‘Eddie is gone. Don’t talk about him,’ she said.
Denial, thought Lottie, but she persisted. ‘And Dad, can we talk about him?’
‘The chicken will be cooked in another half-hour. Watch the water doesn’t boil off the spuds.’ Rose pulled on her coat and hat. ‘You can heat everything up in the microwave for dinner this evening.’
‘I suppose we can’t talk about them, then,’ Lottie said, wryly.
‘You need a man in your life, Lottie Parker,’ Rose said, hand on the door.
‘What?’ asked Lottie, wrong-footed.
‘Boyd? Is that his name? The long, skinny one. Nice man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know right well what I mean. And bring those kiddies to visit soon.’
Lottie wasn’t keeping them away – they had made the decision themselves that they’d had enough of their meddling grandmother.
On the doorstep, Rose said, ‘By the way, I saw your interview on the news.’
‘And?’
‘Not very impressive, madam.’ She drew her hat over her ears. ‘You could have masked those bruises with a touch of make-up.’
As always, her mother got in the last word.
Lottie slammed the door. She turned off the cooker, drained the potatoes and dumped them in the pedal bin. She threw out the chicken too. She was damned if she was going to eat anything prepared by her domineering mother. She would rather starve.
Her hangover was pulsating now, but she had to go to work.
Thirty-Two
As the morning sleet eased, the temperatures rose unexpectedly.
‘Listen to that,’ Garda Gillian O’Donoghue said.
‘To what?’ asked Garda Tom Tierney.
‘Snow melting.’
The sound was like a forest of humming birds, such was the intensity of the thaw. They were standing at the door of James Brown’s cottage.
‘Positively balmy,’ Tierney said. ‘A warm plus one beats minus ten on New Year’s Eve.’
‘I’m going for a walk around the garden. My feet are in a state of perpetual frozenness,’ O’Donoghue said.
‘Is that even a proper word?’
‘Who cares?’ she laughed and headed along the path to the back garden, enthralled by the greenery being slowly exposed through the shifting snow. The white beauty had been magical for the first few days until it became an unbearable burden. She breathed in the cool air and listened to the thaw.
As she turned, a snatch of colour under a tree caught her eye. She walked toward it, then backed away, shouting, ‘Tom. Tom!’
A hand, cuffed in black, protruded from the snow.
O’Donoghue reached for the radio pinned to her chest.
By the time Lottie and Boyd arrived, the garden was a scene of organised commotion.
Lottie groaned. This was more work in three days than they’d seen in the last two years. She hadn’t even had time to get her head around her mother’s revelations. Boyd and Maria Lynch had met her on the station steps with the news and they’d driven to James Brown’s house as quickly as the slush allowed.
She walked with Lynch around the back, both keeping their eyes peeled for any evidence that might be exposed. Boyd spoke with the uniformed officers.
Lottie spotted the SOCOs team leader, Jim McGlynn. He smirked.
‘The bastard,’ Lottie said.
‘Who?’ asked Lynch.
‘McGlynn.’
He was laughing at her. Pity he wasn’t under her command. She’d have him sifting pig shit for the rest of his working life, looking for invisible dioxins.
The garden was compact. A shed and a wooden table with chairs leaning against it occupied the patio area to the left of the back door. Evergreen trees bordered two sides of the enclosure, a wall at the end and snowy fields beyond. McGlynn worked the area, painstakingly removing snow and revealing the victim.
Lottie waited. Eventually the body was fully exposed. Male, face down, clothed in a black jacket and trousers. The visible hand appeared wrinkle free, with a silver ring. Pieces of glass and black plastic were scattered around and over the body. McGlynn was picking them up with tweezers and placing them in an evidence bag.
‘A phone?’ Lottie asked.
‘Smashed to bits,’ he said. ‘I doubt even our best technicians will get anything from it.’
‘How long has the body been here?’
‘I’m waiting for the state pathologist,’ McGlynn answered, sharply.
‘Prick,’ Lottie said, under her breath.
