Broken Souls: An absolutely addictive mystery thriller with a brilliant twist (Detective Lottie Parker Book 7)

by Patricia Gibney

  ‘And puts the ex-fiancé in the frame.’

  Lottie took her hands from the railing, pulled off the latex gloves and blew on her palms, trying to inject heat into her fingers. She noted a rusted steel ladder leading down the side of the building from the roof. The deluge of snow had covered any footprints there might have been.

  ‘Does the neighbour know who the fiancé is?’ Boyd thrust his own hands deep into his pockets as the wind swirled snow around them.

  ‘No. Says she didn’t know Cara Dunne very well.’

  ‘But she was able to gain entry to the apartment.’

  Lottie sighed. ‘She had a spare key for emergencies. Let herself in because she heard raised voices. We need to interview the doctor from the ground floor.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘And get his DNA and fingerprints for elimination.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Boyd said.

  She studied the hard line of his jaw. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You seem distant.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m just tired after last night.’

  ‘Right.’ She moved off the roof and back to the open door. ‘If Cara was murdered, this emergency exit could have been used as a means of escape by her attacker.’

  ‘There is no way back into the building from the rooftop unless the door is left open, so he either came in the front door or he lives in the block.’

  ‘Or someone let him in the emergency door and left it propped open.’

  ‘I’ll tell SOCOs to take prints,’ Boyd said, ‘and I’ll get door-to-door enquiries started.’ He went on ahead of her.

  Lottie stepped from the cold air into the relative warmth of the corridor, but she couldn’t stop the shivers on her skin. Something was up with Boyd, and she felt it was more than hangover grumpiness.

  ‘The body can be removed to the mortuary.’ Tim Jones was pulling off his forensic suit and balling it into a brown evidence bag. Garda Tom Thornton noted the details on the bag with a Sharpie pen and sealed it up.

  ‘Can you tell us anything, Dr Jones? Foul play?’ Lottie said, glad to talk about work and not feelings.

  ‘It looks suspicious.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Many ways, but for one I don’t know how a woman of such slight build could have got the belt tightly secured to that valve so high up on the wall. Even standing on the stool she isn’t tall enough, and she would need more upper-body strength.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Lottie said.

  ‘She has scratches on her neck. I need to get her on the table.’

  ‘Time of death?’ She pushed for more information.

  ‘I’d say in the last six hours. Can’t be more specific at the moment.’

  ‘Will Jane Dore be doing the post-mortem?’ Lottie said.

  ‘I’m sure she will, if I deem the death suspicious.’ Jones headed off towards the stairs.

  ‘Well, I was right,’ Boyd said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘There’s no way that woman could have hanged herself.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’ But Lottie agreed with him. ‘I didn’t notice any other wedding paraphernalia in the apartment, apart from the dress. You interview the doctor, and then we need to find out more about Ms Cara Dunne.’

  Chapter Seven

  Fiona Heffernan finished her rounds on the ward and hurried along the long corridor to the locker room in the oldest part of the abbey. She felt the excitement building and it was beginning to erode some of her fear. Tomorrow her life would change for ever. Tomorrow would be the first day of the rest of her life. Tomorrow she would be free.

  She did a little dance on the cold stone floor in her bare feet before slipping off her navy cotton trousers and pulling her white tunic up over her head. She hung up the trousers on a wire hanger and folded the tunic onto the floor of the locker. A line of goose bumps prickled up her skin and the tiny dark hairs on her arms stood to attention as she grabbed a towel and glanced over her shoulder. Despite the fact that there was no one around, she had an uncomfortable feeling of being watched. The fear returned full blast like an Arctic storm bumping along her skin.

  Holding the fluffy white towel to her chest, she stepped around the row of battered lockers and took a look. Empty. The shower units were to her right. Two cramped stalls with old shower heads that dripped continuously. She walked on her tiptoes. The change in the sound of the dripping of water from one of the shower heads made her jump. The plastic curtain had long since disintegrated and the white tiles were rusted to yellow ochre. Thrusting her hand inside, she tried to turn the tap in an attempt to halt the dribble of water. It wouldn’t budge. She did likewise in the other shower stall. No result.

