Disappeared Page 17

  It landed on the floor with a heavy thump.

  As the jeep slowly reversed, he glanced at the driver with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Bet you never saw an old fool burgle a house before.”

  “Not like that, anyway.”

  “You’re an accomplice to robbery now.”

  “If the police ever question me, I only gave you a lift.”

  “That’s right. I could be carrying anything in that bag. A load of sticks or a bale of hay. Anything at all.”

  The driver peeked into the sack and saw Devine’s collection of duck decoys glinting back at him. He grinned at Hughes.

  24

  When Daly got back to his cottage there was a message for him on his answering machine. Constable O’Neill had asked him to phone her at the station.

  “What’s happened?” asked Daly, expecting grim news.

  “Nothing too serious,” she replied. “I thought you might like to know. Eliza Hughes rang earlier looking to speak to Inspector Irwin. No one else would do. When Irwin got the message, he left in a hurry. That’s all.”

  “Did she say where she was calling from?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks. Keep in touch if you hear anything else.”

  Eliza’s secret meeting with Irwin was suspicious enough to merit further investigation. Wishing he had eaten something at the wake, Daly got back into his car and drove to Washing Bay. He met her on the way, driving fast, an expression of alarm on her face. She did not appear to have noticed his car. He reversed in a lane and took off after her in a flurry of mud. As he drove in the twilight, the dark blues of the lough reasserted themselves, the pine forests lagging behind. She was following the lough shore, Daly realized, keeping off the main roads.

  The idea that she might have something to hide was psychologically disturbing for Daly. She was Hughes’s long-suffering carer, an elderly woman who had devoted herself to her brother’s needs, not someone who organized furtive meetings with Special Branch.

  As her brake lights gleamed ahead, something pressed upon a nerve in his subconscious. Her responses had struck him as odd on the night of Hughes’s disappearance. A stillness and silence when he asked about any enemies David might have had. Daly’s hunger was replaced by a gnawing unease.

  Her car turned left, and after ten minutes of driving turned left again into a forest. There was only one possible destination, and that was Joseph Devine’s rundown cottage. Daly pulled his car into a passing place and waited for her lights to disappear through the trees. It was a calm moonlit night. In a field, he saw two hares running together. After a few minutes, he took off again, slowly following the road through the forest.

  He parked in the shadow of a high plantation of fir trees a short distance from Devine’s cottage. The first thing that struck him as strange was the absence of a patrol car guarding the house. He rang through to the station on his mobile and discovered that Irwin had reassigned the officers to a burglary in Portadown.

  The lights were on in Devine’s cottage, and the front door lay slightly open. The night was dark and cold, and the cottage still offered a residual sense of welcome that even the owner’s grim murder had not quite dispelled.

  It had rained earlier and the thorn trees dripped heavily as Daly brushed beneath them. He wasn’t looking forward to several hours of cold, wet, stooping surveillance.

  Eliza Hughes was briefly silhouetted in the doorway, her hair tied up in a bun, before she scuttled within. He saw her again framed in the front-room window, talking to someone. A few days ago, she had been Hughes’s stricken sister, a detached but recognizable figure. Now she was a woman of intrigue with a hidden life. The upturned collar of her coat and the formal arrangement of her hair made her look efficient, like a woman dressed to carry out a difficult assignment.

  Daly watched her head turn to survey the room and then back to continue her conversation. He was amazed he had not noticed this side to her personality before. He felt an overpowering sense of curiosity and was about to walk up to the cottage when the figure of Irwin appeared in the window. Daly heard the detective shout suddenly. Eliza crouched with her arms raised protectively to her head as a horrible clacking sound echoed from inside the house. Irwin stood behind her, waving his arms wildly in the air.

  It was no time for chivalry, but Daly did not want to see the woman hurt. He tensed his body and was about to run toward the house, when the motive behind their violent pantomime became apparent. There was a trapped bird in the room, its dark shape swinging between the walls like the shadow cast by an erratic candle flame. Its wings thrashed frantically against the windowpane as Irwin tried to help it escape. But the bird was too frightened. It fluttered its wings through his hair and swung its beak at his face. In the background, Eliza appeared with a broomstick and managed to shove the distressed creature out the opened window. Daly crept back into the hedge, half smiling to himself.

  For the next twenty minutes, the two conducted what appeared to be a thorough search of the house, even stripping at the grim wallpaper. Daly watched, waiting for someone else to appear. Nothing made sense to him. He couldn’t imagine Irwin at the helm of a conspiracy with Eliza as an accomplice.

  Eventually another figure appeared in the room. A tall, sleek, well-groomed man with a razor-blade smile. Daly wondered where he had been during the search. His presence in the room was like a sudden shift in gravity. It appeared to galvanize the efforts of Irwin and Eliza Hughes. They proceeded with more haste throughout the house, emptying shelves, pulling out boxes, upending furniture.

