He comes across the room, throws his bag under his desk, and faces me, his hands on his hips. I straighten from Helen’s computer, wait for him to tell me what he’s got, because he’s got something, he just wants to make sure we’re all listening.
Helen looks back at her screen, pulls her chair in. I think I hear a small grunt of disgust come from her throat.
Ryan continues. “They’d a camera over the counter that takes in the door from the inside and another over the exit of the shop facing the seawall that takes in the street immediately outside and as far as the promenade. And”—he wags a finger in the air to no one in particular—“they worked. Hennessy enters the venue at ten to six, gets his order of chips, and out he goes. Another camera at the front of the shop shows him heading across the street to a bench on the prom where he stays stuffing his trap for forty minutes or so and then we pick him up heading back up the street. I imagine to meet youse,” he says to me.
He holds up a USB.
There’s something satisfying about ruling out a suspect. You might think it should be otherwise, but every path followed and eliminated is one step closer to the truth. We’re not blinded or immobilized by choice. Every name crossed off leaves only the guilty behind. And I’m not going to lie: To be able to put Seán Hennessy to one side in this case feels great.
“Good work, Ryan. Set it up and send the footage to my computer.” My eyes now firmly on Father Patrick Healy, I take up his background info from Helen’s desk and smile my thanks.
“Where’s Baz?”
“He’s in room one with the priest,” she replies.
“Thanks.” I head for the interview room.
I open the door and settle down on the other side of the glass. Baz, fresh-faced, clean shaven, ready to challenge Father Healy on how his phone managed to follow the same track as Geraldine Shine’s directly after her murder.
Baz gives the priest a reassuring smile. An interview has its own psychology. We want witnesses and suspects like Healy to trust us, want them to believe we’re on their side. We rely on a man’s capacity to always think the worst couldn’t happen. That no matter what they tell us, they will be okay. And because humans want to believe that, eventually they do begin to talk. And when they do, a tongue-tied perp can morph into a grand orator.
“Father, here we are again. Good to see you.”
Baz’s voice is a boom of energy. The priest gives him a nervous smile.
“So, now. What we got.” Baz opens up a folder. “Ho-ho. Right, yes.” He becomes serious. “We’re going to ask a few questions. Just like the last time.”
The priest nods then remembers he needs to speak up. “Yes.”
Baz presses the recorder and a red light appears. “We’re recording this interview and also, you’ll see”—he turns in his seat and points to a camera in the corner of the ceiling—“we have the ol’ video going now too. Very high-tech. You okay with that?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Interview between Father Patrick Healy and Detective Barry Harwood, conducted at 6:06 on Thursday the twenty-third of August 2012. Father Healy has declined the offer of legal representation at this time.”
He gifts Healy with a wide smile. “You understand you’re not under arrest but that information collected during this interview may be used against you in a court of law?”
The priest glances about the room, eyes flitting to the camera. When he answers, he leans forward a bit as if speaking into a microphone. “Yes.”
“When we interviewed you last, you said”—he pulls the folder toward him, reads his notes—“you left the church at approximately one fifteen and did not return until gardaí were already at the scene for the murders of Ger and Alan Shine, on Sunday, the nineteenth of August 2012. Is that correct?”
Healy swallows. He opens his mouth then closes it, resting a fingertip across his lips as if silencing himself. After a short pause he says, “That’s correct.”
“So you were not in the church between the hours of two and seven P.M.?”
“No.”
“In our last interview you said that you had been doing your rounds, or visiting parishioners, but later retracted that and said that you had, in fact, been in a pub near Howth. Is that correct?”
“Yes.” Confident. “I was in the Anchor.”
“Thanks. Yes, the barman verified that you arrived at the Anchor at two thirty and you had a pint of lager shandy and a fish and chips.”
“Yes.” He nods along with his answer, content with himself.
“What time did you leave the pub?”
“I’m not sure. I took my time.”
Baz spreads his hands. “Roughly.”
“I guess shortly before I arrived back at the church.”
“You arrived at the crime scene at eight forty-five P.M., according to my colleague.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a long drink.”
The priest smiles, sheepish. “Maybe I had more than one. I know I shouldn’t, driving and all.”
Baz looks down at the folder again. He removes a receipt and passes it across the table. “This is your order and receipt from the Anchor pub. It states the time as 2:40 P.M. One lager shandy and one portion of fish and chips. Paid for by card at 3:47. The barman said you left shortly afterward.”
Father Healy rubs his head; his fingers brush his ear. It reddens. “Oh wait. Maybe I did. That’s it. I took a drive.”
“You took a drive?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Where?”
There’s a knock on the door behind me and I turn away from the viewing window.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Helen says. “The commissioner, Mrs. Hegarty, is here and wants to speak with you.”
I look back through the open door. Donna Hegarty stands at the top of the room, her face turned up on the case board. Every eye in the office is focused on the back of her pale blue cardigan.
“Christ. What’s she doing here?”
“Jane Brennan’s gone to the press. She’s mentioned the article Conor Sheridan wrote against Seán Hennessy.”
