Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  The heat of the station was oppressive as she entered the main door, and by the time she reached her office, she felt she needed to change her T-shirt. Damn building. So much for the fortune spent on refurbishment. It was a furnace in summer and an icebox in winter. That thought brought her back to the body. Gathering the team together, she led them into the incident room and relayed the information she’d gleaned at the mortuary.

  ‘The state pathologist tells me this is all preliminary at the moment. Lots of tests and analysis have yet to be undertaken.’ She looked at the notes she had scrawled on the white board.

  Victim – Torso

  Female

  Aged 7-12

  Strangled

  Possibly an axe used to dismember

  Fibres – analysis

  DNA – comparisons

  Label – 12/6/1997

  Flecks of blue paint – one on body, two on railway sleeper

  Leg – not yet examined.

  Threads of a pink ribbon, possible part of a sock

  Victim – Hand

  Adult Male

  Right hand

  Ringless

  Kirby said, ‘So we have two victims. Could the leg belong to a third?’

  ‘I hope not.’ Lottie had not considered this. ‘It still has to be examined but it must belong to the same child.’ She sat. ‘Are the divers still on site?’

  ‘Yes. Found nothing else yet. They’ll break for the night and return at first light,’ Lynch said.

  ‘And Irish Canals? Have they been contacted?’

  ‘I phoned them.’ Lynch consulted her notebook. ‘They’ve instructed all registered boat owners to check in with them and issued instructions to terminate the use of the canal for the foreseeable future. But they have no real control. Truth is, anyone can take a boat out at any time.’

  ‘Okay. Check the homeowners along the route. See if there’s any CCTV,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Put out an appeal for anyone who walked or cycled along the canal path in the last few days. Someone might have noticed something. Have you checked the locks?’

  ‘A team of divers carried out an inspection earlier. Nothing to report.’ Lynch shut her notebook. ‘The railway’s been closed all day. When do you think it can be reopened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Update the appeal. See if anyone who travelled by train over the last few days witnessed anything unusual along the line. People acting suspiciously, that kind of thing. It can be opened again once it’s been comprehensively searched. But run it by Superintendent Farrell first. She’ll have to deal with the fallout.’

  ‘Right.’

  Lynch didn’t seem particularly pleased, but that wasn’t Lottie’s concern. She rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn. She knew her tiredness was a reaction to the shock of the discovery of the child’s body. She wondered how young Jack and Gavin were coping.

  ‘We need to go through every missing person file from around June 1997. Check for children in the relevant age range. I doubt we’ll have DNA on file, but if you find anything close to a likely candidate, let me know. McKeown and Kirby, take that on between you.’

  Her two detectives nodded in unison. About the only thing they agreed on.

  ‘Lynch, I want you to oversee officers checking through the litter collected from the banks of the canal and the rail tracks. Something might have been discarded that’s pertinent to the investigation, something that might identify whoever dumped the bodies.’

  ‘That’s a shit job,’ Lynch said, her eyes shooting sparks of anger. ‘Can’t someone else do it?’

  ‘I’m only asking you to oversee it; you don’t have to get your hands dirty. You have a good eye for what’s relevant and what’s not.’ Lottie hated stoking egos, but Lynch had been a thorn in her side for years and she knew how to work her. ‘But leave it until the morning. I don’t know about you lot, but I’m knackered.’

  When the team had dispersed, Lottie pinned up the gruesome photos. First the torso, in situ on the tracks. Then the hand, and finally the leg, with its pink ribbon attached to the string of fabric around the tiny ankle. She prayed it was part of the torso, because she couldn’t bear to contemplate the horror that she might be dealing with two murdered little girls.

  Twenty

  Kevin O’Keeffe knew the second he put his foot over the threshold that a stranger had been in the house. He smelled cologne. And it wasn’t his.

  ‘Who was here?’ he called out. ‘Marianne? Where are you?’

