Nina

by Louise Phillips

Genres: Women's Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

A feminist, redemptive crime novel about a woman searching for her lost daughter, perfect for fans of Charlie Donlea, Laura Lippman and Ashley Flowers. 

On the eve of her sixty-first birthday, Elizabeth Harte decides to run away from home, where she is living with her daughter and son-in-law. Elizabeth has experienced deep trauma in her life, including the disappearance of her daughter Nina twenty-five years ago, leaving her feeling trapped and lost. She is determined to find her daughter in order to make amends with her past. She soon crosses path with a young autistic girl called April, and it’s this relationship, alongside Elizabeth’s determination to find Nina, that forges an awakening within her.      

Meanwhile, disgraced detective Nick is revisiting a series of cold cases for the Irish police. His father worked Nina’s case back in the day, and came up empty-handed, and in despair, took his own life. Soon, young women start to go missing and are found murdered, with a pattern emerging.  

​When Elizabeth reaches out to Nick to discuss her daughter’s vanishing, he realizes his cold cases are a crucial lead to stopping this killer from striking again in this emotional pageturner.

Publisher: Union Square & Co.

Print pages: 288

Sample

The day I turned sixty, I decided to run away from home. I gave myself a deadline. It needed to happen within a year. Tomorrow is my birthday, so today is the day. I live with my daughter Alison, her husband, and my three grandchildren. Right now, I’m in the kitchen. I feel both invisible and of little consequence.

There’s a loud clattering of dishes, cereal bowls, cups and glasses being emptied into the sink, the cutlery crashing down on top, quickly followed by the sound of running tap water—splash—splash—splash. There are other noises too, the children’s voices arguing with one another, thwarting, complaining about not wanting to go to school.

“I hate cereal,” Emily moans. She’s eight and the eldest.

I walk toward the large island unit with its black crushed marble top, ready to clear some spilt milk. My son-in-law trips over a schoolbag. “SHIT,” he yells, annoyed. Mornings aren’t his thing.

I suck in air, attempting the relaxing techniques I recently learned from Spotify, breathing in through my nostrils and out through my mouth. If everyone wasn’t so busy, they might notice me—they don’t. I count backward from one hundred too, filing the chaos into that part of my brain developed from necessity since moving in with my daughter five years ago. It had seemed like such a sensible idea at the time, amalgamating resources. That’s what she called it. I wasn’t so sure. I feel it is her house. I think she feels that too.

I love my daughter dearly, but all the years of unspoken words, especially since we moved in together, has created a messy and complicated maze. And now, it’s as if every day, instead of real life, I’m living a kind of false existence, and on those rare occasions when I try to reach out to Alison, she’s always beyond my grasp. Of late, I’ve finally learned to accept, we may no longer be capable of finding one another, because that’s what happens when you stop connecting properly. A certain point is reached, one you dare not go beyond, because if you do, you risk losing whatever tentative relationship, no matter how small, you still have.

If this was the only problem, perhaps things wouldn’t be so difficult, but the proverbial elephant in the room is my other daughter, Nina.

Nina is missing. She’s been that way for a very long time, and the word “missing,” with all its ramifications, has circled around in my head for over twenty-five years. It’s part of who I am. I have to believe she’s missing, because the alternative isn’t acceptable.

Others think differently, including the Irish police. They look at it as something else—missing presumed dead. It’s a cold case now. They don’t call it “closed,” only, it is. Last year, over 11,000 people went missing in Ireland. All but twenty-seven of them eventually turned up. The others, like Nina, form part of the statistics of the loved ones who never came home.

Sometimes, I think Alison is slightly threatened by her older sister, thinking, but not saying, that I might have loved her more.

Mostly, I try not to dwell on that part. When you spend half a lifetime fantasising about your daughter coming home, with all that unknowingness, pent-up anger, and grief, it defines you in ways you never wanted or intended it to. It affects your relationships with others. It affects everything.

My son-in-law, Ciaran, is still fuming over the schoolbag. His shirt is ruined with a coffee stain. He’ll need to change it. He’ll be late. Again, I place this information into that quiet part of my brain, the part that tries, mostly, not to give a shit.

