The drive up to Farranstown House provided a view of the churning black waters of Lough Cullion in the distance.

When she stepped out of the car, Lottie held onto the roof to steady herself against the rising swirl of wind. With waterlogged pebbles crunching beneath her boots, she reached the door of the eighteenth-century country manor ahead of Boyd. She dragged down on the worn piece of twine, ringing the ancient brass bell.

‘This is how the other half lives,’ Boyd whispered as they stood on the cracked concrete step, shielding themselves from the tempest.

‘Looks a bit sad,’ Lottie said, and pulled the string again.

‘I’m coming! I’m coming.’ The door swung inwards and a woman, bent double, her head almost touching her knees, appeared. ‘You youngsters have no patience. None whatsoever.’

Restraining herself from stooping down to the woman’s level, Lottie introduced herself and Boyd.

‘Can we have a few words please, Mrs Belfield?’

‘The name is Kitty. And where is that lovely young man who was here the other day? Did you not bring him with you?’

‘He’s busy,’ Lottie said, realising that Kitty was talking about Kirby.

‘Come in so. He loved my bacon and cabbage. A great chat he was. Don’t get many round here to talk to nowadays. Sorry about the cold. I usually don’t put down a fire until seven.’ She led the way inside.

It was colder inside than out. The wide stone-floored hall, naked of any adornments, gave way to a large high-ceilinged living room. The walls were dressed in hanging tapestries depicting long-ago battles, and the ceiling, decorated with alabaster coving, seemed to creak with the weight of the upper level. Two couches that had once been upholstered in black leather, now stripped to their lining, were the only furniture in front of the vast cast-iron fireplace. A couple of logs sat in the grate with rolled-up sheets of newspaper protruding.

‘Sit down,’ Kitty said. ‘I can’t see you when you’re standing up. Scoliosis of the spine has me crippled. I won’t offer tea, because it isn’t teatime, so let’s be hearing what you have to say for yourselves.’

‘It’s about Tessa Ball,’ Lottie began.

‘Well, it’s hardly about the weather, young lady. What do you want to know about Tessa that you haven’t heard from your friend Larry?’

‘Larry?’ Boyd frowned.

‘Kirby,’ Lottie whispered.

‘Lovely young man – I’d say he’s a right hit with the ladies.’

‘You’d be correct there,’ Boyd said.

‘About Tessa,’ Lottie insisted. ‘We know she worked in partnership with your husband. Was there anything she might have been involved in that could have resulted in her murder?’

‘As a solicitor, Tessa would have dealt with a lot of ordinary folk, but she’d also have dealt with unsavoury characters. I’m sure there’s a list of people out there who were only too glad to hear she’d kicked the bucket.’

‘The files that were stolen from the office. You told Detective… Larry that they related to a case involving a woman called Carrie King who tried to burn down her home. Can you tell me anything else about that?’

Kitty turned up her nose and folded her arms as best she could around her shrunken frame. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. The words were out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. He is very disarming, that young man.’

‘We are interested in hearing the story.’

‘There is no story.’

‘Tell me about your husband’s business.’ Lottie tried to sidetrack Kitty before the woman clammed up totally.

‘I wasn’t allowed near the business. My role was to look after this monstrosity of a house. Left to my husband by a grateful client, if you can believe that. Back then, property was currency. I don’t know what type of characters he and Tessa dealt with, but I’m sure criminal elements were involved.’

‘And Carrie King. What was all that about?’

Kitty appeared to hesitate, though it was hard to see the old woman’s face.

‘I know nothing about her. Tessa dealt with that. Stan gave me the impression he was put out by it. But he let Tessa run the show.’

‘The files that were stolen. I suppose there were no copies kept.’

‘You suppose correctly, Inspector.’

‘And no one was ever apprehended.’

‘No one.’

‘Do you know why Tessa would have had a gun in her home?’

‘A gun?’ The old lady clutched a hand to her chest, catching her nylon blouse in a fist.

Lottie ploughed on. ‘It was an old Webley and Scott revolver. Used mainly by the Special Branch in the seventies. And by the IRA when they could get their hands on them.’

‘That’s another story,’ Boyd said.

