Chapter 36

THIRTY-SIX

With Conor sitting in the interview room, Lottie went to find someone who could fetch them all coffee.

‘You’ve nothing to hold him on.’ Boyd marched up and down the corridor.

‘Keep your voice down. McMahon will hear you. Jesus, the whole town will hear you.’

‘So what? It’s true. You’ve singled him out just because he’s been released from prison and has a decade-old connection to the dead women. This is ludicrous. You need something more.’

‘Right then, I’ll interview him alone and you can pussyfoot around for the rest of the day.’ She walked away, then stopped. ‘And get the damn coffee.’

‘Get it yourself,’ he said, and stomped in the other direction.

‘Boyd!’

But he had disappeared around the corner. Shit. She needed him on her side. With no sign of McMahon’s new recruit, she’d have to look for Kirby to sit in. Then again, maybe she could let Dowling stew for an hour. She checked the time. No. It would have to be now.

Once they were seated and Kirby had made the introductions for the recording, Lottie began.

‘So, Conor, nice to have you back with us.’

‘Don’t you have to read me my rights or something?’ He sniffed away a bubble of sweat that had gathered at the end of his nose.

‘Would you like to take off your coat? It’s warm in here.’ It galled her to be nice to this piece of scum who had robbed an old man and beaten him up so badly in his own home that he’d died not twelve months later. It was ten years ago, but as her mother would say, a leopard rarely changed its spots.

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘Nice to see you’ve found your manners.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Ah, normal service.’

Lottie leaned back in her chair and tapped the buff folder on the desk with the tip of her pen, as if there was startling evidence between the covers. There was nothing. But he didn’t know that.

‘Tell me where you were last night.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I asked nicely?’

‘None of your business.’

‘You’re not going to start that again, are you? I can detain you for six hours initially. And if we charge you, what will your poor disabled mother do without you to care for her?’

‘She did fine all the time you had me locked up. And I won’t be here one hour, let alone six, because I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘Louise Gill was found murdered this morning. You know who I’m talking about. Louise Gill who along with Amy Whyte gave witness against you in that trial.’

She watched his face carefully. Checked for signs of guilt. But all she saw was his skin pale beneath his ginger freckles and his lips begin to quiver.

‘This is some kind of sick joke. You’re perverted, that’s what you are.’ He straightened himself in the chair.

‘No, I’m not. Louise is dead. Brutally murdered along with another young woman. So that’s four bodies in a few days. And two of them link back to you.’

‘You’re trying to stitch me up.’ He turned his attention to Kirby.

Lottie thought the detective might have fallen asleep. His eyes drooped and his arms were folded, his chest moving rhythmically up and down. She nudged him with her elbow and he turned to look at her.

‘What?’

‘Are you listening?’ she whispered.

‘Course I am.’

‘This is a joke,’ Conor said.

Lottie slapped the table. Kirby jumped. Conor remained still as a statue. ‘Look, smart-arse. Tell me where you were last night.’

‘At home.’

‘When did you last see Louise Gill?’

He hesitated. ‘Ten years ago.’

‘You don’t seem so sure.’

‘I’m sure.’ His eyes bored through her. ‘Either charge me or let me go. You don’t have jack shit on me.’

She had to admit he was right on that score. But she wasn’t letting him off that lightly.

‘I want a DNA sample. I want your fingerprints and I want a list of everywhere you’ve been and everyone you met since last Saturday.’

‘And I want my solicitor.’

She had to leave Dowling in a holding cell while the solicitor was being contacted, so she cornered Boyd and drove to the Gill residence.

The Gills lived in a modern mansion situated on a hill overlooking the town. Belinda Gill led them into what she called the reception room. The ceiling was high and white. The walls, decorated in deep red paint, looked as though someone had emptied a truck of blood down them and walked away. Expensive-looking paintings were dotted here and there, but it was the furniture that caught Lottie’s attention. She threw a look at Boyd, who turned up his nose.

‘Junk?’ he whispered.

‘It’s all antique,’ Belinda said, catching sight of Lottie’s interest. Lottie hoped she hadn’t heard Boyd’s comment. ‘The rest of the house is modern and bright, but Cyril allowed me to indulge in my love of auctions. In my opinion, the contents of this room are worth more than the house itself.’

Lottie wondered if Belinda had been informed of Louise’s murder. The woman wasn’t displaying any signs of grief, though her eyes were glazed and her voice was slightly slurred. She was wearing stained jeans, and her shirt was buttoned up incorrectly. Her short hair appeared unwashed, her skin pale. She might have been pretty once, but now she looked lined and haggard despite the fact that she couldn’t be more than fifty years old.

‘You’re here about Louise, I gather.’

‘Yes,’ Lottie said. ‘You heard the news?’

‘I did.’

‘I’m so sorry for your loss. Is your husband home? Would you like him to be present while we talk?’

Belinda’s laugh cut through the air and rebounded off the ceiling. ‘I don’t need Cyril for anything. Do you know, I was out shopping when he phoned me to tell me our daughter was dead? That slimeball is afraid of his own shadow.’

‘He phoned you?’ Lottie didn’t know what to say. What type of a man did that to his wife? Not a very nice one, she surmised.

‘Would you like a drink?’

Before Lottie or Boyd could answer, Belinda had crossed to the distressed-looking cabinet beside the enormous wrought-iron fireplace. She poured herself a large gin, no mixer.

‘Nothing for us,’ Lottie said. ‘We’re on duty.’

Belinda returned and sat down. ‘I drink. There. Got that out of the way. I’m an embarrassment to Cyril. Says I damage his reputation in the business world. He drinks too, but there’s not a word about that. He makes up the rules as he goes along.’

