Full Irish Murder

by Kathy Cranston

  “Like we just did?”

  “No!” he exclaimed. “We have a very good reason for being here. Aren’t... Wait a second. What’s this?”

  He pulled out an envelope with a logo on it that Fiona didn’t recognise at first. Something about it must have resonated with Marty, though, because his fingers shook as he pulled the letter from the already open envelope.

  “Look at this!” he said, after he’d skimmed over the first few lines. “It’s a letter from the wind farm people. This is saying that they’ve chosen her site out on the Cloher road for the development of two turbines! This explains everything, Fi! The money, the reason someone hated her so much that they could kill her! Remember the bile that old Brady faced and that was before he even got approval!”

  “You think someone would kill her over a wind turbine?”

  He nodded eagerly as if the answer was obvious. “Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. You’ve seen how up in arms people got over them. Look at all the posters that are still up on power poles. People really don’t want them around. I don’t mind them, but then I suppose we’re far enough away from the proposed sites that they wouldn’t bother any of us.”

  Fiona shuddered. It seemed like they had their answer. Mrs Stanley had gotten a payout from the turbine company and booked a flight hoping she could escape off to the US before anyone found out. It looked like someone had got wind of it before she could get away. Now all they needed to do was figure out which of Mrs Stanley’s neighbours had taken the law into their own hands.

  “Come on,” she whispered, no longer able to stand being in poor Mrs Stanley’s house.

  “But we’ve still got all the other rooms to check.”

  “Please. It’s creeping me out. I think we’ve found out enough.”

  “Okay,” Marty said. “Come on.”

  They snuck back through the quiet house and let themselves out. Fiona began to relax once they reached the path. She was about to suggest they stop off to get fish and chips when she was suddenly thrown off balance and into the hedge. She opened her mouth to scream but someone clamped their hand over it before she could do so.

  7

  “IT’S OKAY, it’s okay, it’s okay. That was me,” Marty whispered in her ear, slowly removing his hand.

  “What the hell was that? She hissed, falling silent when she saw he’d clamped his index finger to his lips.

  He shook his head. From the little light the moon was casting on his face she could see he looked worried. Haunted even. She shivered.

  “Someone’s coming.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Who?” she asked, her heart starting to race.

  “I don’t know. I saw a flash of torchlight. It can’t have been headlights: it wasn’t strong enough. Did I hurt you? I panicked and did the first thing that came into my head.”

  “I didn’t know it was you. I thought somebody else had—”

  “Shh.”

  A beam of torch light had just lit up the path to the house. Fiona felt as if her heart was going to burst out of her chest, it was beating so hard. Who was creeping around here in the middle of the night? It was past nine. Okay fair enough, it wasn’t exactly late. But it was dark.

  Brennan, she thought. She looked around and was relieved to see they were completely hidden from view by the boxy hedge. They’d be in trouble if anyone left the path and came behind the hedge, but she could see no reason for the intruder to do that.

  A thought gripped her. Why would Brennan leave an interview he clearly relished and then go to the trouble of walking here if he could have taken his squad car? There was no need for him to go sneaking about.

  Unless…

  Fiona blinked and told herself to get a grip. It was hard to do that, though, when you were crouched behind a hedge at a murder scene. How had she allowed Marty to convince her that this was a good idea?

  She bit the insides of her cheeks. The beam was getting brighter. She didn’t like the way it bounced up and down. It was too jerky; too fast. This was somebody walking with intent, not out for a casual walk. Probably not the kind of person you wanted to meet in the middle of the night.

  She gripped Marty’s arm so hard that he winced.

  “Sorry,” she mouthed.

  He shook his head, beyond frustrated.

  Before she could do anything else, a pair of legs moved past them. She wasn’t sure what colour they were in the dim moonlight and the torch was shining in the opposite direction. She realised with a sinking heart that they were so low down that they didn’t have a hope of seeing the person’s face.

  Focus, Fiona, she told herself.

  Big shoes. Sturdy.

  Most likely a man.

  Jeans?

  She listened and heard the tell-tale swish. Yes, jeans.

  She stared at his ankles. These weren’t the skinny jeans that young guys wore or the baggy shapeless type worn by older men.

  And then she realised. They weren’t jeans at all, but chinos.

  She shook her head in disbelief, but knew she hadn’t been mistaken. But who wore chinos in Ballycashel? Could it be Jimmy Brady? After all, it was possible the killer had bought clothes in order to disguise himself. But he’d been wearing tattered old jeans and a filthy coat when they had passed him on the road.

  She heard a rustling sound and a muttered curse that startled her and made her jump. Luckily the mystery man seemed more focussed on whatever had caused him to cry out than on listening out for strange women hidden in the bushes.

  He swore again and kicked something.

  The key! Fiona realised. They’d left on the hall table! She had intended to replace it under the flowerpot when they left, but she’d completely forgotten!

  She glanced at Marty and knew from his panic-stricken face that he had realised the same thing. What if the killer knew about the spare key and came looking for it?

