Authors: Graham Masterton
‘At the moment, Superintendent, any time is a bad time, as I’m sure you can understand,’ said Aileen. ‘But come in anyway.’
‘I can come back tomorrow if it’s better for you,’ said Katie.
‘No, no, since you’re here. You can’t make things any worse.’
She opened the door wider so that Katie could step inside. She was a dark-haired, bosomy woman of about forty-five and she had been eye-wateringly over-generous with the Estée Lauder Beautiful. She was wearing a black wool dress that was a size too small for her, so that Katie could see where her midriff bulged over the top of her tights. Her face was puffy, probably from too many years of vodka cocktails, but Katie guessed that she must have once been just as pretty as Roisin.
Inside, the Begley house was plain and minimalist, with white leather couches and revolving armchairs, and sparkling chandeliers made of triangles of glass. On one living-room wall hung a large landscape by the Cork artist Maurice Desmond, the top half a lurid blue and the bottom half sludgy brown. On the facing wall hung a large crucifix, and Katie couldn’t help thinking of Saint Gemma levitating into the air to drink the blood of Christ from the wound in His side.
‘I wanted to offer my condolences to you and your husband on behalf of the Garda,’ said Katie. ‘Is your husband here?’
‘He’ll be down directly,’ said Aileen. ‘Can I get you a drink at all?’
‘No, thank you, I’m grand altogether,’ Katie told her, but noticed Aileen glancing towards a cut-glass tumbler on one of the side tables with ice cubes and a slice of lemon in it. ‘But, please, don’t let me stop you. This must have been a terrible time for you. Roisin was the only child you had living at home, wasn’t she?’
‘That’s right. We have two sons, Darragh and Coileán. Darragh’s in Dubai just now, working for a construction company, and Coileán’s at UCC, studying architecture. They both take after their father, thank God.’
‘And Roisin? Who did she take after?’
‘God knows. That girl, may she rest in peace. It’s not right to speak ill of the dead, I know that, but she was trouble from the very moment she was born. Jim used to wonder if we’d offended the Lord in some way that we weren’t aware of, to be burdened with a child like her.’
At that moment they heard Jim Begley coming down the stairs. He walked into the living room in a cloud of cigar smoke, like a demon making his entrance in a pantomime.
‘I thought I heard the front door,’ he said, in a harsh, phlegmy voice.
‘This is Detective Superintendent Maguire, Jim,’ said Aileen. ‘She’s very kindly come to offer her condolences.’
Jim was a tall, heavily built man with a wave of white hair. Everything about him seemed larger than a normal human being. He had a huge, long face with deep-set eyes and a lantern jaw, and there was a cleft in the end of his nose. He was wearing a light-grey Adidas tracksuit top and white trackie bottoms, almost a parody of the millionaire property developer relaxing at home. When he held out his hand to Katie, she could see that he was wearing a massive gold ring with a crest on it.
‘It’s good of your to take the trouble,’ he said. ‘We’re holding the funeral mass at St Joseph’s on Thursday. It’ll be a quiet affair, under the circumstances. Close family only.’
‘None of her school friends? She was very popular at school, I understand.’
‘Yes, but suicide. Self-murder is a mortal sin and there was a time when we couldn’t have held a mass at all. As for inviting her school friends, I didn’t consider that at all appropriate. They’d be weeping and wailing and saying what an angel she was. A funeral isn’t a time to eulogize the dead. It’s a time to worship Christ’s victory over death and to console those left behind.’
‘We don’t yet have definitive proof that Roisin took her own life, Mr Begley. That’s another reason I’ve come to see you today.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Jim. He sucked at his cigar until the end glowed red and then blew a long stream of smoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘She was ashamed of giving evidence in court about prostituting herself and so she drowned herself in the river. What more proof do you need than that?’
‘Do you mind if we sit down?’ said Katie.
‘Help yourself,’ said Jim and pointed to one of the armchairs. When Katie had perched herself on the edge of the seat, he lowered himself on to the couch next to her, with his belly in his lap, tapping his cigar ash into a large glass ashtray. Aileen retrieved her drink and took a sip of it, and then another, and then sat down on the other end of the couch, keeping her distance from him.
‘So, what’s the problem?’ asked Jim.
‘The note that was found under Roisin’s pillow, that’s the problem.’
