The doctors were just trying to do their job.
Charlie Lane had sustained significant blood loss and was barely out of intensive care.
He couldn’t be put under the sort of pressure an interview would bring.
And the inspector really didn’t give a shit.
He didn’t want to be here at all. But what choice did he have? They’d no idea where Fiona Holland was. Unless she was already dead, she was locked up somewhere and now they were in a race against time to ensure she didn’t starve to death.
‘It’s like this,’ he snapped, and planted two hands on the hospital administrator’s desk. ‘We either interview Charlie Lane today, or I am going to have you charged as an accessory in a crime.’
‘What are you talking about?’
The man sitting across from Tom laughed nervously. He was used to dealing with members of the emergency services, including the guards, and knew they could get hysterical at times. Everything was always of the utmost importance and urgency, regardless of how ill a patient was. And normally, he, the man in charge of that access, could handle these hyperactive officers. But the man who stood in front of him now looked nearly psychotic. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, his cheeks purple beneath the salt-and-pepper beard, veins throbbing at the side of his forehead. He’d heard of Tom Reynolds, but usually in the most respectful of terms. If people only knew!
‘The man lying in the bed upstairs kidnapped and murdered five women. He tried to kill one of my detectives. And somewhere, there is a nineteen-year-old girl waiting to be found. For all we know, she is lying in a dingy cellar, freezing and starving to death. Charlie Lane is the only person on this planet who knows her whereabouts. So, yes, if you don’t allow me to interview him and we don’t find that girl, or we find her too late, I will have you charged.’
The man at the desk was beginning to accept that there were some battles not worth winning.
‘I will speak to his doctors and see if he can be made comfortable enough for questioning.’ The administrator conceded defeat. ‘You won’t have long with him. There is absolutely nothing I can do about that and you can arrest me for it if you want.’
‘Fine,’ Tom said, his voice a little kinder. ‘I’ll be up with the detective who was admitted last night. Find me there. Quickly, please.’
The man nodded and picked up his phone to indicate to the inspector that he was getting right on it.
‘When did you know?’ she asked.
‘About Lane?’
Laura blushed, the colour vivid against her pale skin. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in a hospital gown, her legs dangling over the side. The back of her head was partially covered by a large bandage. She wanted to get out of there, but Ray was trying to talk her into staying. And if he wouldn’t let her leave, then they could finally have the conversation they needed to have. Laura was still woozy from the meds they’d given her and was feeling slightly braver than usual.
‘I don’t mean Lane. What you said to me last night. Where did that come from?’
It was Ray’s turn to flush red.
He smiled shyly.
‘Last year. Around autumn. We’d spent time together during the summer when I was helping your mam look for her sister’s grave, remember? And then you sort of disappeared, because you were off seeing Eoin Coyle. When I asked you out for dinner to the Japanese place that time, I really wanted to tell you then, but you left early.’
‘I remember that night. You started talking about your feelings for another woman!’
‘I know.’ Ray shook his head. ‘I was an idiot. But I did try to tell you that, afterwards. Then you dumped Eoin and I thought I had a chance. But you didn’t seem interested any more.’
Laura tried to find the words to explain how she hadn’t had a clue what he was thinking. Now she wanted to know everything to make up for the lost time – what she’d done to make him suddenly notice her; what she’d been wearing; what she’d said. The butterflies in her stomach fluttered with delight at the very thought of it. She’d been in love with him for years and for the last few months he had actually fancied her. All those misread situations seemed so silly and childish now.
‘I was interested,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think you were and I didn’t want to be some dopey cow mooning after you. I really thought you were oblivious to how I felt.’
‘I was. For a long time. I didn’t realise you’d any feelings for me until that night in the restaurant. When you got so annoyed at me for talking about Ellie, then I knew.’
She smiled. She couldn’t bring herself to proper laughter just yet. The experience with Lane was still too raw.
Ray took her hand tenderly and caressed it. He knew it would take a while for Laura to bounce back.
There was a knock on the door and Tom popped his head around.
‘Are we up for visitors?’ their boss asked.
‘Tom, speak to her, will you? She thinks she’s going home.’
The inspector came in and studied Laura. She’d regained a smidgen of colour in her cheeks but still looked ghostly compared to normal. It wasn’t the only noticeable difference. The inspector could see a shadow in Laura’s expression that hadn’t been there before, a doubt in her eyes, usually so open and friendly around those she knew and loved.
‘They’ve treated my head wound, boss. We still have work to do.’
‘No, you don’t.’ Tom pulled over an extra chair. ‘Legs back in the bed, Detective.’