  There was the sound of a muttered curse and a moment later, the sound of glass breaking filled the still country air. Fiona was rigid with fear now. What was going to happen next? Who had the cheek to break into a house that was central to a murder investigation? The guards would be back the following morning! He must know that!

  The shuffling sound stopped or became too faint for them to hear. Fiona crept forward on her hands and knees, craning her neck to get a glimpse of the front door. The man had disappeared, but she didn’t know if he’d gone through the window or gone around the back. It was too dark to see which window had been broken.

  Marty crept alongside her and she shook her head and pushed him back. “He might see you,” she hissed. “You need to get back to the hedge.”

  “Come on, Fi. It’s time to get out of here.”

  She shook her head. “No. We need to find out who it is.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does,” she said, retreating backwards so they weren’t so close to the house. “Don’t you see? That’s probably the murderer.”

  “I can’t think of a better reason to leave. Can you?”

  She nodded and they hurried back towards the gate, bursting through the hedge at the end of the path. Even though there was no torchlight visible, it was still nerve-wracking to think that that guy could be standing there waiting for them.

  But he wasn’t. They hurried out the gate and crouched behind the stone wall, moving as quickly as they could to get away from the house.

  “I have an idea,” Fiona whispered when they were far enough away. “Where did you see the torch come from?”

  “This way,” he whispered. “Definitely this way.”

  She nodded. There were only two ways to approach the house. It would take more than an hour to loop back around the other side of the lane, which came out further along the Newtownbeg road: it wouldn’t make sense to come in one way and out the other, especially on foot.

  Fi grabbed Marty’s arm and gestured across the narrow road. It was another stone wall, but she knew from memory that it wasn’t as s
turdy as it looked. In fact, it was ideal.

  Marty groaned but it was obvious that he was just as keen to find out who that man was. Fi glanced behind them. There was no sign of torchlight. She was thankful that both of them were dressed in dark colours and that she hadn’t changed into her running clothes, with their reflective strips that would have shone in the killer’s torchlight and made her a target.

  They hurried along and through the open gate of the abandoned house. Then they doubled back along the wall, stepping high to get through the tall grass in the overgrown garden.

  “I don’t even want to know what I’m stepping on,” Marty whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter. We might be able to catch a glimpse of his face from here.”

  “How? It’s a wall, Fiona. You can’t see through them and it’s taller than me.”

  “Shhh. He might be coming. Look.” She stopped and positioned herself in front of a large crack where some of the cement had crumbled away. Marty did the same at another spot close by. A few moments later he let out a quiet sigh. “I can’t see anything.”

  She leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Trust me. All we need is the glow from his torch. It’s worth a shot.”

  They waited and waited. Fi shifted from foot to foot, her legs itching ever since Marty had mentioned the unidentified nasties that might have been lurking in the long grass. She tried not to think about it, reasoning that she’d have a nice long bath as soon as she got home.

  Soon, she started to yawn. She hadn’t eaten all day and hunger was beginning to gnaw at her, though thankfully her stomach remained silent for now. Then the cold began to bite. It had been nice and warm earlier, but now it was dark it was damp and chilly. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky to keep the heat in. She’d be thankful for that tomorrow, but right then she could have used some warmth.

  And then the light flashed. Fiona held her breath. Because she only had a partial field of vision thanks to the wall, she couldn’t tell how far away the man was. All she knew was he was out there somewhere with his flashlight. She reached over slowly and tapped Marty’s arm. He nodded.

  It felt like hours passed before the torch beam grew stronger. Then she heard the footsteps; the regular creak of leather shoes. She made a mental note of that: the suspect wore leather shoes and chinos. She blinked, trying to commit it to memory.

  When she opened her eyes, though, she found she no longer needed a description of what the suspect was wearing.

  Her eyes widened. She only got a brief glimpse of him as he walked past, but she had no doubt in her mind.

  It was Alan Power.

  Alan Power had broken into Mrs Stanley’s house. And judging from the awkward angle of his elbow, he hadn’t left empty handed.

  8

  THEY WAITED behind the wall for a long time. It felt like hours, but neither one was willing to suggest leaving. Fiona wanted to be absolutely sure the man was gone.

  Eventually, she tapped Marty on the arm. It had been quiet for several minutes. Alan Power would need to be incredibly paranoid to still be lurking around, and he’d have no reason to think they were watching him: if they saw him they could just say they were visiting Ben’s friend Barry who lived up the road.

  “Did you see that?” she whispered as softly as she could.

  “I know,” Marty muttered. “I can’t believe it was Power.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t know Alan Power well. He was another one of the commuter brigade, with the only difference being that he had bought a terraced house in the town rather than a house in one of the new developments on the outskirts.

  “Did you see? It looked like he had something big under his arm. I couldn’t make out what it was.”

  “I don’t know what it was either. It looked like a big box maybe? Something awkward to carry.”

  She sighed. “Money, maybe? But we didn’t see any. He wasn’t in there for very long so it can’t have been well hidden. It must have been in one of the other rooms!”

  “Come on, Fi. Let’s go home.”

