‘I can’t lie for you any more. I think the prophet of doom is landing on your shoulders as we speak. I’m sorry.’
She hung up before there was time for a reply.
Still in darkness, she pulled back the bolt on the cellar door, flicked on the light switch and stared into the space below. Could she make it without falling head first? But she needed to destroy what was down there. The only evidence the guards could use to make sense of everything.
Her spine pained her more than her knees. She could make it down, but would she make it back up again? And if she didn’t, there was no one to come looking for her.
Switching off the light, she locked the door.
‘Another time,’ she said, and listened to her voice echoing back at her from the icy walls.
Seventy-Four
Lottie entered the office with Boyd behind her.
Sensing a stand-off, she said, ‘DI McMahon, just the man I need to have a word with.’
He indicated the office with no door, and she followed.
‘What is it you want?’ McMahon said, all pretence at congeniality lost in his tone.
‘I wanted to get an update from you on how your side of the investigation is progressing,’ Lottie said.
‘I didn’t come down in the last shower of rain.’
‘Looks like it from here.’ Why did she have to say what she was thinking?
‘Detective Inspector Parker, first your detective out there, the one who badly needs a haircut…’
‘Kirby?’
‘Yes. First he insults my intelligence, and now you’re doing the same.’
‘You have a nicer team up in Dublin, do you?’
‘As a matter of fact, I’m treated with the utmost respect.’
‘Well then, why don’t you piss off back up there?’ No going back now.
‘What… what did you just say?’
‘I said, why don’t you—’
‘Stop right there.’ He was out of his chair and standing in her space. ‘I want an apology this instant or I’m on my way to your superintendent.’
‘Good. And you might ask Superintendent Corrigan when this refurbishment is going to be completed. I’m itching to get back into my office.’
Lottie felt the backdraught of hot air as McMahon rushed past her out of the doorless space and through the main office, heading for Corrigan’s.
‘You handled that well,’ Boyd said sarcastically.
‘Don’t you start,’ Lottie said.
‘Can I have your attention for a minute.’ Kirby clicked his keyboard.
‘Fire away.’
Pulling her chair across, Lottie inched in beside him and forced herself to concentrate on what he had to show her. But her mind was in turmoil. She’d been out of line, allowing McMahon to rile her. But she couldn’t dislodge the image planted in her brain by Kitty Belfield. A pregnant Carrie King’s terror of Tessa Ball. Had the past caught up with Tessa? Where was Carrie King now, if she was still alive? Where were her children? And did Lottie even believe the half of what Kitty had said?
‘Tell me what I’m looking at.’
Pointing with the tip of his biro, he said, ‘That’s O’Dowd’s farm. The small square is the cottage.’
‘How many acres is the farm?’
‘According to the land registry, it’s two hundred and fifty acres. But that’s not what I want to show you.’
‘I’m waiting.’ Lottie leaned in as Boyd peered over her shoulder.
‘That’s Farranstown House,’ Kirby said.
‘What is?’ Lottie asked, knitting her brow in a frown.
He clicked the mouse to zoom in. ‘Farranstown House is situated on another five hundred acres, leading down to the shores of Lough Cullion. Following me so far?’
‘I think so,’ Lottie said.
‘The land on the other side of Farranstown House is where Tessa Ball lived before she signed her home over to her daughter, Marian Russell.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ Lottie said, holding up her hand to halt Kirby. ‘It’s possible that at one time all that land had been part of the Farranstown estate.’
‘Correct.’
‘And we didn’t twig how close the Russell and O’Dowd places were, because the land is accessed by two different roads,’ Lottie said, realisation dawning on her.
‘Never entered into the equation,’ Boyd said.
‘If all this land was at one time owned by the Farranstown estate, when was it broken up and sold?’
‘Does it even matter to our investigation?’ Boyd asked.
‘Besides the drugs angle being pursued by McMahon,’ Lottie said, ‘we haven’t come up with anything else. But this might be another way to approach it.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Boyd said, stretching and walking back to his own desk.
Lottie put out a hand to call him back. ‘Whoever owned Farranstown also held all that land. Now, Mick O’Dowd owns two hundred and fifty acres and the burned cottage. The portion of land on the other side of the manor house contains two houses. One was originally Tessa Ball’s, where Marian lived, and the other is where Bernie Kelly lives. Kirby, does Bernie own her house?’
‘I’ll find out,’ he said. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘We know Tessa signed over the cottage to Mick O’Dowd. What if she owned the land on the other side also?’ Lottie pointed to the screen. ‘How would a town solicitor acquire all that wealth?’
‘Kitty Belfield told us her husband inherited Farranstown House,’ Boyd said.
‘Right. If the Belfields owned the whole lot, what are we talking about in terms of size? Almost a thousand acres? That’s a lot of land for—’
‘A small-town solicitor,’ Boyd said.
‘O’Dowd told Kirby that the family who originally owned the farm left for America forty years ago…’ Lottie stopped mid sentence. ‘That’s around the time all the trouble was going on with Carrie King.’
‘Who’s Carrie King?’ Lynch asked.
‘I don’t rightly know, but I intend to find out,’ Lottie said, shoving back her chair and standing up. ‘Unearth everything you can about that land. Go back as far as possible. I want to know who owned, sold, leased or bequeathed every blade of grass on it.’
‘I think you’re a bit spooked after Kitty Belfield’s tale,’ Boyd said.
‘I am. Will you get me a list of all St Declan’s patients for the last forty-odd years? I want to see what happened to Carrie King.’
‘You’re chasing a shadow,’ he said.
‘That may be so, but I need to catch up with it before someone else ends up dead.’
‘It’s the proverbial wild goose chase,’ Boyd said, lining up his pens on his desk. ‘We have a direct link to a Dublin drug gang and you have me checking out asylum patients who are probably dead by now.’
Lottie whirled round. ‘There is not one shred of evidence pointing to Marian Russell or her daughter having anything to do with drugs.’
‘A hoodie that Emma might have been wearing was found in Lorcan Brady’s house,’ Boyd said. ‘He was shacked up with Jerome Quinn before they were burned. And Marian Russell had her tongue cut out. It all points to criminal involvement in… in something or other.’
‘Boyd, you talk pure shite sometimes. Get me an update on those searches for O’Dowd and Arthur Russell.’ As she grabbed her bag and jacket, she heard Superintendent Corrigan’s footsteps hammering down the corridor. ‘And cover for me. I’m out of here.’
‘Where?’
‘To look at land.’
Running out of the door, she ignored Corrigan’s roar behind her and fled down the stairs and out of the station.
Seventy-Five