‘I don’t see why that should be. She made it perfectly clear that she was mortified by what she’d done and that she wanted to end it all. She wanted to turn out the light, that’s what she wrote.’
‘I agree with you, Mr Begley, that’s what the note said, but the high probability is that Roisin didn’t write it. Our technical experts have examined it and they’re ninety-nine point nine per cent certain that it’s a forgery.’
‘
What
?’ said Aileen. ‘What do you mean, it’s forgery? I found it myself, under her pillow. There was nobody else in the house that night but us. Who else could have written it but Roisin?’
Katie said nothing but looked at Jim and raised her eyebrows. Jim had been about to take another puff of his cigar, but now he lowered it. He turned to look at Aileen and then turned back to face Katie.
‘Jim?’ said Aileen.
Jim ignored her and heaved himself to his feet. He loomed over Katie and said, in that brick-harsh voice, ‘I think you’d best leave, Detective Superintendent.’
‘We’re talking about the death of your daughter, Mr Begley. The unexplained death of your daughter. If you refuse to discuss it now, I shall have to ask you to come down to Anglesea Street Garda Station and answer questions about it there, under caution.’
‘And if I refuse to do that?’
‘Well, I’m very much hoping that you won’t, but if you do, I shall detain you.’
Jim continued to loom over her, breathing hard. The smell of his cigar smoke was so acrid that it made Katie feel as if she had been smoking a cigar herself and she began to feel nauseous. She thought about standing up herself and leaving and sending Detective Dooley around tomorrow to bring Jim in for questioning. But just as she was about to get to her feet, Aileen said, ‘Jim? It wasn’t
you
wrote the note, was it?’
Jim opened and closed his mouth like a huge landed salmon. Then he sat down again and Katie could see that he was trembling.
‘Jim?’ said Aileen. ‘Tell me it wasn’t you. Please, Jim, tell me it wasn’t you.’
‘She was prostituting herself,’ said Jim. ‘Our own daughter. I had to make it look as if she was feeling at least some remorse for bringing so such shame on us.’
‘So you wrote the note?’ asked Katie.
He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘Have you any idea at all what it’s been like, sitting in church every Sunday morning at Mass, and everybody’s eyes on us, and whispering. “That’s the Begleys. You know what their daughter Roisin does for a living? She’s only a hoor!”’
‘One of our oldest friends came up to us and told us that she didn’t know how we had the nerve to come and take communion alongside decent folk.’
He opened his eyes and looked at Katie as if he were asking for understanding, but she could tell that he was still more angry than sorrowful.
I thought I had a beautiful clever daughter and she turned out to be a brasser. What she would have said in court, that would have ruined our reputation for good and all
.
‘Oh, Jim,’ said Aileen and reached across and laid her hand on top of his.
‘Are you satisfied?’ Jim asked Katie. ‘Maybe you can leave now.’
‘You know there’s one more question I have to ask you,’ said Katie. ‘Was it you who drowned her?’
The silence was so total that Katie could almost have believed that she had gone deaf. It was broken only by Aileen making a suppressed mewing sound, like a kitten that had been shut in a cupboard. At last Jim stood up again. His cigar had gone out but he sucked at it all the same.
‘I asked you to leave, Detective Superintendent.’
‘I will at once, if you answer my question.’
‘I don’t have to answer a question like that. Coming from a senior Garda officer like you, that’s an outrage. Don’t you have any idea who I am? I’m a county councillor for Cork City South-East, for one thing. For another thing, I could buy and sell you in the same street.’
Katie stood up. ‘I’m sorry you feel unable to give me a straight answer, Mr Begley. But I think you’re capable of understanding why I had to ask you. I’m not going to take this any further at the moment, but when I get back to the station I’m going to be meeting Detective Dooley, who’s been handling Roisin’s case. We’ll be wanting to talk to you again.’
‘Not without my lawyer,’ said Jim.
‘Not a bother,’ said Katie. ‘I’ll have Detective Dooley ring you to make an appointment.’
Jim was about to say something else, but Aileen stood up and took hold of his arm and shook her head, warning him not to. She showed Katie to the front door. The draught that blew in when she opened it was damp and cold, and they could hear an oil tanker mournfully hooting as it made its way down the river and the dry leaves crackling in the swimming pool.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Katie.
