She glanced up and found Boyd staring at her. Long and lean, his ears sticking out a little, more grey than black in his tightly cut hair and a light shimmer of stubble on his chin – very un-Boyd-like.
‘McMahon is looking for you, as usual,’ he said.
‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone nine.’
‘Can the super not give me five minutes of me-time?’
‘Lottie, you’ve been coming here every morning for months. It’s not going to turn into a phoenix and rise from the ashes.’ He held up his hand as she opened her mouth to protest. ‘Your house of memories is no more. Like I said already, you need to take this as a sign, and move on.’
Biting her lip, Lottie thought of her husband, Adam, now five years dead. This was the house they had lived in from the day they’d got married. The house in which they’d reared Katie, Chloe and Sean, their three beautiful children. Burned to the ground. Gone. All gone. Was Boyd right? Was it a sign? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything any more.
‘Fancy a drink?’ she said.
‘Jesus, Lottie! It’s nine in the morning. Come on. Where’s your car?’
‘I walked.’
‘From your mother’s?’
‘Thought it was a nice morning for a stroll.’ She looked up at the inky blue sky and noticed the warning clouds gathering momentum, despite the lazy sun. She knew Boyd didn’t buy her lie. ‘Car wouldn’t start, so I called Kirby for a lift. He dropped me off on his way in. He’s in a jolly mood today.’
Boyd said, ‘Must be his woman. Gilly O’Donoghue is like a tonic to him. Anyway, you should have rung me. I’ll give you a lift to the station.’ He made for the car. ‘Are you coming, or are you going to stare at that boarded-up ruin for the rest of the day?’
She kicked at the butt of the cigarette, took out the packet and said, ‘Got a light?’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘I’m not going to set fire to the rubble, in case that’s what you’re thinking. I want a cigarette, and Kirby lit the last one because I’d no lighter or matches.’ Tears threatened. Jesus, she thought, I’m a worse wreck than the damn house. Bricks and mortar. That’s all it was. But it had been more, much more. It had held all her memories, and now it was nothing.
‘Get in.’ Boyd opened the car door for her.
Lottie shrugged and did as she was told. She was in no humour for a row. Then she remembered why he had come looking for her.
‘McMahon sent you? Why does he want to see me?’ Acting Superintendent David McMahon was keeping her on a tight leash. Paperwork and then more paperwork. She was sure he got off on it.
‘Guess.’ Boyd switched on the engine, reversed, then drove out of the estate.
‘Trouble,’ she said.
‘Probably.’
Two
Lottie dallied in the station yard after Boyd had parked the car. ‘Go on ahead. I just need a bit of fresh air first.’
‘You’d better hurry up. I’m not making any more excuses for you.’ He strode into the building.
Why was she feeling so low? Maybe it was the overcrowded situation at her mother’s. With twenty-year-old Katie and her son Louis, seventeen-year-old Chloe and fifteen-year-old Sean, it was a tight squeeze. But Rose had opened her house to them after the fire, and Lottie had accepted the offer of a roof over her family’s head.
It wouldn’t be for much longer, though. She had it sorted. So what was the problem? She took a deep breath, knocked away the longing for another cigarette, vowing to quit. She found a Xanax in her jeans pocket and swallowed it. Hopefully it would calm her.
She walked inside, letting the door swing shut behind her. In the reception area, she nodded at the desk sergeant, Garda O’Donoghue, and went to key in the code for the inner door. Before she could enter the second number, she heard a shriek from behind her.
Turning around, she came face to face with a teenage girl with wide black eyes, damp hair criss-crossing her cheeks, expression wild and feral. Her jeans were ripped, zipper undone, feet bare. Her T-shirt, once white, looked like it had been tie-dyed in blood.
Involuntarily, Lottie took a step back, banging into the door. She opened her mouth, but words refused to form.
The girl spoke.
‘I think I killed him,’ she whispered.
Lottie pulled herself together and stepped forward. ‘What did you say?’
The teenager raised her voice. The sound was guttural, animal-like.
‘I killed him.’
And then she fell in a faint to the floor.
* * *
The duty doctor insisted the girl needed to be hospitalised. The ambulance arrived within ten minutes, and Lottie travelled in the back with her.
‘Shock and hypothermia,’ the doctor had said. As she watched the pale face beneath the oxygen mask, Lottie wondered how the girl could be suffering from hypothermia in the warm July weather. But that was the least of her worries.
The paramedic studiously monitored blood pressure and other vital signs.
‘Very low heart rate,’ he said.
‘Who are you?’ Lottie whispered to the girl.
‘Don’t think she’s able to answer you,’ the paramedic said. The name badge on his green uniform told Lottie he was called Steven.
‘I’m not stupid,’ she snapped. Seeing his eyes dip, she added, ‘Sorry.’
‘No problem. What did she do?’
‘I have no idea.’ She checked the plastic evidence bags she had hastily fastened about the girl’s hands, preserving the evidence of a crime she knew nothing about. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with her?’
‘Not being smart with you, but I’ve no idea.’ Steven shook his head and checked the monitor. ‘Blood pressure is dangerously low.’
