Are You Watching Me

by Sinéad Crowley

  Flynn unfolded himself from the passenger seat, gave a stretch as if to say he was his own man who wouldn’t be hurried, and then hurried after her. They hadn’t bothered getting directions to McBride’s office but, just as Claire had anticipated, they spotted it the minute they left the car park. The firm of solicitors was located halfway down Rathoban main street, sandwiched between a sweet shop and one of the twenty-seven pubs. The buildings looked like they’d been built in the nineteen-fifties and had had minimal redecoration since then. A plastic ice-cream cone hung outside the shop and, as they approached, Claire could see ads for long-discontinued chocolate bars fading in the window.

  ‘Jesus, I hate this place. The state of it.’

  Flynn looked at her, surprised at her tone. ‘What, Rathoban? I thought you said you’d never been here?’

  ‘This place, these places, these types of places. Small towns. God, I feel smothered just standing here. I couldn’t stick living here, could you? Everyone knowing your business. I’m surprised there wasn’t a brass band brought in to announce that we were in town.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Flynn shrugged. ‘Some people like living in places like this. This McBride guy; sure, he’s probably well set up. Nice business, nice few bob in it, as well, doing wills for farmers and handling farm sales. There’s worse ways of earning a living.’

  Maybe. But Claire couldn’t think of any, and she was still scowling as she halted in front of the building that housed McBride and Son. It wasn’t quite as scruffy as the others on the street; in fact, it looked like it had been done up in the recent past, which, in Rathoban, clearly meant around nineteen ninety-nine. The firm’s name was fixed to the outside on a large blue-and-white sign and the front of the red-brick building featured large white u.P.V.C. windows through which an expanse of laminate flooring and a large airy waiting area could be seen. You wouldn’t, thought Claire, want to be trying to manage your affairs in private.

  A handwritten note on the entry keypad announced that it was out of order, but the big windows had rendered it unnecessary anyway and, before Claire could rap on the glass, the door buzzed and the receptionist inside signalled at her to push it open. Typical, Claire huffed to herself. She had probably been watching them from halfway down the street.

  Aged anywhere between fifty and sixty, the woman had hair that matched the ash-blond wooden floors, while her designer nails must have made operating the computer keyboard in front of her something of a challenge. Phone clutched to her ear, she continued talking while beckoning Claire and Flynn to come forward.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. ’Tis indeed. I know. You’re right. I will. I know. C’mere, there’s someone here for himself. I do. I do, indeed. I know. Leave it with me, so. Leave it with me. Mm hmm. I know. I will, indeed. I will, indeed, Sheila! Take care, now!’

  Replacing the phone with a flourish, she bestowed upon them a bright, utterly welcoming and utterly fake smile.

  ‘Now! Ye’re here to see Gavin.’

  It wasn’t a question, and Claire nodded rather than replying, feeling even more sympathy for anyone who thought they’d be able to get discretion in this place. Her own father travelled into Galway on the odd occasion he had to do legal work associated with their farm, rather than use what he described as ‘the local crowd’, and she was beginning to see why. Still, she was hoping the open-plan atmosphere in the office would extend to Gavin McBride’s willingness to talk about the Mannion family.

  The receptionist directed them towards a set of three steel chairs.

  ‘Take a seat there, now; he’ll be with you in a minute. Ye’ll have coffee?’

  Claire nodded again. But before the red talons could become engaged in a tussle with the stack of gold Nespresso discs to the left of her computer terminal, an inner door opened and the smile broadened even further.

  ‘Sure, there he is, now! Ye can go on through; I’ll bring the coffees in. Milk, was it?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ Only Flynn managed a mutter and a half smile as they were steered past the reception desk and through the open door.

  *

  ‘It was my father’s practice.’