  It was polar cold in the room, and Fiona felt there were more inviting things in life than a cold shower at the end of a shift. She decided to have it later.

  Setting her lips in a firm line of determination, she was about to get dressed when a flash of white caught the corner of her eye. She froze, her body on high alert. With the towel still clutched tightly, hiding her underwear, she listened.

  There it was again. A flutter and a flash of white to the right where her steel locker stood in a line of five. She jumped when the wind rattled the one window in the room, the six panes of frosted glass shuddering in their frames, snow beating a pattern with the wind.

  Holding her breath, trying not to sniff the fusty air, she took a step forward. ‘Hello? Is there someone there?’ she said lamely.

  Another step.

  ‘Hello? Who’s there? Hello?’

  She reached the end of the lockers and waited by the edge of the final one. She held her breath, hands shaking uncontrollably, tremors convulsing her body, and stuck her head around the side of the narrow cabinet. There was no one there.

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  That was when she felt the soft whisper of air on the nape of her neck.

  As Boyd idled the car in the line of traffic on the bridge, Lottie looked out of the window. Sections of the water on the canal were frozen solid. Moorhens dipped their heads among the reeds, skidding on the ice, searching in vain for food. She noticed an old-fashioned canal barge tied up to a stack of rubber tyres on the shore.

  ‘Do you think anyone lives on that?’ she said.

  Boyd puffed on an e-cigarette and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Haven’t a clue. Maybe you want to investigate that too.’

  ‘No need to be a smartarse. We have enough work as it is.’ She turned her attention to a man with a sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, weaving through the stalled traffic. The unlit Christmas lights trailed across the width of Main Street ahead. The traffic began to move. Slowly.

  ‘Fancy a bag of chips?’ Boyd said, nodding towards the Malloca Café.

  ‘That’s a great idea. Look, a parking space. No, over there.’

  With a grunt, Boyd swung the car into the tiny space and switched off the engine.

  ‘Plenty of vinegar,’ she said.

  ‘Right so.’ He got out of the car and waited to cross the road.

  Lottie knocked on the window. ‘You better bring a couple of bags for Kirby and McKeown. Add curry sauce. Good for a hangover.’

  She smiled to herself as Boyd grumbled loudly, making his way between the cars in the traffic jam. She rested her head against the glass. The street looked so dull with the Christmas lights off. That was when she remembered she was supposed to be bringing her grandson to see the official switching-on ceremony later that afternoon. Shit! The day was getting away from her. It had taken ages to seal off Cara Dunne’s apartment and organise uniforms to do the door-to-door legwork, and then Boyd had had to interview and fingerprint the doctor, who only confirmed what Eve Clarke had said. Cara Dunne was dead when he’d seen her, but not long dead.

  She slammed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Cara’s post-mortem would probably be held around five, and she needed to be there for i
t. But she also wanted to be with her grandson Louis, Katie’s son. Dilemma time. Maybe Boyd could attend the post-mortem. Then she remembered that he’d asked for time off. Well, that was a no, now that they were dealing with a suspicious death. She wondered why he needed it. He rarely took leave out of the blue, but he’d been taking a lot recently.

  As she watched him struggle back across the road with a large brown bag in his hand, her phone vibrated in her pocket. Acting Superintendent McMahon. Shit, she still hadn’t finished the November report.

  Opening her eyes, Fiona shook her head and discovered it was a mistake to try moving. A bolt of pain careened through her brain like a meteor shower. She blinked away a kaleidoscope of stars.

  Her hand touched something soft and cold. Snow? Shivering uncontrollably, she realised she was lying flat on her back. As she shifted slightly, something wet slithered down her face. She could taste it at the edge of her lips. Blood.

