Wednesday's Child (21 page)

‘Okay. But I’m not committing to anything. This is … well it’s very deep work you’re proposing.’

‘I know. I think she needs intense regression therapy. But I do think that you’re the one who should do it. It sounds like she sees you as her saviour.’

‘She thinks that at ten o’clock, but by lunchtime I’m just some arsehole who won’t leave her alone.’

‘She’s conflicted, Shane. But that doesn’t take away from the deep bond you’ve been able to build up with her. Let’s use that to really help her.’

‘I’ll meet your colleague. I do, however, know my limitations. If I think I’ll just fuck her up worse, we’ll have to think again.’

‘Fair enough.’

I stood to go.

‘Why are you doing this, Gráinne? I thought Gillian was a lost cause, as far as the department was concerned.’

She smiled wistfully and looked out her window at the traffic humming past on the street outside.

‘Once upon a time there was a young psychologist
who was sent a little girl. Her first case, in fact. This little girl was very damaged, very troubled. The psychologist did her best to help the girl. Used every trick she had learned at college. But she couldn’t help her. There are some things they don’t –
can’t
– teach you at college, things you can learn only through experience. This is what she was lacking, though she didn’t know it at the time. And often, in the years that followed, the psychologist would lie awake at night and think about that child and wonder what became of her. And every now and then, a file would come over her desk that reminded her of that particular girl, and when that happened, she would try to do something about it. We cannot save them all, Shane. But we can do our damnedest.’

I parked my car outside the cottage and checked the address that I had written in my notebook. I got out and went to the front door.

The house was like something out of Enid Blyton. Honeysuckle grew round the door and gnomes peered out from behind shrubs in the garden. A ginger cat stretched lazily in the afternoon sun. It felt wrong bringing anything unpleasant here. I knocked anyway.

An elderly lady answered. She looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies, but her face and her ease of motion spoke of a keen intelligence and a sprightly physical fitness that belied her advanced years. She looked at me expectantly.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Are you Selina Canning?’

‘Yes.’

I told her my name.

‘I’m a childcare worker with the Health Board. I’d like to talk to you about the Kellys. I believe you worked with them.’

She grimaced and sighed deeply.

‘Yes. I did work with that family. But I have nothing to add to whatever exists on record. I haven’t seen them in years, and I have not worked for the Health Board for a long time. I can’t help you.’

She turned to go, but I put my foot in the door.

‘Please, Ms Canning. I know that there’s something really bad going on. The files hint at a lot of stuff, but that’s all they do. What happened to Connie when she disappeared? Do you know?’

Selina Canning paused then, and opened the door just enough for me to enter.

‘You’d better come in. That is a long story. And not a pleasant one.’

She sat me down in a living room that was as quaint and prettily designed as her garden. Prints from the Beatrix Potter books were on the walls. An upright piano with a white lace cloth over the top stood by the window. The room smelt of fresh flowers. A few minutes later she came in with tea things.

‘Would you like a little whiskey in your tea, Shane? I’ll be having some. I usually do, about now.’

It was just after two in the afternoon.

‘Well, when you put it like that, why the hell not?’

When the tea was poured, she sat back and looked for a while at nothing, cradling the cup between her hands as if to warm herself, although it was not cold in the cottage. I sipped the tea. She had put a very fine whiskey into a small jug for us to dip into, and I bet that Libby O’Gorman would have given her eye teeth to have sampled some of it.

‘I worked with the Kelly family for ten years,’ she said at last. ‘I am not ashamed to tell you that I never enjoyed my contact with them, and I never bonded with any member of that family. I found them all extremely difficult to deal with, and I believe that they always saw me as their enemy. I knew almost as soon as I began visiting the house that there were levels of violence and abuse at work that I would never be able to counteract. But what did I really expect? Psychiatric illness often manifests itself in that way, doesn’t it? People hurt themselves and those around them. I tried to ensure that the parents saw their doctors regularly, and I set up various services for Michael – Mick they called him. But I saw no real change or improvement in any of them.’

‘The children?’ I prompted her.

‘Yes. Geraldine was the first to exhibit signs of abuse. Her behaviour, you see. Back then, sexual abuse wasn’t as prevalent or talked about. I thought that she was seeing things on the television, on those videos some people watch – they had such things in the house. I thought she was just copying what she
saw. I talked to them about being careful, about not viewing them when she was in the room, but it was always a waste of time. Going through the motions. Then, a couple of years later, Denise told her teacher that she was involved in a sexual relationship with her brother. She wasn’t asking for help, mind. It was more of a boast. The teacher in question was a young girl who was to be married. The children were going to sing at the church ceremony, and were all talking about how exciting it was and how she’d be living with her young man after the wedding. It came out then. As soon as I was called to talk to Denise, she said that she was only joking. What could I do? Her parents were virtually incoherent when I spoke to them about it. Mick became aggressive … and Shane, this was a different time legally. We didn’t have the powers then that we have now. It wasn’t as easy to take a child into care. Before the Child Care Act, the burden was on the child-protection workers to find proof of foul play. The parents’ needs always came first. And there was no proof, just a ten-year-old girl’s fantastic claims. In those days, an
adult
within the family needed to ask for help before social services could get involved in a case at all.’

