November 1952, 1.45 a.m. Constable Edward Rutherford had been on duty at Whiteabbey RUC barracks since ten the previous evening. A coal fire burned in the hearth of the whitewashed duty room. An unshaded sixty-watt bulb in the centre of the ceiling cast long shadows. It had been a quiet night. There had been several incidents involving soldiers returning from the NAAFI dance, which he had logged in the incident book, but the continuous rain had kept most people inside. Also logged were an elderly widow who reported an intruder in her garden and a traffic accident between a car and a lorry on the main Belfast road. Small incidents documented in Rutherford's meticulous hand. It was a cell-like room and there was something monkish about Rutherford's scratchy and crabbed handwriting, of studious men with failing eyesight and the making of records to offset against the darkness, the chaos, the trans-European hordes swarming with fire and swarthy vigour.
The telephone rang at 1.45 a.m. When Rutherford answered, Judge Curran was on the other end.
"This is Lance Curran. My daughter has failed to arrive home from the city. Mrs Curran and I are extremely concerned."
"Good evening, Judge Curran. I have no report of anything untoward. Might she have stayed with . . .?"
"We thought there might have been a road traffic accident involving a bus?"
"No sir, there's been nothing like that tonight, sir."
"She was at college today. Normally she returns at approximately six o'clock. I have been informed by one of her friends that she had taken the five o'clock bus to Whiteabbey. It is now almost two o'clock and we have had no contact with her."
"I tell you what, Sir. I . . ."
"I would be extremely grateful if you came to The Glen immediately."
"Certainly, your honour."
Rutherford replaced the phone in the cradle. He recorded the call in the night book and took his coat from its peg. As he did so, Constables McCulla and Tweed entered the station following their late evening beat. Both of them were wearing oilskins over their uniforms, and exuded a burly authority.
"What a fucking night," McCulla said. "How come you've got the coat on?" "I got a call from Judge Curran. He says the daughter's missing."
"From what you hear tell," Tweed said, "it's not the first time that one's gone missing in action. Far from the first time, if I heard it right."
"I'm serious, boys. He sounded worried, so he did."
"Get on up there, then. We'll hold the fort here. Go on to fuck."
As Rutherford was fixing his cap the phone rang again. Rutherford had been a policeman for fifteen years and had once had ambitions to be a detective. He had craved the glamour that attached to it. The clandestine meetings with informers. The grudging respect between criminal and policeman. He often imagined himself as a craggy individualist, a man troubled by dangerous knowledge, moral ambivalence, given to dour, unsung heroics. It was not something he dreamed of any more and yet the two phone calls he received that night seemed to belong to a congruent fiction of felony and murder by night. When he lifted the phone he heard a woman's voice. Her voice was shaking. "This is Doris Curran. Something terrible has happened . . ."
The phone line went dead. "As if someone had put their finger on the receiver," Rutherford said afterwards, carried along by the current of intrigue. He would speak the phrase thoughtfully, tailing off into silence while his listeners waited respectfully, recognizing his right to dramatic pacing, the appearance of pained reverie.
He told the others what had happened.
"I hear the mother's bad with the nerves," Tweed said. "Fuck me, what a house. The Desmond character playing on God's team and the daughter on the flat of her back with the rakes of the country. There's not much breeding there."
"You'd better mind yourself up in that place," McCulla said. "I wouldn't take a pension to go near The Glen this night."
Constable Rutherford cycled along the unlit railway track until he reached the main Whiteabbey road. He stopped and dismounted at the gates of The Glen and left the bicycle leaning against the gate pillar. He recalled that he heard a church bell strike two. Something moved in the trees. Rutherford had the sense of elements being put in place. An impression that a dark choreography had been set in motion. The rustle in the undergrowth. The tolling of bells. He heard gravel scuffle underfoot in the driveway. He looked up to see Judge Curran approaching him out of the shadows. He was wearing a judge's white tie and pinstripe trousers and his face was white in the gloom, so that he resembled a pallid and hollow-voiced compere come to announce the opening of a desolate festivity.
