Authors: Graham Masterton
‘He’s looking in real fine fettle,’ said Dermot. Then, turning to Andy, ‘What’s the craic, boy? Keeping you busy are they, all those adulterish husbands?’
‘Oh, it’s the wives, they’re the worst,’ grinned Andy. ‘They’re all doing the messages online these days and having the delivery fellows from Tesco and SuperValu around when their husbands are at work. It’s like the milkmen used to be in the old days. Tesco Direct? Tesco Erect, more like!’
It was a grey, overcast morning and the clouds were moving only slowly, although there was enough of a chilly breeze for the lime trees to be whispering to each other. Dermot smacked Saint Sparkle affectionately on his shiny brown flank and then led him away. Andy took out a packet of cigarettes himself and offered them to Riona, but she shook her head.
‘Handsome-looking horse,’ he said, flicking his lighter three or four times before he got a flame. ‘He didn’t do too well on Sunday, though, did he?’
‘You didn’t bet on him, did you?’
Andy blew out smoke and shook his head. ‘I only bet when it’s a fix and I’m in on it. Since you declined to tell me where he was going to finish, like, or if he was going to finish at all, which as it turned out he didn’t, I wisely decided to keep my money in my wallet.’
‘He wasn’t mentally hyped up for it, that’s all,’ said Riona. ‘He’s physically strong, Sparkle, but he’s a pessimist. He’s like a lot of people... if he realizes that he’s not going to make it past the post first, he gives up. But he’s entered into the BoyleSports Tied Cottage Race Day at Punchestown the Sunday after next and I can tell you for sure that he’ll run away with that one.’
‘He’ll be up against Jezki, though, won’t he, and Tiger Roll? What’s his price?’
‘Paddy Power are giving an early bird of tens.’
‘But you think he’s going to win it easy?’
‘God willing, yes.’
Andy looked at her with his eyes narrowed so suspiciously that he appeared to have no eyes at all. He was a huge man, at least six foot four inches, with a head that looked too big for his brown trilby hat. His cheeks were blotchy and embroidered with fine crimson veins, his teeth were all brown and crowded, and his nose was broken. He wore a flappy white trench coat and raspberry-coloured corduroy trousers that didn’t quite reach his ankles. If he were a building on Adelaide Street he would be well past derelict and ready for demolition.
‘You said that you’d located Sister Aibrean Callery,’ said Riona.
‘I have, yes. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you, but I’ve found her all right. She’s living with her eldest granddaughter in Waterfall Road, Curraheen. Up until last February she was being looked after in the Marymount Hospice, but her granddaughter’s husband died of a haemorrhage about a year ago and so she offered to take her in, for the company, like.’
‘Well, that was good work, Andy,’ said Riona. ‘Can I ask how you found her, or is that one of your trade secrets?’
‘No, it’s no secret. It’s knowing the right people, that’s all. I talked to Canon O’Flynn, who used to hold Mass at the Holy Family Church on Military Hill, and he knew all of the penguins up at the Bon Sauveur. He visited Sister Aibrean when she was in hospital with her kidneys and he kept in touch with her afterwards, too. The one critical thing he told me about Sister Aibrean was that she always insisted on wearing the full penguin outfit, even after she left the convent.
‘One of the porters I know at the Wilton Hilton tipped me off that after she was discharged from there she was sent to the Marymount. The trouble was, the Marymount refused to tell me where she had gone to after that. But I reckoned that if she was still wearing the full penguin outfit, like, she must either be sewing it herself, like a lot of the nuns do, or else she was buying it from one of the very few places that still supply religious clothing. Since she’s so old, and she has the arthritis, I doubted that she was doing her own sewing, so I checked with some of the suppliers of holy vestments.
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Most church stuff is sold online these days – copes, albs, candles – even the fecking sacramental wafers. All on the Internet. I’m surprised they don’t supply choirboys, too, with their bums ready-buttered. But after I’d tried
ars.sacra.com
and churchsupplies.ie, I got third time lucky with Mary Fitzpatrick who runs her own vestment business in Carrigaline, called
GloryBe.com
. She’d been making habits for Sister Aibrean for years, and when I explained to her with tears in my eyes that I was Sister Aibrean’s long-lost cousin Conor from Australia, she told me at once where she lived.’
