Page 139 of The Guilty Girl

Superintendent Farrell was talking to McKeown at the end of the corridor. Ducking her head, Lottie swung into the incident room. The exertion floored her. Every inch of her body ached.

Lynch, arms folded, was studying a new set of photos pinned to the board. ‘You look like shit, boss.’

‘Got any Solpadeine?’

She rooted in her tote bag and came up with a blister pack. ‘Paracetamol okay?’

‘They’ll have to do.’ Lottie dry-swallowed three Panadol and indicated the board. ‘What’s all this?’

‘I tried to tell you earlier.’

Moving closer, Lottie studied the photos along the bottom. ‘Let’s see so. That’s Lucy and Ivy. And isn’t that Richie Harrison and Noel Glennon? Where did you get these from?’

‘Gary got me into Terry Starr’s Finsta.’ Lynch tapped the photo pinned above the others.

‘Fuck!’ Lottie leaned back against the table and tried to make sense of what she was looking at. ‘I don’t understand.’ She shook her head, relieved that the pills seemed to be working already. ‘Did you locate Terry?’

‘He’s not at his Dublin apartment. I reckon he could be in Ragmullin. I don’t know where, though. I’ve put a trace on his car and requested a check on the M4 toll booth cameras.’

‘Did you ask Albert about Terry?’

‘I tried but the McAllisters aren’t at the Brook Hotel.’

‘What? They can’t go back to their home yet, so where are they?’

‘No idea. Sorry.’

‘This is a bloody disaster.’ Lottie forced herself to calm down when she caught Lynch eyeing her intensely. ‘Where could they be?’

‘Albert isn’t at his office and they haven’t left the country. I checked. Maybe they went out for dinner somewhere.’

‘Maybe Terry met with them and … what? Something happened between them?’ Lottie’s brain was smothered with questions. Shit, this was bad.

‘If Albert thought Terry had something to do with Lucy’s death …’ Lynch paced a small circle. ‘If he killed their daughter, maybe …’

‘But why would Terry bite the hand that feeds him? It makes no sense. No motive.’

Lynch tapped a page pinned to the board. ‘Gary finally came up trumps with the email on Lucy’s laptop. It was sent from an address in Ranelagh.’

‘That’s where Terry Starr lives.’

‘Yep. He was clever, but obviously not as clever as Gary.’ Lynch looked triumphant.

Lottie read the email with renewed interest. Meet at Lagh Café, 19.00, Saturday. Bring a sexy nightie. ‘And we’re sure there’s no such a café in Ranelagh?’

‘Yes, it could be code.’

‘If Terry sent this email to Lucy, there had to be something going on between them. “Bring a sexy nightie.” Fuck.’

‘Will I organise a warrant to search his home address?’

Lottie pulled over a chair and sat directly in front of the incident board. ‘Yes, but let’s think this through first. Terry and Lucy had a dirty weekend away somewhere. Her house was free, but it mustn’t have felt safe for them there.’

‘He’s thirty isn’t he? Lucy was seventeen. Whatever they were up to, they were keeping it secret. Something’s not right; besides the fact that if he had sex with her, she was barely the legal age of consent.’

‘I get all that, but if they were in a relationship, what reason did he have to kill her?’

‘Lovers’ tiff?’