I wait for her to push me away, but she doesn’t. She leans into me, crying, and I hug her, for a long, long time. We can hear kids shouting and laughing down at the beach. After a while, she stands up and walks ahead of me as though it never happened. I’m left watching her disappear up the road and into her and Uncle Danny’s house.
24
MONDAY, MAY 30,
2016
The parents are camped out at the hotel with some extended family and family friends, Roly says, far enough from the search command post that it’s not in their face all the time. He says it’s a new place, built during the boom, and they were able to clear out most of the other guests so the Horrigans could be in peace.
“Thank God they’ve got some dosh, like,” he says. “When the poor family’s got no money you always think about how the week in the hotel is going to bankrupt them. And then if there’s a funeral, too.” He shakes his head.
“How are they holding up?” I ask him as we drive down.
“They’re doing okay so far. The local lads have been the ones spending time with them. But we’re getting to the point where desperation will start to set in. You’ve got to be careful not to get them upset, D’arcy.”
He turns onto a narrow drive marked with gray stone pillars. There’s a fancy sign reading “Wicklow House Hotel and Spa Resort.” “Ah, isn’t this nice now?” Roly says, looking delighted.
The room is small, an events room off the main dining room. In addition to Roly and Griz from the Serious Crimes Review Team, there are a couple of other guards from the team that’s trying to find Niamh. Roly introduces me to a compact older guy with a luxurious gray moustache. “Superintendent William Regan,” he says, nodding at me. The room is tense but under control. It feels good, familiar to me from well-run investigations. Everyone’s putting aside their egos to focus on the objective, for the moment anyway.
As we drove into the parking lot, I caught sight of Stephen Hines’s lurking frame, hunched over his cell phone by the back door. There are other reporters outside, a few television cameras and more print reporters clustered by the front entrance to the hotel, and a hotel employee comes in and shuts all the drapes. The room is painted pale lavender, the walls covered with watercolors of irises.
Niamh’s mother is thin, well-dressed, her face drawn in worry. She looks fit and prosperous, her short, frosted blond hair expertly cut but left unstyled, her athletic frame too thin for the navy blue pants and blouse that are hanging off her. I’m betting she’s lost ten pounds over the past week.
Mr. Horrigan is tall, his hair still mostly brown, only peppered with gray. He’s the first one to speak, to step forward to shake my hand and say, “Thank you so much for meeting with us, Miss D’arcy.” His hand is large and warm and he reminds me of my father.
“Maggie,” I say. “Please. I’ve been thinking about you so much, and about what you’re going through. My uncle sends his best, too. We’ve been praying for Niamh.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Horrigan says, stepping forward to take my hand. “It’s the waiting, as you know. It’s driving me mad. How do you stand it?” Tears fall out of her eyes. She’s not even aware of them. Her husband rubs her shoulder.
“You keep hoping,” I tell her. “But I know, it’s awful. It’s a place no one would ever want to go. I’m so sorry you have to spend time in this place.”
She keeps patting my arm and then she says, “We don’t have much time, if what they say about the other girls is true. We heard … we learned about your career in the States, about Andrea Delaurio, about what you did. Detective D’arcy, we don’t have a lot of time.” She sits back and now she’s all strength. “What do we need to do to save my daughter?”
Everyone in the room turns at her words.
She isn’t nervous. She isn’t scared. I’m not a person to her—I’m a means to an end, and she’s going to use me however she needs to to get what she wants. “You know what to do. If there is any chance you can help save her, you must do it. You know what this is like. You know how this feels. Detective D’arcy, how can we save my daughter?”
Regan stands up. “Mrs. Horrigan, it’s much more complex a—”
She’s just staring at me, not letting me out of her gaze. “How, Detective D’arcy? What do we need to do?”
I look up to find Roly watching me. He knows he’s been played. He’s just not sure if it’s by me or Stephen Hines or the Horrigans. I ignore him and try to look humble and disinterested. Griz is pretending to inspect her nails, but she’s hanging on every word. I have to do this right.
“Mrs. Horrigan,” I say. “You have the best people working to find your daughter. I can tell you that with absolute confidence. They have done everything according to the absolute highest standards of best practice. They have run an exemplary investigation, both into your daughter’s disappearance and also in the reviews of my cousin’s case and the disappearances of the other women. Of Teresa and June.”
“We know that,” Mr. Horrigan says. He looks up at the guards standing around. “We are incredibly grateful. We know we have the best here. But we are desperate, Detective D’arcy. We are absolutely desperate. If there is anything that you can bring to the table, a new look, an outsider’s eye. You found that girl, in the States. Andrea.” He looks directly at me when he says it, when he says her name.
“Mr. Horrigan.” I breathe through the flash of panic and surging adrenaline. “That was a very different set of—”
“The FBI couldn’t find her and you found her! Please, Detective D’arcy.” He’s crying now, too. He looks up at one of the guards, a middle-aged guy in a red sweater. “What would you need, Detective D’arcy? What would you need to do a review?”
“Please, Mr. Horrigan.”
“Just … What would you need? Just tell me that?”
A long silence. I start, “A review of the case files, a visit to the scene of Niamh’s disappearance, would be the way I would start to create a picture. But, as I said—”
“Can she do that?” Mrs. Horrigan asks. She stands up, turning to Regan and Roly and Griz. “Can she look at the files? Can you take her up to Drumkee? When can she do it?”
Roly looks panicked. “Mrs. Horrigan,” he says, “there are protocols, there is the Official Secrets Act. I don’t even know how we would—”
“Detective Byrne,” she says, in a strong, even voice. She is standing so still she could be a statue. There is not a trace of weakness or emotion in her voice. She will not be denied. “There is my daughter. There is her life. Next to my daughter’s life, there is nothing. There is nothing.”
We’re all watching her. We can’t look away.
“Give us a minute,” Regan says finally, gesturing to Roly. “Everyone just stay right here.”
Through the closed drapes, we can see the silhouettes of the reporters crossing back and forth outside the window.
* * *
I have forty-eight hours.