Final Betrayal

by Patricia Gibney

  * * *

  Sipping a pint at the bar in the Parkland Hotel lounge, Tony Keegan was trying to ignore the wedding crowd singing loudly on the opposite side of the room. Stilettos and bling usually excited the hell out of him. Girls with caked-on make-up, mascara so thick it looked like ink, and fake-tanned legs hovered around encroaching on his thoughts. Despite trying to be oblivious, he couldn’t help the hard-on giving him an ache in his groin. His hair was still damp from the rain. It was a curse of a night to be out. He should feel pity for the anonymous bride who had to brave the downpour on her wedding day, but fuck her and her fairy-tale ideas. This was real life, where there were no happy endings. Not that he’d seen so far.

  The pint tasted bitter. Probably dredged from the end of the barrel. He should send it back, but the girl behind the bar was already struggling with the crowd. She had good legs, natural. No fake tan for her. He found himself wondering if she had been to Spain on her holidays. That would be a nice escape. If he had the money. Which he hadn’t. And now Conor was back.

  He took a gulp of the putrid beer and let out a loud belch. Awful. He raised a hand to summon the girl, but she either didn’t see it or just plain ignored him. She knew who the good tippers were. Not him. Clever girl. Didn’t change the fact that he still had to drink a pint of slop.

  He drained his glass and stood. Despite the rain outside, he knew he would feel better out there.

  Gathering his change into his pocket, he heaved on his coat and trudged a lonely trek through the merry crowd. He couldn’t escape quickly enough.

  * * *

  Cyril Gill poured a double whiskey from the decanter and stood looking out the window of his million-euro dream house. Just when business was going so well, despite the delay with his current project, that thorn in his side was back in Ragmullin. Along with him, the only other person who could make trouble for Cyril was his own daughter Louise.

  He swallowed his drink and poured another. He was used to getting his own way, but when it came to family, his hands were tied. Leaning his head against the cool glass of the window, he tried to think of a way out. One thing he knew for sure, he had to do something, and quickly.

  He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

  ‘I thought we agreed we would not be in contact. It’s too easy to track our—’

  ‘It’s Amy. She’s dead. Some bastard murdered her. What are you going to do about that? Tell me! What the hell are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Jesus, back up there. Amy? Dead? What the—’

  Richard Whyte hung up.

  Cyril dropped the phone and the glass and raced up the stairs. ‘Louise! Louise! We have to talk. Now!’

  * * *

  Louise thought it safer to be away from the house at the moment. Huddled in her silver-coloured parka jacket, she rushed down the shingle driveway and out onto the road. It was dark. Of course it was. Her father had built this house in the middle of nowhere.

  She hated living outside the town, and never having mastered the skill of driving, her red Mazda sports car continued to rust away in one of the four garages at the back of the house. More extravagance on her father’s part. Compensating? For what? She wondered about that as she made her way along the narrow path that edged the side of the road.

  It was all her father’s fault again. Shouting and roaring up the stairs about Amy being dead. That couldn’t be true. She’d rushed past him, out into the night, without her phone or bag. She had to find out for herself. As the lights of approaching cars illuminated her route and then plunged her into darkness again, she had no fear for her safety. She’d lived in Ragmullin all her life. She knew the town inside out.

  It couldn’t be true about Amy. Their relationship had suffered badly. Teenage friendships rarely survived into adulthood, Louise knew, but she also knew the two of them were intrinsically linked by their past.

  The road once again became silvery grey with yet another car behind her. Head down, she continued to walk. But this car didn’t pass her. The light snaked alongside her and stopped. She kept walking. Almost there. Three minutes and the Parkland Hotel would be in view and lights would pave the way towards Amy’s house. Perhaps she should nip into the hotel. A hot whiskey with cloves stuck in a lemon would warm her up. She was beginning to feel the cold through the feathered layers of her jacket. And something else, too. A tinge of fear. That car hadn’t moved.

  Quickening her steps, Louise was jogging when a hand gripped her arm and swung her round. She opened her mouth to scream, but only a groan accompanied the spatter of rain on the road.

  ‘Louise? I thought it was you. How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh God!’ She shuddered. ‘You terrified me. Don’t you know you shouldn’t creep up on a defenceless woman on a dark road.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth as she tried to disguise the terror thumping double beats in her heart.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’

  He was insistent without sounding it. It was his body language. Head twisting and turning. Trying to see if anyone had noticed them? A tic at the edge of his mouth, and continuously sniffing. She needed to appear calm.

  ‘No thanks. I wanted some fresh air. Had to get out of the house. I’m fine. I love the rain.’

  She extracted her arm and began to walk again. He kept pace.

  ‘Leave me alone.’ Brave words, but she was shaking all over now.

  ‘Ah, come on. A drink will warm you up.’

  She stopped and swirled around. Drew back her hand and hit him. She surprised herself almost as much as she shocked him. His jaw slackened and his mouth hung open.

  ‘That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’

  Seizing the opportunity while he was apparently stunned by her action, Louise turned and ran. Further into the darkness, where the road was empty.

  The one thing she had feared had happened.

  Her past had caught up with her.

  All she could do was try to outrun it.

