by James Nally
Shep brought them up to speed on the loose ends from last weekend’s purge of Peter’s workplace, the Pines care home. ‘As we know, Karen took a few hours off work. She told colleagues she was going shopping in Blackheath with her younger sister, Laura. One of the nurses there, Sharon Healy, finished work at four p.m. and saw Karen driving her purple estate car out of the clinic car park. She was alone, with her hair tied up, wearing shades and a red top. Colleagues report her wearing a red top and jeans throughout that day and evening.
‘Another employee, Valerie Donald, left the clinic at six p.m. on the dot. She knows this because she has to pick up her kid from childcare. She saw Karen’s purple estate car stationary at the end of the driveway, facing towards the home. Sitting inside it was Karen still wearing her shades and, she thought, a dark top. She remembers Karen waving back at her.
‘The question is, of course, what had Karen been up to in those intervening two hours? And with whom? What’s your strategy, gents?’
‘We don’t want her clamming up, so we’re going to take it nice and gently,’ said Colin.
‘We’ve got all we need to peel her open like a can of sardines,’ added Mick, calm but focused, ‘there’ll be no need for bawling and shouting.’
‘Follow me, Lynch,’ said Shep, careering up the corridor and through a door.
‘Ringside,’ he said, taking the furthest of four seats facing a window. On the other side of the glass, Karen sat nearside of her duty solicitor, her arms folded, chewing a piece of gum. She might have been waiting for a bus.
‘She can’t see us, right?’ I whispered.
‘Or hear us,’ boomed Shep.
I was grateful for the chance to have a good ogle at Karen. As femmes fatales go, she was something of a let-down. Her best feature: long, glistening brown hair. Her face was several cheap tanning booths too teak, resembling a glazed bagel. Her tight black jeans and t-shirt served only to highlight her excess flesh, forcing it to spill out in the places she probably least wanted it to.
‘She reminds me of a busted bin bag,’ said Shep.
Her lifeless blue eyes conveyed a sullen insolence. When she spoke to her solicitor, she ended most sentences with a questioning, ‘you know?’ that implicitly granted her victim status. ‘This is the third time I’ve had to take time off work, you know? I can’t believe I have to go through it all again. It’s quite traumatic for me, you know?’
‘If the Foster family ever fall on hard times,’ piped up Shep, ‘they could charge people to slap her.’
The boys started on the afternoon of the murder: nothing too taxing. Karen parroted her original alibi: afternoon shopping in Blackheath with her sister Laura; she wore the same thing all day – jeans and her red Levi’s t-shirt; back to the Pines just after five p.m.; meeting Bethan Trott in the communal kitchen and heading to her room for tea and a soap opera; fish feeding with ‘Pete’ at six.
Problems verifying these events cropped up early. Karen and Laura didn’t buy anything in Blackheath, and she couldn’t remember any of the shops they’d visited.
Shep shook his head: ‘I mean, really, are you telling me a woman wouldn’t remember every shop she went into, on any shopping trip?’
Karen couldn’t recall being in her car outside the home at six p.m.: ‘I may have popped out to get cigarettes which I sometimes leave in the car, or a bottle of water.’
While helping to clean out the fish tanks, Karen developed an upset stomach. At about 7.45 p.m. she went to use the toilet and agreed to meet Peter by her car at eight p.m. She went back to her room to pick up her car keys and car park pass.
Almost inaudibly, she took up the story: ‘There weren’t any parking spaces on Sangora Road at that time of the night. So I parked on a street around the corner. I don’t know what it’s called. When we got to the house, Peter was surprised that the front door wasn’t double-locked. Marion always locked the mortise lock.’
‘And why did you go into the flat, Karen?’
‘My stomach still wasn’t right. I needed to use the toilet. I also wanted to say hello to Marion. We were good friends, you know?’
‘So you’re in the hallway of the house …’ prompted Colin.
