The Stolen Girls

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘Such a beautiful girl. And if she’s like the others, there’ll be no one to claim her damaged body.’

  Boyd shook his head and ducked out of the tent. Lottie followed, and while Boyd waited for Jim McGlynn, she decided it was time to talk to Petrovci, the common denominator between all the victims.

  As she reached him, he turned to face her. The scar on his face appeared more pronounced, deeper and darker in the rain. But his eyes were the same. Filled with pain and hurt.

  ‘Mr Petrovci. We meet again.’ She folded her arms.

  ‘I tell detective.’ He pointed to Lynch, who was desperately trying to shield her notebook from disintegrating. Rain dripped from Petrovci’s ears and nose. His T-shirt and singlet clung to his chest. Hands deep in sopping-wet jeans pockets. Black work boots covered in mud.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lottie insisted.

  He sighed but kept his lips tightly shut.

  Lynch swung round to Lottie. ‘Mr Dermody informed me they drove here to fix the lock and discovered the body. Together.’

  ‘When were you at this location before today?’ Lottie directed her question to Dermody.

  The man was a shivering wreck. ‘A few days ago. A week maybe. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Was it secured?’

  ‘No. Lock was busted. We got a call to come and fix it this morning. Decided to pick up some tools at the same time. She’s dead, isn’t she? The girl.’

  Lottie nodded.

  Lynch closed her sopping notebook. ‘That’s the general gist of what he told me.’

  ‘This call you got. Who was it from?’ Lottie asked Dermody.

  ‘Some geezer from head office, I presume. I didn’t know the number but he seemed to know what he was talking about.’ He stopped, his mouth hanging open. ‘You don’t think…’

  ‘At the moment, Mr Dermody, I don’t know what to think. And you?’ Lottie enquired of Petrovci. ‘What have you to say?’

  Andri Petrovci pulled his hands out of his pockets and raised them to the skies. ‘It evil,’ he cried. ‘So evil. Why I have to see all these bodies?’

  ‘Do you know who this girl is?’ Lottie asked him briskly.

  Petrovci shook his head.

  Lottie sniffed. ‘She was lying there waiting for you to come along and find her, was she?’

  ‘I not know. She just there. Like she… asleep.’ His shoulders slumped. He looked small and beaten.

  ‘I don’t understand how you have found three bodies in the space of a week,’ Lottie said. ‘It makes no sense. Unless…’

  ‘What?’ he implored.

  ‘Unless you killed them.’

  The wail from his lips took her by surprise and she stepped back as if his scream had physically propelled her. Words flowed from him. Unintelligible words. A language she had no knowledge of. Rain continued to fall in torrents. The ground at their feet swelled with turbid waters. The skies cracked with a flash of lightning and the air splintered with the explosion of thunder. It was not long past midday, but suddenly it was dark.

  Petrovci screamed. ‘Ju lutem!’

  Lottie said, ‘What is wrong with you? Take him to the station, Lynch.’

  The scene around her was like a negative. Everything inverted and obscure. With another streak of lightning cracking the black sky like shattered crockery, she wondered, had she been looking at this the wrong way round the whole time?

  SIXTY-TWO

  In a blaze of blue flashing lights and screaming sirens, Detectives Lynch and Kirby took Andri Petrovci and Jack Dermody to the station to escape the rain and impatient reporters. Lottie ordered the two men’s phones to be logged, then examined by the technical team. She wasn’t sure what Petrovci had done, if anything, but having observed him becoming unhinged, she decided he needed to be in the safety of the station and checked over by a doctor before any further questioning.

  She joined Jim McGlynn as he arrived on site. The rain had eased a little but the smell of thunder still lurked behind menacing clouds. Her clothes clung to her body, but she was oblivious to the dampness.

  ‘Let’s have a look at what you’ve cooked up for me today,’ McGlynn said.

  Lottie followed him to the tent. He was suited up but she felt it was too little, too late. Everything had been contaminated, and anything that hadn’t been was now washed away in the biblical deluge.

