Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Did you report your husband’s disappearance?’

  ‘Why would I? Be a waste of time. He was fifty-nine years old. A grown man. I asked around his friends, but no one seemed to know or care. One day he was here, the next he was gone. Probably off with another woman. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  Lottie wondered about that and made a note to find out all she could about Richard Frost. ‘I’ll try to find him. He’ll need to be informed of your son’s death.’

  ‘Do what you have to do.’

  ‘Josie, I need to know Aaron’s movements. You thought he was at work today; did he have an early breakfast before he left this morning?’ She knew this was impossible. Aaron had been dead for some hours.

  ‘He never came home last night, so I’ve no idea if he had breakfast or not.’ The woman gave a distinct shrug of her shoulders and her body contracted, her hip jutting out. She looked around and Lottie picked up the crutch and handed it to her.

  ‘I’ll send someone round to bring you to the morgue when his body is ready for identification. Is that okay?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Josie, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me anything at all about Aaron’s life. Who were his friends? What did he do in his spare time? That kind of thing.’

  ‘I knew little about him over the last few years, never mind the last few days. He was quiet, except when he’d been out on the town. Then he could roll in here at all hours, kicking up a racket. He’d wake the dead. But I let him be.’

  ‘Would you have the names of his friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one you know of that he was close to?’

  ‘I knew nothing about Aaron’s friends. He never brought anyone around here.’

  ‘But he lived with you; surely you can tell us something?’

  Josie was hunched over now, hands tightly gripping her crutch. She looked to have aged by ten years.

  ‘I can tell you nothing. I never thought my boy would meet a violent end. It was violent, I assume.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ Recalling why she’d been looking for Aaron in the first place, Lottie said, ‘Do you know a young woman called Faye Baker?’

  ‘Wasn’t she the woman found in the boot of a car? Never heard of her before it was mentioned on the news.’

  ‘What about Jeff Cole?’

  ‘No.’

  There was no point in asking if Aaron had known them, but Lottie tried. ‘Do you think Aaron might have been friends with them?’

  ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘We found a skull at number 2 Church View. The house had belonged to a Patsy Cole. Would Aaron have known her, or ever been in that house?’ Lottie recalled the Ferris and Frost For Sale sign in the garden.

  ‘Awful business. Again, I heard it on the news. You don’t think my Aaron had anything to do with it, do you?’

  Lottie was conscious that Josie had deflected the question with another one. She persevered. ‘I need to know if there’s any connection between your family and Faye Baker or Jeff Cole.’

  ‘I can’t help you there. The names mean nothing to me. Now I want to be left alone.’

  ‘Is there someone you’d like me to call to come and sit with you?’ Kirby said.

  ‘I’m fine on my own. I’m used to it.’

  ‘But you’re not used to shocks like this,’ he persisted.

  ‘I’ll be fine. Please let me know when I can see Aaron’s body.’

  Lottie moved towards the door. ‘Would you mind if we had a quick look in Aaron’s room?’

  Josie sighed. ‘Top of the stairs. It’s the door facing you.’ She nudged Kirby out of the way with her crutch and returned to her vigil at the patio doors.

  Aaron’s room had a double bed, unmade, a built-in wardrobe and a bedside cabinet. Clothes were strewn on a chair in the corner and socks and underwear were rolled up under the bed.

  ‘Untidy,’ Lottie said.

  ‘Three suits and a few pair of jeans, jumpers, shirts,’ Kirby said as he inspected the clothes hanging in the wardrobe.

  On the shelf there was an assortment of T-shirts, all neatly folded and ironed. Two pairs of shoes and three different types of runners were lined up at the side of the bed.

  Lottie opened the drawers of the bedside cabinet. ‘Cables and chargers for phones.’

  Kirby pulled back the duvet. ‘His laptop.’

  ‘Take it.’

  ‘Yeah. Hopefully there’ll be emails or files to tell us something.’

  ‘The way the last few days have panned out, I doubt it,’ Lottie said.

  ‘There are no photographs.’ Kirby was looking around the room.

