Shit.
Fifty-Six
Lottie couldn’t believe she was about to conduct another interview while her daughters were still missing. Before entering the room, she phoned her mother to make sure all was okay with Sean and Louis and to confirm her house was still monitored with a squad car outside it. She had to keep working otherwise she’d go insane.
Tony Keegan’s stomach was pressed up against the table and his greasy hair fell to his shoulders, with wayward curls around his forehead. His eyes travelled from Lottie to Boyd, then, as he tried to focus on a point above their heads, he gave up and studied his thick hands resting on the table. If Lottie had to describe him, she would have said he was rough but shifty. She would need to delve deep beneath his exterior. She knew murderers came in all guises, and so far the killer of four young women was like a feather in the wind.
‘Can I take off my jacket?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’ Lottie had a file with her this time to give the impression that she was reading before addressing him.
Boyd concluded the introductions for the recording.
Lottie began. ‘Mr Keegan, what can you tell me about Conor Dowling?’
‘Ah, well, you know all about Conor, don’t you? He’s not long out of jail.’
‘Tell us something we don’t already know.’
‘How would I know what you do or don’t know?’
‘Humour me,’ she said, fighting down rising irritation. She was sure Boyd and Keegan could hear the beating of her heart, such was her anxiety. She had to find her daughters before it was too late. She wanted to breathe in their youthful scent, not this sweaty idiot’s. But she had to follow this route in order to discover any information that might lead her to them. Concentrate. Focus.
The shifty eyes landed on her. ‘He says you’re harassing him.’
‘I’m talking about the murders, smart-arse.’
‘Oh. I know nothing about them.’
Her exasperation boiled over. ‘Do you read the newspapers? You can read, can’t you? Or watch television, or follow Twitter and Facebook? I’m sure you’ve heard about Amy Whyte, Penny Brogan, Cristina Lee and Louise Gill.’
‘Course I heard about them. Doesn’t mean I knew them.’
‘Your boss is Cyril Gill. You’d have seen Louise around, I’m sure.’
‘I know all the girls to see.’
Lottie stared at him. ‘Tell me how you know them.’
He made to fold his arms, but his girth restricted him in the confined space. A waft of stale cigarettes accompanied his movement, and Lottie regretted having just eaten the croissant. Her stomach churned. The lack of fresh air in their interview rooms was a constant bugbear.
Keegan chewed loudly on a piece of gum, squelching it between his teeth. ‘I saw Amy whenever I went in the pharmacy, which wasn’t often, because I try to avoid my ex-wife. She works there.’ He paused as if he had sucked something rotten into his mouth. ‘Then Penny, I only ever saw her if I was out at the clubs, which wasn’t often either.’
‘And Louise Gill?’
‘Never saw much of her. She never hung around the site. Don’t think there was much love lost between her and her daddy. I knew her lesbian lover to see. Though I doubt Mr Gill was aware of that relationship.’
‘So you think Cyril Gill would have objected to Louise’s choice of partner?’
‘Shit, yeah. He hated all that rainbow stuff. Out-and-out bigot he was. And not afraid to let you know either.’
‘You ever have any disagreements with him?’
‘Not really. No.’ The chewing continued.
‘How long have you worked for Cyril Gill?’
‘Since I finished school.’
‘Which was when?’
‘I didn’t hang around to do my Leaving Cert. I must’ve been about sixteen. That’d be nearly twenty years ago, give or take.’
‘It’s a wonder you never rose to the rank of foreman.’ On second thoughts, she doubted Keegan had the mentality for that sort of job. Without waiting for his reply, she said, ‘Marrying Megan Price must have been a step up the ladder for you. How did you meet her?’
Tony shifted uneasily on the chair. ‘My marriage has nothing to do with anything.’
‘I will decide that.’
The more he shifted, the more she wanted to get up and run. Search for Katie and Chloe. But she had to go through the motions in case Keegan knew something about them because of his connection to Dowling.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You were telling me about Ms Price.’
