The furrow disappeared, eyes widened. ‘No video. We record nothing. The camera, it just helps me to see who is outside before I open the outside door.’ He gestured to the interior door behind him. ‘Only employees come here usually. They have security passes that permit them entry to this room. It is my job to make sure that they leave all their technology here. They are permitted no phones, no tablets or outside computers in the lab.’ He gestured to the lockers. ‘They leave everything here, then go inside. That’s my job.’ He looked from Cormac to Fisher and back.
‘Okay,’ said Cormac. ‘That’s fine, thank you Joe.’ The guy was a bit nervous. Worried that he’d screwed up somewhere along the line maybe. ‘But we’ll need to see Professor Murtagh, and I’m afraid we can’t leave our phones out here. We can’t leave garda property out of our view in that way.’
Cormac had expected an objection, but Joe nodded seriously. ‘It’s not a problem. I do not think police could be security risk. I will show you to his office now, if you would like to meet with him?’
Joe led them through the interior door, and down a narrow corridor which had a bare concrete wall on the right – the outer skin of the building – and an internal wall on their left, broken up with multiple doors. The doors were anonymous, identical, with no signage to distinguish one from another. As they walked Fisher asked if someone was on duty at the front desk twenty-four hours, and Joe shook his head.
‘It’s Monday to Friday, nine to six only,’ he said, and kept walking. Joe chose the fourth door and led them down another short corridor, before finally pausing in front of yet another anonymous door, knocking, and entering. James Murtagh sat behind a polished oak desk. He had a pen in one hand and appeared to have been marking up a paper. Joe made hurried introductions and excused himself at Murtagh’s nod.
Murtagh stood and held out his hand. ‘Professor James Murtagh,’ he said. ‘James.’ The hand was thin, with long, elegant fingers. His clothing was simple – trousers and an open necked shirt – but the fabric looked expensive and as if it had been tailored to fit. His hair was grey and cut very close to the scalp.
Murtagh gestured to two seats in front of his desk and took a seat himself. The office was a decent size, with room for the large oak desk, a beautiful piece of furniture very obviously not standard issue, and a small round meeting table, currently overloaded with stacks of papers and scientific journals. One wall was largely taken up with bookshelves, which were packed two deep and overflowing. Against another wall Murtagh had placed a narrow oak table – a companion piece for his desk – on which he kept a number of silver-framed photographs. There was also a window, finally – a fantastic floor-to-ceiling number that looked out over the river. The view was striking; all the more startling for the austerity of the building up until that point.
‘How can I help you, detectives? I presume you are here to speak to me about that terrible accident. Nathan Egan did mention that you may have some questions. He has asked me to give you every cooperation, though, I hasten to add, I would have been happy to help in any way I can, regardless. I have the greatest respect for the work you do.’
‘You’re aware that the body of a young woman was found on campus on Friday night?’
‘Yes, the victim of a hit-and-run, I understand.’ Murtagh looked genuinely distressed. ‘I hadn’t heard that she was young. I don’t know why but that somehow makes it worse, doesn’t it?’
Cormac thought about all the houses he’d visited where Mummy or Daddy, or on one awful occasion both, hadn’t come home, and felt he couldn’t agree.
‘I understand that the university was entirely shut down, that the buildings were in lockdown and couldn’t be accessed,’ he said. Out of the corner of his eye, Cormac could see that Fisher had taken out his notebook and was sitting with an attentive look on his face, pen at the ready, for all the world like an eager young uniform at his first interview.
‘So I’m told,’ said Murtagh. ‘I wasn’t here on Friday. I went away for the weekend actually, with my wife. It was our wedding anniversary.’ Murtagh nodded in the direction of the photographs. One of the photographs appeared to be recent – in it Murtagh looked much as he did now. He had his arm around a woman who was presumably his wife. She smiled gently at the camera but her face, which was beautiful, was tired and too thin, and her head was wrapped in a silk scarf.
