by Sam Blake
Anna punched the call button again. Why was this the most godawful slowest lift? Why?
She closed her eyes and focused on her physical reaction to the memories. She couldn’t stop them coming but she could try and regulate her response. And she was getting there. It was slow but she was getting there.
Chapter 24
Sunday, 4 p.m.
Cathy was relieved to see that the kitchen in Dun Laoghaire station was empty as she headed in to it. She went straight to the kettle, the form she needed to fill in stuck under her arm, a biro behind her ear. She literally had about ten minutes free. The partition doors were partially folded back between the kitchen and the incident room, but everyone was either out on enquiries or in the detective office.
Thirsty had found more drugs in Lauren’s washbag – a single box of Adderall this time – and was tracking the batch numbers on all the boxes as well as dusting them for fingerprints. Cathy had stuck her head into O’Rourke’s office on the way past but he’d been on the phone. On top of these investigations, a series of thefts from the marina had escalated over the weekend and had boat owners bombarding the station with calls. The armed robbery in Cornelscourt had turned into a massive job, with the raiders traced back to one of the major Dublin gangs. They’d shot and injured a member of the public when they’d abandoned their car in the city centre and the press were going mad. Pearse Street were managing that investigation but keeping him in the loop. It would prepare him well for Limerick.
The thought gave her an unpleasant jolt, made her previously positive mood – buoyed up by the feeling that they were finally getting somewhere with the case – evaporate. Everything was changing, but she wasn’t going to sit around and get left behind. She knew she was young to be in the detective unit, that some older members saw her in a role that they felt they should be doing. But she’d proven herself time and time again. And now she was ready for the next move. In a weird way, the timing couldn’t actually be better. She was almost at peak fitness, was ready to take on the world right now and McIntyre’s training was as much psychological as physical.
The kettle boiled and Cathy stuck a spoonful of instant coffee in a mug, sniffed the milk carton left on the counter, and sloshed some in, stirring it as she headed to a table tucked in the corner. As she sat down her phone pipped with a text: Dad says to say hello to Anna Lockharte from him. Followed by a row of hearts and winking eye emoji. Cathy smiled, and texted Sarah Jane back: Will do! Cathy hadn’t mentioned Ted Hansen to Anna this morning when she’d met her; it hadn’t been appropriate with everything else going on. And she wanted to get closer to some answers about Anna Lockharte’s background first. But Sarah Jane’s constant matchmaking for her dad was hilarious. Sarah Jane reckoned he was never going to find love in a war zone, and he was never at home in his apartment overlooking Central Park long enough to get involved in the New York social scene, so he needed all the help he could get. Cathy shook her head. They could all do with all the help they could get.
Cathy smoothed out the application form she’d brought with her onto the table and pulled the pen out from behind her ear. The pre-selection course for the Emergency Response Unit was the toughest in the job – two weeks in a military style training camp. Assault courses, overnight treks. Helicopter drills. It tested every particle of your being, your ability to function in a team, your ability to make life and death decisions when you were exhausted and broken. It was pure hell.
She knew she was going to love it.
Assuming she got to that stage. She had to be selected for interview first and she knew the competition for what would be only a handful of posts would be fierce. There were plenty of other officers just as fit and determined as she was.
Sometimes she wondered if she was an adrenaline junkie, but there was nothing more exhilarating than hitting the wall and powering through it. It was completely and absolutely mind over matter. As your muscles screamed you had to keep on going, knowing that when you got past the pain, the going got easier and you’d have done it.
When she thought back to the moments when she’d really been up against it – like when she’d got shot the first time – it had been adrenaline that had got her through. Cathy took a sip of her coffee, glancing over the front page of the form. Some officers never even saw a dead body in their entire career, let alone drew a weapon, but she was getting a reputation for getting shot at. She was up to three near misses now.
The second time it had happened, in the car park beside Blessington Lakes, she’d been much more on top of the situation than that first time with O’Rourke. She’d had the benefit of surprise but, as she’d learned subsequently, the man she was pursuing, Dave Givens, had been one of the British Army’s most decorated soldiers, and his aim was sure. She’d sort of guessed that going in, but there had been too much at stake to start arsing about getting cold feet. It had been all about adrenaline that night as well – sometimes you just had to act. Like later, in Keane’s Field in Ballymun, when she’d come face to face with the barrel of a gun once again.
That had been a horrible night. Dark and wet and bloody freezing, although she hadn’t felt the cold until later. She’d stayed with Sarah Jane, not daring to move her jacket from the wound in her shoulder in case she bled out. Backup and medical support had come fast, getting straight to work on Sarah Jane. Cathy had gone to Jazz, a lost and lonely fifteen-year-old boy who was sobbing beside the one thing he really loved, his beautiful, enormous and badly injured piebald horse. Then the air ambulance had landed at the top of the hill and Krypton, the animal they both thought was dead, had snorted and lifted his head, rolling his eyes so Cathy could see the whites, baring his teeth. She and Jazz had scrambled back in the mud as fast as they could, giving him the space to try and stand. It had taken a few attempts, his hooves digging into the mud, his flank bleeding from a deep wound as he staggered to his feet, tossing his head. He’d stood still for a moment and then had come over to nuzzle Jazz. Cathy had given them plenty of space, sliding back further up the hill, but it had been one of those moments she would never forget. Watching them, boy and horse, mesmerised, she’d felt O’Rourke materialise beside her. She’d reached for his hand so he could pull her up and then for a few precious moments she’d leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, his chin resting on the top of her head.
