‘No, I’m not, but we’ve found nothing. All the apartments and businesses on Gaol Street have been checked.’
‘What about the stallholders?’
‘No one saw anything.’
‘And the theatre where Lily was rehearsing, has that been searched again?’
‘From top to bottom.’
Lottie sat on the edge of a table, staring up at the photos on the board. ‘A child does not just vanish like that.’
But she knew deep in her heart that that was not true. And for the first time since she’d discovered the little girl was missing, she thought Lily might be dead. She bent down to pick up her bag and noticed her hands were white and trembling. It was as if an icicle had slithered through her blood.
Boyd stood at the printer and pressed the button. It shrieked a warning.
‘Needs paper,’ Lottie said, sitting on the nearest chair. The meeting had eroded the last fragment of energy from her. She needed to sleep and eat. Soon.
He opened a fresh ream and fed paper into the machine. ‘SOCOs sent Lily’s toothbrush for DNA analysis.’
‘Okay.’
‘To have it on file so that if anything or anyone turns up, we can use it for identification purposes.’
Lottie gripped her elbows to quell the shiver. They had to find Lily. Alive.
‘Here’s the thing,’ Boyd said, jabbing the print button again. ‘McGlynn fast-tracked it through the system. Checked it against Fiona’s DNA.’
‘And?’
‘It’s a match all right.
‘But …?’
‘But it also threw up an interesting thing on Lily’s father.’
‘Colin Kavanagh?’ Lottie said. ‘He should be on the system for elimination purposes due to his work.’
‘He is, and it was run against his DNA profile.’ Boyd waved the piece of paper he’d printed off. ‘Colin Kavanagh is not Lily’s father.’
‘What the hell? Show me.’ She grabbed the page and scanned the technical data. ‘Holy shit.’
Boyd sat on the edge of his desk. ‘So who is going to tell him?’
He sat and watched her sleep. So angelic. Silent. Unlike the tantrum he’d witnessed not an hour ago. Rubbing his hands together, he tried to think of a way out. He was in a bind. What to do with her now that he had her?
Moving closer to the cot bed, he unwound his fingers from each other and clasped them behind his back as he leaned over her. He needed to see the mist of her breath in the cool air, to hear the soft sound of her breathing. Watching the shallow rise and dip of her flat chest, he was satisfied.
He hadn’t meant to slap her, to strike out at her, but she would not shut up. Screaming for her mother. He knew no one could hear, but that did not douse his frustration. He thought children should be submissive and willing to learn from him. Willing to see sense. Willing to let him take the lead. But Lily was different. She was Fiona’s child. She was supposed to be compliant and dutiful, not disrespectful and rude. She had to be punished. But should it be by his hand or not?
Exhaling, he turned and left her to her dreams.
There was somewhere he had to be.
He locked the door, pocketed the key and made his way outside.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Beth had been unable to get rid of Ryan. She hadn’t the nerve to be rude to him. He’d sat at the table watching his tea turn cold. She’d made him coffee and he’d sipped it for a second before watching that go cold also. They’d talked a little. Very little.
Eventually she’d said, ‘Ryan, I’ve stuff to organise. You know, for Dad’s funeral.’
‘Don’t let me stop you.’
‘Why don’t you go home? I’m sure Zoe and the boys miss you.’
‘Zoe is better off without me.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Look, Beth, you do what you’ve got to do. I just want peace and quiet.’
‘Do you want to have a shower or a bath?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. But here, put this with the story you’re writing.’ He took an SD card out of his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘You can upload them to your laptop and put them on a USB stick.’
‘The photos?’ she said, picking it up.
‘Yes.’
She sat in the silence. His head drooped and he laid it on his folded arms on the table. Only when she heard the soft purr of his snores did she feel brave enough to move. To stand up. Take one step at a time out of the kitchen.
Quietly she climbed the stairs and sat on her bed wondering why Ryan was so grubby. Mud and leaves were stuck in his hair and dirt cramped his usually pristine fingernails. At work, he was a stickler for hygiene. Was this what grief did to you? She hoped not. Her father’s death had not had time to settle with her. She doubted it ever would.
When her mother had left them, had she grieved back then? She remembered the last night, so clearly it was like looking through glass. Christy roaring at Eve in their bedroom.
‘Get out of my house!’
‘You can keep your fucking house. I’ll get a bigger and fancier one in the sunshine, not this godforsaken dark, wet hole of a village.’
‘Oh, your fancy man is a millionaire now, is he?’ Christy laughed manically.
‘Shut the fuck up.’ Eve slammed one drawer and opened another.
‘Are you going to make me?’ He leaned against the door as she stuffed clothes into an old suitcase with broken wheels.
‘You are impossible to live with, Christy Clarke.’
‘Silage smells. Slurry smells. You knew that when you married me.’
‘I’m not talking about that and well you know it.’ Eve sat on the suitcase to squash the clothes down. Her legs were bare and her shoes were soft leather. Beth had loved how her mother always dressed well, even when Dad said money was tight.
