“Dare I ask if we’ve a time of death?”
“She can’t give us anything specific. She reckons a few days prior to discovery, taking into account the rate of decomp and refrigeration.” He pauses, then, “When was the last time you discharged a weapon?”
I let my hand drop from my face. “Could do with a visit to the shooting range.”
He moves to the door, signs out. “So what’s next? Our lovely Father Healy?”
“I wish, but we need to get to Conor Sheridan’s flatmate before this gets into the press.”
“Jimmy Lynch it is then so,” he says, and heads for the exit.
I follow him outside, head to my car, open the door.
“I’m not going in that bone-rattler,” he says, opening the passenger side of his own car. He gets in. “But you can drive. I’m wrecked,” he says before he shuts the door.
I sigh, lock mine, and send a message to Helen to have it picked up. When I open the driver’s side of Baz’s car, the smell of pine hits me. I start the engine and put my hands on the steering wheel, my fingers squeaking over the leather cover. “Your car is way too clean for this job.”
“Got it reworked,” he says, his eyes closed. “Nice new hubs, valet, the lot.”
“The smell is nose-strippingly fresh.”
“I’m enjoying it while it lasts.”
* * *
—
WE TAKE M50 SOUTH, come off on the N81, where the city buzz turns to a shifting kind of quiet, cranes and blocks of flats divide up the cool, gray sky. Baz is scrunched in a ball in the passenger seat, getting his forty winks while he can. It’s hitting six and news of Conor Sheridan’s murder will be trickling out.
“You awake?” I say to Baz.
He opens his eyes, glances at the clock in the car. “We’re here?” He scrambles to check his phone.
“Almost.” I slow for a traffic light, come to a stop.
A young fella, sweatpants riding low on his hips, a gray hoodie, a baseball cap perched like a trilby on the side of his head, stops at the edge of the road to give us the finger. Baz reaches out and pushes down the central locking.
“I hope the SOCO team have the sense to stay in the van until we get there,” I say.
“You’d think so.”
The light changes and I pull away. A small precinct opens up ahead of us. Boxy shop-fronts, peeling fascias, empty windows smeared in graffiti and swirls of white paint, a couple of cars tucked nose to pavement, glinting in the weak sunlight.
“We asking Lynch about McDonagh?”
I see the turnoff for Sheridan’s flat to the left. I indicate, turn sharply. “Let’s see how it plays out. It might be good not to make a big deal out of it yet. See if he trips himself up.”
“I’ll follow your lead.”
“Gracious of you.”
His phone buzzes. “It’s Helen.” He puts her on speaker and Helen’s voice spills out between us.
“Right. So we’ve been trying to trace Conor Sheridan’s last movements. We’ve got his car stopping at a garage just north of Tallaght. He parks and uses an ATM at the Square.”
Hope stretches through me; it might be easy after all.
Helen continues. “We lost him then for a bit and thought we could run a later search at the same cameras, maybe catch him returning home. But no sign of him. Because he was found in Clontarf and his kids and family live there, we ran another search of his car in the Clontarf area and, bingo, we got him pulling into a car park in Fairview one week ago. Wednesday, the fifteenth of August. It was hitting ten P.M. on the cameras.”
“It fits with Abigail’s estimations on time of death. Is there a visual on him leaving?”
“No return journey for this fella. His car is still here. I’m out now with the forensics lads. The retrieval truck has arrived to take it in.”
I check the GPS; we’re almost at Sheridan’s place. I pull down a one-way street. The buildings crowd over the car, a vacuum of concrete and wet, humid air. The SOCOs’ humpback van is parked in the shadows a little bit down the way. No sign of Keith’s van. His lot still processing Sheridan’s scene. I pull up outside the apartment block, turn off the engine.
“He left midday and didn’t get to Clontarf until ten at night?” I say. “He definitely stopped off somewhere. Can you keep working on CCTV, get some more sightings of his journey, maybe? We need to fill in those hours.”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Any phone? In the car?”
