Final Betrayal

by Patricia Gibney

  Lottie felt Boyd kick her ankle. It hadn’t taken long for the ‘entitled to my solicitor’ line to raise its head.

  ‘You’re not under arrest,’ she said.

  ‘I can go so?’ He unfolded his arms and made to stand up.

  Slamming her hand on the table, Lottie felt Boyd jump at the same time as Dowling.

  ‘Sit down!’

  ‘I am sitting.’

  ‘Listen to me. I want the answers to a few questions first, then you can leave. Okay?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  He was either stupid or pretending to be stupid. She intended to fire right ahead and find out.

  ‘When did you last see Amy Whyte?’

  He half closed his eyes and watched her through the slits. ‘Might have been 2006. My memory’s not the best from all the beatings I got in jail. Where you and that pair of liars landed me.’

  ‘You’ve been free for two months. Did you make contact with Amy in that time?’ Chancing her arm, watching his expression, waiting for the break. But he remained calm.

  ‘I don’t want to clap eyes on that bitch ever again.’

  ‘Not likely, is it, seeing as she’s dead.’ Lottie let the sentence hang in the silence and watched his face for a reaction. But he simply stared right back at her.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Amy?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ At last. Realisation dawned on his face. He sat forward. ‘Look here. This is a joke. You pinned one crime on me, and sure as there’s a fire in hell you’re not going to do it again. You can piss off, you skinny bitch.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Lottie said. Boyd nudged her again. She glared at him. She wanted Dowling riled. He might inadvertently say something he didn’t mean to say. Hopefully.

  ‘Take it any way you like,’ he snarled. ‘I’d say you’d like it up the arse!’

  ‘That’s abusive language.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Ignoring his anger, Lottie said, ‘Where were you on Saturday night from eleven p.m. onwards?’ She kept her tone even, her voice clear and strong. No way was this bald shithead going to get under her skin.

  ‘At home.’

  ‘And all day Sunday?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Can anyone verify that?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘It is my business.’

  He let out a strangled sigh. ‘My mother is there all the time. She’s disabled. Chronic arthritis, if you want to know.’

  ‘She can vouch that you were at home all weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never went out anywhere?’

  ‘I went to the shop for milk and bread.’

  ‘What shop?’

  ‘Tesco.’

  ‘I’m sure their security cameras will confirm that, if you provide me with the times.’

  ‘I don’t know what time it was. I’m not Superman with a super-brain.’

  ‘No, you’re most definitely not.’

  ‘Are you being smart with me?’

  ‘No. But you’re being smart with me. So give me the truth.’

  ‘I’m saying nothing until I get a solicitor.’

  Lottie wasn’t giving up so easily. She rolled up the sleeves of her T-shirt and extracted a laminated sheet from the buff folder in front of her.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dowling said.

  ‘Read it,’ she said. ‘You can read, can’t you?’

  He turned the sheet around and scanned it. ‘So? What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘We found it in Amy Whyte’s bedroom. Did you write this note and send it to Amy?’

  ‘You didn’t ask if I can write.’

  ‘Come on, Conor. Playtime is over. This is serious,’ Lottie said, trying hard to keep it professional.

  ‘Answer the question,’ Boyd said.

  ‘What question might that be?’ Conor sighed loudly. ‘Yes, I can write, and I can read too. Happy?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Lottie took the page and slipped it back into the folder. ‘And your smart mouth is not endearing you to me at all.’

  ‘Tough shit.’

  ‘This is a photocopy of a coin found in the envelope with the note.’ She showed him an image of the round piece of metal. She held back on talking about the coins found with the bodies. No point in showing her hand too early.

  ‘Never saw it before.’

  ‘I think you did. You refused to talk last time, but you can tell the truth about this crime.’

  ‘Would you ever fuck off?’ His face flared red, and his knuckles, crunched into fists, were white. He stood up. ‘I’m leaving. And don’t think you can frame me for whatever this is about. I won’t stand for it a second time.’

