“Can I get you another?” the barman asked her. She didn’t recognise him.
“No, I’m fine for the moment, thanks.”
“Waiting on someone?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“I haven’t seen you around here before. Have you just moved?”
“No, I’m from Ballycashel.”
He sucked in a breath. “Terrible business over there. I heard ye had a murder!”
She nodded, not wanting to talk about it anymore but too polite not to answer his question. You couldn’t do that in a place so close to home—they’d be calling her a snob before she even got home. “Yeah,” she said noncommittally.
He didn’t seem to notice her reticence—or if he did, he ignored it. “Terrible business. It was a local lad, yeah?”
She nodded. “It was.”
“And a local fella who did it?”
Fiona was barely paying attention. “Nah, they reckon it was a fella from Dublin.”
“A transplant, like?” He had abandoned the pretence of polishing glasses and was now leaning over the bar, seemingly intrigued by Ballycashel’s crime.
She looked up at him, confused. “No, he didn’t live there if that’s what you mean. I’d never seen him before.”
His eyes widened. “You were there? At the murder?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head and beyond irritated now. “Of course not. I run a bar there. He was in that night.”
“So you saw him.”
“Didn’t I just say that?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up. “There’s no need to bite my head off.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged. “I thought I was here for a drink, not an interrogation. I’ve never seen you in here before.”
He reached for a cloth and began to haphazardly swipe at the bar. “This is only my second week. Do you come in here a lot?”
“Nah, not so much. Occasionally when I need a break from Newtownbeg.”
“I know the feeling. This place gets claustrophobic too.”
“You’re from here?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding.
She frowned. “I’ve never seen you before.”
He smiled apologetically. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but we might have socialised in different circles. I just finished my Leaving last year. Jeff.”
She laughed. “I’m Fiona. That explains it so. It’s a damn sight more than a year since I finished mine. Are you going to college?”
“Hoping to,” he said with a wistful smile. “I took a year out to save and do a bit of travel. I’m hoping to get into law. Missed it this year.”
“Ah,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. “That’s why you’re so interested in the Hanlon case.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t mean to be grim, like, but it’s the first time anything like that has happened so close to home.” He frowned. “Though, I’m surprised you say he’s not local.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well the way it’s laid out down there,” he said carefully. “You’d never think it was the way down to the canal. I mean, I used to skateboard with my friends near there but we only knew about it because a lad from Ballycashel told us about it. It looks like the entrance to the carpark of the Garda Station. I don’t know what it looked like before—maybe it’s a recent thing… Anyway, there’s no way a murderer is going to drag his victim down what looks like another entrance to a cop shop.”
Fiona nodded. “That’s true,” she said, wondering why it hadn’t struck her before. Maybe it would have if the identity of the perpetrator was still a mystery. “That Garda station has been there for as long as I can remember—you’d have to be local or someone who lived in town years ago to know about the layout. The lane doesn’t show up as a road in maps. I’m sure that’s one of the things they’ll be asking him when they question him.”
Jeff turned his head to one side. “What did he seem like?” he asked almost shyly. “Did he give you the heebie-jeebies when you saw him?”
She closed her eyes and thought back. Every part of her wanted to nod and say she had sensed something strange about him immediately, but the truth was he had just seemed like any other overly-impatient customer. “Not at all,” she said at last. “He definitely didn’t look like the picture I have in my head of a gangster. If anything, he…” she trailed off when she noticed his attention had been distracted. She looked behind her to see where he was focused.
And she couldn’t help but smile. In fact, it was all she could do to stop her jaw from hitting the floor.
“How’s it going, Jeff,” the man said in a voice that was pure Newtownbeg with a distinctive Australian twang.
Fiona swallowed. Her mother had said David Murray was a good-looking fella, but then her mother tended to say that about every friend’s son that she’d tried to set Fiona up with. Fiona had serious reservations about her mother’s taste, but now she knew she’d judged too harshly.
He was built like a Greek god, tanned and strong-looking with mussed-up brown hair and thick black-rimmed glasses. And he was well dressed. Fiona prayed that this wasn’t a cruel joke; that he wasn’t some other guy from Newtownbeg who also happened to have returned recently from Australia.
“Can’t complain, Dave,” the barman said with a shrug. “We were just talking about that business over in Ballycashel.”
“Fiona?” the Adonis said, tilting his head to one side as if trying to work out whether it was her. Fiona wouldn’t put it past her mother to have provided an unflattering photo of her to Mrs Murray.
“Yeah,” she smiled, holding out her hand. “David?”
“The very one.”
By the time they had both ordered drinks and moved to the snug in the corner, Fiona was daydreaming about how she could ask Jeff to watch her pub while she and David Murray honeymooned in Australia and Fiji.
“YEAH, IT’S REALLY COOL,” David said, taking a sip of his cocktail. “Getting to surf every morning before work is a dream for a lot of people, but my reality.”
