The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six

by Valerie Keogh

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘There was something else Owen wanted to tell me. He and Aidan, they’re getting married.’ That’s why Aidan had been on their doorstep. He’d wanted to come around to deliver the invitation in person and to beg forgiveness for his jealousy.

  She smiled at West. ‘They want us to come to the wedding.’

  14

  Next morning, West negotiated the roads to Connolly Memorial Hospital for the 8am post-mortem, amused at his quick change of heart after hearing Edel’s news. He had been worried how they’d manage when their life became mundane and conventional. He should have guessed: it never would.

  It was a little before eight when he turned into the hospital car park. He put Edel firmly to the back of his mind, paid the extortionate car-parking charge and hurried to the far side of the extensive hospital grounds where the morgue was situated in a low-lying building that so far had managed to escape the renovation that had gone on all around it.

  Five minutes later, on the dot of eight, he was sitting in the viewing area of the post-mortem room. It was the first of the day, and on time as a result.

  West had no sooner sat than Dr Niall Kennedy pushed through the double doors, easily recognisable despite the mask and eye shield. For a small man, he had a powerful presence. He looked up to the viewing area and lifted a hand in greeting. ‘Morning,’ he said, his voice coming loud and clear through the speaker beside West’s head. Too loud and clear. West shuffled up a few seats.

  There was no hanging about: Kennedy started work as soon as the body was wheeled in and positioned on the table.

  Twenty minutes later, West was drumming his finger on the arm of the chair. So far, he’d not learned anything that was going to help their investigation. The victim, whoever he was, had been in the best of health. Didn’t smoke. There were no needle marks to suggest he had a serious drug habit. He wasn’t overweight, not malnourished.

  ‘He should still be alive,’ Kennedy said.

  Since at this stage, the pathologist was in the middle of removing the victim’s lungs, West had to bite back the retort that it was as well he wasn’t. He took a breath and let it out slowly. Something killed the man: he needed to know what.

  The lungs were weighed and put to one side. West leaned forward as Kennedy examined the puncture wound, using tweezers to remove something.

  After a few minutes examining the wound, he straightened. ‘The wound is approximately 100 millimetres deep, the original puncture to the skin approximately three millimetres in width. I’ve found microscopic particles of red cellulose acetate on the skin.’ He looked up to where West sat. ‘I can’t be one hundred per cent certain but I’d be fairly sure we’re looking at a screwdriver. It was rammed in, to the end of the shaft, the handle leaving that microscopic residue on the skin.’

  A screwdriver. ‘The residue: could it be matched to a specific screwdriver?’ He’d take anything at this stage.

  Kennedy shook his head. ‘You know how I hate to disappoint but it’s likely to be a common or garden type, I’m afraid. Most handles of that kind of tool are made from the same cellulose acetate. However–’ he shrugged ‘–if you find a likely screwdriver, there might be microscopic particles of blood to be found where the shaft fits into the handle.’

  West groaned. A screwdriver. Probably one of the most common tools there was. Even he had one, and he wasn’t into DIY.

  ‘The puncture wound didn’t kill him though,’ Kennedy was saying. ‘He was dead before this insult was offered.’

  ‘So, what did kill him?’ West couldn’t hide the frustration in his voice.

  ‘I’ve sent off blood, skin and hair samples to toxicology, plus fragments of cotton from the skin around his mouth.’

  ‘From around his mouth? A gag or something?’

  ‘Not something used to keep him quiet, no, that’s not what I meant.’ Kennedy rested his gloved hands on the table as he explained. ‘Sergeant Maddison informed me they found a substance on the mesh that separates the priest’s and penitent’s confessional.’

  ‘Toxicology will show up whatever it is, won’t they?’

  ‘Yes, it should do. There are a couple of things that might have been used,’ Kennedy said. ‘I’d guess gamma-Butyrolactone, or GBL. At high doses, it causes rapid death. It’s a colourless fluid, widely used as an industrial solvent. Unfortunately, it’s hydrolysed to gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid and will be completely gone from the body after two or three hours.’

  ‘That’s GHB, isn’t it,’ West asked. The classic date-rape drug. ‘It won’t show up in a tox screen.’

  ‘That’s correct, it’s undetectable after two, three hours max. But generally, it’s used to subdue and manipulate, not kill. If I had to give an opinion based on what we know so far, I’d say the GBL was mixed with something and sprayed into our victim’s face in sufficient quantities to render him unconscious within a few seconds. From the fibres around his mouth, it looks as though the perpetrator then applied a pad soaked in the drug over his mouth and nose ensuring inspiration of a high enough concentration to be lethal. Death would have been almost instantaneous.’

