‘It’s pure shite.’ Pushing the empty carton away from him, he said, ‘Did your mother say anything about this information Sullivan mentions?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe we should check if James Brown was also on Facebook.’
‘I did.’ Lottie patrolled her kitchen. ‘Do you realise how many people are called James Brown?’
‘Too many?’
‘Exactly.’
‘While you’re at it, check out the others,’ she said.
‘Who? Father Angelotti? The missing priest?’ He tapped in the name. Nothing again.
Lottie sat down next to him, took the iPad from his hand and asked, ‘Are you on it?’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said, ‘don’t you dare.’
‘I bet you keep track of your beautiful ex-wife Jackie and her boyfriend.’
‘He’s a criminal. And she is still legally my wife.’
‘You must still feel something for her if you haven’t divorced her yet. Why haven’t you?’
‘She was a party animal. I wasn’t. But I love her, I mean loved her. I suppose I just wasn’t what Jackie wanted.’
‘And she wanted Jamie McNally? The biggest scumbag in Ireland. Where are they now?’
‘Costa del Sol, last I heard.’
‘You’re keeping tabs on her then.’ Lottie patted his hand. He swatted her away.
‘I am not.’
‘It’s been years, Boyd. Forget about her.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘Okay,’ Lottie said, ‘I’ll try Mr Ferret.’
‘Mike O’Brien? Ah, stop. I know him.’
‘So?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘He undressed me with those sly eyes of his.’
‘Bet he didn’t get a view as good as I got last night.’
‘Shut up.’ She tapped in O’Brien’s name. ‘Nothing.’
‘I saw him at the gym this evening. He was all chat. You know he’s very fit for a man who doesn’t look it.’
‘You’ve planted an obscene image in my mind.’
‘What image?’
‘O’Brien in Lycra.’
‘Gross,’ said Boyd. ‘Try Tom Rickard?’
Lottie tapped in the name. ‘Too common a name. We’d be a week going through them trying to find our man.’
‘Rickard Construction?’
‘Yep. That’s here.’ She scrolled down the page. ‘Mainly advertising stuff. It’s his business page.’
‘Who liked it?’
‘Jesus, there’s hundreds of likes on it. He must’ve had a special offer on one of his ghost houses.’
She scrolled through the names.
‘I’ll kill her,’ Lottie said.
‘Who?’
‘Katie.’
‘Your Katie?’
‘Yes, my Katie.’ Lottie pointed to a photograph. ‘Jason Rickard.’
‘Ugly kid, isn’t he,’ Boyd said. ‘He must be son and heir. What’s he got to do with Katie?’
‘He is my beloved daughter’s boyfriend! That little pup was in my sitting room earlier this evening. Smoking weed.’
‘You’re having me on.’ Boyd raised a brow.
Lottie glared. ‘I’m not joking.’
‘Arrest the little fart.’
‘He’s not that little, and he is the son of one of our people of interest.’ She struggled with the idea of Katie in a relationship with Rickard’s offspring.
‘You’re always going on about small towns, Lottie. In the end everyone knows everyone else and they know each other’s business.’
She knew it was true, but she didn’t want her daughter in the middle of whatever they were in the middle of. ‘Why are we always last to know?’
‘Parents or the guards?’
‘Both.’
‘You’re tired. Leave this until tomorrow.’ Boyd stretched and yawned.
‘I don’t want to go to bed. My mind is hyper.’ She glanced up at him. ‘And no comment about how you can tire me out.’
‘We can investigate this further tomorrow.’
‘Stymied every way we turn.’
‘I’m going home,’ Boyd said. ‘Unless you want me to stay?’
‘Go,’ Lottie said.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to see the ache in his eyes.
He pulled the front door softly behind him.
She returned to Susan Sullivan’s Facebook message.
‘What did you want to tell me?’ Lottie asked.
2nd January 1975
He watched from the window. The corridor air whispered a chill around him.