The Judge and Constable Rutherford exchanged a few words at the gate. Judge Curran told the policeman that he and his son had searched the driveway and had found nothing. The following day's newspapers recounted how Rutherford and Curran had then heard "a cry" from Desmond Curran. They hurried down the driveway and located Desmond a few feet in from the edge of the drive. He was looking downwards. The two men followed his gaze and saw Patricia Curran lying on the ground at his feet. He shone his torch on her. She was bareheaded but otherwise dressed. He was aware of the Judge standing behind him and Desmond at his elbow. She was lying on her left side and her right arm was raised, the wrist flexed as though in a overwrought gesture of farewell, although it was to be some time before a more sinister meaning was established from the position of her arm. Her clothing, from her neck to her thighs, was stained with blood.
Rutherford looked nervously at Desmond. He was looking at his sister and his lips were moving. Although Rutherford couldn't hear any words he formed the impression that Desmond was praying. Rutherford sank onto one knee and touched Patricia's shoulder. The blood on the shoulder of her coat was hard and crusted.
He placed the back of his hand against her cold cheek and Rutherford knew then that Patricia Curran was beyond any absolution that Desmond's prayers might bring. As Rutherford began to straighten up he heard a car engine at the entrance to The Glen, then headlights on the drive. The car stopped on the drive beside them and a man got out. Rutherford recognized him as Malcolm Davidson, a local solicitor. He saw that Mrs Davidson was behind the wheel. She didn't look at him. She stared straight ahead, gripping the wheel. Malcolm Davidson approached the small group of men gathered round the body. He was a florid man who moved with a sense of his own import and he approached them like a man entering a funeral home, ready to shake hands and murmur obsequies in their ear.
"Dear God, Lance," he said, stopping beside Judge Curran. As the man spoke, Rutherford felt Desmond begin to shake beside him.
"She's still breathing," Desmond shouted. "I saw her breathing." He threw himself to the ground and began to lift the girl's body. The corpse was so stiff that she was relatively easy to lift. Rutherford waited for Davidson or the Judge to stop him. Instead the Judge and Davidson bent to help Desmond. Rutherford stepped back as they bent forward over her like men determined to press a depraved suit upon the corpse. They managed to lift her and they began to move towards the car, supporting the body between them, its right arm still raised like a tormented mannequin.
Inspector McConnell asked Rutherford why he hadn't stopped them, since the girl was obviously dead, and Rutherford knew the importance of preserving a crime scene. By putting this question McConnell was clearly observing a formality. He knew that an ordinary constable would not dare to challenge the authority of a man of the Judge's stature. Rutherford replied, "I would not take it upon myself to tell any of the men not to touch the body, especially with a car so convenient."
The three men attempted to put the body into the car. The rigor mortis meant that it could not be placed in a sitting position and when they placed it lengthwise, the feet protruded so that the door could not be shut. In the end they placed her across Desmond's lap with her feet through the open window. During this entire procedure Mrs Doreen Davidson remained at the wheel and did not turn to see what was happening behind her. Rutherford could see the whites of her eyes and a gold locket at her neck rising and falling with her shallow, rapid breathing.
Davidson got in at the other side of the car so that the girl's head was supported on his knees. Rutherford could not see any signal being exchanged but Mrs Davidson put the car into gear and it lurched forward. She turned over the muddy verge until the car was pointing the direction it had come. The two men in the car kept their eyes fixed frontwards as it started down the drive towards the main road, like passengers intent on fulfilling a macabre itinerary. Curran turned back towards the house, saying that he had to tell Mrs Curran what had happened.
Rutherford returned to the station, where he telephoned Inspector McConnell at home. He told him that Judge Curran's daughter had been assaulted in the grounds of The Glen and that the body had been taken to Dr Wilson's surgery. It was now 2.30 a.m. After he had replaced the receiver, McConnell stood for a moment in the hallway of his home. From the hall window he could see across the lough to where car headlights were moving along the Whiteabbey road, sparse and remote. Then he lifted the receiver and asked the operator for the home number of Sir Richard Pim, Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
After he had telephoned Inspector McConnell, Rutherford went to Dr Wilson's surgery. He met the solicitor, Davidson, at the door.
