‘I’m fine, Mrs Thompson. You’ll no doubt have seen the news.’
A clearing of throat. Her voice lowered a little: ‘Yes, I saw the, er, news about Mr Sproul.’
Brennan listened to her intonation carefully — she seemed to have put a stranglehold on her vowels. ‘I think I mentioned on my last visit, about speaking to Lynne again.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’
Brennan tugged at the phone line, started to twist it into little kinks. ‘Oh, really.’
‘She’s very upset about everything, as you can imagine, Inspector.’
Brennan cleared his throat. ‘Yes, I can understand that, Mrs Thompson, but I’d like to stress how important your daughter is to our investigation… A young girl has been killed and her child is missing. We still have no idea of the whereabouts of…’ He suddenly became aware of a silence on the other end of the line that made him wonder if he was speaking to himself. ‘Hello?’
There was no reply, then, ‘Lynne, here, take the phone.’
‘Hello, Lynne… Do you remember me?’
‘Yes, of course.’ The girl’s voice came loaded with nerves but short on actual words.
‘And how have you been keeping?’ Formality again; it irked him.
‘Okay, I guess.’
Brennan dropped the telephone cord, sat upright in his chair. ‘Lynne, I don’t want you to think too hard about what I’m about to ask you, all right?’
‘Okay.’
‘I think, by now, you know there’s nothing you can say that’s going to harm you, or get you into trouble…’
‘I suppose.’
‘If you are going to think about anything, you need only concern yourself with your best friend, Carly, and her baby, Beth. You knew all about Beth, didn’t you, long before anyone else did?’
There was a gap on the line. It stretched out too long and Brennan jumped in again: ‘You knew about Beth before Reverend Donald and his wife, didn’t you?’
The girl’s voice lowered yet further: ‘Yes.’
Brennan raised his eyes, thanked above. ‘Now, remember what I said: no one can hurt you now, Lynne… Peter Sproul was the father, wasn’t he?’
A gap. Brennan imagined the young girl looking at her mother and then a defiant nod coming. ‘Yes.’
Brennan scrunched his eyes, and smiled into the receiver. ‘What happened, Lynne?… What happened with Carly and Peter Sproul?’
The young girl started to cry. Brennan felt an enormous guilt for upsetting her. He heard her mother making encouraging noises, then, ‘He… he… raped her.’
Brennan froze. The facts of the matter had crossed his mind many times before but hearing them uttered this way somehow gave them more power. ‘Did she tell you about that, Lynne?’
More tears, sobbing. ‘Yes. More than once. He used to come into her room… She told her…’ The girl paused.
Brennan prompted: ‘Carly told her parents — is that what you were going to say?’
‘Yes.’
The thought of what Carly Donald had gone through in the months before her death welled up in Brennan. He felt his chest ache for her hurts. He wanted to be able to take the culprit and wring the life out of him, like Carly had surely had the life wrung out of her. The girl had faced a trial of misery. Brennan knew who to blame for some of it, and thought he knew who to blame for the rest.
‘Okay, Lynne, that’s enough now. Go back to your mum. You’ve done well. Thank you.’
The young girl started to cry again as the phone line died. Brennan placed down his receiver, rose from the chair and picked up his jacket. Something drew him to take the picture that Lorraine had given him from the pocket. He stared at the familiar shape for a second or two; he was responsible for bringing another child into this world and the thought gored him. Could any of the children be protected from the beasts that were out there? Brennan shoved the scan back in his pocket. As he put his hand in the sleeve of his jacket he spotted the Reverend John Donald being led towards the interview room by DC Stevie McGuire.
‘Right, Minister, let’s see what you have to say for yourself now,’ he muttered.
As Brennan left the office for Incident Room One he was stopped by a WPC. ‘Sir, I have the lab on the phone for you.’
‘What do they want?’
‘I think you should take it.’
Brennan picked up the phone. ‘Hello.’
‘ Rob?’
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘I just thought you’d like to know that hunch you had about the ammunition…’
‘What about it?’
The boffin’s voice rose an octave: ‘You were absolutely right: the bullets were gold-washed.’
Brennan liked to be proven right; it hadn’t happened enough lately. ‘Pro hit all right. Told you. Thanks, Mike.’
He hung up, turned the phone over to the WPC, said, ‘Did you get anywhere running that ammunition through the system?’
She lowered the receiver, reached over a pile of blue files for a loose sheaf of paper, then another. ‘There’s a few, sir.’
‘How many?’
She curled down the corners of her mouth, showed a row of milk-white teeth. ‘I haven’t counted but I’d say over the country, I mean Scotland, fairly few… but in the UK and Ireland we’re into the dozens, especially in Ulster.’
‘Those Troubles have blocked our job.’
A smile. ‘Do you want me to cross-ref with over the water, sir?’
‘It’s a hit with military precision on our patch. They have enough on their own to still clear up without going out of their way to help us, but give it a go.’ Brennan nodded to her. ‘Good work, Constable.’
‘Thanks, sir.’
On the way out, Brennan picked up his pace. He didn’t want the minister to get too comfortable. He wanted him on edge. As he swung open the door, the minister was standing in the corner of the room with his hands behind his back.
Brennan was the first to speak: ‘Would you like to take a seat?’
‘I’d sooner stand, unless you have something to tell me.’
Brennan indicated the chair. ‘I have plenty to tell you and I’d like you to be comfortable but, please, suit yourself.’
The minister removed a grey-to-white handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his nose, then moved forward. As he sat down Brennan noticed the redness at the edges of his nose. ‘Can you tell me what this is about, please, and how long you will be keeping us under house arrest?’
Brennan turned over the cover of the blue folder sitting on the desk, said, ‘This is about the murder of your daughter and about your missing granddaughter, you know that… You also know you are not under house arrest, but merely helping us with our inquiries. I should have thought, Minister, in the circumstances, you would be more than happy to do that — am I wrong?’
The minister crossed his legs, showed grey argyle socks. He checked his watch as Brennan shuffled papers.
‘Will you need me long?’ he said.
Brennan tilted his head, huffed. ‘Are you in a hurry, Minister? Got somewhere to be?’
He looked away, frowned. Dark semicircles had appeared under his eyes in the last couple of days.
Brennan started again: ‘It’s not the Moderator’s job, is it?… My boss has an interview today. I know how nervous they make some people.’
‘Can we just get on with this, please?’
