Chapter 96
Dermot Macken was allowed to have a shower, and his clothing was taken for forensic examination. He was dressed in a grey Garda tracksuit.
Lottie was relieved that the man now smelled of woody oak. ‘Cutting straight to the chase, Dermot, I suspect you are part of a paedophile ring operating out of Ragmullin.’
‘What? No way. You can’t think I had anything to do with all this?’
‘Why would Alice Quigley travel to an arsehole-of-nowhere chicken farm if you’re not involved?’
He shrugged, incensing her.
‘Why did she go straight to you after abducting Eugene Tormey?’
‘She’s a psycho. That woman is mad.’
‘I think Alice Quigley is actually very clever.’
‘Not clever enough to escape from you.’ He folded his arms as if to stop his hands from fidgeting. ‘You got her.’
Lottie tapped her pen on the table. Tap. Tap. Tap. ‘What did she say when she arrived at your house?’
‘Barged in like a wrecking ball. Dragged the old man out of the car, and that other stooge followed along like a lapdog. He was sick outside on the ground before they hunted me in. Maybe she terrified him.’
‘I think Thomas Clarke had a hangover.’
‘Sadie’s husband? Serves him right.’
‘So you let Alice inside. Why?’
‘She had a knife!’
‘Okay. Go on.’
‘When I got into the kitchen, I grabbed the shovel out of the coal bucket, and that put a stop to her gallop.’
‘Did you know who she was when she arrived?’
‘I remembered her from before. She hasn’t changed.
Caroline is… was the image of her. From what Sadie told me years ago, I believed Alice was behind the deaths of Sadie’s family.
She’ll have to tell you why she did it. Given the way she was so manic today, I can well believe she was involved in the deaths of her own family. ’
‘But why would she kill them?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the detective.’
‘Right, and my problem is that you are slap-bang in the middle of everything. Dermot, do you know where Sadie and Lily are?’
‘I do not. And I honestly can’t believe Sadie did anything to the Healys.’
Lottie let the silence permeate the space between them before showing him a selection of the images they’d found on Cameron’s laptop.
The colour left his face. His hands trembled as he reached out to the photos, then flinched without touching them. He sank back into the chair.
‘These are awful. Why are you showing them to me?’
‘It was you who first mentioned grooming and abuse. This is evidence.’
‘But I meant twenty years ago. I know nothing about this.’
‘What do you know about it historically, then?’
‘Just what Sadie told me. That Alice got her mother involved in it. That she feared for her little sister.’
‘That would give Sadie a motive to kill her mother.’
‘Maybe, but not Poppy,’ he said sadly.
‘No, not Poppy,’ Lottie agreed.
‘It was Alice,’ he added.
‘I can’t figure out what motive she’d have to kill the Tormeys. She and Denise seemed to have a lucrative racket going, so why end it in murder?’ It was rhetorical, but all the same, she hoped Dermot could offer her an explanation.
He shook his head, and the silence fell on her shoulders, another unwelcome burden.