‘And you’ve checked that she’s actually there?’
Andy produced his iPhone from out of his raincoat pocket, jabbed at it with a dirty fingernail, and then passed it over. Riona could see a white-painted detached house with a hedge outside and a tall elderly woman in a nun’s habit standing in the open doorway, her face as pale as a plateful of porridge. She had one hand lifted as if she were waving somebody goodbye.
‘I took that myself this morning,’ said Andy. ‘Right near the corner of Waterfall Road and Bandon Road.’
‘And you’re certain that’s her?’
‘I talked to the girl behind the counter at Mac’s Cafe in Bishopstown Road. She knows her. She’s in there as soon as they open every morning. Tea, no milk, no sugar, and two plain oat biscuits.’
‘That’s good work, Andy. How are the other two coming along? Sister Virginia and Sister Nessa?’
‘I think I have a break on Sister Virginia. The other one’s a little more knotty, like. But don’t worry. I’ll track them down, the both of them. They don’t call me Find ’Em Flanagan for nothing.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Well, nobody. I just made that up. But it sounds good, what do you think?’
Riona looked totally unamused. For some reason Andy found himself staring at the pink face powder that clung to the very fine hairs on her upper lip. Perhaps he didn’t have the nerve to look her straight in the eyes. Although he would have found it hard to explain why, she was one of the most frightening people that he had ever met, and that was including a Slovakian drug-dealer called Vicki who had once threatened to cut his mebs off with serrated kitchen scissors.
‘Come into the house and I’ll pay you for finding Sister Aibrean,’ said Riona. ‘You do understand, don’t you, that the second that money passes from my hands into yours, you have never heard of anybody called Sister Aibrean and nobody has ever asked you to find anybody of that name and you have never been looking for her?’
‘Mother of God, Riona. For what you’re paying me, I’d be happy to forget my own name, let alone hers.’
‘I wanted to make that crystal-clear, that’s all,’ said Riona. ‘I wouldn’t like you to end up as the victim of a misunderstanding.’
Andy left his Range Rover where it was and followed Riona across the stable yard and into the house. As they approached the back door he didn’t know what to do with his cigarette, so he nipped it out between finger and thumb and tucked it behind his left ear.
Almost as soon as she had returned to the station and hung up her coat, Katie’s phone rang. It was Garret MacTeague, from Scully & MacTeague, who were Jim Begley’s solicitors. He spoke with a thick lisp, almost as if he were half langered, but Katie had faced him many times in the district court and she knew that he always sounded like that, and that he was a very formidable lawyer.
‘My client informs me that you may want to interview him regarding the tragic death of his daughter.’
‘That’s correct, yes. Has he told you about Roisin’s suicide note?’
‘He’s admitted that he wrote it himself, if that’s what you’re referring to. I know you have the necessary evidence so there’s no point in us beating about the bush and trying to make out that he didn’t. However, he totally denies any responsibility for her drowning.’
Katie sat down and slowly rubbed her stomach. She had been suffering from indigestion ever since she had left the Bon Sauveur Convent. Not only that, she had the beginnings of a headache. Her normal painkillers contained caffeine as well as paracetamol and she knew that she shouldn’t be taking those now that she was pregnant.
‘Why don’t you bring your client into the station about eleven tomorrow morning?’ she suggested. ‘I’m very tied up at the moment, what with the Spring Lane bombing and all.’
‘Of course, yes,’ said Garret MacTeague. ‘You have my firm’s sincerest condolences for that. I’ll contact my client, but I don’t think there’ll be any problem with him coming in tomorrow. He’s very anxious to get this matter resolved as soon as possible. So is
Mrs
Begley, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
Katie hung up and then rang for Detective Dooley, who had also returned to the station only a few minutes before. When he came up to her office he looked almost as if he had been in a brawl. His brushed-up Jedward hairstyle was windswept and his jacket collar half turned up at the back.
‘State of you la,’ she said, and she couldn’t help smiling. ‘How’s it going up at Spring Lane?’
‘Oh, slow – painful slow. The technical experts are still picking up all of the doonchie little bits of human flesh and aluminium with tweezers. They have the patience of Job, those people, I tell you. But me and Brennan have finished interviewing all of the residents, which is why I’ve come back. We talked to every one of them, even the kids.’
