When She Was Gone

Book 2: David Dunnigan

by S.A. Dunphy

Genres: Mystery; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

The gripping, fast-paced thriller from best-selling author S. A. Dunphy. When criminologist David Dunnigan receives the shocking delivery of one of his niece Beth's shoes, it reignites the 18-year-old investigation into her disappearance - which Dunnigan has always blamed himself for. But is he ready for what he might find? New evidence links Beth's abduction to an antiquated psychiatric hospital and on to an Inuit village in the frozen north of Greenland, where the parents of Harry, a homeless boy Dunnigan and his friend Miley rescued from the streets, may have been trafficked. Can Dunnigan survive the hunt, and will he find Beth after all this time?

Release date: March 1, 2018

Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland

Print pages: 320

Sample

Somewhere

Some time

HE KNEW HE HAD A NAME.

He was aware that somewhere in the mists of what had once been there was a place he called home, a family he cherished and people who trusted and valued him – he had knowledge and skills that were hard won and sought after. At one time men had listened when he spoke and jumped to his commands. But that was before reality had unravelled.

During the early days of his incarceration he turned the details of his previous existence – who and what he had been before he was taken – into a chant, a prayer to make it easier to recall, but even that simple incantation was slipping from him, and he lived in terror that one day he would awaken from a nightmare-haunted sleep to find he had no idea who or where he was.

And that would be worse than death.

Often, despite all his efforts, he drifted, unable to discern reality from fantasy, and grinning, jittering, creeping things slithered from the shadows of his dreams during waking hours too. Then, regardless of any almost-forgotten desire for dignity, he screamed, because he did not know what else to do. The cries erupted from him in waves of throat-ripping fury, and it was almost a relief, because he found he could dive down into the crests and troughs of the horror and sink to a small, silent place within himself where no one could reach him.

Or so he thought.

Finally, when his paroxysms started to disturb the other denizens of that half-world, he was taken from the room that had become the entirety of his universe and brought to a tiny, bare cell – he knew from the change in temperature and the texture of the air that it was subterranean.

The frame of a military cot stood against the back wall, and a wheelchair with a bucket fastened beneath it sat in the corner just inside the door, which was pale grey metal and had a barred grille set into it at about head height. A dim bulb glowed and buzzed overhead – there were no windows in the closet-like space, and as the light was never switched off, he lived in a kind of artificial twilight.

Food was delivered twice a day, and he made himself eat it, although it was so dull and flavourless it was more a chewing exercise than anything else. He forced the meals down, telling himself he needed the nutrition, but he came to wonder if the porridge and grey stew they brought had some form of tranquilliser mixed through them, as he habitually passed out – for how long he knew not – after eating.

Finally, he decided that he did not care, as these sleeps were mercifully dreamless, and he craved the oblivion they brought.

And the dim sense of who he had once been passed further and further from his awareness.

SO OUT OF PLACE AND BIZARRE WAS THIS SIGHT THAT for a moment he backed away from the door and considered lying down again and turning to face the wall. He was about to do just this, when:

‘Hello? Mister? Can you help me, please?’

She spoke in a soft, almost accentless voice.

The prisoner froze, torn between his desire to hide from what could, for all he knew, be a hallucination and his wish to learn more about this strange visitor.

‘Mister?’

Finally, in faltering steps, he went back to the grille and gazed out.

She was perhaps five years old; her hair, which was dark brown, almost black, had been tied into a loose ponytail. She wore what looked to be a cheap, ill-fitting tracksuit of indeterminate grey, and on her feet were cheap blue trainers. As generic and slovenly as her dress was, something about this child told him that, not so very long ago, someone had cared for her a great deal.

Which made it all the more jarring that she had obviously been crying – her cheeks were wet and flushed and her eyes red.

‘What do you want?’ he asked querulously.

She sniffed and cleared her throat, peering up at him with grave seriousness.

‘Could you tell me where the Doctor is, please?’

The prisoner blinked.

‘You want to see a doctor?’

‘No – not a doctor, the Doctor. I need him to save me.’

‘Oh.’

Somewhere deep inside the prisoner something visceral stirred – hadn’t he had a child once? A little girl, not so unlike this one? He felt that he had, but the memory of it just would not come.

‘Have you seen him?’ the girl continued, wiping an eye with an already damp sleeve and sniffing again. ‘I tried to send him a message, but I don’t know if he got it. Sometimes, if you write things down – important things – and think really, really hard, he hears you and comes to help.’

The prisoner blinked, trying to process what she was saying. Even in his confused state, though, he knew that the child made no sense, and he was forced to consider that he might be caught in a bizarre dream – if not of his making, then possibly generated by the child’s feverish mind.

He pushed the thought aside.

