“We might need it,” Rose said at her normal volume. “She’s only looking at rubbishy clothes to buy anyway.”
Fiona grabbed her grandmother’s arm and hurried over to the other side of the bank of desks, not missing the filthy look Mrs Flannery threw the two of them. “Keep your voice down! Anyway, it’s not that one. Mam told me it was that one over there beside the shelves. More out of the way.”
“But sure anyone could sneak up behind you there.”
Fiona wandered over and pulled out a few of the books from the shelf nearest the vacant computer. “I don’t think so,” she said, holding up an ancient copy of Amateur Poetry Annual. “I can’t imagine there’s much demand for this stuff.”
The whole shelf was filled with similar titles, none of which looked like they’d been moved in years, if the thick layer of dust on the shelf was anything to go by.
“No, she had a nice little private spot for herself here. She must have got a right shock when Mam started shouting at her.”
“I’ll say.”
Fi pulled the chair out and sat down. It was only then that she noticed the little wooden divider that separated this desk from the ones beside it, which were more open. “Look at this. She had a very private area. Why did she need it? She had all the privacy in the world in her own house.”
“Let’s find out.”
They turned on the machine and waited for it to boot up, which seemed to take forever. Finally, an outdated operating system that Fi hadn’t seen for years appeared. It took her a few minutes to get the hang of the unfamiliar layout. She half expected to have to start a dialup connection, but the little symbol appeared in the bottom corner telling her she was connected. She opened a browser window and stared at it.
“You’ll want to bring up the history,” Rose prompted. “Let’s see. Was it Tuesday morning that Margaret had her run-in with Mrs Stanley?”
Fiona nodded, clicking on the history button and waiting for it to load. For an awful second she thought it might be set up not to keep a record, but a second later a long list of websites appeared.
She scrolled to the bottom of the list and selected the option to look at the past seven days’ worth of history. There wasn’t that much activity on there, so it didn’t take long for them to find Tuesday’s. In fact, all of the timestamps appeared to be in the same half hour window.
“Wow,” Fiona said, unable to believe what she was seeing. “Mrs Stanley may have been the only person to use this computer that day. We’re in luck.”
Rose leaned forward over her shoulder to read the list. “Are we? I don’t see anything on there that’s incriminating.”
Fiona skimmed through the list and saw what she meant. Apart from Facebook, Mrs Stanley had looked at a travel website, Gmail and the parish council site, just as Margaret had claimed. Fi didn’t know what she’d expected to see, but she’d assumed there’d be something.
She clicked the link and was faced with a page describing prominent volunteers in the parish. Her mother’s picture was on there. Her heart sank.
“Do you think this was what she meant? If that’s the case, then maybe Mrs Stanley was only looking through the page.”
“No,” Rose said. “Remember. Margaret was sure she was doing something with it. It wasn’t the parish website. She was sure it was Facebook.”
Fiona clicked the link, hoping Mrs Stanley had forgotten to log out in her rush to get away.
No such luck.
She sighed. “Well, even if it was some sort of profile, we’ll never know now. She logged out, or the system logged her out. It doesn’t much matter what happened—we can’t get in without her password and we don’t even know what her username is.”
“Let me sit down there for a sec.”
Fiona stood and stepped off to the side. She watched, not really paying attention to what her granny was doing. After all, they’d seen all there was to see, hadn’t they?
When she glanced at the screen a few moments later, she noticed something odd. Rose’s hand was flying around with the mouse, opening all of the links that Mrs Stanley had accessed on Tuesday. When she opened the Gmail one, she let out a satisfied sigh.
“There we go. There’s her email address.”
“It’s locked, though. You need her password to continue.”
“We do,” Rose said thoughtfully. “Anyway.” She clicked back to the window with Facebook open and typed Mrs Stanley’s email address into the email field.
Fiona was about to object when she realised there was no harm in trying. She struggled to maintain her focus, though—after all, it was a pointless exercise. She looked around the library, wondering how it managed to stay open when it was so quiet. Maybe it was busier on the weekends, she thought. Whatever the reason, she thought she’d been a little slack in not going there for so long. They seemed to have a good selection of newish releases in the shelf closest to the door, and there were also several comfy-looking armchairs spread around the place. It certainly looked more comfortable than her flat. She had half a mind to come here next time she needed to dedicate a morning to doing her books.
She looked over at Jean, about to ask her when the library had got in the new chairs—last she remembered, they’d had those awful moulded plastic ones she couldn’t stand.
She soon forgot about chairs when her eyes landed on the screen.
“You got in? What the hell?”
They were looking at what appeared to be Mrs Stanley’s newsfeed.
Rose swivelled around to face her with a big smile on her face. “Some people are diligent with their passwords, but the vast majority pick something really obvious like ‘password’ or 1234567890’. I read an article about it. Now, others think they’re being crafty by putting in the name of a loved one or a pet, but it’s only slightly harder to guess.”
Fiona shook her head in utter disbelief. “You guessed her password?”
