Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

‘Rosie, Rosie, you were always the sly one. You and that husband of yours. Shot himself, I heard. Got fed up with the lies, did he? Or had he had enough of your frosty face?’

Rose was seated at the table, clutching her hands together. Her skin felt like a thousand spiders had taken over and were spinning a multitude of webs. She unclenched her hands and flattened the palms on her knees.

The woman in front of her had eyes steeped in the depths of evil. Rose was no psychiatrist, but she knew that look. From true-life dramas on television. Interviews with serial killers. That look. That deep black nothingness.

‘Answer me.’

Bernie was lounging against the kitchen wall, her dirty coat flung across the back of a chair. Her legs were thin, clad in dark jeans, and her black sweater was stained. Her skin was pale, but her nose and cheeks were flushed, and tufts of wild red hair sprouted around her ears. She looked like a circus clown who had run away before the make-up artist had completed the job.

‘What do you want?’ Rose thought her voice sounded like someone else’s. Was that what stark fear did to you? she wondered.

‘I wanted to see you. To see what type of person steals another woman’s baby.’

‘I did not steal anyone.’

‘Your parasite of a husband did.’

‘Don’t you dare talk about Peter like that.’

‘Peeeter!’ Bernie’s voice was mocking. ‘He raped a defenceless young woman. Impregnated her and then stole her child. Does your precious Lottie know she’s the spawn of hate and rape?’

A force of energy swelled through Rose and she had to fight the urge to lunge for the knife rack. She had to keep calm. God only knew what weapon Bernie was carrying, though it was hard to see how she could conceal anything on her person.

‘Don’t you go near my Lottie.’

‘My Lottie?’ Bernie laughed . ‘She’s my half-sister. Her biological mother’s blood runs through my veins. We are blood sisters and you are nothing!’

‘And she is nothing like you. Stay away from her.’ Rose tried to make her voice threatening, but all that emitted from her lips was a timid cry.

‘I will get what I came for.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Revenge. Lottie Parker betrayed me in front of my own daughter. She stole my freedom. We could have been a family together. But no. That woman put her job before her blood sister. And I won’t rest until I extract every last drop of that blood from her body.’

‘You’re insane.’ Rose cowered as Bernie lunged from the wall and landed on her knees in front of her chair.

‘You know it’s very dangerous to say that to an insane person.’

The eyes were now wide spheres of hollowness. Rose could almost see through them, as if she was staring down the shaft of an old well. She wondered if Bernie Kelly’s very core was a tightly bound ball of hatred, wound so that one snag on the thread and all her family would disintegrate in the ensuing horror. She could not let that happen. But what could she do?

At last she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s a start.’ Bernie hauled herself up and sat onto the side of the table. Swung her legs like she was a five-year-old. ‘This is what I want you to do.’

On her way home, Lottie pulled into a garage and bought the last lonely sausage rolls in the display cabinet. They looked stale and unappetising, but she was starving.

In the car, she switched on the engine, turned the heat up high and sat with the rain beating against the windows as she munched the soggy pastry. She concluded that the trade descriptions people would have a good case here. More pastry than sausage. She crumbled the remainder of the first roll into her mouth and glanced at the time. She was too late to wish Louis goodnight. She loved the little fellow with all her heart, more so since the dangerous episode in Rose’s house a few months before. All her family were at risk because of her job, she knew that better than anyone, though sometimes the threat was hard to quantify. It was little more than a feeling. But the last few days that feeling was growing between her shoulder blades like an unreachable itch.

She balled up the paper bag and scrunched it under the seat. Time to go home. As she drove out of the forecourt, she was looking forward to a peaceful evening, but at the same time she knew she could never erase the loneliness that stalked her bones. Maybe Boyd was the one for her. Maybe not. She had no idea.

She indicated to turn left, then remembered she no longer lived down by the greyhound stadium. At the last minute she drew the car back into the correct lane. It was then that she noticed the car behind her. She knew exactly who it was.

She pulled up outside the Indian restaurant. When she stepped out of the car, the aroma of spices swirled around her. She waited as the car that had been following her came to a halt on double yellow lines. She could write him a ticket, if she had a mind to.

‘Leo, I hope you have good news for me, because I’ve had one bitch of a day.’

‘I’ve searched the whole town and I have no idea where she is.’

‘Have you reported to the hospital that you’ve lost her?’

‘No. But she’s due back there at nine, so I’m sure, as you say, the shit will hit the fan.’

‘Maybe you should get out of Ragmullin. Head to the airport. Get a flight back home and never darken my doorstep with your troubles again.’ She leaned against her car, feeling the dampness seep into her jeans.

‘There’s no need to be like that. We’re in this together.’

‘Like hell we are.’ Lottie moved away from her car and stood in his space. The smell of sweat coming from his body was so pungent, she could almost taste it. Belfield was terrified. ‘You took Bernie Kelly out of a secure mental facility. You brought her to Ragmullin. You lost her. You broke the rules. None of that has anything to do with me.’

He stared at her. An exact replica of her own eyes fixed on her face. It was eerily unsettling.

‘Lottie, we have to work on this together.’

She didn’t like the pleading tone in his voice. ‘There is no together. You find her. I have two dead girls to worry about. I don’t need to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I’ve work to do. Real work. Find her and then go home. There’s nothing in Ragmullin for you.’

‘There is, Lottie. I have to find out the truth.’

‘Talk to your mother. Alexis is the one who betrayed you and Bernie. She’s the only one who knows the truth, and when she feels like it, she will tell you.’

‘Alexis died.’

That stopped Lottie in her tracks. ‘When? I didn’t know. I’m sorry.’ She wasn’t, but it was the right thing to say. Alexis was her biological mother’s sister, and she had separated the twins as toddlers, taking Leo to New York with her and leaving Bernie to live half her life in an institution.

‘A few weeks ago. That’s why I came back. It’s eating me up. I have to know, and I thought Bernie could fill in the gaps.’

The door of the Indian restaurant opened and a man walked out with two bags of takeaway food. Lottie felt her stomach rumble. The sausage rolls had done nothing to fill the hollow.

‘You have phone calls to make. I wish you luck. Don’t come near me again unless it’s to tell me she’s locked up. Okay?’

As Leo returned to his rental car, Lottie felt a little bit of her heart break away. She’d lost one brother at the hands of a madman; was she about to lose another? She cared about Leo but didn’t want to show him. She had enough shit to worry about.