Laura chewed her lip, but swung back onto the bed, allowing Ray to pull the blankets up over her legs.
‘They’re beautiful flowers,’ the inspector said, noticing the large bunch of lilacs placed in a vase on the bedside table. ‘An admirer been in, huh? That chap you were going out with last year, was it?’ It was his turn to smile as Ray and Laura both flushed crimson.
‘I jest,’ Tom said, not cruel enough to embarrass them for any length of time. ‘Laura, that was some blow you took to the head. They need to keep you under observation for thirty-six hours. I just had a lovely little chat with the hospital administrator. Very helpful chap. So, even if you checked out of here, you wouldn’t be allowed back to work.’
Laura sighed. Then she remembered.
‘I’m so sorry about June. Ray told me. I can’t believe it. How is Sean?’
Tom swallowed.
How was Sean? How could anybody be when he’d just lost his soul mate, the love of his life, in such horrific circumstances?
Willie had returned last night at Tom’s request to bring their former chief home. Usually so stoic and wise, he’d turned up at the Reynolds’ door blubbing like a baby and had only pulled himself together when it looked like Sean was actually going to have to do the driving.
‘What can I do?’ Tom had asked his friend, before he left. ‘What can I do to make this easier for you?’
Sean had just shrugged. ‘There’s nothing,’ he replied. ‘Nothing that you won’t do anyway. I just needed to tell you in person. I had to … I had to get out of the house. But you know what you must do now? Go into work tomorrow and get that bastard to talk. Find your missing girl. Then we’ll bury June and the world will keep turning.’
Louise had made her husband go to bed for a few hours, but sleep had felt like an impossibility as he raged at the cruelty of the world. He must have dozed at some point. He remembered snatches of vivid dreams, June clutching his arm on the couch that day, an image that morphed into Laura, her mouth gagged as she mumbled incoherently and desperately.
‘He’s coping,’ Tom answered Laura’s question.
‘When’s the funeral?’ Ray asked.
‘Not for a little while. There has to be a post-mortem to establish for certain what happened.’ The inspector swallowed. ‘Anyhow, that’s for another day. Laura, how are you holding up?’
He could see her stiffen at the question. She wrapped her arms around herself defensively.
‘I’m fine. How many times do I have to say it?’
‘I don’t mean the head. After what happened – how do you feel?’
She shrugged.
‘Like an idiot. What was I thinking going out there alone? I tried to ring him, but he didn’t answer. I said in the voicemail I just wanted to chat about his time in Britain. I thought I was reaching – it seemed so far-fetched, but we’d nothing else to go on. No leads. But I guess I didn’t think he was an actual suspect or I wouldn’t have called out, certainly not alone.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t have,’ Ray said. ‘You were clutching at straws, like the rest of us.’
Laura looked up and met Tom’s eye. She knew what he wanted to ask.
‘He didn’t hurt me,’ she said. ‘Not in that way. I don’t think he sexually assaulted any of the women.’
‘Did he speak to you? Say anything that could help?’
‘Most of the time, I was just down in the cellar on my own. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see a thing. When he spoke to me, he said he wanted to be stopped. But then he put me in the boot of the car. He drove around for hours, until we arrived at those woods. He didn’t mention Fiona Holland the whole time I was with him.’
Laura relaxed once she’d got the words out and Ray squeezed her hand.
‘Have forensics turned up anything at the scene?’ he asked his boss.
‘They collected a lot of samples,’ Tom replied. ‘Emmet is working through them as we speak, but he believes he’s isolated blood and hair for Una Dolan. There’s a lot of it, so they’ll be working for a while. They have to discard Laura’s, ours and Lane’s, obviously.’
Laura shuddered. She’d never shake the horror of being down in that cellar where other girls had been held and had not been so fortunate. She knew she would have nightmares about it for the rest of her life.
‘It will take time,’ the inspector said, examining her face and reading her thoughts. ‘But you’ll recover from this. Don’t try to bury it, though, Laura. Deal with it properly. You’ll need to see the garda counsellor.’
‘The only thing I need is for us to find Fiona,’ she answered. ‘I can’t bear the thought of her being kept somewhere like that. I felt so … hopeless. And that was just for a day. She’s been gone weeks.’
‘I know,’ Tom said. In his gut, he didn’t think Fiona was still alive, no matter how much he wished it so.
On cue, the hospital administrator arrived at the door of the room.
‘Inspector Reynolds, he’s ready.’
Ray stood up with Tom.
‘I don’t think so,’ the inspector said.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You shot him, Ray. There isn’t a hope in hell of you doing this interview with me. Michael is waiting downstairs. He’s just as eager as you to nail this bastard.’
