‘Can you take a quick trip over here? There’s something you need to know.’
‘I was just on my way to interview someone, but I’ll call to you first if you think it’s important.’
‘It is.’
‘I should be there in half an hour.’
Sixty-Five
The morning had lapsed back into its familiar greyness. Rain was spitting against the windscreen as Lottie drove along the motorway, chasing the clouds.
The Dead House seemed colder than usual, which Lottie thought heightened its odour, and she couldn’t help the feeling of unease scratching behind her eyes. Two bodies were laid out on the autopsy tables. Covered. Good, she thought, glad she hadn’t to look at the terrified, dead eyes of young Emma.
‘Come into my office. I need to speak to you in private,’ Jane said. There was no one else around and she hadn’t yet robed up. Why the delay? Lottie wondered.
She ushered Lottie into the cramped office. Lottie pulled off her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. Jane sat down facing her, clutching her hands together like they might escape their wrists if she let go. Her face, usually like a fine porcelain teacup, now looked like a cracked ceramic mug.
‘Coffee?’ she offered.
Lottie shook her head. ‘I’m grand, thanks. You look awful. Has something happened?’
‘There was a break-in here,’ Jane said, her voice just above a whisper. ‘Last night.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Lottie said, thinking of all the evidence that could potentially be interfered with. ‘Tell me.’
‘The alarm was disabled and all the CCTV cameras were either smashed or covered. I was first in at seven thirty this morning…’
‘Was anything taken? Evidence damaged or tampered with?’
‘No evidence or bodies were interfered with that we could determine. But it might throw a shadow over chain of custody and verification of samples. No equipment was damaged, except for the CCTV, of course. I called Tullamore gardaí and they were excellent.’
‘All logged and reported?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why the break-in?’
Jane hauled a large leather bag from beneath her desk. With trembling hands she extracted a bulky green folder. ‘I brought this home with me last night. What if they were after it?’
Lottie frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘Your father’s post-mortem file and relevant inquest documents.’
Lottie felt her mouth hanging open. She blinked and leaned forward, grabbed Jane’s hand. ‘You got it? After all this time? Why do you think someone was after it?’
Shoving the file across the desk, Jane said, ‘I made a copy. I wanted to replace it without anyone knowing I had it. Of course it must have flagged on a computer system somewhere.’
‘So this is a copy?’
‘No, this is the original. I made the copy yesterday but I hadn’t time to return the original, so I took it home with me to have a read-through. And maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I thought it was safer with me.’ She buckled up her bag and laid her hands on top of it. ‘The copy was here, on my desk. It’s the only thing missing.’
‘Oh God. I’m so sorry about all this.’
‘It’s not your fault. I went through the correct channels to get the file. I had no reason to suspect it might send a red flag to someone. But Lottie, this may mean you were right to suspect that your father’s death wasn’t all it seemed.’
‘I know. And I apologise for putting you in an awkward position. Did you tell the investigating guards?’
‘I don’t know why, but I said nothing. Anyway, I still had the original.’
Lottie put a protective hand on top of the file. At last she might get some answers. Or had she opened a Pandora’s box? ‘You said you read it last night.’
‘I did.’
‘Anything strike you as odd about his death?’
‘I think your father did kill himself.’
Lottie slumped back in the chair. Unwanted tears stabbed the corners of her eyes. She brushed them away angrily.
Jane continued. ‘But I think he may have done it under duress. I studied the PM photographs and found evidence of excess pressure on his thorax. There were strange indents across his chest too. I think he may have been tied to a chair. I believe someone forced him to pull that trigger. Then they untied the ropes.’
Lottie sucked in her bottom lip, desperately trying not to cry. She had been right all along. All these years, struggling with the idea that her father hadn’t loved her enough to want to live.
‘Thanks, Jane,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you so much.’
She felt the pressure of Jane’s hand on hers.
