The Scholar

by Dervla McTiernan

  ‘You’re telling me that John Darcy sent Carline here so that he could manipulate the university to falsify her results.’

  Anger flashed in Murtagh’s eyes. He was happy to slander John Darcy’s name, happy to suggest something here, hint at something there, but didn’t want to be tied to it. That could come back to bite him.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Tell me then, where are you going with this legend story?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that Carline’s reputation as a great scholar was exaggerated. That’s all.’

  ‘And you went along with that.’

  ‘With what? I was asked to give her a research position here at the laboratory, which I was happy to do. She carried out basic research assistant tasks. I had little to do with her.’

  ‘And nothing to do with Della Lambert, who worked at her side.’

  ‘I had no reason to show particular interest in Carline’s friends, detective. She should not have brought a friend into the facility, should not have been able to do so, but it seems that she did. I suppose you can hardly blame Josep for turning a blind eye.’

  ‘It wasn’t Josep who let me in today,’ Cormac said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s been suspended, pending a full inquiry into the security breaches at this facility. I believe he’s taken the opportunity to visit his family in Poland,’ said Murtagh.

  Cormac wanted to keep Murtagh spinning, so that he wouldn’t have time to consider his answers, wouldn’t have the opportunity to anticipate the next question. But he was losing confidence that he was going to get anywhere. Murtagh had committed himself to a course of action. He was all in now and he was undeniably intelligent. It wasn’t likely that he would walk himself into a hole out of either stupidity or guilt. Maybe he should have waited, or done the alibi work himself. There had to be something there and if he’d found it he would have had a card to play now. But he was worried about what Carrie and the team would do and hadn’t wanted the cloud of suspicion to hang over Emma for a moment longer than necessary. That sense of urgency was clouding his judgement.

  ‘You lied to me,’ Cormac said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘About the break in. You told me that nothing was taken, but that wasn’t true, was it, Professor Murtagh?’

  The first suggestion of worry appeared around Murtagh’s eyes. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. Then he tensed, waiting, Cormac realised, for him to pull a warrant out of his pocket. A warrant he didn’t have. Cormac let his eyes drop to the desk, then to the locked cupboard to Murtagh’s left. He sensed Murtagh’s tension mount. Christ. The arrogant fucker had brought it back here. The laptop was right here, in this office, and without a warrant Cormac could do absolutely nothing to prove it.

  Cormac looked at Murtagh for a long moment, let the silence spin out, hoping that nerves and inexperience would prompt Murtagh to say something he shouldn’t. But he was too smart for that. As the seconds ticked by and no warrant appeared, Murtagh’s confidence grew.

  ‘Where were you last night, between nine and ten p.m.?’ Cormac asked abruptly.

  Murtagh shoulders drooped in relief and he almost smiled. ‘I was in bed with my wife, detective. I’d suggest you confirm with her, but she’s really very unwell. Morphine, you know. You’ll have to make an appointment through her doctor.’

  Cormac wanted to get up and punch him, but he wouldn’t give the fucker the satisfaction of a compo case. The office door opened before he could ask another question, and the temporary security guard ushered Murtagh’s lawyer into the room. She was a smartly dressed twenty-something with an air of competence about her. Fuck. Cormac didn’t wait for introductions.

  ‘We’ll speak again, Professor Murtagh.’

  The lawyer chirped up. ‘If there is a next time, detective, I suggest you contact my office to arrange a time convenient …’

  Cormac didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence, but made his way back through the bunker, the security guard hurrying after him. He’d come for a confession, or a lie big enough that he could use it to bury Murtagh. He’d gotten neither. Guilt and worry gnawed at him. Murtagh was confident for a reason. He was suddenly very comfortable throwing John Darcy under a bus, wasn’t that worried to be heard bad-mouthing the boss. Why? If Murtagh had murdered Carline Darcy, wouldn’t he be doubly wary of antagonising Darcy, a man of considerable power? Darcy would surely be eager to fully investigate someone suspected of his granddaughter’s murder.

