No Safe Place(Detective Lottie Parker #4)(81)

Was this all because of her? Surely it couldn’t be.

But as she lay miserably in her bed, Carol couldn’t help feeling that it had everything to do with her.



* * *



Wind battered the walls of wherever she was being kept. Grace tried to take short, even breaths, but they came out as strangled gasps. Her eyes were gummy and a rash irritated her skin. It felt like someone had pulled a heavy sack over her head and abandoned her.

Trying to drag herself upright was impossible. She lay there, dampness seeping into her pores, ropes cutting into her flesh and her heart thumping in her ears.

It was useless to fight it. Her situation was hopeless. Mark thought she was in Galway and her mother thought she was with Mark. She was at the mercy of the man who’d brought her here.

A wave of nausea crept up her throat and she struggled not to vomit. She knew that if she did, she would choke to death.





Seventy-One





The terrace of houses was surrounded by a stone wall with a door cut into the brickwork. Behind it, a path led to a set of steps up to the front door.

Pushing the creaking wooden door inwards, Lottie studied the two-storey house. Most of the pebble-dash had eroded over time, leaving bare cracked concrete to face the elements. A bush, branches bare, peeked out at the side of the chimney, while a satellite dish hung lopsided from a trail of wires on the other side.

‘Bit dilapidated for habitation, don’t you think?’ she said.

‘Donal O’Donnell lives alone. Maybe he hasn’t the money to relocate to somewhere, let’s say, more upmarket.’ Boyd quenched his cigarette and doubled up in a fit of coughing.

‘You okay?’ she said.

‘Think I’ve a bit of a cold.’

‘Keep it to yourself. It sounds more than a bit. My mother swears by honey and lemon.’

‘Your mother doesn’t swear.’

‘Piss off, Boyd.’

She pressed the doorbell and waited, blowing hot breath into her cupped hands. The door opened.

‘Donal O’Donnell?’ she said.

‘Yes. You must be Detective Inspector Parker. Come to the kitchen.’

He turned and made his way down the dark, narrow hall. Lottie raised an eyebrow at Boyd. He shook his head as if to say, what? But she’d recognised the man. From the nursing home. He’d been waiting to see Kane and then, up at the glass window, he’d placed a hand on her injured shoulder. She shivered.

‘You must be getting a cold now,’ Boyd whispered in her ear. She pulled away from him.

The O’Donnell brothers were seated at a table. The kitchen was dull and dusty and Lottie tried to pinpoint the sour smell. The floor had either been washed with a dirty mop or it hadn’t been washed in months.

‘Thanks for agreeing to speak with us,’ she said, and introduced Boyd. With the five of them in the small room, she began to feel claustrophobic. They all shook hands and sat down.

‘Is this about our sister?’ Cillian O’Donnell was tall and sleek. His black hair was brushed back behind his ears and his leather jacket covered what looked like a blue lambswool sweater, with the collar of a white shirt tight to his neck. When he’d stood to shake her hand, she noticed he was wearing jeans with the requisite tattered designer cuts at the knees.

His brother, on the other hand, had an unkempt appearance, more in line with the look of their father. His sweater sported holes in the sleeves and she was sure they were not there by design. His face was unshaven and his hair unwashed and scraggy.

She struggled to remember the question.

O’Donnell senior said, ‘My daughter. Are you here to tell us something about her?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I’ve no news on Lynn’s disappearance. We’re investigating the murder of a young woman. Her body was found on Tuesday morning in Ragmullin cemetery.’

Cillian shot out of his chair. ‘You got us here on false pretences. We thought you had word about Lynn.’

Finn said, ‘We know nothing about any murder.’

Lottie thought he’d had his nose broken at some stage in his life; the bone was crooked. His eyes were dark spots of intensity.

‘Please sit down and I’ll explain,’ she said.

‘Yes, explain yourself or I’m going to ask you both to leave,’ Donal said, nodding his head, agreeing with his own statement.

He appeared to have sunk into himself. He was probably once tall and striking, but a sense of loss pressed on his shoulders like a boulder, weighing him down. A striped shirt hung loose about his skeletal body, and his jaw bones almost jutted out through paper-thin skin. She noticed he continuously screwed his hands into each other, as if the motion could lessen the pain chewing up his heart.

‘First of all, I want to thank you, Cillian and Finn, for agreeing to meet us here with your father. It speeds things up greatly,’ she said. ‘The reason we wish to speak with you is that your names turned up on a list of people who jog around Rochfort Gardens at weekends.’

‘But I thought you said the girl was found dead in the graveyard?’ Cillian said. Was he taking on the role of spokesperson?

‘That’s true,’ Lottie said. ‘But we’re talking to anyone who might have known her. One line of inquiry is that she was stalked, perhaps while jogging.’