‘Michael? What the hell? He was injured and you’re still bringing him instead of me?’
‘It was a flesh wound. His arm is in a sling and unlike Laura, I have no medical advice telling me he can’t return to work. Please, you need to stay here.’
Ray sat back on the chair, glowering.
‘Is my company that bad?’ Laura asked, her doing the comforting now.
The tension eased in Ray’s shoulders and he smiled.
‘I suppose if Tom is ordering me to stay with you, I’d better do it.’
The inspector left the fledgling lovebirds alone. Once outside the room, his features hardened again. He sent Michael a text and within minutes, the other detective arrived.
‘Are you sure you’re okay to do this?’ Tom asked him, nodding at the injured arm.
Michael raised his eyebrows dismissively.
‘I don’t want this to affect my merit award chances, but they won’t even give me the good pain relief, that’s how little damage was done. Two shagging Solpadine is all I’m allowed. Anyway, I’m grand. Let’s get this bastard.’
Tom clapped him on the good shoulder.
‘Come on, then.’
Tom and Michael greeted the two guards stationed outside and entered the room.
The hospital medical staff had propped Lane up on pillows, making him as comfortable as possible. The left side of his body was covered with a large bandage and he was attached to various drips. Both hands were cuffed to rails at either side of the bed. The blood loss had been significant, but Ray had aimed well, considering how close he’d fired to the man’s head. No major organs had been hit and Charlie Lane would live, the only legacy of the injury being some nerve damage in his arm.
Tom would have to get Ray down to the firing range to see if he really was as good a shot as everybody was now saying, or if the man in the bed had just been incredibly lucky.
Lane had refused the offer of a solicitor, so they were alone.
‘Inspector,’ he croaked, as the two detectives sat in the chairs placed beside the bed. ‘It looks like you got your wish. Here I am, alive. And I suppose you’re going to make sure my life is the hell I feared.’
‘Let’s be honest, now. Dead or alive, it was always going to be hellish.’ Tom’s voice was measured. ‘Where’s Fiona?’
‘I remember you asking me that last night. I suppose I should have expected it. Will you believe me if I tell you I don’t know?’
The inspector clenched and unclenched his fists. It was a calming technique that usually worked for him but on this occasion didn’t seem to be up to much.
‘I don’t have time to play games with you, Charlie. Or should I call you Cormac? Which do you prefer? What did your granddad call you?’
The other man gritted his teeth.
‘Animal. That’s what he called me.’
Lane closed his eyes, his expression anguished.
There was a part of Tom that felt sympathy for the man who had once been the little boy. He had suffered a violent and abusive beginning, like so many offenders the guards encountered. But the inspector couldn’t do anything for the child who’d witnessed horror at the hands of his grandfather. And he was angry because, of everybody, Charlie Lane knew how it felt to be locked up and frightened. Yet he’d inflicted that time and again on innocent women, and worse. He’d survived his ordeal as a child. His victims had no such luck.
‘Why did you do it?’ he asked Lane, curiosity getting the better of him. ‘Was it to punish your mother for leaving you? Why didn’t you find her and put her through what you’d experienced? The women you took had done nothing wrong.’
‘I looked for her,’ he answered. ‘She was dead. I didn’t want to punish her. I wanted to forgive her. But she denied me even that. They tracked her down – social services – soon after they found me. Told her what her father had done to me. But she didn’t care. She was so far gone with her addictions that I didn’t matter. He beat me every day and kept me in that cellar for weeks and she didn’t care. But you’re wrong, Inspector.’
‘What am I wrong about?’
‘Those women I took. They weren’t innocent. They were all just like her. Sluts. Bitches. Women who didn’t give a shit about anybody or anything bar themselves. I chose carefully. Their own neighbours told me what they were like. Sometimes, even their family.’
‘No,’ Tom shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. They were just young women, living their lives. Maybe they made mistakes, but who knew what their futures held? You’d no right to take that from them. My detective – you know nothing about her life. And what about Pauline O’Hara? She was a victim of domestic abuse. She didn’t party, or sleep with lots of men, or abandon a child. What had she done wrong?’
Lane flushed.
‘Pauline. She … her death was a mistake. I was just driving around collecting fares and there she was, waiting at the bus stop. It was lashing rain and she was on her own. I pulled over, just to offer her a taxi on the cheap. She’d all those shopping bags. She got in. She was so like my mother. She had the same eyes, the same smile. Something clicked in my head. It was almost the anniversary of my mother leaving and it was like God had given her back to me.
