McGlynn dipped his eyes in warning, but Lottie had already turned away.
Fifty-Six
After sending Boyd off to tell Arthur Russell about his daughter’s death and to verify his whereabouts since his release from custody, Lottie watched two crime-scene officers meticulously identify, bag and tag potential evidence in O’Dowd’s kitchen.
Emma’s broken spectacles. Her phone, with a cracked screen. SIM card and battery, separate from the phone. These were the only signs she had left behind that she had been here.
And accounting ledgers. Stepping closer, Lottie flipped open one of the ledgers with a gloved finger. Columns of words and figures. They meant nothing to her. Another had a list of numbered livestock. Who would feed the heifers and milk O’Dowd’s cows now, she wondered? If he didn’t return. If he had murdered the girl. If…
Flicking through the pages, a light of recognition dawned. She knew that handwriting.
‘Hand me an evidence bag,’ she said.
With the ledger sealed, she took another quick glance around. She was sure this was where Emma had been attacked. The CCTV monitor was smashed on the floor.
‘Any tapes?’ she asked the SOCO who was dusting the counter top for fingerprints.
‘Haven’t noticed any yet. But if I come across them, I’ll notify you.’
‘Do that, please.’
She’d seen enough. With the evidence bag under her arm, she left the house, wondering why Emma had been here and what Mick O’Dowd’s role was in the whole sorry mess. Soon, she hoped, Marian Russell would be able to give them answers.
* * *
At the front of the house, Lynch jumped out of a squad car, dipped under the crime-scene tape and caught up with Lottie.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ she said.
‘Now isn’t the time for games,’ Lottie said, shoving the evidence bag under her jacket to keep the rain off it. ‘I need to get home to my children.’
‘Just trying to soften the blow,’ Lynch persisted.
‘Okay,’ Lottie relented. ‘Good news?’
Lynch took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘The man we suspect is Lorcan Brady is off life support but unable to talk for the moment.’
‘That’s the good news?’
‘Yes, boss. The bad news now?’
‘Oh, go on. It can only add to the day I’ve had.’
‘Marian Russell died half an hour ago.’
* * *
‘Inspector Parker?’
Cathal Moroney had appeared from behind a white van with a satellite dish on the roof. He got no further than the gate. Two gardaí succeeded in keeping him behind the crime-scene tape.
‘Have you a comment on what you think happened here, please?’
‘Do you honestly want to know what I think?’ Lottie tightened her grip on the evidence bag under her jacket, and walked up to the tape, careful not to slip in the downpour.
Moroney slid his microphone under her nose. ‘Yes, please. Is it another murder? The girl who went AWOL from under your very eyes?’
Stepping forward, jabbing towards him with her finger, Lottie said, ‘You are the lowest of the low. How do you live with yourself?’
Moroney grabbed her hand before it connected with him.
‘Detective Inspector Parker, I’ll let that go for this one time only. I’ll put it down to the shock of whatever you’ve witnessed in there. But let me tell you, I could do you for assault.’
Lottie kept her mouth shut. He had a point.
‘So it’s no comment, is it?’
She nodded and ducked under the tape, heading for the squad car Lynch had exited. Before she reached it, she felt Moroney tug her sleeve.
‘Meet me in the Joyce Hotel. Tomorrow. Say twelve thirty p.m. There’s something you need to know.’
She shrugged off his hand and opened the car door.
‘Don’t forget,’ he said.
‘If I do, I’m sure you’ll remind me.’
She got into the car and slammed the door. She had more to be doing than meeting Cathal fecking Moroney tomorrow. She leaned her head into the seat and closed her eyes tightly. She could still see Emma Russell’s staring back at her. And she immediately thought of her children. It had been one long, merciless day.
* * *
His coat had been there all the time. Folded in a ball under his music desk. Or had he got two? He couldn’t remember. God, but he had to cut down on the weed. He had no idea what was real or imagined any more.
The guitar held no solace for him. He plucked at a string, sighed, and laid the instrument back in its stand. He scanned his small cabin of refuge and felt the walls encroach on his very soul.
Where would he begin to look for Emma?
Perhaps he should rush over to the hospital and shake the life out of Marian. See what she had to say for herself. The witch. With her plants and her spells and whatnot. Most times he was sure she was insane; other times he was convinced she was just plain sad.
A knock roused him from his reverie. Before he could move, the door swung inwards and Arthur Russell’s sorrowful little world was once again rocked on its axis.
Fifty-Seven
The young garda parked the squad car in the station yard. It took Lottie a moment to realise where she was. A sharp knock on the window and she jumped in her seat.
‘What the…?’
A face peered in at her, the light attached to the wall beaming down behind it.
She stepped out of the car in a daze.
A hand was thrust towards her. She looked down at it and then up at the face. No one she recognised. A head of black hair meant he was probably younger than her. Even in the obscure light she could see his skin was dark. Tanned? She couldn’t make out the colour of the eyes. Not here, anyway. As he stepped back to give her room to shut the car door, she noticed he was a good head taller than her, with shoulders broad enough on which to hang a door. He smirked, and before he opened his mouth, she knew arrogance percolated in the pores of his skin.
