The Nameless Dead (17 page)

Penny had shouted at him as she approached, telling him to leave her alone. He had continued, his fumbling becoming more aggressive even as Claire slumped to the ground. Finally, in fury, the
boy turned to face Penny.

‘What do you want, you nosey bitch?’ he spat. Then he added, ‘Just like your da,’ as he punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground.

‘No one helped me get up again,’ she said, her sobbing subsided now, but her tears still flowing freely.

‘The little fucker,’ I spat.

‘Ben!’

‘I’m going over to get him,’ I said, grabbing the car keys.

Penny shrugged. ‘Don’t, Dad. Stop being such a cop.’

‘I’m not being a cop, Penny, I’m being your father.’

‘Claire will get into trouble, Dad. Her folks will kill her if they find out she’s been drinking.’

‘They’ll be more concerned if they find out she’s been sexually assaulted,’ I said.

‘Leave it for now, Ben,’ Debs said.

I swallowed down my rage as I thought not of what the boy had done to Claire but that he had struck my daughter. As a father, I didn’t want the boy arrested; I wanted to beat him senseless
myself. I wanted to pummel his face for what he had done.

‘He didn’t try anything with you, did he?’ I asked.

Penny shook her head, her eyes not quite reaching mine, as though embarrassed. ‘He punched me, Dad.’

‘How do you feel now?’ Debs asked.

‘Okay. A little shaky.’

Debbie angled Penny’s head upwards, her face towards the light. ‘Let me see your pupils,’ she said.

‘I told you I wasn’t drinking, Mum,’ Penny said.

‘And I trust you,’ Debs replied. ‘But you had a brain injury and this boy hit you on the head. I want to be sure he hasn’t damaged anything inside this beautiful little
skull.’

Penny managed a smile and wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket.

‘I’m very proud of you, honey,’ Debbie said.

‘For not drinking?’

‘For standing up for your friend when no one else did. Even if it meant you got yourself hurt.’

‘She still had him pawing all over her. I should have gone over to her myself at the start.’

‘You did just fine,’ Debs said.

I heard something in the hallway and looked out to see Shane crouching on the stairway, listening to the conversation. As he stared at Penny’s swollen face, his expression was drawn, his
skin pale. When he noticed I was watching him, he stood and padded back up to his room without a word.

I went up the stairs, ostensibly to check on him, though also because I wanted to phone Jim Hendry. Penny had said she didn’t want her friend to get in trouble, but I had no intention of
allowing someone to punch my child with impunity.

As it transpired, Hendry was ahead of me. Claire had been lifted by an ambulance crew that had been on standby in case of any burn injuries suffered at the fire. Her parents had been contacted
and the girl was already giving a statement to a female officer from the Public Protection Unit.

‘It’s Burke,’ I said. ‘Penny was with the girl. She tried to intervene and he punched her.’

‘Jesus, is she all right?’

‘She has a black eye. She’s a little shaken, but she seems to be coming around.’

‘It wouldn’t have any implications on her . . . injury, you know, her brain thing.’

‘We’re going to take her to the doctor and get her checked out.’

‘We’ll be looking for Burke. I’ll head down to the hostel where he stays myself and see if I can pick him up. If Penny feels up to it, a statement would be very
useful.’

‘As soon as she’s at herself I’ll bring her across,’ I promised.

‘Ben,’ Hendry began. ‘If I find Burke tonight, do you want to know about it before I bring him in?’

I was taken aback at the baldness of the question and, more so, by the time it took me to say, ‘Thanks, Jim. Best not.’

Shane was standing in the doorway of his own bedroom when I came out of mine.

‘Is Penny okay?’

I nodded. ‘She’ll be fine. She got hurt.’

‘Did someone hit her?’

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak as I considered the pain and self-doubt that marked his expression.

‘I didn’t mean what I said about her,’ he said, his tears already gathering.

‘Forget about it, partner,’ I said.

‘I don’t want anyone hurting her,’ he blubbed.

‘I know. Penny knows that, too.’

He was not to be convinced, though, turning angrily and going back to his bed. I could hear his mutters as I went back downstairs to where Penny and Debbie were still sitting together on the
sofa.

