Caroline looked at her, square in the face, but did not speak.
‘This wouldn’t bring Peter back,’ her mother persisted.
‘Peter dying was my fault,’ Caroline stated.
‘That not true, Caroline,’ I said. ‘You know that as well as anyone.’
‘Well, who else did it? Who else brought him up? Who else let him go to a fucking beach camping in the middle of winter?’ Her eyes shone brightly, wet with grief and defiance.
‘Is that what Simon told you?’ I asked.
‘
Him
,’ John McCrudden spat angrily. ‘He’s the one should be . . .’ He prevented himself going any further as his wife shushed him.
‘Is he still here?’ I asked.
‘He’s going home this evening. He’s staying out at the Rosses,’ Rose McCrudden said.
‘He should never have been here,’ her husband stated.
I glanced at Caroline but she was slumped back on the bed. Though her eyes were open, she seemed to have difficulty focusing.
‘I’m going to go to the shop,’ I said. ‘Would anyone like anything? Caroline?’
‘I need some stuff from home,’ she slurred. ‘My stuff.’ She tried, with little success, to turn her head towards her mother. ‘From home.’
‘I’ll take you, if you like,’ I offered. ‘If you need to collect some things. If it would help.’
After some discussion, Rose McCrudden agreed to go with me to Caroline’s house. I guessed Caroline needed clothes and underwear. And I knew that her father would not want to leave her side for some time to come.
At Caroline’s house the curtains were still drawn. While her mother went upstairs to collect clothes, I tidied up a little downstairs, opening the curtains to allow some light in. Then I headed up to the bathroom. I guessed that the room would not have been touched since Caroline’s discovery. True enough, the bath was still full of water, mixed with vomit, which had also spattered against the sides. An empty tablet bottle lay on the floor beside a discarded pile of Caroline’s clothes. An empty wine bottle lay in the nest of her black trousers.
I became aware of a buzzing noise and realized that Caroline’s phone was sitting on the windowsill. I picked it up and read the caller’s number, though I did not recognize it. I called to Rose McCrudden to see if she wanted to answer the call for Caroline but by the time she came into the bathroom the phone had rung off. I was struck, though, to see that there had been thirty-two missed calls. The same number was listed over fifty times since the night previous, with one single break in numbers at 7.05 a.m., to MUM. Some of the calls from the other number had lasted fifteen minutes, some only a matter of seconds. The incoming call immediately prior to Caroline’s call to her mother had lasted forty minutes. All the calls from the anonymous number were incoming. The fact that Caroline hadn’t saved the number or added a name to her phone’s address book suggested it was someone whose contact she didn’t wish to retain. I had a fair idea who it was.
I dropped Rose McCrudden back at the hospital, then headed out of Sligo towards Rosses Point, a sandy beach area made famous by Yeats in his poetry. I knew of only one hotel in the area and hedged my bets.
I asked for Simon at the reception desk, telling them he was expecting me. The girl, Polish by her accent, gave me the room number and told me she’d call ahead and let him know that I was coming up.
‘I’ll call him on his mobile,’ I said. ‘Can I just check I’ve got the right number for him? I can’t remember if this is his work or private phone.’ I read the number off the display of Caroline’s mobile.
‘I can’t give out details of a customer’s phone,’ she said.
‘Yes, you can,’ I said, taking out my ID.
She looked at the screen in front of her, her teeth digging into her lower lip, as if she might find the answer to her predicament there. She glanced around.
‘It’s not like I’m going to shoot him. You don’t have to give me the number. I just need you to confirm that the number I have is the right one.’
Reluctantly, she agreed. I read the number off again and she followed it on her screen, her lips silently forming each number.
‘That’s the number we have for Mr Williams,’ she said.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You’ve really helped me out.’
I knocked twice on the door, lightly, as if for room service, then stepped back out of view from the fish-eye lens. Finally I heard the clunk of the lock been flicked and the door opened.
Simon Williams wasn’t wearing his glasses, which meant he was squinting into my fist when it broke his nose. He fell backwards into the room, tripping over his travel bag. The pale blue of his shirt darkened with blood. I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me while Williams scurried backwards away from me.
‘I’ll call the Guards,’ he stammered.
I spat, then lunged for him and lifted him off the ground by his shirt front. I spun him against the wall, the buttons on his shirt ripping off with the force. His head thumped against a framed print on the wall, which shattered with the impact.
He tried to shout out, even as he began to grapple with me, his hands clawing at my neck. Without thinking, I jerked back my head, then smashed it full force into his face, feeling the cartilage of his nose flatten against my forehead.
‘Jesus,’ he squealed, falling to the floor.
‘You made her do it, didn’t you?’
He curled into a foetal position, looking up at me through the crook of his arm.
‘You called her through the night. You goaded her into doing it, didn’t you?’
‘Doing what?’ he asked, spitting blood onto the carpet.
‘She overdosed this morning. Is that what you wanted?’
His entire demeanour changed and he looked at me almost with an expression of ecstasy. ‘Is she dead?’ he asked, the note of hope evident in his voice, though even as he asked he tensed himself and covered his face with his arms, expecting me to strike him again.
‘Do you hate her
that
much?’
He seemed to believe that my anger had subsided and he relaxed a little, twisting his mouth in a bloodstained smile.
‘Did she let you screw her?’ he responded.
He had misjudged the level of my anger.
The sky the following morning hung leaden over the Donegal hills, a thick haze obscuring the upper peaks from view. My entire body ached and my head was numb.
Debbie had been in bed by the time I got back the night previous. During breakfast we spoke little. Penny ate quickly and went upstairs to get changed. Shane was watching something on the TV.
