The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(92)

She leaned back, took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Jake’s room was empty. She followed Boyd into the little girl’s room. Also empty.

‘Where are the children?’ she cried.

A whimper from the corner of the room alerted her.

‘The wardrobe!’

Running across the shaggy pink carpet, she pulled back the sliding door, tugged the hanging clothes apart and dropped to her knees.

‘Annie? Sweetheart, I’m a friend. You’re okay now. No one is going to hurt you.’ Stroking the arm of the curled-up trembling child, she pulled down her mask and hood, not wanting to terrorise the little girl further.

‘Mommy? Where’s m-m-my m-mommy?’

Lottie gently lifted Annie out of her refuge. Boyd leaned in to search further. He shook his head.

‘Annie darling, where’s your brother? Where’s Jake?’

The child in her arms screamed.

Boyd rushed across to the boy’s room. Lottie heard him pulling at doors and drawers. He returned. ‘He’s not in his room.’

The sound of commotion downstairs reached Lottie’s ears.

‘Let’s get this little one to an ambulance,’ she said.

At the bottom of the stairs she directed Jim McGlynn towards the kitchen. Boyd passed by and out of the front door, calling for a paramedic.

‘I want my mommy,’ Annie cried, clinging to Lottie’s neck.

‘Find the neighbour who reported this,’ Lottie instructed Boyd.

Sitting on the bottom stair, she pulled a fleece jacket from the banister to wrap around the child, then realised that she could compromise any evidence that might be on the girl. She waited. Had Moroney killed his wife and then himself, as Boyd had surmised? Hadn’t Moroney told her only yesterday that he’d been working for years on an organised crime story? Maybe he’d got too close to the truth and had to be taken out. But why kill his wife? Jesus, she didn’t even know the woman’s name, hadn’t even known Moroney was married with kids. She had him all wrong.

Boyd returned with a woman, tear-streaked cheeks, hair hanging untidily around her shoulders.

‘This is Dee White. Jake was having a sleepover with her son last night. She brought him home this morning and got no response at the front door. When she went round the back… she saw the blood.’

‘I had Jake with me. I just bundled him up in my arms and ran home to call the emergency services. I knew something was wrong.’

‘What age is Jake?’

‘He’s five. Annie is three. Will you come with me, sweetie?’

Lottie said, ‘Annie, I want you to go with Dee. You’ll see Jake soon. Would you like that?’

The little girl murmured and wriggled from Lottie’s grip. Dee took her in her arms and Boyd guided them to the ambulance. Lottie assigned a detective to remain with them at all times. Maybe the little girl had seen something. Heard something. They’d have to interview her at some stage. But she’s only three, Lottie thought, and turned back to the kitchen of death.





Eighty-Two





McGlynn and his team worked in silence. There had to be a study or an office. Lottie tried the door to her left. Utility room – the washing machine with a late-night wash. An empty basket sat on the floor ready for the clothes. Clothes that would never again be worn.

Coats hung on hooks, wellingtons lined up neatly beneath them. A shelf with a pair of small football boots, mud and grass clogged in the studs.

‘Out,’ McGlynn said. ‘You’ve trampled all over my crime scene. Enough is enough.’

‘Later, then. After the state pathologist arrives.’

Without glancing at the bodies, she moved back to the hallway and into the living room. Beyond the fireplace a door lay open. Before McGlynn or any of his team could stop her, she entered.

Moroney’s home office. The only thing not upturned was an old desk with its drawers hanging open. It looked hand-made. Roughly hewn timber planks nailed together. A filing cabinet, on its side, had the drawers ripped from its rollers. They were piled on top of each other, contents spilled and ripped apart. The blinds were pulled down behind the desk but a little light crept in at the sides. Lottie noticed the framed photograph hanging on the wall. A seated Moroney, with his usual megawatt smile, his shoulders draped with the arms of the beautiful black-haired woman standing behind him, so different from how she now looked on the kitchen floor. Two children, smiling out at the camera, on his knees, their arms wrapped around his neck. Choking back a sob, Lottie silently mourned the man she had never liked and the family she’d never known he had.

‘Inspector?’ Jane Dore stood, suited up in the hallway.

Totally convinced now that Moroney had not murdered his wife before taking his own life, Lottie walked out of the office with determination in every step. Someone had been looking for something. And she’d no idea if it had been found or not. But once the SOCOs had finished their work, she would be back.

‘It’s an ugly one,’ she said.

‘Aren’t they all?’ Jane said, and set off for the kitchen.

Outside the tent that had been erected at the front door, the cold air had turned to rain once more, and with her mouth set in a grim line, Lottie hurried round the back of the house to look for Boyd.



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