‘She told you all this sitting in the back of an ambulance?’ Iris looked at him, and then remembered she was driving and looked back at the road in time to stop the car swerving off to the left.
‘And that’s not all. Rachel McDermott never wanted a penny from Marshall – all she’d ever wanted was to have a relationship with her two sisters and her father. But it turned out, that was another thing Susan couldn’t tolerate. Susan never even asked Marshall if Rachel could have been his daughter, instead she took matters into her own hands. She went out to Curlew Hall that night to kill her and she would have killed Eleanor too, but the girl managed to slip away from her. Once Eleanor knew what she’d done, it was only a matter of time until Karena found out and so Susan followed her that night into the woods, hoping to clear up the remaining loose ends. Karena had gone to look for Eleanor, but she never arrived, instead she confronted Susan and…’
‘God and all because of a stupid mix-up,’ Iris said, thinking of the sheet of paper that they’d tracked down earlier. She also had a feeling that Slattery hadn’t quite reached his trump card yet. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
‘Kit’s wife, the way she died, there were always questions…’
‘So, Susan may have been responsible for that too?’
‘We’ll have to look into it, but well, if she’s capable of murdering twice…’
‘Wonderful, it won’t do a lot to bring any of them comfort now though, will it?’
‘No, but I’ll bet it could be enough to make Marshall cut ties with her for good,’ Slattery said and they both knew this meant that there would be no fancy legal team – which would be good for their case – good for justice.
They were speeding back into the city. Slattery had to be dropped off at home but then Iris was heading into the station to read back over the case file and put in additional notes that still lay on her desk. They had more questions for Susan, there were loose ends that Iris knew couldn’t be left untied. Everyone was due at least a day or two off then, otherwise, the overtime bill would be astronomical. No one was going to argue with the order to stay at home for a long weekend in the middle of the week. This case had wiped them all out.
‘What the—?’ Slattery yelled at her as she turned into his street. ‘I can’t stay here, my flat is on the first floor. Do you know how many steps I have to get up and down every time I want to go and get a bottle of milk?’
‘So, where to?’ Iris pulled in on the path while he thought.
‘I suppose…’ he was angling.
‘No way, you’re not staying with me, Slattery. I’m staying in a bloody boarding house and lucky to have found a place at such short notice. The last thing I want is you upsetting Mrs Leddy with your cantankerous ways. No, Slattery, you’ll have to go to Maureen.’
‘No, I can’t… not there, please.’ He sounded like a child, pleading with her and if she didn’t know him as well as she did, she might have given in to him.
‘From what I hear, she’ll spoil you rotten. You won’t have to lift anything heavier than a teacup and she’ll pray for your soul as well, what more could you want?’ she asked, turning the car around and heading for the opposite side of town.
There was a certain sense of satisfaction, dropping Slattery off with Maureen that afternoon. The house was an average, everyday detached bungalow, tucked away in the centre of a horseshoe-shaped estate. The houses, all built in the 1980s, were probably homes to second families now, with the first generation of child-rearing having moved on, only Maureen and one or two more remaining.
‘Oh, that’s right, bring him in here,’ Maureen said and she bustled about with great energy and enthusiasm for her uninvited guest. ‘Of course, I’ll look after him, it’s what I promised the day I married him, for better or for worse. Mind you, if I’d known then…’ she said ruefully, her cracking voice gave way the disease that lurked behind her bustling manner and Iris couldn’t help but wonder, exactly who would be looking after whom. Then Maureen looked at Iris, with genuine concern in her eyes. ‘You poor girl, you don’t mean to tell me you have to put up with him all the time?’ She shook her head, as if she could hardly take in the hardship of it all.
‘Well, Slattery, I think you’re in safe hands here,’ Iris said, smiling at him, though she caught that unspoken word between them. He’d get her back for this, one day soon; he’d make sure he’d have the last laugh. Iris bent down, squeezed his shoulder. ‘Try to behave,’ she said to his cross snarl, but she still remembered the look in his eyes from that night in the woods, it had been as plain to see as if he’d uttered the words. He cared about what happened to her and that made him the closest thing to family she had these days – whether either of them liked it or not.
Epilogue
Five bells rang out across the river. Iris still hadn’t succumbed to the urge to take out her semi-automatic and sort out their melodious intrusion. Funny, but she always woke at the same hour. This morning, she even welcomed the reminder that life was going on beyond the four walls of her cramped room. She switched on the kettle and dropped a peppermint teabag into a dark mug – all the better to hide the inevitable caffeine rings that surely loitered in its depths.
