‘The break-in,’ Cormac said. ‘That was Carline, wasn’t it? She knew it was you all along, knew you had killed Della, and so you must have her computer. And Carline needed the computer too, of course. She needed the thesis Della had written for her, to try to keep up her fiction with her grandfather. So she stole it back from you. You knew that only Carline could have taken it. So you waited for a night when she would be alone and you went there and took it. Killed her while you were at it.’ It wouldn’t have been hard for Murtagh to figure out she was alone. He knew who her roommates were, and Cormac would have bet every cent of his measly pension that Valentina and Mark were the type to post real-time photos of their end-of-exams dinner to more than one social media platform.
Murtagh had finally shut up. He kept his mouth firmly closed and looked at Cormac as if he had just now realised the hole he was in. Anne Brady uncrossed her legs. ‘My client and I need a moment to consult, detective,’ she said. ‘If you’ll give us a moment?’
Cormac nodded. He stood and left the room, waited in the corridor. Fisher was there, face tight with tension. They said nothing, just stood and waited, until Anne Brady knocked on the interview room door, and they could go back in.
Fisher restarted the tape.
‘My client wishes to confess to the killing of Della Lambert, and Carline Darcy,’ Anne Brady said, in the matter-of-fact tone of voice she might use to order food at an upmarket restaurant. ‘He asks that his cooperation be noted for the record.’
Murtagh buried his face in his hands. He started to cry, snivelling tears of self-pity. Christ.
‘Garda Fisher will take your statement,’ Cormac said. ‘Make it full and frank and we will inform the court that you cooperated with our investigation. Your solicitor will have told you that an early guilty plea can be rewarded.’ Cormac looked him up and down. ‘You’re old. You have money. They’ll probably put you away in Shelton Abbey, which is a country club in comparison to Mountjoy.’
Cormac didn’t feel the energy and release that usually came from putting a big case to rest. A few years in prison at the end of his life didn’t feel like anything near sufficient punishment for what Murtagh had done.
As Cormac left the room, he was surprised to hear Anne Brady’s heels follow him. He turned to her.
‘Detective Sergeant Reilly,’ she said. ‘The computer, or rather, the contents of the computer.’
‘Yes?’
‘As I said, Della Lambert was an employee of Darcy Therapeutics. She was paid by Carline Darcy to carry out work on a drug that was the sole intellectual property of my client. The content of that laptop belongs to my client. I just want to make that very clear. It is, of course, extremely valuable.’
Cormac stared her down, but she was utterly unabashed.
‘I quite understand that you will need to retain the laptop for evidence purposes, but my client would like to send a technology expert to clone the contents, to ensure that nothing is destroyed during your examination.’
‘Your client?’ Cormac said.
A trace of annoyance crossed over that perfectly controlled face. ‘My … other client.’
Cormac took a step towards her. ‘How did you get him to take the deal?’ he asked. ‘What else does Darcy have on him? Or was it financial? A promise to take care of his family maybe, if he goes quietly with his mouth shut?’
‘I merely pointed out to Mr Murtagh the strength of the evidence against him,’ she said. ‘He’s a sensible man.’
Cormac turned to walk away.
‘Detective Sergeant Reilly,’ she said. ‘My client …’
‘I think I’ve had about enough of your clients for one day, Ms Brady,’ Cormac said, and he kept walking.
EPILOGUE
Emma asked him to move out the next day. Just for a couple of days, she said. Just to give her some time to think. Cormac didn’t argue. He packed an overnight bag, kissed her goodbye, and found a hotel.
