Tom woke up feeling fresh and ready for what he had to do.
He turned on his side and watched Louise sleeping peacefully beside him. She’d arrived home late last night but he’d still been awake when she climbed into bed and snuggled up to him. He’d wrapped his arms around her and they’d fallen asleep like that, but somehow in the night their limbs had become disentangled.
Her auburn hair had fallen onto her face and he tucked it behind her ear, running his fingers tenderly over her cream cheek, bathed in the morning sunlight. She opened her eyes and looked at him.
‘I know how lucky I am to have you,’ he said, his voice throaty.
‘Bloody right, you are.’ She smiled, but with sadness. It didn’t feel fair to be so grateful for each other when Sean was waking up alone this morning, yet again. But she knew it was only natural that Sean’s loss would remind them of what they had.
‘You’ve got to the bottom of it, haven’t you?’ she said, studying him.
‘The case? Yes. How can you tell?’
‘You look more relaxed. I can see the veil has lifted. Your eyes – they’re peaceful. When you can’t figure things out, they’re distant, away off thinking. You’re here, but not here. Do you know where she is, then, Fiona Holland?’
‘No. But it’s only a matter of time. She’s not being held captive, I’m afraid. Fiona’s dead, I’m certain of it. I know who killed her. I’m going out to see him this morning.’
‘You didn’t go last night?’
‘No. He thinks he’s safe. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘Well, go tell him he’s wrong, then.’
Tom nodded and kissed her, before throwing off the duvet and heading for the shower.
Ray was outside a half-hour later.
‘Coffee?’ Tom offered, putting a travel mug into the car’s cup holder.
‘Thanks. Right, let’s go turn the screws on this prick.’
The inspector had filled him in on his theory last night over dinner and Ray had quickly come to the same conclusion.
They planned their line of questioning on the drive out to Meath.
‘We have to make him think we have something absolutely concrete,’ Ray said, as they turned in the direction of Trim. ‘I can’t see him caving just because we apply a little pressure.’
‘I don’t know,’ Tom said. ‘He might play into our hands.’
But he agreed. They’d massage what they knew to get the truth out of him, if they needed to. The irony of deciding to blur the lines, when he’d been so vexed by the errors of some of his garda colleagues in the course of this investigation, wasn’t lost on Tom.
Caroline Holland opened the door. She was holding Fiona’s son, who peered at the two men curiously. His red hair was brushed and soft after a morning bath, his skin pale in the sunlight. He was so like his mother and grandmother.
Caroline’s eyes filled with hope when she saw Tom and then with sorrow when he slowly shook his head.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Holland, I’m not here with good news.’
‘Oh. Well, it can’t be long, can it? You must be able to make him talk. You caught him – I know you’ll find my daughter.’
She beckoned them in, leading them to the room they’d sat in when they first visited the house.
‘Is Richard at home?’ Tom asked, holding the door open for her.
‘Yes. I’ll call him. Ah, there’s Nikki. She helps with Cían. Nikki, will you take the baby and fetch Mr Holland?’
‘Of course.’
Nikki’s accent was French. God love her. She’d probably come to Ireland thinking she’d landed a handy au pair job with a nice family, and somehow ended up in the middle of this mess.
‘Nikki, hold on,’ Tom said. ‘Mrs Holland, is Fergus about? He should be here, too.’
‘Yes, he is. He and his father are going over some business. Richard hasn’t been there lately, obviously. But now with Fiona coming back – well, he’s making sure Fergus hasn’t run us into the ground.’ She laughed, the sound hollow and forced.
Nikki took the baby and went off to summon the two Holland men.
‘I don’t think I’ve told you before but this has always been Fi’s favourite room,’ Caroline said, sitting down on one of the chairs. ‘It’s the green. She finds it soothing. God, I can’t believe what happened. That somebody we knew took her. Well, I didn’t know him as such. I knew he worked for us. To think, we gave him access to our daughter. Thank God you figured it out.’
She closed her eyes and inhaled. The inspector could see that though she was still wound to a tight knot of concern, Fiona’s mother’s despair had been replaced with something else. Patience. She was calm, believing now that it was just a waiting game until her daughter was found.
Her hope made Tom hate even more what he had to do here, what was coming.
Richard and Fergus arrived together. Both men looked at the inspector questioningly, but Tom knew only one of them was concerned for Fiona’s well-being. The other wanted to know what the detectives knew, what they’d come for.
