The Lost Child: A Gripping Detective Thriller with a Heart-Stopping Twist

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She was a right nag when she wanted to be. Didn’t agree with the barring order. One of those old-fashioned biddies who believed in “for better, for worse” even when the worse was so bad you had to lock your husband out.’

  ‘So she was nagging Marian over Arthur?’

  Bernie nodded.

  ‘But she was the person Marian wanted the night she was assaulted?’ Boyd said.

  ‘I wondered about that. I think Marian had to show her mother just how brutal Arthur could be.’

  ‘Makes a kind of sense,’ Boyd said, scrunching his eyebrows together.

  ‘Any other instances of domestic violence in the Russell home that you can recall?’ Lottie asked.

  Bernie sighed and looked down at her clasped hands.

  ‘Is there something you have to share with us?’ Boyd urged. ‘Rest assured everything is confidential.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Until I read it in the newspaper or online.’

  ‘You’re here to help us. We need to find Marian,’ he said. ‘To make sure she is safe. Something you say may help us locate her.’

  With another sigh, Bernie said, ‘I think Tessa Ball beat Marian too.’

  Lottie exchanged a glance with Boyd. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s just something Emma told Natasha once. About how it was such an injustice the way the courts treated her dad, when he was like a puppy compared to her granny.’

  ‘But you have no eyewitness account of Mrs Ball beating Marian?’

  ‘No. But after what happened last night, I think I can believe it.’

  ‘You think Marian attacked her mother and left her dead on the kitchen floor?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘It seems like it from where I’m sitting.’

  ‘Is there anything else you’d like to add?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘No. I want to go home now.’ Bernie Kelly picked up an umbrella from the floor and shook it.

  ‘Of course,’ Lottie said. ‘I’m sending a family liaison officer to stay with you until we find somewhere for Emma.’

  Bernie’s cheeks flared red. ‘I’ve told you we don’t need a babysitter.’

  ‘Emma needs protection until we find her mother.’

  ‘She says she wants to go home.’

  ‘That’s not possible. Not at the moment.’

  ‘She can stay with me as long as she wants. And I don’t want any guards in my house.’

  ‘And I’ve to do my job. Thanks for coming in.’ Lottie stood up to complete the interview protocol. ‘I’m sorry for leaving you waiting earlier.’

  Bernie Kelly stood too. ‘I’d nowhere else to be anyway. Except being at home watching the girls.’

  Nine

  The garda technical van was still parked on the road outside the Russell house, and spotlights were casting tunnels of yellow light up at the grey-black sky. Jim McGlynn was standing outside the door, instructing his assistant to head upstairs.

  ‘Hi, Jim. Did you see a teenager hanging round here this morning?’ Detective Maria Lynch asked, holding the umbrella over both of them. ‘I’ve been up at the Kellys’ but there seems to be no one there.’

  He ducked away. ‘That thing is dripping all over me. Who is it you’re looking for?’

  ‘Emma Russell. Granddaughter of the victim. She might have been with a friend.’

  ‘Ah, yes, saw someone. Around ten o’clock. Wanting to get in. The cheek, like.’

  ‘Do you know where they went?’

  McGlynn said, ‘I was busy trying to finish up here so I didn’t pass any remarks. Is it your job to be minding the young one?’

  ‘Yes, it is. And I can’t find her,’ Lynch said. A gust of wind took hold of her umbrella, blowing it inside out.

  ‘Rather you than me, then, having to tell DI Parker you lost her.’ McGlynn chuckled to himself as he hurried inside the house.

  ‘For fucks sake,’ Lynch said. She was already in Lottie Parker’s bad books – God only knew what for – and now this. She’d wring Emma Russell’s neck when she found her.

  And then a terrible thought struck her.

  She dropped the inside-out umbrella into the ditch and started to run back up the road.

  Ten

  Arthur Russell strummed his guitar and listened through the headphones. It was beginning to sound good. Beginning to sound like something worth recording. He still had dreams. Forty-nine and acting like a wannabe world-famous guitarist. That’s me, he thought. Too late to change now.