  Watching the growing desperation of their search, Daly had a hunch that whatever they were looking for was already gone. The secret life of Joseph Devine was entangling more and more people. His mind flashed back to the black BMW that had followed him from Mitchell’s house, and the note pinned to his door. It was more than an attempt at intimidation. We can follow you and we don’t care if you see us, the note seemed to suggest. But behind it, he also sensed a growing agitation as his investigation dug deeper into Devine’s past and the connections with David Hughes became evident. Perhaps they were trying to distract him from something.

  He walked back to his car. He had gained an advantage over Irwin, and he wanted to make sure he made the most of it.

  It rained heavily throughout the night. The next morning, Daly’s car sped along the lough-shore roads on white wings of spray. His eyes took in the flooded scenery of the countryside, the huddled gables of outhouses, wet ribbons of water forming in the fields, and cattle sinking up to their knees, but his mind was elsewhere.

  So familiar was the route to Hughes’s cottage he could have driven there in his sleep. A furniture-removal van crammed the lane. Two men waited in the cab and watched as Daly parked and got out. He felt as though he had stepped into an unfamiliar water-bound landscape. The sound of hidden water filled the air, gurgling in gullies and clefts along the lane and behind the hedges. He made his way up to the house, scrambling between dry land and the flood’s rising tide.

  When Daly called at the door, Eliza Hughes’s face registered a kind of cold dismay. In the morning light, she looked to have aged. She was haggard, the smudges beneath her eyes were coal-dark, and her forehead was heavily lined. She seemed to have lost weight. Her neck did not quite fit the collar of her polo-necked blouse.

  She nodded quickly at Daly and stepped aside for him, as though she had been expecting his visit. The kitchen table was stacked with half-filled boxes. Cupboard doors and drawers lay open, their contents gone.

  “I don’t have much time to talk,” she told him. “Busy packing.”

  Daly surveyed the rifled kitchen. “Every step I take forward in this investigation seems to produce more and more complications,” he remarked.

  The cottage was quiet but full of shadows. It occurred to Daly there might be someone lurking in the next room. The ever-present sense of danger was what distinguished the lives of these people, he realized. He looked at Eliza and she
produced a distant smile for him.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, getting up to close the door.

  She said nothing and stared at him, her eyes widening.

  “Is anything wrong, Miss Hughes?”

  “Nothing,” she said, turning away. “I’ve been unable to sleep. The loneliness has got to me. I’m moving back to Belfast, until they find David.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “I mean the police. Yourselves.” She looked around the room as if giving it a mental farewell.

  “I visited your house last night, but you were gone. What were you doing at Devine’s cottage?”

  She was less distracted now, listening carefully to Daly’s every word.

  “From the first night I came here, something has not quite added up. You’ve been hiding the truth from me. In fact, I believe you’ve delayed and hampered the progress of this investigation all along.” He waited for his words to sink in. “But, I suspect you were put in an impossible position.”

  Eliza switched on the radio and turned up the volume. On her way back, she staggered slightly. Daly wondered if she was on tranquillizers. Her face was ashen with weariness, and her voice sounded groggy. Through the window, the flooded fields looked like the gray ice floes of a frozen landscape.

  “I should have told you the truth that first night you arrived. David wasn’t just a farmer. He worked undercover for Special Branch. The East Tyrone Support Unit was his brainchild. He set it up with eight other officers. They operated in plainclothes and in unmarked cars, and mixed with the local community. He was a recruiter of informers, one of their best. Devine was one of the men he enlisted.” Although her voice shook at first, a practical tone reasserted itself. She was like a survivor reconstructing the scene of a ghastly accident.

  “I used to work as an administrator in the security forces, and had special clearance. When David became ill, I was assigned to look after him. After all, I was his sister and I knew how much he wanted to live here by the lough. I kept in contact with headquarters, and they routinely assessed him. Though he was confused at times, he wasn’t deemed a security risk. I thought I could keep a handle on his dementia, but David had his own plans.

  “My brother believed that Devine had made a note of all the operations he was involved in. The typical legal type. Everything recorded down to the last detail. That’s what we were doing at his cottage, looking to see whether he had hidden the information somewhere.”

  As she spoke, Daly noticed the lines of tension dissolve from her face, and he guessed she was telling the truth, or at least that part of the truth she knew.

  “I need to know if anything unusual happened to David in the weeks before he disappeared,” said Daly. “Did he have any strange visitors? Did he talk to someone he shouldn’t have? This wasn’t a prison. You couldn’t shut him away completely from the world.”

  She looked away and reached for a bottle of window spray on the table. Daly got there first. He grabbed the bottle and placed it out of her reach. She stared at him in surprise.

  It was a small but important victory against the woman’s obsession with cleaning. The way in which she used it to tidy away unruly feelings and unwanted thoughts.

  “Remember, this is David’s last chance,” said Daly. “To the people who murdered Devine, life is cheap. Especially an old man’s life.”

  She stared at him, her face motionless. She appeared to be waiting for more. He tried a different tack.

  “Noel Bingham’s life was cheap too. I suspect his death was no accident. It was linked to his meeting David the morning after he ran away.”

