‘Oh, Jesus, Stephen, come down! You’ll kill yourself, son. Come down to me.’
A beat. And then, from the back of the crowd, Francie Daly, the biggest boy in the school, guffawed. ‘Mind yourself, now, Stephen, or your mammy will have to climb up there and get you.’
The laughter was much louder than the gasp had been.
Francie’s mate, Colm, leaped forward and started swinging his way up like a monkey, his scuffed runners clinging to each rung. His swift movements made the rest of the climbing frame sway, and Stephen clung tighter. Within seconds, Colm had climbed as high as him and then higher, and then they all flooded forward, all of the boys and some of the girls as well, swarming up the rungs, up as far as Stephen and then past him, some of them hanging one-handed, showing off to the parents below. Still Stephen clung. He knew he’d made a fool of himself, again. It was only a kid’s climbing frame; look, there were toddlers now messing around the bottom rungs. But he was too shaken to finish the climb and join the rest of the lads at the top; too afraid, when he saw the look on his father’s face, to go back down.
He had been right to be afraid, Stephen thought, as he shifted miserably in the bed and listened to the wind rattle the ill-fitting windows of the flat. He pushed his face into the pillow, wondering, if he wished for it hard enough, whether sleep would come. But his body wouldn’t let him lie still. There was too much pressure, too much anger, too much shame; he could feel it in the twitching of his nerve endings and the pounding of the blood in his temples.
‘It’s all your fault, you know.’ His father’s words. Or his, maybe.
It would be easier not to think if he was on the move. So he got out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s clothes, letting his feet lead him on the usual route. He thanked the Chinese girl when she sold him the paper, even though she was on her phone again and didn’t even look up this time. He found himself, for one wild moment, tempted to show her the front page – the picture of the tent and the canal and the little blurry insert of the man whose name he now knew was Eugene – and say, ‘I did that. That was all my fault.’ He wanted to point at it and say, ‘Isn’t it a dreadful world?’ And to hear her agree. But she wasn’t even looking at him. It was a dreadful world. But no one else seemed to notice.
CARING LIZ’S TEARS FOR EUGENE
He opened the paper as he walked, and there she was, on page two, face half covered by her hand as she ran past the camera. He hadn’t been expecting that. He’d anticipated the picture of the man, the tent, the police. But not his Elizabeth, not here. How frightened she looked!
Oh, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry.
He sat on the small wall outside the shop, smoothed the pages. Touched her face gently with his finger. Was she crying? It was hard to tell. But the paper said she had been, that caring Liz, twenty-six, had been seen at Tír na nÓg weeping following the killing of a second client. And that shattered Liz had said she feared for the lives of the rest of the residents. And her own?
Oh, Elizabeth. Stephen rocked back and forwards on his small wall, closed his eyes and summoned her face. Those green eyes. She was right to be worried.
Oh, my sweet Elizabeth. My girl.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘They like it when you wear the cap, sir.’
‘Huh?’
Quigley was fiddling with his tie and Claire realised, with no little amusement, that he was nervous.
‘Your cap. They like it when you wear it. The press office, I mean.’
‘Ah, yes. The press office.’
Quigley sighed deeply and then tugged at his tie again, looking over at Claire as if considering asking for her help and then deciding against it.
‘Remind me whose idea this was again?’
‘Yours, sir.’
‘Yes. Hmm.’
Giving him a moment, she walked over to the window and peered out through the dusty blinds. Quigley’s office was at the front of Collins Street Garda Station and, out on the street, she could see that two TV news vans had been added to the unruly line of parked cars on the far side of the road. As she watched, a familiar-looking female journalist climbed out of a taxi and headed through the front gate.
‘Many of them out there?’
‘There’s a fair few down in reception, yeah.’
‘Hmm.’
Quigley gave the tie a final yank and sat down at his desk again, the slim file on Eugene Cannon’s murder investigation open in front of him. It was its very slenderness that had made him decide to hold the press conference in the first place – that and the previous day’s case conference, when he’d overheard one of the sergeants describe the amount of information they’d gathered as being somewhere between slim and fuck all.
