No Turning Back

by Sam Blake

  She hadn’t been ready for the possessiveness or the jealousy that had come with his being deployed while she studied – her emails met with questions from the moment he was online. If he loved her, he’d trust her, and he quite simply hadn’t. And she’d realised all too quickly that the relationship she wanted wasn’t about accounting for her nights out, or listing her friends. It was about mutual support and encouragement. He knew she wanted to get her doctorate, that she adored her subject, but being apart just hadn’t worked and, as she’d discovered, some men just couldn’t cope with an intellectual woman who knew her own mind. And the ones that could all seemed to be taken.

  She looked back at her computer screen. Xavier had lots of opportunities to talk to her. She’d spotted him in the Arts building coffee shop again yesterday. She’d smiled at him politely as she’d got a Lucozade out of the vending machine. But then she’d felt his eyes on her, his gaze crawling over her back – and hadn’t liked it one little bit. What was mad was that every woman within miles, both staff and pupils, melted when he looked at them – the accent, the Mediterranean looks, the worked-out body, his sheer confidence – just not her. She could hardly refuse his request to speak at the society, though, but she didn’t need to have coffee with him to organise that.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday 9 a.m.

  Cathy could hear the team before she saw them as she crossed the hall from O’Rourke’s office to the incident room, the burble of chatter seeping out from the swing doors. When they’d got back the previous night, O’Rourke had brought Frank Gallagher, Dun Laoghaire’s Detective Sergeant, up to speed. While they had been at the morgue and interviewing Anna Lockharte, he’d been getting house-to-house enquiries underway on both investigations. The machine was cranking into gear.

  Dun Laoghaire’s recreation room doubled as an incident room; ply boards had been pulled across the snooker table to create a conference table. As O’Rourke held the door open for her, Gallagher turned from the whiteboard, a dark blue marker in his hand. The room was full, members of the district detective unit and uniform, plus the lads from the traffic unit in Blackrock. Cathy nabbed a spare chair at the back and sat down as O’Rourke strode to the front, nodding his thanks to Gallagher.

  ‘Bit of quiet please.’ O’Rourke tapped his biro on the side of an empty coffee mug, looking for everyone’s attention.

  As she watched him from the back row, everyone fell silent. He’d grabbed his jacket as they’d left his office. He looked good. Too good.

  Cathy pulled her necklace from under her sweater and ran the pendant along the chain. There were so many times like this, when she watched him from across the room, or when they were sitting in his car in the pouring rain, bags of chips open on their knees discussing a case, when she knew she was absolutely smitten by him. She’d been out on dates, had met guys she really fancied, but it was never the same, never the deep emotional connection that she felt with him.

  Maybe the universe was trying to tell her something. Whenever she tried dating anyone else it never worked out, veered close to total disaster more often than not. Like the gorgeous Alexsy – she could still feel herself blushing at the thought of his beautiful blue eyes. That might have gone somewhere if things had been different. If he hadn’t been a suspect in a case she’d been investigating.

  O’Rourke began to run through the two cases – where they were with interviews, what they had already found out – but Cathy was only half-listening. She knew she couldn’t spend her life praying that he felt the same as she did, and that one day they’d find a way to be together, but there were times when she just wanted it to happen so badly.

  She was sure he did feel the same way about her, had witnessed a thousand clues over the years. They had a history, a shared past. In her first posting he’d been her sergeant and she’d ended up taking a bullet for him, the scar almost invisible now after the skin grafts she’d had following the explosion. He’d thought she was dying when he’d kissed her then, after the explosion, the sound of sirens intensifying as the emergency vehicles came closer, a member down their first priority. She had been, almost. But afterwards, although he was around loads and had supported her so much, being more of a friend than a colleague, it was like it had never happened. She knew he didn’t do grey areas – that was the one and only time she’d known him to cross the line, any line. But it had been one of those moments that was suspended in time – her beautiful Mini exploding, the blast carrying her twenty feet across her neighbour’s lawn. Caught in a moment that didn’t feel real.