“No. Nothing on Cell Site. Wherever it is, it’s turned off. The car was locked up, alarm activated. Quite tidy, the body of the car still smelled of wax, not even a half-drunk water bottle or an old parking ticket on the floor.”
“Keep looking. Clancy phone?”
“No.”
Everyone playing their own game here.
“We’re about to enter Sheridan’s place,” I tell her. “Update on the car as soon as you can.”
“Right you are, Chief.”
Baz ends the call and I push open the car door. “Come on, let’s get on this.”
* * *
—
CONOR SHERIDAN’S FLAT is on the third floor of a five-story building. The façade a dirty cream, greening at the corners, paint peeling around the row of doorbells, Sheridan’s name in faded blue ink on a slip of paper. I glance over the other names. There’s no one who looks familiar. I push the button next to Sheridan’s name. The intercom crackles after two rings.
“Hello?”
“Gardaí. May we come up?”
A stiff silence, then: “What the fuck do youse want?”
I look to Baz. Déjà fucking vu.
“We need to speak to you about Conor Sheridan.”
The door buzzes, and we enter the building. There’s no lift; the stairwell has that smell: piss, sweat, some stomach-churning chemical floral scent. There’s a small disk of pink in the corner of the hallway where someone’s thrown down a toilet freshener in an attempt to combat the pong of the joint. The mix is potent and in the humidity it grabs at the back of my throat. I head quickly up the stairs, hear a door unlock, open above us.
Two SOCOs, already suited, follow behind myself and Baz. On the final few steps, I extend a hand to one of them and she passes me two pairs of foot covers and gloves.
“Thanks,” I say, and pocket them. “Hold back here for a moment; let us introduce ourselves. I’ll call you in when we’re ready.”
The SOCO looks back down the stairwell, shares a worried look with her colleagues, holds her kit a little closer.
“Yes, ma’am,” she says.
Baz and I move up the last few steps.
“You’ve probably condemned them to death,” he mutters. “Stand still for long enough in this place, someone will steal the legs from under you.”
“If anything’s getting stolen, it’s your car outside.”
He laughs but there’s a shot of alarm about it.
CHAPTER 15
LEANING OVER THE BANISTER is a heavy bloke, tattooed up his neck, white undershirt, stained, the works. His head, round as a bowling ball and almost as smooth, is glistening with sweat.
When I get level, I meet his eyes, a shifting brown, narrow gaze, his forehead a ledge of thick flesh.
“Detective Sheehan and this is Detective Harwood,” I say. “Jimmy Lynch?”
He looks over Baz in a way that seems like he might throttle him just because he could. “Yeah.”
Baz clears his throat. “It’s about your flatmate, Conor Sheridan.”
“Conor? What’s happened then?” I watch the man, the wee cogs turning like a drugged clock in his head.
“I’m afraid we don’t have good news, Mr. Lynch. Conor Sheridan was found dead this morning,” Baz says. He waits for Lynch’s reaction but the man continues to stare at him as if Baz had only in
formed him that the weather was lousy.
Baz spreads his hands. “We’re up to our neck in it,” he says, like he’s talking to a friend. “We’ve nothing. Nothing. We were relying on you, ye see, to give us a bit of background, something for us to work on.”
As he speaks I see the effect on the bull-neck in front of me, his frame slowly straightening, his body language loosening. This is a man who wants to be the front-runner. He won’t have anyone tell him he has to talk, even if it’s only about the fucking weather. He’ll be the one making the decisions here.
He looks at me, his eyes gliding down my front then back again. “I suppose youse ’ill want to come in then?”
Baz smacks his hands together. “That’d be a great help, Jimmy.”
Jimmy Lynch turns, ducks his considerable size into the flat, indicating we should follow. The door opens into a small kitchenette, shabby with less of the chic; the bin overflowing with pizza boxes, beer cans stacked up around it like beaten sentries.
