The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

Swan could see that the lining looked spotless, except for some deposits of lint in the corners.

‘Nothing?’

Dr Flynn nodded, not breaking eye contact.

Perhaps a stain of bloody fluid in the bag, to match the one on the shirt and paper bag, would be too neat. The baby could have been wrapped in some other layer that they hadn’t located, or she brought the baby to the garden in just the paper carrier at an earlier time. The misty woman or girl in his imaginary scenarios now wore Ali Hogan’s face.

There were no leads yet from the towelling or blue carpet fibres, but they could come if they found a location to match them to. He urged Goretti Flynn to get out and grab what was left of the weekend.

‘If I served only you, Vincent, I’d be happy to, but there are others in line. Thanks anyway.’

Considine was waiting for him outside the door.

‘Managed to track down Carmen Fitzgerald,’ she said. ‘Her mother had taken her on holiday – South of France, no less. She brought her in this morning.’

‘I told her to tell Rathmines if she left the city.’

‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

‘Anything good?’

‘Well, Carmen says she’s shocked at the idea that Alison might have been pregnant. Says she didn’t have a boyfriend; they told each other everything and shared rooms in each other’s houses, so she would have noticed if she had a bump.’

‘Is she plausible?’

Considine shrugged. ‘I think so, but then she told me something very interesting. You can hear it from her.’ She jigged her head towards the corridor of interview rooms and Swan followed her.

Carmen Fitzgerald lit up the dreary room with her red jacket and electrocuted yellow hair, but her face was ashen.

‘Tell him what you told me,’ said Considine, ‘about the night before you found the baby.’

‘Can I go home if I do?’

Considine looked to Swan. He nodded at the girl.

‘We were at the school that night – near the hockey pitch. We go there sometimes … to drink. It’s just round the back of Ali’s house.’

‘What time was this at?’

‘Dunno. About nine or ten. We met two blokes we knew from Rathgar College, and we had some drink. But we weren’t near the Rosary Garden.’

‘She says they didn’t see anyone else,’ said Considine. ‘That they drank some beer and went home by eleven.’

‘And Ali was with you all the time?’

Carmen chewed her bottom lip into a small sideways loop.

‘She went off for a little while with Ronan – they didn’t go far away.’

‘And you were involved with the other boy.’

‘God, no! Bobby Kinsella, you must be joking.’

‘I thought you said Ali didn’t have a boyfriend.’

‘She doesn’t – that was just, y’know, a little bit of messing. Ali always had a soft spot for Ronan. He used to go out with Eleanor Glenn.’

She spoke as if Swan would have foreknowledge of her social scene, of the repulsiveness of Bobby and the cachet of Eleanor Glenn.

‘Was Ali a virgin, do you know?’

Carmen blushed as red as her jacket. ‘I don’t know!’

‘I’m sure you talk about those kinds of things.’

‘I don’t know,’ she insisted.

They let the girl re-join her mother, but asked them to stay to have a statement taken and give details of the boys.

Considine and Swan regrouped in the corridor. Carmen’s hotly claimed ignorance of Ali’s sexual experience wasn’t particularly convincing. And the fact that they’d been in the grounds of St Brigid’s around the time of the child’s death was impossible to ignore.

Swan reminded Considine of the pathologist’s anecdote, about the girl whose boyfriend didn’t even notice she was pregnant. Wasn’t it possible that a best friend mightn’t notice, either?

Considine ticked off the known facts on her fingers. ‘Ali was there that night, she had the means to conceal it, the blouse found at the scene is probably hers.’

‘We’re going to have to move this forward, fast. I’ll get Barrett to track down the two boys this morning, but more importantly we need to recruit an expert, a thingummy – gynaecologist – can you take care of that?’

22

Ali had slept badly. Her mind had kept startling awake to thoughts of Ivor and what had happened in his van. The shame and the wonder of it. How different it felt compared to every fumbling misadventure she’d tried before. But on the way back to the marquee they’d found nothing to say to each other. Maybe they never would. It was only a one-night stand, she told herself, trying out the phrase she knew from magazines, flicking it away.

Ali swung her feet to the floor. This swoony feeling was just exhaustion, not emotion. She had slept naked and now peeled the sheet from her body, pulled on her pyjamas and an old jumper, and went downstairs.

The house was strangely silent, the kitchen empty. Toast crumbs littered the oilcloth and the teapot felt warm. She checked the immersion was switched on for a bath, and went to the scullery to get milk for cornflakes from the big jug there. It was so fresh from the cows that it was still lukewarm and frothy. She changed her mind about eating.

As she filled the kettle she wondered if Davy was up and about in the bungalow. Maybe she could bring coffee up to him, try to get back their normal jokiness, after the strange mood they parted with last night.

The love-bite. She tried to see it in the small rectangle of mirror that hung over the sink. It was hardly anything, just a purple smear. If she remembered not to push her hair back, it would stay hidden. She met her eyes. She could go out for a walk later. Down through the village maybe. Joan said Ivor’s flat was above the garage.

There was a sudden movement in the background of her reflection. Someone had passed by the window and was opening the door in the scullery. She heard rustling among the coats hung there.

‘Hello?’ she called.

Brendan appeared in the doorway. He looked