Cathy looked at the ERU application form in front of her, the Garda badge at the top, and filled in her full name and registered number, below it her station. This was it. She took a hasty swig of her coffee and looked over the form. With a bit of luck, she’d have time to get most of it filled in before she was called back to the office.
‘Competencies’ seemed to be the buzzword in the various boxes she had to complete. At least she had plenty of those.
*
‘Cat, you busy?’
Cathy looked up to see O’Rourke’s head around the partition door between the incident room and the kitchen. She almost had the form complete, and was very glad she was used to writing essays for college – some of the answers required were long ones.
‘What’s up?’
‘The mobile companies have come back with locations. Both those pay-as-you-go mobiles were being used close to each other in Dalkey, they were all bouncing off the same masts.’
‘Even the one Lauren was calling?’
O’Rourke nodded. ‘Maybe she was calling Tom. We’ve got a map with the triangulated signals marked but it’s looking like they were in the same area very close to where he lived. The call records aren’t giving us any clues unfortunately.’
‘So our main focus is on Dalkey? At least that narrows things down a bit.’
‘Looks like it. Can you give 007 a hand getting an interview list together from the CCTV in Ulverton Road? I want to get house to house out again around both locations. See if anyone can remember anything. I’m feeling like we’re missing something.’
‘No problem.’ She slid her chair back and picked up her coffee cup and th
e form.
‘What’s that?’
She took another sip of her coffee and pulled a face as she realised it was cold.
‘Application for ERU.’
He looked at her hard, didn’t say anything for a moment, like he was thinking about it.
‘Apart from the increased likelihood of you getting yourself killed, I still think it’s probably a good move.’
‘I can get myself killed here. I don’t need to be in ERU. When your number’s up . . .’
He gave her a withering look; he’d never believed any of her superstitious ‘nonsense’ as he called it. He endured her reading out his horoscope when they were stuck on a job in the middle of the night, but that was more out of sheer boredom than interest. They both knew she didn’t fully believe in it either but it gave her something to needle him with.
‘You know I’m right.’ She glared at him, half in jest.
‘Get moving. 007’s in the office. You’ll be faster at checking the info on the system than him. He can only type with one finger.’
She threw a salute and followed him out.
*
In the cramped detective office, Jamie Fanning turned around from the desk he was sitting at, looking very pleased to see her.
‘Where’ve you been? I hate doing this stuff. You’re way faster than I am.’
‘What have you got?’ She stood behind him, bending to look over his shoulder at the screen. He hadn’t got very far.
‘Traffic have lifted all the plates off the CCTV they can find covering both ends of Ulverton Road – right down to Sandycove. There was a good bit of traffic.’
‘Right, budge over.’
Her fingers moving quickly over the keys of the computer, Cathy created a follow-up list of the names and addresses of every vehicle owner. Any one of the drivers could easily have seen something they didn’t realise was important. Had Tom been with someone when the accident had occurred? Had he been on his own?
‘Whoa.’ Her hands poised above the keyboard, Cathy stopped and reread the data on the screen.
Behind her Fanning looked up from the printout in his hand. ‘What have you found?’
‘Ronan Delaney. He’s that DJ that works for Life Talk FM and was MC at Orla Quinn’s charity thing. Married to Karen Delaney. Bit of a shit, from what I gathered when I spoke to her.’
‘What about him?’
Cathy scrolled down the page. ‘He lives in Ulverton Road. This address can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards from where Tom was found.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I guess Karen thought I already knew that when I spoke to her at her salon.’
‘Think he could have seen something?’
‘I do – I think we need to have a chat to him.’ She leaned over to double-check the time from the CCTV listed beside the registration plate. ‘From the time Delaney was passing this camera in Sandycove, it looks like he would have passed the place that Tom was hit about five minutes after his mum had called him. And he obviously didn’t feel the need to share that fact with his wife, or his good friends the Quinns.’
Chapter 25
Sunday, 4 p.m.
It had taken a good ten minutes for Anna to steady her breathing. She’d locked the door to her office as she came in. Someone had knocked but she’d ignored it, had instead grabbed the edge of the desk with both hands, braced herself and closed her eyes, playing the psychologist’s words through her head over the soundtrack of gunshots and people dying. She’d focused on her favourite page in the book Rob had given her. It was a beautiful woodcut illustration, black on white, showing how to breathe consciously. Step by step she felt her anxiety receding.
Success. And immense relief.