  Boyd held the flap open and the two of them peered in as McGlynn began his work. His gloved hands measured and touched. He noted and muttered. Photographed. Eventually he flipped the dead girl gently onto her side.

  Lottie stared at the girl’s back. Beneath the thin cotton of her dress she could see the outline of a deep hole below her ribs.

  McGlynn said, ‘You have another one. State pathologist will be here shortly.’

  ‘Shot and dressed,’ Boyd said.

  ‘Shot and dressed,’ Lottie agreed, holding back her hand from smoothing down the crumpled dress.

  * * *

  Once the pump house had been searched, SOCOs began sweeping the old dirt floor for evidence. Lottie was convinced they wouldn’t find a thing pointing them to the killer. Leaning against the outside wall, she thought of bumming a cigarette from Boyd. A shout from inside stopped her.

  ‘Found something!’

  She hurried back inside. A SOCO stood in front of a rusted piece of machinery. He looked like a ghost in his paper-thin white crime suit. In his gloved hand was something that Lottie instantly recognised.

  Slowly she took a step towards him. He shook his head and opened an evidence bag, into which he dropped a soft, tatty toy rabbit. Just like the one Milot had. It was covered with blood.

  * * *

  Lottie rushed out of the pump house. She had to get back to the station.

  ‘Inspector! Inspector, what’s going on?’ Cathal Moroney shouted from the outer cordon. He was standing in front of a scrum of journalists. Media vans, satellite dishes sticking up from their roofs, lined the road behind them.

  She couldn’t ignore him – she had to walk past him to get to the waiting patrol car.

  ‘No comment.’ Keeping her head low, she continued up the canal bank toward the car. He clipped along at her heels, an eager posse of journalists behind him.

  ‘Are the organs cut out of this victim also?’ he shouted.

  Where had he heard that from? He was persistent, she had to give him that. She kept on walking. He kept on talking.

  ‘Is there a butcher stalking Ragmullin at the moment? Is it a serial killer?’

  Lottie had had enough. She squared up to the journalist.

  ‘The only one stalking anyone in Ragmullin at the moment is you, Mister Moroney. And if you continue shouting unsubstantiated statements like you’ve just done, I’ll have you arrested for impeding my investigation. Got it?’

  He stood with his mouth open, but quickly recovered. ‘So you’re not denying there’s a serial killer, then?’

  ‘I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer. Now get out of my way.’

  She’d heard enough for one morning.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Standing with Boyd in the station’s makeshift kitchen, Lottie sipped a lukewarm coffee.

  ‘Why did the killer put her in the pump house?’ she said.

  ‘He couldn’t bury her in one of the existing excavation sites because we have them guarded,’ Boyd said.

  ‘We only put uniforms on the sites today.’

  ‘I’d like to know how he picks where to dump the bodies.’

  ‘And are we ever going to find out who these victims are?’ Lottie asked. ‘What about Milot’s toy? What was it doing there?’

  ‘You said you recognised today’s dead girl from the morning Mimoza came to your house. Could she have delivered Milot to you?’

  ‘I’m beginning to think so. She must have thought he was in danger. Maybe she forgot to bring his toy. But then why would the killer leave it with her?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Boyd, I think the ki
ller desperately wants to find Milot. I think it’s Dan Russell. He seems very anxious about the boy. Perhaps he planted the toy with the body. Baiting us. He thinks we will lead him to the child.’

  ‘You really think it could be Russell?’

  ‘Possibly. This victim was tortured.’ Lottie cradled her mug, grimacing. ‘You saw the bite marks… they were vicious. We need to go back over all the evidence. There’s something there to lead us in the right direction.’

  ‘At this stage, I don’t know what direction we are going in.’

  ‘Be positive,’ Lottie said. ‘We’ll review everything.’ She put her mug into the basin.

  Boyd picked it up and splashed in water from the kettle to rinse it out.

  ‘Lottie, I saw Jackie earlier today…’ he began.

  ‘You don’t have to explain anything to me.’

