I opt for telling a part-truth. ‘There’s probably some connection, yeah. The world seems a scarier place when your mum’s not in it. I suppose by joining the police, I thought I could make it less scary.’
‘For you or for other people?’
Good question.
‘For both, I think.’
She nods, steeples her fingers. ‘What else do you get out of your job?’
Another decent question and far more preferable to our first half hour when every question centred around how I was feeling, how I was sleeping, how I did nothing wrong in that bedsit and so on and so on.
This time I go with a whole truth. ‘I get first-hand reassurance that the rules work.’
Dr Allen loves an abstract statement, delights in them like a kitten with a ball of wool. ‘Well that’s a very interesting way of putting it, Cat. What do you mean? What rules?’
‘I’ve just always had a bit of an obsession with fairness, I suppose. Take school, for example, if the wrong kid ended up getting blamed for something, it’d really upset me. Like, really. And God, if someone got a bigger slice of cake than me, there’d be blue murder – but then I always had to make sure that I didn’t have a bigger slice than anyone else either.’
‘Fairness.’ Dr Allen chews the word over. ‘So you’re talking about justice?’
I laugh. ‘Justice? That’s a bit of a lofty goal. I’ll settle for the basic rule that says bad people get punished.’
A glance of recognition, things clicking into place. ‘But the rules didn’t work for Alana-Jane and her mother though, did they? Her father’s still walking free. No one’s been punished for that. Is that why you find it so tough to deal with?’
‘He will be punished. One way or another.’ And I really do believe that. One look at my Dad’s face as he realised his ‘baby’ believed he could actually be a killer has given me new perspective on the word ‘punishment.’
The most devastating punishments aren’t always the legal ones.
Dr Allen leans forward. ‘What’s the difference between punishment and justice, Cat?’
This doesn’t take me long. ‘Punishment’s tangible. It’s something that’s actually meted out. Justice isn’t tangible, it’s just a feeling that things are as they should be.’
‘And is that important to you?’
‘Of course it is,’ I reply. ‘That’s like asking a bin-man if bins are important to him.’
A tiny thin-lipped smile. ‘Well yes, it’s just that some of the officers I see struggle with the idea of true justice. I’d go as far as to say they don’t think it exists.’
‘Well, I bloody hope it does, because if it doesn’t, we might as well all become bin-men. At least what they do is tangible, it’s something people actually need – the crap removed out of their lives.’ I ponder that for a second. ‘Although maybe that is part of what I do. And you,’ I add.
She seems to like this answer. ‘So do you think we have removed some crap together, Cat? How are you feeling?’
I check the clock. Time to go.
21
There’s nothing quite like a turbulent flight sat next to a hysterical first-time flyer to temporarily distract you from your own mental chaos and I’m grateful for both as we judder to the ground at Knock airport, battling a stubborn crosswind.
‘Hurricane Something-or-other,’ says retired ex-Sergeant Bill Swords, tossing my case into the boot of his seen-better-days Volvo. ‘We always cop the tail-end here. Rap music and fierce winds, that’s America’s gift to the west coast of Ireland.’
When Swords said he’d pick me up, I assumed it was some sort of professional courtesy, however it turns out that retired ex-Sergeant Bill Swords is now a taxi driver and it’ll cost seventy euro to take me, thanks very much. He’s an interesting sight, that’s for sure. Tracksuit trousers paired with shiny black work brogues. A green Aran sweater with the sleeves rolled up.
No coat. They build them hardy in this part of the world.
He informs me this is my interview slot. He has to bring a stag do to Westport as soon as he drops me off and then he’s flying to Lanzarote tomorrow for a blast of winter sunshine and ‘a few rounds of the ol’ golf.’ I bite back telling him that it might have been nice to have known that before and instead I silently rifle through my bag for my interview apparatus – my pad, a pen, the file, etc. Swords entertains himself by passing comment on just about every other person’s driving ability and singing along to Sounds of the Sixties. I wait for the last chorus of ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ before I start.
An unprofessional courtesy, you might say.
‘So did you ever wonder about what happened to Maryanne, Bill?’
In a flash, his face changes – deadly serious – and his answer is instant. ‘Wondered, yes. Worried, no. People go missing all the time, Cat. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the number of folk who say they’re popping out for the paper and then, poof’ – he takes both hands of the steering wheel – ‘never seen again. It’s unusual, right enough, but it’s not uncommon and unless we have evidence of foul play, or unless it’s completely out of character, which it wasn’t in the Doyle girl’s case, there’s not a lot we can do.’ He stops for a second, gives the finger to a boy-racer flying out of a side road. ‘Anyways, I spoke to the people who knew her best, put the wind up them a bit, but they all kept saying the same thing – well, apart from the father and the brother but then it’s the family who normally know the least about someone – everyone else kept saying it didn’t surprise them one bit that she’d took off.’
I nod. Fickle as I am, I decide I quite like Bill Swords – even if seventy euro does seem a bit steep for a forty-minute journey in a rust-bucket of a car that smells faintly of feet – and I’m given to thinking I might have been a bit hasty in my assessment of him. While nothing he’s said particularly differs from the words he committed to paper eighteen years ago, face-to-face it seems less half-arsed and dispassionate, leaving me wondering if I’d really have done anything different?
‘So are you stopping long?’ he asks.
‘Afraid not. I’m on the fifteen-forty back to Gatwick tomorrow.’ I glance at the clock on the dashboard. ‘I’ve got twenty-fours hours.’
Swords hits the steering wheel, delighted. ‘That’s what they say in the movies, isn’t it? You know, the angry Lieutenant giving out to the Detective: “You’ve got twenty-fours or you’re off the case, goddammit.” He laughs to himself, bouncing in his seat. “You’ve got twenty-four hours or I’m having your badge!”’
He’s kind of infectious, I can’t help but smile. ‘Yeah, well, it might come to that yet, Bill.’
He screws his face up. ‘And sure, what are you doing here then, loveen? ’Tis London that finished that girl off, nothing to do with Mulderrin.’
I trot out the party line. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she was in contact with someone and they can tell us something? Maybe she asked them not to say anything but now she’s dead, they might? I don’t know, Bill, clutching at straws is better than sitting around scratching our heads.’
He’s not convinced. ‘Something like that’d get out around Mulderrin, I don’t care how much someone said they’d keep it a secret. This isn’t London, Cat. You might be able to run across Piccadilly Circus, naked as the day you were born and no one’d pay a blind bit of notice, but round here, if your washing’s out too long, folk start to speculate. Secrets are just gossip you haven’t been drunk enough to spill yet, you know?’ I must look despairing because he suddenly changes his tune. ‘Ah sure, you never know, I suppose. What harm will it do talking to folk .?.?.’