Francis McCabe threw his head back and howled with laughter. “Are you serious? The pair of ace detectives and you’re asking me how you get that information across?”
“Yeah. It was a simple question,” Fiona said, getting offended. “We know we’re not good at this, but we’re doing all we can.”
“Ah, what am I supposed to do? You come in here with your suggestions about using anonymizers and the like.”
“That’s the reality of life these days, Dad. If we sent it from one of our phones they’d be able to trace it.”
Francis rolled his eyes. “Who said anything about sending it from your phone? Come on, do you have any idea what you’re dealing with here? Do you really think they’re going to try and trace whatever message you send them?”
“They might.”
“I doubt it. Anyway,” he said, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the ceiling. “I have a better idea. I’ll go down to Phelan’s and tell Conway myself.”
“You’ll do what?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s like the opposite of what we’ve been talking about. What’s the opposite of anonymous? Because that’s exactly what you’re suggesting.”
“Nonsense,” he said, waving his hand. “Think about it. This is Conway we’re talking about. I’ll go down there and have a word in his ear. His memory’ll be so fuzzy tomorrow he won’t have a clue who told him what. He’ll make up some story about an anonymous tip-off purely because he won’t want to admit to the sarge that he was three sheets to the wind.”
Fiona glanced at Marty and they both smiled. For once she was glad of Sergeant Brennan’s rigid ways. The old sergeant was just as bad as Garda Conway and wouldn’t have cared less that Conway was drunk when he got the tipoff.
10
“IT’LL WORK,” Francis said the following morning. Usually at this time he’d have moved through to the international section, but he was still staring at the front page. It was obvious that he was beginning to doubt Garda Conway’s memory of what he’d said the night before.
“It will,” Marty agreed. He had stayed the night after they stayed up into the wee hours sitting around the table and discussing what could possibly have turned Alan Power into a cold-blooded killer.
They had concluded that it was the same thing that had swayed many people: greed.
“It had better work,” Fiona said, pushing her dry toast around her plate. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll fall back on plan B. We’ll find a way to send them an anonymous tip online.”
Marty nodded. “And we better do it quick. The clock is ticking. We need to act before Power disappears with that money.”
“What time is it?” Fi said, standing so abruptly the blood rushed to her head. “I didn’t realise it was that late. My phone died last night and I don’t have my charger. I’d better get to the pub.”
“Sure there’s no point. It’s well past half eight. Any commuters looking for a coffee will be well gone by now. And you don’t have a bit of food to offer them.”
“What are you?” she asked laughing. “My anti-business adviser? I can’t just stay closed for days on end.”
“It’s sort of an extreme situation. People will understand.”
“You’re right,” she muttered, sitting back down. “Everybody probably knows at this stage. I bet I’d have done a roaring trade today with everybody skulking in trying to get the latest gossip out of me.”
“Open up at lunch. Offer them meal specials and the chance to have their photo taken with the murderess’s daughter.”
Their father groaned and lowered his paper from his face. “Would ye not joke about it at the table? It’s a bit too soon to see the funny side. For all we know, they’ll ignore what I told them about Power and insist on keeping her in there and—”
The sound of a key in the front door made them all freeze and jerk their heads towards it.
“Who’s that?”
“Don’t know.”
“Ben’s upstairs.”
“Kate probably,” Fi said, disappointed.
“Ah.” Francis hit his paper in disgust. “Where was she anyway, your sister? What was she doing out ’til all hours with her mother in the Garda station being questioned?”
The front door opened after much scraping. None of them paid much heed to it, assuming it was just Kate coming in after a big night out. A moment later, they realised their mistake.
“Look at the state of this hallway,” said a loud voice from the other side of the door. “Would none of ye have thought of Hoovering, no? Is that too much to ask?”
They were on their feet in an instant. Marty gained an immediate head-start, his sporting prowess giving him a speed advantage. Fi was next, trailed by their father who had a gammy hip when it suited him and when there was an ‘R’ in the month.
“Mam,” Marty cried, rushing through the door and pulling Mrs McCabe into a bear hug despite her laughing protestations.
“Oh, Martin,” she whispered, finally acknowledging that no amount of scolding was going to make him put her down. “Oh, it’s so good to be home.”
“They let you out.”
“They did, Francis. Mammy had just come in to visit so I didn’t think there was any sense in ringing you when she could just give me a lift.”
“You’re right, too. Ah, it’s good to have you back, Margaret. What happened?” He cast a subtle glance in Fiona’s direction as he said this.
Mrs McCabe dropped her handbag and bustled to the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” she said, after she’d filled the kettle with water and popped it on. “They came in this morning and said there’d been a development in the case. That I was free to go but I wasn’t to travel out of the country without telling them first.”
“Do they have anyone else in for it?”
“Not that I know of. Did you see anyone, Mammy?”
Granny Coyle shook her head, her mouth set in a grim line. “I did not, indeed.” She reached over and took one of the dry slices of toast from the plate Fiona had abandoned. She held it up and twisted it in the air inches from her face, as if it was some ancient cypher she was struggling to translate. “What is this?”
