Chapter 46

FORTY-SIX

In the end, Lottie persuaded Cynthia to drop her off at the station before sending her packing with a quote about sympathy for the victims of the accident and their families. She assumed Cynthia had already received that line from McMahon, but much to her relief, the reporter didn’t press for anything further.

After passing through a relatively calm reception area, she made her way gingerly up the stairs to her office. It was so quiet it was almost silent. Everyone must be at the scene of the accident.

Without having to sniff under her arms, she knew she smelled rotten and should have gone home first, but she was too wound up on adrenaline to slow down. She knocked on McMahon’s office door and stuck her head around it without waiting for an answer. Empty. She headed into the incident room, which was also empty, and walked up to the boards.

Four young women. All dead. And now at least ten others dead as the result of an accident. Boyd’s words stuck in her brain. Was it really an accident, or could it have been an orchestrated plan to take out Cyril Gill? Surely there were other means.

Her eyes rested on the photograph of Conor Dowling from the old case file. He looked young and vulnerable. An image of what he looked like now sprung to her mind. He’d hardened in prison, but she thought he’d retained his youthful vulnerability beneath his hostile exterior. Could he have murdered the four young women in revenge? She traced a finger over his fathomless eyes. Where was he when the crane collapsed? Could he be among the dead? She’d ask Kirby to find out. She walked to the general office. No sign of him or anyone else.

She needed to check in at home to ensure that with all the traffic disruptions Chloe and Sean had been picked up safely by the taxi. Then she realised that her phone was in her bag, and her bag was buried somewhere under the rubble at the courthouse.

Her face ached and her head thumped. Every limb in her body felt like it had been hit with a concrete block. Which wasn’t far from the truth. She decided a quick shower in the locker room would suffice.

She headed down the stairs to the basement, stripped off her filthy clothes and stood under the cold water. She realised she should have checked first to make sure she had a clean set of clothes in her locker. As the water drummed up goose bumps on her skin, she hoped with all her heart that Boyd was going to be okay. She needed him.

Tony escaped to the pub as soon as he could. The guards and emergency personnel had done everything possible in the circumstances. They now had to wait for lifting equipment to come from Dublin to raise the crushed remains of the crane. The fire service were using cutting equipment, but it was too dangerous as the ground underfoot kept giving way.

He’d just got inside when the clouds burst open. The site was going to be some mess now. He half expected Conor to be sitting nursing a pint, but there was no sign of him. The place seemed to be full of journalists and reporters. He quickly took off his jacket with Gill Construction emblazoned on the back. Better to be just another rubbernecker, he thought. He didn’t want to have to answer any awkward questions.

Elbowing his way to the counter, he heard snippets of conversation, though nothing to concern himself with. He ordered his drink and waited. For the first time in ten years, he felt as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders. Now he just had to hope that Conor Dowling was one of the bodies beneath the rubble.

The T-shirt was too long and the jeans too tight, but Lottie had no choice but to squeeze into them. Deciding that her jacket was a lost cause, she found a lightweight garda one. Before she went home, she’d call to Conor Dowling’s house, because that was where she’d been heading when she’d taken the detour to the building site, and because, after making enquiries, no one on the site had been able to contact him.

Nabbing a car from the pool in the yard, she sped around via the bypass, pulling up at Dowling’s house fifteen minutes after she’d stepped out of the freezing-cold shower. She was so numb she couldn’t feel any pain, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

The house looked slightly more decrepit than its neighbours. She had never been house-proud herself, but she had to still an urge to find a cloth and clean the dirt off the windows.

She hammered with her fist on the cracked timber and cringed with the pain reverberating through the bones in her hand. The grass was long and trampled in places. Plenty of weeds, too, and a buckled bicycle wheel leaning against the inside of the wall. About to walk away, she heard a shuffling behind the door just before it was opened.

‘Mrs Dowling?’

‘What’s with all the banging? Have you no patience? I’m not supposed to be up. What do you want?’

‘I’m Detective Inspector Parker. I’d like a word with Conor, please.’