Jimmy sets his large body into a La-Z-Boy with a huff. “I suppose yis can sit there,” he says, motioning to a grubby white sofa.
“Thanks,” I say, but remain standing.
Baz sinks down into the fabric, sits forward, his hands loosely clasped between his knees.
“Mr. Lynch,” I begin, and he turns, gives me a wary look. “Conor Sheridan’s body was found on Clontarf beach early this morning. We believe he was murdered and we’ve a warrant to search his room.”
He doesn’t budge. Not one stinking millimeter, not a flicker of shock registers on his face, but I see his hands tighten on his legs. “Nothing to do with me.”
Baz holds up a palm. “No, no. But if you felt able to answer a few questions about him, so we can get a feel for where he was at, that’d be great. You know yourself how these things go?”
His dark eyes narrow. “Why would I know that?”
“Right so. Why would ye? Could you tell us when was the last time you saw him?”
“A week, a few days, more. I can’t remember the exact time. I work night shift at the Aldi depot, sleep or chill most of the day. Ships in the night, both of us. By the time I’m up and going, sure Conor’s only in the door from his job.”
“Were you working last night?” Baz asks.
“I was, yeah.”
Baz nods. “What was he like as a housemate? Did yis get on?”
“Private.”
“Private?”
“Yeah, like his room there now. He locked it, whether he was in or out. Like fucking Fort Knox that place, more metal on the inside of that door than a Swiss bank vault.”
I step closer, lean against the breakfast bar. Something crunches under my elbow and I straighten quickly. “Do you have a key?”
“No, I don’t. I reckon if he wanted all and sundry going in an’ out of that room, he woulda left it open.”
Baz laughs. “Good one.”
Jimmy looks down to hide a half-smile, pleased with himself for making Baz laugh.
Baz continues. “He must have had something in there he wanted to keep quiet, like. A secret.”
“Or out,” Jimmy says.
“Out?”
“Well, I lock me fucking front door not because I’ve got a fucking secret”—he gives a wave around the room—“but because I don’t want every Tom, Dick, or Harry getting in, bothering me.”
“You think he was feeling threatened.”
He shrugs. “Don’t fucking know. He started up with that when he got clean a few months ago. He liked his drink, you know, Conor did. He was grand on the sauce; reckon the detox made him paranoid. Or opened his fucking eyes. The world’s a happier fucking place when you’re bat-eyed drunk, isn’t it?”
“Don’t I know it,” Baz says.
I lean back, peer down the little annex behind me, see three rooms, the door at the end open, I can see the edge of a bath, a charming shade of vomit green. Another door, open, daylight pouring out into the hallway, and a door opposite, sealed tight. I send a quick text to the lead SOCO, Bring the enforcer, door locked.
“You said Conor got clean. His ex-wife said he was still drinking heavily.”
“I’ve yet to meet an ex-wife who doesn’t love caking her rejects in shite, have you? Don’t listen to that nasty piece of work. Fucking ruined Conor, if you ask me. Took his kids, his money, then shacked up in his house like a fucking cuckoo with some ponce.” His face is reddening and he takes a moment, his nostrils flare, his eyes fix on the window. Then:
“When I first met Conor, he was the life and soul, ’tis why I moved in with him. Work kept us kinda busy but on the occasional day we’d be free together, we’d head to the pub there on the corner, go on a bender. It was grand.
“He was lonely though. The type of man that needed a woman, you know. Not that he wasn’t up to his groin in bitches any time we went out but he needed a partner. He missed that. So a while back he signed up to some fucking online yoke. He was always trying to get me to go on there, meet the woman of my dreams. But I got that woman right here.” He flexes his right hand, smiles, then throws me a quick glance. “No offense like, but I don’t need no fucking headache, you know.”
“Did he meet someone online?” I ask.
“Yeah, sure, isn’t that what I’m telling ye. Grand little thing from the look of her picture but you never can tell with these yokes, I said that to him. He eased off the drinking soon after that, every fucking minute he’d be in his room, I’d hear the tap and beep of his computer. Thought he was in love, poor fucker.”
