Authors: Paula Martin
Chapter 2
Kara waited until Ryan drove away before leaving the coffee shop. She checked the sketch map Josie Flynn, the secretary at the Adoption Agency, had drawn for her, and followed the directions along the side of the small park to the bus stop. It occurred to her that maybe she should take a look at the bust of President Kennedy, in case Ryan asked her about it later, but the decision was taken out of her hands when the Number 401 bus approached the stop.
During the twenty-minute journey to Salthill, the seaside area of Galway, she tried to formulate the questions she wanted to ask when she reached the Calvary Hospital, but her mind kept drifting to Ryan. Was it her imagination, or had he deliberately steered the conversation away from himself? She gathered together the few crumbs she'd learnt about him: his family came from Dublin, he hadn't been in Clifden for long, whatever that meant, and he had a small apartment in Bridge Street. Not much to go on, except he said
I
and not
we
, even when he mentioned France and New York.
But Mark Rankin had always been careful in the same way. He called his New York apartment his 'bachelor pad', and only gave her vague information about his past life. Not for one minute did she suspect he was married, and she'd been naïve enough to accept his excuse of 'working on a case' for the weekends he spent away from New York. Until the day Joanne Rankin turned up at HQ on a surprise visit to her husband.
Perhaps she was being paranoid, but no way was she going to make the same mistake again.
She jerked back to the present when the bus reached the promenade at Salthill, and alighted near the Calvary Hospital.
Not that she held out much hope of learning anything from the Sisters of Calvary who, according to Josie, once ran the mother and baby home at Ballykane, and now owned the private hospital here in Galway.
"Ye'll have to be very persistent," Josie said. "It's difficult to get any information from them, but don't be fobbed off. Once the scandal about all the baby adoptions was highlighted in the media, the religious orders clammed up. Honourin' their guarantees of confidentiality, they call it."
The hospital, a modern two-storey building, was set in spacious, well-maintained grounds, and she followed the signs to the reception area. At the desk, she explained briefly the reason for her visit and asked to speak to someone who might be able to help her.
After about fifteen minutes, a slim nun, not much older than herself, came into reception. She wore a navy suit with a sleeveless jacket over a white blouse, and a matching navy silk headscarf, and beckoned to her. "Miss Stewart? I apologise for keeping you waiting, but if you'd like to follow me?"
She led the way down a cream-painted corridor into a large office with wide windows overlooking Galway Bay.
The nun, whose ID tag showed her name as Sister Mary Theresa, indicated the chair in front of her desk and gave her a friendly smile. "Now, how can I help you?"
"Oh, I thought your receptionist might have told you. I gave her the reason for my visit here."
"Yes, something to do with donations to our order, I understand."
Kara thought of Josie's indignant comments when she'd mentioned the donations:
Fees, you mean,
'
cept they weren't allowed to call them that, 'cause it was illegal to sell babies, but American couples paid hundreds, if not thousands, to adopt Irish babies.
For the moment, however, it was more tactful to keep to the official line.
"My grandfather made annual donations to the Sisters of Calvary for over fifty years until his death last year, and I believe this was because he and his wife adopted a baby from the mother and baby home in Ballykane in 1960."
"We are extremely grateful for all donations, Miss Stewart. We receive no government funding and rely on clients' payments and on donations to continue our commitment to providing high quality medical care here."
"I'm trying to find out more about the baby they adopted, Sister. That baby is my mother, and she knows nothing about her birth mother or the circumstances of her birth."
The nun nodded. "I see. Well, I'm afraid it's often very difficult to trace the details of all the babies born in the home at Ballykane."
"Surely the Sisters kept records of the mothers, and the adoptions, too?"
"Unfortunately, we're talking about a time when there were only paper records. No computers then, of course. I regret to say many of those records have been lost over the years."
"Aren't there
any
records from the Ballykane home?"
"Oh yes, several hundred boxes. Sister Augusta, our archivist, is trying to index them. However, I'm sure you understand that we are only permitted to give out non-identifying information."
"What does that mean?"
"We can't divulge the original name or surname of an adopted child, or the names of his or her birth parents. Such details have to remain confidential."
Kara frowned. "Why?"
"The mothers have a right to privacy about their past lives, Miss Stewart."
"What about the children? Don't they have the right to know about their birth parents?"
"Under current legislation, no, not unless the mother consents, and the father, too, if he is named on the birth certificate."
Kara blinked as she struggled to absorb this information. "I see." She thought for a couple of seconds. "Is there any way I can find out more about my mother's birth and adoption?"
The nun wrote something on a notepad and handed it to her. "Here's the address for Sister Augusta."
Kara looked down at the paper, and up again. "I wrote to this address about four months ago but didn't get any reply."
Sister Mary Theresa gave her an apologetic smile. "I'm so sorry about that. We receive a lot of enquiries, and Sister Augusta does her best to deal with them all, but it can take her a long time to search through all the old records."
When the nun stood, Kara realised the interview was over, despite the million and one questions she still wanted to ask. Recognising that this woman wasn't going to give her any answers, she stood too, and forced a smile. "Thank you for your time, Sister. I appreciate the information you've given me."
"Good luck with your search," the nun said.
As
Kara trekked along the corridor toward the main door of the hospital, Josie's words came back to her:
Don't be fobbed off
. That was exactly what Sister Mary Theresa had been doing. Fobbing her off with vague excuses about missing records and confidentiality, so even if she wrote to Sister Augusta again, what were the chances of any reply?
She pushed open the swing door, and stood for a few moments, gazing out across the grey-blue water of the bay. No nearer to finding anything about her mother's birth than when she first arrived in Ireland, she had no idea what to do next.
