DI Lottie Parker 06-Final Betrayal

by Gibney, Patricia

  ‘It doesn’t have to be this way, Bernie.’ Edging along the length of the table, he knocked against a chair, the sound screeching in the fusty air.

  ‘Stop!’ She raised her other hand. In the moonlight streaming through the window, he saw the steel of a knife glinting in her hand.

  * * *

  Back at the station, after they’d settled Belinda Gill with a blanket and a cup of tea with plenty of sugar, Lottie and Boyd entered the incident room. Dowling and Keegan had been released. There was nothing she could have done to prevent it, so she would just have to follow the evidence. McKeown surfaced from the midst of a group of detectives and hurried over to them. His tie was sticking out of his pocket and his shirt was undone at the neck. He looked like she felt. Exhausted.

  ‘Boss,’ he said. ‘We rushed through the DNA from Dowling and Keegan. The forensics lab have outdone themselves this time. Probably because we now have five bodies.’

  Lottie perched on the edge of a desk, tapping a text to her mother. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Do you remember the hairs found on the bodies at the first murder scene?’

  ‘Yes.’ She glanced at the incident board, where a photograph of said hairs was pinned. ‘But we didn’t think we’d get much success seeing as they came from a doss house.’

  ‘Anyway, we already had Dowling’s DNA on file from the original case. Though I don’t think any comparative analysis was ever carried out, once you had the witnesses.’

  ‘Things were different then,’ Lottie said. ‘Samples had to be sent to the UK. It cost a lot of money, and budgets were as tight as they are now.’

  ‘Well, just to let you know, it isn’t a match for the hair.’

  ‘Doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘I know. But I thought it was important. I’ve fast-tracked Keegan’s DNA sample to the lab. My contact there said he should have something within four hours.’

  ‘That must be a record,’ Boyd said.

  ‘It’s all about who you know,’ McKeown said, and tapped the side of his nose.

  Lottie read the reply from her mother. No word on the girls. She pocketed her phone.

  McKeown was still talking. ‘But this is the good bit. They got a hit on the hairs from an unrelated case.’

  ‘What?’ Lottie and Boyd said.

  ‘It may be nothing, but a couple of years ago, Whyte’s Pharmacy was broken into. Samples were taken from all the employees to rule them out of the incident. I don’t know if the culprit was ever found. You might remember it, boss.’

  ‘McKeown, will you get to the point.’ Lottie slid off the desk and paced up and down in front of the boards.

  ‘The hair found on the bodies is a match for Megan Price.’

  ‘What? The hair from the crime scene at Petit Lane?’ Lottie digested the new information.

  Boyd said, ‘Megan worked with Amy Whyte. It could have transferred from her clothing if their coats were hanging close together.’

  ‘No, Boyd,’ Lottie said. ‘Amy was out clubbing. Her clothing was nothing like what she would wear to work. And hairs were also found on Penny Brogan. We need to bring Megan in for questioning.’ She glanced around the room. ‘Where’s Kirby?’

  They all looked round.

  ‘Didn’t you send him to Whyte’s Pharmacy to ask about the note Dowling sent to Amy?’ Boyd said.

  Lottie had her phone in her hand calling Kirby as she ran out of the incident room.

  There was no answer from Kirby, but as she went to tap his number for a third time, the phone vibrated with a text.

  ‘Leo,’ Lottie said.

  ‘What does it say?’ Boyd asked.

  She read it out. ‘“Farranstown. Injured.”’

  ‘Does he say anything about Katie and Chloe?’

  ‘No.’ She sprang into action. ‘McKeown, you try to reach Kirby. Head down to the pharmacy and see if he’s still there. Take uniforms and bring in Megan Price. Boyd and I have to go to Farranstown.’

  In the yard, she told Boyd to drive. He was a faster and safer driver. The sky was dark, with the yellow hue of street lights giving it a gothic air.

  ‘Will I put on the flashers?’

  ‘Yeah, do.’

  ‘We should radio for backup.’

  ‘Let’s see what Leo’s found first.’

  Boyd switched on the flashing blue lights and headed out on the road towards Farranstown House.