"Is there any word of the young lady's condition, if you don't mind me asking sir?" he asked.
Davidson looked at him. "No, I don't mind you asking Constable, and the plain answer to your question is that the girl is dead. Shot, as far as Dr Wilson is concerned."
Rutherford telephoned Whiteabbey RUC station to pass on this information and then returned along the railway line to The Glen. He was uncertain as to what he should do so he decided that he would post himself at the gates of the house until the arrival of the District Inspector. He could see lights burning in The Glen through the trees and he thought of the Judge and Mrs Curran waiting alone by the phone for news of her daughter.
Through the night and into the early hours of the following morning, people started to arrive at the house. Shocked relatives, legal and political colleagues, policemen. However, in the hours following the removal of Patricia's body, only Judge Curran and Doris Curran were in the house, and no record was made or notation set down as to what may have taken place between husband and wife during those hours, or what might have been covenanted between them.
At approximately 4.00 a.m. District Inspector McConnell arrived, accompanied by Constables Tweed and McCulla. The two men were left at the gate and Rutherford accompanied McConnell in an attempt to relocate the spot where the body had been found. Rutherford had left his lit torch on the ground after the body had been lifted in order to find the spot, but the battery had run out. The two men cast around in the darkness for the site. They heard a car coming up the drive. It stopped and Desmond got out.
Rutherford could see that it was the solicitor's car and that his wife was still at the wheel. She was stiff as before, but this time she turned and stared at him, and her eyes seemed to glitter, so that he felt that exposure to terrible events had burdened her with an unexpected and bitter grandeur.
Rutherford regretted then that he had not become a detective. He thought that he could have got to the bottom of it. He imagined interrogating her in a windowless room. Look at me, Mrs Davidson. Did you hear anything suspicious in the car? I said look at me, Mrs Davidson.
Desmond and McConnell spoke quietly together and then they set off along the driveway again with Rutherford following. Desmond led them to the place immediately. McConnell shone his own torch on the spot and then in a direct line towards the driveway. He saw an object on the ground and moved closer.
"Those are my sister's college books," Desmond said. McConnell saw the books and folder, held together by the leather strap, sitting neatly on the leaf mould. Desmond moved forward, past the books, and lifted another object.
"And this is her scarf," he said, holding up the yellow scarf she had been wearing that day.
'Please don't touch anything at all, Mr Curran," McConnell said. "This is a crime scene." He spoke softly. He knelt to examine the books and folder. The edges of each of the books, and of the folder, were aligned as though they had been placed there rather than fallen. The other two men stood at the edge of the pool of torchlight. McConnell stood and took the scarf from Desmond. The fabric was only slightly damp and the scent of a woman's perfume rose from it. Patricia liked a heavy French perfume called Clair de Lune. Intended to be musky and melancholic when worn, but now exuding a brassy mystique that seemed dissipated. Desmond turned to Rutherford. In the torchlight his face looked pinched and guileful.
"Thank goodness there was no sexual interference," he said.
In the early morning, the body of Patricia Curran was transferred by ambulance to the morgue at the Royal Victoria Hospital. A morgue attendant wheeled her into the cold-room and prepared her for the autopsy, which was to be performed by Professor Wells in the morning. He then covered the naked body with a sheet and departed. There was only one body in the morgue that night, presiding over that empty domain with a glassy imperious stare.
The early morning papers the next day all carried the Curran murder as the front-page lead. JUDGE'S DAUGHTER SHOT, the Belfast Telegraph said, going on to describe it as a "sickening crime". Dr Wilson's initial error in assuming that the stab wounds were in fact caused by shotgun pellets, and the subsequent correction of the error by the pathologist, was one of the major contributing factors to the sense of doubt that began to grow about the case, the undertone of stealth, concealment. Other newspapers printed the same error. Some hinted at IRA involvement, the presence of stocky monosyllabic men with concealed firearms, amoral designs on civil society.
