‘Hi, Mother. You coming home soon?’
‘Not yet,’ Lottie said. ‘I’m going into a meeting with my superintendent. Don’t know how long I’ll be.’ She rejected a pang of guilt. What could she do? She had to work and this meant unpredictable hours.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll mind the house,’ Chloe said.
‘Is Katie home yet?’ Lottie was worried about her eldest child.
‘I think she’s in her room.’
‘Check to make sure.’
‘Will do.’
‘And tell Sean to turn off his PlayStation.’
‘Of course. Chat later.’ Chloe hung up.
They’d be in bed when she got home. Well able to look after themselves. They would do okay. She hoped. She wasn’t so sure about herself.
Brushing snow off his shoulders, Boyd joined her.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The superintendent awaits and we are late.’
‘You took your time.’
Corrigan marched up and down his office, like a regimental sergeant.
‘Was it suicide or what?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Never mind anyway, it’s suicide for now. One murder is enough for one day. Whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it. I don’t want a hot-shot team from Dublin taking over, so you better get your act together. Step up the door-to-door enquiries. There’s people to be interviewed, phones to be manned, press releases, media briefings.’
You’re in your element, Lottie thought.
‘I don’t think James Brown killed himself,’ she ventured.
Corrigan snorted. ‘And how do you arrive at that conclusion?’
‘I think . . . it feels too convenient, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Enlighten me.’
Lottie chewed her lip. How could she translate a gut feeling? Corrigan was career-minded and did things by the book. His favourite mantra regarding investigations was ‘my way or no way’. Lottie had another way . . . her way. In any case, he didn’t wait for her to answer.
‘Inspector Parker, what you think is irrelevant. Look at the evidence, the circumstances. He was hanging from a feckin’ tree in the middle of the feckin’ countryside in a feckin’ blizzard. Something fishy was going on in the council, I can smell it here. He probably killed Susan Sullivan over some work thing, found the guilt too much, so . . . he swung a rope over a tree and killed himself. Now let’s plan our action.’
Lottie withheld her words and the three of them outlined the team tasks. She was too exhausted to argue with Corrigan.
When they had everything sorted as best they could, Corrigan repeated, ‘I don’t want Dublin sending down hot-shots. We can handle this. I want the Susan Sullivan murder solved, pronto.’
‘But sir,’ Boyd interjected, ‘if it turns out we have two murders, won’t we need the outside help?’
‘Detective Sergeant Boyd! I’ve said what I’ve said. End of the matter. As of now we have one suspicious death and a suspected suicide.’
Corrigan’s eyes slanted, defying them to argue. Lottie returned his gaze and pulled on her jacket.
‘Get a few hours’ sleep. Be back here at six a.m. sharp,’ he said.
They left the superintendent’s office and walked down the corridor.
‘What the hell?’ Boyd said, stopping abruptly.
Lottie looked at him. He’d walked into a decorator’s ladder and notched a cut on his forehead. She laughed.
Boyd cursed his way out the door. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘I know,’ she said, but she couldn’t stop laughing.
Ten
Lottie smiled to herself before she opened her front door. A bundle of Sean’s hurleys stood in the corner of the porch and the holly wreath was caked in frozen snow, blown there by the wind. The wooden plaque on the wall beside the bell read ‘Penny Lane’. Adam had christened the house. Each of the four bedrooms, named after the Beatles. It seemed cute at the time. Now it was plain sad.
She lived in one of thirty semi-detached houses, midway along a mature, horse-shoe shaped estate. It was near enough to the greyhound stadium to hear the cheers every Tuesday and Thursday evening. But she never ventured the couple of hundred metres down the road to the track. Adam had taken the children a couple of times but they weren’t enamoured by the skinny dogs and their fat handlers. Tonight the area was quiet. No racing until the ground was back in shape. Good, thought Lottie; she needed the peace and quiet.
Silence greeted her as she hung up her jacket, the rap music consigned to Sean’s virtual world. Having worked eighteen hours, Lottie’s body creaked but her mind was wound up.
In the kitchen, a plate with two slices of pizza was left out for her. Chloe had written a note, ‘We DO love you.’
She popped the pizza into the microwave and poured a glass of water. She loved her children, but usually didn’t have the time to tell them. She saw so little of Katie. The nineteen year old commuted daily to college in Dublin. But even throughout the holidays, she was never around. She’d been the apple of her daddy’s eye and had been so moody since Adam died. Lottie didn’t know how to handle her.
Having devoured the soggy food, she climbed the stairs to her ‘John Lennon’ bedroom. Chloe and Sean were in bed. She closed their doors and glanced into Katie’s room. Empty. She would have to talk to that girl. Tomorrow. Maybe.
Katie Parker lay back in her boyfriend’s arms.
His hair tickled her nose. She tried not to sneeze and stifled a giggle. He appeared not to notice as he inhaled deeply from the spliff clutched between his long thin fingers. When he’d filled his lungs, he passed it over. She shouldn’t take it but she desperately wanted to impress Jason. At nineteen, she should have more sense. Her mother would have a fit if she could see her. Tough shit, Mam; always pontificating about the dangers of drink and drugs; maybe her mother should practise what she preached.
Katie brought the rolled taper to her lips, inhaled its acrid odour before sucking deeply. She had expected a lightness in her head, but never had she experienced this thrill.
‘This is so cool,’ she said.
‘Take it easy.’ Jason rose on to his elbow. ‘I don’t want you puking all over me.’
She squinted up at the ceiling and saw little stars painted there. She assumed they were painted, otherwise she was hallucinating.
‘Do you have stars painted on your ceiling?’
‘Yes. A throwback to my Harry Potter days.’
‘I love Harry Potter,’ Katie said. ‘All that mystical stuff. I used to wish I could magic myself into a different world. More so, after my dad died.’
Jason laughed. She glanced sideways at him. He was gorgeous, with his designer jeans and Abercrombie hoodies. She was so lucky. Today, when he had asked her to his home, she’d nearly died. Her house would fit into his sitting room. She was glad his parents were not around, because genuinely she would not have known whether to bow or genuflect. As for his room, it was fantastic. The size of hers, Chloe’s and Sean’s all scrunched into one.
First year of college was a bore, but he’d picked her from all the other girls. She was floating.