  Cormac knew he was still missing something. Something that was driving all the actors in this particular play. He wanted to get out of the bunker and into the fresh air. He wanted to get back to Emma, Emma whom he’d just failed so badly.

  Fuck.

  Cormac stalked towards the car. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he was nearly upon Peter Fisher before he saw him.

  ‘Sergeant,’ Fisher said.

  ‘Fisher.’

  Fisher was holding something in his hand. A folded piece of paper.

  ‘I’ve traced the car, from the first murder. There’s a body shop over the border. A man brought a black BMW X5 there on the twenty-sixth of April. He was there when they opened up and he wanted same-day service. The front of the car was badly damaged, and the guy who brought it in had a story about hitting a deer. The car belonged to James Murtagh’s wife.’

  ‘Christ, Fisher …’ Cormac could have hugged him.

  Fisher’s face said there was more. Cormac waited. ‘Look, the thing is, I didn’t get any of this from the PSNI,’ Fisher said. ‘We hadn’t heard a thing from them and we weren’t likely to any time soon. I took a punt. I know I shouldn’t have and I know I’ve caused us problems with admissibility and all the rest of it, but … in the circumstances.’

  ‘We would have been waiting a year on the PSNI. A hitand-run in the Republic is never going to be on their priority list.’

  Fisher nodded. ‘There’s something else. The guy I spoke to twigged that I was from the Republic.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Told me to get the PSNI on it, and to pretend I’d never called him. I told him it was a hit-and-run and it had left a girl dead. He copped that I was calling from down south.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cormac said. ‘He was probably ex-police or ex-paramilitary. Probably knows more about procedure than either of us. I’ll call a contact in the North. Someone I know in the PSNI. He’ll go out, no questions asked.’

  Fisher held out his piece of paper, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. ‘I’ve an ex-girlfriend in Enniskillen PSNI,’ he said. ‘I called her and she called our man. She emailed through a short statement five minutes later and I caught Judge Whelan at the courthouse.’

  Cormac took the paper, opened it, and read the warrant.

  ‘It covers the lab and Murtagh’s home,’ Fisher said. ‘Where do you want to start?’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Cormac and Fisher waited for back-up. They stood a hundred metres or so from the laboratory, out of reach of the cameras, watching to make sure no one left. It was just after 4 p.m., rush hour hadn’t kicked in yet, and it took only ten minutes for the first squad car to arrive. Cormac was okay with the wait. A calm had settled now. There was nothing Murtagh could do to stop what was coming for him. The lawyer hadn’t left, and he would hardly try to wipe the hard-drive with her watching him. Cormac’s mind was occupied instead with thoughts of the young garda beside him. Why had Fisher taken action? There were many other tasks he could have performed that day, all equally important, and he had chosen to throw himself against the one thing that needed to be done, if his priority was to prove Emma’s innocence.

  Carrie arrived in the first car. She nodded a greeting to Cormac, looked over the warrant, then organised her troops. Fisher, of course. Rory Mulcair was there, Dave McCarthy, a handful of uniforms. Dave gave him a clap on the back; the others, more circumspect, sent n
ods of greeting his way. It was enough. They were making it clear that he was part of the team, that they didn’t see him as an outsider. It was more than enough. Cormac felt a sudden, entirely unexpected, rush of emotion.

  He stood back, expecting to wait, to stay outside. Then Carrie handed him a pair of gloves. ‘You’ll need these,’ she said, and he would have grinned at her if things had been less tense.

  The sight of six gardaí, four of them in uniform, brought the new security guard quickly to the door. Rory held him at the front desk. Cormac was able to find his way to Murtagh’s office without an escort. Murtagh and the lawyer were still sitting there. Someone had made them coffee. Murtagh’s calm control deserted him quickly. He stood almost as soon as Cormac and Fisher came in the door, gave voice to spluttering objections. Cormac handed the warrant to the lawyer, gave her a minute to read it, to explain it to her client. Murtagh was still standing behind his desk, not moving, arguing as if there was something to be decided. As if he was still in control.

