The Lost Child: A Gripping Detective Thriller with a Heart-Stopping Twist

by Patricia Gibney

  He had no idea where she was.

  Ninety-Three

  The sound of water trickling down the inside of a copper drainpipe woke Lottie up.

  ‘Ohhh,’ she groaned. ‘My head.’

  Dragging her body to a sitting position, she found her limbs were free from restraints. A thin sliver of light gleamed through a crack between a door and its jamb in front of her, up high. Where the hell was she?

  Her hand, pricked with thorns, flew to her forehead, her fingers touching dried blood. The back of her skull felt like it had been hit with a steel bat. Running her hands down her body, checking, she was sure she had no major injuries. The knife had not been used on her. And she was still clothed in her filthy shirt and jeans. Her feet were bare and her ankle swollen. Unbound. Why? Must be somewhere her captor believed she could not escape from. We’ll see about that, she thought, parking her pain, steeling her body with resolve. No way was she going to die in this musty black hole.

  In the sliver of light, she determined that the walls and floor were naked stone. She turned round on to her hands and knees, and crawled. There was a wooden table with sturdy legs. Could they be used as a weapon? She tried. They wouldn’t budge. No chairs. At the far wall – cupboards. No doors. Shelves. Cans and containers. Dipping her finger into one, she touched hard clay.

  She took out the can and peered inside. A small green shoot struggled for life in the dry piece of earth. Ten cans, in five cupboards. Then an old washing machine. A twin tub, with its rubber hose sticking out. Not perfect, but it would do. Past the washer, a wooden staircase with open slats. She gazed upwards at the door at the top. High and foreboding. Was she alone in the cellar of some old house? She tried to recall if O’Dowd’s farmhouse had a cellar, but her mind was blank.

  Up the stairs, as quietly as she could manage, each step causing her to wince with her throbbing ankle. Tried the round brass handle. Of course it was locked. Sitting on the top step, she peered down into the cavern to which she’d been brought in the dead of night.

  There had been two of them. It had taken two people to possibly haul her into a car and drive her here. They must have knocked her out with the blow to her head. She remembered no more. Who had stolen the file, then assaulted and abducted her? At the back of her mind, she thought she had known at the time. That didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting home to…

  Dear God. Her children. Clamping a hand to her mouth, preventing a cry escaping, Lottie felt tears brim, then flow. They’d better not touch my kids, she thought, or so help me, I’ll kill them myself. She needed a plan. This was not the time to dissolve into a bubbling wreck.

  Dismissing the pain in her body, she made her way on her buttocks back down the steps, crawled to the cupboard and set to work.

  Ninety-Four

  Back at the station, Boyd checked in with Superintendent Corrigan, who had activated a district-wide search for Lottie. He left Corrigan on the phone to McMahon, who was at the hospital trying to extract further information from the recovering Lorcan Brady.

  Pulling off his suit jacket, Boyd said, ‘So, Kirby, what’s this information you have?’

  ‘Number one, you need to check those printouts on your desk. They came in via your email yesterday. I got Lynch to print them off but forgot to tell you.’

  ‘I’ll have a look in a minute. What’s number two?’

  ‘After we got Tessa and Mick’s birth certificates, the boss told me to find out if the Belfields had any kids.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Kirby chewed on the end of his e-cig, twirling it from one side of his mouth to the other as he searched his desk. ‘I got the Belfields’ marriage cert. Guess what Kitty’s name was before she married Stan Belfield?’

  ‘O’Dowd?’

  ‘Nope. King.’

  ‘King?’ Boyd rushed over to Kirby’s desk and took the page from him. ‘Any relation to Carrie King?’

  Kirby held up another page. ‘Kitty King had a child before she was married, called Carrie. Born out of wedlock, as they used to say.’

  Boyd said, ‘What happened to Carrie?’

  ‘Have a look at the printouts on your desk. Records from St Declan’s Asylum.’

  Boyd sat down and scanned through the documents, his mind swirling with thoughts of Lottie. God, he hoped she was okay.

