‘You’re sure you feel well enough to speak to us?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Carthy nodded, and Flynn could see that his face, although still drawn, was starting to regain its normal colour. He was also, Flynn realised, younger than he had first thought. His grey hair was thick and wiry and the face underneath it was relatively unlined. In fact, Tom Carthy was probably only in his early fifties, and he was tall, with broad shoulders and a slim-hipped runner’s body.
‘I feel a bit foolish, actually.’ Carthy attempted a smile. ‘It’s not like I haven’t seen a dead body before. One of the lads from the centre passed away a couple of months ago, and there were my parents, of course. It’s just . . . I’d never seen anything like that before.’ He sighed, but his gaze remained steady. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’
For a moment, ‘that’, the image of James Mannion’s battered skull, hung in the still air. Boyle left it a beat then leaned forward again.
‘Can you tell us when you last saw Mr Mannion?’
Carthy answered in a low but level voice. ‘I suppose it would have been about two weeks ago? He wasn’t one of our regulars. But we did see him at least once a fortnight, sometimes more.’
‘And “we” are . . .?’
He gave another, even fainter smile. ‘I’m sorry; I should explain. I run Tír na nÓg; it’s a drop-in centre for men in the parish. Our house is only a few streets away. We get a lot of visitors – all sorts, really. But it was set up with people like James in mind.’
Ah. Suddenly Flynn remembered why the name was so familiar. ‘One of the lads took up a collection for you at Christmas. Said he’d sent a fair few fellas over to you in his time.’
The older man’s face brightened and he nodded eagerly. ‘Ah, yes – Ray. Of course. He’s a great supporter.’
‘So you’re a charity?’
Flynn, happy to let Boyle take the lead again, retreated to his spot by the window.
Carthy gave a faint smile. ‘Would it help if I filled you in a bit on what we do?’
‘Sure.’
Picking up on the briskness of Boyle’s tone, he began to run through the story of his organisation as if he’d told it many times before.
He’d been working as a teacher in Dublin – P.E., he confirmed, and Flynn gave himself a mental pat on the back for having picked up on the athletic build – when he’d received a call to say his father needed him at home.
‘One of the neighbours rang me. She sounded mortified, poor woman. My mother was only dead a couple of months and I’d say she thought he’d been on the batter. But it wasn’t that simple.’
Carthy paused and stroked the side of his face, the fingers raking the patchy stubble.
‘The home place is in Westmeath, just outside Athlone, so it took me nearly three hours to get down there, rush hour and that. But when I arrived at the house, Dad was still sitting out on the front step, refusing to move. Our neighbour had put a blanket around him and got a face full of abuse for her trouble, poor woman. Dad told her to shag off and that he was waiting for his wife to come home.’
As Carthy shifted in his seat, Flynn thought he detected a glisten of tears, but with a blink they disappeared.
‘I’ll keep it short for you. Turned out he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Mam had been keeping it from me. Typical. Didn’t want to be bothering me, apparently – I’m an only child. She thought I had my hands full.’
He smiled at Claire and shrugged, a ‘you know, yourself’ gesture, presumably designed to convey the martyrdom of the Irish mammy. As Flynn expected, the sergeant didn’t smile back. The whole ‘appeal to the feminine side’ malarkey never worked on her. After a moment, Carthy continued.
‘She died in her sleep – a heart attack, God rest her. Dad wasn’t himself at the funeral, but I put it down to shock. He insisted I was to go back to work as soon as possible, so I did, after a couple of days. Stupid of me, not to notice what was going on, but I was upset myself, I suppose. Anyway, after that night in the garden, he was never really well again. I gave up my job, moved down home – well, it’s what you do, isn’t it? He went downhill quickly after that. Didn’t know me at all in the end.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
Carthy gave Flynn a quick, upwards nod. ‘Thanks. These things happen, sure. But look, that’s how it all started, really. I’ve no siblings, so I inherited the house and whatever few bob there was. I’d no need for it myself, so I bought a house up here and set up Tír na nÓg. To be honest, it wouldn’t take a psychologist to say I was doing it for them. For the mother, and especially for the oul fella. I just wanted there to be somewhere for oul lads like him to go, you know? Not overnight, we don’t have the money, or the space to provide beds. But we cook a dinner most days, and there’s a phone and the internet, so we try and get them sorted for emergency accommodation if they need it. And many of them, like James, have their own places, anyway. They’re not all hard up; in fact, some of them would be quite well off, relatively speaking. But being able to pay your bills on time doesn’t mean you never get lonely. They just need somewhere to go during the day. It’s not much. But they seem to get a bit of ease from it.’
