‘I’m sure to her friends and classmates Della was very memorable,’ said Egan.
‘I’d like to speak with Della’s teachers. Anyone who knew her well, who had direct interaction with her.’
Egan frowned. ‘You’d almost certainly be wasting your time with her lecturers. In first year the Biopharma students have their lectures with the Chemistry and Biology students. There would have been about a hundred students in every lecture, and virtually no one-on-one interaction. Her tutors would be a better bet, if they’re still at the university.’
Tracking down the information took a couple of phone calls, which Egan made right in front of him. He had perked up, confirming Cormac’s first impression – that he would go to a great deal of effort to help the investigation, as long as that help pointed in a direction other than Carline Darcy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Cormac left the office with the mobile phone numbers of two former tutors. According to Egan, one of the two had completed his PhD and now lectured at the university, the other had just handed in her thesis but should still be in Galway and available for a call. Cormac tried the woman first. She answered the phone, but sounded harried, said she didn’t remember Della and she was on the way to the airport so did he mind? The second was much more promising. Graham Nicholls, former tutor, now biochemistry lecturer, was having coffee not far from the campus. He was distressed to hear that Della had been killed, and eager to talk.
It was a five-minute walk to the café. Nicholls was keeping an eye out for him – he was sitting at a table towards the back, but half-stood and waved when Cormac opened the door. Cormac made his way through the tables. The place was full, but the murmur of conversation was quieter than might have been expected. Half the tables were occupied by students with a laptop or iPad open in front of them, earphones in ears and heads bowed.
‘Detective Reilly?’ Nicholls said, as he held out a hand to Cormac.
Nicholls had obviously been working. There were a few printed journal articles on the table, and an open notebook with some scrawled notes, mostly drawings of chemical structures that meant nothing to Cormac. A waitress looked their way, and Cormac said to Nicholls, ‘I think I’ll grab something, if you don’t mind. I haven’t had an opportunity until now.’ Nicholls indicated he was in no rush. He ordered another coffee, though he hadn’t finished the cappuccino sitting in front of him, and Cormac ordered a sandwich and coffee.
Cormac sat back, glanced around the café, adopted a casual tone. ‘I haven’t been here before. Must be handy for the college.’
‘Food’s better than the canteen,’ said Nicholls. ‘Quieter too.’ He looked expectantly at Cormac, waiting for Cormac to get to the point.
Cormac took the cue. ‘Thanks for the chat. I want to speak to anyone who knew Della Lambert during her time at college. I’m not looking for anything specifically. Just to get a feel for the kind of girl she was.’
‘Her family couldn’t help with that? Friends?’
‘We haven’t managed to track down any friends yet. I’m hoping you might be able to help with that. And its seems like she wasn’t that close to her family, other than a younger brother, who probably only knew a younger brother’s version of her.’
‘I can’t help you with her friends I’m afraid. I only saw Della at tutorials, and she didn’t seem to be particularly friendly with anyone.’ Nicholls sat back, rubbed the palm of his left hand against his jaw. He had a full beard that was well trimmed. Brown eyes, dark brown skin, the hint of a Scottish accent.
‘You must see a lot of students, and it’s been, what, fifteen months? Since you saw Della. But you remember her. Why?’
Nicholls grimaced. ‘Della was impossible to forget, if you got her talking. It’s devastating that she’s died. A bloody tragedy.’
‘In what way, impossible to forget?’ Before Nicholls had a chance to answer the waitress arrived with Cormac’s sandwich and both coffees. The food smelled good. Cormac took a bite of his sandwich, added milk to his coffee, and listened.
‘Della had an incredible mind,’ Nicholls said. ‘She was a genius, without a doubt. The kind of thinker who comes along once in a generation.’
Cormac shook his head as he chewed and swallowed. ‘I saw her Christmas exam results. They were solid. Better than solid, maybe, but not spectacular.’