‘So what did they have to say for themselves, the residents?’
‘They’re Travellers, what do you think? The politest response I got out of them was, “Go wash the back of your bollocks,” if you’ll excuse my language, and that was from a little girl of six.’
Katie raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh well. Maybe Inspector O’Rourke will have more luck. He has very good connections with the Pavees. Meanwhile, I’ve just had Jim Begley’s solicitor on the phone. Jim Begley’s coming in to the station tomorrow morning to answer questions about Roisin’s drowning.’
‘He’s coming in voluntarily, like?’
‘Yes. Voluntarily. At eleven. I want you there, too, please.’
‘If he’s coming in voluntarily he must be feeling confident that we can’t stick it on him. He totally denied that it was him who drowned Roisin, didn’t he, when you went round to see him? If he goes on denying it, it’s going to be fierce problematical for us to prove it.’
‘He’s very religious, so maybe his conscience will get the better of him,’ said Katie. ‘That’s always supposing that he really
did
do it.’
‘We don’t have any forensics, that’s the trouble,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘There was no bruising on her to speak of, and none of her fingernails were broken or had skin under them, like if she’d been fighting somebody off. All right, Jim Begley might have confessed that he forged her suicide note, but what’s that proof of? Only proof that he was ashamed of her, nothing else.’
‘It goes to motive, if nothing else,’ said Katie. ‘But I’ve been thinking what evidence we might be able to find. What about her phone?’
‘Well, yes, her phone might have been helpful, but we couldn’t find it. It wasn’t in her bedroom or anywhere else in the rest of the house. We tried tracking it, but we couldn’t get a GPS signal. In the end we had to assume that she’d had it with her when she went into the river and that it wasn’t waterproof – and if that was the case, the chances of locating it are not much better than zero. We’d have had to call in the navy divers to look for it – and even then...’
‘Didn’t you find out from her parents what network she was connected to? They could provide you with all of her recent texts and tweets and emails and whatever.’
Detective Dooley looked flustered. ‘I was intending to, of course, but at the time we thought the suicide note was genuine so there didn’t seem to be too much urgency. I’m sorry. What with this Spring Lane bombing and all, it kind of slipped down the list of priorities.’
‘It’s all right, Robert,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve piled a heap of work on you lately, I know that, but with all the cutbacks we’ve been suffering lately I haven’t had much choice. But let’s think about it. Roisin Begley was a teenage girl, and how do teenage girls share all their worries these days? If she was stressed or thinking about taking her own life, it’s highly probable that she would have used her phone to tell her friends how bad she was feeling.’
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘I’ll get on to it immediately.’
Katie looked up at him. His hair was sticking up even more than it had before, and he looked so young and anxious that it was hard for her to think of him as an experienced detective. ‘Have you had a break today?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then go and have a break now and something to eat and then get on to Roisin’s phone messages after. So long as I can see them before her father comes in to the station tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Thanks a million.’
* * *
When she arrived home that evening the living-room curtains were still open and when she climbed out of her car she could see John bent over the coffee table, tapping away at his laptop.
He didn’t look up when she came into the room, but raised one hand to greet her. ‘Be with you in a second, sweetheart.’
The house smelled of bolognese sauce, but it also still smelled faintly of acrylic paint. Katie leaned over him and kissed the back of John’s neck. ‘You’re working late.’
‘In Montreal, it’s only three-twenty in the afternoon,’ he told her. ‘I’m just closing a deal on resveratrol tablets. Sorry, but it’s the only way I’m ever going to become a billionaire.’
He tapped the keyboard with a flourish and then he said, ‘There, that’s it, order complete. I got a fantastic discount, too.’
Katie peered at the screen. ‘Resveratrol, never heard of it. What’s it for? Shyness?’
‘No, no. It gives you all of the life-enhancing benefits of red wine without the deathly after-effects of a hangover. Maybe you should try some now you’ve given up drinking. I’m really impressed, the way you’ve stuck to it. The last time I went on the wagon I think I lasted five hours before I tumbled off again.’
‘I’m up the walls at the station these days, darling,’ said Katie. ‘I couldn’t possibly cope if I went into work every day feeling like thirteen tinkers after a wedding. I know, I know – politically incorrect, but I’m too tired to be PC.’