The wind-down of most cases is generally tedious and time-consuming but there’s an air of collective bounce within MIT4 as we edge towards the end of January. Of course, it could just be the relief of a much-awaited pay-day on the horizon or maybe the slight shift in temperature from ‘baltic’ to ‘a bit nippy’, but in all probability, it’s the sheer unfettered delight of not having to prepare for a trial. Guilty pleas are always seen as a job well done, back-slaps all round, and the pints and Prosecco flow every night in the Bell Tavern. Even Steele comes out eventually. It’s the first time I’ve seen her tipsy. We even get her singing one particularly rowdy night – her and Parnell murdering ‘Islands in the Stream’ with not a tuneful note between them. Melodically challenged might be the kindest way to put it.
It makes me laugh though. Then I loathe myself for laughing.
Because while I still have my job and Dad still has his freedom, Maryanne Doyle is still very much dead. Buried in a field in Surrey at the cruel insistence of Thomas Lapaine – a man who can barely speak her name – despite her family’s pleas for her to be brought back to Ireland and buried alongside her mam. And probably soon enough, her dad.
The day we clear out the incident room I feel knotty and nauseous. Someone else needs it now, I get it – there’s been a fifteen-year-old fatally stabbed just behind St Pancras, whereas we haven’t had anything new in that requires more than a few desks stuck in a corner somewhere – but still, I don’t feel quite ready to pack Maryanne away yet and I literally can’t bear the thought of Flowers, maybe Ben, tossing her remnants into boxes then kicking the boxes across the floor because they’re too hungover to pick them up. I’ve seen it. Christ, I’ve probably done it myself once or twice. But Maryanne’s different.
Maryanne will always be different.
In the end, I do the only thing I can do and I stay late that night, making sure that everything’s done neatly. That Maryanne’s last hours in this room are at least orderly and in some way, dignified.
The photo featuring ‘Uncle’ Frank thumps me in the solar plexus one last time. Demented with guilt, I call Dad and ask him to tell me the truth about how big a part his so-called blood-brother played in the operation. Am I shielding a key player or just another hustler? A fully paid-up trafficker, or just a lager-fuelled lech? For one laughable, never-gonna-happen second, I swear on everything I hold dear that if Dad implicates Frank in anything more than just enjoying the hospitality in that flat, I’ll call Steele right away – or probably Parnell, if I’m honest – and I’ll confess everything there and then. To hell with careers and families, they’re overrated anyway.
But Dad’s cagey. Noncommittal. He says ‘he wouldn’t be surprised’ if Frank had put some money up, had some direct links to the top, but he claims he doesn’t know for sure, and he certainly doesn’t have any proof.
And so the ball falls squarely back in my court. Do I protect Dad or go after Frank? I can’t do both. We might not share DNA with ‘Uncle’ Frank but still, our roots are too entwined for any of us to survive the fallout of a formal investigation into Francis ‘Frank’ Clayton.
So I choose Dad. Like I always knew I would, except for one mad, fanciful second.
Good daughter.
Bad cop.
*
And between all the public back-slapping and private self-condemnation, the business of Murder goes on. We’re still trying to locate Leo Hicks. Witness intimidation isn’t a thing we take lightly, even when it’s carried out by public schoolboys with gangster complexes, acting at the behest of their mummies.
In fact, even when the CPS advise it could be tricky to prove, given that Saskia wasn’t our witness at the time Leo threatened her.
It turns out the concert performance was true, at least – not that Leo Hicks ever turned up. The Kensington Symphony Orchestra were left to perform with one less violinist at the Wiener Konzerthaus in Vienna, and both his parents still refuse to shed any light on his whereabouts and nothing enlightening has shown up on their phones. The only thing we can be sure of is that he hasn’t flown out of Austria, although with the train system providing links to Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary to name just a few, Leo Hicks could be practically anywhere. Sinking a beer in Munich or having an audience with the Pope in Rome.
When I’m not schmoozing with Interpol, I’m trawling through the death records of every Kristen who passed away in late 2000. Assuming her death was actually registered is stupidly optimistic of me, given it’s likely she was disposed of in a rather more unofficial fashion, but someone’s got to try, you know. A young girl’s life has to be worth at least a brief wild goose-chase.
When it proves to be exactly that, I run a search for every Kristen reported missing in the UK and Ireland in the early Noughties and there’s one that looks interesting – a Kristen McCloud, reported missing by her mother in February 2001, after moving to London in May 2000 from County Kerry. Kristen regularly phoned home, her mother tells me, although she hadn’t been back to visit, however the last time she called had been the first week of December 2000 and she recalls her daughter did sound a bit down that day. She never heard from her only child ever again. Saskia French takes a look at her photo, pitifully insists it’s not her while her chin wobbles and her eyes bulge with tears. Gina Hicks struggles to even glance at it. Both women haunted in their own way by the reality of what happened to Kristen. Both still wanting to believe that maybe she was out there, living a great life with an army of children and just a couple of faint scars on her wrists to remind her that her life wasn’t always so wonderful.
