The boy liked the peacefulness of the creek, midway between his home and his grandmother’s. Despite the roar of water flowing down the mountainside, it was quiet today. No gunfire or shelling. He looked around as he dipped the bucket into the spring water, making sure he was alone. He thought he heard a car in the distance and glanced behind him. Dust was rising from the twisting road. Someone was coming. He hauled up the bucket, spilling the water. The screech of brakes and the sound of loud voices propelled him to run.
As he neared home, he dropped the bucket and fell to the ground, lying flat on his belly, gravel tearing into his bare skin. He had left his shirt hanging on a rusty nail sticking out of a concrete block back where he was working with Papa. They’d been trying to mend the shell damage on his grandmother’s house. The boy knew it was futile, but Papa insisted. At thirteen, he knew better than to argue. Anyway, he had been happy to spend a day with Papa, away from his chattering mother and sister.
On elbows and knees he crawled over the dusty roadway into the long scrub grass at the edge. Only a few yards from his house, but it might as well have been a mile.
He listened. Heard laughter, followed by screams. Mama? Rhea? No! He pleaded with the sun in the cloudless sky. Its only answer was a burning heat on his skin.
More rough laughter. Soldiers?
He inched forward. Men were shouting. What could he do? Was Papa too far away to help? Did he have his gun with him?
The boy crept on. At the fence, he parted the long brown grass and leaned in between two posts.
A green jeep with a red cross on an open door. Four men. Soldier’s uniforms. Guns slung idly across their backs. Trousers around ankles. Bare buttocks in the air, humping. He knew what they were doing. They’d raped his friend’s sister who lived at the foot of the mountain. And then they’d killed her.
Fighting back his useless tears, he watched. Mama and Rhea were screaming. The two soldiers got up, straightened their clothes as the other two took their places. More laughter.
Clamping his teeth onto his fist, he choked down sobs. Shep, his collie dog, barked loudly, circling the soldiers hysterically. The boy froze, then jumped, cracking his front tooth against bone, as a gunshot echoed up against the mountain and back down again. He let out an involuntary cry. Birds shot up from the sparse trees, merged as one, then flew in all directions. Shep lay unmoving in the yard beneath the makeshift swing, a tyre Papa had put up on a branch when they were little children. They were still children, but they didn’t play on the swing any more. Not since the war.
An argument broke out among the soldiers. The boy tried to understand what they were saying but couldn’t avert his eyes from the naked, dust-covered figures, still alive, their screams now muted whimpers. Where was Papa?
He stared, feeling hypnotised, as the men pulled on surgical gloves. The tallest one extracted a long steel blade from an old-fashioned scabbard attached to his hip. Then another one did the same. The boy was frozen with terror. Watching transfixed, he saw the soldier crouch behind his mama and drag her up against his chest. The other man grabbed eleven-year-old Rhea. Blood streamed down her legs and he quelled an urge to find clothing to hide her nakedness. Weeping silent tears, he felt powerless and useless.
One man raised his knife. It glinted in the sun before he drew it downwards, slitting Rhea from her throat to her belly. The other man did the same to Mama. The bodies convulsed. Blood gushed and spurted into the faces of the abusers. Gloved hands thrust into the cavities and tore out organs, blood dripping along their arms. The other two soldiers rushed forward with steel cases. The bodies dropped to the ground.
Wide-eyed with horror, the boy watched the soldiers quickly place the organs of his precious mama and sister into the cases, laughing as they snapped them shut. One took a marker from his pocket and casually wrote on the side of the container and another turned and kicked out at Rhea. Her body shuddered. He looked directly over towards the boy’s hiding place.
Holding his breath, eyes locked on the soldier, the boy felt no terror now. He was prepared to die and half stood up, but the man was moving back to his comrades. They packed the cases into the jeep, jumped in and with a cloud of stones and dust rising skywards, drove back down the mountain road.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there before a hand clamped down on his shoulder and pulled him into an embrace. He looked into a pair of heartbroken eyes. He hadn’t heard the frantic running or the frenzied shouting. The vision of the disembowelled bodies of Mama and Rhea had imprinted themselves as a photograph in his mind. And he knew it would never fade.