Nicholl’s face darkened. ‘Those results were bullshit,’ he said. ‘There must have been some sort of mix-up with exam numbers. I looked at the results of all of the students who were in my tutorial groups. I couldn’t believe it when I saw Della’s. I went to look for her, more than once, to talk to her about it. I would have told her to appeal the results.’
‘But she dropped out, never came back.’
Nicholls nodded. ‘Exactly.’ He took a sip from his coffee. ‘By the time I saw her again she’d moved on.’
‘You saw her again? On the campus?’
‘Just once. I bumped into her outside the library. She’d come in to meet a friend. She said she’d had to do it – drop out, I mean. Her parents had some sort of small shop. They lost money in the crash, the business staggered on for a couple of years, then fell over. She needed to work to help support them.’
Cormac finished his sandwich and wiped his fingers on the napkin as he thought. ‘What led you to believe that Della was a genius?’
Nicholls pushed one hand back through his hair, then shook his head. ‘It was just the way she was. What she talked about. Look, all the kids in that class are very bright. Every kid in there got pretty much all As in their Leaving. But they’re still kids. Bright enough to be able to understand the material, but they need plenty explained to them. Della wasn’t a show-off. She kept herself to herself and let the others answer the questions.’ Nichols paused. ‘This is hard to explain.’ He fooled with his pen for a moment, doodled something on the notebook, as if working something out, then replaced the pen on the table. ‘This is what it is. If we were working our way through a basic concept, Della would wait until the end, until everyone else had had their time, and then she would ask a question. And the question would demonstrate that not only had she understood the concept perfectly, but that she had followed that concept all the way through the most complex iterations. Her questions were the sort of thing that might be raised by a very talented PhD candidate, or an expert in the field, not a first-year student at her intro to basics tutorials.’
‘Could she have just read ahead?’
‘No way. Or rather, yes, but it was her ability to understand and break down what she was reading that was exceptional. I consider myself a pretty smart guy, but I struggled with her. She needed more than I could give her.’
‘A statistical improbability,’ Cormac murmured.
‘Sorry?’
‘It just occurs to me. You tell me that Della Lambert was the kind of mind that comes along once in a generation. Egan tells me that Carline Darcy was another. And both of these young women end up in – forgive me – a small university in the West of Ireland. In the same class.’
‘Yes.’ Nicholls looked down at his coffee cup.
‘And both of them in your tutorial.’
‘I know.’ Nicholls looked back at him. ‘But Carline Darcy has every advantage, doesn’t she? And less than two years later Della Lambert has dropped out – sorry, I still can’t get my head around the fact that she’s dead – whereas Carline Darcy is this close to her degree.’ There was something in Nicholls’ face, the slightest curl of his lip when he said Carline’s name.
‘You don’t think it’s deserved?’
Nicholls hesitated. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just pointing out that Carline Darcy has everything going for her, including the support of her grandfather. Della Lambert had nothing but a brilliant mind, and she’s dead on the street.’
‘What did you think of Carline, when you taught her?’
‘I only had her for that first semester. She was quite … intense. Very focused. Aloof, I suppose.
She kept herself to herself, didn’t talk much, didn’t really contribute.’
‘And after that?’
Another shrug. ‘I should have had her for the following semester too, but she didn’t show up. Fair enough. By then she was accelerating. After her Christmas exams the faculty agreed she could complete the four-years honours programme in two years. I was teaching first-year Chemistry and by that January she was beyond it.’
‘They weren’t friends then, Della and Carline? I would have thought … kindred spirits.’
‘Not that I saw. Maybe they would have been, if they had had more time.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Cormac returned to the station. The team had pored over everything they could find about Della Lambert, which was little enough. She had no social media presence at all. A warrant for her calls and texts was working its way through the system at her phone company. The company had prioritised the request to track her phone, but the last signal they’d received had been a ping to the tower closest to the campus on the night that Della had died. Nothing more. Whoever had killed her had been smart enough to destroy the phone straight away.