  Cormac took the gloves Carrie had given him, pulled them on, then took a step closer to Murtagh, loomed over him.

  ‘Step aside Professor Murtagh. Step aside now.’

  A final moment of hesitation and Murtagh retreated. Only one cupboard in the room had doors that hid the contents within. Cormac cast a glance across the table top, the cupboard to the left of the desk. He felt a stab of fear that he’d got it all wrong, then he opened the cupboard and there it was, neatly stacked on top of a pile of scientific journals. Cormac took it out and placed it on the desk in front of him, then turned to Murtagh, who looked utterly shaken.

  The laptop was unremarkable. A black Acer, the only thing distinguishing it was a hair-line crack running along the left-hand side, and a scuffed sticky mark near the top-right corner, where someone had peeled off a sticker.

  ‘Who owns this laptop, Professor Murtagh?’ Cormac asked.

  The lawyer saw what was coming. She raised her hand, an attempt to prevent what came next, but Murtagh was angry, and afraid, and beyond saving.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he blurted.

  Cormac opened the machine and pressed the on button. Four pairs of eyes stared at the dark screen as it slowly came to life. The last logged-in username was listed D Lambert. The password box was blank and the cursor was blinking.

  Cormac turned to Murtagh, a deliberately bland expression on his face. ‘Password?’ he asked.

  Murtagh’s face creased with fury and helplessness. After a long silence he shook his head. Cormac closed the machine. Fisher would bag it into evidence. They would need to dust it for fingerprints before handing it over to the IT specialists.

  ‘James Murtagh, I’m arresting you for the murder of Della Marie Lambert, and Carline Darcy. You are not obliged to say anything, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

  Handcuffs felt like overkill, given the age of the man, but when Fisher pulled them out Cormac didn’t stop him. The fucker had killed two young women.

  Fisher led Murtagh out of the room, to the sound of the lawyer assuring Murtagh that she would see him again at the station. Cormac waited behind for a few minutes. He took in the room, the awards, the beauty of the view over the river. Emma had worked here. She’d worked next door to this murderous bastard for months. He’d come so close to destroying her. Cormac let his weight fall into Murtagh’s chair, sat forward and rested his forehead on his hands.

  By the time Cormac left the building, Fisher had put Murtagh in the back of a squad car and sent him on his way. He walked back to Cormac, a spring in his step.

  ‘We’ve got the fucker, no doubt about it,’ he said, and if he wasn’t grinning from ear to ear it was clear he wanted to.

  ‘We’ve a way to go,’ said Cormac, ‘but we’re getting there. Can you go in and start taking staff details? Get the lads to take names and addresses, contact numbers, ask a few preliminaries. Anyone who has good information – anyone who met or spoke with Della, or who knew what she was working on, let’s get them into the station now, get their statements. For the rest, let them know we’ll be in touch. And get another team out to the house, yeah? We’ll need to take the car in for testing. Chances are there’ll be traces of her blood.’

  Fisher nodded, ready and willing. He turned to go.

  ‘And Fisher?’

  Fisher turned back.

  ‘Thank you. That was stellar work.’ The words were inadequate. Cormac was full of gratitude for the younger man.

  Fisher shrugged. ‘I knew she couldn’t have done it. She’s not the type.’

  Cormac nodded, felt a pang of guilt at his earlier doubt. Had Fisher had more confidence in Emma than he had? ‘I’ll see you at the station, all right?’ Cormac said.

  There was work to do. The laptop wasn’t a smoking gun. Proving it had been Della Lambert’s should be relatively straight-forward, even if it took time for IT to break the password. But Murtagh would recover from the shock of their incursion, and he would be working on a story right now to explain how the computer came to be in his hands. They needed the physical evidence of the car. They needed to break Murtagh’s alibi, prove that he hadn’t been in the hotel room at Harvey’s Point when he’d claimed to be.

