Lottie plumped up her pillow and listened. The two wood pigeons began their harmony at the end of her garden. A mug of coffee in bed would be nice, she thought. Some chance of that happening. Adam used to leave a mug beside her, feather his lips over her forehead and silently close the door as he headed to work. But it was now almost four years since he had died and she was left with his shadow, living in a silent movie stuck in rewind mode.
As the seconds churned, boring into her consciousness, she felt the familiar and uneasy loneliness that accompanied her memories. Wasn’t it about time she got over Adam? Everyone seemed to think she should be back to her normal self, whatever that might be. But now her life was like a black-and-white photograph, fading to sepia with time, and she struggled to find colour to inject into it.
She slammed her fist into the duvet and gritted her teeth to keep the tears away. It was no good. She was still angry at Adam, at his cancer, for dying and leaving her alone with three children. For not giving her the time to ask him what he wanted her to do with the rest of her life without him by her side. For not being stronger in the face of her grief. ‘God damn you, Adam Parker!’ she cried aloud.
Throwing back the duvet, she jumped out of bed, fleeing her jumbled thoughts, and ran to the shower. As the water flowed in a swirl of suds down the drain she knew her attitude wasn’t good enough. Pull yourself together, woman, she scolded, and consciously she did just that. She was stronger than her memories.
‘Strong Lottie, that’s me,’ she said to the steamed-up mirror.
She dried and dressed herself, and was ready to face whatever the day had to throw at her. And then she realised she was late. Again.
* * *
‘You’re late,’ Boyd said, slamming a cabinet drawer. Files, stacked on top of it, slid to the floor.
‘Really? I could’ve sworn I was dead late.’ Lottie sat at her desk and powered up her computer. ‘Who are you now? My mother?’
‘How is your mother?’
‘Boyd, you know right well not to go there.’ She shoved her handbag under her desk and lifted the poppy-painted mug. She read her password, keyed it in and said, ‘Any updates?’
‘No identification of the victim yet,’ he said, picking up the files, sorting them alphabetically.
‘Do you ever stop?’ Lottie asked.
‘What?’
‘Trying to keep everything in order.’ She waited for her computer to wake up.
‘Just because you’re “sloppy Lottie” doesn’t mean we all have to be.’ He slotted files into the drawer.
‘Boyd, will you sit down, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Okay, okay.’
‘I meant to tell you. Yesterday morning I had a visit from a young woman and a little boy.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Boyd stood with a file in each hand.
So much had happened yesterday, Lottie had completely forgotten about the girl and the letter until this morning. She took the envelope from her bag and slipped out a folded page.
‘It’s written in a foreign language,’ she said, passing it over to Boyd.
He took it. ‘How am I supposed to know what this says?’
‘We need to get it translated.’
‘Why do we need to do that?’
She ignored him and peeked into the envelope, surprised to see something wedged at the bottom. She was about to take it out when Superintendent Corrigan appeared like an apparition at the door.
Corrigan opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word, Lottie said, ‘Yes, sir, I’m coming.’ She stuffed the envelope back into her bag.
* * *
Seated, slightly squashed behind his desk, Superintendent Corrigan said, ‘Jamie McNally is back in town.’
‘What? Does Boyd know?’ Lottie sat down uninvited. Shit, she thought. A few years ago, Boyd’s wife Jackie had left him for McNally, who was known to the gardaí as a small-time criminal. Last she’d heard, the couple were residing in Spain.
‘I don’t know,’ Corrigan said, removing his spectacles to rub furiously at his sore eye.
Lottie grimaced as she watched him. ‘He’ll go mental.’
‘Inspector, you and I know Sergeant Boyd never goes mental. He’s the calmest one in the station.’
‘Will I tell him?’ Lottie asked. If McNally had come back to Ragmullin, she wondered if Jackie had returned also. How would Boyd handle it? She didn’t like to dwell on that.
‘I don’t care who tells him, but we need to find out why McNally’s back and what he’s up to.’
‘I’ll put Kirby on it straight away, sir.’
‘Do that.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Our intel says Wednesday of last week. This is all I need.’ Corrigan replaced his spectacles on the bridge of his nose but his finger searched beneath the glass to continue rubbing.
Lottie flinched.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘I think you need to see a doctor about your eye, Superintendent.’
‘You’re starting to get on my nerves now. I’ve got to listen to that shite from the wife. I don’t want to feckin’ listen to it from you too, do you hear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And put someone on McNally’s tail.’
‘On it already.’
* * *
After instructing Kirby to find out anything he could about McNally’s whereabouts, Lottie slumped back at her desk and began reading the accumulated case reports. Time enough to tell Boyd about McNally. Maybe Jackie hadn’t returned. But should she consider McNally as a possible murder suspect? He had history. Maybe not murder, as far as they knew, but history all the same. What the hell was he doing in Ragmullin?
‘Still no hits on the missing persons list. No one resembling our girl.’ Boyd tapped angrily on the keyboard.
‘Someone, somewhere is missing her,’ Lottie said. Her T-shirt clung to her skin, a rivulet of sweat pooled between her breasts and the wire of her bra burned into her ribs. The unease she’d felt earlier in the morning returned with a sharp stab of anxiety in her chest. She took a few deep breaths. It didn’t work. She blinked as the room slipped in and out of focus. Oh God, she thought. I have to be strong. I can handle this shit. Fuck it.
Opening her bag, she unzipped the small internal pocket. Her emergency pill was there. Popping open the blister, she quickly swallowed the pill, grabbed Boyd’s bottle of water and washed away the chalky taste. Last one, swear to God, she silently prayed, and handed back the water.
‘Keep it,’ Boyd said, waving her away.
She knew he’d seen her surreptitiously taking the pill and ignored his derisory look. ‘Any word from ballistics?’ she asked, knowing it could take weeks.
‘No.’
Sighing, she noticed Boyd had dumped the letter on her desk. The foreign words seemed to mock her. Where had the girl and her son come from? And how could she help them?
‘I think we need to find this Mimoza. She mentioned her friend was missing, so it’s possible she might know who the victim is.’
‘That’s some leap in deduction.’
She waved the letter at him. ‘Did you have any luck translating this?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t try.’
‘No worries,’ she said and started to type the words into Google Translate. It wasn’t making sense. She got up and rummaged through the stack of paper on Boyd’s desk.
‘Hey, I sorted those,’ he said, trying to pull them out of her reach.
‘I’m just looking for the phone number for that guy who found the body. Andri whatshisname.’ She continued to flick through the reports, opening files, leaving pages curled and untidy.
‘Petrovci?’