I sign out a pool car and head straight for McAuley’s, fairly sure that Dad won’t be there but still inclined to check. Parnell’s definitely rubbed off on me over the past six months.
‘Time and patience got the snail to America, kiddo.’
‘Every dead end is another box ticked.’
I picture his face in a few hours’ time. Those kind, smiley eyes clouded by betrayal and disappointment. The thought turns my heart to wet sand.
I park across the street. There’s no light upstairs, no sign he’s here at all, but I head over anyway. Argue with some jobsworth on the door who says I need a ticket to come in. My warrant card twitches in my pocket but I try out my daughter credentials first. Jobsworth doesn’t believe me though so I tell him to get Xavier. Cross my fingers that a sexy Spanish barman remembers a plain girl in a parka from nearly a fortnight ago.
He does, and I’m in.
‘He’s not here though,’ he says, frowning. ‘I thought he was with you?’
‘Me?’ The absurdity of it actually makes me laugh, despite everything.
Xavier calls to another barman, checks he hasn’t picked it up wrong.
Other Barman confirms it. ‘Nah, he’s not been here for days. He’s away with family. Skiing in Val d’Isere, I think?’
Dad took us to Val d’Isere once. Mum said it was important to learn how to ski now I was at posh school. I wasn’t exactly a natural though and I felt self-conscious the whole time. My single happy memory is of the caramel apple crêpes I used to scoff after each and every meal.
But Dad’s not in Val d’Isere now.
The New Year’s Eve roads are quiet as I shoot north into Hertfordshire, and I rocket up to Radlett in less than an hour, only nudging the speed limit twice. All the way, I get green light after green light and gracious drivers wave me out of side-roads. I should be pleased – I’m not exactly a patient driver at the best of times – but instead I have this burning, twisting feeling that the world’s conspiring to get me there as fast as possible and I’m terrified of finding out the reason why.
The house is in darkness. The cul-de-sac’s one and only party-pooper. Even Kevin Farrow, Kevin ‘Killjoy’ Farrow as Dad used to call him, appears to be having some sort of get-together and a glut of cars are parked bumper-to-bumper around the horseshoe of the street.
I can’t see Dad’s car though.
Could I have got this wrong?
I go through the gate and walk down the side of the house, the narrow space between the kitchen extension and the garage where I used to smoke crafty fags and text even craftier boys. I peer through the garage window but again, no car.
My phone vibrates: Parnell.
Hicks’ brief still having a ’mare on M3. Interview in morning. Don’t come back if you feel poorly, think we’ve got enough cover.
SMS 19.36 p.m.
I tap out a ‘fanks!’ and thumbs-up emoji. This buys me a bit of time at least.
It’s drizzling now. Freezing rain, not quite sleet. All the doors at the back are double-locked and the kitchen blinds are closed. I look for evidence in the bins that’s someone’s been here recently but there’s nothing. Nothing in any of them. Just a frantic spider in the recycling bin, dizzying itself in circles.
I know the feeling, mate.
I take the spider in my hand and flick it gently onto the path, wondering if I’ve just rescued it or made its predicament worse. Suffocation versus hypothermia? Two brutal ends of a particularly shitty stick.
The analogy isn’t lost on me as I watch it scuttle away.
I look at my phone and scroll for Dad’s number. I’d wanted the element of surprise but this is getting me nowhere so there’s nothing else for it, I’m going to have to do things the long-winded way. I’m going to have to call him, hope he answers, ask him very nicely where he is and then ask even more nicely if he’ll talk to me. I fully expect to get his voicemail – that deep, cheerful voice saying, ‘Bollocks, I’ve missed you. Leave a message’ – but to my surprise it rings.
And it’s ringing inside the house.
I vault towards the patio doors, hammering my palms against the glass. ‘Dad, it’s me. I know you’re in there.’
Nothing. Somewhere up the street a bass thumps out a generic dance hook.
‘Let me in,’ I shout into the dark. ‘I know you know Saskia. And that she knew Maryanne.’ More nothing. I keep the volume but change my tone. ‘Listen, it’s either me or my colleagues, Dad. And they’ll be baying for blood, I just want to understand.’
