Page 59 of The Trap by Catherine
It was doingsomething.
Until Chris woke up in the middle of the night, found her and the car gone, and freaked the fuck out. She came clean about where she’d been just to stop him shouting at her, and he lost it. She’d had to promise him that she’d never, ever do it again.
But she did.
The last time had been the night before last.On that visit, even though it was closer to dawn than to dusk, all the lights in Roland’s apartment were ablaze. Nervous that he might look out and see her car, she’d doubled back and left it parked in the retail park, outside the Aldi, and walked back to his apartment instead.
“I was...” She wasn’t quite sure how to answer Roland’s question; she didn’t want to antagonize him until he told her what she needed to know. “Making myself feel better.”
“So you do think it was me.”
A statement, not a question.
“You know it can’t be,” he said then.
“I don’t know anything, Roland. That’s the point.”
“I have an alibi.”
“But not for Tana.”
Her heart felt like it was going to beat its way out of her chest, but what was the point of this if she didn’t say what she needed to say?
“But for the others,” Roland said.
His voice was toneless, eerily calm.
“You were watching my interview,” Lucy said. “They may not be connected, all three cases. They’re probably not. The guards may have made a mistake, intentionally or otherwise—”
“Oh, they definitelydid.”
“—and actually, the same guy isn’t responsible for all three. Or four, if you include Lena.”
“Five, if you include what happened down in Enniscorthy.”
Lucy froze, waiting.
But it soon became obvious that he was going to make her ask.
“What happened in Enniscorthy?”
Roland didn’t respond immediately and Lucy got the sickening sense that he was relishing this.
“Denise Pope is your FLO too, isn’t she?” he said. “She stopped by today, and mentioned that she’d been in Wexford, to some place outside Enniscorthy. Made a point of mentioning it. She wanted to know if I’d ever been. After she left, I did a quick bit of googling. Turns out there was a woman who went missing from there back in 2019. Kerry something or other. After what I heard tonight, on your little TV special, I’m thinking that maybe they’re realizing there’s more women gone, and she’s one of them.” He grinned, remembering something. “Oh, and by the way, I told Denise some woman was hanging around outside my place most nights. But I said I suspected it was Caroline O’Callaghan.”
“Caroline?Why?”
“Because I fucking hate that deranged bitch.”
The words dripped with venom, and sent a fresh ripple of fear down Lucy’s spine.
She needed to ask him what she needed to ask him, now, before she completely lost her nerve.
“Look, Roland,” she said. “It’s just us here. Just you and me. And so I’m going to be completely honest: I don’t care if you killed Tana. Honestly, I don’t give a shit. I didn’t know the woman, I don’t know you, it’s nothing to do with me. All I care about is finding out what happened to my sister. To Nicki. That’s it. And right now, you’re all I have. You’re the only suspect in any of these cases. So can you just...?” She stopped, took a deep breath. “Can you justpleasetell me the truth? If you killed Tana, just tell me. I won’t tell anyone. I just need to know. If I know that she isn’t part of this, then I can just move—”
“Stop!” Roland roared suddenly, rising up out of his seat at the same time, morphing into a huge, faceless shadow, looming over her.
Now it was her chair legs that screeched as she pushed herself back, tried to move away, but there was a dip in the floor just behind her and the chair caught there, refusing to go any further.
