Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Don’t you dare hit me.’ She thought the voice came from someone else, but no, she’d dredged it, full of loathing, from the pit of her own stomach. ‘You might be able to beat up Mum, but you won’t do it to me. I’ve had enough of your bullying.’ She was trembling all over, sweat pulsing on her skin; even her feet in her socks felt wet. ‘And do not hit my mother again. Ever. Or I’ll report you.’

  A slow smirk widened across her father’s face.

  ‘Is that so?’ he said, and moved to the back door.

  Ruby thought she’d won. Her hands trembled with elation and she breathed out, but her father turned quickly and wrapped his arm around her throat, choking her.

  He was going to kill her. Here in the kitchen in front of her silent mother.

  ‘Kevin! Stop!’

  Marianne’s voice was strong and loud. It stilled her father and he dropped his arm, the fight appearing to desert him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,’ he said, letting Ruby go.

  She landed on the floor and Kevin pushed past Marianne, his footsteps echoing up the stairs.

  When her mother held her in her arms, Ruby’s tears fell in fat drops down her face. She knew this couldn’t go on. She would have to do something. Something drastic.

  Sixty-Five

  Boyd had got dressed at 6 a.m. without taking a shower, in case the noise of the water disturbed Grace. He had slipped out of the house before she opened an eye, and set off. She would be angry, but she’d get over it. And Lottie? No, he wasn’t going to think about her this morning.

  That was where he’d been heading last night, but he hadn’t got far. Walked to the end of the road before deciding she had enough troubles of her own without him offloading his, so he’d doubled back to his apartment. He’d been relieved to find Grace in bed, the door firmly shut. Lying on the couch, he’d pulled the duvet up to his chin, determined to sort out their living arrangements the next day. After his early-morning hospital appointment. Hopefully today he would get good news; perhaps it would be the last day of his treatment. Then he could return to work. Once he got his energy back and lost the fatigue.

  The nurse had taken his blood to be tested and he sat in the waiting room thinking how Lottie would go apeshit when she found out he’d come here alone. He picked up a discarded newspaper and began to flick through it without anything registering. His blood better be okay.

  The door opened and in strolled the tall man who’d fled the other day. Without a glance, he moved to the farthest corner and sat on a straight-backed chair beneath a mute television streaming advertisements.

  Boyd studied him. Why had he disappeared when he’d seen Lottie? Maybe it was nothing to do with her. Hadn’t she said the man’s son – Jack, that was his name – had found the body parts on the railway? Must have been traumatic for the boy and the family. Perhaps he had been waiting for news he might have suspected would be bad and had lost his nerve at the last minute.

  The man was twisting his hands into knots; when he caught Boyd staring, he shoved them into his pockets, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

  ‘Bit of a change in the weather,’ Boyd said, folding the newspaper.

  ‘Suppose so.’

  It was clear from his body language that he didn’t want to converse. Undeterred, Boyd said, ‘Are you waiting for treatment?’

  The man shrugged one shoulder.

  Boyd said, ‘I’m hoping today sees my last chemo. That’s if my platelets behave. Damn things were so far down the scale the other day they had to send out a search party.’ He’d thought the quip might make the man grin, but his face remained like a concrete block.

  He added, ‘But I’m hopeful.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And yourself? Is it chemo or radium?’

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘It’s good to talk.’ Not wanting to bore the man with the specifics of his disease, Boyd decided to generalise. ‘I’ve got leukaemia. Not the worst form as far as I can determine, but it’s still cancer.’

  The man nodded silently.

  ‘And yourself?’ he persisted.

  ‘Waiting for results.’

  ‘The waiting is the worst. I thought I might need a bone marrow transplant or stem cells, whatever they call it, but I hope it won’t come to that. I’ve no one that I can ask to donate, and the donor lists are a minefield.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, not enough people registered. Or something like that.’ In truth Boyd wasn’t sure how the donor lists worked and hoped he would never have to find out.