We sat in Accident and Emergency at Letterkenny General Hospital until 4 a.m. before Penny was seen. My parents had come up to watch Shane, allowing Debbie and me to take Penny
in together. Once she had told us her story, she had settled somewhat. Still, considering her recent head injury it seemed prudent to get her checked following the blow to her face.

She grew sleepy while we sat, and despite our best efforts to keep her awake, she stretched out across the two chairs beside us and laid her head on Debbie’s lap. I covered her with my
coat and sat with her legs across my own knees.

Despite being mid-week, the ward was busy. Opposite us a young boy sat with his mother, his arm hanging limply in a sling. She explained to Debbie that he had fallen while getting out of the car
and she thought he had broken his wrist. To her left sat a man in dress trousers and a white shirt. The front of the shirt was spotted with blood and he held a bloody wad of tissue to his mouth. He
looked across at me and winked happily, his face breaking into a smile that revealed the gap where two teeth were missing and the split in the lip below where they should have been.

Around 1 a.m. the burns injuries started appearing. Most were teenage boys who had been handling fireworks. Some were minor scorches from mishandled sparklers, others more serious burns from
firecrackers. One held his hand against his chest, the thick bandages wrapped around it unable to disguise the absence of several fingers. He was wheeled through immediately and no one else was
called in for treatment for some time.

‘Have you told Jim?’ Debs asked me when Penny was asleep.

I nodded. ‘Burke’s known to them. We had him in over the Sean Cleary killing. He robbed the body.’

‘Do you know where he lives?’ she asked, not even trying to disguise the hope in her voice.

‘He stays in a hostel in Strabane. His folks threw him out. Jim’s going looking for him.’

‘Maybe you should have found him before you told the North.’

I glanced at her to see if she was being serious. The set of her jaw left no room for confusion.

‘He assaulted Claire. He’ll do time for that.’

‘He better,’ Debs said, running her hand through Penny’s hair.

‘Would you rather I beat him up myself?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time, Ben. This time you could do it for one of your own family instead of strangers.’

‘I wanted to go across. Penny said . . .’

The discussion was cut short by our being called in to the triage room. After a further twenty-minute wait a locum doctor came in. He scolded us for allowing Penny to sleep, though by the time
he did so she had woken anyway.

He shone a small pen-light into both of her eyes, using his thumb to hold open the lower lid on the swollen eye.

‘Reactions look normal,’ he said. ‘What happened to her?’

‘A boy struck her.’

‘Maybe be more careful in the company she keeps.’

‘She was protecting her friend from a sexual assault,’ I said. ‘I’d maybe mind my tone.’

‘And you yours,’ the locum said, putting away the light. ‘She seems fine. Keep an eye on her; if she gets headaches or that, bring her back in.’

With that he turned and swept back the curtain of the unit in which we sat. The nurse who had been standing with us, smiled apologetically. ‘It gets a little fractious, sometimes, when
we’re busy,’ she offered by way of explanation.

I attended Mass for All Saints’ Day later that morning. It was also the Requiem Mass for Sean Cleary, his remains having been released by the PSNI. Several times during
the service, Father Brennan made reference to the macabre symmetry of Sean’s life, which began just after his father’s disappearance and ended just before the discovery of
Declan’s remains. He had no doubt, he said, that they had finally met in God’s kingdom.

At the end of the service, before Sean Cleary’s coffin was carried from the church, Brennan also announced his intention to bless the
cillin
on Islandview the following day, on the
Feast of All Souls. He extended an invitation to any parishioners who may have had to bury children there, or who knew of brothers or sisters who rested beneath the island soil, to attend the
service. He prefaced this with a short word about the whole idea of the
cillin
and the Catholic tradition of limbo. The rules had loosened, he said, so that, in the words of the Church,
‘there was a very great hope’ that those children who had been lost would be reunited with God. His own belief, he confessed, was much firmer with regards to the communion of God with
such infants, and the special place they held by His throne.

As I scanned the congregation, I wondered if the seven infants found on the west of the island, alongside Declan Cleary, would be included in his blessing, so that they too might recover their
rightful place among the consecrated dead.

