Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Back right-hand pocket,’ she said, for the video. ‘Confirms it’s Gavin Robinson.’

  ‘Poor little fucker,’ McGlynn said. ‘You’d better check on the other boy who found the torso.’

  ‘I’d better.’ Someone offered her an evidence bag and she dropped in the card and sealed it.

  ‘You done here?’ McGlynn said. ‘I need to get on with my work. Can’t have you in my way.’

  Lottie moved carefully back to the ladder. ‘When the state pathologist has the time of death, make sure she lets me know.’

  McGlynn didn’t answer. He was too busy shouting orders at his team.

  With one foot on the bottom rung, she turned. ‘How did he get in here?’

  ‘He didn’t walk or jump, that’s for sure.’

  Shaking her head wryly, Lottie scaled the ladder, shrugging off McGlynn’s words. He could do sarcasm too.

  Forty-Eight

  Marianne opened her eyes and was surprised to see Kevin sitting on the edge of the bed tapping away on her laptop.

  ‘That’s mine,’ she said. He had figured out her password. Kevin was like that, sneaky.

  Her mouth felt like there was cotton wool stuffed inside, and the back of her head throbbed where she’d hit the table. She wondered if his punches had left the marks of his knuckles on her skin. Her face felt like a pin cushion, with the pins digging right into the bones. She hoped Ruby was okay. Dear God, the girl had witnessed her father’s brutality. How would she ever console her?

  ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘Give it back.’

  ‘I said shut up.’ His voice rose an octave, but she was past caring. The worst he could do now was kill her, and she didn’t think he’d do that. Not with Ruby in the house. Then again … he could’ve succeeded last night.

  ‘There’s nothing there to interest you,’ she said. ‘It’s just my novel. It’s private.’

  ‘Nothing is private in this house.’ He leaned over her, the stale stench of alcohol oozing from his breath. ‘You married me. I have a right to know what you’re writing, what you’re doing and where you’ve been.’ He closed the laptop, evidently not finding anything to interest him. ‘I’ve a right to crush this to a pulp, just like I’m going to crush you one of these days.’

  ‘You did a fair good job of it last night.’ She tried to sit up, but the pillows had slipped down during the night and her back felt like a steamroller had run over her.

  He slapped the bed, catching her hand. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He twisted her fingers backwards. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’

  She did. And for spite, she didn’t want to tell him the truth. She said, ‘Out with my friend.’

  ‘Liar. You’re seeing someone else.’

  She groaned in pain as he dropped her hand. ‘I am not.’

  ‘How do you explain the sheets?’ he said, getting up from the bed, flicking the edge of the duvet.

  ‘The sheets?’ Had he truly slipped into madness? She had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘You changed the bed linen yesterday, and let me remind you, yesterday was not Saturday.’ He opened the wardrobe and took out a white shirt. He checked it had been ironed before he slipped it on.

  It dawned on her then. A rush of memory flushed her cheeks. Not that anything had happened, but Kevin missed nothing.

  ‘I spilled some tea and thought it might annoy you, so I stripped the bed and put on clean sheets.’

  ‘Liar.’ He turned to her, buttoning his shirt. She recoiled at the naked hatred creasing his eyes into slits. ‘Someone was here. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘I have no reason to lie to you. You’re the liar in this family.’ She knew the punishment he could mete out, so why was she spitting this at him? But she couldn’t stop. ‘I know your secrets, Kevin, remember that.’

  ‘You better watch your step.’

  Bolder now, she said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  ‘I’m late for work.’

  She ploughed on. ‘Did you ever love me?’

  He stopped and leaned his head to one side, a dangerous look in his eyes. ‘Do you want the truth?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said shakily. She thought she knew the answer, but she needed to hear him say it. It would make up her mind for her.

  ‘I don’t know if I ever loved you.’ He looped his tie round his neck. ‘I admired your wealth. Your parents’ wealth, I should say.’

  ‘Why do you stay with me?’

  ‘For your father’s inheritance.’ He laughed, then added, ‘And because of Ruby. If you ever think of throwing me out, I will bring my daughter with me.’

  ‘Our daughter! And she’d never willingly leave with you.’

  ‘Who said anything about willingly?’

  He leaned down and she dragged the duvet up to her chin, trying not to cry out with pain. He caressed her face and neck with his fingers and probed one between her lips. She felt as if he had assaulted her, more so than if he had actually slapped her. He laughed again and drew away. Took his jacket from the hanger and inserted his arms into the sleeves. At the door, he turned and smiled cruelly, then pulled it shut behind him.

  Forty-Nine

  Lottie knew she had to speak to Tamara Robinson before the press got hold of the story. A few of the local media journalists were hovering outside the depot gate. She wanted to interview the man who had found the body, but she didn’t want Tamara reading about her son’s murder on Instagram or Twitter.

  She left Kirby and McKeown to gather whatever evidence they could and to interview the recycling centre staff. She dragged a reluctant Lynch with her.

  Climbing the steps to the Robinson apartment, Lynch said, ‘Why wasn’t there an FLO assigned originally?’

