Darkhouse (19 page)

Joe watched Anna from the doorway. She was standing in the living room in front of a large rectangle wrapped in layers of brown paper and leaning against the back of the sofa. She put her knee on one of the cushions and started ripping off the paper, revealing each time more of a deepframed acrylic painting – white with a thick slash of teal down the right-hand side, roughly edged and textured. When she was finished, she stood back and smiled, then jumped as Joe came up behind her. He grabbed a piece of packaging that hung from a corner.

‘The Hobson Gallery,’ he said. He picked up the invoice before Anna could get to it and held it up high in front of him. He read it and shook his head.

‘Please tell me I will not be billed three hundred and seventy five euros for this.’

She looked up at him. ‘You will.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’

‘I ordered it weeks ago, before anything. Brendan is coming again to take shots. I need one big piece—’

‘I need. I need,’ he mimicked.

‘You’re not creative,’ she said angrily. ‘You don’t understand any of this.’ She gestured towards the painting, the furniture, the perfect white floorboards.

‘I understand what you do. I love what you do,’ he said calmly. ‘I love how you’re so determined – just don’t be so determined to ruin us financially.’ He walked away. ‘And actually, I think the painting is great,’ he called back.

Shaun saw the group of boys as he turned the corner, but he quickly pulled back behind the wall when he heard his name. Three of them were talking.

‘It’s fucking nuts in the States though.’

‘I know. We should be lucky he didn’t come in here in a trenchcoat and blow us all to shit.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, grow up. Those guys were total losers.’

‘Well, who knows? He could be nuts behind it all. It’s always the quiet ones.’

‘But he’s not even quiet! He’s just normal.’

‘Exactly. What I’m saying is it’s always the ones you least suspect.’

‘That would make you bottom of the list.’

‘Ha. Ha.’

‘Combats, shaved head, knows the scripts of
Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning Vietnam
and
Black Hawk Down
off by heart. Has seen
Platoon
twenty-five times.’ He made an alarm sound.

‘Well no-one’s come knocking on my door to take me in.’

‘No-one’s come knocking on Shaun’s either, you fuckwit. It’s so embarrassing, though. Apparently his dad’s going around asking people questions, doing a Jessica Fletcher on it.’

‘Jessica Fletcher.’

‘Anyway, people are getting fairly pissed off. Richie’s going apeshit. People are saying things to Lucky’s dad, then not saying stuff to Richie or else they’re just getting fed up saying the same things over and over again. And maybe the guy should be looking a lot closer to home. Mr Lucchesi, I mean.’

‘There’s no way Lucky had anything to do with this.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘You sound like my mother.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Lucky, though. Could his nickname
be
any more ironic?’

Shaun turned back and walked home.

‘I hate to have to do this again,’ said Frank, trying to smile at Martha. ‘But you never know what you might find that would help.’

‘It doesn’t feel right,’ said Martha. ‘She was so private.’ She pushed open the door to Katie’s bedroom. It was a wet, grey morning and the room was dark. They both looked up, drawn by the fluorescent stars on the ceiling. Martha turned on the light and the glow disappeared. She sat down on the bed, a tissue up to her nose, thinking:
that’s all I seem to have been doing for weeks, sitting, rubbing my nose raw.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Frank,’ she said, getting up quickly, ‘I’m dreaming.’ She closed the door gently behind her.

Frank looked around. The room was a little girl’s doing its best to be a teenager’s. The wallpaper was pink and girly, but a strip had been torn away for notes to be scribbled on it. The quilt was floral and faded, but the lamp by the bed was simple and modern. Her wardrobe should have been brown, but had been sanded and repainted white with a bright pink border. There were no teddies or dolls anywhere. He walked towards the mirror. A piece of ribbon stretched across the top with tiny clips attached to hold photos. He didn’t see Katie’s face in any of them. He saw Ali and a few other girls from around the village, he saw Shaun and he saw a tiny little girl at the zoo, holding a man’s hand and looking up at him, smiling. He looked closer and realised it was Katie and her father, taken a few years before he died.

