Page 146 of Final Betrayal

She held the knife down by her leg and stood waiting. One or both of them could easily overpower her, but somehow they were transfixed by what she was about to say.

She pushed past Conor and opened the door. ‘Where is the entrance?’

‘To what?’

‘The tunnel where you brought Hannah Lee.’

Conor shifted from foot to foot, his face a ghostly mask in the yellow hue of the street lights. ‘Hannah?’

‘I know you killed her.’

‘And how would you know that?’ The wind carried his voice across to her.

‘Because if you hadn’t been killing her and disposing of her body that night, Tony would never have escaped justice for murdering my stepfather.’

Tony stood up straight. ‘Hey, just a minute. I never killed anyone.’

Megan laughed. ‘You stole my key to the safe and you broke in to rob my stepfather. Then you proceeded to beat him to a pulp. He never regained consciousness.’

‘He died from a stroke.’

‘Brought on by your violence. How could you do that to me?’

‘Shit, he was only your stepfather, not your real dad.’

She lashed out then, striking him on the cheek with the knife. The cut wasn’t deep but the blood ran freely down his face, and he dropped to his knees in the mud, whimpering.

Conor reacted though, and made to grab the knife from her hand, but she whipped it around in his direction and drew it along his arm, tearing through the stiff material of his jacket. He clutched the wound and yelled, ‘Fuck you, you’re a mad bitch.’

‘Open up the tunnel,’ she said.

Outside Conor Dowling’s house, with his mother ranting from the doorstep, Lottie walked around in circles.

‘Where did they go?’ she said.

‘Vera says she was asleep but woke up when Megan Price near knocked the door down with her hammering. She heard Keegan and Conor talking in the hall and then they were gone.’

‘We missed them by a few minutes. Shit.’

McKeown arrived with a wad of papers in his hand. ‘I think I might know where they are.’

‘Let’s get into the car,’ Boyd said as the rain began to beat down harder.

‘What have you got?’ Lottie asked.

‘I eventually got hold of some old maps from a local historian. She arrived with them earlier when she heard on the news about the body we found in the tunnel.’

They sat into the car. Boyd switched on the engine to get the heat going.

‘And?’ Lottie said.

‘There’s a network of tunnels all right, and one of them has an entrance on this patch of waste ground.’ He pointed to the folded map in his hand.

‘Where’s that?’

‘Cyril Gill bought up the land when he came up with his big project ten years ago. It was laid waste when his plans were scuppered. It’s on the other side of the council buildings, not a million miles away from the house where we found Amy and Penny.’

‘But why do you think we’ll find Dowling and the others there?’ Boyd asked.

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