McCarthy suggested accessing the Bio-Pharmaceutical Chemistry class list. With only twenty-five students some at least would remember Della, and it was possible she’d been on campus to visit one of them. It was a good idea, but a call to Nathan Egan found that he had already left campus and his mobile was diverting to voice mail. The university’s administrative staff wouldn’t release any student information without a warrant.
‘What’s happening with the swipe records?’ Cormac asked. ‘The records from the lab. Murtagh said they kept a record of everyone swiping in and out of the building. Had to for health and safety reasons, right? Have they sent that on?’
Fisher grimaced. ‘We got it, after a bit of pushing on our part and a bit of delay on theirs. He leaned over to his desk, pulled a thick bundle of printed A4 pages, stapled together, towards him. ‘This is the record for the last six months. The highlighted lines show when the ID Della Lambert was carrying accessed the building. And yes, it was used right up to the day before her death, but not on the Friday night.’
‘Carline told us she lost that ID at the beginning of the year,’ Cormac said. ‘She’s either lying about when she lost it, or Della was using it herself.’
‘Yeah, but why?’ Fisher said. ‘Why would she want to access the lab? And why so often? Unless it was some sort of like, industrial espionage.’ The look on Fisher’s face said he thought the idea was ridiculous. ‘But if it was, then why would she go so often or for so long, and why wouldn’t anyone ask her what she was doing there?’
‘Look at the records again. Did anyone swipe in at the same time as her? We need to correlate the records, see whose visits consistently overlapped with hers,’ Cormac said. He took the print out, found himself looking at an anonymous list of ID numbers and dates. He looked back at Fisher.
‘Yeah,’ said Fisher. ‘We don’t have the names to go with the ID numbers, and Darcy Therapeutics has refused to hand them over. Said it would be a breach of their privacy policy in the absence of a warrant.’
‘We don’t have enough for a warrant,’ Dave McCarthy said. ‘Judges will be careful with this one.’ Dave was right. No judge liked to have their decisions overturned by a higher court, so they were likely to tread very carefully when it came to a company like Darcy Therapeutics, with its near endless resources, which could if it chose fund near endless litigation.
‘We need a connection,’ Cormac said. ‘Something other than the ID to link Della Lambert to that lab, or to Carline Darcy.’ He looked at his team and was met by a sea of blank faces. ‘Right,’ said Cormac. ‘I have an interview now. Keep on it, update me when I get back.’ He left the case room with a sense of foreboding. He had a theory that seemed to fit, but there were undercurrents in this case, little hints and pressure points that told him he had missed something. He worried that time was a factor. Whatever had set these events in motion hadn’t yet fully played out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The interview with Lucy Henderson and her son had been scheduled for 4.30 p.m., after school hours. When Cormac got to the family room Lucy and Fearghal were already there, waiting for him, with Moira Hanley for company. No one looked comfortable. The family room was supposed to be friendlier than a formal interview room. Cormac decided that it was poorly named. Nine times out of ten the room was used to interview victims of domestic abuse, or sexual assault. The place was depressing, carried the imprint of too many broken families. He made a mental note to see if something could be done to take the taint of failure from the place.
Cormac tried to catch Moira’s eye but she looked away. He hadn’t had an opportunity to speak to her about her misunderstanding of what had happened at the Henderson house, but judging by her stiffness and the colour in her cheeks, he thought that Carrie might have done it for him.
Lucy Henderson looked more alert, but it would be hard to argue that she looked better. She was jittery. The fingers of her right hand twisted the wedding ring on her left, around and around. She looked from her son, to the ratty couch, to the box of toys in the corner and back again with quick, jerky glances. Absent the numbing effect of the tranquillisers, she appeared to be a woman worn thin with nervous tension.
Fearghal Henderson sat on the couch beside his mother. The boy was fifteen years old according to the file, the same age as Paul Lambert, but that was where the similarities ended. Cormac wouldn’t have given Fearghal Henderson a day more than thirteen. He was slight, thin and hunched. He sat turned slightly away from his mother, averting his gaze as if he could remove himself from the scene just by wishing. Cormac took a seat in one of the armchairs. He sat forward, made eye contact.