He saw the girl getting out of the car followed by a tall thin woman holding a small bundle in the crook of one arm. The girl looked pale and tired. He ducked his head as she glanced up at the white sash windows. Her eyes, veiled in a dark unseeing way, reminded him of a terrified boy he’d once seen, after suffering a beating. The girl looked just like that, walking in a stupor, pushed along by some invisible force. A man sat in the yellow Cortina, with the engine running.
Sister Immaculata hurried down the steps. She took the blanketed bundle and ushered the girl to walk beside her. Without a hug or kiss, the tall woman – he assumed she was her mother – rushed from the girl to the car and drove off quickly.
He stood there, listening to the wind, which used to frighten him before he came to realise there were more terrifying things in St Angela’s than blustery corridors. He wondered about the new girl and her bundle, her baby. He knew it was a baby; her baby.
He’d witnessed many such arrivals here, but this girl’s stunned eyes had unsettled him. Some remained only a short time. Not all though. Not like him. He thought he’d been here forever. He supposed that many years ago, he was like the wrapped-up bundle – a dark secret hidden deep in swaddling. Was his mother like this girl? He didn't usually allow himself such reflections but her face, painted with such uncertainty and fear, touched him. This was his home. He knew no different. Would this be her home now? What was her story and where would it end?
‘Patrick, get out of that window. How many times do I have to tell you? You’ll catch a cold,’ Sister Teresa said, as she passed by him.
He stretched his twelve-year-old legs to the floor and welcomed the pat on his head from her old hand. He liked her. Not the other nuns. They had changed when that last priest arrived. The one with the black eyes. No, Patrick did not like him at all and the nuns were wary. Afraid? He decided he didn't really care one way or the other as he walked along the black and white mosaics to the stone carved staircase. Sister Immaculata, coming from the nursery, stood in front of him.
‘Tea time, Patrick,’ she said, her forehead bulging beneath the wimple of her long black veil. He shrugged.
She walked ahead of him, down the stairs in a wave of black skirts. He smelled mothballs and followed in silence.
What would she look like at the bottom, if he tripped her? This was not the first time he’d wondered that. He smiled to himself and went to wash his hands before tea.
DAY FIVE
3rd January 20
Thirty-Nine
The townspeople of Ragmullin were wide awake and wary. News of another murder had filtered through the gossip lines. They were saying a priest was dead. Lottie frowned. The grapevine was proving very fruitful, even in the depths of winter.
Snowy icicles hanging from drainpipes dripped slowly as temperatures struggled to rise. A murky grey fog enveloped the morning. Lottie looked away from the incident room window. Extensive searches had failed to uncover the whereabouts of a phone or laptop belonging to Susan Sullivan.
‘She could have used an internet cafe,’ Boyd suggested.
‘She could have been on Mars for all we know,’ Lottie snapped.
She felt bloated, having scoffed a McDonald’s breakfast on her way into work. Junk food. She binged when the urge for alcohol threatened to become something more than a desire. The investigations would drive a saint to drink altar wine. Lottie knew she was no sa
int but she’d endured the night without alcohol or indeed much sleep.
The technical team had searched the relevant Facebook pages and found nothing. It was like driving around a strange city without GPS or any knowledge of the local language. They were lost.
Glancing out the window again, she noticed around a dozen heavily jacketed journalists, armed with cameras and notebooks, assembled in huddles below. She turned to the sparse incident board. She felt like the murderer was an invisible man or woman. But he was out there. She turned to Boyd.
‘We have to join the dots soon, and when we do the picture is going to get complicated very quickly.’
‘It’s complicated enough,’ he said.
‘We’re due a break, otherwise the two of us will be working cold cases for the rest of our lives. And this one will be the coldest of all.’
‘Sometimes you speak in the riddles of Egyptian gods,’ Boyd said.
‘Egyptian gods?’ Lottie studied the prints on the incident board.
‘Like hieroglyphics. You know, language of symbols,’ he offered by way of explanation.
