If I Never See You Again

by Niamh O'Connor

  Dan had spotted the Post-it and pulled the dishwasher door open. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘Won’t work,’ Jo said, studying the back of a tube of tomato purée.

  He walked the machine out from under the bench as if it were as light as a feather and lifted the trays out on the floor, kneeling to inspect inside. Jo used to marvel at the span of his shoulders. She forced herself to look away.

  ‘She was on the game,’ he said, reaching behind the machine and jolting something.

  ‘I gathered,’ Jo answered.

  He turned around to face her. ‘You shouldn’t have gone in there on your own. What if he’d still been in there? What if something had happened to you?’

  ‘I wasn’t on my own. Foxy was with me,’ Jo said, abandoning the tube and scraping the onion into the pan. The hissing drowned out the sound of Dan snorting.

  ‘The forensic team is not happy,’ he continued, reaching across her to turn the heat down then pulling a screwdriver from a junk drawer.

  ‘Yeah, well, levitation isn’t something I’ve mastered yet,’ Jo replied, trying to squirt the purée on to the spoon then aiming it directly into the pan.

  Dan shook his head, straightened up and took it off her. ‘We got an anonymous tip-off that a body was there – a unit of crime-scene examiners had been dispatched,’ he said, going back down on one knee. ‘That’s how they were on the scene so quickly after you.’ He closed the dishwasher door up, pressed the on/off button and nodded to himself at the sound of water flooding in, then turned it off.

  Jo threw an arm over his shoulder as he stood up. ‘Thank you.’

  He gave her a sidelong glance that lasted too long and she moved away awkwardly.

  Dan stepped behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from the frying pan and towards the table, pushing her back into a chair. He tucked the dishcloth into the sides of his belt like an apron and started tossing the pan around the heat. Jo wasn’t about to argue. He was a great cook, while she had difficulty boiling an egg. ‘What shall I do?’ she asked.

  Dan stretched across her to the cupboard over her head and pulled down two wine glasses. She suspected he knew the effect he was having on her because of the way he looked at her when he said, ‘Make mine a small one, I’m supposed to be driving after.’

  But when he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, Jo pulled her head away. She hated that he could still make her feel like this after everything that had happened. ‘I want you to put me in charge of the investigation,’ she said tetchily. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of murder cases I’ve been on, but I’m the only inspector in the division who hasn’t headed one up yet.’

  Dan returned to the cooker. ‘It’s tricky,’ he said, handing a corkscrew to Jo. ‘You know that.’

  Jo had lots of appropriate expletives, but there was no point using them when she knew he was right. Her promotion had finally come only on the back of her threat to take the force to the High Court after she was repeatedly passed over on the promotion list despite a record conviction rate in Store Street station, the divisional drugs HQ for the Dublin Metropolitan Area (DMA). She believed she was being held back because she was too gobby with the staff of the Justice Department. But she couldn’t help it – the system of social apartheid that operated in the courts drove her crazy. She couldn’t bear the way the legal eagles looked down their noses at people, the convoluted language they used, the wigs and gowns they wore. Even the sign on the restaurant door when the criminal courts sat in the Four Courts stipulated ‘Barristers only’, informing them they were ‘Entitled to free iced tea’. It all served to segregate people who were already intimidated enough by the whole process, people the justice system was supposed to serve. But she really wanted this case. If she solved it, she’d some hope of getting a transfer . . .

  ‘I needed that hostage course under my belt, Dan,’ Jo said, straining on her tiptoes to push the arms of the corkscrew down.

  He placed his hands on her waist and slowly moved her sideways.

  ‘I worked hard for it,’ she continued, swallowing. ‘I did it by the book. I was in command. I could have done a deal.’

  Dan scoffed, popped the cork and poured, clinking her glass. ‘You broke the cardinal rule,’ he said. ‘You started talking about angels, for Christ’s sake! You left Billy between a rock and a hard place. His only way to save face was by going through with it. And don’t even get me started on the shite you came out with about plasma screens!’

