The Missing Ones: An absolutely gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 1)

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘You are Tom Rickard, aren’t you?’ She stepped in beside him.

  ‘Are you still here?’ he asked.

  She folded her arms without budging an inch.

  ‘You need an appointment,’ he said, pressing his chubby finger on the button to keep the door open.

  She flashed her ID badge in his face.

  Rickard glanced at it and smirked.

  ‘I should have recognised you, Inspector, but you look different from your newspaper photos.’

  ‘I need to ask you a few questions.’

  Lottie stepped into his space.

  ‘Joke,’ he said. ‘I’m very busy but as you’re already here, I’ll spare you two minutes.’

  He pushed number three on the keypad. The doors eased closed and the lift rose quickly. His office appeared to take up most of the third floor.

  Despite herself, Lottie admired the man’s taste. The space was modern and sparse, with bright warm colours mirroring the sleek character before her.

  Rickard removed his cashmere coat, hung it on a marble coat rack and seated himself behind his desk, indicating a chair for Lottie to sit. She didn’t know anything about designer clothes but estimated his coat could cost at least a week of her wages. Perhaps two. Another world.

  His grey suit had hand-stitched tucks and the double-breasted waistcoat held in a thick belly. Lottie thought he was about six foot two; mid-fifties; straight russet hair, neatly coiffured. Teeth so white, they had to be veneers. A blue shirt and dark grey tie completed his executive look. She wanted to believe he wasn’t handsome but he was; his craggy jaw and bright eyes reminded her of Robert Redford.

  ‘I’m extremely busy.’ He leaned forward, two hands placed firmly on the desk. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Mr Rickard,’ Lottie spoke slowly. Unconcerned for his busy schedule, she would take her time. ‘You are aware of the suspicious death in the cathedral yesterday?’

  ‘I saw the news report last night. Very tragic.’ He sat back in his chair, creating space between them. ‘What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘Can you account for your whereabouts, from about eleven in the morning until eight last night?’

  She eyed Rickard. His expression was chameleon-like, fading from smug and pompous to enquiring and puzzled.

  ‘Why do I have to? I didn’t know the victim.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Can’t be a hundred per cent. I meet many people in the course of my business. I don’t remember everyone.’

  ‘I’ll ask you again. Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday, in particular between eleven a.m. and eight p.m.?’

  She was beginning to enjoy this encounter. Maybe she was grasping at straws in the wind, but his altering body language told her to go for it.

  ‘I’ll have to check my diary,’ he said, reluctantly.

  ‘I’m talking about yesterday, not last year. Surely you know where you were, what you did and who you did it with?’

  ‘I travel all over the country, all over the world. I could’ve been on Wall Street, New York, yesterday.’

  Playing for time or concocting a web to spin a story? Lottie didn’t doubt that Tom Rickard wouldn’t look a bit out of place on Wall Street.

  ‘Stop wasting my time and yours,’ she said. ‘Dublin Airport was closed from early morning yesterday because of the snow. So spin another one.’

  Opening up his iPad, he pounded an icon for his diary and index fingered the date. She peered across the desk trying to see the upside down words.

  They raised their heads simultaneously, two sets of eyes, challenging each other.

  ‘I was out and about. I had my PA cancel a meeting in Dublin – because of the bad weather. So I did a few site visits.’

  She detected a hint of insolence returning to his voice.

  ‘Can anyone vouch for you?’

  ‘Vouch?’ He laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Nothing, Inspector. Am I a suspect?’

  ‘I’m trying to establish if you have a credible alibi.’

  ‘Mmm . . . There was no one on any of the sites. The weather, you know. Vouch?’ he repeated. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I’ll need a list of those sites.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘You got a phone call. Late afternoon,’ Lottie said, changing the emphasis of the conversation.

  Rickard shifted in his chair.

  ‘What phone call?’

  ‘The call James Brown made to you not long before he died.’

  ‘He’s dead?’ Rickard said, his eyes widening. He appeared to gather his thoughts. ‘I don’t know any James Brown and I certainly didn’t get any call from him.’