Lottie sighed. At this stage, she’d settle for any sign pointing them in the right direction. Something to fill the glaring, empty spaces. She studied the photocopies of the tattoos on Susan Sullivan and James Brown.
‘I wonder if these could be ancient symbols.’ She compared both the Brown and Sullivan tattoos.
‘They’re crosses in circles,’ Boyd said.
‘No, they’re not crosses,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’re linked to a ritual or a sect. I wonder if victim number three, who is really victim number one, also has one?’
She dialled Jane Dore’s private line. The pathologist answered immediately.
‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that our latest victim also had the tattoo?’ Lottie asked.
‘I did a thorough visual and haven’t come across one,’ Jane Dore said in her no-nonsense voice. ‘I’m commencing the autopsy soon. I’ll send on my preliminary report when I’m done.’
‘Any word on the DNA analysis?’ Lottie asked. ‘I need to confirm it is actually Father Angelotti.’
‘I told you it could be weeks for DNA comparisons. Don’t pin your hopes on it. Get someone to ID the body.’
Another dead end. She hoped it was him otherwise she’d be in deep shit after telling the bishop it was his missing priest.
She looked at the tattoo again. Maybe Father Joe could make sense of it. Unorthodox behaviour to be eliciting help from a potential suspect, but what the heck. Just digging herself in a little deeper.
She punched the bell a second time. Eventually the crooked little nun answered the door.
‘I’d like to speak to Father Joe, please,’ Lottie said, finding herself bending to the nun’s level.
‘I’m not deaf you know,’ the nun said. ‘And he is called Father Burke.’
Lottie imagined the old nun in her prime, beating the life out of terrified youngsters in a classroom.
The nun kept the door closed over.
‘Sorry, I should say Father Burke.’ Lottie added, ‘Is he here?’
‘Not any more,’ the veiled woman said, closing the door.
Lottie put her booted foot in the gap, hoping she wouldn’t get crushed bones.
‘What do you mean by any more? I spoke with him yesterday.’
‘He’s not here. He’s gone,’ the nun said with cold authority.
‘Is there someone I can speak to about why he has left?’ Lottie asked, dread inching up her chest. Father Joe was one of their people of interest, though she herself didn’t believe he had done anything wrong.
‘I can’t help you. You’ll have to speak to Bishop Connor.’
Lottie jumped back as the wooden slab of a door smashed against the jamb and a bolt slid into a lock. She stepped into the bitter wind and headed down the path, away from the wizened old woman.
Boyd will have a field day with this, she thought. Done a runner, that’s what he’ll say. Instinctively Lottie knew there was more to this. She tried Father Joe’s mobile. Switched off. She desperately had to find him.
Blowing warm air on to her cold hands, she craved a cigarette and thought of Katie smoking weed. She needed to do something constructive. Like sorting out her daughter.
Forty
The four men sat at a long table, cups of coffee at their hands. Each one of them was worried, suspicious of each other, troubled and afraid.
Tom Rickard spoke first. ‘Well?’
‘We shouldn’t be meeting like this. Someone might see us,’ said Mike O’Brien, nervously wiping dandruff from his shoulders. ‘And I’ve to get back to the bank before I’m missed.’
‘It’s getting very near the crucial deadline. We need to be sure of what we’re doing,’ said Gerry Dunne. ‘You wouldn’t get this type of carry on at a council meeting.’
‘And I need to be sure you approve that planning permission,’ Rickard said, pointing a finger at Dunne. ‘I want this development to go ahead, otherwise I’ll be bankrupt.’
Dunne straightened himself up in his chair, smoothing the creases in his immaculate pinstripe trousers. ‘I know how important this is to all of us.’
Rickard scrutinised the men and wondered, not for the first time, why he’d allowed himself to be corralled into the deal. Gerry Dunne, county manager, with the planning fate in his hands, O’Brien manoeuvring the money around banks and Bishop Connor maintaining a stake in the development after the sale.
‘I heard a rumour this morning. What’s this about a priest found dead? In James Brown’s back garden, no less.’ Rickard nodded to the bishop. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
‘It’s of no concern to us,’ Bishop Connor replied.