The morning papers carried few photographs. The Irish News had a smudged shot of The Glen taken from an estate agent's brochure. The Newsletter showed Judge Curran at his investiture. The tragedy for the family was commented on. Police determination to hunt down the killers was stressed. The evening papers carried more detail. Inspector McConnell described the events of the previous night. He also stated that Patricia had been stabbed rather than shot. The phrase 'frenzied attack' was used in editorials. All the papers carried a small indistinct photograph of the murdered girl. It had been clipped from a society magazine and was poorly printed so that her eyes and mouth could not be distinguished from each other. They formed a single calamitous maw.
Ferguson heard the news that morning as he was shaving. He went into Esther's bedroom. She was sleeping. She had not removed her make-up and her hair was still half pinned up. He thought to himself that she did these things deliberately so that she could see the full extent of her degradation when she looked in the mirror in the morning. Sluttish, culpable. It was part of a resourcefulness she possessed in the field of self-hatred. He shook her gently by the shoulder. When she woke he told her that Patricia Curran had been murdered. She sat up slowly in the bed.
"The poor girl," she said. "Her poor mother." She took his hand. She had a talent for simple, correct gestures. Later she would begin to rearrange the event in line with her drinking, labouring towards the alcoholic's stringent doctrine of self-reprieve, but for the moment her sympathy was genuine.
"Do they know who did it?" she asked.
He shook his head. "They're still looking. McConnell's in charge of the investigation."
"Where was she found?"
"On the driveway. She didn't come home and Desmond and Lance went looking for her."
"Desmond and Lance."
"They phoned everybody she knew first."
"I'd no idea they cared so much."
"Well, if your daughter didn't come home."
"It wasn't the first time Patricia didn't come home."
"I suppose that's true, Esther. The poor creature."
"Will I come with you?" She was looking up at him. He knew how much a visit to the Currans would cost her. The hand that was sitting on the bedclothes was trembling slightly. He could picture her pale, driven face in the Currans' hallway, rendered ascetic and unworldly by terrible need, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her dress so that no one would notice the tremor. He shook his head. He kissed her on her forehead, as if her skin was a patinaed and reverenced icon. Something filled with ancient virtue, hard-won wisdom. When he left the room she was looking into a hand mirror with a kind of wondering revulsion.
It was Judge Curran's task to formally identify his daughter's body at the morgue. Ferguson drove to The Glen to bring him into the city. The small group of people standing at the entrance to the house stared at him, trying to establish his identity, to assign him a role in the narrative, some distinctive persona. A detective. A pathologist. A hard-eyed professional with experience of painstaking investigation.
A policeman recognized him and waved him on. On the driveway two men in plain clothes and a uniformed policeman were examining the ground just off the drive. He thought that this was the place where Patricia's body had been found. About ten yards from the road he saw that a canvas cover had been erected over a piece of ground as if it had undergone dark consecration.
There were several strange cars outside the house and the front door was open. Ferguson went into the hallway, where he heard voices coming from the dining room. He looked in and saw Judge Curran, the solicitor Davidson, and Inspector McConnell. He waited in the hallway. He noticed a pair of girls' tennis shoes under one of the chairs and thought that they must belong to Patricia. He had seen her play at the Douglases' once. She had not wanted to stop when it started to get dark. The two girls played on into the dusk until they could barely be seen, moving like distant monochromatic figures of early film, stately and elegiac figures.
McConnell came out into the hall.
"A terrible thing," Ferguson said, rising to greet him. "Everyone must be most distraught."
"Terrible indeed," McConnell said, "but there is a matter I must raise with you, Harry. The Judge won't let us search the house."
"Why would you do that?"
"There's a good chance our killer was a burglar. There might be some sign of his presence in the house. The murder weapon might have come from the house. God knows. I just think it's a good idea to have a look."
