Disappeared (12 page)

The ashes settled into the grate. Crows creaked from the chimney top. He detected a ghostly whisper in the air—the sound of his father reciting the intricate prayers that were his nightly routine. Even after six months, he still expected to see his father sitting beside him by the fire, wreathed in pipe smoke. Soon the ashes of the turf the old man had dug last spring would be swept up and scattered among the potato ridges. He shivered in the armchair. There was the past, and there was sleep, but in neither could his mind find rest.

He put on his overcoat and picked up the car keys. In spite of the weight of tiredness tugging at him, he decided to return to the station and examine Devine’s files.

Outside, the moon was shining. The feathery weight of the frost burdened the trees and crumpled the thick grass in the front garden. The sound of the lawn crunching underfoot was more tangible than the memories in his head. The soft wing-beat of a bird, probably an owl wheeling for prey, circled in the branches above. Living in Glasgow, night was a time to lock the doors and huddle inside, but out here, in the deep Armagh countryside, it was hard to imagine evil or peril simmering in the dark. Unless, of course, you listened to the honeyed voices of the newsreaders.

The hens were roosting in their coop. Before he locked them up for the night, he threw them some chicken meal. They gawked and scratched about, looking dirty and down-at-heel, their clucking hoarse and timid. The countryside was full of foxes and the night air probably carried the whiff of danger. Daly hoped the coop was secure. He didn’t want to wake up some morning to a bloodbath.

He got into the car and drove along the lough shore through Clonmakate and Maghery. A lone taxi sat by a forest plantation at the Birches, its engine ticking over. He crawled along country roads. The shapes of trees shining in the frost were like the nerves and arteries of a dissected corpse. On a whim he turned south at the motorway roundabout and made his way to Portadown and the house of Tessa Jordan.

At Dalriada Terrace, he could see behind the curtained windows the ghostly blue margins of TV screens, but at number 14, the lights were yellow and orange. The Jordans must be the sole watchers of another channel, he thought. He got out and looked up and down the street. Bulky toys still lay abandoned in the front gardens. There was no sign of the patrol car he had requested. He felt a twinge of annoyance. A door opened somewhere, and a harsh voice greeted the arrival home of a drunk. The street felt like a dingy holiday resort inhabited by the inmates of a concentration camp.

He was just about to get back into his car when he noticed the yellow and orange colors intensify in the Jordans’ front room. Then he heard a boom and the crash of glass breaking. He felt the heat before he saw the flames escape from the broken window. Very quickly, they engulfed the entire front of the house. He crouched against the garden fence, feeling a heavy blanket of heat roll over him. He tried to move but felt pinned down. The sounds of wood splintering and glass breaking erupted from within the building. He listened intently to the trapped sounds of the fire, hoping to detect a human shout or cry, but heard none.

Fumbling for his phone, he tried to ring the fire brigade.

It felt as though the heat had hurled his voice to the back of his throat. He struggled to give directions to the operator. Above the spitting sounds of the blaze, he could barely hear the woman’s voice.

Fearing he had wasted too much time already, he ran toward the door. More by luck than brute strength, he managed to break it down, stumbling into the smoke-filled darkness of the hall. He hung back at first, like a timid bather, listening for any sounds that might lead him to Tessa and her son. The house seemed empty of human life. The flames had taken hold of the living room, the furniture, and the walls. A jagged light lit up the staircase. He shouted out Tessa’s name against the condensed roar of the fire, but got no reply. It was like confronting a trapped violence, the compacted heat forcing him backward.

He took a running leap up the stairs. The flames had yet to reach the first floor, but the smoke was rising up the stairs in black plumes. He could hear a thick sigh as it spread along the landing floor.

He burst into a bedroom, shouting, “Get up! Get up!” But the beds within were empty. He checked the smoke alarm on the landing ceiling and saw the battery had been ripped out. Holding his breath, he groped toward the main bedroom and rolled himself through the door.

Someone was lying on the double bed. Daly shouted, but the body remained lifeless. He fumbled his way toward it. The body was a solid, unmoving mass. For a moment, he feared Tessa Jordan had suffocated in her sleep.

