The Killing House Page 4

  She knew what kind of woman she was. A tout. A slut. A betrayer, of everyone and everything. Once again she wondered how on earth she’d ever ended up here. And how she would ever get out, when everything they were saying about her was true.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘What is it you want from me?’

  He smiled. It was the worst thing Margaret Maguire had ever seen.

  Chapter Four

  She could never pinpoint what it was about prison that got to her. The smell, maybe, of bleach and cooped-up men, stale coffee spilled on the cheap plywood tables of the visiting room. The sound, that echoed like a swimming pool, a barely suppressed fury. The way she felt naked, stripped of her phone and cash and make-up compact and headphones and other random contraband. It was in a prison that she’d experienced one of the worst moments of her life – Aidan telling her he wasn’t Maggie’s father, that he’d known it for two years, after Pat had secretly done a DNA test on the child. That he’d been lying to her all that time, pretending their agreement to not find out still stood. That he wasn’t going to fight his arrest for killing Sean Conlon, because it was highly likely he had done it. That it was over between them, despite the fact they’d been about to get married when the police came for him. Her mind still shied away from that. Aidan might have punched and kicked Conlon, the man who’d shot his father right in front of him when he was a child, but someone else had finished the job. Surely they must have. Aidan was no killer. She had to believe that.

  Corry was striding ahead into the visitors’ room, confident in her trouser suit. Paula skulked behind, scanning the rows of men to see if Aidan was one of them. Her palms felt sweaty. How could she see him now, after all this time? He’d almost been her husband. He’d slept beside her every night for two years. How could they be strangers? Since his trial back in March, which she hadn’t come back for – he hadn’t wanted her to, and a craven part of her was relieved – Aidan was now part of the general prison population. A convict. Doing eight years for voluntary manslaughter. He’d been lucky, in many ways. He could be out in half that, if he kept his head down. It wasn’t so very long for killing a man.

  She tried to focus on the job. A dark-haired man slouched at a table. Thin, nervous, forty but looking older. Corry took her seat briskly. ‘Mr Wallace, hello.’

  His voice was croaky. ‘Ciaran.’

  ‘Ciaran, all right. I’m DI Corry and this is Dr Maguire, a forensic psychologist who works with us. You know what this is about?’

  He just nodded. He’d been handsome once, maybe, but prison had made him old and grey, his fingers gnarled with too much smoking, the nails dry and cracked. Would Aidan look like this soon? Ciaran Wallace was in for murder, had been in for more than ten years, and wouldn’t be out any time soon. Paula tried not to think about the things he’d done. It was easier to focus on the person in front of you, in these situations. She sat down, scraping her chair over the bare floor.

  ‘The farm,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. We’ve found some bodies at your old family house, buried under the barn floor.’

  He didn’t react as you’d expect to such grisly news. He just tapped the edge of his plastic coffee cup, his nails making a percussive sound. ‘Aye, well. Our Paddy used the barn for all sorts back then. Touts, informers. Interrogations, you know.’

  Her mother had been a tout. The worst word you could call someone back then. Paula kept her voice calm, professional. ‘Can you help us identify them, Ciaran? So their families can maybe find some peace?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno who they are. I never had nothing to do with that side of things, that was our Paddy.’ He caught Corry’s sceptical look. ‘It’s true. I never done that murder neither – never shot a gun in my life, even.’

  ‘You didn’t do it.’

  ‘No. I’m innocent.’ He looked around the room. ‘Suppose it hardly matters when I’ve been in here ten years, but for what it’s worth, yeah, I didn’t do it.’

  Paula could see Corry’s small head-shake: they always said they were innocent. ‘So it was only your brother who brought people to the farm for interrogation,’ Corry said. ‘Where is he?’

  Another shrug. ‘Haven’t seen him these years and years. He’s hiding out down south somewhere, far as I know.’ Paddy Wallace, the Ghost. Infamous even in IRA circles for his violence, his lack of mercy. It was men like him who’d killed Aidan’s father, and who may well have taken her mother from the house that day. To interrogate, and maybe afterwards to murder. ‘It’s probably some informers who had a run-in with him.’