The woman’s face appeared to shrink in on itself. Looking down on the balding head, Lottie thought Mrs Vera Dowling was about to take a bite out of her arm, so she shoved her hands into her flimsy jacket pockets.

‘Conor? What do you want with him? Aren’t you the one who locked him up?’ Now the face had definitely taken on an evil quality. ‘Bitch of a guard, you are. My boy did nothing wrong. But you believed those two young hussies over him.’

‘Can I come in, please?’ Lottie glanced back over her shoulder to where curtains were twitching across the road. ‘You don’t want the neighbours knowing your business, do you?’

Mrs Dowling twisted round on her walking sticks and beckoned. ‘Come in so.’

Lottie had to wait for her to slowly shuffle along the narrow hall before she could enter and close the door behind her. She followed her into what she could only describe as the woman’s living quarters.

From what she could see, it seemed Vera Dowling ate, slept and carried out her bathroom functions in the one room. A television stood in a corner with the sound blasting out a game show. The air was foul with the odour of unwashed flesh and clothes. She felt like opening a window to allow freshness in. There was nowhere to sit, so she stood, careful not to lean up against the wall, where condensation dripped down faded wallpaper and a wooden crucifix hung with black rosary beads fixed around Jesus’ drooped head. A yellowed stock image of a house in a forest hung in a cracked wooden frame over an unlit fireplace.

At last Mrs Dowling was seated on a fetid pile of cushions. Dust motes rose in unison as if eager to escape being flattened by her bottom. Lottie felt like she had walked into a sepia-hazed nightmare.

‘So why do you want to talk to Conor?’

‘Can you lower the television sound, please?’ Lottie couldn’t hear a word the woman was saying.

After trying each of the four remote controls lined up on the arm of the chair, the woman eventually got the sound turned down. Lottie noticed how crooked and swollen the older woman’s fingers were.

‘Mrs Dowling, have you heard that there was an accident at the courthouse today?’

‘Accident? Is Conor okay? I hope he isn’t injured. I need him to look after me.’

‘I don’t know if he is or not,’ Lottie said truthfully. ‘I’m trying to locate him. Was he at work today?’

‘Of course he was at work. He goes every day. He’s a good lad, not that you believe that. He’ll be home soon.’

‘My office has been unable to contact him.’

Mrs Dowling blessed herself. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, he better be all right. I spent ten years waiting for the day he’d be free to look after me, and now this happens.’

‘Don’t worry unduly. I’m sure he’ll turn up.’ Lottie wasn’t at all certain of that, but she didn’t want Mrs Dowling getting hysterical. Now that she was here, she itched to get home and check on her family, then return to the hospital to make sure Boyd hadn’t discharged himself.

‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’ Why on earth had she said that?

‘Oh, that’d be great. The kitchen is that way.’ Mrs Dowling pointed with her walking stick. ‘I’m eaten alive with rheumatoid arthritis. Painful in the legs and hands. I depend on Conor for everything.’

‘How did you manage when he was … inside?’

‘His friend Tony was good to me. He works with him on the site. A loyal friend, Tony is.’

‘I’ll make that tea then.’

In the scullery-like kitchen, Lottie filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘Do you take milk?’

‘Course I do. Otherwise it’d be like dishwater.’

Lottie found a carton in the fridge. ‘Sugar?’

‘There’s a bowl in the cupboard. Two spoonfuls. Tea bags are in the caddy.’

‘Does Conor stay in every night?’ Lottie searched through the grimy cupboard.

‘He does.’

She made the tea and brought a mug in to Mrs Dowling. ‘Hope that’s okay.’

‘A bit weak,’ the woman sniffed.

‘And he goes shopping for you?’

‘You hardly think I’m able to go around pushing a trolley, do you?’

‘Tuesday night, was he in all evening? All night?’

Her legs were weak from the trauma of the accident, and the look Vera Dowling threw her made her feel like sinking to the floor.

‘Are you accusing him of something? Like you did the last time?’ Tea spilled from the mug and down the side of the chair, but the old woman didn’t seem to notice. ‘He was here. Every night. So you can piss off with whatever you think you’re going to pin on him.’

