Bang, bang, bang, croak, croak, croak.
The realisation that someone was at his front door brought him fully into the moment. He stood, wobbling slightly, and he knew he wasn’t quite sober. And then, on the bedside locker, he saw it, an empty half-pint bottle of Jameson. The sight of it brought some relief, because it meant he had not gone over the edge in full public spectacle in a pub or somewhere; he had done it here, in his bedroom. He realised something else, too: that he was still dressed, fully dressed. He even had his shoes on.
‘Christ,’ he said aloud. He went to the window and looked out.
There was a woman there. He could see her profile, but nothing else. Was it Claire? He couldn’t really see. It looked like her – the build did, or was it just similar? He decided that it had to be her. Who else could possibly be calling – he looked at the time: 11.15 p.m. – at this hour? Natalia, maybe? His heart quickened. Could it be? He could hardly believe that it might. He ran a hand through his hair and went down to answer the door.
It wasn’t Claire.
It wasn’t Natalia.
‘Mr Beck, are you alright?’
‘What?’
‘Are you alright, Mr Beck?’ she repeated.
It was a woman named Sheila, although he never referred to his landlady by her Christian name.
‘Mrs Claxton,’ he said.
What the hell’s she doing here, at this hour?
Beck owned his own house in Dublin, which he didn’t plan to sell; his sojourn in Cross Beg would be as short as he could make it. He’d never thought that having a landlady living next door would be a problem, until now.
Her eyes were wide with concern. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said, and he wasn’t certain that she was relieved he wasn’t.
‘Dead?’ he said, confused. He felt woozy, like he might collapse. ‘I have to sit down, sorry,’ he said.
He went into the kitchen and she followed. The kitchen was tidy only because he rarely came in here. He lived for the most part in the living room, where he watched nature programmes on TV and read books and newspapers. That was, when Gumbell wasn’t about, or it wasn’t a Friday night, or a Sunday night, or a Saturday night, or maybe a Monday night too, sometimes.
He sat at the kitchen table. He was sweating again, he felt hot, but Mrs Claxton had her coat buttoned and her hands in her pockets. She glanced about the room, at its 1970s fittings, stopping to stare at the orange curtains, still gathered in their ties by the windows in the way only a woman can gather them. Beck had never once closed them.
‘I’ll be honest, Mr Beck. I saw you come in a couple of hours ago. You were in a state, is all I can say. I’m not making a comment about it, mind. My late husband could get like that too sometimes. No, that’s not what worried me. I heard an awful banging noise and I had images of you lying on the floor maybe choking to death on your own vomit or something. That kind of thing happens to people when they’re… you know, like you were. I went to bed and I slept for a little while but then I woke up and I heard the noise again. I kept worrying that something had happened to you. I imagined you lying on the floor gasping for breath. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened, so I had to come round. But I can see you’re well enough, thank God. And as I’m here, shall I put the kettle on, make us a cup of tea? I need one after all this.’
He would really have liked a drink, but he knew that what he liked was not always what he needed. And a drink was the last thing he needed right now.
‘What?’ she said.
‘What?’ Beck said in return.
‘You just said, “No, no, no”.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. You did. Did you fall? Perhaps you have concussion? Really.’
‘I don’t know,’ Beck said. ‘But I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
She went to the sink and turned on the tap, put the electric kettle spout into the flow of water and went and switched the kettle on, then stood with her arms folded, looking at the curtains. Finally making her mind up, she leaned across the sink, took the curtains from their ties and pulled them shut.
‘I’m going to put on the central heating too, Mr Beck, if you have no objections? And set it to come on in the morning and evening. I left you a full tank of oil when you moved in. And you’ve never used it. I know you’ve never used it. I would have heard. It needs to be used, Mr Beck, otherwise the condensation gets in, ruins the oil after a while. Can you not feel the cold?’
‘Not really, Mrs Claxton. No. But turn it on, yes.’