A few days earlier a letter had arrived; it sat unopened by the kettle on the chest of drawers. The handwriting was so familiar it still made her gasp. Her father. Reaching out to her from beyond the grave. She knew what it would say, Jack Locke would have sewn together the words he needed to exonerate his wife and shoulder the burden of guilt and blame. She knew, because the DPP had already been in touch. It seemed, that even in death, old Nessie was taking care of Theodora. For now, at least, it looked as if no one would pay for the crimes that had turned her world upside down and engineered the deaths of her sister Anna and Anna’s two small kids. Iris couldn’t bring herself to open that envelope and so she’d left it there to taunt her instead. She figured she could always burn it, cut it out as she was slowly cutting out Theodora – but she didn’t think she truly had the heart for either.
She turned away from the recriminating envelope, she would think of something else. She sighed deeply in the empty darkness. She had to give some sort of shape to her life, even if she wasn’t sure how to do that. She imagined Grady whispering in her ear: One day at a time, just take whatever comes your way and make the most of it.
Byrne had phoned earlier in the week. He cleared his throat, congratulated her on the closing of the case and then, as though he might choke, wondered if she’d be interested in applying for Grady’s old post. The interviews were in two weeks’ time. Detective Inspector Iris Locke. It had a nice ring to it, she thought. Interested? Of course, she was interested.
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Books by Geraldine Hogan
Her Sister's Bones
Why She Ran
Available in Audio
Her Sister’s Bones (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Geraldine
Dear Reader,
I wanted to say a huge thank you for choosing to read Why She Ran, the second in the new Corbally Crime series. I’ve so enjoyed writing this book and, as you might imagine, there are many more stories waiting to unfold around this pair. Already, I’m plotting away at their next case and I promise it’s as full of twists and turns as this one, but also filled with familiar faces from Corbally! If you would like to keep up to date with the latest news on my new releases, click on the link below to sign up to my mailing list. I promise to only contact you when I have a new book out and I’ll never share your email with anyone else.
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Geraldine Hogan
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Her Sister’s Bones
‘She reached into the pram and placed her hands on the cotton blanket. It was still warm. But her smiling, new baby sister, with her wide blue-grey eyes, was gone…’
Twenty five years later, three bodies are found at a ramshackle cottage in the Irish countryside, and Detective Iris Locke is sick to her stomach. The victims are Anna Crowe and her two young children.
Iris has only recently joined the Limerick Murder Squad. Against her father’s advice, she’s working the narrow lanes and green hills of her childhood. Iris still remembers Anna, who was just a small girl when her baby sister was snatched, never to be seen again. It was the one case Iris’ own father never solved, and Iris can’t help but wonder if the two crimes are connected.
She’ll stop at nothing to find Anna justice, but a fire has destroyed almost all the physical evidence, and Limerick is the same small town she remembers: everybody protects their neighbours, and Iris has been away for too long.
Can Iris unpick the lies beneath the surface of her pretty hometown, and catch the most twisted individual of her career, when reopening the old case means reopening old wounds for her team, the rest of the community, and her own father?
Fans of Patricia Gibney, Angela Marsons and L.J. Ross won’t want to miss this – the first book in a gripping and unputdownable new crime series.
Previously published as ‘Silent Night’.
ORDER NOW!
Acknowledgements
To you my reader – thank you for picking up my book – I do hope you enjoyed it and you’ll come back for more…
In becoming the story in your hands today, I want to thank most sincerely the following people.
I count myself as very lucky to be a J girl – thanks to Judith Murdoch, my agent, who is kind, witty, savvy and very, very wise!
Thank you to Lydia Vasser-Smith, for putting in so much thought, energy and genius on my behalf! Thank you to team Bookouture – especially Jon Appleton, Leodora Darlington, Lauren Finger and Alexandra Holmes for their ace editing skills and to Kim Nash and Noelle Holten – publicity wizards!
A big thank you to all of my author friends across the Lounge, the Savvies and on Twitter – you make coffee break even better!
Since I began to write, I’ve been lucky to fall into a community of book bloggers – too many to mention and much too generous to forget. They share a love of books, generously and enthusiastically – you are a rare gift!
Thank you to Silke, Michelle, Olivia and Mairead, and all the Scannan–Beehive Team who have kept the show on the road, giving me a chance to write and to breathe!
Thank you to Bernadine Cafferkey – I wouldn’t have written this without you.
Thank you to Christine Cafferkey who is always there and gave me the gift of time when this book was just a flicker of possibility.
To my wonderful family, Seán, Roisín, Tomás, Cristín – I count my blessings every day!
And finally, to James, for more than I can possibly begin to put into words. xx
Published by Bookouture in 2019
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Geraldine Hogan, 2019
Geraldine Hogan has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78681-911-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Why She Ran Page 26