‘Ah, Silvia,’ the words sounded like something delicious had just landed on his tongue. She wanted to scream. ‘You know about Silvia? That surprises me.’ Sitting forward, the knife still in Charlie’s side, he touched her shoulder, resting his fingers lightly, like an insect, his hand lingering. She felt her skin crawl.
He smiled at her. ‘But then again, Kate, I’m forgetting how clever you are.’
Meadow View
Monday, 10 October, 4.30 p.m.
THEY TRIED THE DOORBELL OF 15 MEADOW VIEW one last time, then put in the door. O’Connor and a couple of the detectives from Harcourt Square entered first and checked that the premises were safe, before stepping back to let Hanley and his crew take over.
The inside of the house was tidy and immaculately clean. It didn’t take long for one of Hanley’s crew to discover that the shoes and boots in the under-stair storage area were all size nine, with a slight wearing down on the left side. Not a lot on its own, but another piece of the jigsaw as far as O’Connor was concerned.
There were books stacked neatly on the bookshelves either side of the fireplace. On one of the top shelves they found newspaper cuttings of the recent murders, placed in the sleeve of a large hardback book by someone called Pascal.
O’Connor’s phone rang. It was Donoghue.
‘We have the Wexford warrant. The second tech team and the squad cars are only twenty minutes away.’
‘Good. We’re doing well here, have matching size nine footwear, and looks like William Cronly liked to collect newspaper clippings of our victims.’
‘Nothing conclusive?’
‘It’s still early days. He’s careful, but nobody’s perfect.’
‘You’d like to think so. I’ll let you know when the crew arrives in Wexford.’
‘Thanks.’
O’Connor texted Kate – ‘Ring me when you can’ – before turning, hearing Hanley call him from upstairs.
‘You might like to see this, O’Connor.’ Hanley held up a clear Ziplock bag with a Polaroid photograph inside. O’Connor stepped over to the bedside locker to stand beside Hanley and took the sealed evidence bag from him. He looked at the photograph of Caroline Devine. Despite O’Connor’s overriding desire to nail William Cronly, he was still taken aback by the image of the dead girl.
‘Right, Hanley, keep searching. I’ve a few calls to make.’
Walking back down the stairs, the first call he made was to Samuel Ebbs at St Michael’s, the second to the crew on the way to Wexford, speaking to DI Carey, the supervising officer, and the third was to Donoghue. He had only hung up the phone on Donoghue when he got another call back from him.
‘O’Connor.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Declan Cassidy has put a call in.’
‘Kate’s husband?’ O’Connor did a double take, wondering why Kate’s husband would have made contact.
‘He’d arranged to meet Kate at 5 p.m., but he went home early, wanted to surprise her. Are you sitting down, O’Connor?’
O’Connor felt a sudden coldness rush through him. ‘I don’t need to fucking sit down. Jesus. What is it?’
‘We think our man has taken Kate, and the boy. Cassidy found the babysitter tied up in the child’s bedroom, lacerations to the neck, bruising to face and arms. She told him a guy broke in and was carrying a knife.’
‘Fuck, fuck, FUCK.’
‘He took her over an hour ago, O’Connor.’
‘Shit, if he’s taken them to Wexford, he could be nearly there by now. Have you pinged Kate’s phone?’
‘Doing it now.’
O’Connor rang Carey. ‘Carey, this is now high risk, category 1 – woman and child kidnapped. I’m sending more men down. Get there fast, but take it easy when you get there. As far as we know, our man is armed with a knife, nothing more. But we can’t take any chances. He has Kate Pearson and her child. Nothing can go wrong here. Are you listening to me, Carey? ’ His voice rose the further into the call he went.
‘I’m hearing you.’
‘Good, how long until you get there?’
‘Ten minutes at the most.’
‘Ring me.’
O’Connor wanted to do anything rather than stand still, but he forced himself to stop and think. What had Kate said? Murder wasn’t his motivation with Caroline. He had to have taken her some place he felt safe. Where? It wasn’t Meadow View, they’d found nothing there to indicate a primary crime scene. It had to be Cronly Lodge. It was the only thing that made sense.
Getting into the car, his instincts told him to drive straight to Wexford, now, but something else was bothering him. It was the words from Ellie Brady’s copybook. Changing the direction of the car, turning it towards St Michael’s, the words ‘his hideout’ repeated themselves over and over in his head, moving from a quite whisper to a loud, relentless scream.
Gorey, County Wexford