Buried Angels

by Patricia Gibney

  Lottie shrugged. She wasn’t going to tell her anyway. The image of the chair and the blood on the floor in the old house caused her to momentarily shake. She dug her fingers into the palms of her hands to keep calm. ‘Me too.’

  Marianne looked at her steadily. ‘Do you think it had to do with him and Jack finding the body parts?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Lottie wondered why she was sitting here with this apparently damaged woman when there were so many people she had to interview; so many other lines to connect. Gut instinct? Ticking boxes? But it niggled away at her as to why Kevin O’Keeffe had visited Karen Tierney with knowledge about Faye’s murder before it had been publicly revealed. Okay, he might have seen it online, but why the need to talk to Karen? It bugged the shit out of her.

  As she stood to leave, she said, ‘I spoke with Kevin yesterday.’

  ‘Kevin?’ Marianne’s eyes flickered as if she’d seen a ghost appear beyond Lottie’s shoulder. ‘About what?’

  ‘In relation to another case.’

  ‘Did he do something?’

  Lottie held onto the door and watched as Marianne, keeping her arm across her chest, raised herself from the chair. ‘Was he at home last night?’

  ‘I was out till after eleven. Might have been nearer midnight, because I drove around for a bit. He was here when I got in.’ She winced.

  Lottie didn’t need a map and a compass to work out what had happened then. ‘How well does Kevin know Karen Tierney?’

  ‘They work together. That’s all.’

  The addition of ‘that’s all’ made Lottie think that maybe there was more to that relationship. She’d have to quiz Kevin some more. Perhaps the only thing he was guilty of was infidelity. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Okay. Do you know Faye Baker?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know anything about number 2 Church View?’

  ‘I heard it mentioned on the news.’

  ‘Faye Baker found a skull there a few days ago, and then we found her body in the boot of a car yesterday morning.’

  ‘Jesus! Do you think Kevin had something to do with it?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Marianne bit her lip and her face closed like a fist. From between tight lips she eventually said, ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  Fifty-Four

  Kirby filled Lottie in on his interview with Brandon Carthy at the recycling centre.

  ‘Did you get the CCTV tape?’ Lottie tried to concentrate on his words.

  ‘Yeah. Told the lads to prioritise it.’

  She told him about her conversations with Lisa, Tamara and Marianne. ‘I’m waiting to see if anyone can find out who owns that derelict house. It’s a horrible crime scene.’

  ‘You’re sure the body in the freezer is Aaron Frost?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘And Gavin most likely met his death there too.’ She needed to reassess all their evidence to see who connected to what. So far nothing seemed to be linked. Faye definitely wasn’t murdered in the boot of the car where she was found, so it was possible she had been murdered in that house. Why had Kevin O’Keeffe been so quick to call to Karen Tierney to ask about the body? ‘I want O’Keeffe in here for an interview. We need to know where he was last night.’

  ‘Right so.’

  ‘And find out who owns that old house and let me know. How did you get on with the warrant for Derry Walsh’s butcher shop?’

  ‘Got it,’ Kirby said. ‘The shop was searched early this morning. All clear.’

  ‘That’s good. But you still need to get one for Ferris and Frost. I want to see Aaron’s diary.’

  ‘Boss, you’re giving me a lot to do,’ Kirby moaned, running a pen through his bushy hair and scratching his head with it.

  ‘Learn to delegate, Kirby. And we still have to inform Aaron Frost’s mother. She’ll need to identify the body.’

  She was delaying that tough visit. She stood looking into her own small office with the mess of paperwork piled high. If she sat down, she felt she might never get up. Her head was muddied and tired. She sneezed and buttoned up her cardigan. She hoped she wasn’t getting a cold. If she did, she’d have to stay away from Boyd. It could compromise his immune system and cause more delays to his treatment.

  Boyd. She needed to hear his voice. That alone might help to release her anxiety.

  She rang him.