‘Thank you for seeing us,’ he began. ‘I’m sorry, as I said to Mrs Holland, that I’m not the bearer of good news. In fact, I’m afraid you might need to prepare yourself for very bad news.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Caroline wailed. ‘Is she dead?’
Richard paled, his hand grasping his wife’s.
‘We haven’t found her yet,’ Tom continued. ‘But I fear that, yes, she may be dead. I’m afraid also that we’ve been pursuing the wrong line of inquiry. I think it may be the case that Fiona has been dead all along.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Richard barked. ‘You’ve caught him, haven’t you? Charlie Lane. You said he kept the women for a while. So he can’t have killed Fi already and if you haven’t found her body yet – why are you saying this? Why are you upsetting us? I don’t understand.’
‘He didn’t take Fiona,’ Tom said, gently. ‘I don’t really understand this either. But I think your son does. Don’t you, Fergus?’
The young man looked shocked for a minute. Then he scowled at the detectives, his face assuming its usual sulky pose.
‘What do you mean by that?’ he spat.
Richard and Caroline were looking from Tom to Fergus and back again, completely adrift.
‘I don’t understand how anybody could murder his sister and let his parents live through the hope that she was still alive,’ the inspector explained. ‘It seems particularly cruel.’
‘What are you saying?’ Richard jumped to his feet. ‘How dare you accuse our son. Have you lost your mind?’
His wife’s jaw dropped open.
Fergus stayed sitting, his face contorted with hatred.
‘That’s a disgusting thing to say,’ he growled. ‘What, just because you haven’t found her body, you think you can start throwing the blame back at her own family? That’s sick. You’re sick, Inspector.’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘We know it was you, Fergus. You made a fatal mistake with the letter.’
‘What letter?’ Richard cried.
‘We received a note. The sender wanted us to think it was from the serial killer. It claimed he’d taken Fiona and we wouldn’t find her, so we should give up.’
‘Well, then, you know it was him,’ Caroline whispered, her voice small.
The inspector glanced at her. Richard Holland was railing against the accusations, but Caroline was hunched over on the sofa, her tiny frame huddled into itself as she tried to retreat from what Tom was saying.
She wouldn’t look at her son.
A mother always knows, Tom thought.
‘Why weren’t we told about this letter?’ Richard snapped. ‘Didn’t you think we’d a right to know?’
Tom held up his hand.
‘We receive a lot of communication in an investigation like this, Mr Holland, and most of it is from cranks. We can’t inform the family until we’re certain the contact is authentic. And we weren’t in this instance. It wasn’t signed; there was nothing in it about the other murders which would have let us know he was the real deal. For example, he could have mentioned the bracelets he’d given to his victims. That information wasn’t released to the public.’ Tom turned his attention back to the young man, who was still glaring at the inspector. ‘So, you wouldn’t have known about that, Fergus.’
‘If you hadn’t sent the letter, we might never have figured it out. But you wrote it in your own notepad and we were able to pick up the letters and numbers that had been written a few pages beforehand. It took me a while to get there. I should have figured it out the day we went to see you at the garden centre. You had Lane unloading five hundred bags of fertiliser from a delivery truck. S-P, L. 500. F dash E, R. Supplies. Five hundred bags of fertiliser.’
There was a shocked silence for a moment.
Richard broke it. ‘Now, this is just getting ridiculous. Charlie Lane worked in our garden centre. You said it yourself, he was unloading the damn things. Why couldn’t he have written those letters and numbers? If that’s even what the words are.’
Tom shook his head.
‘Charlie Lane was just a delivery man and gardener. He wasn’t in charge of your business. And we’ve more proof. The handwriting. Our experts looked at the note and they looked at the directions Fergus gave us to Vincent Carney’s house that day. They match, even though he tried to disguise his handwriting. It doesn’t fool the experts, Fergus.’
The inspector was stretching the truth about the handwriting analysis. Lying, for want of a better word. He’d no idea where those written directions had gone. He’d probably left them in Charlie Lane’s car when it was clear the man didn’t need them to find Carney’s house. But it wouldn’t be hard to get another sample of Fergus’ penmanship.
For a while Tom had toyed with the idea that Fiona’s father had sent the note. Fergus had referred that day in the garden centre to how he was in charge but his father was still overseeing the orders. But that hadn’t meant he’d been writing the orders out – just ensuring they were correct. Ultimately, Fergus’ insistence that day that the serial killer had Fiona and that she was already dead had given it away. Her parents, Richard included, passionately believed Fiona was still alive. You could see it in them. But there had been something in Fergus’ eyes. He knew she was dead and it wasn’t just that his hope was gone. It was because he had killed her.
