In the Morning I'll Be Gone (30 page)

“What if they’re over ninety?”

Nurse Laverty looked at Dr. Kent. He cleared his throat and didn’t say anything. But I could see what they were getting at. If they were over ninety they let the pneumonia take them.

“So you sent his blood test off and it came back negative and then he died?” I asked.

“No, it takes a week to get the tests back from Belfast. He was dead and buried by then.”

“And when you did get the test back? Did you tell anyone of your suspicions?” I asked.

“I didn’t have any suspicions. His white count was low. He showed no evidence of pneumonia but the test is not foolproof. And he was an elderly man who’d had a stroke. Pneumonia can come on a patient very suddenly, and in this case it must have done so.”

I asked her a few questions about Harper McCullough, his demeanor, his behavior, but she had seen nothing but good things.

I excused her and let her go back to her shift.

“How many elderly patients die of bronchopneumonia in this hospital, Dr. Kent?”

“I don’t know, quite a few I suppose.”

“Would you say that the majority of elderly patients die of pneumonia?”

“Yes.”

“So if Dr. Moran found a stroke patient dead at home in his bed, he probably would have written bronchopneumonia as a useful catch-all on the death certificate, especially if the distraught son of that stroke patient didn’t authorize an autopsy.”

“He could have written bronchopneumonia or cardiac arrest or just death from natural causes, something like that,” Dr. Kent concurred.

“If Mr. McCullough had been suffocated, would it have been obvious?”

“Deliberately murdered?” he said, taken aback.

“Yes. With a pillow or a blanket or a plastic bag over the head. Something like that.”

“A plastic bag would have left ligature marks perhaps but a pillow . . . aye, you could easily mistake suffocation for death by bronchopneumonia. Of course, an autopsy would have told you the truth.”

It was getting late now and the sun had carved up the sky between Lough Neagh and the Bluestack Mountains in Donegal. “You think there’s been a murder, Duffy? What’s this all about?” Dr. Kent asked me.

“I’ll tell you what it’s about. It’s about three deaths in three months and two of them more than a little suspect.”

“Which three deaths?”

“James Mulvenna, Lizzie Fitzpatrick, and Tommy McCullough.”

“But what’s the connection?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out, Doctor,” I said.

“I knew I was right! I can help you,” he said.

“No. This is a police matter. There’s no proof of wrongdoing here. And you won’t be saying or doing anything. If I need your help I’ll bring you in.”

He nodded.

“I have to go,” I said. “Thank you, Doctor, you’ve been of great assistance.”

I went down to reception, called directory assistance, and got the home address for Dr. Moran. Another enquiry and I got the phone number for Antrim Rugby Club. Two more calls got me the rugby club chairman, Andrew Platt, who happened to be at the club right now.

I asked him whether he could wait there for me for an hour or so. He said it was no problem.

I went outside, checked under the Beemer for bombs, and drove to Dr. Moran’s house, reaching 80 mph in a 30 zone. Mock-Tudor four-bedroom on a cul de sac. Moran a married man, three kids, all of whom were under five. Grey hair, thin, cheerful. A damn sight less cheerful when I hit him with the possibility that Tommy McCullough had been murdered. No, he didn’t recall the details of the case. I showed him the file. Was there evidence of pneumonia? Not as such. As such? Well, how else could you explain the poor man’s sudden demise? How else? Read the
News of the World
any given Sunday.

I drove to the rugby club.

I met Andrew Platt in the rugby club’s oak bar, which was a long, elegant affair decorated with club ties, trophies, and rugby shirts from touring parties. Platt was quite the Colonel Blimp character. Handlebar moustache, puffy face, chrome dome, black blazer, trousers too high and too tight. He was about sixty years old, which would have put him slap bang in WWII.

He shook my hand and offered me a drink.

“Whatever you’re having,” I said, and the barkeep made us two double gin and tonics.

I thanked the barman for the drink and told him to scram while I asked Platt some questions.

When he was gone I went straight to the rugby club dinner of Christmas 1980: what time had Harper McCullough got there, what time had he left?

Platt hadn’t the foggiest, but he thought he had an old agenda in his office.

“Let’s go, then, we’ll bring our drinks,” I said.

Platt’s office was neat and well maintained. A couple of plants. An empty desk. He was clearly a military man.

“The Christmas dinner of 1980, you say?”

“That’s the one.”

He opened a metal filing cabinet and began rummaging inside.

I noticed that even his shoes were shined to a brilliance.

“By any chance were you in the war, Mr. Platt?” I asked to satisfy my own curiosity.

“Indeed I was, my boy. RAF. Dumfries.”

“Spitfires?”

“Hurricanes.”

“Any kills?”

“A Ju-88 and I shared a kill on a 111.”

“That’s not too shabby.”

“No, it isn’t,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

He handed me a file that contained press clippings, photographs, and a schedule for the rugby club Christmas dinner of 1980. There were lots of awards and presentations. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

“Harper McCullough got an award and gave a speech that night, didn’t he?”

“Oh yes. A speech on behalf of his father. It was the President’s Award.”

“And what time would that have been given at?”

“That would have been the next-to-last presentation, at about ten o’clock.”

“And how long was Harper’s speech, if you remember?”

“Two minutes, not more. We like to keep the speeches short,” Platt said, sitting on the edge of his desk and gulping the last of his gin and tonic.

“You don’t happen to remember seeing Harper after his speech was over, do you?” I said with the chill marching up my spine again.

I could almost predict the answer word for word.

“Harper? He gave a very gracious speech. Very gracious. After it was over he excused himself to go to the Gents. Did I see him after that? Hmm, I don’t know. There was no reason for him to stay there until the bitter end . . .”