‘My wife is recovering from cancer. It’s been a difficult time,’ Murtagh said. ‘But she’s been feeling better lately, so we took the opportunity to get away for a few days.’ He frowned. ‘I can’t see how my being here that night would have saved that girl, but you can’t help but think about it, can you?’ His eyes went from Cormac to Fisher then back. ‘If I’d been driving down the street at a particular time would my being there have stopped the accident?’
‘Would you have been there?’ Cormac asked. ‘If you hadn’t been away for the weekend, is it likely you would have been in the lab on Friday night?’
Murtagh gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I suppose not. I do often come to the lab at odd hours. We all do, those of us who have the security clearance, if there is work that needs monitoring. But we finished up a long-running series of experiments last week, and we’re reviewing results before we start working on the next run. I can check the logs, people do come and work in the evenings sometimes, but there’s no guarantee that anyone was actually here when the young woman was killed. What time was the accident?’
Cormac’s eyes were beginning to water. The sun had made its way through the window at just the wrong angle for his comfort. He tried to shift his position to avoid it, but failed.
‘How is your work going, Dr Murtagh?’ he asked.
Murtagh smiled. ‘Very well, thank you, detective. Better since the arrival of your lovely partner Dr Sweeney, as I’m sure she’s told you. I asked John to find us the best, and he certainly did that.’
Cormac was slightly taken aback by the mention of Emma – he hadn’t expected Murtagh to realise the relationship, though of course there were any number of ways he could have come across that information, including, and perhaps most likely, from Emma herself. How absolutely natural it would be for Emma to tell her colleagues that her partner was a police detective, to mention him by name, though coming so soon after Nathan Egan waving her name around like a threat, it was disconcerting.
‘Your security man tells us that there are no internal security cameras. Does he have that right?’ Fisher asked.
‘He does. There are no cameras inside this facility.’
‘The system relies on employees swiping themselves in and out, is that correct?’ Cormac asked. Murtagh nodded and Cormac continued, ‘Each employee has a unique identification that permits them access?’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ said Murtagh. He narrowed his eyes.
‘In that case you must have a record of when people swipe in and out,’ Fisher said. ‘For health and safety reasons if nothing else.’
‘I’m not sure why you’re asking about our security arrangements. The young woman who was killed had no connection to this laboratory, surely?’
Cormac held Murtagh’s gaze, said nothing. After a moment Murtagh looked away.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘This wasn’t just a hit-and-run, was it detective? You don’t think it was an accident.’ He waited, but seemed to accept that he wouldn’t get a direct answer. ‘Well, Joe will be able to help you with the details, but I believe that there is an electronic log that tracks our comings and goings.’ Murtagh paused. ‘Should I be concerned for our staff here? We have a number of young women working here you know, some of them students who are very young indeed.’
‘There’s no need for concern, Mr Murtagh,’ Fisher said. He handed Murtagh a card. ‘If you can have someone email the electronic log to me at that address as soon as possible, that would be very helpful.’
Fisher delivered the request in just the right manner – casual, but with an assumption of cooperation, and it seemed to work
. Murtagh made an expansive gesture. ‘Anything I can do to help.’
‘You mentioned students,’ Cormac said. ‘Carline Darcy is one of those students, is that correct?’
‘Yes,’ Murtagh said. ‘Carline does some research work with us.’ He looked from Cormac to Fisher, waiting for the next question.
Cormac was conscious of stepping onto dangerous ground. Murphy clearly wanted him to give the Darcy family a wide berth. But Carline Darcy was hiding something. The dead girl had had Carline’s ID for a reason, the obvious one being to access these laboratories. He couldn’t avoid the obvious questions that led to Carline and therefore the laboratory, even if he wanted to. And he shouldn’t want to.
‘Is she a good student?’
Murtagh answered the question with some enthusiasm. ‘Carline Darcy is far more than a good student. She’s exceptional. Truly exceptional. She’s about to complete a four-year degree in two years and has had early acceptance for her doctorate. Her topic for her doctoral thesis is incredibly ambitious – I cautioned her against it frankly – but she’s already proving me wrong.’ He paused, then finished his sentence in the tone of one making a pronouncement. ‘Carline Darcy is exactly like John Darcy was at her age. She has a genius for compound design. A natural instinct that is quite exceptional.’