‘Tessa,’ Kitty said, ‘wasn’t all sugar and spice. She was tough. A woman before her time, if I was to quote a cliché. Today, I think she would have made president. A crooked one, but she’d have made it.’

‘Crooked? How?’

‘She was in cahoots with a guard. And her brother thought he was Casanova. Ended up mucking out cow dung on a bankrupt farm.’

‘Brother?’ Lottie felt the cold wind whining down the chimney and rustling the newspaper in the grate. A shock of soot fell out onto the threadbare mat at her feet.

‘Well, it was said they were brother and sister but I suspect there may have been something more between those two. Too close for comfort they were.’

‘Is it Mick O’Dowd you’re referring to?’ Boyd asked.

‘It is. Put his hand up my dress once. First and last time he did it.’ Kitty patted her pleated tweed skirt down over her knee.

‘Tessa owned a lot of property and signed a cottage over to O’Dowd. Would you know about that?’

‘No. But like I said, property was currency.’

‘We can’t find Mick O’Dowd. Is there anywhere he would go to hide?’ Lottie said.

‘How would I know?’ Kitty sniffed indignantly, turning up her already wrinkled nose. At last Lottie could see her face, and noticed the old woman’s eyes blazing a cold shade of blue.

‘Just thought I’d ask.’

Kitty said, ‘But it was odd when Tessa had Marian.’

‘Odd how?’ Lottie leaned closer as the old woman’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘The child was the spitting image of O’Dowd. Something was going on between those two, mark my words.’

‘But…’ Pausing, Lottie tried to line up her thoughts. ‘I thought O’Dowd might have been in a relationship with Carrie King.’

‘O’Dowd got himself into a relationship with any woman willing to spread her legs for him. Pardon my vulgarity, but it’s the truth.’

‘What can you remember about Carrie King?’ Lottie wondered if Kitty had the same recollections as Buzz Flynn.

‘Carrie was a lost soul, God love her.’ Kitty shook her head and stared at the lifeless fire. ‘She abused herself and she allowed others to abuse her. Locked up in the asylum eventually. But she wasn’t mad. No, Carrie was plain sad. She’d stand outside the post office on a Friday, when the old lads would be picking up their pensions, looking for pennies to buy drink. Turned to prostitution in the end, poor girl.’

‘Where did she come from? Was she from Ragmullin?’

‘How would I know? God himself only knows where Carrie hailed from. She arrived one day, probably off the Dublin train. Wherever she came from, Ragmullin didn’t welcome her.’ Kitty seemed to swallow a sob.

‘You seem to have a lot of sympathy for her. Did you do anything to help?’ Boyd said. Lottie threw him a look telling him to shut up. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Carrie was beyond help.’

‘You knew her personally?’

‘I didn’t know her. Made her acquaintance… once. She crawled on her hands and knees up that avenue out there… on a day not unlike today.’ Kitty was staring at the window. ‘Wind and rain. It was Halloween. I don’t remember the year, but it was awful miserable. We didn’t have all the razzmatazz you get nowadays. The only pumpkin we knew about was a turnip. Well, she looked like a turnip that day. Ready to pop out a baby.’

‘Why did she come here?’

Kitty turned and lifted her head as far as it would go. Lottie recoiled. A shot of venom would have been less poisonous.

‘How would I know?’ the old woman said. ‘She fell through the front door when I opened it. Walked the whole way from town, she had. Nearly two miles in the rain. How she didn’t die of pneumonia, I’ll never know. I hauled her in – I was forty years younger than I am today, and a lot straighter too – got her onto that very couch you’re sitting on now, and boiled the kettle for a cup of tea. I thought she was drunk or high, or maybe both. She was spouting gibberish. I can’t recall it now, but every sentence contained the words “Tessa” and “bitch”. I telephoned Stan and told him to get himself home.’

Kitty stopped speaking and Lottie tried to envisage what had happened. She knew she was dealing with something very dark.

‘Stan sent Tessa here instead,’ Kitty continued. ‘The screams. The screeches that young woman howled when she saw Tessa walk into this room. I can tell you, I still hear them when I go to bed at night. The lights flickered and the fire almost died in the grate. It was like the devil himself had entered my house and all the inhabitants of hell were on his heels.’

