The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)
Patricia Gibney
The Seventies
The Child
‘You have to be quiet. Please. Don’t cry again.’
‘But… but she hurt me. I want to go back to our other mummy.’
‘Shh. Shh. I do too. But if we’re good, this mummy won’t hurt us. You have to be really, really good.’
More crying. ‘Too hard to be good. I’m so hungry. Hic… hic.’
‘Don’t get hiccups. Don’t. You make her so mad.’
I wrap my arms around my twin’s small, thin body and stare into the blackness. It is too dark in here. When the mummy woman turned off the hall light, even the little crack at the lock was filled with blackness. I lean into the folds of the vacuum cleaner bag, try to make a pillow for my head, but it is too lumpy, my body too bony. Pins and needles prickle my arm where my twin’s head rests.
I am too cramped to move. The weight of my twin lying on me would be very light for the big people, I think, but it feels like a monster to me.
A spider lowers itself from a web, down on to my nose, and I scream. My twin slips from my grasp. A head cracks loudly against the wall. We are both screaming now.
In the confined space of the hall cupboard, our screams are loud and shrill. Neither of us knows why the other is howling. Neither of us can stop the other crying. Neither of us knows when the horror will end.
And then… the sound of the lock opening.
* * *
Carrie King puts her hands over her ears. Will they ever shut up? Sobbing, crying, screaming. Little brats. After all she has done for them. Given up her drugs. Stopped drinking. Become someone she isn’t. For them. To get them back. She had to do it, especially after the others were taken from her. Fought so hard for them.
‘Shut up!’
She uncorks the whiskey bottle and fills a glass. Two gulps later, she feels the warmth seep into her veins. That’s better. But she still hears them. Another gulp.
‘Enough!’ She runs from the kitchen. Bangs on the door of the cupboard in the hallway.
‘I said, shut up! If I hear one more word, I’ll kill the two of you,’ she screams.
Leaning against the white chipboard, her chest rising and heaving from the effort, she listens above the thumping of her heart. Still crying, but softer now. Whimpers.
‘Thank God,’ she sighs. ‘Peace at last.’
She drags herself back to the kitchen, dirt and crumbs sticking to her bare feet. Standing at the clogged sink, peering out through the smeared window, she pops an acid pill, but she really needs a smoke. Pulling the small bag of weed from her skirt pocket, she rolls a joint and takes two hits from the spliff in quick succession.
Her legs weaken at her knees. She can see two windows, or is that three? The bread bin hops along the bench and the sweeping brush is begging for a dance partner.
She laughs, and lights a candle. This is seriously good shit, or is it the acid? Turning, she grabs the whiskey bottle and drinks from its neck. It doesn’t taste so sharp now. She opens the book lying by her hand, before closing it again. She can’t remember when she last read, but this looked good. She liked the little pictures. Now, though, it is mocking her.
The racket from the hallway has ceased and she hears the angels singing. Up there, lying in white fluffy clouds on her ceiling. They look kind of cute. Not like the twin bastards that have cost her so much of her life. At least she got them back. Away from their foster mother. That was a laugh. That woman had no idea how to raise children.
‘Hello, little angel friends,’ she chirps at the ceiling, her voice an octave higher than normal. ‘Have you come to shut the brats up?’
That’s when she hears screams. Scrunching her face in confusion, she stares blindly around the kitchen. The angels have fled.
Carrie King takes another slug of whiskey, following it with a drag on her joint, and grabs hold of the wooden spoon. As she flees the kitchen, she doesn’t notice she has knocked over the candle and the bottle.
‘I’ll give you two something to cry about. So help me God, I will.’
Day One
Early October 2015
One
The evening was the best time to study. A glass of wine by her hand, phone in the dock spewing soft music, blinds pulled down halfway, the fields beyond the house in darkness. Light reflected off the glass and she could see all around her. Alone with her books. In her own home. Safe.
Marian Russell had to admit that social studies wasn’t her course of choice, but she loved the genealogy module. Everything else was too highbrow for her stupid brain. She was stupid. Arthur had kept telling her that, so now she almost believed it. But she knew it wasn’t really true.
Smiling to herself, she popped two pills into her mouth, swallowed them with her wine and lit a cigarette. Since she’d secured the barring order against her husband, she was beginning to take hold of her life again. A twenty-five-hour-a-week contract in the supermarket helped, and she had the family car. The bastard had lost his licence, so he hadn’t put up much of a fight over it. She’d succeeded in getting her mother to sign the house over to her before ensconcing her in a flat. Out from under her feet. And she had her studies. And her wine. And her pills.
The front door opened and slammed shut.
‘Emma, is that you?’ Marian shouted over her shoulder. She needed to have a sit-down with her daughter. At seventeen, Emma was beginning to take liberties with her curfew. She checked the time. Not yet nine o’clock.
Marian sipped her wine. ‘Where did you go?’
Silence. No matter how much trouble she got into, Emma always stood her ground. A trait inherited from her father? No, Marian knew where she got it from.
Standing up, she turned to the door. The glass fell from her hand.
‘You!’
Two
Carnmore was a quiet area, situated on the outskirts of Ragmullin. The main road had once run through it, but after the ring road had been constructed, it was cut off and mainly accessed by residents, or used as a rat run by those aware of its existence. Almost five hundred metres separated the two houses built there and only every third street lamp remained lit. On a night like this, with rain thundering down to earth, it was a bleak and desolate place. Trees shook their wet branches free of their remaining leaves and the ground was sludgy and black.
The crime-scene tape was already in place when Detective Inspector Lottie Parker and Detective Sergeant Mark Boyd arrived. Two squad cars blocked the house from the view of any curious onlookers. But the area was quiet, except for garda activity.
Lottie looked over at Boyd. He shook his head. At over six feet tall, he was lean and well toned. His hair, once black, now shaded with grey, was cut close around his ears, which stuck out slightly.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s get out of this rain. I hate calls late at night.’
‘And I hate domestics,’ Boyd said, turning up the collar of his coat.
‘Could be a home invasion. A burglary gone wrong.’
‘Could be anything at this stage, but Marian Russell’s had a barring order against her husband, Arthur, for the last twelve months,’ Boyd said, reading from a page dripping with rainwater. ‘An order he has flouted on two occasions.’
‘Still doesn’t mean it was him. We have to assess the scene first.’
She pulled her black puffa jacket tight to her throat. She hoped this winter wasn’t going to be as bad as the last one. October could be a lovely time, but currently there was a storm warning, status orange, and forecasters intimated it could change to red at a moment’s notice. Being surrounded by lakes, Ragmullin was susceptible to flooding, and Lottie had had enough of the rain over the last two weeks.
After a cursory look at a car in the drive, she approached the house. The door was open. A uniformed garda barred the entrance. When he recognised her, he nodded.