We’re still waiting on sentencing. While in theory a guilty plea should be straightforward, there’s always a bit of sniping that has to happen between prosecution and defence around what the agreed facts are, and in this case, the point of sending a terminally ill man to prison. With any luck though, Patrick Mackie will die inside. Which means he’ll serve a maximum of twelve months for murder.
I can’t dwell on that for too long, my insides start to itch.
My guess is Gina will get five years for assault – we now know it was assault, the location of the bloodstains suggests a push, not a fall. I’m not sure they’ll bother too much with an assisting an offender charge, not when there’s a host of historic trafficking charges gathering pace but we’ll see. It’s fair to say, prison isn’t suiting her. In the four weeks since she was charged, her honey-blonde hair has gone grey at the roots and stripped of her make-up and all her Wandsworth-set props, she looks ordinary. Almost featureless. She doesn’t get many visitors either. All the people who drank her posh wine and ate her Christmas canapés appear to be staying well away. It’s only really Felix Whiteley and occasionally me or Parnell who grace her presence, scavenging for more information that she refuses to give. The only time she speaks is to ask after the twins, who she doesn’t want visiting, and the occasional abrupt enquiry as to her Dad’s health. There’s not a word about Nate, and poor Amber – ‘Leo’s mine, Amber’s Nate’s’ – hardly gets a look in either. When the chips are down, Gina Hicks obviously feels that blood is unequivocally thicker than water.
Something I understand only too well.
*
In a reversal of fortune that I know she just loves, it’s me who stalks Jacqui in the busy weeks that follow. It’s me who leaves the voicemails and begs for her time. We finally meet one lunchtime in a café by St Paul’s. I order a panini and a large cappuccino. Jacqui says she doesn’t want anything and then bursts into tears.
I’ve had easier meetings, that’s for sure. I’ve certainly had more truthful meetings.
In an effort to diffuse the bombshell I’d dropped about Maryanne being in the boot of Dad’s car, I go big and I go broad, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Jacqui. First, I claim I was drunk when I said it. On medication and drunk. Having man-trouble. Over-tired. Later I hint towards drug use, trying to suggest that I’d entered some kind of hyper-reality, brought on by excessive weed use, that genuinely made me believe that Dad had been stashing dead women in the boot of his car. For good measure, I detail a few other crazy hallucinations I’d been having. Some other bonkers accusations that I’d made (‘I’ve cut the weed out now, honestly . . . learned my lesson there, I promise . . .’) I even end up confessing that I’ve been seeing a counsellor at work and I now realise that there’s a possibility I might have been transferring my feelings towards Alana-Jane’s murdering father onto my entirely innocent one. Transference is very common when you’re mentally fragile, I say.
I should be offended that she believes it all so easily, but I’m far too busy just being grateful that she forgives me. Not to mention hugely relieved that she never did mention anything to Dad.
Thank the Lord for Jacqui’s easy readiness to sweep anything unpleasant under the carpet.
Dad and I haven’t met up yet. We’re letting the feelings lie fallow, just occasionally speaking on the phone. One night he mentions going to Ireland in the summer, maybe just the two of us. He pitches it as an opportunity to lay flowers on Gran’s grave, the least he can do after all this time avoiding the place, but I know he hopes we’ll lay some ghosts to rest too. That atonement might be found strolling idly past Duffy’s field or walking side by side up the Long Road.
I say I’ll think about it to avoid the awkwardness but I know it won’t happen. To me, it feels wrong.
*
It feels right to go back to where Maryanne was found though.
It’s a mild day, freakish for January. ‘Hotter than Madrid!’ so I’m told by just about everyone. However, it certainly isn’t drier than Madrid. Swollen grey clouds have been spewing torrents of rain for the past hour but if anything, it feels beautiful. Oddly fitting for what I’m about to do.
Near to where Maryanne was found, a few bouquets sit under a plane tree. Small, modest bouquets, laid mainly by the kind residents of Leamington Square.
Goodnight and Godbless, The Okonjos (number six)
We didn’t know you but we are very sad you have died, lotz of luv, Lily and Freya Markham (number fourteen) xxx
When the moment feels right I crouch down and to anyone watching – not that anyone is watching as far as I can tell – I probably look like I’m just reading all the messages, soaking up the grief.
What I’m actually doing is ploughing hard into the rain-softened dirt with my fingers. It takes a bit longer than I expected but I just keep on digging. And when I’ve finally made a hiding place a few centimetres deep and then the same measure wide, I take it out of my pocket and place it in the ground, patting the mud back in tightly and covering the area in mulch.
The small shiny Tinkerbell I’d meant Maryanne to keep.
*
Aiden Doyle and I mosey along nicely – going on dates, staying in bed, delighting each other with every dull fact about ourselves. And yes, I know it’s wrong. I know that secrets always kill relationships in the long run but I can’t even fathom what ‘long run’ means at the moment, and in any case, according to every self-help book I own, we should be worrying less and living more in the here and now.
So here I am now, sitting on his lumpy settee, waiting for my cheese and bean toastie to be served.
‘I’m thinking of going to Canada,’ he shouts from the kitchen, or at least I think that’s what he shouts over the pounding thump of the doof-doof music that I’ve learned he worships.