  ‘Nice try.’

  Lottie pulled the sheet of crumpled paper from her pocket. She unfolded it on the desk, ironing out the creases with her finger. Taking her time. She picked up his silver pen and underlined the penultimate line of digits. The rest of the page was blacked out.

  Turning it towards him, she asked, ‘Is that your number?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘It is your number. You know it’s your number. What was James Brown ringing you about shortly before he apparently wrapped a rope around his neck and hung himself?’

  Rickard didn’t flinch.

  ‘I won’t deny I might’ve had dealings with Brown in the past. I’m sorry he’s dead but you’re not going to pin this on me, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m not trying to pin anything on anyone. I asked a simple question.’

  ‘He could have called me by mistake. I don’t know.’ He shrugged.

  ‘The call lasted thirty-seven seconds.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’ll get a warrant for your phone records.’

  ‘Do that. We’re done here. I’ve important work to do.’

  Lottie watched as Rickard began opening and shutting drawers beneath his desk, dismissing her with his actions. She stood up.

  ‘I’ll be back, Mr Rickard.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt about it,’ he said. ‘No doubt in the world.’

  ‘Happy New Year,’ Lottie said and walked out the door before he could reply. As she stepped into the lift, she knew she was on a collision course with Tom Rickard. That was probably not a good thing.

  Tom Rickard glared at the closed door in the ensuing silence. He pulled over the piece of paper with Brown’s blanked-out phone calls from the last day of his life. He stared at his own number, crudely underlined.

  It was there in black and white. Date, time and call duration.

  He snorted and crumpled the page into his bin.

  He had too much to lose. Let them prove he spoke with Brown.

  Tom Rickard would deny, deny, deny.

  He tapped a speed dial number on his phone.

  ‘We need another meeting.’

  Sixteen

  ‘Brown could have been susceptible to blackmail, judging by the paraphernalia in his bedroom,’ Boyd said to Lottie when she returned to the office.

  She stood, too wound up to sit still.

  ‘Having pictures of naked men on his bedroom wall? Come on, Boyd. That’s nothing to be blackmailed over.’ She paced up and down the small office. Corrigan’s habit was catching.

  She’d sent Brown’s laptop to their technical guys to trawl through and assigned a detective to check out the reported planning threats. She still had to interview Derek Harte, who had found James Brown’s body. She wondered who he was and what he’d been doing at Brown’s house. She’d instructed Lynch to find him after he’d failed to appear for the ten a.m. appointment.

  ‘Someone, anyone, organise a Section 10 warrant for Tom Rickard’s phone records,’ Lottie said. ‘And check when the next District Court is on. We need to get things moving.’

  ‘Sit down, you’re making me nervous,’ Boyd said.

  She sat.

  The desk phone rang.

  ‘Good afternoon, Detective Inspector,
’ said the state pathologist. ‘Are you available to come over to Tullamore? I know the weather is atrocious but there are some things I think you should see.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve the preliminary reports ready.’

  ‘Can you email them?’

  ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

  ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  ‘Any news?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Get a life,’ Lottie said. He’d heard every word of the conversation. ‘I wish I had my own office back.’ She pulled on her jacket.

  ‘You might as well dream here as in bed,’ he said.

  Jesus, he sounded more like her mother with every passing day. Lottie zipped up quickly, almost snagging her throat.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  She didn’t answer him and banged the door behind her.

  ‘Women,’ he said.

  ‘I heard that,’ she shouted back.

  A minute later, she returned, having eyed the state of the road outside.

  ‘Boyd?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector?’

  ‘Will you drive me to Tullamore?’

  Seventeen

  He was heading back to his office when he saw the teenage boy heading into Danny’s Bar and he had to follow. The dark interior helped him meld into the woodwork. He watched as the youngster stretched toward a girl, kiss her mouth, then remove his coat.