Jane Dore breezed on to the site suited up in her protective gear and acknowledged Lottie with a swift shake of her head.
‘Someone must think I’ve nothing to do, they keep supplying me with bodies.’
‘Agreed,’ Lottie said, standing to one side while the pathologist carried out her preliminary examination.
‘Appears to be strangulation,’ Jane said. ‘There’s a ligature mark on his neck. On initial observation I can determine frozen snow under the body. It’s quite possible he was killed within the last week. The arctic temperatures have preserved him in perfect condition.’
Perfect condition, except he is dead, thought Lottie. She felt like puking, her hangover unrelenting.
‘Do you think this is the crime scene?’ she asked and realised that if the body had been here a week, the man had been killed prior to the Sullivan and Brown deaths.
‘I’ll know more when I get him on my table.’
‘And you’ll inform me if he has a tattoo?’
‘Of course,’ the pathologist said and, with short, careful steps, left the scene.
Lottie’s headache intensified. The body count was rising. Corrigan was boiling. The press were baying. The public were terrified and her team were no nearer any explanation for all or any of the murders. Welcome to La La Land, Inspector Parker. She scratched her head. Fucking hell.
‘You okay?’ Boyd was at her shoulder.
‘Who is he?’ she asked.
‘How do I know?’
She bit back a retort and looked at Boyd. His face seemed thinner, if that were possible. ‘It was a rhetorical question. The victim was more than likely killed before Sullivan and Brown.’
With the body turned over on to his back, Lottie looked at the bloated, blackened face.
‘I’d estimate mid-thirties,’ she said and watched patiently as the SOCOs bagged the body and removed it from the scene.
McGlynn held up a small plastic evidence bag.
‘Blue fibre,’ Lottie noted.
‘From around the neck,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ Lottie said. Similar rope to that wound round James Brown’s neck.
‘No wallet or identification but there are two cigarette ends here,’ McGlynn said, picking up one with tweezers.
‘Belonging to the victim?’
‘Possibly. Or his killer.’ He dropped it into an evidence bag.
Lottie watched McGlynn at work for a few minutes before going into the house.
‘That body isn’t a million miles from the description we have of Father Angelotti,’ Boyd said, trailing her inside.
‘The face is unrecognisable and we’ve no record of distinguishing marks to check for,’ Lottie said. ‘We’ll have to wait for a formal identification. Otherwise, it’s down to DNA analysis.’
‘Whoever he is, someone has to be missing him.’
‘There’s no car,’ Lottie remarked, looking out the front window. ‘How did he get out here?’
‘Maybe the killer drove him or he got a taxi,’ Boyd said. ‘Why was he here? That’s another question.’
‘And did Brown know him?’
‘We have too many questions and not enough answers,’ Boyd said.
‘Find out what you can.’
‘He could’ve been Brown’s lover. He drove him here and killed him in a jealous rage,’ Boyd ventured.
‘I suppose now you think Brown killed this man, strangled Sullivan, then hung himsel
f?’ Lottie shook her head in annoyance.
Boyd said nothing, pulled out another cigarette and went outside to light it. Following him, Lottie stepped into the slushy yard. Her brain was a muddle.
She could do with a drink.
She settled for one of Boyd’s cigarettes and told him about the conversations with Doctor Annabelle O’Shea and her mother.
Thirty-Three
At the station they added the unknown victim and details from the scene to the incident board. Lottie supported the theory whereby visually interpreting data was more productive than information in databases which could be missed or forgotten. Not that they had much to interpret.
She assigned the task of resurrecting information on Sally Stynes aka Susan Sullivan to a detective and wondered where she could get her hands on St Angela’s records. Discovering more about the institution just might reveal something about Susan Sullivan. Lottie returned her attention to the latest victim.
‘If it hadn’t snowed so heavily,’ she said, ‘the body might have been found—’
‘A week ago,’ Boyd interjected.
‘Yes. Unless the killer was following the weather forecast, he wanted that body found.’