  She stared at him for a moment. With his saturated shirt clinging to his body, his short hair sleek from the rain and his black eye shining in the unnatural light, she thought he was the most handsome man she had met since Adam. Adam! Dear God, what had he been involved in? Had their life together been a complete lie? A gasp escaped her throat and she struggled to keep her tears in check before Boyd misread her.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, we do. Change of clothes and incident room in five minutes. Team meeting.’

  She marched down the corridor without a backward glance. She knew he was watching her every step, waiting for her to come back to him.

  Fuck you, Boyd. She kept on going.

  * * *

  Her team, all seated and eager, looked like Labradors ready to escape the leash. She would give them something to get their teeth into. The T-shirt she had changed into was the last one in her locker. Too tight and too short. Her jeans would have to do. She’d get another pair when or if she returned home. Her shoes were ruined, so she’d pulled on her boots.

  Lynch reported first. ‘Duty doctor has given Mr Petrovci a sedative. He’s resting in a cell. I’ve put a guard outside. Just in case.’

  The holding cells were part of the new block and Lottie knew there was nothing there that Petrovci could use to harm himself. Still, it was essential to have someone watch him.

  Lynch continued. ‘Jack Dermody made a statement. He got a phone call at eleven thirty-five a.m. telling him to go to the pump house and fix the lock. His phone is being checked as we speak. He said Petrovci always works with him, so he was the obvious choice to bring along. Health and Safety procedures. When they got there, he went inside to check nothing was missing and to pick up some tools, and that’s when he saw the body.’

  ‘Hold him for a while longer. See if he changes anything.’ Lottie glanced at the incident board. It now held a photograph of their most recent victim. ‘Let’s recap on what we have and haven’t got.’

  She marched along the floor, scanning the incident noticeboards.

  ‘In addition to our two murder victims, the girl just found will be confirmed as murder later today. She has a gunshot wound to her back.’

  ‘Another one,’ Garda Gillian O’Donoghue said.

  ‘Exactly. Three girls, none of whom has been reported missing. All shot in the back. The first two have had a kidney surgically removed, and victim number one was four months pregnant. The media circus, courtesy of that clown Moroney, now know about the organs being removed and are reporting it as a serial killer.’

  ‘Isn’t that what we’ve got?’ Boyd said.

  ‘We didn’t want the whole world knowing. Not until we had something substantial to bring to the public.’

  Lynch said, ‘We have a suspect currently sitting in the cells.’

  ‘I know. But I thought I asked for absolute secrecy on the organ removal issue.’ Lottie’s eyes landed on Kirby. He’d been the source of information leaking to Moroney on her previous case, though he’d claimed it was accidental.

  He shook his head, letting her know he wasn’t the leak this time.

  She sighed. ‘All I’m asking is that you do your jobs without causing panic on the streets. Okay?’

  Murmurs rippled through the room.

  ‘I’ll get the press office to write up a piece. Try to keep the media chasing their own tail, not ours.’

  Kirby grunted but said nothing.

  ‘These victims,’ Lottie said. ‘No one, not one single person, has reported them missing, so it is increasingly likely they were from the direct provision centre.’

  Kirby said, ‘We’ve checked the official database and according to the Justice Department it’s up to date. All accounted for.’

  ‘I believe there is an unofficial one. In the last few days I’ve become aware of a girl missing from the centre.’ She pointed at Mimoza’s picture, swallowing hard. She knew that once she went public with this, Russell could release the information he had on Adam. But the image of the soft toy rabbit and Milot with cherry blossoms stuck in his hair was more urgent. Whatever damage Russell intended, it affected the dead, not the living.

  Coughing to clear her throat, she continued, ‘Mimoza hasn’t been officially reported missing. However, Dan Russell has asked me to investigate. So we need to expedite that warrant to search the building, in particular the computers.’

  ‘It’s down for the district court first thing Monday morning,’ Boyd said. ‘But I can’t understand why Russell would want you to investigate Mimoza’s disappearance if he’s involved in these murders?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he also expressed concern for Mimoza’s young son Milot.’

  ‘A missing child adds a new dimension,’ Lynch said.