My daughter is preparing three lunchboxes. I hand her the drink bottles, dutifully filled with water. Lucy, the black Labrador, darts into the kitchen barking at a stray cat who hoards the window ledge outside. The feline doesn’t move. Like me, it appears oblivious, but finally, it leaps down and slinks off.

We’ve now reached the “schoolbags on the backs of children” point in the morning proceedings. My grandchildren are Emily; Oscar, who recently turned seven; and Katie, the baby, age four. She will always be “baby” because she was born last. I love them too.

On the clotheshorse by the double doors to the garden, the sun gleams down onto an array of socks, underpants, shirts, and pyjamas. I begin to fold them onto the cleared island unit, looking up periodically as one by one the children make their way out to the car for school. My son-in-law kisses my daughter on the cheek. Simultaneously, they both say “bye, honey,” and I’m tempted to say “snap,” like you do in that card game when two cards match.

Alison hovers, checking nothing important has been left behind. The “important” heading doesn’t include me. At times like this, I feel like a tiny bird, small and easily dismissed. My daughter lovingly pats the dog on the head, while issuing final instructions to the children. She shouts back at me from the hallway. “Bye, Mom.”

“Bye,” I reply, too low for her to hear, but either way, she’s already gone. Tomorrow, it’ll happen all over again, the chaos within the ordinary, the repetitive grey mundane. Only tomorrow, I won’t be here.

I place a half-finished carton of milk on the top shelf of the large, sleek fridge. There’s an aroma of coffee lingering from the cafetiere. I pick it up, draining the liquid into the sink, before emptying the discarded remains into the pedal bin on the floor. The dregs fall like chunky brown snow.

I carry the folded laundry upstairs. In the children’s bedrooms, after putting everything away, I pick up dirty socks, pants, and inside-out pyjamas. This is my morning routine. When I enter my daughter and son-in-law’s bedroom, I glimpse a reflection of myself in their dressing-table mirror. I don’t look that old, I think. Regular visits to the hairdresser under Alison’s instructions, topping up my hair colour, takes at least ten years off me. My skin, inherited from my mother, has few enough wrinkles, which is just as well, as skin care was never high on my priority list. I don’t tidy up in here. Alison and Ciaran might think I’m meddling. Instead, I place the laundry at the end of their bed.

In my room, I stare at the wallpaper, like that actress once did in Shirley Valentine, when she talked to the wall. I don’t say “Hello, wallpaper.” I don’t say anything. The wallpaper is purple with large white swirls. At night, I follow the pattern over and over. A couple of months ago, a face appeared. At first, I couldn’t make it out, but then I solved the mystery. I realised the face was mine. She was calling out, wanting to know what had happened to me, where I’d gone? I didn’t know how to answer her, which is another reason why I’m running away.

I pack enough clothes to ensure I don’t have to return for a very long time. On top of my belongings, I place an envelope with newspaper clippings and an old photograph with the date 1992 written in pencil on the back. Flipping the photograph over, I stare at the image. In it, there’s a house with a white rosebush in the front garden. The roses are large, fully in bloom, the petals delicate, as if they already know that soon, they too will perish. In the centre, a pebbled pathway sits behind a small black wrought iron gate with low concrete pillars on either side. Beyond them is the front door, which, like the window frames, boasts a shade of royal blue. I imagine the rooms behind windows. Even now, I can’t help but shiver, remembering a place where, in so many ways, it all began. Finally, I study the left of the image, which lies in shadow. The shadow could be nothing, or something, or someone. Either way, I’ve kept it all these years, a clue if you like, because isn’t that what they say you should do, if you want to find answers—go back to the beginning.

I place the photograph in the suitcase and slam it shut before scribbling a note to Alison.

Soon, like the rest of the family, I pull the front door closed behind me, my old Ford Fiesta waiting like a chariot in the drive. Once inside it, duly seat belted, I consider playing some music, something upbeat, but decide against it. Silence is best for now.

On the motorway, my head is filled with other sounds, cars whizzing past at speed, trucks honking their horns. When the car stalls in heavy traffic, a radio broadcast steeps in from another car. I need to block it out, so, despite the heat of the day, I close my driver’s-side window.