In other words, from about 10:15 onward Harper’s movements were unaccounted for. He’d said that he’d stayed until 11:30 but would there be any witnesses who could back up that story?

“Did you ever speak to the police before about this dinner?”

“No.”

“Did you ever talk to an Inspector Beggs?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Beggs had missed it. Beggs had bloody missed it! He had taken Harper at his word and assumed that there would have been dozens of witnesses at the dinner who would have backed up his alibi.

“How well did you know his father? Tommy McCullough?”

“As well as anyone else. Tommy loved the rugby club.”

“He was a builder, wasn’t he?”

“A contractor. Very successful. They say his company built half of Antrim town.”

“I heard that. How would you say that relations were between father and son?”

“They were good.”

“Are you quite sure?”

Platt opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Go on, please, Mr. Platt,” I prompted him.

“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead . . .”

“He didn’t like Harper?”

“It’s not that he didn’t like him . . . Well, it’s more that he never . . .”

“Please, sir, I’m a homicide detective conducting what could be a murder inquiry.”

“Well, one time . . . it’s probably nothing . . . one time I heard him call Harper ‘Carol’s wee bastard.’”

“He didn’t think that Harper was his child?”

“They weren’t alike in temperament and they certainly didn’t look anything alike.”

“Did he say this sort of thing often?”

“God, no! One time. Just that one time. He’d been drinking!”

“Nice of Harper to pick up that award for his father. Had he done anything like that before?”

“No . . . but his father had just had a stroke.”

“Is there a picture of Tommy here in the club? Harper didn’t have one in the house when I went to visit.”

“Of course!”

He walked me out into the corridor and showed me several pictures of Tommy at various club functions and a couple of him playing for Antrim 1st XV. He was a big, strapping second row with blond hair, huge thighs and shoulders. Harper was tall like his father, but dark haired and thin.

“Harper never played the game?” I asked.

“Never. And his dad didn’t force him, which was right. You can force someone to play football or cricket, but with rugby you have to be committed or you’re going to get yourself hurt.”

I studied the photograph for a while.

“Mr. Pratt, did Tommy ever talk about leaving any money to the rugby club in his will?”

“Gentlemen don’t discuss things like that. I would never have asked him!” Mr. Platt said, affronted.

“Of course not.”

We studied the photograph for another moment or two.

“Although . . .” Mr. Platt said sotto voce.

“Yes?”

“Well, he did say to me once that the house was going to the RSPB after his death. He wanted it to be some kind of birdwatching center or something. He loved the birds.”

“I heard that. Did the club get
any
money after Tommy’s death?”

“No. Not a penny. It all went to his boy and, like I say, rugby wasn’t his game. Not at all.”

“It’s a shame that he died intestate, then, isn’t it?”

“Aye. But a man never knows when his number’s up. Even in the war you never really thought about that. They could have said to you, OK, chaps, this is a dicey mission and only one out of ten of you is going to make it back. You would have thought to yourself, oh, those poor bastards, I shan’t be seeing them again.”

I thanked Mr. Platt for his time and asked him where I could make a phone call.

He said there was a payphone next to the squash court.

I got some change out of my pocket and called McCrabban at home in Ballymena.

I bounced my idea off him. He liked it. He thought it was entirely possible.

“There’s an expression in Irish, Crabbie.
Olann an cat cluin bainne leis.
”

“Which means?”

“The quiet cat also drinks the cream.”

“I know what you’re getting at.”

I left it at that. I didn’t say that I was going to make a collar. We both knew that all the evidence was circumstantial.

This wasn’t his case. It wasn’t even my case. This one belonged to Mary Fitzpatrick.

I told McCrabban that I’d see him next week and told him to give my best to his missus. I hung up and walked outside to the waiting BMW. It was a dark sky. A sleekit line of storm clouds had drifted up from the Mourne Mountains and the sun had finally set into the Atlantic. I felt the first spit of rain and looked underneath the Beemer for an explosive device and when I found none I got inside.

I wondered whether it had all been Lizzie’s idea.

After Mulvenna’s death from MS she must have known that she was the sole witness to Tommy McCullough’s spiteful will. All they had to do was get rid of the will and that would be that. She would marry Harper and they would inherit the estate and live happily ever after.

But then why would he kill her?

And how did he kill her?

A dozen raindrops fell on the roof and then a score and then the heavens opened.

“Shit,” I said. There was no point putting it off anymore.

I drove to Ballykeel village, parked outside the Henry Joy McCracken, and took my lockpick kit from the glove compartment.

I walked to the front door.

I knew the lock now and I was inside the pub two minutes later.

I turned the lights on, took an upturned chair from off the table, and sat down.

I flipped through my notebook for the hundredth time.

Always with this case 1, 2, 3 . . . 5, 6.

I looked at the bar and the front door and the back door.

How did he do it?

How?

How did he—

One beat.

Two.

Three.

And just like that.

I knew.

I knew everything.

I drove out to Harper’s house through the rain and dark. Perhaps I should have called McCrabban in for this one, but I didn’t want to bother him this late at night and Harper surely wouldn’t be much trouble.

I parked the car next to an open horsebox in the muddy yard.

I opened the glove compartment and put brand-new AAA batteries in the Dictaphone.

I set it running in my inside pocket. It was a corny technique and it wouldn’t hold up in court, but I didn’t need it to hold up in
court
. . .

It was raining hard so I turned up my collar and put on my baseball cap.

I opened the car door and ran, but I still got soaked in the ten seconds between the car and the porch and I was lucky not to go arse over tit on the wet grass.