Then she reached out for the dog again and pulled him towards her.
‘Jesus, though, he’s dead now, isn’t he? That’s the fella who died, isn’t it? Oh my God. You don’t think—?’
‘Ah, sure, it’s all guess work, at this stage.’
Flynn could hear the effort Boyle was putting in to keeping her voice steady.
‘And do you remember, at all, what time of the evening this was?’
‘Half five.’
The woman’s voice grew fainter.
‘Half five, because I looked at my watch and I was thinking, Shit, I’m going to be late picking up the kids. That’s why I told her in the first place, me mother, about what happened. I always pick up the kids at half five on the dot on Thursdays to let her go to bingo. So I had to tell her why I was late. Fuck it, though. Did he kill him, did he? That scrawny fella – did he do it? Oh, Jesus . . .’
The dog growled as Boyle rose to her feet. ‘You’ve been brilliant, really brilliant.’
Keeping her hand on the dog’s head, the woman looked up at them. ‘C’mere, did he see me? Am I in trouble now?’
‘No, no, not at all.’
‘Here, do I have to go to court or anything? Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have called you.’
‘Ah, sure, look, don’t worry about that for the moment.’
Flynn shot his boss a look. The witness would almost certainly have to go to court; he knew – and he knew Boyle knew – that she had given them their best lead yet. But right now their main aim was to find the bus, and the man, and avoid becoming the Alsatian’s evening meal.
‘I’ll give you a shout in a few days.’
Claire was almost doing a comedy walk now, backing through the house at speed, the woman following her, the dog bringing up the rear.
‘I don’t want any trouble, now.’
‘It’s all fine. You’ve been a brilliant help. Oh, and by the way –’ Claire stopped dead in the centre of the hall and reached into her briefcase – ‘just wondering – is this the man you saw, do you think?’
She held out the still image, taken from the CCTV footage. The lads in tech had done their best and, although it was still grainy, they’d managed to catch him, full face, just before he looked up at the door.
The woman glanced at the page and nodded immediately. ‘Yeah, that’s him, alright.’
‘We’ll be in touch.’
The dog’s snout was the last thing Flynn saw as he followed Claire back to the car.
*
A movie would have had a montage sequence right at that point, Flynn reckoned. A few pictures of him making some calls and then staring at a screen, maybe a scene where he stuck his head in his hands and looked knackered, or punched the desk in frustration, that sort of thing. Or maybe there’d be a bit showing him and Boyle going door to door and holding out a sheet of paper, and people nodding and scratching their heads and saying, ‘Maybe,’ and, ‘Yeah,’ and, ‘No,’ and, ‘Possibly,’ and, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen him.’
In reality, it took three days, which was actually pretty speedy for the real world. Three days to find out which buses stopped in that area at that time of the evening, and requisition the CCTV and then sit through it. More bloody grey pictures. But their man had been quite easy to spot, in the end. It had been impossible to miss him, truth be told, the way he’d jumped on to the bus and flung money at the driver. Even distanced from the scene by the graininess of the picture, you could see he was upset. Hassled. Then he’d stood near the door for the entire journey, right in front of the camera, fair play to him, so it was no bother figuring out when he got off, either. And after that, well, Flynn hated using the word simple. But it was, really. The bus stop where he got off turned out to be near a row of shops and it was just a case of going from door to door, picture in hand, asking about him.
And the young, bored-looking Chinese girl behind the counter in the newsagent’s said, ‘Yes,’ the minute they showed her the photo of him, and, ‘Yes,’ again when they asked if she knew where he lived. He’d dropped his wallet one morning, she’d told them, and she’d followed him outside and seen him go through a metal gate on the other side of the road, a gate that led to flats above yet more shops in this small inner-city enclave.
Sometimes, Flynn thought, it was as simple as getting on a bus and asking the right questions. And finding the people who could answer them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Stephen was on the internet when they arrived. Looking at pictures of her, as it happened. So that made it easy for them.
