Broken Souls
An absolutely addictive mystery thriller with a brilliant twist
Patricia Gibney
Books by Patricia Gibney
The Detective Lottie Parker series
1. The Missing Ones
2. The Stolen Girls
3. The Lost Child
4. No Safe Place
5. Tell Nobody
6. Final Betrayal
7. Broken Souls
Available in Audio
The Detective Lottie Parker series
1. The Missing Ones (Available in the UK and the US)
2. The Stolen Girls (Available in the UK and the US)
3. The Lost Child (Available in the UK and the US)
4. No Safe Place (Available in the UK and the US)
5. Tell Nobody (Available in the UK and the US)
6. Final Betrayal (Available in the UK and the US)
Contents
*
November
*
December
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
*
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
*
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
*
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Patricia’s Email Sign-Up
Books by Patricia Gibney
A Letter from Patricia
The Missing Ones
The Stolen Girls
The Lost Child
No Safe Place
Tell Nobody
Final Betrayal
Acknowledgements
To Marie Brennan
For everything
*
The four-year-old boy tore off the paper and pushed the sweet into his mouth. The toffee stuck to his baby teeth. He tried to extract it with a finger. The toffee stuck to his fingers and he began to cry.
The slap of the ruler across his knuckles caught him by surprise and momentarily stopped his whimpering. But once he felt the pain shoot up his hand, he screamed.
‘I want to go home!’
‘Shut up. Not another word. You’re upsetting the other children. Look around you. You’re a mean little boy, and if you don’t stop, I’ll stand you outside the door in the rain. You know there are bad people out there and the bad people come to take away naughty little children. Do you want that to happen to you?’
He sniffed away his tears and bit his lip, feeling the toffee still stuck to his front tooth.
‘I asked you a question. Answer me.’ Another crack of the ruler, this time on the desk.
‘No.’ He nodded vigorously. He did not want to feel that ruler on his hand or anywhere else again. He would be a good boy.
‘Put that wrapper in the bin and open your spelling book.’
He had no idea which one was his spelling book.
‘Come up here!’
Making his way to the front of the classroom, he tried fruitlessly to tear the sweet wrapper from his hand.
‘It’s stuck.’ With the piece of paper sticking fast to his throbbing fingers, he faced the teacher.
The ruler came down hard and sharp on his hand once more.
‘Get back to your seat.’
His first day at school was turning out to be even worse than life at home. As he walked back to his desk, he felt the warmth trickle down his leg and settle inside his white ankle sock. The ruler would surely visit him again many times, today and in days to come. He didn’t think he wanted to wait around for that. But where else could he go?
He spent the morning sitting in his wet shorts; he didn’t even go out to the playground when the other children left for their break. He stayed at his desk, opened his lunch box and munched on the bruised banana. The teacher sat at her desk at the head of the classroom, her eyes blinking with every movement of his jaw.
‘Come here,’ she said when the other children returned.
He looked up fearfully and the banana lodged in his throat.
Not wanting to feel the timber of the ruler again, he put down the fruit and made his way forward. When he reached her desk, barely able to see over the edge, she leaned forward and grabbed his hair. He shrieked when he saw the long-bladed scissors in her hand.
‘Your hair is much too long. You can hardly see out through it. You need a trim.’
He tried to say no, but the words stuck to the roof of his mouth like the toffee had stuck to his fingers. He loved his hair. Shoulder length. It reminded him of the photo of his mother. He had her hair.
The teacher waved the scissors in front of him before tugging his fringe. She looked at him triumphantly, a lock of his hair clasped in her hand.
‘Now I can see your horrible little face.’
Silently, he wished for the day to end.
November
*
Is there ever a good day to die?
The man didn’t think so as he silently answered his own question. The sky was a greyish blue. Murky. The clouds on the horizon forewarned of a touch of rain to come. Otherwise, the day wasn’t too bad.
He moved slowly into the forest of trees that skirted the narrow road around the lake. He wanted to see the lake before he did what he had to do. It was late evening and he was sure the fishermen would have departed. Not that there were many fish to be caught in November, he thought wryly.
