All the Lost Girls

by Bilinda P Sheehan

  “How’s it going your end?”

  “Fine,” I said, almost noncommittally.

  “Come on, babe, you can tell me about it. You know my lips are sealed right?”

  I wasn’t worried about him spilling the beans to someone he shouldn’t; he wouldn’t jeopardize a case in that way. No. I was more concerned that if I did tell him the details that he would start pointing out obvious errors that I’d made.

  “I should let you get back to sleep,” I said, quickly. “Can’t have you falling asleep in the middle of your raid and blowing the whole op.”

  He laughed, the rich sensuous sound sending a shiver of warmth racing through my body.

  “I wish you were here,” he said. “The bed is too empty without you.”

  “Cold too I should imagine,” I said.

  “The worst…”

  “I love you,” I said, blurting the words out as a wave of insecurity washed over me. It didn’t happen often but when it did it always left me feeling cold.

  “Love you too, babe,” he said. The line went dead and I stared down at it for a couple of seconds, feeling suddenly foolish for the insecurity that still fluttered inside me. Pushing it away, I made my way slowly back up to my room. It felt smaller than it had when Ronan was here, as though the walls had shrunk in further, drawing in toward the bed, crowding me out. Pushing the notes and files to one side, I slid beneath the covers and flicked off the lights, trying to imagine that I was back in my own bed. I tried to make myself believe that I wasn’t alone in the bed, that Paul was next to me, his breathing heavy as he slept.

  But I was alone.

  The sudden knowledge that if I screwed up, that if I made a mistake we would find another body slammed into me. The Sergeant, John Mills might not believe that Joanna and the others were linked but I knew they were. I couldn’t quite explain it. Call it a gut feeling but whatever it was I was positive of it. And we were running out of time.

  26

  I try to concentrate on the words on the page but they blur into one another and I realise I’ve read the same sentence over at least twenty times. The rhythmic sound of the bedsprings mingled with the animalistic sounds of flesh on flesh keep drawing me back to the room.

  I keep my back to the door, letting them get on with their game. They think I don’t know what passes between them, that I don’t know about the times when I’m not here and he visits her.

  Not that I can blame him; she is beautiful. I knew he’d want her as much as I did the day I saw her in the paper. Wide hazel eyes, long silky brown hair, a smile that hid more than it hinted at. No, I’d known the moment I laid eyes on her what she was, what she craved.

  And I’d been right.

  A part of me registers the guttural grunt as he finishes. Setting the unread book aside, I climb to my feet and wait. The murmur of words spoken causes the hairs on my arms to stand to attention in anticipation. My tongue slides across my dry chapped lips and I fight the urge to worry at my fingernails. They’re already ragged, I can’t have them bleeding at the wrong time.

  The sound of his fly grating as he slides it closed speeds my heartbeat. He appears in the doorway, framed in the half-light thrown by the bedside lamp. His eyes dark, unreadable as he sees me watching but his mouth isn’t in shadow and I can see the self-satisfied smug grin quirking his lips. An unspoken challenge of sorts. ‘Let’s see if you can do better…’

  The nod of his head is almost imperceptible but I’ve seen it so many times before, I’d know it anywhere. He exits, taking a sharp right as he heads for the kitchen, giving me the privacy I need.

  My turn…

  27

  Ronan picked me up as promised from outside the hotel and the journey was surprisingly smooth, despite my nervousness over his driving ability. A couple of times on the ride up, I’d caught him watching me from the corner of his eye as though he couldn’t fully make up his mind just what I was thinking.

  I wasn’t worried about him figuring out my dark secret. Cars frightened the shit out of me. It was one of the many reasons I loved living in Dublin; everywhere I needed to go was within biking distance and anything further than that could be reached with the Luas or the bus. It wasn’t every form of transport that panicked me either. Just the cars. I could take a bus or a train just as well as anyone else. But getting into a car was a special type of hell and taking on this case had been a baptism of fire of sorts with the constant need for vehicular transport.

  The building we parked in front of had, at one point in time, been a beauty. The red brick walls were covered in an acidic green ivy and wouldn’t have looked out of place on the front cover of some glossy campus prospectus for an elite university. However, on closer inspection, I could see the ivy had grown ragged, almost woody in parts and the bricks beneath were starting to break up. The minerals had leeched out, covering the red with spots of white and cream so that it looked less like a prestigious building and more like the acne prone face of a teenager, who’d spent a little too much time squeezing that which they should have left alone.

  “Not what you were expecting?” Ronan asked, catching me in the act of appraising the building as we approached it.

  “I don’t know,” I said, somewhat honestly. “I guess I expected it to be newer…”

  “Wait until you see the inside then,” he said. “They were awarded a huge grant last year. Three hundred million or so and rather than building some huge modern eyesore, they decided to pour it into kitting this place out with state of the art gear.”

  The doors were one of those huge carousel affairs and Ronan went first, pushing the door to get it moving. I hopped in behind him as it started to move forward of its own accord. It spat us out in a large sprawling marble entry hall. The huge domed ceiling above our heads was made entirely of glass and I could see the pale blue sky, with its traces of white clouds overhead.

