Authors: Minette Walters
forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping
his hands loosely in front of him. 'And sadly, the one
sure thing I know about Bridey is that you can't
believe a word she says. It may not be her fault, but
it is a fact. She's never had the courage to speak out
honestly because her drunken brute of a husband
beats her within an inch of her life if she even dares to
think about it.'
Siobhan found his directness shocking. 'You're
talking about things that happened a long time ago,'
she said. 'Liam hasn't struck anyone since he lost the
use of his right arm.'
'Do you know how that happened?'
'In a car crash.'
'Did Bridey tell you that?'
'Yes.'
'Not so,' he countered bluntly. 'When Patrick was
twenty, he tied Liam's arm to a table top and used
a hammer to smash his wrist to a pulp. He was so
wrought up that when his mother tried to stop him,
he shoved her through a window and broke her pelvis
so badly she's never been able to walk again. That's
why she's in a wheelchair and why Liam has a useless
right arm. Patrick got off lightly by pleading provocation
because of Liam's past brutality towards him,
and spent less than two years in prison for it.'
Siobhan shook her head. 'I don't believe you.'
'It's true.' He rubbed a tired hand around his face.
'Trust me, Mrs Lavenham.'
The can't,' she said flatly. 'You've never lived in
Sowerbridge, Inspector. There's not a soul in that
village who doesn't have it in for the O'Riordans and
a juicy titbit like that would have been repeated a
thousand times. Trust me.''
'No one knows about it.' The man held her gaze
for a moment, then dropped his eyes. 'It was fifteen
years ago and it happened in London. I was a raw
recruit with the Met, and Liam was on our ten-most
wanted list. He was a scrap-metal merchant, and up
to his neck in villainy, until Patrick scuppered him for
good. He sold up when the lad went to prison and
moved himself and Bridey down here to start a new
life. When Patrick joined them after his release, the
story of the car crash had already been accepted.'
She shook her head again. 'Patrick came over from
Ireland after being wounded by a terrorist bomb.
That's why he smiles all the time. The nerves in his
cheek were severed by a piece of flying glass.' She
sighed. 'It's another kind of disability. People take
against him because they think he's laughing at them.'
'No, ma'am, it was a revenge attack in prison for
stealing from his cellmate. His face was slashed with
a razor. As far as I know, he's never set foot in
Ireland.'
She didn't answer. Instead she ran her hand rhythmically
over her skirt while she tried to collect her
thoughts. Oh, Bridey, Bridey, Bridey . . . Have you been
lying to me . . .?
The inspector watched her with compassion.
'Nothing happens in a vacuum, Mrs Lavenham.'
'Meaning what, exactly?'
'Meaning that Patrick murdered Mrs Fanshaw - '
he paused - 'and both Liam and Bridey know he did.
You can argue that the physical abuse he suffered at
the hands of his father as a child provoked an anger in
him that he couldn't control - it's a defence that
worked after the attack on Liam - but it won't cut
much ice with a jury when the victims were two
defenceless old ladies. That's why Bridey's jumping at
shadows. She knows that she effectively signed Mrs
Fanshaw's death warrant when she chose to keep quiet
about how dangerous Patrick was, and she's terrified
of it becoming public.' He paused. 'Which it certainly
will during die trial.'
Was he right, Siobhan wondered? Were Bridey's
fears rooted in guilt? 'That doesn't absolve the police
of responsibility for their safety,' she pointed out.
'No,' he agreed, 'except we don't believe their
safety's in question. Frankly, all the evidence so far
points to Liam himself being the instigator of the
hate campaign. The graffiti is always done at night
in car spray paint, at least a hundred cans of which are
stored in Liam's shed. There are never any witnesses
to it, and by the time Bridey calls us the perpetrators
are long gone. We've no idea if the phone rings as
constantly as they claim, but on every occasion that a
threat has been made Bridey admits she was alone
in the cottage. We think Liam is making the calls
himself.'
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She shook her head in bewilderment. 'Why would
he do that?'
'To prejudice the trial?' he suggested. 'He has a
different mindset to you and me, ma'am, and he's
quite capable of trashing Kilkenny Cottage himself
if he thinks it will win Patrick some sympathy with a
jury.'
Did she believe him? Was Liam that clever? 'You
said you were always questioning him. Why? What
had he done?'
'Any scam involving cars. Theft. Forging MOT
certificates. Odometer fixing. You name it, Liam was
involved in it. The scrap-metal business was just a
front for a car-laundering operation.'
'You're talking about when he was in London?'
'Yes.'
She pondered for a moment. 'Did he go to prison
for it?'
'Once or twice. Most of the time he managed to
avoid conviction. He had money in those days - a lot
of money - and could pay top briefs to get him off.
He shipped some of the cars down here, presumably
with the intention of starting the same game again,
but he was a broken man after Patrick smashed his
arm. I'm told he gave up grafting for himself and took
to living off disability benefit instead. There's no way
anyone was going to employ him. He's too unreliable
to hold down a job. Just like his son.'
The see,' said Siobhan slowly.
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He waited for her to go on, and when she didn't
he said, 'Leopards don't change their spots, Mrs
Lavenham. I
wish I could say they did, but I've been
a policeman too long to believe anything so naive.'
She surprised him by laughing. 'Leopards?' she
echoed. 'And there was me thinking we were talking
about dogs.'
'I don't follow.'
'Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Did the
police ever intend to let them wipe the slate clean and
start again, Inspector?'
He smiled slightly. 'We did ... for fifteen years . . .
Then Patrick murdered Mrs Fanshaw.'
'Are you sure?'
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'He used the same hammer on
her that he used on his father.'