‘You should run away,’ he heard himself saying. ‘This is a bad place. Find the door and get out and run far, far away.’

‘But then the Doctor won’t find me – when he gets here, he’s going to be very cross with the bad men, and he’ll make sure they are never mean to kids again. Then he’ll take me home to my mammy and daddy in his blue box.’

Fresh tears leaked from the corners of her eyes at this, and he saw her fight to regain control. She was trying so hard to be brave. He admired her for it, while pitying her, too. He had been brave. For a time.

‘Just go!’ he hissed. ‘Get out of here before they find you!’

And then he heard the sound of keys in a lock at the end of the hallway, and a look of true terror spread across the child’s pretty features, and without another word she took off at a sprint the way she had come. He wanted to shrink back into his safe, featureless room, but somehow he couldn’t – he was locked in place, and as he watched, a cold, bitter darkness began to work its way down the corridor, and a shape that looked like an old man but wasn’t stalked past, glancing at him with reptilian eyes before making its way after the fleeing child.

‘Now, Beth, dear.’ He heard a deep, purring voice. ‘How did you get out of your room, eh? Time for bed, my dear. Don’t you want to have your story before lights out?’

He heard her screeching: ‘No! I won’t go! I won’t go!’

And then he was bellowing, too, and someone was opening his door and he tried to fight them, the Gods knew he did, but they were too strong.

It was months before he could get the sound of the little girl’s cries out of his head.

He never forgot her, though they tried to make him.

Phibsboro, Dublin

11.13 a.m.

DIANE ROBINSON WAS AWARE OF SOMEONE SHAKING her gently. Opening one eye, she saw the face of her man-friend, David Dunnigan (they had as yet been unable to settle on a proper title for what they were – boyfriend/girlfriend seemed ridiculous, as they were each either in the throes of or as close as didn’t matter to middle age), grinning sheepishly.

‘Breakfast is served,’ he said quietly. They hadn’t been together long, and had only spent the night together a handful of times, but Dunnigan had quickly learned that she was not a morning person, so a tentative approach to waking her was assuredly the best course of action.

‘It’s still the middle of the night.’

‘It’s a quarter past eleven!’

‘You just made my point for me.’

He leaned down and kissed her, then went back out to the living room.

Diane stayed where she was and stretched luxuriously. Like most of Dunnigan’s apartment, the room was devoid of any decoration or personalising touches: it contained a double bed (when she had first visited, there had only been a single, but she had persuaded him to scale up), a single bedside locker (which he had thoughtfully put on the side where she slept) and a wardrobe. The bedspread and pillowcases were all a neutral cream colour – the only other set he had considered buying involved characters from the Star Wars films, so she had steered him in the direction of something more subtle.

Getting up, she pulled on an over-sized Bat out of Hell T-shirt, then walked to the door. Opening it a crack, she could see the man she had come to care deeply about perched on the threadbare couch he refused to get rid of, sipping from a mug of tea and leafing through The Sunday Times. This room was the only one that showed any signs of individuality: on the wall above the fireplace (which she had never seen him use) hung a framed poster of Patrick Troughton as the second incarnation of the science-fiction character Doctor Who, and on the empty mantelpiece directly below was a photo of Dunnigan and his niece, Beth, who had been four years old when the shot was taken on 8 December 1998, the day she disappeared.

Beth, who was the daughter of Gina, Dunnigan’s twin sister, had been about the only thing he gave a damn about other than his work – as a criminology lecturer at the National University in Maynooth and a consultant on missing persons cases and serious sexual assaults for the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Harcourt Street. A shared trip into Dublin city centre on the official opening of the Christmas shopping season had become a tradition for Beth and her uncle, and one they both looked forward to with great excitement. Dunnigan had prepared for it with the same degree of precision and attention to detail he applied to the criminal investigations he was so expert at – their itinerary had been carefully mapped out, he had researched restaurants they might visit for lunch and a mid-afternoon mug of hot chocolate and Beth had shown him her shopping list in advance, so he might think about where her gifts could be obtained at the most competitive prices.

All of which made it a bitter irony that a random variable had proven to be their undoing. Dunnigan and Beth had stopped on Grafton Street, just opposite the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, to listen to a group of carol singers. The little girl had been holding his hand, but she let go for a moment, and when he looked down to check on her, perhaps thirty seconds later, she was gone.

Eighteen years later, not so much as a trace of the child had ever been found. And it had almost killed Dunnigan.

He had retreated into himself – racked with guilt, he’d pushed everyone away: family members, colleagues, the few friends he had – and started approaching the work he had always been passionately devoted to with a sort of mechanical indifference. He taught his classes and processed evidence for his police work, but with just enough effort to get by.

