She ran her hands through her hair. ‘It still doesn’t explain why you left your apartment and came back again.’
He shuffled around the small cell, constantly tapping and rubbing his head, leaving dark streaks of dirt and sweat. In the confined space he appeared like a lonely, sad giant. Lottie shook herself. She shouldn’t be feeling sorry for him. God knows what he’d done.
Facing the wall, he said, ‘I find that little girl dead by the water and you lock me up. Your detective, he ask me lot of questions. He let me go. I afraid. I not want to be locked up again. I get phone call. This man, he say my girl in town. He say he kill her and me. That all he say. I pack and I go. I have to look for her.’
‘Where did you go?’
Petrovci shrugged his shoulders. ‘I walk around. I sleep by the rail tracks. But I got nowhere to go. I come back to my apartment. Only place I know. I got nowhere.’ He banged the wall with his knuckles. ‘I come back. That is all I know.’ He started to sob. ‘She is near.’
‘Who is near? What are you talking about?’
‘He tell me she is near. That is why I look for her. The man on the phone. But he not tell me where she is.’
Give me strength, Lottie thought. ‘When you’re ready to speak without the riddles, I’ll be back.’ She opened the door.
As she stepped out into the brightly lit hallway, she heard Andri Petrovci cry out.
‘One day. One day I see my Mimoza again.’
Boyd clasped the phone to his ear and walked up and down the station yard.
‘Start from the beginning, Jackie, you’re making no sense.’
‘I haven’t seen Jamie for hours. He rushed off after getting a phone call. When he’d left, I found this phone on the couch. Not his usual iPhone. A bulky Nokia. It was unlocked. I thought maybe he used it for another woman, you know…’
‘So you checked it. Right?’
‘Right. The only text sent said: “Boy not safe at yours. Leave. Meet at canal footbridge.” That’s all.’
‘You sure. No name? Anything?
‘Just the number.’ She read it out to him.
Boyd recognised it. ‘I’m sending someone to yours for the phone. Don’t leave.’
‘Okay. And one other thing…’
‘What?’
‘There are only two names in the contact list. One is Tracy Phillips and the other is George O’H. Mean anything to you?’
‘I need that phone,’ Boyd said.
Eighty-Three
‘Boyd. Boyd!’ Lottie ran up the stairs and into the incident room. ‘Have you seen Boyd?’
Lynch and Kirby were there, rings as black as nuggets of coal circling their eyes.
‘Chloe?’ Lottie gasped.
‘No, boss,’ said Kirby. ‘We’ve searched high up and low down.’
‘Her phone. Anything on it?’
‘We got a number, but it’s another one of those throwaway yokes.’
‘Pre-pay,’ Lynch said.
‘Yes. And it’s not the same number that contacted Dermody or Carter,’ Kirby said with a yawn.
‘Guys, I’m so sorry,’ Lottie said. ‘You’ve been working day and night. I need Boyd.’
‘I’m here.’ He walked in.
If anything, Lottie thought he looked worse than her other two detectives. She said, ‘It’s Petrovci. You won’t believe what he’s just told me.’
‘Can it wait? I’ve something important to tell you all.’
‘You’re looking too serious. It’s Chloe. Tell me!’ Gulping air so as not to get hysterical, Lottie pleaded with her eyes. ‘I can handle it.’
Boyd slumped into the nearest chair, plucked at the growing stubble on his chin. ‘It’s Jackie—’ he began.
‘Boyd! My daughter and a child are missing and you’re on about Jackie. Give me a break.’
‘Will you calm—’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down.’ Lottie kicked over the nearest chair. ‘This is shit. All shit.’ Near to tears, she picked up the chair and sat down. ‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘Turns out Jamie McNally is in this up to his greasy little ponytail.’
‘What?’ Lottie jumped up again.
‘The slimy little fucker,’ Kirby said, sticking an unlit cigar into his mouth.
Boyd told them about the phone Jackie had found.
Lottie counted silently, trying to ease the tension building in her chest. She said, ‘McNally has Chloe and Milot.’
‘How did he get Chloe’s number?’ Kirby asked.
‘Kids have their numbers on Facebook and Twitter and stuff,’ Lynch said. ‘Never aware of how vulnerable it leaves them.’ At the incident board she pushed a pin slap-bang in the middle of McNally’s face.
‘I should have been more careful. I suspected someone was watching me, watching my house,’ Lottie said. ‘Why would Chloe respond to that message if she didn’t know who it was from?’
‘Unless he is Lipjan,’ Boyd said.
‘Where is McNally now?’ Lynch said.
‘Is Jackie with him?’ Lottie said. ‘Why are we still here? Come on. Let’s go.’
Boyd stopped her at the door. ‘I don’t know where McNally is. Jackie’s alone. I’ve sent officers over to get the phone and sit with her.’
‘Could McNally be with Russell? Up at the DPC?’ Lynch asked.
‘I thought I told someone to pick up Russell,’ Lottie said.
‘We went in with the warrant,’ Kirby said. ‘I left a crew of detectives searching. Ongoing as we speak. But Russell wasn’t there. Last seen early afternoon.’
‘Check his home.’
‘Done. Not there either. His car is still at the DPC.’
Lottie paused, banging her forehead with her knuckles.
‘Could he be at St Declan’s? That’s where O’Hara wanted to pick the boy up from Carter. And Jackie said that O’Hara’s name is in McNally’s phone.’
‘You’re right.’ Boyd passed her at the door. ‘Two cars. No sirens. Come on.’
‘Right.’ Lottie wondered where she was getting her energy from. She hadn’t eaten all day and she was still going.
Fear, she thought.
Fear for her daughter and that little boy.
* * *
The three-storey Victorian asylum for the mentally insane rose in front of them like a monster in the fog as they parked the cars outside the front door. They couldn’t see lights anywhere in the building.
Huddling in a group, Lottie quelled a rush of anxiety taking a tight hold of her heart.
‘It’s a horrible-looking place,’ she said.
‘There’s an annexe-type building to the back. It was built in the early 1900s,’ Lynch said.
Lottie, Boyd and Kirby stared at her.
‘I studied for a diploma in local history a few years ago,’ she explained. ‘Far as I can remember, the annexe housed an operating theatre.’
They set off round the side of the building, staying close to the wall.
‘You all right?’ Boyd asked Lottie.
‘No.’
She stopped abruptly as they turned the corner. A long single-storey building jutted out from the main hospital. A light glared from a window at the very end.
‘Looks like it’s shining through plastic or something,’ Kirby said.
‘It’s the fog,’ Lynch said.
‘No, I think Kirby’s right,’ Boyd said.
‘Quiet,’ Lottie warned. ‘Be ready with your weapons.’ She eased her gun into her hand.
The door opened silently. No creak.
‘Not a sound,’ Lottie whispered. ‘No flashlights. Follow me.’
‘Shouldn’t we get the ballistic vests?’ Kirby asked.