In daylight, St Angela’s had lost its sinister ambiance. It was only a rambling old building with doors and windows. But Lottie knew it shielded the secrets of horrific brutality behind its concrete and stone. She’d read the insanity in Cornelius Mohan’s faded notebook and followed the story in James Brown’s envelope. She’d discovered the cover-up in the Rome ledgers. And witnessed its legacy reincarnated last night. For what? Torn lives and damaged souls. Bodies buried but the living carrying the burden. That’s how she’d felt at Adam’s grave a few short days ago. Now she fully understood what she’d been thinking then and a crushing sadness settled in her heart.

Taking a deep breath, she walked over to the figure leaning against a scarred, bare tree.

‘They did a good job of saving the rest of it,’ Father Joe said, nodding toward the building.

The site was almost deserted. The fire crews had rolled up their hoses, slid ladders on top of truck roofs and departed from the site. A couple of gardaí manned fluttering crime scene tapes. Burning stench hung in the air, but the smoke was gone and smouldering embers remained. The chapel walls were singed black, windows shattered, the roof caved in. But the main structure of St Angela’s endured, unscathed.

‘Pity the whole place didn’t burn to the ground,’ he added.

‘What are you doing here?’ Lottie pulled down her hood to get a better look at him.

‘I felt drawn to it. After all the lies.’

‘Joe . . .’ she began.

‘Don’t, Lottie. Don’t say anything.’

He pushed away from the tree. She placed her hand on his arm.

‘Did you see any sign of a vagrant? Patrick O’Malley. We’re looking for him.’

‘Just the place for vagrancy,’ he said. ‘Bishop Connor is nosing around.’

Lottie beckoned to Boyd. Lynch and Kirby brought up the rear.

‘Bishop Connor is here,’ she said. ‘O’Malley must be too. Spread out and look for them,’ she said. ‘Not you, Boyd. You look like you’re about to faint.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, averting his eyes from Lottie holding on to the priest’s sleeve.

She dropped her hand, shrugged her shoulders and headed into the walled, snow-covered orchard, outside the cordoned-off area. Boyd trudged behind her, Father Joe at his side. Lynch and Kirby crossed the frozen lawn and hurried left around the back of St Angela’s.

It was Lottie’s first time inside the small orchard enclosure. In the lifeless winter it was barren, trees shredded bare, the ground swathed in a white sheet of purity. She truly believed there was nothing pure in this place. Evil stalked every crevice in its walls and bodies lay uneasy in unmarked graves. She glanced upwards at the window, where three sets of terrified eyes had witnessed atrocities no child should have to observe or comprehend.

Shadows spread at the base of the trees and the sun struggled to find its place low in the grey afternoon sky. At the furthest corner of the orchard, she saw them. Two figures. Silhouetted marionettes, twirling around each other, leaving streaked snow in their wake.

She put a finger to her lips and inched forward.

The puppets ceased their dancing, interrupted by birds fleeing as a flock from the branches.

O’Malley swung round and looked directly into her eyes. Blood poured from his cheek and a blue nylon rope lay useless around his neck.

Bishop Terence Connor turned slowly and dropped the other end of the rope.

‘It’s all over, Bishop Connor,’ Lottie said. She wondered at his audacity to attempt committing a crime metres from gardaí. He must surely be mad.

‘Over?’ Bishop Connor shouted. ‘Over? Not yet.’ He stood with his arms reaching to the heavens. ‘It is over when my God tells me.’

‘You’re finished.’ Father Joe stepped up beside Lottie.

‘You!’ the bishop exploded, pointing his finger towards the priest. ‘You are the cause of this.’

‘Me? You’re insane,’ Father Joe said, voicing Lottie’s thoughts. ‘All those people are dead. For what? To cover up St Angela’s abusive past?’ He opened his hands, palms upwards. ‘How could your God could allow this?’

‘My God? He is your God too.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Father Joe tore his clerical collar from his neck and flung it into the snow, where it blended with the whiteness.

‘Blasphemy. I did all this for you,’ Connor roared.

O’Malley started toward him. Lottie silently urged him to move away from Connor. She remained by Father Joe’s side. Boyd edged forward, nearer to O’Malley. The vagrant knelt in the deep snow, bloodied and unmoving.

‘She was your mother, you know,’ Bishop Connor said, a smile slowly creasing his face in a sinister mask. ‘Susan Sullivan.’

Father Joe lurched forward, hands outstretched to grab the other man’s throat. ‘You’re the lowest of the low,’ he screamed.

Lottie grabbed the tail of his coat before he touched Connor.

‘Susan Sullivan,’ Bishop Connor repeated, taking a step backwards. ‘Yes, Joe, you are her son. She never found out. I sent the records away to Rome, having first altered them. I put out a false trail. Father Angelotti helped there, unwittingly I might add. Once that Susan Sullivan started her meddling, I knew she would stop at nothing to uncover the truth. I only wanted to protect you.’

‘You’re lying,’ Father Joe cried.

