‘You’ll pay for these as normal,’ he said. ‘Tell Rebecca that a prescription will follow.’
‘No, I won’t pay,’ Melanie said. She laughed. ‘Because I have no money. All I have is my black lace panties.’
His face reddened.
‘Why not?’ she said, enjoying his reaction. ‘Don’t you like young girls, too? My father does. Creep. Are you a creep as well?’
But then her smile disappeared and she looked like she might cry.
Blake wanted her out of here as quickly as possible.
She began fumbling with the box of Xanax, tearing it open, pulling out a blister pack, squeezing a couple of capsules from the foil wrapping.
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Jesus. Not here.’
She enjoyed his reaction; it took her mind off things.
‘Why not?’ she said, popping both capsules into her mouth.
Blake looked on helplessly, said nothing. Yes, she thought. This is it, control. That did something for her. Weird, or what? But it did something for her. She shivered, but it wasn’t the cold, it was the thought of it. He was old enough to be her father.
The sound of a commotion outside on the shop floor got their attention. Blake stood, pushed open the door of the consultation room enough to see out. And looked right into the eyes of the big policeman, the one who’d been in the other day for paracetamol, the one he’d seen at Tanya’s funeral. The big policeman wasn’t alone either – there was a half-dozen uniformed officers with him.
Blake did something his rational mind told him was useless, but he went ahead and did it anyway. He closed the consultation room door and hoped they would all just go away.
But immediately the door swung open again, almost striking him in the face, and the big policeman entered.
‘I’ll have those,’ Beck said, swiping the two boxes from Melanie’s hands as she tried to push them down inside her tracksuit bottoms.
Melanie glared.
‘Hello again, Melanie,’ Beck said.
‘They’re not mine. I just picked them up.’
Beck held the warrant out for Blake to see. ‘This is a warrant to search your premises. Is there anything you’d like to tell us about before we begin?’
Blake’s shoulders crumpled as he reached out, steadying himself against a wall.
‘My wife. She has MS. If I could ask, please, don’t disturb her. I’ll show you everything.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In her room. Sleeping.’
‘We still need to search every room.’
‘Please.’
Beck nodded. ‘We can leave it till last, then.’
‘It’s this way,’ Blake said.
‘What? What’s this way?’
‘What you’re looking for. Someone’s tipped you off, haven’t they? I’m relieved, in a way. I can’t take this any longer.’
‘What we’re looking for,’ Beck said. ‘Yes, lead the way.’
A uniform was left with Melanie while another cleared the shop and locked the doors. Beck followed Blake into the living area, up the stairs to the first floor. Blake took a key from his pocket, opened a door and threw it open, stepped aside.
Beck heard the hum of ventilators, shading his eyes against the harsh white light spilling out of the room. With it came the smell. He stood in the doorway and peered in, looking at a miniature forest of swaying cannabis plants.
But that wasn’t all.
Sixty-Five
O’Reilly had not been part of the search team, but he came straight over when he was informed of the positive result. Beck led him through the property. He looked dazed, like he couldn’t keep up with the speed of events. Which was probably true. Beck guessed he’d had to deal with more in the past week than in his entire career.
There were three rooms, and the plants were already being pulled from their pots, numbered and placed into evidence bags.
‘How many?’ O’Reilly asked.
‘Three rooms,’ Beck said. ‘I’d guess about two hundred and twenty plants.’
‘That many? And there was something else, is that right?’
‘Yes, there was.’
They went back down the stairs. Beck led the way into the basement, a uniform standing at the bottom. The basement was a large rectangular space, support pillars running down either side. At one end two long trestle tables had been placed end to end. Various buckets were scattered on the floor next to each, the buckets lined with plastic bags containing a white powder. On one of the tables was a Bunsen burner and various glass jars and tubes.
‘I believe it’s a factory,’ Beck said.
‘Doesn’t look like any factory I’ve ever seen,’ O’Reilly replied.