On leaving the church, I approached Mary Collins and her husband and again offered my condolences on the loss of her son. She held my hand in both of hers as she thanked me, though she seemed so
dazed I doubted she even knew who I was.

When I reached my car I noticed I had a new voicemail message on the phone. McCready had called; he had traced only a single name for a child born with Goldenhar syndrome in Donegal during the
1970s.

‘His name is Christopher Hillen,’ McCready explained as we drew up outside the address in Ballykeen an hour later. ‘He was born in April 1976.’

The modest council house was part of a row of five. The entire estate consisted of such blocks, built as part of the social-housing schemes that had sprung up around the country in the
eighties.

As we walked up the pathway to the house, the lace curtains at the front window twitched. Before we even had a chance to knock, a middle-aged woman opened the door.

‘Mrs Hillen?’ McCready asked.

‘Yes,’ she looked from McCready to me and back, her expression drawn. ‘Is something wrong?’ She was fine-featured, her hair thick and brown. She wore no make-up, her skin
fresh save for some mild acne-scarring on her cheeks. She was not much older than fifty.

‘No ma’am,’ McCready said. ‘I’m Sergeant McCready; this is Inspector Devlin. We wanted to talk to you about Christopher.’

‘What’s Christopher done?’ she asked, standing more erect, her tone suddenly defensive.

‘Nothing ma’am,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for some help, to be honest. Is your husband home?’

‘My husband?’

‘Christopher.’

She smiled warmly. ‘You’re a right charmer, too, aren’t you? Christopher’s my son.’

‘This is Christopher Hillen? Born April 1976? He’s your son?’

‘Get away with you,’ she smiled. ‘He’s my son. I was only a kid myself when I had him. You may come in.’ She stepped back, laughing to herself as we passed.

She was little more than 5'5", standing as she did barefooted. She wore a loose grey tracksuit, her hair pulled back and twisted around a biro pen, which held the bun in place.

The hallway was narrow and dark, the staircase to our left-hand side separated from us by a flimsy sheet-wood banister. The kitchen was cramped, the only space for sitting two bar-stools either
side of a breakfast bar. The ceiling retained its original wood panelling.

‘I’m just having tea, do you want a cup?’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Milk and one sugar, please.’

‘Just milk for me, thanks.’

‘No wonder you’re so sweet,’ she said to me, gesturing for us to sit while she made the tea in two mugs and handed them to us. ‘What can I do for you, then?’

‘We wanted to ask about your son’s illness.’

‘Oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum,’ she said, rolling the ‘r’s. ‘What about it?’

Joe looked at me uncertainly, then said, ‘We thought he had Goldenhar syndrome.’

‘It’s the same thing,’ she said. ‘Different name.’

‘Can you tell us something about it, Mrs Hillen?’ I asked.

‘Jane,’ she said. ‘There’s not much to tell. When Christopher was born he had bones missing on one side of his face. He had some hearing difficulty in one ear and his
speech was a little slow. He got some help when he was a child, quite a bit more when he grew up. That’s it. He was very lucky.’

‘Lucky how?’

‘He has a relatively mild version of it. He had no other defects, heart or kidneys or that. Some babies who develop it don’t even live to birth.’

We heard a rattle at the door as a key turned in the lock and, a moment later, a man I assumed to be Christopher clomped down the hall. He was a little stooped, though that may have been due to
the bags of shopping he was carrying.

‘Hello,’ he said. Even having seen the skeletons on Islandmore, I was a little taken aback by his face. On the left-hand side his cheekbone seemed to be entirely missing, with the
consequence that his skin had puckered into a gap several inches above his mouth. His upper lip was pulled back, his lower eyelids drooping. He wore his hair long, but I could see that his right
ear was smaller than the other, the tan plastic of a hearing aid visible above it.

‘Christopher, son,’ Jane said. ‘These men are here to talk about your condition. Do you want to tell them anything about it?’

‘It’s shit,’ he said. ‘I can’t get a girlfriend for a start.’

‘Which is why he’s still living with his mother at the age of 35,’ Jane added, laughing.

Despite his facial abnormality, Christopher’s speech was fairly clear, if a little sibilant in places.

‘I expected . . .’