Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘I can’t understand it. You’re telling me Charlie Sheridan killed a nine-year-old girl twenty years ago? When he was just fourteen.’

  ‘Yes. He told me he killed his mother and sisters too. And then he killed the man who claimed to be his father.’

  ‘But …’ Lottie moved then, in small, sharp circles. ‘The family was called Doyle. Sinead, Annie and Angela. The father was Harry Doyle. Harry killed his family and absconded with his son, Karl.’

  ‘That’s not what Charlie told me. He says he killed them. He really put the wind up me. He described it. Knives and stabbing.’

  ‘Are you telling me that Charlie Sheridan is Karl?’

  ‘Yeah. He rebranded himself as Charlie Sheridan. Made a new life for himself until he thought he was dying of cancer. Then he dragged that halfwit Aaron Frost into his mad schemes too.’

  ‘Shit.’ Lottie stopped pacing and tore at the roots of her hair. ‘Did he ever talk about anything that might tell us where he is now?’

  ‘The old family home. The Doyle house. He killed Gavin and Aaron there, and probably Faye Baker too. He made that poor sod Aaron pick her up and drive her to her death and then dump her body.’

  ‘But why Faye?’

  ‘When she found the skull, he thought she had discovered his secret. That she knew what he had done. That’s how deranged he is.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Lottie stared at Kevin, a broken man, destined for years in prison. In that instant, she realised she shouldn’t be questioning him alone in the cell. But she had a little boy to find and Kevin might unlock the mystery of his whereabouts. ‘The Doyle house is cordoned off. We have SOCOs working their way through it. He can’t be there. Where else is there?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Please find Jack.’

  ‘You’ll need to make a full statement. Thanks for being so candid.’

  She turned towards the door.

  Kevin said, ‘There was something he mentioned that might help you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He told me his love of the canal had come from Harry Doyle, the man who wasn’t even his real father. He said Harry and some fellow called Noel worked for the Canal Board. It’s called Irish Canals now. And he said wasn’t it funny how he ended up working on the canals too.’

  ‘Canals. Okay.’

  She raced up the stairs into the incident room. Kirby, McKeown and Lynch stared at her. Waiting for instructions.

  ‘Find out what part of the canal Charlie Sheridan was working on. Ring Irish Canals. Someone. Call out air support. Move. We have to find him or he’s going to kill Jack.’

  Lottie scoured every piece of information they’d accumulated since Jack and Gavin had found the torso. She reread the emails from Aaron’s laptop. Charlie and Aaron were half-brothers. Aaron’s father, Richard Frost, had fathered Charlie, aka Karl, with Sinead Doyle. Two years ago, Richard had left Ragmullin, and at the same time Charlie had discovered he was related to the Frosts by registering with an ancestry DNA site.

  ‘Did anyone have any luck finding out where Richard Frost went to when he left home?’

  ‘I put in a request to trace his passport,’ McKeown said. ‘Nothing back yet.’

  A thought struck her, and she raced up to the tech room.

  ‘Gary. Do you still have Aaron Frost’s laptop?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘We have a printout of emails between Aaron and Charlie Sheridan. Are there other emails?’

  ‘Loads. But I only printed the ones in relation to the DNA site.’ He was opening the laptop as he spoke. Tapping and prodding.

  ‘Search for a Richard Frost.’

  ‘Here we are. There are a few. In what order do you want them?’

  She peered over his shoulder. ‘The most recent.’

  ‘This one hasn’t been opened. It has a phone number under the name. Looks like a UK number.’ Gary moved to one side and let her read.

  Lottie tapped the number into her phone and waited.

  ‘Is that Richard Frost?’

  ‘It is.’

  She introduced herself and said, ‘Richard, I know you don’t want to be found, but Aaron tracked you down. And you may or may not know that Aaron has been murdered.’

  ‘Josie rang me. Blamed me, as usual. I’m totally devastated.’

