Page 64 of The Trap by Catherine
He was alone in every single one of them.
She scanned a second time, just to be sure, but no: there wasn’t a single one of him and Caroline together, or of him with anyone else.
And then she saw why that was.
Every single photo was a crop.Roland’s arm or shoulder or head ended abruptly in every one of them. He had been cut out of larger photos, separated from other people. Several of the shots had disembodied arms or hands belonging to someone else, and in some of them strands of red hair were visible at the edges.
Tana Meehan had had red hair.
Angela knew that from her official photo.
She backed out of the room, back into the hall—still empty—and got out her phone again. With shaking fingers, not from fear but from adrenaline, she sent Denise a second text.Get here SOS something very wrong.
Then she held up the phone, zoomed in and took a picture of the world’s oddest gallery wall, and sent that to Denise as well.
“Is everything all right?”
Angela turned toward the voice.
Caroline was standing further down the hall, outside the living room.
Watching her.
“Um, yeah,” Angela said, slipping her phone into a pocket. She smiled. “All good.”
How long had Caroline been standing there? Long enough to see Angela send a text message, or long enough to see her take a photo of the inexplicable room devoted to weird pictures of her missing friend’s ex-husband?
“Reception can be a bit patchy here,” Caroline said, her expression unreadable. She waved a hand toward the living room. “Shall we?”
* * *
Angela explained what she needed Caroline to do in as much detail as she could. She took her through each element individually: the letter that she could send to each shop; the list of shops; and the possibility of sharing some sort of appeal on, say, Facebook, aimed at any members of the public who had come across personal items in charity-shop finds that they may not have reported to the Gardaí yet. She talked about a timeline, about the order in which these things should be done. She even told Caroline why they were doing this, although she shouldn’t be telling anyone anything about Kerry Long and her personal items surfacing in a donated handbag.
But even so, by the time she’d done all that, Denisestillhadn’t arrived.
And Angela was running out of ideas.
“Would you like to read the letter?” she asked, taking out her phone.
Caroline shrugged. “You can just email it to me. I’ll read it later.”
Angela surreptitiously checked the screen to see if Denise had texted—no—before she put her phone away again. She had to hope that that was because she was too busy driving here really,reallyfast.
“Thanks so much for this.” Angela smiled gratefully—she hoped. “We’re doing everything we can to find out what happened to Tana and the other women. I really appreciate—”
“Didn’t sound like it,” Caroline said. “Tonight, on the news.”
They fell into a silence.
Maybe nothing was actually wrong here. Maybe Angela could quit this excruciating stalling and go. Maybe sheshould.
She made a mental inventory of all the things about Caroline that just weren’t adding up. The woman had behaved oddly, initially not wanting to let Angela into her house. She said she was engaged but wore no ring, and Angela hadn’t seen any male products in the bathroom, although she hadn’t thought to look for them either. Caroline had some weird shrine to Roland Kearns, the ex-husband of her friend who’d gone missing. Who Angela just happened to be the last person to have seen alive. Kearns had said she was unhinged, obsessed with him. She had infiltrated the families.
What did it all mean? Did it mean anything?
Angela didn’t know.
But she knew she couldn’t leave just in case it meantsomething.