  ‘Not now, Lynch.’ Lottie knew there would be hell to pay for not having assigned a family liaison officer to the two boys’ families, even though they’d both refused the offer. She’d have to deal with it at a later stage.

  ‘Okay, but it’s going to come up. This new super isn’t like Corrigan, or McMahon for that matter. She’s straight down the line.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ Lottie said tersely.

  ‘Forget it.’ Lynch rang the doorbell and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her navy trousers. Lottie hoped she was sweating buckets.

  The door was opened by Garda Martina Brennan, whom Lottie had dispatched to sit with Tamara. In other words, to keep the media away until the woman had been informed.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Up the walls and back down again.’

  The house smelled different from the last time Lottie had been here. The fragrance of perfumes and scented candles had been replaced by the distinct scent of loss. She knew the smell. She sniffed it into her lungs every time she dealt with murder, and more so when children were involved.

  Tamara sat in the small white kitchen, wearing a black sweatshirt over leggings. Her hair was tied haphazardly, knotted and sticky. She kept her head down, with her fingers around a smouldering cigarette. The room was consumed with tobacco fumes. Lottie opened the window a little before sitting beside the stricken young woman. The false eyelashes were gone and her make-up dripped like a delta along her cheeks. Lottie fought the urge to take her in her arms, carry her out of the kitchen and give her a bath. Tamara was childlike – a broken china doll that no amount of patching was ever going to fix. And this was before she’d even heard the heartbreaking news.

  ‘Tamara? Look at me for a moment. I have—’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Lottie watched as the hand with the cigarette unfurled slowly and doused the butt on the table next to the saucer serving as an ashtray. Tamara hadn’t been a smoker, she concluded, but she was now.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Can you light me another one?’ Tamara asked.

  Taking the
packet, Lottie tipped out a cigarette and, despite swearing off cigarettes months ago, lit one for the grieving mother.

  ‘Tamara. I need you to talk to me.’

  ‘Whatever happened to my Gavin, it’s all my fault.’ Her tears were dried like mud on her face and her eyes were wet with unshed pools.

  ‘How can you say that?’ Lottie looked around for Lynch to help her out, but the detective was in the hall chatting to Garda Brennan.

  ‘Where is my son?’ Tamara said, her voice a monotone, dead in her head. ‘I want to see him.’

  ‘Not yet. Soon, though. I can arrange it for you.’

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  There was no easy way to say it. Lottie decided to be direct. ‘We found Gavin’s body at the community recycling centre, on the other side of town.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Tamara snapped. ‘What was he doing there? I only sent him to the butcher’s down the road to get meat for dinner.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘I … I was doing my tan. That’s why I sent him. I couldn’t go to the shop. Gavin said I looked like an Oompa Loompa.’

  Lottie smiled sadly.

  Tamara inhaled deeply and coughed before placing the cigarette on the saucer. ‘We were to be on the telly this morning. Me and Gavin. Someone took him. Someone didn’t want him telling …’ The tears came then. Big, fat ugly drops, trickling through the crevices in the muddied make-up.

  ‘What had he to tell?’ Lottie said softly.

  ‘Nothing really. Just him and Jack finding the body. That must have been horrific for them. I didn’t stop to think how it must have been for Gavin. I only thought of myself. I’m selfish. I know that now. When can I see him?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet.’

  Tamara wrapped her arms around her body and began banging her head off the table. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Grabbing her around the shoulders, Lottie tugged the woman against her chest. ‘Stop, Tamara. Please. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘Don’t care. Did he suffer? If he suffered, I will make myself suffer more.’

  ‘I don’t think so. We’ll know more after the post-mortem.’ She held Tamara as if she was one of her own girls. ‘Is there someone I can call for you?’

  ‘I’ve no one. Gavin’s dad died when he was little. And now Gavin is …’

  ‘When did you become worried about him not coming home?’

  Tamara shrugged. ‘I thought he’d forgotten to get the meat, or couldn’t be bothered because he didn’t like it anyway, and had maybe walked over to Jack’s house or gone somewhere with him to kick a ball. I wasn’t worried. Not then. I finished applying my tan, all the time giving out about him and how I was going to kill him when he got home.’ She cried out. ‘Oh God, how could I say such a thing?’

  ‘It’s okay. Go on.’

  ‘Before I knew it, it was eight o’clock and still no sign of him.’

  ‘You didn’t contact the station until eleven o’clock last night. Why the delay?’

  ‘I honestly thought he was with Jack.’

  ‘But did you try his phone?’

  ‘He never answered. Jack didn’t either, so I assumed the two of them were together playing football or flying that stupid drone.’

  ‘We still have his drone at the station.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I rang Lisa, Jack’s mum. Must have been about nine or nine thirty. She said Jack was in bed and hadn’t seen Gavin all day. I didn’t send Gavin to school yesterday.’

  ‘What did you do after speaking with Lisa?’

  ‘I walked around the estate and down to the bridge. I asked the guards there if they’d seen him, and one of them thought they’d noticed him earlier but wasn’t sure.’

  ‘I’ll check that with them. Go on. What did you do then?’