A year ago she would have curled up under her desk, safe in its dark confines, but she had come on so much in the last twelve months. She needed to find another counsellor here she could talk to, though. The first doctor she’d gone to had been brilliant but was now on an extended study trip in the States, and stupidly Anna hadn’t found someone else immediately. The doctor had trained in trauma counselling in Belfast, had been so good that she’d come on in leaps and bounds. It had been a good nine months since she’d had a panic attack like this, which just proved it. But she needed to keep it up, needed to keep working through her issues. And she needed to keep the little book Rob had given her closer to hand. It was her talisman, a reminder that there was a safety net out there, that she didn’t have to do this on her own.
Running her hands over her face and tucking her hair behind her ears, Anna sat down and powered up her desktop computer, trying to concentrate on her work, on anything that would occupy her mind.
It was a struggle, but it was an hour later when she heard her mobile ring, the sound muffled. It was in her coat pocket. She turned around, realising she was still sitting on her coat, and rooted for it in the folds of the fabric. She got there before it stopped ringing, smiling as she saw the name that flashed across the screen.
‘Hello, stranger.’
‘And how are you, Professor Lockharte?’
It was Rob, his gorgeous velvety voice with its all-American accent sounding stronger when she couldn’t hear similar ones all around her. Anna found herself smiling. They didn’t talk nearly often enough on the phone; they emailed and texted but it wasn’t the same. He was exactly what she needed right now.
‘I’m at the office, but I’m good, always pleased to hear from you.’
She could hear him chuckling as he replied. ‘Always good to hear. Why are you working on a Sunday? I thought that was my prerogative? I wanted to touch base – I’m really sorry I haven’t sorted this out sooner and I don’t have much time now. I’m going to call back later so we can sort out this email issue.’
‘I know you’re busy, really, thank you. Hope said you’d know what to do.’
‘How is my beautiful niece?’
‘Doing great, loving school. I’m whisking her over to London next weekend to see the sights and a show. I’m speaking at a training seminar on Friday and we live so close, but she’s never been.’
‘I like the sound of being whisked away by you.’
Anna smiled, her voice low. ‘I’d whisk you away tomorrow if I could, you know that.’
She heard him sigh, then in the background another voice – someone had come into his office.
‘I’m sorry, honey, I gotta go. Your laptop’s at home?’
‘Yes, it’s back at my apartment.’
‘What time will you be back?’
‘Just after six?’
‘I’ll call you then, don’t turn it on until you talk to me. I’ll have a team ready to work on it.’
‘Thank you.’ She meant every letter of it.
‘I’m always here for you, you know that. We’ll get this fixed.’
The line went dead and Anna hung up, smiling. He always made her happy. She adored that he took the time to write her the longest emails, telling her about the silly stuff that happened to him. He could never talk about his job specifically, they both understood that, but they had developed their own code when they needed to say something sensitive.
Anna sighed, shaking her head half to herself. She was a bit old for this, knew she needed to find someone else eventually, but knowing that he felt the same about her made her want to hang on, just to see. He wasn’t available right now; would he ever be? She knew he wasn’t happy at home but separating was a big thing. And even then, their getting together would be complicated. He was Hope’s uncle by marriage. She shook her head. It was all very messy, whichever way you looked at it.
Still, he was going to call back tonight so they’d get a chance to chat properly as well as sort out her laptop. She hoped her webcam hadn’t been hacked – she kept her laptop in the living room and closed it when she wasn’t using it, but she still didn’t like the idea that someone could be watching her. Was that what had happened to Lauren? It certainly looked like it.
Another knock on her door interr
upted her thoughts. Anna was about to say ‘come in’ when she realised that it was still locked. Rolling her chair backwards, she put her mobile down and stood up to open the door.
But it wasn’t one of her students as she’d expected – it was Olivier Ayari, Xavier’s younger brother. Anna drew in her breath, not sure she was ready for a conversation with him in the confines of her office after the day she’d had, however irrational her fears might be.
‘Hello, Olivier, how can I help you?’ She thought fast. ‘I was just about to go out.’
The boy outside her door cleared his throat. ‘I was wondering . . .’ He cleared his throat again. ‘I was wondering if I could talk to you. About . . . about Tom.’
Anna winced inwardly. Even though it was quiet down in the cafe today, they could hardly go down there to have that conversation, but she didn’t feel comfortable about inviting him in. Olivier didn’t have any of his brother’s good looks; he looked lost and a little forlorn standing out in the corridor, his backpack heavy with books, slung over his shoulder, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. What was it with these brothers? Anna took a deep breath, slowing her heart. She was being ridiculous, they were Tunisian, weren’t even the same nationality as the men in the bank. Olivier had obviously been in college today, probably visiting the library. That’s what students did. She really needed to get a grip. Maybe this was the time to start.
‘Come in.’
He looked at her hard for a moment and then nodded. ‘Thank you.’
Heading for the chair opposite her desk, he sat down half-reluctantly, lowering his backpack to the floor.