  The man ordered a pint of Guinness, sat at the bar and angled himself on the stool so that he could see the young couple. The teenage boy shrugged his coat over his arm and linked his other arm around the girl’s narrow waist. But the man wasn’t interested in the girl. He loosened his tie at the collar of this shirt and continued to stare.

  ‘Are you going to drink that or offer it up?’ The barman grinned at him.

  The man scowled, lifted his pint and sipped before returning his gaze to the boy’s delicate features. He shoved his legs further beneath the bar, shielding the hardening muscle under the zipper of his trousers. He had plenty to be doing, but for now all he wanted to do was sit and watch and imagine what it would feel like to have that youthful flesh in his hands.

  Eighteen

  The state pathologist, Jane Dore, greeted Lottie and Boyd. A pair of tiny spectacles were perched on her prim nose and her dark green eyes peered through the glass. A smart navy skirt suit clung to her tiny body and a blue blouse peeked out at her throat. She wore very high-heeled shoes. Lottie felt underdressed in her warm jacket, jeans and long-sleeved top with a thermal vest underneath. She’d spent the forty-kilometre drive to Tullamore in silence. Boyd sang, out of tune, to the music on the radio and she’d found it irritating but said nothing. Sometimes that was the best way to handle his moods.

  ‘Welcome to the Dead House,’ Jane Dore said, extending a petite hand to Lottie.

  Lottie returned the handshake.

  ‘Call me Lottie. The Dead House?’ she enquired.

  ‘A throwback to olden times. Come.’ Jane led the way along a narrow corridor.

  Lottie followed, hoping the intense disinfectant smell would help blank out the scent of death. She doubted it. Boyd slipped into step behind them.

  The pathologist pushed open a swing door and entered a room with white tiles stretching from floor to ceiling. Three stainless steel tables stood in the centre. Two held bodies under stark white cotton sheeting. Susan Sullivan and James Brown, Lottie presumed. She could see reflections in the steel cabinets and recoiled from her own distorted image.

  Jane Dore sat on to a high stool in the corner and booted up a computer.

  ‘This takes ages to come alive,’ she said.

  ‘Once that’s all that comes alive,’ Lottie said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere. Boyd raised an eyebrow, folded his arms, said nothing.

  The pathologist drummed a red varnished fingernail on the bench. Lottie pulled over another stool and sat in the silence, waiting for the computer to zip into cyber world.

  ‘Did anything unexpected crop up?’ she asked as Jane keyed in her password. No Post-its stuck under the keyboard for this woman.

  ‘Death in both cases was asphyxiation due to strangulation,’ she replied. ‘There is little evidence of defensive wounds on Sullivan’s body. There’s grazing on Brown’s fingers and bruising on his neck around the ligature, as if he’d tried to dislodge the rope. I also found some blue nylon fibre under his fingernails. I’ve sent all fibre and hair to the forensics lab and they have the rope too. There is a slight contusion at the base of his skull. I don’t know what caused it and until I have the forensic results I cannot conclusively determine that his death was self-inflicted.’

  Lottie congratulated her gut instinct. She might still be proven wrong but she was almost sure Brown hadn’t committed suicide. A bump on the back of the head told her someone else was around last night.

  ‘Sullivan was in a bad way . . .’ The pathologist paused mid-sentence, pushing her spectacles back up her nose.

  ‘And she may have given birth. I’m not one hundred per cent sure until I run more tests on the tissue I’ve extracted.’

  ‘Why can’t you be sure?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘Her reproductive system is a mess. She was in the advanced stages of ovarian cancer. Both ovaries have tumours as large as mandarins and there’s another in her uterus.’

  ‘It had crossed my mind she might’ve had cancer,’ Lottie said, recalling the Oxycontin in the victim’s medicine cabinet.

  ‘It’s possible she confused the symptoms with menopause,’ Jane said.

  ‘She knew,’ Lottie said with conviction.

  ‘Ovarian cancer is silent. It’s usually at an advanced stage when symptoms appear. Sullivan only had weeks to live, but someone got to her first.’