The Tír na nÓg Facebook page hadn’t been updated for days, so he had just Googled her name instead and then sat back, surprised and delighted at the number of pages that crowded the screen: links to articles in the papers and clips from the TV news; a discussion on a message board about her; another discussion about the killings at Tír na nÓg and how it was all really obvious who was doing it, only the guards were too thick to figure it out. The second post on that thread had been deleted by the moderator before Stephen got a chance to read it. It would have been interesting to see how close to the truth it came.
She even had her own hashtag on Twitter, #LizCafferky; there were loads of people talking about her there and someone had set up a fake account too, @charideegurl, in what appeared to be a feeble attempt to slag her off. The picture was of the back of some other woman’s head but you could tell they meant her, alright; the little bit of writing at the top was about how she wanted to save the world, one sob story at a time. The account, which wasn’t very funny, only had thirteen followers and Stephen had no intention of adding to their number. But it was a pleasant way to spend time, nonetheless, reading about her. She was everywhere.
It wasn’t just Elizabeth, either. You couldn’t click on her name now without Mr Mannion’s coming up alongside it, or that other chap, the one Stephen now knew was called Eugene Cannon. The photograph they were using was old and looked nothing like the man Stephen had seen, but the papers said it was him and who was he to argue with them? Stephen had never been very good at arguing and he wasn’t going to get any better at this late stage. That was how he felt when they knocked on his door too: passive, reluctant to disagree with anything they were saying. It felt as if everything that had happened so far had been inevitable, and this? Well, this next stage was inevitable too.
There were two of them: a tall, quiet man and a busy, angular woman who spoke quickly, too quickly, about evidence and footage and search warrants and possible cause. For one mad moment, Stephen considered holding his hand up gently in front of her face the way his mother used to when he came home from school, full of some story or another, and saying, Take it handy, now; don’t be rushing; sure, you have all the time in the world. But he didn’t dare, and he didn’t think she’d appreciate the advice, either.
Instead, he just stood by the wall and watched them search his home. He’d felt embarrassed when he saw it dawn on them that the ‘flat’ was just one room. The man guard said they’d start the search ‘in here’ and then stopped dead when he realised there wasn’t actually anywhere else to go. The woman guard muttered something about how she thought ‘these places’ had been banned years ago, when Stephen, trying to be helpful, opened the door that led to the toilet, in the little partition between the two-ring cooker and the fridge. And when they raised their eyebrows and asked if this was the only bathroom, he’d told them about the shower room he shared at the end of the corridor and how it was handy being on shift work because there was never usually anyone else in there. Then he realised he was talking too much, and stood back against the wall, feeling exposed, and angry that they had made him feel this way.
He knew they felt uncomfortable around him too, but he was used to that. He hadn’t slept properly in days, hadn’t washed, either. Just got up when he woke, dragged on the same clothes as the day before, turned on his computer and thought about her, and everything that had happened. The girl from his job had called him the day be
fore to tell him that there was a formal warning in the post. Her voice had been a lot less friendly this time. Without a proper medical certificate, she told him, he was in danger of dismissal.
Well, there was no point in worrying about that anymore.
So, they searched his home: the sofa bed and the chair, the box of magazines in the corner, the cupboard over the sink where he stored his food, the WiFi modem – the man guard spent a long time over that; Stephen thought about offering him the password but then decided he might sound cheeky. They even rifled through his clothes, and the woman guard had called the man over when she’d found the scrapbook stored in with his shoes. It wasn’t like he’d hidden it, or anything. He’d just wanted to keep it safe. But she acted like finding it was a big deal, put on gloves, took some photographs, the whole shebang. Meanwhile, the big chap was examining his computer. He didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what was going on there, either. Sure, the minute they knocked it off sleep mode they could see that his screen saver was a picture of her. He hadn’t ever thought anyone would see it, that was all. There were no big mysteries to be found in his search history, either. Most of the searches were about her: Elizabeth Cafferky. Liz Cafferky Tír na nÓg. Elizabeth Cafferky help. Elizabeth Cafferky boyfriend. Well, a man could dream.