A box on the dressing table was filled with hair
pins, scrunchies, makeup and cheap jewellery. He turned around and pulled open the doors of the wardrobe, running his fingers across the clothes. He bent down and saw piles of old shoes and two old tennis rackets. Then he saw an envelope, from an oversized greeting card, stuck into the side. He pulled it free from its slot in the wood and laid it on the bed. The big card was a birthday card, signed by several girls, love hearts and circles dotting the ‘i’s. The messages were all innocent. He reached his hand to the bottom of the envelope and pulled out more cards and letters from her girlfriends and from Shaun, birthday cards stretching back to her childhood and a few Valentine’s cards. One of them, in a soft pink envelope had a teddy on the front, holding a flower. He opened it. ‘Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Sugar is Sweet and So are You.’ It was a child’s writing. A big question mark filled the left-hand side. Frank was surprised anyone would write such a clichéd poem. But how old was the card? He flipped the envelope over. It was postmarked the previous year. Why would a child be sending Katie a Valentine’s card? Or was it someone trying to appear like a child? But that didn’t make sense. He flicked through the rest of the cards, had one last look around the room and walked down the narrow stairs to the living room. Martha got up expectantly.

‘Well?’ she said.

He waved the card at her. ‘Do you know where this came from?’ he asked.

She took it from him and smiled. ‘Aw,’ she said, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I can’t believe she kept this. It was from Petey Grant, bless him. She thought it was so sweet. It gave her a bit of a boost at the time, even though she knew there was nothing really to it. That’s why she showed it to me. She’d never have showed me the others she got. I remember she laughed that he’d bother putting a question mark on it, because his handwriting was so recognisable. He used to pin notes on the boards in school to let them know if the floors were wet or a classroom had to be closed for cleaning.’ She stopped.

‘Anyway, I’m rabbiting on here. Do you need this?’ she held up the card.

‘No, you can hang on to that,’ said Frank.

D.I. O’Connor parked his car in the lane andwalked up to the Lucchesis’ door, admiring the view as he went. Joe took his time answering.

‘You’ve done a wonderful job on the lighthouse,’ said O’Connor.

‘That’s my wife.’

‘I’ve always had a fondness for it.’

‘Yeah. It’s a great place.’

Joe nodded and waited.

‘As I’m sure you know, I’m Detective Inspector Myles O’Connor from Waterford and I’m heading the Katie Lawson investigation.’

‘Yeah, I know. Come in.’

They stood in the hallway.

‘This is about your involvement. I’m going to have to ask you to…’

Joe knew O’Connor was hoping to avoid finishing the sentence.

‘To?’ he said.

‘To stay out of things. I’ve never been in this situation before with a person going around to people’s doors asking them questions, arriving unannounced at the station and telling our men what to do—’

‘I thought I was helping out. The information I was giving was based on my experience—’

‘Let’s just cut to the chase here. You obviously think we’re not doing our job right, that we’re some quiet village with a sleepy force…’

Joe said nothing.

‘Do you honestly think an investigation into the death of a teenage girl is something every single one of my men is not putting their whole heart into? Things are done differently around here. Don’t mistake a measured approach for a leisurely one. We’re not all Flash Harrys speeding around the streets chasing down “perps”.’

‘Neither am I.’

‘Well that’s two misconceptions out of the way, then.’

‘I guess so.’

Joe looked past O’Connor.

‘Right, well, I won’t keep you. But I want you to know that we’re doing OK without your help.’

He went to walk away, then turned back.

‘We don’t have guns or VICAP or HOLMES or a Ten Most Wanted list, but then we don’t have tens of thousands of murders a year. We have around fifty.’

Joe shrugged.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said O’Connor, ‘we make our mistakes, but so does the NYPD, so does every police force in the world. But any time I’ve been on a trip to New York, I’ve never charged into a precinct—’

‘Come on. Katie was my son’s—’

‘Then you’re probably one of the last people—’

‘Would you stand by if it was you and do nothing?’

‘I would leave it to the professionals—’

‘Am I not a professional?’

‘You’re an amateur over here. And you’re compromising our investigation. There are people in Mountcannon who think you’re consulting on this and that’s really starting to bother me. I’m asking you – formally now – to keep out of it. Unfortunately, you have a connection to the victim and for that, you and your family have my sympathies. But the brief interview we carried out with you at the beginning of all this is where your input should have ended.’