  Goddam that woman! She liked to play deaf when it suited her. He felt the anger twist like a roll of barbed wire inside him. It wasn’t good enough. He’d had a bitch of a day and needed his dinner and a whiskey. A double. No, make that a triple, he thought as he tramped into the living room and opened up his mahogany bar. He sniffed. The odour of the pungent cologne hung in the air here too.

  He poured a decent measure into the Waterford crystal glass and cast his eye over and under her antique desk. The bin was empty. Opening a drawer, he shoved around the pens and paper. There was nothing there to interest him. Marianne was an open book as far as he was concerned. A boring book at that. A book that would never be finished, always a work in progress. She tired him out. She was tedious and life-draining, but he was too proud to cast her aside. And too broke. He needed somehow to register the house in his name. The only thing he owned was his mother’s wardrobe. A damn ugly monstrosity, but he’d won that battle. Dragged it across town on the roof of his car just to teach Marianne who was the boss of the house, even if she still owned it. Fuck her.

  ‘Marianne?’ he yelled, louder now, fuelled with alcohol. He refilled his glass and made his way into the kitchen. ‘I want to know who was here while I was out.’

  ‘Dad, what are you on about?’

  His daughter, Ruby, was seated at the table in the dining area with a friend. That detective’s son. What was his name? Parker? The boy kept his eyes down, staring at the PlayStation controller in his hand. Ruby held one also, and they had linked the PlayStation to the television screen. A multitude of coloured cables lined the table.

  ‘You should be doing your homework,’ Kevin said.

  ‘Sean is heading home soon,’ Ruby said. ‘I’ll start then.’

  ‘I’m looking for your mother.’

  ‘Haven’t seen her.’

  ‘It’s not a mansion.’ But he knew it was the next best thing.

  ‘Maybe she’s in the bedroom,’ Ruby said. ‘I haven’t been upstairs yet. Well, only to bring the PlayStation down.’

  ‘Finish up that game and get your books out.’ Kevin turned on his heel to the sound of the teenagers moaning.

  Upstairs, he entered the bathroom, put the glass on the sink, turned to the toilet bowl and peed. When he’d finished, he washed and dried his hands, drained the glass of the remaining whiskey and left it there. She could bring it downstairs.

  In the bedroom, he paused inside the door. Something was different. He scanned the room, and then it hit him. The sheets. Why had she changed them? Once a week was enough, he’d told her. Saturday mornings. He didn’t see the need for wasting water or electricity by having the washing machine working every second day. So why had she defied him by doing the washing today? He peered through the window. On the clothes line at the end of the expansive garden, sheets and pillowcases billowed in the evening air. Why? And where was his wife?

  He glanced into the en suite. A trace of steam lingered on the mirror. An afternoon shower? And then he remembered the sensation he’d got when he’d entered the house. Someone other than his daughter and the Parker boy had been here today.

  ‘Marianne!’ he yelled, racing back down the stairs.

  Fuck the bitch.

  He was going out.

  Twenty-One

  Before she left for the evening, Lottie took a call from reception.

  She hung up and turned to Kirby. ‘There’s a young lady in the interview room. The desk sergeant tells me she arrived
just as I started the team meeting and was asked to wait.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘She claims to have found a skull in her boyfriend’s house. At first she thought it was fake, but then she saw the news about the torso and now thinks the two might be connected.’

  ‘Can’t be a coincidence,’ Kirby said.

  ‘It’s all a little macabre.’

  She was almost out the door when she thought of protocol. ‘You come too. Bring a notebook and pen. I’ve no idea where to find mine.’

  As usual, Interview Room 1 was stuffy, and the odour of its last visitor hung in the air, like a rack of damp clothes left beside a radiator for too long.

  ‘You must be Faye.’ Lottie held out her hand to the thin young woman seated at the table.

  Faye half stood. Her hand had a plaster on it, and there was an ugly scrape on her tired face, her hair swept to one side in a ponytail.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Lottie Parker, and this is Detective Larry Kirby. How can we help you?’