‘He unlocked the door to the flat and went ahead of me up the stairs. When I heard him call out “Marion! Marion!” I ran upstairs. Pete felt Marion’s hand for a pulse and put his hand on her forehead. He said she was still lukewarm.
‘I felt for a pulse in Marion’s neck. I put my hand underneath her head and tried to lift her up. I told Pete that she was all stiff. I noticed Marion’s eyes were bloodshot and I saw cuts all over her dress. I saw blood around her mouth and ears. I started to scream. I must have gone into shock.’
She stopped, bowed her head and pushed her hair back with a trembling hand: rattled by grief or guilt, I couldn’t tell.
‘What was Pete doing?’
‘Pete didn’t touch her again. He said he was going downstairs to the neighbour’s flat to ring the police. I remembered seeing a police officer on the street as we were looking for a parking space. I ran outside to try to find him.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I interjected, ‘we were the nearest cops. That’s why we got there first.’
Karen carried on: ‘I looked around but I couldn’t see him so I ran into the pub and told them to call the police because someone was dead. A few of the guys at the bar tried to calm me down and were asking me what had happened. I was hysterical.
‘Three or four people from the pub came with me back to the flat. They went upstairs to see what had happened and I followed them up. They looked at Marion, then went back downstairs.’
My heart sank; this explained all the prints on the doors.
I could barely hear Karen now. ‘Her skirt had risen up around her waist. I didn’t like people seeing her like that so I pulled it down and pushed her hair away from her face. I realised I had blood on my hands, so I went to the bathroom to wash them.’
Karen stopped for a quivering sob as Shep bucked in his seat.
‘I tell you what really troubles me here, Lynch,’ he ranted, ‘most people are instinctively wary of touching a dead body. It’s just not something civilians in that situation do. I mean, take Peter. He touched Marion’s hand and forehead. Once he knew she was dead, he didn’t touch her again. And he’s her husband. That might sound cold, but that’s the natural response.
‘What isn’t natural is Karen touching every part of the body, getting people in to trample the crime scene, washing her hands in the sink. The one place that she wouldn’t have been able to explain away her fingerprints would have been in the bathroom sink. She’d even thought of that, the crafty bitch. I’ll tell you what she was doing, Lynch. She was systematically contaminating the crime scene.’
Karen regained her composure. ‘Pete came back upstairs. He wanted to see if they’d been burgled. I followed him into the sitting room to check.’
Shep tutted: ‘Good old Pete. Wife dead on the landing, better check no one’s made off with the telly.’
‘Everything seemed normal and undisturbed. On my way back downstairs, I opened the window on the landing because I felt sick and wanted some fresh air. I remember the clasp on the window seemed loose.’
Shep shook his head: ‘While everyone else was in shock, she was busy destroying evidence and creating fake suspects.’
‘Okay, Karen, we want to move on to another area of interest now,’ said Mick.
Colin began. ‘What was the nature of your relationship with Peter Ryan?’
Karen bristled, ‘As I’ve said before, we’ve been working together for five years. We became friends. Then he met Marion and I became friends with both of them, you know?’
Colin went hunting through his papers, settled on one sheet and laid it carefully before him.
In a deadpan voice, he said: ‘On October 23rd, 1990, you listed the presents Pete had bought Marion for her birthday. At the bottom of the list, you wrote the words “sick, sick, s
ick”. Do you remember this, Karen? Would you like to see the piece of paper to confirm this is your writing?’
Karen’s bottom lip dropped slightly. I could sense her insides collapsing like cliffs into a raging sea.
‘What I want to know, Karen, is how you managed to listen to them in their room? Your room was four doors down the corridor.’
‘I had a key to Bethan’s room, which was next to theirs. I went in there to watch telly sometimes. I overheard them next door.’
‘You went in there to eavesdrop, to spy on them, didn’t you, Karen? You were obsessed with Peter Ryan. You wanted him all to yourself.’
She shook her head.
Colin raised his voice: ‘You told a witness that Peter was up to something behind Marion’s back. What was Peter up to, Karen?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Peter took Marion away for the weekend, but he wouldn’t even spend a night with you. Isn’t that what you said?’