‘Keep her alive,’ Lottie said, ‘please.’
He nodded.
The siren waned and the engine stopped. The doors opened and Lottie jumped out, then stood back to allow Steven and the driver to extract the stretcher. They pulled down the wheels, and as the hospital doors slid open, they ran inside. She followed.
‘Keep her alive,’ she repeated as a porter slid the girl from the stretcher onto a trolley bed in the A&E cubicle.
When the curtains were discreetly pulled tight, shutting Lottie outside, she called Boyd.
* * *
She bought a Diet Coke from the hospital shop and stood outside the main door to have a quick cigarette, only to realise there was no smoking allowed anywhere on site. She’d no lighter anyway.
Boyd parked on double yellow lines. ‘Any news?’
‘They’re working on her.’
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘Jesus, Boyd. She appeared at the door covered in blood, said, “I think I killed him” and then collapsed.’
‘So you have no idea what happened?’
Lottie snapped her head around. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’
‘Hey, keep your hair on.’
‘For feck’s sake, Boyd.’ She turned on her heel and walked back into the hospital. Some days he wound her up like a spring, and today was one of them.
She sought out the consultant who had taken command of the teenager.
‘Dr Mohamed,’ she said, flashing her ID badge. ‘What can you tell me?’
His eyes were tired and his skin sagged, though she estimated he was only in his early thirties.
He said, ‘She lost a lot of blood. We may have to give her a transfusion. I’m monitoring her progress and will make a decision soon.’
Lottie scowled. She hadn’t noticed any visible wounds. ‘In what way is she injured?’
‘She is not injured in your sense of the word. Do you not know?’
‘Know what?’
‘She has given birth. Quite recently. The placenta was still in place, adhered to the womb, and that caused the haemorrhage. It’s been removed now.’
Digesting this information, Lottie wondered where the girl’s baby was. How and why had
she arrived at the station uttering those guilty words of admission? Feeling Boyd’s presence at her shoulder, she hoped he would ask sensible questions of the doctor, because all logic had fled her brain and she was speechless.
‘What are her survival chances?’ he asked.
‘We got her in time. I believe she will be fine. However, if you’re thinking of interviewing her, it won’t be today.’
‘If she says anything, let us know,’ Lottie said. ‘And if you find out who she is …’
‘I will inform you.’
With that, the doctor walked away down the narrow corridor lined with helpless patients on trolleys. A uniformed officer arrived and Lottie instructed him to keep guard outside the room containing the girl’s cubicle.
‘We need to retrace her steps,’ she said.
Shrugging his shoulders, Boyd asked, ‘And how do you propose we do that?’
‘Old-fashioned police work.’ She pushed through the double doors. ‘I need a lift back to the station.’
Three
Fifteen-year-old Sean Parker was happy for the first time since the school holidays had started. He’d been at the soccer match last night, and congratulated young Mikey on a great goal. He knew Mikey from when the youngster used to play hurling, not that Sean played much any more. He had even helped coach him at one stage.
A schoolmate, Barry Duffy, had been there as well and had texted him this morning to see if he wanted to go fishing. They had only become friendly when Sean had moved to live at his gran’s house, which wasn’t too far from Barry’s.
Sean glanced at the canal water, where the odd ripple moved the reeds to and fro. In the distance, he could hear the hum of traffic. The cathedral bell chimed. Fumes from the sewage works filled the air with a sickening smell. It happened every summer. Must be the warm weather, he thought. A slight breeze rustled through the trees. The water undulated with tiny waves as a moorhen swam across.
‘I like your fishing rod,’ Barry said. ‘Where’d you get it?’
Sean followed Barry up the bank and onto the pathway that ran along the edge of the canal. ‘It was my dad’s.’
‘I thought all your shite got burned in the fire?’
‘The stuff in the shed survived.’ Sean hoisted the old green army bag onto his shoulder and held his father’s fishing rod with both hands. ‘Where do you want to set down?’
‘Just a bit further on. Caught a trout up here yesterday.’
‘Liar,’ Sean laughed.
The path opened up in front of them once they had crossed the Dublin Bridge. Sean caught up with Barry and they walked side by side until they reached the section where the canal was joined by the supply river.
‘This is the best place,’ Barry said, and dropped his bag.
Sean decided not to argue. Barry handed him a can of cider. Shit, his mother would kill him. But she wouldn’t know, so he took it, flipped the tab and took a sip. He looked at the sun, creeping up the sky.
Yeah, it was going to be a great day.
Four
Hope opened her eyes. She was lying flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. She could see dots of blood peppered in a V directly above her head. She glanced at her arm, where the line of an IV ran from her bloodied wrist up to a drip bag.
The baby was gone. She knew that. The little body that had grown in her belly for the last nine months, twisting and turning, was no more. The pain had eased but she could feel the child’s shadow as though it had refused to let go even after the last contraction and burst of pain. And after that? She could not recall.
‘Oh, you’re awake.’ A nurse in a white tunic lifted Hope’s wrist, jiggled the drip bag and tightened a blood pressure monitor around her upper arm.
