The Dead Ground (29 page)

Paula sniffed. ‘I know. Pat will be good for you, I know it.’

‘Ah.’ PJ stopped. ‘Tell me this, pet, before we go down. Is Aidan the father of the wean?’

She bit her lip. ‘Dad – I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m not sure. I— He might be. But he might not.’

He winced. ‘Then don’t tell Pat till you’ve told him, OK?’

‘OK.’ She took deep, shaky breaths. ‘Dad?’

‘Aye?’

‘I – I hope you’ll be happy, the two of you.’ A weak smile flashed on PJ’s face and was replaced by a look of weary sadness.

‘We’ve as much a chance as anyone else in this ould world, for what it’s worth. And so do you. Now come on downstairs.’

Chapter Thirty

There was no answer the next day when Paula rang the door of Maeve’s flat, in a converted warehouse close to the old meat district in Dublin. Smithfield, it was called, same as in London. She’d driven down that morning – thanks to the improved roads built with EU money, you could get to Dublin in less than two hours from Ballyterrin, though it might take you as long again to fight your way through the city’s traffic-choked mediaeval streets. From behind the door of number five she could hear loud music: ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’. Aidan had played that incessantly when he was eighteen, and they were driving about in his then-new Clio, drunk on freedom and youth and each other. ‘Hello!’ she shouted. ‘Anyone in?’

The door flew open and there was Maeve Cooley, pulling blond hair into a messy ponytail. Despite the chill she wore shorts under a grey hoodie, her legs long and bare, chipped lime polish on her toes. ‘Paula, howyeh. Sorry, I was working all night on deadline so I’m only up. Come in, will you.’ Having been in Maeve’s car, Paula was not surprised to find the flat was also a tip. A laptop sat on the hardwood floor surrounded by sheaves of paper and crumpled magazines, and every surface had collections of glasses, stained red with wine, or beer bottles, or plates used as ashtrays. The air smelled of smoke, and hangovers.

‘Will you have tea or something?’ Maeve threw back the curtains, wincing at the grey light which flooded in, and opened the fridge. A fluffy grey cat shot out from under the breakfast bar, giving Paula an evil stare and meowing loudly at his owner. ‘Give over, Ernest. Bollocks, I’ve no milk.’

‘I’m OK.’ Paula moved inside, setting her bag down by the door under a framed poster of Oscar Wilde.
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Maeve said something she couldn’t hear over the music. ‘Sorry?’

‘That racket!’ Maeve raised her voice. ‘Shut that bloody din off, would you?’

‘Oh, is someone—’

Too late. Paula heard a voice in the bedroom, an all too familiar voice, and then suddenly Aidan was in the room. ‘It’s Slash, you eejit – oh.’ He stared at Paula. She took in the fact he wore only boxers and a T-shirt – one she’d bought him years ago, with Bob Dylan on it – and that he was coming out of the flat’s only bedroom. His dark hair stuck up and he had several days’ stubble on his face. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Paula must have backed away, because she felt the ridges of the door under her shoulders.

Maeve was swilling water in the sink. ‘Aidan’s down staying for a few days. Did you not tell her you were here, you eejit? I thought that’s why you came, Paula.’

‘No.’ Paula’s heart was thumping. ‘No, I wanted to speak to you about that faith healer, like I said.’

Maeve glanced between them. ‘Aidan’s on some story too. Won’t say what, the dodgy bastard that he is.’

Aidan was still staring at Paula.

‘I saw your mum,’ she heard herself say. ‘She said you were OK.’

‘I am OK.’

‘Oh, good. That’s good.’ Silence.

Maeve was either oblivious or choosing to barrel right through the acute tension in the room. ‘Right. I’ve no milk and it’s a mess in here, so I’m taking Paula out for a breakfast bap and a chat. Are you coming, William Randolph Hearst?’

‘No,’ said Aidan grumpily, rubbing hands through his tousled hair. ‘I’ve work to do.’

Maeve rolled her eyes at Paula. ‘Ah, the top-secret investigative work. Fair enough. You could load the dishwasher, if the mood takes you, before you win your Pulitzer.’

Aidan just turned and went back into the room. ‘Grumpy arse,’ sighed Maeve. ‘Right, I’ll put my jeans on and we’ll go, will we?’

‘Everything OK with you?’ Maeve lifted the all-day breakfast bap to her mouth and took a huge bacon-filled bite.