  ‘You’re wrong, Dan. I’d got his first name. I’d got him talking. I’d saved the kid. He wouldn’t have left her, not on her own.’

  She took a sip and felt herself instantly start to mellow. ‘You sure you’re not just trying to keep me around?’

  ‘All right dad,’ Rory said, sticking his head around the door.

  Jo moved further away from Dan.

  ‘Dishes,’ Dan instructed, tossing the dishcloth at him.

  Rory headed slowly towards the sink, removing and inspecting the contents of the half-open grocery bag on the island on the way.

  ‘Do you have any idea how bad monosodium glutamate is for you, Mother?’ he asked, studying the back of a soup packet, then lifting and dropping a block of Parmesan with disdain. ‘Also, the smell of vomit is not conducive to appetite,’ he said.

  ‘Hey, a little more respect for your mother,’ Dan instructed, catching Jo’s eye behind his back and straining to keep a straight face.

  Jo heard a whimper upstairs and went to get Harry.

  Dan and Rory were arguing when she got back, but they stopped talking as soon as they saw her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jo asked, moving quickly to the cooker to turn the heat down. Gloopy water was overflowing from the pot of spaghetti.

  ‘Go on, tell her,’ Rory said, eyeballing his father.

  Dan looked at Jo sheepishly and muttered something about Rory’s school reports which Jo couldn’t make out.

  ‘Tell me what?’ Jo asked, placing Harry in the high chair and handing him a rusk.

  Dan opened his mouth to say something, but Rory spoke over him angrily. ‘Okay, so my grades are down. Big deal. When your parents split, that’s what happens. I’m a textbook broken-home kid. Shoot me.’

  ‘Do not speak to me like that,’ Dan said.

  ‘Why not?’ Rory asked. ‘Because tonight we’re playing grown-ups who get along? You want to get everything out in the open so much, Dad, why don’t you tell Mum about the new place you’re planning on moving into with your girlfriend?’

  Jo looked at Dan. When he didn’t say anything, she handed Harry his milk. As soon as he started guzzling, she left the room.

  ‘I was going to tell you,’ Dan said, following her to the front room.

  Jo was sitting on the couch studying her hands, which lay on her knees.

  Dan knelt down in front of her. ‘Don’t do this,’ he said, clasping his hands over hers.

  Jo stood up quickly, walked across to the door and lowered her voice as she closed it. ‘How worried should I be about Rory’s grades?’

  ‘He’s a bright kid, he’ll be fine,’ Dan said coldly. ‘The move with Jeanie . . . it’s not the way it sounds . . . It’s temporary, until I find somewhere of my own. Her place is too small. She was moving anyway!’

  Jo wanted to change the subject. ‘We need to talk about my transfer,’ she said.

  ‘Not now,’ he answered, sounding frustrated.

  ‘When?’ she asked, keeping her voice down. ‘Your secretary keeps refusing to give me an appointment.’

  Dan plunged his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘Take it that Jeanie will book you in tomorrow morning.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘All you have to do is say the word, Jo. You know how I feel about you.’

  ‘And where does Jeanie fit in?’ Jo asked calmly. ‘You’re just stringing her along in case things don’t work out between us, is that it? And what if we did get back together . . . Would she stay on as your s
ecretary, just like the old days?’

  Dan’s voice hardened. ‘How many times do I have to tell you there was nothing between us before you kicked me out? And what’s happened since isn’t serious.’

  He brushed past her lightly as he headed back into the kitchen.

  When he called out, ‘Grub up,’ minutes later, she walked stiffly back to the kitchen and sat down alongside Becky, opposite Dan and Rory. She ate forced mouthfuls in between making light conversation. There was one humorous moment when Dan made Rory laugh by telling him about Jo’s rooftop claim that she didn’t want to be a cop, or to work. Jo tried telling them that she’d pack it all in at the drop of a hat if she won the Lotto, but they all just laughed harder at her, even Becky.

  After Harry was winded and the strings of spaghetti removed from his hair, Jo pulled his hat on and kissed his rosy little cheeks before handing him slowly over to Dan, with a tube of Bonjela.