  Flicking a couple of the red switches and sliding a lever on the sound desk, he began again. Crooning to the soft music straining through his headphones.

  Still not quite right. Sighing loudly, he tugged at his wiry grey-flecked beard and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, two people were standing before him. He pulled off the headphones, scraping the skin on his shaved head.

  ‘What do you want? How’d you get in here?’

  ‘Mr Russell? Arthur Russell?’ said the woman with rain-soaked hair.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ He placed his guitar on its stand, folded his arms and gently swivelled on his stool.

  ‘Detective Inspector Lottie Parker,’ the woman said.

  He liked the sound of her voice. Deep and melodic. He wondered if she could sing.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Boyd,’ said the tall wiry man.

  He looked more groomed than the woman. Odd pair, Russell thought.

  ‘You’re trespassing on my property. How did you get in?’

  ‘Your landlady. Nice set-up you have here,’ the detective inspector said.

  ‘Mrs Crumb is a loony old bat. What do you want? I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Breach of a barring order strike any bells?’ The woman’s voice was higher now. Sneering at him.

  He said, ‘I haven’t been next, nigh nor near that house. Ask the wife. Oh, maybe she sent you to shake me up for a few more euros, is that it? Hard luck. I’m broke.’

  ‘When did you last see your wife?’ the male detective asked.

  He wasn’t a singer anyway, Russell mused. And what had this to do with Marian?

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Russell. Your wife.’

  ‘Saw her in court about four months ago. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘We would if we could find her.’ The inspector again.

  ‘Try Tesco or up at the house. Only two places Marian goes.’

  ‘She’s not at either. When did you last see your mother-in-law?’

  ‘Hold on a minute… What’s this about?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘No, I won’t answer the question. You’ve no right being here, asking stupid shite. Now get out before I call a solicitor.’

  The inspector stepped towards him. Arthur stood his ground.

  She said, ‘It’s in your own interests to answer our questions.’

  ‘Why? Any time I’ve had anything to do with your lot, it’s ended up damn expensive. You and your like cost me my family. I can’t even see my daughter without giving a month’s notice.’ He rolled his fists into tight balls. Chewed hard on the Nicorette gum in his mouth. Blood pumping up through his chest and arms, boiling around in his head. The muscles in his legs making his knee twitch.

  ‘Why are you so angry?’ The inspector – what was her name? Parker. Yeah. Bitch –took another step into his space. One more and I’ll flatten you, he thought. He shrugged his shoulders instead.

  ‘I want no trouble.’

  ‘Where were you last night between six thirty and, say, eleven?’

  ‘Do I need a solicitor?’

  ‘Up to you. Have you something to hide?’

  Arthur banged his fists against his thighs. ‘You come in here and ask me all these questions. Makes me nervous, that’s all. What would you feel like if someone came into your music shed and did that to you?’

  ‘I don’t have a music shed,’ she said.

  ‘Figures.’

 
‘What do you mean?’

  Arthur stood up, his patience finally snapping. ‘You look like you’re too far up your own hole to chill with music. Am I right or am I right? Ha.’

  Gone too far, he thought, as she grabbed his shirt and pulled him close to her. He smelled the mint she’d been sucking, masking the staleness of alcohol. A drinker. All the guards were the same. Alcoholic bastards.

  ‘Take your hands off me this second,’ he said.

  She released her grip, dropping her hand without moving away. ‘I’m taking you to the station to make a statement.’

  ‘What am I supposed to have done, because I sure don’t know?’

  ‘You refused to answer our questions,’ said the lanky male detective. ‘Last night, where were you?’

  Russell picked up his guitar and sat down. ‘I was at work yesterday in Danny’s Bar and I had my dinner with Mrs Crumb around seven thirty. After that, I worked on my music in here. Now get the hell out of my privacy.’

  The two detectives looked at each other. Deciding what to do? Pricks, Arthur thought, and put his headphones on. He wheeled the stool away from them, faced his desk and began to sing.

  When he turned around again, they’d gone. But he knew, as sure as day follows night or whatever the saying was, they’d be back.

