Page 12 of The Trap by Catherine
There was only one woman waiting in reception.
Angela would’ve guessed Rosemary Double-Barrelled was in her sixties, although she seemed to be doing everything she could to age herself more. Her hair was teased into a bouffant Princess Anne would’ve approved of, and she was wearing a white polo-neck under a bright-pink cardigan decorated with a string of pearls. She was standing next to a chair with a small cardboard box on its seat.
“Rosemary? Hi. I’m Angela.”
The other woman looked her up and down. “You’re aguard???”
“I’m with the Missing Persons Unit.” It wasn’t a lie. “Is that it?” She pointed at the box. “Well, thanks for bringing—”
“I’d rather you look at the contents now,” Rosemary interrupted, “before I leave, so there can be no confusion. I don’t want to be, you know,accusedof anything down the line.”
This must be punishment not just for the uneaten carrot batons, but the forgetting of the prepared lunch as well.
Angela reached for the box.
“Aren’t you going to put on some gloves first?” Rosemary said, aghast.
The carrots, the prepared lunch,andthe water bottle, then.
There was a box of gloves on the reception desk. Angela pulled two—cloudy white latex, her favorite—and made a show of putting them on, snapping the cuffs loudly against her wrists. May as well give Rosemary the episode ofCSIshe clearly wanted.
“I have no idea when it came in or where it came from,” Rosemary said. “Before you ask. We don’t keep track of donations. It wasn’t even something new; it could’ve been in the back room for months. I was just moving it from one shelf to another when I heard the keys rattling.”
Angela had lifted the bag out of the box. It was tan in color and made of soft, real leather; left to its own devices, it had started to fall in on itself, collapsing like a half-deflated balloon. It looked as good as new, no visible dirt or scuff marks on the exterior.
This clearly wasn’t an item that had spent any considerable time outdoors.
Inside were two open compartments, divided in the middle by a slim, zipped pouch. Angela reached in and started pulling out the items in there one by one.
A set of keys.
Three different types on one ring that reminded her of the ones she had for her own apartment: main door, door to the apartment, and post box. There was no electronic fob, which made her think that these weren’t for a new-build. The keychain was a souvenir from the National Gallery of Ireland.
“When was this?” Angela asked, placing the keys back into the now empty box. “That you found it?”
“Two weeks ago, now.” Rosemary folded her arms. “I’ve been trying to get through to someone here ever since.”
A small, fabric wallet.
It was stitched in the shape of an envelope, with a single snap-fastener under the flap. Floral design. Just about big enough to hold its contents: nearly fifty euro in tens and fives, a learner driver’s permit granted in September 2018, and a debit card. The cards were both in the name of Kerry Long, and the photo on the permit looked like an unflattering angle of the same woman whose picture Angela had seen online.
“That’s her,” Rosemary said. “Isn’t it? There was a photo on the internet.”
Angela made ahmmnoise as she put the wallet in the box and returned to the bag to extract the next item.
A cream-colored envelope with a greeting card inside.
Mamwas written on it in loopy cursive, above a decorative line with neat curls on both ends. When Angela turned it over, she thought she could make out the wordbirthdaythrough the paper.
“Her poor mother,” Rosemary muttered, pressing a hand to her chest.
Angela pulled the sides of the bag apart and angled it so the ceiling light was pointing straight into it.
Only then did she see a small pouch, credit card-sized, attached to the interior lining. When she pulled it open with a finger, she caught a flash of white: a Q-Park ticket for the multi-story at Stephen’s Green Shopping Center, time-stamped 11:02 a.m. on 3 March 2018. That was here, in Dublin city center, only a few minutes’ walk away from where they stood.
She put the ticket with the other items and then unzipped the central pouch.
At first, she thought it was empty. It was a narrow, tight space; it wasn’t easy to see all the way to its depths. But when she slipped her hand inside and reached her fingers right down into its corners—
