He tried a door with no name on it and peeked into a simple bedroom. The single bed was stripped back to its floral mattress. The white wardrobe and matching bedside and dressing table all had the same gold squiggly handles. If not exactly luxurious, it was comfortable and fresh, a lot better than most charity gaffs.
A home for pregnant girls. What were those bloody nuns at – not telling them about this place? Or was it the unit’s fault for not locating it? He was sure it hadn’t turned up in their checks of mother-and-baby homes.
‘Are you finished yet?’ The girl had come to keep an eye on him.
‘Seems a nice place.’
She made a non-committal noise and leaned a shoulder against the wall.
‘Are you from round here?’ asked Swan.
‘Naw. I’m from Clonakilty.’
‘How are you liking Dublin?’
‘We don’t go out much. They think someone might spot us. From home.’
‘Which one are you?’ Swan pointed to the doors with names on them.
‘Esther McDaid. No longer a maid.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘You got any money?’
‘What do you need money for?’
‘They don’t let us have any. They say it might be stolen, if we had it.’
‘Maybe I have. Tell me, who was the last girl here to have a baby?’
Her bold smile dimmed and she examined him closely. He stared her out, trying to simultaneously look kindly and hide the eagerness he felt. He wondered whether he should be so blatant as to take out his wallet.
She turned round and headed for the stairs, looked back at him over one shoulder. He followed her down. On the landing of the last flight of stairs she stopped and opened a door he had presumed was a bathroom. It led to a corridor, an extension on the back of the original house, and the end of the corridor was a little chapel, with miniature pews for about eight people. A hanging candle in a small red glass signalled Christ’s presence. Esther bobbed a quick genuflection, leaning back to balance her bump.
She led him to the left, to a blunt little offshoot passage with a door at the end.
‘She stayed here, not for long. A couple of weeks ago. We weren’t even supposed to know about it, but she came out some nights and talked to us, once the nuns were gone or asleep. One day I heard a baby cry in there. She didn’t give it up. I heard her arguing with Sister Bernadette about it.’
‘Are you going to keep yours?’
‘They won’t let me. They tell me it’ll ruin my life. I told Bernadette that wasn’t fair, and she told me that I would spoil the baby’s life too, if it grew up as a bastard. She used that word.’
There was a name-holder on this door too, but the little card was blank. Swan tried the handle. It opened into a bedroom larger than the ones upstairs, with a sofa and a double bed. The carpet that ran seamlessly between the skirting boards was a rich cornflower blue. He let out a whistle, then walked to the centre of the room and slowly looked about. His veins hummed with excitement. There were no personal belongings, nothing that drew his eye. He opened the wardrobe door. It was empty, except for a padded plastic rectangle with teddy bears on it. Inexperienced as he was, Swan recognised it as a changing mat.
He closed the wardrobe and looked round. Esther had disappeared. Instead, Sister Dreyfus stood there in a grey anorak, her habitually tense expression turned to frank alarm. He suppressed a terrible urge to laugh.
‘Can I help you, Detective?’
He backed her out of the room, closed the door behind him. Esther McDaid was sitting on one of the chapel pews, pretending to pray. He would have to remember to slip her some money. At least enough for a train fare.
‘I need a telephone, and then I need to see Sister Bernadette. Here. Now.’ He tried not to shout it.
Mother Mary Paul was having extraordinary difficulty backing the convent’s station wagon into a quite generous space across the road from St Jude’s. Swan watched her efforts through the window of the front office that he had commandeered as his own.
More than an hour had passed since he hit the phone. Sunday was a bad day for excitement – the world wasn’t geared up to meet it. Considine was at home, and offered to locate Barrett and come to Percy Place as soon as they could manage. Rathmines Garda station would send two uniforms over to secure the scene. There was nobody in the technical lab, so he left a message at the duty desk. He was tempted to phone Goretti Flynn at home, but she would probably just tell him to lock the bedroom door and wait for morning.
The nuns had been elusive too. Nobody answered the main phone in the convent, and it was only by bullying Sister Dreyfus that he managed to reach Mother Mary Paul on a private line. Mary Paul said Sister Bernadette was on retreat across the border in Newry, but she would come herself right away, didn’t bother to fake surprise or ask why. Sister Dreyfus was supposed to be downstairs making lunch for the residents, but kept appearing at his elbow with cups of tea. Hovering.
Mother Mary Paul finally gave up her struggle with the car, leaving it at an angle to the kerb. She slammed the driver’s door with surprising force and shifted her shoulders back, military-style, before heading towards the house. Swan opened the front door and directed her into the front office.
‘Monsignor Kelly is on his way,’ were the first words out of her mouth.
He was about to shut the front door when he heard a little skid of tyres, and Considine jinked her Mini into a small space at the kerb. Barrett was with her. Swan asked Mary Paul to wait in the office and went to meet them.
They clustered on the pavement. He turned