With few witnesses to speak to and victims about whom very little was known, Claire had thought it was an excellent idea. But she hadn’t realised just how much her boss would dread the whole procedure. She turned back from the window to where Quigley was now staring, dejectedly, at the front of the file.
‘Have you, um, thought about what you want to say, sir?’
‘Huh?’ Quigley said again and Claire found herself in the unusual position of losing patience with her boss.
‘What you want to say? The information you want to get across?’
‘Ah, the usual; you know, yourself.’ Quigley looked mildly confused. ‘That anyone with information should give us a shout, I’ll read out the phone number, that sort of thing. The usual stuff. Yeah.’
He looked down at the file again, but Claire wasn’t going to let him get away that easily.
‘And if they ask you about the Tír na nÓg link?’
‘Well, I’ll . . .’ Quigley frowned.
A ray of sun, filtering through the blinds, found the top of his head and, for a moment, Claire thought she could see pink scalp showing through. Hardly, though. Probably just the way he’d combed it.
‘Sure, I won’t say anything about that, just that it’s part of the ongoing investigation and that we can’t . . . Sure . . . they mightn’t ask that at all.’
Claire walked back to the desk and sat down in front of him. ‘I’d be fairly sure they’ll ask about that, sir.’
Quigley glared at her. ‘So I suppose you’ve a better idea?’
‘Well . . .’
She paused, unsure of how far to push it. She and Quigley had a good relationship; she’d been on his team for years and he’d always had her back. He’d even been, she suspected, instrumental in minimising the repercussions after what she’d heard him describe as her ‘unorthodox’ method of solving the Miriam Twohy case. Unorthodox. She’d wanted to shake his hand when she heard that. A lot of other supers would have had her disciplined, if not worse, given what she’d done, despite the positive outcome. She had even considered sending him a thank-you text one evening when she’d had her first glass of wine after Anna was born. Hadn’t done it in the end, of course; had seen sense before she’d pressed the send button. But, yeah, she owed him one. And that was why she wasn’t going to let him make a tit of himself today. She’d have to be subtle about it, though.
‘Well . . .’
She paused, as if thinking hard of a strategy. In actual fact, Claire had been dying to take part in a high-profile press conference ever since Collins Street had sent her on that day course in media relations the previous year. But she knew Quigley, knew how these things worked. Best let him think she was just coming up with suggestions.
‘Well, sir, you know, yourself, what has to be said. I mean, you’re right, of course you are – about the need for people to come forward, and that, and give us any information they have. Absolutely. But, I suppose . . . I suppose what we really want is for anyone who noticed anything unusual to really listen to you? To understand how important it is for them to call us? And – I don’t know, sir – people just have the news on in the background, a lot of the time. So I think you’ll have to give them something. Something a bit personal. You have to give these journalists something t
o go on, something other than a phone number they could get off a press release.’
‘OK.’
Quigley’s face was perfectly still, but he wasn’t trying to interrupt her, which Claire took as an instruction to continue.
‘So what is it you want to know?’
Quigley looked at her. ‘Are you serious?’
Claire nodded, and Quigley narrowed his eyes.
‘We want to know who the fuck killed these two and if it was the same fucker that did the both of them.’
Claire grinned. ‘Well, that would certainly get you on the news, anyway, sir.’
‘Bit too blunt?’
‘Little bit.’
His face softened into a smile for a moment, and then he raised his eyebrows again, an unspoken invitation for her to keep talking.
‘Well, we’ve spoken to everyone who knew the men; at least, everyone who we know knew them, if you get me. So it’s more the others, isn’t it? People we don’t know, people who might have known them or seen them, even, on the day they died. I mean, we know where James Mannion was killed, and roughly when, but we know very little about this Cannon chap. We know he left Tír na nÓg before it closed – around five thirty, Tom Carthy said – and his body was found at the canal before six the following morning. And we’ve nothing else. So we need a timeline, I suppose.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘So . . .’ Claire inhaled, suddenly realising she was veering dangerously close to giving advice to a superior – far superior – officer. ‘Well, sir, if it was me – and this is only a suggestion, now – but, if it was me, I’d tell the press that the deaths were brutal, you know the sort of thing. Make it sound like you give a— Like you really care about the victims. Which you do, obviously. But, you know, like you were shocked by it. Something to make what you say stand out.’