They talked generally; Mrs Claxton had no difficulty making chit-chat, she left no blank spaces for him to fill. Beck drifted off into himself, half listening, coming out every so often to say something like ‘Really’, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘I didn’t know that’, and once, ‘It’s no weather for ducks’, with no clue as to what they were talking about except that winter weather had formed part of it. What he was really thinking about was tomorrow. He expected to be suspended from duty.
The fun part of the previous night, or what had made it seem like fun – the alcohol – was leaving his system now. Left behind was the residue, which would linger, every drop of merriment wrung from it, nothing left but the thoughts of doom and gloom fanned by the bellows of fear and anxiety. He would have to take a couple of Dr Gumbell’s magic little pills later. He had no particular inclination to acquire a drug as well as a drink habit, so took the yellow happy pills rarely, only during those times when he felt particularly rattled, which he felt certain was only a matter of time as the alcohol slowly drained from his system.
When he looked at the kitchen clock it was gone midnight and he thought: why is she still here? It was then that his addled brain realised that something else was taking place here other than Mrs Claxton’s concern for his welfare. He noticed that she’d taken off her coat. It was draped over the back of her chair. She wore a jumper, a pink jumper, of a very thin fabric – he could see through to what she had on underneath. She was sitting a little back from the table, her legs crossed. He could see that underneath the jumper she wore something bright and red, that it extended down from the line of the bottom of the jumper for a short distance, a very short distance. It was a red satin, or silk, nightie. He could see that her nipples were prominent, pushing through the cloth like thimbles.
He looked away, embarrassed, warmth spreading from his ears and across his cheeks. Mrs Claxton, whom he’d never seen in anything other than high-neck blouses and long, dour skirts or trousers. But he reminded himself the woman had rushed over here thinking she might find him dead on the floor. She had come here to help. The fact that she was wearing a short red nightie was not something to be read into.
He knew he needed to go to bed and try and get some sleep. He forced a yawn.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming to check on me, it was very kind. But I need to get some sleep now, or at least try to.’
She smiled. She had a nice smile; it lit up her face. He saw she was wearing make-up: mascara, lipstick, a touch of colour on her cheeks. Her hair was black, thick, tumbling about her face to her shoulders. She was an attractive woman. Not young, but not old either. A bit like himself, really.
‘How long have you been here now?’ she asked.
Beck couldn’t think straight. ‘Here in this house?’
She nodded.
‘A few weeks.’
‘Soon it will be six. You liked it as soon as you saw it, didn’t you? You remarked on the red brick and the granite cornerstones. You said they were pretty. My husband liked those too. Did you know I knew my husband little more than three weeks before he asked me to marry him? I miss him. It’s why I don’t live in this house any more. Too many memories. You remind me of him, Mr Beck. My husband. I miss him. I miss his touch. Do you know what I mean?’
She stood there, his normally formal landlady, thick-thighed, a grin now playing on her lips, one hand resting on a hip, the other hanging loose by her side. He said no
thing. What could he say, other than perhaps: ‘Mrs Claxton, I might be crazy here, which is completely possible, because my brain is fried and I’m not thinking straight as I’ve had enough alcohol in the last forty-eight hours to kill a horse, or at least a donkey, and my neurotransmitters are sparking and misfiring and giving me a distorted image of the world, so I don’t know what’s what, but are you coming on to me?’
He didn’t say that, of course. He remained silent. She stepped over to him, ran a hand slowly and gently along his cheek.
‘You’re a handsome man,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you realise it. And there’s a quiet strength about you, a sense of sadness, too, and loss. I’d like to hear about that, that sadness and loss, sometime, if you wouldn’t mind telling me.’
And he detected, because she was so close to him, the aroma of alcohol on her own breath. Gin, he guessed. She giggled softly, turning.
‘I’ll say good night, Mr Beck.’ She gave an exaggerated playful swivel of her hips. ‘And leave you wondering about it all.’
