Two hours later, he entered the last piece of data before saving and closing the programme. Then with perfect timing, the phone rang. To his surprise, it was the Nigerian.
‘I have some news for you,’ he said without any preliminaries. ‘Utibe Omotoso has a cousin who lives in Dublin, in a place called Rathmines. Would you like the address?’
A bit of luck at last. ‘That would be good,’ West said, trying not to indicate just how helpful this piece of information was.
‘It is number twenty-five, Saddler’s Court, and the cousin’s name is Dayo Lawal. He has lived there for a number of years and is married to an Irish woman. I have no name for her.’
‘That’s great,’ West said, writing the name and address down. ‘Thank you for your assistance. I will be sure to inform you how the case is resolved.’ Hanging up, he quickly used Google maps to check the address. ‘Just off the Lower Rathmines Road.’ He stood and headed out to the main office.
Allen, he noticed, was still working on the list of B & Bs. ‘I think you can call a halt to that,’ West said with a rueful smile. ‘It turns out Omotoso has a cousin living in Rathmines. I’m hoping we’ll find him staying there.’
Andrews, who had been busy refilling the coffee pot, heard the end of what he’d said. ‘You’ve found him?’
West explained that his Nigerian contact had come through. ‘With a bit of luck, he is either staying there, or they know where he is.’ He looked around the room. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked.
‘Baxter and Edwards were called to an assault, and Jarvis is helping Foley with a robbery since Clark is taking personal time,’ Allen said.
‘Again,’ West growled at him. ‘Who told Jarvis to assist?’
Allen’s mouth hung slightly open.
‘I did,’ Andrews said quickly, ‘you were buried in your audit; I didn’t want to disturb you.’
West knew he was lying but shook his head. There was no point in complaining, he’d have agreed if he’d been asked. Sometimes he wondered if he weren’t just a little too easy-going. Pushing the idea away, he looked at Allen. ‘Well, you may as well come with us,’ he said, ‘we may need someone young and fit if this Omotoso tries to do a runner.’
Allen laughed at Andrews’ look of outrage and the three made their way to West’s car, Andrews muttering under his breath about easily being able to run a marathon if necessary. West inputted the address into the car’s satnav and thirty minutes later they turned onto Ardee Road.
The road was a mix of older semi-detached and newer town houses. Halfway down they found Saddler’s Court. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a gated cul-de-sac. They couldn’t drive up, but West was relieved to see an open pedestrian gate.
‘We’ll park where we can, and walk to it,’ he said, looking ahead to find a space.
‘It’s resident’s permit parking only,’ Andrews told him, pointing to a prominent sign with a knowing grin. ‘We could go and park in the Swan Centre, if you like.’
West had no intention of parking in the nearby shopping centre. He was just about to say so when Allen stretched forward from the back seat. ‘Not up there,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘That’s a pay-and-display sign.’
West drove on and found a space. He paid the parking fee, guessing an hour would be more than enough, and stuck the ticket on the windscreen.
The town houses that comprised Saddler’s Court were large and modern. Very nice, West thought, looking around before spying directional signs pointing them to number twenty-five, toward the back of the development. They walked and stopped outside the house.
Hanging baskets rocked gently in the breeze on either side of the uPVC door. They squeaked with every sway, providing background music as the three detectives stood with narrowed eyes assessing entrance and egress; a quick risk assessment none were aware of doing.
West took the lead up to the front door, the other two keeping a few steps back, their eyes constantly moving, their stance on high alert.
He pressed the doorbell once and waited. The swaying baskets caught his eye. They’d probably been a riot of colour in the summer, now they bore straggly ends of dead plants. A passing thought that winter pansies would look good in them was swept away as he heard the distinct sound of approaching footsteps.
The door was opened without hesitation, a pleasant-faced woman holding it open with one hand, as she held fast to the arm of a mischievous-looking child of indeterminate sex with the other. ‘Yes?’ she said.