‘Lottie, you need to drop it now. Don’t keep after it. You won’t find answers. It will destroy you.’
‘But don’t you see? My father was murdered. I have to find out why, and then I have to bring the perpetrator to justice.’ She wondered once again why Tessa Ball had had in her possession the gun that had killed her father.
‘Whoever it was, they’re probably dead by now,’ the pathologist said.
‘Someone knows, Jane. Someone, somewhere knows. Why else were they prepared to steal that file?’
Sixty-Six
Arriving back in Ragmullin, Lottie drove through the flooded streets and parked outside Willie ‘The Buzz’ Flynn’s apartment.
Buzz brought her into a cluttered living room. A two-bar electric heater blazed in the fireplace and a gas heater flamed out a noxious heat in the centre of the room. She searched for somewhere to leave her jacket, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere free to put it. The room was packed to the ceiling with memorabilia relating to the late singer Joe Dolan. The old man, one hand gripping a Zimmer frame, pointed out each prized possession, documenting its significance.
‘I’ve a few videos here too, of Joe singing. I’ll put one on for you.’ Buzz pulled a cassette from a bookcase.
Lottie placed her hand on his arm. ‘Not now, if you don’t mind. I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’d like to ask you a few questions. About your time working with the Midland Tribune.’
He croaked a laugh. ‘I’m retired out of there donkey’s years. What could a pretty young lady like yourself want to know about the old days?’
‘I’m not altogether sure, to be honest.’
‘Start at the beginning.’ He lowered his thin body into an armchair and sat on top of a bundle of newspapers.
Looking around, Lottie spied a stool with a frayed leather seat. She pulled it over and sat down gingerly, hoping the bandy legs wouldn’t give way under her weight.
‘Have you heard about Tessa Ball’s murder?’ she asked.
‘Nothing goes on in this town without Buzz knowing.’ He tapped his nose with a thin finger, the skin almost transparent.
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Didn’t know her at all, at all. Not recently anyway. She used to be a solicitor. At a time when there weren’t many women in the profession. Not like nowadays. Tough-nosed biddy she was.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She had a reputation.’
‘Reputation? Not a good one?’
‘Depends on what you mean by good.’ He leaned into the chair, newspapers rustling as he made room for himself. ‘From what I can remember, Tessa Ball was good at winning cases in the district court. She mainly dealt with what you’d now call family law. Though there was no such title then.’
‘What sort of cases?’
‘Father against son, brother against brother – land stuff. Husbands beating their wives – abuse stuff. That kind of thing. It was a long time ago. My memory is not what it used to be.’
‘You’re doing fine,’ Lottie encouraged him. ‘Is there any case in particular that you can recall?’
He closed his eyes. She thought he had nodded off when he started to speak. ‘Not a case. No. A bit of a scandal, you could say. She sorted it out, though. Oh yes, Tessa was the go-to woman to get
things sorted.’
‘What scandal? Would I find it listed in the newspaper’s archives?’
‘No, you won’t, because it was never reported. All hush-hush, covered up. Ha! But every dog in the street knew about it.’
‘Can you remember it?’ Lottie wondered what she was doing here. Surely this old man’s unreliable recollections had nothing to do with her investigation. She wanted answers to things she didn’t even know the questions to.
‘Let me think,’ he said, knotting his fingers together. ‘It was the time of the IRA bombings in Dublin. You can look it up on the goggle thing you use nowadays. Seventy-two or three, I think. It was all over the press. God, that was a time when the Special Branch were sprouting up everywhere like wild ivy. Shocking times. Shocking.’
‘I was only a child then,’ Lottie said. ‘What was this thing that Tessa was involved in?’
‘There was a local woman… Carrie… I can’t remember the surname. I remember the name Carrie, because wasn’t there a horror film of the same name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this Carrie was a bit of a horror show herself. A right madam. Into drugs and drink in a fierce way. Must’ve been from Woodstock or somewhere that she got her barmy ideas. A hippy. That’s what she was. Wild clothes, every colour under the sun; hair all matted… What do you call it? Dreadlocks? Aye, that’s it.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘So, Mr Flynn, what’s your point?’