I’ve no idea whether I mean this or not.
I dial his phone again. And again. When it goes to voicemail the third time, I walk over to the rockery, now neglected, and pick up the largest stone I can find. Standing by the back door, I take three breaths to consider the consequences of what I’m about to do. An alarm could go off? Would Dad actually hurt me?
I’m about to lose my nerve when the door clicks open.
His silhouette’s enough to shock me. The heavy droop of his shoulders and the hang of his head. He looks smaller, somehow. Diminished. To think I’ve spent most of my life kicking against all his swagger and the gangster-lite bravado. Now I can hardly look at this sunken version.
Just a scared middle-aged man, hiding out in the dark.
‘You can’t stay long,’ he says, retreating into the house. ‘It might not be safe.’
I step into the kitchen, instinctively reaching left for the light. He grabs my arm and pulls me with him. ‘What do you mean, “not safe?’’’ I try to shake him off. ‘What’s going on, Dad? What’s with the blackout?’
‘In the study,’ he says, shoving me forward.
I walk into the so-called ‘study.’ The small enclave at the centre of the house, accessible through the dining room on one side, the ‘good’ living room on the other.
No windows to the outside world. So no announcements to the outside world that anyone’s here either.
And no ventilation. The air’s sour and smoky.
‘It’s all right during the day,’ he says, sitting down behind an oak desk that was bought purely for show. ‘I just stay away from the main windows. But at night, it’s the only room where I feel safe turning the lights on.’
I stay standing, sizing him up, waiting for an explanation. When it doesn’t come I sit down, taking the chair opposite. Committing myself physically to however long this is going to take.
‘Just tell me, Dad. Tell me what you did, or what you’ve done, and I promise things will feel a whole lot better.’
It’s the oldest trick in the book, of course. ‘Interrogation for Dummies’. My soft voice, the bedtime-story tone, I’ve done it countless times – ‘Come on now . . . I know you’re a good guy . . . you’ll feel a whole lot better when get it off your chest . . .’
He doesn’t fall for it though so I revert to basics. The ‘Specific-Closed’ I think they called it at Hendon.
‘Do you know where Saskia is?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know if she’s in danger?’
Silence.
‘Did you hurt Maryanne?’ My mouth won’t form the word ‘kill’.
He gives me a look so heartsick that I swear I feel the heavy sadness that’s crushing him. For a second I can actually taste his shame.
‘No,’ he says, a mere whisper.
‘Then who did?’
His eyes fix on a photo, just to the right of my head. One of those expensive family portraits that make it look like you all like each other.
‘It was supposed to be a one-off,’ he says eventually, sighing deeply. ‘Just Maryanne. But it spiralled out of control. I didn’t want what happened . . . I’m not a bad person, Catrina . . . I know you think I am, but I’m not . . . nor was Maryanne, really . . .’
I say nothing. He’s trying to convince himself, not me.
‘I was in deep shit, you see. I owed money to this . . . well, this guy you don’t want to owe money to, let’s just put it that way. I was playing a lot of poker back then. Underground poker, backroom stuff. Winning big sometimes, losing big more often. Anyway, this guy wanted his money back. One of his men approached Jacqui, you know. Stopped her in the street, told her how pretty she was, gave it all that “you could be a model” bullshit.’ He laughs, sadly. ‘Christ, she was hyper that night, do you remember?’ I do. Hyper’s not the word I’d use. Try insufferable. ‘I knew it was him playing games though. I knew what the threat meant.’
‘Patrick Mackie?’
A quick nod. If he’s surprised I know the name, he doesn’t show it. ‘So I needed to get away for a while. Get us all away. Lie low. And your mum felt guilty that she hadn’t been home for years – I mean, we hadn’t been back since you were born – so I thought two birds, one stone, why not? Just for a few weeks while I worked out what to do.’
‘So you were always a fuck-up, Dad. That really isn’t big news. What’s it got to do with Maryanne?’