Quigley nodded, impatiently. ‘And?’
He was dying to write it down, she realised, but that would have crossed a whole motorway full of white lines.
‘So I suppose what I’m saying is, I’d make it a bit personal, sir. Like you’re, I don’t know, a bit upset or something.’
The eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. ‘Ah, now, come on; I mean, do you expect me to burst into tears or—’
She shook her head vigorously. ‘No, no, God, no. Sorry. I just mean a bit of, you know, something a bit human-interesty, I suppose.’
A bit human-interesty. Brilliant, Claire. Prepare the uniform; those stripes are only hours away. She wished, for a moment, that she could level with him. Tell him the truth – that Matt had a mate who worked in P.R. and had given her the stats over dinner one evening. There’d be fifteen stories on the news that night, and most of the people watching would only be half listening, anyway – drinking tea, or having their dinner, or giving out to their children at the same time. And chances were the person who knew something – the person who didn’t even know they knew something, maybe – would be one of them, sitting there, supervising homework, or looking for a missing sock, or arguing over whose turn it was to walk the dog and thinking they were listening to the news but not taking it in, not really.
Truth of the matter was, Quigley needed to put a serious bit of effort in or else this whole press-conference thing would be a waste of time. He needed his words to stand out, to make someone remember something they hadn’t even known was important at the time. If all he did was recite a phone number then there wasn’t a hope of that happening. The public was pissed off, the deaths of the two men had come too close together and there was talk of a public protest now, a rally in the city centre. The organisers were saying on social media that they just wanted to keep the men’s deaths in the public eye, to encourage people to ‘keep an eye on their elderly neighbours’, that sort of thing. But she’d no doubt that the usual hotheads would be out too, slagging off the guards and anyone else they considered to be Them to their Us.
But the best advice she could come up with was, ‘a bit human-interesty, I suppose.’ God, was this baby brain? No, Claire decided, she couldn’t even blame Anna this time. She’d always been a bit incoherent in front of Quigley – that was the truth of it. She’d just have to trust he got the message.
Quigley pursed his lips and then nodded briskly.
‘Well, appreciate the advice, Boyle. What time did we ask them to be here, anyway? Noon?’
‘Yeah. It’s just gone that now, sir. They’ll be trying to catch the one o’clock news, I suppose.’
‘Grand, so.’
He strode past her and down the corridor, looked backwards as if to say something, and then caught sight of his reflection in the window instead and straightened his cap. Then he turned to face her.
‘So, are you coming?’
‘Down with you?’
‘Yeah. I thought you might . . .’ Quigley paused, allowed a half smile to creep across his features and then folded it away again. ‘I thought you might like to see how it’s done, Boyle.’
‘Absolutely.’
Straightening her own jacket, Claire strode after him, surprised at how pleased she was at the invitation. She was also surprised to find herself wondering what the cap would look like on her.
*
So, while Boyle had got the glamour gig – and her mug on the TV news, no less, – he, Flynn, was doing the donkey work.
Thanks be to God.
He took a sip from his bottle of water and thought back to the scrum he’d just witnessed down in the front office. Journalists, cameramen, all that crowd, dressed to the nines and trying their hardest to look bored, as if they had much better things to be doing than hanging around a suburban Garda station in the early afternoon. All fake nonchalance and occasional pokes at their phones to indicate there was much more exciting news happening elsewhere.
Then Boyle had walked in and told them the super would talk to them outside, and you could practically see their antennae quivering. They were elbowing each other out of the way as they tried to get their microphones up the nose of the big man, their cameras right in his face. And the questions? Mother of mercy, the stupid questions:
‘Do you have a suspect for this crime?’
‘Is there a link between this latest death and the death of James Mannion?’
‘What details can you give us of Eugene Cannon’s final movements?’