Lottie’s heart shattered into little pieces for him. The only time he had had contact with his mother was the day he was born and the day she died when he had administered the last rites as she lay at his feet.

‘You are the bastard son of a paedophile priest and a girl barely out of childhood.’

‘Liar,’ Father Joe whispered, shaking his head, trying to make the vision disappear, but Lottie knew it would remain with him forever.

‘I would’ve known by my birth certificate if I was adopted.’ His voice was broken, a million pieces of shattered glass.

‘Back then,’ Connor sneered, ‘the nuns, Father Con and I, we made sure there was no time-wasting with adoption certificates. With the babies we dealt with, their birth certificates appeared to be the genuine article but we maintained details of the original births in ledgers.’ He tried to move forward, but his feet sank deeper into the snow.

‘You changed the reference numbers,’ Lottie said. ‘Why?’

‘Because I could. And because Susan Sullivan wanted to know who and where her bastard child was. I had to protect him.’

‘Why kill Father Angelotti?’ Lottie asked, stalling him.

‘Because Angelotti was going to reveal the truth, once he’d discovered his mistake. He had realised the records had been changed so he organised a meeting with Brown to get him to talk to Susan. Of course I offered to drive him to see how things would pan out. Brown never showed and I took my chance. I had hoped Brown would get the blame. Unfortunately the weather didn’t help there.’

Father Joe shook his head again. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’

‘It’s a fact. I lived my life for you. I spared you in St Angela’s all those years ago. I placed you with a good family. Spent my life covering up for the Church.’

‘And you covered up a boy’s murder,’ Lottie said.

‘I did what I had to do,’ Bishop Connor said. Suddenly his shoulders drooped.

Lottie knew he had lost his fight.

‘Why kill Susan and James?’ she asked.

‘They were blackmailing me. Wanted to expose the secrets I’d worked all my life to keep buried. I had to stop them. I couldn’t afford it any more.’ He laughed cynically. ‘If I had known Susan Sullivan was already dying of cancer perhaps none of this would have been necessary.’

Convinced she was staring into the eyes of the devil himself, Lottie said, ‘You concealed the abuse of children. You moved Father Cornelius Mohan around, allowing him to commit further abuse in new parishes. Babies, never making it out the door of this place, throwing them into unmarked graves. A young boy beaten to death behind these walls and unceremoniously buried here.’ She waved her hand around the enclosure. ‘Somewhere.’

‘You can’t prove anything.’ His eyes challenged her.

Lottie held his stare, counted to nineteen before he looked away. Lynch and Kirby, weapons drawn, unnecessarily, took up positions along the wall behind the bishop and O’Malley.

‘And why does one boy’s death matter so much to you, Inspector Parker?’

‘It matters to everyone,’ Father Joe said. ‘Especially to those you murdered to keep things secret.’

Lottie pulled at his sleeve to shut him up.

‘You are a discredit to the collar you wear,’ Bishop Connor spat.

‘No, I’m not,’ Father Joe said. ‘But you are.’ He inched forward. Lottie pulled him back.

O’Malley broke from Boyd’s grip, leaped upwards and lunged at Connor’s shoulders, knocking him into the snow. Lottie hauled up Connor as Boyd grabbed O’Malley.

‘I saw you with my own eyes,’ O’Malley said, blood spluttering from his mouth. ‘From those windows up there. Me and Susan and James. We saw you throw poor Fitzy in a hole under a tree.’ He pointed wildly around the orchard. ‘And you’d been in the chapel. We’d seen you do nothing when he screamed and cried. Brian and Father Con beat him until he was stripped bare of his skin and what did you do? Absolutely nothing. You could’ve stopped it.’

Boyd dragged O’Malley away from his tormentor.

‘You murdering bastard,’ O’Malley shouted at Connor. ‘But you didn’t get me.’

Lottie snapped handcuffs on Connor. All his arrogance had disappeared, leaving a dead blackness in his eyes.

‘My brother,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Eddie Fitzpatrick. What did you do to him?’

‘Buried him. What else could I do with his broken body?’ He scanned the orchard with a swift head movement. ‘Here. Somewhere here.’

Lottie slapped him hard across the face. He didn’t flinch. If anything, his eyes dimmed, murky shadows clouding them over.

‘Your family abandoned that boy,’ he sneered. ‘Your father shot himself with a bullet through his mouth; your mother threw a grieving ten year old behind these walls and walked away. And you . . . you . . .’

‘I was four,’ Lottie murmured.

‘And why did your mother do that? The lovely upstanding Catholic Rose Fitzpatrick. I’ll tell you why. Because your brother was a thieving, good-for-nothing tearaway. And the widow couldn’t stand the added shame of the boy ruining her life. So she had him locked away.’

‘Shut up,’ Lottie cried.

‘Ask her, you ask her.’

Lottie’s tears dampened her cheeks and a soft flutter of snow fell to earth. His words had hammered home things never spoken aloud in her family. Things her mother should have told her. And she still wasn’t sure if she’d found what she had lost all those years ago.

Boyd’s hand slipped into hers.