After She Vanished

Book 1: David Dunnigan

by S.A. Dunphy

Genres: Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

'A cracking debut thriller packed with great characters that leaves the reader wanting more' Irish Independent Five people living on Dublin's streets have gone missing and criminologist David Dunnigan has been tasked with finding them. His search leads him to ten-year-old Harry, living alone in an abandoned warehouse, who has been waiting days for his parents' return ... Dunnigan knows more than he would wish to about unexplained disappearances. Almost twenty years ago, his young niece Beth vanished during their annual Christmas shopping trip. No trace of her was ever discovered. And the tragic mystery has loomed over Dunnigan's life ever since. As his current investigation draws him deeper into the city's dark underbelly, Dunnigan's resolve to help Harry and unravel this mystery grows stronger. And could it lead him one step closer to finding out what became of Beth?

Release date: July 13, 2017

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

THE PROFESSOR WAS FAT AND BALDING, WHAT little hair he had left Brylcreemed straight back on his round head. He wore a plain white cotton shirt and a sky-blue sports jacket, and when Dunnigan walked in, he was writing in a hard-backed notebook with an expensive-looking fountain pen. The office was decorated with framed Victorian cartoons from magazines like Punch and the Irish Periodical, and there was a big oak set of bookshelves creaking with untidily organised volumes.

‘Ah, Mr Dunnigan – back so soon,’ Bolger said, smiling in an indulgent manner. His voice was rich and deep, musical almost.

‘I want to speak to you.’ Dunnigan swayed, and held onto the arm of a chair to right himself.

‘Why don’t you sit? It’s so much more civilised than having you looming over me looking ill.’

Dunnigan virtually fell into the offered seat.

‘So, what can I help you with today?’

‘Marian Cooke.’

‘This again.’

‘And Terri Spears.’

‘I’ve already told you—’

‘And Leona Cardwell. And Alanna Morgan and all the others. I want to talk to you about the twenty-five former students who have now given statements that you sexually assaulted them – sometimes in this very office, sometimes in your home, sometimes on research trips to various parts of the country that appear to have been more about rape than they were history. Did you know that, of the twenty-five, fourteen have given evidence that you introduced them to Newton Esmund and Todd Gerard, who seem to have been regular companions of yours on these excursions?’

‘Stuff and nonsense.’

‘The Sex Crimes Unit has a statement that you were in the company of Newton Esmund in a hotel in County Leitrim in 2010, when you offered Alanna Morgan, whom you brought under the pretence of assisting you in recording interviews with local historians, a sum of five hundred euro if she would bring her niece, who was five, along on the next trip. She says you saw a photograph of the child because she used it as the wallpaper on her phone.’

‘More lies. This is really becoming intolerable.’

‘I’m almost finished. Terri Spears says she called to your home in Glasnevin at your request in 2007, and arrived just as a woman she did not know was putting a little girl into a car – she says the child was crying. Esmund and Gerard were also there when she arrived, and she says the three of you were either drunk or on drugs of some kind. She alleges you took turns raping her, during which the pair of you bragged about abusing the little girl, whom you referred to as Alice.’

‘Mr Dunnigan, are you making your way to a particular point, or must I continue to sit here and listen to these unfounded allegations for the rest of the afternoon?’

‘Some of the evidence these women have given dates back to 1994,’ Dunnigan said. He was taking shallow breaths now, and fighting to remain conscious. ‘We have, among the statements, more than twenty references to you either asking that children be brought to you or of you and your associates being seen with children. Always little girls, and always between the ages of three and ten.’

‘I am losing patience, Mr Dunnigan.’

‘There are five children within that age range on our books who remain missing,’ Dunnigan said. ‘And I think you know where they are.’

‘Get out of my office.’

Dunnigan fumbled in his jacket pocket, and held out a photograph to the historian. ‘Do you know this girl?’

‘Get out!’

‘Look at the photograph, Professor Bolger.’

‘I’m getting Security!’

The academic stood, but before he could move, Dunnigan had flung himself across the desk and had him by the throat. He was screaming, tears mixing with the sweat on his face, hysteria peppering his cries. ‘Where is she? Please tell me what you’ve done with her!’

‘Get off me, you lunatic!’ Bolger grabbed his attacker by the collar and flung him aside, Dunnigan landing heavily on his injured leg. With a sickening crunch, he felt the glass slice even deeper. He tried to stagger up, but the room had suddenly darkened, and though Bolger was shouting at him, the words were muffled. Then a hole opened and swallowed him, and he was glad to sink into it.

HE WAS SUSPENDED WITHOUT PAY WHILE THE powers-that-be fell over themselves apologising to a serial sex offender. They told him he had probably destroyed any chances of bringing a prosecution against Bolger and his fellow deviants, but Dunnigan calmly reminded them that the evidence against the three men was so circumstantial, it would have been years before they could bring charges anyway.