  She blinked again. Beneath heavy eyelids, she squinted up at the dark sky pulsing with a cloud of snow. She was outside. But how? She recalled the locker room and someone behind her. A fuzzy recollection was trying to make itself known to her. Something being pulled roughly over her head. Soft material against her frozen skin. Someone dragging her. Through the door. Up the steps. Out onto the roof. The roof!

  She tried to move her hand. It wouldn’t budge. Her fingers felt like they were solid blocks of ice, and she wondered why she was covered in white. Snow? No, it was heavier.

  Something black was at the side of her head. It moved, leaving a footprint in its wake. A boot appeared on the other side. She felt the roughness of gloved hands grabbing her under her armpits, pinching her skin. Her body being raised until she was standing. But she wasn’t standing. She was being held upright. Her head thumped with a horrid pain and she couldn’t fathom out what was happening to her. There was somewhere she was supposed to be, someone she was meant to call. But where? Who?

  She could see the landscape stretching out before her. The afternoon sun dipped like a shadow on the horizon, which was almost entirely blotted out by the falling snow. Trees swayed in the wind. And in the distance, almost hidden by the blizzard, were the statues. Fiona knew exactly where she was, and she knew in that instant that she would end her thirty-four-year-old life on the ground below her.

  She tried to open her lips, to speak a word of protest, to beg for mercy, because in this moment of surreal clarity, she knew where she was supposed to be. Being dragged to the edge of a precipice was not on her agenda for today. No, she had had different plans in mind. And they were all disintegrating into the minute particles of black nothingness where she was headed. To the life beyond.

  She couldn’t speak or cry out.

  She lost focus and swayed.

  She was doomed.

  Chapter Eight

  After they’d finished their chips, Lottie set Kirby and McKeown the job of digging up background information on Cara Dunne, in particular to find out who her fiancé was and where he lived and worked. She needed to interview him and eliminate him from the investigation – or not.

  Her gut was telling her she was dealing with a murder, even though she’d have to wait for confirmation from the post-mortem results. The smell of vinegar reached her from her fingers, even after washing them and scrubbing vigorously with the baby wipes she’d found in her handbag.

  ‘Can I have a word?’ Boyd entered the office and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Sure. Sit down.’

  ‘Those few hours off that I requested. I really do have to leave at four thirty. Is that okay?’

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Boyd, for goodness’ sake. I want you to liaise with the SOCOs and the state pathologist. Until we know for sure what happened to Cara Dunne, we need to treat this as a live investigation.’

  ‘I know all that.’ He sat down and leaned his elbows on her desk, one hand under his chin. ‘But I need to head home to Galway. I rarely ask for time off, you know that, and—’

  ‘What’s going on in Galway? You were there last week for a day as well.’ Shit, she thought. Boyd’s business was his own, but she still felt he was keeping a secret from her. Friends didn’t keep secrets from each other, did they? And she and Boyd were more than friends.

  ‘It’s my mother,’ he said, shifting uneasily on the chair. ‘She has an appointment and she asked me to attend with her.’

  ‘Can’t Grace go with her?’ Lottie had met Boyd’s sister and liked the girl.

  ‘You know what Grace is like, so no, she can’t.’

  Lottie bristled at the inherent rebuke in his tone. With an audible sigh, she said, ‘What about Cara’s post-mortem?’

  ‘It’s not even scheduled yet.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I rang to find out. Tim Jones said it could be morning before Jane Dore arrives from Dublin.’

  ‘Right so. I suppose there’s no point in keeping you here if you’re working half-heartedly.’

  ‘Jesus, Lottie, don’t take it personally.’ He stood.

  ‘I’m not. I’m under pressure. All this work we have, Boyd, not to mention the November performance reports, and you want to hightail to Galway. McMahon is on my back. God give me strength.’

  ‘I offered to help this morning, but you said you had it under control.’

  She couldn’t argue with that, because it was true. Her thick-headed stubbornness was biting her on the arse.