“It’s bread, Rose,” Francis said, in a voice that suggested he’d had all he could take of his mother-in-law for a while.
“It doesn’t look like bread to me. It looks hard and nasty. Like it came out of a packet three days ago.”
“Well it was all that was left in the press.”
“Francis McCabe! You’re how old and you still have no idea how to look after yourself?”
“I’ll make a fresh loaf,” Mrs McCabe called.
“You will not, love. Will you sit down? You go and have a nice shower and I’ll make it. Have you brown flour?”
“Of course. It’s all in the press behind you.”
Fiona closed her eyes and drowned out their words, listening instead to the melody of their voices.
“What’re you looking so happy about?” her father barked.
Her eyes flew open and she shook her head. “It’s over. Mam’s home. Job done. I don’t know what you’re looking so grumpy about.”
“I thought it was obvious.”
She shook her head, searching his face for some clue and growing impatient when he wouldn’t elaborate. “No. Please explain.”
He closed his paper and folded it in his prompt, precise way, obviously having concluded that he wasn’t going to get a moment’s peace for the rest of the day.
“Do you really think our job is done? I mean, sure, your mother is out. For the moment.”
“What are you talking about, Dad? They know about Power.”
“Ah, lookit, it could be nothing. I’m just saying don’t relax too much. You heard what they told her about sticking around. I’m not going to let myself forget about this until I hear it on the news that they’ve got their man.”
“Or woman,” his wife piped up from the kitchen, where she was
arguing over ingredients with her mother.
“Ah here, don’t say that. It’s fine here in the house, but if you say something like that in public they’re only going to change their minds again and decide you’re a suspect after all.”
Mrs McCabe laughed. “I didn’t say it was me. I was just saying. It was probably a woman.”
Marty looked at Fi who looked at her father, who threw his hands up in the air.
“What on earth gave you that impression?”
“There’s no need to take that tone with me, Francis,” his wife said, coming out of the kitchen with her hands on her hips, like she did when she was well and truly riled up by something. “I’m only saying what I’ve heard from a number of different places through the years. It’s women, isn’t it Mammy?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, love,” Margaret said without turning around. It was clear from the clouds of flour that she was wrestling her dough into submission.
“With the poison, I mean.”
Francis baulked. “Who said anything about poison?”
“Brennan did,” she said, still standing there in full confrontation mode. “That’s how she was killed. It was poison.”
“I thought they said she was murdered.”
She shrugged. “She was. She was poisoned. They found traces of it in her system and they found the same stuff in the fry she’d been eating when she died. Imagine! The poor woman. Killed by her lovely breakfast.”
“I thought you hated her,” Fiona frowned. “After you caught her with your picture.”
“Ah, sure it doesn’t matter now. Maybe she got confused, the poor old thing. They do at that age. I wonder who did it? I can’t think of anyone who disliked her that much.”
“Power,” Francis announced, stopping abruptly. It was obvious that he’d been about to tell her how he came by that information but thought better of it. Wisely, Fi thought.
“What? Where’d you hear that?”
He shrugged. “Garda Conway had a few too many down in Phelan’s last night. It was he who told me.”
Mrs McCabe frowned and shook her head, seemingly perplexed. “Is that so, now? Well I’m surprised by that. I’ve heard it said so many times.”
“What?” Granny Coyle scoffed. “You’re making no sense.”
“Poisoners,” Mrs McCabe said as if she could barely stay patient for a moment longer. “Are usually women.”
At this, Granny Coyle’s eyes lit up. “You’re right! She’s right! I heard the same thing said manys a time on the True Crime channel.”
Fiona looked around. All of the others seemed amused, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in her mother’s theory. She had heard the same thing, hadn’t she? And now that her mother mentioned it. But it was crazy, wasn’t it? They’d caught Alan Power red-handed.
“Can you think of another woman in Ballycashel with a grudge against Mrs Stanley?”
Her mother nodded absently, clearly thinking it over. “No,” she said after a while. “I can’t think of anyone. I thought she was a right aul sourpuss, but she’s never actually done anything to me. I can’t remember hearing anyone giving out about her apart from Mammy.”
They all turned to look at Granny Coyle.
“What?” she protested.
“You were giving out about Mrs Stanley?”
Rose nodded, suddenly cagy. “I suppose. She’s a miserable aul one. Everyone knows that.”
Fiona glanced at Marty, who looked very serious.
11
FIONA RETURNED to the pub just before all hell broke loose between her mother and grandmother. She smirked as she unlocked the front door of the pub. It hadn’t taken them even an hour to get back into their usual ways after Mrs McCabe’s return from the Garda station. She didn’t know why she’d expected anything else.
And it wasn’t even about the case at all, but about which of them was going to make the bread.
“I like soda bread but they take it to extremes,” she muttered, as she walked into the pub.