  And ultimately, this wasn’t his case. Carrie would make the decisions from here on. She would decide who should be interviewed, and when and in what manner. He would have to accept that.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Emma was waiting for him. Cormac drove to the office on Abbeygate Street. Saturday afternoon meant there wasn’t a chance of parking but he was driving an unmarked and he left it in a loading bay opposite the Mercy Convent, and walked the rest of the way. He took the steps up to Collins’s office two at a time, opened the door to the conference room. Tom and Emma were there, empty coffee cups and the remains of a late lunch spread across the table. Tom was taking notes.

  ‘We got him,’ Cormac said.

  Cormac didn’t miss the spasm of relief that passed quickly across Tom Collins’s face. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’

  Emma opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and swallowed. She was very obviously trying not to cry.

  ‘I’ll give you a minute,’ Tom said. He stood up, gathered his papers, then paused. ‘You did great, Emma.’

  She snorted, half-laughed, shook her head. ‘All I did was eat your food, and cry and talk around in circles.’

  ‘You did great,’ Tom said again. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. He didn’t wait for their thanks or acknowledgement, just nodded to them both, excused himself, and left the room.

  And then they were alone again.

  Cormac would have gone to her, if he had felt she wanted it. But that wasn’t what he saw in her face. He leaned on the back of one of the chairs instead.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Fisher traced the car,’ Cormac said. ‘He figured out where they would have had to bring it to fix it. He spoke to a guy who met James Murtagh the morning after Della was killed. Murtagh used his wife’s car to do it. The front of it was bashed in, there was blood. Murtagh claimed he’d hit a deer, and he paid for a same-day turnaround.’

  Emma, already very pale, looked like she might be sick.

  ‘It was enough for a warrant. We searched the lab. Murtagh had Della’s laptop in his office. We’ve arrested him. He’ll be questioned shortly. I think Della confronted him and he killed her to keep from being exposed. But he killed Carline Darcy for whatever is on that laptop.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘That night, the night I found Della’s body. If I’d gone to the lab only an hour earlier, I might have prevented it. James wouldn’t have done it if he’d known I was there.’

  They were quiet for a moment.

  ‘You can’t know that, Em,’ Cormac said softly. ‘There’s no way to know that. And if you start thinking that way you’ll never stop. I’ve made mistakes o
n this case, you know? I ask myself if those mistakes got Carline Darcy killed. If I’d been more aware, if I hadn’t let myself get distracted by other things, could I have gotten there faster? Could I have prevented her death?’

  Emma shook her head, tears in her eyes. ‘But here’s the thing, Em. That way lies madness. That way lies a drink problem, and early retirement, and me propping up a bar somewhere with the other men and women the job has chewed up and spat out, and then what the hell good am I to anyone? You have to let it go, right? You have to do the best you can, and let the rest go. And if you’re angry, if you’re guilty, you have to shove all that into the work, into your next case, so that next time you don’t make those mistakes.’ He let out a shaky, hard laugh. ‘Maybe you make new ones, but you try.’

  A tear slipped down Emma’s face, and she wiped it away.

  ‘Okay?’ he said.

  Eventually, she nodded. He went to her, and wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close to him and held her, felt the warmth of her body against his, the smell of her shampoo. Tears threatened and he blinked them back. His mouth near her ear, he said, ‘I love you, Emma. All right? I love you so much.’

  She stayed there, in his arms, for the longest time, and he felt that maybe everything was going to be all right between them. Then she pulled back, turned away from him as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘I need to go home,’ she said. ‘I want to shower and change my clothes. Then I’d better talk to Alessandro and see how the team are doing.’ She saw the look on his face. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not a good idea for you to talk to your team right now,’ he said. ‘Everyone will have to give a statement, and it will be easier in the long run if you haven’t spoken to anyone before they speak to the police. Afterwards there will be time for you to get together, to regroup. But for now, better to stay away.’