Chapter 44
They were on their way through town to call on Liam Scanlan when Alice Quigley phoned saying she had something to tell them.
‘We’re a bit tied up,’ Lottie said. ‘Can it wait?’
‘No,’ the woman said, and hung up.
‘Odd,’ Lottie said.
‘Interesting,’ Boyd added.
‘We better see what she has to say before we tackle Liam.’
The rain had eased a little and it seemed to have enhanced the green of the lawn in front of the bungalow.
Some of the flowers Lottie had seen on her last visit had not survived the night.
Their heads drooped with moisture, while others lay beaten into the sodden earth.
Sad, she thought, feeling a bit beaten down herself.
There was no answer at the front door, so they walked around to the rear of the house.
Lottie glanced in the window of a bedroom as she passed.
The room was cluttered with suitcases and a menagerie of knick-knacks.
The duvet was pulled up into a ball and a pile of clothes sat in the middle of the bed.
Lottie raised an eyebrow at Boyd, who was wide-eyed. She could see how his OCD would send him into a meltdown if he had to live there.
Alice opened the back door.
‘Why didn’t you wait at the front door and not be making an eejit out of me? Come in. There’s something you should know.’
She guided them through a manky utility room into the kitchen without offering tea or coffee. She had her own mug of coffee on the table, which she gripped as if it might run away. Lottie would kill for a proper coffee in a clean mug in a different kitchen right that minute. Well, maybe not kill.
‘What should we know?’ She was sharp with the grieving woman.
Time was against them. They’d had little success so far and the investigation had taken root under her skin, festering there like a boil that needed to be lanced.
She knew she must keep propelling forward, though sometimes it was beneficial to go back.
Back to where it’d all started. And she had a feeling, a gut feeling, that this was where Alice was about to lead her.
‘It’s about my Caroline and Sadie Clarke. Or Sadie Tormey, as she was before she was married.’ Alice’s voice registered barely above a whisper, and Lottie had to lean in closer to hear.
‘What about them?’
‘They knew each other. Before.’
‘Before what?’ She wanted to say she hadn’t time for twenty questions, but something in the woman’s demeanour caused her to pause. ‘Go on, Alice.’
‘You see, they originally met when they were youngsters.’
‘What?’ Lottie was totally confused now. ‘Where?’
‘Caroline never talked about that time much. It was a dark and dangerous period in our lives.’
Worried now, she pressed the older woman. ‘Tell me, Alice.’
‘Caroline was twelve years old. She got in trouble and ended up in a place for young offenders. She met Sadie there, though she was maybe a year older.’
Lottie felt her stomach flip. Jesus, had they run full background checks? She had asked someone to do it, hadn’t she? Or was it just to do a check on the husbands? Now she felt dizzy. She’d have to wing it. ‘I haven’t come across anything like that so far in the investigation.’
‘Maybe the files were sealed. Caroline was a juvenile, so you might need a judge to unseal it. She was never tried or convicted of anything. They let her out after a week.’
‘What did she do?’
‘She was an innocent kid. Targeted by the wrong crowd maybe because she was innocent and naive. We were poor and lived in a rough area of Dublin, and there was a rampant drug culture. It was terrifying.’
‘Did she assault or kill someone?’ Lottie was baffled.
Alice’s mouth dropped open, her lips lined with coffee, and she shook her head. ‘God, no. Nothing like that. Like I said, she hung around with a bad crowd. They got her into it.’
‘Into what?’
‘She was twelve, for Christ’s sake. Just like little Freya.
’ She buried her head in her hands before resuming.
‘I never wanted to believe that she did what she was accused of, but she was remanded in that juvenile institution while the investigation was ongoing. You see, she got sucked in with a gang who got her to deliver drugs around the estates. Weed. Small-time stuff. She was a child, Inspector, an impressionable child, and the justice system put her in that awful place. I think she just wanted to make some money for us. That’s what poverty does to a child. ’
Now Lottie felt sick. Could the murders and disappearances be linked to a drugs gang? Surely it was too long ago. She didn’t know what to think. ‘What was the young offenders place called?’
‘Oak House Juvenile Detention Centre.’ Alice spat the words out.
‘Caroline was a different person when she was released. Knocked any confidence she might have had out of her. She was quiet as a mouse when she came home. Wouldn’t talk about what had happened there.
A few years later, I got us out of Dublin and down to Ragmullin. ’
‘Let me get this straight. You’re saying Caroline met Sadie in this Oak House place?’
‘She told me she made a friend there called Sadie.’
‘But you said she didn’t talk about her time there.’ Lottie didn’t know what to believe.
Alice hesitated, picking earthy dirt from her nails.
‘Well, she did talk a little. Told me about this girl called Sadie Tormey who was there for a similar reason. Involved in drugs. She said they had education classes every day. It was the only time she got to see others around her own age. The rest of the time they were segregated or something. You’d know more about that sort of thing. ’
‘I’ll find out about it.’
‘Do you think it’s important?’ Alice raised an eyebrow more in a plea than a question. ‘That they knew each other all those years ago?’
‘I won’t know until I investigate it. Alice, why do you believe that the Sadie that Caroline met in there is now Sadie Clarke?’
Alice gave up on her nails and tightened her grip on the mug. ‘Caroline told me about her when they met again just over two years ago. She became besotted with her. Mimicking her every move and trying to be just like her. It was painful to watch.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us this before now?’ Lottie dug her nails into the palms of her closed fists.
‘I was ashamed of my daughter’s past. I didn’t want to damage her reputation.’
‘A reputation is not much use when you’re dead.’
It was a cruel thing to say, but Lottie was past caring. This crucial piece of information had been kept from her. But in reality, they should have known about it if they’d been doing their job correctly.