The Good Turn Read online

  ‘He’s gone for the day,’ she said. ‘Can I help at all?’

  ‘He won’t be back?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not on a Saturday night. Is it urgent?’

  ‘I . . . yeah. It is. Can you call him?’

  ‘You don’t have his number?’

  Peter shrugged. He didn’t want to have to say it – she looked nervous and he didn’t want to make her worse – but Brian Murphy didn’t give out his mobile number to the rank and file.

  She hesitated.

  ‘It’s very important,’ Peter said. ‘You won’t get into any trouble.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that,’ she said with a toss of her head, suddenly snippy. She pressed a few buttons, dialled a number.

  ‘It’s out of service,’ she said. ‘Turned off, I suppose.’

  ‘Turned off? Is that normal?’

  ‘Well. Everyone needs downtime, don’t they?’

  ‘Can you try it again?’

  She did, with the same result. ‘There’s his home number . . .’

  ‘Try it,’ Peter said. ‘Please.’

  She dialled the number, pressed the phone to her ear again. ‘It’s ringing out,’ she said.

  Peter thanked her and retreated. He was running out of options. A station the size of Mill Street should have at least three sergeants, but Carrie O’Halloran had taken a transfer for Oranmore Station, and Melanie Hackett had been on stress leave for the last six months. Which left only Cormac Reilly to keep the show on the road. Peter made his way back to the squad room.

  ‘No luck?’ Deirdre asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Try Rory one more time,’ Deirdre said.

  He picked up the phone, dialled, listened to it ring once, then twice, then finally, an answer.

  ‘Uh . . . it’s Mulcair here.’

  ‘Can you put me on to DS Reilly?’

  ‘He’s with the family right now. It’s not the best time to interrupt them,’ Rory said. He sounded nervous. There were raised voices in the background.

  Peter filled him in on developments, on the sighting of Jason Kelly’s car, on his fear that Kelly would turn off on one of the side roads to Lough Corrib, his theory that as a fisherman he’d know the lake, maybe park the car under cover and be lost to them. ‘We need to get the chopper out looking for the car, but it’ll take thirty minutes to get to Galway from Dublin, so I need to talk to him now.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Rory said. The voices in the background were louder. There was an argument, maybe crying. ‘He’s right in the middle of it. He’s just, uh, calming everything down, getting it settled. I can’t interrupt him, all right? But I’ll get him to call you back as soon as possible, okay?’ Rory hung up.

  Peter took the phone away from his ear and stared down at it.

  ‘What is it?’ Deirdre asked.

  He shook his head, unable to bring himself to explain the situation. His sense of impending doom had returned with a vengeance. Deirdre was still watching him.

  ‘Can’t we call the flight crew anyway? Explain that the boss is tied up and he’ll send through authorisation as soon as he’s available.’

  Peter tried. But he knew before he started that he didn’t have a chance. No way in hell the air support unit was going to release a helicopter on his say-so. He tried anyway, pitched it hard, heard the sympathy in the voice of the officer on the other end of the line, but ultimately got nowhere.

  ‘Look, we can be with you in thirty minutes once we get the go-ahead. Get your sergeant on the line and we’ll be in the air.’

  Peter hung up.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait a few minutes,’ Deirdre said. ‘Reilly will call us back and we can get things moving.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Peter said. ‘I think he’s going to turn off. I think he’ll turn off the main road and by the time we get the chopper it will be too late.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  Peter shook his head, swivelled his computer screen in her direction.

  ‘Look at these.’ The screen displayed the photographs of Jason Kelly that he had gathered through his earlier social media search. Peter clicked on and enlarged the centre picture, a photograph that had captured Kelly in the background, looking pissed off, while another man, grinning widely, held a fish up to the camera. It was a wide-angled shot, taken at dusk. Clouds gathered on the horizon and the water of the nearby lake was dark and murky. In the far-right corner of the photograph there was a low stone building with one small window and an aging red tin roof. A boathouse, it looked like. Other than the men, their boat, and the boathouse, there were no signs of other people or buildings in the background of the photograph. It looked like a lonely place.

