Murder In The Academy : A chilling murder mystery set in Belfast (Alice Fox Murder Mysteries Book 1)

by Maggie Feeley

  As she moved along the Pass by small antique and bric-a-brac shops that were good for foraging expeditions, familiar odours of Chinese food filled the air and Alice was instantly transported home to the China Star where she had been a frequent customer when working in and around the Acre area in Lowell. Belfast’s Chinese quarter was small but ample and Alice had rapidly found her favourite place to eat when she didn’t feel like cooking.

  Botanic Station disgorged a rush of people just as she passed by. Some were chatting loudly in that strange flat accent with its distinctive narrowed vowel sounds while others were solitary and had the grim-faced expressions of the discontented worker. There was a whole new music to the English language here and Alice Fox found it easy on the ear. Along Botanic Avenue the traffic was bumper to bumper and the broad footpaths were full of people making their way home from work via the supermarket or the bar. There was a general air of pleasant chatter and people open to casual exchanges with passers-by. A number of people made eye contact with her and uttered a shy greeting – ‘Hiya’ or ‘Hello there’. Belfast still retained a friendliness that other places she knew had long ago lost and she liked that hint of innocence.

  By the time she reached the left-hand turn into her road she had come to a few conclusions about the demise of Helen Breen but she would keep them to herself until she had a chance to test them more thoroughly. Being a detective and being a social researcher were both about gathering data so that you could get a clearer picture of the truth. She would agree to settle for both those inclinations coexisting in her for the moment and see where that got her. She smiled to herself and felt relieved to have come to a resting place in that struggle.

  By way of a reward to herself, she dropped into the local bookshop that had an excellent selection of crime reading and replenished her stash of murder mysteries that had been depleted during her Wicklow stay. She smiled as she reflected that for the moment she was more than amply preoccupied with the real thing.

  Installed in her rooms just off Botanic Avenue, Alice sat quietly in her easy chair with sonorous cello music playing through her excellent sound system. She reflected on her day and on the inevitable chain of thought that the revelation of Breen’s murder had sparked. There was no point in ignoring her inclinations to be drawn into reviewing the facts as she saw them. It wasn’t possible to be in DePRec and not hear the ongoing chatter about the inquiry nor was she able to stop her mind thinking of all the possibilities. Caroline Paton’s apparent openness to her contribution had perhaps been the defining catalyst in that it seemed as if it was almost required of her to use her skills and experience to help in whatever way she could. Anyway, at this degree of proximity she found it impossible not to be drawn further in. She closed her eyes and allowed the music to calm her busy mind.

  She was just beginning to feel some sense of relaxation when her doorbell buzzed. She had very few callers and her initial reaction was to ignore it. It was probably someone proselytising on behalf of a religious group that she could live happily without. After a brief interlude the bell buzzed again, more insistently than the first time. She went to the window and looked down into the street. The January wind whipped through the trees and played with the streetlights to create a raft of agitated shadows. Two figures stood outside the gate to her building looking up at the windows. She realised that Mairéad Walsh and what looked like Ralph Wilson were staring up at her. She waved to them to come up and moved across to the door to release the remote locking mechanism.

  A few moments later they arrived, windswept and anxious, at her first-floor entrance.

  “Apologies for invading your privacy,” Mairéad said, engaging Alice with a look of genuine regret. “I know you like to be left in peace, Alice, but we are desperate for some of your advice,” she faltered, “in fact we are here to ask for your professional services.” She registered Alice’s look of bewilderment. “Look, lovey, just give us a few moments of your time and we’ll explain. I promise we won’t outstay our welcome.”

  Alice moved aside and showed them into her peaceful living space. The cello music played on and Alice reduced the volume.

  Ralph produced a bottle of cold white wine and said apologetically, “Any chance of a corkscrew and a few glasses?”

  At this moment in time, the opportunity of discussing the murder of Helen Breen was not something Alice was opposed to, and she produced three wineglasses and handed Ralph a corkscrew. Thinking they might not have eaten very much, she put some cheese and crackers on a plate on the table between them in case anyone wanted to nibble at something.

  Mairéad looked around the room and smiled at the book-lined wall and orderly workspace.

  The old oak partner’s desk and office chair were part of the furnishings provided in the apartment rental and matched the high ceilings and simplicity of the Victorian building. The good taste with which the place was decorated had been a pivotal influence for Alice’s choice. She liked classic design and quality over tasteless modern ideas of comfort.

  “This place suits you very well, Alice Fox,” Mairéad said, nodding approvingly. “I hope you will excuse our intrusion.”

  Alice dismissed her concerns with a wave of her hand and a sideways smile. Ralph opened the wine and poured three glasses. They all sipped and then he began to speak in a gentle tone that Alice hadn’t witnessed as part of his public, work persona.