  ‘Do you think Bernie’s there?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘If she is, she’s liable to do anything. We should radio for backup just in case.’

  ‘Shut up, Boyd.’

  ‘You’re being irrational, Lottie, though that’s nothing new.’

  She refused to answer him.

  ‘It could be a trap,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I thought of that.’ And she had. Every scenario was tripping over itself in her brain. ‘Okay. Radio for an armed unit to follow us.’

  ‘We should wait for them.’

  ‘Just drive the fucking car, Boyd.’

  * * *

  As far as Kirby knew, Megan didn’t have a pet. But the noise had sounded like an animal. Or something. Or someone.

  Curiosity got the better of him, so he got out of his car and walked around the side of the house again. Ears pricked. Listening. Nothing. He stood at the back door, pressed his ear up against it. Definitely nothing. Back around to the front again, and to the garage. Silence. But he had to go in. He wished he had McKeown’s knife.

  He jiggled his car key in the garage lock. Pulled it, twisted it. No go. Looking around on the ground, he found a sharp piece of slate, but it broke the second he tried to jimmy the lock. He stood back and surveyed the doors. Hinges. He set to work on the screws with his key.

  One hinge was on the ground, with three more to go, when he heard a car screech into the gravelled drive.

  Sixty

  There were no lights on in the house up ahead as Boyd turned off the main road and made his way up the unlit avenue.

  ‘It’s as dark and forbidding as the first time we were here.’

  ‘That was a year ago, Boyd.’

  ‘I know, but some things imprint themselves on your brain and you can never erase them.’

  ‘I’m not listening to that shite.’ Lottie jumped out of the car almost before he had the brake on.

  He followed her with two torches he’d taken from the boot. ‘Are you going to ring the bell?’

  ‘I’ve a key. Somewhere.’ She twiddled her key ring around in her hand, trying to find the right one.

  ‘How come you have that?’

  ‘It’s my biological grandmother’s home. The solicitor gave me the key and asked me to keep an eye on it while probate is being conducted.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Boyd. I don’t tell you everything.’ She found the correct key, and after a couple of nervous tries, it slid it into the new lock that had been fitted after Kitty Belfield had died.

  ‘Have you been out here at all since … you know?’

  ‘No. Shush.’

  Stepping onto the cold stone floor, Lottie listened to the door creak open and felt Boyd’s soft breath on her neck. In different circumstances she would have welcomed his closeness, the safety of having him by her side. But her daughters’ lives were at stake, and all she could think about was that they might be here. With Leo and Bernie. Whether Leo was in cahoots with Bernie was something she would soon find out.

  ‘This way. I see a faint light,’ she whispered.

  ‘What’s down there?’

  ‘The kitchen.’

  She edged along the wall towards the room at the end, where a thin shaft of light seeped from beneath the door. She wondered what awaited her.

  With one hand on the handle, she took a deep breath and opened the door.

  ‘Sweet Mother of Jesus,’ Boyd exclaimed.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Lottie said once she could form the words.

  The amb
ulance rushed with sirens and flashing lights down the avenue while Lottie and Boyd waited for SOCOs. Bernie Kelly was no longer on the run. No longer in the wind. No longer a threat to Lottie’s family. She lay curled on the floor, hardened froth on her lips and her eyes hysterically open in death.

  Leo had knife wounds to his upper chest, but he was conscious, his phone in his hand. There was no sign of Katie or Chloe, and no evidence that they had been in the house.

  Lottie’s phone rang.

  ‘What’s up, McKeown?’

  ‘I can’t locate Kirby anywhere. He’s not answering his phone.’

  ‘Did you try the pubs?’ Boyd said into Lottie’s ear, for McKeown’s benefit.

  ‘We’re on our way back into town,’ Lottie said. ‘Be there in five minutes.’

  She hung up and walked quickly out of the house to the car.

  ‘Give me the keys,’ she said to Boyd. ‘I need to concentrate on something before I go out of my mind trying to figure out what Bernie was doing.’

  ‘I think it’s obvious. She wanted to wipe out all of her siblings.’