  ‘Do men display them?’ She knew Boyd didn’t.

  ‘I used to have photos of dogs when I had my house.’

  ‘You never had a dog, Kirby.’

  ‘I know, but I liked looking at the photos. Cheaper and quieter than children,’ he laughed.

  ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ she said.

  ‘Aye. But it is kind of sparse in here. Do you think he had somewhere else to call his own?’

  As Kirby left the room with the laptop under his arm, Lottie had one last look around. She drew back the net curtain and checked the windowsill. There wasn’t even a speck of dust. Obviously his mother cleaned but didn’t pick up his dirty underwear. She glanced at the top of the wardrobe. Nothing. She had never known Aaron when he was alive, and now the dead man wasn’t even giving her a hint of why he might have been killed. She prayed forensics found something at the old house.

  Josie Frost watched from the window as the detectives drove off. Then, clutching her crutch, she walked back to the kitchen. She found her phone on the counter and scrolled through her contacts.

  When the call was answered she said, ‘Aaron’s dead. What the hell have you done?’

  Fifty-Six

  The team were in the incident room when Lottie returned. She switched on the free-standing fan in the corner of the room and found it had little effect.

  She watched McKeown add a photograph to the board of Gavin’s body lying in the pit in the recycling depot, side by side with a photo of Aaron before he was extricated from the freezer. The next few photos depicted the bodies found on day one. The frozen torso and frozen hand, and the child’s leg from the canal. To the left of those, a single photo of the skull discovered by Faye Baker. Then, lastly, the photo of Faye herself curled in the boot of the car.

  She felt sick looking at the gruesome display. If Boyd were here, he would help alleviate some of the horror. But he wasn’t. She’d better get on with it.

  ‘SOCOs and a team of uniforms are at the derelict house where we found Aaron Frost,’ McKeown said. ‘The forensic guys are sure it’s human blood on the floor under the chair. They’re sending samples to the lab to be checked against samples from Aaron, Gavin and Faye.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Aaron Frost’s body has been sent to the morgue. SOCOs are taking samples from the ice in all three freezers and then shipping the appliances to the forensic lab in Dublin.’

  ‘I want Aaron’s fingerprints cross-checked with the prints taken from Jeff and Faye’s car.’

  ‘On it.’

  ‘And his movements for the last few days. Kirby, get on to Dave Murphy at the estate agent’s office. Find out if Aaron had somewhere else where he stayed. And we need to see their records. Did anyone check Murphy’s alibi?’

  Kirby said, ‘I had a word with him on the phone. He was at the Chinese and then at his girlfriend’s house all night. Her parents confirmed it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lottie said. ‘Follow up on Aaron’s laptop. I want to know if anything is found on it. His phone? Where is it?’

  ‘It was in pieces beneath the body,’ McKeown said. ‘Tech guys have it, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope of getting anything from it.’

  ‘Right. Who is at Tamara’s house?’

  Lynch said, ‘Garda Brennan and her colleague. Tamara keeps asking to see Gavin.�
�

  ‘Only when the state pathologist says so,’ Lottie said, and added, ‘I’m assigning you as FLO to the Sheridans. I want you to go over there straight away. I’ve had confirmation that Jack is safe at school. So be there when he’s picked up.’

  Lynch looked like she was about to object, but remained silent.

  ‘Let’s get on with it. Has anyone contacted Kevin O’Keeffe?’

  Kirby said, ‘I sent uniforms to his office. Don’t think that will go down well.’

  Lottie said. ‘He’s a person of interest because it seems he knew we’d found Faye’s body before it was made public. I want to know where he was last night, and for that matter, the night Faye was murdered.’

  Lynch said, ‘I want to know why the little boy’s body was left in the recycling depot. Has it any significance?’

  ‘Yeah, and has anyone got any idea why he was murdered?’ Lottie asked. Blank faces stared back at her.

  McKeown eventually broke the silence. ‘I think Gavin noticed something when he was passing the derelict house. He then stumbled on the killer with Aaron Frost.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he stuffed in the freezer too?’ Kirby said truculently.

