Struggles of Psycho

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Struggles of Psycho Page 21

by Rhyam O'Bryam


  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘Ivy,’ I said. ‘I’d like to ask you about Ivy.’

  ‘Certainly, Superintendent. I like nothing more than that subject matter.’ Amy Philips smirked at me. She seemed in better humour than earlier, as if she’d received good news.

  ‘When, exactly, did you last see her?’

  ‘Exactly? I can’t really be sure. It was about a month ago.’

  ‘Was it daytime? What did she say? What was she wearing?’

  Amy Philips shook her head. ‘There wasn’t a big scene. We went to bed as usual and when I woke up, she had gone.’

  ‘Before going to bed, had you watched any television or listened to the radio?’

  ‘Why?’ Our suspect looked at me with genuine curiosity.

  ‘It might jog your memory about the date. If you can recall what was on the news or if you saw a film, something like that, we could get a date from it.’

  She leaned back as though thinking, but I felt that this was merely for display and therefore I wasn’t surprised when she said, ‘No, nothing like that. I think we were just reading that night. We had new books from the library.’

  ‘Can you remember the book you were reading? Was there a usual day you went to the library? What would their records show about the date the books were borrowed?’ McCarthy jumped in quickly.

  After a long, calculating pause, Amy Philips nodded. ‘Well done, Detective. Yes, I can remember the book, it was Crime and Punishment. Not much of a story. The silly boy had a conscience and we don’t really need to read a thousand pages to learn that you can’t murder someone if you have a conscience.’

  ‘So if we asked Wexford library for the date you borrowed Crime and Punishment,’ McCarthy pushed on, ignoring the teasing tone of Philips and her allusions to murder, ‘that would give us the date of the last night you saw Ivy Patterson?’

  ‘It would indeed. A Thursday, about a month ago.’

  My mouth felt dry and I licked my lips before speaking. ‘What did she take with her?’

  ‘Very little. I had her passport, for instance. And her bank cards.’

  ‘Did she pack much? Clothes?’

  ‘No, Superintendent, she didn’t pack at all. I don’t even think she took more than a handbag and the clothes she was wearing.’

  ‘And where do you think she went, with just the clothes she was wearing?’

  Amy Philips looked more serious now. ‘Good question. What I think is that she somehow had managed to get a local secret admirer and she ran off to him. Without passport and money, I don’t see her getting back to her family in England.’

  McCarthy drew a deep breath and shook her head. ‘Ivy runs away from you to a new boyfriend and doesn’t then ring her parents?’

  ‘Doesn’t she? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ McCarthy was pointed. ‘You said that the victim, Michael Patterson, came to your house because of a worry about Ivy. That they hadn’t heard from her.’

  Did I smile? I probably did. It wasn’t often that I’d seen Philips on the defensive, but McCarthy had definitely caught her a good one.

  After a pause, with a bitter expression, Philips gave McCarthy a nod. ‘You’re right, Detective. She can’t have phoned home.’

  Right away, McCarthy pushed again. ‘So she ran away to a friend but didn’t ring her parents?’

  Once more, a long pause.

  ‘No. She would have rung her parents.’

  At last, we were making progress. We had broken through the confusion created by the non-stop biographical stories of Amy Philips to catch her in a lie. And in my experience, this would often be the crucial moment in a case. Because once suspects have lost control of their story, they rarely get it back. I felt a surge of elation and my thoughts turned to Léan O’Raghailligh, the DPP; it looked like I would have something to show her.

  Philips gave a sniff and a tear came to her eye. ‘I tried to avoid the conclusion for so long. But deep down, I think I always knew where she’d gone. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.’

  ‘And where was that?’ asked McCarthy, somewhat aggressively, her tone already stating that Philips was a liar and whatever this new idea was, it would be challenged.

  ‘To the sea. To drown herself. It’s what she always threatened to do.’