  The door swung closed behind him.

  Lottie said, ‘Interesting young man, don’t you think?’

  Boyd said, ‘Did you notice he never once asked how she died.’

  ‘Maybe he already knew.’

  ‘Like he’d heard about it?’

  ‘No, like he did it.’

  * * *

  The cathedral bells rang out the hour as Conor walked past the wrought-iron gates. He didn’t even bother to check how many chimes. Time was his enemy. Time had betrayed him and continued to do so. He’d learned that in a cell with the shouts and roars of the other inmates for company. A plump black crow perched on a railing ahead of him. He picked up a drink can from the path and toyed with the idea of hurling it at the bird. As he came closer, he noticed that the crow’s beak was thick and hard. The eyes black. He paused and stared. The bird did not move. Which of us has the darker soul? he wondered. Then he laughed. Birds had no souls.

  He dropped the can and kicked it down the footpath in front of him. He kept on kicking it until it ended up in a muddy drain. Then he thumped his fist into a car door. His probation officer would be pissed off to learn he’d been questioned by the guards. Well, tough shit.

  He needed a pint. Hadn’t he promised Tony he’d buy him a drink after work? He didn’t fancy going into Cafferty’s. All the guards drank there. He took out his phone and found his hands were shaking. Goddam you, Parker.

  He texted Tony. Told him he’d meet him in Fallon’s pub.

  No reply.

  He’d have one pint anyway, then go home to see what his mother had got up to during the day. And then he remembered he’d put on a wash that morning. The clothes had probably been in the machine all day. They’d be rank. He’d have to wash them again. After he’d had his pint.

  Twenty-Five

  ‘Rosie, Rosie, you were always the sly one. You and that husband of yours. Shot himself, I heard. Got fed up with the lies, did he? Or had he had enough of your frosty face?’

  Rose was seated at the table, clutching her hands together. Her skin felt like a thousand spiders had taken over and were spinning a multitude of webs. She unclenched her hands and flattened the palms on her knees.

  The woman in front of her had eyes steeped in the depths of evil. Rose was no psychiatrist, but she knew that look. From true-life dramas on television. Interviews with serial killers. That look. That deep black nothingness.

  ‘Answer me.’

  Bernie was lounging against the kitchen wall, her dirty coat flung across the back of a chair. Her legs were thin, clad in dark jeans, and her black sweater was stained. Her skin was pale, but her nose and cheeks were flushed, and tufts of wild red hair sprouted around her ears. She looked like a circus clown who had run away before the make-up artist had completed the job.

  ‘What do you want?’ Rose thought her voice sounded like someone else’s. Was that what stark fear did to you? she wondered.

  ‘I wanted to see you. To see what type of person steals another woman’s baby.’

  ‘I did not steal anyone.’

  ‘Your parasite of a husband did.’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk about Peter like that.’

  ‘Peeeter!’ Bernie’s voice was mocking. ‘He rap
ed a defenceless young woman. Impregnated her and then stole her child. Does your precious Lottie know she’s the spawn of hate and rape?’

  A force of energy swelled through Rose and she had to fight the urge to lunge for the knife rack. She had to keep calm. God only knew what weapon Bernie was carrying, though it was hard to see how she could conceal anything on her person.

  ‘Don’t you go near my Lottie.’

  ‘My Lottie?’ Bernie laughed. ‘She’s my half-sister. Her biological mother’s blood runs through my veins. We are blood sisters and you are nothing!’

  ‘And she is nothing like you. Stay away from her.’ Rose tried to make her voice threatening, but all that emitted from her lips was a timid cry.

  ‘I will get what I came for.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Revenge. Lottie Parker betrayed me in front of my own daughter. She stole my freedom. We could have been a family together. But no. That woman put her job before her blood sister. And I won’t rest until I extract every last drop of that blood from her body.’