The forest floor foliage was green and lush, and smelly. The branches above his head, winter bare. Broken twigs and ferns crunched beneath his feet. Had someone walked this exact same way recently? His brain was crowded with so many unanswered questions, it was like a bubble waiting to be pricked with a spike. And he knew that there was no one in the world to care; to really care for him. He was totally alone. Desolate as the branches, at peace with himself. Almost.
A knotted branch tangled
in his hair as he delved further through the dense forest to where it was dark and more than a little bit damp. He paused and listened to the sounds of animals he could not see scurrying through the long grass. I’m not afraid any more, he thought. Not afraid of any living thing.
He crouched down and, virtually crawling, scrabbled his way through thorns and briars. The sound of water reached his ears. The trumpet of winter swans pierced the air.
Pausing once again, he listened. Followed the sound.
Reaching a clearing, he found the source of the water. Not the lake, but a stone mound spewing a fresh spring from a crevice between the rocks. He leaned over. Scooped some water into his mouth and relished the taste. He made up his mind. He was going to fight back.
That was when he heard another sound.
As he turned his head, a hand circled his mouth and another clenched tightly on his throat. His last thought was: it is a good day to die.
December
Chapter One
Wednesday
Ragmullin in December presented itself as a beautiful place. From a distance.
Lottie stared out through the window at the early-morning sky. No hint of blue, just flat grey. Even the snow looked like gunmetal. The snowman her son Sean had built for her fifteen-month-old grandson Louis, stood rock solid in the garden.
It was too early to go to work. She forced herself to load the washing machine and then the dishwasher. Moving to the hall, she listened at the foot of the stairs. No sound came from above, so she returned to the kitchen and switched on the kettle.
Tea, rather than coffee, was her choice of drink at the moment. Too much coffee gave her the jitters. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she absently folded a stack of clean clothes, separating them into bundles for her three children. The girls were officially adults now. A few weeks ago, they’d celebrated Chloe’s eighteenth birthday. The party had been organised by twenty-one-year-old Katie and fifteen-year-old Sean. Sean was already taller than Lottie and possessed the same startling blue eyes as his father had. She was momentarily catapulted back to a time before Adam had died. Five years ago. Cancer. Too young. Too quick. Too hard to believe. Too long grieving until Mark Boyd had proposed to her. She’d dithered for a while, unsure what to do, but she knew she loved him. The night of Chloe’s party, she’d said yes to him, though they had yet to sort out the details, like setting a date and telling people. So far, it was their secret. Her choice.
The kettle purred. She fetched a mug and popped a slice of out-of-date bread into the toaster. Added bread to the whiteboard list attached to the refrigerator. Hopefully Katie would run to the shops later. Some hope, she told herself, and snapped a quick photo of the list in case she had to do it herself after work.
When the toaster popped, she took out the bread and chewed. It was dry. The tea tasted like sawdust. Feck it. She decided to stop on the way for a McDonald’s coffee, jitters be damned.
Pulling on her jacket, she tied a bobbin around her straggly hair and shoved it under her hood. As she left the house, she wondered what kind of humour Boyd would be in today.
Mark Boyd tightened the knot on his tie and appraised the effect in his tiny bathroom mirror. He wasn’t impressed with the image reflected back at him. His tightly cut hair was now more salt than pepper and his eyes betrayed last night’s heavy drinking. Sunken hollows emphasised his cheekbones. At his age, he knew he shouldn’t have sagging skin around his throat. He should get out on his bike for a cycle. But the weather was too cold and icy for cycling, he thought, ignoring the fact that he had a turbo bike folded up in the corner of his kitchenette. No, he needed to deal with the tangible issues in his life. For that he had requested a half-day off work. He hoped Lottie approved it, otherwise he’d have to go AWOL.
In the living area of his one-bedroom apartment he heard his friend Larry Kirby snoring loudly, his torso sprawled across the couch and feet plonked on the overflowing coffee table. Beer cans and bottles littered all available space. Boyd felt his bones creak and his skin prickle. He hated mess. Quickly he gathered up the cans and bottles, placing them in a sack for recycling.
Kirby stirred. Struggled to sit upright. ‘Where the hell am I?’ He glanced around, bleary-eyed, and ran a hand through his mop of busy hair. ‘Oh, Boyd, it’s you. That was some session last night. Where’s McKeown?’