  All at once, my growing confidence collapsed. I could see the thought had hit McCarthy hard too, for she turned white around her fleshy neck and even her ears: all the parts of her skin uncovered by makeup. It fitted. Even if it wasn’t true. Even if Amy Philips had murdered Ivy Patterson, this story would fit. We would find no witnesses to confirm the cause of Ivy’s disappearance and yet that wouldn’t matter. There might well be no witnesses to a woman swimming out to sea early one morning on the long, bare Wexford coastline.

  I didn’t believe Philips. Although her eyes were moist, there was no real grief. As usual, she was looking at me appraisingly, to check the impact of her statement. To make sure that I could see it all. How death by drowning explained why Ivy took so few items with her. How it explained that she didn’t need her passport or bank cards. Above all, it explained why her family didn’t hear from her.

  Now I was uncertain. Had Philips planned this all along? To tease us with a story that we could tear apart in just one or two questions then to hit us with her cast-iron explanation for Ivy’s disappearance? If so, she had been in charge all along, even when it seemed like her story was falling apart. Christ. Again, I was struck by the feeling that I’d met a criminal who was too smart for me. Amy Philips made me see myself as dull and clumsy.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s have a break. It will give us a chance to confirm the date of Ivy Patterson’s departure from your home.’

  ‘Certainly, Superintendent.’ Amy Philips didn’t move, only watched with her knowing expression as McCarthy and I stood up. Even as I left the room, she was still sitting there, facing the chair I had left.

  ‘Fuck her,’ muttered McCarthy as soon as we were safely out of earshot. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Let’s sit in my car.’

  She followed me out of the building, where I remembered that I had been unable to park in my reserved space. It was empty now.

  ‘Damn. I forgot. It’s at White’s Hotel. Still, the walk will do you good.’

  Understandably, McCarthy took this as a slight against her somewhat overweight figure and so I took no offence when she said, ‘And fuck you too.’ Then, after a pause, added, ‘sir.’

  ‘Sorry, McCarthy. I just meant that I needed the walk, to clear my head and it might serve in the same for you too. Often, my best thoughts come when walking.’

  We strolled down the hill towards the hotel, with my slowing down my usual pace to save McCarthy from any effort.

  ‘I thought you had her there.’

  ‘I did too.’ McCarthy adjusted her cap. ‘The witch.’

  ‘She is a witch, though, isn’t she?’

  After walking through the back entrance of the hotel, we settled into my car, McCarthy letting her door slam shut, perhaps still annoyed at my remark about her needing the walk.

  ‘Where are we, then?’ I asked her.

  ‘She’s killed them both.’

  ‘In what order?’

  McCarthy didn’t answer right away, but watched a seagull as it shuffled about on top of the grey stone wall in front of us. ‘You know the way she’s a sexual deviant, right?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t use the term deviant in court.’

  ‘No, I know. But between ourselves, she’s into some twisted stuff, right?’

  ‘I’m interested in where your thought is leading, McCarthy,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think she cares all that much about sex. I don’t think she cares all that much about anything.’

  McCarthy shook her head, impatient with me. ‘I think there was some kind of sex scene. Mike, Ivy and Amy. Maybe he was tied up; that way she could pierce his ribs with a knitting needle, no problem.’

 
‘Yeah. That’s good. That makes a lot of sense. OK, good. And Ivy is in the room?’ We shared a look and I could see that McCarthy took heart from my expression, which I hope was encouraging.

  ‘Right. Philips kills him in front of her. To torture her. To punish her.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Then, Philips has to kill her, as a possible witness. But she has more feelings for Ivy, so it isn’t easy.’

  ‘How?’

  McCarthy shook her head. ‘That’s where I’m stuck.’

  ‘Anything in the forensics of the room? Fibres from ropes?’

  ‘All sorts of debris in the carpet, but nothing you wouldn’t expect from a farm. Nothing to say for sure Ivy was present when her brother died.’

  I found myself leaning forward, resting my head on the wheel, closing my eyes.

  ‘Doyle? Are you OK?’