Papa dragged him towards the bodies. The boy stared into his mother’s eyes. Pleading in death. Papa took out his pistol, turned his wife’s face into the hot clay and shot her in the back of the head. Her body flexed. Stilled.
Papa cried, big, silent tears, as he crawled over to Rhea. He shot her too. The boy knew she was already dead. There was no need for the bullet. He tried to shout at Papa but his voice was lost in the midst of the turmoil.
‘I had to do it!’ Papa cried. ‘To save their souls.’ He pulled the two bodies, and then Shep, into the house. With determination in his steps he hurriedly emptied a jerry can of petrol inside the door and threw in a lighted torch of dry reeds. Picking up his gun, he raised it towards the boy.
No words of fear, no movement. Yet. The boy was immobile until he saw Papa’s work-stained finger tremble on the trigger. Instinct caused him to run.
Papa cried out, ‘Save yourself. Run, boy. Don’t stop running.’
Looking over his shoulder as he went, he saw Papa turn the gun to his own wrinkled forehead and pull the trigger before falling back into the flames. They ignited in a whoosh of crinkling, falling timber.
The boy watched from the fence as the life he had known burned as bright as the sun in the sky. No help came. The war had caused everyone to fend for themselves and he supposed those living in the other houses along the road were hiding, terrified, awaiting their own fate. He couldn’t blame them. There was nothing they could do here anyway.
After some time the sun dipped low and night stars twinkled like nothing was wrong. Without even a shirt on his back he began the long, lonely trek down the mountain.
He did not know where he was going.
He had nowhere to go.
He did not care.
Slowly he walked, one foot in front of the other, stones breaking through the soft rubber soles of his sandals. He walked until his feet bled. He walked until his sandals disintegrated like his heart. He kept on walking until he reached a place where he would never feel pain again.
It was the dark that frightened her the most. Not being able to see. And the sounds. Soft skittering, then silence.
Shifting onto her side, she tried to haul herself into a sitting position. Gave up. A rustle. Squeaking. She screamed, and her voice echoed back. Sobbing, she wrapped her arms tight around her body. Her thin cotton shirt and jeans were soaked with cold sweat.
The dark.
She had spent too many nights like this in her own bedroom, listening to her mother’s laughter with others in the kitchen below. Now she remembered those nights as a luxury. Because that wasn’t real dark. Street lights and the moon had cast shadows through paper-thin curtains, birthing the wallpaper to life. Her dated furniture had stood like statues in a dimly lit cemetery. Her clothes, heaped in piles on a chair in the corner, had sometimes appeared to be heaving, as the headlamps of cars passing on the road shone through the curtains. And she thought that had been dark? No. This, where she was now, was the true meaning of pitch black.
She wished she had her phone, with her life attached to it – her cyber friends on Facebook and Twitter. They might be able to help her. If she had her phone. If only.
The door opened, the glow from the hallway blinding her eyes shut. Church bells chimed in the distance. Where was she? Near home? The bells stopped. A sharp laugh. The light flicked on. A naked bulb swayed with the draught and she saw the figure of a man.
Backing into the damp wall, scuffing her bare heels along the floor, she felt a tug on her hair and pain pinpricked each follicle on her head. She didn’t care. He could scalp her bald as long as she got home alive.
‘P-please…’
Her voice didn’t sound like her own. High-pitched and quivering, no longer laced with her usual teenage swagger.
A rough hand pulled her upward, her hair snarled round his fingers. She squinted at him, trying to form a mental picture. He was taller than her, wearing a grey knitted hat pierced with two slits revealing hostile eyes. She must remember the eyes. For later. For when she was free. A thrust of determination inched its way into her heart. Straightening her spine, she faced him.
‘What?’ he barked.
His sour breath churned her stomach upside down. His clothes smelled like the slaughterhouse behind Kennedy’s butcher’s shop on Patrick Street. In springtime, little lambs succumbed to bullets or knives or whatever they used to kill them. That smell. Death. The cloying odour clinging to her uniform all day long.
She shuddered as he moved his face nearer. Now she had something to be more frightened of than pitch-black nothingness. For the first time in her life, she actually wanted her mother.
‘Let me go,’ she cried. ‘Home. I want to go home. Please.’
‘You make me laugh, little one.’