I wondered a while back if I might be depressed. I looked it up online. I hadn’t realised people could be depressed for years and not know it, so I completed a questionnaire.

You had to choose your answers from four options: (a) not at all, (b) several days, (c) more than half the days, or (d) nearly every day. I wasn’t surprised by the result. I could tell by the number of D’s from early on exactly where it was heading.

I’d looked up post-traumatic stress too. That can also last for years. Apparently, if you ignore it, it will worsen over time. War veterans suffer it a lot. Women who’ve experienced domestic abuse suffer it too. There wasn’t a questionnaire for that one, but rather a list of symptoms—vivid flashbacks, negative thoughts, nightmares, intense feelings of distress at real or symbolic reminders of the trauma, alongside experiencing physical sensations such as pain, sweating, nausea, or trembling. Tick—tick—tick—tick—and tick.

The traffic eases. The car is travelling at speed again. I look up. Above me is a cloudless blue sky. It catches me unawares, and for the briefest moment, I feel more like a girl than a woman, as if temporarily unburdened. I breathe in deep, wanting to hold on to that feeling, but it’s already slipping away.

The large blue signs on the motorway tell me how many kilometres it is to my destination. I need to keep focused on the task at hand. There’s no going back now. I’ve waited too long for this, because I also know this thing I’m doing isn’t only about running away. It’s also about returning.

It’s not long before I reach my destination. I park the car in the small driveway to the front of the house. Tall, dense laurel bushes separate this garden from the one next door, recalling as a young bride moving into this street, and those laurels being newly planted. Now, they’re a large wall of greenery.

My friend Ellie, who’s lending me her house while she’s away, has already told me about April, the little girl who lives next door. She describes her as an utter joy, although I’ve already received several specific instructions about how I should act with her. How I need to be careful the way I phrase things, idioms, metaphors or other common expressions. I’ve also been told she’s very intelligent, talkative, and if we become friends, and at any point she decides to use the bathroom upstairs, I should only ever leave one toilet roll in the room at a time. Apparently, the child is obsessed with cleanliness, an obsession that has resulted in blocked drains on several occasions. I didn’t question it too much, but if Ellie mentioned it, I’m going to assume it’s important. The girl is ten, and I also understand she may call on a regular basis. Acceptance of this is an unsaid condition of our arrangement. It’s not ideal, but if my needs were purely about accommodation, I could have gone elsewhere. Only, they’re not. The location is important. I lived on this street as a young mother, ten doors up from Ellie’s, the year Nina went missing.

I open the car door, still partly surprised I’m here, and that somehow, after all these months of silently thinking about it, it’s actually happening. If someone was interviewing me right now, I’d say I feel a combination of two things. Firstly, knowing it’s the absolute right thing to do. While, secondly, also knowing I’m running a risk with Alison. If Alison was being interviewed, she’d probably say I’m misbehaving like some silly child. One who should be spoken to with absolute determination and clarity for fear I might repeat something stupid like this again. Daring to overstep the mark, behaving wholly irresponsibly, and that the risk of this action being repeated would need to be constantly guarded against.

I breathe out, taking in my surroundings, realising something else too. I’m nervous. Sometimes, I think there’s another person inside of me, a stranger, and that somehow, instead of me doing certain things, I’m watching her doing them instead. What would this stranger be thinking now? She might, like Alison, consider me crazy to be back here, playing some kind of amateur detective, recklessly returning to the scene of the crime. I try to shut that voice down, but the stranger inside me isn’t having any of it. She knows I’m afraid, and that fear, the one that has kept me awake at night in the days and years building up to this, will never go away. It too is always there, because both the stranger and I know there’s always the risk he might find me, watch me, and wait his time to make his move. The stranger inside me dismisses it as paranoia, but I’m not so sure, not on this street so full of memories.

Clutching my car keys, I stare at the cherry blossom trees on either side of the road, thick and heavy, although no longer in bloom. They camouflage the low garden walls as my eyes are drawn downward toward the road markings: DRIVE SLOW. BEWARE OF CHILDREN. And despite the current emptiness of the street, I hear children playing—loud, happy cries, unafraid, as if the years since Nina’s disappearance have simply vanished.

