Chapter 44

FORTY-FOUR

When she was eventually dragged free, Lottie found herself sitting in a scene of chaos. Her head thumped agonisingly and blood streamed from a cut somewhere on her skull. She felt shaken but didn’t think she was too badly hurt.

She looked around for Boyd. Where was he? A bolt of panic shot through her chest and she thought she was going to throw up. She tried to stand. Wobbled. Put out her hand to her rescuer for support. She had no idea who she was holding onto. She didn’t care. She had to find Boyd.

‘My partner. Where is he?’

The man pointed to the right. Boyd was lying on a makeshift stretcher of laths of timber while an ambulance driver desperately tried to get his vehicle onto the site.

‘What’s your name?’ She thought she vaguely recalled the man from her earlier visits.

‘Tony.’

‘Help me over to Detective Boyd, please.’ She leaned on his arm and carefully put one foot in front of the other. She noticed that the legs of her jeans were shredded.

‘Take it slowly,’ Tony said. ‘This place is like a bomb went off.’

‘Is that what happened?’

‘No. The crane collapsed. It’s as bad as a bomb, though.’

She looked around, pain shooting up her neck. She couldn’t see the security hut or the Portakabin. Both structures had been flattened. Buried beneath mangled steel, concrete and timber. Sirens screamed down the street. As she reached Boyd, she noticed three bodies lined up with yellow work jackets placed over their heads.

‘How many dead do you think, Tony?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll leave you here now and go help the others.’

‘Thanks.’

She knelt on the ground beside Boyd just as a paramedic arrived, having abandoned his vehicle outside the shattered hoarding. Crowds were beginning to gather. She should be coordinating the rescue. She should be doing something.

‘You’re hurt,’ the paramedic said. His name badge read Nigel .

‘Don’t mind me, Nigel. Treat Boyd. Is he going to be okay?’ She thought her voice sounded hoarse and weak.

‘Give me room,’ he said.

She rose unsteadily to her feet and watched as Nigel got to work. Boyd was deathly pale, his eyes tight shut, and she couldn’t see his chest moving. Nigel fixed an oxygen mask to his mouth and tore open his shirt. She noticed a trail of blood from the back of Boyd’s head, staining his collar deep red. The paramedic was setting up wires and intravenous lines; she had to turn away when he inserted a needle into Boyd’s wrist.

Numb. That was how she felt. Her best friend and long-time colleague could be lying dead in the noise and dirt, and she felt bereft.

Eventually some of the debris was removed from the entrance and the ambulance made its way in. A fire truck screeched to a halt on the street and men ran onto the site, followed by her own colleagues. People were scrambling everywhere. Someone had to take control of this emergency, she thought. But she hadn’t the energy to voice a command.

Smoke rose in pockets as men began to dig through the rubble, and she wondered how many had lost their lives in that tragic instant of carnage. Returning her gaze to Boyd, she caught Nigel’s eye and cocked her head in question. He nodded. Boyd was going to be okay.

Kirby arrived with McKeown and Garda Thornton at the same time as Cynthia Rhodes. How the hell did journalists do that? The street was blocked and he could only get halfway down. He left the blue lights flashing on the car and parked up on the footpath, then got a roll of crime-scene tape from the boot and shouldered his way through the crowd.

At the entrance to the courthouse, the devastation was laid bare. Kirby grabbed hold of McKeown and told him to roll out the tape while he held onto the other end. He’d had the sense to throw on his work jacket, and people followed his commands and moved back. With the tape secured, he directed the uniforms not to let anyone pass through. McKeown got on the radio for more reinforcements.

The tall green crane that had held sway over the town’s landscape for the last year was a tangled mass of steel. Part of it appeared to be sunk into a hole in the ground. It was impossible to get much further on to the site. Kirby felt a surge of panic as he saw the bodies lined up inside the gate, and he thought of Gilly and how she had died in a moment of violence. He knew he shouldn’t be walking on and over the mangled mess, but he had to help. Two men were trying to pull someone out from beneath a shattered wall, and he started towards them. But then he saw Lottie standing in a daze, bloodied and lost.

