The Stolen Girls

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘I think I know someone who might be able to answer that.’

  Lottie somehow followed his train of thought. ‘McNally?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He has something to do with this?’

  ‘I think so. Jackie mentioned he might be involved in human trafficking.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Lottie edged out past Boyd. The suffocating room was giving her a headache.

  Boyd said, ‘I had a run-in with him this morning.’

  ‘Where? You know we’ve been trying to locate him for a week.’

  ‘He came to mine looking for Jackie.’

  ‘She stayed the night? Jesus, Boyd, will you never learn?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. She’s scared of him.’

  ‘A likely story. Where is he staying?’

  ‘Parkview Hotel. Though Jackie says he hasn’t really been there. He must have somewhere else to hide out.’

  ‘You had him, Boyd. Why didn’t you arrest him?’

  ‘For what? He has no outstanding warrants. Instructions were to watch him. Now we know where he’s staying.’

  ‘He assaulted you, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Too late now.’ Lottie relented. ‘We’ll check out the hotel. Send the note for analysis and get it translated immediately. We need to find Mimoza and I need to talk to Superintendent Corrigan about her son.’

  ‘Don’t say anything about—’

  ‘I’ll say what the situation dictates I need to say.’ Lottie wiped the sweat from her nose and shook her head. ‘You’re a grade-A eejit, Boyd.’ She held her hand palm upward and stepped away as he was about to speak. ‘And don’t even try to blame Kirby.’

  FIFTY-SIX

  ‘You feckin’ what?’

  The tubed light fitting rattled with the force of Superintendent Corrigan’s roar. He stood up, then crashed back down into his chair, a squeal of air escaping from the leather. He looked worse than he’d done all week, despite his day off work. A cotton swab was plastered crookedly across his sore eye behind his spectacles.

  ‘Things just got ahead of me and I had no time to deal with him.’ Without an invitation to sit, Lottie remained standing, arms folded, trying to make herself look full of a confidence she didn’t feel.

  ‘You didn’t even make a phone call, let alone fill out a form.’ Corrigan swept his hand over his forehead in despair. ‘You know the shite we had to deal with before with that shower.’

  ‘I know, sir. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t want Milot going into the system.’

  ‘You have to go by the book. You can’t give them a reason to crucify us. I’m disappointed in you.’

  ‘If you’d let me explain—’ she began.

  He cut her off with a raised hand. ‘No, Inspector. You leave me no choice.’

  Lottie dropped her hands, leaned on his desk.

  ‘Choice? What choice does that little boy have? What choice does his mother have, wherever she is? What choice do those unwanted souls in the DPC have? Don’t talk to me about choice. Don’t. Sir.’

  Stopping to catch her breath, it struck her with alarming clarity what she’d done. Bawled out her superior officer in his own office. He looked at her coldly, the silence seeming to last an eternity.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said at last, his voice way too soft. She was in deep shit. ‘Inspector Parker,’ he repeated, ‘I don’t take kindly to being spoken to like that. You have some nerve. I honestly don’t know what to do with you. While I’m making up my mind, contact that feckin’ agency and get a social worker to the child. Find his mother. And don’t ever, ever speak to me like that again. Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And put a uniformed officer on every site those contractors are working on. I don’t want to give this killer any opportunity to bury another body.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘We need to find the bastard before he kills anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ Lottie turned to leave.

  ‘Don’t thank me. This is your very last chance. Feck up again and don’t even wait for me to suspend you. Take it as given.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Reaching her office, Lottie spotted Maria Lynch hard at work.

  ‘Lynch, can you get me the Child and Family Agency on the phone. I need to speak to a social worker.’

  * * *

  The incident room was buzzing as Lottie entered. The agency had told her that a social worker, Eamon Carter, would call to her home. She had succeeded in putting him off until late afternoon.