Aileen shrugged, as if to show Katie that she didn’t believe her.
‘I’m sorry you lost Roisin, and there’s something else that I’m sorry about. I may never again get an opportunity to prosecute the man who pimped her and because of that he’s going to go on exploiting scores of other young girls just like Roisin, only they won’t be able to escape from him like she did.’
‘Well, that’s your problem, Detective Superintendent,’ said Aileen. ‘You can’t expect us to sacrifice our family’s good name just because you can’t do your job properly.’
‘Goodnight to you, Mrs Begley,’ Katie told her and left. Aileen closed the front door very quietly behind her.
Katie didn’t leave immediately, though. She stood by the empty swimming pool, listening, and almost at once she heard Aileen shouting and Jim shouting back at her. Their voices grew louder and louder, and it sounded as if Aileen was following Jim from one room to another. Katie heard a crash, and then another crash, and another, and a bump like an armchair tipping over.
Then Aileen screaming, quite distinctly, ‘
How could you
?
How could you
?
She was our
daughter
!
She was our daughter, no matter what
!’
After that she heard Aileen sobbing, then silence. She walked down the sloping driveway back to her car. She felt far more sad than satisfied, although she was almost certain now that she would eventually get a confession. She knew from experience that it was those who had committed criminal acts in the name of righteousness who always ended up feeling the most guilty. Mother O’Dwyer was a prime example. The real criminals like Michael Gerrety never felt a moment’s remorse.
Driving back down Summerhill into the city she saw a young blonde girl waiting to cross the road who looked so much like Roisin that it gave her a prickly feeling of shock. As she crossed over the Brian Boru Bridge, it occurred her that Jim and Aileen Begley would be liable to the same kind of shock whenever they saw a Roisin lookalike, and that would be a life sentence in itself.
She stayed at Anglesea Street until 7.45 p.m., drawing up a plan of action with Superintendent Pearse to arrest Paddy Fearon. If he had been an ordinary suspect, they simply would have sent two uniformed gardaí around to knock on his door and take him into custody.
Paddy Fearon, though, was a prominent figure among the Travellers, which made his arrest much more contentious and political. Not only that, they were going to arrest him at the Spring Lane Halting Site, which because of its condition had been the subject of fierce protests from the Pavee community for years. As Superintendent Pearse said, it would be as sensitive as the American police arresting a black activist in a rundown ghetto.
He looked around at the twenty gardaí assembled in the briefing room and said, ‘No matter what verbal provocation you get from the Travellers – and you know as well as I do that they’ll be giving you an earful – you are not to respond.’
‘What if they start tossing rockers?’ asked one young officer.
‘Then, of course, that’s different. It’s possible that you may have to resort to physical force in order to effect the arrest, or to keep the peace, or to protect yourselves from injury. If you do, though, you must apply only the very minimum force necessary. It doesn’t matter what you think of Travellers, or what kind of a slabbering they give you, they’re human beings, and I don’t want to see you clubbing them like seals.’
‘What time are you planning on going in?’ Katie asked him.
Superintendent Pearse pointed at the map of Ballyvolane spread out on the table. ‘I want everybody assembled at the entrance to the halting site
here
by 07.00 hours sharp. Sunrise is at 07.22 tomorrow and that’s when six officers will enter the site to surround the Fearon caravan and knock on his door. I don’t want us being accused of making the arrest under cover of darkness, even though it should be well light by then, and I don’t want us being accused of going in mob-handed.’
‘And if you get trouble?’
‘If Fearon resists arrest, or if we’re attacked by any of the other residents, we’ll have a further fourteen officers in riot gear waiting out here in the roadway, ready to take immediate action. Now, as far as bringing Fearon back here to Anglesea Street for questioning is concerned – ’
Detective Dooley’s iPhone buzzed. He checked the screen and then he raised one hand and said, ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I’ve just had a text from the press office. Somehow the media have got wind of this.’
‘How in the name of all that’s holy did that happen?’ said Superintendent Pearse. He glared at the gardaí crowded all around him, but all they could do was turn their heads around and look at each other and shrug. ‘That’s absolutely what we
don’t
need, the media! If the Travellers think they’re going to be shown on the telly, they’ll only play up all the more.’