Someone You Know Read Free Page A

breeze off the river had risen now, bringing with it further flecks of rain and a sudden chill that heralded the first grumble of thunder overhead.
    â€˜We’ll need to get her covered before the rain hits,’ Burns said. ‘So, what’s the story with the girl, then?’
    â€˜She’s been in and out of care for years now,’ Lucy said. ‘She’d be in the residential unit for a few months at a time, then out home again.’
    â€˜What are the home circumstances?’
    â€˜As I said, the mother is an alcoholic. Every time she’d be taken in to dry out, Karen ended up in care. Plus, occasionally, Karen would be hospitalized for self-harming and would be kept in care until her mood stabilized.’
    Burns nodded. ‘And I don’t need to ask about the father.’
    The element of the story the media had focused on, despite Lucy’s best attempts to keep it all about the girl, was the fact that her father was Eoghan Harkin, a man coming to the end of a twelve-year stretch for murder. He’d been part of an armed gang that had robbed a local bank in a tiger kidnapping which had left the bank’s manager dead.
    He’d done his time in Magherberry, in Antrim, only to get moved closer to home a few months earlier, to Magilligan Prison in Coleraine. He currently resided in the Foyleview unit there, which prepared offenders for release. As the girl had used her mother’s surname, it hadn’t been an issue when Lucy had drafted the first press release on Friday expressing concern for Karen. By Sunday, one of the trashier papers had somehow made the connection and ran a front-page story under the heading ‘Killer’s Girl Goes Missing’.
    â€˜Who found her?’
    â€˜A poor sod working for the railways,’ Burns said. ‘He was called in because someone stole cabling. The late train is stuck down at Gransha. Lucky really. The bend she was on, the train would have been straight into her before the driver would have seen her.’
    â€˜Was that the point? Lay her on the tracks so that, when she gets hit by the train, the damage it’d do would hide the wound to the throat?’
    â€˜Make it look like suicide,’ Burns agreed. ‘We’d have thought nothing of it with her having been in care and that.’
    â€˜Whoever did it knew she was in care then,’ Lucy ventured.
    His face mask down now, Lucy could get a better look at Burns. He was stocky, his features soft, his jawline a little lacking in definition. But his eyes still shone in the flickering blue of the ambulance lights.
    â€˜Maybe.’ He huffed out his cheeks. ‘Look, I appreciate you coming to ID the remains, folks. We’ll be another few hours here at least and we’ll have the PM in the morning. Maybe you could call to the CID suite about noon and we’ll take it from there.’
    â€˜Of course, sir,’ she said.
    Burns pantomimed a winch. ‘And a second favour. Seeing as how you already know them, perhaps you’d inform the next of kin.’
    T hey stopped first at Gransha, the local psychiatric hospital, where Karen’s mother, Marian, was being held while she dried out after her latest two-week session. She’d be in no fit state to talk to them for some time. At that moment, they were informed, she was insensible.
    As they left the ward to return to the car, Lucy glanced across to the secure accommodation where her own father was a permanent resident. The block was in darkness now, low and squat. Her father had once been a policeman too, but had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for the past few years. Lucy’s estranged mother, the ACC of the division, had sanctioned the man’s incarceration in the secure unit following the events in Prehen woods a year earlier.
    â€˜Will we get the prison officers to break the news to the grieving father? Or do you fancy a drive to Magilligan?’ Fleming