His career stalled. If it had not been for Chief Superintendent Frank Tormey, who had recruited him as a consultant for the gardaí in the first place and still saw something in the strange, skinny, unkempt young man, he would have been let go countless times. As it was, the university repeatedly cut his lecturing hours until he was down to the bare minimum, which meant he was dependent on the police work to simply pay his bills.

Six months ago, through a case he had been given because no one else wanted it – a series of missing persons reports involving homeless people – Dunnigan had come to the Widow’s Quay Homeless Project, and there he had met the charismatic and unorthodox priest Father Bill Creedon, who had taken the lonely investigator under his wing. At the project he had also met Diane, who acted as a therapist-cum-receptionist/accountant for the charity, and after several faltering steps, the two had begun a tentative relationship that had blossomed into something special.

As they’d become closer, she’d sensed him loosening up – sharing a little more and daring to open himself to others who wanted to be there for him. He’d developed a close friendship with a young man named Miley Timoney, whom he helped to escape an abusive care home he had been placed in by a family who were embarrassed at the fact that he lived with Down syndrome.

Dunnigan had even started to approach his work with renewed vigour and had actually solved the case, which had been meant to simply keep him occupied and out of trouble. Through his efforts, he had been instrumental in shutting down a people-trafficking operation that had been snatching the homeless from the streets of Dublin and sending them into forced labour all over the world.

As she watched him through the doorway, Diane thought he looked happy. Hopeful.

‘So what’s on the menu?’ she asked as she pushed the door open and went and sat down beside him.

Two takeout mugs of coffee, a plate with some Danish pastries, a couple of freshly baked croissants and two cream-cheese bagels and a jar of good raspberry jam he had bought at Donnybrook Fair the previous week (at her insistence) were sitting on the low, rickety coffee table that, although as much an orphan as anything else in the room, seemed somehow to have morphed into a companion piece to the ancient sofa.

‘All bought with my own fair hands,’ he said. ‘And a cappuccino – hurry up and drink it before it goes cold.’

He passed her the Culture section of the paper, and she grabbed a bagel and slathered it with jam. They ate in companionable silence for a few moments.

‘Would you consider getting a proper dining table?’ Diane asked.

Dunnigan looked at her from the corner of his eye.

‘I’d consider it.’

‘I thought it might be nice to have Miley and Harry over for a meal.’

Harry was a ten-year-old boy whose parents were among the many forced into indentured slavery by the After Dark Campaign, the criminal group Dunnigan, Diane and Father Bill, along with an army from one of the local crime gangs whom the (always unpredictable) priest maintained relations with for reasons best known to himself, had caused to cease operations. The police, to whom Dunnigan had handed over all the records recovered from the offices of an abandoned freight warehouse on the docks, were trying to trace those who had been abducted, but the trail was so convoluted the prospect of recovering them did not look very likely.

Harry was now in foster care, but Miley, who had become very close to the lad, still played a huge role in his life and saw him during regular visits. It was hoped these might turn into overnight stays in time.

‘Father Bill might come over too,’ Diane said, testing the waters a bit more.

‘Mmm,’ Dunnigan said (a sound Diane knew by now meant he was only half-listening). She poked him playfully in the ribs. ‘I can’t really cook, though,’ he retorted.

‘That’s why God invented takeout menus. Would your sister come?’

Dunnigan and Gina had become very close again in recent months, and while she was still wary of Diane, there had been a gentle thawing of their relationship, too.

‘She might. I could ask her.’

‘Her husband still pissed at you?’

‘Yes.’

Diane felt herself bristle. Obviously, she could understand why the man would still harbour some pain towards Dunnigan, but for the sake of the family, perhaps it was time to begin rebuilding bridges? She realised she was probably biased, but decided she didn’t care.

‘We can work on that.’

Dunnigan sat back and looked at her, his eyes clear, alive with intelligence. ‘Do we need to?’

Diane shrugged. ‘Only if you want.’

He smiled and took her hand in his. ‘I don’t.’

They continued their meal, chatting about this and that, enjoying the lazy, simple pleasure of an unhurried Sunday-morning breakfast.

Then at 12.15 p.m. (Diane had just looked at her phone, and saw it was that time precisely), the doorbell buzzed.

Widow’s Quay Homeless Project, Dublin

12.01 p.m.

FATHER BILL CREEDON POURED HIMSELF SOME TEA and wondered if it was a sin to add just a little Irish whiskey when the sun was barely at its zenith in the sky. He decided that, as it was a Sunday, the usual rules of etiquette didn’t apply (drinking buttermilk all the week, whiskey on a Sunday – wasn’t that how the old song went?) and discharged a modest amount into his mug.