  ‘That’s something only the killer can tell us,’ Lottie said, trying to defuse the growing animosity between her detectives. ‘Have we confirmed Tamara’s story yet?’

  ‘She was in her apartment with her friend all evening until about eleven,’ Lynch said. ‘And she reported her son missing straight afterwards.’

  ‘How did you confirm Marianne was there?’ Lottie enquired.

  ‘One neighbour identified her car and another saw her driving off erratically. Was even going to phone her in for drunk driving but didn’t. Then the squad car arrived maybe ten minutes later.’

  ‘Okay. Do we have reports from the lab?’

  ‘Email came in not five minutes ago.’ McKeown made a big deal of tapping his iPad.

  ‘What does it say?’ Lottie said, thinking she should have scanned over her own emails before the meeting.

  ‘DNA results on the child’s torso and leg. They’re a partial match for Jeff Cole.’

  ‘It must be Jeff’s cousin Polly.’ Lottie looked up at the board and felt her stomach churn. ‘Evidence on the skull points to blunt-force trauma inflicted with a poker-type implement. Then the little girl was cut up, possibly in the bath of her own home. If that’s the case, her mother, Jeff’s aunt, Patsy Cole, never reported it. Why not? Did Patsy kill her daughter? I know things have moved at a fast pace this week, but we need to discover everything we can about the family who lived at number 2 Church View.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can dig up,’ McKeown said.

  ‘Have we got the results from the bathroom?’

  ‘The bathroom samples have DNA from two different people. One is a match for the torso and the other matches the male hand. But the two victims aren’t related.’

  ‘A real house of horrors,’ Lynch said.

  ‘Make sure the DNA is run through all the databases they can find, and also any fingerprints they managed to get from the hand.’ Lottie glanced at the photos again. ‘We have the partial tattoo from the hand too. See if it shows up in any missing persons reports. I’ll speak to Jeff Cole again.’

  ‘Is he a suspect now?’ Kirby said.

  ‘If this crime happened over twenty years ago, he would have been nine years old. I doubt he could have cut up a body, but stranger things have happened. We have someone watching him, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kirby said. ‘Two uniforms in a car are keeping tabs on him.’

  Next Lottie ran through the details of Gavin’s last-known movements. ‘He was found in the same clothes he was wearing when he left his house, so hopefully we’ll get DNA from those. The recycling centre CCTV, any word on it?’

  McKeown said, ‘I’ve assigned two tech guys to check it.’

  ‘I want to know the minute anything is found. There has to be something.’

  ‘The techies are checking to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with.’

  ‘There was hardly time for anyone to tamper with it. The body was discovered before eight this morning. First responders were on site five minutes later. Time of death has to be between six and eleven, and he was probably dumped between those hours. Once Tamara reported it, our people were all around that area looking for him.’ She paused, thinking how they hadn’t been looking in the right fecking place. ‘There might have been too much activity in the area for a killer to move around freely with a body in his car after that. That could be the reason why Aaron’s body was left at the derelict house. Who owns that house?’ She felt like she was repeating herself, but until she got answers, she’d have to continue.

  The loud tap of Superintendent Deborah Farrell’s garda-issue shoes sounded in the corridor, and Lottie cringed. She could do without interference, especially since she didn’t know the woman well enough to figure out what kind of support she might offer.

  ‘I would have liked to have been notified about this meeting.’ Farrell marched up to the top table.

  ‘Apologies, Superintendent,’ Lottie said, trying not to grovel but feeling elbowed out of the way all the same. ‘We’re just recapping on all we have so far.’

  ‘You have another body, I hear.’

  ‘Yes. Eleven-year-old Gavin Robinson. He was one of the boys who found the frozen torso on the railway. I’ve appointed Lynch to be FLO for his friend Jack Sheridan. She is qualified.’

  ‘Remind me why wasn’t this done initially?’

  ‘We offered the service to both families straight after the body parts were discovered, but they declined the offer.’