  Gavin McBride, like the decor, looked like he had been styled around fifteen years ago, and his black pin-stripe suit had clearly been bought when he was a thinner man. The crumpled jacket hung off the back of his large leather chair and his gleaming white shirt strained at the middle, while an expensive-looking gold tie wasn’t quite able to hide what looked like a tomato sauce stain near the third button. There wasn’t a rib of grey in his close-cropped red hair, but Claire reckoned that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the weight he was carrying put him in his early forties. A dulled wedding ring and a gold-framed photo of a wife and three equally red-headed munchkins told her everything else she needed to know. Poor fecker. Probably made it as far as Dublin to study before Daddy kicked the bucket and he was hauled back to Rathoban to take over the family firm. Stuck here now with three kids in the house he grew up in. Gawd. Claire could almost feel the suffocation of it, like living in slowly drying cement. She thanked God every day she’d had the cop on to join the guards and avoid a similar fate.

  Pushing the large square glasses up on to his nose – they had probably looked great on the model, but succeeded only in making his freckled face even fatter – McBride shuffled some papers around his desk before finally giving his visitors what looked like a genuine smile.

  ‘So, the Mannion family: what exactly do ye need to know?’

  Shifting uncomfortably on yet another metal chair, Claire outlined what little information they’d gathered already. The solicitor nodded, looked down at the papers again and sucked his top lip before replying.

  ‘Well, ye have the most of it there, to be honest with ye. Mr Mannion senior, Timothy, had a small farm just a few miles outside the town, here, in Rathoban. His wife died when his children were young and he brought up the two lads, James and Paul. ’Twas my father drew up Mr Mannion’s will; he was the only solicitor in town at that stage. I have the records here; I looked them up when I heard ye were coming down. It’s a bit unusual, actually.’

  He reached across the desk and pulled a cardboard folder towards him.

  ‘Mr Mannion senior drew up his first will in nineteen seventy-two, which must have been just after his wife died. It’s straightforward, divides the farm between the two lads. It was a fine farm, plenty there for the two of them. James went into teaching; ye probably know that? He taught in the school, here, locally, for a while. Anyway . . .’

  He paused, let his hand rest on the yellowed paper for a moment and then picked up another page from underneath.

  ‘Here – this is more interesting.’

  He passed the paper across the desk.

  ‘The father drew up another will in nineteen eighty-five. Left everything to Paul; nothing to James, this time, not so much as a blade of grass. That would be unusual, now, that you’d have such a significant change of mind.’

  Claire nodded. She had an instinct that the information was important, but wasn’t sure, as yet, in what way. She’d find out, though, she was sure of it.

  McBride closed the folder.

  ‘That was the last will. Timothy died a couple of years after that – heart attack, I think. Something sudden, anyway. I remember it well, actually; I was down from college for the weekend and I remember my mother saying James hadn’t come home for the funeral. That wouldn’t have been normal at all, for those times. It stuck in my head, I suppose. Mam said they were all talking about it at Mass – I hadn’t gone; sure, there was a row about that too!’

  He laughed and shook his head.

  ‘Anyway. Paul had no interest in farming; he set the land out, as ye know, and headed to England. So.’

  The solicitor removed his glasses again and polished them with the end of his tie.

  ‘Where are we? Well, Dad was gone by the time Paul died and I’d taken over here, so I wrote to James to tell him what was going on. My fath
er had his address on record, thankfully; otherwise, I don’t think the poor man would have known he’d lost his brother at all. I did expect him to turn up at that stage, to be honest with you. God knows, land was making great money around here in those days. But not a word. You know the rest, I think? Paul’s widow and daughter went ahead and sold the place; they did well out of it too. And James never appeared. God rest him.’

  He looked at Flynn briefly and then dropped his gaze.

  ‘I read about it in the paper. Jesus, that was an awful way to go.’

  Flynn nodded, waited a beat and asked the obvious question:

  ‘Have you any idea what it was? What happened to cause the rift, I mean? It must have been fairly serious if James – if Mr Mannion – didn’t turn up for his own father’s funeral.’

  The solicitor put his glasses back on and blinked at them.

