Page 44 of The Altar Girls

But no one heard him.

The campsite was deserted in December. His mother had told him that. He hadn’t felt scared before because she always returned. This time, he felt she wasn’t coming back at all.

Sliding down the inside of the door, he stuck his balled-up fist in his mouth to stifle his cries.

32

Having reluctantly left her mother on her own, Lottie sped back to work with the intention of calling to Betty Coyne later with her proposition. She met up with her team in the general office.

‘What have you got?’ she asked McKeown.

‘We put out the usual appeals for business CCTV, dash-cam footage and eyewitnesses. But because the weather was so bad at that hour of the morning, very little has come back and what I did get isn’t much use.’

‘Something has you excited, though,’ Lottie prompted. She could do with a bit of good news.

Kirby sniggered. ‘The promise of a ride later?’

McKeown ignored the snide remark. ‘Willow Devine’s mother, Zara, told us she returned to the school after she’d discovered it was closed for the day. CCTV from the end of the lane corroborates that.’ He swivelled his chair. ‘Here, you can see her car. An old Zafira pulls up and parks on the double yellows. She gets out, looks around, glances into the back seat at her other daughter. Leaving the little one there, she runs up the lane, and is back within twenty seconds. Alone. The snow is almost whiteout at this stage, but you can see the tail lights as she pulls away.’

‘Okay, that confirms what she told us,’ Lottie said. ‘She also said she drove home via the route she thought Willow would take if she’d walked.’

‘I grabbed as much footage as possible along that route and can confirm her car travelled that way.’

‘So,’ Lottie said, stretching her back and tucking in her T-shirt, ‘after we lose sight of the two girls walking towards the cathedral, have you found them anywhere else or seen anything suspicious?’

McKeown opened up a map on his screen and pointed to it. Lottie wished he’d use a printout to pin on the wall. That would be easier for less tech-savvy detectives like herself.

‘I scanned the footage from around town. No joy. We can also discount that they came back towards the school, because I haven’t found them going in that direction.’

‘Unless they were in a car,’ Lottie said.

‘The only cars that show up on CCTV anywhere near there within the relevant time frame all had legitimate reasons for travelling up or down Bishop Street.’

‘Many of them?’

‘A few. Including the two priests you’ve mentioned in your report. Father Maguire and Father Pearse.’

‘Together?’

‘In their own cars at different times.’ He handed her a printout. Thank God, she thought, because if she had to peer over his shoulder any longer, she’d scream.

‘Father Maguire said he did some sick calls, admin work and then went to the food bank from midday until two thirty.’

‘And what’s wrong with that?’ McKeown asked.

‘Nothing really. The food bank is in the community centre, and that’s only a few hundred metres from the priests’ house. Did you pull the community centre CCTV?’

‘No, because it’s not working. Similar story on most of the outdoor cameras in the church grounds. I have the ones from inside the church, but there’s nothing suspicious.’ He ran his hand over his shaved head, which was glistening with perspiration.

‘What about at St Patrick’s?’ Lottie asked.

‘All the internal cameras and those outside the main door are working. I’ve yet to look at their feeds. There’s one camera at the rear, but it only covers the overflow car park.’

‘The crib where we found Willow’s body is to the rear.’

‘Yeah, but it’s up a slight incline and not in the camera’s range.’

‘I noticed a tree-lined path up that hill. Get uniforms to search it. They might notice something there.’

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