  ‘Just thinking. We are missing something. All this time she’s giving us. All this nonsense about her life. I’ve never come across anything like it.’

  McCarthy shrugged. ‘We’re a captive audience. She can dump all her crap on us.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s more sinister. I’ve long had the feeling she’s deliberately dragging this out. Where could you put a body that it would take three or four days to disappear?’

  ‘You’re on the ball there, Doyle. That’s exactly what she’s doing.’ McCarthy looked at me excitedly. ‘The septic tank? She’s in the tank dissolving, while Philips stalls us.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ The thought had already occurred to me. ‘I’ve seen a body from a septic tank.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. In 1990. The Whyte case. I was detective sergeant there. Even after two months there’s still quite a lot left.’

  ‘But it has to be something like that. That makes total sense of her behaviour. She’s not a lonely weirdo in search of a sympathetic ear. She’s a fucking cold-hearted killer and she’s waiting for the evidence to disappear.’

  Surprising myself, let alone McCarthy, I let out a long, disconsolate sigh. ‘Poor Ivy.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That she didn’t get much of a life, blackmailed into living with Philips. And that’s she’s probably buried on the farm. If you replaced the grass sods carefully, then after a few days the cut lines would probably be grown together.’

  ‘There would still be signs though. A different colour to the grass. A bump. Come on, let’s go look.’ McCarthy looked at me expectantly. I found my heart lifting and I know that a smile was appearing on my face.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea. Are you afraid of heights?’

  ‘No, why?’

  Without answering her, I took out my phone and called the Air Support Unit.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The first time I’d been in a police helicopter, I’d found the experience intense and very exciting. We had chased down a gang who had robbed a country home and were trying to get away across fields in a Land Rover. That was ten years ago, however, and these days I didn’t enjoy going up in one. If the wind was strong, you were buffeted around and felt sick.

  That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst was the thought that it would be so easy to unclip myself and jump out.

  So McCarthy was up in the helicopter while I took a car from the pool and drove to the farm. The idea was that they would survey the fields from the air and then drop McCarthy down to tour the grounds on foot.

  From time to time, I studied the sky but I didn’t see the helicopter. I pulled into the yard of the farm and switched off the engine. It was a bright day and if you had never met Amy Philips, you might consider the place cheerful. Even the looming, grey presence of the castle was less ominous with one side lit up by the sun.

  As far as I could tell, nothing had changed since my last visit. The farm could easily be a target for thieves. Local knowledge of arrests was invariably accurate and there was a good chance that the fact that the farm was currently unoccupied was widely known. I walked around the courtyard and looked through some of the dusty windows. What had really happened here the night that Mike Patterson had died?

  My walkie-talkie crackled.

  ‘Doyle, are you receiving? Over.’

  ‘Come in, McCarthy. Where are you?’

  ‘Sorry, just some technical problems. We are about ten minutes out. Over.’

  ‘Fine. I’m going to walk the fields,’ I paused to check the position of the sun, ‘to the east of the farm. Over.’

  ‘See you soon. Over and out.’

  I flipped open the boot of the car and sat on the rear frame while I swapped my shoes for Wellington boots. It seemed to me that the rough ground to the east was the most likely place to find a grave. Elsewhere, the fields were flat and green, populated by a few sheep, but ahead of me was uneven ground, wild grass, gorse and a cluster of short, underdeveloped birch trees. I walked about a hundred metres, enjoying the sun and the freshness of the air, reached a fence – two wires, wooden posts, bushes growing up through it – and after moving along it for a couple of metres, turned and walked back towards the farm, in as straight a line as I could manage.

  It dawned on me that I could hear the noise of the helicopter and suddenly there it was, swooping down over the tower. McCarthy was up front with the pilot. A photographer was leaning out of the open slide door with a large-lensed camera in his hands. They hovered nearby, creating a series of rapid, deep-booming waves of air that pushed at me with a swift, chopping motion.