West held up his identification card. ‘My name is Detective Garda Sergeant West,’ he said, watching as her pleasant open face quickly shut down. He indicated the two men behind him. ‘Garda Andrews and Garda Allen.’
‘What do you want?’ Not precisely rude, definitely not welcoming. She bent and scooped the toddler up.
‘May we come inside, please, Mrs… Lawel, is it?’
She nodded to the name, stood her ground for a moment as if to make a point and, with a grunt of dissatisfaction, stood back to allow them in. The hallway was too small to accommodate three tall men comfortably, so she reluctantly indicated an open doorway. ‘Go on in,’ she said, following them into the sunny kitchen-diner that stretched across the back of the house.
The toddler, released from her arms, immediately scampered toward the men, grabbing hold of one leg after the next, beaming up at them, unafraid.
‘He’s a cute lad,’ Allen said, watching as a sticky hand left an imprint on his trouser leg.
‘Her name is Halima,’ the woman said, taking the child by the hand and walking her over to a small sofa in front of a television. She switched it on and put on a DVD. ‘She’ll be happy for a while,’ she said. ‘Now, what is it you want?’
She didn’t waste her time on polite chit-chat. That made their job easier. ‘We’re looking for Utibe Omotoso,’ West said, ‘we’ve been told he is a cousin of your husband.’
‘A very distant cousin, as it happens,’ she said grudgingly, ‘and what of it? Utibe is here legally on a tourist visa.’
‘We’d like to speak to him,’ he said without elaborating.
‘Why?’
West smiled. She didn’t look to be a stupid woman. She’d know that if three detectives arrived looking for Omotoso, there was likely to be a good reason.
‘For goodness sake,’ she said, when the silence stretched out. ‘Utibe has been through enough. He’s lost the daughter he adored. All he wants to do is find out who killed her. That’s not a crime surely?’ The look on West’s face made her catch her breath and reach out to the back of a chair for support. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘what’s happened?’
‘May we sit down,’ West said.
All the fight seemed to have left the woman. She nodded and sat in the chair she’d been holding, body slumped, eyes looking down at clasped hands.
West wished that breaking bad news got easier with time. ‘We believe that someone contacted Omotoso and told him that Abasiama’s body had been found. The man we think was responsible for her death was found dead a few days ago.’ She didn’t move. ‘Two days after Omotoso arrived in Ireland, Mrs Lawel.’
She ran a hand over her face and sat up. ‘Dayo didn’t have much to do with his relatives in Nigeria. He knew Utibe by name, that was all, so he was surprised to hear from him.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t remember exactly when, maybe a couple of weeks ago. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘he asked if he could stay for a day or two. Dayo asked me and I agreed. Our child is half-Nigerian, I thought it was important to keep up connections.
‘When he arrived, it was obvious there was something wrong. He was gaunt, his eyes red, and he barely spoke until Halima came running in.’ She looked across the room to where her daughter was watching a children’s movie, a smile on her face, her eyes glued to the screen. ‘He cried when he saw her, frightened her actually, it took a while to calm her down. When she was asleep, he told us about Abasiama’s death. He sobbed as he told us what a perfect, beautiful child she was and how much he’d lo
ved her. He’d have done anything to make her happy, he said, but one day she vanished.’
‘Why didn’t he contact the child’s mother?’ West asked. ‘He must have known that she was trying to get custody of Abasiama, and that it was likely she’d taken her.’
‘He tried,’ she said, ‘he rang her number, only to find it had been disconnected. He sent letters that came back unopened, and when he rang her old job in Nigeria, he was told she’d left. They wouldn’t give him her new address, or even a contact number. In France, he did what he could.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s not a rich man; there was only so much he could do. After a while, he said he’d started to accept he’d never see his daughter again. Then he had a call from someone here in Ireland to tell him that both Lesere and Abasiama were dead.’