Then he realized it was only a set of pillows. His head was pounding and he could barely breathe. The stairs behind him were no longer intact, so he took a chair and broke the windowpane. In the garden below, a woman and a boy, huddling together, stared up at him in surprise. They watched as he lowered himself onto the outside ledge, slipped on the crumbling plaster, and pitched backward toward the ground.

His arm was in pain when he awoke. Tessa Jordan leaned over him.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Is that you, Inspector Daly?”

He tried to turn to one side. “I’m the one meant to be rescuing you. What happened?”

“A group of men dressed in black come to the front door with a can of petrol. Dermot raised the alarm. We had to leg it out of the house and hide in the garden.”

Daly could make out the boy’s anxious face in the light of the fire.

He sat up and gasped with the ache in his shoulder.

“You’re injured,” said Tessa. “The ambulance will be here soon.”

“I don’t need any help,” he said, picking himself up.

“That’s the second time you’ve appeared as soon as I rang for help.”

“Bloody telepathy.” He winced. “I’ll have to do something about that.”

Within minutes, the lights of the ambulance and fire brigade were bathing the street in a reassuring blue. The fire roared with a sickening glee as the firefighters fought to control it.

A paramedic rushed toward Daly, but he brushed him away.

He walked on, and a group of firefighters surrounded him like members of an opposing football team.

“I thought you were a detective, not a bloody firefighter,” said Martin O’Hanlon, the chief fire officer. He looked Daly up and down, taking in his scorched clothes.

“I was answering a call nearby and saw the fire start,” said Daly vaguely.

He wanted to ask O’Hanlon an important question. A detail inside the house had struck him as unusual, but the force of the fall had dislodged it from his memory.

“The fire started in the living room,” Daly told him. “I could smell petrol. The family has been attacked before. We’ll have to put a patrol car down here every night.”

“You won’t need to,” said O’Hanlon. “The house is ruined. They won’t be staying here for a while.”

“Of course,” said Daly.

“There’s no need for you to stay here. You look as if you should go home.”

For a family burnt out of their home, the Jordans looked remarkably relaxed. Daly found them tucked in the shadow of the fire engine, sheltering from the cold. Tessa gave Daly a look as though she were personally responsible for his grim appearance.

“How’s the investigation going?” she asked.

“It’s not going anywhere.”

“Too busy trying to save people from fires, I suppose.” There was a hint of a smile on her pale face.

She shivered slightly as he put his jacket around her shoulders. From his brief contact, she felt like a woman who had escaped the clutches of an icy river rather than a blazing fire.

“No one ever makes progress,” she said. “That’s the nature of Oliver’s case. You’ll never hunt down clues that have vanished off the face of the earth. Just as you’ll never be able to charge people who are protected by the state. Every Catholic knows that.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“We never had an armed struggle. The whole thing was a horrible game run by secret agents and psychopaths.”

Even though his shoulder hurt and his clothes smelled of smoke, Daly tried to maintain a professional air.

“What are you going to do tonight? Is there anywhere you can stay?”

“My sister lives out in the country. We can stay in a caravan she has on the farm.”

“I’ll give you a lift, if you like?”

Under his jacket, she was wearing a dark green dressing robe. The fabric parted as she slipped into the backseat of the car. The pale skin of her thighs was dappled with the light of the emergency services. The movement of her legs ignited a subtler fire within him.

Dermot got into the front of the car, his mouth set in a frown, his hands clenched in his lap.

As he drove, Daly began to feel revitalized. Not exactly happy, but the blaze had fueled his sense of determination. He also felt he had earned the right to ask Tessa more questions about Oliver’s disappearance.

“Has it ever occurred to you the arson attacks might be linked to your campaign to find Oliver’s body?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Why should I think that?”

She stared into his rearview mirror with evident unease. He thought it was strange she should deny a link between the intimidation and her fight for justice. Surely she must suspect somebody out there had something to hide and might go to any lengths to avoid detection.