  ‘Carrie King was in and out of St Declan’s for most of her life,’ Kirby said.

  Looking up, Boyd said, ‘These are just for the seventies. How do you know she was in and out all her life?’

  ‘I rang the HSE records office, pulled in a few favours. They’ve emailed me the relevant pages. From what I can see, Carrie King was incarcerated in that hellhole in the sixties until she was nineteen and on two other occasions in the seventies. I’ve also traced that she lived in the cottage that was burned down the other day.’

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Boyd said. ‘Kitty Belfield was Carrie’s mother. So did Tessa help cover up Carrie’s indiscretions? If so, she was paid in land by the Belfields. Kitty did say land was currency.’

  ‘And Marian Russell’s mother was Carrie and Mick O’Dowd was her father.’

  ‘Therefore O’Dowd was Emma’s grandfather,’ Boyd said.

  ‘That’s the way it looks,’ Kirby said.

  ‘But signing over all their land in payment?’ Boyd scratched his head. ‘What exactly did Tessa have to do?’

  ‘Look at the two entries I’ve highlighted in the St Declan’s records.’

  Boyd flipped over the page. ‘Carrie was signed into St Declan’s in 1973 by Tessa Ball and… Jesus, Kirby!’

  ‘I know. The town sergeant. Lottie’s dad, Peter Fitzpatrick. Read on.’

  ‘Signed out by Peter Fitzpatrick and Kitty Belfield. Okay, so she spent a couple of months inside that time.’

  ‘Yes. Having already spent most of her childhood there. Now read on.’

  ‘Another order was signed by Tessa Ball in November 1974 and Carrie was sectioned again. No record of a release date. Why?’

  ‘She tried to burn down the cottage with her twins inside,’ Kirby said.

  ‘Jesus, Kirby, this isn’t straightforward at all.’ Boyd marched around the office, pulling at his chin. ‘Last night we found an old file in Moroney’s house. The name on the cover was Peter Fitzpatrick. Maybe it relates to the incarceration of Carrie King. Carrie gave birth to Marian. And now you say she also had twins. What happened to them?’

  Kirby checked his notes. ‘I don’t know. I’ve just had a chat with my old friend Buzz Flynn and he told me they were born about a year after she was released from St Declan’s the first time.’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘This is a bit of a minefield, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I think the Belfields, because they were well off, thought they were above placing Carrie in a mother-and-baby home.’

  ‘And the asylum was the lesser of two evils?’

  ‘Seems that way. They were prepared to shed their wealth to keep their family lunacy hidden.’

  ‘But why?’ Kirby said.

  ‘This was the early seventies. Things were different then. Rich families didn’t like to have their dirty linen washed in public.’

  ‘So they locked away their shame in the asylum.’

  ‘Did Kitty have just the one child? Carrie.’

  ‘Nope,’ Kirby said, and waved another page. ‘After she married Stan, she had another daughter—’

  The door pushed open and McMahon rushed in. ‘Brady’s been talking.’

  ‘We’re in the middle of sorting this mystery out,’ Boyd said, without raising his head.

  ‘Yes, but you’re going to want to hear this. I know who killed Tessa Ball and abducted Marian Russell.’ McMahon shoved his hands into his pockets and stuck out his chest.

  ‘Lorcan Brady and Jerome Quinn?’

  ‘They killed no one. They were paid to abduct the two women. But the person who was bankrolling them, that’s who did the killing.’
<
br />   ‘Go on then, tell us,’ Boyd said.

  ‘You’re not going to believe it…’

  Ninety-Five

  With cans stacked behind her and the hose strategically near her hand, Lottie resumed the position she had been left in by her abductor. She didn’t have long to wait.

  The screech of a bolt being shot back and the door at the top of the staircase opening caused the hairs on her arms to stand to attention. She was in pain, but ready. Shielding her eyes from the light, she made out the silhouette of a slight figure coming down the stairs.

  ‘Natasha.’

  ‘Don’t say anything. Just be quiet and you won’t get hurt.’