  The man said, ‘I checked it out. Just in case.’

  ‘And do you have a relative that can donate if you need it?’

  The man stared up at the flickering fluorescent light. A buzzing fly was caught in the surrounding casing. ‘It’s complicated. My son …’ His voice faltered. ‘It’s complicated.’

  Boyd could see flashes of anger in his eyes. Obviously the man didn’t want to put his son through the procedure. ‘Hard on a young fellow. What age is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your son.’

  ‘Er … nine.’

  ‘Very young. Hopefully it won’t come to that then.’

  A nurse opened the door, ‘Charlie Sheridan? Mr Saka will see you now.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Charlie said as he passed.

  Left to his thoughts, Boyd wondered why the man was so on edge. He’d have a word with Lottie when he got back, if she was still speaking to him once she found out he’d driven to the hospital alone.

  Sixty-Six

  The coffee was tepid. Lottie grimaced as she reread the various forensic reports that had just arrived. The words flickered in and out of focus. Her mind was full of the conversation with Katie, which was quickly followed by Grace’s angry phone call about Boyd driving himself to the hospital. Boyd was a stubborn fool. She shook away her frustration and tried to concentrate on the reports, noting down the salient points.

  Fingerprints found on the inside of the boot of Faye Baker’s car were a match for Aaron Frost. Shit, she thought. Frost was dead, so she couldn’t question him. Obviously. They’d also found plenty of other DNA in the boot, which had been rushed through the Dublin forensics lab. Plenty of unexplained DNA. But they’d identified Jeff’s, Faye’s and Aaron’s, and one other that made Lottie raise her eyebrows as she read. DNA had been recovered from a hair attached to Faye’s body. It was not a match for anything in their database, but there were enough markers to point to it being a relative of Aaron. Interesting. She’d have to interrogate Mrs Frost again.

  The next report informed her that fibres from the carpet at 2 Church View matched those found on the frozen torso. And here was the kicker. The fingerprints from the hand matched unidentified fingerprints taken at the Doyle crime scene over twenty years previously. Was this the father, Harry Doyle? Or someone else who had massacred the Doyle family? She shook her head, trying to clear it. There had been no DNA filed at the time of the Doyle case, only fingerprints. It was too far back, an era before DNA databases were compiled in Ireland. Harry Doyle had absconded and disappeared, so at the time there was no way to confirm if the fingerprints were his or not.

  ‘This gets weirder,’ Lottie said, as McKeown loped into her office.

  ‘I can add to it,’ he said. ‘Brandon Carthy sent me the list of people he’d given the gate code to.’

  ‘Many on it?’ Lottie despaired of ever getting a lead if it was a long one.

  ‘Four names.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘One of them is Kevin O’Keeffe.’

  ‘What the f—’

  ‘Exactly. I checked the CCTV images again, and the car is similar to the saloon O’Keeffe drives, though we can’t determine the registration number on the image.’

  ‘Get O’Keeffe in here, and his car too. What about the other names on the list?’

  ‘None of the others have a car similar to the one on the CCTV, and
their alibis all check out for the relevant time.’

  ‘Right, we need to talk to O’Keeffe, so,’ Lottie said.

  Kirby peered around McKeown’s large frame. ‘I’ve news too. Marianne O’Keeffe has just been on the phone. She was looking for you, but you’d said you weren’t to be disturbed, so I spoke with her.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She wants to make a complaint about her husband. Says he beat her up the night before last. The same night that Aaron Frost was murdered. She said she had a thing with Aaron – a non-thing really because he didn’t accept her advances. However, she believes Kevin somehow found out and followed Aaron and killed him.’

  ‘Under normal circumstances I’d say that’s some leap in deduction, but O’Keeffe couldn’t give us an alibi for that night. If it is his car dumping Gavin’s body, I’m inclined to give Marianne’s hypothesis some credence. Is he our killer? If he is, what reason has he for killing a defenceless eleven-year-old boy?’