‘Is it awkward? Supervising the work of your boss’s granddaughter?’ Fisher asked, his tone sympathetic.
Murtagh laughed. ‘I wouldn’t call John my boss. I’m sure he wouldn’t either. We’ve known each other since we were undergrads.’
Neither Fisher nor Cormac responded, and after a moment Murtagh filled the silence.
‘Obviously John has had significant commercial success, though I’d like to think I contributed to that at a few pivotal moments along the way.’ He held Fisher’s gaze, then looked at Cormac. His manner said that he knew those words sounded self-aggrandising but he was sticking to them all the same. There was a self-respect in that that was admirable.
‘Did you ever see Carline Darcy with a blonde friend?’ Cormac asked. ‘Around the same height? Either at the lab or at any other location?’
‘I’m sure I have. Not at the lab, but I’ve seen Carline from time to time around the campus. She tends to be surrounded by a group.’
‘No particular friend?’ Cormac asked.
Murtagh thought for a moment. ‘Not that I have noticed, but I wouldn’t have, really. I don’t see Carline outside the lab. I don’t socialise on campus, certainly not with students, and when I’m here I’m usually in my office. Forgive me. I suspect you won’t answer but I find it difficult not to ask the question. Do you suspect Carline Darcy of some involvement in this girl’s death?’
‘Not at all, Professor Murtagh,’ Cormac said smoothly. ‘We are merely trying to identify people who had access to Carline’s identification card.’
Murtagh nodded with a concerned frown. ‘Well, as I’ve said, anything we can do.’
Cormac wrapped up the interview, taking the name of the hotel Murtagh had stayed in for his weekend away, and confirming a few other details. Then Murtagh called Joe Zabielski to escort them back through the lab. Fisher took the opportunity to request again the access log for the lab.
‘Professor Murtagh said that you’d know where to get it,’ Fisher said. ‘If you can send it through to the station as soon as possible, that would be very helpful. Or I can wait and take it with me now, if that works.’
Joe shook his head. ‘I would like to be helpful, but all of the records are held centrally, at the company headquarters in Berlin. I only see the records from the same day, you understand? Nothing historical.’
Fisher and Cormac exchanged a glance. ‘Please put through a request for the records to your headquarters immediately,’ Cormac said. ‘It’s essential that they are provided to us without delay.’ Their best chance of getting the records was if security personnel processed their request without referring it up through the ranks. If a company lawyer got wind of it there was a chance the request would be nixed or delayed on privacy or data protection grounds, and as they were held overseas, accessing them would be a challenge if the company chose not to cooperate. Joe looked doubtful, but agreed to make the request. He showed them out into the afternoon sunshine, and the door shut firmly behind them.
‘Why do I feel like we’re not getting anywhere, Fisher?’ Cormac asked.
Fisher grimaced. ‘I have a feeling we won’t be getting those records.’
Cormac blew out a breath. ‘We need to find the car,’ Cormac said. ‘it has to be somewhere. Even burnt out it would tell us something. Let’s get back to the case room. See what progress has been made in our absence.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As a police officer, Moira Hanley had a lot of flaws. She was lazy, for one thing. She worked, with no extraordinary degree of effort, up to the hour exactly and not a minute beyond, and deeply resented anyone who either drew attention to that fact or asked more of her. She was also prone to taking a sudden and intense dislike to one individual or another, often for spurious reasons. Peter Fisher was right to suppose that she disliked him. Fisher’s obvious ambition, his drive, and the hours he put in at his desk offended her. Despite all this, she did care deeply about the victims she encountered in her job, and when not blinded by one of her irrational dislikes, she was capable of moments of great insight into other people’s behaviour. With the Henderson case, she had known that something was very wrong from the moment she saw Rob Henderson, hunched and wary on the roof of his house. She was also capable, when she had decided on a course of action, of dogged pursuit of that course. Carrie O’Halloran, who had worked Galway stations in Hanley’s company for years, knew her strengths and weaknesses, and exactly how to make the best of the former and avoid the latter. Cormac Reilly had no such advantage.
