A chill wind gusted from outside and up along the platform as a train entered on Platform 3 and the Belfast express shunted out on the track furthest away. And then he saw her. Desperately trying to scan her ticket. The woman behind her was trying to scan hers at the same time. Eventually they both rushed through, running on the slippery tiles. He knew they’d have to jump onto the last carriage, so he got on just before them.
As he’d thought, the carriage was full. He moved down halfway until he got to the blockage of people standing in the aisle with their technology glued to their hands. He glanced over his shoulder. Three rows down. The two of them were standing in the middle of the aisle.
The train snaked out of Dublin into the dark of the evening, heading for Ragmullin. Over the slow rhythm of the engine his mind whirled with plans. He had to ensure the other woman wasn’t going to be a problem. That was Plan A. Plan B was to ensure his target didn’t attempt to escape.
He smiled to himself and kept his eyes glued to the two women.
* * *
Grace laughed, a nervous reaction to mask her fear. She’d run too quickly. Her breath was catching in the back of her throat.
Fumbling in her pocket, she found her inhaler and, trying to keep the pulsing bodies from touching her, brought it up to her lips. As she inhaled, she felt a slight reduction in the palpitations, but the panic lingered beneath the surface of her skin.
‘Are you okay?’
She looked up at Mollie, her new friend.
‘I’ll be fine once I get to carriage C.’
‘Not a hope in hell.’
With her saliva drying up, Grace took another hit from her inhaler. ‘But I have to sit in carriage C. It’s the only way I’ll get home safe.’
Mollie laughed. ‘You’re not that superstitious, are you?’
Suddenly Grace found herself in what she called freeze mode. Stock still, only her eyes moving. Slanting to the right, then to the left, then back to Mollie’s grinning face. Her lips stuck together, tongue thick and throat closed. As she breathed quickly through her nose, perspiration bubbled on her forehead. She felt it drip down into her eyes and tasted the saltiness on her lips. Mollie’s hand reached out and grabbed hers. No! Don’t touch. But her words were lost in the drying mucus.
In, out, in, out. One, two, three, she counted in her head. No use. Ten, nine, eight. Still useless. I can’t pass out, she warned herself. There was nowhere for her to fall, nowhere for her to go.
People pushed up against her as the train left the station. Her worst nightmare: physical touch. And the suffocating smell of sweat and last-minute cigarettes. Her hand tightened on the leather strap of her satchel. The numbness began to ebb. Her lips opened, and she exhaled a breath.
‘A little colour is coming back to your cheeks,’ Mollie said. ‘You had me worried for a minute. What came over you?’
Shrugging, Grace clutched her bag tighter to her body. How could she explain to this girl, who was still a stranger, what it was like to live inside her skin? She couldn’t, so she remained mute, silently praying for an opportunity to get to carriage C. Only then would she be okay.
Eighteen
The evening sky was grey-blue. Not quite daylight and not yet night. Dusk. It’d be fully dark soon. February was being a stubbornly cold month, with very little hint of spring appearing. Lottie zipped up her hoodie and then her jacket. The wrought-iron gates were wide open to allow the forensic vehicles entry to the cemetery. Crime-scene tape hung limply across the space, guarded by two uniformed officers.
They signed in and entered the grounds. Lottie stopped to view the caretaker’s office, dark and lifeless in the shadow of the trees.
‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ Boyd said.
‘Beginning to freeze. Look at that lot. Fahy mentioned illegal dumping.’ Lottie scanned the heaving mass of black bags sitting on top of a yellow skip. ‘They look like they’re moving.’ Then she spied the vermin boxes around the house. Ugh!
Boyd said, ‘See there. Sacks scattered on the ground. People must drive up outside and hurl their rubbish over the wall.’
‘The council need to put up more cameras,’ she said. ‘Have we got the surveillance footage yet?’
‘Kirby’s looking after it.’
‘Good,’ Lottie started down the slope, which was glistening silver with the evening frost. A series of halogen lights on tripods illuminated the forensic tent and cast spectral shadows on the headstones surrounding it. A colony of SOCOs were working systematically, like ants, sifting through the clay and dirt.
She walked towards the wall that backed onto the traveller site. ‘How high do you think this is?’
‘Must be nine or ten feet.’
‘And Bridie’s house is just beyond it. She says she heard a scream after three on Tuesday morning. Will you go back up there and scream?’ She indicated the direction they’d come from. ‘I’ll see if I can hear it.’
‘You’re having me on?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘Then I’ll stand here while you go and scream.’
‘Maybe I should warn Bridie first.’
‘Maybe you should warn the banshee that you intend to take her place.’
‘Boyd, I need to confirm one way or the other if someone’s screams could be heard the other side of the wall.’
‘There are flaws to your plan. Say, if you stand right under the wall, you can be sure you’d be heard.’
Lottie swung her flashlight around the headstones, silently admitting that it had been a half-thought-out plan. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Bridie really had heard the woman’s screams. Travellers were renowned for their insights and vision. And if Bridie had heard Elizabeth Byrne screaming, it could tie down time of death.
She went over to the SOCOs. McGlynn was on his knees in the bottom of the grave, brushing and scraping where the body had lain. He looked up.
‘Before you even ask,’ he said, ‘I haven’t found much for you to work with. Just flakes of skin, clay, dirt and stones.’
‘Blood?’ Lottie ventured, peering over the edge.
‘Some. It’ll be analysed.’
Lottie recalled the spot of blood she’d found on the stone from the neighbouring grave. She’d follow it up in the morning.
‘If he covered her with clay, did he use his hands?’ she asked.
‘How would I know that?’ McGlynn said.
Lottie turned to Boyd. ‘We need to examine all the tools used around here.’
McGlynn’s voice rose from the grave. ‘I’ve taken care of that. You’ll have the results as soon as I have them. I’m assuming you took the two workers’ DNA and fingerprints.’
‘Of course,’ she said, hoping Kirby had done his job properly.
‘Good.’
‘The entire area has been fingertip-searched,’ Boyd said. ‘When will your work be finished here?’
McGlynn glanced up, his eyes dancing with green fire above his white mouth mask. ‘It will be finished when it’s finished.’
Lottie looked over at the rows of headstones, misshapen humps on the landscape. The vastness of the resting place for the dead chilled her.
‘I don’t think this is what the killer intended,’ she said. ‘It’s more than likely the girl escaped from him and he followed. But why were they here in the first place? Were they having sex and it got too rough, or he was raping her and she fled? Where did they come from? He had to have a car, so where was it parked?’
Boyd said, ‘We’ve been assuming this is the work of a man, but it could just as easily have been a woman.’
‘True,’ Lottie conceded. ‘The victim was naked, so that implies something sexual. Hopefully the post-mortem will tell us more about that. And something might show up on the CCTV footage. If it was an accident, why not try to get her out, or call 999? Was the intention all along to kill her? I can’t get my head around it. And so far, we haven’t one clue. That’s unthinkable.’
‘Wait for the post-mortem. And the results from McGlynn.’
The embankment to their right lit up with the lights of the Sligo to Dublin train. A horn screeched into the evening air and the inky sky brightened in a V from the light.
‘I’ve to pick up Grace,’ Boyd said, and headed up the hill.