He leaned towards her, so close that his wool-covered nose touched hers and his sickly breath oozed through the knitted stitches.
She tried to back away but there was nowhere to go. She held her breath, desperately trying not to puke as he gripped her shoulder and pushed her to the door.
‘Stage two of your adventure begins,’ he said, laughing to himself.
Her blood crawled as she hobbled into the barren corridor. High ceilings. Peeling paint. Giant cast-iron radiators snatched up her faltering steps with their shadows. A high wooden door blocked her progress. His hand slid around her waist, pulling her body to his. She froze. Leaning over, he shoved open the door.
Forced into a room, she slipped on the wet floor and fell to her knees.
‘No, no…’ She swung around frantically. What was going on? What was this place? Windows sheathed in Perspex kept daylight at bay. The floor was covered in damp heavy-duty plastic; the walls were streaked with what she thought looked like dried blood. Everything she saw screeched at her to run. Instead, she crawled. On hands and knees. All she could see in front of her were his boots, caked in mud or blood or both. He hauled her up and prodded her to move. Rotating her body, she faced him.
He pulled off the balaclava. Eyes she had only seen through slits were now joined by a thin, pink-lipped mouth. She stared. His face was a blank canvas awaiting a horror yet to be painted.
‘Tell me your name again?’ he asked.
‘Wh-what do you mean?’
‘I want to hear you say it,’ he snarled.
Catching sight of the knife in his hand, she slithered and slipped on the blood-soaked plastic before falling prostrate before him. This time she welcomed the darkness. As it glided over the tiny stars flickering behind her eyes, she whispered, ‘Maeve.’
They were at it again. Loud and cheerful. Alto and tenor competing with each other, starling and wood pigeon. Bird shit floated down in front of the open window, just missing the glass.
‘Shit,’ Lottie Parker said; her favourite swear word, the irony not lost on her. She tugged the window shut, making the room even more hot and airless, but she could still hear them. She flopped onto the damp duvet. Another night sweating. She would be forty-four next month, at least six years, she hoped, from the age when she could put it down to the menopause. So it had to be the monster heat.
Her eyes were dry from lack of sleep, and then her phone alarm buzzed.
Go time. Work time.
And Lottie Parker wondered how she would cope today.
‘Where are my keys?’ she shouted up the stairs half an hour later.
No answer.
Eight bells rang out from the cathedral situated in the centre of Ragmullin, half a mile from her home. Late. She tipped the contents of her handbag onto the kitchen table. Sunglasses – necessary; wallet – empty; till receipts – too many; bank card – lost cause; phone – would ring any minute; Xanax… Help. No keys.
Opening a blister pack, she swallowed a pill, even though she had promised herself not to slip into old habits. What the hell, she’d been awake most of the night and needed a shot of something. It was months since she’d touched an alcoholic drink, so a pill was the next best thing. Maybe even better. She poured a glass of water.
The stairs creaked. Seconds later, Chloe, her younger daughter, stormed into the kitchen.
‘We need to talk, Mother.’
She called Lottie Mother just to antagonise her.
‘We do. But not now,’ Lottie said. ‘I’ve to go to work. If I ever find my keys.’
She rummaged through the detritus on the table. ID, hairbrush, sunscreen, two-euro coin. No keys.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘Jesus, Chloe, give me a break. Please.’
‘No, Mother. I won’t. Sean’s going round like a zombie, Katie’s… not herself, I’m a mess and you’re a madwoman the minute you have to return to work.’
Lottie stared helplessly at her daughter and kept her mouth shut in case she said the wrong thing. These days everything she uttered appeared to send the sixteen-year-old into either a sulk or a tantrum. And Chloe wasn’t finished yet.
‘You need to do something. This family’s falling apart and what does all-important Mrs Detective Inspector do? She goes back to work.’
Chloe scraped back her unruly blonde hair, piled it on top of her head and wrapped it up with a bobbin. It stuck out in places and loose tendrils framed her face. Lottie went to smooth it but her daughter stepped away.
‘I’m trying,’ Lottie said, slumping on a chair. She’d spent the last few months trying to build her family back up after tragedy had struck while she had been trying to resolve her last case. She’d thought things were a lot better now. How wrong could you be? ‘You’ve had me at home for the last few months. Granny is coming over later to have dinner ready when you and Sean get in from school. She’ll keep an eye on Katie too. What more can I do? You know I have to work. We need the money.’