‘Buzz. Call me Buzz. It’s the only name I answer to nowadays.’
‘You were telling me about this Carrie woman,’ Lottie prompted.
‘I know what I was telling you. Not senile yet.’
‘I’m sorry. Go ahead.’
‘She slept around. Anyone that’d give her a few bob or a drop of whiskey was welcomed. You know what I mean?’
‘I think I do.’
‘Got herself caught with buns in the oven a fair few times.’ He tapped his nose again. ‘She had more than one pregnancy?’ Where was this going?
‘There was a rumour doing the rounds that young Mick O’Dowd and even a couple of the guards up in the station were regular visitors to her.’
Lottie felt her stomach lurch, then somersault. Shit, this wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘Really? Did you hear any names?’
‘No. All part of the hush-hush,’ he said. ‘Here’s the thing. The rumour mill sizzled with the news that Carrie had a child, but there was no sign of it. One day she was pregnant, and the next she wasn’t. Don’t know what went on there, now do I? A few months later, wasn’t your woman going around with another bun in the oven. No contraceptive pill available in them days, was there? Until the women took the train to Belfast protesting about its availability in the North…’
‘Go on,’ Lottie said.
‘The story went that Tessa Ball took the child and reared it as her own. I don’t know if that was fact or fiction. And this is the best bit so far. It must only have been two years later and your woman was pregnant again. Like a rabbit, she was. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so vulgar.’
‘Back up a minute. You think Tessa took a child away from this woman?’
‘Rumour, that’s all. Will I go on?’
‘Yes, do.’ Some memory, for an old man, Lottie thought. Or perhaps he was making it up, now that he had an audience.
‘Twins she had that time. And this is the really interesting thing. The two mites were taken from her and placed with a foster mother, and Carrie was shunted into St Declan’s. About a year, maybe two years later, she was back out. Tessa Ball was involved. Got her released, so the story goes. And Carrie had her twins back.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Tried to burn the bloody house down, she did. The mad witch.’
‘Jesus. Did the children die?’ Lottie was now convinced this was the same Carrie that Kirby had mentioned.
‘I don’t rightly know what happened to them, though I heard one of them was fostered.’
‘And Carrie, did she die?’
‘No, she didn’t. Sure you can’t kill a bad thing. Great saying that. Back into the asylum she went. Come to think of it now, one of the children was placed there with her until they could find a home for it.’
‘Is there any way I can get verification for any of this? St Declan’s records?’
‘That monstrosity closed down years ago. Run by the Health Board then. What’s that called now?’
‘The Health Services Executive.’
‘Fancy name for the same bloody thing. You should try them.’
‘So you think Tessa Ball was complicit in everything to do with Carrie and her children?’
‘That was the talk at the time. And sure, then all the files were stolen out of the solicitor’s office. Any evidence of her supposed involvement gone.’
‘I must say, Buzz, you have a great memory, to recall all this after so long.’
‘Told you I’m not senile yet. But it’s just with Tessa’s murder the other day, and talking to you now, it all came back to me. Different times now. That carry-on wouldn’t happen today, sure it wouldn’t.’
Lottie thought for a moment. Maybe the murders, though linked to criminal and drug activity, were in fact intrinsically rooted in the past. Had Rose been right with her offhand remark about Tessa’s past come back to haunt her? Tessa was dead; her daughter and granddaughter were dead. Who else was left to be haunted by that past?
She stood up, her legs like jelly. ‘Thank you, Buzz. You’ve been very helpful. I’ll see myself out.’
‘Just me and Joe here now.’ He dragged his old body out of the armchair and put a cassette into the VHS recorder. ‘I go to the day-care centre on Thursdays; other than that, I’m here all the time. Call and visit. I’ll boil the kettle for you next time.’