  ‘Hi, beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘Have you been drinking?’ Just listening to him, she felt some of the tension of the morning evaporating.

  ‘No, but I got another hospital appointment for tomorrow. They want to run my bloods again. I’ve had two doughnuts,’ he laughed, ‘trying to bring my platelets up.’

  ‘Doesn’t work that way.’ How was she going to get the time off to go with him? There was only so much skiving she could get away with, and she needed to keep Superintendent Farrell off her back.

  ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ he said.

  She grinned. He had a habit of reading her mind. Pacing the cramped office, she said, ‘I want to. No argument.’

  Still holding the phone to her ear, she pushed a box file out of her way with her foot, turned the corner and stopped.

  Boyd was standing there, phone to his ear, leaning against the wall outside her office. Her heart flipped in a double somersault. He was so handsome. So Boyd. She had an insane urge to rush up and kiss him. Like a teenager. God!

  ‘Were you here all along?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Just walking up the corridor when you rang. Fancy a coffee? I want to talk to you about something.’

  His cheeks seemed even more hollow than last night. He looked so tired.

  She was about to tell him she was too busy, but stopped herself. Yes, she had the murder investigations to juggle, including little Gavin, and to tell Mrs Frost that her son was dead, but she realised in the same instant that she had to make time for the living too.

  ‘Come in and sit down.’

  She moved a bundle of files and watched as he folded himself into the chair, one leg over his knee, trying to appear relaxed. She knew he was missing work terribly, but so far he had stayed away. Maybe he’d been in to see the super.

  When she had settled herself at the desk, she said, ‘Are you okay, Boyd?’

  ‘It’s Grace. She wasn’t herself this morning. I’m worried about her and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘It’s been a traumatic time for you both. It will take her a good while to adjust to life without your mother.’

  ‘Mam’s death hasn’t really hit me yet, but it has hit Grace quite hard. I can’t let her live on her own in Galway. She wants to be self-sufficient, but you and I know that’s not going to work.’

  ‘There must be a neighbour who could keep an eye on her.’

  ‘A neighbour? You saw how isolated our home is down there.’ He looked around at the clutter. ‘I’m thinking I’ll have to ignore her objections and bring her to Ragmullin to live with me permanently.’

  She had expected this, but hearing him say the words out loud stumped her for a moment. What about their plans to get married? His treatment? Suddenly she felt selfish, and possessive of Boyd. She folded her arms defensively; then, knowing he could read her, she unfolded them. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I need your advice and wisdom.’

  ‘I am not one bit wise. Not where you’re concerned, in any case.’ She smiled.

  His face was etched with worry. ‘We can talk about it later,’ he said. ‘Call round. And you don’t have to drive me tomorrow. The super will be on your case over it.’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘I insist too. You’re busy. According to Kirby, you have two if not three cold-case victims, a young pregnant woman murdered and two new murders today. Are they all connected?’

  She knew he was deflecting her. Then again, he might be able to o
ffer some help. Against her better judgement, she found herself explaining the morning’s developments.

  ‘That’s an awful lot going on,’ he said when she’d finished.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘There has to be a connection between the frozen body parts. They were found on the same piece of track on the same day. But you say one was male and one female. Two victims. Anything else in forensics to tie them together?’

  ‘Not so far. We’re waiting for lab results.’ She reminded him about the tag found on the child’s torso. ‘I have the team going through old missing persons reports.’

  ‘Have you tackled the question of how they ended up on the tracks?’

  ‘The derelict house we found earlier was overgrown and boarded off. It’s like it had become part of the landscape and no one seemed to even know it was there any more. An ideal spot to hide bodies. There were three freezers plugged in. SOCOs will be inspecting them, but I’m sure they held the body parts. If so, it’s possible someone put them in a wheelie bin and walked brazenly along the road and across the bridge with it.’

  ‘Could anyone be that audacious?’