  O’Rourke turned, putting his coffee cup down, slipping the pen into his top pocket, half-catching her eye. His smile was a flicker, but she caught it, and felt the warmth of his look as their eyes connected. For a split second she felt like they were the only people in the room.

  Holy feck.

  And then the moment was gone.

  Cathy looked down at the floor, trying to gather her thoughts.

  How did this keep happening? Would they ever move forwards? She wasn’t getting any younger, and at thirteen years her senior he definitely wasn’t.

  Maybe the promotions list was a blessing in disguise. Maybe she needed to get away and get some distance.

  Turning to the room again, O’Rourke pulled himself up to his full height and was fully focused. She envied his ability to switch like that, to think so fast. She reacted fast in the ring, but emotionally, especially after everything that had happened in the past couple of years, it took her longer to fully engage. Sometimes she wondered if she’d ever be able to.

  O’Rourke was clear and precise as he summarised the situation in his soft Monaghan accent. Behind him, photographs of Lauren, blown up from her Facebook page, were taped to the incident board, the date, crime number and location detailed below in black marker. Beside them were photos of the park and the location of her body. On the other side of the board, a photo of Tom, also taken from his Facebook page, grinned down at them.

  Beyond the closed concertina doors that separated the rec room from the kitchen Cathy could hear the sounds of crockery clinking. The early shift was having breakfast. Her stomach rumbled. She’d had some muesli before she’d headed for the gym but that felt like a very long time ago now. Straightening in her chair, Cathy stretched her back, concentrating on what was being said in an effort to distract herself from thoughts of her stomach.

  O’Rourke began with Tom’s accident.

  ‘At seven on Friday morning, Tom Quinn was found on Ulverton Road, the victim of what appears to be a hit-and-run. Initial findings suggest that the vehicle was dark blue with metallic paint. And Saunders has confirmed he died from crush injuries.’ He hesitated, glancing behind him at the board. ‘Then, lunchtime Friday, a fisherman based in Bulloch Harbour, Michael McCarthy, spotted a girl’s body on rocks below Dillon’s Park.

  ‘The District Detective Unit responded and secured the scene. Search and Rescue airlifted her off the rocks. Professor Saunders has confirmed her death was as a result of trauma sustained in the fall, coupled with extreme exposure.’

  O’Rourke flicked on his laptop, and additional photos of the scene appeared on the wall behind him. Taken from the lifeboat, they clearly showed the height of the drop and the jagged rocks that subsided into the sea between Dillon’s Park and Dalkey Island. In the middle of the shot Lauren O’Reilly lay like a discarded rag doll, gulls already scavenging.

  O’Rourke continued, ‘Next of kin have been notified. And she has been formally identified by her dental records. She had her student ID card in her coat pocket.’ He flicked to a photo of a Trinity ID Card, an image of a pretty girl smiling from the right-hand side of the pale blue and white card.

  Looking at Lauren O’Reilly’s photo magnified on the screen behind O’Rourke, Cathy felt again the tragedy of her death. O’Rourke’s voice cut into her thoughts.

  ‘Lauren had registered her Leap card online and it indicates that she travelled from Pearse Street station to Dalkey on Th
ursday evening, arriving at 22:11. It’s a twenty-six minute journey and it was the last trip she made. We know Tom was still alive at that time.’ He stopped speaking for a moment, the room silent as they waited for him to continue. ‘Tom and Lauren were in the same study group in Trinity and Lauren also interned at Tom’s father’s radio station over the summer at the end of their first year.’ He turned to look at the room. ‘Her death looks like suicide, but we have to be open to the possibility that these deaths are somehow connected. Perhaps Lauren was coming to Dalkey to meet Tom. Perhaps they had a row and he helped her over the edge at Dillon’s Park. Perhaps a third party was involved in both tragedies. It’s our job to find out.’ He flicked to a screen showing their photographs side by side.