  ‘Well, there was some scandal beyond at the school, as far as I know, anyway. I was only a child myself when it happened; I heard my parents talking about it alright, but it wasn’t meant for my tender ears. I knew about the farm; I would have gone through all that sort of thing when Dad handed over the reins here. But we never discussed James Mannion and, to be honest, I never felt I could ask.’

  Claire rearranged her features into a suitably sympathetic expression. ‘And when did your own father pass away?’

  ‘Pass away? Oh, Jesus!’ A sudden burst of laughter made the man look younger than she’d first estimated. ‘God, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. No, no, Dad’s flying. He took early retirement a few years ago, but he’s having a ball, other than the golf handicap. He’s up at the house now, if you want to talk to him. You’re lucky that he’s around, actually; himself and Mam have a place over in Florida and they’ll be heading out next month for the winter. We’ll be going ourselves at Christmas. Have you ever been? No? Jaysus, it’s a fine place. There’s a swimming pool and all in their apartment complex. Dead? Ah, that’ll give him a great laugh.’

  He sat back in the chair and beamed at them.

  ‘The house is only a mile or so out the road; I’ll give you directions. Dad was a county councillor too, you know, for nearly thirty years. Mayor, at one stage. There’s nothing that happens within a ten-mile radius of Rathoban he wouldn’t have the inside track on. I’d be surprised if he couldn’t tell you what you need. Just head out the road there, straight through the crossroads; it’s the second turn on the left when you pass the garage; you can’t miss it. Ah, that’s cheered me up, now. Me poor oul Da!’

  He folded his arms across his stomach, giggling gently.

  Kicking herself for her assumption about his father – it was a small thing, but she hated being wrong – Claire forced a smile. ‘You’ve been very helpful. I appreciate it.’

  She moved towards the door, but her colleague didn’t follow her. Instead, Flynn nodded towards the desk and the gold frame.

  ‘You’re bringing your family up around here, so?’

  ‘Indeed I am.’

  Gavin McBride gave the photo a possessive pat.

  ‘Studied up in Dublin; you know, yourself. But I couldn’t wait to get back down here and, when the oul lad retired, I was in like Flynn. Sheila’s from Dublin, but she wanted to move back here too. Sure, you couldn’t beat it. We built the house for half nothing on the folks’ bit of land and the commute is ten minutes door to door. Sheila’s running an aromatherapy clinic from the house and the kids love it too. Jesus, no, I wouldn’t move back to the city now if you paid me.’

  Flynn opened his mouth as if to continue the conversation, but Claire glared at him and shepherded him back into reception. They had an interview to conduct. He’d made his point; she had completely misjudged Gavin McBride. Feck it. She didn’t have to be right all the time. But hopefully, for the rest of this investigation, at least, she’d be right most of the time.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘And that one there, that was taken just off the Galapagos Islands – a cruise for our fortieth wedding anniversary. God, it’s beautiful there. Have ye ever been? Just beautiful.’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have, now,’ Flynn managed to mutter.

  Claire was too distracted to answer him. Distracted by the way the man was bringing them on a tour of his home, as if they were valued guests instead of two out-of-town guards investigating a murder. Distracted by the house itself, which had clearly been built when Dallas was at its zenith, and differed from Southfork only in its lack of a pool. Distracted, most of all, by former-councillor Richie McBride’s hair, which rose majestically from his high forehead in soft rippling waves. She thought back to his son’s carroty crop. This couldn’t possibly be the man’s natural colour, could it? But, as he continued his sweep around what he called, without even a glimmer of modesty, his ‘wall of fame’, she found herself mesmerised by it, a golden, gravity-defying bouffant, which, according to the photographs on the wall, had looked the same for the last thirty years.

  ‘I think, Sergeant Boyle, if we could . . .’ Flynn coughed and kicked her softly on the ankle.

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’

  Claire blinked, told herself to stop focusing on the man, his hair and the bizarre way he pronounced ‘Galapa-goes’, and straightened her shoulders.