  ‘I think the person we’re dealing with is clever and cunning. They probably killed and dismembered two people, one of them a child, and hid those body parts for twenty years. Now they’re killing again. They have all the traits of a serial killer.’

  ‘But they stopped for twenty years. Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Who says they stopped? We just haven’t found any more bodies.’

  ‘Shit, Lottie, you know you need me on this with you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I could go through files, knock on doors. I want to help.’

  ‘You can’t. Anyway, there aren’t many houses out that way.’

  ‘There must be farmland. Get someone to check with the farmers along the route. I seem to remember a lot of bogs between Ragmullin and Enfield. Maybe someone footing turf saw something unusual. The place could be littered with bog bodies.’

  ‘Stop, Boyd. I’ve enough to contend with. I have to trace young Polly Cole. I’m convinced she’s the dead child. I’m waiting for DNA results.’

  ‘If she is the victim, then her mother must have killed her. Why else would she remain silent?’

  ‘Patsy Cole is dead, so she isn’t the one we’re looking for now.’

  ‘Someone somewhere knows something,’ Boyd said.

  ‘I’ll ask Superintendent Farrell to put out another appeal. But you know how unreliable eyewitnesses are.’

  ‘I do. Has she spoken to you yet?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Her plans for the station. Her plans for you.’

  ‘We had a conversation. She said you wanted to return to light duties.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You know you can’t do that.’

  He took her hand. ‘I’m going demented at home. I know I have my treatment, and I’m thankful that it’s going well, but I have too much time and I’m living in my own head. I need to work, Lottie. I need a purpose. I want to be involved even if it’s only sitting behind a desk trawling through missing persons reports. I can do that.’

  She leaned across the desk and squeezed his hand sympathetically. ‘I’ll have a word with the super. See what she says.’ She knew Superintendent Farrell would not allow the two of them to work together, but now wasn’t the time to tell Boyd that.

  He stood, walked around the desk and kissed her cheek. ‘I love you, you know that, Lottie Parker.’

  Smiling, she patted his thin jaw. ‘I have to get back to work.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll get out of your hair.’

  ‘About Grace. There really isn’t room for the two of you in your apartment.’

  ‘Kirby lived there with me for six months, and we didn’t kill each other.’

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Where is he staying now?’

  ‘Maybe with McKeown.’

  ‘Those two?’ Lottie smothered a laugh. ‘They’re at each other’s throats all the time. I can’t see them living together.’ She looked over Boyd’s shoulder at Kirby. He had his head down, reading something on his computer screen. ‘He mentioned he spent a night at the Joyce Hotel. I’ll have a word with him later.’

  ‘Right, boss.’ Boyd saluted and sauntered out the door.

  He was right, though, she thought: she really could do with his help.

  Fifty-Five

  The body had been removed from the freezer once Jane Dore had carried out her preliminary inspection. The information relayed to Lottie was that Aaron Frost had sustained at least two knife wounds to his upper back and had been killed within the last twenty-four hours. The wallet on his body had confirmed his identity. But all they had linking him to Faye and Jeff Baker was the fact that he had rented them the apartment. Now he was dead. And dead men couldn’t speak. She hoped maybe his mother would.

  While Kirby doused his cigar and placed it in his pocket, Lottie rang the doorbell of the modern semi-detached house on the old Athlone Road. A woman in her late fifties, with a hospital crutch snapped to her arm, opened the door. Her T-shirt was white with a gold-lettered logo proclaiming I need my coffee across her bust, and her faded denim jeans were flared.

  After introducing herself, Lottie said, ‘Mrs Frost, we need to talk with you. I’m afraid we have some very bad news.’

  ‘You better come in. Is it about Aaron?’

  Lottie walked behind her into a tidy sitting room. There was a couch and two armchairs, black leather. Magazines littered a small coffee table. It was an L-shaped space that led to an open-plan kitchen with double doors overlooking a garden. The kitchen, though small, appeared pleasant and warm.

