Page 13 of The Trap by Catherine
Therewassomething in there.
She lifted it out.
It was a bra.
Originally pastel in color, with lace detailing. Small, padded cups. One strap was twisted while the other dangled free from the back loop. The underwire looked bent out of shape and maybe even broken in the middle, at the spot where the two cups met.
Rosemary gasped as Angela silently thanked her for suggesting that she put on gloves, because the bra was completely covered in blood.
* * *
As Don pointed Angela toward the Missing Persons Unit’s conference room, her stomach whined loudly, as if it knew it was gone noon and that they weren’t going to get to take a lunch break.
“Is there time for me to make a cup of coffee?” she asked.
“There is if you make two,” Don said, checking his watch. “But be quick. She’s never late.”
Angela was already moving toward the door. “Milk and two sugars?”
Don nodded. “And see if there’s any biscuits about, will you?”
There was no need to tell him that that was the whole idea. But all she could find in the kitchen was a Tupperware container marked VIC SUPP—DO NOT TOUCH! in aggressively large capital letters, wherein lay three unexciting supermarket packets in various stages of depletion. Angela stuffed two digestive biscuits into her mouth, reasoning that the people who availed of the Victim Support Service had suffered enough without having to eat dry, dusty off-brand digestives too.
By the time she returned to the conference room, Detective Denise Pope was already there.
“... but we’re trying to keep that on the down-low,” she was saying to Don. “The down-very-low. Make him nervous. Hope he makes a mistake.”
“Ah, here she is now,” Don said unnecessarily loudly, clearly trying to signal to Detective Pope that she should stop talking about whatever she was talking about. “Dee, this is Angela. Angela, this is Detective Pope.”
Detective Pope gave Angela a nod and said, “Denise is fine.”
“Hi,” Angela said.
She only knew Denise by reputation, which was stellar. The daughter of a former inspector and a chief superintendent, legend had it that she’d wanted to be a guard for so long, she’d hand-sewn blue uniforms for her Barbies. She’d started her meteoric rise back in Templemore when she won the Gary Sheehan, awarded to the best all-round student in any given phase, the one who showed themselves to be both academically excellent and an excellent leader while also earning the respect of their fellow trainees, which was no mean feat when you were already doing the first two. One of her first assignments after passing out was a stint in the Missing Persons Unit under Don, who only ever talked about her short tenure with a glassy-eyed reverence as if he was describing being in the audience when U2 played their first ever gig at a Dublin school’s talent show in 1976.
Angela wanted to be Detective Denise Pope when she grew up.
Which meant she had to pass the Physical Competency Test.Which she was definitely going to do on her second go, because she was totally going to start actually bringing her water bottle and eating her carrots and going up the stairs as well.
Angela was on a mission to graduate from Garda staff to actual member of An Garda Síochána. Unfortunately, the application process wasn’t going as smoothly as she would have hoped. She’d failed the PCT, which consisted of running around a room full of obstacles before having a go on a push-and-pull contraption, supposedly designed to simulate a foot chase, and then restraining the guy after you caught his arse. It was all timed, and Angela’s time hadn’t been good enough, because she hadn’t been fit enough.
They’d notify her of the date of her second attempt any day now. She really had to start getting ready for it. Hence, the carrot batons.
“Would you like a coffee?” Angela asked Denise as she handed a cup to Don.
Denise wrinkled her nose. “God no.”
It wasn’t entirely clear who or what the ire in that response was directed to, so Angela didn’t ask a second time.
She took her seat directly opposite Denise, then a quick sip of her coffee. At least her stomach was quiet now. It seemed like the stolen pair of horrible digestives might have done the trick.
“I thought you lot were getting turfed out of this shithole, no?” Denise said to Don.
“We were,” he said. “But it’s taking them so long to build the new shithole, we outgrew it in the meantime. Anyway, thanks for coming in.”
“Well, I was free. I was just leaving our old friend Roland Kearns.”
“Ah, the world’s most innocent man,” Don said with a wink. “How is he holding up?”