  Eliza shook her head. “Don’t you see what’s going on? Bingham knew everything. He was David’s driver when he worked undercover. Bingham was in contact with Special Branch, and was meant to bring him in. Somehow, David guessed and managed to get away while Bingham was phoning for help.”

  She reached her hand into a cardigan pocket and fumblingly withdrew a cigarette.

  “The last few months have been hell. I took on far more than I could handle. David became obsessed with the past and the informers he had recruited. He didn’t seem to notice me at all. It was as though I had become a shadow in the cottage, walking through his darkest memories.

  “The weeks dragged on and became months. His illness didn’t get any better, nor did it seem to deteriorate. I began to feel I was the one under surveillance. Living in a prison. David was writing notes to himself and leaving them littered across the hedgerows. I couldn’t sleep at night with the worry.

  “Last November, I went to my GP to get some sleeping tablets, but I broke down in his surgery. It was the one moment in the last six months that I lost my self-restraint. Before I knew it, the GP had organized a fortnight’s respite for David at a nearby nursing home. An ambulance was waiting for him when I arrived home. I had two weeks of blissful sleep at night and desperate elation during the day. Even then, I had a dread that my rest was going to be paid for at a very high price. I didn’t tell Special Branch, of course.

  “When David returned, he appeared less confused. He was full of humorous remarks about how quick I was to abandon him. I was relieved and glad to get back to the business of caring for him. I convinced myself I had done no wrong. Special Branch believed their security measures were watertight, up until the night he disappeared. I committed my second error that night by ringing the police in a panic. My instructions had been to contact a special number if David went missing, but it was the middle of the night and I couldn’t think straight.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ve been so helpful and I’ve been such a hindrance.”

  Daly shook his head. What he saw was a guilt-ridden woman swept into a land of shadows.

  She stared at Daly. “I’m worried about David. You’ll find him, won’t you?”

  “You did the right thing that night, calling the police,” said Daly. “And I’m glad I was the detective on call. But I have to be careful. Special Branch is watching me, as well. I want you to give me twenty-four hours before you tell them about David’s respite stay. Now, I need the name of that nursing home.”

  25

  The silence observed by the residents in the nursing home was like that between competitors at an interminable game of chess. It hung in the air, forming an invisible barrier between them as Daly made his way through the day room to the nurse manager’s office. Some of the faces of the patients looked vexed, others had relaxed into the half-grin of senility. Nurses carried out their duties with an air of organized tranquility. Underfoot, the thick carpet decorated with the shapes of flowers gave off a synthetic smell of roses.

  The nurse manager stood waiting for him, as his urgent call had requested. Her mild, maternal eyes scanned his face with an expression of puzzled amusement.

  “What sort of emergency heralds a lone policeman in an unmarked car?” she enquired.

  “I’m sorry for taking you away from your work,” said Daly. “This shouldn’t take too long. I understand David Hughes spent a fortnight’s respite here back in November. I’m just following up any leads that might help us locate him.”

  “David Hughes,” she said with an understanding nod. “We were all concerned when we saw his photo in the papers. The staff warmed to him while he was here.”

  “I need the details of anyone who came in contact with him. Staff, visitors, other residents’ relatives….”

  She went to a filing cabinet and produced several files. “All our employees are vetted by the police these days. Their information is in these files. I can let you read through it, if you want.”

  An old man walking up to one of the windows in the nearby day room caught Daly’s eye. It was dusk outside, and the old man’s focus was short. He appeared to be examining his own reflection rather than the darkening view of the landscaped gardens. Saliva drooled from his mouth.

  “Mr. Hughes enjoyed his stay with us,” said the manager. “It was a surprise he did not come back. I think he neede
d more space and time to work things through.”

  “Work what through?” asked Daly, raising an eyebrow.

  “He still hadn’t come to terms with his illness. Sometimes the residents gain a new perspective, a different angle, when they come here. Sometimes it forces them to see what they’ve been ignoring all along.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged. “We’ve all got unfinished business, Inspector, things we try to push to one side and ignore.”

  Daly felt his shoulders tighten. He found himself staring down at his shirt.

  “Take that gentleman over there,” she said, pointing to the man at the window. “He’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Like Mr. Hughes. To anyone who’ll listen he’ll tell a terrible story about his brother-in-law, and the morning they found his mutilated body in a roll of carpet floating in the river Bann. I’ve no way of knowing if his story is true, but the details never change.”

  “Did David ever talk about his past?”

  “No. He was very reticent in that regard,” she said. “He was more of a wanderer than a talker.”

  The manager left him alone to search through the files. He took down names and contact details. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. He was going to have to interview every staff member and find out what they knew about Hughes. Then he would have to start on the residents and their relatives. Even then he could not be sure he had talked to everyone who had met Hughes during those two weeks. How could he? Perhaps he was just fooling himself. Eliza’s revelation about Hughes’s stay in the nursing home had seemed promising at first. However, he feared it might lead him down a dead end.

  When he got up to leave the office, the old man was still standing at the window, peering into the unfathomable depths of his reflection. He glanced over at Daly. The corners of his mouth were dragged down by what might have been sadness.