As Lottie stepped outside and the clouds gave way to another downpour, her phone vibrated in her pocket.
Shit. Moroney.
Sixty-Seven
The Joyce Hotel had commanded the centre of Ragmullin for over one hundred and fifty years. Having undergone many facelifts and name changes, it was currently named after the Irish novelist who it was said had once stayed a night in the establishment. As Lottie entered the lounge bar, it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the dark interior.
‘Over here, Inspector.’
She squinted and turned on her heel. Cathal Moroney sat nestled in a red velour armchair nursing a pint of Guinness. A fake coal fire burned gas up a blocked-off chimney.
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet me. Will you have a drink?’ He wiped froth from his upper lip.
‘A cup of tea would be nice.’
As he beckoned to the barman, Lottie sat opposite the reporter, wishing she had asked for a double vodka. But she needed her wits about her where Moroney was concerned. She pulled off her jacket, folded it into a ball and squashed it between the iron legs of the small round table.
‘You intrigue me, Inspector.’
‘I can’t say the feeling is mutual.’ She shifted on the chair, dipping her head slightly to avoid his scrutiny.
‘Can we be friends?’ He held out a hand.
‘Not on your life.’ She folded her arms. This was going to be painful. The barman arrived with a pot of tea, and without waiting for it to brew, Lottie poured the weak liquid into a cup. At least it might warm up her hands. ‘What do you want to speak to me about?’
‘No time for chit-chat, then?’
‘Come on, Moroney, you know how busy I am. Out with it.’
He sipped his pint. Slowly. Lottie felt her patience tip over. She stood up.
‘I’m leaving.’
‘I think you’ll want to sit down,’ he said, slapping his glass onto the table. ‘It’s about the drug link to these murders you’re investigating. And possibly your private investigation into your father’s death.’
Lottie stopped, bent halfway under the table retrieving her jacket. Ra
ising her head, she glared at the reporter. If he didn’t try so hard, she might even go so far as admitting he could be handsome. She supposed he flossed his teeth and dyed his hair. Even a little Botox on the forehead to help his television appearance. For all that, his green eyes were bloodshot, probably from drinking whiskey alone in a one-bedroom flat at night, and his belly strained against his shirt buttons.
She sat back down. ‘Go on.’
‘Nothing for nothing,’ he said, curling his lip in a knowing smirk.
‘Thought as much.’
‘I want the inside track on these drug-related deaths.’
‘What are you on about?’ She wasn’t giving him anything.
‘I believe there’s an organised-crime element involved in the Ball and Russell murders. I’ve been working on a story for years and I think this is the apex of it. I want in.’
‘You’re delusional.’ Lottie poured more tea, well brewed now.
A waiter arrived with a plate of food on a tray. ‘Mr Moroney, you ordered chicken, mash, veg and gravy. That right?’
‘Good lad. Put it right there.’ Moroney made room on the table for the plate of food. ‘Hungry, Inspector? Can I order anything for you?’
‘No thank you,’ Lottie said. Her stomach growled in protest.
She watched Moroney dig a fork into the chicken, stuff it into his mouth and chomp with his white veneers. She realised she had never met him outside of his confrontational reporting work. But he might have information to help her, so she’d have to put up with his disgusting eating, for a few minutes at least.
‘My father,’ she said. ‘What makes you think I’ve been looking into his death?’
He tapped the side of his nose with his fork, leaving a streak of gravy behind.
‘It’s my business to know these things. So what’s in it for me?’
Sipping the cup of tea, Lottie gripped the handle tightly. She had to find out what he had, if anything. She made her decision.
‘If you tell me what you know, I’ll try to give you first call on whatever we discover with regard to the murder investigations. Before any other media outlet is informed. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best.’
The Lost Child: A Gripping Detective Thriller with a Heart-Stopping Twist Page 22