Fiona smiled despite the heartbreak she was feeling inside. How could someone so spectacularly good-looking be so… dull? “Lucky alright,” she agreed, staring in dismay at her near-empty glass. There was no way she could have another drink and drive home, but this evening with David was making her want to march over to the bar and demand Jeff fill every available receptacle with something intoxicating.
“Well, you know,” he said with a patient smile. “We talk about luck, but I feel like that diminishes my achievements somewhat.”
“Is that so?” she asked, looking around for a distraction. Any distraction would do, she thought. Unfortunately, there were only a handful of other customers in the bar and they were all focused on the football match playing on the TV in the corner.
“I truly believe it is. I mean, I work hard and send so much good energy into the universe. Isn’t it only right that I get positive things out of it?”
“Sure,” Fiona said, enunciating exaggeratedly in order to mask a yawn. “Pity that doesn’t work for people in Africa or the poor parts of Asia.”
“Come again?”
He looked genuinely confused, she realised. Mrs Murray had always seemed like a nice lady whenever Fiona met her—how on earth had she raised a fella like this, with his head shoved so far up his you-know-what that he could no longer hear how ridiculous his own words sounded?
“Well, you say you got this great lifestyle and a high-paying job by sending out positive thoughts. It makes me wonder—all those people living below the poverty line must have sent out bad thoughts?”
He shrugged, still staring at her as if she was having some sort of meltdown. “I didn’t say that, no.”
“No,” she said through gritted teeth as she wondered if she should just cut her losses and do a runner. “But… ah here, forget it,” she said, waving her hand. “Here, do you think if I send positive thoughts into the universe I can have another g
lass of wine and miraculously not be over the alcohol limit?”
He puckered his lips in a way that brought to mind an unpleasant part of a cat’s anatomy. “I feel like you’re mocking me? I’d forgotten how negative Ireland is. People always trying to drag you down. All the naysayers—it’s disheartening.”
“I wasn’t mocking you,” Fiona sighed, pulling her phone from her bag and unlocking the screen under the table. “I was using your theory.”
“All the same,” he said. “It’s alarming the dependence this country has on alcohol. Look here—we’re meeting in a pub for God’s sake.” He waved his arms around as if to highlight the preposterousness of it.
Fiona paused. “It was your suggestion.”
“Of course,” he said, looking pained. “These terrible attitudes have been bred into me. Thankfully I’ve seen the light and cut out alcohol.”
“What’s that you’re drinking then?” She nodded at his glass as she tapped a message to Marty. “It looks like a cocktail.”
He smiled beatifically and shook his head. He reminded Fiona of one of those Head Boys from TV shows she used to watch as a child—infinitely superior in all possible ways, in his own mind at least. “It’s pomegranate nectar and coconut water. About as far from a cocktail as you might get.”
Fiona threw her phone back in her bag and nodded. “Sounds lovely.”
“Do you want to try?” he asked, holding it out to her.
She stared at the bright pink mixture. “Are you sure? I might get my alcoholic aura and negative vibes all over it. I’d never forgive myself.”
His face fell and she could tell he was searching for mockery. And then the uncomfortable silence was shattered by the non-descript musak of Fiona’s ringtone. She pulled her phone from her bag and frowned at the screen.
“It’s my business partner. I better get this.”
David nodded.
“Hello? Martin? Is everything alright? I told you I was unreachable for the evening.”
Marty cleared his throat. “Soz. We’re in the middle of an emergency. Someone tried to force Mam to give up her soda bread recipe. Of course she refused as any good Irish mammy would but we have a bit of a standoff.”
“Oh no, you’re not serious?” Fiona said, forcing a pained expression and closing her eyes in a vain attempt to stop herself from laughing.
“I’m afraid so,” Marty said. “And they’ve scheduled Dad in for surgical removal of his paper. So no doubt there’ll be trouble in that quarter too.”
“Ah,” she said regretfully. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“You’re okay to drive?”
“Yes, yes, of course, more’s the pity,” she said, casting an apologetic look at David. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Everything okay?” he asked, after she’d ended the call.
She shook her head and pursed her lips as if she was filled with the deepest regret. “I’m afraid not. There’s a burst pipe at the pub. I’ve got to get back there and start moving stock. Thanks a million for the drink.”
She jumped to her feet and hurried out, relief swelling inside her.
14
IT WAS STRANGE. Fiona got all the way back to Ballycashel and had parked in her usual spot. There was still no word from any of her family. Nor had any of them camped outside the door to her flat. She let herself in and hurried upstairs, expecting to find them all sprawled in her living room and ready to interrogate her about her date.
She had to admit, a small part of her was disappointed—for once, she had a good date story to tell. Well, a good bad date story at any rate. She had decided on the drive back that that was it—enough was enough. She wasn’t going to allow her mother to set her up again.
Not that she ever planned it that way, of course. Mrs McCabe had a way of twisting her arm that meant she usually went from resistance to compliance over the course of a meal. And then all her mother needed to do was keep on hammering away.
“No more,” Fiona muttered as she collapsed on the couch and flicked on the TV.