  ‘Okay, but I’m still alive, and so is Leo.’ She started the car as Boyd hauled his long legs into the passenger footwell.

  ‘But she might have thought Leo was dead. And you …’

  ‘She’s done something to Chloe and Katie. That’s how she wants me to suffer.’

  She gunned the engine, and with gravel flying into the damp night air, she left Farranstown House with the body of her half-sister lying dead on a cold stone floor.

  The office was abuzz with noise, heat and anxiety. No one had any idea where Kirby had got to. Lottie sat at his desk and flicked though the open documents on his computer, trying to find an answer.

  ‘What did the pharmacy staff say?’ she asked.

  McKeown said, ‘Just that he called in looking to speak to Megan Price, and when he was told she was on her break, he left.’

  ‘Where does she go for her break?’

  ‘Sometimes she eats in town, other times she goes home.’

  ‘Did you get her number?’

  ‘Yes. Goes straight to voice message.’

  ‘Why haven’t you brought her in? Where does she live? Did you call to her home?’

  McKeown sighed. ‘I haven’t called out there yet. This was on Kirby’s desk.’

  Lottie took the photocopied page. It was from Penny Brogan’s appointment book. One name was highlighted in a yellow circle. Megan Price.

  ‘When I was in the pharmacy,’ McKeown said, ‘I had a look around too. I asked if Amy had a locker. An assistant, Trisha I think her name was, said Detective Kirby had asked about it early in the week, but he hadn’t looked in it.’

  ‘And you did?’ Lottie balled her hands into fists. She hoped Kirby hadn’t fucked up.

  McKeown dropped an evidence bag of clothing on the desk. And then another, with a pink-covered notebook.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lottie pulled protective gloves from a drawer and dragged them over her sweaty hands. She took out the notebook and opened it to a page that had a corner turned down. ‘This is about the night Louise and Amy saw Conor Dowling. Amy says they came out of the teenage disco in Jomo’s and were waiting to be picked up when someone ran by them wearing a baseball cap. Louise said she recognised it as belonging to Conor Dowling, who worked as an apprentice for her father.’

  ‘Bill Thompson’s house is only a stone’s throw away from the nightclub, if you take the railway underpass by the canal,’ Boyd said.

  ‘But why was Dowling coming that way?’ That had always bothered Lottie. ‘If he had committed the crime, wouldn’t he have been running a million miles from town?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Boyd agreed. ‘But in the heat of the moment, maybe he became disorientated and ran towards town instead of away.’

  ‘I don’t think the girls made a mistake that night. I think they did see Conor Dowling.’

  ‘That was agreed at trial.’

  ‘Yes. But what if he had committed a different crime, and that’s why he never gave an alibi for the Thompson assault and robbery?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I think Dowling had something to do with the body in the tunnel. That’s where he was running from. Not from Thompson’s. He came up through a tunnel. Either the one we were at earlier, or one nearby.’

  ‘So did he kill our victims or not?’

  ‘Whoever killed Amy and Penny had knowledge of the tunnels. From McKeown’s work on the CCTV, we can deduce that the murderer used a tunnel to either hide, make a getaway or stash the murder weapon.’

  ‘So who would know about it?’

  ‘Tony Keegan. He’s worked for Gill for twenty years. He had to know. He’s friends with Dowling, who may have told him.’

  ‘So you think Keegan beat up and robbed his future wife’s stepfather?’ McKeown said.

  Lottie threw down the notebook and wrenched the heels of her hands into her eyes. None of this was bringing her any closer to her daughters’ whereabouts, but she was convinced the original Thompson case held the key. She just had to find it.

  ‘First things first. Give me Megan Price’s address. I’m going to see if Kirby is there. Then we’ll bring Dowling and Keegan back in. Boyd, you’re with me.’

  Sixty-One

  Kirby’s car was in the drive. Lottie stood with Boyd and listened. A train chugged in the distance, traffic buzzed on the bypass a few kilometres away, a swing in someone’s garden squealed in the rising night wind. Normality in the midst of confusion, she thought.

  Rain fell steadily as she approached the house. No lights blazed and no one opened the door.

