnage of 1st May 2006. ‘Flaherty’s widowed,’ said Guy. ‘Lives alone. He has one daughter, Roisin, who’s in Dublin.’

‘Are we seeing her?’

‘No, they haven’t spoken in years, apparently.’

‘Doesn’t really matter. If people are in trouble they nearly always go to family first, however long estranged.’

‘Would you like to visit her, then?’

The question was surprising. ‘Well, sure, but am I not needed here?’

‘We can call you in if we need you.’

Paula understood – sending her to Dublin was an entirely pointless errand, a safe way to get rid of her and her embarrassing cargo. Out of the front line. She stared out the car window, annoyed. ‘OK. After that we interview the families of the victims?’

‘Unless we find some answers before then. Really we should have questioned the mayor by now, but apparently that would “inflame” local sensibilities.’ Guy sighed, changing gear as they slowed down in the traffic nearing town. ‘It’s a very odd case.’

That was true. For a start, it wasn’t often you had more sympathy for whoever the killer was than the victim.

Kira

Kira told everyone she couldn’t remember the bomb. It was easier, and it made them feel better. She could see them relax, and sometimes they’d say things like,
ah, it’s for the best. Poor pet, she’s blocked it out
. But what it was really like was having something under your bedclothes, twisting and turning around, like when the cat’s in there so you can’t see it but the shape’s there and you know it’s about to come out. For a long time it was like that. Then she woke up one night too scared to scream. Her tongue in her mouth was dead and the breath crushed out of her lungs. What she’d remembered had no eyes but the smell was there – burned, and something yellow she knew was blood. And the sound – the little noises you knew were people trying to scream, but everyone had the wind knocked out of them and your ears had gone and the silence was the most frightening thing. You’d been blown over, so your back was raw against the ground. Bits were falling down on you like burning rain. Plaster. Brick. People.

You tried to breathe. No one knew for ages it was a bomb. You just knew the world blew up. You were born the year peace came. You never knew about bombs.

For a long time you could see nothing and that was a blessing, but it was there waiting. One day you saw Rose after the bomb. Her face was gone. There was her hair, her lovely blonde hair all dirty, and then a space of just blood, and then her body. You saw something on the ground and it was Rose’s leg, twitching, blood pumping. It had blown off her. Her leg wasn’t attached any more.

Rose was still not dead then and making a noise through the place where her face usually was. You went to her, though you were eight and it was horrible and you couldn’t believe any of this.

Your arms were all red. Her blood. Rose’s blood blown all over you and in your eyes and mouth and nose. You could hardly see anything, eyes swimming in a line of blood, like when your goggles filled up at the pool.

Rose was making a noise. Kind of like
Mmmmmok
 . . .
kay?
You couldn’t talk. You held her hand, which couldn’t stop twitching, and told her it was OK somehow, even though she had no face or leg any more. There was blood all over the pavement, running down it like rain.

‘Mm . . . OK?’

She was asking if you were OK. She was dying and she wanted to know were you OK.

‘It’s OK,’ you croaked. ‘It’s all fine.’ Your last words to her were a lie. You knew that she was dead before she did.