I knew that it wasn’t as simple as that, but I let it go. I wasn’t there to point fingers of blame. I wanted to hear what she thought had been going on. I needed her to join the dots for me. I had my own suspicions, but she had been with this family for a decade.

‘With Connie, everything was worse. The physical
abuse was worse. And she responded terribly. Denise and Geraldine were stoic. They never really caused much fuss. But Connie, she was a firebrand. A fierce child from when she was a baby. They say that infants learn early that their cries will not be answered, and become silent children. She never did. I remember her screaming constantly in the first couple of years of her life. The family hated her. And I will admit, she was hard to love. There were problems right the way up through school. Aggression, peer abuse. A tormented child, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She’s quite different now, Selina. She changed, it seems, after this lost fortnight.’

She nodded and poured more whiskey into her tea. I was driving, and was only whetting my lips to keep her company.

‘The lost fortnight. Yes indeed.’

‘A missing child would have caused quite a stir. A lot of questions
must
have been asked.’

‘Oh, we asked a lot of questions, Shane. You’ve got to understand, there simply weren’t any answers. Connie Kelly, to all intents and purposes, disappeared from the face of the earth. It’s not as if we didn’t try and find her. The gardaí were involved, her vanishing was covered by the media … we put in a huge effort. But we didn’t find her. Not until she turned up.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘She just came home. Or so we were told.’

‘Was she dirty? Bruised? Emaciated?’

‘No. She could easily have been staying at an hotel.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘Well, it does, in a way.’

‘Explain.’

‘She said that she had run away and had lived in the fields and woods nearby. A big adventure. They had been reading excerpts from
Tom Sawyer
at school, apparently. It had caught her imagination. This was total nonsense. There was no evidence to support the claim at all.’

‘So what do you think happened?’

‘She was sent away.’

‘By whom?’

‘Her parents and Mick.’

‘To what end?’

‘Within that past year, she had been getting more and more out of control. There had been severe problems at school, public outbursts around the town. Then she was beaten to within an inch of her life and ended up in hospital. I think that this was done to keep her in line, probably by Mick, but it could just as easily have been her father or mother. She was drawing a lot of attention to the family. The medical reports caused her to be put in care – the physical stuff plus the genital scarring was enough to have her removed from the home. But care couldn’t hold her. There were no secure or high-support units then, and she just kept breaking out and going home. The decision was made to let her stay at home, and then, she disappeared. Does that seem a peculiar coincidence to you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you recall the incident of Denise being found naked half a mile from the house?’

‘Yes. I read the report.’

‘How does a six-year-old end up naked half a mile from her home? No one saw her walking
from
the house. She was found trying to make her way
back to it
.’

‘Oh Jesus …’

The puzzle started to lock into place, and I felt the colour draining from my face as it did.

‘I believe that these children were being rented out. I think that Connie was sent somewhere very nasty, to show her just how tough it could get if she didn’t play the game by the rules. And it must have frightened the living daylights out of her, because she never caused a single minute of trouble ever again.’

‘You’re suggesting that they’re being used as child prostitutes.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Did any of them ever tell you this specifically?’

‘No, they did not.’

‘You have no proof.’

‘None at all. But I
know
.’

I felt the bile rising in my throat and forced it down. The picture that had just been painted for me was too terrible to entertain. Yet it fitted. It all made an awful, warped kind of sense.

‘Did you ever tell anyone about this? Your superiors?’

She nodded.

‘And …’

‘They asked me the same questions you just did about proof, and advised me never to commit my suspicions to paper.’

‘Aw God.’

‘I fear that He is no help to us at all, Shane. He has turned His back on those children. They have been left with no one.’

‘That may be so, but we can’t give up on them. I can’t give up on them.’

‘Ah yes. And what makes you think that you will be any more successful in making them listen than I was?’

‘I can be pretty annoying.’

‘Well, good luck to you. You have brought back quite a few memories I have spent years trying to forget, and have sentenced me to at least a week’s worth of sleepless nights. If that is a small taste of your talent for irritation, well then you may just emerge victorious.’

She topped up both of our cups with whiskey and raised hers in a toast.

‘May you give them hell.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’

And I did.

Max McCoy was hung over. It was obvious to me that he was, even though he insisted that he had a dose of the flu. His eyes were bloodshot, his breath
stank of liquor and he held his head every time I spoke as if each syllable caused razor blades to grind together inside his skull.