Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (15 page)

‘“Them” plural,’ Burns commented. ‘We know of Karen Hughes. Who is the rest of “them”?’

‘And how many?’ Fleming added.

Lucy watched Wilson. Her face, always sharp, had thinned. When she removed her glasses, two red ridges marked the sides of the bridge of her nose. She was still attractive, Lucy conceded, but she was beginning to show her age. Either that, or her position as ACC was beginning to tell on her.

‘And, of course, if Carlin didn’t kill “them”, then who did?’ she added.

‘What’s happening at the site?’ Fleming asked.

‘The car’s being removed from the lough,’ Wilson said. ‘But it’ll be morning before it’s out. The underwater team has recovered Carlin’s body and any obvious belongings. We’ve sent a team out to start searching the house on the Foreglen Road to see what they can find.’

‘That’s on the way to the Ness Woods, where the Finn girl’s phone was found, isn’t it?’ Burns said.

‘Yes. Though we have to work on the assumption that, if Carlin was trying to make contact with her, then he probably isn’t the one who took her.’

‘Nor was Kay,’ Fleming said. ‘Unless he took her in the middle of the night, disposed of her, and then went for coffee to photograph groups of girls.’

‘Have we anything connecting Kay to Karen Hughes?’ Wilson asked.

Burns shook his head.

‘So, in fact, he might have nothing to do with Karen Hughes at all. His being in the centre might have been sheer coincidence.’

‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ said Burns defensively.

‘Why not?’ Wilson snapped. ‘They happen all the time. Cut Kay loose then, pending a file on the images he’s admitted to taking. If we can ever recover them,’ Wilson added.

‘What about Carlin?’ Lucy asked. ‘Does he have a record?’

Fleming shook his head. ‘All low-level stuff. He was questioned about flashing at a school girl in the bus depot a few years back.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was warned off. Told to stay clear of the depot. He was occasionally visiting the community mental health team. He was deemed a vulnerable person.’

‘Not that that necessarily makes him a predator,’ Wilson said.

Fleming nodded in agreement.

‘We’ll see what the searches of the car and house throw up,’ Wilson decided. ‘As for the events of this evening, the Ombudsman will have to investigate Carlin’s death. You’ll need to make statements about the events. Best get it out of the way tonight, while it’s fresh in your mind. I’ve already contacted their office to get someone down here to take initial statements.’

Lucy nodded. It was standard practice that the Ombudsman would investigate the death of an individual who’d had immediate prior contact with the police.

‘If it turns out that Carlin was abducting and killing young girls, no one’s going to mourn his death,’ Burns said.

‘Least of all Eoghan Harkin,’ Lucy reflected. He’d asked for half an hour with the person who’d killed Karen. If Carlin had told the truth, that person was still walking free.

It was pitch black in her room when the phone woke her at 6.30 the next morning. She’d only been asleep for two hours, yet had dreamed again of Mary Quigg and the fire. It meant that it took her a moment to realize she was awake when, upon answering, she was told that Gene Kay’s house was burning down. And that he was still inside it.

When Lucy arrived, a number of Land Rovers lined the roadway leading to the junction of the Trench Road. At first, Lucy couldn’t understand what was preventing them moving closer to where Kay lived. Then, as she got out of her own car, she noticed the flaming carcass of a car, angled across the junction, illuminating the pre-dawn scene. Behind it, their features covered with scarves, their figures seeming to ripple and shimmer in the heated air that rose from the burning vehicle, Lucy spotted a crowd of a hundred or more youths, already dressed for battle. Occasional bottles and stones arched over the burning car, breaking through the thick plumes of black smoke and skittering impotently along the tarmac of the roadway. Only once did one explode with a hollow thud against the side of a Land Rover, the sound being greeted with cheers by those beyond the smoke. Despite the attempts to provoke a response from the PSNI officers, Lucy knew why her colleagues were holding back. Any heavy-handed attempt by the PSNI to break through the line of youths would be immediately politicized and could undo years of painstakingly developed cooperation between the residents in the area and the community policing teams.