‘Fine,’ lied Paula. She’d asked for a cup of tea, which came with sachets of creamer that floated unappetisingly to the surface. They were in a café a few streets away, with metal tables and loud music playing, Christmas lights flashing like a warning sign. Directly across the street, in a pointed coincidence, was a large anti-abortion billboard showing a traumatised-looking woman. She ignored it. ‘Aidan’s OK then.’ She itched to ask what he was doing in Maeve’s bedroom, but she wouldn’t let herself.

Maeve was chewing. ‘Oh yeah. You know him. Narky as feck when he’s not drinking.’ He wasn’t on the booze, then. That was one thing. ‘You didn’t know he was here, I take it.’

Paula shrugged. ‘We haven’t been talking much.’

Maeve clearly didn’t want to get involved. ‘Ah well, he’s a difficult one.’

‘Yeah.’ Paula stirred the manky tea and forced herself to change the subject. ‘Anyway, thanks for seeing me so quickly. I want to know about Magdalena Croft, the faith healer. She’s been up with us for years but she started out here. We think she might be involved with these cases we’re working on, but we can’t get at her since we’ve actually been using her as an expert.’

Maeve licked her fingers and rummaged in her bag for a messy pile of papers. ‘So. A gift of a story, that is. I spoke to my colleague at Religion and he’d a lot to say on the subject. Six whiskeys’ worth, in fact, the tight fecker. So, this Magdalena first surfaces in Dublin in the early eighties. Claims to be having visions and offers healing out of some weird church on the Northside, run by this mental priest.’

‘Father Brendan?’

‘That’s him. Joe, that’s my colleague, he tried to do a piece on her once and she slapped an injunction on him. You didn’t really get that out of mad religious women in the eighties, so shall we say he’s followed her career with interest since. So she spends a few years here, collecting up money and followers. There’s thousands of people will swear blind she cured their ingrown toenails or what have you.’

‘That’s what we came up with too.’

‘Next there was the big mansion on the border, and she’s raising money to build her own church in her back field, and the psychic visions she has, and the healing – people would take their disabled kids, I don’t know, thinking she can rearrange DNA or something. Madness. But she’d nothing when Joe first knew her – she used to take the bus to the church and she hadn’t 2d to her name. Then a few years later she’s in a mansion in Ballyterrin and driving a Beemer. I think that’s a bit dodgy, myself.’

‘Dodgy, but hardly unusual, sadly.’

‘You’re telling me. So she made her money off her followers. People were giving cash for building the church – ten, thirty grand a go she’d ask for, her and Father Brendan. He got put out of his chaplaincy because of it, so now he just follows her round like a puppy dog. They take collections out of her house, too – people go to her when they’re dying, and she’s hovering over their relations saying what a shame, now get your chequebook out and make a donation for the Virgin Mary.’

‘She has this board,’ Paula said, tracing patterns in the spilled creamer. ‘All these babies she’s supposedly helped people have.’

‘Oh yeah. Cheaper than IVF, I guess.’

‘But the thing is – I mean, there must be something in it. People believe she helps them. People do get pregnant. Even my DCI asked her to work on a missing persons case for us. So what is it she does?’

‘Hope,’ said Maeve succinctly. ‘She gives them hope, and then sometimes people do get better or they do fall pregnant, and they think it’s her. People trust her. She has a gift all right, but it’s not being psychic. She can read people like a book, that woman.’

‘You’ve met her?’

Maeve hesitated – which was so out of character it made Paula raise her eyebrows. ‘Not exactly. I went to one of those rallies she does at her house. I thought it’d be a laugh, like that Derren Brown or something. Thought I could get a story out of it – why are the Guards using this fraud to help them, and so on.’

‘I know. We’re doing it now, too. But it wasn’t a laugh?’

‘No. She – well, she channels people. The dead, you know. It’s one of her things. Load of bollocks, of course. But the thing was – she sort of channelled for me.’

‘Who?’

‘My dad,’ said Maeve briefly. ‘He died when I was ten. Cancer.’

‘I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t be. That’s why I was pals with Aidan, I guess – he understands.’

A stab of jealousy, quickly suppressed. ‘What happened?’

‘She – well, it was horrible to be honest. She said he’d been sick, and he’d died, and she knew all that and then she—’ Maeve frowned. ‘She said, you and your daddy had the same birthday, didn’t you? And we did, it’s true. March the third. But it was so weird. I still can’t figure out how she could have known that. She has something, you see. I don’t believe in being psychic, it’s bollocks, so she’s working it out some other way, but she has it. She looked right into me somehow and I felt – I felt violated.’