  “Can I help you?” A clipped female voice cut through my admiration and I caught the eye of the woman behind the marble desk that took up pride of place in the middle of the floor. Her brown hair was scraped severely back from a thin, almost gaunt face. She had the look of an academic, her wan complexion telling me she spent more time cooped up among stacks of books rather than outside in the sunlight.

  “We’ve got an appointment to see Dorian Whittiker,” Ronan said smoothly producing his identification and a smile that would have melted any other woman in an instant.

  The woman behind the desk peered disdainfully at his badge before turning her attention on me. “And yours?”

  I pulled out my own identification and presented it to her. She took more time over mine and I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she was a little surprised by my credentials. Finally, she glanced up at me, her gaze opaque and unreadable.

  “He’s expecting you,” she said. “Second floor, third corridor down. You’ll have to buzz for them to let you in up there.”

  Ronan’s smile was once more wasted on her and she turned her attention away from him with a half grimace. She only had eyes for her books and within seconds, she was caught up entirely in the texts laid out on the desk in front of her.

  My low-heeled boots made an odd echoing clip as we crossed the white marble floor. Ronan beat me to the glass lift and the doors whooshed open smoothly. He punched in the floor number and grinned at me as the doors slid silently shut.

  “She was cheery,” he said. “Don’t know why you’d do a job like that if it was only going to make you miserable.”

  “I don’t think it was the job,” I said. “I think it was our intrusion.”

  Ronan snorted and the doors slid open, admitting us to a long narrow walkway. I gazed over the glass railings and caught sight of the woman at the front desk watching our progress.

  “You don’t think she could hear us, do you?” I asked, feeling suddenly paranoid.

  Ronan shrugged and pushed open a set of double doors. “Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t care. Wouldn’t have killed her to give u
s a smile.”

  I stared at him for a moment, suddenly unsure when he’d morphed into such an arrogant asshole. The woman at the desk owed us nothing at all, especially not a smile.

  “Seriously?”

  Catching the tone in my voice he paused and glanced over his shoulder at me. “What?”

  “A smile? She could have given you a smile?”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”

  “You sound like a chauvinistic pig,” I said. “She didn’t throw herself at your feet grovelling because you deigned to smile at her and suddenly she’s the problem?”

  A cloud crossed his expression for a moment and then he rolled his eyes at me. “Whatever,” he muttered. “Didn’t have you pegged as one of them.”

  I let it go. Arguing with him, here and now was a pointless exercise. I wasn’t his mother, and it wasn’t my job to teach him what was rude and what wasn’t. If he couldn’t tell the difference, there would be another woman who would have no problem putting him in his place.

  At the end of the long white corridor, which made me think of so many of the descriptions of the long tunnel those who’d had near death experiences spoke of, we reached another set of double doors. The windows were blanked off and a large keypad and buzzer sat on the wall, alongside what looked suspiciously like a camera.

  Ronan pressed the buzzer and a voice distorted by static cut through the silence.

  “Can I help you?” The disembodied voice asked. Despite the static, I recognised the clipped tones of Dorian Whittiker instantly.

  “Siobhan Geraghty,” I said, cutting over Ronan before he had the chance to speak. “Detective Siobhan Geraghty. We spoke on the phone last night, you asked me to come down. Said you had some information for me pertaining to the case I’m working.”

  There was a moment of silence and then a buzz came from somewhere deeper in the building. The door clicked and a green light flashed on the panel. Without needing to be told, I pushed the nearest of the doors and it folded in on itself, permitting me admission to Dorian’s inner sanctum.

  I’d thought the hallway we’d been standing in had seemed sterile but in comparison to the one I now found myself walking down, the other had been positively grubby.

  The walls were a brilliant white, the kind that hurt your eyes. It matched the high gloss white tiles on the floor. Even the grout between each tile was a perfect glowing white. Dotted along the walls at regular intervals sat signs. Some of them yellow with large symbols indicating the need for caution and care. Others were a more normal white, with small black writing that insisted on hand washing to prevent the spread of contaminants.

  At the end of the hall there was another set of double doors. They were silver and chrome, heavy doors that opened electronically as we approached. The room beyond was set up much like I’d have imagined a laboratory. Well if the laboratory had belonged to Frankenstein.

  A large stainless steel table dominated the centre of the room. A small stand that gleamed dully in the harsh lighting sat near the head of the table, which was currently unoccupied. Judging by the way the steel gleamed wetly—as if it had been recently hosed down—I guessed that the table had been occupied recently.

  Dorian, or at least I assumed it was Dorian, seemed to melt out from somewhere near the back wall. It took me a moment to realise that he hadn’t actually materialised from the shelves but out from behind them.

  Just beyond the chrome shelves lined, which were lined with all manner of bottles and fluids, sat another large metal desk. The only bodies dissected and examined on this table however, were microscopic in nature. Dorian was dressed in a white lab coat, his lanky frame barely filling his clothes, making him look like a little boy caught playing dress up in his father’s clothes.