‘We need you.’
What could she say to that? Adam would have known what to say, she thought, remembering her dead husband’s gift for finding the right words. But he was never coming back. Four years dead come July, and she still struggled without him.
Chloe picked up her school rucksack. ‘And I hate this shit-hole of a town. What hope have I of ever getting away?’ She banged the front door on her way out.
‘Want a lift?’ Lottie shouted to a shadow.
No keys. Shit! Now she’d have to walk to work. Swiping her hand across the table, she knocked the contents of her handbag to the floor.
The doorbell rang. She jumped up and ran into the hall.
‘What did you forget?’ she asked, opening the door.
It wasn’t Chloe.
The girl was dressed in a navy sweater despite the morning warmth.
Stepping into her footsteps, a good fifteen strides behind her, he assessed her long legs. Not muscular, but beautifully slender. Blonde hair lolling on top of her head in an untidy bun made her appear taller and leaner. She had large breasts for a teenager, beneath her loose school uniform. He knew this because he’d seen her wearing a tight long-sleeved T-shirt in Danny’s Bar at the weekend. Unnoticed in the heave of hot bodies spilling pints in the beer garden, he had been close enough to touch the V of her back, just above her buttocks. He had removed his hand quickly though he’d wanted it to linger, to trace the vertebrae beneath the light cotton, to let it wander lower. Her hair was hanging loose that night, long and voluminous, with a few strands nestling in the curve of her breasts. Every detail registered, stored in his mind, for him to return to whenever he wanted.
Now she walked slowly and he had to keep several paces behind. She strolled up Gaol Street and onto Main Street. The school was another ten-minute walk from there.
He forced himself to concentrate on the end target. She needed saving. Because he knew why she wore long sleeves. Soon she would search the depths of his eyes, begging for a happy release from her pain.
He smiled contentedly, following her along the street, watching her swing her rucksack from one shoulder to the other. She must be very hot by now; too hot. Lost in his thoughts, he almost missed her stopping and turning around.
Dipping his head, he overtook her.
He kept walking. Normal pace. Had she noticed him? A glance over his shoulder to see why she had suddenly halted. Perhaps she had sensed him. Would she recognise him as a dangerous Lucifer or a guardian angel? He would know soon enough.
At the old harbour he crossed the road, avoiding the few girls chattering at the school gates. He walked along the canal bank and idly watched a swarm of flies hover above the stagnant waters. A sleek brown shadow lurked in the depths – a predator searching for prey? He was aware that menacing pike swam in these waters with their large gaping mouths, fangs gnashing and snaring unsuspecting trout and bream.
His excitement had been tempered. For now.
His little fish had escaped him. For now.
But he would continue to prowl the shadows, waiting to snatch his chance. Like the pike with its open mouth, he could be patient.
Lottie stepped back from the front door.
The young woman standing on the step was a stranger. A white silk scarf wrapped around her head, a hijab framing a gaunt face. A small boy was clutching her hand tightly. He stared up at Lottie with scared brown eyes. A cracked-plastic cream-coloured jacket over a cotton blouse and jeans did little to hide the woman’s thinness. Lottie noticed that despite the oppressive heat she was wearing heavy brown boots.
‘Can I help you?’ Lottie asked wearily.
‘Zonje.’
‘Sonja?’
The young woman shook her head. ‘Zonje… madam…’ A shrug of her shoulders.
‘Oh. Zonje means madam. Got you now.’ Lottie stepped forward, closing the front door behind her. ‘Look, I can’t stop. I’m in a hurry, I need to get to work.’
The woman didn’t move. Lottie sighed. This was all she needed. Next she’d have Superintendent Corrigan shouting down the phone to hike her arse into work. Was the woman begging? She thought of the coins she’d tipped out of her bag. Maybe they would do the trick.
‘Ju lutem… please.’ The woman looked at her imploringly, her broken English soft and accented.
‘I’ve no money,’ Lottie said. Almost true. ‘Maybe later.’ Not true.
With a shake of her head, the young woman lifted the little boy into her arms. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘help.’
