I Saw You (30 page)

McLoughlin sipped gingerly. The alcohol stung the cuts in and around his mouth. It was hard to speak so he nodded and tried to smile. They sat in friendly silence drinking and nibbling olives
until the warm air chilled. Then they moved inside, into the huge open-plan sitting room/dining room/kitchen area, which constituted the whole of the top floor of Harris’s duplex. Even
McLoughlin, with his scepticism about modern apartments, had to admit he was impressed.

‘You’ve been busy. I thought you’d only just moved in. You’ve done all this in what? Three weeks? I didn’t realize you had such good taste,’ he muttered,
through pursed lips. He gestured towards the hardwood floors, the stainless-steel gas fire, the sofas and chairs covered with glowing oranges and yellows.

Harris closed the huge American-style fridge. The door made a satisfyingly solid sound and McLoughlin was reminded that his friend was something of an expert on fridges. They were, after all,
part and parcel of his working day.

He put another bottle on the low glass table and sat down.

‘Show apartment. I bought it fully furnished, decorated, the lot.’ He uncorked the bottle and sniffed appreciatively. ‘Thank God it doesn’t smell like formaldehyde. A day
at the office can be a smelly old day.’ He poured it, and motioned to McLoughlin to help himself. ‘In fact, now I come to think of it, your suicide lady was the designer here. She did a
great job.’

McLoughlin picked up his glass and stood. He walked around the huge room, inspecting the paintings on the walls, the vases on the sideboard, the pot plants on the balcony. Then he moved to the
stairs.

‘Be my guest, Michael.’ Harris smiled up at him. ‘You’d better stay the night anyway, so pick your room. There’s three down there. Mine’s the messy one. And
there’s two bathrooms, so feel free.’

Downstairs was as attractive as upstairs. The bedrooms were spacious. Two of them opened out on to balconies. The bathrooms were luxurious. One had an exquisite modern free-standing bath and
basin. Taps as beautiful as pieces of modern sculpture gleamed. His bathroom at home, with its pale green fittings and pitted lino, seemed very third world. He walked into the larger of the spare
bedrooms and sat down on the bed. Suddenly he was exhausted. He lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes. And for a few moments he slept. Then woke, heart pounding, sweat dripping from his
forehead, stinging as it seeped into the cuts around his eyes. He opened them, closed them, then opened them again. He stared up at the ceiling. And noticed it had been badly painted. They’d
skimped on the coats, he thought. Bloody typical. There was a dark shape under the white. A swirl of some other colour. Red or black, maybe. He stared up at it, trying to figure out what it could
be, and twisted the wall light to get a better view. Just as Harris walked in.

‘So this is where you’ve got to. I was getting worried. Thought maybe concussion had hit, after all.’ He moved to the window and closed the curtains. ‘How’s the
bed?’

‘Very comfortable, thanks.’ McLoughlin shifted slightly. ‘Here, come and lie down and look at this.’

‘What? An invitation? I thought you’d never ask.’ Harris smirked and made as if to leap up beside him.

‘Get off, Johnny,’ McLoughlin said. ‘Now, look up at the ceiling. Can you see something there?’

‘Oh, that.’ Harris leaned back, ‘They didn’t do a good job, did they, covering it up?’

‘Covering what up?’

‘There was some kind of break-in around the time I was signing up for the apartment. Vandalism. Despite the new building and the trendification that’s going on, this area’s
still a bit rough. They reckoned it was probably local kids from the old flats down the road who did it.’

‘Did what exactly?’ McLoughlin propped himself up on his elbows.

‘Wrote all over the walls. In here and upstairs in the sitting room too. The agent said they’d fix it immediately and they did it pretty quick. But whoever it was, used red paint so
I suppose it was pretty hard to cover it up.’

‘And you don’t know what they wrote?’

‘No, I didn’t see it. I got a very apologetic phone call. They even knocked off a few hundred because of what they called the inconvenience.’ Harris sat up. ‘I
didn’t care. They said they’d increase the security on the site, and they’ve done that so it’s grand. Now, what I came to tell you was that Tony Heffernan phoned. He has
some news for you about the guy who hit you. He’s coming around in half an hour so on your feet. Pronto.’ He swung his legs off the bed. ‘You’re a bit of a dark horse,
Michael. I never knew you were such a popular guy. Your phone’s been beeping nonstop. Don’t worry,’ he wagged his finger in front of McLoughlin’s face, ‘I
haven’t read them. I wouldn’t want to intrude. Now, you’d better get up. Tony will be here soon.’