‘For all our sakes, I hope that’s true,’ Rickard said. ‘Two murders and now this.’
‘The sooner it’s all over the better,’ O’Brien said.
‘We’re depending on you to keep your finger on the money,’ Rickard said and noticed a tremble in the other man’s hand.
O’Brien picked up his glass, drank quickly and started to cough. ‘I need more water,’ he said with a choke.
‘I need another holiday,’ Dunne said and knocked over his coffee.
‘You all need to calm down,’ Bishop Connor said as the dark liquid spread over the desk.
Lottie switched off the car engine outside the red-brick, multi-windowed mansion.
An image of her daughter, with her weed-smoking boyfriend, intruded every time she attempted to co-ordinate her thoughts into a cohesive train. Rather than let it fester throughout the day, and to avoid dealing with Father Joe’s hasty departure from Ragmullin, she’d decided to talk to the Rickards about their son’s illegal habit and the source of his drugs.
She stepped out of the car and rang the ornate bell before she could change her mind. As the sound echoed inside she noticed the watery sun slip round the side of the house. Trees stood tall, encircling the building like giant umbrellas. The first snowdrops sprouted through icy beds, straining against the weather. An expanse of lawn appeared in patches through the snow. Someone was going to be busy come spring. And probably not the errant son, Lottie thought.
Soft footsteps approached from behind the door. Jason Rickard opened it.
‘Oh! Mrs Parker,’ he said and jumped back, barefoot, on the marble tiled hallway. He was wearing yesterday’s clothes.
‘Are your parents home?’ Her eyes were drawn to the black inscription snaking along the skin of his neck.
He stepped forward and leaned against the door frame, folding his arms over his skinny chest. ‘They’re not here.’
‘Really? Who owns the cars outside, then?’
‘We do.’
‘Jesus, how many cars do you own?’ Lottie blurted. Behind her, she noted four cars and a quad, neatly lined up in front of a triple garage.
‘The quad and Beamer are mine. The others belong to my mum and dad.’ The boy guarded the entrance to his house with
a hint of youthful cockiness.
A BMW? And she’d initially thought he was a bum. Wrong call, Inspector.
‘I thought you said your parents are not home,’ she said.
‘They have other cars,’ he said.
Lottie stared at him.
‘What age are you, Jason?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘Well, if you’re going to hang out with my daughter, I better not catch you in possession.’
‘Possession of your daughter?’
‘Listen, smart arse, I don’t like you and I don’t know what Katie sees in you, but take this visit as a warning. Next time I’ll come with a search warrant.’
Lottie moved closer to the crack in the door. She noted Jason’s eyes clouding into dark challenging arcs. Like father, like son, she concluded.
‘Katie is old enough to know her own mind,’ he said, closing over the door further.
‘Do you know your own mind? I sincerely doubt it,’ Lottie said. ‘I’ll be back to speak to your parents.’
The door closed.
Lottie strode away, disgruntled. Twice in one morning – a door shut in her face. Was she losing her touch? And all those cars. They needed checking out. She snapped photos on her phone camera.
Just in case the little shit was lying.
Jason sauntered from the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house and poured a glass of water. He looked out the window.
His father’s white Audi, a dark blue BMW and two black Mercedes were parked in the yard. His dad had told him that the visitors were not to be disturbed. And they weren’t.
He wished he could get a new car. He wished Katie didn’t have such a bitch for a mother.
He turned. One of his father’s friends stood in the doorway.
‘I’m looking for something to wipe up a spill,’ the man said, ‘and a jug of water.’
‘This should do it.’ Jason handed him a tea-towel. He could swear that the man’s fingers lingered on his own a second or two longer than necessary. Pulling his hand back, he hastily rubbed it on his jeans. He searched in the cupboard, found a jug and poured the water. The man took it and his lips curled into a slow smile, eyes flashing up and down Jason’s body.
The Missing Ones: An absolutely gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 1) Page 16