Page 125 of Three Widows

‘One decent person left in the world,’ she mumbled, and followed Grainne inside while Gerry laboured behind them.

‘Why do you need me here?’ Grainne said, tugging the hood of her protective boiler suit up over her voluminous red hair. ‘I’m still processing the scene at the lake.’

‘Looks like flecks of blood in one of the freezers. Needs to be checked. Whether it’s human or animal is anyone’s guess at this stage. We found a locked door through there.’

Grainne flicked on a large torch. ‘I’ll send samples to the lab. Could that door have any more locks?’

Lottie waited for Gerry to get the key in place. ‘Boyd thought he heard something inside.’

‘I understand the urgency.’ Gerry was panting like he’d run a marathon.

‘Can you manage it?’

‘Sorry. No. You have to be trained how to use this.’

‘Give it here.’

She wrestled the heavy ram from him as Boyd joined them in the tight dark space, the door now illuminated by Grainne’s torch.

‘I got a screwdriver. I think it’s best to take off the hinges.’

‘And how long will that take?’ Lottie felt her shirt sticking to her skin, and if she didn’t get a painkiller for her head soon, she was sure she would turn into a serial killer herself. The three people standing around her were in line to be her first victims.

‘Okay, let us at it,’ Boyd said, abandoning his screwdriver idea.

He and Gerry manoeuvred the battering ram between them, and on the count of three, they had the door in bits, hanging off its hinges.

Inhaling deeply, Lottie stepped over the threshold into the darkness.

* * *

Detective Sam McKeown studiously ignored Lynch. Their working relationship had been irreparably damaged because of his affair with Martina Brennan. He felt further alienated when he found out the inspector was trying to have him shipped back to Athlone. Fuck the lot of them, he thought, and began to watch another file of security footage. This one was from Dolan’s supermarket, a little bit up the road from Herbal Heaven, taken earlier that morning.

There were no cameras in or outside the herbal shop, and he’d already trawled through footage from the council car park without finding anything he could determine as being out of the ordinary. He had seen Orla Keating park Helena’s car, and head for the shop. Other than that, it was shoppers in and out of the car park.

Now he concentrated on the camera images captured at the front door of the supermarket. A young lad with piercings, in dark clothing, came out and lit a cigarette. He appeared to be talking to someone just out of the camera angle. He was staring across the road. McKeown glanced at the time on the top corner of the footage. An hour before the boss and Lei had arrived at the herbal shop.

What was the lad so interested in over there? Had he anything to do with whatever horror might lie within the locked room? It was now the talk of the station.

McKeown kept his eyes on him. The lad stubbed out the cigarette underfoot and propelled himself from the wall, making his way out of shot. Not back into his place of work, but down and across the street.

McKeown quickly pulled up Google Maps to see what else was over there besides the car park and Herbal Heaven. A block of flats to the rear of the shop. His fingers travelled across his keyboard, frantically trying to discover whether the apartments had any cameras. Some at the front, but none at the back where the lad was headed.

Back to the supermarket footage. He fast-forwarded, and within five minutes the lad returned. He was smoking again, and just before he entered the sliding doors, he flicked the cigarette to the ground. That cigarette might have DNA on it. It might be nothing, but it might be everything. Time had passed, and by now there could be a multitude of butts or debris there, but he couldn’t take the risk of losing it.

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The stench hit Lottie first. Human waste. Then she caught the smell of fear and death in the air. She grabbed Grainne’s torch and waved it around the small, dank space.

Boyd moved to her shoulder and groaned. ‘God, no…’

She was speechless as nausea coursed through her stomach and up her throat. Her saliva dried up and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She had to force the words out.

‘I… I… God, Boyd, what went on in here?’

She moved towards the woman lying naked in a pool of her own blood and waste.

‘Inspector, please don’t contaminate the crime scene.’ Grainne’s voice floated over Lottie’s head like melting snowflakes as she hunkered down beside the pitiful shape. She could see a bone sticking out from torn flesh. The woman had her arms wrapped around her head. Blue nylon rope bound her hands together. They didn’t appear to be broken.

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