Hiding in Plain Sight

by Eoghan Egan

  Hiding in Plain Sight

  Eoghan Egan

  Copyright © 2020 Eoghan Egan

  First published in 2020

  Cover Design: Nick Castle

  Formatting and Typeset by Richard Bradburn and Norah Deay

  The right of Eoghan Egan to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  eBooks are not transferrable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN

  www.eoghanegan.com

  For Theia Ellis Kirwan.

  Born: August 24th 2019

  Welcome to planet earth, young lady. May you be the best possible version of yourself and have a long, happy, exciting, fun-filled, book-filled life.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 1

  Monday, 7 January 2019

  Afternoon

  Just before afternoon coffee break, the art dealer decided to kill Roberta Lord.

  He compressed a tennis ball, gazed out of the corner office window, and watched another heavy snow shower blanket the space between Tullamore’s O’Carroll Street and Market Square. Snow was a natural enemy; it meant tracks and traces. But with more prolonged showers forecast for tonight, it would hide footprints and allow him to slip away unseen.

  He’d noticed her at a gallery three weeks earlier and sidled close enough to breathe in her scent and learn the basics: a single mother and artist, employed part-time in a café, struggling to stretch her income. He overheard her ask where she could find a copy of a particular book, and later, he smelled her insecurity as she paused at a display and gave him a quick smile. No conversation. No phone number exchange. No swapped business cards. He’d taken the volume Roberta wanted from his library and kept it in his briefcase—an alibi, if needed.

  He sat back and closed his eyes.

  Yes. In a few hours, Roberta Lord will die.

  He willed his body to trigger the intense hormonal surge that swelled and gushed like waves, followed by blessed peace of mind, and …

  A desk phone buzz interrupted his reverie. He stabbed a button on the console. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Wilson’s downstairs.’

  ‘Get someone else to deal with her.’

  ‘She specifically—’

  ‘Ambrose, perhaps?’

  ‘—asked for you. Won’t talk to anyone else.’

  Face muscles bunching, wishing he could throttle this new secretary, the art dealer glared at a digital desk clock as it blinked 2:49. ‘Be right there,’ he said.

  Ten minutes. Have to be out of here in ten minutes.

  He pressed an external line and dialled a local garage. ‘My car is due a service,’ he told the receptionist.

  ‘Of course. What day—?

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I’ll transfer—’

  ‘Twenty minutes. Have a replacement ready.’ The art dealer dropped the receiver, shoved the tennis ball into a pocket, grabbed his briefcase and marched out. At the lift, he pressed the call button, lips curling in distaste when he saw the secretary totter towards him, teetering in tangerine high-heel courts. She gestured at the folder in her hand.

  ‘I’ve typed and printed the file, sir.’ The art dealer stared at her and the secretary blushed, wary now. ‘The one you said was urgent. Will I leave—?’

  ‘I’ll take it.’ The art dealer punched the lift button again, riffled through the pages, and scowled at a typo on page three. He gave up on the lift, pushed through an exit door and bounded downstairs. On the ground floor, he dumped the folder into a rubbish bin, patted down his hair, switched the scowl to a choirboy’s smile and walked into the reception area, hand outstretched. ‘Christine. So wonderful to see you again.’ The handshake was warm and firm. The art dealer placed his hand on the woman’s elbow and guided her towards a viewing room. ‘Now—’ his voice settling like smoke around the visitor ‘—prepare to be impressed…’

  Twenty-two minutes later, across town in Kilcruttin Business Park, the man exchanged keys with a garage mechanic, made sure all lights and taillights worked …

  Faulty brake lights. That’s how others got caught.

  … and settled into a Toyota Avensis. He nosed the car onto the N52, passed by Charleville demesne, through Kilcormac village and signalled left after Fivealley. The car jounced along a narrow pot-holed lane and he glanced in at the empty farmhouse. When the road petered out, he stopped, opened a field gate and inched the car up a gravel road that gave access to farm sheds. Eastwards, dark cloudbanks hovered over Stillbrook Hill and Wolftrap Mountain, presaging more snow.

  In a toolshed, he slipped into wellingtons, donned a hooded raincoat, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and cased the Toyota boot with a piece of old black tarpaulin used to wrap silage bales. Housed cattle stuck their heads under feed bars, lowing in expectation. From a toolbox, he removed a wooden mallet and a steel-handled claw hammer with a rubber grip. He hefted each, judged weight and balance, decided on the mallet and put it in the briefcase alongside a new pair of rubber gloves. From a shelf, he selected a tin of black paint and an artist’s rigger brush. Eight strokes changed the registration numbers from 10340 to 18848. He stepped away, inspected his handiwork …

  Fine.

  Dabbed on a small alteration …

  Better.

  … and placed a bottle of turpentine and a cloth on a shelf. He’d need them later. He left his mobile phone beside them, tore off the gloves, shoved them into an old fertiliser bag, and glanced around once more. In a tin box, he found a rusted Stanley blade and placed it in the car’s ashtray. A trickle of anticipation snaked up his spine. ‘Number seven,’ he murmured. ‘Your time is up.’