Her parents had run McCabes when she was growing up, but it was finally beginning to feel like her own place. She had painted the green walls a charcoal colour after experimenting with white and finding it far too light for a traditional Irish pub—even one that was trying to reinvent itself as a cocktail bar slash coffee shop. She shook her head. She hadn’t been doing so well on the coffee shop front: she’d been opening up early in the mornings and serving espresso coffees and baked goods. The problem was there wasn’t a whole lot of demand for that in Ballycashel. What commuters there were seemed more concerned about getting in their cars and getting up the motorway to Dublin or down to Cork as quickly as possible. It wasn’t that the locals were opposed to a cafe, it was more that they were set in their ways. There was already a cafe—Mary’s—which had been on the go for at least thirty years. It was where Fiona and her siblings had gone to buy their sausage rolls when their parents gave them money on a Friday to go and buy a treat for lunch.
Fi shook her head. There should have been plenty of room in town for two cafes, but she had underestimated people’s unwillingness to try new things. Sure even people who had moved to the town when she was in primary school were still referred to as newcomers.
“I don’t know,” she muttered, grabbing her spray of surface cleaner and a fresh cloth from the press under the sink in the kitchen. “Maybe I should just stop opening early. I’d get a whole lot more sleep if I did, that’s for sure.”
She set about scrubbing down all of the tables and the bar counter. When she was finished, she looked around and decided the floors could use a good thorough clean.
When she was finished with that, her enthusiasm started to falter. The place was spotless and there was nothing left for her to do except to polish for the sake of it.
The problem was, it was far too early to open the bar—she’d just be sitting behind the counter, twiddling her thumbs. Nor did she want to go upstairs. She’d only end up watching TV and that was hardly productive, was it?
She shuffled behind the bar and hit the button that was concealed underneath on the staff side.
Within five minutes, the bell rang out above the door and her brother Marty appeared in the bar, hands full of little boxes.
“What have you got there?”
He held them up as if he was surprised to see them too. “Rat poison.”
She shivered. “What on earth are you doing with that?”
“I was restocking the shelf when you buzzed. Thought there might be something wrong.”
“Nah,” she said, resting her chin on her hand and leaning on the bar. “I said I’d see what you were up to. I take it you got fed up with listening to them too.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Listen, Fi, I’m a bit busy over in the shop. I’ll catch you later, yeah?”
She watched him leave and decided to lock up after him just in case. Just in case what, she didn’t know. They must have taken Power into custody by now—it was almost eleven.
She turned on the speaker system and selected a playlist of relaxing songs she liked. She’d never usually play it in the bar, but it was closed.
Try as she might, though, she couldn’t stop her mind from returning to the murder. Why would Alan Power do away with Mrs Stanley? She had always seemed perfectly pleasant to Fiona. But her mother and granny felt differently. Mrs McCabe bugged the heads off her kids on a lot of occasions, but she wasn’t exactly a difficult person. Even so, she had been riled up enough at Mrs Stanley that they’d had a screaming match in the street.
Before she knew what she was doing, Fiona found herself switching the music off and walking through the bar to the door. After locking up, she turned and walked as fast as she could, not stopping until she reached the Garda station.
This isn’t exactly a good idea, she reflected, though that didn’t stop her from hurrying up the steps.
She had taken to describing Ballycashel’s Garda Serg
eant as her arch nemesis and she wasn’t joking. They couldn’t stand the sight of each other. She didn’t really understand why—they had gone on one terrible date in Dublin long before he ever got posted to Ballycashel. She hadn’t called him back and he’d held a grudge against her ever since.
Even though he’s a grown man in his thirties, she thought, getting riled up as she pushed open the door to the station.
Behind the desk, Garda Conway looked slightly the worst for wear. His cheeks were flushed a deep rosy colour and the bags under his eyes were even darker than usual.
“Morning Garda Conway,” she called.
“Howaya Fiona. What can we do for you?”
She looked around, glad to see the sergeant’s office door closed.
“Ah not much. I just wanted to come down and say… well, thanks for being so good to my mam when she was here.”
It was a lie, but that wasn’t important to her. All she wanted to do was hear that they’d thrown the book at Power and the case was closed. Of course, she couldn’t come right out and just ask—Conway didn’t give anything away when he was sober.
“Ah, not at all. It was a terrible business. We had to bring her in for questioning after she was seen fighting with poor Mrs Stanley.”
“I know, I know. I appreciate you being so good to her.” She paused and looked around. “How’s your mother?”
“Ah, she’s grand now. Can’t complain. The arthritis is at her.”
“And she must be rattled after what happened to poor old Mrs Stanley.”
His eyes widened and for a moment she thought she’d pushed it too far, but then she saw there was no suspicion in them. For an officer of the peace, Garda Conway was an incredibly trusting soul. Part of her wanted to shake him and tell him to cop on; she was only trying to butter him up so that he’d give her information.
She was so conflicted that she didn’t notice a door opening at the edge of her peripheral vision.
“Miss McCabe,” said a cold voice.
Fiona stifled a groan. “Sergeant Brennan. What a pleasure.”
“I’m surprised to see you back here so soon. What can we do for you?”
Full Irish Murder Page 5