‘And there was no attempt to cover it up.’
‘Just the snow.’
‘If it hadn’t snowed . . .’ Boyd began.
‘But it did. Was it an attempt to point the finger at—’
‘James Brown? When the body wasn’t found, for some reason, the murderer had to kill Sullivan and Brown.’ Boyd paused then continued, ‘Brown could still have carried out this murder though.’
‘Oh, this conjecture is pointless.’ Lottie sighed with exasperation.
Looking at the board, she noticed they had no photograph of Father Angelotti. She made a quick phone call, grabbed her coat, and sidestepping Boyd, hurried out of the building.
‘Hello, Sister. I’m here to see Father Burke. He’s expecting me.’
The nun directed her to the room where she’d sat the first day. Lottie walked around the mahogany furniture looking at the large portraits of long-dead bishops hanging on the walls. They’d put the fear of God in you, she thought.
‘Wouldn’t they put the fear of God in you?’ Father Joe said, walking in behind her.
‘I was thinking the exact same thing.’ She grinned at him. Synchronicity?
‘Tea? Sister Anna will oblige.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘How can I help? It sounded urgent on the phone.’
‘I need a photograph of Father Angelotti,’ Lottie said. She didn’t really need it, they had the hairbrush for DNA comparisons.
‘You haven’t found him yet?’ He went to a computer in the corner where he printed a photograph. She could have done that herself. Wasn’t it just an excuse to see him again? She shouldn’t have come here. Her logic and emotion were contradictory. So was she.
Studying the photo, she wrinkled up her nose. It was possible he was the body in Brown’s garden.
‘Does Father Angelotti smoke?’ she asked, recalling the stale tobacco smell in the priest’s room and the cigarette butts at the scene.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Hold on.’ He phoned someone, listened and hung up.
‘According to Father Eoin, Bishop Connor’s secretary, he did smoke. Why do you need to know?’
‘Gathering as much information as possible.’ She switched the conversation. ‘What do you know about St Angela’s?’
‘St Angela’s? Not a lot. It ceased operating as a children’s home in the early eighties. I think it was a retirement place for nuns before it closed permanently. It was sold a few years ago.’
‘What happened to the records?’
‘I presume they were archived,’ he said. ‘Why the questions about St Angela’s?’
‘How would I go about finding out where the records are?’ Lottie ignored his query.
‘All very mysterious, Inspector, but leave it with me. I can do some amateur detecting for you.’
Lottie caught a glint of mischief in his eye and thought she saw the boy he once was, before the white collar of Rome shackled him to austere adulthood. She rose to leave, holding out her hand. He seemed to hold it for a second longer than necessary or was it her imagination?
‘You have my number. Let me know as soon as you find anything,’ she said.
‘Of course I will.’
Father Joe searched the diocesan records on the local area network, using his personal password. He keyed in St Angela’s.
Access denied.
Unusual.
He rang Father Eoin.
‘I seem to be having difficulty finding the diocesan records database,’ he said.
‘Bishop Connor engaged a consultant to revamp our intranet. He wanted increased security.’
‘But surely these records are available to us priests.’
‘You can have my password. See if it gets you in. I’m sure Bishop Connor won’t mind.’
‘You’re a lifesaver.’
Hanging up, he entered the new password.
He was in.
He looked at the cursor flashing on the blank screen.
There were no records relating to St Angela’s.
He grabbed for his phone again.
Thirty-Four
‘You what?’ Boyd exploded when Lottie told him where she’d been. ‘Have you lost your mind?’
‘What’s your problem? He’s sure to have avenues we don’t know about.’ Why was she justifying her actions to Boyd?
‘You’re still drunk,’ he said. ‘That’s the only logical conclusion.’
‘Lower your voice,’ Lottie said, looking around to see who was listening to the interchange. Lynch and Kirby were keeping their heads studiously down.
‘He’s a suspect in the Sullivan murder.’ Boyd paced, his long legs carrying him from wall to wall in three strides.
Her headache intensified with each step he hammered on the floor.
