Chapter 81
The car was speeding. Blue and white strobe lights flashing. No sirens.
Lottie had to keep moving. Otherwise she would vegetate with worry. She couldn’t stop catastrophising over Chloe’s condition. She should be sitting by her daughter’s bedside, but she had to find the bastard who’d attacked her beautiful girl. That pursuit had brought her on an unexpected route.
‘I still can’t believe it. Clarice identified Alice Quigley. What was Alice doing at Liam Scanlan’s? What the hell, Boyd?’
‘Scanlan worked for Alice’s son-in-law, Cameron Healy.’
‘Yeah, but it was late at night when she visited Scanlan’s apartment. She was up to something.’
‘How long ago was it?’
‘Three weeks,’ Lottie said.
‘Was there anything significant going on then?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘In the Healys’ lives. Maybe Caroline was having an affair with Liam Scanlan, not Thomas Clarke as we thought, and Alice went there to confront him.’
Lottie shook her head. ‘Why would she even care? No, it must be something to do with money.’
‘She’d have confronted Cameron if it was about that.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Lottie had to force herself to think rationally. ‘What if Cameron had got her to invest in something and it went belly-up? Or maybe he was embezzling money. Alice might have wanted Scanlan to confirm or deny it before she did something about it.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ Boyd argued. ‘You’re in the area of speculation and hyperbole now.’
‘Tough. I need to be in some area or I’ll combust. Chloe is badly injured and God knows what mental trauma she’ll endure in the future.
I can’t begin to think about that, so I need to catch the bastard.
The clearest clue we have so far is Alice Quigley.
She knows something, and by God she is going to tell me what I want to know. ’
She bit her nails, mulled over everything.
When they pulled up at Alice’s house, she spoke again. ‘It was Alice who offered up the information about Caroline having an affair. She also told me about her daughter having been in Oak House, where she met Sadie. What if she was misdirecting us towards Sadie all along?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Boyd said. Getting out of the car, he asked, ‘But why?’
‘Million-dollar question.’ She followed him. ‘Keep a close eye on Alice’s reactions and see what you make of her.’
Alice was not in her garden, nor did it appear that she was inside the house. They had tried the front door, then the back door, and looked in windows where they could see the house still in a state of disarray. Her car was nowhere to be seen.
‘Looks like someone ransacked the kip,’ Boyd said.
‘It was like that the last time we were here.’ Lottie walked slowly back around the other side of the house, peering in through windows as she went. She stopped outside one, pointing. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘Depends on what you’re looking at.’ He was at her shoulder, his breath on her skin. She had to stop herself leaning into him for support.
A pile of boxes sat on a bed. One had torn gift wrap.
‘Shit, that’s a PlayStation,’ Boyd said.
‘Thought so.’ Her brain was going a mile a minute. ‘Freya Healy’s birthday present?’
‘If so, why has her grandmother got it?’
‘Maybe she bought it for her or something.’ Slowly shaking her head, she ducked as a drop of rain trickled down her cheek. ‘None of this makes sense. We need a warrant for the house, for the whole property.’
‘I’m surprised at you, Lottie.’
‘Why?’
‘There was a time you’d have had me kicking down the door to get in.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that. Good idea, though.’
‘I wasn’t serious.’
‘I know. But what if Alice is in there, injured? We should go in to check.’
‘Sorry I opened my mouth now.’ He moved away from her. ‘There’s no car, no sign of life. She’s not here.’
‘Get an alert for her car. But honestly, she could be dead inside the house.’
‘If she is, she’s going nowhere. My bet is she’s with Scanlan. The two of them have to be in on this together.’
She turned to look up at him, her mouth hanging open. ‘You can’t mean…? No, Boyd. There’s no way Alice Quigley was involved in the murder of her daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law.’
‘It’s unlikely, but I wouldn’t be too quick to rule it out.’
She stared back in through the window. ‘She is up to something, and I want to know what that is.’
Grainne Nixon had spent a late night in the lab logging the little they’d found at Priory Lane, where Chloe Parker had been attacked. This morning she decided to have a quick look over some of the outstanding work.
She’d been following up on the shoe print found on Caroline Healy’s back.
It annoyed her when things were right in front of her that she couldn’t see.
Everything and everyone left a trace. Fact.
So why couldn’t she find a match? It was there somewhere.
Hidden in the banks of data that had been amassed since Caroline and her family had been murdered.
She had to keep digging. Grainne was not a quitter. And this time would be no different.
She glanced at the paperwork that had accumulated for the lace collar found at the Clarkes’ house.
The DNA matched the cold case. Freya Healy had been dressed in similar clothing.
A thought came to her, and she pulled up the Healy crime-scene photos.
Her eyes kept coming back to Caroline in the old-fashioned clothing. The plain rustic brown shoes.
The shoes.
Shit.
She scrabbled around on the computer, pressing keys, pulling up reports and databases and images until she found what she was looking for.
‘How did I miss this? How did everyone miss it?’
Then she scrolled through the evidence inventory, looking for a log number. Once she was armed with that, she went in search of the actual evidence.