‘You mentioned “we”?’
Carthy nodded. ‘Yeah. I ran it myself for a while, but a couple of years ago we got funding for another worker. One of those government schemes. Liz is supposed to be with us three days a week, but she does way more than that, way more than she’s paid to do. She’d have known James too; I can give you her number.’
‘Thanks.’
Boyle made a note, but she wasn’t finished with Carthy yet.
‘And what can you tell us about Mr Mannion?’
‘James?’ Carthy paused and ran a hand over his hair. ‘James Mannion was one of nature’s gentlemen. One of the other lads brought him in six months ago – one of the rough sleepers. I’ve a feeling James might have thrown a few bob into his hat and they got into conversation. He came in around once a week, I suppose. Never arrived empty-handed. We don’t allow the men to drink alcohol on the premises, but we go through buckets of tea. James would never drop in without a packet of biscuits or an apple cake or something.’
He paused, swallowed and continued.
‘He even brought a chessboard one day and started teaching some of the others how to play. It’s still there. We’ll miss him.’
His voice finally cracked, but, as Flynn noted with interest, Boyle didn’t give him time to compose himself.
‘What was his interaction like with the other men? Would he have had a particular friend?’
‘No, not really. James was always a little different from the others. He was an educated man – you could tell that after a couple minutes talking to him. One of the other lads said he was a retired teacher, although he never told me that himself. I’d well believe it, though; a conversation with him could be a real education in and of itself; you never knew what he’d come out with. And he loved books. Always had one sticking out of the pocket. Well – you saw that yourself today.’
Flynn repressed a shiver. The smell of the damp, under-heated house was still in his nostrils and he knew, if he closed his eyes, he could easily call the rows and rows of neatly stacked books to mind. But Carthy was still talking.
‘He was a lovely man, James, but he wasn’t without his problems. We could all see that. He had a few . . . habits, I suppose you’d call them. He never ate or drank at our place, not even a cup of tea. And – OK, I know this sounds weird, but he didn’t like shaking hands. He’d do it if he had to, but he’d wash them straight afterwards, or clean them on his trousers, like this,’ Carthy made a brisk rubbing movement on his thighs. ‘He’d do anything to avoid getting dirty. But that was just how it was, you know? A lot of the men who visit us have their own ways of doing things, detective. They are – how would I put it? – men who don’t quite fit in with the rest of the world.’
Flynn got it and didn’t get it at the same time. What Carthy was saying made sense given the order in t
he house, the almost mathematical way in which the books had been arranged, even the extraordinary pyramid. But the place had been absolutely filthy as well, which didn’t fit in with the type of man being described.
Carthy smiled faintly as if reading his mind.
‘I know; doesn’t really make sense, does it? But, as I said, James had his problems. And in the last few months it became clear to all of us that he wasn’t a well man. It wasn’t just old age. I don’t think James was seventy, even. But he’d started to fail in the last few months, fail badly. The weight was dropping off him – I mentioned it to him a few weeks ago, but he brushed me off. But every time he called around it was as if he had aged another year. And as well as that . . .’
He paused, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and continued.
‘Ah, the mind was starting to go, as well. He lost a few games of chess – I thought he was being kind at first, letting the other fellas win. But the truth of it was he just wasn’t up to it anymore. He used to get grumpy when he lost a game – aggressive, even. That wasn’t James. Jesus, he had his odd moments, but he was the kindest man you could ever meet, and the gentlest. And the clothes – he was always neat, James. Well turned out. But the last few times I saw him, he just wore the same stained jumper, over and over again.’
‘Did you ask him what was going on?’