He waited two days without hearing from her. Two days that were, admittedly, very busy. The Henderson and Murtagh cases were ploughing ahead. Brian Murphy had made no comment about Carrie’s decision to bring Cormac back onto the case. It would have been difficult for him to object, of course, given that Murtagh had confessed and given that Darcy Therapeutics were suddenly entirely cooperative. Miraculously, the very next day the company had produced hours of recorded footage from the security camera at the entrance. Footage from the supposedly nonrecording camera. The company had apologised. Explained that they adopted a belt and braces approach – local security personnel were unaware that the entrance cameras at Darcy facilities did actually record, and the footage was sent to the company’s headquarters in Berlin for review. The footage showed Carline and Della entering and leaving the lab together on many occasions, evidence, the company claimed, that Della was an employee. The one small positive about that particular piece of fiction was that Della’s family would get to keep the money Carline had paid her, and would likely even get paid a fair bit more in exchange for signing away any claim to the intellectual property in Della’s work. And that money would go to Paul and Geraldine, not their parents – a local solicitor had been in touch with the station to ask for contact details for the children. It seemed that one of Della’s first acts after she received the money from Carline Darcy was to make an appointment to make a will, and the will left everything to Paul and Geraldine, with an uncle on their father’s side to act as trustee. The uncle was a Cork-based accountant, and seemingly a very different character to his brother. He showed no signs of being cowed by his sister-in-law and gave every indication that he took his duties to the children seriously.
It wasn’t a surprise that the CCTV footage was accompanied by another request for access to the laptop, a request that Cormac had denied. Murphy hadn’t overturned that decision either, at least not yet.
So for two days Cormac pushed on with the cases, chased down loose ends, worked closely with the team and felt their confidence in him grow. He made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t underestimate them again. And on the third day he went to the house. He sat outside on the low canal wall and waited for Emma to come home. He could have gone in, waited inside, but it didn’t feel right. That was her home, for now, and it wouldn’t be his again until she wanted him there.
She came home earlier than he expected. The sun was just beginning to set, bathing the sky in an orange-red glow. She saw him straight away, parked the car and walked over, sat beside him on the wall.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you.’
The words were distant, too formal. Had there been a trace of warmth in her tone, or had he imagined it? She looked tired, worn out.
‘You’ve been working?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Trying to unpeel the mess that James left behind. Trying to figure out the extent of the stuff he just made up. If we can define the gap, at least, maybe we can figure out how to fill it.’
‘Is John Darcy there with you?’
Her face grew troubled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Did you come here to ask me that?’
‘No, Em,’ he said. He took her hand where she’d laid it on the wall between them. It was cold. They stayed there like that for a long moment, while he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. ‘I came to tell you that I’m sorry. I screwed a lot of things up, from the very beginning of this case. I understand why you felt abandoned. If I’d gone home with you that very first night, maybe things would have been different.’
She shook her head. ‘No. It might have been different, but it might have been worse too. I had already found Della. There’s every chance that James would have tried to blame me either way. Except then you wouldn’t have been there to fix things.’
She hadn’t taken her hand away. He squeezed it again.
‘I know you’re upset because you think I didn’t believe you …’
‘You didn’t, Corm,’ she cut across him, her voice low and full of emotion. ‘It migh
t not have been for very long, but you wondered, for a time, if I could have done it. I would never, could never, think that of you. And I can’t get my head around that. How can there possibly be a future for us if you could conceive of me murdering two innocent people?’
He’d thought of and discarded a hundred counter arguments to this. Discarded because he knew, just knew down to the soles of his boots, that anything less than complete honesty would lose her. And he couldn’t lose her. Somehow, over the past two years, Emma had become the centre of everything for him. She was the future he wanted to build towards. He wasn’t sure if she could ever understand or accept the truth. Which is that he had wondered, and it had nearly broken him. And he had loved her still.
He held onto her hand like a life-line.
‘I did, Emma. I did wonder. Only for a few minutes, and I was out of my head with worry for you, but I did wonder. I wondered if what you went through with Roisín had hurt you deeper than I knew. I thought about all your sleepless nights. I thought about how you came in late and upset the night Carline died. And your car was in the video. It was your car, Em.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Her eyes searched his, looking for something she could hold onto.