Sure, if they knew that, Flynn thought to himself giddily, there’d be no need for the press conference at all. In fairness to the super, though, he’d handled it well. Even got a bit, well, emotional was the wrong word. But he said a few strong things towards the end, stuff about how both killings had been brutal and horrific and how he was sure someone out there knew something and that it was important, even if they thought it was small or insignificant, that they call the guards, anyway.
Even if they thought it was small or insignificant. Quigley had said that bit twice and glanced into the camera a couple of times. It had worked too; they’d been playing the clip all afternoon on Ireland 24, and near the top of the bulletin, not halfway down like they usually did. Flynn had also seen the clip a couple of times on Twitter, attached to the #vigilforJames hashtag, and it seemed to have softened the online opinion of the guards, and their role in the case, as well. The lads on the desk said they’d had several calls offering information, even at this early stage, and that some of it sounded quite useful. Fair play to Quigley. Truth be told, Flynn hadn’t thought he had it in him.
He wondered briefly if Boyle had enjoyed herself. You could see her quite clearly on the TV, standing beside Quigley, all intense head-nodding and grimly efficient stares. Well, let her at it. It wasn’t for him, all that TV stuff. Well, not being on it, anyway. He looked at the tiny grey screen in front of him. Watching it, that was more his line. This wasn’t exactly Netflix, though.
He opened the Tupperware container that held his lunch, took a mouthful of couscous and chewed, thoughtfully. Dinner and a movie, what? Chuckling at his own joke, he picked a bit of fresh mint from betw
een his two front teeth. The CCTV footage from outside Tír na nÓg wouldn’t win any Oscars, but, if he did his job right, it might end up being something far more important than that.
On the screen in front of him, a grey shape wobbled, twitched and then revealed itself to be a cat. Or a dog. Tom Carthy had bought the cheapest security system on the market, which made it hard to be sure. Flynn squinted. A larger figure, definitely a man this time, shimmered his way up the garden path. Flynn leaned forward and paused the picture. It wasn’t Eugene Cannon, anyway; this fella was a lot shorter, for one, and his hair looked white and bushy, not dark and close cropped, like the victim’s. He reached over, grabbed a still image and then noted the date and time in his notebook. The footage he was watching was dated the day before Cannon’s body was discovered. So everything was important. Well, it might be.
Could all be shite, of course. But at least it was something to do, genuine graft, something to get his teeth into. Like this roast salmon, he chuckled to himself again. Well, you wouldn’t be fit enough for promotion if you lived on canteen food. And Boyle wasn’t the only one round here with ambition. But he wanted to make his way through real policing, not dealing with the press and all that jazz. Asking the right questions and making the right connections, that was the sort of thing he liked. He took another drink of water and focused on the screen again. He was looking at footage from two o’clock in the afternoon, or so the little clock in the corner of the screen informed him. But it might as well be two a.m. for all that activity that was going on. Still, though, he’d plough on. He’d nothing better to do, anyway.
As if it had read his mind, a text pinged into his phone. Flynn picked it up, read it and nearly spluttered salad dressing (homemade, two parts oil to one vinegar) all over the TV screen. Ah, here. That was a bit cheeky, now. But, despite himself, he was grinning and he chose his words carefully before texting back.
Not tonight, sorry. Long day tomorrow. Another time?
That should do it; keen but not desperate. Flynn read the text again and smiled. It was mad, really, how the whole Diarmaid thing had come about. After the worst of beginnings, too. Flynn still cringed every time he thought of the night in the pub, after the Miriam Twohy result, when Siobhán O’Doheny, fuelled by victory and the guts of a bottle of Pinot Grigio, had ambled over to him and dropped a heavy hint that they head off somewhere to celebrate, alone. Flynn had almost choked on his pint when she suggested it, and his muttered revelation that that particular scenario could never be a runner had had a similar effect on O’Doheny. But, in fairness to her, she’d recovered quickly and even made some comment about how she had a brother she could introduce him to, before heading off to try her luck elsewhere. Flynn, thinking she was just trying to save face by proving how cool she was with the whole gay thing, had forgotten about the offer almost instantly. But, who would have guessed it? It turned out she’d meant every word.
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