Page 20 of The Trap by Catherine
She nodded her head like she was taking all this in, carefully considering it.
She was starting to understand what was happening here now. Jack Keane didn’t understand that Lucy had moved into a new phase of desperation, one in which she was perfectly willing to talk to the likes of him if he was the only way she could get on the national news.
He thought he was up against the same brick wall with the families of the missing women that he’d been dealing with since the commencement of Operation Tide, and he was doing his best to put a crack in it.
If she didn’t disabuse him of that belief, she might find out what the Gardaí were keeping from them right now.
Andget what she wanted: a national TV interview.
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to look conflicted. “I’m still not sure.”
“I know. Of course. Yes. And it would certainly be a challenge.” Jack straightened up. “Look, the reason we’re doing this show isbecauseof what they’re not telling you. What they haven’t told anyone. Which is that Operation Tide isn’t fit for purpose.”
Lucy felt a chill, even though the cafe was warm.
“What do you mean?”
“The guy heading it up, Superintendent Colin Hall—he loves the limelight. Facts, though, not so much. Seems like our crack team of detectives on one of the most high-profile investigations the state has ever seen have a serious case of confirmation bias. They went looking for more missing women to connect to Jennifer Gold so they could meet the quota for bringing in the big guns, but we’re not sure they properly investigated the ones they got. If you need something to fit in a round hole, you’re not going to stick on some edges, now, are you?”
“I’m sorry.” Lucy frowned. “I don’t really...”
“What if,” Jack said, leaning forward, “they could solve one of the cases right now? What if they have enough circumstantial evidence to make a case?”
“Which one?”
“Tana Meehan,” Jack said.
Lucy’s throat was suddenly bone dry. “So... are you saying... Roland Kearns...?”
Jack held up his hands. “I’mnot saying anything. That’s just what I’m hearing. That’s what we’re digging into right now. That they don’t want to charge Roland Kearns with his ex-wife’s murder because that’ll be the end of Operation Tide’s bottomless budget, and it’ll therefore make it—they say—more difficult to solve the other two. Or three, potentially, if you include Lena. We think we have a Garda source who’ll go on the record for us on that.”
Lucy thought about the hope she’d felt surge in her chest the day Denise had first come to the house, said a glass of tap water would be fine, thank you, and then told them about Nicki’s case being upgraded and joined with the two others under the remit of Operation Tide. It had felt like the answers were not only there all of a sudden, but within her grasp. But what had they learned since then?
Absolutely nothing.
It hadn’t made any difference at all.
“And,” Jack said quietly, “I know what Lena told the paramedics. Whatelseshe told them. Do you want to know?”
Ofcourseshe wanted to know.
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“You sure? It might be upset—”
“Just tell me.”
“I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “And not just because I’m trying to convince you to do this. Some of the information... Well, we haven’t made a decision yet on whether we’re going to report it. But I will say this. Lena was in a nightdress that neither her parents nor boyfriend recognized, one of those long cotton ones, so someone had given her clothing since she’d disappeared. And she kept saying something about a pink house.Thepink house. She repeated it, over and over. That’s what the boys in blue are out searching for as we speak.”
A pink house, in the Wicklow Mountains? Surely the guards could find that. The area was huge, yes, but how many actual homes were there?
And how many of them were pink?
Hope bloomed in Lucy’s chest and took off surging through her body.
Finally, something tangible. Something that might actually bring this nightmare to an end.
“Look, Lucy. I’ll level with you, OK?” Jack was standing up now, collecting his sunglasses from the top of the tea chest. “I want this interview because it’ll make fucking great TV, and that’ll make me look fucking great. But if this is all out in the open, if Operation Tide’s shit is exposed for all to see... It could change everything. It could break open this case. These cases. Which maybe aren’t connected at all. Which might get solved if that didn’t matter.”