  They sat down, Kirby making a play of opening his notebook and uncapping his biro.

  ‘Please, I don’t want this recorded. I just want to pass on the information.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lottie said. She was too tired to argue. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I’m probably being foolish. Jeff would kill me if he knew I was here.’ Faye’s hand shook as she wound a stray strand of hair around her finger. Lottie noticed a blush flare high on the woman’s cheekbones. ‘I mean, he’d be angry; he wouldn’t really kill me. Wrong choice of words to use in here. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t fret. Just tell me what you found. Where and when.’

  ‘It was this morning. Jeff dropped me off at the house before he headed to work.’

  ‘What’s Jeff’s surname?’

  ‘Cole.’

  ‘Where did he drop you off?’

  ‘At his aunt’s house. Well, it’s his house now. His aunt died you see. I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I’ve never been in a garda station before. Well, I was. To get my passport form signed, but not like this … Sorry.’

  The young woman was clearly petrified, twisting her hands into knots. The three steri-strips on her face had burst slightly, oozing a soft trickle of blood. Lottie wanted to ask how she’d been injured, but first she had to know about the skull.

  ‘You’ve nothing to be nervous about. Where is this house?’

  ‘It’s the second one.’ She’d stopped twisting her hands and had tangled her fingers in her hair again.

  Lottie wanted to tell her to stop fidgeting, but instead she said, ‘What’s the address?’

  Faye lowered her hands and clasped them tightly in her lap. ‘Number 2 Church View. Do you know it?’

  ‘The old estate behind Tesco?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘So Jeff dropped you off. What were you doing there?’

  ‘It needs a lot of work before we can move in. She was an old woman, Jeff’s aunt. The house is in a state. I wanted to sell it, but Jeff said no. He was firm about it. We can’t afford to pay anyone to decorate it, so now we’re doing it ourselves.’

  ‘So this morning, what had you to do?’

  ‘I wanted to scrape off the wallpaper. You should see it. Rotten. That’s what I was doing when I found it.’

  ‘The skull?’ Lottie was exhausted, but she needed Faye to tell her everything in her own words.

  ‘Yes.’ Faye shivered and her lips trembled. ‘It was hideous. I screamed and phoned Jeff to come, and—’

  ‘Faye, where exactly did you find it?’ Lottie wanted to lean across the table and shake the answers out of the woman, but she knew that wouldn’t do her reputation any good.

  ‘Like I said, I was scraping the paper off the wall. I noticed the plaster to the side of the fireplace was different to the rest of it. I remembered Jeff saying there used to be a range there … you know, a stove?’

  ‘I know what a range is.’

  ‘Well, it got me thinking there might be a nice nook behind the plaster where we could put in a shelving unit. I got a hammer and smashed the plaster. It was hollow, so it was easy enough, and then it rolled out on the floor. Oh my God, it was awful.’

  ‘Let me get this straight. You broke down the wall and there was a skull behind it. Is that correct?’

  Faye nodded frantically.

  ‘You called Jeff. Then what?’

  ‘His boss, Derry Walsh, is good to him and let him off for a bit. Jeff arrived within ten minutes of me calling him.’

  ‘What did he say when he saw the skull?’

  ‘He told me it had to be fake, and he’d get rid of it.’

  ‘Was it fake?’

  ‘Looked real to me.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Jeff brought me into town for coffee because I’d had a shock, but I went back to the house later. Even though I hated the sight of the skull, I had to see it again. I thought he’d put it in the bin, but it wasn’t there.’

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Yes. That’s when the cat did this to me.’ Faye pointed to the angry scratches on her face.

  ‘The cat?’

  ‘It jumped out at me when I went into the baby’s room?’

  This was like unravelling clues in a logic puzzle, though Lottie couldn’t see the logic anywhere. ‘What baby?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ She wasn’t too far along, Lottie thought. She hadn’t noticed a bump before Faye had sat.

  ‘Thanks.’ Faye paused. ‘I’m talking about the room we were going to turn into a nursery. Now, I’m not sure I want my baby in there.’