“Fuck’s sake.” I turn back to the window. “Tell her I’ll be out in five.” I feel Helen’s hesitation, torn between whose orders to follow. Mine or Hegarty’s. No one wants to return to the commissioner empty-handed but short of laying my decapitated head in Helen’s hands, nothing we do will make Donna Hegarty happy. She’s on the career move of the century. Eventually, I hear the door behind me click closed.
“Did you return to the church?” Baz is asking.
Healy can’t meet Baz’s eyes. Fingers meshed on the table, thumb turning over thumb. “No.”
The ground is falling away beneath Healy’s feet, and as if sensing it, he draws them further beneath his chair.
“You said Geraldine contacted you on the day she died. What did her message say?”
“Just that she needed to meet up. She thought I could come over for some lunch.”
“Lunch?”
The priest nods.
“We’re going to need to seize your phone, Father,” Baz says, and the priest nods again. “Apart from arranging these weekly meet-ups, were you in touch with her for any other reason?”
The color in Healy’s face deepens. “No.”
Baz stretches his arms back over his head. “You know mobile phones make it so easy for us nowadays. If a phone is on, we can actually follow its whereabouts, you know. As you travel”—he walks his fingers through the air—“as a mobile phone travels, it hits off masts and sends out signals so we can work out its location. Pretty handy for us, right?”
Healy swallows.
“Are you hearing me, Father?”
The priest looks down. He’s not going to give up until he knows he’s beaten.
“After she was murdered, Geraldine’s pho
ne continued to travel,” Baz says. “Without her! Her phone went from the area of the church all the way out to Cliff Walk. And you know whose phone also traveled the same path at the exact same time?”
I see the priest’s chin dimple; his mouth turns down. “Yes,” he whispers, shame laced through his voice.
“How was that?”
Tiny, tiny voice. “I took it.”
“You took her phone?”
I can see Healy’s lips moving. Clenched hands rise to his chest. He’s praying. After a moment he sniffs, tugs the handkerchief out of his breast pocket, wipes his face, his nose. “I . . . I came back probably around six thirty. I went into the church . . .” He clears his throat, his fist over his mouth, and the skin wobbles over his collar. His lips whiten, disappear into his face. “I didn’t see them at first. I walked into the vestry to check it was set for the morning. When I came out again, something felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on it but then it hit me. The smell . . .” His hand flutters to his nose. “Something rotten, and blood. That’s when I saw them in the middle of the aisle.”
“What did you do next?”
“When I saw who it was, I panicked. I know how it would have looked. The message from her phone to me. There really wasn’t anything else on the phone but I panicked. I was supposed to meet with her. I didn’t want to be connected with this at all. It was stupid but I was scared. I got some gloves from the vestry. I tried to just take the phone but when I removed it there was a message on the screen.”
“A message? From you?”
“No. From her own number, like she’d sent it to herself. It was just one word.”
“What did it say?”
“Victim.”
His hands are shaking on the table. He curls his fingers in on his palms. “The blood, it was still warm,” he says, tears in his voice.
“You took her bag?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I drove out to Cliff Walk, like you said, and threw the lot into the sea.”
“Can you be more specific? Where?”
“I’m not sure.” Then, “Oh wait, there was a trash bin. I was going to just drop it in there but in the end I thought it might be found, so I threw it over the cliff face.”
“Can you describe the bag?”
“Erm, black, PVC. It was shiny. Not big. A clutch, I think they call it.”
I pick up the phone, dial Ryan’s desk.
“Chief?”
“Tell the team at Cliff Walk that we’re looking for a black PVC clutch bag. Dropped in the sea below. There’s a trash bin next to where it was dropped. Check the bin too.”
“Copy that, Chief.”
Baz steps out of the interview room. Less buoyant. He shakes his head at me, and we walk the short hallway to my office.
“Victim!” he says when he closes the door. “Could have done with that little nugget four days ago. What do you think?”
“I think he’s just about stupid enough to be telling the truth.”
“Yeah. What a piece of work. How could he feck off leaving his housekeeper fifty yards away when he knew there was a murderer in the area?” His face lights up. “We can charge him with obstruction.”
“And have the media saying we messed up when we release him. No.” And his face falls. “Hegarty is literally breathing down our necks. She’s on the case room floor.”
“What the fuck’s she doing here?”
“She owns our backsides, remember?” I sit at the computer. “Jane Brennan has sold out to the press. We need our ducks in a row on Hennessy.” I open up the footage that Ryan secured.
“At least the alibi will make her happy,” Baz says, leaning out the door to watch Hegarty.
The first piece of footage is slightly obscured by dull weather, rain clouding up the lens of the camera. But I can see a tall figure, fit, dark jacket pulled up around his neck, baseball cap over his head. It could be Hennessy. His back is to the camera. In his hand, a brown bag. White trainers, jeans, similar clothing to Hennessy’s when he met Tanya and me at Smith’s bar. He steps off the pavement. I lean closer, try to get a better view through the haze of misty rain. He crosses the street to a bench on the green looking out on the promenade and the sea. The scope of the footage barely covers the bench. But I can make out that he sits. I fast-forward the film, watch the minutes count out to 6:46, obliterating our killer’s window for entering the Shine house.