  ‘We really don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mr McBride. I know you’re a busy man.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The smile was half grimace, half smirk. Almost half of the photographs on the wall had shown McBride in a mayoral chain and it was a smile that, Claire assumed, had opened a hundred supermarkets. But they weren’t here to reflect on McBride’s magnificent career in public life. McBride’s son seemed to think his father knew everything that had moved in Rathoban over the past thirty years and she badly needed some of that expertise. Plastering a smile on her own face, she turned to the man and gestured towards a set of long comfortable-looking sofas at the opposite end of the vast sitting room.

  ‘So, if we could just . . .?’

  ‘We’ll sit over here, shall we?’ McBride turned his back on the sofa, and the huge picture window that made the far end of the room so inviting, and led the two guards instead to an imposing lacquered dining table. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll be able to help you at all, but, of course, anything I can do, just ask!’

  Curse him, anyway, thought Claire as she accepted the uncomfortable dining chair her host indicated. She had badly wanted him to choose the sofa. She knew from experience that the more comfortable the interviewee got, the more likely he was to forget he was in the presence of guards and tell them something they actually needed to know. But McBride, it seemed, was the type of man who needed to be in control. As he took his place at the head of the table, she had to work hard to rid herself of the impression that he was still chair of the local council and she a newbie councillor who’d turned up late for her first meeting.

  Resting lightly on the edge of his own seat, the older man settled his features in an approximation of a helpful smile. ‘Always delighted to cooperate with An Garda Síochána, of course, but I haven’t seen James Mannion in over thirty years.’

  Yes, Claire thought to herself, you said – once, when you opened the door with a lack of surprise that indicated the Rathoban bush telegraph had announced our presence without the need for a 3G connection, and again when you insisted on the bloody grand tour. She pulled her notebook out of her bag, enjoying the wince he failed to hide as she slid it roughly across the surface of the table.

  ‘Terrible, to hear of a man dying at such a young age.’ McBride touched the bouffant lightly, grinned at Claire and continued: ‘What was he? Late sixties? It’s no age at all, these days. Tell us, anyway, what happened to him?’

  The voice was mildly inquisitive, no more, as if he was enquiring about the result of a football match he’d only a passing interest in.

  ‘I mean, I read some rubbish in the paper about him having been killed, or something, but I assume that was all made up, was it? Sure, those bu
ffoons in the press would write anything to make a few bob. What happened to him? Heart attack, was it? Fell and hit his head? Savage, the way a man can be taken so quickly.’ He shook his head sorrowfully.

  Claire frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’

  McBride, she decided, was either being deliberately obtuse or genuinely stupid. Despite what politicians loved to think, newspapers, as a rule, didn’t actually make up details of murder cases, and the reporting of James Mannion’s death had been straightforward and, in the main, accurate. There had been no need for embellishment, anyway. The man had been bashed on the head and left bleeding to death in his own kitchen. The facts of the case were lurid enough on their own.

  ‘Mr McBride – this is a murder investigation. We’ve come down from Dublin to talk to you about James Mannion’s murder – we did explain this?’

  ‘Ah, yes, but –’ McBride gave a bland smile and offered his hands to her, palms up in a weird, almost supplicating gesture – ‘I assumed it was all exaggerated in some way.’

  Claire shook her head. ‘No, Mr McBride. This is a murder investigation. And Mr Mannion led a –’ she fought for the word – ‘a quiet life in Dublin, so we’ve come down here to find out what else there is to know about him. Your son tells me you know everyone in Rathoban. What can you tell me, for example, about why he left so suddenly? What was it – thirty years ago?’

  McBride’s smile didn’t waver.

  ‘Thirty years at least. Lot of water under the bridge since then.’

  Claire remained silent. Sometimes it was best to leave a gap that could be filled in. But McBride was a seasoned public performer and stared at her unblinkingly until she spoke again.

  ‘Your son said there was some sort of family disagreement? That James’s father changed his will? Cut Mr Mannion out of it?’