This did not seem to make his superiors any less angry with him, but he had long since stopped caring about that.

He lay in his hospital bed, drank Bovril from a plastic cup and stared at the ceiling into the small hours of the morning because, even with all the pills and potions they pumped into him, sleep proved elusive. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face. Every time he drifted into a doze for a moment, she was there, watching from the shadows, reaching out for him.

The doctors told him he was lucky to be alive. He didn’t agree.

What he found unbearable was that he had hit another dead end – he had thought Bolger and his foul friends might be able to end his misery, to bring him closure. But he had messed it up. He had failed again.

A week later they sent him home with a bottle of strong painkillers. He stood by the window, alone amid his few items of furniture and the dust, and looked at the pills. He googled their uses and effects: ‘Oxycodone,’ the internet informed him, ‘is a slow-release semi-synthetic opioid, prescribed for severe pain relief. It is also one of the most abused pharmaceutical drugs, as it can cause euphoria, relaxation and reduced anxiety in users.’ The script on the bottle advised him to take 15 milligrams every six hours.

He limped into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea.

Then he sat on his couch and methodically took every pill in the bottle.

He came to consciousness an hour later, vomiting, and realised in a distracted way that someone had their fingers down his throat.

‘Come on, you selfish asshole,’ the voice of his boss, Detective Inspector Frank Tormey, said, somewhere above him. ‘I’ll pull your fucking colon out if I have to, but you are not dying on my watch.’

He did not die. He could not even kill himself successfully.

Later, he sat on the bathroom floor while the detective went through all the cupboards and storage units in the flat to make sure he had no further tools to aid him in ending his life.

‘You’re lucky I decided to call by,’ Tormey said, a plastic bag with a couple of half-empty packs of paracetamol and two knives in his hand. ‘You are also lucky I had the sense to break in your door when I didn’t get an answer.’

‘I wanted to die. You stopped me. How is that lucky by any definition?’

Tormey sighed and shook his head. ‘Bolger and those sickos – they’re not the guys you’re looking for. It’s all wrong – the profile doesn’t fit, and you know it.’

‘I don’t know anything any more.’

‘That’s a pity, ’cause I came over to tell you that Bolger has changed his statement. He’s not pressing charges, so you can come back to work.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He doesn’t want to air his dirty laundry in court, so you’re in the clear. The traffic accident is still an issue, but with the blood loss you suffered, anyone will believe you were delirious when you left the scene.’

‘How lovely for me.’

‘That said, you need help, Davey.’

‘No.’

‘I’m calling your sister.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘With the greatest of respect, Davey, fuck you.’

And he left him sitting with his back against the toilet, his life in tatters about him.

GINA CARLTON, NÉE DUNNIGAN, STOOD IN THE virtually empty space that was her twin brother’s flat.

‘I know I’ve said it before,’ she put a bag of groceries on the floor, ‘but I cannot believe you’ve been living here for eighteen years.’

‘I have everything I need.’

‘And that’s what scares me.’

David Dunnigan was painfully thin, his dark hair, long and unkempt from neglect rather than design, was shot through with grey. He was dressed in a Walking Dead T-shirt that was at least three sizes too large for him and scuffed, baggy jeans – he had not deigned to put shoes on yet, and his toenails needed cutting. The bruises and cuts from the accident were still very much in evidence on his face, but the abrasions had scabbed over and the bruises had begun to turn yellow.

‘I’m very comfortable here, Gina. I have no intention of adding unnecessary clutter.’

The room – Dunnigan’s main living space – featured a low, threadbare couch, an equally low coffee-table that looked as though it might collapse if more than one cup were placed on it at a time, a folding card table and one chair. A single framed black and white poster of Patrick Troughton as the second incarnation of the science-fiction character Doctor Who hung over a fireplace that looked as if flame had not graced its environs for a very long time.

‘Would you at least consider getting a second chair?’

‘Why?’ Dunnigan asked, without any hint of irony.

Gina – slender like her brother and striking, if not pretty, her dark hair cut short and tight to her head – was dressed in a soft leather jacket, black jeans, a white mannish shirt and black silk scarf. Her Dr Martens boots were polished to a high sheen. ‘If you have to ask, there’s really no point in telling you,’ she said in resignation. ‘Let’s have brunch.’

‘I don’t eat brunch.’

‘You do now.’

Dunnigan sat at the card table and ate bacon and eggs; Gina sat on the couch, noting that the brother she had made such an effort to visit now had his back to her.

‘When was the last time you ate anything other than breakfast cereal?’