  ‘We haven’t found Lauren’s phone. It’s possible she had it in her hand when she went over the edge, but we’ve a request in for her records and identifying her this quickly is hugely in our favour. Significantly she had an envelope in her coat pocket with a note in it saying “I’m sorry” printed in block caps.’ The screen changed again and the note appeared, crumpled and water-stained, a blank envelope beside it.

  ‘Who types a suicide note, and then prints it out?’ At the back of the room, Jamie Fanning was leaning against the wall, immaculate as always in a trendy casual tweed jacket and chinos, his blond fringe slicked back today.

  Frank Gallagher leaned back in his chair. ‘Perhaps she was planning to give it to whoever she was meeting, that’s why it was in an envelope. You’d expect her to sign it, though.’

  O’Rourke grimaced. ‘You have a point there, Frank. It’s with the technical bureau to see what they can lift from it. They’ll be analysing the ink to see what it can tell us.’

  The swing doors to the incident room opened and JP, Cathy’s friend and housemate, came in, his navy uniform bomber jacket glistening with rain.

  ‘Sorry, Cig, we were on a call.’ Taking off his hat, he headed for a spare chair, the familiar Irish term for ‘Inspector’ rolling naturally off his tongue.

  ‘You’re grand, I’m just bringing everyone up to speed.’ O’Rourke continued, ‘The collision team from Blackrock are handling the technical investigation into Tom Quinn’s death. They will have a 3-D reconstruction animation for us by Monday.’ He looked at the two uniformed traffic officers. ‘And we’re pulling CCTV from the surrounding premises. I want every house visited on all and any of the routes these two took that night. Someone must have seen something.’

  ‘Were they dating? Perhaps he dumped her and she jumps off the nearest cliff?’ They all turned to look at Fanning, who shrugged theatrically. ‘Just seems a bit co-incidental to me.’

  O’Rourke shook his head. ‘I think that’s the point, Fanning. The co-incidence is why we’re all here. There are times when I wonder how you got in to the detective unit.’ A wave of laughter ran across the room.

  Fanning took it as it was intended. ‘Charm and wit.’ He grinned, looking pointedly at O’Rourke. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Cathy turned back to the board as Frank Gallagher leaned forward in his seat towards O’Rourke.

  ‘And what about Tom Quinn? What does Saunders think about him?’

  ‘Saunders found tyre impressions across his back, says he had major internal injuries. He’s waiting for toxicology results on both victims but he won’t have any conclusions for us for a while. He did, however, find some interesting bruising on Lauren’s left shoulder.’

  ‘Not both shoulders, like she’d been shoved?’ Fanning asked.

  ‘No, just on her left. He said he’ll detail his opinion in the full report.’ O’Rourke frowned. ‘But I’m not at all happy with the location of Lauren O’Reilly’s body, and quite what she was doing in this area in the first place, and I don’t want to hang about while we wait to get his results.’

  He turned to look at Lauren’s smiling face. ‘We need to find out if anyone saw Lauren enter the park and if they did, whether she was alone. Exact time of death is tricky because the body was so exposed; but some time Thursday evening is the earliest. Obviously that correlates with the time that she arrived in Dalkey.’

  Nodding, Frank Gallagher said, ‘Lauren was living in one of the Trinity College halls of residence in Pearse Street, about a three minute walk from the DART station – we’re calling in all the CCTV. We’ll also be working through the CCTV in Dalkey village itself.’

  ‘What happened to her wallet?’

  Everyone turned to look at Cathy. She was staring at Lauren’s picture on the board, connections forming in her head. The student card had been in the lining of her coat – had she lost it and ordered another one that was still in her wallet? She’d used her Leap card to get to Dalkey but they hadn’t found it yet. Cathy kept her Leap card in her wallet with her ID cards and her bank cards. So where was Lauren’s?