‘For the manufacture of methamphetamine.’
‘Methamphetamine.’ O’Reilly could hardly pronounce the word. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Unfortunately I am. Looks like that to me.’
O’Reilly said nothing, looking about the room. ‘Right under our noses. I never… I mean. Why? Has he said?’
‘No. He hasn’t been interviewed yet.’
O’Reilly looked at Beck, fisted his hand and held it in the air. As they bumped fists, Beck thought it was the silliest thing he had done in a long while, which was saying something.
The curtains were pulled in Blake’s wife’s room, and a night light glowed on a table next to a medical bed with its sides pulled up. There was a smell of talcum powder and bleach, and sickness. The body shape underneath the blanket could have been that of a child. Blake leaned over the bed and looked down at his wife. The shape beneath the blankets stirred.
‘Are you alright, darling?’ he said softly. His wife said something indiscernible in a weak, dry voice. ‘It’s okay,’ he soothed. ‘I’m just showing these people around. It’s nothing to worry about.’
Blake straightened, turned and walked over to Beck. ‘She’s soiled,’ he said. ‘She needs to be changed. I’m the only one who can do it. Could we have some privacy?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Beck said. ‘That’s not possible. You’re under arrest. I need to remain with you.’
‘What will happen? To my wife? Who’s going to care for her?’
‘I imagine social services.’
‘What have I done?’ Blake muttered, as if to himself. ‘Oh, God. What have I done?’
In the silence of the room he undressed her with practised efficiency, cleaned her with a soft cotton flannel, placed on her a fresh nappy and nightdress and pulled the blankets up loosely about her chin. He kissed her forehead and raised the sides of the bed again. They clicked into place.
Beck stood in a corner of the room, waiting. Blake came to him and he led him out. O’Reilly ordered two uniforms to take the prisoner to the station. As he was led away, his hulking frame between two guards, Blake paused briefly in the doorway to the street outside. Beck watched, wondering if he was about to turn and say something. The guards on either side stiffened. But he bowed his head, said nothing, continued to walk away.
Sixty-Six
In Interview Room One at Cross Beg station, after he’d been given the cup of coffee he’d asked for and which he now left untouched on the table in front of him, Blake began to talk. Beside him was Harold Gray, his solicitor, who Beck insisted on having present, and on the other side of the table, Beck, O’Reilly and Wilde.
Blake began by talking about his lonely existence, of the years spent caring for his wife, of feeling utterly trapped, of having no one to talk to.
‘No one knows what it’s like,’ he whined on. ‘No one. People asked about my wife. How she was. In the beginning, that is, but then gradually, as the years passed, they didn’t bother any more, except maybe the odd time, like an afterthought. But really, I knew that they couldn’t care less. It was then I came to realise that ultimately people don’t care about anybody else but themselves. That was quite a revelation to me because I’d never thought about it like that before, I always looked for the good in people.
They act as if they do care, but they don’t, not really, it’s just all about them, once you scratch the surface a little bit, even when they themselves think it’s not, if that makes any sense.
‘You know, they come into my pharmacy complaining about, I don’t know, athlete’s foot or something, or wanting to lose weight, like nothing else matters in the whole world. I’d think if they wanted to lose weight they should stop eating so much and get some exercise. They buy multivitamins and supplements, organic coffee and sugar alternatives, colonic irrigation products, probiotics with billions of active cells in every capsule. No need for any of it. And don’t get me started on “Made in California”. If “Made in California” is printed on the label, the land of the permanently young, the never dead, the Botox and supplement waifs in the land of the unfat, it’s “gimme gimme gimme”, don’t care what it is, they just want it anyway. It’s all a sad joke, enough to drive a man insane. Meanwhile, the really sick ones, the ill people like my wife, they slowly die, forgotten about.’
So. Blake was angry, Beck decided. But angry enough to kill?
