Chapter 64

SIXTY-FOUR

Boyd silenced the siren as they approached the area McKeown had marked on the map.

‘No point in alerting them,’ Lottie said. ‘Look.’ A car was parked with all the doors open outside the hoarding.

He glided the car up behind a Ford Fiesta. ‘What’s the plan?’

Lottie wanted this over and done with. She wanted to be at her daughters’ bedsides. She knew she should be there already, but she also knew they were in safe hands. Once she had this wrapped up, they would get her undivided attention. Her heart lurched with guilt, but she couldn’t deal with that right now.

‘Let’s see if they’re in there,’ she said.

They left the car, closing the doors quietly, and made their way to the open door in the hoarding.

Lottie put her finger to her lips and eased up against the timber. Voices carried towards her as she peered inside.

Tony said, ‘The money was well spent on that lavish wedding you had. You should have known I couldn’t have earned enough as a labourer to afford that, but you never questioned it.’

‘Biggest mistake of my life,’ Megan said. She put one hand in her pocket and extracted a handful of coins. She threw them on the ground, where they sank into the grey water of muck and dirt.

Conor took a step backwards.

She spun her head around, pointing the knife at him. ‘If you had come clean, I would have been spared a lifetime of misery.’

‘But now you know why I didn’t. You made your own decisions. Nothing to do with me.’

‘I loved you, you know.’

‘You what?’ Conor ran his hand over his head, streaking it with blood.

‘Yes, but you only had eyes for that housekeeper.’ She took a step towards him. ‘What did you do to her?’

‘It was an accident.’ Conor recalled the night when at last he’d got Hannah alone, down by the railway tracks about a hundred metres from where he now stood. And then she’d changed her mind. Didn’t want him near her and had tried to fight him off. But he was young and hormone-fuelled, and when he forced himself on her, she crashed her head against a rock he hadn’t known was sticking up in the overgrown bank. He hadn’t murdered her, but she’d died and he had panicked. He told Megan this.

‘If it was an accident, why did you hide her body?’

‘Let’s just say I’m not a methodical killer like you. I panicked. I ran. Afterwards, I went back and hid the body.’ He stared into her hard eyes. ‘Why did you have to murder Amy and Louise and the others?’

‘Because I found out the truth,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t you see, Conor? I’ve had to live my life without you because they gave sworn statements that they saw you that night, and because of that you ended up in prison. You should have spoken up. I left coins at the scenes in memory of what you’d done to me. You betrayed me with your lies. Just like a Judas. Just like those silly girls.’

‘But they did see me.’

‘You didn’t assault or rob my stepfather.’

‘Why does it matter now?’ Conor said wearily.

‘When you got out of prison, you never even called to see me.’

‘I was in the pharmacy one day and?—’

‘Yeah, you were. With a note for Amy. Never even asked about me. So I reckoned it was time to make you notice me.’

It was then that Conor sensed the silence around them. The wind had dipped and the rain had eased slightly, and the three of them, standing in the middle of the piece of waste ground, were like a tripod abandoned by some weary photographer. And he knew they were not alone. He scanned his eyes around and behind Megan. Over at the door in the hoarding, he saw movement.

‘Run!’ he shouted.

As Tony and Megan swirled around in confusion, three people rushed towards them. Conor turned and fled.

He used to know where the entrance to the tunnel was. But now, ten years later, in the dark, he couldn’t find it. As a hand gripped his shoulder and hauled him down, he was aware only of the wet ground rising up to meet him, and he closed his eyes.