‘I never said anything of the sort.’
‘Sex in a shed, Karen. That can’t be very comfortable.’
She remained stoically inscrutable.
‘We have a witness who saw you and Peter going at it in a shed at work last November. Must have been chilly too.’
Karen folded her arms, looked to one side and sighed petulantly.
‘You’re not denying it then, Karen? You admit having sex in the shed at work with Peter Ryan, last November?’
Karen’s gaze remained locked onto the side wall.
Good cop Mick interjected calmly.
‘Karen, we know you and Peter were having sex last year and that you used to go out together. There’s no point wasting our time here. So, why don’t you tell us, when did your sexual relationship with Pete begin?’
She turned to Mick, blinked and took a deep, resigned breath: ‘We started going out three years ago, in 1988. I used to meet him in his room at the home. He lived in staff accommodation at the time. He came to my twenty-second birthday party at my house and met my family. We went for drinks. We took up classes together, weight training and aerobics.’
‘Christ,’ chuckled Shep, ‘I’d have thought he got enough weight training and aerobics humping that lump.’
‘How would you describe your relationship at that time?’
‘We was girlfriend and boyfriend, you know? That’s how I introduced him to my family. That’s how he introduced me at the classes, as his girlfriend.’
‘Did you not find it strange that he was never available at weekends?’
Karen shrugged.
‘And when did you learn that he was in a relationship with Marion?’
‘They threw an engagement party for them at the home.’
‘That would have been, let me see, almost two years ago, in June 1989? How did you react?’
‘I was furious. I didn’t speak to him for months.’
‘Did you resume your relationship with Pete after this?’
‘After the wedding in June last year, he told me that he’d made a mistake, and that he didn’t love Marion. He loved me.’
‘So you resumed your affair with Pete?’
She nodded.
‘I need you to answer the question for the tape recorder,’ said Colin, gently.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I realised he was lying to me and using me. The night of his birthday, in December last year, he tried it on with me and I refused. I ended it.’
‘So when was the last time you had sex with Pete?’
‘November last year. Nine months ago. By then I’d got to know Marion and I liked her. We became good mates. We went to the pub. I baked a cake for her birthday. I helped them move out of the home. By the end of last year I hated Pete and thought Marion deserved better.’
Colin laughed: ‘It was Marion you hated really, wasn’t it, for standing in the way of you and the man you loved?’
‘I didn’t love him. I was angry and hurt. But that was last year. Like I said, I became friends with Marion and stopped seeing Pete.’
‘It can’t have been easy, Karen, especially when Marion moved into Pete’s room after the wedding, seeing them together, happy. The man of your dreams married and in love with someone else.’
Karen darkened.
‘You went to the room next to theirs to eavesdrop. This sounds to me like you were obsessed with Pete. I think that you remained obsessed with Pete. I think this obsession turned into a murderous hatred. Of Marion.’
Karen muttered something to her brief and folded her arms. ‘My client does not want to make any further comment at this time,’ he announced.
Mick told the tape recorder they were stopping for a break. We reassembled in the kitchen.
‘I tell you what, for a fat bird, she’s lively on her feet,’ said Shep, ‘she gambled that we only knew about them having sex last year. I bet he carried on screwing her, right up until the murder.’
‘The trouble is we have no evidence that the affair continued after November last year,’ said Mick.
‘And she’s clamming up,’ added Colin, ‘she’s probably guessed that her best bet now is to keep her trap shut.’
Shep checked his watch: ‘I’ll make sure we get a twenty-four-hour custody extension, let the bitch stew for a day. By the time we finish with Lover Boy tomorrow, we’ll have enough to charge her with perverting the course of justice. That should open her up a treat.’
Chapter 26
Trinity Road, South London
Tuesday, August 13, 1991; 19:00
‘I’m at the Wheatsheaf, Eve x’ read the Post-it note on my flat door that evening. I wondered how she got inside the building’s front door.
