Hurt (DS Lucy Black) (16 page)

‘Do you know his date of birth, Mrs Finn? We have over four hundred Seamus Dohertys on the system.’

Finn angled her head in thought, then finally shook it. ‘He never told me.’

‘Even his age,’ Fleming said. ‘That would be a start.’

Finn shrugged. ‘In his forties, maybe.’

As they left Finn’s house, Lucy phoned through to H. M. Haulage again. The secretary who answered told her that she couldn’t speak to Mr Martin as he had meetings all morning.

‘This is part of a child abduction investigation,’ Lucy explained.

‘Mr Martin was very clear that he wasn’t to be disturbed,’ the girl explained, stuttering slightly. Lucy guessed she was young, afraid to annoy the boss, not confident enough to use her common sense.

‘I spoke with Mr Martin yesterday about one of your employees, Seamus Doherty. We’re having trouble locating an address for Mr Doherty and we really need to find him. Would you have an address for him?’

‘I really think you need to speak to Mr Martin,’ the girl said. ‘I’m not sure I can give that information out. How do I know you’re a police officer?’

‘You can call my station if you want,’ Lucy offered. ‘Look, tell you what, how about you give me his driving licence number? If I’m not police, there’s nothing much I can do with that, is there?’

‘Wait a moment,’ the girl said, and ‘Greensleeves’ clicked into action. After a dozen renditions, the girl’s voice cracked on the line.

‘There’s no one else here,’ she explained. ‘I’m not sure if ...’

‘Look, it’s fine,’ Lucy said. ‘All I need is the number.’

She glanced at Fleming who rolled his eyes exasperatedly.

‘We have GB5786345 on record if that’s any good.’

‘That’s perfect,’ Lucy said, repeating it while Fleming copied it down. ‘Thank you.’

Within minutes, they had called the number through to the station and been contacted to be told that Doherty’s last recorded address was in Norburgh Park. They were also told that he had a record for assault following a bar brawl in Belfast in the late eighties. Beyond that, and a few speeding tickets in the mid-nineties, Doherty had stayed off the system.

They pulled up outside the house twenty minutes later. Initially, they believed the place to be empty. Lucy banged on the door several times while Fleming skirted the perimeter of the house.

‘All the ground floor curtains are drawn,’ he observed as he joined her at the front step.

‘One window up the stairs is the same,’ Lucy said, nodding up.

‘So someone’s probably home.’

Lucy nodded. ‘I’ve knocked a few times.’

‘Maybe he can’t hear very well,’ Fleming commented, hammering his fist against the door three times, so sharply it rattled in the frame.

‘I think the people in the next street overheard that,’ she said.

‘And success,’ Fleming added, nodding to where a figure could be seen moving down the hallway towards the door.

They heard the click of the dead bolt being drawn back, then the door opened slightly. The man who peered out through the opening allowed by the security chain between door and frame had black hair. He pulled a blanket around his shoulders as he hunched over, clasping the gathered corners at his throat.

‘Yes?’ he asked, nasally, before sniffing audibly.

‘Mr Doherty?’

‘Yes?’

‘Seamus Doherty?’

The man shook his head. ‘No. Ian,’ he said, straightening slightly. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re not Seamus Doherty,’ Lucy stated, though the young man misread the tone and responded.

‘No, I’m not. Why?’

‘We’re sorry to have bothered you,’ Fleming said. ‘We’re looking for Seamus Doherty. We were given this address as his last known residence.’

‘You’ve the wrong Doherty,’ the man said, standing taller now, his voice noticeably clearer.

‘Do you know the other Mr Doherty?’ Lucy asked.

‘I bought the house last year,’ he replied. ‘I know the last owner was called Doherty. There’s some of his post lying in here. I gathered it up in case he ever called to collect it, but he never did. Junk mostly, I imagine.’

‘Can we see it?’

The man glanced backwards, hesitating, then finally closed the door, undid the security chain and allowed them in.

As Lucy followed him down the hallway towards the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of a second figure, female, turning quickly from the top of the stairs. She too had been wrapped in a blanket.

‘Your cold’s improved,’ Fleming commented, glancing around the kitchen as the man padded across to a black unit in the corner and began flicking through the piles of paper shoved into it.