‘I tried alcohol,’ Blake went on, and Beck’s ears pricked up. ‘But every time I got drunk I was sick for three days afterwards. Not sick like I was puking in the toilet, you understand, but sick depressed, not wanting to do anything, just wanting to hide.’
Then drink again, Beck thought. Problem solved.
‘I tried drugs next. After all, I was surrounded by them. But that didn’t work either, because sometimes I got high preparing prescriptions, and a couple of times I got it wrong. I knew it was only a matter of time before I killed someone, and I didn’t want to do that. So I stopped.’
The three police officers exchanged glances.
‘It started with a lottery scratch card. I won a hundred euro. Amazing how quickly it escalated after that. You know what the biggest buzz of all was? The losing. That’s what. Isn’t that mad? The more I lost, the… how can I put this, the happier I became. Happy in my misery is how I heard it once described. It completely obliterated every other feeling I had, which is what I wanted. I knew then. That gambling was for me. That I’d found my escape. And boy, did I find it.’
Beck thought of Jason Geraghty, lying dead on the stairs leading to the number one Thai restaurant in Dublin.
‘It’s funny how these people can sniff an opportunity,’ he went on. ‘When I became desperate, really desperate, I seriously contemplated robbing a bank. I didn’t care. I quite liked the idea of being an outlaw. But I couldn’t do it. I could, I mean, I was capable of it. But what would happen to Mary? It was then that they came to me, like they could sense the best time to move in for the kill, just as a wild animal would. They knew I was already supplying prescription pills. Yes, I was. Amazing what you’ll do for money when you have to. You’ll do anything.
‘That got out of hand, the prescription drug thing. I’m amazed you, the gardai, didn’t know about it. I had schoolkids literally queuing outside my door sometimes, during their lunch hour. I tried to stop it, but they wouldn’t listen. Anyway. They came to me. They said they’d take all my problems away. They’d look after it. And they did. Overnight, the queues disappeared. They would give me the orders and I’d fill them. All I had to do was… do what they told me. And I did. It worked. I was so preoccupied with the new arrangement that I didn’t gamble. I didn’t have the headspace, I was shitting myself with the worry of this new thing instead. You know, I have to say, I’m glad I’ve been caught. Really. Because in the end it all became too much. They wanted me to do more and more.’ Blake lowered his eyes. ‘But Mary, what’s going to happen to her?’
‘You refer to those people as they,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Who are “they”?’
Blake’s solicitor leaned in, whispered something in his ear.
‘No comment,’ Blake replied.
Beck didn’t care about who those people were or were not. There was only one thing he wanted to know.
‘Did you murder Tanya Frazzali?’
Wilde and O’Reilly turned, but before Mr Gray could say anything, Blake had spoken. ‘You think I’d do something like that?’
‘You tell me,’ Beck said.
‘I’m not a murderer. I didn’t kill anyone.’
‘Did you supply her? Was Tanya one of your customers?’ Beck pressed.
‘No comment,’ Mr Gray said quickly, but Blake raised his hand to silence him.
‘Yes. She was. A few Xanax pills every weekend. That was it. She was a good kid. I think she was just trying to fit in.’
‘Do you have any idea who might have killed her?’
Blake bowed his head. ‘No.’
‘I would like to consult with my client before you pursue any further line of enquiry,’ Gray said. ‘I’ve literally just arrived, there’s been no preliminary.’
Wilde nodded, raised his hand to Beck, pressed the recorder off.
Sixty-Seven
He could smell Mrs Claxton when he got home – she was in the air, a mixture of perfume and something else, lavender maybe. But it was her smell. He went through the rooms, finally to the bedroom, where it was most pungent, where he imagined she had lingered. It didn’t disturb him that she had been here. He listened, could hear nothing through the walls from next door. He lit a cigarette and sat in the living room, smoking and playing over details of the case in his mind, his thoughts wandering to Spanish brandy, cold cans of lager and drunken escapades. But he didn’t feel like a drink. Be grateful for small mercies, he told himself.