‘No,’ Richard shook his head. Fergus remained remarkably calm and quiet. ‘This is utterly ludicrous. What possible reason could Fergus have for killing his sister? He’s been out on the searches with us! I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Inspector. The next conversation you have with us will be in the presence of our solicitor.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t leave without taking Fergus with me. And as for why he did it, I assume it’s because she refused to listen to you, is that right, Fergus? When you asked her who was hitting her and she wouldn’t tell you? You were sick of her, weren’t you? Running around the village, screwing every bloke that moved. Probably your mates, too. You said it yourself, it was a nightmare having such a slut for a sister.’
‘Stop it!’ Caroline cried. ‘Don’t speak about her like that. She was not a slut!’
‘Oh, come on!’ Fergus snorted. ‘Open your eyes, woman. On this – and only this – the inspector is correct. Your darling daughter would spread her legs for anybody who bought her a fucking vodka. She was a whore.’
The slap rang out sharp and clear. Richard Holland had lashed out at his son before any of them could react.
‘Don’t you ever speak like that about your sister,’ he roared. ‘She’s worth ten of you.’
Fergus stood up slowly, recovering from the shock, his hand clasping his cheek.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Daddy’s little angel. You thought the sun shone out of her fucking arsehole. Even when she popped a bastard sprog, she was still the golden girl. She never lifted a fucking finger to help with the business but still you’d have chosen her over me if you had to, wouldn’t you?’
‘Is that why you killed her?’ Tom said, standing too. There was an opportunity here that they had to grab. He and Ray had discussed whether they should claim that Fiona had been seen getting into Fergus’ car, anything that might frighten him into confessing, but that would have been dangerous. If he’d picked her up somewhere remote, he’d have known they were reaching. But he saw now that they could rile the young man into confessing. He was a loose cannon, not a calculated killer like Charlie Lane. His role in her death would probably have come to light already, were it not for the Lane distraction.
Fergus laughed at him.
‘Yeah. Yeah, right. I killed her because of a little bit of sibling rivalry. Your lot must have to deal with a massacre a day. Nice try, Inspector.’
Caroline Holland stood up and crossed the room. She pulled her husband aside and stood in front of her son, staring up at him.
Tom watched as she placed her hands on either side of his face, tenderly, like any mother would to comfort her son.
‘Did you kill her?’ she whispered, her voice imploring.
Fergus’ expression shifted between anger and confusion.
‘Do you think I’m capable of that?’ he replied.
Caroline sighed.
‘I gave birth to you, my darling. I carried you in my body for nine months and I laboured to deliver you. When I held you, my firstborn, I knew that I would always love you. No matter what. Do you hear me? No matter what. You were my baby. You stole my heart. You still have it and you always will. Fiona could be … difficult. I understand that. But did you hurt her? I need to know.’
Tears began to flow down Caroline’s face.
Fergus swallowed and tried to pull her hands away, but she held him firm.
Richard placed his hand on her arm. She shook him off. There were only two people in the room – Caroline and her son.
‘Did you kill her?’ she asked again. ‘I’m begging you. Tell me. I won’t have any peace until I know. None of us will. It has to be said out loud before we can move on.’
Fergus’ eyes began to well up. He bowed his head close to hers and a sob erupted from his throat.
The inspector barely heard the whispered, ‘Yes’.
There was absolute silence in the room, then Fergus shrieked and pulled his face away from his mother. Five long slashes had been ripped down each cheek where she’d dragged her nails. He jumped backwards and she flew at him. Tom and Ray had to hold her back. Richard Holland was paralysed, unable to process what had just happened.
‘Where is she?’ Caroline screamed. ‘Where’s my baby?’
Fergus fell back onto the couch, stunned. For a minute he said nothing, watching his mother strain against the strength of the two men grappling with her.
She wanted to kill him.
Defiance filled her son’s face.
‘You lied,’ he snarled. ‘You fucking lied. “You stole my heart.” Sure. But only for a few years, huh? Until that bitch came along. I’ll tell you what I did with her. What I should have done with her when she was born. What you do with any feral cat. I drowned her. I fucking drowned her. Satisfied now?’
Caroline howled and collapsed to the floor between Tom and Ray. Richard Holland stumbled back onto the couch, unable to stand, unable to talk.
‘Fergus Holland,’ Tom said, facing the young man. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Fiona Holland. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do or say may be given in evidence.’