  ‘First things first,’ she said. ‘Superintendent Corrigan wants uniforms active on every site the contractors are working on. I’m not sure we can spare the personnel, but he’s not in the mood to be disobeyed.’

  She pinned up a photocopy of Mimoza’s note from Boyd’s wallet. It might only be a cry for help, but maybe it could tell her something more. The cloth had been dispatched for forensic analysis. She looked up as Kirby sauntered in, swigging from a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  ‘The stud has at last decided to grace us with his presence,’ she mocked.

  Kirby, with the bottle halfway between his lips and his belly, stood with his mouth open.

  She saw Boyd shake his head. Taking the hint, Kirby went to answer the nearest ringing phone.

  ‘When you finish that call, I want to see the two of you in my office,’ Lottie said. ‘I mean our office. And the rest of you better find something concrete before this day is out. I want a warrant to search the DPC. And go back over all the door-to-door reports; read interview transcripts; cross-reference everything we have; check all the CCTV cameras that work in this godforsaken town. Find out who owns that van and how it came to be in Weir’s yard. Someone is missing those girls. Someone somewhere saw something, even if they don’t remember seeing it.’

  Pausing for no more than a single breath, she pointed to Garda Gillian O’Donoghue. ‘You, talk to every retailer with rear business entrances onto Columb Street again. That body didn’t get buried by itself. And you’ – she singled out another uniformed garda – ‘re-interview everyone who lives on Bridge Street where the first victim was buried. Same thing applies. Someone saw something. This is no invisible killer, though I swear to God it feels like it.’

  A phone chirped away unanswered in the silence. ‘And someone answer that phone. Am I working with a crowd of children? Am I?’

  ‘No, Inspector,’ came the collective answer.

  ‘Well you better prove it to me. If my arse is on the line, you can be damn sure all of yours are too.’

  Feeling her face burning and her heart thumping double beats, she slammed out of the room and marched down the corridor with Boyd and Kirby close behind.

  * * *

  ‘Detective Lynch, I need a moment alone with these two,’ Lottie said. ‘And I want that note translated.’

  ‘Who will I—’

  ‘I don’t care who you get, just get it done.’

  Lynch picked up a stack of files and left with a shake of her head.

  Turning to face her other two detectives, Lottie paused, allowing them to sweat a little more. Condensation slid down the bottle in Kirby’s hands. He placed it on the nearest desk. Boyd’s. She heard Boyd sigh; watched him lift it up and wipe away the ring of damp with his fingers. He threw the bottle into the bin.

  ‘Sit,’ Lottie said.

  They did.

  Walking around the cramped office, she said, ‘I’m disappointed in the two of you. Visiting a brothel is unacceptable behaviour for men in your position. I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you of ethics, codes of conduct, et cetera, et cetera.’ Jesus, she thought, I’m not a great one to be lecturing on conduct.

  Kirby’s eyes bulged towards Boyd. Of course Boyd hadn’t had time to warn him. Lottie pounced.

  ‘Brothel? Mean anything to you, Detective Kirby? Hill Point brothel in particular.’

  She had expected his rotund c
heeks to flush with embarrassment, but they drained of all colour.

  ‘And don’t even attempt to deny it.’

  Kirby slapped around his breast pocket, searching for a cigar.

  ‘As you appear to have been well acquainted with this house of ill repute, tell me who ran it and where the fuck they are now.’

  ‘I… I… I’ve no idea,’ Kirby mumbled.

  ‘Oh but you have. Anya. Isn’t that the name of the lady of the house? Detective Sergeant Boyd filled me in on what he knows. I’m waiting to hear what you know.’

  Shaking his head of bushy hair, Kirby appeared to be arguing with himself, without looking in Boyd’s direction. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘I just knew her as Anya. I’d only been there once before… before the other night. She’s Albanian, I think. Had four girls working for her. I got the same one the twice I visited. So there might not be a big turnover of… women.’

  With her stomach somersaulting, Lottie looked away from him. How could this grown man, a law-abiding citizen, an enforcer of the law, engage in such activity?