I stand up, turn the volume down – this gets me a side-eye. ‘But you’ve only been here a few months. Christ, you don’t let the grass grow.’
He leans in the doorway, a cheese grater in one hand, a spatula in the other. God, he’s gorgeous.
‘Not to live, yer big eejit, although it is supposed to be great there. Aren’t Canadians supposed to be the happiest people on earth or something?’
‘I think it’s the Danes actually.’
‘The Danes?’ he says, unconvinced. ‘What’ve they got to be so happy about?’
‘Oh I don’t know, social democracy, work-life balance, damn sexy women . . .’
‘Last one’ll do me.’ He thwacks me on the arse with the spatula. ‘Anyway, smart arse, I’m not on about emigrating, I mean for a holiday. See my brother and his kids, you know? We never really got on, me and Kevin. He’s a good bit older than me and he’s a bit of a square . . .’
‘Says the man who wears an “I Heart Sums” T-shirt?’
I dodge another thwack, take refuge back on the settee.
He grins and carries on. ‘But after what happened to Maryanne, it’s makes you think about things, you know?’
I do. It makes you think about family. About the unbreakable bonds that withstand almost everything. Every foible and idiosyncrasy. Every failing and poor life-choice.
‘So do you fancy it then?’ he asks, looking nervous. ‘A holiday to Canada?’
‘I’m not sure. You’ll have loads of catching up to do . . . and it . . . it seems a bit full on.’ The hurt registers on his face. ‘For now, anyway,’ I add quickly. ‘It’s just I’m a hell of a slow mover, Aiden, and it’s only been a month. Hey, listen, my last boyfriend didn’t get under my top until we were three months in so you should count yourself lucky, sunshine – you’d practically seen my uterus in the time it took him to get near my bra.’
Humour. The last line of defence in any awkward situation.
‘Just think about it, OK?’ he says, not letting up. ‘I’m not talking tomorrow, maybe over the summer? There’s loads of good festivals around then. Escapade’s in July, gets all the best DJs.’
Maryanne loved dance music too by all accounts, sneaking off to Turnmills whenever she and Saskia felt brave enough. Aiden and his sister could have been sibling ravers.
Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda. The sadness is too much.
‘I promise I’ll think about,’ I say and I honestly mean it. Who knows, I might have won the lottery by the summer, if I actually start playing the lottery, and then I won’t need to worry about careers and possible disciplinary panels, charges of gross misconduct and professional suicide.
‘“I’ll think about it” will do for now,’ he says, handing me a beer. Beer with cheese toasties? ‘Me mam always used to say she’d “think about it” right before handing over whatever it was you wanted, so I’m feeling positive, I gotta tell you.’ He walks over to a sideboard and takes out a small photo album, returning with it with a cheeky smirk on his face. ‘Here, you should get yourself acquainted with who we’ll be visiting, and the rest of me family if you’re interested.’
I am.
The first few photos are in black and white. A grimacing old man, leaning on a stick in front of a tin bath, and then a similarly morose old woman scowling against the same backdrop.
‘Me great nan and grandad,’ he says, standing behind me. ‘Kills me how fecked-off they look in front of the camera, suspicious of it, like. Bit different now, eh? Don’t know what they’d make of the selfie?’ I laugh and flick forward, encounter a slightly younger-looking man holding up a fork of hay like an umbrella, then a tiny woman with a perm and a red buttoned coat, as grim-faced and rigid as one of the Queen’s Royal Guards. There’s none of Jonjo Doyle, unsurprisingly. Plenty of his mam – a plump pretty woman in an assortment of summer dresses. I feel anxious as I move towards the more recent photos but there’s actually only one of Maryanne. Carefree and laughing and sticking her Vs up to the camera.
‘That’s the only one I have her. Apart from the one I gave to you guys. Anyway, keep going,’ he says, prodding me. ‘You’re supposed to be drooling over the Canada ones, whetting your appetite.’
And who could blame it for being whetted? There’s glaciers and waterfalls, mountain views and Downtown Vancouver at night. There’s also two of the cutest lads I’ve ever seen, growing up before my eyes. Nappy changes and bathtimes give way to senior school photos and ice hockey games, all steadily documented for the uncle they probably never expect to meet. The last few are really recent, there isn’t an ounce of puppy fat or a badly chosen outfit left to coo over. Jaws have been strengthened, chests defined and hair styled.
‘Good-looking lads, eh?’ he says, proudly. ‘Kian there, the one on the right with the flash hairdo – makes him look like he’s been electrocuted – doesn’t he look like his aunt Maryanne?’
The smell of burned cheese sends him hurtling into the kitchen in a whirlwind of panic and repeated expletives. Alone, I draw the photo closer. My breath comes quickly and my body feels like it might not withstand all the beams of ‘how-the-fuck-didn’t-I-see-this-before?’ energy currently chasing through my veins.
Because Kian Doyle does look a bit like his Aunt Maryanne, yes.
However, he looks a whole lot more like somebody else.
Somebody his aunt Maryanne never got to know.