  Lottie laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  ‘Natasha, how are you involved in this?’

  ‘I’m bringing you some food, so shut up and eat. You don’t want her coming down. She’s in a bad mood and that’s not good.’ She placed a tray on the ground, four feet from where Lottie sat.

  Without a glance at the food, Lottie stood up and gingerly took a step towards the girl. She was dressed in black Converses, jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt. Her hair was tied back and she looked younger than her seventeen years.

  ‘What do you want with me? Why have you brought me here?’ Another step forward. The girl retreated up the stairs.

  ‘You couldn’t leave us alone! If you’d stayed away, we could’ve left without any fuss. But you had to come around upsetting my mum. Now she says she’s staying until the end. I hate you.’

  Before Lottie could utter another word, Natasha had slipped through the door and snapped the bolt shut.

  Kneeling down to the tray of toast and tea, Lottie tried to assimilate everything that had happened in the last week. How did Bernie Kelly fit into the equation? At the back of her mind she’d always felt that something was off with Bernie and her daughter. But events had occurred so quickly, she hadn’t explored the possibility of Bernie’s involvement. Now she had to figure it out. Her life depended on it.

  If Bernie Kelly was behind the murders of Tessa, Marian and Emma, then Lottie knew exactly what the woman was capable of.

  * * *

  She must have fallen asleep after the tea and toast, because she awoke with a jolt. Bernie Kelly was sitting on the bottom step, tapping a long knife against her thigh. The door above her was open, light streaming in.

  ‘Sleeping Beauty awakes,’ she snarled. ‘Though I don’t see much beauty.’

  ‘What do you want? Why did you abduct me?’ Lottie scrambled her thoughts and tried to sit up straight.

  ‘I followed you to Moroney’s house. Saw you leave with that file.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lottie said. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In the cellar of what should be my rightful inheritance.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t read the story in the file, did you?’

  ‘I had no time to read it. You attacked me.’

  ‘Yes, me and my sweet girl. Strong, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  Bernie Kelly laughed. ‘I wasn’t always insane, you know. But when that greedy bitch Tessa Ball had me locked away with my mother in the asylum, I was condemned to a life of madness. If you can’t beat them, join them. You ever hear that saying?’

  ‘I did, but I think you know exactly what you are doing, Bernie. And this is wrong. I’m a detective inspector. You need to let me go. We can work this out.’

  Another laugh, louder, more demonic. The woman stood up, the light behind shrouding her. She looked like the devil rising up from the flames of hell.

  Lottie eased back against the arsenal she’d built up. She couldn’t let Bernie see it. It might be her only hope of getting out alive.

  ‘This is Kitty’s house, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Ah, so you are a detective. How did you figure that out?’

  ‘It’s either O’Dowd’s or Belfield’s, and I can’t smell cow shite, so…’

  ‘Your deduction skills are a little primitive. You didn’t figure me out, did you? You or your team. Incompetence.’

  ‘What did you do with Kitty Belfield?’

  ‘My grandmother?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Kitty Belfield is your grandmother?’

  ‘Was is the correct grammar. The old witch.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ll enlighten you, shall I?’

  As long as she kept Bernie talking, Lottie thought she might get a chance to use her makeshift ammunition. Boyd and the team had better have got their act together. But how would they figure it out in time? She would just have to trust them, she told herself.

  ‘I hope you didn’t harm the old lady,’ she said.

  ‘Lady? Don’t make me laugh.’ Bernie sniggered. ‘Now see what you made me do!’

  ‘Tell me your story. I want to know what happened to you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to tell you anything,’ Bernie said, wrinkling her nose. She wandered towards the old washing machine. ‘I’m fascinated by this. It’s so small. Not like the ones I had to work with in the madhouse.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t keep interrupting me!’ The eyes glaring in the half-light were ferocious. Pinpricks in a white face. Daggers of evil. ‘Are you going to be quiet?’ Her whisper was laced with menace.