  West frowned in thought. ‘The perpetrator would have needed to take precautions.’

  Kennedy looked up at him, head tilted in thought. ‘A good mask and a quick retreat from the vicinity would have been sufficient. But I would have expected a tall man like this to have made rather a clatter when he fell.’

  ‘The penitent’s box is small. If he were there intending to make a confession, he’d have been on his knees, there wouldn’t have been much space to fall anywhere.’ But West would have to check with the church, see if the sacristan heard anything, check if there were any other people in the church after mass was over. Churches were quiet places, someone must have heard something. He’d keep pulling at all the strings in the hope that one of them would untangle the case.

  With a wave and a muttered thank you to Kennedy, West took his leave. An hour later he was turning into the car park in front of Foxrock station.

  15

  Detective Garda Seamus Baxter had arranged to pick up Detective Garda Mark Edwards first thing that morning and go directly to the garage where their victim had worked both before and after his arrest for rape.

  Baxter had recently moved to Gorey with his girlfriend, Tanya, and was still adjusting to the longer drive in the morning. One of those people who hated to be late, he tended to arrive too early as a result and pulled up outside Edwards’ Clonskeagh home fifteen minutes before the agreed eight o’clock pickup. Switching off the engine, he climbed out. It never crossed his mind he wouldn’t be welcome at such an early time and he pressed the doorbell whistling off-tune.

  The plump, pretty woman who opened the door didn’t seem surprised to see him. ‘Morning, Seamus,’ she said, standing back to allow him in.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Edwards. Sorry, I’m a bit early.’

  ‘You always are,’ she said, her voice resigned rather than annoyed. ‘When Mark said who was picking him up, I guessed you’d be here way before you said, so I have coffee made if you fancy a cup.’

  Baxter, who had left home without breakfast, accepted happily and was munching a slice of toast and drinking coffee when Edwards came through to the kitchen ten minutes later.

  ‘Is that my toast you’re eating,’ he said by way of greeting to Baxter.

  ‘There’s plenty made,’ his mother said, pouring him coffee. ‘Sit and have your breakfast.’

  Edwards finished knotting his tie and sat. ‘You know where this garage is?’ He slathered butter onto the hot toast, took a bite and wiped melted butter from his chin with his hand.

  ‘I used to live in Raheny,’ Baxter said, putting his empty mug down and standing, impatient to be on the way. ‘I know the northside pretty well. We’d best be off: the traffic will be a nightmare.’

  With a couple of gulps, Edwards finished the last of his coffee. ‘Okay, let’s go then,’ he said, turning to
give his mother a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thanks, Mum, someday the Garda Síochána will pay you for feeding their waifs and strays.’

  ‘Ha, I wouldn’t hold your breath, Mrs Edwards,’ Baxter said, kissing her other cheek. ‘Thanks, it was what I needed. Mark here doesn’t realise how lucky he is.’

  ‘Lucky!’ Edwards said, climbing into the passenger seat and fastening his seat belt. ‘I need to move out before they drive me nuts.’

  Baxter indicated and pulled into the line of traffic. ‘Why don’t you rent somewhere?’

  ‘Have you seen the rents they’re charging for even the pokiest flats?’

  Baxter had been lucky. He’d used a small inheritance to buy his apartment in Rathmines at a time when they were relatively cheap and had sold it several years later for a good price. He and Tanya had discussed the option of getting a big mortgage and buying close to the city or moving further out and having money to spare. They were still trying to decide when Tanya saw a vacancy advertised for a ward nurse in the hospital in Loughlinstown. When she got it, it made their choice easier, looking first in Arklow, then finding the perfect house a bit further in the booming town of Gorey. Less than an hour’s drive for her and slightly more for him.

  ‘A guard’s salary doesn’t get you far in Dublin,’ Edwards complained.

  Baxter raised an eyebrow but said nothing. There was no point at all in stating the blinding obvious that if Edwards spent less on holidays, it would be easier to save for a deposit.

  ‘This is an odd case,’ Baxter said, deciding it was better to focus on their investigation rather than the state of Dublin’s inflated housing and rental market. ‘It would be nice if we could get some concrete information.’