He picks up a bottle of something clear; gin, maybe vodka, I can’t see the label. ‘We need to get one thing straight, sweetheart. I never laid a hand on Maryanne, then or now. That isn’t what this is about.’
I stay stock still. ‘OK, I’m listening.’
Something unlocks and the words spew out. Maybe if I’d offered to hear him out years ago, instead of all the teenage histrionics and grown-up passive-aggression, we might have got to this point sooner.
‘It started with that bloody barmaid in Grogan’s.’ He shakes his head bitterly. ‘We had a drunken kiss one night – and that’s all it was, Catrina, a stupid drunken kiss, I could hardly remember it the next day. But Maryanne saw us. She was a sharp one, I’ll give her that – had a bit of scandal on everyone and wasn’t afraid to use it if it benefited her. Anyway, she threatened to tell your mum what she’d seen and well . . . me and your mum were on a sticky wicket already, and on top of all the shit with Mackie, I just didn’t need it.’
‘So how did blackmailing you benefit her? What did she want?’
He closes his eyes, sighs again. ‘She was pregnant.’
I knew this, of course. We’ve suspected it ever since the post-mortem and Hazel O’Keefe more or less confirmed it yesterday. How can that only be yesterday? But hearing it from Dad adds an ominous weight to it. He says the word ‘pregnant’ like it means everything. Like it’s the reason we’re here. The reason we’ve spent a lifetime splintering each other’s hearts.
‘She said she’d keep schtum if I gave her a few hundred quid and a lift to Dublin that Saturday, to the ferry. She wanted an abortion, you see, she had to get to Liverpool.’
I remember that Saturday. Dad gone since lunchtime, Mum perming Gran’s hair. Jacqui and Noel off somewhere. ‘Gallivanting,’ Gran called it.
I was so bored that day I actually did my maths homework.
‘So I said yes . . . eventually. What else could I do?’
‘You could have told Mum? I mean, what was one more . . . especially if it was just a drunken kiss.’
He cuts me off quickly. ‘But you see, I felt sorry for Maryanne too, even though she was a crafty one. Jonjo Doyle was a nasty little shit, especially after a few pints, and I knew the beating she’d get when he found out she was up the spout.’ He looks at me for a long second, trying to communicate something. I think he’s begging me not to judge him too harshly. ‘So I hit on an idea, see? The worst fucking idea of my life, sweetheart, but you’ve no idea how stressed out I was about Patrick Mackie and for the first time in weeks, I could actually see a way out.’
He pushes the bottle towards me, doesn’t offer me a glass. I want to say no but it might steady my heartbeat.
I drink straight from the bottle. Neat white rum.
‘Patrick Mackie was a nasty, greedy bastard.’ He points a finger. ‘Now I wasn’t involved in this at all, you understand, but I knew he had this racket going – paying prostitutes a few thousand quid to get pregnant and then selling the babies on the black market.’
There were rumours he was involved in people trafficking . . .
‘He made good money of it too. There’s plenty of desperate people with deep pockets who can’t have kids. Problem was, half the time the girls were addicts. They’d promise to stop using but they never did, and then the babies were born addicted, or with low birth weights, what have you, and I think it was getting to the point where he was wondering if it was worth the hassle. I had nothing to do with this, you understand,’ he repeats. ‘I just heard a lot of things, knew a lot of people . . .’
It’s obvious where this is heading but I need to hear him say it.
‘So Maryanne got me thinking – ’cos she was upset, you know – she wasn’t blasé about the abortion, she just thought she didn’t have a choice. And so I looked at her – fit, healthy, good-looking, smart, that perfect Irish colleen thing going on, and I thought, “well maybe you do have a choice, missus?” Patrick Mackie had all the contacts and I mean, it was obvious any rich couple would take one look at Maryanne and fall in love with her, which meant falling in love with her baby ten times over, so I knew it meant big money. Enough for her to make a clean break away from that shit of a father. So I made that clear to Mackie, when I finally got up the guts to make contact. I made sure he understood this wasn’t some skank-whore he could palm off with a couple of grand, he’d have to pay big but then he’d get paid big as well – at least five times what he was paying Maryanne – so it was a good deal for him . . .’