I studied that ‘x’ for clues. It looked very neat, very formal. I wondered what it meant, if it meant anything at all. What did she really want? Me? Fintan? Neither of us? The other evening at the Archway had been a disaster. The whole night felt as if the three of us had regressed to 1988, or before.
I walked into the pub and scanned the tables. I met her smile in the very far corner: had she been watching the door? Butterflies that had been dead for years rose for a fluttery circuit of my chest.
She looked pretty, if a little formal: skirt, blouse and suit jacket, ready for business. I walked to the bar, gesturing if she’d like another. She nodded, toasting me with another smile. God knows how many gin and tonics (lime not lemon) I’d bankrolled the other night.
As our drinks were being poured, I glanced over and caught her looking at me. We shared bashful smiles and I wondered why your first love remains special after you’d forgotten all others. I suppose aged sixteen or seventeen, you don’t believe anyone could really actually love you. Not in a sexual way. Maybe your first love helps you learn to love yourself.
I wanted to tell her all of this, but said instead: ‘Well, how’s the head?’
‘Still fragile,’ she husked in a voice that made Lauren Bacall sound like Mammy Two Shoes out of Tom and Jerry.
‘Listen, I meant to say the other night, it’s great to see you.’ And I meant it. ‘I was just a bit shocked, and half cut …’
I scolded myself for the unwitting knife pun. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘I did try to let Fintan know I was coming to London. I left God knows how many messages but he never got back. Do you think he’s okay with me? He seemed very … cold would you say?’
‘I didn’t think so,’ I lied.
‘Now I’m not newsworthy I don’t think he gives a shit,’ Eve spat.
I was shocked by her sudden change of tone. Underneath that sombre brown bob still lurked a volatile redhead.
She saw the alarm in my face and quickly changed tack: ‘Well, Detective Constable, have you cracked that case yet?’
We weren’t supposed to discuss live cases with anyone, but I couldn’t help myself. Especially the part about me unearthing Marion’s damning letter to her friend.
‘Wow, you’re quite the Columbo aren’t you?’ she tea
sed. I laughed it off, wondering why no one ever compared me to a sexy detective.
For the rest of the night, I sat back and let Eve take me on a languorous, drink-fuelled trawl through the lives and times of our contemporaries.
Some sort of unspecified Catholic guilt prevented us getting straight down to the sweet schadenfreude of other people’s misfortunes. Instead, Eve kicked off with a few success stories: someone’s brother scouted by United; Fidelma Daly landing a role in a daytime soap; a guy we barely knew inheriting a fortune from some great uncle in Canada. But the really interesting news invariably involved downfall and ruin: babies popping out, students dropping out and people coming out.
I was surprised by the number of girls back home who’d fallen pregnant, clearly without planning to. I wondered how many more had undergone secret abortions in England, like Tara Molloy, the girl I’d unwittingly chaperoned to a clinic in Stepney. Mind you, in late Eighties Tullamore, it was easier to get hold of Semtex than a pack of Jonnies. Women had to beg their inevitably God-fearing, pro-life GP to go on the pill. So Eve and I went without. We did everything but. Why play the Russian roulette of unprotected sex? Yet I couldn’t help thinking now: were they all at it, all along, hammer and tongs, except us?
Some of the pregnancies resulted in shotgun weddings, usually in Rome. One couple compounded their degenerate behaviour by ‘living in sin’, forcing their hard-line religious families to disown them. As Fintan says: ‘He sure moves in mysterious ways.’ But most of the ‘fallen’ young mums were staying with their families. I was amazed to hear that none of the dads had scarpered, at least not yet. I couldn’t help thinking what a life these young parents faced now, trapped in a town with few job opportunities, playing second fiddle to a child they didn’t want, beholden for the rest of their lives to some man/woman they’d shagged a few times, unable to meet someone else because they were ‘damaged goods with baggage’, forever under the thumb of the child’s maternal grandparents. But that was the Irish way. You didn’t run away. You made your bed. Pain was your penance.