  Deirdre leaned forward. ‘Where is it? Lough Corrib?’

  ‘According to the post it was taken at Ross Lake. That’s only a couple of kilometres off the Clifden Road. Ross Lake is small, not as popular and nowhere near as busy as Lough Corrib. At this time of year, in this weather, I would think it would be fairly deserted.’

  Deirdre tilted her head sideways, considering.

  Peter clicked back to the map, zoomed in a bit closer. ‘I think the boathouse would be somewhere around here,’ he said. ‘I had a look at some satellite images online earlier and they weren’t clear, but it looked like there was a structure around here that might match up. We know that the ANPR caught him on his way out on the Clifden Road. If I’m right about this there are at least two routes he could take from where the camera picked him up to get to Ross Lake, and neither would take him much more than twenty minutes.’

  They stared at the map together. An old stone building like that, in the middle of nowhere. It would be cold and damp inside, with a stone or dirt floor. No other buildings around for miles, and it was already dark. The place would be deserted. If Kelly took Peggah there, no one would see him and no one would hear her. And if he wanted to dispose of her, wasn’t the lake right there?

  ‘We could be wrong,’ Deirdre said abruptly.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About all of it. We don’t know for sure that it’s Kelly we’re looking for. And we don’t know where he is headed. We’re chasing a lot of possibles and maybes.’

  ‘We need the full plate number from the video,’ Peter said, agitated. ‘It really shouldn’t be taking this long.’

  ‘I’ll call Dublin,’ Deirdre said. ‘Try to hurry them along.’

  While she made the call Peter studied the map of the Clifden Road and the side roads coming off it. Looked at the satellite images. Ross Lake was small. His best guess was no more than three or four kilometres long, one to maybe one and a half wide. There was a smattering of buildings close to the lake, but not many. It must have been twilight when the satellite had taken the photographs. In the images the water was murky and uninviting, the surrounding land a green so dark it was almost black. Peter zoomed in again, tried to follow the two possible routes closely, to understand how they linked up with where he thought the boathouse was located.

  He couldn’t get an image out of his head: Peggah Abbassi pulled from the boot of a car on the shores of a dark lake, dragged into that boathouse. Five minutes, ten minutes. Surely they couldn’t afford to wait one.

  ‘I’m going out there,’ he said suddenly, straightening up. He glanced around for his car keys.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll drive out there, you keep trying Reilly,’ he said. ‘We’ll stay in touch over the phone or the radio. Keep me posted.’

  ‘But shouldn’t you wait for the boss? What about the helicopter?’

  Peter was already shrugging his jacket over his shoulders. ‘I’m not achieving anything here,’ he said. ‘Reilly will finish with the family soon, and he’ll call in. You fill him in on the ANPR information, and he’ll get the chopper moving. In the meantime, I’ll get out there, see what I can see.’

  ‘We haven’t even confirmed the plate,’ Deirdre said. ‘Don’t you . . . wouldn’t it be better to wait? Mak
e sure?’

  Peter couldn’t have borne it. Not another minute sitting in that seat. He needed to move.

  He was very aware that he was crossing a line. Reilly expected him to stay in the squad room. But Reilly wasn’t there to see how things had developed and Peter couldn’t sit there and do nothing. Not when he was sure that he was right. If Kelly had abducted Peggah Abbassi he’d done it using his own car. That suggested a lack of planning, that Kelly was running on instinct. Which meant he would have to bring her to somewhere he already knew well. Somewhere he wasn’t likely to be seen or overheard. Somewhere like a lonely boathouse on the shores of a lake.

  ‘Call me when you speak to Reilly,’ he said, and left.