Sighing, Lottie said, ‘Wait here.’
Back inside, she picked up a coin from the floor. When she turned round, the woman was standing behind her. In her kitchen.
‘Jesus! What are you doing?’ Lottie held out the two euros. ‘Here, take this.’ She waved her hand toward the front door.
Declining the money, the young woman tugged a crumpled envelope from her jeans pocket and offered it to Lottie. She shook her head without taking it.
‘What is it?’ she asked. Was it one of those notes begging for money? The morning was going from bad to worse.
The woman shrugged and the little boy whimpered.
Feeling the stirring of an instinct within, Lottie pulled out a chair and gestured for the woman to sit. The boy climbed on to her knee and nestled his head into the silk scarf.
‘What do you want?’ Lottie asked, picking up her stuff from the floor and dumping it all back in her bag. She hurriedly tapped out a text to Detective Sergeant Boyd telling him she was going to be late, asking him to cover for her. A streak of guilt itched beneath her skin. She hadn’t had time for her daughter earlier and here she was entertaining a stranger. But something was telling her to listen to what she had to say.
The girl spoke rapidly in a language Lottie couldn’t understand.
‘Hey, slow down,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
A head shake, shrug of shoulders. It reminded Lottie of Chloe. What age was this woman? Looking at her more closely, she thought she might be anywhere between sixteen and her early twenties. No more than a girl.
‘I’m Lottie. You?’
Deep brown orbs appeared to question her for a moment before their flecks of hazel brightened, lighting up the face.
‘Mimoza.’ The girl smiled, white teeth glinting in the morning sun beaming through the window.
Getting somewhere at last, Lottie thought.
‘Milot.’ The girl pointed to the boy.
‘So, Mimoza and Milot,’ Lottie said. ‘What do you want?’
Maybe she should offer tea. No. She needed to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Her phone beeped. Boyd. She glanced at the text. You are dead late. Corrigan’s on the warpath. Nothing new there.
Sean, her fourteen-year-old son, sauntered into the kitchen. ‘Who owns this?’ he asked, holding up a raggedy stuffed rabbit with long chewed ears.
Milot held out a hand and grasped the toy.
Sean mussed the boy’s hair. ‘What’s wrong, bud?’ He crouched down. ‘Why you crying?’
Shrinking into Mimoza’s chest, the child pursed his bottom lip over his top one while his little fingers slid up and down the rabbit’s worn label.
‘Can you play with him for a few minutes?’ Lottie asked. ‘Before you leave for school? Chloe’s already gone ahead.’
Sean nodded and bounced a hurling ball from one hand to the other. ‘Wanna play ball?’
The child sought his mother’s approval with his eyes and the girl nodded. Sliding from her knee, Milot followed Sean through the back door out into the garden. Lottie stared after them. It was the most she’d heard her son say in a month. She smiled across the table at the girl. Maybe allowing her into her home had had some use after all.
‘Son?’ Mimoza asked.
‘Yes,’ Lottie said.
‘Milot my son,’ Mimoza said.
She looked too young to have a child, Lottie thought.
‘I have little English. Is hard to explain to you. Easy for me to write in my language.’ She passed over the envelope.
Lottie glanced down. It was sealed, with foreign words written on the outside.
‘How am I supposed to know what this means?’
The girl said, ‘Find Kaltrina. Help me and Milot escape. Please, you help?’
‘Kaltrina? Who’s she? Escape what?’
‘I cannot tell much. I write down a little. You read?’
‘Of course. Is someone threatening you? Where do you live? What’s happened to this Kaltrina?’
The girl pointed to the envelope. ‘All there. Sorry it not English. I afraid.’
‘How do you know who I am? Why did you not call in to the garda … the police station?’
The girl shrugged. ‘It not safe. You help?’
Lottie sighed. ‘I’ll see if I can get someone to translate it for me. That’s all I can do at the moment.’ She glanced at the clock. She was going to be dead late for her first day back to work after almost four months off.
The girl caught her eye, stood up quickly and called the boy. Sean ushered him into the kitchen. The little fellow’s cheeks were flushed. Mimoza smiled up at Sean, took her son by the hand and went to the front door. It closed behind her with a soft click.
‘Did you find out anything from him?’ Lottie asked.