‘I wasn’t. You’re not even listening to me.’ He took a deep breath and sighed it outwards. She could see the gum stuck to his teeth. ‘Me and Megan, we were complicated.’
Aren’t we all, she thought. ‘Did you know her before her stepfather, Bill Thompson, was attacked?’
‘We hung out a bit. A gang of us. Including Conor. Megan was wild back then, even though she was in college. She always looked down on us, but I thought she was a goddess.’
‘You’d do anything for her?’
‘I fell in love with her. Doesn’t mean I’d do anything for her. Couldn’t believe she said yes when I asked her to marry me. When I look back on it, it wasn’t long after Bill Thompson died, so maybe I got her on the rebound.’
‘Rebound?’
‘You know. She loved the old man and then he was gone, so I was next in her line of fire.’
‘Strange choice of words.’
He whittled away at a piece of skin at the edge of a nail until he drew blood. ‘That’s what it turned out like in the end. I was always in her line of fire.’ He coughed, chewed and looked at Lottie. ‘I can’t see what this has to do with the murder of those girls.’
Lottie couldn’t see it either. Yet. But she couldn’t let Keegan know that. ‘So you would have done anything for Megan?’
‘Sure. Back then. Not now.’
‘You’d even help stitch up your friend Conor. Back then,’ she emphasised.
His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you trying to make me say?’
Scenarios were forming in her brain. What if it was all about the money and Megan wanted her stepfather’s cash? No, that didn’t make sense. ‘Maybe it was Cyril Gill who got you to stitch up your friend, then?’
Keegan shook his head, dots of dandruff drifting like fireflies through the air. ‘I don’t follow you at all.’
Good, Lottie thought. Confuse the enemy at all times. ‘Ten years ago, it’s possible that Cyril Gill wanted Bill Thompson out of the way so that he could proceed with a planning application.’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘The urban development project. You would have known. You told me yourself you’ve been working for Gill for nearly twenty years.’
He clamped his mouth shut.
Lottie continued. ‘Either you or Conor Dowling did Gill’s dirty work by taking Thompson out of the picture. Whichever of you it was, Dowling got the blame and paid with ten years of his life.
Keegan’s already puce cheeks turned purple. Snot poured out of his nose and he tried to sniff it back down his throat. ‘I had nothing to do with that.’
Lottie turned to Boyd. ‘I think he protests too much, don’t you?’
Boyd nodded, and she reckoned he thought he knew where she was headed with this. But he’d be wrong. She didn’t even know herself. She wished for the hundredth time that day that she wasn’t so distracted.
From the file she extracted a photograph. Sliding it across the table, she kept her eyes screwed onto Keegan’s face. His tongue ran the length of his teeth behind his lips, pushing out his jaw. Concocting a story? She knew he recognised the image in the photograph.
He shook his head. Too vehemently. ‘Don’t know what that is.’
‘It’s a coin. One of a number found in the vicinity of the young women’s bodies.’
‘So?’ He kept his eyes on the photo.
‘Explain it to me. Tell me what it means.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘You do know.’
He shrugged his bulky shoulders. ‘Looks like some sort of medal.’
She glanced at Boyd. A medal? They’d been so convinced the discs were coins that they’d become blind to the fact that they could in fact be something else. There were no inscriptions on any of them.
Boyd said, ‘What kind of medal?’
Another shrug. ‘It’s just a suggestion. I’ve never seen it before.’
She filed away his suggestion for later. ‘Tell me about the body in the tunnel.’
Now the puce faded to white. ‘You know about that?’
Bingo!
‘Yes. I do.’
He looked around the sparse room frantically. ‘Shit. If Gill was still alive, he’d go apeshit.’
‘Cyril Gill knew about it too?’
Clamped lips told Lottie that Keegan had gone too far. Said something he shouldn’t have.
‘Go on, Tony. You started so you can finish.’