  ‘You have a long way to climb to get back in my good books, Kirby. A long, long way. Do you know if Jamie McNally is involved?’

  ‘McNally? No, never heard him mentioned in relation to it.’

  ‘Well, you can start by finding out everything about this Anya. Who she worked for. Who supplied her girls. Where she is now. And McNally’s role. Got it?’

  ‘But that’s a job for either the anti-human trafficking team or the immigration bureau,’ Kirby spluttered.

  ‘If I bring them in, I’ll have to land you and Boyd right in the middle of it all. Do you want that?’

  ‘No, Inspector, but—’

  ‘No buts in my vocabulary. Get to it. Now!’

  ‘With all due respect, boss, what has this got to do with the murders?’

  Lottie breathed in deeply and exhaled long and loud. ‘For all we know, it could have everything to do with the murders. Boyd, you saw Mimoza in the brothel. Right?’

  ‘I’m almost sure it was her,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Mimoza communicated with me via a letter. She left you a note. She can’t speak our language so it’s her only way of communicating. I’m sure she’s the key to the two murdered girls.’

  ‘It’s the only lead we have,’ he agreed.

  She left them to it, and went to find where Maria Lynch had buried herself.

  * * *

  ‘The lad who translated for me before isn’t in today. Google Translate tells me this note is someone asking for help. It is Kosovar Albanian, though.’ Lynch handed over a printout.

  Lottie read: Help me. Find my son. Asylum centre.

  ‘It has to have been written by Mimoza. She has a son,’ she said.

  ‘Where did you get this note from?’ Lynch eyed her with a furrowed brow.

  Lottie debated bringing her in on Boyd’s role in the whole debacle, but decided the fewer people who knew the better. For now.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, but it confirms what we already knew. Mimoza and her son were resident with the asylum seekers at the direct provision centre. She came to me originally looking for a missing friend, Kaltrina. I now suspect this Kaltrina is our second unidentified victim though I’ve no idea who the first victim is. Somehow Mimoza ended up in a brothel after escaping from the DPC. Her son was left on my doorstep. Around the same time, the brothel residents shut up shop and disappeared, Mimoza along with them.’

  ‘People can’t just disappear like that.’

  ‘But they do. All the time.’

  Lynch pored over the file in front of her. She looked utterly exhausted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lottie said, ‘for working you so hard.’

  ‘It’s fine. We have to find this killer.’

  Checking the time on her phone, Lottie saw she still had a few hours before her meeting with the social worker about Milot.

  ‘I’m going to see if Dan Russell is at work today. He definitely has some explaining to do.’

  ‘Want me to come with you?’

  ‘No. This is something I’m going to handle my own way. There are a few things he needs to clarify for me.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Things you don’t need to concern yourself with.’ Lottie shoved her phone into her jeans pocket and moved to the door.

  ‘Inspector?’ Lynch said.

  Lottie turned.

  ‘Be careful.’

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Chloe opened the refrigerator, glanced at the empty shelves and closed the door again. ‘We need groceries, Katie, and shut that whingeing child up.’ She filled a glass of water from the tap and stared out at the garden.

  ‘You know it’s about twenty-five degrees out. Why’re you going around wearing long sleeves?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Mind your own business.’ Chloe stomped barefoot out the back door.

  ‘Whatever,’ Katie said, soothing Milot on her knee.

  Sitting on a garden chair, Chloe sipped her water and chipped away at the varnish peeling from the table. The smell of barbecued food blew across the fence. Proper families having a proper Saturday, she thought. Her family was anything but proper. A tear escaped and fell unhindered down her face. Surrounded by so many, she had never felt so alone.

  A train rumbled slowly along the tracks above as it made its way into the station. Maybe she should buy a one-way ticket out of Ragmullin. Could she leave her stress behind? Dodge her exams and escape her mother? With no more varnish to pick at, she felt her nail move towards the skin of her arm beneath her sleeve. There she found an old scab and worried away at it until dark red blood stained the white cotton. She felt no pain. Just unending numbness.