I think of the crime scene investigators, waiting in the damp stink of the stairwell. “When was this?”
He pats the arm of the chair. “Dunno. Maybe about five months or so ago.”
“And that’s when he bought the locks. For his room?” Baz asks.
“Yeah. Soon after that. Stopped everything that was any craic really. Took to running, out most evenings after work, eating better. But private, like I say.”
Meaning he stopped going on the piss with his mate. The resentment for it chimes in his voice.
“How long have you been flatmates?”
He tips his head then after a few moments answers. “Probably near on five years now. From after the divorce. Yeah.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Suppose it is.”
“And in that five years, he never had any visitors?”
“Not that I know of. Could have been shimmying up the drainpipe unbeknown to me.”
“How about family? Did they visit?”
“Do you need me to write it down for you? He had no fucking visitors. Ever.”
I wait for him to catch his breath, then: “Mr. Lynch, we need to look at his room. It shouldn’t take any more than a couple of hours.”
He loops his hands over the back of his head, settles further into the recliner. “Not much I can do about it, by the sounds of it. Just keep outta my fucking room; make that clear to your people. I’m not under investigation here for nothing.”
You can tell when people have been inside; there’s a brazen kind of defense about them. They know their rights and then some. Jimmy Lynch has that in spades.
“No, you’re not.” I turn, open the door, and wave in the crew. The two SOCOs enter and I point down the short hallway. “The door on the right.”
They go at it with the enforcer, make short work of Conor Sheridan’s door.
“The fuck?” Jimmy Lynch is on his feet.
“We’ll talk to your landlord, get it fixed,” I say, my hands out.
He swears again then sits, one eye on the business end of the flat, tracking the SOCOs as they move into Conor Sheridan’s room.
“Do you know whether anyone would have wanted to harm Conor?” Baz directs Jimmy’s attention back to the matter at hand.
“Not
one.”
“How about how he was, you know, did he seem stressed or frightened to you?”
He laughs. “A man like Conor doesn’t show that kind of side now, does he? He coulda been pissing his bedsheets in fear every night and you’d be none the wiser. He withdrew a bit is all I’m saying but it didn’t feel like he was fucking scared, only he’d met this bird and was trying to get himself on the straight and narrow, rise above the bullshit that his ex was throwing at him.”
“Did he mention the last time he saw Jane Brennan?”
“That’s where he was off to, wasn’t it? Last time I saw, he got into his car to take the kids to the cinema or some such.”
“It didn’t seem strange to you that he didn’t come back?”
He rubs a hand over his face and there is a flash of something in his eyes, a brief haunted look. “No. It didn’t.”
“Really?”
He holds up a hand, examines something on his knuckles. “Just thought he’d fallen off the wagon, gone on a bender, you know. That woman knew how to push his buttons. If anyone could ha’ driven him to drink, it was her. I assumed he got there, plans had changed, and she stopped him seeing the kids. It happened often enough when the fit took her, manipulative bitch.”
I give Baz that look. He stands. “Mr. Lynch, thank you so much for your time. We’re going to have a look at the room now. It might be easier if you had somewhere else to be.”
Jimmy lets out a laugh that could be a snarl. “You want me to leave me own home. I don’t think so.” He puts his feet up, crosses them at the ankles, and Baz sits back down.
I’m already moving away. The door to Conor Sheridan’s room is smashed at the lock, splinters, slices of wood are scattered over the thin carpet.
The thing that strikes me most as I look into the room is the neatness of it. The bed is wide, crisp white sheets taut over the double mattress, clean dove-gray walls, the desk and bedside table, the wardrobe all a deep walnut, the dark carpet, thick and plush, looks new. I can’t help noticing similarities to Jane Brennan’s house. As if she’d decorated it herself or maybe Conor was attempting to re-create one little piece of his past in the small flat.
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