‘How’s my buddy?’ I asked him, forcing a lightness of tone which I did not feel.
‘Fine,’ he said, spooning Frosties into his mouth and turning his attention immediately back to the television.
I wanted to talk to Debbie about what I had done, but found, for once, that I could not be sure how she’d respond. In the end, she brought up the topic herself.
‘I never imagined I’d end up married to a man with bruised knuckles,’ she said, as she cleared the dishes from the table. ‘Who was on the receiving end of your latest mood?’
‘Simon Williams,’ I said, then waited for her reaction.
‘Jumping to Caroline’s defence again?’ she retorted, walking away from me.
‘He goaded her into attempting suicide. He phoned her almost fifty times after the funeral.’
Debbie stopped at the sink and let down the dishes. She leaned heavily on the counter, though did not turn towards me.
‘He’s a bully. He needed to meet someone his own size.’
‘And how did Caroline feel about you beating her husband?’
‘I haven’t told her.’
‘What about Patterson? What’ll he do when Simon presses charges?’
‘I’m not sure. Should I tell him?’
Finally she turned towards me. ‘You can’t not. Do you think Williams won’t report it?’
I nodded my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘What for?’ Debbie asked.
‘For all this shit. For all the stuff with Penny and that.’
She murmured something and turned from me again.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What is it now?’
‘Nothing.’
She stood with her back to me.
Finally, I asked, ‘Debs, this isn’t about Caroline, is it?’
‘You’re rushing down the road to be with her every day,’ she said, making no effort to disguise the hurt tone in her voice.
‘It’s not like that,’ I said, coming towards her, but she raised her hands and stepped back from me.
‘Of course it is,’ she said simply. ‘You’re spending longer with her than with us these days.’
‘She’s lost her son, for God’s sake,’ I said.
‘And you’re losing a daughter,’ Debbie replied quietly. ‘You’re losing your whole family. And you don’t seem to care,’ she added.
Her words played over in my mind as I drove to Letterkenny to discuss the outcome of Lorcan Hutton’s post-mortem with Patterson, and to check what Forensics had found in Hutton’s house and Hamill’s car. I also knew that I would have to tell Patterson what had happened in Sligo. In fact I was a little unsettled that I hadn’t already begun to witness some fallout from my actions.
Patterson was standing in reception when I arrived, being interviewed by a radio reporter on Hutton’s death. I had to concede that, in the years since his promotion, he had become much more polished in his presentations to the media. When quizzed about The Rising, he suggested that, while An Garda welcomed public support, the public might be better served by reporting anything suspicious to their local officers, rather than taking to the streets.
When the interview was finished he summoned me into his office with a crooked finger.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked. ‘I expected you to go out to Hutton’s yesterday.’
I explained about Caroline’s overdose, though I left out the incident with Simon Williams for now.
‘Is she OK?’ he asked, gruffly.
‘Seems to be.’
He grunted something approximating sympathy. ‘Anyway, the PM results are back on Hutton. And the Forensics reports you wanted too.’
‘What’s the news?’
He picked up a folder from his desk and handed it to me. ‘Hamill’s car was clean. Set alight with petrol, nothing useable found. Hutton’s house was a mess, by all accounts. As for the man himself, he was shot in the head with a Colt .45. Probably beaten up before his death. Cigarette burns on his arms. Dead three weeks at least.’
‘Different MO from Kielty then?’ Kielty had been stabbed. No signs of beating or torture.
‘Seems different, certainly,’ Patterson agreed. ‘Could still be the same killer.’
‘I doubt it, Harry. Kielty was killed and set alight in his own barn. Even with the body destroyed, we were going to find it straight away. Hutton was killed a month ago and hidden. Whoever killed him didn’t want him found, at all.’
‘You’re crediting these people with too much intelligence. Most of these fuckers are so addled on drugs they don’t know what they’re at. Work with Nicell in the Drugs Unit, see what you can come up with on these. I had uniforms do a quick check on the other houses in the Court, take statements and that; they’re all in the file. Hutton’s house was trashed, by the way – before the Forensics team got there. Might have been someone after the protest the other night. Or a looter maybe.’
‘I’ll need more help to work this, Harry. Nicell is Drugs Unit; a murder investigation isn’t his area of expertise.’
‘What about that fella Black you have down there?’
‘He’s a part-timer, Harry. Christ, he needed me to tell him to take a piss the other day.’
Patterson chuckled to himself. ‘Who do you want then?’
‘There’s a Guard in Sligo – Joe McCready. He’s young, but he’s smart; thinks on his feet. We could second him for a few weeks.’
Patterson considered this. ‘A uniform – murder is
his
area of expertise then, is it?’
‘He’s thorough. And he wants to do well.’
Patterson nodded, more to shut me up than in agreement. ‘I’ll speak to his Super; see what he says. Get cracking.’
I started to stand, then sat again. ‘There is something else,’ I said.
Patterson had already begun to read something on his desk and he looked up at me without raising his head. ‘What?’
‘Caroline Williams OD-ed because her ex-husband bullied her into it. He called her through the night, convincing her she was to blame.’
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘I went to see him.’ I glanced down at my hands. I had been rubbing my thumb across the bruised knuckles of my left hand.
Patterson followed my gaze and started to chortle to himself. ‘I thought you weren’t sporting those yesterday.’
‘I might have roughed him up a bit,’ I said.
Patterson smirked at me, though he did not speak for a moment. Finally he leant back again and put his hands behind his head. ‘So, why are you telling me?’
It wasn’t the response I’d been expecting. ‘I . . . I thought I should.’