  ‘I’m sorry. She knew where you were all the time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lottie could not think of Josie Frost’s lies right now. ‘Richard, I have a small boy in mortal danger. Do you remember Sinead Doyle?’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘You had a son together. Charlie Sheridan. He used to be called Karl Doyle. I need to find him. Is there anything in the Doyles’ history that might help me discover where he’s taken the boy?’

  ‘Let me think.’ After a long pause he said, ‘Sinead’s husband Harry worked on the canals. He’d been working on the lock gates beside an old lock house at the time his family were murdered.’

  ‘Do you think that’s where Charlie could be now? This lock house?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you asked and that’s all I can think of.’

  ‘Would you know where it is?’

  And he told her.

  Seventy-Four

  Jack felt his collarbone snap under Charlie’s hand. The pain shot up his neck and down his spine and into every crevice of his body.

  ‘You little fucker,’ Charlie snarled, dragging him through the reeds and grasses, rats and moorhens and ducks scattering in all directions.

  ‘Let me go,’ Jack screamed. ‘I did nothing.’

  ‘You were born, weren’t you? And you saw me dump the frozen body parts with your drone.’

  ‘I didn’t see you. I told you, it was just shadows. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’

  Jack yelped as his trousers tore and ripped, and his legs bumped over stones and gravel. Blood poured from the cuts, and the smell of the canal clogged his throat along with mucus and snot. He thought he might die before Charlie had a chance to kill him.

  He swallowed, then screamed as loudly as he could. He heard the birds taking flight from the trees, and the sky darkened with heavy clouds. The summer appeared to have deserted the earth like everyone had deserted him.

  Charlie threw him down on the concrete and the lock chamber opened up before him, full of water.

  ‘Dad … I have it. The USB. In my pocket.’

  Charlie laughed then. Loud and harsh. Maniacal. Like something Jack and Gavin would be afraid of if they heard it in one of their games. Jack missed Gavin. And he understood in that moment what his father had done.

  ‘Did you kill Gavin because he was my friend?’

  ‘No, but he was a nosy little fucker. He stumbled on me by accident while I was getting rid of … Well, he heard a man scream and shout and wandered in where he shouldn’t have been.’

  Jack sobbed long and hard, and then he noticed the silence all around him. He lifted his head, trying not to shout with the torture of his injured shoulder. A car. A siren in the distance. Charlie heard it too. He was standing as still as a statue.

  The sky lit up blue. Bright blue, then white, then red.

  A helicopter hovered overhead and cars parked up somewhere close by. Doors opened and slammed.

  Shouts rang out and commands and orders filled the air. Jack rolled into a ball in the shelter of the big iron windlass and covered his head.

  He heard the voice of the woman detective.

  ‘Charlie Sheridan. Or should I say Karl Doyle? Put the knife down. You are surrounded by armed gardaí. Walk towards me slowly with your hands on your head.’

  Jack felt Charlie pull him from the ground and grab him to his chest, the knife at his throat. He elbowed Charlie in the stomach before everything went fuzzy.

  As he closed his eyes, he thought he saw Gavin up above giving him a high-five.

  Lottie saw Jack drop at Charlie’s feet as the knife fell into the water. She couldn’t be sure if he had another weapon or not.


  ‘Charlie,’ she yelled, ‘move away from Jack. Come slowly towards me.’

  ‘Like fuck.’ Charlie swung around.

  The boy was unmoving. She had to get him out of there. She noticed the armed response unit circling around behind Charlie. She had to distract him; get him talking.

  ‘Why, Charlie?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Your mother. Your sisters.’

  ‘Ha! I was the bastard son of Richard Frost. I knew my family talked about me behind my back. I had to get rid of them to clear my brain of their cackles. I eventually got the old man too.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ The ARU were now just metres away.

  ‘Harry arrived home to the carnage that night, and before I could knife him, he chased me. But he wasn’t a killer. When he caught me, he didn’t know what to do with me. The police were after him, not me. He thought he would be found guilty of the murders. No one would have believed a fourteen-year-old could slaughter his mother and sisters. So he brought me to his workmate’s house.’ Charlie’s lips curled in a wicked sneer.

