Vanished

Chapter 39

Jack and Maggie had promised each other that their first venture back out into the wider world beyond the pandemic would be their honeymoon. Yet here he was, flying to Dublin to get closure on a murder case, whilst she was working overtime to cover for her absent surgeon boss.

Once Jack had landed, he went straight to collect his hire car. He’d asked for a Mercedes Jeep which they didn’t have, so he settled for a BMW M3. He knew that by the time he got home, Maggie would have purchased the horrendous pea-green Nissan, so he’d decided that he owed it to himself to at least spend his short time in Ireland driving something nice.

Jack headed straight for the red-brick council building, where he used his police ID to get some help searching local births, deaths and marriage records to find out if Avril Summers had married anyone else before Frederick Jenkins.

He knew that Adam Border was around 35 now and he also knew that Adam was around five or six when Avril was in Dublin. So, if she had quietly married here, it would have been between 1992 and 1994. Jack was left alone at an archive computer, with instructions on how the system worked. Two and a half hours later, he found what he was looking for. In the spring of 1994, Avril Summers married Shaun Joseph Donal Border.

Jack was then sent from one department to another in order to find an address to go with the name. Shaun Border, it eventually turned out, was the part-owner of a building company in Sandymount, two and a half miles south of Dublin. He suffered a back injury at work when he was in his thirties and was forced to sell his business and start claiming benefits. He was also paid compensation for his injuries. He’d been registered with various benefit offices from Cork to Killarney, which is where his death was registered in 2002. There was no record of Shaun and Avril getting divorced, which meant that Terence might well be back at the top of the list to inherit all of Avril’s estate. Jack searched for a short while longer and found a nephew for Shaun Border. Seamus was still in Ireland, running a dairy farm in Cork.

Jack drove for just under three hours along the M7, then the M8 towards the Border Dairy Farm. It was a small, family-run business working out of a large house with several attached barns and surrounding fields, accessed via a long, well-maintained gravel path just wide enough for two cars to pass.

Jack parked in front of the impressive four-storey house, next to a quad bike. There were large, cracked plant pots boasting fabulous looking grasses on either side of the wide front door which was opened by a woman wearing dark green wellington boots over blue jeans, and a cotton floral shirt stretched tight over her heavily pregnant stomach. One hand leant on the thick wooden door frame and the other pushed into the small of her back, trying for a more comfortable position.

Jack asked if it was possible for him to speak with Seamus and she gave him the option of walking around the outside of the house via an uneven footpath full of potholes containing muddy rainwater, or driving back down to the road, taking the first left and heading around the outside of the house that way. Jack chose to drive.

Within minutes, Jack was regretting his decision because of the mud that was being thrown up onto the back window of his hire car from the rear tyres. The noise of stones hitting the underside was also concerning, as he envisaged not getting his deposit back.

In the distance, Seamus was waiting outside an enormous milking shed, hands on hips, watching Jack’s BMW bounce over the uneven ground. He was a large man with broad shoulders beneath his old rollneck sweater.

Jack parked short of the milkshed, for fear of totally ruining the BMW’s suspension by driving any further. As he stepped down into the mud, Seamus spoke first. ‘Kathleen said you wanted to speak to me.’ He had a broad Cork accent.

‘My name’s Jack Warr, Mr Border. I’m a DS from the Met in London.’ Jack walked towards Seamus with his hand extended and his eyes on the ground, carefully avoiding mud puddles and cow pats. Seamus, who was less concerned with where he stood, strode forwards, his broad hand swamping Jack’s as he shook it hard and corrected Jack’s assumption that his name was Border. He was a Benton; his mother’s maiden name was Border. Seamus then led the way into a lean-to office which contained nothing more than a desk and a chair. Seamus perched on the desk and gestured for Jack to sit. Jack chose to remain standing. ‘I’m trying to locate Adam Border. I have some good news for him.’

‘I don’t know what I can tell you. I’ve not seen Adam in years. And not properly since school. Last time was, more than twelve years ago? Something like that. What’s the good news?’

Jack said that he’d need to speak to Adam before anyone else, then casually asked Seamus to elaborate on family history, in the hope of stumbling across a clue as to where he might be now.

‘His mother married my uncle Shaun. Patience of a saint, that man... which was lucky because Adam’s mammy was a bloody battle-axe of a woman; I mean, she was good-looking, but a right handful. My uncle Shaun was very kind to Adam, giving him his name and all, so he’d not feel unwanted. I know Adam had spent the first five years of his life in Amsterdam with his da, so he was wiser than me, you know. I’ve been nowhere. As we grew up, he’d come and go with his real da, and sometimes she’d bring another man and take him away, and once he was left in some airport on his own, and Shaun had to collect him. He also spent time in Germany with I-don’t-know-who, but he said it was his favourite place. Anyways the bitch Avril was long gone by the time he was a teen. He didn’t seem to care, but never getting so much as a birthday card from your mammy has to sting.’

