Someone You Know (6 page)

As they stood at the front door, Fleming nudged Lucy and nodded towards the end of the street. ‘We're being watched,' he said.

Lucy followed his gaze to where a half-dozen youths stood at the corner, staring across at them. ‘They'll hardly start anything,' Lucy commented. ‘It's still early.'

They heard the dead bolt click and the door opened. Gene Kay was short, not much taller than Lucy herself, but stocky, broad-shouldered. His face was jowly, his hair and moustache white. He glanced past them at the group of boys.

‘You may come in,' he said, without looking at either of his visitors, then turned and moved back inside the house.

Kay led them into the lounge. Two brown tweed armchairs faced a small TV jabbering away in the corner, tuned to a daytime chat show. In the other corner, a glass cabinet stood, its shelves empty of anything but dust. Behind the furthest armchair was a small drop leaf table with two wooden seats placed either side of it. A computer sat on the table, the screen black.

‘What do you want then?' Kay wore jeans and a red sweater. He was barefooted. His hand shook as he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from a tin on the mantelpiece and lit it. Flakes of flaming tobacco fluttered to the ground and he stepped on them with his bare foot.

‘We'd like to ask you a few questions, Gene. As part of an ongoing inquiry,' Fleming began.

‘Do I need a lawyer?' Kay said, sitting on the armchair in front of the table. On the wall behind him was a painting of a child, a single tear perfectly formed on his face, his doe eyes, huge and brown, stared down beneath a ragged blond fringe. He held a cap in his hand. Lucy had seen similar pictures before, remembered in fact a newspaper story that suggested they were cursed in some way.

‘That's your right, Gene,' Lucy said. ‘But at the moment, we're just hoping to eliminate you from our inquiries. Do you know this girl?'

She handed Kay a picture of Karen, which Social Services had provided, taken from her care plan. He studied the face, before handing the picture back.

‘I think I saw her picture on TV earlier. Didn't catch her name. She's missing or something, is that right?'

‘She's dead, Gene,' Fleming said. ‘She was found last night.'

Kay nodded. ‘Well, it had naught to do with me. I'm sorry for the wee girl.'

‘Where were you yesterday morning, Gene?' Lucy asked.

Kay considered the question. ‘I was at church at eleven,' he said. ‘Then I went straight to my sister's for Sunday lunch. I took a taxi to church, so I left here just after half ten. I didn't come back until about six.'

‘Did you go back out again last night?'

‘I don't go out at night,' Kay said. ‘That group of thugs out there hang around the streets drinking every night. It's not safe. Not that the police do anything about it.'

‘You didn't have anyone here with you, who could confirm that you were at home?'

‘What do you think?' Kay snapped. ‘Of course I didn't.'

‘What about last Thursday? Do you remember where you were on Thursday?'

‘I was in bed sick most of last week,' Kay added. ‘I've a prescription from the chemist's to prove it. I can get it if you want.'

Fleming nodded. ‘That would be helpful. Nothing serious, I trust.'

Kay hoisted himself out of the armchair and padded out to the kitchen. He returned with a small bottle of cough mixture, dated the previous Thursday.

‘Does your pharmacist deliver?'

‘No. I had to go out with a dose to get it.'

Fleming glanced at the bottle. ‘Of course, that doesn't prove you were in your bed sick.'

‘Well I was,' Kay said. ‘You people are torturing me, you know that? That gang out there, seeing you coming here. They'll be attacking me while I sleep.'

Lucy had to stop herself from commenting on the irony of such a comment. Kay had been arrested in Limavady after several years of abusing one of his neighbour's sons. He had first assaulted the child while babysitting for the couple when the wife went into labour. The abuse had continued for eight years. Kay had served less than half that in prison as punishment.

‘Karen Hughes was murdered, Gene,' Lucy said. ‘Black dog hairs were found on her clothing. You have a black dog, don't you?'

‘Half the town has black dogs.'

‘But not a record for sexual assault as well,' Lucy retorted.

Kay straightened himself, regarded Lucy coolly. ‘You're a smart one, aren't you? I'd nothing to do with whoever was killed. I never killed no one. The only person I'll ever be hurting is myself someday if you people don't leave me in peace.'