Her eyes were tear-filled when she looked around. ‘I don’t know if you have children, but I know how I’d feel if someone took Halima, and then to find out she was dead. I don’t think life would be worth living.’
There was no arguing with this point. Those of the three who were childless looked across at the giggling child on the sofa, and Andrews thought of his son, Petey. But they still had a job to do.
‘Where can we find him?’ West asked her.
She sighed. ‘He had a phone call earlier this morning and said he had to go out.’
West bit back the groan of frustration. So damn close. ‘Did he say who he was speaking to?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but it was someone local.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard him say he’d be there in about twenty minutes.’
West frowned. ‘Did he know many people here?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t stay here every night so he must know some.’
Andrews leaned forward. ‘The night of the twenty-first of November, did he stay here then?’
Mrs Lawel stood and walked to a wall calendar pinned on the back of the kitchen door. ‘He was very considerate, he told me the nights he would be away so that I wouldn’t have to cook for him. I’ve marked them on here,’ she said with a smile before looking at it. She turned back to them. ‘No, that was one of the nights he was staying elsewhere.’
The three men exchanged glances. The night in question was the night of Fearon’s murder. At least now, when they found him, he couldn’t claim the Lawels as his alibi.
There was nothing else to be learned from her. West stood and handed her his card. ‘When he returns, tell him to contact me, Mrs Lawel.’
She took it but said nothing.
Outside, they stood for a moment.
‘What now?’ Allen said impatiently.
‘Let’s go back to the station,’ West said. They fell into step, but nothing was said until they were in the car. He started the engine, but instead of moving off, he sat staring out the window.
Andrews looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Just thinking of what she said. How much Omotoso had loved his daughter, his devastation at her disappearance. He probably felt justified in taking the life of the man responsible.’
‘Probably,’ Andrews agreed.
West turned to him. ‘But Fearon wasn’t the only man responsible, was he?’ He took his mobile from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Andrews. ‘Ring Careless, his number is there under C.’ Starting the engine, he did a U-turn on the narrow street.
38
‘There’s no answer,’ Andrews said, the phone pressed to his ear. ‘You think he might be in danger?’
‘If it hadn’t been for Lesere and Careless’s attempts to get custody of the girl, she’d still be alive. Lesere is already dead, that leaves the solicitor. You could argue he’s as much to blame for Abasiama’s death as Ollie Fearon.’
They pulled up outside Careless’s apartment fifteen minutes later and got out. West pushed the doorbell, pushing it again when there was no answer. After a few seconds, he pressed every doorbell and finally got an irate answer through the intercom.
‘It’s the gardaí,’ he said without preamble, holding his identification up to the camera, ‘can you let us in please?’
The door buzzed almost immediately and the three men sped up the stairs. On the landing they stopped, eyes drawn to the open door of Careless’s apartment. West nodded at the other two and they drew their weapons.
West pushed the door fully open and waited. ‘Armed gardaí,’ West shouted loud and clear. And then again, ‘Armed gardaí.’
When there was no sound, he moved in, SIG held in both hands pointing toward the floor. He moved to one side as Andrews moved to the other, Allen following close behind. They stayed there for a moment, their backs to the wall as they surveyed the open-plan apartment. Only Careless was there, slouched on the sofa, and he wasn’t moving.
From where they stood, they could see where arterial spray had peppered a wide area around him. West, with Andrews covering him, darted across the room. It was useless. Careless’s upper torso was sodden with blood, his eyes wide and staring. West carefully felt for a jugular pulse. There was none.
They searched the rest of the apartment, room by room, checking any possible hiding place, covering one another, grunting as each door opened.
‘We just missed him,’ Andrews said, when they’d cleared the last room.
Back in the living room, they holstered their weapons. West looked down at Careless with a sudden feeling of helplessness. With a shake of his head, he turned to Allen. ‘Phone for an ambulance, and get a…’
A groan made him stop and turn around, his hand grasping the holstered SIG. It wasn’t until the sound came again that they pinpointed the direction. It was coming from the balcony, the door to it hidden behind full-length curtains.