  He spat out the gum. Rooted around in his guitar case, found a pack of cigarettes and lit one. His head began to swim and he knew he needed something stronger than nicotine.

  ‘Fuck you, Marian,’ he said, tugging off the earphones again. ‘You scheming bitch.’

  * * *

  ‘He’s a piece of work,’ Boyd said, struggling to light a cigarette in the rain.

  ‘With his hillbilly tartan shirt and his scraggy beard… Who does he think he is?’ Lottie said, pulling up her hood against the downpour.

  ‘He could do with a wash,’ Boyd said.

  ‘I couldn’t smell him.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Lottie, you’re drinking again. I’m not blind or stupid. What’s going on?’

  The concern etched on his face disturbed her. But she didn’t need him to feel sorry for her. She’d fight this her own way. Like she always did.

  ‘Mind your own business.’ She ran to the car. Got in and slammed the door.

  Boyd joined her. ‘I’ll only say this once,’ he began. ‘I’m here if you need me.’

  ‘Start the car. We need to do the paperwork on Arthur Russell and check out his so-called alibi.’

  ‘Your wish is—’

  ‘Start the car, Boyd.’

  ‘Maybe we should’ve told him about his dead mother-in-law and his missing wife.’

  ‘Maybe we were right not to. Let’s see what he does next.’

  ‘Do you think Marian killed her own mother?’

  ‘When we find her, why don’t we ask her?’ Lottie stamped her feet up on the dashboard and wondered where she could get more pills.

  ‘Where to?’ Boyd said.

  ‘Tessa Ball’s flat.’

  ‘What about Danny’s Bar? To check Arthur’s alibi.’

  ‘It can wait. We’ll have lunch there.’

  ‘Might get it on the house.’ Boyd put the car in gear.

  ‘You’re a mean shite.’ But she had been thinking the same thing.

  ‘Bet you were thinking the same,’ Boyd said.

  Lottie attempted to hide her smile, but failed. She had to listen to him laughing all the way to St Declan’s Apartments.

  * * *

  Lynch ceased her banging on the door and turned round, coming face to face with a woman, key in hand.

  ‘Can I help you at all?’

  ‘I’m the temporary family liaison officer assigned to Emma Russell. Do you know where she might be?’

  ‘I told the other one that we don’t need… Oh, come on in.’ The woman opened the door and ushered her inside. ‘I’m Bernie Kelly.’

  Taking off her coat, Lynch hung it over a heap of others on the stair post. ‘I was ringing and knocking but no one answered. I even went down to check at the Russells’. Where is Emma?’

  ‘In bed, I should think. I don’t know how she’s going to cope with it all.’

  ‘Can I check?’ Lynch grabbed the other woman’s arm and steered her towards the stairs. ‘I want to be sure she’s safe.’

  ‘Of course she’s safe in my house. Why wouldn’t she be?’

  ‘Please have a look.’

  ‘Emma? Natasha? Are ye awake yet?’ Bernie sauntered up the stairs. Lynch wanted to push past her and run into every room.

  ‘What’s up, Mum?’

  Lynch assumed this was Natasha. The girl appeared on the landing, a black T-shirt for a nightie and her hair a tangled mess around her shoulders. Both thighs were tattooed with a dark red heart dripping blood from the dagger piercing it.

  ‘Where’s Emma?’ Lynch almost sent Bernie tumbling back down the stairs as she barged past her.

  Natasha squinted through one eye, the other seemingly stuck closed with sleep. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Detective Maria Lynch, family liaison officer. I need to see Emma. Where is she?’ She couldn’t stop the panic sharpening her voice.

  Emma’s bedroom was empty.

  ‘Is she in another room?’ Without waiting for an answer, she checked the other rooms. All empty. She whipped out her phone and bounded down the stairs past an open-mouthed Bernie Kelly, tapping her phone for Lottie’s number.

  ‘Hey, just a minute, you, this is my house.’

  Lynch felt her ponytail being tugged, and whirled round to launch an attack just as the back door opened and in walked a teenager, holding a plastic supermarket bag in her hand. The smell of fresh bread preceded her entrance.