Boyd shrugged and thought for a moment. They’d abandoned Sam McKeown, the newest member of their team, in Cafferty’s Pub when they’d left at … shit, he had no idea what time it’d been.
‘God only knows where he ended up.’ He placed the recycling sack on the floor beside his turbo bike. ‘Fancy a coffee? There’s a clean towel in the airing cupboard if you want to take a shower.’ He found a packet of paracetamol and swallowed two.
Kirby sniffed his armpits. ‘Don’t suppose you have a shirt I could wear?’
Boyd smirked. Kirby was twice his width. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’ll have that coffee, so.’
As Boyd busied himself making the coffee, Kirby said, ‘Are you okay?’
‘Despite a thundering hangover, I’m grand.’
‘You were pretty intense last night. All maudlin and depressed.’
‘I’m always like that, according to you.’ Boyd wondered what he’d been saying towards the latter part of the night.
Kirby yawned loudly. ‘Every second word out of your mouth was Lottie this and Lottie that. God, I don’t know what McKeown must have thought of you.’
Boyd brought two mugs of coffee to the living area and sat down opposite Kirby. ‘Was I that bad?’
‘Worse.’
‘Shit.’
‘Why don’t you put a ring on her finger? Anyone with one eye can see you two are meant for each other.’
Boyd felt the blush work its way up his cheeks. He’d been thrilled when Lottie had agreed to marry him, but they’d decided – no, he thought, she’d decided to tell no one yet, as it was too awkward with them both working in the same garda station. But all that was before everything else. He said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘I still have an engagement ring if you want it.’ Kirby laughed, then grimaced.
‘I can buy my own, thank you very much. When and if I need one.’ Boyd closed his eyes and ran a hand over his throbbing forehead. The paracetamol was taking its time to do the job.
‘Suit yourself.’ Kirby put his mug down on the table. Clutching his hands between his knees, he stared glassy-eyed. ‘I’ve no use for it now that Gilly’s … you know …’
‘I know, it’s bloody tough. Give yourself time to grieve.’ Boyd thought of Garda Gilly O’Donoghue, who had been murdered during the summer. Gilly was the first woman Larry Kirby had fallen for since his divorce years previously.
‘That’s what everyone says.’ With creaking knees and a raspy cough from too many cigars, Kirby stood. ‘Jesus, I stink. I’ll see you at the office. What the hell time is it now?’
‘Half past six.’
‘Ah, for Christ’s sake. Why’d you wake me at such an ungodly hour? I’ve time for a snooze before work. I’m off. See you later.’
As Boyd sipped his coffee, he spied a whiskey bottle lying on its side under the couch. He got down on his knees and picked it up; shook his head and went to fetch his Dyson.
Chapter Two
The pigs were making an unmerciful noise in the sheds. Wind rattled the windows violently as another blizzard spun snow diagonally across the yard.
Beth Clarke took a mug from the cupboard and turned on the tap. Nothing. She tried again. Still nothing.
‘Dad!’ She shouted into the living room, where her father was furiously banging the keys of an old-fashioned calculator. ‘What’s wrong with the water?’
‘Frozen pipes, no doubt.’ His voice sounded faint against the thump of his fingers.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ She clattered the mug into the sink and checked to see if there was enough water in the kettle for him to make his tea
later. Probably. Just.
‘For pity’s sake,’ he growled.
She turned round to find him standing in the doorway, one hand holding a calculator and the other clutching a sheaf of pages bleeding handwritten figures into crooked columns. He was dressed in yesterday’s clothes.
‘Were you up all night?’
‘Yeah, more’s the pity. I can’t balance this VAT return. Don’t suppose you could put this lot onto your laptop, could you?’ His voice cut in two with a cough and he doubled over, wheezing.
‘You suppose correctly.’ Bending down, Beth picked up her rucksack from beneath the table and hauled it onto her back. She smoothed her black skinny jeans down to her ankles and tied up a lace on her shiny red boots. ‘I’m off to work.
Broken Souls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller with a brilliant twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 7) Page 1