The hiss of the expanding cuff pinched Hope’s arm but it was nothing like the pain she had experienced a few hours ago. Or was it days? She had no memory of what had occurred. Why not?
‘How long … how long have I been here?’ Her voice sounded raw, not like hers at all.
‘You were brought in by ambulance about an hour ago.’ The nurse wrote notes in the chart at the foot of the bed. ‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘What? Why do you want to know?’
‘For one, I can’t keep calling you “the girl in cubicle three”. And two, we need it for our records.’
Hope toyed with the idea of giving a false name, but she knew she would be found out. Eventually.
‘Hope Cotter.’
‘Address?’ The nurse was scribbling on a clipboard.
‘Fifty-three Munbally Grove.’ Hope waited for a reaction as she gave the address from the wrong end of town. But there was none. And how come she could remember those details but not what had led to her being here?
‘I’ll get a doctor to come in to have a word with you. No more talking for the time being, and don’t go back to sleep yet, do you hear?’
‘You said something about an ambulance? How … Who … I don’t understand …’
‘Now what did I say about not talking? Rest yourself. The doctor will answer all your questions.’ The nurse made to leave, then turned. ‘The gardaí want a word with you too.’
‘What?’
But the door had already swung shut, leaving Hope alone with her fuzzy memories and a knot of fear tightening in her chest. Why did the guards want to talk to her? She didn’t know what was going on.
But there was one thing she knew for sure.
She had to get out of here.
And soon.
Five
‘Who did she kill?’ Sitting at his desk, black hair flopping over his forehead, Acting Superintendent David McMahon was staring at Lottie like he wanted to laser her in two.
Lottie stuck her hands into her jeans pockets and leaned back against the wall of his office.
‘That’s a bit presumptuous, sir.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.
If he starts to swivel, Lottie thought, I’ll swing for him. But he didn’t move.
He continued. ‘She appears at the station, covered in blood, announcing, and I quote, “I think I killed him.” That sounds to me like there’s a body out there waiting to be found.’
‘According to the A&E consultant, she had delivered a baby and the placenta was still intact, so it caused a major haemorrhage. It’s probable that the blood was her own.’
‘And you’re a doctor now, are you?’ he grunted. ‘Have blood tests been run yet?’
‘Being analysed as we speak.’
‘So you don’t actually know whether the blood on her clothes is her own or someone else’s?’
‘Not yet,’ Lottie admitted. She clenched her hands into fists inside the pockets of her jeans. She was sure McMahon knew he was infuriating her. As usual. But she had to admit he was right.
‘Therefore, you must treat her as a suspect in a murder. This is top priority. Go and find me the body.’
‘With respect, sir—’
‘No more is to be said on the matter.’ He stood, swiping his hair from his eyes, two pinpricks boring into her. He smoothed down his double-breasted waistcoat and buttoned up his jacket. ‘Get to it, Parker.’
‘For feck’s sake,’ she said under her breath as she pushed herself away from the wall and left his office.
McMahon had been gunning for her from day one. He had yet to hit the mark, but he was getting closer with each passing day. Lottie had got the better of him in a case last October when he’d been drafted in from the drugs squad. But when her superintendent, Myles Corrigan, had had to take sick leave, McMahon had secured the acting job ahead of her. As further punishment, he was continually bombarding her with paperwork, which she hated, and the pile was rising as high as his temper. Every morning he called her in to check on progress. At least this morning he’d had a different tune.
She headed for her own office, situated at the back of the main area. It was little more than a cubicle, much like the space their unknown gir
l was occupying in the hospital at the moment. But at least Lottie had a glass door rather than a curtain. Where was the girl’s baby? And was it dead or alive?
* * *
Detectives Larry Kirby and Maria Lynch were seated at their desks and neither raised their head as Lottie made her way past them.
‘Where’s Boyd?’ she asked, noticing his vacant chair.
Two sets of shoulders shrugged in answer.
‘What’s up with everyone?’ She knew it was a rhetorical question, but all the same, it bugged her when neither detective replied.
‘Have it your own way,’ she muttered and slammed her door. Sinking into the chair, she wished she could escape to a desert island. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with three kids and a grandson to take care of.
She clicked on her computer, scrunched her eyes trying to remember her password, then shoved the keyboard away.
Her phone vibrated. Mother flashed on the screen. She rejected the call. Could the woman not leave her alone while she was at work? It was bad enough that Lottie had to live in her house and spend the evenings with her. At least she was in the process of decorating a rental house, with the help of Maria Lynch’s husband, Ben, but the day she and the children moved out couldn’t come quick enough. Hopefully it would happen early next week. She knew the kids needed their own space too. And soon. Otherwise Katie was in danger of murdering her younger sister. And Sean? Well, he was no bother—
The desk phone rang. Surely her mother wasn’t that insistent? But it was a nurse from the hospital. With news.
Lottie took down the name and address of the bloodied teenager and hung up. Just as she was about to leave, her mobile vibrated again.
‘Look, Mother, I’m busy,’ she said without checking the caller ID.
‘Lottie, are you okay?’ It was Father Joe.
Tell Nobody: Absolutely gripping crime fiction with unputdownable mystery and suspense Page 2