  ‘You’re insane.’ Rose cowered as Bernie lunged from the wall and landed on her knees in front of her chair.

  ‘You know it’s very dangerous to say that to an insane person.’

  The eyes were now wide spheres of hollowness. Rose could almost see through them, as if she was staring down the shaft of an old well. She wondered if Bernie Kelly’s very core was a tightly bound ball of hatred, wound so that one snag on the thread and all her family would disintegrate in the ensuing horror. She could not let that happen. But what could she do?

  At last she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s a start.’ Bernie hauled herself up and sat onto the side of the table. Swung her legs like she was a five-year-old. ‘This is what I want you to do.’

  * * *

  On her way home, Lottie pulled into a garage and bought the last lonely sausage rolls in the display cabinet. They looked stale and unappetising, but she was starving.

  In the car, she switched on the engine, turned the heat up high and sat with the rain beating against the windows as she munched the soggy pastry. She concluded that the trade descriptions people would have a good case here. More pastry than sausage. She crumbled the remainder of the first roll into her mouth and glanced at the time. She was too late to wish Louis goodnight. She loved the little fellow with all her heart, more so since the dangerous episode in Rose’s house a few months before. All her family were at risk because of her job, she knew that better than anyone, though sometimes the threat was hard to quantify. It was little more than a feeling. But the last few days that feeling was growing between her shoulder blades like an unreachable itch.

  She balled up the paper bag and scrunched it under the seat. Time to go home. As she drove out of the forecourt, she was looking forward to a peaceful evening, but at the same time she knew she could never erase the loneliness that stalked her bones. Maybe Boyd was the one for her. Maybe not. She had no idea.

  She indicated to turn left, then remembered she no longer lived down by the greyhound stadium. At the last minute she drew the car back into the correct lane. It was then that she noticed the car behind her. She knew exactly who it was.

  She pulled up outside the Indian restaurant. When she stepped out of the car, the aroma of spices swirled around her. She waited as the car that had been following her came to a halt on double yellow lines. She could write him a ticket, if she had a mind to.

  ‘Leo, I hope you have good news for me, because I’ve had one bitch of a day.’

  ‘I’ve searched the whole town and I have no idea where she is.’

  ‘Have you reported to the hospital that you’ve lost her?’

  ‘No. But she’s due back there at nine, so I’m sure, as you say, the shit will hit the fan.’

  ‘Maybe you should get out of Ragmullin. Head to the airport. Get a flight back home and never darken my doorstep with your troubles again.’ She leaned against her car, feeling the dampness seep into her jeans.

  ‘There’s no need to be like that. We’re in this together.’

  ‘Like hell we are.’ Lottie moved away from her car and stood in his space. The smell of sweat coming from his body was so pungent, she could almost taste it. Belfield was terrified. ‘You took Bernie Kelly out of a secure mental facility. You brought her to Ragmullin. You lost her. You broke the rules. None of that has anything to do with me.’

  He stared at her. An exact replica of her own eyes fixed on her face. It was eerily unsettling.

  ‘Lottie, we have to work on this together.’

  She didn’t like the pleading tone in his voice. ‘There is no together. You find her. I have two dead girls to worry about. I don’t need to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I’ve work to do. Real work. Find her and then go home. There’s nothing in Ragmullin for you.’

  ‘There is, Lottie. I have to find out the truth.’

  ‘Talk to your mother. Alexis is the one who betrayed you and Bernie. She’s the only one who knows the truth, and when she feels like it, she will tell you.’

  ‘Alexis died.’

  That stopped Lottie in her tracks. ‘When? I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’ She wasn’t, but it was the right thing to say. Alexis was her biological mother’s sister, and she had separated the twins as toddlers, taking Leo to New York with her and leaving Bernie to live half her life in an institution.

  ‘A few weeks ago. That’s why I came back. It’s eating me up. I have to know, and I thought Bernie could fill in the gaps.’

