‘Constantly remind me. I don’t need added pressure from you.’
Lottie looked at the phone as Chloe cut her off. Now look what she’d done. But for the moment, she had enough on her plate without worrying about Chloe’s sulks. Another murder on top of the first one, and not a single suspect. Plus a girl who had apparently disappeared into the ether.
Glancing at Maeve Phillips’s photo, she didn’t think the girl was the most recent body buried in the road. So where the hell was she? Who was this second dead girl? Who was the first one? And why had they both been the targets of a murderer?
Her desk phone chirped. The desk sergeant.
‘Andri Petrovci is in Interview Room One.’
Thirty-Seven
With Boyd, Lynch and Kirby still at the scene, Lottie commandeered Garda Gillian O’Donoghue, one of the brighter uniformed officers, to sit in with her. Once the recording disc was in place and the formalities were over, Andri Petrovci was first to speak.
‘So much of this in my home country. I not want to see it here. Understand?’
‘Yes, but it’s odd that it’s you who has found two bodies. Do you find that strange?’
‘Not my fault. I work here. This what I do. I dig. I fill. I work.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders half-heartedly, and Lottie couldn’t help thinking that for all his size, he seemed childlike. ‘Who are these women, Inspector?’
‘Do you have any idea, Mr Petrovci?’
‘Sorry. I not know. You police. You know?’
Lottie’s phone vibrated. Chloe again. She ignored it. Then she remembered she had the photo of Maeve on her phone. She opened it up and slid the phone across the table to Petrovci. All the time keeping her eyes locked on his face.
He gulped. Stood up, visibly shaking. ‘Please. I go. Now.’
‘Sit down.’ At last she’d got a reaction out of him. ‘Do you know her?’
‘No. You no understand. I go.’
‘Come on.’ Lottie felt she was on to something here. ‘How do you know her? Where did you meet her?’
‘No. Is she one of them? In the ground?’
‘You recognised her. Tell me.’
His shoulders sagged. Locking his fingers together, he bowed his head. Silence. She heard the slight movement of his hi-vis vest with the rise and fall of his breaths.
‘Who is she?’ His voice so low she could barely hear him. ‘In photo. You know?’
‘I know who she is,’ Lottie said. ‘What do you know about her?’
He shook his head as if the movement could dispel some demon from his brain. He did not speak.
‘Andri, you can tell me. Where is she?’
He looked up. Lottie tried to see into the depths of his eyes, to read what was written there. All she saw, penetrating the surface, was pain. What had happened to Andri Petrovci? And what had he done to Maeve? A slow anger began to boil in the pit of her stomach, knocking her sympathy out cold.
‘I know nothing.’ He unclenched his hands and folded his arms.
Lottie took a breath and set her mouth in a fake smile. ‘You mentioned you saw a lot of death in your own country. Tell me about it.’ Changing the subject away from Maeve in an attempt to wrong-foot him. No such luck.
‘Inspector, I work on water main. I dig road. I find bodies I not put there. I not kill them. Please, I go now?’
‘First tell me what you know,’ Lottie insisted.
‘I know nothing.’
‘Yes you do. Is Maeve in danger? What did you do to her?’ Shit, she’d let the girl’s name slip. No harm really, she thought. It was already in the media.
He folded his arms. ‘You not let me go. Get me lawyer,’ he said, and closed his mouth into a thin line.
Lottie sighed heavily. All she had were suspicions. No proof that he’d done anything. They were still awaiting results from his DNA sample. She could hold him in custody. Assign a solicitor. Then what? Hours of nothing.
Persisting with questions for another five minutes got her nowhere. He refused to speak. She had nothing to hold him on.
Making her decision, she said, ‘You can go.’
Garda O’Donoghue switched off the recording equipment and sealed the discs. Petrovci unfolded his arms, stood up and walked out of the room without a word. As he left, Lottie wondered if he actually did know Maeve Phillips. He’d appeared to recognise her photo. Perhaps he had seen the social media alerts, or was he the invisible boyfriend? He had to be near thirty years old and Maeve only seventeen. How to get him to admit to it?
Leaving O’Donoghue to sign off on the technical and written reports, she rushed up to her office, grabbed her bag and raced down the stairs and out of the station.
Chloe looked at her phone in disbelief. Her mum had refused to take her call. Just when she’d decided she was going to reveal all to her. She had thought it would be easier telling her on the phone rather than face to face.
Now she decided she wasn’t going to tell her anything. Nothing at all.
She would deal with it herself. She only needed to get her fixer mojo back.
Thirty-Eight
Boyd was well and truly fed up with Lottie Parker. He’d spent all afternoon deflecting flak from the business people in the Columb area of town, and she hadn’t the balls to appear back on site. Even Jane Dore had been wondering where she had got to. At least the body was now on its way to Tullamore and SOCOs were busy with the site.
‘How’s the door-to-door going?’ he asked Kirby when he caught up with him outside the gated apartments.
Kirby wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Not too many people at home. I’ll have to hang around with uniforms until later on. And this gout is killing me.’ He pointed to his feet. ‘What’re you up to?’
‘Just finished here. Need to see if I can find my wallet.’
Without waiting to hear what other tales of woe Kirby had to tell, Boyd headed up the street. Crossing the footbridge spanning the railway, he ran across the road and over the new canal bridge leading to Ragmullin’s landscape deformity. Hill Point Flats. Apartments if you wanted to be fancy about it, he thought.
The buildings looked blander in daylight. Not that Boyd could remember much from the night before. Red bricks streaked white with mildew; super-sized satellite dishes protruding from windows along the five floors; urine-stained stone steps leading up to door. As if to reassure himself that he wasn’t entirely mad, he tapped his pockets once more. Definitely no wallet.
Ringing the doorbell, he looked around anxiously, hoping no one would see him. But parents were picking up children from a crèche and bedraggled shoppers struggling with grocery bags across a paved area. Did they not know what was going on under their very noses? He ducked his chin to his chest and pressed the bell again.
A stream of foreign words preceded the opening of the door. Looking at the woman, Boyd wondered, had he met her last night? He wasn’t even sure it was the right place. Apartment five, block two, Kirby had said.
‘Excuse me.’ He flashed his sincerest smile. ‘I think I lost my wallet here last night. I was wondering if you or any of the girls found it.’