She tipped her glass towards Boyd and downed it in one go. ‘Be a good man and get me a refill.’

Lottie caught Boyd’s bewildered glance and nodded for him to go ahead.

‘Mrs Gill … May I call you Belinda?’

‘Of course you can. I’ve been called everything from bitch to whore in this house. Be nice to be called by my name for once.’

‘Belinda,’ Lottie said softly, ‘is Cyril here?’

‘No. He’s at work. Where else do you think he’d be? That project means more to him than his own flesh and blood. What happened to Louise?’

Lottie couldn’t believe the detachment in the woman’s voice. It was like it hadn’t registered with her that her daughter was dead.

‘I’m afraid we suspect she was murdered, though it has yet to be confirmed by the state pathologist. Can you tell me how she was behaving recently? Did you notice anything unusual or concerning?’

‘Do you think she killed herself?’ The glass was pointed at Lottie in an accusatory fashion, clear liquid spilling down the side.

‘I’m trying to build up a profile of your daughter that might lead us to who did this and why.’

‘How did she die?’

Lottie looked at Boyd for support.

He said, ‘We can’t divulge details yet, but we really need to learn all we can about Louise.’

‘I don’t know a whole lot, to be honest. Suppose you want to see her room?’

‘Yes please. But can you answer our questions first?’ Boyd said soothingly.

Belinda sipped her drink and seemed to consider. ‘Louise was a troubled girl. Ever since that business over Mr Thompson’s case. I was sure she was depressed, but her father wouldn’t believe me. I secretly arranged counselling for her, but she didn’t buy into it. She only ever listened to her father.’ She paused. ‘Why do you think I drink? I can’t stand the man.’

‘You could leave him,’ Lottie said.

‘It’s complicated.’

She decided to abandon that conversation. Her main concern was to discover what she could about Louise. ‘What was Louise’s relationship with Cristina Lee like?’

‘Cristina Lee? I’ve never heard that name mentioned. But I don’t know much about Louise’s friends. She didn’t really talk to me.’

‘Did she get any unusual letters or notes recently?’ Lottie was thinking of the threatening note she’d discovered in Amy Whyte’s bedroom.

Belinda sipped and shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Can I search her room?’

‘I’ll take you up.’

Lottie made for the door. She couldn’t wait to get away from the woman. Something in her demeanour clanged warning bells in her head. She thought it might be because Belinda reminded her of when she herself had been snared by the talons of alcohol after Adam died. Or was it something else entirely? She didn’t know.

Boyd rolled his eyes as they waited for Belinda to refill her glass before she led the way up the winding staircase. She stopped outside one of the doors on the wide landing.

‘That’s her room. I think I’ll lie down for an hour. If you have to take anything away, please bring it back in one piece.’ She disappeared behind a door at the end of the landing.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ Boyd said.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

Stepping into the young murdered woman’s personal domain, Lottie was immediately gripped with a sense of loss for Louise. A sense of loss that her mother had not displayed. She was standing in the preserve of a twenty-five-year-old girl who was never going to lie on her bed again, or flick through her phone, or complete her university course.

The room was tidy. In the wardrobe, clothes hung in neat lines. The dressing table had everything lined up perfectly. The bed covers were rumpled, with a T-shirt and jogging bottoms draped across them. Possibly used as nightwear. On the window seat Lottie spied a laptop, notebooks and a ring binder.

‘This must be her coursework,’ Boyd said, picking up a folder in his gloved hands.

‘Must be, Sherlock.’

Lottie glanced out through the window. A trio of magpies sat on the bare branches of a tree. She tried to remember the rhyme, but it escaped her. Instead, she concerned herself with the laptop. It was charged and switched on, and password-protected. ‘Shit. We need the password.’

‘Her mother might know.’

‘I doubt it very much. The technical crew can have a look at it.’

‘Or you could ask her father.’

‘Perhaps.’ Lottie wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to Cyril Gill any time soon.

‘Do we need anything else?’ Boyd asked.

She couldn’t help but feel the distance his tone was placing between them. She was wrong to have yelled at him at the station, but the day had been stressful. McMahon was gunning for her. Cynthia Rhodes knew stuff she shouldn’t. Bernie Kelly was prowling around on the loose. And to cap all that, they had two more bodies.

‘Her phone.’ Lottie found the jewel-encrusted iPhone lying on the pillow. She tapped the home key. Like the laptop, it required a passcode.

She bagged the phone. Boyd did likewise with the laptop. Then, while he flicked through the pages of the notebooks, she took a quick look around the en suite bathroom. She opened the mirrored cabinet above the washbasin without looking at her appearance. Toothpaste, electric toothbrush, hair serum, small bottles of shower gel. No medicines of any sort. No contraceptive pills either. She shut the cabinet.

Returning to the dressing table, she inspected each bottle of expensive perfume and nail polish. The drawers held an assortment of jewellery still in the boxes they’d been bought in. The remainder were filled with underwear. All luxurious, though there was nothing flimsy or erotic.

‘No sign of a coin. No note,’ she said.

‘Her death may not be connected to Amy and Penny,’ Boyd said.

‘It has to be. There were coins left with the bodies. It is the same killer.’

As Boyd lifted a black leather-bound Moleskine notebook, Lottie heard something fall to the floor.

‘What was that? Don’t move. Stay where you are,’ she instructed him as the hairs on her arms tingled.

‘Not going anywhere.’

She got down on her knees and searched around his feet. ‘Something fell out of the notebook. I heard it.’

‘You’re imagining things.’

She scrabbled around under the bed. Nothing. Eased her hand beneath the bedside cabinet. Feeling something through the latex of her gloves, she dragged it out and lifted it up to the light.

‘A coin,’ she said triumphantly.