  ‘The garage door is open,’ Boyd said.

  Lottie pushed past him and stared. The door was indeed slightly ajar.

  ‘Should we wait for backup?’

  ‘I’m waiting for no one.’

  The door scraped on the bare concrete floor as she pushed it inwards. The interior was lit dimly by the red glow from a light on a fridge freezer. A bench with tools lined one wall. She shone her torch around searching for a light switch, but couldn’t see one, though a fluorescent tube hung from the ceiling on a chain. Returning her attention to the bench, she caught sight of the glint of metal shards.

  ‘Boyd, look.’

  ‘It’s a workbench.’

  ‘I know, but those shavings are similar to what I saw in Conor Dowling’s shed.’ She continued shining the light up and down the area in front of her until the beam illuminated an unusual circular piece of equipment. ‘What do you think that’s for?’

  Boyd just shrugged and turned up his mouth.

  Even in her anxiety to find Kirby and her daughters, Lottie remembered her training and tugged on gloves. Running her finger along the inside edge of the circle, she said, ‘This is what was used to make the coins found at the murder scenes. And it came from Conor Dowling’s house.’

  A groan alerted her senses.

  ‘What’s that?’ she whispered.

  Boyd had heard it too. He rushed to the internal door and pushed it. He found a switch and light fell into the garage. ‘In here.’

  Lottie followed him. On the floor of what looked like a utility room lay Kirby.

  ‘Shit, are you okay?’ Boyd knelt down beside the prone figure.

  ‘How could someone have overpowered him? Surely not Megan?’ She paused as Boyd administered to Kirby. ‘Unless Tony Keegan is here. He might have Megan captive.’ She looked down at her two detectives. ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘I can’t see any blood. Maybe he was drugged.’

  Kirby groaned again and opened his eyes. He quickly closed them again as if the light had blinded him. ‘Neck,’ he groaned.

  Boyd ran his fingers around Kirby’s neck, turned the detective’s head to one side. But he still couldn’t see a wound.

  ‘Needle,’ whispered Kirby.

  ‘He’s been drugged.’ Boyd whipped out his phone and called for medical backup.

&n
bsp; Lottie was about to reply when she heard a sound overhead. She patted Boyd on the shoulder to tell him that he was to stay with Kirby, then made her way from the utility room into a darkened kitchen. She had no idea what she was facing, so she decided not to turn on a light. The hair on the back of her neck stood to attention and her heart picked up pace. She was certain that if there was anyone in the room they would surely hear it. But it was empty. The torch beam caught the outline of a table and chairs and wall cupboards, and that was it. Scanning the light over the walls she found they were bare. She made her way to the next door and opened it.

  A low moaning, like the keening of a banshee, whispered from above. At the end of the short hallway she came to a staircase. A few coats hung on the banister, the only sign that someone lived here. Hoping it wouldn’t creak, she put her foot on the first step, then made her way slowly upwards. On each step she could see a coin similar to those at the murder scenes. Her heart picked up speed in her chest and she held her breath, trying to subdue the rising surge of panic.

  All the doors were open. Dim light seeped out from one. She made her way quickly, the beat of her heart almost deafening her. With no idea of what horror might await her, with no fear for her own safety, she stepped into the room.

  Her mouth opened automatically to issue a scream, but all that came out was a choked gurgle. She tried to call out to Boyd, but the words would not form. She was rooted to the spot as if superglue was attached to her boots. Frozen in a time frame of terror.

  Megan Price was nowhere to be seen.

  But her two daughters lay side by side on the floor.

  Their hands were bound in front of them. Legs outstretched. Their heads, one dark and the other dyed blonde, were both a straggling mess of blood. No movement. No breath that she could see. The scene of horror simultaneously iced her brain and her body.

  She had no idea how long she stood transfixed, her heart shattering into a million fragments, her eyes pouring forth tears of pain. Her hands trembling, her knees weak as she fell to the floor. Her babies. Her girls. Her life. Entrusted to her to care for. To look after. To love. After Adam had died, her sole responsibility was to their children. To love them and protect them. And she’d fucked it all up.