‘David,’ he said. ‘Detective Inspector David McMahon. National Drugs Unit. Seconded from Dublin Castle to take command. You must be Detective Inspector Parker.’
Take command? Arrogant prick, she thought. ‘You can take all you like, but I’m still SIO on the murder cases. And the new one.’
‘New what?’
‘Murder.’ Lottie brushed past him and glided up the steps and in through the door. She wanted to bang it in his face, but it was on a slow hinge. She left him standing in the rain. And she knew his mouth was open.
* * *
‘I’ll take this office, shall I?’
He was heading into what would soon be her new office, as yet unfinished, without a door.
‘No you won’t. That’s mine.’
‘Looks like no one has moved in. It’ll do.’ In he marched, pulling off his coat, shaking rainwater over the new beige carpet. He moved a ladder from one wall to the other and eyed the decorator’s table.
She slapped the ledger she’d taken from O’Dowd’s house onto her desk and flopped into her chair.
‘Can I get a chair and a computer?’ he asked.
‘You can piss off back to Dublin,’ she muttered under her breath.
‘What was that?’
‘You can talk to Superintendent Corrigan about that.’
‘I will.’
His voice was deep: a baritone. Or was it a bass? Jesus, she was so exhausted she could cry.
‘Didn’t think you’d be here until tomorrow,’ she said.
He came and sat at Boyd’s desk. She wanted to yell at him to get his arse off her friend’s chair, but she hadn’t the energy.
‘After the fire victim was identified, I knew you wouldn’t have the expertise to handle it,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about? Lorcan Brady is a small-time crook. No need for you to disturb your evening.’
‘Lorcan Brady? No, not that whippersnapper.’
�
�Who then?’
But she knew. McMahon had got word before she had. The stabbed and burned man must have been identified through his dental records. Big-time crook, if it brought a detective inspector out of his cushy Dublin office while a biblical storm raged.
‘Jerome Quinn,’ he said.
‘One of the Quinns?’
‘Second biggest drug family in the country. Jerome split from his half-brother a couple of years ago and disappeared from our radar. Interesting to note he’d most probably been living under your very nose here in Ragmullin.’
‘He never came to our attention.’
‘Correct, but it was some haul of cannabis he had growing, wasn’t it?’
Lottie could hear the reprimand in his tone. Wait till he found out about the heroin they’d discovered in Brady’s house.
‘Not to mention the value of the heroin from Brady’s house.’
So he already knew. Unable to think of a suitable reply, she remained mute.
‘You look tired,’ he said. ‘I’ll check into my hotel and we’ll take this up in the morning. Should be an open-and-shut case. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.’
She felt her hand reach up to her straggly locks. A natural reflex. Maybe he wouldn’t be too bad after all.
‘And I want a computer in here, first thing.’ He fetched his coat and was out of the door before she could pull her thoughts together to frame a suitable reply.
‘What the hell?’ she said to the four walls.
Her phone beeped. Katie.
‘I meant to ask when you rang earlier, Mam, will you pick something up from the supermarket for dinner? And a tin of formula for Louis. Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe another pack of nappies. Ta. You’re the best.’
‘Sure,’ Lottie said, and the call died. She leaned over and rested her head on the desk. She didn’t realise she’d fallen asleep until she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘You’d better go home, Lottie.’ Boyd.
She stretched and glanced at the ledger, still in the evidence bag. ‘I need you to have a look at this.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And there’s no sign of Arthur Russell at the B and B or at Danny’s. No one has laid eyes on him since he was released.’
‘Shit. Surely he didn’t kill his own daughter?’
‘Anything is possible.’
‘I wonder if he knows Marian is dead?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Let’s recap.’ She sat up as straight as her tired spine allowed. ‘Tessa Ball is dead. Marian Russell, her daughter, is dead. Marian’s daughter Emma is dead. Three members of one family. Who benefited from their deaths? What is the motive? And who had it? Arthur? O’Dowd? I can’t get my head around it.’
‘Lottie?’
‘Yes?’
‘It can wait until tomorrow. Go home.’
‘Where’s everyone?’
‘Still at O’Dowd’s. There is a search party out for him and Arthur Russell. But the storm is playing havoc. The town is flooded. The river burst its banks. I had to drive here the long way round.’
Lottie jumped up.
‘I hope my house is okay.’ The river skirted around the side of the estate where she lived. She remembered Katie’s call. Surely she would have mentioned if the house was in danger of flooding? Then again…
‘Will you come grocery shopping with me, Boyd? I haven’t the energy.’
‘What?’
‘Please?’
‘The things I do for you.’
Fifty-Eight
Every night it was the same. Stepping carefully around him, like the floor was covered in sharp shards of glass. And no matter how hard she tried, something invariably tipped him over.
Tonight Annabelle vowed it would be different.
Every last surface in the house was shining. The counter tops were immaculate. The floor – you could eat your dinner off it, and she had, once, with his shoe resting on the back of her neck.
There had to be a way out of this hellhole. Going to a hostel might be an option. But he would find her. And she had to keep her practice going. She had to keep the twins.