‘I’m going to get in a whole load of trouble for this.’
‘I’m dealing with four murders and now this body. You’re already in a whole load of trouble.’
‘Goddam it,’ he said, and leaned across the table, his expression earnest. ‘Earlier this week, it might have been Wednesday, Bob Cleary, our foreman, came across this brick wall in the tunnel. He’d gone down to assess it to see what we had to do to support the lift shaft, you know.’ Lottie nodded like she understood. ‘He came back up, gathered a crew and brought us down to break through the wall. That’s when I first saw the bones. Cleary was fit to be tied. Made us swear not to say a word until he figured out how to tell the boss.’
‘And did you say a word of this to anyone?’
‘I told Conor. I don’t know if Bob told the boss or not. That’s all I know about the body. I swear to God.’
Lottie wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. But if he had told his friend, then Dowling had lied when he said he hadn’t known about the body before. Or had she asked him that specific question? She’d have to check with Boyd later and read the interview transcript. She ran her hand through her hair. This was going round in circles. And she was still no closer to finding her daughters.
‘Where are Katie and Chloe Parker?’
‘Who?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Don’t know them.’
‘They’re my daughters. And they’re missing.’
‘What’re you doing in here then? If they were my daughters, I’d be out looking for them.’
‘Smart-mouth,’ Boyd said.
Lottie felt her heart miss a beat. Keegan was right. ‘One final question. What does Dowling do in the shed in his garden?’
‘The shed? I don’t know.’
But his facial expression told Lottie he did. ‘What’s in the shed? And don’t tell me to go and look.’
‘Tools mainly. He used to do woodcraft and stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
Keegan blew out a fetid breath. ‘You know, little wooden toys, and then he started making jewellery.’
‘What kind of jewellery?’
‘Just stuff. Ask him about it.’
‘I will.’
She turned to Boyd, asking him with her eyes if he had any further questions.
He said, ‘The coin we showed you earlier. Could Conor have made it?’
Keegan bit his lip. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. Yeah.’
Fifty-Seven
Lottie sat at her desk and checked in with Rose again. Still no news. Sean and Louis were fine. She knew she had to keep busy, while all the time her heart was shredding itself into tiny fragments.
She tried to assess everything she had learned from the two interviews. Both men would have to be released. She had no hard evidence of any wrongdoing on their part. They couldn’t be held on her instinct alone. Was it possible that Dowling had made the coins? How could she obtain a search warrant for his shed? Not a shred of evidence placed him at any of the murder scenes, and gut feeling wouldn’t convince a judge. Unless she returned to soft-soap Vera Dowling. Boyd was good at that kind of thing.
‘Boyd!’
He limped in.
‘You need to come with me to Dowling’s house. I want you to talk nice to Vera. Make her tea or whatever while I have a snoop in the garden shed.’
‘Are you crazy?’ He leaned wearily against the door jamb. ‘I think you took a harder bang to the head than I did.’
‘You’ll have to work your charm and get her to give us permission.’
‘Lottie, you’re not thinking straight. We have so much other stuff to be doing.’
She stood. ‘Are you coming with me, or are you just going to stand there feeling sorry for yourself?’
Harsh words, because he really did look awful.
‘I’ve no choice, I suppose.’
* * *
Kirby popped in to Whyte’s Pharmacy. The assistant, Trisha, said Megan had left to get something to eat before the late shift.
‘When will she be back?’
‘We’re open until nine, so she should be back soon.’ She checked the clock hanging above the door. ‘Maybe fifteen minutes. Do you want to wait?’
‘No, I’m busy.’ He thought quickly. ‘Don’t tell her I called.’
‘Sure.’
At the door he said, ‘Do you think she went home for her break?’
Trisha shrugged her shoulders.
He had to talk to Megan. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
Outside, he felt the dark of the afternoon sitting heavily on his shoulders. He missed Gilly at times like this. Her comforting words or silly remarks. He wondered how his boss was able to function not knowing where her daughters were. God, he didn’t want to think the worst. They’d be fine. But in his heart, he felt they were not.
