The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(26)

‘I don’t want to talk to you. Leave me alone.’

Lying on the bed, Emma pulled the pillow over her face and listened to the muffled footsteps making their way back down the stairs.

Her granny was dead, her mother was probably dying and her dad was going to be a convicted murderer. Her life was gushing down the drain. Fast. Too fast.

She really had to speak to her dad.

There was something he had to know.





Twenty-Two





When everyone else was settled down for the night, Lottie was still pacing her bedroom. Three steps one way, three steps the other. She could do with somewhere other than her room. If she lived in a house like Annabelle’s, she would have plenty of space to think.

At her window, she looked down on the road below. Rain fell in sheets of grey to the ground. Maybe she could go for a run. Wash the cobwebs out of her brain. Don’t be stupid, she admonished herself. She thought about Tessa Ball. Why had she recognised the name? And her mother had known her. Well, that was nothing new. Rose Fitzpatrick knew everyone over the age of sixty in Ragmullin.

Leaning against the wall, holding the curtain, she nursed the glass of vodka. Secret drinking. She was back there again and she didn’t like it. But she couldn’t help it. Spying the box sticking out at an angle from beneath her bed, she placed the glass on the window ledge and knelt down. Dragging out the box, she lifted the lid. Files, photographs, notebooks. Her father’s pipe. She lifted it to her nose. It was stale and fusty; it didn’t resurrect memories of the smell of his tobacco. It could have belonged to anyone.

Her fingertips feathered over a small, square, hand-made wooden box with rusted hinges. She knew what was inside but opened it anyway. Two trays of fly-fish hooks. All created by her father’s hands. He would have got on well with Adam. They had both loved fishing. She closed the box and took up an old notebook. Sitting back against the wardrobe door, she reached up to the window ledge for her glass and started at page one.

She’d been through it so many times recently, she almost knew the words off by heart. Her father’s notes on cases. All solved, as far as she’d discovered from her covert investigations. Had she seen Tessa Ball’s name in this notebook? It had to be somewhere and it must have been something inconsequential, because she hadn’t followed it up.

And then, more than halfway through, she found it. Belfield and Ball, Solicitors. Main Street. Ragmullin. Neatly inscribed in her father’s schooled handwriting. In the centre of a page, written over a sentence, between two blue lines. She read back over the script. The name of the solicitor bore no relation to the text. Why had her father written it here? Had he been at his desk, taking a phone call perhaps; opened the first thing to hand, scribbled it down to remember for later? She had no idea.

Taking another sip, she closed her eyes. For the last few months she’d been asking questions. Interviewing old people in nursing homes. People who had once worked with her dad. Now Tessa Ball had died violently and her daughter, Marian Russell, had had her tongue cut out. It might not be related to her dad, but Lottie couldn’t help wondering if she had opened up a can of worms with her private investigation into her father’s death.



* * *



Taking the bobbin from her ponytail, Detective Maria Lynch let her hair hang loose about her shoulders. She was sitting in her car outside her home. It was in darkness except for the hall light. Ben usually got the children to bed early, and when she wasn’t home, he’d retire to bed with either work or a book.

Gathering her phone into her bag, she took the keys from the ignition and wondered about Lottie Parker. During the last two big murder cases they’d investigated, Lottie had made a lot of errors of judgement. Lynch didn’t like being on a team that made mistakes. Okay, everything had worked out in the end and they’d caught the killers, but did that make how they’d reached those positive conclusions correct?

This case was probably a domestic dispute that had gone south, but Lottie Parker was on edge. And Lynch knew that that was when mistakes were sure to be made. Perhaps it was time to have a word with Superintendent Corrigan. One thing was certain: she was not going to sink on Lottie Parker’s ship.



* * *



Boyd had a quick shower after his nightly workout on his turbo bike. Once the rain cleared, whenever that might be, he’d be back on the road with his racer. Pounding tarmac to exorcise the torment of his work.

Lottie Parker was at it again. He feared for her when she was in this state. She never knew when to stop. He half expected to find her curled up on his doorstep, or for his phone to ring with her babbling incoherently.

Dressed in a white T-shirt and baggy jogging pants, he sat on his couch and took out his phone, scrolling to Lottie’s name. He wanted to talk to her. To make sure she was sober. But maybe she’d be asleep. He glanced at the time on the phone. 10.22 p.m. No way Lottie Parker was asleep.

The apartment walls were swallowing him up. He pulled on a pair of trainers and plucked a jacket from the hall stand.

There was only one place Boyd could go dressed like this, at this hour of the night.





Twenty-Three





Lottie opened the door and stood back to let Boyd in.

‘The state of you. What do you look like?’ she laughed, then, seeing the serious lines etched on his face, she added, ‘Something wrong?’