Page 85

Lily is already in her dressing gown, so I run the bath and check the temperature and help her make her usual timid foray, toe in, out, toe in, toe out. I’ve started singing a unique Fawley family version of ‘We do the toe-ky cokey’ at this point, which she claims to find excruciatingly embarrassing but actually loves, almost as much as I love being here with her. Bath-time is not a chore, not for me. It’s like pressing pause on the universe. No messages, no decisions, no playing a role. Just a warm and muffled cocoon against the world, where I sing while I wash my daughter’s beautiful long auburn hair.
***
Quinn gets in first the following morning. Or rather, intends to, but when he pushes open the door of the CID office Sargent and Stillwell have beaten him to it.
‘Anything new?’ he asks as he drops his jacket over his chair. He’s still narked by the fact that there’s no spare office so he’s out in the open-plan with the rest of the team, which is not helping his ‘Look at me I’m a DI’ campaign one iota. Fawley never had to put up with this.
Stillwell looks up. ‘We’ve just had another email from that chap you spoke to at the Gardaí. They still haven’t found anyrecord of Kate Madigan anywhere in the Republic – no sign of her either working or claiming benefits, and no Sabrina Aoife Madigan of the right age in the school system either.’
‘OK –’
‘But as I was just saying,’ interrupts Sargent, ‘frankly, I’m not surprised. If you’d abducted a child, wouldn’tyouhomeschool them? Just to stay off-grid? I mean, she was a teacher – if anyone could, she could.’
Quinn considers. ‘When the kid was younger, maybe. But now? She’s sixteen – there’s exams and all the rest of it.’
‘Exactly,’ says Stillwell. ‘And if she’s homeschooling full-time, what are they living on, if it’s not benefits?’
Quinn shrugs. ‘Bar work? Waitressing? Anything that pays cash.’
‘She found the money for dental implants, though,’ says Sargent, ‘assuming the vic really is her. That’s not cheap.’
‘What isn’t cheap?’
It’s Ev, with a tray of three coffees, followed a few moments later by Gis and Baxter, deep in their usual morning male-bonding session on yesterday’s sport. Football, always, for preference, but cricket will do in the absence of the Premier League.
‘Didn’t get a coffee for me, I see,’ says Quinn, half in jest, but only half.
‘You always used to get your own from that Jericho place,’ says Ev, not looking round.
And he would have done that today too, but he wanted to get in early. So now he’s pissed off, even though he knows he has no right to be.
‘What was that you were you saying?’ asks Ev as she hands the women their cups.
‘That dental implants are expensive, especially for someone who doesn’t seem to have had a mainstream job. At least according to the Gardaí.’
‘Maybe they’re the wrong people to ask,’ says Gislingham.
They all turn to look at him.
‘I was wondering about it, last night,’ he says. ‘Or rather Janet was –’
Quinn raises an eyebrow. ‘Taking your work home again, Gis?’
Gis grins. ‘You know how it is. Nothing on telly –’
‘So what was Janet “wondering”?’
Gis glances round. ‘There’s no trace of Kate Madigan in Galway, right? Nor in the rest of the Republic either, even though we know for a fact that they went to Dublin in 2016.’
‘Right,’ says Quinn slowly, trying – as always – to get there first. ‘And “Sabrina” travelled back from there on June 14th.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that’s where they were living, does it? What if they didn’t go south to Galway back in 2016, but north instead?’
Ev frowns. ‘North, as in –?’
‘North as inNorthern Ireland. No passport checks at the border there either – especially not back then before Brexit and all that shit.’
Quinn frowns. ‘So why did they piss about going to Dublin? Why not get the ferry straight to Belfast?’