‘It would be really helpful if we could maybe get a strand of your dog's hair,' Lucy said. ‘To compare with the strands we found.'

‘Don't you need a warrant for something like that?' Kay asked.

‘We could get one,' Lucy agreed.

‘Although, making us go for a warrant suggests you're reluctant to help with our inquiries,' Fleming added. ‘It might look like you have something to hide.'

‘I don't want her hurt,' Kay said. ‘I won't have anyone hurt Mollie.'

Lucy said nothing.

At Kay's mention of her name though, the dog itself appeared at the door of the kitchen, yawning lazily, its tongue lolling to one side. Mollie crossed to Lucy and sniffed at her legs, the dog's tail offering a desultory wag, then falling limp.

Lucy reached into her pockets and pulled on a glove. Bending down, she held out her hand. Mollie approached tentatively, sniffing at the latex of the glove before tasting it with a quick lather of her tongue. She moved closer to Lucy, allowing Lucy first to rub her hand across the dome of the animal's head, then to bury her hand among the thicker fur at the top of her spine. Lucy rubbed vigorously at the fur, as if petting the dog, then checked her hand. A few black strands of hair clung to the glove.

‘Do you consent to our taking these for testing?' Lucy asked.

Kay nodded, once, curtly. He took a last drag from his cigarette then threw the butt into the hearth, before dropping down and calling the dog to him. As he kissed its snout, Mollie licked at the tobacco rich air of his breath.

‘Thank you,' Lucy said. She pulled off the glove inside out to trap the hairs, then placed it in an evidence bag.

‘We'll be in touch,' Fleming said. ‘And of course, if you think of anything else, do let us know.'

Lucy opened the front door and stepped out. The group of youths had grown larger now and had moved directly across the road. They stood beneath the street lamp opposite, without words. One of the youths, at the centre of the group, regarded her coldly. He was tall, wearing a black T-shirt beneath a badly worn leather jacket. ‘All right, love?' he called, winking at her, to the amusement of the rest who stood around him.

As she reached the car, Lucy recognized another of the youths, standing at the outer edge of the group. He wore a grey woollen hat pulled down low over his head, covering his scalp completely. He had thick black eyebrows, both of which had a stripe shaved down their centre. Lucy started to raise her hand, then thought better of it and stopped.

‘Someone you know,' Fleming asked, when she closed the door.

‘Gavin Duffy,' Lucy said. ‘He's in the residential care unit. His father was Gary Duffy. He hung himself about a month ago. Gavin's grandparents asked he be moved closer to them.'

‘Gary Duffy? The Louisa Gant guy?'

Lucy nodded. Louisa Gant had been a nine-year-old girl who vanished in 1998. The girl herself had never been found. Lucy and her father had moved out of Derry by that stage, though she recalled the case for the child had gone missing the day the Good Friday Agreement had been finally signed, her vanishing a coda to news reports filled with images of bleary-eyed politicians heralding the beginning of a new future for Northern Ireland and Blair's sound bite about the ‘hand of history'. Lucy remembered sitting with her father, watching events unfolding. Then, at the end, Louisa Gant was mentioned.

Her remains had never been found, but, within a few days, the police investigation changed from missing persons to murder. The reason Lucy remembered it so clearly was because during one of the press conferences covered by the TV news on the case in subsequent weeks, it was her mother who read a statement about the investigation in her newly appointed role as Chief Superintendent. It was the first time Lucy had seen her in months.

Despite not recovering the child, police charged local man, Gary Duffy, with her murder in 1999. Following a tip-off from an informant, police had discovered one of the girl's chunky black shoes in Duffy's garage, the pirate motif decorating its strap distinctive. The shoe had been badged with the girl's blood. Though he claimed innocence, Duffy had been tried, found guilty and imprisoned. He had been released on parole only a few months previously. And had committed suicide soon after.

‘The young lad's found himself some new friends already,' Fleming said.

‘So it seems,' Lucy said, glancing out again at the group, her stare being held by Gavin's all the way to the corner of the street.

