Chapter 87
She had just seated herself in her office and was searching her drawer for something to eat when Grainne arrived.
The SOCO was breathless, red hair flying around her face as if she hadn’t brushed it in a week.
Probably had no time, Lottie thought, and couldn’t remember when she’d last brushed her own, not to talk about washing it.
‘I have a breakthrough regarding the shoe-print bruise on Caroline Healy’s back.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ Lottie said.
‘Yes. I worked into the night. By the way, how is your daughter doing?’
‘Recovering. Any discoveries to help us nail the bastard?’
‘Rain washed most of the evidence away, but my team are still on site.’
‘I appreciate it. I know you’ve all been working around the clock this week.’
‘No problem.’
‘Tell me about the print on Caroline’s back. And no scientific-speak.’
‘You’ll find this hard to believe, but the shoes Caroline herself was wearing when her body was found, the right one is an exact match for the mark on her back.’
‘Wait a minute. What?’ Lottie was incredulous. ‘A woman’s shoe?’
‘Yes, and it’s an old style shoe too,’ Grainne emphasised. ‘I checked everywhere I could access. Those shoes went out of production about ten years ago.’
‘Could the person who killed her have once worn the shoes she was found in?’
‘Jane confirmed that the mark on Caroline’s back is days old. It didn’t happen at the time of her murder.’
‘And she couldn’t have done it to herself?’
‘It’d be impossible.’
‘So someone had held her down with their foot on her back wearing these shoes, pressing hard enough to leave a bruise. Why? Who? And how did Caroline come to be wearing them when she died?’ Lottie looked all around the office, as if she could pluck the answer out of the air.
‘Thank you, Grainne, but you’ve given me a bigger mystery. ’
Alone again, Lottie turned to her computer and pulled up everything she could find on the Tormey family killings.
The shoes found on Caroline were old but not necessarily twenty years old.
She zoomed in on the photos of the victims. Both Denise and Poppy Tormey were barefoot in death.
She scanned the file for the inventory. No shoes had been found that were anything remotely like the shoes found on Caroline Healy’s body.
The same shoes that now matched the bruise on her back.
Was it possible that a woman had assaulted Caroline?
Was it Sadie all along? But why? Mary Jane shoes were back in fashion, but Grainne had said the particular shoe they’d been searching for had been out of production for over ten years.
Someone had owned or borrowed them, or even picked them up in a charity shop.
Endless possibilities, none of them helpful.
She checked the evidence inventories from the Healy crime scene and also from Sadie Clarke’s house. Nothing similar had been located at either site. The shoes had been on Caroline’s feet and it was obvious there was no way she could have stamped on her own back. So who had done it?
A man wearing the shoes? Possible. Liam Scanlan? Maybe. If he squashed his feet into them. But why? What about Thomas Clarke or Cameron Healy? They’d have some job getting their feet into them too. But not impossible.
She studied the Tormey crime-scene photos, still learning nothing useful. It was time to concentrate on the living.
Lily Clarke was missing. Sadie Clarke was missing.
Abducted or on the run? Anyone’s guess. Alice Quigley was not at home.
She was the only other female connected to both cases.
Surely she could not have murdered her own daughter and granddaughter.
Then again, if husbands could take a knife or hatchet to their wives and children in acts of familicide, then anything was possible.
She studied the photos again. Side by side.
The birthday parties.
The balloons.
And it brought her back to Dermot Macken.