  Mrs Frost leaned the crutch against the arm of the chair and sat down gingerly. She bit her lip and tugged at the ends of her bobbed hair. ‘My hip. Had an operation a year ago and it’s worse than before. What’s Aaron got himself involved in?’

  Lottie had to calm her thumping heart. Informing bereaved families about the death of a loved one continued to be one of the hardest parts of her job. She could have sent someone else, but seeing the first reactions of the people closest to a murder victim could tell her a lot. She felt Kirby shuffle on the couch beside her and knew she had to speak.

  ‘Mrs Frost—’

  ‘It’s Josie.’

  Lottie smiled. A little familiarity usually helped keep things calm. She straightened her back and felt her bottom sink into the comfortable seat. She’d need Josie’s crutch to get up.

  ‘I regret to have to tell you that we found the body of a man this morning and—’

  ‘Oh, it can’t be my Aaron. He’ll be at work.’

  Not going to be easy, Lottie thought. ‘I’m afraid there’s no mistake. The body is that of your son. I’m so sorry for your loss. You will be invited to make a formal identification once the pathologist gives the go-ahead.’

  Mrs Frost’s fingers snared on a lock of hair at her ear. ‘My Aaron? No. No. You’re wrong.’

  Lottie shook her head slowly, hoping Kirby might speak up. He remained mute.

  Mrs Frost dropped her gaze. ‘You see, Aaron is a good man. He can drink and act the Mick when he wants to, but he’s good.’ She glanced up, a glimmer of hope flitting across her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s not him?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt. I know it’s hard to take it all in at once, but I really need to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.’

  Swiping away a tear, Mrs Frost leaned forward on the chair, and Lottie gazed past her into the garden. The lawn was definitely due a trim and the bushes could do with being pruned. She returned her attention to the bereaved woman.

  ‘Josie, we believe Aaron was murdered.’

  ‘Oh dear God!’ Josie slumped on the chair. After a moment she said, ‘I suppose I knew something was wrong, with gardaí calling yesterday looking for him and now two detectives arriving at my door. I’m not stupid. But listen, Aaron has never been in t
rouble. Like I said, he drinks too much at times. Can’t get a girl to stay long enough to call her a girlfriend. But he’ll settle down in time, and then …’ She stopped speaking as the futility of her hopes for her son’s future sank in. ‘Sorry. Murdered, you say? How? Why?’

  ‘We need you to tell us everything Aaron did over the last few days and nights. Do you think you can do that now?’

  ‘Aaron does his own thing. He’s an adult.’ Josie stood and hobbled to the other room, leaning her head against the glass doors. Lottie watched her in silence. The woman was average build. Average height too, about five foot five, and her hair had grey roots. Maybe a little older than late fifties; it was hard to tell.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Lottie said, fearing Josie had slipped into a trance. ‘Water? I can make a cup of tea if you’d like?’

  Josie shook her head. ‘It’s my house and I’ll make the tea if I need it.’

  Still she kept her back to them. Lottie tried to rephrase her earlier question.

  ‘Can you tell us anything about Aaron that could help us uncover the events that led to his death?’ She moved to stand beside the woman at the doors.

  ‘I’ve nothing else to say about Aaron.’

  ‘We know he was out of the office yesterday. Where do you think he might have been?’

  ‘He told me nothing about his private life. He used this house like a B&B. I even did his washing and ironing for him. I spoiled him.’

  ‘Is his dad around?’

  Josie said nothing.

  ‘Do you want me to call your husband?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Richard in a couple of years. Went out for a packet of cigarettes and never returned.’ She turned back towards Lottie. ‘Left Aaron with a lot of unanswered questions, which led to a deep depression for a while. But I thought he had worked his way out of it.’

  Lottie had first-hand experience and knew how hard it was to work your way out of depression. She noticed there were no longer tears in Josie’s eyes. Just a dark rage burning the brown irises a deep shade of red.