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

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Pity the whole place didn’t burn to the ground,’ he added.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lottie pulled down her hood to get a better look at him.

  ‘I felt drawn to it. After all the lies.’

  ‘Joe . . .’ she began.

  ‘Don’t, Lottie. Don’t say anything.’

  He pushed away from the tree. She placed her hand on his arm.

  ‘Did you see any sign of a vagrant? Patrick O’Malley. We’re looking for him.’

  ‘Just the place for vagrancy,’ he said. ‘Bishop Connor is nosing around.’

  Lottie beckoned to Boyd. Lynch and Kirby brought up the rear.

  ‘Bishop Connor is here,’ she said. ‘O’Malley must be too. Spread out and look for them,’ she said. ‘Not you, Boyd. You look like you’re about to faint.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, averting his eyes from Lottie holding on to the priest’s sleeve.

  She dropped her hand, shrugged her shoulders and headed into the walled, snow-covered orchard, outside the cordoned-off area. Boyd trudged behind her, Father Joe at his side. Lynch and Kirby crossed the frozen lawn and hurried left around the back of St Angela’s.

  It was Lottie’s first time inside the small orchard enclosure. In the lifeless winter it was barren, trees shredded bare, the ground swathed in a white sheet of purity. She truly believed there was nothing pure in this place. Evil stalked every crevice in its walls and bodies lay uneasy in unmarked graves. She glanced upwards at the window, where three sets of terrified eyes had witnessed atrocities no child should have to observe or comprehend.

  Shadows spread at the base of the trees and the sun struggled to find its place low in the grey afternoon sky. At the furthest corner of the orchard, she saw them. Two figures. Silhouetted marionettes, twirling around each other, leaving streaked snow in their wake.

  She put a finger to her lips and inched forward.

  The puppets ceased their dancing, interrupted by birds fleeing as a flock from the branches.

  O’Malley swung round and looked directly into her eyes. Blood poured from his cheek and a blue nylon rope lay useless around his neck.

  Bishop Terence Connor turned slowly and dropped the other end of the rope.

  ‘It’s all over, Bishop Connor,’ Lottie said. She wondered at his audacity to attempt committing a crime metres from gardaí. He must surely be mad.

  ‘Over?’ Bishop Connor shouted. ‘Over? Not yet.’ He stood with his arms reaching to the heavens. ‘It is over when my God tells me.’

  ‘You’re finished.’ Father Joe stepped up beside Lottie.

  ‘You!’ the bishop exploded, pointing his finger towards the priest. ‘You are the cause of this.’

  ‘Me? You’re insane,’ Father Joe said, voicing Lottie’s thoughts. ‘All those people are dead. For what? To cover up St Angela’s abusive past?’ He opened his hands, palms upwards. ‘How could your God could allow this?’

  ‘My God? He is your God too.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Father Joe tore his clerical collar from his neck and flung it into the snow, where it blended with the whiteness.

  ‘Blasphemy. I did all this for you,’ Connor roared.

  O’Malley started toward him. Lottie silently urged him to move away from Connor. She remained by Father Joe’s side. Boyd edged forward, nearer to O’Malley. The vagrant knelt in the deep snow, bloodied and unmoving.

  ‘She was your mother, you know,’ Bishop Connor said, a smile slowly creasing his face in a sinister mask. ‘Susan Sullivan.’

  Father Joe lurched forward, hands outstretched to grab the other man’s throat. ‘You’re the lowest of the low,’ he screamed.

  Lottie grabbed the tail of his coat before he touched Connor.

  ‘Susan Sullivan,’ Bishop Connor repeated, taking a step backwards. ‘Yes, Joe, you are her son. She never found out. I sent the records away to Rome, having first altered them. I put out a false trail. Father Angelotti helped there, unwittingly I might add. Once that Susan Sullivan started her meddling, I knew she would stop at nothing to uncover the truth. I only wanted to protect you.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Father Joe cried.

