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And why, I ask myself, does that not surprise me.
‘She wasn’t easy to teach?’
She flushes slightly. ‘No, not like that – not academically, anyway,’ she adds quickly. ‘Far from it. She was seriously bright, reading way ahead of her age.’
‘So if not that –?’
She takes another deep breath. ‘Something – else. Worse. Though like I said, I don’t actually know –’
‘What was this woman’s name?’
She bites her lip. ‘Deegan. Ann Deegan.’
***
Voicemail from Adam Fawley to Anthony Asante
***
Adam Fawley
27 July 2024
21.15
By the time we get to the hotel, Marie Ryan has already got someone to do a check on Ann Deegan. It’s not going to be good news; I’ve been a police officer too long to ignore that lurch in the pit of my stomach.
‘Unmarried,’ she says, reading off her phone as we sit in the car park. ‘Teacher, like Reynolds said, and lived in the same house she was born in until her death in March this year.’
She scrolls down and her face clouds a little.
‘What is it?’
She glances up. ‘Her brother’s the priest at Holy Trinity. Or was. That’s the nearest church to where Kate lives.’
‘So probably her church? She would have known him?’
She nods. ‘Her and Sabrina.’
Sunday school, confirmation, services; Daisy might have been alone with this man on any number of occasions. I don’t need it spelling out.
And nor, clearly, does Ryan.
‘You think something happened?’ she says.
‘If you really want to know, I’m more concerned that something didn’t.’
She nods slowly. ‘It’s so easy to accuse a priest these days – maybe too easy. Especially if it was just his word against hers –’
‘That’s exactly what worries me. This girl was manipulative at eight, God only knows what she’s like now.’
‘That’s assuming she’s still alive,’ says Quinn from the back, staring gloomily out of the window. ‘Like Gis said, there’s no good way your hair gets found on a murder vic.’
***
Interview with Joel Hudrick, Consular Officer, US Embassy, Nine Elms, London
28 July 2018, 9.45 a.m.