On impulse, Lottie found herself driving towards O’Dowd’s farm. She wasn’t about to hang around to get a bollocking from Corrigan. McMahon would’ve painted a dim enough picture without her adding to its bleakness. She needed air and time to clear her head. She grabbed at her bag to search for a pill and immediately thought of Annabelle. After she was finished here, she’d call her to see what she’d been ringing about. She threw the bag back on the seat.
The wind had stolen the crime-scene tape from the gates at the entrance to the farm – it now swung from the bare branches of a tree. She parked up and stepped out carefully, avoiding the mucky puddles. Listening, she found the only sound was the downpour and the wind roaring across the barren fields. The house stood like a lost icon from a museum. Curtains drawn over the grey windows; stonework black from the rain; door tightly closed against the elements and intruders. Too late now.
Walking around the side of the house, she wondered how Emma was related to O’Dowd. It had to be the reason she’d come here. And where the hell was he?
At the rear of the building she looked over at the barns and sheds. The SOCOs had completed their work and departed, leaving a trail of evidence easy for the trained eye to see.
Glancing into the milking shed, she noted the empty stalls, machinery hanging limply. She remembered standing here with O’Dowd as he busied himself with his animals, a raw anger burning beneath the surface of his skin. Why hadn’t she probed deeper? Somehow the O’Dowd she’d met was hard to marry with the younger version she’d learned about earlier. Had his dalliance with Carrie King and her subsequent fate forced him to exile himself to a solitary life with animals?
‘They were taken to the mart.’
Lottie turned round, her heart stopping its beating for a second.
‘What the…?’ She took a step back as the tall figure of McMahon loomed out of the shadows and stood at the open barn doorway. She hadn’t heard his car. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Same thing as you, I imagine,’ he said. ‘Trying to figure out what brought young Emma here.’
‘I thought you were convinced everything was drugs-related?’ She stood her ground.
He stepped closer and leaned one arm on the railing. ‘That’s my theory, but the only thing not fitting in nice and neat is Emma.’
‘Thing? You’re a cold-hearted bastard.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She moved closer to him, deciding to fight this out. ‘If Emma was in a relationship with Lorcan Brady, which I must say I doubt, then there’s your link.’
‘That may be so, but I just don’t buy it.’
‘Me neither,’ Lottie conceded.
‘Will we have a look through the house?’ he said. ‘This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
Lottie caught him eyeing the slatted floor. ‘Not a farm boy, then?’
‘City slicker, that’s me.’ He smiled.
Lottie was no fool. She could see his smile was forced. Despite her misgivings, she led the way to the rear door, digging around in her handbag for the evidence bag containing the key. Putting it in the lock, she glanced over her shoulder. McMahon had moved towards the other shed.
‘Are you coming in?’ she asked.
‘What the hell is that?’ He indicated the large machine with rotors.
‘An agitator,’ she said, recalling O’Dowd’s words.
‘Used for what?’
‘Stirring shit.’
He followed her into the kitchen.
The CCTV monitor had been taken away, as had the accounting books. Specks of dark brown on the table and floor were circled and numbered. They were the only remaining evidence of the trauma suffered by Emma before she was forcibly submerged in a barrel until she drowned.
‘Did the killer have help?’ Lottie wondered aloud. ‘If Emma was attacked in here, she’d be a dead weight. She had to be carried outside and then put in the barrel.’
‘How big is O’Dowd?’
Lottie thought for a moment, recalling his broad shoulders – a man used to hauling animals and feedstuff.
‘He’s a farmer. Worked alone. He looked strong and relatively fit, despite his age. But I can’t see him killing Emma.’
‘Why not?’
‘She came here after her grandmother was murdered and her mother left lying in a coma in hospital. She didn’t seek out her father. She came to O’Dowd. Why?’
‘Some prearranged code?’
‘Perhaps. But what danger did she pose that warranted her being killed?’
‘Maybe, like her mother, she knew something and was going to blab.’
‘Then we have to find out what that something was.’
Lottie turned to find that McMahon had divested himself of his coat and was sitting at the table, fingers tapping the grained wood. Even though the house had been thoroughly searched, she felt the need to do something. She began opening and shutting cupboard doors.
‘You won’t find anything,’ he said. Tap, tap, tap, his fingers continued.
‘You never know.’ He was grating on every nerve in her body. She stood back and visualised the scene as it might’ve been just before Emma was attacked.
Dinner dishes washed up. Draining board wiped clean. Accounting ledgers on the table. Her spectacles and phone on the floor. The floor. Dropping to her knees, Lottie lay flat on her stomach and looked around.
‘What in the name of…?’ McMahon began.
‘Shush.’
A horde of people had trooped through the house. Everywhere had been searched, fingerprinted; DNA collected. Had something been missed? Like a predator, Lottie crawled on her belly, arms outstretched as she moved towards the sink area. A gap, about three inches, between the cupboard and the floor. Reaching out her hands in front of her, she eased them into the space. They touched something solid. She flicked her fingers, trying to draw the object out.
‘It’s a book.’
‘More of O’Dowd’s accounts, no doubt. Did that man never hear of a computer?’
She heard McMahon shove back his chair. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor. An icy shiver escaped from the bottom of her skull and travelled down the nape of her neck. If McMahon wanted to pay her back for her enmity, now was the time. Get a grip, Parker. Her fingers edged round the corner of the book and she slid it towards the aperture. Blowing dust out of her nostrils, she grabbed it in her hand and sat back on her haunches.
‘Well, fuck me pink,’ she said.
‘Are you offering?’
Lottie swung round. Boyd was framed in the doorway, dousing a cigarette between his fingertips.
He nodded to McMahon.
Standing up and brushing herself down, Lottie didn’t bother to ask Boyd why he’d followed her. She was just glad he had.
‘What did you find?’ McMahon peered over her shoulder.
‘An old book.’
‘Probably down there since the kitchen was installed a hundred years ago. I’ll see you two back at the station. I hope you can come up with some answers for Emma’s involvement. I want to wrap this up as soon as I can.’
‘Wrap it up and get back to your castle,’ Lottie said, between gritted teeth. She knew he’d heard her by the force of the door banging after his exit.
Boyd said, ‘You know that blacklist management keep? I reckon your name is in the brightest of red letters, commanding top spot.’
‘It’s the same book,’ Lottie said.
‘What book?’
‘Have you an evidence bag?’
‘Out in the boot of the car. Why?’
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s well contaminated by now.’ She laid the hardback on the table, stood it on its side and read the gold lettering on the brown linen spine. ‘Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. Similar to the one Marian had.’
‘Looks different.’
‘This hasn’t got the dust jacket.’ She flicked open the old pages, some with colour illustrations of plants; most lined in a tiny font. ‘Look, Boyd.’
Small cursive strokes in blue ink, now faded, at the top right-hand corner of the index page: Carrie King.
Seventy-Six
Sitting on a boulder on the shore of Lough Cullion, Arthur Russell scanned the dark horizon, then glanced behind him up the hill at the big old house.