‘We get lunch at Harcourt Street, you know. They send out for sandwiches. Sometimes they get McDonald’s, or have a Chinese takeaway delivered.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’

‘I’m doing fine, Gina. I promise.’

‘Frank Tormey tells me otherwise.’ She thought she saw him stiffen, but it was a small movement, and she might have been mistaken. He continued to pick absently at the food. The couple of mouthfuls he’d had seemed to have filled him. A pool of yellow yolk was congealing on the plate. ‘Did you hear what I just said, David?’

‘Yes.’

‘I just made reference to the fact that you almost killed yourself.’

‘It was a mistake. I took too much of my pain medication by accident.’

‘You are the most precise person I know,’ Gina said, a hardness entering her voice. ‘You don’t make that kind of mistake.’

‘I’m not—’

‘I’m not one of your students or some poor eejit you’ve got locked up in an interrogation room. You can’t out-manoeuvre me with words or by playing with the facts. I’ve been trying to break through this horrible wall of pain you’ve constructed around yourself for more years than I care to remember. I love you, Davey, but even that has its limits. Now, are we going to have a conversation like adults or are you determined to continue this ridiculous game of hide-and-seek you’ve been playing, with yourself as much as anyone else?’

Dunnigan looked at her and blinked, as if someone had just slapped him. ‘I … I don’t know how,’ he said in a tiny voice.

Gina stood up, went to him, and put her arms around her brother, who sat, rigid and cold, on his lonely wooden chair, as cut off from her as he had been when the front door had been closed between them.

SOME TIME LATER THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE ON THE couch – at least, Gina sat: Dunnigan perched on the edge, still not really looking at her.

‘I know how hard things have been for you, Davey,’ Gina said, picking her words carefully. ‘But it’s been really tough for all of us.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around.’

‘How could you be around when you were living in London?’

‘That’s what I mean. I had to get away after … after what happened.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘I thought it might help me and Clive.’

‘You’ve told me all this, Gina.’

‘Will you please shut up and let me speak?’

He lapsed into silence.

‘I thought that going somewhere new, where we weren’t being faced with reminders of Beth every moment of every day, might save my marriage. I’m not sure I realised what a state the rest of the family were in. It wasn’t until about a year later, when Clive and I finally did break up, that I realised Mum was on tranquillizers. Dad more or less stopped talking to anyone – just locked himself up in his study with his books and his old films.’

Dunnigan sighed deeply and turned awkwardly to look at her. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘I don’t want you to say anything. I’ve come home, Davey. I’ve rented out the flat in London and got some part-time teaching in Blanchardstown.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe because I’m strong enough to be here now.’

‘Nothing has changed. Dublin is the same as it was when you left.’

‘But I’m different. I wish you were, too. None of this was your fault, Davey. You did not make this … this awful, hellish thing happen. We’ve all told you that – well, maybe not all of us …’

‘I haven’t spoken to our parents in seventeen years, Gina.’

‘Come on, it hasn’t been that long!’

‘Seventeen years, six months and twenty-two days.’

‘Well, at least you haven’t been brooding over it!’

Dunnigan narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Was that a joke?’

‘Yes! Jesus, Davey, we used to laugh all the time! You were funny – people always commented on how witty and sharp you were. Remember?’

‘I’m not that person any more.’

‘Couldn’t you be again? Look, it wasn’t easy to rebuild my life! Can’t you at least try?’

‘I have rebuilt my life.’

‘You’ve built something, but I don’t think it’s a life. Won’t you try, even for me?’

Dunnigan said nothing. He was staring at the floor now.

‘It was always you and me,’ Gina said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘I’ve lost so, so much – don’t take my brother away from me too.’

He shook off her hand and walked to the window. ‘I know what happened wasn’t my fault,’ he said, after a long, painful silence. ‘Intellectually, I understand that there was not an awful lot I could have done differently – I’ve been over and over it in my head. But, you see, being able to rationalise it doesn’t help. I still feel like I was to blame. No matter what I do, I still have that fear deep inside. That it was down to me, in the end.’

Gina got up and stood beside him, looking through the glass (almost medically sterile on this side of the window, grimy with soot on the other) at the milling throng on the street below. A crow had perched on a windowsill opposite them, and it seemed to be staring right at her. ‘Davey, I spent years being really, really angry at the world. I raged at everything I could find to rage at. But all that did was exhaust me. Being mad didn’t change anything, and it didn’t make me feel any better.’

‘I’m not angry – at least, I don’t think I am.’

‘I believe that, underneath a thick layer of ice, you are very, very angry, Davey. You’re just scared to let it out. And I think you’re terribly, desperately sad. And that breaks my heart.’