‘I didn’t tell him why I wanted the records or for that matter what records I was looking for. I need to know of their existence and current whereabouts.’
‘For argument’s sake, if he is the murderer, he either knows there’s something you want in those records and will destroy them, if they’re not already destroyed, or if he didn’t know before, now he does and will destroy them anyway.’
‘You’re talking pure shite, Boyd.’ She pulled out a chair and flopped down.
‘What do you want with them anyway?’ he asked, standing in front of her.
‘I don’t know.’
She wished she was back in her own office. At least there she could think without an audience.
‘The records may have nothing to do with our case. It’s just a hunch at this stage. Ticking boxes,’ she said.
‘Speaking of boxes, did you take my spare cigarettes this morning?’ Boyd asked, throwing an empty packet in the bin.
Lottie dug the box out of her pocket and threw it at him. He caught it and marched out the door.
‘Lynch?’
‘Inspector?’
‘I’m going out for a while.’
Lottie was convinced Ragmullin Cemetery was the coldest place in Ireland. The icy wind swirled around her and the cold sun cast a shimmering mist through the headstones. Eerie monoliths, standing in the shade of large pine trees, flung deep shadows on the graves, slowing the thaw. Crystallised snow, frosted to Christmas wreaths, added an unlikely mystical feel to the surroundings.
The wind increased momentarily and rustled the plastic wrapping on a poinsettia potted plant. The red head, blackened and wilting under the weight of snow, was a reminder that someone had visited to leave a token for those no longer alive but living on in a memory.
A tall granite cross marked the four short decades Adam had spent in this world. She hadn’t visited for some time, avoided it at Christmas and now, with the solitude of the cemetery wrapping itself around her like a threadbare shawl providing little
comfort, Lottie apologised to Adam.
‘It’s too lonely here,’ she told the stone cross. ‘I keep you in my heart.’
She squinted around at the other tombstones with their stories hidden deep within hewn granite. A chime tinkled in the stillness and a chill traversed her spine. Time to go. She had secrets to unearth and a killer to catch.
As she walked out through the open gates Lottie noticed the silhouette of St Angela’s, across the fields about a mile in the distance, shrouded in a soft grey mist. What skeletons lay buried deep within its walls? How many lives had it damaged? She thought of Susan and her baby. She remembered another child who had disappeared a long time ago. Was he dead? Would he ever rest within the grounds of a cemetery? Was that missing boy the real reason she wanted to see the old records? She wasn’t at all sure of her motives. But she knew she could never forget that child. He was missing so long, others may have forgotten about him but she hadn’t. Her constant checking of his file was more than an exercise in memory, it was a means of keeping him deeply planted in her mind. The day she had joined the Garda Síochána, following in her late father’s footsteps, she had promised herself she would find him. So far she had failed in delivering on that promise.
She hurried back to her car before the ghosts of the past rested heavier on her shoulders.
Thirty-Five
Lottie sat with Boyd in front of bank manager Mike O’Brien. She’d taken an instant dislike to the man the moment he’d sat down behind his desk without as much as a hello. But Boyd knew him. They shared the same gym and coached Ragmullin’s underage hurling team. Lottie wondered if he’d ever trained Sean. She knew Boyd had.
‘You have the Brown and Sullivan bank statements,’ O’Brien said, ‘so, what else do you want from me?’
His small eyes reminded Lottie of a ferret her son had once attempted to bring home as a pet. Dark and shifty. She had the feeling that O’Brien was trying to second-guess her, puffing out his chest and desperately failing to make himself look important. Dandruff from his too-long grey hair speckled the shoulders of his black suit. Diamond cufflinks sparkled at his wrists, glittering under the fluorescent lighting. Here was a man trying to look half his age, only succeeding in looking older. Tough shit, O’Brien. But as he had led them into his office a moment ago, she had noticed his quick athletic stride. Hours in the gym paid off for some people. If you had the time, she told herself.
The Missing Ones: An absolutely gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 1) Page 14