Sean shrugged. ‘He’s a great little hurler.’ He sauntered up the stairs towards the cavernous security of his room.
‘Hurry up, Sean. You’re going to be late for school. And don’t wake Katie.’
Picking up her bag with an exasperated shake of her head, Lottie stuffed Mimoza’s envelope inside and then noticed her keys hanging on the hook at the door. She took them and stepped out into the morning sunshine.
Reversing her car out of the drive, she noticed Mimoza and her son walking to the end of the road. Before they turned the corner, a smaller girl joined them, linking her arm into Mimoza’s.
When she arrived at the junction with the main road, Lottie glanced around and noticed a black car pulling away from the kerb at great speed. It drove along the outside of the line of traffic, squeezed in and disappeared. Had someone been waiting for her mysterious visitors?
As a break in the traffic appeared, she manoeuvred her car into the line of early-morning commuters, still thinking about Mimoza and her son. How did the other girl fit into the picture? Maybe the letter would explain it all.
It was too hot for a jumper, but Chloe had been in such a state she hadn’t been able to find her long-sleeved uniform shirt. She resigned herself to sweating her way through the day in the heavy wool garment.
Pausing opposite Dunne’s Stores car park, she wiped away the perspiration bubbling on her forehead and debated skipping school. A man brushed past her and she was aware of him looking at her sideways, but she took no notice of him. The knot of anxiety in her chest was threatening to explode. Taking a few deep breaths, she continued up the hill, greeting other girls on the way, a smile plastered firmly in place.
At the bridge over the old harbour, she glanced down, almost casually, into the dark green canal water and realised she couldn’t face school. With exams a month away, she knew she needed to be in class, but she couldn’t do it. Not today.
The knot in her chest slowly untied itself as she hurried along the towpath, away from the ceaseless carefree chatter of the gaggle hanging around the school gate. She walked with unseeing eyes until she reached the small bridge where the canal linked up with the supply. Her dad had once told her the river was called the supply because it supplied fresh water from Lough Cullion to replenish the canal. God, she missed her dad.
Turning left, she walked along the riverbank for a few minutes before sitting down on the long grass, losing herself in the depth and height of the reeds. Opening her rucksack, she extracted from her pencil case a razor blade wrapped in soft white tissue.
She knew life was cruel. They’d lost their father, and then a few months ago Sean had almost died too. Her younger brother would never be the same again, tarnished with the memories of what had happened in that cursed chapel to him and Jason, Katie’s boyfriend. Katie was damaged too; even though she tried to act normal, Chloe knew her scars ran deep.
Did Katie blame their mother? Chloe hoped not, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Lottie was somehow at fault; she hadn’t acted fast enough at the time to save the boys, and Jason had died.
Chloe was a fixer and now she felt helpless. She couldn’t fix her family. She couldn’t fix herself. She couldn’t fix anything. She turned the blade over and over in her hand.
Lifting her face to the rising sun, she allowed the rays to burn her face before rolling up her sleeve. Selecting an unblemished patch, she brought the sharp piece of steel down into her young skin. One slow slash. Not too deep. Not too shallow.
The sight of the bright red blood, bubbling at first then flowing over the paleness, soothed her. Digging in a little deeper, she felt the pain, fought tears and slumped back into the arid grass.
The reeds rustled. She sat upright, looking around, but there was silence. She felt like someone was watching her but she couldn’t see anybody. Pulling down her sleeve, she gathered her belongings and shoved them into her bag. Was she imagining things? Was the noise just water rats foraging among the reeds? Ugh! She shivered in the heat and set out along the gravel path, wondering where she could hide out for the day.
Checking her phone, she posted to the Twitter hashtag #cutforlife. The feeling that someone had been watching her refused to disappear. She slung her rucksack over her shoulder and began to run.
The narrow roadway made the job difficult, but at least it was a one-way street. The three-storey apartments on the right-hand side cast a thin shadow, averting the rays of the morning sun.
He had been late for work so he had to make up time before the boss arrived. New water pipes had been laid on Friday, and as the work moved along the street they’d filled in parts of the road with temporary tarmac, while other parts took a light dusting of clay covered with iron sheeting. Quick and simple, the boss had said. No one would know the. . .
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