‘The fire service can’t get in near it,’ Fleming told Lucy after he spotted her among the gathered officers. ‘They’ve gone up the other way and are coming down the Trench Road from the upper end. We’re going to try to push through here when they arrive. Hopefully, the kids will be so focused on what’s happened at this end as we come at them, they’ll miss the fire crews coming from behind.’

‘Any word on Kay?’

Fleming shook his head. ‘A case of bad timing. He was released before midnight. The first word of the fire came from a neighbour about half an hour ago. The crew who did it probably didn’t even realize that he was back in the house.’

As they spoke, Lucy noticed teams of officers, in Tactical Support gear, moving quickly into formation behind the Land Rovers. They heard the heavy clunk of the doors on the vehicles closing and the familiar roar of the engines as they came to life. The kids on the other side of the burning car must have heard it too, their ears well tuned through experience to the sounds of a gathering force. Lucy could make out, through the smoke, as they fixed their scarves around their lower faces, some passing round bottles and stones. She noticed a few of them huddling together, their backs turned to the officers, then saw the blooming of light between them as they ignited the first of the petrol bombs.

There was a thud as the first Land Rover pulled off the kerb, where it had been parked, and, revving its engine, it began moving towards the car, inching its way forward. It was clearly hoping to push the vehicle to one side, thereby allowing those vehicles and officers behind enough space to move towards the gathered crowd.

‘The plan is to push the kids back down the Old Strabane Road and free up the junction so we can get to Kay. Tactical Support will hold them in bay once we get them shifted,’ Fleming explained.

Stones began clattering against the armoured sides of the Land Rover now, a bottle shattering against the reinforced windscreen. Then the first of the petrol bombs was thrown. It had been sloppily packed, and the flaming rag became dislodged as it turned in the air, a horsetail of flame in its wake as its contents spilled, so that, by the time it hit, the flames it produced on the Land Rover’s bonnet spluttered and quickly died.

The Land Rover pushed forward, its front grille now making contact with the burning car. The driver had approached at an angle so that, as he moved, the car shifted down to the right, into the junction.

Lucy glanced up to the left. She could see the flickering blue of the Fire Service vehicle lights intensify as it seemed to bounce off the gable walls of the houses beyond.

A sharp pop, followed by a cheer, brought her attention back to the scene in front of her. A petrol bomb had broken across the windscreen of the first Land Rover, leaving it ablaze. The driver turned on his wipers, scattering the fluid in flaming drops, to right and left.

She heard a faint whistle, then the body of officers moving silently behind the vehicles suddenly split, scattering in all directions. A moment later, a firework exploded on the tarmac where they had stood, in a ball of magnesium white. Another cheer from the crowd.

At a signal, several of the support vehicles drove around the front one and cut sharply towards the assembled kids, forcing them backwards, herding them down towards the Old Strabane Road, away from Kay’s house, effectively hemming the crowd of youngsters in.

‘Let’s go,’ Fleming said.

He and Lucy moved up quickly through the gap towards Kay’s house. The Fire Service had already reached the street and was pumping water into the house. Another crowd had gathered here; spectators this time, watching with macabre fascination as, one by one, the windows at the front of Kay’s house exploded with the pressure of heat ballooning from within. Some, though, were clearly neighbours driven from their own homes due to their proximity to the fire.

On the front of the house, sprayed in paint, blood red in the blue wash of light thrown off the fire tenders, were the words ‘Paedos out!’

Kay’s black dog, its fur soaked by the overspill from the flumes of water splashing against the window frames as the fire crew aimed their hoses, whimpered as it gingerly approached the front door of the house, then hastily withdrew before trying to approach again.

‘The poor wee dog,’ Lucy heard someone near her say as she passed. ‘Someone should lift it.’

It was almost eight thirty before the blaze had been controlled to the point that the first fire crew struggled in through the remnants of the front door, the charred remains hanging off the still bright brass hinges.

The crowd had thickened now, including younger children stopping on their way to school gawping at the scene, necks craned to see past their parents who stood, in groups, commenting on the events, some in condemnation, many in quiet agreement with what had happened. Only the man who owned the house next to Kay’s was receiving any sympathy from those around him.

