The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(46)

Thirty-Nine





Emma shivered beneath the rough blanket and stifled her tears. No point in crying. Her grandmother was dead, her mother was in a coma and her dad was a murder suspect. And it was all her fault. She never should have listened to the big ideas and small-town talk. Some people were just bad news. She knew that now. But things had gone too far. Too much had been covered up. And now her family had paid the ultimate price.

She heard him downstairs, pottering around, making dinner. She wasn’t hungry. Couldn’t eat. Wouldn’t eat. Wanted to die. Serve her right if she died. Why had she even come here? Because she’d been told that if anything happened to her family – if she was ever in trouble – Mick O’Dowd was the man to go to for help. He was supposed to keep her safe. Oh my God! She didn’t even know him. He could rape and murder her and dump her body in his slurry pit, and no one would ever know. Why had she come here? Was it the biggest mistake of her life?

Picking up her phone, she debated putting the SIM and battery back in. If she did, it could be traced. Did she really need to make the call? She knew she had to tell someone about what she’d overheard; what she’d seen. Could she wait another day?

A burst of wind rattled the glass in the window frame. Cans and bins clattered across the yard below. The dog howled. She heard O’Dowd whistling in tune to the gale.

What should she do?

Pulling the blanket up over her head, its musty scent telling her it was years since it had been out of the linen box, she lay in the darkness and listened to the storm blowing outside.

She missed her mother.

She wanted her father.

Emma Russell was terrified. Not of the storm, but of what might happen next.





Forty





Wind and rain crashed against the window pane and Lottie lay awake with the curtains open, staring out at the storm.

She craved the arms of a man. She craved another drink. She craved escape to oblivion.

The glass in her hand shook. She drained the clear liquid and, still in darkness, poured another drink from the bottle in the bed beside her.

There was something wrong with her mother. There always had been. Now it was worse. Had it to do with Lottie snooping into her father’s suicide? But in the few days since Tessa Ball had been murdered, Rose seemed to have deteriorated. Did she know something? What had she said about Tessa’s past?

As the alcohol wended its way through her veins, Lottie felt a light relief in her head. She put down the glass, then the bottle, and fell asleep to the sound of the wind.





Forty-One





Alexis didn’t like using Skype. She didn’t like it when they could see her. And in all honesty, she didn’t want to see them either. Standing to one side of her black glass-topped desk, she hit the connect button.

‘Be short and quick,’ she said.

‘Things are going well…’

‘I hear a but. Tell me.’ Alexis didn’t want any buts. They usually heralded new problems. She walked away from the desk and looked out at the afternoon lower Manhattan skyline.

There was silence from the computer. She was beginning to think the caller had disconnected when she heard the cough.

‘You’re right. There is a but. Nothing we can’t handle at this end, though.’

‘I’m waiting.’

‘It’s to do with the other problem.’

Alexis knew what was being referred to.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Well, I got what you wanted from the old lady’s attic, but the pathologist has accessed the post-mortem file.’

‘The original file?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Alexis hated that term. She wasn’t anyone’s ma’am.

‘Can you destroy it?’ she asked.

‘Not unless I get it from her.’

‘Her?’

‘The state pathologist.’

Alexis wondered if there was anything in the file to warrant the case being reopened. She couldn’t take the chance.

‘Get it. Don’t contact me again unless you have it.’ She walked back to her desk and disconnected the call.

She had a dinner party to attend. She knew it was one way to dispel any gnawing concern she might have about events in Ragmullin. She had handled it all before; she would do so again. Not even Detective Inspector Lottie Parker was going to stop her.





The Late Seventies





The Child





I don’t know what age I am and they won’t tell me. But I know I’m young. A child. They call me ‘the child’.

Why is everyone here so old?

Shuffling in and out of their ragged slippers. Peeling the paint off the walls with their fingernails. Banging their heads against the iron radiators. Blood pouring unhindered from wounds and sores.

And the noise.

Yelling and screaming. Do they not realise there’s no one to hear? No one to care about them. We’re all alone, together.

Today they’ve put me working in the laundry room.

It’s so hot, I think I might die.

The ceilings are so high, I feel so small. Maybe I am a midget.

The laundry.