With a discouraged sigh, she headed along the path between manicured lawns and neat flower beds already colourful with spring anemones. A quick check of her watch showed only one o'clock. She had plenty of time to find somewhere for lunch, and perhaps she'd do some shopping after all before she met Ryan in Eyre Square.
She reached the wide gateway of the hospital grounds and turned to take a photo with her phone. Moving a few steps to avoid getting the large signboard in the picture, she noticed a small wooden sign near the ground, half-hidden by one of the posts holding the main sign.
Clochar na Siúracha Calvary – Convent of the Sisters of Calvary.
The sign pointed away from the main entrance along a narrow path between neatly trimmed shrubs.
She gave a satisfied smile. Forget lunch and shopping, and forget Sister Mary Theresa and her bland excuses. If she could meet with Sister Augusta at the convent, maybe she wouldn't have to write off today's visit as a complete waste of time.
* * * * * *
Ryan reached the hotel near Wolfe Tone Bridge, handed his car key to the parking valet, and entered the lobby. Ignoring the people waiting for the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time, and knocked on the door of Room 116.
A key turned in the lock, and Chief Superintendent Enya Quinn opened the door. In her late forties, tall and auburn-haired, and immaculate as always in a mid-grey trouser suit, she crossed to the two leather bucket chairs near the window.
"Help yourself to a sandwich and a drink, and update me, Ryan. You said you had a possible lead."
Ryan picked up a chicken sandwich and bottle of water from a tray on the low table between the chairs, took a quick slurp, and flipped open his notebook. "Not before time, after doing this taxi job for a month and getting nowhere. Spent the first couple of weeks checking the computer records whenever no one was in the office, and made a note of all the regular bookings."
"How many?" Enya asked.
He counted up. "Ten, but most of them were local, mainly hotel staff going home at midnight or two a.m. Only two were going further afield, one to Oughterard every Thursday evening at seven, and one to Roscommon every Monday morning at eight."
"Have you discovered anything more about either of them?"
"Drove Mr. Gould to Oughterard a week last Thursday, and got his life story. He owns three gift shops, Clifden, Westport, and Oughterard. Spends two days at each every week, but lost his licence end of last year. Drunk driving. Wife and three kids live in Oughterard. Sounded genuine."
"And the other one?"
Ryan grinned. "This is where things get interesting. According to the computer, Tom Wild has done the Roscommon run with a Patrick Walsh since February. Last week, Tom was full of a cold, sneezing and coughing like a seal, so I offered to do the run, and nearly got my head bitten off.
I do that run
, he said,
so keep your freakin' nose out
. He apologised later, and said he didn't mean to be rude, but he was feeling rough."
Enya shrugged. "Sounds reasonable."
"Aye, except somehow he overdid the apology thing, and kept telling me to forget what he said that morning."
"Okay. What next?"
"Two things. Last Sunday night, I dropped a group of women off at Mist Na Mara Arts Centre about eleven o'clock, and I reached the gate just as Tom Wild's car passed, going down the lane to the Leary farm. Didn't think much about it until I got back to the office five minutes later, and the receptionist was on the radio to him, asking if he could do a pickup at eleven-thirty from Oliver's Bar in Cleggan. His reply was,
It'll take me at least forty minutes to get to Cleggan. Ask someone else to go.
Obviously a lie, as I'd just seen him, and it would only take him about ten minutes, fifteen at the most, to get from the Leary farm to Cleggan."
Enya pursed her lips. "Could be any number of reasons for that. Maybe he didn't want to drive up to Cleggan, or he stopped for a cup of tea at the farm."
"I'd agree, except Eve, the receptionist, looked very puzzled, and said she thought his last fare was to Beckfield Lodge. That's a guest house on Westport Road, about a mile north of Clifden, and on the route to Cleggan."
"Interesting. Certainly seems like he may have been lying, for whatever reason. You said
two
things. What was the other?"
"I'd already seen Patrick Walsh's name on the list again for Monday morning, so I parked further along the street where I could see the office in my rear view mirror. Got there about seven-thirty, and
bingo
– eight o'clock, a white transit van pulls up outside the office, and a man gets out from the passenger side." He checked his notebook again. "About five foot seven or eight, stocky build, receding mid-brown hair, wearing light blue jeans and a denim jacket. He unloaded a
large cardboard box from the van, put it on the back seat of Tom's car, got in the front with Tom, and off they went. I thought about following them, but decided not to, since Tom would recognise my car. The van had already driven off in the direction of Market Street, but by the time I got to the top of the street, there was no sign of it."
"Any name on the van, or did you get the number?"
"Plain white. Took a couple of photos with my phone, but I think I was too far away to get a clear image of the number plate. I sent the photos to Declan in the hope he can enlarge them."
"Do we have anything on Tom Wild?"
Enya clicked some keys on her laptop, but he shook his head. "I checked. We don't have anything on him, or anyone called Patrick Walsh either. Of course, those might not be their real names." He chuckled. "Which makes three of us working under false names."
"Tom Wild's the owner of the taxi firm, isn't he?"
"Yes, he bought the business when the previous owner retired at the end of last year. He's efficient and organised, and normally quite friendly."
"Any family?"
"Never talks about a wife or kids. He once mentioned he lived in a flat near the harbour, but I've never seen him in any of the pubs in Clifden."
"Perhaps he doesn't drink."
"Could be, but gut instinct is telling me this weekly trip to Roscommon with a large cardboard box is worth investigating. We know whoever is running the racket has used taxis before to take stolen goods up to Belfast, although I admit that doesn't necessarily mean Tom Wild is involved. The Belfast taxi driver who was picked up with a stash of stuff last December said he had no idea what was in the boxes."