Dunnigan continued to stare out of the window. ‘I don’t think I feel very much of anything, Gina, if I’m honest.’

‘Maybe we could try working on that, then.’

‘Maybe.’

Gina didn’t know if this was progress or not. But it was a start.

DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT FRANK Tormey glared at Dunnigan, who stared impassively back at him over his cluttered desk. Tormey was an angular man, his dark hair worn in a crew cut, a heavy moustache hanging over his upper lip. Today he was dressed, as per usual, in a nondescript grey suit, his blue tie hanging askew.

‘Where’s the report I’m supposed to have from you on the Drogheda killing? Like, yesterday?’

‘I put it in your mail slot.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘I put it in yesterday evening.’

‘Why haven’t I got it, then? Why isn’t it sitting right there among all the other crap on my desk?’

‘Because you haven’t collected it yet?’

‘I collect stuff, or have someone else collect it, at least three times every day.’

‘Well, you mustn’t have today yet, because I put the report in there last night. Like I’ve already said. Twice.’

‘Are you yanking me about, Davey?’

‘No, boss.’

‘You’d better not be.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I won’t put up with it, Davey. I’ve tolerated a very large amount of rubbish from you over the years, and I’m about fucking sick of it.’

‘Did you just call me in here to shout at me?’

Tormey scowled and picked a file up from amid the clutter in front of him. ‘The commissioner wants us to give this a look-over. He specifically asked us to get a criminologist’s take on it, so that’s why it’s landing in your lap.’

Dunnigan took the file and flipped it open to the front page.

‘Five missing-person reports, one involving a young couple, all filed over the past six months, all in Dublin’s inner city,’ Tormey said.

Dunnigan ran his eye down the first page in the file, which was a chronology of when the reports had been made – there was no regularity to it that he could see. Two had come in during the same week in March, and there was a two-month gap between the penultimate and final disappearances. ‘I take it there’s something linking them?’

‘They’re all homeless.’

Dunnigan looked up at his boss. ‘So who says they’re missing? They could just be out on the streets somewhere, off the grid.’

‘My thoughts exactly. Homelessness is grabbing a lot of newspaper headlines at the moment. I think the commissioner just wants it to look like we’re pulling our weight and doing our bit for the cause. Look the file over, see if there’s any line of enquiry we can take. If there is, look into it. If there isn’t, we can say we gave it a go and file it as closed.’

‘How exactly does a simple missing-person case fall under our remit?’

‘Two of the missing have been taken in for soliciting – it’s tenuous, but I think Head Office just wants to be able to say they’ve put their best people on it. You should be pleased that, after all the shit you’ve pulled, you’re still considered to be “best people”.’

‘Yes, boss.’ Dunnigan stood to leave.

‘One more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘I need you to do me a favour.’

Dunnigan remained standing. Tormey, one of the most self-contained men the criminologist had ever met, had never asked for a favour before.

‘My wife’s cousin is going to be coming here for a day’s work experience, which will mostly involve getting a tour, like. I was wondering if you might show him around for a couple of hours, explain about what you do.’

Dunnigan blinked. ‘Is he a garda cadet?’

‘No. He’s … well, he goes to a centre for people with special needs. I’ve only ever met him once before – I barely know the lad. I promised I’d take him but sure we can’t have him wandering around the bullpen looking at evidence, can we? I don’t know what I was thinking. He’s coming tomorrow. Could you show him the offices, tell him some stories about cases we solved, then buy him some lunch and send him on his way?’

‘This really is not my area of expertise, boss …’

‘D’ye think it’s mine? The lad was put in a home when he was small and my missus feels guilty we never helped out more. She nags me day and night to do my bit for him.’

‘But this would be me doing your bit for him.’

‘Are you gonna help me or not?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, of course I will.’

‘Good. Now, stop fecking about and get on with that case.’

DUNNIGAN HAD A DESK IN THE LARGE SQUAD room, which was usually surrounded by a wall of boxes containing evidence and stacks of files. He made some tea in the tiny kitchen at the end of the fifth-floor corridor the Sex Crimes Unit called home, then sat at his desk and began to examine the information Tormey had given him.

One of Dunnigan’s gifts as a criminologist was his ability to focus with laser-like intensity on the details of a case, usually finding facts that conflicted with one another, coincidences that were just too convenient, or links and similarities others had missed. His true talent was that he was painstaking and methodical – while others’ minds would start to wander after many hours of poring over seemingly insignificant minutiae, Dunnigan’s attention would still be razor sharp. He did not seem to experience mental fatigue the way others did.

That day’s file was slim enough, though, consisting as it did only of the pro formas that had been filled out for the missing-person reports themselves, and statements taken from those making the reports – it seemed that very little effort had been expended in investigatin. . .