‘She was relaxed in my company. Chatty. She told me she’d been living in an awful situation but she was going to get out of it. I turned the car and drove in the direction of where I was living at the time. She laughed and said she couldn’t leave right now. But then she got angry and I put my hand over her mouth. She was so scared, she just sat there quietly for miles.’
‘Where were you living back then?’
‘Just outside Waterford City. I kept her for a while. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to protect her. I wanted her to stay. But sometimes, all I could see was my mother and I needed her to know how much pain I’d been in. How frightened I was. She didn’t understand. One day, she was screaming and yelling at me and I just placed my hands around her throat and squeezed until she stopped.’
Lane’s eyes glazed over as he recalled the final moments of his first victim’s murder. Tom wanted to look away, but he was transfixed.
‘How long did you keep her?’ he asked, when he found his voice.
‘I … can’t remember.’
That was a lie. Tom waited.
‘I don’t know. Maybe six months?’
‘Jesus,’ Michael spat.
‘I didn’t want to kill her,’ Lane protested, as though that somehow excused his holding her captive for so long. ‘I didn’t. I vomited, after, when I realised what I’d done. I thought she’d wake up. I bought her a present – a little bracelet – and I told her if she woke, I’d let her go. I would rescue her, just like I’d been rescued.’
‘But she didn’t,’ Tom said. ‘The thing is, I can believe what you’re saying, Charlie. And if Pauline had been your only victim, this would be a different conversation. But you went and did it again, didn’t you?’
Lane blinked. He nodded, slowly.
‘Not for a long time,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I didn’t want to do it again. I moved away from Waterford, down to West Cork. Everything was – normal. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Pauline. It was horrific, when she died. But after I accepted that she was dead – what I’d done – I felt calm. It was as though, with her death, something had been put to rest. For the first time in my life, I was at peace. But, as time went on, it started to slip away.’
‘So the only way you could find peace was by kidnapping women and murdering them? Pauline, Mary Ellen, Treasa, Eimear, Una and now Fiona Holland. You kept them captive for a while, Charlie. So where is Fiona? Have you killed her already?’
Lane shook his head.
‘I didn’t take her. I understand why you think I did, I went after a girl last April. I’d been watching her for a while. But I made a mistake. I forgot to put the roof plate on the car and when I pulled up beside her and asked her to get in, she started screaming. Another car came up behind me, so I drove off. It was a sign. I had to stop.’
Tom shook his head in disbelief.
‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘You were foiled in April and all of a sudden you have your urges under complete control? You dug up Una so we’d find her and stop you? Do you really expect us to buy that? You wiped clean every trace of your crime in the cellar in your West Cork house. Why do that if you wanted to be stopped? And now you claim it’s just a coincidence that Fiona Holland, who lives a couple of miles away, went missing in exactly the same circumstances as your previous victims, just a few months later? A girl who fits the very profile you were targeting – young, a little reckless, leaves her child at home with her parents – in fact, everything that angered you. That was just a strange alignment of the fates? Absolutely amazing.’
Lane was getting agitated, his body starting to tremble, the cuffs clinking against the rails.
‘I’m telling the truth,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘When the police came to the house I was staying in in Cork, it scared the hell out of me. I wanted to keep going, back then. I had to kill Mary Ellen a few days after I took her and it didn’t give me the same satisfaction. I knew I couldn’t risk taking a woman again in a location where I lived.’
‘This is a crock of shit,’ Michael snapped. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m telling the truth, I didn’t take Fiona. I wouldn’t be that stupid.’ Charlie lifted his head off the pillow and raised his voice.
‘You wouldn’t be that stupid?’ Michael snarled back. ‘You attacked a garda detective and tried to kill her. You shot me!’
The door to the room flew open and a doctor strode in, followed at a pace by two nurses.
‘Okay. That’s enough, detectives. My patient’s blood pressure is rising to dangerous levels. You need to leave.’
‘His blood pressure is rising?’ Tom retaliated. ‘I’m about to blow a gasket. Where is she, Charlie? Where’s Fiona?’
‘Inspector, if you don’t leave now, I am going to have hospital security come and remove you and your detective!’
Tom stood up. He kicked his chair back as he did.
‘We’ll leave,’ he barked. ‘I’m going to ask you one more time, Charlie. What have you done with that girl?’
‘Inspector!’
‘I didn’t …’ Lane panted, struggling for breath, the blood rushing to his face. ‘I didn’t take her. I swear it.’
‘You sent us a letter. You told us you had her!’
‘What? I didn’t. I didn’t send any letter.’