‘And a good deal for you. You’d be back in the good books. Everyone’s a winner, eh?’
Defensive. ‘Everyone was a winner, sweetheart. Maryanne bit my hand off.’
‘Everyone apart from the baby, sold off to the highest bidder like a meat raffle.’
I should want to spit at him. Bounce his head off the wall. Tear at his face. But I don’t feel angry, I feel nothing. Hollow and weightless. I dig my nails into the palms of my hands just to feel the sensation.
‘I thought the highest bidders were good people. Criminals maybe, but having a few brushes with the law doesn’t mean you can’t give a child a good life. It doesn’t mean you don’t know how to love. Do you know how hard it is to adopt legally if you’ve got more than a speeding fine? Might have changed now, of course, but back then . . .’ His voice trails off.
‘So what happened next?’
‘What she’d asked to happen. I picked her up, she hid in the boot until we were well out of Mulderrin . . .’
The Tinkerbell mystery solved, eighteen years and a hundred battles too late.
He frowns, confused as to why I’m so shaken by such a small detail. ‘Well, it’s just you never knew who you’d pass on the road,’ he says, explaining, ‘Or who’d flag you over for a quick chat. We just didn’t want to take the risk, that’s all. But as soon as we were a good few miles away, she jumped into the back, went to sleep I think, and I drove her to Dublin as planned and she got on the ferry. Only difference was that someone from Mackie’s crew was waiting at the other end to take her to London. And she didn’t go through with the abortion and she got paid £10,000 quid.’
Ten thousand pounds. Around £12,000 in today’s money. The watch on Dad’s wrist couldn’t have cost much less.
‘So if it was such a happy-ever-after, why is Maryanne dead? Why are you hiding in the dark in your own bloody house?’
‘Maryanne was supposed to be a one-off,’ he says, pressing his fingers into his forehead, squashing the memories. ‘I mean, I can’t believe now that I was so fucking naïve, but it never occurred to me that Mackie would want to run with it, turn it into a separate operation. And Maryanne, you know, she’d got a taste of the high life, she wanted more. It was her idea to target someone working at an abortion clinic.’
‘Saskia.’
He nods. ‘A lot of the Irish girls headed for Manchester or Liverpool, nearer to the ferry I suppose, but some of them would get the train down to London and Camden was the nearest clinic to Euston. That’s where Saskia worked. Basically, she’d tip off Maryanne about any girl who sounded like she was wobbling, pass on their contact details. Maryanne would make the approach and the odd one would go for it. There you have it, big business,’ he adds with a sneer.
I almost laugh. ‘And what, you didn’t approve? Don’t tell me you weren’t getting a decent kickback. Commission, was it? Payment on delivery? Literally.’ I look around the room at all the handmade furniture, all the gadgets, the stuff. ‘Oh my God, that’s what paid for everything, isn’t it? For all this shit. For my fucking education.’
He picks up a coaster, turns it over, turns it back again – something to do to avoid meeting my eyes. Eventually he says, ‘You won’t believe me but I wasn’t comfortable with it all. Not one bit. I hadn’t meant it to spiral like it did – but Maryanne and Saskia, especially Maryanne – it was like she thought they were performing some kind of public service, helping girls make the best out of a bad situation, that was her argument – no abortion required, girl gets paid, we all get paid, doting parents get bouncing baby, where’s the problem? She had me convinced for a while that it was a kind of victimless crime. And yeah, I liked the money so I just blanked out the bad feeling.’
‘Which was what?’
A bold stare. ‘That it was wrong.’
Does that change anything? Mean anything? Does it make him a better man than I thought, or worse?
‘Did Mum know about this. About any of it?’ I choke on the words, fearing the answer.
Mercifully, he shakes his head, appalled. ‘No, never, absolutely nothing. She turned a blind eye to a lot of stuff, your mum – she wasn’t Mother Teresa, you know, she liked the high life too, the nice things – but she wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to this, no way. The less she knew the better.’