Tony Heffernan arrived with a plastic bag filled with files. He tipped them out on the glass table. ‘Don’t ask me how I got this stuff,’ he said, face red and
sweaty. ‘Give me a drink, Johnny, quick.’ Favours from years back had been called in, he explained. And it all had to be returned before the night was over. ‘Otherwise I’ll
be in deep shit. Anyway, have a look. You were right about the snake man. And you’ll probably identify the guy with him too.’

McLoughlin leafed through the pages. Gerry Leonard, born 19 July 1968. Brought up in Fatima Mansions in Rialto. Youngest of six children. His convictions went way back – petty theft,
joy-riding, minor assault – to the late 1980s. Then his name started appearing with some of the really well-known criminals. Guys who were importing heroin by the containerload. Flooding the
streets and the working-class estates with the drug. Leonard was arrested and questioned on a number of occasions, but the guards could never hold him. There was never enough evidence. So the
police found themselves an informant. They set up a witness-protection programme and a man called Martin Kennedy was their first lure. The haul was impressive. They got Gerry Leonard and all his
mates. McLoughlin looked at the photos. ‘Yeah, that’s him. And that’s the other fucker, Peter Feeney. He was the backup.’ He stabbed the picture with his finger.

Peter Feeney, Gerry Leonard and Shane Ward had stood trial for drug importation. The DPP had thrown in a few more charges just to be on the safe side. But the problem was that Martin Kennedy was
an idiot. McLoughlin remembered the way they had winced as they listened to him stumbling through his evidence. The guy was so drugged with tranquillizers he could hardly stand, barely remember his
own name. He was so frightened that the banging of a door drained the colour from his face and made his legs shake. Still, his evidence was convincing. Leonard and Ward were convicted, sentenced to
thirty years in prison. Feeney, who was obviously a minor player, got off. But a year ago Leonard had appealed. His barrister, Dominic de Paor, cut through the prosecution case like a knife through
butter. And Leonard had been released.

‘What’s he been up to since he got out?’ McLoughlin asked Heffernan. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Actually, nothing, so far as anyone knows. He went to Spain for a few months. But he’s been keeping his nose clean. Although you can be sure that he’s still controlling his
piece of the drug action in the inner city.’

McLoughlin sifted through the pile of paper in front of him. Leonard’s career was a microcosm of the way that Dublin’s crime and criminals had changed over the last twenty years. He
checked back to see what was his first offence.

‘Hey.’ McLoughlin’s voice rose with excitement. ‘“Interviewed on the twenty-ninth of June 1988 Bray Garda station. Suspect was questioned in connection with the
taking without permission of a motorboat on Lough Dubh. Suspect was with three other men, Shane Ward, Peter Feeney and Lawrence O’Toole. All were questioned but no charges were put
forward.”’ He took a sip from his glass. ‘How extraordinary. You know what that means, don’t you?’

Harris and Heffernan looked blankly at him.

‘It means that Gerry Leonard was one of the boys who were indirectly responsible for the death of James de Paor. They stole the boat from its mooring. It was because of them that James and
Marina went out in that dinghy. And as a result James drowned.’ He dropped the file on top of the rest and leaned back. ‘And nearly twenty years later James’s son gets him out of
prison.’

‘Do you think he knew?’ Heffernan wiped his hands on a clean white handkerchief.

‘Maybe, maybe not. Like father, like son. It was the kind of case that James used to specialize in. Controversial, very high profile, very well paid.’ McLoughlin gestured to Harris
for a refill.

‘Yes.’ He lifted the bottle. ‘How much per day? Couple of grand?’

‘And then some. At least.’ McLoughlin nodded his thanks. ‘At least.’

For a while they contemplated.

‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ Heffernan sat back and stretched his legs. ‘Free legal aid. Set up to help the deserving poor. And made millionaires of all those clever boys.
Doesn’t seem fair.’ He sighed, then sat up. ‘Oh, Michael, I knew I wanted to tell you something. You asked me about Helena de Paor, what Janet knew about her.’

‘Yeah.’ McLoughlin watched the bubbles in his glass rise to the top.