Her life had always been boring with Cian, and she no longer remembered why she had married him. At one time she had plugged the gap with affairs, but her disastrous liaison with Tom Rickard had been the final straw for Cian. Something had snapped inside him when he found out. The man she thought she’d been married to for twenty years had altered within weeks into a raging control freak.
It was all her doing, he’d said. She was the one who’d slept in other men’s beds, the one who’d let other men shag her. She was the one who’d deceived her husband with a myriad of lies. She was the worthless one. Wasn’t she? So she deserved every slap and humiliation he threw at her. Didn’t she?
No she did not, she told herself. Annabelle O’Shea was not going to be trampled into worthlessness. She had to do something.
She undressed her burned wrist, tended it with ointment and wrapped a clean bandage over the seeping wound. It should be healing by now, but it wasn’t. She limped over to the stove and, like a robot, stirred the stew.
The twins were in their rooms, finishing their homework. There was no sound from Cian’s study. Come to think of it, she had not heard anything from him since she arrived home from work. She glanced at the clock. He usually visited the kitchen around now, to check on her and call her names.
But this evening there was silence.
She ceased stirring and listened intently. The hum of Bronagh singing along to a tune. The stomp of Pearse’s foot on the floor. Not a sound from Cian’s study.
Opening the back door, she peered through the rain at the raised door of the garage. His car wasn’t there. She never asked where he went or what he did, because she didn’t care. It gave her a few hours of uninterrupted peace. But to go out this early? The clock indicated that it was 19.05.
Slipping off her boots, she climbed the stairs in her Calvin Klein socks. Holding her breath outside his study, she waited. Listened. Nothing. She eased out a breath as her fingers clutched the handle. And then she noticed the coded keypad attached to the door. When had he put that there?
What was Cian involved in that warranted keeping his own family out of his study? She tried the handle anyway. No give. With a sigh of resignation, she was turning to go back down the stairs when she heard, above the cacophony of the storm, the sound of a car screeching up the drive, rounding the gable of the house and entering the garage.
She ran down the stairs and flew into the kitchen, and was stirring the stew when he walked in. Not a word. Not a glance. She didn’t raise her head until she sensed the icy chill as he walked up behind her, eased his arm around her waist and dragged her body to his in a rough embrace. A damp smell of staleness rose from his clothes as his fingers began to probe.
Her long neck, which she had once loved him to caress, froze with the touch of his cold lips on her most sensual spot. And then the pinch, where no one could see. Biting her lip, she willed the scream to lock itself down. To stay silent until she was free to acknowledge the pain.
His hand circled her body and delved under the waistband of her jeans, toying with the lace of her knickers, his fingers exploring. She breathed out, hoping he wouldn’t mistake it for consent. He didn’t. With a final pinch, and without having uttered a word, he extricated himself and hit her behind the knees. She buckled but didn’t fall. He left her with her hand still holding the spoon above the saucepan. Straining her ears, she heard him enter his study and shut the door. Slowly she sank to the floor.
Wiping away her tears, a resolution formed in the depths of her soul.
This could not go on.
Twins or no twins, Cian had to go. If he didn’t, she would. Eventually.
But first she would find out what was so precious to her husband that he kept it locked away in his study.
Fifty-Nine
Lottie pushed down an urge to turn at her front door and walk st
raight back out again. It was like living with three adults who insisted on acting like two-year-olds. They crowded out her four-bedroomed semi-detached house and overwhelmed her with tasks after work each evening. But she loved them. And she needed them more than they would ever know. They kept her grounded in brightness and helped keep the darkness of her job outside her front door.
This evening, though, she needed a drink. No, she thought. Not yet.
Hauling the bag of groceries onto the counter, she began putting the supplies in the cupboards. It looked like her mother hadn’t been in today. The kitchen was a mess. Working, trying to manage the house, watching the children… it was too much. Leaning her head against the cupboard door, she banged a tin of beans down on the counter without hearing the noise she was making. And banged it again.
‘Mam!’ Katie ran in. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You woke up Louis. I’ll have to rock him for another hour to get him asleep again.’
‘I told you not to get into the habit of rocking him.’
‘I’m so tired… Anything that gets him to sleep is fine by me.’
Lottie shoved a jar of curry sauce and two packets of soup into the cupboard. There were three soups in there already. She automatically checked the use-by dates. Two years out of date. What the hell?
‘Are you listening to me, Mam?’
Lottie turned round. Her eyes glazed over, and without knowing what she was doing, she flung the packets to the floor.
‘Jesus, Mam. Stop. What’s wrong with you?’
Lottie squinted over at her daughter. ‘Katie?’
‘I’m getting Chloe.’ Katie flew out of the kitchen.
A black shadow crept across Lottie’s vision. She clutched for the counter top but her legs slipped out from under her and she slid to the ground. Tipping back her head, she gulped for air. Couldn’t catch her breath.
‘Katie…’
Breathe, she warned herself. Breathe. She was no use to her kids dead. Unable to catch hold of a breath, she saw black stars swim in front of her eyes. Then darkness.
The Lost Child: A Gripping Detective Thriller with a Heart-Stopping Twist Page 19