After the first of the fire crew re-emerged from the remnants of Kay’s house Lucy and Fleming moved across to where the men spoke with their District Commander, a man who Lucy had met once before outside the charred remains of Mary Quigg’s home. If the man recognized her, he didn’t show it. She, on the other hand, would never forget him.

‘Well?’ Fleming asked.

The man shook his head. ‘One dead inside,’ he said. ‘Looks like a male.’

‘That would be right,’ Lucy said. ‘Any sign of how it started?’

The man nodded towards the front of the house. ‘Judging by the damage done to the door, it started there. I’d hazard we’ll find it was petrol through the letterbox. The fire seems to have been most intense at the front of the house. We’ll need to do a proper investigation once the whole place is clear, obviously, so this is just an educated guess.’

‘But definitely started deliberately?’ Fleming asked again.

The Commander nodded. ‘Looks like you can add another murder case to your workload.’ He pointed to the writing on the wall before adding, ‘You’ll not have far to look for motive, though, judging by the graffiti.’

As she was making her way back to her car, Lucy noticed a heavy-bodied man, his hair thick and white, standing speaking with two of the officers on duty at the cordon, which had been set up near the junction to keep the rioters contained. He moved away as she approached.

‘Concerned resident?’ Lucy asked one of the officers.

‘Community leader,’ he replied. ‘That’s Jackie Logue.’

Lucy shrugged. She’d heard the name recently, but couldn’t place it.

‘He runs the community up here. He’s been talking to the kids since we pushed them back. Most of the wee shits have buggered off home thanks to him.’

‘Ah,’ Lucy said, remembering now that he was the one with whom Fleming had spoken about Sarah Finn in the youth club.

‘Oh, Jackie’s a legend up here. Voice of moderation. He’s the reason why we can usually come in and out of here without what happened this morning happening.’

‘So what was different this time?’

The uniform shrugged as he stepped away to speak to the driver of a car that had approached the tape, clearly hoping to be allowed access.

After nine, Lucy and Fleming returned to Sarah Finn’s house. The mood in the house seemed to have changed from the previous day. Sinead Finn sat at the edge of the seat now, her knee jiggling up and down, one hand clutching her dressing gown shut, the other holding her cigarette.

‘Was that pervert involved? The one they burned out down the road?’ she asked, after Fleming had updated her on the previous day’s events.

Fleming glanced at Lucy before answering. ‘We don’t believe so, Mrs Finn. No.’

‘Well, where is she?’ she asked, her hand extended, palm up, the cigarette clenched between her fingers. ‘What are you doing to find her?’

‘We believe she may be with your partner, Mr Doherty,’ Lucy said. ‘We’ve followed up with his work and they tell us that he isn’t in Manchester.’

‘What do you mean? Where is he then?’

‘We hoped you might be able to help us,’ Fleming said. ‘Have you had any luck contacting him?’

The woman shook her head. ‘I’d have said if I had, wouldn’t I?’

‘I noticed yesterday, when I was looking for Sarah, that Mr Doherty doesn’t keep many clothes here,’ Lucy began. ‘Does he have somewhere else he stays when he’s not here with you?’

‘He’s at work when he’s not here with me.’

‘Not according to his employer. Can you give us the dates of his most recent trips?’

‘Did he take my Sarah?’ she asked, one eye weeping against the smoke that twisted in the air off her cigarette.

Lucy sat, while Fleming moved across to the window again, glancing out. Lucy suspected he was a little on edge following the riot; two officers split from the rest of their team were easy targets.

‘We know Sarah went to the post office and withdrew £200. We know she lied to both you and her friends about where she was going the previous night. Both of those things would suggest that she was planning on going somewhere. Then your partner ups and leaves in the middle of the night, saying he’s going to Manchester, but we know he’s not. The lack of his possessions here suggests he has somewhere else where he stays. Either he has taken her, or else his leaving is purely coincidental.’

‘Experience suggests that generally these things aren’t coincidence,’ Fleming commented. ‘You must have some idea where else Mr Doherty might be. Where is he from? We have no records for him.’

‘He grew up in Donegal, I think,’ Finn said. ‘I think he said he had a house in Foyle Springs, but I’m nearly sure he sold it.’