  “The fact is that I think I am very much in danger of being suspect number one in the murder of Helen Breen. If I wasn’t sure of my innocence, I would suspect me too.” He was clearly overwrought and Mairéad looked on with concern as he spoke. “You see I spent a lot of the holidays alone and have no one to vouch for my whereabouts except for a few evenings with Mairéad that I don’t really want to make public knowledge.”

  “Well, more importantly,” Mairéad interrupted, clearly wanting to move along from any insinuations about their relationship, “Ralph spent a lot of time verbally attacking Breen to other colleagues. They were usually in agreement with him then, but now that circumstances have changed he’s coming up against a lot of suspicion and amnesia about all that. Their version of the truth for the detectives will be unlike what really happened before the killing. We can see that a case will be building against him and want to ask you to help find out what really happened. You are a professional, Alice, and know how this all works. You also know the Department and all the characters involved. We are lost in the face of it.”

  She looked older slumped against the sofa and Alice felt an urge to make everything better.

  “In fact,” Mairéad continued, “we are paralysed with fear and dread. This whole business is going to cause havoc with lots of people’s private lives. Not just ours.” She widened her eyes, clamped her lips in an expression of resignation and nodded repeatedly.

  “I hear you,” Alice said kindly, “but it’s probably better not to rush ahead.” It was the obvious truth, however, that Wilson was likely to be mentioned in many interviews as someone known to be antagonistic towards Helen Breen.

  She sipped the wine thoughtfully and realised she was really enjoying herself. “There will not be much definitive police action until there is a time and place of death and then it will be important to be able to show that you are not someone who had opportunity to commit the crime. Also many people have rivalries and even enmities at work but that is not usually a motive for murder.” She paused. “If even a fraction of negativity directed at people in the workplace actually led to murder then we would be looking at a boom in Crime Detection vocational training courses.”

  “But will you help him, Alice?” Mairéad insisted. “Will you do some investigating of your own and see if it is possible to prove that Ralph is beyond reproach in this matter?”

  They both looked at her with such a sense of despair that Alice felt her sympathies begin to slip in Ralph’s direction.

  “I have no role in this investigation and I don’t think it’s a good idea to aggravate the detectiv
es by setting up an alternative inquiry. But I have got off to a good start with DI Paton and might be able to offer her some insider support that I think she would be open to.” She was already seeing a way of both serving the interests of the investigation and Wilson’s need to have someone looking out for his interests. “Let’s calm down here and get systematic. We can pool what we know so far and see where that gets us.”

  She placed her phone on ‘voice record’ on the table between them and chaos gradually gave way to concentration.

  By the time Mairéad and Ralph left her, Alice was convinced that Wilson was not the culprit. She was also already significantly invested in finding out more about what had motivated someone to brutally eliminate Helen Breen from the land of the living.

  24

  While Alice was warming to her challenge, in the Grosvenor Road police station DI Caroline Paton and her team were settling in for a thorough review of the first day’s findings. They were joined by Sandra Woods who had managed to find an hour of carer-time for her elderly mother and was eager to get started and home as quickly as possible. Mugs of tea and coffee, a large plate of filled rolls and an equally generous basket of muffins sat temptingly in the middle of the table around which they all sat. An A4-size facial image of Helen Breen was already affixed to an electronic whiteboard that had the facility to print out a copy of its contents at any point in time. They would fill it many times over in their search for Breen’s killer. Each dated printout signified the most recent point in their thinking and also allowed the possibility to review hypotheses in the light of new information.

  “OK, Sandra!” Paton began with gusto. “You have the most pressing time limit so let’s hear from you first. We will just do sound and paper notes for now and Bill can play with the Etch-a-Sketch later when we have a clearer picture of what’s been happening here.”

  Bill was a big fan of the technology and loved that their rough mind maps and random scrawlings could all be captured with such ease.

  Paton raised her eyebrows slightly to signal to Sandra that she could begin. McVeigh started his recorder and they all made dated, pen-and-paper notes to supplement the evidence base. Paton knew from experience that people retained very different details from the same evidential accounts and from their three versions she hoped they would cover most bases.