  When she looked up, Boyd had returned to the main office and was switching off his computer while dragging on his coat. She felt a deep sense of loneliness settle in her chest. He was keeping her out of something. What and why? She had no idea.

  Then her desk phone rang.

  Trevor Toner entered the theatre and hurriedly pulled on his dance shoes, wrapping a velour towel around his neck. He stood and watched the stage for a moment. The dance routine wasn’t going to plan.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he shouted, moving towards the stage. ‘Take it from the top. Five, six, seven, eight …’

  Glancing at Shelly, his assistant, he sat down beside her and wondered why he bothered. The show was due to open next week, and rehearsals seemed to be catapulting him backwards instead of forwards. He waited as the young dance troupe prepared to restart, then signalled for the music. Shelly tapped the iPhone attached to the speakers and Wham! belted out ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’. He supposed his charges had never heard of George Michael, let alone Wham!, but that shouldn’t hinder their performance of a simple routine, even though they appeared to have dead legs today.

  Looking on in despair as the six teenagers and two little girls jumped at the wrong time, he buried his face in the towel.

  ‘What’s up?’ Shelly slid closer to him.

  ‘It’s a disaster,’ Trevor wailed, unable to keep the hysteria out of his voice. ‘It’ll never be ready in time.’

  ‘It’s always ready in time. What happened to “it’ll be all right on the night”?’

  ‘I know, I know.’ He turned to her. ‘But look at the state of them.’

  ‘Stop panicking.’ She unwound her ponytail and let her hair hang loose around her shoulders. ‘I need a break and you need to calm down.’ She placed a hand on his arm, letting it linger there, before adding, ‘I’ll fetch us some water.’

  Her flirtations were lost on him. She still didn’t get it, he thought as she skipped out of the door.

  Jumping up onto the stage, he said, ‘This is the last time I’m showing you the routine, okay?’ He gesticulated wildly. ‘Stand down there and watch me and learn. Otherwise I’m leaving and this show can die on its feet.’

  The mean-guy routine didn’t come naturally to him in public. He knew he looked like a mannequin let loose in a shop window as he took a deep breath, waiting for the beat to kick in and the music to wend its way into his veins. He glanced at his toes to make sure he was ready. When he looked up again, he noticed a shadow on the balcony. Someone moved through the front r
ow before letting the seat down and sitting. Maybe it was a talent scout, Trevor thought irrationally. Not at his stage of life, surely. Thirty-six was too old for Broadway.

  Nevertheless, he was going to give this his best shot. He needed to demonstrate to the kids, plus whoever was watching, just how to dance.

  Chapter Nine

  The atmosphere had an eerie stillness to it. Like the calm before a full-blown storm. The drive through the village of Ballydoon had brought Lottie back in time. One street. Two pubs. A solitary shop that looked like it sold everything from a bale of briquettes to a cappuccino in a cardboard cup. A signpost told her there was a school up to the left, past the church with a cemetery across the road. A green area was bare other than an ancient water pump, painted blue, which looked out of place in the centre.

  A garage with dirt and grime on its plate-glass window screamed that it had been closed for some time. The petrol pumps were defunct. The whole village seemed to be dying on bandaged feet, crying out for redemption.

  Ballydoon Abbey stood at the end of a roadway lined with trees. Branches, heavy with snow, hung low across the treacherous avenue.

  Lottie looked up at the abbey roof and noticed smoke hanging in the air as it struggled to rise from a chimney stack. Her day so far had been filled with death and spreadsheets. She wasn’t sure which was worse. At least she’d succeeded in getting Boyd to delay his departure for an hour or so because she wanted him at the scene for initial observations.

  At the inner cordon, her eyes were drawn towards the prostrate figure. She noticed the long dress clothing the body. It was whiter than the slushy snow on which the woman lay. It couldn’t be another victim in a wedding dress, could it? Shit, she thought.

  From where she stood, she saw very little blood. The young woman was lying on her stomach, face sideways, and Lottie wondered why brain matter had not spattered across the virgin snow. Had she been dead before she fell?