The Lost by Claire McGowan Page A

a brand-new monolith of bullet-proof glass, erected with PFI money and in another effort to bulldoze the past. Everything smelled new and unboxed, like the inside of a fresh pair of trainers. It was strange that night, full of buzzing phones and unfamiliar officers in rolled-up sleeves, constantly walking in and out with bits of paper in their hands. In a country so long inured to death, to horror, it was frightening how safe you could feel. The terrorists had never targeted children, not deliberately. The streets had always felt safe to walk in – but now this. A fifteen-year-old girl snatched on her way home from school, killed, dumped in the dark waters of the canal, until the twisting weeds and shopping trolleys had yielded her body back again.
    Guy and Bob Hamilton had been closeted in a briefing with station detectives, grim faces behind tinted glass. No one else was quite sure where to put themselves, except Gerard, who as lead officer on the missing person’s case had already pinned a large map of Ballyterrin to the wall. Cathy’s way from school to home would have taken her through town, past the old mill where she’d been found. Paula watched Gerard across the room instructing uniformed officers.
    ‘Let’s get CCTV from every business she’d have passed.’ He pointed on the map. ‘There’s a garage on that corner, chip shop, car showroom – and get door-to-doors on all the residents. We can also run licence recognition on any cars passing through.’
    Avril was strugglingto find somewhere to put her laptop, settling finally for the end of a long open-plan desk, where she had to perch on a stool looking less than pleased. Paula wasn’t sure what to do. Her work wasn’t in the awful blurred aftermath of a crime, it was in clear-headed analysis, piecing together reports, trying to get a picture of what had been going on inside Cathy’s head, what steps had led her to that dark canal, and who might have put her there. She made notes on what she’d seen – the careful wrapping of the body, the knots in the ropes, the glitter polish still visible on Cathy’s muddy hand – but her thoughts wouldn’t settle, as swirling with sediment as that dark water itself.
    At some point, everyone in the room seemed to stiffen; voices came in from the desk. The family were here . Everyone seemed to know it. Through the glass you could see a dark-haired man, shouting at the desk officer: ‘. . . tell us nothing! Where the bloody hell is she? Where is the wean?’ He had a look of Eamonn Carr about him – one of the brothers? – and then the man himself came into view. By contrast, Cathy’s father was pale and composed.
    ‘Come on, Jarlath, they’re doing their best.’
    The door to the conference room snapped open and Guy strode out, buttoning his suit. He shot Paula a quick look as he passed; his face was set in sharp angles. She knew where he was going – to the mortuary at the hospital above town, where Cathy was waiting in a body bag. Taking the family to identify the body was the worst, the absolute worst, worse than crime scenes or arrests or autopsies. It was the moment you saw the final bit of hope drain away like blood down a sink.
    The remaining team workedfrantically, as if activity could stop them thinking of the dead child. Around midnight Paula went into the ladies’ to breathe for a minute, and heard loud sobbing. Since there was currently only one other woman in the place, she called, ‘Avril?’
    Avril came out, flushing the toilet. Her eyes were red. Defensively, she said, ‘She was so young. It’s tragic.’
    ‘I know.’ Paula leaned against the hand-dryer as Avril splashed her face with water.
    She looked at Paula in the mirror. ‘You’ve done this lots, have you? I just did traffic analysis before. How come you don’t cry?’
    Paula thought of all the bodies she’d seen, starting with the ones back in her teens, the ones they’d made her look at because they didn’t entirely trust