Page 117 of Final Betrayal

She heard the door close with a soft thud. Feeling faint, she rested her head on her folded arms and allowed the coolness to seep into the bones of her cheek.

Boyd turned to Kirby and McKeown. Kirby tried to turn down the heat on one of the radiators. Rattles rang out through the office as the water cooled inside the steel.

‘Is the boss all right?’ McKeown said.

‘Give her a few minutes,’ Boyd said. ‘She’s dealing with a lot.’

‘You don’t look the best yourself,’ Kirby said.

‘What’s your thinking about these Tony and Megan characters?’ Boyd sat and went to put his feet on the desk, but a pain shot up through his hip so he rested them on a stack of box files instead.

‘I don’t know what to think.’

‘Could they have any connection to the current murders?’ McKeown asked. Neither Kirby nor Boyd answered, so he added, ‘I suppose anything is possible. But my money’s on Conor Dowling.’

‘We need to bring in Keegan and Price, and find Dowling,’ Boyd said.

Kirby shrugged. ‘He’s probably buried in one of those tunnels.’

‘What tunnels?’

Kirby explained the conversation he’d had with Tony Keegan.

‘That’s interesting.’ McKeown waved the sheets of paper he had in his hand. ‘I have CCTV stills here from the night the two drunk lads broke into the house at Petit Lane.’ He laid them out on Boyd’s desk.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘Shadows.’

‘Jesus, what have shadows got to do with anything?’

‘Give the man a minute,’ Kirby said, and traced his finger along the edge of the wall.

‘I see it.’ Boyd spread the pages out in a line.

‘And once it reaches this point, it disappears.’ McKeown sounded triumphant.

‘Probably a fox,’ Kirby said.

‘What’s down there?’ Boyd asked.

‘I don’t know yet. But when you mentioned tunnels, it got me thinking.’

‘Dangerous,’ Kirby said.

McKeown ignored the jibe. ‘I’m going to the car park to walk the line where this shadow was and see what I come up with.’

‘Do that,’ Boyd said.

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

‘Will I tag along?’ Kirby asked.

‘No, I want to discuss this Tony Keegan character with you.’

The office door clattered against the wall. McMahon stood there, hair askew and cheeks billowed out with rage.

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