  Lottie’s heart shattered into little pieces for him. The only time he had had contact with his mother was the day he was born and the day she died when he had administered the last rites as she lay at his feet.

  ‘You are the bastard son of a paedophile priest and a girl barely out of childhood.’

  ‘Liar,’ Father Joe whispered, shaking his head, trying to make the vision disappear, but Lottie knew it would remain with him forever.

  ‘I would’ve known by my birth certificate if I was adopted.’ His voice was broken, a million pieces of shattered glass.

  ‘Back then,’ Connor sneered, ‘the nuns, Father Con and I, we made sure there was no time-wasting with adoption certificates. With the babies we dealt with, their birth certificates appeared to be the genuine article but we maintained details of the original births in ledgers.’ He tried to move forward, but his feet sank deeper into the snow.

  ‘You changed the reference numbers,’ Lottie said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I could. And because Susan Sullivan wanted to know who and where her bastard child was. I had to protect him.’

  ‘Why kill Father Angelotti?’ Lottie asked, stalling him.

  ‘Because Angelotti was going to reveal the truth, once he’d discovered his mistake. He had realised the records had been changed so he organised a meeting with Brown to get him to talk to Susan. Of course I offered to drive him to see how things would pan out. Brown never showed and I took my chance. I had hoped Brown would get the blame. Unfortunately the weather didn’t help there.’

  Father Joe shook his head again. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’

  ‘It’s a fact. I lived my life for you. I spared you in St Angela’s all those years ago. I placed you with a good family. Spent my life covering up for the Church.’

  ‘And you covered up a boy’s murder,’ Lottie said.

  ‘I did what I had to do,’ Bishop Connor said. Suddenly his shoulders drooped.

  Lottie knew he had lost his fight.

  ‘Why kill Susan and James?’ she asked.

  ‘They were blackmailing me. Wanted to expose the secrets I’d worked all my life to keep buried. I had to stop them. I couldn’t afford it any more.’ He laughed cynically. ‘If I had known Susan Sullivan was already dying of cancer perhaps none of this would have been necessary.’

  Convinced she was staring into the eyes of the devil himself, Lottie said, ‘You concealed the abuse of children. You moved Father Cornelius Mohan around, allowing him to commit further abuse in new parishes. Babies, never making it out the door of this place, throwing them into unmarked graves. A young boy beaten to death behind these walls and unceremoniously buried here.’ She waved her hand around the enclosure. ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘You can’t prove anything.’ His eyes challenged her.

  Lottie held his stare, counted to nineteen before he looked away. Lynch and Kirby, weapons drawn, unnecessarily, took up positions along the wall behind the bishop and O’Malley.

  ‘And why does one boy’s death matter so much to you, Inspector Parker?’

  ‘It matters to everyone,’ Father Joe said. ‘Especially to those you murdered to keep things secret.’

  Lottie pulled at his sleeve to shut him up.

  ‘You are a discredit to the collar you wear,’ Bishop Connor spat.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Father Joe said. ‘But you are.’ He inched forward. Lottie pulled him back.

  O’Malley broke from Boyd’s grip, leaped upwards and lunged at Connor’s shoulders, knocking him into the snow. Lottie hauled up Connor as Boyd grabbed O’Malley.

  ‘I saw you with my own eyes,’ O’Malley said, blood spluttering from his mouth. ‘From those windows up there. Me and Susan and James. We saw you throw poor Fitzy in a hole under a tree.’ He pointed wildly around the orchard. ‘An
d you’d been in the chapel. We’d seen you do nothing when he screamed and cried. Brian and Father Con beat him until he was stripped bare of his skin and what did you do? Absolutely nothing. You could’ve stopped it.’

  Boyd dragged O’Malley away from his tormentor.

  ‘You murdering bastard,’ O’Malley shouted at Connor. ‘But you didn’t get me.’

  Lottie snapped handcuffs on Connor. All his arrogance had disappeared, leaving a dead blackness in his eyes.