  Lottie nodded, one hand behind her back encircling a can, the other around the hose beneath her legs. She might only have one chance, and she’d have to take it wisely. She watched intently as Bernie heaved herself up on top of one of the cupboards and folded her arms, the knife still in her hand. She didn’t appear to see Lottie as a threat. That would work in her favour.

  ‘My mother spent most of her young life inside St Declan’s. Money greased hands for that to happen. That’s fine. I can understand that. But I can’t understand why I was also consigned to the asylum. And I’d never have found out the truth about the history of my sordid family if Marian Russell hadn’t decided to burrow a little deeper during her course. Marian. My older sister, or half-sister, depending on who her father was. But I’d never have known she was related to me if she hadn’t started digging with an industrial-sized spade. I know it now. I knew it before I ripped her tongue out of her head. The bitch and her adoptive mother. Tessa, the cow, got rid of all her property so that I could get nothing from her. She thought I’d be happy renting that poxy house. And me in league with one of the biggest drug families in the country.’ She swung her legs like a little girl.

  Lottie felt pieces of the puzzle begin to click into place. She struggled against slipping into detective mode, asking questions. Remain silent. Safest option, she concluded.

  ‘You didn’t figure that out either, did you? Me and Jerome Quinn. We were an item. I coaxed him away from the city, brought him down here. Got him into the cottage. The same one my twin and I were almost burned to death in by our mother. Seemed only right that I succeeded in burning it to the ground.’

  ‘With two men, including your lover, inside?’ Lottie couldn’t help herself. She tried to bite her tongue, but failed. ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘Easy. Once I doctored their weed, they turned into two laughing imbeciles. I stabbed Jerome and knocked out Lorcan as he stood there with his mouth open. I knew he was stealing from us, so I exacted retribution by hacking off his grubby fingers. Don’t know how he didn’t die, but I reckon he’s not far off it.’

  ‘You are a heartless bitch.’

  ‘I am what others made me.’

  ‘What had Emma to do with Lorcan?’

  ‘Nothing. Great idea to lead you to believe he was Emma’s boyfriend. You fell for that. Like you assumed I was with the two girls the night I killed the old bag, Tessa.’ She paused before continuing. ‘Jerome and Lorcan helped me bring Marian to Lorcan’s. I left her for dead. Then those two fools had a change of heart and dumped her at the hospital. Almost ruined everything
. I think they met a suitable fate for their sins.’

  ‘And Emma. Why did you have to kill her?’ Lottie couldn’t understand anything Bernie had done, especially the murder of Emma. ‘She was no threat to you.’

  ‘I gave her food and shelter and she repaid me by running off to that old man. Her grandfather! I don’t think she knew who he was. Only that Tessa had once said that if anything bad happened, he was the only person who could help her. So she stole Natasha’s bike and fled.’

  ‘But Emma was no danger to you.’

  ‘Are you stupid or what? She knew I wasn’t with her and Natasha at the crucial time that night. I returned as she was leaving to go home. She said nothing because she didn’t think it was important. Not then. But she had time to think about it out on that stinking old farm, because she rang Natasha and said she was going to tell the guards. She believed I might have seen something to help solve the murders. The innocent cow.’

  Lottie tried to understand what she was hearing. One thing she knew for certain – Bernie Kelly had no intention of releasing her alive. Otherwise she wouldn’t be relating her murderous story. The woman’s cold-blooded monotone poked at every nerve in her body. She wanted to lash out with the can, smash it into Bernie’s face. But she was too far away. Bide your time, she warned herself.

  She said, ‘Mick O’Dowd. Where is he?’

  ‘Mincemeat, I should think. Before we dragged Emma outside, I went looking for him. Found him working in the cow shed. He tried to come at me with a slash hook, but I accidentally kicked aside one of those slats on the floor. Down he sank into the shithole. Very effective tool, that agitator. I don’t believe you’ll find even a fingernail intact. Slurry whence he came, slurry to where he rests. Is that a line from a poem? If not, it should be.’ More laughter.

  Biting down nausea, blocking the image of O’Dowd’s last horrendous moments, Lottie said, ‘He could’ve been your biological father.’