He smiled wryly. ‘I’m getting there, Lottie. Believe me.’
And as she poured her coffee into the sink, she believed him.
Twenty
The house was tidy for a change. Katie and Sean had already eaten and were watching something loud and bloody on Netflix. Chloe had secreted herself in her room. Lottie was too tired to have an argument, so she let her be and fried a rasher and egg for herself.
After eating, she took out her laptop, inserted the USB and opened up Jane Dore’s autopsy report. Could the unknown girl have been killed in Bob Weir’s yard? She would love to have the ballistics and DNA reports but knew it could take days, even weeks. Unless Jane could pull a few strings, something she’d done before.
Scanning the report, Lottie skipped over the technical data and noted the victim’s vitals. Pregnant. Undernourished. Sexually active. Organs and brain normal. Bite mark on neck. Impression moulded. Swabs taken. Left kidney surgically removed. Precise sutures. Assume medical professional or at least surgically trained. Victim aged between eighteen and twenty-five. Possibly Eastern European or Balkan, determined by bone structure.
She closed the laptop and read through her handwritten notes. What had the girl’s story been? What motive could someone have for killing her? When had she had the kidney removed, and why? Had the killer known she was carrying a baby? Was it the killer’s child? Six-million-dollar questions. She needed to unravel the girl’s life to determine the answers. Hard to do when she didn’t have a name. Maybe, after all, they would have to release the death-mask photograph to the general public. Not a nice prospect. Especially if it meant she’d have to talk to Mister Congeniality himself, television news reporter Cathal Moroney. Perhaps she’d pass that one to Corrigan. Might be safer.
Exhausted and unable to think clearly, she put away her work and headed up the stairs to bed. She paused outside Chloe’s room, knocked on the door and waited.
‘Go away,’ Chloe said.
‘You said we needed to talk. I’m here now.’ Lottie kept her hand on the handle but didn’t venture in. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m tired. Goodnight.’
So am I, Lottie thought. ‘Goodnight so,’ she said. ‘Chat in the morning.’
She went to her room and lay on the bed, wondering if she was a bad mother not to have gone in and talked with her daughter. No, she thought, it would only end in a row. She eventually fell asleep to the sound of Chloe crying softly in the room next to hers.
Twenty-One
The man shifted slightly in the long dry grass where he had been lying for the last hour and a half. He fixed his night-vision goggles and binoculars in line with the window, then returned to his rigid position. The railway tracks were a mere metre behind him, but he had no worries. The next train was not due until 6 a.m.
Stars twinkled high above and street lights cast a yellow hue into the night sky. He ignored his surroundings and concentrated on his target.
With the blinds up and curtains hanging out through the open window, he had a clear view inside. Her light was off but through his hi-tech equipment he could decipher her slender form lying atop her tossed duvet.
He conjured up her youthful beauty. Every strand of her blonde hair sparked electricity throughout his body. The smooth sheen of her face and the rise and fall of her breast – all images he registered and filed away for future perusal.
He didn’t want to be aroused. That wasn’t the object of his crusade. He was not the tempest; no, he was the calm after the storm. He would bring her peace. She would bring him peace.
As he shifted uneasily, the hardness in his groin making his position unbearable, the grass around him rustled in the stillness. He froze. No one ventured down here at 4.47 a.m. Not on the canal and definitely not this far along the railway tracks. Slowly he lowered the binoculars and turned his head, coming face to face with a bright-eyed fox. He laughed. The animal scampered away.
A sign. Time to quit for the night. He packed up his equipment, slung the bag over his shoulder and hurried the length of the track, his hand thrust deep in his trousers, feverishly stroking himself. He knew there was only one way to truly gain relief, to expel the demons from within. Perhaps he should move her up his timeline, he thought, expelling small groans of pleasure with each breath.
Such was his fever of anticipation for the girl, when he arrived home, and before he could even unlock the door, his desire ejaculated in an orgasmic explosion.
He would sleep tonight.
The hood over Mimoza’s head smelled of vomit. She knew she was in the boot of a car, but they hadn’t travelled far when it stopped. Still in town, she felt. Please let Milot be cared for. No matter what they do to me, let my son be okay, she pleaded silently in the darkness. She thought she could smell his apple shampoo. Her chest constricted in panic. She had to be strong. For Milot.
Dragged from the car, she was pushed up a flight of steps and through an open door. When the hood was wrenched from her head, she ascertained that the vomit was her own. It had dripped and hardened along her chin and on her chest. Her breath came low and fast as she tried to calm herself.
A tall woman stood over her, arms folded, stiletto-clad feet wide apart. Mimoza struggled to her knees. A grey stripe streaked an intimidating line along the centre of the woman’s black-haired crown. A red dress floated out from the folds of flesh and a nipple protruded.
‘Up,’ the woman said in Mimoza’s language.
‘Wash?’ Mimoza asked, rising to her feet.
‘Don’t speak unless instructed.’ The slap cracked the skin below her eye. As she reeled backwards, rough hands grabbed her. The man with the crooked teeth. He spoke rapidly, turned and left.
At once Mimoza knew what type of place she was in and what was expected of her. She had been forced to work in such a place once before. Following the woman, she trailed through a patterned-wallpapered hall and up uncarpeted stairs. At the top, four doors, faux-pearl bracelets hanging on the handles of three. The woman opened the one without a bracelet, ushering Mimoza into a tiny bathroom. Soft music drifted from the ceiling.
‘You pee. Two minutes.’
‘Wash?’
The smack of a hand caught her on the side of her head.
‘Dare to answer back and you will be punished. Two minutes.’ The woman left, pulling the door closed behind her.
As a key turned in the lock, Mimoza stripped off her soiled clothing and sat on the toilet. Blood mixed with urine spilled from her body, and with it, excruciating pain, a reminder of Crooked Teeth Man’s violent sex attack before he’d brought her here.
Despite her distress, all she could think of was that she was trapped in one prison while her son was in another.
‘Oh Milot,’ she said aloud, ‘I’m so sorry.’
Kosovo, 1999