I also know there’s another reason why I’m here. The stranger inside me knows it too. Like me, she’s felt it for some time, but unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to understand. Often, I feel choked, trapped, especially around other people. I’d wondered if it was part of the post-traumatic stress list of symptoms, the ones that gradually escalate over time, because over time, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to be around other people, including Alison. People try to make me better, but I’m not ready for that.

At the front door, I lift the key toward the lock. Again, the movement feels surreal, as if the “stranger” me, the one who usually plays the part of Elizabeth, is doing it instead. I’m so caught up in my own thoughts, I jump when I hear footsteps behind me, dropping the keys to the ground.

“Hello,” says a young girl’s voice, and for a second, I wonder if I might be imagining her too.

I pick up the keys, still startled.

“Are you Elizabeth?” she asks, looking inquisitive.

“Yes,” I reply.

The child has ebony-black hair and wears thick bifocals with crimson frames. She stares at me with such intensity, I blink, as I notice one of her eyes turns inward.

“I’m April,” she says. “I’m very friendly.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m also autistic.”

“Right.”

“My friend got a new rabbit today.”

“Oh?”

“Do you want to know her name?”

“The friend or the rabbit?”

“The rabbit,” she laughs.

“Okay then.”

“It’s Charlie, and she makes me and my friend very happy. My friend’s name is Jasmine, by the way.” Her stare intensifies. “Ellie says you’re nice. Are you?”

“I try to be.”

“Hmm…,” she says, looking uncertain. “I try to be nice too, but it can be hard.”

“Sometimes, I find it hard too.”

“They say I get overwhelmed.”

“They?”

“My mam and dad, and the teachers at school.”

“I see,” I reply, although I’m not sure where this conversation is going.

“I cry a lot too. I can be really loud.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. About the crying I mean.”

“It’s okay. It’s because my brain’s too big.”

“Too big?”

“I think about everything all the time.”

“I think about things too.”

“Everything?”

“No, not everything, but there are certain things I think about a lot.”

“Like a fixation.”

“I guess you could call it that,” I say, aware of all the things I’ve been fixated on for years, mostly Nina, but also the fear, the kind that keeps you paralysed.

“I’m fixated about Pokémon.”

“That’s nice,” I reply, sounding only half-interested. Children hate it when you do that to them. “Do you want to come inside?” I ask, attempting to make amends. “I know you’re a friend of Ellie’s.”

“No,” she replies, completely deadpan.

“Maybe another time then,” I say, placing the key in the lock, relieved this conversation will soon end and I can be alone again, inside and away from all distractions.

“A stray cat scratched me yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“Do you think I’ll get rabies?”

“I don’t think…”

“What are the symptoms?”

“I’m not…”

“Can you die from it? I don’t want to die.”

“I’m sure you’ll be…”

“I mean, has anyone ever died from rabies in Ireland? It would be important to know that.”

“Maybe, a hundred years ago,” I say, trying to keep my anxiety in check.

“Are you sure?”

“No, but…”

“Ellie looks things up on Google. Google is very good with questions.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“So, you don’t think I’ll die from this?” She holds up her arm, displaying a minor scratch.

“I’m sure you won’t.” The key turns in the lock.

“Okay then. I better go.” She begins to walk away, and she’s already in the garden next door when she adds, “I hurt my head yesterday.”

“How did you do that?” I ask through the thick laurel bushes, curious now.

“I was banging it off the radiator making music.”

I hear her close the front door.

A smile attempts to emerge on my face, but I shut it down.

I stand motionless for a second, unsure what to do next. Finally, I open the front door.

Once inside Ellie’s house, my mood immediately shifts downward. I look around the hallway, one similar in design to the house ten doors up, the house where we as a family once lived. If I try really hard, I can imagine everything as it once was, the children’s coats layering the end of the banisters, the old familiar sounds and smells, the younger me, standing in the hallway with a view directly out to the back garden, as two swings are temporarily abandoned.