  ‘Get on with it, McCarthy.’

  ‘Roger, Boss. Over.’

  The helicopter turned and began a very low sweep across the flat fields to the north, sending the sheep scurrying away to the far corner. Meanwhile, I’d reached the end of my current row. I moved sideways a couple of metres and began to follow another imaginary grid line across the rough ground. It was clear to me that no spade had touched the earth beneath my wellies for a long time. Hopefully, the helicopter would do better.

  After I had patiently trod the lines back and forth and completed my survey of the field, I called my colleague.

  ‘Come in, McCarthy. Over.’

  ‘Here, sir. Over.’

  ‘Nothing here. How about you? Over.’

  ‘Nothing obvious, but Derek reckons he’s taken some shots of discoloured grass. He’s emailing you the most likely spots now.’

  It was not wise to get too worked up about possibilities. But if we did find a grave with Ivy in it, the case was over and my decision to prosecute for murder would be completely vindicated. But should I really wish for this breakthrough? Because it would mean another dead person. Whether the version of Ivy Patterson we had come to know through Philips were true or not didn’t matter. It would still be a tragedy to find the body, especially for Mrs Patterson.

  My phone shuddered. The images were starting to arrive. As I walked towards the north field, I flicked through them. They were good, high resolution, you could really zoom in a long way without losing sharpness. And there were indeed some lumps of discoloured grass that were promising.

  ‘We’re going west now. Will you check out Derek’s spots? Over.’

  ‘Yes. Over and out.’

  When I got close, however, it was obvious these were not graves. More like a discolouration of the grass from an animal lying on it all night. Without any hope, I took my time and went carefully back and forth across the green field. I could be quicker here because the evenness of the grass and the lack of bushes meant my lines could be much further apart.

  ‘Anything? Over.’ McCarthy was on the walkie-talkie.

  ‘No.’ I was discouraged and she could probably hear that in my voice, even through the hiss of our communications.

  ‘Never mind, Doyle. It means she might be out there somewhere. Over.’

  ‘Do you really think she’s alive?’

  There was a long pause, with just the white noise to remind me I was talking to someone.

  ‘No,’ said McCarthy at last. ‘No, I do
n’t.’

  ‘Come and join me when you’ve completed the circuit.’

  ‘Will do, over and out.’

  I heard the helicopter come closer, rather too close to the tower for my comfort, then it swerved away southwards. There, the grounds had copses of trees. Searching those would be a job for McCarthy and me.

  After another thirty minutes or so of pacing the farm grounds, McCarthy’s voice came through the walkie-talkie. ‘Come in, Doyle. We’re done. They are going to set me down. Where shall I meet you? Over.’

  ‘In the courtyard. Over.’

  What must it have been like for Ivy, living against her will at this farm? On days like this, it might have been pleasant. Sunshine on the fields; slow-moving cattle and sheep grazing lush fields; swallows flitting under the eaves of the houses. Yet, even the best of days would have been spoiled by the presence of Amy Philips. Like the castle, her shadow would have been inescapable.

  I was more resolved on bringing a successful charge against Philips than any other criminal I’d encountered. As I walked up a country road covered in a layer of light brown, dried mud, I examined this feeling. It wasn’t just my instinct telling me that she had murdered two people and was mocking the law. It was also the background horror of her story.

  Even if half of what Philips had told us was true, she had blackmailed, intimidated and tortured poor Ivy, ruining her life. There would be no prosecution for that. But I could successfully give the AG the evidence she needed to prosecute her for the murder of Mike Patterson and possibly that of Ivy. If we could only find the body.

  Why else was Philips stringing us along, if not to allow time for nature to hide a burial? I knew I was on the right track, that some reason lay behind the strange behaviour of Philips. No other suspect I’d ever interviewed had talked so much. What other reason could she have for this behaviour, assuming she was the calculating and cunning personality that I knew she was?

  At the courtyard, McCarthy was leaning on the car bonnet.

 

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