‘I’ve thrown a sickie to be honest,’ the man said. ‘I thought you were someone from my work.’

The creaking from the room upstairs as the man’s partner climbed back into bed made it fairly obvious why he’d thrown a sickie. He blushed slightly as he handed them a pile of white and brown envelopes.

As he did so, Fleming’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen and, excusing himself, moved into the hall. Lucy heard him begin the conversation with ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Can you remember who sold you the house?’ Lucy asked as she glanced at the envelopes. The name on the address labels was Mr S. Doherty. ‘Was it an estate agent?’

‘It might have been,’ he commented at last. ‘O’Day, or something like that.’

‘If you could try to remember, maybe you’d give me a ring,’ Lucy added, handing the man her card with the PPU number on it.

Fleming reappeared in the doorway. ‘We’re wanted back in the station, DS Black,’ he said. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Doherty.’

‘Bad news?’ Lucy asked, as they made their way back to the car.

‘When your mother phones it’s always bad news. They’ve been in Kay’s house. They found his collection.’

The CID team was gathered in the incident room in the Strand Road when Lucy and Fleming arrived. A black bin bag lay on the table, on top of which sat a large metal security file box with a lock to the front. It had already been opened and some of the contents removed.

The vast bulk of the images already arranged on the table were Category 9 or 10. The young people pictured in the ones Lucy saw as she glanced across the collection were girls, all teenagers. They were engaged in a variety of activities, the men in all cases unidentifiable due to the angles at which the images had been taken.

‘I take it they survived the fire because of the metal box,’ Fleming said, as he leaned over, scanning the images.

‘They survived the fire because they were in the shed,’ a voice said. Lucy turned to where her mother had entered the room. ‘I’d like to see you for a moment, Inspector Fleming.’

Fleming glanced at Lucy and raised his eyebrows. She guessed why her mother wanted to speak to Fleming. The box was so big, Lucy wondered how he could have missed it when he’d claimed he’d searched Kay’s shed. She suspected her mother would want to know the same thing.

She worked with the rest of the CID team, sorting through the images, attempting as best they could to organize them into piles, each one assigned to a different girl.

Within minutes, Lucy had found a picture of Karen Hughes. Shortly after, someone handed her an image that, they believed, was of Sarah Finn. Lucy studied the picture, blanking out the background, the position in which the youth was pictured, focusing only on the girl’s face. She was pretty certain that it was indeed an image of Sarah. A second was handed to her; this time, it was a closer shot of the girl and there was no doubting her identity. Yet, while she was facing the camera, her eyes were downcast, as if unable to meet the stare of the one photographing her, his hand just visible under her chin as he tried to raise her head to take the picture.

‘DS Black. The ACC wants to see you,’ Burns called.

Lucy put the picture down, nodding to confirm that it was Sarah Finn, then moved gratefully away from the images and in to her mother.

‘Sit down,’ her mother said as Lucy entered Burns’s office. ‘Everything OK?’

‘The collection out there. It’s a little ... disturbing.’

‘We’re lucky we got it finally. We can catalogue Kay’s lists of abuse.’

‘It’s a little late,’ Lucy said. ‘Considering the bastard died.’

‘I agree,’ her mother replied. ‘In fact that’s what I wanted to ask you. We found the collection in the shed. Who searched there the day you were at the house?’

Lucy held her mother’s stare. ‘I don’t remember. It could have been either of us.’

‘Was it you?’

‘I don’t recall.’

The ACC nodded. ‘DI Fleming has already confirmed that he was the one who checked.’

‘Then why did you ask me?’

Wilson ignored the question. ‘He’s also already accepted that he missed it.’

‘We all make mistakes.’

‘Indeed. Though had we found this yesterday, Kay would be in a cell and facing justice. Instead we have to deal with what he did, the fallout from his being torched alive in his house, and a second Ombudsman inquiry in so many days.’

Lucy’s phone began to ring. She pulled it out and saw Robbie’s name on the caller ID. Apologizing, she switched it to silent and put it away again.

‘I’d like to know again what happened yesterday morning in DI Fleming’s house.’

‘I’m not sure that’s relevant to what we’re talking about,’ Lucy said quickly.