  ‘My brother,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Eddie Fitzpatrick. What did you do to him?’

  ‘Buried him. What else could I do with his broken body?’ He scanned the orchard with a swift head movement. ‘Here. Somewhere here.’

  Lottie slapped him hard across the face. He didn’t flinch. If anything, his eyes dimmed, murky shadows clouding them over.

  ‘Your family abandoned that boy,’ he sneered. ‘Your father shot himself with a bullet through his mouth; your mother threw a grieving ten year old behind these walls and walked away. And you . . . you . . .’

  ‘I was four,’ Lottie murmured.

  ‘And why did your mother do that? The lovely upstanding Catholic Rose Fitzpatrick. I’ll tell you why. Because your brother was a thieving, good-for-nothing tearaway. And the widow couldn’t stand the added shame of the boy ruining her life. So she had him locked away.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Lottie cried.

  ‘Ask her, you ask her.’

  Lottie’s tears dampened her cheeks and a soft flutter of snow fell to earth. His words had hammered home things never spoken aloud in her family. Things her mother should have told her. And she still wasn’t sure if she’d found what she had lost all those years ago.

  Boyd’s hand slipped into hers.

  Epilogue

  30th January 2015

  ‘Charlotte Brontë, that’s who you were called after.’

  ‘I know, Mother,’ Lottie said. ‘You told me numerous times.’

  Before this she couldn’t get her mother to talk about her brother or her father. Now, she couldn’t shut her up. Rose had explained to Lottie that Eddie was an awful handful after their father committed suicide. She had despaired of what to do about him until, on the advice of the parish priest, she placed him in the care of St Angela’s for six months. And then he disappeared.

  ‘And poor Eddie, we called him after—’

  ‘Edward Rochester. Jane Eyre,’ Lottie said. ‘I know.’

  But she didn’t know anything any more.

  The digger operator held up his hand and switched off the machine. It was getting dark and Lottie didn’t know if he’d found something or was quitting for the night.

  She moved away from her mother, leaving her standing with Chloe. Katie was at home minding Sean. They were not doing too well, either of them. The Rickards had buried Jason five days after he died, in a private ceremony. None of Lottie’s family were there. The Rickards didn’t want to see Katie. The girl couldn’t understand it. Lottie could. Boyd had bought Sean a PlayStation 4. It was still in its box, unopened. She’d got him a new hurling kit; he’d thrown it under his bed.

  Now she was struggling to keep her family intact. Her children needed her more than at any time since they’d buried their father. They were son and daughters, sisters and brother. Lottie knew how the hasty action of a mother could change that dynamic for ever, and she couldn’t afford to make a mistake, not where her children were concerned.

  In her job, she still didn’t know if there would be any disciplinary action regarding her flight to Rome and her handling of the murder investigations. Superintendent Corrigan was reluctant to apologise for his actions in shielding the bishop and was avoiding her. But for now she was on paid leave. Work could wait.

  The sky leached grey into black, and night was descending before the day had succeeded in fulfilling itself. Lottie felt the same.

  A spotlight directed a shaft of light into the three-foot-deep hole. She knew it was time.

  The new moon glinted in the dark.

  The Black Moon.

  Maybe the bad omens were behind them. Maybe not.

  She stood on the edge of an abyss wondering where she would find the inner strength to walk away. But Lottie Parker never walked away.

  She noticed Father Joe standing at the wall, by the archway. Jeans and black polo-neck sweater under his big jacket. He was taking a sabbatical. His whole life, he had unknowingly lived a lie, and now he grieved for his dead birth mother, whom he had never known. He looked lost, a deep sadness shading his eyes. Lottie waved, then dropped her hand as he walked away. Suffering for the secrets of others.

  This reminded her again of her own family secret which this case had awakened. Her brother’s yellowing missing person’s file in her drawer; she could never again deny it. And she was proud of his heroism. O’Malley had told the story, painting Fitzy’s – her own brother’s – time in St Angela’s in big bold colours. Her mother had cried for days.

