‘Gary,’ McGlynn said. ‘Tell the detectives what you discovered.’
The technician reluctantly walked away from his prize. ‘This is an impressive CCTV system. Remotely linked. And from what I can see, it’s mainly via mobile phone network.’
‘So he was spying on people via their phones?’
‘And computer webcams.’ He tapped a keyboard with his gloved fingers.
The screen Lottie had accidentally accessed earlier popped open. Annabelle’s surgery. She looked back at Boyd.
‘This is what I told you about.’
‘So the bastard was spying on her,’ Boyd said.
Gary clicked a mouse and another screen sprang life.
‘Looks very modern,’ Lottie said.
‘It’s an office. But have a look at the reflection on the glass wall behind the desk.’
Leaning over, Lottie squinted at the image. ‘A skyscraper?’
‘I think this office is in Manhattan.’
‘Jesus,’ Boyd said. ‘Was he spying on someone in New York?’
‘Can you access the address of the building?’ Lottie asked.
‘The image is a still, not live. I tried accessing the code, but no luck.’
Tiredness and frustration seeped into her bones; she just wanted Gary to get to the point.
‘And brace yourself for this one.’ The technician clicked a third screen open.
‘What the…?’ Lottie gaped open-mouthed. ‘That’s my son’s room.’ She stared incredulously. ‘How…?’
‘He hacked into his computer with a game download.’
‘But why was he spying on Sean?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it was the only way he could access your home.’
‘Why would Cian O’Shea be spying on me and my family?’
‘And for how long?’ Boyd said.
‘I’ll let you know more once I get stuck in.’
She could only see his eyes, but Lottie knew the young man was itching to get started on Cian O’Shea’s project. Whatever the hell that was.
‘And all that is live feed?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it’s in real time.’
‘Copies? Recordings? Tapes or anything?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘O’Shea has some serious questions to answer.’
McGlynn handed Lottie a file. ‘This was in the cabinet. Know anything about it?’
Lottie stared at the copy Jane Dore had made of her father’s post-mortem file. With all Cian’s expertise, she supposed it was a simple task for him to hack into the state computer systems and put a flag on the file. But why did he need to do that, and then steal the hard copy?
Feeling the confinement of the room and the heat from the equipment, Lottie turned and rushed out. It suddenly felt way too small. And she felt even smaller.
Eighty-Eight
Lottie wanted to go home. Instead she sent a technician to her house to check out Sean’s computer equipment and to search for further intrusions. Exhaustion caused her knees to creak, but Kirby wanted everyone in the incident room. He’d pinned maps up on one of the incident boards.
She tried to hide a yawn with the back of her hand. ‘Explain.’
‘For some reason, in 1976 all this land was transferred from Kitty and Stan Belfield to Tessa Ball. Then two years ago, Tessa transferred the farmland, including the cottage, to O’Dowd, and six months ago, the land containing the Russell and Kelly houses to Marian.’ Kirby smiled triumphantly.
‘So?’ Lottie said.
‘Why?’
‘I wanted answers, not more questions.’
‘This might explain part of it.’ Lynch pinned two sheets of paper on the board alongside the maps. ‘Birth certificates.’
Lottie rose from her chair and stood beside Lynch.
‘Tessa was born Teresa O’Dowd.’ She glanced at the other certificate, noted the parents’ names. ‘She was Mick O’Dowd’s sister.’
‘Maybe that explains why she signed the land over to him,’ Lynch said.
‘Answers one question,’ Kirby said.
‘But why did she only do it two years ago? What happened in her life then to force her hand?’
‘The only thing I can come up with is that the cottage was rented out around then. So it might have been the start of their involvement with the drug lord.’
‘Jerome Quinn?’
‘Yup.’
‘Was she trying to distance herself by formally signing the land to O’Dowd?’
‘How does Cian O’Shea fit in?’ Boyd said.
‘This gets more complicated by the minute.’ Lottie paced in small circles. ‘We need to find O’Dowd. He’s the only one who can tell us about Tessa.’
She thought of her search of O’Dowd’s house and the book she’d found under the sink cupboard, with its inscription inside.
‘Carrie King,’ she said. ‘Did you come across any connection to her?’
‘No, don’t think so,’ Kirby said.
‘No,’ Lynch said.
‘Let me get this straight.’ Lottie sat down and drummed her knuckles against her forehead. ‘The Belfields owned all that land. Stan was in partnership with Tessa Ball. Something occurred in the early to mid seventies to warrant him signing a large part of his fortune over to Tessa. What?’
Boyd said. ‘What do you know about this Carrie King?’
‘She was supposedly into drugs and alcohol. Had a number of children taken from her and was eventually locked up in St Declan’s. Kitty Belfield said Tessa was heavily involved in the circumstances surrounding Carrie King’s incarcerations. She even suggested to me that Mick O’Dowd could have fathered at least one of Carrie’s children, and she remarked how alike Marian was to O’Dowd. But if Tessa and Mick were brother and sister, perhaps that’s the reason for the resemblance.’
‘Or, as you first thought, O’Dowd fathered Marian with Carrie King and Tessa cobbled together a birth certificate and raised her as her own.’
‘Let’s go with that for a minute,’ Lottie said. ‘It still doesn’t explain all that land transfer. What hold could Tessa have had over the Belfields?’
‘Maybe they had no children of their own and saw Tessa as an heir,’ Lynch said.
‘Kirby, check it out,’ Lottie said. ‘Boyd, we’re going to have a go at Cian O’Shea.’
Eighty-Nine
She wasted a full hour with Cian O’Shea and his solicitor. She’d be hearing ‘no comment’ in her sleep for a year.
‘The bastard,’ she said, entering Cathal Moroney’s house.
‘He’s afraid, though,’ Boyd said.
‘He should be very afraid. By the time I finish with him he—’
‘Lottie, there’s nothing you can do. Let’s find the evidence.’
‘Right.’
‘What do you hope to discover?’
‘I have no idea, but if it was Cian O’Shea who broke in and murdered the Moroneys, you can be sure it wasn’t something on a computer he was looking for. It had to be the file Moroney told me about.’ She headed straight for the study.
‘So it is drug-related.’
‘If I knew that, O’Shea would be in front of a judge this minute. As it is, we still have to look. This place is a mess.’
On her knees, Lottie carefully stacked pages. Once she had a good sheaf, she handed them to Boyd. ‘Make yourself useful.’
‘Doing what?’
‘These were all in the drawers and filing cabinet. So at one time they were in some sort of order. You’re good at that.’
‘But I don’t even know what they relate to.’ Boyd took the papers and sat on a chair by the desk.
‘Use your head.’
‘Is there anything in particular you want me to highlight for you?’
‘Something that caused a murderer to break in and kill Cathal and Lauren Moroney, while one of their terrified children hid upstairs.’
‘Murder might not have been the intention.’
‘Probably not. If he’d found what he was after, I think he’d have been in and out without being discovered. Just sort the papers and I’ll go through them.’
Should she tell Boyd about her conversation with Moroney? But surely his murder had nothing to do with what his father had wanted to print back in the seventies. Had it? No. It was something Moroney himself had uncovered about the drugs ring. Had to be. And if the killer hadn’t had enough time or couldn’t wrangle it out of him, then that information was still here. Somewhere.
* * *