Her mother retorted, ‘I decide what’s relevant, Lucy. And I think it’s completely fucking relevant that Tom Fleming was so insensible with drink yesterday morning that you called an ambulance for him. So drunk he didn’t even hear his own burglar alarm going off. Yet he then comes into work and misses one of the biggest paedophile collections we’ve managed to find in years. Gene Kay is dead today because Tom Fleming was drunk yesterday.’

‘That’s a little unfair,’ Lucy countered.

‘It’s very unfair,’ Wilson agreed. ‘On you, and me, and the rest of the teams working these cases.’

Lucy looked down at her hands folded in her lap. ‘Looking at the images out there, I’d say Kay got what he deserved.’

‘That’s not our call to make,’ Wilson snapped.

Lucy shrugged.

‘Inspector Fleming will be suspended pending an investigation,’ her mother said.

Lucy glanced up sharply. ‘
That’s
not fair. He needs help.’

‘You’re not the only one who cares for Tom Fleming, Lucy.’

‘You’ve a funny way of showing it.’

‘I remember the
first
time he went through all this,’ her mother snapped. ‘I saw what it did to him. He needs time to go and get himself sorted out. That’s what he’ll get. Do you think sitting out there looking at that filth is going to help him dry out? It’s no wonder he drinks.’

‘Yet you put me in the PPU when I asked to go to CID,’ Lucy retorted. ‘So it’s OK for me to look at them, is it?’

‘Don’t make everything about yourself, Lucy.’

Lucy swallowed her immediate response, not trusting that her mother wouldn’t have her punished for insubordination. ‘So what do I do while he’s off?’

‘The Finn case dovetails with the Hughes murder,’ the ACC said. ‘Continue to work the case and report to Chief Superintendent Burns.’

Lucy stood, saying nothing.

‘I admire your loyalty, Lucy. In this case, though, Tom needs more than loyalty.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ Lucy replied. ‘After all, loyalty was never one of your strong suits, was it?’

Burns was waiting when Lucy came out of the office.

‘You’ve heard about Inspector Fleming, I assume,’ he said.

Lucy nodded.

‘Look, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’d appreciate your help with following up on Carlin. Was he known to PPU?’

Before I drove him into a lough, Lucy thought, bitterly. ‘I’d not come across him before last night, sir,’ she said. ‘Inspector Fleming is the obvious person to ask though.’

‘We already have,’ Burns said. ‘He’d not heard the name before either.’

Lucy folded her arms across her chest, then, being suddenly aware of the defensiveness of the gesture, unfolded them, before finally clasping her hands behind her back.

‘We know he was being supported by the Community Mental Health team. I’d like you to speak to his care worker there and see what you can find out. To fill in the background, you know.’

‘What about the house, sir? Has anyone found anything there yet?’

‘Forensics are doing a full sweep. It’ll take a while before we get any results.’

The Community Mental Health team worked out of Rossdowney House in the Waterside. Lucy knew most of those who worked there, not least because many of the children in the residential unit had been referred to them at one time or another. When she arrived, she was told that she’d best speak with the unit psychiatrist, Noleen Fagan.

‘Good to see you, Lucy. Long time,’ Fagan said as she brought Lucy into her office. ‘Grab a seat.’

The room was small, the walls lined with bookcases, the desk – a modern beech affair – overloaded with green and red files, many of them bulging to the point that elastic bands wrapped around them had been knotted together.

‘How’re things?’ Lucy asked. ‘I’ve not seen you in a while.’

‘The Trust took all the older kids’ cases off us,’ Fagan said. ‘A few years back, they widened the remit of the children’s team to take up to eighteen. We’re adult only now.’

Lucy nodded. ‘That must make things easier.’

‘No change ever makes things easier,’ Fagan laughed. ‘You must know that. How’s the PPU treating you?’

Lucy thought of the images she had been examining half an hour earlier. ‘The same as always,’ she said. ‘I’ve been dispatched to find out about Peter Carlin.’

Fagan nodded. ‘I heard this morning. He drove into Enagh Lough, is that right?’

‘By accident. We were pursuing him and he lost control, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘His car swerved. The road was a little slippy ...’

‘But?’

‘He was on a straight stretch.’

‘You think he drove off deliberately?’

Lucy shrugged. She’d not mentioned it to anyone; there seemed little point. Still, she had wondered how he could have lost control on a straight road.

‘Why were you chasing him? What had he done?’