So there we have it. I might have to do a surface edit of the past, lightly reconfigure my image of Mum so that she’s less righteous and more mercenary, but essentially it’s quite simple.
She was human. She was flawed. She liked fancy things. She loved Dad.
But she had her limits.
I can live with this.
I turn my focus back to Dad. ‘You said Maryanne had you convinced “for a while”. What changed?’
‘I learned things.’ His mouth twists and quivers, fury and disgust. ‘Most of those babies weren’t being sold to doting parents, they were being sold on to other trafficking networks, global networks. God knows where they ended up, who they ended up with?’ He rocks slightly, his knuckles white around his glass. ‘I actually can’t bring myself to think about it, Catrina. If I think about it too much I . . . It haunts me every day of my life what I started.’ He looks at me, desperate for understanding. ‘As soon as I knew, I told Mackie I didn’t want anything more to do with it, not that I had much to do with it by that time anyway, I was just helping out on the sidelines really, driving the girls around, maintenance of the flat, that sort of thing.’
‘Girls?’
He nods, the effort seems to pain him. ‘Yeah, there’d be three or four pregnant girls in that flat at any one time. Maryanne and Saskia lived there too, minding them. “Guiding them” Maryanne used to call it.’
A baby-factory right in the middle of central London. Right now, I wish there was a window to look out of. Something to remind me there’s life – stars, sky, people, laughter – outside this snake pit of a room.
‘What about medical care? I mean, how did they . . .?’ My voice is cracked, hoarse.
‘Mackie’s daughter, Gina. She was a trainee doctor back then. Daddy insisted she had a respectable job and a doctor’s a handy person to have in the family for people like Mackie. Gina’s the one who actually oversaw things on a daily basis. She was Maryanne and Saskia’s boss, I suppose.’
I lean forward. ‘What happened, Dad. This was years ago. What brought everything back up?’
‘Maryanne brought it all back up. She tracked me down a few months ago. I literally hadn’t laid eyes on her in fifteen years and there she was, standing on my doorstep one night, saying she wanted to contact Gina. Wouldn’t say what for. Just that she’d been thinking about the past and . . .’ He puts his hands up in a ‘who knows?’ gesture. ‘Anyway, she said she’d seen Saskia but Saskia wouldn’t tell her where Gina was. I said that was probably for a bloody good reason – I knew Gina’d gone all respectable in her old age and she wouldn’t thank Maryanne for turning up. But Maryanne wouldn’t let it go. She seemed a bit desperate, pitiful really. And I felt guilty for what I’d got her involved in all those years ago, so eventually I cracked and I told her. Not that I knew Gina’s exact address but I know people, I can find out things.’ He stares into his drink, broken. ‘Week later, Maryanne was dead.’
I wait a while, although it’s probably only seconds. ‘So Gina killed Maryanne, is that what you’re saying?’
A small twitch of his shoulders. ‘You’re the detective, you do the maths.’
Fear and love combined equals panic. ‘So does she blame you for sending Maryanne her way? Have you been threatened? Is that why you’re hiding? Jesus, Dad, couldn’t you think of somewhere better than hiding out in your own house?’
He shrugs, a hint of the old bravado. ‘I doubt Maryanne told her it was me, and I don’t know if Gina’d remember me that well, anyway. I worked for Mackie, not her. Gina just saw me as this well-paid handyman. And Mackie, well he hasn’t been seen for years. Went on the run. Could be dead for all I know.’
‘So why all this?’ I say, circling two fingers.
‘A precaution.’
‘Against what? You said you don’t think they’ll come after you.’
The door opens. I age twenty years but Dad looks more annoyed than afraid.
‘He’s protecting me, not himself.’
Saskia.
‘I came to him,’ she says, edging into the room – ‘so lay off him’ being the obvious subtext. ‘That thug turned up . . . threatening me – “delivering a message”, he said . . . I couldn’t stay there . . . I didn’t know where else to go.’