  ‘I thought you were staying,’ Jo said, as Rory began to follow his father.

  Rory mumbled something before disappearing out the hall door. Becky tottered out behind him, telling Jo as she trooped out behind him, ‘No offence. It’s just that if my mum found out I was going to stay here, she’d, like, have a meltdown.’

  Jo started to massage her neck. If Dan was letting Becky stay over with Rory in his place, they’d have to have the birth-control conversation. Something else to look forward to. She listened to Dan’s car drone down the road and around the corner then went out into the garden, jostled the For Sale sign to the ground and dragged it around to the side of the house, where no one could see it. If Dan thought she was going to let him sell her family home just so he could use the proceeds of his half to buy one with Jeanie he had another think coming.

  4

  Unable to stay home alone, Jo spent the next half-hour perched behind the steering wheel in gridlocked Pearse Street trying to turn right on to Tara Street at the fire station but going nowhere. It was almost eight, but the only rush-hour rule that applied on one of the main feeder routes across the Liffey was bottleneck traffic. Her right hand was holding the choke at the only spot guaranteed not to flood the engine and her left foot was monitoring the clutch.

  She was headed for the station, technically five minutes away. Technically. Her wipers slashed at the rain sheeting down, in high summer. The repetitive thump alternated with the throb in her head, which the pills had moved from the front to the back of her skull. When the lights changed but not a single car moved and her petrol warning light flashed up, Jo slid her right arm under her shirt collar to peel the nicotine patch off the top of her arm and relocate it on her left breast, directly over her heart, hoping for a maximum infusion. Seconds later, she leaned over to the dash where she stashed her emergency box of Silk Cut Lights and lit up. The car bunny-hopped until she grabbed the choke again.

  After eventually managing to ditch it on a double yellow, she crossed the Luas tram tracks and hurried past the Victorian Coroner’s Court, the last port of call for murder victims’ families denied justice by the courts. Each morning, a new set of shattered faces could be seen heading into the building beside the station, arms linked, hands clutching photographs of the deceased, and clinging to the last hope – of restoring some dignity to the dead with a verdict of unlawful killing . . .

  Entering the red-bricked, refurbished barracks, she swiped her ID card past the ice-block walls and solid beech doors and headed for the windowless incident room on the first floor. More desks than the room could accommodate were crammed in haphazard rows. A detailed map of Dublin city centre hung on the back wall, with little coloured pins highlighting the primary crime flashpoints. Immigrants were breathing new life into many of the no-go areas where marked cars would have been rammed or stoned in previous years, but the transition was creating a whole new set of tensions, especially now jobs were so thin on the ground.

  Shiny white boards took up most of the end wall. A posthumous close-up of Rita Nulty’s bloodied face had already been taped up, beside details relating to a previous case which somebody had made a half-hearted attempt to rub out.

  Two men were working inside. She knew them both – liked one, couldn’t stand the other.

  Jo made a beeline through the fug of body odour and stale coffee towards Detective Inspector Gavin Sexton, who was studying some paperwork at the top of the room. He was sitting at the desk with the only computer. The other guy – the one with acne on his neck and an All Blacks fleece over his uniform – looked up when she entered. He was known as Mac. She hadn’t a clue what his first name was or how his surname ended. Staff were split into four units to provide cover for twenty-four hours. You could go your whole career never having met someone working in the same station, but Mac she knew by form. He’d been the focus of an inquiry some years back after a mouthy juvenile died in a cell on his watch, but the DPP couldn’t make any charges stick. Every cop on duty that night had suffered a collective lapse in memory. It made her sick to the teeth the way ranks closed whenever trouble loomed.

  ‘Sexton,’ she saluted, scooping up copies of Evening News splashed with the banner headline ‘Murdered Hooker’. That was quick, she thought, dropping it on to the floor with a loud bang, managing to locate the keyboard that had been buried underneath in the process. Taking her arms out of the sleeves of her leather biker jacket, she slung it over the back of the chair.