  ‘And the girl?’ said Corry impatiently, as if expecting an answer. It was one of her tricks, to ask something as if she already knew what you’d say. ‘Who’s she, then? She’s a bit young to be an informer.’

  Ciaran looked blank. ‘Girl?’

  ‘We found the body of a young woman laid in with the man’s. We can’t be sure of her age, but she was likely under twenty and had dark hair.’

  The change that came over Ciaran Wallace was astonishing. His laconic, seen-it-all demeanour had gone and he was trembling. ‘Who is it? Who is she?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know. She was put there in the early to mid-nineties, we think. Any ideas?’

  He was still shaking. ‘No. No. I told you, I don’t know anything about no bodies.’

  Corry said casually, ‘Have you sisters, Ciaran, by any chance?’

  His hands clenched on the coffee cup. ‘The girls never had nothing to do with it.’

  Girls. More than one sister then. ‘Can you tell us their names and ages?’ Paula asked. Taking notes gave her some semblance of control, though her eyes kept darting round the noisy room. Was Aidan there?

  Ciaran didn’t answer for a long time, as if trying to get himself under control. ‘Mairead, she’s the second oldest. Aisling was the youngest. Mairead, she’d be . . . Jesus, she’d be in her forties now. Our Paddy was the year above her, then a gap till me, then Aisling. Mammy, she lost some weans in between, I think.’

  Corry asked, ‘So where are they then, the girls? How come the farm had to go up for sale?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I dunno. We’re hardly close. Mairead’s in England, probably. Ran off soon as she was able, don’t blame her. Did the same myself.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  He looked irritated by this question. ‘London, all right. Everyone went across the water in those days. I was no different.’

  ‘Can you remember when?’

  ‘Would have been, I dunno, ninety-three or ninety-four. Can’t remember.’

  Paula made a careful note; 1993 was the year her mother had gone missing.

  ‘The City of London bombing was in ninety-three, wasn’t it?’ said Corry conversationally. ‘One person killed. That was the IRA.’

  ‘I wasn’t there then.’ Ciaran was scowling. ‘I told you, I wasn’t involved in all that. It was our Paddy.’

  That was the kind of thing they could easily check, so Corry let it go for now.

  ‘And your sister Aisling? What happened to her?’

  His face tightened. ‘Dunno. We lost touch too.’

  ‘Aisling would be, what, in her late thirties now?’

  ‘She was only a wean. She didn’t know nothing. She probably left too. Why’d she want to stay in this bloody town? Nothing for her here.’

  Aisling had not been that much older than Paula, then, when Ciaran left. What must it have been like, living in a home that had become a slaughterhouse?

  Corry had slid some photos across the table. Not of the bodies, nothing gruesome, but the piles of dirt-stained clothes in plastic bags were sad enough on their own. ‘Recognise any of these items?’

  He glanced quickly at the pictures then pushed them away. ‘I wasn’t here, I don’t know. Can you not get DNA testing or that?’

  ‘We
can if we have names, of course, but we’ve no idea who this girl might be. If we’d a sample from you we could tell if it was one of your sisters.’

  He frowned. ‘Me?’

  ‘It would really help us out. They might be fine and well, of course. But if you haven’t heard from them in years, and now we’ve found a girl’s body at the house, well, don’t you want to know? If someone killed your sister?’

  He jerked, his hand balling into a fist, and then he stood up, scraping back his chair, and walked off towards the cells without a word. Paula flinched at the sudden movement, but Corry was immovable, calm. ‘We’ll be in touch about that sample, Ciaran,’ she called after him. She turned to Paula, her groomed eyebrows raised. ‘He knows something.’

  ‘Not talking, though.’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know much, does he, our Ciaran? Not about the murder he’s in here for, not about his brother’s IRA activities, and not about these dead bodies.’ Corry sighed. ‘Come on, let’s go back and try to track down Mairead Wallace.’

  Paula got up. She’d almost forgotten where she was, her brain pulling at the puzzle, trying to get at it from every angle. Ciaran had reacted in such a strange way. Was the dead girl one of the Wallace sisters? And if so, which one? What was Ciaran hiding and why would he refuse to help them?

