The Silent Dead (Paula Maguire 3) (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

In late spring the hills around Ballyterrin bloomed with butter-yellow gorse, ringing the town like a protective fortress. She could see the crime scene from far away, the hills touched with dying light like the beginning of a forest fire. The earlier rain had let off, leaving a pale haze in the air as the sun went down. At this time of year the weather changed in a heartbeat.

Aidan had tried to talk her out of going. ‘Fuck’s sake, Maguire, you’re mental to be doing this. It’s too close to your due date.’

‘Who are you, Doctor Bloody Spock?’

‘Star Trek?’ His forehead creased.

‘Never mind. It’s just annoying you seem to think you’re some kind of childbirth expert. I’m not due for a month. I’m going. I have to see if it’s her, Ni Chonnaill – Christ, she has three kids, Aidan. The youngest isn’t even one.’

‘Paula. Mum told me about the other day, at the morgue. You’re sure you don’t think this is someone else?’

‘Fuck off. It’s a recent body.’

‘Paaaaula.’ He sighed. ‘This is happening, you know. You’re going to have to slow down. What will you do, bring the baby to the crime scenes in her pushchair?’

‘Maybe her father can mind her,’ she snapped, riled. Shit. She realised from the look that cracked across his face she’d gone too far. ‘Sorry. Sorry, I’m just scared. I didn’t mean anything.’ He said nothing. ‘Aidan. I don’t know, OK? I was just – lashing out.’ She swallowed her pride. ‘Please – will you come with me?’

He stood up. He didn’t put on a jacket or jumper or look her in the eyes.

‘Well – will you?’

He had his car keys in his hand. ‘Course I bloody will. You know you don’t have to ask.’

They said nothing driving out of town, that witchy orange glow in the sky, as if bonfire season had come too soon. She’d had to put her seat back as far as it would go to fit in, and her belt would barely go around her bump. Luckily, Aidan’s car was far too ancient to have dangerous airbags. She felt dizzy, as if the ground beneath her feet were slipping and sliding. ‘Can you go any faster?’

‘You want to be pulled over by your mates in green?’

She sighed. ‘No.’

They couldn’t get all the way in the end – police vehicles made a fence around the muddy field where the body had been found, trying to keep back journalists and rubberneckers. Someone’s farm, out near the border. Paula put on her wellies, stooping with difficulty. Aidan just watched her struggle, still in his jeans and vintage Adidas. ‘Maguire,’ he said softly. ‘Would you ever catch a grip?’

She ignored him. She knew what he was thinking. Of Mickey Doyle hanging, his face livid. A punishment for the families he’d left to live with what he’d done, and those who’d killed themselves, unable to. Of Ronan Lynch, his skin hanging off him in blackened strips, left sitting in his car. That was for those who’d been burned alive near the petrol station, clawing at the doors and windows and dying in desperation. Of Callum Brady, his head cut off and sitting several yards away, wide-eyed. For all the people blown apart, studded in shrapnel and glass, brick forced inside their bodies. What could this be? What could those unseen hands have done to Catherine Ni Chonnaill? Paula thought of her three children, the two oldest sullen, swollen-eyed, the little one with the unknown father – just bewildered, crying for his mother. He didn’t know she had helped murder young babies like him. He’d no idea what she’d done – just that she was his mother, and he needed her.

She got out of the car. ‘You’ll have to help me walk.’

He gave her his arm stiffly, refusing to speak, cursing softly as his trainers were quickly clabbered in mud. At the cordon she disengaged, rearranging her cardigan. ‘You can’t come in. No press.’

The old Aidan would have wheedled and bribed, seeking the story at any cost. This one just stepped back. ‘Be careful. Please.’

She ignored him, though the ‘please’ was like a knife in her chest. It wasn’t his place to tell her what to do. For all they knew it wasn’t even his baby.

Guy was there, the orange sunset shining on his fair hair, suit trousers tucked into green wellies and over them those plastic covers. He frowned at her approach, waddling through the crowd. She wondered if they believed her that she wasn’t behind the leak.

‘I know, I know,’ she said wearily. ‘But I’m here. Show me.’

‘It’s bad.’

Duh. ‘Is it her?’

‘We think so.’ He led her close by, to where a white tent had been erected, lights shining out and shadows moving behind its thin walls. Catherine Ni Chonnaill’s last resting place was a field in the fertile agricultural land around South Armagh.