On Sundays, the project operated a skeleton staff, a couple of elderly ladies coming in to cook lunch and Father Bill setting out cutlery and crockery on the tables and keeping endless pots of tea on the go for anyone who happened to drop by.

Because Sundays were habitually seen as a family day, a lot of the people who were regulars the rest of the week seemed to lay low. In fact, the dining room was usually filled with mums, dads and children, a lot of whom weren’t technically homeless but who struggled to make ends meet and were grateful for the meal the project provided. The women who came in to cook always pushed the boat out, dishing up rustic, homemade vegetable soup and soda bread for starters, a roast of some kind with all the trimmings for the main and apple crumble (or tart, depending on who was preparing dessert that weekend) with thick custard. It was a meal most restaurants would be proud of and was wholly provided out of goodwill – various local shops donated the food, and the women gave their time and skills gratis and with good humour.

That quiet, gentle sense of goodwill was one of the many things that made him particularly proud to be a Dubliner.

Father Bill had grown up amid the poverty and violence of the inner city. By the age of ten he was showing promise as a boxer and knew even then that life offered him two paths: he could go into the local gangs and make a career as an enforcer, using his talents to instil fear and spread carnage, or he could enter the seminary, join a different kind of gang and serve his community in another way entirely.

He chose the church, and while over the years he had seen the organisation become more and more weighed down by corruption and the evils it claimed to stand against, his belief in a higher power, in the inherent decency that lay in the hearts of the people he worked alongside every day, had sustained him.

He could be unorthodox – he refused to toe the line when it came to sheltering sex offenders; he believed homosexuality was just another way of loving and performed gay marriages long before the state deemed them legal; he spoke out where he saw injustice and inequality and suffered the rebukes from his superiors with a stoic shrug. He understood the landscape and the psychology of the people and the environment through which he moved, and because he valued and respected those he came across, they loved and honoured him in turn. From the kids kicking ball in the narrow laneways to the rough men who ran the criminal underworld, Father Bill was seen as someone to be reckoned with.

He sipped his tea and surveyed the small office – an almost obsolete computer, some ancient filing cabinets donated to them when a nearby paper firm closed, a desk he had brought with him from Dolphin’s Barn, his first parish. He had built the project from the ground up, and it meant the world to him. It wasn’t much, but it was more than enough.

‘Father Bill?’

One of the women on kitchen duty that day stuck her head in – a kindly, wizened face, tightly permed blue-rinsed hair, covered that day by a pink-and-orange head scarf.

‘Yes, Kitty – what can I do for you?’

‘Spuds, Father. We need another sack, and neither me nor Marie can heft the things. Could you go out back and grab some for us?’

‘I will, of course,’ the priest said, and taking another draught of his tea, he set it on the desk and followed Kitty out.

The storage room was a low shed situated behind the project. Tinned food, blankets, bags of donated clothes and fresh foodstuffs that were used quickly (potatoes rarely languished in the shed for more than a day) were kept there. Father Bill unlocked the door and went inside, grabbing a five-kilo bag. He was a tall man, over six feet in height, with a full head of dark hair that was showing some grey. He still had the slim waist and broad shoulders of a boxer, and his nose had been broken more than once. He was, however, by any standards, a handsome man, a fact not lost on his parishioners.

He turned to bring the spuds to the kitchen, when he realised there was someone standing in the doorway.

If he had looked at his watch, he would have seen that it was 12.15 p.m. exactly.

Ringsend, Dublin

11.50 a.m.

MILEY TIMONEY WAS SINGING. LOUDLY. THE FACT that music was not a talent he possessed did not prevent him from enjoying the experience one bit. As he hoovered his small apartment, the first home he could really call his own, Miley belted out the chorus to ‘Don’t Pay the Ferryman’, which he considered to be one of the top-five best songs from his newly discovered favourite musical artist, Chris de Burgh, whose greatest hits collection he was playing at top volume.

Miley’s life had not always been a happy one. Placed in care when he was six, following the death of his father, he had been moved from one care setting to another until he had ended up in a nursing home, a residential service for the elderly. Even though he was not yet thirty years old, Miley’s family had (at least, this was the story he told himself) believed that Harrington Nursing and Convalescent Home was a better option than the other institutions a young man with Down syndrome might be sent to by the state.

They were wrong. While a resident there, Miley had been physically and emotionally abused by a thuggish caretaker. He dreaded to think how it all might have ended if David Dunnigan, whom he had met while being given a tour of the garda offices at Harcourt Street, hadn’t realised something was wrong. Dunnigan had got him out and helped him to set up home on his own. He had also ensured Miley’s tormentor was prosecuted for what he had done.

Now he had his own place and the freedom to be who he wanted, Miley was explor. . .