Jack nodded his agreement and Seamus continued. ‘Adam was lucky to have Shaun, and, after the work accident, Uncle Shaun was lucky to have Adam. He did the heavy lifting and they both lived off the compensation, but there was friction between Shaun and my family, and you know he had to sell up at a loss. Shaun was forever getting cheques she was cashing, draining every cent he’d got left. My da said it was fraud and Uncle Shaun should get the cops onto her, but he wouldn’t, and it was a big falling-out. I think Adam was with him until the end, then like his mammy he disappeared abroad. Anyways, we never seen or heard from him since.’

He sighed shaking his head. ‘I can take a guess at what the good news might be... his mammy finally do the decent thing and die?’

As Jack was about to head back to his now-filthy hire car, disappointed that he’d had a wasted journey, Kathleen appeared around the side of the house. She was carrying a flask of tea and a Tupperware box filled with sandwiches for Seamus’ lunch.

Jack shouted a thank you in her direction and she asked if he’d got what he came for. By Jack’s polite but lacklustre reply, it was clear that he hadn’t. Seamus joined Kathleen and apologised for not being very helpful.

‘I told him we’d not seen Adam in such a long time, twelve or more years.’

‘What about our Rachel’s wedding? Remember?’ Kathleen’s words made Jack pause. ‘My sister’s eldest, Rachel, married an optician in Killarney back in April last year. I was driving out of the hotel car park when I saw a guy on a motorbike heading in the opposite direction. I swear on Seamus’ mam’s life that it was Adam.’

‘Meaning she’s not sure,’ Seamus clarified.

Cork to Killarney was just over an hour’s drive along the N22. As Jack drove, he called the Victoria House Hotel and booked himself in for the night. He’d selected a decent place to stay because — if it was as nice as it looked on the website — he’d suggest it to Maggie for their belated honeymoon. It was allegedly one mile from the town centre, overlooked a national park and had fabulous-looking suites. Tonight, Jack was staying in one of their ‘Cosy Rooms’, which he interpreted as ‘small’. But that was fine for him on his own.

As he made his way through the luscious green farmland, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was now on a fool’s errand. He’d become obsessed with tracking this elusive man yet, if he was honest, it was based on nothing that would stand up in court.

Jack arrived at the Victoria House Hotel at 3 p.m., just in time to be allowed to check in. The concierge was shocked when she saw Jack enter carrying one small, tatty black rucksack and splattered in mud from his knees down — but the BMW M3 humming outside the main door waiting to be valet-parked allayed her fears. Once he’d signed in and left his card details, he was directed to his room. Jack looked through various leaflets for local attractions that had been left on the dresser, then FaceTimed Maggie. She was sitting in the staff room on DeBakey Ward, with her trainers off and her stockinged feet propped on top of the radiator. Jack held up a leaflet for Lough Leane in Killarney National Park so that Maggie could see the photographs.

She let out a long moan. ‘That looks amazing. I’m desperate to get away, Jack.’

‘It’s a beautiful part of the country, Mags.’ Jack held up more leaflets. ‘Ross Castle. That’s right on the edge of Lough Leane. A puffin colony? You fancy that?’ Jack grinned, expecting Maggie to mock the idea of puffins being a tourist attraction at all. But she screeched, clapped her hands and said that she’d love to sit and watch puffins pottering about on the cliffside. ‘Bloody hell, Mags. You really do need a break!’

Jack then held up a leaflet advertising the staggeringly beautiful Killarney beach and Maggie audibly gasped. Jack’s trip to Ireland had suddenly been worth every second. His eyes then moved from Maggie’s captivated gaze to the reverse side of the leaflet she was looking at: in the bottom left-hand corner was a hand-drawn picture of a hemp leaf, with a smiley face, doing a double thumbs-up.

‘Promise we’ll do it, Jack.’ Maggie’s words regained Jack’s attention. He promised he’d definitely take her on honeymoon to Ireland if that’s what she wanted. Then, with perfect timing, Maggie’s tea break was over, leaving Jack free to find out where the hemp symbol might have come from.

From the hotel bar, Jack watched the staff come and go. He was trying to identify who might be most likely to be involved in the local drug scene. Halfway through his second cappuccino, Jack saw a young porter talking to a chambermaid. He strode over, flashed his Met ID badge and showed them the cartoon hemp leaf.

‘There’s a gang operating in this area, targeting hemp farms. Have you heard of anyone losing crops to thieves?’

The porter didn’t seem to know or care too much, but the chambermaid was outraged by the audacity of it all. She ‘fucking hated thieves’ and was eager for Jack to make sure that her friend’s farm, not five miles down the road, hadn’t fallen victim. Jack got accurate directions and assured her that he’d make sure her friend was safe.

As Maggie tied the laces on her trainers and walked back out onto the main ward, she noticed four suited men standing in the reception area, one of whom she recognised as DC Lyle. He looked different to how she remembered him — authoritative and rather serious, which gave him a rather attractive air of mystery which she’d never imagined he could possess. He looked like a man not to be taken lightly. As they passed and nodded to each other, Maggie realised he reminded her of Jack two years ago.