  * * *

  Megan Price took the last of the china ornaments out of the box she kept under the bed. He hadn’t found that when he’d ransacked the house for things he could sell. She took them out every night and cleaned them. Because these little figurines were precious. They were all she had left of long ago.

  Lining them up on the mantelpiece she shifted them around until they were in the exact positions they should be in. The way he used to arrange them.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace and rubbed a smudge from her brow with the yellow duster. Her father would have said she looked like death warmed up. And he’d have been right. If he was still alive.

  As she brought her hand downwards, it clipped the corner of the porcelain shoe decorated with gold filigree, and before she could react, it had smashed on the bare floorboards.

  She dropped to her knees and frantically tried to gather the pieces back into shape. Superglue might do it. But you’d still be able see the cracks. She crunched up the pieces into the palms of her hands. Felt the sharp edges cut her skin and let them fall away.

  She needed air. She had to get out of the suffocating walls pulsing with memories, before her entire world fell apart.

  * * *

  He had stopped following her. She no longer heard the slap of feet on the path. Pausing to catch her breath, she chanced a look over her shoulder.

  Darkness. Nothing. No one.

  Louise exhaled and slowed to a brisk walk. Where had he come from? She wished she had her phone to call her dad to come pick her up. That had been an impetuous act, running out of the house. Like a petulant teenager. The one she used to be. The one she thought she had left behind ten years ago. The impressionable one. Yeah, she thought. She and Amy had a lot to answer for. Amy could not be dead.

  Amy’s house was on a gated estate built by Louise’s father’s firm in an area where no one had ever envisaged houses being situated. It probably helped that Mr Whyte was on the council. She keyed in the entry code from a long-held
memory, and as the gates swung open, she saw the convoy of cars parked on the road up near Amy’s house. Louise was rooted to the spot. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Her dad was right. Amy was dead.

  She forced her feet to move and set off towards the house. No. She did not want to go in there. She wanted to go to someone who would comfort her. She turned back, edging between the closing gates before they banged shut.

  Reaching the apartment block, she ran up the steps and pounded on the door. When it opened, she fell into the other girl’s arms.

  ‘Oh, Cristina,’ she sobbed.

  ‘What’s wrong, hon? You’re soaking wet. Come in. Come in.’

  Louise allowed herself to be engulfed in a hug before stepping into the warmth of the apartment. As she did so, the door crashed open behind her and Cristina was thrown to the floor.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ a voice said.

  Standing with her mouth wide open, her body convulsed with shivers, Louise only had eyes for the knife glinting in the gloved hand.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ The knife moved to the other hand.

  Louise felt the prick of something sharp on the side of her neck. She tried to remain standing, but her entire body felt paralysed. Her legs gave way and she slumped against the wall. As her eyelids drooped, she heard Cristina scream.

  Twenty-Seven

  Before heading up to bed, Lottie checked that all the doors and windows were locked. At the front door she thought she saw a shadow move behind the glass. Boyd?

  She unhooked the chain, turned the key in the mortise lock and opened the door. There was no one there. The day had been exhausting and she felt her knees creak with tiredness. Seeing things now, she told herself. The image of the two murdered women lying on slabs in the morgue wouldn’t dissipate. Must be that, she thought.

  About to close the door, she decided: no, best to have a proper look. She walked down the narrow path and onto the road. No cars. No cats or dogs. The rain had eased. Silence and serenity despite the whisper of a slow drizzle.

  She went back up the path and paused as light spilled out from her hallway onto the step. What was that? Bending down, she studied a scattering of small seeds spread across the concrete. Had they been there when she went out a moment ago? She swung around. No one there.

  And then she knew. She knew who had left them. Were they a warning, or an invitation to battle?

  A bolt of fear slashed through her body. It was like someone had cut her veins and her lifeblood was slipping away. There was only one person she knew who had an unhealthy obsession with seeds and herbs. She had discovered this fact during her investigations which led to the arrest of her half-sister.

  Bernie Kelly had been outside her house.

  * * *

  The woman curled away from the bush across the road as the door slammed shut. She was smiling to herself.

  Lottie had got the message.

  Shoving her hands deep into her pockets, she hummed a tuneless song deep within her throat. She wasn’t stupid enough to sing out loud. She couldn’t sing anyway.

  Turning the corner, she moved out onto the main road, keeping close to the hedges. After a year cooped up, hands cuffed to her bed more often than not, it was good to be out in the fresh air. She didn’t care how long that freedom lasted, as long as she completed the task she had set out to do.

  Now it was up to Rose Fitzpatrick to play her part and deliver the second piece of the message.

  And then the serious business could begin.

  * * *

  He’d forgotten to get the milk. But she was already asleep when he returned home, so he went straight to his room. He needed a shower, but the exertions of the last few hours had drained his energy. He stripped naked and lay on the hard mattress.

  He hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains. The lights from the road shone in on the walls, and he stared at a myriad of cobwebs clinging to the light bulb in the ceiling. Just like him, clinging on to reality.

  Her deep green eyes were everywhere. Her sharp nose and inquisitive lips. And the eyes. They were what he remembered most clearly. How she’d peered at him from the witness box while she stood there telling her lies. She knew they were lies, because he knew the truth.

