Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

Penny Brogan’s apartment was situated in a three-storey block on Columb Street, just down from the car dismantler’s yard and across from a coal depot. The road was black from the tyre tracks of trucks pulling in and out of the fuel yard. Lottie gazed over at the mounds of coal and briquettes, shielded beneath a struggling Perspex roof.

‘First floor,’ Boyd said.

‘I’m coming.’ She followed him into the small courtyard.

The garda technical van was positioned in front of the terrace of apartments. She entered through the open door. Two SOCOs were dusting and searching. She could do with ten minutes on her own in here, but they had their work to do too.

Boyd said, ‘It’s like a shoebox.’

‘You can talk. Yours isn’t much bigger.’

‘I suppose she was happy to have her own place, though I’d say it was tough trying to pay the rent in today’s economy, especially as she had no job.’

Lottie spied a small table in the corner of the room and made her way around a settee that she guessed doubled as a bed. On the table sat all the equipment needed to run a little black- market business in nail care. A wooden shelf held baskets filled with bottles of varnish, polish and cleansing products.

‘Penny must have worked on Amy’s nails.’ Lottie picked up a see-through container no bigger than a matchbox and shook it. The rhinestones glittered as they slid around.

She opened a drawer in the small bedside-type cabinet pushed beneath the table and drew out a black plastic-covered appointment book.

‘This might help us,’ she said.

‘It’ll give us a bigger headache,’ Boyd said, ‘leading to a ton of interviews and no doubt nothing of interest to our investigation.’

‘Ever the optimist,’ Lottie mumbled as she flicked through the pages with her gloved fingers. Nothing jumped out at her, so she bagged the book and glanced around.

A kitchenette was separated from the main room by a three-foot-long breakfast bar with two high stools. Upturned mugs and plates sat on the draining board. The sink was empty. She moved through a door to her right. A small bathroom; the walls and shower door were smeared with false tan.

‘Just like mine,’ she said.

Boyd stuck his head over her shoulder. ‘Yours is a little cleaner.’

She shoved out past him. ‘Where does she keep her clothes?’

‘There’s a cupboard over there.’ Boyd pointed to a set of double doors to the left of a gas fire.

Lottie opened them up and found hangers with clothes pressed tightly together. Beneath them was a line of shoes and two pairs of ankle boots. She searched through every item of clothing with pockets but came up empty-handed.

‘There’s nothing here,’ she said. ‘We need to look in Amy Whyte’s house.’

‘I wish you luck getting past the councillor,’ Boyd said as he searched through a basket of nail polish.

‘Didn’t you know my middle name is luck?’

‘Luckless, more like. What’s this when it’s at home?’ He held up a small bottle with white liquid inside.

‘Let me see.’ Lottie took the bottle and shook it. ‘Doesn’t look like a nail product.’ She opened the lid and sniffed.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Boyd said. ‘It’s like ammonia.’

‘Nail polish remover then.’

Boyd took the bottle, screwed back the lid and replaced it in the basket. ‘SOCOs can analyse it.’

As she was leaving, Lottie noticed a jacket hanging on the back of the door. She searched the pockets. ‘Bingo.’ She held up her find.

‘What the …?’ Boyd stared.

‘Must be a couple of hundred euros here.’ Lottie flicked through the roll of notes.

‘Would she make that much from nails?’

‘Depends on who her customers were.’

Boyd patted the appointment book. ‘This might be more of a help than a hindrance after all.’

‘We’re trying to catch a murderer, Boyd. Not nail a tax-dodger. Pardon the pun.’

‘You’re so funny. Not.’

As he left, she turned around to look at the two SOCOs. They were not going to find anything here, unless the killer was into nail fetish. Then again …

She sighed and followed Boyd to the car.

Bernie Kelly curved her back into the wall of Grove’s Coal Suppliers. She didn’t care that a black slick of oil would leave a mark on her jacket. She only had eyes for the tall, hooded figure of Lottie Parker getting into the car with her sergeant. She needed to feel that freckle-skinned neck beneath her fingers as she crushed and squeezed the life out of the woman who had halted her personal crusade of retribution against the family that had never acknowledged her. She knew she had to get a knife. She would plunge it deep into Lottie’s body. Deeper than the last time. And this time it would be fatal.

A drop of water nestled into the nape of her neck. She flicked it away. The blue lights on the car grille flashed before the car turned right and headed away. She moved out from her secluded corner and began to walk in its wake.

Lottie Parker could wait.

It was time to have some fun with her family.