  Sandra held her notebook in one hand and with the other rubbed a piece of Blu Tack between her thumb and first two fingers. The constant movement helped her to think and she always had some handy. “I arrived at the home of Agatha Breen just before 9am. Lisa, the elderly woman’s resident carer, admitted me. She is from the Philippines and has been with Mrs Breen for six years. I could see that Lisa was a little anxious about my appearance in her home but when I got the chance later in the kitchen, I reassured her that her status was not of any interest to us. She has a clear overview of family business and relationships, which I’ll get to in a bit. Mrs Breen is in her 80s and her mobility is restricted. Her mental capacity on the other hand is sharp and she has developed a tough exterior by necessity, I’d judge. Her relationship with her children is distant and I got the distinct impression that Helen was emotionally detached from her family. Mrs Breen was shocked by the news of her daughter’s death but she talked about a relationship that was quite atrophied really. It had little currency. I was given the impression of Helen Breen as a woman who was self-interested and whose connection with her home and family was entirely functional and self-serving.” Sandra paused to sip her tea. “The husband is dead about twenty-five years and the mother said that Helen was very close to him. She was about sixteen when he died and apparently felt abandoned by the father whose favour she was very much invested in gaining. She and the mother were never close and, in recent years, Helen only used the house as a postal address for work-related things. The phone contact for DePRec was also the mother’s house and the carer, Lisa, was tutored in taking messages for her and passing them on, usually to an answering machine. The messages were never acknowledged. Helen collected her post on Sundays and otherwise did not have much contact with the mother. For some reason she didn’t give work her actual home address, which is in Hillsborough. She appears to have been hyper-vigilant about her private life. Neither the mother nor her carer, Lisa, had ever been to her place in Hillsborough, which is a good indicator of the degree of distance in that relationship. I do have the Hillsborough address which is in my written notes and a spare key that was kept at the mother’s.”

  Woods always made impeccable records of her findings and Paton and her team had learned to trust her judgment and to rely on the accuracy of her paperwork.

  “I was struck by the irony that the family business was refrigeration. I even wondered was her death part of some vendetta against the family but there was nothing else to suggest that might be the case. Still, I thought it was worth mentioning.”

  “There’s another icy connection in the fact that DePRec is in the Titanic Quarter,” said Burrows.

  This was greeted with smiles but no one was quite sure if these links were humorous or not.

  Sandra continued. “When the father died the business was sold as none of the three children of the family were interested in keeping it on. It sounds as if it was a successful affair and I expect that they all benefitted financially from the sale. I saw and heard no evidence of anything but a very comfortably well-off family.” Sandra took another mouthful of her tea and proceeded uninterrupted. “Michael Breen, Helen’s younger brother, arrived not long after he was telephoned. He runs quite a large tile-importing business and again appeared affluent and described his business as ‘flourishing’. On his part, there was little display of affection or emotion towards his mother or distress about his sister’s murder. He was shocked by the manner of her death but he actually said to me that he had never liked his sister and that they had little or no contact. He had called to her house in Hillsborough once, in the past, to discuss the fact that their mother was no longer able to live alone and that he had employed a residential carer. He said she didn’t even invite him in.” Sandra flicked over a page in her notebook and continued. “I left him alone with the mother for a bit and sat in the kitchen with Lisa. She had a good handle on the whole family. The oldest son, Frank, although he lives in Australia, has more contact and shows more concern for his mother than his siblings ever did. He phones every week and his children communicate regularly with their grandmother on Skype. Lisa found the behaviour of Helen shocking. She was less judgmental of Michael because her expectation was that a daughter would be more caring towards her mother than a son. She said that Helen was cold and seemingly heartless. She talked about her as if she had some kind of emotional disability and said several times that she didn’t feel comfortable with Helen. She could see that Mrs Breen was lonely and hurt by her children’s neglect of her but the old lady maintained a façade before everyone, including Lisa. The mother talked about them as if they were just very busy and Lisa did not ever want to add to her hurt by showing that she thought of their behaviour in any negative way. She said to me that she thought it was sad that she, who loved her family, had to leave them so that she could care for someone whose children didn’t want to spend any time with her at all. I said nothing but I got her point.”

  At this point Woods closed her notebook and looked around the room at her colleagues. They were all nodding in approval at her initial report.

  “I will be going back to check in with Mrs Breen tomorrow and see what else I can discover. Any suggestions of what might be useful to your inquiry?”

  “Really great progress to get the address and keys for Hillsborough, Sandra,” said Paton. “We’ll get someone out there tomorrow early and give it a good going-over. Ian, maybe you can call in a few lab boys and head out there first thing. See what you can pick up in terms of computer, phone and observations from neighbours. Maybe talk to the local police and see what they know.”

  She turned back to Sandra who was gathering her things
to leave.

  “Thanks for all that, Sandra. I’ll know better if there are any particular areas for poking at tomorrow when we have done with our review this evening. Bill will be in touch with any questions we come up with but otherwise just do what you always do and we’ll be happy with what you uncover. I will get there tomorrow evening to interview Mrs Breen and Lisa and probably Michael as well. You might flag that up so that the brother is there too. Let’s say six o’clock. It sounds to me as if Helen Breen may have had some kind of personality disorder or something like that. Maybe see if the mother will spill the beans about any possible psychiatric issues. Let’s look at school records, college, GP and see if there is anything there. Helen obviously really annoyed somebody so anything that might shed light on her relationships even going back a bit could be helpful. We’ll talk more tomorrow, Sandra.”