‘Where were you?’
‘In his room. I had to stay there because there was some business meeting going on downstairs.’
The little shit Jason had lied.
‘Who was at this meeting?’ asked Lottie.
‘How do I know? I was confined to barracks, as Dad used to say when he sent me to my room.’ Katie opened the fridge door and scanned its meagre contents. ‘Why were you there anyway?’
‘Because I want to get to the bottom of this weed thing. It’s serious, Katie.’
‘Mother! I’m not a child.’
‘You’re my child and I’m not going to have you dying in some doorway with a needle in your arm. And I can guarantee Jason Rickard will run a million miles from you when he loses interest.’
‘Whatever! I’m going to bed,’ she said, pulling the wrapper off a cheese string.
‘Did you eat today?’
Katie waved the cheese from the fridge at her and hurried out of the room before Lottie could further admonish her.
Sitting at the table, she mulled over Tom Rickard and who else might have been at the meeting. Why did he have to conduct business at his house? He had a perfectly grand office in the centre of town. Was something underhand being discussed?
Gathering up the pages, she put them in her bag and sat on her armchair with her legs curled up. Closing her eyes, she fell into a fitful sleep and dreamt about black crows circling a bleeding statue of a woman with a blue nylon rope tight around her neck. One of the crows swooped low, stabbed its feathery body into a cot, before flying away with a squealing baby wedged in its beak.
Lottie awoke suddenly, a cold sweat sending rivulets between her breasts.
2nd January 1975
Sally saw the boy sitting in the window as she followed the nun up the steps and through the door to the sound of the car leaving her behind.
The hallway was cold and the floor threw up a wax-polish smell. Panic threatened to overwhelm her as the nun disappeared down a corridor. With her baby. A door banged and she followed the echo.
A baby cried and she wondered if she would be able to recognise the sound of her own child and wasn’t at all sure that she could. She inched along, stepping on the wooden patterns until the floor changed to multi-coloured mosaics. She paused outside a door before turning the handle. Her knickers were sopping, the blood trickling down her legs staining her white knee-socks red. Her tiny breasts were sore and leaking. She wanted to curl up in her own bed and die.
She twisted the handle and opened the door.
Three rows of iron-barred cribs, five to a line and a baby in each. The nun stood in the centre of the room and turned, casting her arms wide. Sally wondered which cot held her baby. They looked like dolls. Little dolls in cages.
‘These are the devil’s work, children of sin, spawn of Satan,’ the nun snarled.
Sally felt her knees buckle and blood ooze between her legs.
The black robes swished towards her, smelling like the drawer in her dead granny’s wardrobe. Most of the nuns in her school wore shorter skirts and some even ventured to show a lock of hair. This one, shrouded in old-style robes with a stained white cotton apron tied at the waist, was tall and her transparent skin wore a washed-out threatening face.
‘Where is my baby?’ Sally asked, anxiously looking along a row of cots, straining to see behind the nun. All the babies were now quiet, some asleep, others awake – their little eyes pleading towards the cracked ceiling.
‘It is not yours any more,’ the nun said. ‘They all belong to the devil.’
Sally gathered her strength and with fear fuelling her momentum, she pushed past the nun, ran to the end of the room and back. Tears blinded her. Frantically, she searched for her baby. But which one was hers?
‘Where’s my baby?’ she cried. ‘Tell me.’
The room began to swirl. The stink of dirty nappies and sour milk clogged her nose. Babies began to wail, disturbed by her scream.
As she hit the floor, she saw the blue and white statue at the end of the room. The Virgin Mary, a serpent wrapped around her swollen belly choking the life from the infant before it was even born.
DAY SIX
4th January 2015
Forty-Nine
The six a.m. conference was seriously in need of ‘the hair of the dog’.
Superintendent Corrigan had a hangover. Boyd had a hangover. Kirby had a hangover. Lottie and Maria Lynch were caught in the crossfire.
Once she had dragged herself from the kitchen armchair to bed, Lottie’s night had been filled with more nightmares. She’d woken up at five, drenched in sweat. She was glad of the early morning briefing, needing something to concentrate on, to banish the night terrors.
Outlining the progress they’d made, she wished that today might see more success. And pigs might fly. She looked at Corrigan, dubiously.
‘I’m going to have a chat with Tom Rickard today,’ she said.
‘A chat?’ Corrigan bellowed, then winced and lowered his voice. ‘What kind of chat?’
‘I want to see what information I can discover about his development of St Angela’s. It’s all we have to go on. It might be a blind alley but we have to pursue it.’
‘Don’t go charging down any feckin’ alleys, like the proverbial bull in a china shop. He’s an acquaintance of mine. Talked with him last night, I did. Grand man. I don’t want him on the phone again, yelling about you harassing him. Especially not today.’ He stroked his bald head, increasing its sheen.
‘Of course.’ Lottie was in no mood for arguments either.
The duty sergeant thrust his head around the door.
‘We hauled in a drunk last night. He’s awake now, shouting the place down. I think you need to hear him, Inspector.’
‘I’m in the middle of a case conference.’
‘He says he knew Susan Sullivan.’
‘Right,’ said Lottie, gathering up her papers. ‘Put him in an interview room and I’ll be there straight away.’
‘He’s a bit worse for wear,’ the sergeant warned.
‘Aren’t we all,’ said Kirby.
Every pair of eyes in the room turned to him. Kirby dropped his head.
‘I’m on my way,’ said Lottie.
The air reeked of soft rotting onions.
Lottie’s stomach heaved and she attempted to stem the rise of bile. Boyd sat beside her and she knew he was itching to light a cigarette. She looked across the table at the drunk and checked his name on the charge sheet.
Patrick O’Malley was a mess; his face was a map of pulsing pimples and he continuously licked, with a swollen tongue, cold sores on cracked lips. His quaking hands, sprouting long crooked nails stuffed with the remnants of whatever he’d eaten last, were sheathed in fingerless gloves. An old woollen coat, reminding Lottie of one her father had worn, hung over at least two faded hoodies. Here is a man, she thought, who wears his journey through life, not only on his clothes, but in his eyes.
‘Mr O’Malley,’ she said, ‘I appreciate you talking to us. You know your rights and we are recording this interview.’