  But that was when she saw him out of the corner of her eye. Aidan. Her almost-husband, across the room, in a queue of men waiting to be processed back into the locked part of the prison. ‘Aidan!’ She was shouting before she realised. ‘Aidan! It’s me!’

  He turned, reflexively, and she saw his surprise. He’d have thought her far away in London. His face was in shadow under the high window but she could see he looked unhealthy, scrawny and defeated, like the rest of the men in here. Would he speak to her? Last time they’d seen each other he’d told her to leave town, make a life for herself, and try to forget him. Leave him to rot, and accept his punishment. He’d barely even spoken at the trial, she knew. There was little defence to offer – he’d been in the pub that night, he’d fought with Conlon, he’d come home with blood on his T-shirt. There were witnesses, a motive, forensic evidence. His lawyers – with no help from Aidan – had successfully argued for a voluntary manslaughter verdict. No weapon, no premeditation. Loss of control. He’d pleaded guilty, buying himself a lower sentence, and then there was parole. It wasn’t so very long, she told herself again. But there was Maggie. Even four years was a long time at that age.

  For a moment, she thought he would speak to her. But as she watched, Aidan’s face closed up again, and he set his shoulder to her and walked away. Paula was left standing like an idiot, her heart pounding and people looking at her curiously. She felt Corry’s hand on her arm. ‘Come on. Leave him.’

  Outside, back through the metal detectors and the locked doors, the fresh air hit her face and she began to shake. Was it always going to be this way? Were she and Aidan . . . over? She’d always thought of this time as a sad interlude, a terrible misunderstanding that would end some day, and they could pick up where they’d left off, get married maybe, buy another house, look after Maggie. But if he still wouldn’t see her – perhaps there was no hope. ‘I thought, maybe . . . now there’s a verdict, you know. He might come round . . .’

  Corry was sympathetic but frank. ‘You have to let him be, Maguire. No sense in chasing a man, not ever. Even one that can’t get away. He’s got a lot to work through. Leave him be.’

  But Maggie, she wanted to say. It was one thing to push me away, but how could he leave that little girl he put to bed every night, read her endless stories about princesses and ponies and goblins, tucked her back in when she woke up demanding to know was it morning yet? How could he do that, even if she wasn’t his daughter?

  Her mouth felt full of unshed tears as she followed Corry shakily to the car park. It was then it occurred to her: if Aidan was in the visiting room, who was visiting him? Not Pat, she was looking after Maggie. Not Saoirse or Dave, they’d have reported back to Paula. A lawyer maybe – he could be considering an appeal. But then she saw the car in the other part of the parking area, the old run-down Volvo, and she saw from a distance who was unlocking its door and getting in. ‘Is that . . .’

  Corry followed her gaze, squinting. She was too vain to wear glasses while out and about. ‘Yeah. Hmm. What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Visiting, maybe.’

  ‘Does he know Aidan?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. Just through me.’

  ‘Well. Maybe he’s up seeing someone else. Now come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of prisons for one day.’

  As they drove away Paula was thinking: why was Bob Hamilton, her father’s former partner in the RUC, her former colleague at the missing persons’ unit, visiting the prison? Was he seeing Aidan, and if so, what was going on that she didn’t know about?

  Chapter Five

  ‘We’ve found Mairead Wallace in Liverpool. Alive and well, so it’s not her in that grave. She’s forty-seven now.’

  ‘Already? How did you manage that?’ It was later in the day, and Paula was back in the office preparing her initial report on the crime scene. Noting the contrast in the modes of death and burial. One executed, tumbled into the grave. The other strangled, and laid out so carefully with her arms crossed. She’d had to refer back to the crime scene photos and autopsy reports, even though something about seeing bone in soil made her recoil. As Corry had said, there wasn’t much left of the bodies to help with identification. She noted the report on the dead man: estimated mid-twenties to mid-thirties, gunshot wound to the head. Arms tied behind him with rope, likely kneeling when killed. In the pocket of his jeans was thirty pounds in cash – no wallet, no ID. The notes dated the death to the early nineties. The coincidence of the date, the nearness to when her mother went, made Paula’s neck twitch. They were going through their missing persons’ archives trying to find out who the male body might be, but as quite a few young men had died during those last bloody years of the Troubles, it was taking a while. She put her work aside for a moment and listened to Corry.