“This time I’ll make sure a car watches your sister’s house. Hopefully the arsonists won’t know where she lives.”

He glanced into the rearview mirror again and saw she had fallen asleep. The boy sitting in the passenger seat beside him was still awake. Daly could feel an intense concentration from him.

His imperative was to ensure their safety, but as for a larger strategy, he had none. He had no doubt that but for the boy’s watchfulness, the latest fire could have been fatal. From his car phone he put out an alert for the arsonists based upon the boy’s description.

Then he turned the heater on and relaxed into his seat. The boy beside him sat like a ghost stranded from a bad dream.

“Are you still at school, Dermot?” asked Daly.

“I’m doing A-levels. One of them’s criminology.”

Daly didn’t say anything. He could understand why the boy wanted to study crime. It probably helped create a mental distance from terror. Analyzing it was a way of preventing fear from paralyzing oneself.

They drove several miles without exchanging a word.

“Doing criminology was a mistake,” announced Dermot. “The more I read about the study of crime the more it seems a waste of time. My teacher talks about poverty and inequality, but really some people are so evil they’re beyond human understanding.”

Daly nodded and tried to change the subject, but the boy appeared not to hear him.

“Law and order are no comfort to people like my mum. I’ve watched her. Her life is a tightrope walk on a wire tied at one end to the police and people like you, and at the other to the IRA and the so-called protectors of Catholics. She doesn’t trust any of you.”

“That can’t be healthy.”

“Look at where we’re forced to live. It’s a hole. I can’t wait to get out. I wish they’d burn the whole place down. Even then my mother would still want to stay there.”

“That’s where her roots are?”

“No. She’s just set in her ways.”

“Mothers can be like that.”

The boy gave him directions that led them up a deep lane lined with ragged fuchsia bushes.

Before they pulled up at the farmhouse, he turned to Daly. “Can you do me a favor?”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ve work experience to do as part of my criminology course. Just a day or two. I was wondering if I could follow you around?”

Daly paused for a moment. He glanced at the sleeping form of Tessa in the backseat. Her face was a pale blur hidden behind her dark hair.

“I can’t see it being a problem,” he said. “We’re meant to be an accessible police force these days. Headquarters is always encouraging us to let people see how professional we’ve become.”

The car swung up to the front door of the farmhouse. Tessa’s sister was ready to greet them, framed against a neat porch filled with overwintering geraniums. She looked older and softer than Tessa.

Daly got out to introduce himself, but the sister, who had stepped closer to the car to inspect them, backed away. He knew he didn’t look good. Judging from his reflection in the car window, he would have scared most people away.

The woman looked relieved when Tessa climbed out of the car. She half-scolded, half-reassured her, and they embraced.

“You won’t back out of your promise?” asked Dermot.

“I never back out of anything.”

Before going into the house, Tessa turned and walked back to Daly. Her hand stroked her hair back from her flushed cheeks. Her eyes, however, were level and calm.

“You’re a good man,” she said. “Don’t waste your time investigating what happened tonight. The people who set my house alight were just drunk vandals. Tomorrow night, it’ll be someone else’s home.”

Daly nodded. Either she could not understand that Oliver’s killers might also want her dead, or she wanted to protect them in some way. Perhaps her lack of suspicion was no bad thing. It might help scale down his sense of mistrust and paranoia. When he got into the car, he felt so exhausted he wanted to lie down and sleep. He drove straight home, his mind a blank.

W
hen Daly walked into the main office in the police station, Irwin was already sitting there, yawning, and O’Neill was on the phone with an open magazine on her lap. She replaced the receiver and pulled a face. Harland, Robertson, and O’Brien were gathered around a computer screen. Judging from the tight grins on their faces, they weren’t writing crime reports.

“How’s it going?”

“Like shit.” Irwin spoke for the rest of the team. “Thank God I’m off duty at one.”

Daly could feel a weariness in the room like a physical weight. Bouts of lethargy in difficult murder cases were not unusual. He hoped it was no more than a periodic fit and that his team would not miss an important clue or lead.