Siobhan remembered the sense of shock that had
swept through the village the previous June when the
two bodies were discovered by the paper boy after his
curiosity had been piqued by the fact that the front
door had been standing ajar at six thirty on a Sunday
morning. Thereafter, only the police and Lavinia's
grandson had seen inside the house, but the rumour
machine described a scene of carnage, with Lavinia's
brains splattered across the walls of her bedroom and
her nurse lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen. It
was inconceivable that anyone in Sowerbridge could
have done such a thing, and it was assumed the Manor
House had been targeted by an outside gang for
whatever valuables the old woman might possess.
I
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It was never very clear why police suspicion had
centred so rapidly on Patrick O'Riordan. Gossip said
his fingerprints were all over the house and his toolbox
was found in the kitchen, but Siobhan had always
believed the police had received a tipoff. Whatever the
reason, the matter appeared to be settled when a
search warrant unearthed Lavinia's jeweller}' under his
floorboards and Patrick was formally charged with the
murders.
Predictably, shock had turned to fury but, with
Patrick already in custody, it was Liam and Bridey
who took the full brunt of Sowerbridge's wrath. Their
presence in the village had never been a particularly
welcome one - indeed, it was a mystery how 'rough
trade like them' could have afforded to buy a cottage
in rural Hampshire, or why they had wanted to - but
they became deeply unwelcome after the murders.
Had it been possible to banish them behind a physical
pale, the village would most certainly have done so;
as it was, the old couple were left to exist in a social
limbo where backs were turned and no one spoke to
them.
In such a climate, Siobhan wondered, could Liam
really have been stupid enough to ratchet up the
hatred against them by daubing anti-Irish slogans
across his front wall?
'If Patrick is the murderer, then why didn't you
find Lavinia's diamond rings in Kilkenny Cottage?'
she asked the inspector. 'Why did you only find pieces
of fake jewellery?'
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'Who told you that? Bridey?'
'Yes.'
He looked at her with a kind of compassion. 'Then
I'm afraid she was lying, Mrs Lavenham. The diamond
rings were in Kilkenny Cottage along with everything
else.'
14
Two
Monday, 8 March 1999, 11.45p.m.
Siobhan was aware of the orange glow in the night
sky ahead of her for some time before her tired brain
began to question what it meant. Arc lights? A party?
Fire, she thought in alarm as she approached the
outskirts of Sowerbridge and saw sparks shooting into
the air like a giant Roman candle. She slowed her
Range Rover to a crawl as she approached the bend
by the church, knowing it must be the O'Riordans'
house, tempted to put the car into reverse and drive
away, as if denial could alter what was happening.
But she could see the flames licking up the front of
Kilkenny Cottage by that time and knew it was too
late for anything so simplistic. A police car was blocking
the narrow road ahead, and with a sense of
foreboding she obeyed the torch that signalled her to
draw up on the grass verge beyond the church gate.
She lowered her window as the policeman came
over, and felt the warmth from the fire fan her face
like a Saharan wind. 'Do you live in Sowerbridge,
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madam?' he asked. He was dressed in shirtsleeves,
perspiration glistening on his forehead, and Siobhan
was amazed that one small house two hundred yards
away could generate so much heat on a cool March
night.
'Yes.' She gestured in the direction of the blaze.
'At Fording Farm. It's another half-mile beyond the
crossroads.'
He shone his torch into her eyes for a moment his
curiosity whetted by her soft Dublin accent, she
guessed - before lowering the beam to a map. 'You'll
waste a lot less time if you go back the way you came
and make a detour,' he advised her.
'I can't. Our driveway leads off the crossroads by
Kilkenny Cottage and there's no other access to it.'
She touched a finger to the map. 'There. Whichever
way I go, I still need to come back to the crossroads.'
Headlights swept across her rearview mirror as
another car rounded the bend. 'Wait there a moment,
please.' He moved away to signal towards the verge,
leaving Siobhan to gaze through her windscreen at
the scene of chaos ahead.
There seemed to be a lot of people milling around,
but her night sight had been damaged by the brilliance
of the flames; and the water glistening on the tarmac
made it difficult to distinguish what was real from
what was reflection. The rusted hulks of the old cars
that littered the O'Riordans' property stood out in
bold silhouettes against the light, and Siobhan
thought that Cynthia Haversley had been right when
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she said they weren't just an eyesore but a fire hazard
as well. Cynthia had talked dramatically about the
dangers of petrol, but if there was any petrol left in
the corroded tanks, it remained sluggishly inert. The
real hazard was the time and effort it must have taken
to manoeuvre the two fire engines close enough to
weave the hoses through so many obstacles, and Siobhan
wondered if the house had ever stood a chance of
being saved.
She began to fret about her two small boys and their
nanny, Rosheen, who were alone at the farmhouse,
and drummed her fingers impatiently on the steering
wheel. 'What should I do?' she asked the policeman
when he returned after persuading the other driver to
make a detour. 'I need to get home.'
He looked at the map again. 'There's a footpath
running behind the church and the vicarage. If you're
prepared to walk home, I suggest you park your car
in the churchyard and take the footpath. I'll radio
through to ask one of the constables on the other side
of the crossroads to escort you into your driveway.
Failing that, I'm afraid you'll have to stay here until the road's clear, and that could take several hours.'
'I'll walk.' She reached for the gear stick, then let
her hand drop. 'No one's been hurt, have they?'
'No. The occupants are away.'
Siobhan nodded. Under the watchful eyes of
half of Sowerbridge village Liam and Bridey had set
off that morning in their ancient Ford estate, to
the malignant sound of whistles and hisses. 'The
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