She considered calling her mother there and then and asking what on earth she’d been doing setting Fiona up with a narcissistic hippy, but she decided against it. She was exhausted. It was time for some guilty TV watching.
The first channel that came up was showing the nine o’clock news. Fiona reached for the remote. She was in the mood for bubble-gum TV—something vacuous like reality TV or a soap that didn’t make her think too much. Before she could hit the button, though, she saw something that made her gasp in surprise.
It was Dec’s killer, face plastered all over the screen.
Fiona lurched forward, staring at him. The picture looked like a still shot taken from high-quality video footage. He looked more aggressive and hostile than she remembered him. A shiver ran down her spine followed by a sense of immense relief that they’d caught him.
The murderer’s picture disappeared and the shot returned to a TV presenter in the newsroom. Fiona had forgotten all about mindless reality TV now. She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
“Wanted in connection with a murder in the small town of Ballycashel. A witness provided Gardaí with a photofit image of the suspect, who was traced to an address in south county Dublin. A Garda spokesperson confirmed that a man was arrested yesterday afternoon in relation to the offence.”
“We’ve received reports just now that award-winning investigative journalist Simon Moriarty was the man arrested. He called our producers a short time ago after his release from Garda custody. Join us after the break, when we bring you an exclusive update on what seems to be a most unusual case of mistaken identity.”
Fiona stared at the screen in horror as the reporter’s words sank in. Mistaken identity? Her phone buzzed in her bag where she’d left it on the table. She didn’t even have to see the screen to know who it was.
“You’re watching the news, I take it,” she said, after hitting the green dot onscreen.
“We are of course,” her mother said. “We thought they were just announcing his arrest. What on earth is this about mistaken identity?”
“I have no idea. I just got home. I flipped on the telly and there was his face—the murderer’s.”
“What?” Mrs McCabe’s voice grew muffled as she evidently turned away from the phone receiver to confer with her husband. “No, you must’ve seen something else. Your father heard the same thing as me—the murderer’s at large.”
“But I saw him,” Fiona said, pointing futilely at the screen. “It showed a video still of him.”
“Are you watching RTE1?”
Fiona had to check the little icon in the corner of the screen. She didn’t often watch TV, preferring movie subscription services. “It is, yeah. I just switched it on before the ad break. It was him, Mam. A still from a video. He was in front of some big building or other.”
“Fiona, love,” her mother said, sounding concerned. “How many drinks did you have? That’s no murderer. That’s Simon Moriarty.”
“But that’s the guy who—”
“Shhhhh,” Mrs McCabe hissed. “It’s back on.”
Fiona couldn’t get a word out. She watched in confusion as the man from the bar walked out into the studio and took a seat at the table with the two presenters.
“That’s him,” she whispered faintly.
But her mother must have put down the phone because there was no answer.
“Good evening, Mr Moriarty.”
“Alan,” the murderer said. Fiona wondered why they’d brought him on the telly. Had they really believed him when he said he was a journalist? Had they not thought to check his credentials? It seemed extremely lax of them.
“Thanks for joining us tonight. I know you’ve just been through an awful debacle.”
“That’s right,” Murder Man said grimly. “I wanted to share with your viewers so they know what the so-called peace officers in our country are capable of.”
The presenter, Alan, nodded. “
As many of you will know, Simon Moriarty is a reporter for the Sunday Saturn. He works undercover mainly, and has authored several books, mainly on the subject of crime. Can you tell us what happened to you a few days ago?”
The man nodded. Fiona found she was barely even breathing, she was so confused about the situation. She lifted the phone to her ear and listened—dialling tone. Her mother must have hung up.
“I heard a noise outside my home, and when I went out to investigate, I was met by armed Gardaí, who insisted on taking me with them. I have just spent the past several hours in an interview room, where I’ve had to justify my presence in a small village in Ireland on the night of a murder.”
Alan, who had been nodding along with the story, grew serious. “That seems reasonable, I have to say. Don’t they want to talk to everyone who was nearby and might have seen something?”
“Of course, Alan. That’s exactly what they set out to do in cases like this. But this was no civil chat. They sent an armed unit to my house and the conversation flowed very much as if they believed I was the one behind the murder. So much for the presumption of innocence!”
Fiona’s cheeks felt hot and fevered. She hit her mother’s number and held her phone to her ear, cursing when she heard the engaged tone.
“And what were you doing in Ballycashel that night, Alan?”
The man smiled for the first time. “I was speaking to a source in relation to a story I’m working on.”
“Is this of any relevance to the Garda investigation?”
“It might well be,” Moriarty said, nodding sagely. “And I’ll be happy to help them out when I receive an apology for their brutal, discriminatory treatment of me over the past twenty-four hours.”
Fiona’s phone rang as soon as the news segment ended and the sports presenter appeared on the screen.
“What’s going on?” her mother wailed. “You never told me you have Simon Moriarty in the pub.”
Apple Seeds and Murderous Deeds: An Irish Mystery Page 8