‘Buried deep this time?’ The other bodies had not been well-hidden, clearly meant to be found in as startling a way as possible. ‘That’s different. She could have been here for a while.’

Guy hesitated. ‘Yes, but – well. You’ll see. Are you OK for this?’

‘Just because I’m pregnant, sir, it doesn’t mean I forgot how to do my job.’

Without comment, he passed her some gloves and foot covers and they pushed back the tent flap. Paula blinked. Surrounded by rapidly working CSIs was a shallow trench in the earth. A grave. The earth was rich and heavy, the smell of soil stronger than any decay. She hadn’t been there long.

Catherine Ni Chonnaill had been a striking woman in life, tall, fair-haired, beautiful. The Republican Mata Hari, she’d once been called during one of her trials. Now that lovely hair was spread about her, brown with earth like a bad dye-job, and her face, once beautiful, was a mask of horror. Soil caked her mouth and nose, as if she’d choked on it, and her arms were stiffening up, the hands clawed and covered in dirt. Nestled in the earth, she looked like a tree root burrowing desperately to the light.

‘What do you think?’ asked Guy quietly. ‘She was found exactly like this, only covered in around two foot of soil and with a heavy stone dragged on top.’

Paula stared down, transfixed. ‘Was it—’

‘Yes.’ He dropped the flap. ‘We’re pretty sure she was put down there alive.’

Exactly like those who’d died under the rubble in Crossanure that day. Buried alive, suffocating, their nails splintered in their desperation to live, dying in a heap near the door of the collapsed bank. ‘Is there a note?’ she asked. Her own voice seemed to be coming from far away.

Guy said nothing, just passed her a plastic bag. This note was soil-stained, barely legible. In the lights of the crime scene she read the words: ‘LEGITIMATE TARGET’.

Paula had the strangest feeling she was sinking into the ground. She looked at the woman’s blue-grey face for a long time. She’d died in terror, you could see that. Clawing through the cold ground, feeling it fill up her lungs, fighting until the end with the dawning terror it was going to be too late. Paula had been there too, when someone had tried to kill her at Christmas – watching the blade move towards her belly, thinking
no no this can’t be it no
and then realising it was, the knife was in her, it was happening. It had been the same for Catherine Ni Chonnaill. She was sure of it. Her last thought would have been of her children, at home in their beds, wondering where their mother was.

‘Paula?’ Guy was gripping her arm. ‘For God’s sake, I told you not to come. You’ve gone grey.’

‘I’m fine! I – oh.’ Paula gasped. A fist had punched her from the inside.

‘What is it? The baby?’

She was going to say no, it was fine, it was too early, but then she felt a cramp move through her, crushing her, and she felt herself give up. She’d fought for months – fought with herself about even having the baby, and then fought to keep it alive, fought with Aidan’s hostility and Guy’s pained politeness, and fought with everyone who wanted her to stop working, and now she’d lost. Her own body had won, as snakes began to coil and writhe in her, and a terrible fear took hold of her, a sense of slipping, of cogs and gears whirring into life. She could almost feel the child strain within her. How could Paula birth her into this, a grave, a crime scene?

‘Help me,’ she gasped, groping for Guy’s arm like a drowning woman. ‘Get me away, please.’

‘Can you walk?’

She opened her mouth, shook her head. Gave up. ‘No.’

Guy picked her up with a small grunt, heaving up her legs and getting mud on his suit from her wellies. ‘Come on.’

She put her arms round his neck, and as the pain took hold she made a mewling noise in her throat, like a stepped-on cat
. Oh, fuck.

‘Coming through!’ Guy whisked her past the cordon, panting with the effort. He probably would have struggled even if she hadn’t been pregnant; she was nearly as tall as him. He kept up a soothing monologue. ‘My car’s just there. I’ll drive you to hospital, and it will be fine. It takes ages, especially a first baby. You’ve got hours yet. Don’t worry.’

‘My things,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t go. I don’t have any things.’

‘We can call for them. I’ll phone your dad. Will he know?’

She nodded helplessly. What did it matter if she had the wrong pyjamas? Guy was so good at this. He was good at it because he’d already had two children. With his wife. His wife he was still married to. She began to shake. ‘Put me down.’

‘What? Paula, you’re going into labour. We have to get you out of here.’

