‘Carol, you have to tell me what you suspect. I can’t promise you anything until I know.’
She looked out the window at the ripples roughing up the lake. ‘You used to wear a ring on a chain round your neck. But you don’t wear it any more. Why?’
‘I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything. But to satisfy you, I’ll tell you.’ He turned around to face her. ‘I had a row with my brother one night. I can’t even remember the exact thing we fought over. Something to do with the railway preservation committee, I think. But fight we did. Down and dirty. Like we used to when we were kids. He pulled the chain off me. It got lost. Searched the ground for it when he was gone. Never found it. Are you saying the rapist had it?’
‘You don’t know where it might be?’
‘No and I don’t care any more. It was a Claddagh ring. Lynn had one just like it … when she vanished. I bought a similar one and wore it around my neck to remind me of her.’
Carol twisted away from the window and faced him.
‘The night I was attacked, my rapist was wearing one exactly like it. I pulled it from his neck.’
‘What?’ The realisation of what she was saying began to dawn on him. ‘You thought it was me. All these weeks, you still met up with me, thinking I might have attacked and raped you. How could you?’
She shrugged. ‘I just did. The ring was yours. I was sure of it. I gave it to a friend to mind for me, in case I ever reported the rape and needed evidence.’
‘You what? Jesus, Carol. I could never …’ He stopped. ‘I don’t think I could … you know, be violent like that. But I’ve been so stressed recently, I’m not myself. I actually hit Keelan one night, and another evening I broke every plate in the house.’
Tears streamed down his cheeks. She reached up and wiped them. ‘I’m sorry. I love you and didn’t want to believe it was you.’
‘I don’t really blame you.’
‘Cillian.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The man who attacked me, could it have been, you know, your brother?’
‘Finn? No!’ he cried.
She watched him and saw his expression changing.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
Banging his head against the steering wheel, Cillian wailed at the waters rising on the lake.
And in that moment, Carol feared for her life and that of the baby growing in her womb.
Ninety-Five
The door of the hatch opened and his legs appeared, climbing down the ladder. Why hadn’t she thought of whacking him before? A day or two ago, when she still had the strength? But now hunger gnawed at her stomach like a rat, and she could hardly move.
When he jumped off the last rung onto the floor, she saw he held scissors in one hand, and a battery-powered razor in the other.
‘Time for a haircut,’ he said. ‘Or maybe you’d like to tell me where you hid it first?’
‘Hid what?’
‘Oh, don’t go all coy on me, pretty girl. I know you were friends with that slut. Took her in the night she was attacked. Didn’t I tell you? I did that to her. She was some fighter. A terrible vixen.’
Was he talking about the girl who was raped? What was her name? Carol O’Grady? But Mollie hardly knew her. ‘What am I supposed to have hidden?’
‘So that’s the way you want to play it? I thought a few days of confinement might loosen your tongue, but it seems I have to use brutal measures. Poor old Lynn. She didn’t like getting her head shaved. But I had to do it. The creepy-crawly lice would’ve torn her scalp to shreds in this place. See, I’m not all bad.’
Before she realised what he was doing, he had pulled her upright by her hair. Gripped it in a tight knot around his fingers and sliced through with the scissors. She watched helplessly as it fell to the ground at her bare feet.
‘No!’
The buzz of the razor drowned out her sobs as it sliced close to her scalp, shaving her hair clean from her head. It nicked a spot that had erupted over the last day, and blood seeped down her forehead into her eyes.
‘What do you want?’ she cried.
‘The silver chain with the ring. The one your raped friend gave you to mind.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She honestly hadn’t a clue.
‘Come on. I’m not stupid. She either gave it to that Elizabeth bitch or she gave it to you. That cow died before I could get the information from her, so I’m back to thinking you must have it. Now where the fuck is it?’
Mollie crumpled in a heap on the floor in the midst of her shorn hair and tried to remember. She had Carol’s clothes. Nothing else. No chain. No ring. But he wasn’t going to believe that. As he hunkered down to continue shaving, she knew she had to come up with a plan. And mighty quick. Otherwise she’d end up fermenting beside the bones on the table.
Ninety-Six
On the way, Boyd checked in with the other search teams. Still ongoing at Rochfort Gardens, but nothing had been found. Yet. As they drove towards the old nursing home, Kirby came on the radio.
‘Dropped the O’Donnells at the station. Heading to pick up Finn and Sara, then I’m going to join the search at the Ladystown caravan park.’
Boyd clicked him off.
‘They’ll find her,’ Lottie said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I will be once this is all over.’
He drove up to the front of the old home and parked. Lottie got out of the car and walked between two buildings leaning in over her until she came to the oldest structure.
‘It dates back to the famine,’ she said as Boyd joined her.
‘I thought Lynch was our local history fanatic.’
She pointed to a plaque above the black timber door. ‘Says it right there.’ Pushing against the door, she found it was firmly closed. ‘Let’s have a look further back.’
Rusting oil tanks and odds and ends of machinery were lined up against the ancient wall behind which the current nursing home was housed. She continued walking to her right, with Boyd by her side. They turned another corner and stopped. A car was parked haphazardly.
‘Who owns that, then?’ Boyd asked, taking out his phone.
‘My bet is Cillian O’Donnell. Check the registration.’
He was already on the phone as she made her way past the car and behind a mound of rubble to the side of another building.
‘Is that a boiler house?’ she said.
‘I’d say so but look at the chimney.’ He pointed upwards. ‘There must have been an incinerator here.’
To the rear, a door. Lottie nudged it with the knuckles of her good hand and it swung inwards. She raised her eyebrows at Boyd.
‘That’s a stroke of good luck,’ he said.
‘You always can read my mind. Pull on gloves, just in case this leads to anything.’
They moved inside.
‘I think you’re right, Boyd. This was an incinerator. You go that way and I’ll take this side.’
They spent five minutes looking, searching and listening. Nothing.
‘There’s a car out back, so someone must be here,’ Lottie said.
‘Maybe he’s avoiding parking charges at the nursing home. Just dropped the car there and headed off.’
She ignored him and opened the door to the oven-like structure built into a brick chimney breast. Leaned over the edge and peered in.
‘Holy fuck, Boyd. There’s a hatch built into the floor.’
Ninety-Seven
Was that a voice?
Sounded like one. Up high.
He was so busy scalping her bald, he mustn’t have heard it. She was sure someone was there above them. Someone with him? Or help for her? She had to distract him.
‘The bones,’ she said. ‘Where did they come from?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘They scare me a little.’
‘I can scare you a whole lot more than bones.’
‘I’m not afraid of you.’ The hope that rescue might be close gave her a smidgen of courage.
He let go of her head and sat back on the floor. She twisted round and faced him.
‘Who do you think I’m going to tell, locked up here?’ she said.
‘You have a smart mouth on you, for a pretty girl.’
‘Oh, don’t bother telling me. I don’t want to know.’
He stared at her, chewing the inside of his cheek. Weighing it up. Was she getting to him? She hoped so.
‘They belong to a baby,’ he said.