B
efore finishing for the day, Lucy drove back to Gransha Hospital to see Karen's mother, Marian Hughes.

She'd met her once before when Karen had been taken to hospital eight months earlier after cutting her wrists too deeply. Lucy had been visiting Robbie on her evening off when the girl cut herself while having a bath. Lucy had helped dress her while waiting for an ambulance to take her to hospital.

Karen had apologized over and over for spoiling their evening. Her face had paled, her lips bloodless beneath her small teeth.

‘What were you thinking?' Lucy had asked.

Karen had shrugged, her head tilted to one side.

‘You could have killed yourself,' Lucy said. ‘Or is that what you wanted to do?'

Karen shook her head, her hair falling across her face as she did so. Lucy pushed it back with one hand, her other helping Karen keep the pressure on the towel they had wrapped around the wound. The broken pieces of a safety razor lay on the floor, the blade she'd removed from it glinting darkly beneath the sink.

‘I can usually control it,' Karen said. ‘My hand slipped is all.'

Lucy knew girls from school who'd hurt themselves, understood only too well the impulses that drove them to it. So, she'd said nothing more, but simply put her arm around the girl, pulled her closer to her, stayed like that until the ambulance arrived.

Marian Hughes had turned up at the hospital later that evening. She'd already been drinking before she got there, her breath warm and ketonic in the closeness of the room in which Karen sat while her arm was stitched.

‘Should someone not have been watching her?' the woman had asked.

‘Karen was having a bath, Mrs Hughes,' Robbie explained.

The woman shook her head, muttering to herself, as she sat by the girl. ‘Someday you'll do it for real,' she said to Karen; her first words to the girl since her arrival. ‘Some day you'll actually manage it and give us all peace.'

Karen had stared at her arm, watching the doctor as he worked, never once lifting her head to look at the woman.

‘Someone should have been watching her,' the woman repeated to the room, looking from face to face in hope that one of them would agree with her. The doctor coughed embarrassedly and kept working.

M
arian Hughes looked considerably older now, the drinking having taken its toll. Her hair, brown though streaked with grey, was tied back from her face accentuating the sharpness of her features. The skin of her cheeks, taut against the bone, was waxy in appearance save for threads of burst veins. She sat in the chair next to her bed, wearing a hospital gown and pink slippers, while Lucy and a doctor spoke to her about Karen's death. She was sober now, but clearly the days of drying out seemed to have left her in a daze of sorts, for if she understood what Lucy had told her, Hughes showed little sign of it until Lucy stood to leave.

‘So, did she kill herself or not?' she asked, looking up at her with vacant eyes.

‘No, Marian,' Lucy said. ‘Someone killed her.'

The woman nodded her head. ‘That's what I thought.'

‘Can you think of anyone who might have had reason to hurt your daughter, Marian?' Lucy asked.

The woman pursed her lips, her brow knotting briefly as she considered the question. Finally she shook her head.

‘Were those Social Service people not watching her?' she asked.

‘They were,' Lucy said. ‘She'd been missing for a few days now.'

‘Why wasn't I told?'

Lucy glanced at the doctor. ‘You were here, Marian. You weren't really in a fit state to receive the news.'

‘I should have been told,' Marian said. ‘She never told me nothing.'

Lucy glanced again at the doctor who shook his head lightly. She laid her hand on Marian's arm. ‘If you do think of anything, Marian, will you let someone know? They'll get word to me.'

As Lucy left the room, she heard the woman address the doctor who had remained with her. ‘I told her that would happen. She was always cutting at herself. I warned her about that.'

B
efore leaving Gransha, Lucy walked across to the low block where her father was resident. She hadn't seen him in a few weeks and was shocked to see how frail he looked. He lay in the bed, his wrists strapped to the side bars. His pyjama jacket had pulled open revealing the curve of his chest, his hair white and tangled as it rose and fell with each breath. He smacked his lips as he slept, his eyelids not quite closed, his breath wheezing in his throat.

The skin below his left eye carried a yellowed bruise, while a small stitch bulged on his lip. The wooden chair next to his bed creaked as she sat, causing him to open his eyes.