  Fisher turned on his siren and lights and took off from Mill Street Garda Station at speed. He was going to break every record that had ever been set in a police car.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The meeting with the family went more or less as Cormac had expected, right up until Lena’s sister arrived, and started shouting at Amir for letting Peggah out to walk the dog alone. That had caused Amir to collapse into himself completely. Up until that moment he had been just about hanging in there, responding to questions with monosyllables. With the attack from Lena’s sister he had started sobbing uncontrollably, which prompted Lena to step in and defend her husband and the whole thing escalated until nothing could be heard but the two women shouting at each other and Amir moaning in the background. It took precious time to calm everyone down, get them quiet and listening. And Rory Mulcair was no help. He stood there uselessly, then disappeared into the hall to take a call. Cormac drew Lena to one side.

  ‘We don’t know anything,’ she said, wringing her hands.

  ‘You know more than you think,’ he said. ‘You know more than we do. We need to understand Peggah’s day-today life. The people she spends time with, the places she goes. You can give us all that and more. But I know it’s very difficult. It’s a big ask, to put aside all of your emotion and your fear and concentrate on the questions we need to ask you. Can you do that? Can you sit down with me for half an hour and answer every question I can throw at you, as fully and honestly as you can? Can you do that for Peggah?’

  Lena’s response was to give him a look of contempt, as if to say that he could not begin to imagine what she could do for her daughter. She took a seat on the couch, tucked her hands under her legs, and looked at him expectantly. After a moment, her sister joined her. And the family’s day unfolded itself.

  Lena had left the house for work at eight-thirty that morning – she worked as a dispensing pharmacist in the city. Amir worked Monday to Friday at Boston Scientific. He was home at the weekends. He said he had slept in, that Peggah had made her own breakfast. They’d talked a little when he got up, but Peggah had been distracted, playing a computer game.

  ‘I let her play,’ Amir said. ‘For longer than I should have. She was cross with me when I told her to stop. She went to her room. I tidied the kitchen and I . . . I think I read the newspapers. Then the dog wanted to go out.’ He started to cry again. He didn’t seem to notice the tears, just let them roll down his face unheeded. ‘I called Peggah down from her room. I made her take the dog out.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Cormac asked.

  Amir looked helplessly at his wife. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘Does Peggah have a phone?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘She has a very basic phone,’ Lena said. ‘No internet. For calls only, to me or her father. But the phone is here.’ She pointed towards the hall. ‘It is on the hall table.’

  ‘All right,’ Cormac said. ‘And you mentioned Peggah was using a computer game this morning. What sort of device was she using? What I mean is, does it have internet access? Could she have been in contact with someone through the game or device?’

  Lena shook her head firmly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We do not allow that. No tablet, no internet. We have a console for playing games. Peggah’s auntie bought it for Christmas. But no internet.’

  Cormac let his eyes slide to Lena’s sister and she nodded her head in confirmation.

  ‘Right,’ Cormac said. ‘Let’s talk about Peggah’s friends.’

  It took time to work through the pivotal questions. Rory hovered in the background, saying nothing, but checking his watch intermittently and looking increasingly anxious as time wore on. Cormac extricated himself as quickly as possible from a family who didn’t want him to leave. It was a very normal response to extraordinary circumstances. Logically, of course, they should want him gone, want him out working the case. But with him in the room, asking questions, they had something to focus on. When the interview was over, they would be left with nothing but the gaping hole of Peggah’s absence. Cormac stood finally, assured them that a family liaison officer would be in touch with them as soon as possible, hoping that it was true, and left, nodding to Rory to follow.

  ‘What was the call about?’ Cormac asked, as they walked to the car.

  ‘I . . . wasn’t sure if I should interrupt,’ Rory said. ‘Peter Fisher called to let you know that a camera caught a Volkswagen Passat with a reg number that matched the partial from the video, heading towards Clifden just after four o’clock. Peter wants to call out the helicopter, but he needs your okay.’

  Cormac stopped in his tracks. ‘Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Rory took a step back. ‘I wasn’t sure . . . the family was very upset, I didn’t think it was the time to . . .’

  ‘Christ,’ Cormac said, cutting across the excuses. ‘Come on.’

  Cormac called the station from the car, reached Deirdre Russell.