‘Damn it,’ he said. Jumping into the car he’d parked on double yellow lines, he headed for Megan’s house.
* * *
This time Mrs Dowling was more accommodating. Boyd turned on his magic smile and made tea. He arranged a blanket around her knees. She told him he could call her Vera.
Once he’d succeeded in getting the television sound turned down, he said, ‘Vera, is it okay for my inspector to take a look around?’
‘I don’t like her,’ Vera whispered conspiratorially. ‘But I’ve nothing to hide.’ She looked up at Lottie. ‘You’re not to take anything.’
‘I won’t.’
Lottie grabbed a shiny new key from a hook in the kitchen. Opening the lock on the shed door, she entered the cold, damp space. Finding a string for the light, she pulled it and surveyed the equipment in front of her. With gloved hands she lifted a square of sheet metal. It was similar in weight and colour to the coins they’d found with the bodies, including the body in the tunnel.
Scanning the workbench, she noticed woodturning equipment but nothing that resembled what she thought might be used to pound medals or coins out of the sheet metal. As she looked around, her eyes were drawn to a gap on the bench. A hole had been bored into the wood, and as she ran her hand carefully around the bottom of it, tiny shards of metal came away on her fingertips. She held them up to the light, where they glinted.
Where was the machine that had fitted in here? She’d have to call SOCOs to take samples to compare with the coins found at the crime scenes. There was nothing further of interest, so she made her way through the wet grass and went back inside.
She smiled at Boyd’s strained face. Torture, she thought. He didn’t deserve that. Time to rescue him. ‘Mrs Dowling, does anyone else have access to Conor’s shed?’
‘His workshop, you mean. That lad was always hammering or cutting something out there. All hours of the night. He had dreams of becoming an architect once upon a time. Before you lot framed him.’ Her eyes slid into slits.
Lottie was undeterred. ‘An architect?’
‘He worke
d part-time as an apprentice for that Cyril Gill before he ended up in prison.’
Now that Vera said it, Lottie vaguely remembered it from the Thompson case.
‘There seems to be a piece of equipment missing. Do you know who might have taken it?’ If Conor hadn’t dumped it himself, she thought.
‘He was giving out loads when he came home from prison. Saying I’d let someone into the shed. He never said anything was missing, though.’
‘So who did have access to it?’
‘I never let anyone take nothing. Are you saying I did? Are you accusing me?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Lottie dug her fingers into the palms of her hands. ‘Who comes in and out of your house?’
‘The Meals on Wheels crowd. The community nurse, though she hasn’t called in ages.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Conor’s friend Tony. He helped me out a bit. With shopping and the like. That nice wife of his called once. Lovely girl.’
‘Megan Price?’
‘Oh, is she not called Keegan? They were married, you know.’
‘I think they’re separated, or else she never changed her name,’ Lottie said. Maybe she needed to check that out, but she had more pressing matters at the moment. ‘Were they ever here together? Megan and Tony.’
‘Not that I can think of straight off.’
‘When was the last time either of them called?’
‘I can’t remember that.’
This was going nowhere. ‘Did Conor ever say something was missing from his workshop?’
‘All that lad does is moan since he came home.’ Vera slapped her walking stick on the floor.
‘Mrs Dowling,’ Lottie said, ‘I have to get someone from our forensic team to examine the workshop. There may be evidence there linked to a crime.’
‘I knew it. You!’ Vera pointed the stick at Boyd. ‘With your smiles and your tea, chatting me up so I’d let that woman snoop around my house. Trying to catch me off guard. Do you know what? I may have let you look once, but if you want men in white suits to come in here, they better have a warrant. Now leave, both of you. And don’t come back. Stitching my boy up again. Corrupt. That’s what you are. You guards are all the same.’
DI Lottie Parker 06-Final Betrayal Page 29