‘Thank you for coming Fearghal, Lucy,’ Cormac said. He walked them through the process, explained to the boy that he had some questions he needed to ask him about his father, and that his mother would stay in the room at all times. If he needed a break, for the bathroom or just to think, he should let Cormac know at any time. ‘All right, Fearghal?’ Cormac didn’t wait for a nod.
‘You told your guidance counsellor … Mrs Fitzgibbon, isn’t it? You told Mrs Fitzgibbon that you were worried about your family. That you were worried about your mother and your sisters. Is that right?’
A shrug, a slight shake of the head.
‘You did, Fearghal,’ Cormac’s voice was gentle. ‘Tell me why you told her that. What had you worried?’
‘I don’t know,’ Fearghal’s voice was rough. He had been crying. Lucy’s hand fluttered in his direction for a moment, then she returned the hand to her lap.
‘He’s told you he doesn’t know,’ she said. ‘You’re harassing him.’ Her fingers still worried at her ring, twisting and twisting.
Moira sat forward in her chair. ‘You have nothing to be afraid of, Fearghal,’ she said. ‘And nothing to be ashamed of. When you spoke to your teacher you saved your own life. Saved the lives of your mother and your sisters. That makes you a hero.’
Fearghal’s face twisted at the word, nose wrinkled as if he had caught a bad smell. Moira Hanley looked in Cormac’s direction and with a slight shake of the head he warned her not to push. They sat in silence for a long moment.
‘I have a sister,’ Cormac said at last. His tone was conversational. It took some of the tension from the air. ‘She’s younger than me. Rebecca. Becca and me were always good friends. We had to be, because of our dad.’
Fearghal Henderson was very still.
‘Our dad wasn’t the worst. Like, on the face of it, some of our friends were way worse off. He never hit us, wasn’t really much of a drinker. But I still hated being around him. He didn’t like us. I dunno if he ever wanted kids. Dunno if he wanted to get married even.’ Cormac sniffed. ‘I wish he’d made his mind up about that before he landed himself on my mother.’
And the boy finally looked up. Everything Cormac had been hoping for was there in
his eyes – Fearghal Henderson wanted a connection. He was smart enough, or damaged enough, to suspect that Cormac might not be telling him the whole truth, but he was still drawn to the story. Cormac had met a lot of abused kids over the years. He knew what they felt – that the stain of their background was indelible, that it marked them as different. Cormac could guess that for Fearghal, meeting someone who’d lived through something similar would feel like making a friend.
‘When I was about ten Dad started keeping all the money. They both worked, my parents, but Dad insisted on managing the money.’ Cormac let his voice drip with sarcasm. ‘Except he didn’t really manage anything, just pissed it away on anything that took his fancy. One year he bought himself this really fancy bike for his birthday. It was five hundred pounds or something like that. The next day he screamed at my mother because she bought herself a cup of coffee at the place down the road for what, like, two quid? I don’t think he ever rode that bike once.’
Lucy Henderson was watching him now too. As if he were fascinating. As if he were dangerous.
‘Living with Dad was awful,’ Cormac said. ‘We never knew when he was going to blow up about something. He used to unplug the phone from the wall – this was before we had mobile phones, you know? Anyway, he’d put it away somewhere, said if we really needed to make a call we could ask his permission. The few times we asked he said no, of course. And getting rid of the phone made my mother more isolated. She couldn’t call a friend. Couldn’t call her sister.’
Fearghal turned to look at his mother. Lucy Henderson didn’t react. Her pale blue eyes were locked on Cormac. The sleeves of her cardigan were pulled down and tucked protectively inside each tightly clenched fist. Cormac kept his attention on Fearghal.
‘He never hit us, and there really wasn’t that much shouting in the house, but we didn’t have a very happy home. I never wanted to be there. If I had a choice I would have stayed on at training after school every day, but I had to go home, because of Becca.’
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