  Corry rolled her eyes. ‘How else, bloody Facebook. She’s not on it, of course, that would sort of defeat the object of running away. Although it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen it. No, it was her daughter. Carly Jones is her name, and a few months ago she put out a call to find her family. One of those stupid viral things.’

  ‘Did it work?’ asked Paula, thinking of course of her mother. Facebook had not been imaginable when she’d gone, or even having a computer at home.

  Corry gave her a withering look. ‘Don’t you be even thinking about it. I’d tan my Rosie’s hide if she ever did such a thing. It’s an open invitation to every creep in the world to make contact.’

  ‘It works, though. A lot of the time.’

  ‘That’s the worst thing. Well, it seems the Wallace siblings have something in common, and that’s not wanting to be found by each other. Wee Carly only got weirdos contacting her, as I could have told her in advance. But it meant we were able to find her too. Look.’ She spun her laptop and Paula was looking at a Facebook entry, the poster a girl in her late teens pouting into the camera, all lips and eyes. I AM LOOKIN FOR THE FAMILY OF MY MUM, HER NAME IS MAIREAD JONES WAS WALLACE, CAME FROM A PLACE CALLED BALLEYTERIN (‘She’s spelled that wrong. What do they teach them in schools nowadays?’). SHE HAD 1 SISTER AND 2 BROTHRES AND I WANT TO FIND THEM. PLS LIKE AND SHARE SO THIS CAN GO VIRAL AND I CAN FIND MY FAMILY.

  Below were dozens of comments, some from other unrelated Wallaces, some from internet sleazebags or well-wishers or bossyboots. Paula hated Facebook. Even if her mother by some chance was alive, and on it, she’d hardly be using the same name. She pushed the thought aside for now. ‘So nothing from the rest of the family?’

  ‘Nope. Like I say, the rest of the siblings must want to stay off-grid. But that’s two of them we’ve
tracked down. I also found this.’

  Corry clicked further onto Carly’s page and revealed a scanned photo, of five people standing on the steps of a house. It was the Red Road farmhouse, and Paula felt a chill down her spine. In the picture was an older woman, eyes narrowed at the camera as if she distrusted it. Two young men, round about their twenties, both smiling and strapping, in striped-leg tracksuits. It was the nineties, after all. Paddy and Ciaran. Two girls, one also in her twenties, with shiny dark hair and hoop earrings, ample breasts in a peasant top. ‘Mairead,’ said Corry. The other girl was a teenager, pretty, in jeans and a sports sweatshirt, the kind of clothes kids wore back then. Shy, dimpled smile. Aisling, this must be. The Wallace family. They were a good-looking bunch. They even looked happy, back then. Paula wondered who’d taken the photo. She peered closer. ‘That jumper. Could that be the one our dead girl’s wearing?’

  ‘It’s very similar, certainly.’

  ‘Everyone had those back then, of course.’ Paula’s mother had refused to buy her one, thinking them over-priced and ugly.

  Corry tapped the screen. ‘Aisling Wallace. That’s who we need to find. Unless we can find her, I’d lay bets that our dead girl is her. And that someone in her family knows exactly who put her there.’

  ‘So what’s the next move?’

  ‘What I said. We’ll have to try and track the rest of the family down. But there’s another complication we haven’t discussed yet. Ah, bollocks.’

  ‘What?’ Corry had stopped talking. A man in a blue jumper and slacks had appeared in the doorway of the interview room, a visitor’s pass round his neck. He had glasses and floppy brown hair, and was looking around as if trying to spot someone. ‘Who’s that?’

  Corry hissed, ‘They’re bloody here already. Well. This is going to throw a massive great spanner in the works and no mistake.’

  She pasted on a smile and moved towards him, Paula trotting after her, whispering, ‘What’s going on? Who is that?’ No answer.