Page 94 of The Altar Girls

‘Bradley had the weight of huge legal teams behind him. Isaac, if what you now suspect was true, he was doing his job diligently. His focus was protecting your daughters. You can’t fault him for that. He had your family’s welfare at heart.’

‘I know all that, but he was overzealous. It was like it was personal to him.’

‘I’ve seen the aftermath of abused kids and I’m certain he has too. It can scar you, especially if you feel helpless to prevent it. I suspect that’s how he felt. He’d seen the medical evidence.’

‘It wasn’t proven how Naomi got those injuries,’ Isaac protested.

Despite what he’d said, Martina could see he was still in denial. ‘Bradley believed she had been physically abused and he worked to keep it from escalating. That’s why he was assigned to supervise your family.’

‘I get that. But what I don’t understand is how Ruth could be so damaged as to break our little girl’s bones. Something else has me worried too.’

‘Go on.’ Martina sipped her cold tea, and over the rim of the mug focused her eyes on the distraught man in front of her.

‘What if… what if she killed Naomi and that other little girl?’

That same thought had been foremost in Martina’s mind for hours now. She put down the mug. ‘We have to accept it’s a possibility.’

‘But why?’

‘Only Ruth can answer that, and to date we have no evidence she did do it.’ Martina knew that wasn’t entirely true. Ruth had no one to validate her account of her whereabouts on Monday. Had she gone back for Naomi and picked up both girls? Had her temper led her to batter one to death and drown the other? Her fundamentalist religious beliefs could have led her to dress the girls in robes and pose their little bodies on church grounds.

Isaac broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ll check on Bethany and Naomi’s friend. He seems a good lad, eager to help out. Not many like him around these days, are there?’

The hairs on Martina’s neck began to prickle. How long was it since they’d checked on the children? She glanced at the wall clock.

‘They’ve been quiet a long time,’ she said, pushing past Isaac.

‘What is it? You look worried. Surely… No, you can’t think…’ Isaac knocked over a chair in his haste to get out before her.

But Martina had already checked the empty sitting room and flung open the front door before he reached it. She heard the baby screech as he awoke, but she kept going.

The garden was empty; only a snow angel patterned the ground. Two sets of footsteps imprinted a trek to the gate, which hung open in the still air.

‘Bethany!’ Isaac roared as he reached the road.

Maybe they were panicking unnecessarily, but Martina wasn’t about to hesitate. She plucked the radio from her vest, swallowed hard and called it in.

58

As Sinead finished talking to the final volunteer, who was impatiently waiting to lock up the community centre, her colleague Enda Daniels phoned.

‘What’s up, Sinead?’ he said.

‘You called me.’

‘Oh yeah, I did. Any news on finding the killer of those girls?’

She stepped outside to the sound of sirens ripping through the air. ‘Nothing yet. Plenty of activity going on at the moment.’

‘I hear sirens in the background.’

‘You’d make a great investigative reporter.’ She hastened her steps to see what was going on at the station. ‘Any word on your crash victim?’

‘Here’s the odd thing, no one knows her. The guards are making up a photofit from her death mask. Gruesome way to jog a loved one’s memory.’

‘Is that why you called me?’

‘Just touching base.’