Page 86 of The Trap by Catherine
Not in this heat.
“How about over there?” Baseball Cap said, pointing. One of those all-in-one picnic-table-and-chairs was just visible on the other side of the oak’s trunk.
In the shade, Angela noted. Thank God.
Nicki shot Baseball Cap a murderous look.
“Great,” Denise said. “Thank you.” Then, to Nicki, “Shall we?”
Baseball Cap whispered something to her that sounded likejust talk to themand she rolled her eyes and started stalking away, toward the table, exhaling loudly, like a sulking teenager who’s heading upstairs to slam their bedroom door and blast early Metallica albums.
“She’ll be fine,” he said to them, apologetic. “She’s just... It’s already been a bit of a day here, you know?”
Angela nodded, even though she knew that whatever had happened before they’d arrived would be completely forgotten by the time they left. It wouldn’t matter a damn. And Nicki O’Sullivan was never going to be fine again. She didn’t know it yet, but she was in the final moments of the last truly good time in her entire life. However she felt now, whatever mood she was in, whatever life was like for her here, in this place—it was a peak. A high point. The crest of a great wave. All that was waiting on the other side was a descent into hell.
And they were the ones who were going to have to push her into it.
Denise and Angela set off across the grass, which was littered with parched leaves and rotting acorns, and joined Nicki at the table, taking seats side by side, opposite her.
“Obviously,” Nicki said, folding her arms, “I’m not missing. And I’m not leaving here, OK? You can tell her that.”
“This won’t take long.” Denise had taken out her notebook and began to read from it now. “Nicki, your sister, Lucy, filed a missing person report on the fourteenth of June last year. She told Gardaí she hadn’t seen you or had any contact with you since you’d left your home two nights before, on Saturday the twelfth, to meet friends in town. She said you were living at the same address with her and your boyfriend, Chris, who also was concerned he had had no contact with you. When Lucy contacted the friends you’d been with in the—it was the Duke, wasn’t it?—they told her you’d left without saying goodbye and that they hadn’t seen or heard from you either.”
Nicki looked surprised. “Luce contacted myfriends?”
“Your phone was found discarded in a laneway,” Denise continued, “near the Duke, having suffered significant damage. You were captured on CCTV moving along Duke Street toward Grafton Street, but after that, cameras were unable to pick you up again. You left your passport at home and you never touched your bank account.” She stopped to flip the notebook to a fresh page. “Nicki, can you tell us what happened between you leaving the pub that night and you arriving here?”
Silence.
Then Nicki said, “CCTV?”
Denise nodded. “Yes.”
“And you... Someone looked at mybank account?”
“We investigated your disappearance, Nicki. The Gardaí did. There was concern that you may have come to harm.”
“What?Why?”
“Because your sister didn’t know where you were,” Denise said evenly, “and she had no way of contacting you.”
At this, Nicki rolled her eyes.
“Let’s go back to that night,” Denise said. “To your phone. Is there anything you can tell us about that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you put the phone there, or...?”
Now Nicki looked genuinely confused. “How else would it have got there?”
“So you did?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“Can you tell us why you discarded your phone?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to be able to contact me, obviously.”