‘I think you’ll say you would have reacted differently, and I believe that you would have. Something in you would have seen it as a challenge to us, and you would have rushed to fight at my side, asking no questions.’ The questions would still have been there, of course, they would have been there at the back of her mind. But for Emma it would have been loyalty first – fight, defend, ask questions later.
Cormac lowered his voice, held her hand firmly. ‘That’s not who I am, Emma. I’m a policeman. I always will be a policeman. I’m asking you to accept that we might be different, in how we act, in the decisions we make. But underneath it all, the love is the same.’
She looked up into his face for another long moment, then turned to gaze out over the water. There was silence.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Okay?’
She didn’t look at him but she nodded, and her hand was still tucked inside his. They sat there for a long time, and Cormac felt that the world was settling back into place.
Eventually, Emma spoke again. ‘You asked me about John,’ she said. ‘What do you know?’
He didn’t want to tell her. Not when they had begun to find a form of peace.
‘Della Lambert found a solution to the drug design problem,’ Cormac said. ‘She found out the truth about Murtagh’s fraud, then she figured out a solution.’
Emma turned to him, surprise all over her face.
‘He didn’t tell you? John Darcy didn’t tell you?’
‘No,’ she said.
Cormac nodded. ‘He’s claiming ownership of the intellectual property. Della’s design, I mean. He says that because the work was carried out on Darcy property, and because Carline paid her, the work is owned by the company. He wants us to let him have the laptop, or a copy of it at least.’
‘Jesus,’ Emma said.
‘Yeah.’
‘But he couldn’t have known,’ Emma said, her voice almost pleading. ‘He couldn’t have known about James, about Carline and Della, about any of it, until it was all over, right?’
‘He did know, Em,’ Cormac said. ‘We can’t prove it, but I believe he knew. John Darcy came to Galway on Tuesday. He met with Murtagh, then went to visit Carline. I spoke to one of Carline’s roommates. She listened outside the door. She said he was asking about Carline’s thesis – that thesis was Della Lambert’s solution. He knew about it and he wanted it. I think John Darcy was playing both sides. I think Murtagh confessed everything, and then claimed to have access to Della’s solution. He had part of it in the thesis proposal. Maybe enough to convince John Darcy, to get him on side. Darcy went along with it and when Murtagh was arrested he sent his pet lawyer in to look after his interests.’
‘Oh God,’ Emma said. She gave a sudden, hard shiver.
‘I don’t know all of the answers,’ Cormac said. ‘There’s no reason to think that Darcy knew Murtagh was planning on killing Carline, or even that there would be some sort of violent confrontation. I’m not even sure that Murtagh meant to kill her. Maybe he tied her up and hit her to try to get her to hand over the password to the laptop, and things got out of hand.’
‘He went there dressed as me,’ Emma said. ‘I think he knew he was going to kill her.’
Cormac nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it. ‘At best he was indifferent as to whether or not she lived. But I don’t think John Darcy knew.’
‘No,’ Emma said, and her voice had hardened. ‘But he didn’t care, did he? If James had rolled up with the laptop and the solution in his hand John would have taken it, no questions asked, and would have protected James too, wouldn’t he? To hell with his own granddaughter. She was only a girl, with nothing at all to offer him.’
Cormac said nothing. He wasn’t sure there was anything left to say. After a moment he stood, offered his other hand to Emma.
‘Why did he send her here?’ Emma asked sadly. ‘If he never cared about her at all, why did he send her to Galway, to his own lab, when he’d never taken much interest in her before then? If he’d just left her alone she’d be alive now, and happy somewhere.’
Cormac hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her anything that would hurt her more. But Emma knew him to well. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Darcy has another granddaughter,’ he said. ‘His daughter’s daughter – Rachel. She would have been starting in Trinity the year after Carline. Fisher’s spoken to a few people. The theory is that Darcy and his wife didn’t want Carline at the same university as the girl they thought of as their true granddaughter. To them Carline was an embarrassment. They didn’t want her presence to affect Rachel’s social standing.’