  ‘It could have fallen out of her pocket as a result of the fall, or perhaps she was holding it with her phone in one hand when she went over the edge. My wife walks around with her purse and her phone in her hand all the time.’ Frank said it half to himself but they were all listening.

  ‘Good point. Frank, can you get the park and the rocks checked today for it? If it went into the sea we may never find it, but she could have dropped it.’

  ‘Will do.’

  O’Rourke turned and gazed at the board for a moment like he was processing all the information.

  ‘Frank, can you make up an interview list and work through all their friends? Cat, I want you and Fanning to go back and talk to Tom’s parents this morning. See how well they knew Lauren, if at all, or if they had heard Tom talking about her. It’s quite possible Conor Quinn has no idea who’s interning with the station at any one time, but someone there must have known her other than Tom and might be able to give us a perspective on their relationship.’ He paused. ‘And then get over to Trinity. We need to take a look at her room, her computer, see if she was planning to meet anyone. Let’s find out what happened here.’

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, noon.

  Cathy would have much preferred to chat to Tom Quinn’s parents with O’Rourke or Frank Gallagher, instead of Jamie Fanning, but she knew they had plenty to do. Everyone was a suspect until they’d been ruled out, which meant potentially hundreds of interviews, all of which had to be checked and cross-checked. Marie, the family liaison officer, was out sick and with so many lines of enquiry to manage it could be like herding cats, a task made more difficult with reduced manpower.

  The second half of the morning briefing had been mainly about cameras and angles and timing. A huge map of the area had been blown up and pinned to the incident board showing where the CCTV cameras in Dalkey were located. Until they got the data they’d requested from the mobile phone providers, they had no idea where Tom had been when he’d sent the text to his mother, and it left a broad window to cover until the time he’d been found. That was a lot of videotape to watch. At least Lauren’s Leap card had given them a clear time that she’d exited Dalkey DART Station. It was a fifteen minute walk to Dillon’s Park – if she’d headed down the main street of the village she would have been picked up on camera in several locations.

  After the briefing, O’Rourke had taken her to one side, muttering, ‘Keep an eye on lover boy, make sure he keeps focused. We can catch up later.’

  She’d nodded. Jamie Fanning wasn’t all bad, he had had his moments in the past, and when he wasn’t trying to get laid by every available female, he could be useful.

  Walking up the granite steps to the Quinn house, Cathy glanced back at the view, taking in the panorama of the sea from the Pigeon House power station at Poolbeg to the brooding purple of the Wicklow mountains, thinking about Lauren O’Reilly, about the moment she hit the rocks. The sky was bright blue today, so different from the rain-heavy grey of the last few days.

  They had been damn lucky to find her. As they’d stood at the edge of the park, waves breaking below them, the sound of the helicopter receding
, the fisherman who had spotted the body had explained the tides to her, shaking his head.

  ‘You’re lucky we’re in neaps, a spring tide would have taken her off the rocks and you may never have found her.’ Cathy had looked perplexed as he’d continued. ‘Neap tides are fairly high at this time of year, stay that way for about two weeks. Then they change to spring tides – the sea level is even higher at high tide and goes out further at low tide. Her body could easily have been lifted off the rocks and washed away.’

  Cathy still hadn’t quite got it until he’d explained to her that the tides had nothing to do with the seasons. The spring tide wasn’t related to spring and neaps to summer – it was a lunar cycle, changing every two weeks. And the current through Dalkey Sound, between the land and the island, was very strong. If they’d had a high spring tide, Lauren O’Reilly would have been swept right out to sea.

  On the Quinns’ doorstep, Fanning pressed the round brass doorbell again and a moment later the door opened. Mira, the housekeeper, smiled politely at him. She was just as tidily dressed as the last time they had met her; her eyes red-rimmed. She ushered them into the hall, the scents of lilies still strong from the arrangement on the central table. The brightness of the flowers did nothing to lift the mood. The house felt still and silent.