Page 92 of The Altar Girls

The lady glared at him. ‘Yes, I’m Phyllis Maguire. Who are you when you’re at home?’

‘Detective Inspector Lottie Parker.’ She held out her hand, and after a pause, Phyllis gave it a feeble shake.

‘What brings you to Dream Care, Inspector? Stalking my son?’

‘I happened to be here to see someone else.’ Why was she even explaining? But Phyllis had a schoolteacher glare in her eye that would extract a confession from anyone. ‘It’s a case I’m working on. I better be off. Nice to meet you, Phyllis.’

Nodding goodbye to the priest, she turned to leave. His hand gripped the sleeve of her jacket, halting her.

‘Inspector, wait a minute. I’ll be out the door with you. See you tomorrow, Mam.’

As they moved out of the room, Lottie glanced over her shoulder. Phyllis was glaring so hard she could set fire to wet grass.

‘How long has your mother been here?’

‘About four or five years. I was too far away to look after her properly when she started to fall and forget things.’ She caught his glance as he added, ‘Don’t let her fool you, she actually loves it here.’

Out on the icy steps, Lottie pulled her hood up against the biting wind. ‘You were angry earlier today, but now you seem relatively calm. Has your mother that effect on you?’

‘I apologise for my rudeness earlier. I’m furious at what happened to those children and aggrieved because you seem to think I had something to do with their murders.’

‘I have to investigate everything and everyone.’

‘Do you still suspect me?’

‘I suspect everything and everyone,’ she said non-committally.

He laughed. ‘You’d make a good poker player.’

She smiled, despite herself, then asked, ‘Did you know that Jacinta Nally, Alfie’s mother, works here?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t have it easy. A woman on her own doing her best for her son, just like my mother did.’

‘You turned out okay. Do you think Alfie will pose problems for his mother?’

‘He’s a complex boy. A boy unacknowledged by his father will be full of anger, and I can empathise with that emotion.’

‘You don’t know who his father is, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Is Alfie still an angry child?’

Father Maguire pulled a black knitted beanie from his pocket and stretched it between his hands as if measuring his words before he spoke. ‘I had hoped the choir would mellow him, but I don’t know… I honestly don’t know.’

* * *

After the altercation with Julian Bradley at the Brook Hotel, Boyd couldn’t concentrate on the murdered girls’ investigation. In an attempt to calm his mood, he swung by his apartment to change his coffee-stained trousers. Despite the cold weather, he was sweating heavily when he returned to the station. Bradley’s fault.

He gulped down a hot tea and munched on a stale croissant at his desk. He was breathing hard, still seething as he clicked on the news app.

The lead story was the search for the girls’ killer, and the second was about the Ballina car wreck. The woman was still being reported as unidentified. No one had been reported missing and no one had come forward to claim her body.

A thought careened through his brain and he blinked hard. Could it be Jackie? She’d been off the grid for months. All attempts to locate her had failed. It wasn’t remotely possible that she was this woman. Or was it?

With the hairs standing to attention on the back of his neck, he phoned the north-west traffic division. They had no update other than a photofit that had been constructed from the woman’s death mask.

‘I’d like to see it, please.’ He couldn’t keep the tremble from his voice.