He spoke softly to her. “Bob has to go back to his children, to his home. That must happen, Mary. You understand that, don’t you?”

All hope leached from her face and she started to cry quietly as if she’d lost him all over again.

Amanda’s smile had faded. “Why are you being nice to her?”

But Derek ignored her and took Mary gently away by the hand. “Come on, let me call someone for you.”

“Phyllis,” I suggested. “Call Phyllis.”

He nodded and they left. And then there was just Amanda, Molloy and me, standing in a white corridor with a buzzing light, watching them both walk out of view.

Amanda’s voice cut through the silence. “Moves fast for a man with only one leg, doesn’t he?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

“THANK YOU FOR that,” Molloy said as we hurried out of the hospital. I think we both wanted to get away from Amanda Jameson as quickly as possible. “Turns out there are times when it’s handy to have a solicitor around.”

“That’s okay,” I said distractedly.

I was thinking about clothes. Specifically, the suit that Amanda was wearing. I’d remarked on it before, the number and range of clothes that she’d packed for a weekend watching a charity cycle. I now knew that this was because her intention had been to leave permanently with Bob and the boys from Derry and that she’d packed accordingly. But someone else had packed more than he needed. Derek. When Amanda had made the crack about Derek’s leg, I’d looked at his feet and had a flashback to the hiking boots he’d worn that day we’d gone out to Mamore. It hadn’t hit me at the time, but why would you need to bring boots on a cycle? Surely you wouldn’t pack anything you didn’t absolutely need. And hiking boots were heavy items.

Molloy’s voice broke into my thoughts. He was also thinking about Derek. “So, Derek Jameson has only one leg. Was that something you knew?”

Before I could respond, my phone buzzed with a text from Leah. Where are you? and I checked the time. It was quarter past three and I still hadn’t come back after lunch. It was no wonder she was chasing me.

Molloy said he’d drop me back at the office.

There was no sign of the Burns family when we left the hospital. I didn’t know what the sisters’ car looked like but there was no sign of Jude’s bike either. Jude Burns had lied, if not actively, then certainly by omission. But had I lost my chance to find out what they knew?

We were waiting to pull out onto the main road when Molloy suddenly exhaled, leaning forward over the steering wheel to get a better look. “That’s quite a sight!”