The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(52)

About six tins of Lynx deodorant stood haphazardly amongst drink cans and empty cigarette packets. Three deep drawers. She opened the first one. A whiff of puke rose to her nose.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she muttered.

‘What?’

Lottie jumped, jostling the collection on the dresser.

‘Boyd, you bastard. You frightened the shite out of me.’

‘The state of this place. What kind of tramp is Brady?’

‘A filthy one. Everything stinks. How could Emma Russell be involved with him?’

‘Love is blind,’ Boyd said.

‘Love would want to have no sense of smell to come into this room. I really can’t see Emma in this pigsty.’

‘What’s in the drawers?’

‘Give me a chance.’ Lottie gingerly moved the underwear around, her gloved fingers searching beneath them. Finding nothing, she closed the drawer and opened the next one. T-shirts and vests. The bottom drawer too had little to offer. ‘More clothes. Hey, wait a minute.’

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Boyd leaned over her shoulder.

‘If you thought it was a bag of heroin, then yes.’ She held it aloft.

‘That’s worth a fair bit.’

‘How much do you think?’

‘There must be at least ten ounces in there.’

‘Worth killing for?’

‘There has to be more. I’ll look in the bathroom.’

‘You might want a gas mask.’ Lottie opened her handbag, found a plastic evidence bag and deposited the heroin. Giving the drawer a final glance, she closed it.

As she was passing the bed, she flicked up the bundled sheeting. Snagged up in the clump of dirty linen, she caught sight of a snatch of purple material. Carefully she plucked out a girl’s hoodie. She’d seen one similar to it recently, but in a different colour. Where? Who’d been wearing it? Emma Russell! Had the girl really been in here? Having sex with Brady? It didn’t fit with the image she had of her. But she’d been proven wrong before.

‘Found more!’ Boyd shouted from the bathroom.

With a shake of her head, Lottie folded the hoodie and took it with her. Boyd was on his hands and knees, having removed the avocado-green plastic covering from the side of the bath.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘That’s some haul.’ Boyd had extracted three more bags of heroin.

‘But it’s not a lot in the scheme of things, is it?’

‘Lorcan Brady’s fingers were chopped off, Marian Russell had her tongue cut out and was left for dead, and an unidentified male was stabbed and burned. There must be more drugs.’

‘Maybe they went up in smoke in the cottage fire?’

‘I think we’d better find out before someone else is murdered,’ she said.

‘We need to identify the dead man. It might lead us to his killer.’ Boyd got up from his knees. ‘Want to look in the cistern?’

Lottie lifted the lid from the toilet cistern. ‘Water. Nothing else. But…’

‘What?’

Shifting the lid back on the cistern, Lottie glanced around the dingy bathroom with its plastic decor and drab tiles. ‘If Lorcan Brady was big into the drugs game, don’t you think he would be living somewhere better than this?’

‘Possibly.’

‘The hacking-off of his fingers – I think he was stealing from the big guys. Got caught out. Was he a middleman, or the lowest link of the chain? Is something bigger going on?’

The trundle of a heavy van and the screech of brakes from outside caused her to look up. ‘That’ll be McGlynn and his team.’

Boyd said, ‘Wait until he sees the amount of blood in that kitchen.’

Lottie had another look into the bedroom and a familiar icy chill settled between her shoulder blades.

‘Boyd?’

‘What?’

‘We’d better find Emma.’





Forty-Five





Jim McGlynn wasn’t a happy camper.

‘I wish you two would toddle off to some other division. Didn’t I tell ye I’ve been looking forward to a nice easy ride into retirement? You keep screwing up my journey.’

‘Not our fault,’ Lottie said.

McGlynn was busy setting up his equipment to photograph the scene. ‘When I’ve finished here, I’m going to the cottage. It’s been deemed safe to enter at last.’

‘Let me know if you find anything.’ At the door, Lottie turned. ‘Will you get your team to go through the rubbish bags out the back?’

McGlynn nodded. ‘It all looks a bit too frantic in here.’

Boyd said, ‘Maybe the assailants were high on drugs.’

‘Possibly.’

Lottie looked at the streaks of blood lining the surface of the gnarled wooden table lying on its side. Chairs had been overturned. Doors were hanging off the cupboards and crockery had been smashed on the floor. Envelopes and paper were scattered everywhere and the sink looked like no one had washed anything in it in months. Food littered the counter tops along with two dead mice.

‘No fish tank,’ Lottie said. ‘Why all the fish food?’

‘Maybe that’s what he fed the dog with.’