“I tried a few times,” Rose said nodding. “I’ll admit I was a bit stumped when her maiden name didn’t work, or Glenbeg, her townsland. But then I typed in Fort Lauderdale and it let me in!”
“Great work, Granny! Now.” Fiona grabbed the chair from the nearest computer and pulled it over beside Rose’s. “Let’s find out what she had to hide. It must have been something big to bring her all the way here. What could she have done here that she couldn’t have done at home?”
20
THE NEWSFEED OFFERED FEW CLUES. There were no upcoming events and it didn’t appear that Mrs Stanley had posted anything in months. The few posts she had made were shares of uncontroversial animal videos. She had about forty friends, very few of whom Fiona recognised.
“Check her messages,” Fi said, before second-guessing the ethics of that. Was it a step too far?
It was too late. Rose had clicked the little message link on the top menu.
Fiona let out a sigh—she hadn’t realised up to that point that she’d been holding her breath.
“There’s nothing. Literally a handful of messages from about a year ago.”
The disappointment was so great that it seemed to swirl around Fi. It really had seemed like they were on to something. If it wasn’t for her mother’s story about catching Mrs Stanley in the middle of something, she would have given up and gone home.
“Mam saw something. She must have—it’s just not like her to have a fight with another woman in the middle of the street.”
Rose shook her head. “But there’s nothing in here. It doesn’t look like she’s done anything on here for months.”
Fi bit her lip. “Will we try her email? For all Mam knew, maybe she was sending that picture to someone in an email.”
“I can try.” Rose was already opening another window and going to Gmail. “With a bit of luck she’s got the same password.”
This time, Fiona couldn’t look away. She felt a little burst of triumph when it became clear that Mrs Stanley’s inbox was loading, but that feeling disappeared when the list of emails appeare
d and she scanned through their subjects and senders.
“These are mostly order confirmations from online retailers.”
“There might be something further down.” Rose scrolled slowly through the list, but there was nothing remarkable there. There was one email from her sister but aside from that, nothing. The sent items folder was even more barren, with only a reply to her sister, which the date stamp said had been sent six weeks before.
“I guess that’s our theory out the window,” Fiona said, shaking her head. There was nothing more they could do—they had checked all the sites Mrs Stanley had accessed. There was no picture of Margaret McCabe anywhere.
“I hope your mother wasn’t having some kind of episode,” Rose said gravely.
“No, of course not. She’s mad but not like that. We’d have known.”
“But there’s nothing! Nothing at all that explains why someone would want to kill her.” Rose sighed and logged out of Mrs Stanley’s email account. “I’ll just check my own emails and then we’ll head away. It’s getting on and neither of us has eaten for hours.”
Fiona became aware of her own hunger at that point and her stomach rumbled in response. She was just about to suggest going across the road to the bakery when she saw what was on the screen.
“Granny!” Fi burst forward, grabbing Rose’s arm before she could click away from the page she was on. “Those names!”
“What names, love? Those? Oh, they’re just the email addresses that have been accessed from this machine. See? I need to click down here to add my own email address and log in.”
Fiona stared at the screen. She knew that—she’d been seeing the same screen since she set up a new account for her bar: she always had to select whether she wanted her own personal email account or the one for McCabe’s. Now they were looking at a list of three email addresses that had been accessed on this computer.
“They’re probably someone else’s.”
Fiona shook her head. Goosebumps prickled on her skin as she got the overwhelming feeling that this was it; this was the lead they were looking for.
“No. Look, that’s Eunice Doyle at Gmail dot com. There’s Mrs Stanley’s. But who’s this?”
Rose shook her head. “Pete Smith at Gmail dot com. I don’t know. Maybe one of the people from the new estate.”
It was still called the new estate around the town even though the houses had been finished for more than ten years.
“No, Granny. I don’t know anyone by that name in town. And even if you don’t know people, you’d have heard of them.”
Rose shrugged. “It could be an out-of-towner.”
“Really? In the library?”
“A Spanish student.”
“With a name like Pete Smith? If anything it sounds like an alias.”
“You’re right!” Rose exclaimed, earning a warning look from Jean, not that she noticed. She clicked the mouse and her hands flew across the keyboard as she tried to work out the password.
“It worked! You were right!” Rose was too excited to keep her voice down. “She used the same password for everything, the fool.”
“Granny, shhh. We need privacy for this.”
Rose looked around, saw Jean and nodded. “Okay,” she said in a loud whisper. “Right, we’re in. Let’s see what we can find here.”
A bunch of spammy-looking emails, as it turned out.
Fiona shook her head. “I don’t get it. This is obviously hers. She went to the trouble of making up a name and it must be her account if the password is the same. So why aren’t we seeing anything? This is all just…” she read the subject line of one of the emails, proclaiming to be able to cure all kinds of ailments… “It’s just junk.”
“You’re right about that,” Rose said, clicking into the sent items.
They were both surprised to see a completely blank folder.
“There’s nothing? No sent items?”
Rose nodded. “It looks that way. What about here?”