  Sexton looked up and grinned. He was short by police standards, and handsome, with Mediterranean good looks. It was only a few months since Jo had last seen him, but he’d aged so much she had to look twice. Grey slashes had appeared in his dark hair at the sides, and there were puffy bags under his eyes. He looked a lot older than his thirty-two years, Jo thought.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while, Sarge,’ he said.

  ‘That’s Inspector to you . . . I got promoted, remember?’ She plonked herself in the chair, wheeling it sideways with little steps, telling him to ‘push over’ with her elbows so she could work on the computer.

  ‘How could I forget?’ he replied.

  The running joke that she’d cheated her way up the ranks was wearing very thin, but Sexton she let get away with it. He was three years younger than she was but the most instinctive cop she’d ever worked with, and rumoured to be on course for promotion when the next list came out. She knew first-hand how good he was and so she didn’t begrudge him, especially when he’d also had to overcome huge personal tragedy – his late wife, Maura, had taken her own life, must be a year and a half ago now. Jo remembered it as happening at much the same time she and Dan broke up. Sexton hadn’t taken a day’s leave since, as far as she could tell, but he point-blank refused to discuss it whenever she tried to bring it up. She still hadn’t been able to talk to him properly. She’d also heard on the grapevine that he’d only found out from Maura’s autopsy report that she’d been expecting their first child.

  ‘You need a shave,’ she told him.

  He rubbed his jaw. ‘Did I ever tell you, you’re the image of that actress . . . what’s her name?’ he asked.

  Jo jabbed the keyboard, tabbing through the PULSE crime programme as she answered, ‘Orla Brady – I wish, and yeah, you tell me all the time.’ She didn’t entertain it for a second. Sexton could charm the birds out of the trees.

  ‘Wasn’t she in Mistresses?’ Mac asked with a snigger.

  Jo shot him a look of contempt, but Sexton distracted her with another question.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, linking his hands behind his head.

  ‘I want to do a bit of research on the murder victim today,’ Jo answered, still eyeballing Mac. ‘You know, Rita Nulty – I found her.’

  ‘I heard. Lucky for us. What were the chances of you being in situ at that location today, eh?’ He stretched over to grab a novelty mug from her desk. ‘So what have you been working on lately?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t ask. Deskbound, mostly.’

  ‘What a waste,’ he said.

  ‘Pays
the same.’ Her eyes moved across the screen. The computer system was an exercise in frustration. The software had cost 50 million and was incapable of basic tasks. Unlike the HOLMES system in the UK, it didn’t cross reference relevant information and, as the plan for a national DNA bank was in its infancy, it couldn’t throw up the hits needed to solve crime. Plus there was the fact that, if the civil liberties crowd ever found out that the details of people who’d reported a crime were permanently stored with those of suspects who’d been long since cleared, there’d be hell to pay.

  ‘Shit boring though, right?’ Sexton guessed.

  Jo shrugged.

  ‘Milk, two sugars?’ He held a mug up.

  Jo pressed two pleading hands in his direction like she was praying. He nodded ‘no problem’. She watched him as he walked towards the coffee machine on a bench on the opposite wall and thought how tired he looked.

  When he realized the dregs in the coffee pot were burnt into a sticky glue at the bottom of the pot, Sexton clicked his tongue and headed outside to the toilets to clean it. As he did so, the phone on his desk rang.

  ‘Sexton around?’ a gravelly voice quizzed.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Ryan Freeman.’

  Jo looked at the newspapers on the floor and focused on the by-line on the murder story. She weighed this information up against the ten-odd seconds it would take to get Sexton back to the phone to take the call from the country’s highest-profile crime reporter. ‘He’s not available,’ she lied, ignoring Mac’s open mouth and hanging up.

  She returned to the computer search. ‘Did you find out who owned that apartment?’ she asked when Sexton returned, adding, ‘Cheers,’ as he handed over a polystyrene cup from the machine outside. He held the coffee pot up to show her how the ring of glass in the bottom had come away when he’d tried to clean it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, sitting on the desk. ‘Foxy actioned the job, but the key-holder was kosher. He’d bought it from the plans, never set foot in the place.’