Fascinated now, Flynn took a step away from the window as Boyle made the enquiry.
Carthy nodded, slowly. ‘I did, of course. But the last thing our clients want is someone asking too many questions. James Mannion was a proud man, and a very private one. I dropped him home a few times in the last while, when it was clear he wasn’t up to the walk. He gave me a key to the house – he said it was in case he ever locked himself out, but, thinking back, it should have been a clue that he wasn’t feeling well, that he thought there might come a time I’d need to get in, maybe. But he never invited me past the front door.’
Sergeant Boyle closed her notebook with a snap. ‘We may need to talk to you again.’
‘Of course.’ Tom Carthy pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut wearily. ‘Anything I can do. The thing is . . .’
He stood up, making Flynn jump with the suddenness of the movement. He was even taller than he had first imagined – six three, maybe – and towered over Sergeant Boyle as he addressed her directly.
‘Do you think, officer . . . Do you think, maybe, it was an ease to him?’
Moving closer, Flynn could see the sergeant frown.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Carthy, I’m not quite sure what you mean.’
‘The sudden death – was it the best thing for him, maybe? Lookit, James wasn’t a well man, we could all see that, and he wasn’t a happy one, either. Maybe it was best, that he was taken so quickly?’
The sergeant shook her head, seemingly at a loss as to how anyone who had seen James Mannion’s battered skull could even countenance such a thought.
As if understanding her confusion, Carthy shrugged. ‘No, no it wasn’t, of course. Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose. Poor James. Maybe he’s at peace now, anyway. God rest his soul.’
Chapter Seven
‘So that’s all you got out of him?’
‘For the moment, yeah.’ Claire took a bite out of her lasagne, swallowed without tasting it and took another, bigger one. ‘D’you make that? ’S nice.’
‘No.’ Matt shook his head, wearily. ‘M&S. By the time I got her home and changed, it was after six, and then Tim wanted to talk to me about the new system.’
Claire took another huge bite. ‘’S nice, though. Grand.’
‘Ah, yeah.’
Matt took a forkful of the dinner himself and chewed, slowly. There was a moment’s reverential silence and then Claire’s eyes flicked towards the blank television screen. After two weeks, during which Anna’s first cold had caused her to produce enough mucus and other bodily fluids to remake The Exorcist, it sounded like she was finally, blissfully fast asleep. Fantastic. Maybe Claire could get an hour to herself. She had that Swedish series taped . . .
‘So you reckon he’s on the level, yeah?’
But Matt, it seemed, wanted to talk – to reconnect with his wife over a ready meal and a glass of their finest tap water. Well, in fairness, Claire realised, he had a right to. After all, it was the first time in over a fortnight that they’d both eaten a meal in the same room without somebody screaming at them – ‘somebody’ being a small girl whose lung capacity was far in excess of her size. And, in the days Claire was rapidly starting to think of as ‘old’, even though they happened less than a year ago, she used to enjoy discussing cases with him. Not the classified stuff, obviously, but the ‘big picture’ information. The stuff she knew and the stuff she wanted to know and the stuff that was bugging her. She’d lay the facts out in front of him and watch as his computer programmer’s mind stacked them up in ordered lines. Often, they’d find a pattern that way.
But that was then. Just now, the musty smell of James Mannion’s sitting room still hanging in her nostrils, all Claire really wanted to do was nothing at all. Her brain felt like a computer with too many windows open and she would have given anything for an hour of peace, and some shite telly, to shut them all down.
Sensing the dip in her mood, Matt left the room, returning with two bottles of beer.
‘Can I tempt you?’
‘Ah, no, I—’
The baby monitor crackled and they both held their breath, but after a moment it fell silent again. In fact, Claire could swear she could hear a tiny baby snore. ‘Calpol?’
He shook his head. ‘No, Coors Light.’ Then, laughing in the face of her eye-roll, he continued. ‘She’s drug-free. I think that tooth broke through; your mother might have been on to something, there.’
Good Jaysus. Baby teeth and Nuala Boyle. Even shop talk would be better than that. Claire took a long swig from her beer, turned her face away from the television and arranged a bright smile on her face.
