Page 2 of Final Betrayal

‘Whatever about the wheels, I wouldn’t call them meals. Only old Mrs Tone going around with her arms full of plastic tubs, and by the time she gets to me, it’s cold. How do they expect these knobbly fingers to turn the dial on the microwave?’

Conor was about to say she could have got a new digital model, but he stopped himself. His mother was displaying all the signs of the bully he remembered from his childhood; there was no way he would win this or any other argument. It was as if the last ten years had just folded into themselves and absolutely nothing in this house had changed. But he had.

Rubbing his hand over his head, he felt the beginning of bristles sprouting and itched to get upstairs to his razor, if it was still there. He guessed it probably was; the living room looked as though his mother had slept downstairs for years. Then a thought struck him. They only had an upstairs bathroom and toilet. How did she …? His eye was drawn to the bag of urine nestled between her veined legs.

‘I’m glad you’re home, son,’ she said, stretching out her hand. He stuffed his own resolutely into his jeans pockets. ‘You can cook for me. Did they teach you new recipes in … in there?’

Shrugging his shoulders, Conor walked to the window and stared out through the dirt and grime. He rubbed a hand on the glass and it stuck to the grease lining the inside of the pane. Where the hell did she think he’d been? Cookery school?

‘I’m going to have a wash,’ he said, and turned to leave. She shot out a hand and grabbed his arm. Goose bumps erupted on his flesh as he tried to shuffle away. Still she held firm.

‘I know what you did, Conor. I know. So you’d better treat me right.’

As the knobbly hand fell away, Conor rushed from the room, almost tripping over the holdall he’d dropped in the hall. In the kitchen, he glanced briefly at the mess, at the commode she’d once used, standing in the corner beside an overflowing rubbish bin. The odours infested his nostrils, and old memories threatened to drown him, like a biblical flood.

To distract himself, he stared out through the small window. And there it was. Still standing. His shed, his place of escape, his refuge from reality, rising like a castle in the midst of reedy grass and discarded furniture.

But what was that? He leaned over the sink, full of plastic food containers, and tried to see more clearly. No use. He opened the back door and stepped out into the garden, where the flattened grass made a pathway to the shed door. No, he hadn’t been mistaken. The lock on the door was hanging open.

‘Mam! Who the hell has been in my shed?’

Conor stood amongst the chaos of the shed that had once been his haven. His tools looked okay, though they were not in the correct order. Not on the right shelves. Not laid out the way he had left them. He shook himself. It was so long ago, maybe he was imagining it. But he wasn’t imagining the padlock in his hand. Someone had been in here.

He’d begun by making little wooden dolls for craft fairs. He felt a flush creep up his pale cheeks as he remembered how he’d started that, aged thirteen, not long after his father had left. Went to work one morning without a goodbye. Only when he didn’t return home did they discover he’d taken a small case with his few possessions. A lifetime ago, but Conor recalled it like it was yesterday. Abandoned by his father and left to his mother’s wrath.

The prospect of spending the rest of his life with his mother was decidedly more chilling than the memory of the years he had spent in jail. He reminded himself miserably that she was only sixty-five, so the odds of her croaking any time soon were remote. Not of her own accord, in any case.

Running a finger over the woodturner, he stepped back in shock. There was something missing. One of his tools. The one he’d moved on to when he’d got fed up with working with wood. There was only one other person who knew how to use his tools. And it wasn’t his mother.

TWO

Lottie Parker was excited at having a home of her own after living in her mother’s cramped house since mid February. Being a detective inspector in the town of Ragmullin brought its fair share of dangers. During one recent case, her house had been burned down. Though it had been ruled accidental, she still wasn’t convinced.

‘You could at least smile,’ Mark Boyd said as he struggled with an IKEA flat-pack box wider and taller than the door space. ‘And get Sean to give me a hand.’

‘He’s gone for a ride. And that’s your fault. Buying him a new racing bike.’

‘At least it gets him out of his room. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, but we could do with an extra pair of hands right now.’

She gripped one end of the box and began to shimmy it in through the front door with Boyd huffing and puffing on the outside. Sean, her fifteen-year-old son, was becoming more of an enigma with each passing day. He had succumbed to another bout of depression a few months ago, and only when Boyd arrived with the sparkling new bicycle had his eyes shed their deep darkness.

Boyd stopped moving the carton.

‘What?’ she said. He was looking at her over the angles of the now crunched cardboard.

‘This is the right thing to do, Lottie. You know that. But you have to accept that everything you had in your old house is gone. This is an opportunity to start over. Leave the ghosts of the past blowing in the ashes.’

She shook her head, surprised to find that tears were gathering. She sniffed them away. Boyd was her detective sergeant and a good friend. ‘This isn’t going to work.’

‘Of course it will. Just give yourself time to get settled.’

‘I mean this goddam carton. We’ll have to open it up outside and bring the stuff in bit by bit.’

‘What’s in it anyway?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

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