And this was a bit like a dream too, he realised. Standing here, in his room, his home, answering their questions. Saying yes and saying no. It seemed to make them happy, every time he got one right. So he kept it simple. Yes, he had called to Tír na nÓg that evening two weeks ago. Letters to Elizabeth? He’d rather not discuss that, thank you. He hoped being polite would still count for something; he was trying to be as helpful as he could, under the circumstances. Yes, he did know James Mannion, or had known him, many years ago. He’d known him in school; Mr Mannion been a teacher there. The lady guard had widened her eyes then and made a kind of a whistling sound through her teeth and said, ‘Jesus, are you Stephen? Stephen Millar?’ And Stephen had said yes, although it had been many years since he’d used that name. He used his mother’s maiden name now, Stephen Ford; he felt more comfortable with it. But by then she wasn’t really listening, she had got all excited and, pretty soon, so had the tall chap and they were talking about arrest warrants and bringing him into the station. He realised that trying to answer their questions hadn’t done him any good, so he’d have to take a different approach, if things had any hope of turning out OK.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea. You’d be too obvious out there, too exposed. Those letters might have been bullshit but—’
‘Yeah. Totally. You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.’
Liz folded the flyer, made a paper aeroplane and aimed it at the bin. She wasn’t particularly surprised when it fell well short and took a nosedive on to the carpet instead. It had been that sort of day. That sort of life, really.
‘They were talking about it in the office today; they reckon there might be hundreds there. I’ll probably be working at it, even. A couple of politicians are saying they are going to turn up as well; it makes them look good, you know – the whole touchy-feely thing.’
In the absence of anywhere to sit, Dean had propped himself against the windowsill and was tugging anxiously at his ear.
‘I just don’t . . . It’s one thing doing a few interviews, you know, but this? This is totally different. I’d worry about you, to be honest.’
‘Yeah. You’re right. Forget it; it was a stupid idea.’
Liz looked around the bedroom, every surface covered either by her clothes or by mystifying pieces of electronic equipment, all belonging to Dean, and all of which he insisted were vital to his survival as a freelance journalist. Liz reckoned, if they ever found themselves under attack from aliens, he’d be able to build his own satellite communication system, no bother – providing the little green men left them some electricity, of course. But, Christ, it made the place feel cluttered.
When Dean had invited her to stay with him for a couple of days, he had neglected to mention the fact that he shared his house with three other people, two of them students, neither of them particularly tidy and none of them keen on the idea of a body on the sofa in the already-cramped living room. So Liz had spent the last four days sleeping in Dean’s bed while he lied about being more comfortable on a chair. It had been kind of him to take her in, but she couldn’t go on like this. She needed to get back to her real life. Whatever the hell that was.
She looked across at the crashed aeroplane again. A large red ‘V’ could just be seen peeping out from the fuselage.
A Vigil for the Voiceless.
It was a good name, she thought – said it all. It was incredible, really, how quickly the whole thing seemed to have come together. Just a couple of days ago, a small picture of James Mannion’s funeral had appeared in one of the daily papers. Delayed by the investigation into his death, the service had been sparsely attended but moving, thanks, for the most part, to a sincere priest who tried to say nice things about a man he’d never met. However, a photograph taken from the car park, which had been printed in the Dublin Daily, had made the crowd look tiny and there had been something almost pathetic about the sight of the mourners, most of them elderly, shuffling alongside the funeral car. There had been no floral tribute on top of the coffin – no Dad, or Husband formed in pink carnations – just a small wreath with a misspelt card proclaiming love from all at Tirna Noge. Liz had felt saddened all over again when she saw the picture, and it seemed she wasn’t the only one to have that reaction.