  ‘Nothing. The guard I spoke to told me to report him missing, even though he said he was probably smoking a fag behind a shed somewhere. My Gavin doesn’t smoke.’ She stared blankly at the cigarette burning out on the saucer. ‘I don’t either.’

  ‘You reported him missing at eleven o’clock. That was over an hour later.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I’m all alone here. It’s just been me and Gavin since his dad died. I do my best. I try. Honestly I do.’

  ‘When did you last see Gavin?’

  ‘Some time before six when I sent him to the shop. Might have been quarter to. I’m not sure.’

  ‘And you had no contact with Gavin after that?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Did you go to the shop to see if he had been in?’

  ‘It would have been shut by the time I finished my tan.’

  ‘Did you go out to any of your neighbours?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone around here.’

  ‘Did anyone call in to you?’

  Tamara hesitated, glanced at the door and back down at the table. ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me the truth, Tamara. Your son’s been murdered. Even if it’s something you think might be insignificant, I still need to know about it. I have to be armed with everything, if I’m to find who did this to your son.’

  ‘Was he … you know … abused?’

  Lottie blew out a sigh into the cloudy air. She would have no information until the post-mortem results. ‘I don’t know, but I doubt it. What was he wearing?’

  Tamara glared at the table. ‘I … I think he had his football jersey on and his black jeans.’

  ‘On his feet?’

  ‘His new Nikes, even though I wanted him to keep them for the telly. He said he had to try them out.’

  ‘Did he have socks on?’ Lottie was thinking that if Tamara said yes, then the boy had been undressed and dressed again. She crossed her fingers.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay. Tamara, I need to know who was here with you last night.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because your son is dead and I need to know everything you did and everyone you spoke to.’

  Tamara folded into herself again, sobbing. ‘It was just a friend. She arrived in a state, very angry and upset. She’d had a row with her husband and said she had to get out of the house. She took my mind off my own worries for a time, while I tried to make her see sense and go home to her husband. She’s older than me, but we met through my Instagram account, and when we realised we lived in the same town, we became good friends.’

  ‘Who is your friend?’

  ‘Marianne O’Keeffe.’

  Fifty

  Lottie left Maria Lynch and Garda Brennan with Tamara. She told them that there was to be no contact with Marianne O’Keeffe until she’d had a word with her. She sent a garda to check with the butcher’s shop down the road and was relieved to find it was not the shop where Jeff Cole worked. Word came back that Gavin had been there just before it closed at six. The butcher remembered, because he was just about to lock the door.

  She got the number of the guard who’d been at the bridge the evening before and called him. He had a clear recollection of the boy crossing the bridge because he’d just come on duty. It was shortly after six. He had no idea where the lad had gone. She organised a team to fingertip-search the area from the bridge to Gavin’s home. And another team to do door-to-door calls and pick up any dash-cam or CCTV footage that was available.

  She got into her car and pulled out of the estate quickly. Stopping at the top of the road, she glanced around. In front of her, a May bush bloomed white, and to her left the narrow road led towards the main Dublin road. She shook herself and looked to her right. The roadblock on the bridge had been scaled back and traffic was being allowed through. She heard a train slinking its way out of Ragmullin station heading for Dublin, though it would probably take days to get the schedules back on track.

  As she drove along the lane with grass growing up its middle, she radioed for Kirby to join her.

  At the door, she gath
ered the edges of her cardigan closed as a wind picked up and gusted in from the canal.

  The child’s dismembered leg had been found in an area a good bit further up to her left. She needed the results soon on Jeff’s DNA to see if the torso was that of his cousin. Polly Cole had no passport, so it was probable that she hadn’t left the country. If it turned out that the torso was related to Jeff, what had gone on at number 2 Church View, his aunt’s house, all those years ago? How could a mother not report her daughter missing or dead? It was inconceivable. Unless she had killed her herself. Lottie couldn’t understand any of it. Maybe Jane could call in yet another favour to hurry up the DNA analysis. McKeown should be able to uncover details of the girl’s whereabouts if she was still alive. But now another child was dead.

  Hedges and soft-topped trees blocked her view of the canal. She shivered with the deepening chill from the breeze. While she waited for the door to be opened, she glanced at the clouds massing in the sky. She had an uneasy feeling that things were gathering pace. As if by some biblical curse, the weather usually changed when a case turned. She didn’t know if this one was going nowhere, turning back on itself. Nothing made sense. She just knew that Gavin’s death and that of Faye Baker were linked to both of them having found decades-old body parts. Jack Sheridan had to be protected. She had already organised a garda unit to watch the family and their house.

  When she turned around, she came face to face with Lisa Sheridan, standing on the doorstep looking like a waif. Her light floral dress was pulled up on one side by the little girl sitting on her hip, exposing white legs. Her skin was paper thin and her eyes had deep dark circles of sleeplessness. She still hadn’t washed her hair.

  ‘I heard about Gavin. Come in.’

  The kitchen was in disarray. The small steel bin beside the back door was overflowing, and the smell of dirty nappies permeated the air, dissolving the lemon air freshener she suspected Lisa had hurriedly sprayed before answering the door.

  ‘Lisa, is there something you need to tell me?’ She swept crumbs from the chair before sitting at the table.