Page 95 of The Altar Girls

‘Listen, Enda, can we talk later? I have to go,’ she said, and hung up.

She reached the garda station as Lottie Parker was running down the steps, almost slipping on the last one. Sinead put out a hand and steadied her.

‘What’s going on?’ She kept pace beside the harried detective.

‘Please, I’m in a hurry. If we need to put out an alert, we’ll call a press briefing.’

‘An alert for what?’ Sinead stopped as Lottie made her way through the side gates. ‘Oh God, another child is missing.’

Lottie turned around. ‘Sinead Healy, if you issue one word before we authorise it, you may be putting an innocent life in danger.’

Sinead knew she was open-mouthed as the inspector hurried away. She jumped into her car, and as Parker left the station, she followed.

* * *

Lottie felt like tugging her hair out and screaming at the sky. How had Martina messed up so badly? She wanted to berate the young garda there and then. Instead she swallowed her anger and sent the disconsolate woman to the kitchen to soothe baby Jacob.

Everyone had been pulled from the searches around the cathedral and St Patrick’s and was now scouring the town, trying to find Alfie Nally and Bethany Kiernan. McKeown was back at base trawling live feeds and available CCTV.

Her stomach was in a ball and she dug her nails into the palms of her hands, seeking control. Control. She had to maintain some semblance of being in charge as Isaac paced in front of her in the living room.

‘Do you know Alfie Nally?’ she asked.

He shook his head wildly. ‘No, but he said he was Naomi’s friend and wanted to help us. I thought he was a genuine kid. Fuck.’

‘Tell me.’

‘He helped by playing with Bethany in here while I was in the kitchen talking to your guard. Why didn’t she say something?’

‘Like what?’

‘Are you for real? That’s the boy who found Naomi’s body. He might have been the one who killed her, for God’s sake!’ He sobbed and ran his hand under his nose angrily. His green eyes flared as he stepped towards her. She was taller than him, but still she felt intimidated by the hysterical grieving father.

‘Isaac, please, sit down.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve been following orders for months and I’m sick of it. I have to find my little girl. I’ve lost one, and let me tell you, I won’t lose another. I need to get out there and look for her.’

‘Your baby son needs you here. Every available member of the force is searching for Bethany. We will bring her home.’ She put a hand to his arm and guided him to the armchair.

Reluctantly he sat, just as her phone rang. She stepped into the hall to answer it so that Isaac couldn’t overhear the conversation, especially if it was bad news.

59

Kirby felt aggrieved that he was constantly being consigned to desk work for this investigation, along with McKeown, while others were out searching. McKeown had positive work to do checking footage, but there was only so much Kirby could learn sitting behind a monitor.

‘I’m joining the search.’ He grabbed his jacket and stuffed a family pack of mini Mars bars into the pocket.

‘Wait a minute,’ McKeown said in an unusually conciliatory tone that made Kirby pause with suspicion. The two still had the hatchet wedged firmly between them.

‘Did you find something?’ He secretly unwrapped a mini Mars bar in his pocket. He was fecked if he was offering one to McKeown.

‘This is from the traffic camera located on the roundabout at the end of the Kiernans’ road. There’s not many people out and about, so let me rewind it a few frames… There.’

‘Holy shit.’ Kirby watched two children, one tall and the other very small, walk along the footpath by the main road.

‘This is twenty minutes before Martina called it in. It has to be Alfie and Bethany.’

‘Did you spot them anywhere else?’

---