  Looking up at the trees sheltering the garden, she thought she saw something glinting in the sunlight. As if the sun had caught a mirror and reflected a laser back at her. Squinting, her hand shielding her eyes, she spotted it again. Was someone up there among the trees? Watching her? Was it him? She gagged at the memory of when she’d last seen him. She could feel the heat of his tongue in her mouth. Retching, she stood up quickly, dropping the glass. It shattered on the patio, the fragments glittering like icicles in the sun. The tiny shards cut into her bare feet. She skidded across them and fell into the kitchen.

  ‘Chloe! You’re a fucking asshole. There’s blood everywhere. Mam will have a fit.’

  ‘Clean it up then if you’re so worried.’

  Chloe continued through to the hall and up the stairs, tears and blood flowing with her.

  He shoved the binoculars back into their case, zipped it up and scanned his surroundings. She had seen him. Stared right up at him. No, she couldn’t have seen him. But she had looked directly at his position. Then he knew. The sun. It must have reflected off the glass of the binoculars. He should have been more careful. Stupid mistake.

  He comforted himself with the thought that she would only have noticed the reflection of light. There was no way she could have seen him. His camouflage clothes against the greenery had done their job. Of course they had.

  Hoisting the black leather bag onto his shoulder, he moved back the way he had come that morning. He knew the train times. He remained hidden until the Dublin express exited the station and picked up speed as it headed on its journey. Crossing over the tracks, he walked down the well-worn slope into the rear garden of a deserted boarded-up house. Keeping close to the fence, he removed his hat and tugged off his jacket, and ran his fingers over his sweating head. After putting everything into his bag, he walked out the side gate and on to the footpath. Whistling as he went, he mingled with the Saturday shoppers and smiled as he made his way to the place he now called home.

  Maybe he should go to work.

  That sounded like a good idea.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  ‘Inspector Parker. What a pleasant surprise.’ Dan Russell was leaning against his car, parked outside Block A. ‘Why don’t you come up to my office?’ he continued, smirking.

  �
��I’m fine here.’ Lottie was determined to keep control of the situation. ‘I need to confirm a couple of things with you.’

  Russell ceased his smirking. ‘Okay. What is it you want?’ he asked shortly.

  ‘Mimoza. What have you done with her?’

  ‘Have you found her yet?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘I told you she was resident here, along with her son. Now they’re gone.’

  ‘What did you do with them?’ Lottie repeated.

  ‘Nothing. They were awaiting processing and they just disappeared.’

  ‘Well I’m processing a warrant to search this building, in particular your office files. I want to know everything there is to know about Mimoza, and believe me, I will find it out.’

  He took a step towards her. Lottie held up her hand to stop him. Her handbag slid down her other arm and fell to the ground, spilling its contents, including the photo of Adam she had found in her mother’s attic.

  ‘What’s that?’ He pointed to the photograph.

  ‘Nothing.’ She picked it up, shoved it back into her bag along with the rest of her stuff. ‘I need all the information you have on Mimoza. We’ve got a new lead.’

  ‘What new lead?’

  ‘I believe the girl is in danger. I want to know where she came from, how she ended up as an asylum seeker. Why her name isn’t on the official database.’

  ‘She should be on it.’

  ‘Well, she isn’t. I’ve checked it myself. Do you maintain a list of your own? A list of people here separate from the asylum seekers, for instance?’

  ‘That’s a preposterous accusation.’

  ‘You yourself informed me that Mimoza had been here, but her name doesn’t appear on the Department of Justice database. Explain that.’

  ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘Yes. And you’ve made it, Mr Russell. A big mistake.’

  For a moment she thought he looked worried before he recovered his composure.

  ‘Come up to my office,’ he said, walking away from her.