The following afternoon, a caller to one of the country’s most listened-to radio shows had declared herself moved to tears by the photograph and had asked if there was any way she could pay her respects to a man who had died in such a violent and lonely way. Another caller asked for Mass cards to be sent to Tír na nÓg, while a third suggested a city-centre vigil be held, in memory of James and all elderly people who die alone. One caller had mentioned Eugene Cannon’s name too, but, since details of his criminal past had been written about in a couple of the tabloids at the weekend, far fewer people wanted to brave the autumnal chill to pay tribute to him. But James’s death, it seemed, had struck a chord and, by the end of the radio show, a vigil had been planned, to take place at the Spire on Dublin’s O’Connell Street the following Saturday afternoon. One of the women who had spoken on the radio had phoned Tír na nÓg afterwards to ask if Liz could be there.
‘To represent his friends,’ was how the caller, Noeleen Kavanagh, had put it, her soft midlands accent gently persuasive on the phone.
‘Maybe you can say a few words about him, whatever you think, yourself, really. But it would be nice to have you there.’
Liz had initially agreed to go along, but it now turned out that Dean was dead set against the idea.
‘This guy, this Stephen – you don’t know if he’s for real or not, but do you really want to take that chance?’
‘I suppose not, no.’
She shook her head, slowly. Her friend was right. As the guards had pointed out, her name and address were in the phone book, her place of work freely available on Facebook or through Google. She wasn’t at all hard to track down and the notes could have been the work of some nutcase trying to freak her out.
But they could have been real. And it would be foolish, very foolish, to appear in such a public place if they were.
Still, though, she thought, as she moved a bundle of unsorted laundry to one side and sat down heavily on Dean’s bed, at least speaking at the vigil would have given her something to focus on, something to work towards. And, God knows, she needed that. Camping out in her friend’s house was really starting to depress her. She missed her home, her bed, her security and her privacy. It had been great of Dean to take her in but she craved solitude, a bath, a night alone. And work was stressing her out too because Tom was acting so weirdly.
Tom: somebody else who seemed totally drained by t
he events of the previous few weeks. When the guards told Liz they’d prefer if she didn’t stay in her own place for a while, her first thought had been to call her boss for advice. But all she’d got from him was a long string of negatives. No, he hadn’t any idea where she could go. No, she couldn’t doss down in Tír na nÓg, it wouldn’t be any safer than her own place. And no, he couldn’t lend her money for a hotel. She hadn’t even asked him if she could stay at his place because it was obvious what the answer would be.
Not that she had any idea where that was, anyway. Liz had been working with Tom for over two years and considered him one of her closest friends. But she didn’t really know what he did outside Tír na nÓg, and, truth be told, had never thought to ask. There couldn’t have been much to find out, anyway. Tom was never away from the centre – opened it up every morning and shut it after the last man had left at night. He was never sick, hadn’t taken a holiday in the two years she’d been working there. But, in the past few days, all that had changed, too.
Half the time he wasn’t in the building and, even when he was, he spent hours in the office with the door closed, breaking his own cardinal rule. He had even taken to turning his mobile off. That didn’t make sense, either. The landline at Tír na nÓg was diverted to it every evening; Tom was a one-man twenty-four-hour helpline and, although Liz had seen him lose car keys, wallet and, once, an entire birthday cake on the journey from the kitchen to the sitting room, she’d never seen him without his mobile, and usually a charger trailing out of it too.
But, for the past few days, he’d been out of contact more often than not and, even when he was in the centre, you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Liz had found him the day before, standing at the front door, foot on the step, nostrils twitching like a horse getting ready to bolt. He had started when she came up behind him, reddened, muttered something about making a call and then pushed past her, back in the direction of the office, leaving what she could have sworn was the faint scent of stale tobacco wafting after him. And Tom, as far as she knew, didn’t smoke.
Are You Watching Me Page 19