No Safe Place(Detective Lottie Parker #4)(102)

She had no notion of when he had last been with her. It seemed like an eternity. Had he forgotten about her? Had he left her here to die? Would she end up like the bones on the table? Rotted bare of all flesh. Unburied and unblessed.

Surely someone had missed her by now?

Her throat was raw from screaming and her eyes had dried up like gravel had taken root behind them. And she was hungry and thirsty. She had nothing left.

She turned onto her side.

No one was coming.

She was alone.

She would never be found.

There was nothing she could do.

She was going to die.

Alone.





Day Five





Sunday 14 February 2016





Eighty-Seven





Lottie awoke to a soft light filtering through thin cotton curtains. She shot up in the bed. Where the hell was she?

Looking around the room, it all came crashing back to her. Her throat was clogged with a taste like the aftermath of smoking one too many cigarettes, and she smelled of smoke.

She hadn’t slept in this room since she’d married Adam, but now memories of her childhood flowed about her like a waterfall. As a child, she’d felt safe here, but now she was like an interloper. A giant in a miniature world. Not nostalgia, just sadness. She didn’t belong here. The only place she could truly call home was now a smouldering mound of ash.

All her memories of her husband and their life together had gone with the house. Disintegrated to ash. Tugging Adam’s sweater to her body, she realised it was the only thing of meaning she had left of him.

The door opened. Lottie hastily wiped the tears from her face and watched her mother place a mug of coffee on the bedside locker.

Rose Fitzpatrick looked healthier than she had in months. Hair washed and standing to attention. Clothes sharply ironed. A mask of yellow still lingered on her skin and her eyes held that sorrowful, dry look you often saw in people who had grieved so long they’d no tears left to shed. Still, it was as if last night’s fire had acted as a catalyst for Rose, causing her to take on the role of Lazarus and rise from the dead.

In that instant, Lottie realised how much she wanted her mother to take control of things. Not that she was going to let it get out of hand. But for now, she was glad of it. Maybe some day soon they might be able to deal with the complexities of their past.

‘Chloe and Sean? Are they okay?’ she asked.

‘Still asleep, poor pets. Awful thing to happen to anyone.’

‘Thanks,’ Lottie said.

‘For what?’

‘Taking us in.’

‘Don’t be acting the lady now, Lottie Parker. Taking you in? Isn’t that what a mother is for? Looking after her family.’

Somewhere in that statement there was a slight on Lottie’s ability to care for her own family, but she let it pass. Slurped the coffee, trying to kick-start her brain.

‘I need to go down to the house. Get some clothes.’ She sensed her mother’s stare. ‘What?’

‘There’s nothing left. You know that.’

‘I didn’t …’ She quickly swallowed a mouthful of coffee, to mask the sob gaining traction in her throat.

‘You need to think, Lottie, long and hard. You and my grandchildren are welcome to stay here. I know you won’t want to do that for very long, but in the meantime, can we at least be civil to each other? Do you think you can manage that?’

Lottie held her tongue. It wasn’t her that was always throwing out snide remarks. Or was it?

‘Okay. Thank you.’

Rose nodded and left the room, closing the door with a soft thud.

‘What am I going to do?’ Lottie cried at the four walls.

She needed air. Shit, she needed clothes.

And then her phone beeped with a message.





Eighty-Eight





Last night, once he’d got over his panic attack, Boyd had scoured the town. Grace was nowhere to be found. He’d rounded up Kirby, Lynch and Gilly to start phoning. Store Street garda station, Garda HQ. The rail company. Anyone and everyone. Someone must know where she was.

It was fruitless. He knew that. Look at Mollie Hunter. No sighting of her since Wednesday. And Grace had been on that train with her. So where was she?

When he’d heard about the fire at Lottie’s house, he’d rushed there to see what he could do to help, and had made sure she and the children were safely ensconced at her mother’s. Now SOCOs were sifting through the embers for clues to what had happened. Had Lottie and her family become the target of whoever had murdered Bridie McWard and her child? The only variable in that synopsis was that Paddy McWard had been detained in a cell all night.

Boyd paced the incident room. He needed to get into his car and do something. Go somewhere. But where?

Right now, he could do with some of Lottie’s gut instinct.

Right now, he could do with Lottie by his side, full stop.





Eighty-Nine





Standing at the corner by the caretaker’s office, Lottie looked down the hill at the small gathering. Father Joe was sprinkling holy water from a narrow hand-held brass bucket. She wanted to walk away from this intimate activity, from the tranquillity of the morning after the mayhem of the last twelve hours, but she’d been drawn here and now she couldn’t move her feet.