"Better do what he says . . . "
McConnell turned to see Doris Curran standing at the top of the stairs. Her hair was uncombed, standing out in a halo round her head, and she was wearing a long floral nightdress so that she resembled an illustration of sorrow from an ancient book of days. Saintly. Resigned. The heartbroken mother. Ferguson wondered if she was aware of the authority of her position. She stared down at them for a moment then moved out of sight without speaking. The two men nodded at each other. McConnell put on his hat and walked towards the door. Ferguson walked towards the library.
Judge Curran greeted him as thought it was Ferguson who had lost a child. "Terrible news, Harry, terrible news. Can I get you something? A drink?"
However, Curran did not speak on the way into the city. He sat with his head on his chest and his eyes half closed, and once Ferguson thought he heard him mumble something to himself but when he looked the man's lips were tight shut, his eyes seemed sightless and his face inanimate to such a degree that Ferguson thought that he may as well have had carriage of a corpse. They drove to the back of the hospital and were directed towards the morgue. As they approached the morgue gates were opened for them and then they shut behind them. The yard was of red brick and was paved in stone. An ambulance was backed up to the doors of the morgue and two men were unloading a reusable coffin of black enamelled steel from it. Wispy smoke drifted from the top of a cylindrical chimney on top of the building as if those within were engaged in a dreadful process and Ferguson held back, but the Judge strode into the building as if all of the day and night that had gone before had granted him right of audience in any charnel house or ossuary. Ferguson stood by the car and waited.
The judge stood alone in the viewing room. He could hear the approaching rattle of a gurney bearing his daughter's body.
If you look at the shadows of the Judge's face as he looks down at the body of his daughter, you may see evidence that the body has struck a chord of remembrance regarding his own father's desolate expertise. The Judge would have recognised much about this building. There was a smell of blood that would have been familiar from his father's work, redolent of the familiar instruments and places. The cleaver. The hook. The blood tank. The doors opened as a porter pushed the gurney into the room. The director of the morgue followed him. He looked at the Judge to see if he was ready, then plucked the cloth from Patricia's face.
The funeral was held four days later. Patricia was buried in the graveyard of the Presbyterian church in Whiteabbey, yards from the gateway of The Glen. Men and women attended the house before the men left with the coffin for the cortΦge to the church. Ferguson saw the Judge talking to the Minister for Home Affairs. He recognized Desmond's blond hair as he moved through the crowd. He saw a young man in an airman's dress uniform. He did not recognize him then but he would later come to know that it was lain Haye Gordon.
Ferguson saw the young man approach Desmond Curran and speak to him briefly. Ferguson had seen Desmond earlier that morning. He seemed cold and aloof and his face seemed to grow colder as Gordon spoke to him and Ferguson had the impression of a suitor soliciting a favour. He thought that Desmond had the look of a minor Germanic prince, haughty and disdainful. He turned his back abruptly on Gordon and walked off through the crowd.
Ferguson saw Patricia's friend Hillary Douglas. She was wearing a large hat and white dress and her face was grey-pallored and otherworldly as though it was Hillary and not her friend who had been promised in deathly betrothal.
"There's no real side to that girl," Esther said. "She wasn't fit to deal with what happened."
He was surprised to see the bookmaker Hughes at the door, come to offer his condolences. Ferguson moved quietly to his side.
"I'm sure Judge Curran would be glad of your condolences . . ."
"I'm not here to add to the Judge's sorrow, Mr Ferguson," Hughes said. "I am here to express my sympathy at the passing of his daughter."
Doris Curran was sitting in a chair by the fire. Now and then people would approach her to offer their condolences and she would murmur something without looking at them. Something kept most people away from her. She seemed a severe presence, about to deliver herself of a stern admonitory address. Mrs Douglas sat across from her. Mrs Davidson stood by the fireplace, her hand resting on the back of Doris Curran's chair, her face filled with sympathy but also a kind of authority as though she had been granted dominion over the mother's grief. It was these three women that Ferguson was to see last as he followed the funeral down the drive, the women, as was customary, not accompanying the men to the graveyard. He turned then and followed the cortΦge towards the graveyard, where the Reverend Douglas was to exercise his dismal jurisdiction.
Eoin McNamee 2001