Pushing them back, they saw the man they were looking for propped against the balcony wall, his face ashen. He held a knife in one hand, the blade pressed to his wrist, blood dripping from the wound to the balcony floor.
His SIG drawn, West slid back the door. ‘Utibe Omotoso,’ he said, stepping outside. It was bitterly cold, but the sky was blue and winter sun shone through the trees in the park. Looking down on him, seeing the shallow breathing and the waxy sheen of his skin, he knew the man had chosen this place to die.
Squatting down, he said, ‘You are Utibe Omotoso?’
The man nodded.
‘Tell me what happened,’ West asked. Holstering his SIG, he shuffled closer and saw that the blood was oozing, not spurting from the self-inflicted wound. There was still hope.
Turning, he shouted through the open door behind him. ‘Get an ambulance.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Omotoso said.
West looked back to him. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said again.
It seemed for a second that he would ignore him, but then, in a barely audible voice he said, ‘Lesere was never interested in Abasiama. It was I who rose during the night to feed her, who changed her when she was wet, washed her when she was dirty. My friends laughed at me; told me I was turning into a woman. I told them they didn’t understand. She was the light in my life. That’s why I wanted to move to Cape Town. There she had a better chance. But Lesere wouldn’t move, her career was too important, so I went without her.’
‘But she wanted Abasiama back?’
Omotoso smiled. ‘Lesere was beautiful, but she only cared for herself and what people thought of her. She’d no real interest in Abasiama; the role of the grief-stricken mother, however, was one she enjoyed playing. It would have gained her a lot of sympathy and attention.’
In the distance, the sound of a siren grew louder.
‘Careless contacted you?’
‘He told me Abasiama had been found, tossed away like garbage and he told me about Lesere.’ He lifted the knife for a moment and looked at it as if wondering why he was holding it before looking back at West. ‘I don’t know why she killed herself,’ he said, ‘but I doubt it was because of Abasiama.’
The siren grew louder, it would soon
be outside.
‘Did you kill Oliver Fearon?’ West asked.
The Nigerian looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cleared. ‘The man who carried my daughter over in the suitcase, yes, I killed him.’ He held the knife up. ‘I had a very sharp knife; it went in easily. This one,’ he waved it gently, ‘is not so good.’
‘And Enda Careless,’ West asked, hearing the ambulance siren switch off as it arrived outside the apartment block.
‘It was his money that allowed that man to take my daughter. But for him, we would still be in France. Abasiama would still be alive.’ With a quick movement, he brought the knife back to his wrist, pressed down hard and drew it across. The blood spurt was immediate and dramatic. ‘Stay back,’ he said, as he saw West move. ‘You would do me no favours if you succeeded in saving me, and justice is better served in letting me die.’
West drew a ragged breath before sitting back on his heels and watching as the spurt quickly reduced to a bubble. Omotoso gave him a faint smile and his lips moved. From where he crouched, West could hear Abasiama, whispered like a prayer.
Raised voices in the apartment alerted him to the arrival of the ambulance crew. He threw a last assessing glance over the man. There was no sign of life. Paramedics pushed him aside with no ceremony, their attention on saving the man, his story unknown to them. Within seconds, as West watched from the doorway, monitors were attached, his wrist bound, and intravenous fluids pumped in to save a man who didn’t want saving.
He turned away from the indignity of the scene and stepped back into the apartment. Andrews, seeing his pale face, caught his upper arm in a tight, reassuring and brief grip. ‘A garda tech team and the pathologist are on their way,’ he said, releasing him and nodding toward the balcony. ‘We’re giving them a two for one offer, are we?’
West shook his head at the man’s grim sense of humour. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. He turned to watch the crew through the glass door. ‘I hope so,’ he murmured, as Andrews moved away to join Allen who was standing over Careless’s body, examining it dispassionately.
The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six Page 23