And then she was gone, and Beck was standing alone in his kitchen with something he hadn’t had in a long while. It was an erection.
Twenty
‘You’re early, Beck,’ Claire Somers said, standing behind the counter in the public office. ‘Amazing.’
Beck hadn’t seen her there. His head felt like it had a nest of insects inside, all scurrying about behind his eyes. He stopped and turned, walked across the foyer to the counter.
‘Prepare yourself, Beck,’ she said. ‘Wilde wants you in his office. Immediately.’
Beck tried to think of an answer to that but couldn’t. What he thought was that he should have stayed in bed and rung in sick. That seemed like a very good idea right now, but it was too late. An acrid taste crawled up from the back of his throat into his mouth. He swallowed it back down quickly.
‘I tried to cover for you,’ Claire went on. ‘Wilde wanted to know where you were, when I got back to the station yesterday. I couldn’t outright lie.’
‘Is he…’ Beck began, but his voice caught in his throat, making a hollow sound, like one speaker of a two-speaker sound system. He cleared his throat, added, ‘… in his office now?’
‘Yes.’
Beck nodded.
‘Sorry, Beck.’
‘Don’t be. Don’t take any responsibility. This is my stuff. Can you buzz me in, please? I’ve forgotten the security code again.’
When he stepped into the hallway on the other side of the door, he popped a tablet, the ‘little yellow saviours’ as Gumbell called them, proceeded up the stairs to the first floor. Superintendent Wilde’s office door was open. The room looked like it belonged in a museum – old lacquered wooden floorboards, antique desk with a glass shaded lamp on either side on its top, creaky wooden chairs. Wilde himself sat behind his desk in an enormous modern leather swivel chair that to Beck appeared almost vulgar in its august surroundings.
He looked up when Beck appeared in the doorway, squeezing his lower lip gently between a thumb and index finger. His expression gave nothing away. He pointed to the hard wooden chair in front of his desk.
Beck crossed to it and sat down.
‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, Beck?’
‘I was with Dr Gumbell, sir, the state pathologist.’
‘I’m well aware of who he is. What you do in your time is your business, but when it infringes into your working time, then it becomes my business.’
‘I know that.’
‘Do you still want to be a police officer, Beck?’
‘I ask myself that same question.’
‘And did you give yourself an answer? Because all it would take is a letter in your best joined-up handwriting.’
‘I know that, too. But there’s the matter of my pension. My present rank is sergeant; any lump sum would be considerably less than if I were still an inspector. I can’t afford it, is what I’m saying.’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Wilde said, as if to himself. ‘Your record speaks for itself. In the report I received on you… You look surprised.’
‘I didn’t know anyone went to the trouble of writing a report on me.’
‘I requested it, Beck. I needed to know what I was dealing with. But the report said your work for the last period while at Pearse Street was marked by a consistent and profound apathy. You probably feel hard done by. Anyway, Beck, could you please hold it together? No more problems. Can you do that?’
Beck nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Darren Murphy, whose name came up at the briefing on Monday?’
Beck nodded again.
‘Has a history of violence towards women. Yesterday morning he reported being assaulted on his way home from The Noose pub on Sunday night. The same night our victim was murdered. The County Hospital confirmed he presented at A&E with marks to his face but left before receiving treatment.’
Wilde looked down at a written statement. ‘Section Three, namely a golf club. He’s a local drug dealer. Check Pulse for details, and keep me informed. Get on to it immediately, will you? Skip the briefing, anything you need to know you can find out later.’ He glanced down at the statement again. ‘I’m getting a headache, Beck. Get on with it. And don’t give me any more grief, please.’
‘You think he might have something to do with the murder?’ Beck asked.
‘Why do you ask? Of course he might have had something to do with the murder. He might be the person responsible. Beck…?’
‘Inspector Reilly tolerates me on this case at best. Which suits me fine. I consider myself only passing through Cross Beg.’