‘Eve. I’m sorry. Give me a chance. Think of Beth.’
‘Fuck you and her.’ Eve jumped up and slapped him full on the face. Christy never wavered, and as if realising what she’d done, she sat back down on the suitcase, pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed. ‘Oh God, I didn’t mean that. I love Beth.’
‘Fine way of showing it.’
‘I’m coming back for her.’
‘Sure you are.’
Eve stood, pulled an orange cashmere coat on over her shoulders and lifted the heavy case. Christy stood to one side to let her pass.
Beth cowered at her bedroom door, waiting for her dad to stop her mother, or for her mother to come for her, at least to say goodbye. But Eve walked down the stairs and out the door without a backward glance. And with the soft click of the door closing, the house lost all its colour.
That was what Beth thought now as she put Ryan’s SD card into her box in the wardrobe. There’d been little colour in her life since the day her mother had left. She’d swallowed the shame, sucked it up as her dad had advised. But it had torn her heart in two.
She sat back on the bed and picked at the plastic popper on the hem of her duvet. Opened and shut it; opened and shut. She glanced out the window. Raining hard now. The sound beating like the thrum of fingers on an out-of-tune piano. As loud as a truck engine. The only thing she could hear.
Kneeling up on her bed, she pressed her face to the cold glass. Save for the rain, there was silence. No sound from the pigs. The quiet was unsettling. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
Jumping from the bed, she ran from her room and down the stairs, skidding past the sleeping Ryan and out to the yard. The rain drenched her in seconds. She rushed into the shed. Empty. Nothing. Not one pig or suckling. Sliding through the shitty straw, she checked each pen. All devoid of life. Kavanagh had already started to strip the farm.
Dad would go apeshit.
Then she remembered.
Her father was gone. Everything was gone.
She fell to her knees and cried.
She didn’t know how long she’d been kneeling on the urine- and excrement-stained ground when the sound of an engine
roused her from her trance. She left the shed and glanced around the yard. Her car was gone.
‘Ryan?’
Shivering uncontrollably in her rain-soaked clothes, she crashed into the kitchen. No sign of him.
‘Where are you?’ She shouted up the stairs before running out the back door again. He was gone. Why? Where? And he’d taken her car. Damn him.
‘Ryan!’ She yelled at the bulbous night sky while rainwater trickled down her face and neck and lodged in a damp pool between her breasts. She felt like a little child alone in the world, with nothing and no one to comfort her. She missed her friend. Missed the cool-headed wisdom, telling her to get up off her arse and sort things out. To confront Colin Kavanagh and demand what was rightfully hers.
She smiled through her tears. Even though he was no longer around, she still heard his voice. He was right. She should go straight to Kavanagh and have it out with him.
She took her phone from her jeans pocket to phone him. It was saturated and lifeless. She’d just have to fetch her jacket and walk. Now that she was full of renewed motivation, she was not going to let anything stop her: not the rain or the lack of a car; not even the pitch blackness of the countryside.
At the back door, she paused. Alert now.
Holding a hand to her brow, she scanned her surroundings, her vision reaching the abbey lights in the distance.
Her mother had walked away from it all. She would not.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The gardaí eventually located Colin Kavanagh at his home. He agreed to come to the station and was directed into the interview room. He divested himself of his jacket, looking around for somewhere to hang it.
Lottie smiled sweetly, with a forced effort. ‘You can put it on the back of your chair.’
‘And pick up fleas? No thanks.’
‘Give it here.’ She took the expensive-looking coat and handed it to a passing guard to look after.
Boyd carried out the introductions for the recording.
‘You’re waiving your right to a solicitor, is that correct?’ Lottie said, sitting down.
‘I am a solicitor,’ Kavanagh said haughtily. As if she didn’t know already. ‘I’m here voluntarily. Get on with it. I’m extremely busy searching for my daughter, seeing as you lot can’t get your finger out.’
‘I’ll talk about Lily in a few minutes. First I want you to account for your whereabouts yesterday afternoon.’
‘You’re talking about Christy Clarke again, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’
‘The answer is still the same. No comment.’
‘We believe you were at Mr Clarke’s garage a short time before his body was found. What were you doing there?’
‘No comment.’
‘Have you a key to Mr Clarke’s premises?’
‘No comment.’
‘Why did Christy call to your home on the day of his murder?’
‘No …’ Kavanagh stared at her. ‘Murder?’
‘Yes.’
He recovered. ‘No comment.’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Lottie slammed the table even though she had warned herself not to get angry. ‘I could be out looking for your daughter, but instead I’m wasting my time in here with you. If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you tell me what you were doing in Clarke’s Garage?’
‘Do you have evidence that I was inside the building?’
Lottie chewed on her cheek for a moment. He was as slimy and slithery as the imaginary worm crawling in her stomach.
‘You don’t even have evidence I was outside it.’
‘I have an eyewitness.’
‘Reliable?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ He leaned into the hard back of the chair, stretched his hands above his head. Lottie smelled the woody scent of whatever he’d sprayed his body with. It wasn’t unpleasant, but still her stomach flipped.