The promotions tab was full of similar junk to the inbox. Fiona was about to give up when her granny opened the ‘social’ tab. She gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“Look at that! Look at all those updates from Facebook.” She leaned forward to get a closer look. “And those names. Look, it’s Trish Mahony.” The subject line saw ‘new message from Louise Graham’. Further down, past a few notifications about people commenting on stuff, there was another message entitled ‘new message from James Brady’. “What’s going on, Granny? I recognise those names. They live here in Ballycashel.”
“They do,” Rose said gravely. “What was she at using an alias? Maybe we’re wrong and these are people with the same names as locals here. But it still doesn’t make sense.”
They opened the top email, which had been sent the week before. It showed a message from Trish Mahony and Fiona felt a jolt of recognition when she saw the picture. It was definitely the Trish Mahony who lived in Ballycashel—there she was in the picture with her beloved golden retriever.
“What do you think it means?”
Fiona shook her head. The message was short and appeared to be a reply to a previous message, which wasn’t visible. All it said was ‘how do I know that’ll be the end of it?’
“Click on that link; the one that says ‘view conversation on Facebook’,” Fiona whispered.
Rose clicked and the Facebook login page came up. Quick as a flash, she typed in the fake email address and the same password. Seconds later, the screen refreshed with a red field. Wrong password.
“Huh. We’ll try something else.”
But it was no use. Rose used everything she knew about Mrs Stanley to try and get in, but nothing worked.
“I don’t understand it,” Rose said. “Why would she have a different password for this one? What’s so special about it?”
“This must be it,” Fiona said with a sinking feeling. “This is what she was killed for. And we can’t access it.”
“We can try again in a while with a different password.”
“What password? We’ve tried everything.”
“Well… we could find out her wedding anniversary from the parish register.”
Fiona sighed. It seemed like a much less promising option now that Mrs Stanley had gone to the trouble to choose a hard-to-guess password for this particular account.
“Let’s go back to her email. Maybe we can piece it together from there.”
Fiona ran to the counter and asked for a pen and paper, which Jean handed over begrudgingly. She had half a mind to tell her that they were doing important work, but she held her tongue. Knowing Jean, she’d be on the phone to Sergeant Brennan within seconds.
There wasn’t a lot of information to be had from Mrs Stanley’s secret Gmail account, but they did manage to find a bit. In all, there were conversations with eight Ballycashel locals. There was one email from weeks before saying “Alan Power sent you a message’—the body of that email gave no clue as to the message’s contents and there was no further notification of messages in the chain.
That in itself was strange.
“What do you think,” Fiona asked, pointing to the screen. “Isn’t it funny that there were no more responses?”
Granny Coyle shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s hard to know when we can’t see the messages she sent herself. What does all this tell us?”
“I don’t know.”
They’d read all the messages that formed part of Facebook conversations and none of them revealed anything much. There was a common thread to them, however: all of them seemed to be frightened of something. A few of them begged Mrs Stanley to leave them alone. That just confused them even more.
“She was small and frail. She was hardly able to walk, for God’s sake! Why were they so afraid of her?”
Fiona shook her head. A thought had cropped into her mind but it was so ridiculous she hesitated to share it out loud.
“Go on. You have that faraway look in your
eyes.”
She sighed. “Okay, but it’s pretty out-there.”
“Isn’t it all?”
“Right. Well. What if it was some sort of blackmail? That email from Trish. It seemed to be looking for reassurance that this was the end of it. What if she had something on all of these people and she was using that knowledge to extort money out of them?”
“It seems possible. But what?”
Fiona shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just a thought. Okay, I’ve written down all the names. We’ve got Jimmy Brady, Trish Mahony, Louise Graham, Alan Power, Bernard Boyle and Mrs Roche. None of their messages really go into detail, but they were all pleading with Mrs Stanley in one way or another. So I guess we’ve got some more suspects. Wait, do you think this is why Mrs Roche never got back to you?”
“What are you asking, Fiona?” her granny demanded.
Fi shrugged sheepishly. Rose and Agnes Roche were good friends. She resolved to do some subtle digging when she was alone. “Nothing.”
“Do you know what I’m just after thinking of? Your mother hardly ever goes online, does she? God knows, I’m always at her to brush up on her skills. She doesn’t even know how to get on her online banking and it’s often cheaper that way.”
“She doesn’t trust it.”
“Neither do I,” Rose said gruffly. “But that’s neither here nor there. She has Facebook, though, doesn’t she? I’m sure I added her as a friend. Supposing she has a message from this Pete Smith fella too and she just hasn’t seen it? It might explain what Mrs Stanley was up to in the library that morning. And I can’t imagine Margaret would have kept it to herself if she received something like that.”
Fiona smirked. “We set her up on it because she was complaining about missing out but then she hardly used it after. I’m not sure she even remembers. I think you could be on to something!”
“Let’s go!” Rose exclaimed, standing up with a flourish and earning another filthy look from Jean. “We finally have a lead to follow!”
21
“WAIT,” Fiona said, holding up her hands in protest.
They had barely made it as far as the crossroads, but she couldn’t go on any longer.
Full Irish Murder Page 10