‘Jesus. Did you really just say that? Only passing through. You know I could suspend you, right now, for what happened yesterday? So tell me, what do you think would be a good move on your part right now?’
Beck got to his feet. ‘I’ll get on to it, boss.’
‘Yes,’ Superintendent Wilde said, ‘you do that.’
Beck went back to the public office. He could see through the safety glass into the Ops Room, filling now with uniforms and detectives.
‘Why are you in here, anyway?’ he asked Claire.
‘O’Rourke, the duty officer, went to get some breakfast. He should be back in a minute.’
They checked the Pulse system. In his statement, Murphy said there had been three attackers, one of whom had been armed with a golf club and had repeatedly struck him about the head and body. That made it a Section 3, assault with a weapon. He’d received stitches to his head as a result. Other injuries were minor, including bruising and minor lacerations to his face and right leg.
‘Superintendent Wilde said Murphy left the hospital before receiving treatment,’ Beck added.
Claire brought up a picture onto the screen. ‘There. Darren Murphy.’
Beck leaned forward. Murphy’s mug shot stared back: shaved head, narrow, close-set eyes, pug nose, wide mouth and chin. He reminded Beck of a pit bull terrier. There were eighty-six incidents listed in his catalogue, too many to go into now. Beck knew that the true number was at least double that; these were merely the incidents for which he’d actually been arrested. Murphy would be twenty-three on his next birthday – his first incident was recorded when he was nine, for shoplifting. He had been below the age of criminal consent back then, but the incident was recorded anyway. There were other shoplifting incidents, but by far the bulk of his criminal activity was drugs-related, simple possession and possession for sale and supply incidents. Darren Murphy was a drug dealer, and being hit over the head with a golf club was an occupational hazard.
Claire was reaching for her coat.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘O’Rourke’s taking the piss.’
Twenty-One
They stopped at a chemist’s shop on the way. Beck needed something for the growing pain in the centre of his head. Blake’s Chemists still had its original facade: two large bay windows framed in red wood, black marble over the door, the word ‘Chemist’ written in
extravagant lettering across it. There was a small hollow between the windows with the entrance door at its end, the walkway laid in marble.
Beck opened the door, and the bell above it sounded. At the counter, he waited. A man emerged from the door to the dispensary at the back of the shop and approached.
‘Rebecca,’ he called. ‘Rebecca. Where is that girl? Are you being served?’
‘Something for a headache?’ Beck asked.
The man picked up a green and blue coloured box from a shelf next to him and placed it on the counter in front of Beck.
‘Should do that trick. Four ninety-nine, please.’
‘What is it?’
‘Paracetamol. Essentially.’
Beck gave him €10 and waited for his change.
‘Any closer to finding who killed that girl?’ the man asked.
‘And you are?’ Beck said.
‘Norman Blake. I know you’re a detective. I’ve seen you about.’ He handed Beck his change.
‘Have you now?’ Beck said.
‘It’s a small town, after all.’
‘So it is,’ Beck said, turning. ‘Thank you for these.’
As Beck left, he could feel the man’s eyes boring into his back.
He hadn’t answered his question.
* * *
The door to number 27 Chapel Park was painted canary yellow. Beck gave it three business knocks. He could sense someone looking out at him through the peephole. There was the sound of a bolt sliding back, and the door slowly opened.
Darren Murphy was standing there, a crutch pressed tight into his right armpit, dressed in a spotless white T-shirt, black tracksuit bottoms and Despicable Me slippers. The top of his head was swathed in a beige bandage; there was bruising beneath his right eye and a series of small cuts to his right cheek. Beck tried not to stare at those cuts, considering if someone’s fingernails – specifically Tanya Frazzali’s – could have inflicted the wounds. Apart from this, Darren looked exactly as he did in his mug shot, except now he had a smirk. Beck saw that both his arms were heavily tattooed. On the side of his neck was a tattoo in Chinese script, something Beck felt confident Murphy hadn’t a clue as to the meaning of.
Where She Lies Page 7