DCI Lind put the phone back in its cradle with a sigh. Maureen Kerrigan was on her way up to his office. It had been at least three years since he had seen her, though she always phoned him around the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance. The case had weighed heavily on him.
There was a light tap on the door and a young woman with a long mane of dark brown curls entered. She was the spitting image of her sister Ailish. A walking monument to her loss.
Lind stood up and smiled at her.
‘Maureen, come away in and sit yourself down.’
She attempted to smile but her skin was chalk white, and she had purple shadows under her eyes that gave her a bruised look.
A young PC brought a tray with tea and biscuits then left. Lind waited until Maureen had raised a cup to her lips, with shaking hands, before saying anything further.
‘How was the trip over on the ferry?’
She groaned and looked queasy.
‘That good?’ said Lind.
‘I’m no sailor,’ she said.
‘I thought your mother might have come over with you?’
‘She left us about a year after Ailish went missing. Broken-hearted she was. Left a note saying she needed to get away from all the reminders. Said she wouldn’t return until she was able to bring Ailish home. We’ve heard nothing from her since. Dad lost heart himself after that. He started drinking, withdrew into himself.’
‘I’m so sorry, Maureen, I had no idea.’
‘There’s been times I’ve hated Ailish through the years,’ she said with a twisted smile. ‘If she hadn’t been so selfish and ran off with that no-good Patrick Rafferty, my family would still be intact. It’s been … hard, you know?’
‘Those feelings are perfectly normal,’ said Lind. ‘You’re bound to have felt conflicted.’
‘When I got the phone call to say that all this time my sister had been lying in an unmarked grave, I …’ She broke down in tears.
Silently, Lind passed a box of tissues across to her. She took one, blew her nose loudly, and gave him a watery smile.
‘I want to arrange her funeral in Donegal. How soon can her remains be released for burial?’
‘It’ll be a while yet,’ said Lind. ‘We’ve managed to establish that the cause of death was most likely that she was stabbed more than once. However, due to the length of time that has passed and the exposed nature of the burial site, we can’t be more precise. Given the remote location of the remains, and the text that she sent to you immediately before she disappeared, we are most definitely treating Ailish’s death as a murder investigation.’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ said Lind.
‘For using her name. For talking about her as if she was a person and not just a dead body, a pile of bones. You’re a good man, DCI Lind.’
He reached across and enfolded her small pale hand between his two large ones.
‘I’ll do everything in my power to get you answers, Maureen. You can count on that. In the meantime, where are you staying?’
‘I’ve booked a B&B in Kirkcudbright.’
Lind looked worried.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Don’t worry, DCI Lind, I’m no Nancy Drew. I simply want to walk in my sister’s footsteps, feel the essence of her in the last place that she walked the Earth. I’m not about to do anything rash. I’ve got a friend in the area. I’ll be fine.’
Lind wasn’t sure that he believed her, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.
‘Promise me you’ll be careful,’ he said.
‘I promise,’ she replied.
‘In the meantime, here’s all the numbers I can be reached on,’ he said, handing her his business card, to which he had added his own personal mobile. ‘I’ll keep you posted on any developments in the investigation.’
She handed over her own contact details on a slip of paper for the duration of her stay.
Lind escorted her down to the front door of the station and had just waved her off when Laura got up from one of the seats in the waiting area. He had walked right by her. The smile froze on his lips, as he took in the stormy expression in her eyes. What he was meant to have done this time was quite beyond him, but he was not going to have a ding-dong in reception, that was for sure.
‘Laura, I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’
‘Evidently,’ she snapped.
Lind ran his fingers distractedly through his thinning hair. He had to get her out of here before she blew. A wave of fatigue rocked him on his feet. It had already been a helluva day and now this …
DI Moore appeared from behind the public information counter with her coat on, her face wreathed in such a warm smile that Laura was left with no choice but to return it.
Lind felt the tension ebb from his body as she hugged Laura and turned to him.
‘John, do you think I could borrow your lovely wife for half an hour? I’m due a break and I’m hoping she’ll join me for a coffee at Mrs Green’s Tea Room. I have an unholy craving for a piece of their delectable carrot cake. Laura, what do you say?’
‘Far be it from me to stand between women and their cake,’ he said, aiming for jovial but falling somewhat short.
Laura allowed herself to be led away by Kate, who was succeeding in being unusually chatty, and a relieved Lind retreated back upstairs. No doubt he was only postponing whatever grievance, real or imagined, had propelled his wife in here.
He knew that Frank, and probably Kate too, had twigged that they were going through a hard time, but he had never been comfortable talking about his private life. It felt disloyal somehow. He was fast running out of ideas though. Frank would be the obvious person to turn to, yet to do so would feel like an admission of failure. He had always known that if Frank hadn’t gone off to the seminary, in all likelihood, he would have married Laura. Knowing that his friend had been her first love had been difficult at first, but he had made his peace with it a long time ago.
He forced his dark thoughts down. He wished Maureen hadn’t come straight over. Her presence complicated things. The killer could well still be living in the area. There was no way of knowing what had drawn him or her to Ailish, but Maureen was the spitting image of her sister, and he couldn’t help but worry that might stir the appetite of the killer.