Paula remembered the woman’s quick, strong hand on her stomach. ‘She’s a very powerful presence. People seem drawn to that.’

‘That’s what Joe said. He’s drawn himself, though he hates her. He was the one found out she was helping the Gardai. The thing is, she does really seem to help. Have you looked into it?’

‘A bit. There were six cases or so, was that it?’

‘I think so. She helped them find four missing children, and the bodies of two others who’d had accidents and the bodies not found.’

‘What had happened to the other four?’

‘Same as usual. Their dads had snatched them in custody cases. Gone overseas, a few times. I think one of them had just wandered off into woodland in Wexford. Croft said she’d be there, and she was, three days later, alive. Joe has a real bee in his bonnet. It drives him mad that she actually seems to get results.’

That was good. No one so useful as the person with the bee in their bonnet. ‘Did he find out anything about her life before all this?’

‘There was the husband no one ever saw – Joe dug up that they were living apart, while she pretended to be in a
good Christian marriage
.’ Maeve did air quotes. ‘David Croft died a few years back, I think. Natural causes, but she never had much use for him except his cash. He was one of her first devotees. Joe showed me photos – she was gorgeous back in the day, was Magdalena.’

‘That’s not her real name, is it? We traced a Mary Conaghan, like I said on the phone, and we think it could be her.’

‘It sounds made up, doesn’t it? No one’s called Magdalena; I mean, it’s not first-century Judea. Anyway, I did a search under the name you gave me and I actually did find a Mary Conaghan living in Dublin at that time.’

‘Oh yes?’ Paula set down her tea.

Maeve smiled. ‘Guess what she did before? She was only a fecking nurse.’

‘No! Really?’

‘Yup.’ Maeve dug around in her bag for a pen and clicked it, then scribbled on Paula’s napkin. ‘That’s the details of the hospital where she started as a student nurse: 1982, St John of God’s.’

‘Wow, thank you.’ Magdalena Croft had a nursing background. She could just imagine Guy’s reaction when she told him that. ‘I’ll check it out while I’m here.’

‘What else do you know?’ asked Maeve, clearly as hungry for the story as Paula was, if for different reasons.

‘Well.’ Paula looked round at the dingy little café before she spoke. Silly – who would be listening or even care? ‘We traced a Mary Conaghan to Donegal and we think she was involved in a child abduction case as a young girl. Her cousin went missing as a baby, then was found again – similar to our Alek Pachek case. I think she came to Dublin not long after that.’

‘I’ll ask Joe, but he never mentioned anything. He said she was an orphan, no family at all.’

‘I think she was hiding,’ Paula said, turning it over in her mind. ‘I think she was running away, when she came here.’

‘From what?’

‘From who, maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have.’

Maeve scribbled something else. ‘OK. Leave it with me. Tell me this, Paula – is Aidan on this story too?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t talked at all.’ Another stab. He’d have helped so much, if only they were actually speaking. ‘I don’t know what he’s up to.’

Maeve did a small eye-roll; it was uncannily similar to the one Saoirse always did when Paula tried to talk to her about Aidan.
You two again
. ‘OK. You don’t want to come back to the flat then?’

‘I won’t, thanks.’ She wasn’t going to ask how long he was staying. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘No bother. I love all this.’ Maeve stood up, all ripped jeans and tangled hair, and Paula thought – wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t Aidan want to be with Maeve, so cool and gorgeous and uncomplicated, rather than someone who shouted at him and kept secrets from him and knew all his own painful ones, all of the dark inside of him? If only she could get over the raging anger that flooded her veins, she might not even blame him at all.

The hospital where Mary Conaghan had her first nursing job was grim, diseased green paintwork on the outside and the chill of old stone emanating out. At four p.m. on a winter Thursday, it was as far from warmth and comfort as you could imagine. Paula had an appointment to see Donald O’Driscoll, who rejoiced in the role of Personnel Director, and had worked in the same small office since 1982, when he’d hired Mary Conaghan for a trainee nursing post in the maternity unit.

Paula took the lift, feet clattering along cold stone corridors with depressing brown doors and metal signs, until she found the right one. Mr O’Driscoll was a corpulent man in his late fifties, wearing a pinstripe suit that looked as if he’d bought it back in 1982. He even had red braces. On his desk sat a picture of an equally fat woman and two plump children, plus a dog that was also in need of a few good walks.