As he smoked, he felt the tiredness begin to crawl through his body. By the time he threw the cigarette butt into the empty fire grate, it was all he could do to get up, make his way into the hall and climb the stairs. In the bathroom he looked at the dark rings beneath his eyes. Perhaps he could take a holiday when this was all over, an all-inclusive week-long break somewhere in the Costas? He went to bed thinking of this, of twinkling water tickling his feet, of hot sand and cold beers under beach umbrellas. He knew he was fooling himself – he didn’t really intend to go – but still he wondered, and hoped that happy thoughts might mean that tonight they would not come for him, they would leave him in peace, hidden in their lairs buried deep within himself.
They did not leave him alone, of course. They came; one by one they filed up from below, stretching and waking, chattering amongst themselves, eager to resume where they had left off, eager to display their annoyance at having been neglected for so long.
In his sleep he talked and muttered and shouted, raised his hands and sliced them through the air as if trying to swat an imaginary fly. Finally he awoke with a jolt, with a feeling that someone had been watching him. The room was still, the sound of the wind outside like the breathing of a giant. He lay there, his own breathing quick and shallow, the bedclothes hot with sweat. He pulled back the duvet, the cold air on his flesh bringing him instantly awake. He glanced at his watch on the bedside locker – just gone 2.30 a.m. He lay back on the bed, and listened as his breathing calmed and became more regular.
A sound.
Beck listened.
Like grains of sand falling, fading.
He sat up quickly, resting on one elbow, and looked about the room. He saw it just as it reached a corner, disappearing into a crack in the skirting board. A cockroach, a great big cockroach. Beck had never seen a cockroach in the house before. He’d heard mice scurrying about in the attic when he’d first moved in, yes, but nothing since Mrs Claxton had called in the exterminators.
The feeling came to Beck slowly. It was nothing more than that, a feeling. But Beck was familiar with feelings, with respecting and listening to them, and understood that he had to be patient, to wait until he knew what it was they were trying to tell him.
He lay on his side, very still, his chin hanging over the edge of the bed. Whatever it was, it was from below, somewhere down there.
Beck pushed himself further forward on the bed, his face now resting along the side of it. His hand lowered and he c
oiled a finger around the edge of the duvet, began to hoist it up as he slowly peered underneath the bed…
Oh shit!
Mrs Claxton’s wide, frozen eyes stared back at him, grey flesh, lips twisted with terrible torment. But it was the eyes, as if they were silently screaming, beseeching him to come and help her, to rescue her. But he could not. She was past all that now.
Sixty-Eight
Beck stood in the kitchen with the night sergeant, Eddie Connor. Beck could tell by the sergeant’s demeanour that he wasn’t sure how to deal with him. He also knew by the suspicious glances he threw his way that he was weighing up the odds of the killer being the man who was now standing opposite him.
‘Won’t be long,’ Connor said. ‘Superintendent Wilde’s on his way.’ And with an air of authority: ‘Take a seat, you’re making me nervous standing there.’
Beck sat down, said, ‘It looks like she was strangled. I’d say she’s been dead a good few hours. I was at the station before I came here. Before that I was on an operation with a half-dozen others. Before that I was in Dublin. Just saying, Connor.’
And he remembered. Mrs Claxton at the railway station. He pondered this as Connor threw another dubious look his way. He said nothing.
Sergeant Connor had red eyes and the pasty skin of the night shift worker. He licked his dry lips. ‘I never said it was you.’ But his tone was unconvinced.
At 3.10 a.m. Superintendent Wilde arrived. He stood in the kitchen in a tracksuit, hands on hips, observing Beck. ‘I’m trying to get my head around this. I’m having difficulty. How did the body of Sheila Claxton get under your bed? My wife played bridge with the woman. This is some shock, I can tell you.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Beck said. ‘Believe me, I don’t know how her body got under my bed. I didn’t kill her. She was my landlady. She had a key.’
Where She Lies Page 19