‘She’s some cookie. She and James had a baby girl who died. It was assumed it was a cot death but, according to Janet, the doctors suspected it might not have been death by natural
causes. James wasn’t convinced. He couldn’t believe it of her. Anyway, the end result was that she was committed. She was having delusions, hallucinations. Hearing voices, that sort of
thing. James was very protective. And even though they were separated he carried on looking after her.’ Heffernan spread his arms wide. ‘But Helena de Paor, it has to be said, was as
clever as she was mad.’ He crossed his legs.

‘Yeah,’ McLoughlin interrupted, ‘I know about the court case. But tell me, is she still sick?’

Heffernan shrugged. ‘Well, as far as everyone knows she’s out of hospital. But that’s because her son is looking after her.’

‘Dominic?’

‘Yeah, the one and only. Janet reckons there’s a bit of a Mr-Rochester-and-the-mad-wife-in-the-attic going on there. Apparently he has her put away on the estate in Wicklow.
He’s devoted to her. Without him, by all accounts, she’d still be in Grangegorman and there’d be no way she’d ever leave.’

McLoughlin lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. And he thought about the email that Tom Spencer had sent. He had placed the motorboat at the far end of the lake. He had
said nothing about its occupants. He had given the positions of everyone else. McLoughlin pictured his little sketch map. Sally and Vanessa on the beach. Dominic de Paor and his friends in the
woods. Marina and James in the dinghy. And Gerry Leonard, Shane Ward, Peter Feeney and Lawrence O’Toole in the motorboat. He rolled over on to his side. Then on to his back again. He sat up
and switched on the bedside lamp. He angled it towards the ceiling. He could see the shapes beneath the white paint. Loops and swirls of letters, maybe. He got up and went to the window. He opened
it and gazed down into the apartment block’s central courtyard. The grounds were landscaped, paved with limestone flags with a large round pond in the middle. A fountain tinkled sweetly. He
could hear the clang of the high metal gates as they swung back to admit residents. It was very secure here, he thought. Guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. No chance of any incursions from the
outside world.

He moved away from the window and began to dress. Then he stepped quietly into the corridor, walked past Harris’s bedroom and up the stairs into the sitting room. He took the keys from the
hook by the door and let himself out. The lift was swift and silent. He stepped into the lobby. The floor was tiled with marble and the walls were painted a dull ochre. The only light came from
behind the long desk where a security guard was seated. As McLoughlin approached he said, ‘Can I help you, sir?’

His accent was thick. Russian, McLoughlin thought. He took out his ID card. ‘I’m looking for some information about an incident that took place here a few months ago. Someone went
into the show apartment and painted all over the walls. I’m wondering if you know anything about it.’ The guard looked bored. He didn’t reply.

‘I’m investigating a death by suicide that happened a couple of months ago. You may have known the dead woman. Marina Spencer? She was the designer here. We have reason to believe
that her death was not quite as it seemed.’ He rested his elbows on the desk.

‘Sure, Marina, I know her well. She very nice lady. Very sad when she die.’ The guard pointed at McLoughlin’s bruises. ‘You have a bit of trouble?’

‘I walked into a plate-glass door. Didn’t realize it wasn’t open. You know how it is,’ McLoughlin told him. ‘As I was saying, I’m interested to know exactly
what was painted on the walls in the apartment.’

The guard reached down and pulled open a drawer. He fumbled around, then spread a number of computer printouts on the desk. ‘These. You want these?’

McLoughlin picked them up. The words ‘I saw you’ were scrawled in huge red letters across the walls and ceiling.

‘Who did it? Did you ever find out?’ He tapped the pictures with a finger.

The guard shrugged. ‘The developer, he not want any trouble, any fuss. He not call the police or anything like that.’

‘But,’ McLoughlin glanced up at the ceiling, at the camera that was trained on him, ‘you have CCTV. I’m sure you have it on all the entrances and exits, don’t you?
Did you not check it?’

‘Sure,’ the guard said. ‘Sure we did. We not see the painting being done. We see some men who come into building. Here, if you interested.’ He stood up and took out a
large bunch of keys. He opened a cupboard concealed behind him in a decorated wall panel. Inside, McLoughlin saw a row of monitors and a bank of DVD machines. The guard rummaged in another
drawer.

‘My boss he mad. He say we need to stop this kind of thing. He check the disks. He see the man he think is doing painting. He tell the developer. The developer say he not interested. You
want come in? I show you.’