‘I think he told us all there is to know about Mannion, yeah. But it’s not much to go on.’
Her husband’s hand stroked her shoulder blade and she shifted a couple of inches away. There was too much work stuff, too much baby stuff, too much of everything stuffing up her head.
‘So, let’s go through it all in detail.’ Matt gazed at her, soulfully.
Claire gave a weak smile. ‘Well, I thought he was very interesting; I mean—’
Her husband threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘God, Boyle, you wouldn’t want to take up poker, anyway. You just want me to feck off, don’t you?’
‘Huh?’ Claire was halfway down the bottle now. ‘Not at all; dying for a chat.’
‘You are in your arse. You want to look at the telly and think about nothing for an hour!’
She tried to muster a face of indignation, but it collapsed in a giggle. ‘Kinda, yeah.’
‘Well, you go for it. I’ll stick the dishwasher on.’
And that’s why I married him, folks.
She raised her beer in a toast to the now-empty sitting room, sank back into the sofa and grabbed the remote. But even as she was scrolling through the recorded programmes, she realised the Swedish crime thriller had lost its appeal. She didn’t think there was enough juice left in her brain to follow a complicated plot in English, let alone with subtitles thrown in. Stabbing at the remote again, she poked around the menu for a couple of moments, but nothing grabbed her. Home-improvement show? Seen it. A Prime Time special on the Garda commissioner? Too much like homework. Crappy romcom on RTE2? That would do.
In front of her, a pre-Oscar Matthew McConaughey tried to persuade a girl that he was more than a set of abs and a southern accent, and Claire tried to lose herself in the plot, such as it was. But her brain wouldn’t stop ticking over.
Tom Carthy had waffled on in places, that was for sure, but Claire had believed his story – well, most of it, anyway. There had been a few issues she wanted to double check, b
ut the same was true for all witnesses. In fact, it was the ones who told their stories straight, without minor inconsistencies, that you usually had to worry about.
No, Claire felt happy enough with their chat with Tom Carthy, and had learned quite a bit about the dead man, some of which was sure to prove useful. Margaret Delahunty, however, was another story. She was a talker and, as Claire knew from experience, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. As soon as Carthy had left, again by the back door, and Mrs Delahunty had been released from the kitchen, she’d settled back on the overstuffed armchair and yapped for Ireland, offering several theories about what might have happened to Mannion, most of them borderline racist and none of them of any practical use. But then Flynn, fair play to him, had stepped up to the cake plate and, after ramping the bogger accent up to eleven and putting away more pie than could possibly have been good for him, had managed to get Margaret Delahunty to clarify a few things.
James Mannion had, according to his next-door neighbour, lived on Darcy Terrace for more than twenty-five years, making a living doing odd jobs – painting, gardening, cleaning guttering, that sort of thing. Jobs too small for professionals to be bothered with and that presumably saw him paid cash in hand. Mrs Delahunty had stopped at that point, looking anxiously at the guards as if she’d said too much, but Claire had more to be bothered about than the victim’s tax-clearance certificate and motioned impatiently at her to continue.
‘So he hadn’t worked in recent years?’
‘No.’ Mrs Delahunty took a sip of tea and grimaced. ‘No, sure, he’d be in his late sixties now. Look, this is freezing. I’ll just make another . . .’
But Claire had come to the end of her patience. ‘Would he have had much of a routine, then? Since he retired?’
‘Ah, you’d see him round and about, alright. Up and down to the library. He was very fond of his books; I suppose Tom told you that?’
‘He did, yes. But he also said Mr Mannion hadn’t been well this past while.’
Mrs Delahunty shook her head. ‘He wasn’t himself at all these last few months, anyone could have seen that. Sure, he walked past me in the street one morning when I was on my way back from Mass; didn’t even salute me. I called in to him that day, offered to bring him in here for a bit of dinner but he wouldn’t hear of it. I’d a mind to ring his niece over in England, but I didn’t have her number. Ye’ll have it, though? Poor girl. That’s desperate news to have to get over the phone.’
Are You Watching Me Page 5