  ‘What workmate?’

  ‘Noel Cole. They worked together on that fucking lock house right over there. Harry couldn’t turn me in because I told him I’d tell the guards he’d done it, so I was foisted on another family who didn’t want me while he tried to figure it all out. And in the process, I was landed with another girl who didn’t want me around and laughed at me with her sick fucking head on her. I soon stopped that, once I’d taken Harry out of the equation.’

  ‘But the Coles never reported any of this. Why?’

  ‘They were junkies, the pair of them. Spaced out and easy to threaten. You see, if you leave the threat of death hanging over a family member, you can scare people shitless. I told the Patsy one I’d gut her nephew if she opened her mouth, and then she’d have his blood on her hands too. She lived for years with the dismembered remains of her daughter in a freezer in her kitchen.’ Charlie started to laugh, and the sound curdled Lottie’s blood.

  ‘I understand, Charlie,’ Lottie said, wanting to wring his neck there and then. She had to keep him talking. ‘But that little girl, Polly. Why?’

  ‘Why not? She reminded me of my sisters. Always had a stupid grin on her face. Then one evening she went too far. Said she’d seen me kill Harry. That was that. I hit her with a poker and then squeezed the life out of her. Useless piece of shit she was.’

  ‘And then you dismembered her. Why leave her head separate from the rest of her body, though?’

  ‘I did it to remind Patsy that she was implicated. Tore down the plaster beside the fireplace where there used to be a range. Put the head in and then plastered it up again. Neat job.’

  Lottie shook her head in confusion. ‘But the freezers, they were found in the Doyle house, your family home.’

  ‘I moved them years later. I think that’s what did old Patsy in. When I arrived with a truck at her door. The look on her face when she saw me!’ He let out another demonic laugh that shook the birds from the trees.

  The ARU were close to Charlie now, sneaking silently behind him. Lottie edged forward, ready to catch Jack if Charlie kicked him into the deep lock chamber.

  ‘Why did you remove the bodies from the freezers? Surely if you’d left them, no one would have known anything.’

  ‘I wanted Aaron to sell the house for me. I had to move the bodies. I thought if I left them on the railway the trains would make them unrecognisable. But it was too difficult and I ended up throwing some of the remains into the canal. I didn’t bank on that Baker woman finding the skull the same week, or my own son and his dumb friend spotting the torso on the tracks. Fate is funny. I don’t trust those doctors telling me it’s just low platelets I’ve got. I’m a sick man and I’m dying.’

  Lottie inched closer as one of the ARU grabbed Charlie, sticking the muzzle of a gun to the side of his head.

  ‘You’re sick all right, and you’re fucking paranoid,’ she said, and dived for Jack, grabbing him before Charlie’s foot could connect with him. She wrapped the unconscious boy in her arms as the murderer was led away.

  Seventy-Five

  Lottie stood in the centre of Superintendent Farrell’s office. The air was stuffy and stale, like something had died in it and was still decaying in a corner. Farrell sat like a squat sergeant major and did not offer Lottie a seat, so she remained on her tired feet.

  She knew it was not going to be a congratulatory meeting. There would be no commendation for saving a young boy and capturing a killer who’d evaded the law for over twenty years. A killer who’d killed three innocent people in the last week and would have killed more if Lottie and her team had not been so good at their job. Or plain lucky. She knew most cases hinged on luck and timing. Circumstance and opportunity. She did not feel very lucky at this particular moment. She was just knackered.

  ‘Detective Inspector Parker, earlier today I ordered you to come to my office and you did not.’

  Lottie tried to remember. Did she mean when Sean was there? Must be that. ‘At that time Ruby O’Keeffe was missing, in danger, and I had to save—’

  ‘Did you save her?’

  ‘Yes. Well, she saved herself actually.’

