Page 81 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

The promenade was getting busier. Lottie retraced their steps knowing she had to say something to move things on before they reached the car. Imelda had said Assumpta Feeney could be key to it all, and she now wanted to know more about the novice who had left her vocation.

‘Do you know where Assumpta lived?’ she asked.

Imelda looked at her, a raised eyebrow in her thin face. ‘Yes. Why?’

‘I want to go there and see if there’s anyone, a neighbour, who knew her.’

‘I can tell you what you want to know.’

Lottie shook her head. ‘You want to keep me going round in circles, Imelda. But listen to me. Too many people have died. I don’t want another person on my conscience. You have directly involved me, so I need to be proactive.’

‘Okay. I’ll show you where she lived.’

‘Maybe I should call Sergeant Mooney to meet us there,’ Lottie said quietly.

‘And maybe I should destroy my recordings.’ Imelda’s tone had taken on a sinister cadence.

Lottie said nothing as she unlocked the car. Imelda was showing signs of instability. And one thing was for sure, she did not want those tapes destroyed in a fit of rage.

‘I’d like to hear what you’ve recorded. I need to get a handle on what this is all about.’

Imelda considered her over the roof of the car. ‘I don’t trust you.’

‘I don’t trust you either. But I haven’t turned you in yet. Shouldn’t that allow you to have some level of trust in me?’

She could see the woman turning this over in her mind, biting the inside of her cheek.

‘We’ll go to Assumpta’s house first, then I’ll decide.’

Fuck you, thought Lottie, but she just nodded.

Assumpta had rented a narrow pebble-dashed house on the outskirts of the city. A sprawling new housing estate arched up and behind the little terrace. It made Lottie wonder if the residents had refused to sell up to the developer. Good on them, she thought.

‘Number six,’ Imelda said.

After parking a little way down the road, they walked back to the black-painted door.

There was no evidence of crime-scene tape, but Lottie hadn’t expected it.

SOCOs would have completed their examination of the house quickly.

The true crime scene was the holiday cottage, so that was where they would have concentrated their efforts.

She remembered poor Assumpta’s scalded, blistered body, and shivered.

Imelda extracted a key from a zipped pocket in her fleece.

‘How the…?’ Lottie stared, mouth agape. ‘You have a key?’

‘I took it from Assumpta.’

Snake-like apprehension stalled Lottie. ‘You killed her.’

‘That’s getting old. I told you I did not kill anyone. Not directly, but my work may have been a factor. That’s my only crime. Are you coming in with me or not?’

‘Yes, I want to see what we can find.’

They entered directly into a small carpeted living space.

Lottie closed the door behind her. It was immediately clear that SOCOs had been very discreet in their work.

The room was small but elegantly furnished.

What she noticed was that which she could not see.

No photos or personal effects. The surfaces were naked of any knick-knacks.

Clean and polished. The fireplace was pristine, as if a fire had never graced the grate.

No items of clothing hung from the back of chairs, and the small kitchenette was neat and tidy.

She opened a wall cupboard to find clean crockery, and in another the non-perishables were sorted by jar size.

The refrigerator was well stocked, though the milk was now out of date.

There were a couple of bottles of wine too, but no evidence of who Assumpta Feeney had been.

‘Have you been here before, Imelda?’

‘Yeah. To initially interview Assumpta about a month ago. I wasn’t here for long.’

So she had a ready excuse if her DNA was found here, Lottie thought. ‘Why was Assumpta at the holiday cottage?’

‘She came to talk, and maybe to warn me. I hadn’t been expecting her. Someone must have followed her.’

‘Warn you about what?’

‘That I was in danger.’

‘But you escaped and she didn’t,’ Lottie said. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘I was lucky. I was in the kitchen, heard her scream, and when she was dragged to the bathroom, I grabbed what I could and fled. Coward’s way, but I was petrified.’ Imelda eyeballed her as if challenging her to comment. ‘What are we looking for here?’

‘I want to get a feel for the woman. I only saw her in death.’ Lottie waited for a beat to see if Imelda would query her explanation, but she didn’t. ‘Her body had been so badly damaged, I could not even determine her age. What can you tell me about her?’

‘Assumpta was a troubled woman, but I found her to be genuine. I believe she wanted to atone for events in her past. But someone else wanted to shut her up.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Later. Do you want me to search here or not?’

‘I’m confident the investigation team have been through the place. I doubt we will find anything.’

‘Seeing as we’re here, I’ll start upstairs,’ Imelda said. ‘You can search down here.’

‘Not so fast.’ Lottie wasn’t about to let the woman find something pertinent and then destroy it. She did not trust her, nor did she believe her. ‘We stick together.’

‘I’m not going to steal?—’

‘Imelda! Just stay with me and don’t touch anything.’

‘You really are a piece of work.’ Imelda slouched into a beautifully upholstered Queen Anne chair like the surly teenager she might once have been. ‘I am trying to help, you know.’

‘If you wanted to help,’ Lottie said, ‘you’d have handed yourself in.’

‘Isn’t that what guilty people do?’

‘You are a person of interest. You need to provide the guards with whatever information you possess. Including all your recordings.’

‘I can’t do that. Not until?—’

‘Not until the documentary is ready to broadcast?’ Lottie tried to dampen her anger at the woman’s obstinacy. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Imelda, there have been five murders in less than a week. Assumpta Feeney, Mickey Fox, Brigid Kelly, Ann Wilson and Edie Butler were sadistically killed. All were in some way involved with the convent and its brutal laundry. You can’t keep evidence from the guards.’

‘You mean six murders. You forgot about little Gabriel.’

‘Do you even know who she was?’

‘Yes, I do. But come on, we’re wasting time.’

‘You sit there and I’ll scout around. I mean it, Imelda. Don’t move.’

A sound from the stairs that led down directly into the living room made Lottie look upwards. She heard Imelda gasp.

A pair of black-booted feet stomped threateningly into view, followed by denim-clad legs, before the full figure appeared.

He wore a dark bomber jacket over a checked shirt, and his greying hair was tied back at the nape of his neck.

But what really caught her attention was the long carving knife he held in his hand.

‘What a nice surprise,’ he said in a gravelly voice.

Lottie recognised him from the photo Kirby had shown her.

‘Robert Hayes, I presume.’