  ‘Didn’t you find a body in a freezer, too?’

  ‘Aaron Frost. A local estate agent. His only link to the current cases that we can find so far is that he would have had keys to Faye Baker’s apartment, giving him an opportunity to take the car and abduct Faye. We don’t know why yet.’

  ‘Have you proof of that?’

  ‘Not until we compare his fingerprints with those found in the car.’

  ‘Inspector Parker, you are the senior investigating officer on the case. I expect results. And sooner rather than later. I’m the one facing a barrage from the media. I have to give them answers. And the public needs reassurances, not more bodies.’

  Lottie thought of telling Farrell of her suspicions about Polly Cole being the little girl from the railway, but decided not to. She needed to hear more from Jeff first. ‘I might have something later. I just need to confirm a few things before that.’

  Farrell rounded on her. ‘I need to be kept fully informed of all developments. Have you seen the reporters and TV crews outside? It’s like a rugby scrum. I’ve to give a press conference in half an hour and I want everything on my desk in ten minutes.’

  She turned and left, the clip of her heels resounding in the corridor outside. A collective sigh wove its way through the room.

  Garda Brennan stuck her head around the door. ‘We have Kevin O’Keeffe in reception.’

  ‘Put him in an interview room. I thought you were at Tamara Robinson’s.’

  ‘Two of my colleagues took over. She was getting very upset, hysterical, so I called the doctor for her.’

  ‘That’s good. Thank you. I’ll be right down.’

  Lottie looked at the board filled with victims and no real suspects. ‘Get a photo of Kevin O’Keeffe and slap it up there beside Aaron Frost. And notify me the second we have any DNA results or anything on that CCTV. Kirby, you come with me.’

  Before she went down to the interview room, she hurried into her office and checked her emails. There was the one from the lab that McKeown had read out; the other was from Jane Dore. She had completed the preliminary post-mortem on Gavin Robinson. Death from blood loss due to a stab wound to the upper back. Time of death between 6.30 and 8.30 yesterday evening. The little boy had wandered into a killer’s lair and ended up dead in a pit of glass and mirrors. Lottie felt her heart
break all over again.

  Fifty-Seven

  Kevin O’Keeffe looked totally pissed off. He was leaning over the table, slapping it with his hands, giving out about his privacy and rights and a whole load of stuff that Lottie tuned out of the second she saw the Band-Aid straining on his knuckles.

  ‘When you’re finished, I’d like to begin,’ she said.

  Kirby did the introductions for the tape.

  ‘Can you account for your whereabouts yesterday evening from say five thirty until this morning?’

  ‘I was at home.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘No. I got home from work at six. I went back out for a drive later and was home at ten thirty. What’s this about?’

  He was getting on her nerves. ‘Where did you go when you went out?’

  ‘Just drove around.’

  ‘Can anyone verify that?’

  ‘No. I was alone.’

  ‘How is your wife?’

  ‘Marianne? She’s fine. Why are you asking about her?’

  ‘Where was she during those hours?’

  ‘How would I know? I’ve told you, I was out.’

  ‘Did you know Marianne had been out too?’

  Sweat appeared on his upper lip and he shifted around on the chair. ‘She wasn’t home when I got back. She returned around midnight.’

  ‘Did you ask where she’d been?’ Lottie felt Kirby staring at her. He had no idea what her angle was, but she was clear on the direction she was taking.

  Kevin said, ‘Er, she didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Do you know Tamara and Gavin Robinson?’

  ‘Tamara is a friend of Marianne’s.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw the Robinsons?’

  ‘Is this about the boy? Gavin? I read he’d been found dead. Awful business.’

  ‘It is awful. When did you last see him?’

  O’Keeffe shifted again, his tailored trousers squeaking. ‘I … I don’t know. He’s a lot younger than Ruby so they’re not in the same circle, not even in the same school. Ruby is friends with your lad—’

  ‘Mr O’Keeffe, I am not talking about Ruby or my son. I’m asking when you last saw Gavin Robinson.’