  ‘He’s not missing,’ Lottie explained. ‘I know where he is.’ She remembered then that she had an appointment soon with the social worker.

  ‘Phew,’ Lynch sighed. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘You just need to know that he’s safe. But SOCOs found a toy rabbit belonging to him at the site of the body discovered today.’

  ‘What?’ A communal gasp.

  ‘How can you be sure it belongs to the boy?’ Kirby asked.

  ‘Frayed label and ears. It’s his.’ Lottie took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what it means yet. But bear it in mind when investigating the latest murder. I’ve also reason to believe Mimoza was kept for a time at a brothel. Detective Kirby, have you found out anything about this Anya who apparently ran the place?’

  Kirby blushed bright red. ‘She’s disappeared. We think she operated under a number of aliases. We’ve put the call out to ports and airports. But she’s probably back in Albania by now. Neither sight nor sound of her or any of her girls. I ran it by anti-human trafficking and the other relevant bureaus. Nothing.’

  ‘Dead end.’ Lottie tapped another photo. ‘Maeve Phillips. Daughter of known criminal Frank Phillips. She was last seen over a week ago. No sighting of her anywhere despite widespread media alerts. We don’t know yet if there is a connection to the murders or indeed to the recent disappearance of Mimoza.’

  ‘I think she is connected,’ Boyd said, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets.

  ‘Explain,’ Lottie said, folding her arms.

  ‘I tried to tell you earlier, but… Information has come my way that points to Jamie McNally’s involvement with the brothel. Something was going wrong with the business; that’s why he’s in Ragmullin. It’s hearsay, but I believe my source. We have an officer at the Parkview Hotel, where McNally’s staying, but he hasn’t been seen there all day.’

  Lottie held his gaze. ‘And Tracy Phillips told me McNally was at her house enquiring about Maeve’s disappearance. Anything else to share?’

  Boyd looked like he was about to speak, but shook his head.

  ‘I tend to agree with DS Boyd regarding McNally’s involvement with the brothel,’ Lottie said finally, clenching her fists under her arms to hide the fact that she was fuming at his reticence to share anything further. She’d get him on his own later. ‘Now, on to the blood and bullet hole in Weir’s depot. Any updates?�
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  Kirby stood up, and as if the action made him feel awkward, promptly resumed his seat. ‘The blood isn’t human. We think it’s from an animal, maybe a fox. It’s the same with the blood found in the white van. So that’s a dead end.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Lottie mused. ‘Is the killer trying to distract us?’

  ‘I took Buzz Flynn to see the van,’ Kirby said. ‘He lives down the road from the depot. Said it looks similar to the one he saw in the early hours of Tuesday morning when someone was picking up road signs. I double-checked with the security company. It’s definitely not one of their fleet. But Buzz is elderly and he had been asleep, so I’m not sure about his accuracy.’

  ‘So who brought the van into Weir’s yard?’ Lottie scratched her chin and squinted down at Kirby.

  ‘Weir says he paid some guy fifty euros for it. The bloke wanted it taken off his hands. No records. No recollection of who brought it in. Just remembers handing over a fifty. And I only got that info by threatening to arrest him for perverting the course of justice. Oh, and as you know, his CCTV is on the blink.’

  Lottie snorted her derision. ‘Why bury the body outside Weir’s depot and then drop the van off there too? What type of lunatic are we dealing with?’

  Boyd piped up. ‘We don’t know for sure it was the killer’s van.’

  ‘I think it was. He’s playing mind games with us. Trying to show us he can do just about anything he wants. Like killing victim three and throwing her body into the old pump house as if she was a rotting fish.’ Lottie paced around the incident room. Everyone was silent. ‘Ignore the van for now. No point in wasting resources we don’t have.’

  ‘But—’ Kirby began.

  ‘No buts. It’s a diversion tactic. I’m sure of it. No more time wasted on the van for now.’

  ‘Right, boss.’ Kirby let out a grunt.

  Lottie said, ‘Another thing I noticed. And this should be confirmed at the autopsy. I believe this latest victim was tortured. Her body has evidence of severe biting.’