  Stumbling over her words, she recapped what Mulcair had already told him.

  ‘There’s no one else there to approve this? You didn’t speak to the Superintendent?’

  ‘He’s left for the day. And there’s no one else. I’ve been thinking maybe I should call Salthill Station, but—’

  ‘I’ll call the flight squad now,’ Cormac interrupted.

  ‘There’s a roadblock at Oughterard. And Fisher has driven out ahead. He’s sure that Jason Kelly has got the girl. He has a theory that Kelly may be going to a boathouse on Ross Lake. Fisher found a photograph online – Kelly’s been there before and it would be on the route the Volkswagen’s taking. Fisher’s going to try to find the boathouse – he has a couple of possible locations based on what we can see on Google Earth.’

  ‘Right. Good work.’ Inwardly Cormac felt like screaming. A child had been abducted and they were cobbling this operation together. ‘I’ll get the air crew moving. I’m going to get some more cars from Salthill, Oranmore, wherever. I’ll send them out to Fisher’s general location. Stand by to coordinate.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Cormac hung up, got in the car and made his calls, calling in favours while Mulcair drove for the station.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The drive deteriorated quickly once Peter left the main road. The road was narrow, barely wide enough for two cars, and heavily pockmarked with potholes. He passed a few houses on either side of the road, mostly new, with unfinished driveways and gardens, remnants of the Celtic Tiger. A few minutes more and he’d left the houses behind. The road narrowed further. It was too tight for a second car now; if he met someone coming the other way, one of them would have to reverse until they reached a passing bay. Peter slowed down and hugged the left-hand side of the road. The hedgerow was thick on either side, and a good two metres high. Branches scraped the side of the car. He glanced intermittently at the map on his phone. He was getting closer.

  The road widened suddenly. There was a gravel clearing on the left, with plenty of space for parking. Peter pulled in, then hesitated, confused. On the map this had looked like the best access point to reach the lakeside. The navigation app showed a narrow road leading down to the lake. He’d found the clearing and the parking area, but no access road to the lake. Peter nudged the car forward, allowing the
lights from his headlights to spill across the trees and hedges. There. An entrance to a slender laneway, half hidden behind overgrown hedges and blocked by a steel boom gate. It didn’t look promising.

  Peter turned off the ignition and got out of the car. It was very quiet, the only sound he could hear was the crunch of his boots on the gravel. The air was damp, he could nearly taste the lake. It must be very close. He went to the barrier, tried to lift it. It moved easily. The chain that was intended to secure it hung loose. Peter stood there for a moment, turned and looked in the direction he’d come from, then back towards the lake. It was so quiet. The laneway beyond the gate was narrow, steep and in poor condition. Standing there in the darkness, his theory that Jason Kelly had come this way seemed very unlikely. But the laneway was wide enough for a car – just. And if Kelly had come here before, maybe multiple times in daylight and good weather, he might have driven the route more than once. The path would be less intimidating to someone who knew it already and he would, after all, be motivated. The quieter, the more deserted, the better.

  Peter lifted the boom gate high, leaving it open before returning to the car, starting it and heading for the narrow path. He thought about calling the station, filling them in, but his confidence in the decision he’d made was waning. He had visions of a chopper arriving, the few cars that Reilly would be able to scrape from somewhere, all racing out to Ross Lake on a wild-goose chase he’d set them on. No, he wanted something, some little bit of validation, first.

  The incline was getting steeper now, and the engine of the car complained with the climb. The squad car he was driving was a Hyundai i30 Estate, part of a batch bought for the force in 2014 and rapidly reaching the point at which it would need to be taken out of service. The car had no special modifications. With the exception of the livery and lights, it was exactly the same model sold off forecourts across Ireland. Peter cursed the short-sightedness of the pen-pushers who continuously underfunded the gardaí while expecting more and more as his tyres slipped on the gravel and mud and his engine whined. If Kelly was somewhere up ahead, he would surely hear Peter coming. More brambles and tree branches scraped the sides of the car. He kept going.