  The door of the Indian restaurant opened and a man walked out with two bags of takeaway food. Lottie felt her stomach rumble. The sausage rolls had done nothing to fill the hollow.

  ‘You have phone calls to make. I wish you luck. Don’t come near me again unless it’s to tell me she’s locked up. Okay?’

  As Leo returned to his rental car, Lottie felt a little bit of her heart break away. She’d lost one brother at the hands of a madman; was she about to lose another? She cared about Leo but didn’t want to show him. She had enough shit to worry about.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘I was better off in jail,’ Conor muttered to himself as he stuffed his mother’s soiled clothing into the washing machine. At least inside there’d been a full laundry service. He put the morning’s wash into the dryer and hoped it worked properly or he’d have nothing to wear to work tomorrow.

  ‘What did you say?’ came the voice from the living room.

  Nothing wrong with her ears. Not a thing. Even though she played the martyr and liked him to think she was losing her hearing as well as her marbles.

  He didn’t answer. Let her think he hadn’t heard. It had been a long, miserable day and he wanted to crawl into his own bed without having to make up hers. But she was putting a roof over his head, as she’d told him a million times since his release, and he was expected to do bits and pieces around the house. He set the machine to a quick wash and opened the refrigerator. She had to have warm milk every night.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said to the bare door of the appliance.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve to go out to get milk. We’ve none left.’ He shut the door and grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair before going to the living room door. ‘Have you got any change?’

  ‘Why didn’t you make sure we had enough? It’s your responsibility now that I’m giving you a place to stay. You need to pull your weight. I …’

  He tuned her out. Saw her purse on the mantelpiece. Took out a five-euro note.

  ‘I want that back when you get paid,’ she said.

  ‘Sure.’ He buttoned his jacket. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘It’s raining out. I can hear the wind …’

  She was still talking when he pulled the front door shut behind him. He had no idea how much longer he could stick this life. It had been better in jail. And that had been total shit.

  * * *

  Katie whispered a kiss on
Louis’ head and turned on the dim night light. He sucked hungrily on his bottle and she smiled. He was such a good baby really. Not a baby any more, she thought, as she recalled his first steps two days after he turned one.

  She wondered what her life would have been like if Jason hadn’t been murdered. These days she found it hard to remember Louis’ dad. The only photos she had of him had been lost when she’d upgraded her phone. But she told Louis all about him. Made most of it up, if she wanted to be totally honest. She’d only been with Jason a few short months when he’d been killed. He hadn’t even known she was pregnant. But she’d kept the baby and never regretted her decision.

  She thumbed the curtains apart and looked out. The dark evenings gave her goose bumps, and she hoped Louis was warm enough in his sleeping-bag and fleece blanket his grandad had sent from New York. The wind was rising and leaves whistled down to the ground from increasingly bare branches. She liked the new estate. It was quiet. Maybe too quiet. If it wasn’t for the wind, she’d describe it as deathly silent. Rain began to spill in diagonal sheets, sweeping the leaves down the road. Shadows danced in the rain and she turned away.

  The sucking ceased, so Katie took the bottle from her now sleeping son. A finger of fear traced a line down the nape of her neck. She rushed back to the window and looked out. Was that a shadow she’d seen behind the wall across the road? Someone crouching at the entrance to the laneway that led to the rear of St Catherine’s retirement home? But there was no one there now. Why had she felt fear? As she turned back to watch her son, she remembered that she’d sensed the same feeling yesterday in the shop. Should she tell her mother? Good God, no. Lottie would go into detective mode and put a clamp on her freedom, even if she was only imagining things.

  Pulling up the old chair she’d brought from her granny’s house, Katie sat down, drew her legs beneath her and snuggled under a blanket. She suspected that tonight she wouldn’t be able to sleep in her bed. She had to keep watch over her son. Because she was convinced that someone else had been keeping watch over her. And not in a good way.