  ‘Then there was no need to disobey an order.’

  ‘With all due respect—’

  ‘Don’t make excuses.’

  ‘But we successfully found Kevin O’Keeffe, and then—’

  ‘Was he even missing?’

  ‘We couldn’t locate him at first and his wife said he was a danger. We suspected him of murdering Aaron Frost.’

  ‘Did he murder Aaron Frost?’

  ‘No, but he was complicit in—’

  ‘Did you interview O’Keeffe with another officer present? Did you read him his rights?’

  ‘I read him his rights at the lake.’

  ‘Was there an officer present in the cell? Did you record the interview?’

  ‘No, but I had to find Jack Sheridan and—’

  ‘Detective Inspector Parker, you couldn’t obey an order if your life depended on it. I want to play fair and I want you to play fair, but you make it so difficult for me. If you can’t play by my rules, there have to be consequences.’

  Lottie swayed on her feet. She wanted to sit, so badly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent. It won’t happen again.’ She gulped down her pride and her anger.

  ‘Too bloody right it won’t. I have a list of complaints here about you. I’m going to read them out and you have a right of reply when I’ve finished.’

  ‘Do I have the right to a garda representative, or do I need my solicitor?’

  ‘Have you got a rep?’ Farrell folded her arms.

  ‘I can find one.’

  ‘Okay. If you want to formalise this, on your head be it.’

  ‘No, no, read them out. Then I’ll see what I need to do.’

  Lottie’s exhaustion was replaced by anger as Farrell began.

  ‘First up, you interviewed Jeff Cole in the cell with no one else present.’

  ‘Best way to get information at the time.’

  ‘But it’s not following protocol. Why did you do it?’

  ‘I just did.’ She knew she sounded like one of her kids. When they were five years old, maybe.

  ‘You interviewed him alone, without recording it. On your own!’ Farrell raised her voice.

  ‘Not unusual for me. I’ve been doing it for—’ Lottie shut her mouth when Farrell stared. No point in digging a deeper grave. She needed to dump the shovel.

  ‘You did not assign FLOs to the families of the two boys who found the body parts. Why?’

  ‘They initially refused them. I can only offer, I can’t coerce.’

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ Farrell said drily. ‘You visited the Sheridan family alone without other officers present. You interviewed Josie Frost and Marianne O’Keeffe alone.’

  ‘So?’

  Farrell ignored her. ‘On garda tim
e you attended hospital visits with Detective Sergeant Boyd. While you were in the middle of an investigation, I might add.’

  Lottie clenched her hands into fists as her anger threatened to spill over. She said nothing.

  Farrell continued to read, and Lottie knew Maria Lynch had hung her out to dry. Well, Detective Lynch, she thought, what goes around fucking comes around.

  Seventy-Six

  One week later

  Ruby O’Keeffe stuffed her earbuds into her jeans pocket and stepped into Tamara’s kitchen. She shuddered. The room pulsed with a sense of loss. She hugged Tamara and went to sit beside Marianne.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Tamara,’ she said. ‘We’re sure my dad didn’t kill Gavin, but I’ll never forgive him for what he did afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t care about Kevin.’ Tamara sucked on a cigarette, her eyes glazed with grief. ‘Nothing can bring my little boy back.’

  Ruby waited for her mother to say something, though Marianne was consumed with hatred, and anything that came from her lips might be better left unsaid.

  ‘I’ve been offered a lot of money to write about my husband’s role in all this,’ Marianne said eventually. ‘He spent our married life trying to get his hands on my money, threatening to reveal to all and sundry that I’d coerced my father into leaving everything to me, and I’ve lived the last two years threatening to tell everyone about his illegitimate child. Now I know that a life built on threats can only lead to disaster.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Tamara said.

  ‘My dream has always been for my words to be published in a book, but let me tell you, I will not write one word about this tragedy.’

  ‘Write it,’ Tamara said. ‘Make loads of money. He can rot in jail while you spend it.’