Richie was making coffee when Frank arrived back from Martha Lawson’s.

‘Did you find anything?’ he asked.

‘Nothing unusual,’ said Frank. ‘The only thing is, Petey Grant again. I found a Valentine’s card in Katie’s room from him. I know he’s a harmless divil, but maybe the rejection upset him or if she didn’t take him seriously…I don’t know.’

‘Why don’t I have a chat with him?’ said Richie. ‘You’ve talked to him already. You’re off this afternoon. I can fit him in then, save you the hassle.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Frank. He paused. ‘That’s it! The documentary. He said he was in that night watching something on the Fastnet disaster. What theme would you call that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Discovery Channel.’

‘Don’t have it,’ said Richie.

‘Well, their nights are usually themed: superstructures, crime, whatever. Friday night is history night. Nora was watching…anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t see a programme on Fastnet fitting in there. It’s always history history, nothing that recent. Wouldn’t the Fastnet race be sport or shipping or something?’

‘I’ll check it out with Petey, honestly.’

‘You’d need to go easy on a lad like Petey Grant, Richie. Can you do that?’

‘No problem.’

Ray leaned against the ladder in the lantern house with two tins of white and green paint on the floor beside him. The walls were smooth for the first time in years, transformed when they were stripped back and the panels were replaced.

‘Right,’ said Anna. ‘Do you know what you’re doing with the colours and everything?’

‘I think so. White on the walls, green on the ceiling and green on all the accent bits, like the ladder.’

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

Richie stood before the small mirror in the station. He rubbed his finger down each temple, over lumps that ran like tiny beads under the surface. He softened hard wax in his palms and worked it carefully through his hair. His eyes lingered on the muscles that filled his shirt. He went to a gym in Waterford seven days a week – unlike the guys he trained with in Templemore. Some of them never worked out. They had beer guts in their early twenties that they never bothered to lose.

‘OK, Petey, what have you got for me?’ he muttered as he walked out the door. He drove to the school in the squad car, rather than taking the short walk.

Students were let out early on Wednesdays and he found Petey Grant in a quiet classroom, washing a blackboard. The whole school seemed deserted.

‘Howiya,’ said Richie.

Petey looked confused. He took a step back.

‘Hi Richie,’ he said. ‘Are you well?’

‘Yes,’ said Richie. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Fine, I’m just doing a bit of work on the blackboards.’

‘Look, Petey, would you mind coming in to the station to answer a few more questions?’

Petey’s eyes widened.

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ said Richie, knowing that Petey wouldn’t argue with him.

‘OK,’ said Petey, ‘I’ll get my coat.’ He walked down the corridor and into the staff room where he picked up his jacket. He felt sick.

‘I’m being arrested,’ he said to Paula, one of the teachers staying back late.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Richie is taking me to the station,’ he said. ‘I think I’m in big trouble. Bye!’ He rushed out of the building into the squad car, about to sit in the front with Richie.

‘Get in the back,’ Richie said roughly.

Petey was trembling when he got inside and stayed that way for the whole agonising drive through the village.

‘It’s me,’ said Danny. ‘Your gold and maroon pin is here, hasn’t been checked out, nothing. And I got your big long list of known associates. You got a pen ready? Duke Rawlins.’

Joe waited. ‘That’s it?’

‘Yup. Donald Riggs, Mr Popularity. Student most likely to be shot in a park.’

‘Rawlins. Name sounds familiar. Anything on him?’

‘Nothing major. Spent eight years in Ely, Nevada. Stuck some guy with a knife in a parking lot. Your average bar-room brawl plus.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yup.’

‘No rape, no murder?’

‘Don’t sound so disappointed.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, just that it was the warden in the prison who kindly provided us with the link. He put a call into Crane after the Riggs murder, Crane scrawled a note at the bottom of the file. The guy’s writing…anyway, no-one paid any attention to it. Why would they? Riggs was dead. So I call the warden, nice guy. Seems Rawlins was mouthing off about Riggs to his cell mate. The cell mate gets into an altercation and bargains with the warden to avoid solitary. Tells him Rawlins’ pal Riggs was planning to kidnap some kid so a pile of cash would be waiting for him when he got out of prison.’