‘I’m sure,’ she said.
‘How is Beth doing? Must have been an awful shock, finding her father dead.’
She stared at him. Kavanagh knew it was Beth who had told her about his presence at the garage. ‘Why did you harass her? In her own home!’
‘Is that what she said? I never harassed that young lady. She’s just like her mother –unstable. I wouldn’t believe a word out of her mouth if I was you.’
‘Unstable? How would you know what her mental health is like?’
‘Christy confided in me. After Eve left him, and I know it sounds like a cliché, he was a broken man. He drank hard for a while, his business went down the sewer and he neglected his daughter.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Christy was broken in every sense of the word. Not a penny left. He’d borrowed left, right and centre trying to make that pig farm work. He lost all his friends over it. I dug him out of that particular hole on numerous occasions until finally he signed his worthless property over to me. One less worry, he told me.’
‘I can’t understand why you would help him out in the first place. What was he to you?’
‘A friend. At one time. Then …’
‘Then what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why take everything from a poverty-stricken man?’
Kavanagh laughed, his white hair rippling on his head like a startled stream. ‘Poverty-stricken? Not quite.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t really want to speak ill of the dead, as they say, but Christy Clarke had made deals with the devil himself. And you know how those turn out. You end up burned.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You saw those cars in his garage. I’m sure by now you know they’re stolen property.’
‘Are you saying Christy was involved with criminals?’
‘I won’t insult your intelligence by feigning surprise at your question. You know. I know. Everyone knows.’
‘Knows what?’
‘That Christy Clarke dealt with criminals. Using his garage as a safe house until the cars could be moved on.’
‘Have you proof of this?’
‘Proof? The cars, Inspector. They’re still sitting in that dusty showroom. Surely you’re not blind?’
‘No, I’m not, but there’s no proof that Christy was involved in anything illegal.’ Lottie smiled. ‘Why would you get involved with him if you knew about these alleged activities?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘You’re one sly bitch.’ Kavanagh stood, his chair clattering into the wall. He leaned on the table with both hands. Eyed Boyd, then Lottie. ‘This interview is terminated.’
‘Sit down, sir,’ Boyd said. ‘The interview will be terminated when we say so.’
‘I refuse to listen to any more of your insinuations.’ He took a deep breath. Lottie was sure he was going to leave, but he surprised her and sat.
‘I don’t need to insinuate anything,’ she said. ‘Acting Superintendent David McMahon was involved in the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau before he came here. And let me tell you, he is very interested in this case.’
Kavanagh shrugged. ‘So what?’
‘Why don’t you come clean now, before your dirty linen is hung on the line for all to see?’
‘I have nothing to worry about.’ Kavanagh folded his arms defiantly, but Lottie thought she caught a hint of uncertainty lurking at the corner of his eyes.
‘Father Michael Curran,’ she said, shifting direction. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘Why in God’s name are you dragging the parish priest into this?’ He unfolded his arms and placed his hands on the table, palms up. ‘Typical Irish cop. If in doubt, blame the poor priest.’
‘You visited him this morning but left at speed. Why?’
‘Lily, of course. I was asking him to include my little girl in his prayers. I thought maybe a little divine intervention might help.’
‘How long have you known Father Curran?’
‘Nine or ten years?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Tell me about Robert Brady.’ She wanted to keep firing names at him, watching for his reaction. Anything at this stage would help.
‘Who?’ He looked genuinely stumped, and she hoped her changing direction was wrong-footing him.
‘The young man who worked on your house.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘You must remember him. He was found hanging from a tree near your property two weeks ago. The men who discovered him ran to your house to raise the alarm. You called the emergency services. And I believe he worked on the rebuild of your home.’
‘Oh, I didn’t make the connection. I honestly don’t remember anything about him.’ Kavanagh looked at her from beneath his white eyebrows.
She eyed him, trying to make up her mind. Time to pull out her ace card and see how his castle crumbled.
‘What do you think has happened to Lily?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe some bad bastard saw an opportunity when her mother wasn’t there to collect her.’
‘Mm,’ Lottie said.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Did you ever wonder why Fiona didn’t give Lily your surname?’
Kavanagh shifted on the chair and looked at a point in the corner of the room. She had to stop herself from turning to see what he was concentrating on. Probably a cobweb.
He said, ‘Fiona was headstrong when it came to Lily. She wouldn’t let me have much to do with the child. Overprotective. Wouldn’t even let me buy her an iPad or a phone. Afraid of online stalkers. Jesus, the child is eight! Fiona smothered her.’
‘I’d call that love.’
‘I suppose you would, but there was something else. I don’t know what you’d call it.’
‘Possessiveness?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But she allowed you access to Lily even after you’d split up. Why?’
‘I was the child’s father. I was entitled.’
‘Were you, though?’
‘Entitled? Of course. I revised our legal agreement. It was ready for her to sign, the day before her wedding. Only she never … she didn’t …’
Broken Souls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller with a brilliant twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 7) Page 28