The Family Secret (Detective Lottie Parker #16)

Prologue

THE PAST

Hate. For as long as I could remember, she’d had that look in her dark eyes. Hate. It was just the way she was born, I suppose.

I took my time walking around the house. How had she ruled with such control for so long? Her insults, humiliation, depravity. The one thing I knew was that I’d been waiting for this moment.

I took the bathrobe belt from around her neck and threaded it through my fingers, mesmerised by her bloodshot eyes wide open in death.

That lifeless stare made me shiver. She was dead, wasn’t she?

I felt my warm blood run cold. The satisfaction was being extinguished too quickly.

I watched her breasts. No sign of them rising and falling.

She was still. Like a lump of stone. Good.

I toured the room one last time, careful not to stand on any of her dirty clothes. The stench was overwhelming and making me gag.

‘Dirty bitch,’ I muttered as I swung the door shut behind me. I felt no remorse for what I had done. She deserved it for making too many lives a misery.

I didn’t dare look into the other room. What I had done in there had been a mistake. I could not undo it.

With my rucksack on my back, my boots on my feet and her bathrobe belt in my pocket, it was time for the call.

‘Nine nine nine, what is your emergency?’

‘I killed them.’

A sharp intake of breath.

A pause.

‘What’s your name, please?’

‘My name doesn’t matter. I need someone to come and take their bodies. I can’t bear looking at them any longer.’

‘I need your name and your address and I will send out first responders. Do you need the paramedics?’

‘Not unless they can raise the dead. Just take them away.’

‘Are you injured?’

‘How could I be injured? I was in total control.’

Another intake of breath. ‘Address, please?’

The caller disconnected.

When the first responders, including the Gardaí, eventually arrived, they found the bodies but not the caller.

They never found the caller. Not until it happened again.