‘Jesus,’ Boyd said.

‘No, there was no Jesus nor God here that evening. Only evil. I can tell you this… Carrie was terrified of Tessa Ball. So terrified, she flung herself off that couch, crawled to the fire and tried to throw herself into it.’

Lottie watched Kitty intently, hanging on her every word.

‘What did Tessa do?’

‘Tessa was so cold hearted it’s a wonder she didn’t douse the fire with her words alone. She walked over there,’ Kitty pointed to the fireplace, ‘lifted the poker and threatened to beat the baby out of Carrie if she didn’t get up on her feet.’

Lottie tried to imagine the then thirty-five-year-old Tessa Ball turning into this demonic individual as painted by Kitty. A woman who in later years kept a prayer to St Anthony pinned to her bedside locker with a Bible resting atop. ‘Did you try to help?’

‘I was as terrified as poor Carrie. I helped her up, her babies straining to escape her womb. She screamed and Tessa dragged her out to her car. That was the last I ever saw of her.’

‘Surely, as a concerned citizen, you should have reported the incident to the authorities?’

‘Authorities? Young lady, this was the early seventies. Everyone was in everyone else’s pocket. The priests and nuns ruled the roost. The guards were as twisted as the priests and the health boards had crooked people in every organisation you could think of. That girl was destined for a mother-and-baby home, or the asylum. I don’t know which was the lesser of the two evils, but she ended up in the asylum.’

‘I heard she was released at one stage, and committed again after trying to burn down a house.’

‘Mmm… I heard that too. But I don’t know the story behind it.’ She folded her arms, twitched her nose and set her mouth in a straight line. ‘I only know that when Stan came home that day and I told him what had happened, he told me to forget all about it. Never repeat it to a sinner, he said. And I never did. I’m only telling you because Stan is no longer around to know and now Tessa is dead too. And you’re not a sinner, are you, Inspector? So no harm done.’

Kitty leaned over and, with the aid of a walking stick, stood up, still doubled over. Lottie wondered if perhaps the old lady had paid with her health for not helping the young woman who had come to her door seeking refuge.

‘I still don’t understand why Carrie came all the way out here in the bad weather you’ve described. Why would she do that?’

‘I ask myself that question quite often. And I don’t like the answer I come up with.’

‘And what answer is that?’

‘That perhaps my Stan was one of those men who took advantage of her.’

‘Surely not,’ Lottie said.

‘This was a town of secrets. Open secrets. People knew everything and said nothing.’

Lottie knew only too well how the town worked. And she didn’t like it one bit.

‘I felt sorry for Carrie that day,’ Kitty said, her voice cracking. ‘Mainly because of her helplessness, but also because of her fear. But she made her own bed, as they say, and she had to lie in it, even if it did turn out to be in a padded cell in the asylum.’

‘I heard that one of her children was placed in the asylum too. I didn’t think that could happen.’

‘I know nothing about that.’ Kitty shuddered and gripped the mantelpiece for support. ‘But those were different times. Back then, children who were not wanted were put in any damn place an adult pleased.’

Lottie put out her hand to steady the old woman, who brushed away the help and flicked a long plastic flint. As the newspaper in the grate ignited, sparks shot out and a flame took hold. Another snarl of wind sent more soot trickling down the chimney. A gust appeared to shake the house to its roots. Should she ask the question or let it die? It would fester if she didn’t ask.

‘One last question,’ she said. ‘You mentioned Tessa was in cahoots with a guard. What were they involved in?’

‘Let me think.’ Picking up the poker, Kitty thrust it into the grate, moving the logs about. ‘The two of them eventually signed Carrie’s life away.’

Holding her breath for a moment, Lottie exhaled as she said, ‘What was his name?’

‘Detective Inspector Parker, are you sure you want me to answer that question?’ Two crystal eyes shot a look at her.

‘Yes,’ Lottie said.

‘I think you already know the answer,’ Kitty said and replaced the poker in the companion set. ‘Sometimes knowing is worse than not knowing. Can you understand that?’

‘I’m not sure, Kitty. I’m honestly not sure of anything.’

‘Well then, my dear, I think I’ve said all that I’m going to say. I’ll show you out.’