Page 41 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

Mooney didn’t bring Lottie straight to the station, and she was glad of the respite.

He parked up at the old convent and they walked to the clearing. A small forensics tent had been erected over Mickey Fox’s body.

‘Put these on.’ Mooney handed her gloves and booties.

‘You are aware that my DNA is all over this place?’

‘Do you always have to argue the point? Just do as I say.’

‘Why bring me here? What do you want me to look at?’

‘I want you to show me exactly what Fox was doing when you were here earlier, and where he was situated.’

‘I told you. He’d been burning something in that oil drum.’ She pointed to it.

‘Were there flames?’

‘I remember smoke. Then some sparks flying as he stoked it.’

‘Someone threw water all over it.’ He glared at her pointedly.

‘Not me, if that’s what you’re insinuating.’

‘What about this imaginary friend you found here?’

She sighed loudly. ‘She was not imaginary. And I didn’t see her here. I heard her running and followed her to the convent. That’s where I found her. You know all this.’

‘I know that’s what you told me. I’m just not sure whether to believe you.’

‘What reason would I have to lie?’

‘Bryan O’Shaughnessy, for one.’

‘Bryan? Come on, Mooney. The man only wanted me to find someone he knew long ago. Don’t forget he was a victim in Knockraw. He’d have no reason to hurt anyone.’

But he would, she thought, wouldn’t he? Her mind was a jumble of inconsistencies.

Imelda Conroy had spoken to him. He said he’d told her about the burned man.

Was that even true? Had there been a man who’d abused young girls?

Girls who’d taken their revenge by throwing boiling water over him.

How had they overpowered him? Where had the nuns been?

Were they involved too? Shit, why hadn’t she asked Bryan all those questions?

But then he’d only heard rumours. That was what he’d said. But was it the truth?

‘I checked O’Shaughnessy out,’ Mooney said. ‘He may not be all that innocent.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ask him yourself. When you find him.’

He marched over to the oil drum. A SOCO stood there carefully rescuing damp fragments of paper and placing them in an evidence bag.

‘Anything?’ Mooney enquired.

‘It’ll take some time to dry out, and most of it is destroyed. But we’ll try.’

‘Good. Let me know as soon as you can.’ He walked over to the caravan.

Lottie followed, averting her eyes from the activity around where Mickey’s body lay. The woman had said she’d tried to warn him. Warn him about who or what? She needed to find that woman.

The caravan was too small for both Lottie and Mooney to move freely inside. She found herself pressed up behind his back. She smelled cigarettes and his strong aftershave, or maybe he used cologne. Red hairs sprouted along the back of his neck, and she felt like telling him to take a razor to them.

‘Not much of a life, was it?’ he said.

‘He seemed content.’

‘But why did he remain here? That’s what I’d like to know. The convent was gutted by thieves. Fox didn’t do anything to stop that.’

‘He must have been eighty years old.’

‘He didn’t even report it.’ The resonance in Mooney’s voice showed he wasn’t for swaying. ‘No, either he was involved in the thefts or he was here for some other reason. If you ask me, it was no good reason.’

‘I didn’t ask you,’ Lottie muttered under her breath. Mooney was irritating her, but she was grateful to him for bringing her along. Even though she sensed he had an ulterior motive.

‘Were you in here with him?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Someone was. Two mugs in the basin.’

‘Maybe he didn’t wash his dishes after every use.’ She was apt to doing that herself at times. Most of the time.

‘You sure you didn’t have a cuppa here?’

‘I’m certain.’ She suspected it might have been the woman in the blue fleece but didn’t utter this aloud. Or maybe the killer. That would mean Mickey knew the person who had murdered him.

‘Your friend, then?’

‘What friend?’

He sighed tiredly. ‘The mysterious woman you said was in your car and then she wasn’t.’

‘It’s possible she was here. She told me she tried to warn him but said he wouldn’t listen.’

‘She whacked him over the head and doused him in toxic drain cleaner. He couldn’t listen after that, could he?’

‘No need to be so cynical.’ Lottie backed out of the cramped space. She’d had enough of Mooney’s conspiracy theories. Not that she didn’t partially agree with his reasoning, but she’d never admit it.

‘The woman acted suspiciously,’ she said when he joined her, ‘but she deserves the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Why run then?’

‘She was scared. She might have seen Mickey being killed.’

‘But why wait around for you to arrive? And if she wasn’t abducted, then she ran from your car. Guilty until proven innocent.’

She considered his words. ‘You’ve that the wrong way round.’

She knew he was aware of what he’d said. But she was thinking the same thing. Why did the woman leave the car? Had something or someone spooked her? Again.

Bryan couldn’t concentrate on his farm, his work, his sheep.

Or even Grace. Ever since the visit of Imelda Conroy a few weeks ago, memories had been awakened.

Memories he’d suppressed for most of his lifetime.

They were invading every waking hour, and his sleeping time too, even though sleep had become rare.

Mary Elizabeth had been his first love. His only love until he’d found Grace.

But now it felt like he was cheating on the woman he was due to marry.

If he knew the truth about what had happened all those years ago, he might be able to move forward with his life.

Imelda Conroy had stirred a pot that perhaps had been best left alone. Best for everyone concerned.

He rounded the corner where the old homestead had stood decades earlier. It was now derelict. Moss-covered stones, the roof caved in. He usually avoided going anywhere near it, but today he walked around it.

Something seemed to have caught on a nail in an upright timber.

The old door frame. He hadn’t counted the sheep that morning, he’d been so distracted.

Could a ewe have wandered over here and got herself entangled?

Unlikely. They tended to keep to the hilly inclines that bordered his land. Still, he had to take a look.

As he neared the ruins, old memories that had been buried for decades surfaced and threatened to choke him.

Images of his brother. His dead mother, of whom he had little recollection.

His young sister. And of course his bastard of a father.

He blamed that man for all that had happened, but in more forgiving moments he knew his father had had it tough too.

No excuse, though, for not rescuing him from Knockraw.

The cloth he’d seen from a distance was some sort of fleece all right, but it wasn’t a sheep that had got caught on the old stone ruin. Blue material. He tugged at it and it came away in his hand. It was stained with what looked like blood.

Holding the scrap of fleece, he entered the ruin and went from room to room. There was no one there.

In a corner he spied a plank of timber with a nail embedded in its crook.

He lifted it up to inspect it. A trail of blood was smeared all the way down the side of it.

It looked like it might have been one of the old rafters.

But the stain wasn’t old, it was fresh. He let the plank fall to the ground, then turned and walked across the fields towards the farmhouse, moving quickly away from what had been his childhood home.

Something was going on. He had no idea what it might be. Only that it was dark and brutal.

And in his hand he still grasped the blue material saturated with blood.