  McKeown said, ‘I still think Gavin stumbled on Aaron’s murder and was killed for it. O’Keeffe is a bastard. I’ll bring him in.’

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ Lottie stood up but sat down quickly again. The office was tiny, and with three of them in there, the air had thinned considerably. ‘We can be sure O’Keeffe will reply no comment to our questions, so we need to be certain of everything. I want all the evidence studied in light of this new information. Find out where O’Keeffe is and stick someone on him so that he doesn’t make a run for it. See if his car has turned up on any other CCTV over the last few days. We need to see where he went and what he did.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ McKeown said.

  ‘Find me the evidence and then we can arrest him. We’ve slipped up in the past making arrests before we’ve had an airtight case, and people have walked. Look at the evidence with a critical eye. In the meantime, prepare a warrant and get it signed so that we can search his car. Kirby, is Marianne coming in to make a statement?’

  ‘She was adamant she wanted to speak with you, so I kind of promised you’d call to her house this morning. Hope that’s okay.’

  ‘It’s not. I haven’t got time. Did she say where her husband is?’

  ‘She said he took their daughter to school and then he’s heading to work.’

  ‘Make sure he’s being watched.’ Lottie looked over at McKeown. ‘We need to get our heads around all this. Find someone to replace Lynch at the Sheridans’.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I know we’re doubling up here, but I asked you for everything you could find on the Doyle familicide case. Did you track down the file?’

  ‘Yeah. Eventually found it listed on PULSE. It had been entered incorrectly, but that’s another day’s work.’

  ‘I need to go through it. The forensic report is back and the fingerprints from the dismembered hand are a near match for prints taken from the original crime scene twenty years ago. There was a lot of deterioration, but they found enough markers to be confident. It’s possible the hand is that of Harry Doyle, who allegedly murdered his family and absconded with his son.’

  ‘Jesus. I’ll get the file,’ McKeown said.

  Once she was alone, Lottie scrutinised the forensic report again. No matter which way she looked at it, she could not figure out how the current murders were linked, but they were. She knew it in her gut.

  Sixty-Seven

  Kirby was munching his way through a Happy Meal, his food of choice when he was broke. Lottie stood beside him.

  ‘I thought I told you to find O’Keeffe and have him watched,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve sent a squad to sit outside his office. I got the file on the derelict house at Canal Lane from Ferris and Frost.’

  ‘Oh good.’ Lottie stole his coffee, removed the lid and gulped down a good mouthful, even though it was cold. ‘And bring Jeff Cole in for interview. I want to talk to him again now that we know his DNA is a partial match to the torso.’

  Kirby stuffed a chicken nugget in his mouth. He chewed then swallowed. ‘Sorry, I bought this on the way in and hadn’t time to eat it.’

  ‘What else did you get from the estate agent’s?’

  ‘First off, Dave Murphy says Aaron didn’t have an apartment anywhere else.’ He handed her the file. ‘But Ferris and Frost have a caretaker agreement on the abandoned house. Aaron Frost was the registered occupier for electricity bills. The agreement came into force two years ago. Nothing to say who owned it before. I’m going to check that out as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yes, do that. We’ll need to speak with Aaron’s mother again. Did the tech guys find anything on his laptop?’

  ‘Still working on it, but so far, not even a porn site. They’re talking about shipping it off to Dublin to see if the experts there can find anything.’

  ‘Why would Aaron end up dead in a freezer in a derelict house that was the scene of horrific murders years ago?’

  ‘Questions beget questions.’

  ‘Don’t think that’s the correct quote, Kirby.’ She sat on the edge of his desk and tried to think straight. ‘Aaron’s fingerprints were in Faye’s car and he had access to the keys, so we could deduce therefore that he disposed of Faye Baker and her unborn child. Did he kill her too? Did he kill Gavin? But if he did, who killed him? Which brings me to Kevin O’Keeffe. How does he fit into the picture? A few minutes ago, I had him down for all the murders, but none of it makes sense.’