  ‘Are you Emma?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Lynch shouted, disconnecting the call before Lottie could answer.

  Emma shrank back against the door. Tears suffused the whites of her eyes. ‘Shopping.’

  ‘And you’ve just assaulted a member of the gardaí,’ Lynch snapped at Bernie Kelly.

  ‘This is my house! You can’t go barging around like you own the place.’ Bernie marched past Lynch into the kitchen. ‘Come on, let’s have a cup of tea and we can all calm down.’

  And that made Lynch even madder.

  Eleven

  Tessa Ball had lived in a modern two-bedroomed apartment complex next door to the disused St Declan’s Hospital. Lottie squirmed as a shiver wormed its way between her shoulder blades. She didn’t like to dwell on her most recent case which had culminated inside the closed-down hospital.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Boyd asked. ‘You look like a rat crawled over your face.’

  ‘Very funny, Boyd.’ She unbuckled her seat belt. ‘Second floor. Apartment 6B.’

  She tried to avoid splashing in puddles. Her boots would never dry out at this rate. In the clean, square foyer, smelling strongly of disinfectant, they were met with the steel door of an elevator. She pressed a button, stepped inside and waited for Boyd to join her.

  The elevator trundled slowly up to the second floor. They exited into a corridor lined with doors.

  Stepping into the apartment, Lottie felt around the wall for a light switch and flicked it on. They were standing in a living area. Curtains drawn across the window. The room was split in half by a breakfast bar, behind which lay a galley-type kitchen. A couch piled with cushions in knitted covers was pushed up against the bar. There was a single armchair too, and the floor was covered with flowery deep-pile carpet.

  ‘Like a return to the seventies,’ Lottie said. ‘I thought these were relatively new apartments?’

  ‘Built about ten years ago, maybe less. She must have decorated it herself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it decorating; not in the modern sense.’ She appraised the acrylic paintings on the wall and sniffed the air. ‘Wintergreen.’

  ‘To mask th
e fusty smell, or maybe she had muscle problems?’ Boyd shrugged and lifted up a newspaper from the coffee table. ‘Yesterday’s Irish Times. No Sun for this lady.’ A basket with wool and knitting needles sat beside the newspaper.

  Lottie moved to the window and drew back the brocade curtain. It didn’t add much light to the room. One of those days that refused to brighten up. A moth escaped the darkness and fluttered up to the glass chandelier.

  The kitchen counter top was clean and the sink empty. One by one she opened the mahogany doors of the cupboards. Pulling out a few pots, she checked there was nothing hidden.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Boyd asked, opening the refrigerator.

  ‘Make sure you check the freezer box,’ Lottie said, recalling how they’d overlooked evidence in an earlier case.

  ‘Not even an ice cream.’

  She walked down the narrow corridor and opened the first of three doors. Bathroom. She searched the cabinet. No prescription medicines. A packet of paracetamol, a brown bottle containing iron tonic, and a tube of wintergreen. Shampoo bottle on the floor of the green-mosaic-tiled shower. The chrome handrail made her think perhaps Tessa was feeling her age.

  The next door appeared to be a spare room. Single bed, neatly made up with a white candlewick bedspread. One locker, empty. Free-standing wardrobe, empty. No boxes on top and nothing under the bed.

  ‘This one must belong to the lady of the house,’ Boyd said, opening the door.

  Lottie bit down a sarcastic retort. Her head was pounding and she needed to get out of the suffocating air as quickly as possible.

  Mrs Ball’s bedroom was what she had half expected. An old brass bed, made up with a spread similar to the spare room. A picture of the Sacred Heart hung above it, with the requisite red lamp lit beneath. Lottie got down on her knees, scrabbling beneath the double bed. She sneezed. Mrs Ball’s tidiness hadn’t extended to hoovering under here. Her fingers touched a cardboard box – a shoebox. As she dragged it out, another cloud of dust rose up.

  Boyd ran his hand underneath the mattress. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I thought all little old ladies stored their life savings under the mattress.’