  Lottie sensed Boyd falling into step beside her. She felt his hand resting on the small of her back, soft and comforting.

  ‘It will only be bones. You don’t have to look, Lottie.’

  She glanced up at the dark windows, then she walked closer to the unmarked grave beneath the bare apple tree, highlighted by the radiance of the crescent moon.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ Lottie said, peering over the mound of clay. ‘I do.’

  Reader Letter

  Hello dear reader,

  I wish to sincerely thank you for reading my debut novel, The Missing Ones.

  I’m so grateful to you for sharing your precious time with Lottie Parker and company. I do hope you enjoyed it and that you will follow Lottie throughout the series of novels.

  In order to get through the darkest days of my life when my husband Aidan died following a very short illness, I began writing this novel. I filled notebooks with lines and lines of words, which at the time I thought of as therapy. But the more I wrote the more I realised that, with a lot of hard work, I could shape the words into a book. And I did. It hasn’t been an easy journey but I think I’m getting there!

  All characters in this story are fictional, as is the town of Ragmullin, though life events have deeply influenced my writing.

  I do hope you enjoyed reading The Missing Ones. I’m a little embarrassed to ask but if you liked it, I would love if you could post a review. It would mean so much to me.

  You can also connect with me via my blog, which I endeavour to keep up to date, or on Facebook.

  Thanks again, and I hope you join me for book two in the series, The Unwanted.

  Patricia Gibney email sign-up

  Love,

  Patricia

  @trisha460

  patricia.gibney1

  www.patriciagibney.com

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a novel is a personal journey, and I could not have reached my destination without the support and encouragement of many people along the way.

  Firstly, I want to thank you, my reader, for taking the time to read The Missing Ones. Without you my writing adventure would be in vain.

  To the Bookouture team, in particular my editor Lydia for initially telling me she loved my novel and then for taking me on. Thank you for believing in me.

  To my agent, Ger Nichol of The Book Bureau, for signing me up. That first email Ger sent to say she was halfway through the book and couldn’t wait to finish it filled me with the self-belief to think yes, I can be a published author!

  The Irish Writers’ Centre is an invaluable resource. The courses and tutors are excellent and I have made life-long friends through it. Arlene Hunt, Conor Kostick and Louise Phillips have assisted in developing my potential and my writing skills through their courses. Also Carolann Copland of Carousel Writers’ Retreat, everyone associated with the Irish Crime Fiction Group and Vanessa O’Loughlin of Writing.ie. Thank you.

  Niamh Brennan for her advice, wisdom and eagle eye when critiquing my work in progress. And of c
ourse for all the texts and emails encouraging me when I was flagging. I value your opinion greatly.

  Jackie Walsh for accompanying me to crime writing festivals and writing holidays. Niamh and Jackie have become great friends, writing buddies and sounding boards for plot development and building confidence in my writing.

  Teresa Doran, Liam Manning and Padraig McGovern, for listening to me reading first drafts at our weekly Write 1 group.

  Tara Sparling for reading the manuscript.

  Alan Murray and John Quinn for advice on policing matters; any mistakes are entirely my own. In order to help the story flow, I took many liberties with police procedures.

  Antoinette and Jo, for always being there. Best Friends.

  My sister Marie for being by my side through all that life has thrown at me.

  My sister Cathy and brother Gerard, family is everything.

  My mother and father, Kathleen and William Ward, for believing in me and helping me throughout my life, especially the most difficult times.

  My mother-in-law, Lily Gibney and family.

  My children, Aisling, Orla and Cathal. You give meaning to my life. I love you so much. And the newest member of our family, my baby granddaughter Daisy, is proof that life is full of surprises.

  Aidan, my dear husband, whom I miss deeply, encouraged me to follow my dream. He would be so proud today and I wish he was here to share this moment. Much loved. Always in my heart.