  His fingers cramped from the cold and his toes were freezing. The Raynaud syndrome was back. It was too cold to get back out of bed to fetch socks. Pulling the thin blanket up to his neck, he thought of her again. Lottie Parker. And her coven of witches who had conspired against him.

  Lying awake, he tried to think up new ways to make them pay for the ten years of his life that were lost for ever.

  * * *

  The shower was too hot, but Tony stood under it, scrubbing and scrubbing until his skin was almost raw. When he was sure he was clean, he stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist, letting the air cool his throbbing flesh.

  He missed her. On nights like this, he craved the sheen of her flesh against his. The aroma of their lovemaking. The taste of her body. The loving look in her eyes. No. Stop. She never had a loving look in her eyes. Derision and disgust. That was all he ever witnessed in the blackness. And now it made him shiver and his skin shrivel.

  Eventually he dried himself, switched off the shower and the light, and padded flat-footed and naked to bed.

  * * *

  Bernie had left hours ago, but Rose still sat in the same position.

  What was she going to do? She had to tell Lottie. But how?

  She bit down on her already shredded nails and shook her head. In all her seventy-odd years, with everything that had happened to her, she had never experienced the anguish and terror that she now felt.

  She could not tell Lottie what Bernie had said. But at the same time, she had to protect her daughter and her grandchildren.

  She sat and pulled at her nails until the sky slowly began to light up the kitchen once again.

  Twenty-Eight

  The sky on Wednesday morning was more beautiful than Lottie had seen it all week. Though it was dawn, a few golden rays broke through the trees where birds perched. Tiny flies flitted in the half-light. But she could not shed the unease sitting between her shoulder blades.

  She picked up the bag holding the seeds she’d gathered from her doorstep last night. Must be about fifty of them, she thought. Did the number mean something? Or was it an indiscriminate figure, meant only to confuse her as she tried to decipher the significance? It was enough to know that her half-sister had been that close to her home, to her children and grandson. She’d left her calling card.

  The warmth and comfort of her new home was suddenly distilled into darkness as a shudder of trepidation crawled up her vertebrae. Stop. No way was she letting that woman ruin her new-found happiness. Ghosts had plagued her life for long enough. She was not returning to that monstrous dungeon of despair and uncertainty.

  ‘Damn you, Bernie,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  Lottie swung around. ‘Katie! Oh my God, you scared the life out of me.’

  ‘Sorry, Mam.’ Katie opened the cupboard and extracted a box of cereal.

  ‘What has you up this early? I didn’t hear Louis wake.’

  Katie sat at the table and shoved a handful of cornflakes into her mouth. ‘It’s not Louis.’

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, and what’s wrong with getting a bowl and spoon?’

  Pushing the cereal box across the table, Katie clenched her hands and lowered her chin to her chest without reply.

  Dragging out a chair, Lottie sat in front of her eldest child and wrapped her hands around Katie’s. ‘What is it? You can tell me.’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s nothing.’

  ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ The possibility caused Lottie’s heart to lurch in her chest. No way could she handle that scenario.

  Katie looked up from beneath long lashes and smiled. ‘Unless it’s the immaculate conception, I don’t think so.’

  Lottie let out a shadow of a sigh. ‘What
has you worried then?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Honestly. Just my mind playing silly games.’ Katie looked away.

  Lottie gently turned her daughter’s head and looked into her eyes. ‘It’s something, otherwise you’d still be asleep and not up raiding cornflakes at this hour.’

  ‘You’ll think I’m crazy.’

  ‘No, sweetheart, I’m the crazy one in this family.’

  ‘It’s just this feeling I have. A weird sensation that someone is watching me. Following me.’

  Lottie dropped her hand and shifted uneasily on the chair. ‘When? Where?’

  ‘Don’t rush into detective mode, Mam.’

  ‘Tell me.’ Lottie spied Louis’ wool jacket on the back of the chair. She picked it up and began to fold it. She needed to be doing something.

  ‘In town, the other day,’ Katie said. ‘I thought someone was watching as I tried on clothes in Jinx. And then last night, I had this awful feeling that someone was looking in the window. Which is ridiculous seeing as my room is upstairs. It’s probably all my imagination. Hormones or something.’

  Or something, Lottie thought. She was going to find Bernie Kelly and string her up from the tallest tree she could find in Ragmullin. This was too much.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, lacing her voice with as much nonchalance as she could muster. She didn’t want to frighten her daughter, but at the same time she needed her to be wary. ‘It could be hormones, or just the time of year. Halloween coming up and all that. But be careful all the same. Keep a close eye on Louis. And Chloe and Sean.’

  She ran her fingers over the soft knitted ribs of the little tan jacket. Maybe she should tell Katie. Warn her. But what good would that do? Terrifying her children wasn’t going to keep Bernie away. After all, she was sure she was after her, not her children. But just in case, she would organise a taxi to ferry Chloe and Sean to and from school every day.

  ‘Perhaps you should stay in today. Louis has a touch of a cold and it might be best to keep him in an even temperature.’ She placed the jacket on the table.