Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(30)

Pat Hannon – neighbour. Scuttered, uncooperative. Says MD has a ‘dirty mouth’ but a harmless old soul.



I find what I’m looking for three-quarters down the final page.



Jacqui McBride, fourteen, visiting from England (Agnes Kinsella’s crowd). Doesn’t know MD well, last saw her Thursday 28th sitting on St Benedict’s wall. Spoke briefly with parents. No relevant info.



So Jacqui had told the truth. She’d admitted she was a bit-part player and hadn’t tried to plant herself firmly in the thick of things like she normally did, back then more than ever.

In total it looks like Sergeant Bill Swords spoke with around twenty people. Not quite the ‘bog-all’ that Aiden Doyle suggested but perfunctory at best. A pass-muster B minus. Even the official Missing Persons form has a whiff of ticked boxes and jaded indifference.

Is the person suspected to be a victim of a crime in progress, e.g, abduction? NO



Is the person vulnerable due to age, infirmity, or any other factor? NO



Are there inclement weather conditions which would seriously increase risk to health? NO



Does the missing person need essential medication or treatment not readily available to them? NO



Does the missing person have any physical illness, disability or mental health problems? NO



Is there any information that the person is likely to cause self-harm or attempt suicide? NO



Has the person previously disappeared AND suffered or was exposed to harm? NO



Are there any indications that preparations have been made for their absence? Brother says bag is gone but nothing else obvious



Are there family and/or relationship problems or recent history of family conflict?

Jonjo Doyle well known to Guards for petty violent incidents



School, college, university, employment or financial problems? NO



Drug or alcohol dependency? NO





There’s part of me – the painstaking, zealous part that makes me tailor-made for Murder, despite what Steele thinks – that’s sick to my stomach at the thought of a teenage girl vanishing off the face of the earth and it warranting no serious follow-up. Yet tonight, as I crouch in Steele’s office, I could kiss Sergeant Bill Swords for his slap-happy half-job. For doing no more than what was absolutely required.

‘Spoke briefly with parents.’

And for his interpretation of the word ‘briefly’.

Because that’s not how I remember it. I remember two pots of tea drunk. A whole plate of fig rolls and half the coconut creams too. I remember the ‘Angelus’ ringing out at six p.m. and a big fat man, presumably Supersleuth Swords, leaping out of his chair, shocked that they’d been gassing for well over an hour when he had crimes to crack on with and cows to bring in.

But then, time always flies when Dad’s on good form.

And he was on sparkling form that day.





8

When I was fourteen I dyed my hair to look like Maryanne. Mousy-brown to liquorice-black in the time it took to wreck Mum’s newly tiled en suite. I knew straight away it didn’t suit me – it was less Maryanne, more Morticia – and I knew I’d pay dearly for the unholy mess I’d left behind, but it was worth every punishment that Mum could mete out just to see the look on Dad’s face, sucker-punched and speechless at the bottom of the stairs.

Sucker-punched, that’s how I’d describe him now. The shock of my face seems to flatten him. He looks pale and transparent. Only the beams from the halogen lights that criss-cross the ceiling give him any kind of colour. Any kind of humanity.

He’d been laughing as I’d walked in. Hunched over the bar, snickering at a video on some city-boy’s phone.

He’s not laughing now.

‘Catrina, you came back.’

I psych myself for a stilted hug – want one even, in some bone-deep, primeval way, but there’s nothing. Just a glass of white wine foisted across the bar and a slightly belligerent look.

‘I have to speak to someone quickly,’ he says, grabbing my arm – more proprietorial than paternal. ‘Do not move, do you hear me?’

I shrug like the fourteen-year-old I always revert to and hoist myself onto a bar-stool, pushing the glass of wine away. Across the bar, to the side of a tasteful but utterly joyless Christmas tree, Dad argues with a tall girl in a black backless dress. They’re too far away and I can’t see her face but as there’s tribal tattoos snaking all the way down her back, I work on the assumption that bad-ass body art and facial piercings often go together and I figure this could be Little Miss Lip-Stud. Dad’s current shag du jour. The sight of her bare skin twinkling diamond-white in the glare of the tree lights makes me feel like a maiden aunt, sat there on my bar stool, straight-backed and sweating in my buttoned-up parka, but I refuse to undo even one notch.

Not stopping.

I watch as Dad says something and Shag du Jour stomps for the door, throwing back one final insult and one pointed finger, like a witch casting a hex on the place. At least this one’s feisty, I think. He usually goes for giggly and saccharine. Curves in all the right places but all the personality of a crash-test dummy.

As he walks back over, he pulls at the back of his neck, releasing tension.