I tell myself again I’ve made the right decision to come here, even if I’ll need to remain vigilant, because outside of my desire to find Nina, the fear, the one that paralyzes you, is also part of moving forward, and piecing all the information together is complicated, because the truth is rarely easy to find, especially when others want to ensure it’s kept from you.

I think about the newspaper clippings too, the ones I packed with that old photograph. In them, the headlines are all about Rachel Meadows’s abduction and murder. She was thirty when she disappeared, the same age Nina would be now, and if Rachel Meadows is part of this, I’ve no choice but to dig deeper, because my life, and the lives of others, could depend on it.

Nick Matthews leans back in his chair, scrunching his eyes tight, tired and in need of caffeine, staring at the images of Rachel Meadows on the laptop screen. The night-lights of Terenure village shine in at him through the top-floor window of the police station, the office dark now except for a lone desk lamp and the reflective glare of the laptop illuminating his face. Flicking through the crime scene images, questions ricochet against one another. He knows how to solve a crime, ten years as a detective has taught him that, but he also knows studying these images could reveal something others have missed.

He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose, staring at the street life below. A couple hail a cab, the rain drizzling down after a day of intense heat. In the shadows, a group of women huddle beneath a red umbrella while traffic whizzes past, fast and furious, in much the same way as the crime scene images invade his sleep, disjointed, like a kaleidoscope revealing only slithers of themselves.

His phone buzzes an alarm, telling him his shift ended two hours ago. He’s no intention of leaving; his apartment, devoid of company, has already lost the battle against the images on-screen. He zooms in on a photograph of Rachel Meadows, the earliest known victim, her sprawled body lifeless in a darkened laneway—hair tangled, muddied, and partly covering her face. Rachel had a life, family and friends who cared about her. A father who never thought he’d see his daughter this way, and a mother with a broken heart so huge, she’ll spend the rest of her life reliving snapshots of her daughter’s life. All because some son of a bitch took their daughter from them.

Nick examines the long slim fingers, another tentative link between the victims, like a calling card telling him to take note, as he flicks to the image of the lone navy shoe, the heel broken, as if at some point Rachel lost her balance or was pushed. The next set of images are the ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. He zooms in again, studying the abrasions consistent with scratches caused by a rope. Another victim had similar markings, from being restrained in a face-down position.

The final set of photographs reveal the contents of Rachel’s bag, discarded off the N8 motorway, containing a smashed compact mirror, makeup, and miniature perfume samples. The samples could be important, but in truth, every detail mattered.

Rachel, like the other three victims, was in her thirties, all killed over a fifteen-year time frame, and all within the investigation formally called Operation Shadow. Some in the force believed the perpetrator was a kind of sleeper, a guy who otherwise lived a normal life. He could even be married, resisting the urge to strike until there was some form of trigger, something tempting him to walk temporarily out of his so-called normal life to kill again.

But Nick knows the start of a story is seldom the first killing. With guys like this, escalation happens over time. At first, the killer might have been content following his victims, or peeping in at them through their bedroom windows, and most likely, his first offence would have been close to home. Only soon, he’d have needed more, breaking and entering the likely next step, quickly followed by a desire for his victims to know he existed.

Nick opens the original missing persons photographs of all four women, their eyes staring back at him. It’s been too long, they seem to say, as Nick considers if he, like his colleagues before him, could mess up.

At first, he hated the idea of the Cold Case Unit. He thought he’d miss the adrenaline rush of arriving at crime scenes, his mind assessing every detail—an unlocked window, a TV humming in the corner, or a countertop obviously wiped down. It all mattered, as did the study of the victim, their age, profile, bruises or marks, entry and exit wounds, position of the body, and what, if anything, all of it could tell him. Cold cases, he figured, wouldn’t be for him, but he was wrong. Which is why he finds himself, long past his shift, scanning case files created long before he became a detective, and the reason why is simple. The killer is still out there.

Operation Shadow, the brainchild of Assistant Deputy Commissioner Christopher Norris, was born out of many factors. The lack of a firm suspect was one. The unproven link between the victims was another. These, alongside the endless television document. . .