  The art dealer retraced the route back to Tullamore, skirted the town and continued towards Kilbeggan. A quick glance at his wristwatch.

  16:34.

  To the left, spotlights cast a shadow on the big house stitched into a glade on Hattinger’s estate. He hadn’t set foot inside since marrying into the family. Linking up with the M6 motorway, he headed west amid a convoy of commuters.

  16:41.

  He needed to be in position by five-fifteen.

  Pillow drifts reduced the motorway to a single lane. The procession of vehicles slowed his progress; he’d have to risk a shortcut rather than take the more circuitous route. Westwards, the orange glow of Ganestown’s lights appeared tantalisingly close, before another snow squall, thick as duck down, obliterated the view.

&nb
sp; A “Traffic Diverted” sign caused a holdup. The man growled in frustration. He took out the tennis ball, squeezed it tight, ignoring the darts of pain that coiled and dug like strands of barbed wire around his brain, and glowered at the silent council machines barricaded behind traffic cones. Further repairs of the road surface, chewed away by weeks of Arctic ice and frost, would have to wait.

  He inched by, fury simmering …

  16:58.

  … gritted his teeth, and mind-mapped the quickest route to Oak View Lane.

  If I turn left—

  A van in front stopped. The art dealer jammed on the brake, skidded along the ice-crusted surface, his arms and body tensed, expecting an impact. He felt the pump-pump action in the pedal as the ABS system kicked in, tyres struggling for grip, and stopped centimetres away from a collision. Through narrowed eyes, he stared at a portable traffic light and willed it to turn green.

  Everywhere seemed similar in snowy suburbia.

  It took eighteen minutes to find Oak View Lane, the cul-de-sac where Roberta Lord lived. The art dealer navigated into the dead-end, where a lone streetlight cast shadows in the gloom. Roberta’s house was still dark. He steered around a snow-covered car, halted three-quarter ways around a traffic circle, cut the lights, set the wipers to intermittent, and stared through a fresh flurry of billowing snowflakes. Then, with the patience of a spider, he settled in to wait.

  Her schedule had become a predictable pattern. Leave café by five. Collect boy at crèche—except on Mondays and Thursdays when the child got collected by a man, presumably his father, and taken to an apartment across Ganestown for sleepovers. Either way, Roberta was home by five-thirty. Lights out at eleven. There’d been several chances to kill her, but tonight felt right; a treat for his thirty-ninth birthday.

  He glanced at dashboard clock.

  She’s late. There’s been a crash.

  His eyes followed the dipped headlights turning into Roberta’s driveway. The trickle of anticipation became a torrent.

  A tiny figure ran from the car to the front porch. The man’s lips tightened.

  Boy’s supposed to be across town. Weather must’ve caused a change in plans. Should I wait? When will I get a better opportunity?

  The pounding headache upgraded to a throbbing migraine. He needed relief. Impossible to suppress the urge.

  And it’s my birthday. It has to be now. If the boy sees me, I’ll kill him too. That means I must stun the woman first. Otherwise, she’ll cause havoc. Then deal with the child. One body or two doesn’t matter.

  The art dealer’s eyes traced Roberta’s progress. She draped a jacket over her shoulders, removed shopping bags from the back seat, fumbled keys, used a hip to nudge the hall door open and shepherd the child inside. She hadn’t closed the driver’s door.

  Means she’s coming back. Saves me knocking on the door.

  He rolled the car forward, executed a reverse manoeuvre and positioned it boot-to-boot with Roberta’s on the short driveway. He switched off the engine, pulled the waterproof hood over his head, opened the briefcase, snapped on the gloves, gripped the mallet and stepped out.

  One, two, three …

  Pushed the boot release and checked the tarpaulin was in place.

  Light spilled from a front room window. A television screen flashed, and Roberta stretched to fasten the curtains.

  Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen …

  Roberta reappeared in the doorway. One hand held the jacket over her head, the other clasped a mobile. She peered at the screen, high-stepping through the snow. Shrouded by the snowburst, the art dealer waited.

  Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine …

  Roberta glanced up, saw the strange car, stopped, frowned, squinted at the motionless figure. ‘Hello? Is there a problem? Has there been an accident?’ She stepped closer. Then, a sudden flash of recognition. ‘Oh, erm … the art exhibition, right?’

  The figure stepped forward.

  Thirty-five, thirty-six …

  ‘No.’ The word burst from Roberta, sharp as a sword swipe, and she stretched out a hand to defend herself.

  With his left hand, the art dealer pressed the jacket over her head and face. His right hand arched and descended, the dull “whap” like bowling balls colliding.

  Forty …

  The thick jacket blunted the delivery. Stunned, Roberta sank to her knees.

  Forty-three, forty-four …

  Her arms flailed. The mobile fell. The man grabbed Roberta’s shoulder, held her in position, adjusted his stance and launched another attack, using more weight. His arm jumped from the impact, and he tightened his grip on the wooden hammer.

  Forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one …

  Faint, up-tempo cartoon sound effects wafted through the doorway.

  Better make sure in case the boy appears.

  Third crunch. Harder now. The wooden head snapped off and disappeared into the snow, leaving him grasping a short piece of jagged wood. The art dealer snarled.

  Fifty-five, fifty-six …

  He threw the useless piece of wood into the boot, stooped, gripped the mallet’s shortened handle that jutted from the snow, and struck again. This fourth blow sounded like a shoe squashing through soggy soil, and it shattered Roberta Lord’s skull.

  Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy …

  He crouched, poised, his sweeping glance taking in the house and driveway, prepared to kill again.

  Nothing.

  He swivelled towards the roadway, gazed through soft, silent snowflakes.

  No voice.

  Seventy-three, seventy-four …

  No shadow.

  Clear.

  With ease, he pitched the body inside the car boot. The fingers on Roberta’s right hand jerked, flexed, clinched, then relaxed.

  Eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two …

  He tossed the mallet on top of the corpse, slammed the boot lid, picked up Roberta’s mobile and shut her car door with his knee. Within an hour, nature would obliterate his presence.

  Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine …

  Ninety seconds after he reversed in, the art dealer drove away.

  The migraine hadn’t slackened.

  Where’s the rush? The release? Maybe I’ll feel something after getting rid of the body.

  At the temporary traffic light, he used the Stanley blade to prise open the cover of Roberta’s mobile. He levered the SIM card from its slot, broke the chip and pitched it and the knife blade out the window. Sweat trapped inside the latex gloves made his hands itch. He opted to avoid the motorway and crossed a flyover to join a minor road. Swirling snow hampered his vision and neutralised landmarks. Within a kilometre, neither full nor dipped beams helped distinguish where the roadside ended and the water table began. He slowed, concentrated hard.

  Near Ferbane, the art dealer lobbed Roberta’s phone battery into a ditch. After Cloughan, the heavy snow shower suddenly turned light as lace, and he increased speed, relieved to have completed the circuit and be back in familiar terrain. A few kilometres later, he flung the mobile itself into the swollen Rapemills river. Time to take Roberta Lord to her burial place.

  The Toyota nosed along the gravel road, tyres locked into the ruts they’d cut earlier, its undercarriage scraping the build-up of icy slush. A half-moon sloped over Wolftrap Mountain, punching a gap through clouds, its beam illuminating the galvanised farm sheds. The art dealer unbolted a double steel door, piloted inside and parked beside a Hitachi excavator. He switched on fluorescent lights and checked his phone. Three missed calls. If he ever needed proof of his whereabouts for the past few hours, satellite towers would have pinged and stored his phone’s location at the farm. He soaked the old cloth in turpentine, scrubbed the paint off both number plates, started the Hitachi and manoeuvred it outside to a feed area. Dipper arms arched, and the bucket scooped up a half-tonne wrapped silage bale.

  He returned to the car, unlocked the boot and tugged at Roberta’s jacket, gummed to congealed blood.
He wrenched the fabric away, unveiled the corpse and studied the mushy goo that gelled in clumps to her hair and coat. Her left eye had disappeared within the shattered side of the skull, the other remained wide open in an expression of eternal surprise. The tangy metallic aroma of blood compelled him to lean closer and inhale. He took a last look, folded the plastic cover around the corpse, used a length of electric fencing cable to secure the crude body bag and propped it alongside the silage bale.

  No trophies. Another way others had got caught.

  He unlatched an enclosure gate to one of the cow byres before climbing into the Hitachi cab. The caterpillar wheels tracked into a field, chewing up virgin snow. A dozen cattle followed the trail of sludge. Near a boundary ditch, he dumped the load and spun the turntable ninety degrees and toggled controls. The engine growl deepened as the blade edge on the six-foot wide mud bucket sank through snow, biting into the soil. He removed the clay, banked it to one side and angled the bucket into the opening again. Four scoops to make a grave.

  One more for good measure.

  The man hopped down from the cab, rolled Roberta’s body over the hole, pushed it in, waited for the hollow thump before he ripped off the silage bale cover and threw most of it onto the corpse. Back at the digger controls he refilled the grave, then positioned the cattle feed across the clay. The animals arranged themselves in a semi-circle, eyes reflecting in the machine’s beams.

  The art dealer smiled.

  By the time they’d finished eating, the combination of hoof tracks and the next snow shower would erase all signs of his activity.

  Nothing beats natural camouflage.

  At the sheds, he washed both the wooden hammer and its broken handle, shoved both pieces along with the raincoat into the fertiliser bag. The byre gate remained ajar; the cattle would return for warmth after their snack. He added the paint-stained cloth to the trash, replaced the turpentine on the shelf, then peeled off the latex gloves, stuffed them beneath the raincoat, and held both hands aloft, letting the polar air act as a balm. Then, slipping back into shoes, he added the wellingtons to the rubbish and placed the sack in the car boot. On the way home, he’d scatter the contents. He straightened his tie, ran a comb through his hair, and slid the mobile into a pocket. Now, he needed a shower.