‘I wasn’t?—’

‘Conor never did those things you accused him of. He never beat that old man to a pulp and he never stole his money.’

‘He didn’t deny it.’

‘He didn’t do it.’

‘He offered no alibi.’

‘How could he? I was working back then. Nights in the hospital. I used to be a nurse’s aide. He was home. Alone.’

‘Was he, though? He never said he was.’ It had niggled Lottie at the time that Conor had offered no explanation for his whereabouts the night of the assault on Bill Thompson. In the end, with lack of forensic evidence and no denial from the accused, it was the two eyewitnesses who had swung the case.

Mrs Dowling set her mouth in a thin straight line and eyed her. ‘He didn’t do it. He had no access to a gun. Did you ever find the weapon? Did you ever find the money? Look around you, Inspector. Do you see any sign of wealth here?’

Lottie shook her head and shrugged. It didn’t mean anything. He could have the money buried, awaiting an appropriate time to dig it up. They never did find out how much had been stolen, but bar staff estimated it could have been ten thousand euros. Bill Thompson hadn’t brought home the takings every night. Usually only on a Sunday. And it had been a busy weekend. Conor Dowling had regularly frequented the pub. He knew Thompson’s routine. Louise Gill and Amy Whyte had sworn they’d seen him rushing from the direction of Thompson’s house that night. He never denied it. Never said a word. But Lottie was confident the right man had been jailed.

‘Here, take this piss away. Trying to poison me, are you?’

Taking the mug, Lottie went back to the scullery. She looked out at the back garden as she swilled the tea down the sink. The outside area was neater than the front, but the overhanging trees could do with being cut back, not that she knew anything about gardening. The wooden shed appeared out of place, like it had been dropped from the sky. One side was slightly lower than the other, as if it had sunk into the ground. A large padlock hung on the bolt. Why? What was in there that needed protection from theft? Not an expensive lawnmower, she thought, seeing as the grass was so long. Hiding something? More than likely.

An ache drummed behind her eyes as she decided on the best approach to get Mrs Dowling to allow her access to the shed. She could just open the back door and go out to have a look, couldn’t she?

‘What are you doing in there?’ The voice sounded closer and Lottie jumped when she turned round. Vera was standing in the doorway, leaning on her two walking sticks.

‘You’re snooping, you sneaky bitch.’

She straightened her shoulders, ignoring the pain shooting down her spine. ‘I was wondering what you keep in your shed?’

‘Conor’s stuff is in there. And it’s none of your business.’

‘What stuff?’

‘You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? If you want to look, get a search warrant. Now before I kick you out, tell me why you’re asking all these questions.’ Mrs Dowling leaned against the door jamb and pointed a walking stick at Lottie’s chest. But she wasn’t letting herself be intimidated by a fetid crone.

‘Four young women were murdered this week. I need to validate Conor’s alibi.’

‘Get out, scum pig.’ Mrs Dowling raised the other stick and Lottie ducked as it swung through the air. ‘Get the hell out of my house with your insane accusations.’

‘I didn’t accuse him of anything. I just need to know?—’

‘Go, and don’t come back. You can rot in hell and take your accusations with you.’

Mrs Dowling’s eyes blazed and Lottie felt her cheeks burn from the angry heat. She’d made a mess of this. Her head throbbed and her bones felt like jelly. She was leaving, but not without a last attempt.

‘I want to know where Conor is now, where he was two nights ago, where he was Saturday night, and I want to know what’s in that shed.’

‘You’re a nosy bitch. Piss off and don’t come back unless you have a search warrant.’

Leaving the front door open so the older woman would have to walk along her hall to close it, Lottie moved slowly to the car. She looked across the road and saw a shape behind the curtains. Tomorrow she’d have the neighbours canvassed to see whether Conor had been at home when he said he’d been, though past experience told her she’d get nothing from them. But the little shit with his crazy mother wasn’t going to best her. That’s if he wasn’t already buried beneath the courthouse rubble.