No Safe Place(Detective Lottie Parker #4)(23)

In, out, in, out. One, two, three, she counted in her head. No use. Ten, nine, eight. Still useless. I can’t pass out, she warned herself. There was nowhere for her to fall, nowhere for her to go.

People pushed up against her as the train left the station. Her worst nightmare: physical touch. And the suffocating smell of sweat and last-minute cigarettes. Her hand tightened on the leather strap of her satchel. The numbness began to ebb. Her lips opened, and she exhaled a breath.

‘A little colour is coming back to your cheeks,’ Mollie said. ‘You had me worried for a minute. What came over you?’

Shrugging, Grace clutched her bag tighter to her body. How could she explain to this girl, who was still a stranger, what it was like to live inside her skin? She couldn’t, so she remained mute, silently praying for an opportunity to get to carriage C. Only then would she be okay.





Eighteen





The evening sky was grey-blue. Not quite daylight and not yet night. Dusk. It’d be fully dark soon. February was being a stubbornly cold month, with very little hint of spring appearing. Lottie zipped up her hoodie and then her jacket. The wrought-iron gates were wide open to allow the forensic vehicles entry to the cemetery. Crime-scene tape hung limply across the space, guarded by two uniformed officers.

They signed in and entered the grounds. Lottie stopped to view the caretaker’s office, dark and lifeless in the shadow of the trees.

‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Boyd said.

‘Beginning to freeze. Look at that lot. Fahy mentioned illegal dumping.’ Lottie scanned the heaving mass of black bags sitting on top of a yellow skip. ‘They look like they’re moving.’ Then she spied the vermin boxes around the house. Ugh!

Boyd said, ‘See there. Sacks scattered on the ground. People must drive up outside and hurl their rubbish over the wall.’

‘The council need to put up more cameras,’ she said. ‘Have we got the surveillance footage yet?’

‘Kirby’s looking after it.’

‘Good,’ Lottie started down the slope, which was glistening silver with the evening frost. A series of halogen lights on tripods illuminated the forensic tent and cast spectral shadows on the headstones surrounding it. A colony of SOCOs were working systematically, like ants, sifting through the clay and dirt.

She walked towards the wall that backed onto the traveller site. ‘How high do you think this is?’

‘Must be nine or ten feet.’

‘And Bridie’s house is just beyond it. She says she heard a scream after three on Tuesday morning. Will you go back up there and scream?’ She indicated the direction they’d come from. ‘I’ll see if I can hear it.’

‘You’re having me on?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Then I’ll stand here while you go and scream.’

‘Maybe I should warn Bridie first.’

‘Maybe you should warn the banshee that you intend to take her place.’

‘Boyd, I need to confirm one way or the other if someone’s screams could be heard the other side of the wall.’

‘There are flaws to your plan. Say, if you stand right under the wall, you can be sure you’d be heard.’

Lottie swung her flashlight around the headstones, silently admitting that it had been a half-thought-out plan. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Bridie really had heard the woman’s screams. Travellers were renowned for their insights and vision. And if Bridie had heard Elizabeth Byrne screaming, it could tie down time of death.

She went over to the SOCOs. McGlynn was on his knees in the bottom of the grave, brushing and scraping where the body had lain. He looked up.

‘Before you even ask,’ he said, ‘I haven’t found much for you to work with. Just flakes of skin, clay, dirt and stones.’

‘Blood?’ Lottie ventured, peering over the edge.

‘Some. It’ll be analysed.’

Lottie recalled the spot of blood she’d found on the stone from the neighbouring grave. She’d follow it up in the morning.

‘If he covered her with clay, did he use his hands?’ she asked.

‘How would I know that?’ McGlynn said.

Lottie turned to Boyd. ‘We need to examine all the tools used around here.’

McGlynn’s voice rose from the grave. ‘I’ve taken care of that. You’ll have the results as soon as I have them. I’m assuming you took the two workers’ DNA and fingerprints.’

‘Of course,’ she said, hoping Kirby had done his job properly.

‘Good.’

‘The entire area has been fingertip-searched,’ Boyd said. ‘When will your work be finished here?’

McGlynn glanced up, his eyes dancing with green fire above his white mouth mask. ‘It will be finished when it’s finished.’

Lottie looked over at the rows of headstones, misshapen humps on the landscape. The vastness of the resting place for the dead chilled her.

‘I don’t think this is what the killer intended,’ she said. ‘It’s more than likely the girl escaped from him and he followed. But why were they here in the first place? Were they having sex and it got too rough, or he was raping her and she fled? Where did they come from? He had to have a car, so where was it parked?’