  Lottie thought back to the day Adam received his diagnosis. Had Susan gone through the same earth-shattering scenario with her doctor? How did she react? Did she take the news in a calm, dignified manner, like Adam, or had she screamed at the doctor as she, Lottie, had?

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jane Dore raised her eyebrows, concern knitted between them.

  ‘I’m fine. Just thinking of something else.’ Lottie quickly composed herself, professionalism overriding her personal emotion. She felt like pounding her finger on the computer, it was taking so long. But her nails were bitten and uneven. Better not, she thought.

  ‘At last,’ the pathologist said, as a program pinged into life and a green hue lit up the screen.

  She keyed in Susan Sullivan’s name. Numerous lines of text and several icons appeared. She clicked and an image of Sullivan’s body filled the screen.

  ‘Here, you can see the ligature mark, a deep groove on the tissue. It’s from a very thin plastic-type wire. This is consistent with the iPod headphones found around the victim’s neck. The lab is currently running analysis to confirm it as the murder weapon. A quick jerk, tighten for fifteen to twenty seconds and the victim is dead.’

  ‘Would the killer have to be a man?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Using the right amount of force in the correct area, it could be either sex. There’s limited bruising on the neck, so she didn’t put up much of a fight.’

  Lottie watched as the pathologist moved the cursor further down the image and hovered over the victim’s upper thigh.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lottie asked, squinting at the screen.

  ‘I believe it’s a homemade tattoo. Indian ink pounded on to the skin and jabbed repeatedly with a needle. It looks like lines in a circle. Not very clear. It’s badly drawn and deep too. Incised with a knife perhaps, then daubed with ink. I’ll show you,’ she said. ‘Put these on.’

  She extracted latex gloves from a drawer at her knee and handed them to Lottie and Boyd. Jumping down off her high perch, she walked with small elegant steps to the nearest table and pulled back the sheet exposing the naked body of Susan Sullivan. A rough Y incision marked the woman’s chest, crudely stitched with thick thread.

  Lottie shudde
red. Is this what they had done to her Adam? Dying at home had necessitated the undertaker placing his body in a steel box and bringing Adam to the hospital for a post-mortem. She’d been too distraught at the time to object. Now, she didn’t want to go there, so she forced her concentration to what the pathologist was indicating.

  Jane Dore moved one of the victim’s legs and fingered the dead woman’s inside thigh. ‘See?’ She pointed to the mark on the victim’s inner thigh.

  Lottie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying to shed her unease. She bent over to look. The dead woman’s pubis was almost in her face.

  ‘Yes, I see it,’ she murmured. Boyd remained in her shadow.

  ‘Now look at this.’

  At the second table, Jane whipped the sheet from the body. James Brown lay there, whiter than he had ever been in life, stitches traversing his chest also. The pathologist pulled his legs apart.

  Lottie stared at a mark comparable to the tattoo on Sullivan’s inner thigh. Both were in similar locations. But this one was more oval-shaped, as if the hand of whoever had drawn it had slipped.

  ‘I’ve sent samples of the ink to the lab for analysis. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a result.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t a county council initiation rite,’ Boyd said.

  ‘Nothing would surprise me nowadays,’ Lottie said.

  ‘In my opinion these marks were made thirty or forty years ago. The growth of the epidermis and the fading ink would testify to that.’

  Lottie opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it. It was an important link between Susan Sullivan and James Brown, besides their work.

  Jane Dore printed off the tattoo images.

  ‘Happy hunting,’ she said, handing them to Boyd.

  Blowing air through her nostrils, Lottie expelled the scent of decaying flesh. She peeled off the gloves, dropping them in a sterile bin beneath a bench. The pathologist scrolled down the computer screen and printed off her preliminary reports.

  Once she’d finished, she gave them to Lottie and returned to the bodies to tag and bag and do whatever it was a pathologist had to do to finish autopsies. Lottie didn’t want to know about that. She leafed through the pages as she strolled behind Boyd and couldn’t help wondering if Susan Sullivan had a child out there somewhere.