Baz is looking over my shoulder. “That him? Not a particularly comfortable day to be eating chips on the seafront.”
“It looks like it’s him. Wait a moment.” I click the second piece of footage. It’s much clearer. Seán Hennessy’s face clear as day at the counter of the chip shop.
I sigh. “That’s definitely him.” I look at Hennessy’s face for a while. The front of his hat casts his face in shadow but there’s no mistaking his identity.
I sink away from the computer. “Finish up with Healy; I’ll deal with Hegarty.”
“Thanks.”
Baz goes back into the room. I sit for a moment. I take out my phone, find the next short clip of the documentary footage, and press play.
Seán Hennessy stretches out his fingers. When he speaks, his eyes don’t quite meet the camera. They lift and then slide to the floor, dipping in and out of memory.
“Hope is a four-walled cell with a heavy metal door. After five years pushing against nothing, I began to see my life anew. I was twenty. It was a gift. Here I was, inside Pandora’s box. And no one was going to lift the lid. I began to accept that. And I relished the safety. No more accusations. Whatever I was guilty of, time was eroding away my sins. Making me again. I applied to college to study. Philosophy. I exercised. I was fitter, healthier in mind and body than I’d ever been. I joined the library. Filled my cell with books. And I read. Read. Read.
“Inside I’d created a whole other place to be. And no one could take it from me. I began to feel at peace. I saw my old life. The before. I saw a young thug who would have ended up dead on a street corner, marks tracking up my arms before I hit twenty. I experienced a rebirth of sorts. I knew I wasn’t guilty and therefore I walked that cell with my innocence filling up my chest. In a lot of ways I was free.”
The interviewer steps in. But you weren’t free.
“Freedom means different things to different people.”
CHAPTER 17
HELEN’S HEAD IS THROWN BACK in laughter. A strand of hair has come away from the flat sweep of her bun. It lies straight and long over her cheek but she doesn’t seem to mind. She lifts a jug of milk from the mini fridge, laughter still shaking across her shoulders. Donna Hegarty gestures “a small amount” with her thumb and forefinger and Helen lets a little milk drop into a mug of coffee. She gives it a quick stir then holds it out to Hegarty with a smile.
When I walk toward her, Helen’s hand reaches up and pushes the hair from her face. “Ma’am,” she says.
Hegarty smiles, all teeth. “Detective Sheehan. Glad you could join us.” She glances around. “I was just getting to know some of our staff better.” She glances at Helen, who is standing between us, her chest high, red blotches appearing over her neck. She’ll pass out in a minute if she doesn’t take a breath.
“Thanks, Helen,” I say. And she looks like she might dissolve with relief.
“Helen was saying you have someone in custody now?”
“We’ve just finished interviewing a witness.”
“No arrest?”
“Not this time.”
She frowns. Then points in the direction of my office. “Shall we?”
I’m not above having my place pointed out to me, but there’s something about the commissioner’s air that gets right under my skin, drawing across my nerves like sandpaper.
I lead her to my office and close the
door behind us.
She speaks before I get to my seat. “I’m calling a press conference in a couple of hours. I want you to attend.”
“About Jane Brennan spilling to the press?”
“Partly. I spoke to your guy out there, Paul. Jane Brennan insists she didn’t sell out to the media. But whatever the situation, it’s out there now and of course the media could go one way or the other.”
“They’ll go one way.”
Her face brightens. “It could work in our favor. She reminded them of Hennessy’s past. That he’s a convicted killer. They may even begin to suspect him of Sheridan’s murder.”
There’s a tinge of glee to her voice. And now I see what’s playing out here. That faced with Hennessy’s potential innocence for the murder of his parents, the next best thing to ensure the public stay on Hegarty’s side would be if he was guilty of more murders. I had thought she wouldn’t want Hennessy within a kilometer of these murders, should it look like we were hounding him. But maybe it might look better for the gardaí this way. Maybe it will look better for Hegarty.
“I’m not sure why we’d want that,” I reply.
“A man attempting to overturn his previous murder conviction is now facing charges for another. Of course we want that.” The skin around her eyes tightens; her lips harden against her teeth. She leans toward me, her voice low. “Hennessy thinks he has us, that he has the media and the public eating from his hands. We’ll see how well he does when the public begin to think he’s killed again.”
I pull back a little, straighten. Comprehension is clear as daylight. Jane Brennan did not leak this story to the press. Donna Hegarty did. I take a drink of coffee. It burns my tongue. “Here was me thinking we wanted the truth.”
“He could be behind these new murders.”
“His alibi is strong. We have CCTV footage to back it.”
She swats away my statement as if it were nothing but an irritating fly and pushes her tongue against her cheek. “I’ve been doing my own digging around this case. And there’s something else that we will need to talk about,” she says, and there’s a quiet threat in her voice.
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