The ‘thug’ throws me. ‘Patrick Mackie?’
She looks to Dad, her face blanched with dread. ‘Why’s she bringing him up, Mike? You said he was long gone? Dead, with any luck.’ She turns to me. ‘I’m on about Gina’s son. Mummy’s little henchman. You know, he actually thought I was scared of him – as if I’d be scared of that little twerp – but I’m scared of that family. Fucking terrified.’
I break it to them. ‘Patrick Mackie’s not dead and he’s back in England.’ Dad jumps up, shifting the desk a few inches. ‘Relax. He’s dying, if that’s any comfort. And he’s in police custody, as is Gina Hicks. You’re safe so turn the rest of the fucking lights on!’
‘Custody,’ snarls Saskia. ‘You think the Mackies don’t still have a long reach? If they want to shut me up, they’ll find someone to do it, doesn’t matter if they’re in custody.’
‘Why do they want shut you up? Because you know about the past? Or because you know what happened to Maryanne?’
Dad gives her a nod, a resigned go-ahead. ‘Two sides of the same coin, really. I know everything.’ She slides down the wall, slumping hard to the floor, exhausted. ‘So how did you nail them? Who talked?’ Her head snaps up, eyes wide. ‘There’s no way they’ll get bail, is there? Not for this?’
I can’t lie. I mean, literally, I can’t. I don’t have one ounce of guile left in me.
‘We don’t have them for this. We’ve arrested them on other grounds for now but they aren’t exactly top-drawer. They’re locked up for tonight, that’s all I can promise you.’ So make a decision, quick. ‘We’re going to need more to hold them for longer. Can you give us more? We can protect you, Saskia, if you tell us everything you know. It’s the only way you’ll be safe in the long run.’
I say ‘we’ but my career’s surely over. It was over after the first lie. I don’t need to read the College of Policing’s ‘Standards of Professional Behaviour’ to know mine have been utterly abysmal.
Saskia looks to Dad again and something weighty passes between them. I’m not sensing a romance but something deeper. True friendship might be Disney-coating it, more a mutual kind of dependency.
She takes a deep, trembly breath, a life-changing one. ‘OK, I’ll tell you everything on one condition. You keep Mike – your dad – out of it.’
Has she always known who I am? Did she know the day I was at the King’s Cross flat?
‘He doesn’t need to be involved. He wasn’t really involved anyway, not in a big way, or in the worst way. And he took care of me that night, the night Maryanne died, when I had nowhere else to go, and I won’t see him punished for this. I won’t. He’s the only person who ever gave a shit about me and Maryanne, then and now. He looked out for us, had a laugh with us, treated us like human beings, not like prison guards and the girls like cattle. So that’s the deal. You don’t need Mike to take them down, you only need me.’
It’s a lovely spin to put on things and I nearly ask her to keep talking. To pull up a pew and tell me all about the great man I’ve missed out on, all the wonderful traits I could never see. And it’s a lifeline too. A chance to cling on to the job I love for that little bit longer – because I’m not stupid enough to think that it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the end, of course. But just a little bit longer would be nice. Long enough for me to be remembered for more than just this.
It’ll never happen though. How can it?
‘You might want to keep my dad out of it, Saskia, but when we charge Gina Hicks, she might have other ideas. And Patrick Mackie.’
She slaps me down quickly – she’s clearly thought this through. ‘That’s not the way they work. Their type don’t drag people down with them, certainly not – no offence, Mike – the small fry. What would be the point? You’re only giving someone ammunition to spill more shit about you and Mike has plenty of shit on them, stuff that goes beyond this. They wouldn’t run the risk, I know it. There’s no benefit in dragging him into this for anyone.’ A pointed look towards me. ‘Including you, I’d have thought?’
So Saskia tells all. The Hickses go down. One of the UK’s most wanted villains is back under our jurisdiction and Maryanne gets justice.
And I get to keep my job, or at least have a wild, gutsy, come-what-may stab at keeping it.
Everyone’s a winner, right?
I slowly nod my head but I feel laden with loss.