She was crying. ‘Not you. You’re still with her. I can’t – not like this.’

Then Aidan was at their side. ‘Maguire? What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s in labour,’ said Guy curtly. ‘I’m taking her to hospital.’

‘Why the feck should you be the one do it?’

Paula had clambered down from Guy’s arms, bent double with a cramp as they argued.

‘O’Hara, there isn’t time for this. She needs help.’

Aidan scowled. ‘Do you want him to take you, Maguire?’

She tried to shake her head, grunting with the pain. ‘Nnnn – no.’

‘See? You’re married, Brooking. You should be with your wife.’

‘I’m responsible for her.’

‘You are in your hole. You barely know her.’

Paula found her voice. She gripped Guy’s arm and heaved herself up. ‘You two. You will SHUT. The fuck. UP.’ She tugged at Guy. ‘Drive me home. Aidan – phone Dad. Tell him to meet us at the house. I need to pack the rest of my things.’

‘Why is he driving you? I brought you here.’

She closed her eyes, grinding her teeth against the pain. When she could speak she said, ‘Because his car is cleaner. Now fecking do what I said, or so help me God I will never forgive you.’

The following twelve hours were something Paula never quite got right in her head. Time was out of joint – she’d look at the clock on the delivery room wall, and an age would pass and she’d look again and it would be the same time. The contractions seemed to take an eternity. She counted through them – one two three four five six. Clawing at her was the anxiety of Guy and Aidan – when they went to the house her dad and Pat were there, throwing clothes in bags, and they’d never met Guy before, so she was aware of certain awkward introductions, while she sat on the sofa, gritting her teeth and counting through the pain. She overhead comments from Pat and Guy, who seemed to have appointed themselves childbirth experts: ‘. . . really close together already . . . not due for another month . . .’ Then Pat must have rung the hospital. ‘They said bring her if they’re this close . . .’ Then she was in the car, retreating somewhere into herself, bracing her hands against the dashboard and making a grunting noise like an animal, trying not to throw up in the footwell. It was Guy’s car, so clean she couldn’t see a speck on the carpet as she breathed in the smell of his air freshener. She’d have liked to stay there. Aidan was in the back, shouting directions, and Guy irritated, saying he’d lived there for a year, he could find the bloody hospital. Then they were there and Saoirse came, her face excited and scared but her voice calm. She took Paula’s hand in her cold, clean one. ‘It’s too early,’ Paula tried to say. ‘Why’s she coming so early?’

‘We don’t know yet. But we’ll look after you.’ Then there were charts and murmurs and people’s hands on her, in her even, and mutters about being three centimetres and why wasn’t she progressing, and she knew you had to get to ten but it was too soon for this surely? Guy and Aidan were there, and her last view was of them standing side by side as she plunged through double doors. There was the wheels of the bed squeaking and a siren noise that must be for her. A pen was in her hand and Saoirse’s voice. ‘You have to sign your consent, Paula. They need to give you a caesarean.’

‘But I didn’t want one.’ She wasn’t sure if this came out or not.

‘I know, but it’s too late. You have to sign.’

She clutched Saoirse’s hand, which was cool and strong. There was one thing she was clinging to, stopping her from being sucked under. ‘Will you tell him . . . Guy . . . will you ask him to find her for me? Ask him to find out more.’

Saoirse’s face a blank oval over her. ‘Find who, Paula?’

‘Find Mum. Ask him to help me find her.’

Then the blinding overhead lights of the theatre, four lights blacking out on the edges and a sharp pain in her hand and faces overhead, masked faces dissolving, and finally, gladly, Paula gave up and disappeared.

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

After my encounter with the Ireland First fundraiser, I tried to seek out Catherine Ni Chonnaill for a statement. I visited her house, where she lives with her three children, since her split from Lynch just before the trial. When I arrived she was getting out of her car with bags of shopping and lifting the youngest, a very young baby, from his car seat. She was very beautiful, even dressed in a tracksuit with her fair hair pulled back.

‘Ms Ni Chonnaill?’
I asked.

She jumped – as someone might who had a small child and death threats from the IRA. ‘
What do you want?’

I explained I was writing a book about the Mayday bombing and wanted to get her point of view. She was immediately cagey.
‘I had nothing to do with that, as I’ve said. It was a tragedy but not caused by Ireland First.’