‘This place is unbelievable,’ Lottie said.

Shelf after shelf of leather-bound ledgers. History consigned to the back streets of Rome.

Father Joe opened a ledger on the desk. ‘St Angela’s,’ he said.

Lottie breathed deeply, realising she’d been holding her breath. He carefully turned the faded pages until he reached the year he was looking for: 1975. She glanced at him before perusing what had been written, decades before.

Lists. Names, ages, dates, sex. All female.

‘What are we looking at?’ she asked, though she had already guessed.

‘These pages refer to girls placed in St Angela’s in 1975,’ he said. ‘I’ve gone through it but I can’t find a Susan Sullivan anywhere.’

Lottie sat down, turned the leaves, reading through the lists.

‘Here she is,’ she said. ‘Sally Stynes. She changed her name.’ She traced her finger along the row.

‘That’s why I couldn’t find her,’ he said.

‘These are reference numbers,’ she declared. ‘This one, beside Sally’s name, AA113. What does it mean?’

‘It refers to another ledger somewhere here,’ he said. ‘I haven’t found it yet. But look at this.’ He handed her another smaller book.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t believe it. Dates of birth. Dates of death. Joe, they were only babies and little children.’ Lottie scanned the pages, horror choking her.

‘I know,’ he said, quietly.

‘Cause of death – Measles, Cholic, Unknown,’ she read. ‘My God. Where did they bury them?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘It all seems so methodical, impersonal,’ she said. ‘These were people’s children.’

‘I’m not sure it has anything to do with your investigations. The reference number you pointed out, I can’t see it here,’ he said, leaning over her shoulder.

Lottie tried to control her trembling body. Shocking media headlines of dead babies in septic tanks came back to her. It was international news a few years ago. Now her hands held evidence of something similar. Was that why the books had been relocated? She went back to the first ledger he’d shown her.

‘This ledger,’ she said, ‘only lists female admissions. There were boys in St Angela’s.’ She remembered the missing boy’s file, buried in her drawer. Another mystery associated with St Angela’s. She hoped this place might throw some light on it.

‘They’ll be in another ledger. I’ll keep looking. There were so many children in that school over the years,’ he said, pointing to the rows of black spines on the shelves.

‘Don’t call it a school,’ she said, thumping the table, unable to suppress her anger any longer. ‘It was an institution. One that slipped under the radar.’

‘Until now.’ His voice was flat. Resigned.

‘Who is this Father Cornelius who signed each page?’ Lottie asked, diverting her eyes from the tragedy scripted before her. Could he be the Father Con that O’Malley referred to? He must be, she thought.

Father Joe pulled down another ledger from the shelf.

‘You have to see this first,’ he said, opening a page he’d already marked. ‘This set of records is like a tracking device,’ he explained. ‘It lists priests and where they served.’

Lottie took the small ledger and placed it on top of the others with trembling hands. The name headlined the page in neat ink script – Father Cornelius Mohan. The rows beneath it confirmed movement between parishes and dioceses. No reason given for such transfers.

‘Most priests might serve three, maybe four parishes in a lifetime,’ Father Joe said.

‘But there must be twenty, thirty here.’ She ran her finger down the page, counting. Then she turned to the next one. More parishes. She kept on counting.

‘He served in forty-two different parishes throughout the country,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Tells a story doesn’t it,’ he said. A statement, not a question. He paced the confined space.

‘He moved around because of abuse?’ she asked.

‘Doesn’t state it, but priests are not normally shifted from parish to parish in that fashion. I’m sure there are bulging files of allegations on him. Somewhere.’

‘Jesus Christ, his last address is Ballinacloy. That’s not far from Ragmullin,’ Lottie said. ‘Do you know if he’s still alive?’

‘I’m sure I would have heard if he had died, even if he is retired,’ Father Joe said, nodding his head, his shoulders slumped. ‘He must be in his eighties.’

‘Do you know him? Have you met him?’

‘I don’t know him. I was shocked when I discovered this.’

‘Someone manually updated these ledgers?’

‘None of this goes on a computer. Would you want this traced? Not the Catholic Church. It would want this hushed up, hidden and covered up.’

‘Can I make copies?’

‘That’s not allowed.’

Lottie observed him for a moment and his eyes told her what she needed to know. She fingered the phone in her pocket.

‘Didn’t you say you have to use the bathroom?’ she asked.

‘Don’t tear out any pages,’ he said. He knew what she was planning.

‘Thank you.’

‘I’m trusting you.’

Listening to Father Joe slowly climb the staircase, Lottie thought his footsteps sounded heavy with the weight of the sins of his church.

She felt physically ill studying the script, couldn’t read any more, so she quickly photographed the pages with her phone camera. She tried to record as much of the large book as she could. Calculating a grid in her head, she photographed in chronological order; she would piece them together on her own computer. This will not remain hidden, she vowed silently. The names inked on the pages seemed so impersonal, devoid of humanity; she wanted to read each one in her own time. They referenced a life story, a heartbeat and a heartbreak. And she was confident they related to the current murders in Ragmullin. James Brown and Susan Sullivan had spent time together in St Angela’s. And she was sure the connection to their murders was buried somewhere in this dungeon of ledgers.

When she’d finished photographing, she turned her attention to the shelves and scanned the dates inscribed on the dusty spines. Early 1900s up to the 1980s. She doubled back and plucked out a thin, 1970s ledger with references A100 to AA500. She located what she thought to be the relevant pages, hurriedly photographed without reading and returned it to the shelf. She searched for the boys’ ledgers. She discovered them on a bottom shelf, found 1975, photographed each page and returned the ledger to its dusty resting place. She did the same for the first half of 1976. She couldn’t bring herself to read it all now. And she wondered why Father Joe hadn’t just photographed the pages and emailed them to her?

The door opened. Father Joe stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

‘You inferred last night,’ Lottie said, ‘that all this had something to do with Bishop Connor, but I don’t see any evidence here.’

‘Look at the signature at the end of each row of the priest’s movements,’ he instructed.

She did. A spindly scrawl, but there was no doubt whose name it was. Terence Connor.

‘I need to ring Boyd,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘I want him to talk to this Father Cornelius Mohan. He served in Ragmullin parish and was assigned to St Angela’s for three years.’ She looked at her phone. No signal.

‘Let’s get some air,’ she said.

Nausea threatened to overcome her, after what she’d just read. Brushing past Father Joe, taking two steps at a time, she hurried as if the dead had risen from the dusty pages and were following in her footsteps.

Outside, she walked in small circles under a streetlight. The tall buildings, leaning inwards, appeared to be grasping the shadows and throwing them around her like gravel in a sandpit.

‘Will you continue to search the other ledgers for me?’ she asked. ‘See what you can find? I’m sure everything connects to St Angela’s.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Father Joe said. ‘But how can you be sure?’

‘It has to be a cover-up and the mistake Father Angelotti made must have something to do with the reference numbers.’ Lottie tapped her phone. ‘Things are beginning to make some sense.’

She checked the signal and called Boyd.