  Kirby munched a handful of fries. ‘What’s O’Keeffe got to do with Faye Baker?’

  ‘I believe he knew Faye was dead before the fact was released to the media, though we know that means fuck all nowadays. But here’s the thing. We’ve yet to prove it, but it’s likely O’Keeffe’s car was used to dump young Gavin’s body.’

  ‘We have to bring him in!’

  ‘Wait. We must be sure of all the evidence first. McKeown is working on a warrant for the car. It needs to be forensically searched.’

  Kirby crushed the empty Happy Meal box and stuffed it in his already overflowing waste bin. ‘You said to look at all the evidence. I’ve been thinking about the blue paint flecks found on the torso. The lab said they were from a recycling bin. We should get McKeown to extend the warrant for O’Keeffe’s bins while he’s at it.’

  ‘Not sure we have enough to ask for a full house search. It’s possible we might be able to place his car at the recycling depot, but not the man himself. Ask the tech guys if the CCTV footage can be digitally enhanced. We need to be certain of everything before I fuck it up.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God, boss, you couldn’t fuck it up if you tried.’ He ran his greasy hands through his unruly bush of hair, leaving it standing on end.

  ‘Too early in the morning for sarcasm, Kirby.’

  ‘I was serious.’

  Lottie heard her phone ringing. If it was Boyd, now was definitely not a good time. But it was her old boss, Corrigan.

  ‘I saw the news last night and it came back to me,’ he said without preamble.

  ‘What came back to you?’

  ‘What we were discussing yesterday. About the Doyle murder case all those years ago.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You have to bear with me. This brain of mine is fecked. But I remembered the name of the man Sinead Doyle was rumoured to have had an affair with. It was Frost.’

  When Lottie hung up to the sound of her old boss chortling down the phone, delighted he could still be of some use to an active case despite dementia chewing up his brain, she had two texts on her mobile. Both from Boyd. Things were gathering pace in the investigation. What if he had bad news? Could she handle it? Oh God, she thought, not now, Boyd.

  Ignoring the texts, she grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and her bag from the floor, and with Lynch not yet back from the Sheridans’ and everyone else busy, headed out on her own.

  Could she be on the verge of finding the connection between Aaron Frost and the dismembered bodies?

  McKeown secured the w
arrant for O’Keeffe’s car without delay. When Lynch was relieved of her FLO duties by Garda Martina Brennan, he headed into town with her. They walked around the small car park at the back of the office where Kevin O’Keeffe worked.

  ‘I can’t see his car here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because it’s not here.’ Lynch moved around the side of the building and opened the door. ‘You know I should be home in bed?’

  ‘Not now, Lynch.’

  ‘Just saying.’

  He followed her up a flight of stairs and into the open-plan office.

  ‘Hi,’ a young woman said, lifting her head from the computer screen in front of her. ‘Can I help you?’

  McKeown and Lynch introduced themselves and showed their ID.

  ‘What’s your name, miss?’ McKeown said, wondering how her eyelids could hold the weight of her lashes.

  ‘Karen Tierney.’

  ‘Well, Karen, we’d like a word with Mr O’Keeffe.’

  ‘Kevin isn’t in yet. Some days he’s a bit late, but Shane, our manager, has let it go so far.’

  ‘Is that so?’ McKeown flashed his widest smile and Karen actually blushed.

  ‘Between you and me, he has a lot to contend with at home. It’s all her fault.’

  ‘Whose fault?’

  ‘The wife. Marianne. She drinks, according to Kevin. He spends the morning cleaning up after her. So he says.’

  ‘So he says,’ McKeown repeated, and threw Lynch a knowing glance. ‘Here’s my number. When Kevin arrives, please don’t say we were here. Just ring me.’

  ‘Has he done something wrong?’ Karen looked around frantically at her colleagues. ‘Have we reason to be worried?’

  Lynch butted in. ‘Just ring us when he comes in.’