  His dark hair flopped over into his intelligent brown eyes as though he’d just raked his fingers through it. Judging by the way he was fidgeting with the pen grasped between his long slender fingers, he probably had. Dark bags sat beneath his eyes, making me wonder when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. Despite his naturally sepia brown complexion, the fluorescent lights gave him an ashen undertone that drained the warmth from his face.

  “You’re late,” Dorian said, managing to sound both irritated and somewhat frightened. “I called the station but they said you were already on your way up here-and then I didn’t know when you would arrive so I had to hang around and wait and—”

  I glanced surreptitiously at my watch as he babbled.

  “It’s only nine fifteen, Dorian,” Ronan said. “Traffic was heavy. You know how it is when you get near the city.”

  “No,” Dorian interjected, shoving his black-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I account for the traffic so I leave on time.”

  “I’m sorry we’re late,” I said, casting a sideways glance at Ronan. “It was my fault.”

  “You should set your alarm for half an hour earlier,” Dorian said, his attention pinning me in place.

  “Pardon?”

  “Your alarm,” he said. “On your phone. I assume that’s what you use. Everyone nowadays uses their phones instead of a real alarm clock. You should set it for half an hour before you’re due to get up. That way, by the time your real alarm goes off, you’ll be more alert and more apt to get up on time, thus preventing you from wasting anymore of my time.”

  “Dorian, mate,” Ronan said. “Chill. It’s fifteen minutes…”

  “It’s not just fifteen minutes though,” Dorian said, and this time his voice was a little shrill. “It might be fifteen minutes to you but I have things that need doing. Things you wouldn’t hope to understand and—”

  “You wanted to talk to me about the case,” I said. “I’m here now, what have you got for me?” I cut him off mid-stream and for a moment Dorian looked as though he was going to argue with me. His body was taut, tension buzzing through his veins as he stared at me with eyes like big black buttons.

  “Sorry,” a female voice said, coming from somewhere on the opposite side of the room. I turned and a petite young woman pushed open a side door. In her hands she carried a large tray of what appeared to be vials of clear liquid. “He gets like this when he drinks to much coffee,” she said, crossing the room.

  “I do not get like anything when I drink coffee—”

  “Yes you do,” she said patiently as though speaking to a small child. There was a slight accent on her words.

  “You’re American?” I asked, meeting her gaze curiously.

  “Canadian actually,” she said with a smile that didn’t entirely reach her eyes. “I get that a lot though, moved over here when I was twelve so it’s softened a lot.”

  I nodded.

  “I do not get like anything when I drink coffee!” Dorian cut in as though the subject hadn’t even changed.

  “Well have you told them you got the necklace all cleaned up?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, a clear challenge.

  “Well I didn’t have the chance, I—”

  “No, because you were too busy berating them for getting here late.”

  She turned her attention back to me once more and held her hand out. “I’m Rosie by the way,” she said. “Finishing up my schooling with a little work experience here in the lab with Dr. Whittiker.”

  We shook hands. She seemed a little old to be doing work experience but I didn’t say anything about it.

  “I’m Detective Siobhan Geraghty, with the NBCI,” I said. “And this is my colleague, Detective Ronan McGuire, he’s from the Clonmel branch.”

  Ronan I noted gave her a wide charming smile and Rosie seemed to straighten, warmth lightly colouring her cheeks as she returned his smile with a flirty one of her own.

  “I managed to get the necklace clean,” Dorian said, cutting through the sudden awkwardness. “The engraving wasn’t a professional job, far too crude. Even sloppy.”

  “What does it say?”

  He gestured for me to follow him and I did so, in behind the shelving units in
the corner of the room. It seemed like an odd set up for an office and as though he could sense the question on the tip of my tongue he said, somewhat sheepishly. “I get claustrophobic in the room they said I could use as my office. Rosie suggested I set up my office out here instead.”

  “Good call,” I said, noting the way the shelves left an impression of open space whilst still affording him the privacy necessary for an office.

  The necklace was in a plastic evidence bag, clearly labelled with the case number in block lettering. Scooping it up from the counter, I twisted the necklace into the light and stared down at the writing. Dorian hadn’t been kidding when he’d said the engraving was sloppy. There were deeper indentations in the metal that made me think whoever had done it, their hand had slipped a couple of times, denting the locket.

  “It looks like it was written by a child,” I said. Alice would have been thirteen when her sister went missing. She’d assured me the locket had no engraving before Clara disappeared and I hadn’t thought she was lying.

  “Do we know what it says?” I asked, studying the words. The only word that really jumped out at me was the ‘I’. Everything else was jammed together.

  Without saying a word, Dorian handed me another slip of paper.

  Who in the World am I?

  “Is this a joke?” I asked, facing Dorian once more.

  “I—No, it’s—”

  “It’s no joke,” Rosie said. “That’s what it says.”

  “Why would they write this on it?” I stared down at the scrawl. Now that I knew what it said, it was a little easier to put the pieces together and I could almost make the words out, if I squinted really hard.

  “It’s from Alice in Wonderland,” Dorian said. “From Chapter 2, The Pool of Tears. Alice ponders on whether she is truly herself. She thinks she might have been changed out for one of the others. One of her friends.”