‘Boss? What the hell? What are you doing here?’

She stared at him, her eyes glazed over, her cheek cut and blood seeping from a wound somewhere on her head.

‘Boyd,’ she said, pointing.

He barely heard her above the din of machinery where work was continuing feverishly to free those interred.

‘Come with me,’ he said, taking her by the elbow. She fell against him, and he wrapped an arm around her and half carried, half dragged her off the site. As they climbed over a slab of concrete, he saw a stretcher being wheeled into an ambulance. He steered Lottie towards it.

‘You need to be seen by a doctor,’ he said. ‘You’re pumping blood.’

The paramedic strapped the stretcher inside and glanced at Lottie. ‘Help her up. We’ll take her too.’

Kirby guided Lottie up the steps. As he turned to climb out of the vehicle, he realised that it was Boyd on the stretcher.

The ambulance did a U-turn because it couldn’t get back up the narrow clogged street. As it sped away, Kirby saw Cynthia Rhodes standing behind the barrier speaking rapidly into her phone. He reckoned she had more than enough material for her next bulletin.

Superintendent McMahon approached him.

‘Thanks, Detective Kirby, but I’m in charge now.’

Kirby shook his head and walked away. He knew McMahon would make a bollocks of himself. He was tired and he missed Gilly. As he pushed his way through the crowd to his car, he felt his eyes stinging. Probably from all the dust, he thought.

Shielded by the swell of curious onlookers, Bernie stood at the window of the shop across the road from the courthouse. The mayhem filled her with a certain type of glee. A feeling she used to get when she stabbed or smothered one of her victims. This was an opportunity to strike. Lottie was in the back of an ambulance. Hopefully she’d be kept in overnight. But if not, Bernie still had time to make her half-sister pay. And she knew the best way to hurt someone was to target those they loved most.

Tony pulled off his gloves and lit a cigarette. A fireman growled at him to put it out. There could be leaking gas. There could be an explosion. Anything could happen. As if he didn’t know all that. He grunted and doused the cigarette and chewed the end of a dirty thumbnail. He’d searched everywhere. Pulled up concrete with his bare hands. Moved bricks and blocks and timber. Dragged the injured to safety. Ferried the dead with as much dignity as was possible in the face of extreme pandemonium. But there was no sign of Conor. Where the hell was he?

He eyed the mangled remains of the crane, crushing the Portakabin and the security hut. They were waiting for another crane to arrive to lift the one that had collapsed like Lego. He scratched his head. His hair felt like it was crawling. He could murder a pint. Or three.

He reckoned Bob Cleary and Ducky Reilly were buried along with the boss beneath the rubble, because they had not been found yet.

Ten dead so far. Plus those three. Unlucky thirteen.

He took his gloves out of his pocket and, dismissing the idea of a creamy pint of Guinness, moved around the side of the courthouse, where a temporary mortuary had been set up. He’d have one final look at the bodies then he was calling it a day. Maybe Conor would be there. And if he was, Tony would be free of him for ever.

Conor eventually reached where he knew the entrance to the tunnel must be, but it was not there. The entire opening was now closed over with concrete and debris. His way out was blocked. And he was in total darkness.

He leaned against the wall, saving his breath because of the dust and debris clogging his airways. There was not much oxygen. He listened.

He could hear muffled noise above his head, but he knew what it was. Heavy machinery. Cutting and grinding. As work continued up there, masonry kept falling downwards. He moved away from the wall, and heard the drip, drip of water. He couldn’t see, but he knew it was seeping from some unknown source and rising around his feet. Another step. Water splashed over the ankles of the steel-capped boots he was wearing. Pipes must have burst overhead. He knew a water main snaked along above some of the tunnels. He tried to remember if there was a tunnel adjacent to the one he was in. And still the water was rising.

The tunnel was going to be flooded. If he didn’t manage to get out in time, he was going to drown.

He had no fear of being underground, but he sensed the terror of never getting out. Like the body encased behind him. And that thought gave him an idea.

He turned around and made his way back towards the body. It might be his only chance of escape.