Cormac had therefore made the dual mistakes of assigning more work to Moira than could easily be achieved in a seven-hour day with a break for a lengthy lunch, and sending her a follow-up email regarding an unanswered query on Sunday afternoon. Moira hadn’t approved of the transfer of the Henderson case from Carrie O’Halloran to Cormac Reilly, and she approved even less of the resulting changes to her comfortable work environment. A great deal of her energy, that Monday morning, was taken up therefore with stoking her growing dislike of Cormac. She wasn’t the type to admit to herself that her dislike of him was due almost entirely to the fact that he was asking of her more than she wanted to give, so she cast about to find a more palatable explanation. She found that justification in his running of the Henderson case.
She had raged internally as she drove him back to the station, as she climbed the stairs to the case room, as she sat and stared blankly at her computer screen. He didn’t care about the case. Clearly, he couldn’t care less that Rob Henderson had tried to murder his kids. Three innocent children, and Cormac Reilly couldn’t even be arsed interviewing the star witness properly because he was too busy … what? Covering up for his girlfriend? He’d asked Lucy Henderson a total of two, three questions? And they were all gentle little lobs, he might as well have sat in behind her and given her a back massage. And he’d interrupted her, Moira, every time she’d found her flow and started to push Lucy Henderson as she should be pushed.
Well, she wouldn’t stand for it. It was as simple as that. Moira glanced around the room, at all the gardaí with their heads down over their computers or huddled together running through transcripts. Making phone calls, checking and cross-checking statements. And not one of them pursuing what should really be pursued, which was Emma Sweeney’s connection with this case. There had been a rumour about Cormac Reilly and his girlfriend, back when all that drama had been going on. Moira had only ever heard bits of it, suggestions, but she had a fair idea who would be able to fill in the missing gaps.
She meandered over to Dave McCarthy. He had a missing persons listing open in front of him, but she doubted he was doing much reading.
‘Do you fancy a coffe
e?’ Moira asked.
McCarthy turned to her, looked her over. There was a knowing look in his eye that Moira didn’t like.
‘I’ve had one, thanks Moira,’ McCarthy said. He waited, eyebrow raised for her to say whatever it was she had come to say. He wasn’t going to make it easy. Fine. She wasn’t the one who had something to be ashamed of, after all.
‘What do you know about Emma Sweeney?’ Moira asked. ‘Should we be worried?’
‘Worried?’ The eyebrow went higher still. ‘About what, exactly?’
The fucker. He knew exactly what she was talking about, but he’d obviously figured out which side his bread was buttered on. Moira felt the expression on her face tighten despite her best intentions.
‘I just don’t think it’s appropriate that DS Reilly is running a case where his girlfriend is the prime witness,’ she said.
McCarthy actually made a flapping gesture with his hand, as if she were a small annoying child he could usher away. ‘Give it a rest, Moira,’ he said. ‘The forensics are clear. Her statement’s been taken, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s grand.’
Moira retreated. She had been planning to ask him about the rumours that had gone around gone round about Reilly and his penchant for beautiful witnesses, before the shooting. She was sure that Dave McCarthy, who was the king of gossips despite his sudden holier than thou stance, would have heard all the juicy details. Well, fuck him. For whatever reason, he’d obviously decided Reilly was his new best friend. Moira sniffed. Never mind. There were other sources in the station, people who wouldn’t hesitate to share a bit of inside information with a colleague. She would just have to go about this a little more carefully.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Carrie had found it difficult to focus on the minutiae of her work after she sent Rory Mulcair to bring Paul Lambert home. The young boy’s sincerity, his obvious distress, was difficult to shrug off. His was a story that needed further inquiry and she had second thoughts about Mulcair’s ability to shepherd things to the next stage. She told herself that Cormac Reilly could manage his own team and forced her attention back to her own work. By eleven she’d worked her way through some long overdue witness statements. At eleven-fifteen she was interrupted by Moira Hanley delivering a coffee and a sandwich to her desk, ulterior motive written all over her face.
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