  She bit her lip. “What if we were wrong? What if it’s not about the wind turbines at all? We need to go back there.”

  “To see what? We’re not going to find what he took; not if it was from one of the rooms we didn’t check.”

  She sighed. “Then we have to go to his house. If we hurry and cut through the fields up here we might beat him to it.”

  Marty groaned. “Are you actually serious? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you suggest, and I was there for your teenage years, remember? You’re talking about confronting a murderer!”

  “What other choice do we have? Anyway there are two of us.”

  “No. I’m not going there, especially not with my little sister.”

  “Don’t be silly. This is an emergency.”

  “We’re not going to confront him, Fi! Are you mad?”

  “It’s the only thing we can do to help Mam. We need to know what he took. Just say we tell the guards anonymously—they’ll get out there tomorrow morning at the very earliest and by that stage Power could have all the evidence destroyed. He might even have vanished off to Spain or somewhere with the cash.”

  “We’re not confronting him. Anyway, who said it was cash?”

  “I’m assuming here. What else could it be? He was hardly after her knickers.”

  “Ah Jesus, thanks a lot for that mental image.”

  She grinned, even though she knew he wouldn’t be able to see the expression on her face. Marty pretended he was tough, but she knew from experience he was one of the most squeamish people she had ever come across.

  “Don’t,” he warned. “I know you. Stop trying to wind me up.”

  She opened her mouth to do just that, but froze before she could get the words out.

  It had been the merest flash; only a second or two at most, but she had definitely seen it.

  9

  “MARTY,” she whispered as quietly as she could. “Did you see that?”

  He groaned. “What now? Why do I get the feeling this is part of an elaborate windup?”

  “No! Listen! I saw something! A light going past that gap in the wall.”

  He exhaled sharply. “It was probably a car.”

  She accepted this for a moment before it dawned on her that it couldn’t have been. “It wasn’t. We would have heard it. No, I saw a flash of light go past. I’m sure of it.”

  He sighed. “Maybe it was Brady coming back. Or it could have been Barry cycling past.”

  “Yeah, but…” she sighed and trying to calm herself. It made sense. Of course it made sense that it was just one of the locals walking by. But the other explanation niggled at her. What if it was Power, back to finish them off? She suggested as much to Marty.

  “Why? What would be the point in it?”

  She knew he was right, even if she couldn’t make herself see sense. “Come on. Let’s go back to Mam and Dad’s. I could use a cuppa before I head back to the flat.”

  “Are you going to be alright staying there on your own tonight? Maybe you should stay at the parents’. They’re always delighted to have any of us stay.” He groaned. It wasn’t like a normal night where they could go home and find a dinner waiting for them as if their mother knew they were on their way without them even saying it.

  “Maybe I should stay anyway. It must be awful for poor Dad being in the place by himself.”

  “Doesn’t he have Ben and Kate there with him?”

  She rolled her eyes. “What use are those two in a crisis? You should have heard Ben on the phone to me when he rang to say Mam was arrested. He was freaking out. For one brief moment I thought he might have grown up a bit. But no, this evening his normal priorities have returned. It’s all about the football and he’s just helping Dad to bury his head in the sand. And as for Kate? I don’t even know where she is.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All we need is Dad. We can come up with a plan to get this information to the guards. It�
��s the only way, Fi. Someone is out here. Let’s just get home to where it’s safe.”

  “STUPID,” Francis McCabe groaned. “What on earth were you thinking? You don’t go around breaking into people’s houses. We didn’t raise you to do things like that.”

  “We didn’t break in,” Fi said. “We found the key.”

  “Oh wonderful,” her father said, casting his eyes towards the ceiling in the perfectly exaggerated motion he’d perfected years ago. “That fills me with relief. You didn’t break in. You went wandering around a dead woman’s house but it’s all grand, because you happened to find a key. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this debacle just keeps getting more and more ridiculous as the day goes on. What next?”

  “Dad, listen. We’re not telling you this for the craic. Just listen, would you? We found nothing in the house, but as we were leaving, Marty saw something. We hid just in time. The next thing we knew, Alan Power was walking up the path and breaking a window to get into the place.”

  Francis McCabe’s expression transformed within seconds. “What are you saying?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t it speak for itself? We got away and hid behind the wall of the old Miller house—this was before we knew it was Alan Power. He came past us a while later, carrying a box under his arm. We think it was filled with cash.”

  “But Mrs Stanley is broke. Everyone knows that.”

  “Well then explain to me what was in that box he was willing to break into a crime scene to get. We didn’t see a box just sitting around on the table, so it’s something he knew about. Maybe he’d been scoping the place out earlier and she surprised him.”

  “Maybe. It still doesn’t sound right to me,” Francis said, scratching his head and refilling his mug with tea from the pot. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

  “We have to let the guards know but in a way that’s not traceable back to us. We’ve been trying to think of a way all the way from Mrs Stanley’s house to here but we’re coming up short. Any ideas? We were thinking maybe sign up to a VPN and a throwaway email account.”