Emma looked at him, and there was no shock in her eyes, no surprise. Just a deep, exhausted sadness. He took her hand.
‘Will we go inside?’ he asked.
She stood. She didn’t hug him. She was too sad, and too angry for that. But they walked hand in hand across the street to their home.
She stopped him before they reached the door. ‘It’s over for me now, Cormac. I can’t go back there, can’t work at his side knowing all this. But if I walk away he gets the use of my device anyway. He wins, doesn’t he?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ Cormac said. ‘It’s not over yet. Murtagh’s hired new lawyers. He might decide to fight his confession on the grounds that Brady had a conflict of interest when she represented him. If he does go down that route he has a lot of dirty linen that he could choose to wash in public.’ It sounded weak to his ears and Emma looked unconvinced. He leaned down and kissed her, leaned back again. ‘John Darcy is rotten from the inside out, Emma. He’ll fall eventually, if not this time, then next.’ That was all he could offer her, but it seemed to be enough. She led him inside, and they closed the door.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is hard to believe that I am here again, writing the acknowledgements for my second book. What a pleasure and a privilege it has been, writing this book with the support of a phenomenal team at the same time that The Ruin went out into the world.
I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made The Ruin such a success. Kimberley Allsopp at HarperCollins – Kimberley I think we spoke almost every day for a while there! Thank you for making it all so much fun. Theresa Anns, Alice Wood, Sarah Barrett, Andrea Johnson and the entire team at HarperCollins – thank you, I’m very lucky to have you. Siobhan Tierney, Susie Cronin, Millie Seaward – thank you, I’m very grateful. At Penguin I’d like to thank Alison Klooster for all her support. And Kevin Che – thank you for being such a champion of books!
I’d like to thank my editors, Nicola Robinson, Katherine Hassett and Anna Valdinger at HarperCollins, Lucy Dauman at Little Brown, and Laura Tisdel at Penguin. Every time you touched it this book got better. You have book
magic in your fingertips. Thank you for all your support and your continuing belief in these stories.
Thank you to my wonderful agents, Tara Wynne, Faye Bender and Sheila Crowley. I love working with you. Love your sense of humour, your grace and your approach to the world. Deeply grateful for your ongoing support, and your patience for a writer on a learning curve!
A special thank you to my dad – my one-man marketing team in Ireland! You are phenomenal, Dad, and I love you. Also, an apology to all of his friends and family. Ahem. Thank you to Mum. At the end of the day, Mum, it’s all down to you. Thank you to my siblings and siblings-in-law, Conor and Ashley, Fiona and Paul, Cormac and Nao, Fearghal and Lenka, Odharnait and Kevin, and Aoibhinn and Rob. And, in that context, thank you to Skype.
Thank you again to Kathleen and Séamus … for all your love and support and for ongoing quality control and early reads. Very much appreciated.
Thank you to Ryan Tubridy, for picking up the book, and, when you liked it, telling everyone. Your support for writers is phenomenal, and game changing, and I’m grateful.
Thank you to everyone involved in organising the incredible writers festivals I’ve been lucky enough to attend this year. Thank you to Writing WA for your ongoing support.
Thank you to Val McDermid. Val, you are endlessly generous to writers coming up behind you – you don’t just lower the ladder, you roll out a red carpet. Thank you very much.
Thanks to my mates, to Libby and Tim Mathew, Claire and Grey Properjon, Michael and Sara Pearson for all your support and for putting up with early morning WhatsApp messages with the latest news! Thank you to Helen Pelusey and all my friends at school, for all your support – you know who you are!
Thank you to all the wonderful booksellers I’ve met over the past year, and so many more I haven’t met yet but who have embraced The Ruin and told everyone. Book people are the best people.
Thank you, Kenny. Thank you, Freya. Thank you, Oisín. You are the point of it all. The beginning and the end point. I love you.
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