  ‘I’m certain once it’s decorated it will be fine. Did you find the skull in the … er … baby’s room?’

  ‘Yes. It was in the wardrobe.’

  ‘Had Jeff put it there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  Faye shrugged. ‘I asked him, and he said he didn’t want to dump it yet. He said he had a weird feeling about it, being his aunt’s house and all, but he didn’t want to freak me out. Hello? Like I wasn’t already crawling up the walls. He’d put it there until he decided what to do with it.’ The young woman’s brown eyes bored through Lottie. ‘He kept saying it was fake, but I’m sure it’s not. Then I read about the body found on the railway. I don’t know what to think now. It all sounds so far-fetched and impossible.’

  ‘You think the two incidents could be linked?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘Likely, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is the skull still at the house?’

  ‘It must be. I didn’t bring it home with me and I doubt Jeff moved it.’

  ‘And why did it take you so long to contact us?’

  Faye shrugged. ‘I wanted to this morning, but Jeff thought I was being ridiculous. I’m here now, though. You see, Jeff had to go to Dublin for work and I was all alone and everything was spinning around in my head. I had to tell someone who would listen.’

  ‘You were right to come in. Do you have a key to the house?’ Lottie found Faye’s sincerity authentic and her anxiety contagious. She had a feeling it was going to be a while before either of them got home this evening.

  Opening her bag, the young woman took out a single key and placed it on the table.

  ‘Will you accompany us to the house?’ Lottie said, picking it up.

  ‘I’m really tired. And I’ve work in the morning. I do alterations and I wasn’t in today and … Sorry. I’m talking shite.’

  ‘I’ll have you back home in no time,’ Lottie said. ‘I drive fast.’

  Faye’s scratched face lit up with the first smile since Lottie had entered the room.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ she said.

  The noise from the kitchen downstairs was like someone driving a drill through Aaron Frost’s skull. The pain was real, he knew that. An overload of tension, strumming away like an out-of-tune guitar. High-pitched. Off the wall. Bloody hell.

&n
bsp; Marianne O’Keeffe was totally loola, he concluded. He should report her for sexual assault. But that would only attract attention to himself at a time when he wanted to be invisible. Who knew being an estate agent could be such a tricky job?

  He paced in circles around his bedroom. It felt miniature compared to the opulence of the O’Keeffe house.

  He opened his laptop. It was all over the news.

  His phone beeped with a text.

  No, he wasn’t going to read it. He wasn’t involved any more. No way was he doing anything else.

  But the text was adamant. Another threat.

  GET THE KEYS.

  What keys? he replied.

  When a message arrived with the address, he couldn’t understand what it was all about. With conflicting emotions, he sent back another text.

  This is the last time.

  There was no response.

  He pocketed his phone and walked slowly down the stairs.

  It was definitely the last time.

  Twenty-Two

  Number 2 Church View was a forgettable house in a line of other similar 1950s detached dwellings. The small iron gate creaked between two pebble-dashed pillars. The grass had grown into a wilderness from inattention over the years, though Lottie noticed a flattened section behind the front wall with a wooden post lying among the weeds.

  Kirby took the keys from Faye. He opened the door and stepped to one side to allow the two women to enter before him. They hadn’t called in SOCOs. Lottie had to know what they were dealing with first. And anyway, the skull had been dislodged, handled and moved.

  She noticed the smell the second she put one foot into the hallway. Cat’s piss, as her mother would have said. More than one cat.

  ‘Did Jeff’s aunt own cats?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s likely.’ Faye led the way to the living room.

  Following the young woman, Lottie could see a dusty haze hanging in an inverted V from the light streaming through the grubby window. She stared at the work Faye had done. Wallpaper hung in shreds from two of the walls, and the others were clear of the yellowing paper, leaving behind remnants of decades-old decor. She moved closer to the nook. The plaster was cracked and broken, the debris in a haphazard heap on the floor, the opening only half exposed.