  The conversation stayed, to Baxter’s relief, on the case for the rest of the stop-and-start journey through Dublin’s crazy rush-hour traffic.

  It was after nine before they pulled up in the visitor’s car park of Tedford Motors, a large, sprawling, new and second-hand car dealership.

  ‘That’s not a bad price for a service,’ Edwards said, nodding towards a large sign.

  ‘You get what you pay for,’ Baxter said. ‘Looks dodgy low to me.’

  The two men approached the service office just as an overweight man wearing a T-shirt stretched over a grossly rotund belly pulled the door open and came out, ignoring them as he passed.

  Inside the office, a middle-aged woman with a head of spiky purple hair stood behind a waist-high counter. She was flicking the pages of a diary backwards and forwards, a frown between her eyes and didn’t look up as Baxter and Edwards stepped up to the counter.

  Baxter slid his identification across the top, the blue and gold of the Garda Síochána emblem catching the light.

  She looked up then, her eyes sharp. ‘As if my day wasn’t bad enough.’ A long sigh. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’d like to see Ronan Tedford, please.’

  ‘You did,’ she said with a jerk of her head to the exit. ‘That was him. His office is at the back. Off you go.’ Dismissing them, she started flicking through the pages of the diary again, looking up impatiently when they didn’t move away.

  ‘We’re here about Ian Moore,’ Baxter said.

  ‘We heard,’ the woman said.

  ‘From who?’ Edwards asked. Since they hadn’t been able to find a next of kin, his name hadn’t been released to the press.

  ‘His landlord, some snooty-voiced woman called Laura something or other. She wanted to know if we knew a next of kin to clear his stuff out.’

  ‘And do you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But you did know Ian Moore?’ He’d worked in the garage for over eight years; Baxter would have expected to see some sadness at his passing, but if the purple-haired woman were grieving, it wasn’t obvious.

  She shrugged a beefy shoulder. ‘As much as I know any of the mechanics. I keep myself to myself. They come in when they need to. Otherwise they keep to themselves and don’t bother me.’

  ‘A friendly place,’ Edwards commented as they left and followed her directions to the office building at the back. They couldn’t miss it. A flat-roofed, ugly building, with two small windows and a brown metal door with the word PRIVATE painted large across it in white paint. Baxter’s knock rattled the door but did little else. With a sigh of frustration, Edwards hammered on it with his fist, the sound echoing around the area and resulting in the unlocking and opening of the door.

  ‘What the f–’ the rotund man they’d passed earlier started to say, biting the end off the last word, his eyes narrowing. ‘Guards?’ At their nod, he stood back and let them in.

  Inside, in contrast to the shabby exterior, the office was remarkably comfortable. A large wooden desk almost filled one corner. Behind it, the office chair Tedford had been occupying, was swinging softly. He collapsed back onto it, waving a hand to the two chairs on the far side. ‘Sit. I assume this has to do with Ian Moore.’ He reached a hand up and rubbed the back of his head roughly, the movement stretching the T-shirt over his extended abdomen.

  Unlike the purple-haired woman, the garage owner did seem affected by Moore’s death. He took a surprisingly white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped it over his face, rubbing his eyes and blowing his nose before looking across the desk to the two men. ‘Terrible, terrible,’ he said, putting the handkerchief away. ‘When his landlord rang to tell us, I was stunned, stunned.’ He fished out the handkerchief again and rubbed it over his eyes. ‘Whatever I can do to help.’

  ‘Can you tell us about him?’ Baxter asked, taking out his notebook.

  ‘Where do I start? He was a good lad, hard-working, a good timekeeper, conscientious, friendly. Customers liked him. The other mechanics liked him.’

  ‘The lady in reception didn’t seem particularly keen,’ Edwards said.

  ‘Shirley hates everyone,’ Tedford said dismissively. ‘Ian Moore was one of the best mechanics we’ve had.’

  He was making Moore out to be a saint. Baxter tapped his notebook. ‘You know about his prison sentence?’

  Tedford’s expression changed, his mouth twisting in a grimace as if he’d eaten something rancid. ‘A miscarriage of justice, that was.’

  ‘He was tried and convicted of rape.’

  ‘It was nonsense. Nonsense, I’m telling you.’ Tedford rocked back and forth in his chair. ‘Listen, I saw that Summers one, flaunting herself.’

  Expecting to hear a misogynistic she got what she deserved, Baxter was taken aback when Tedford’s eyes welled. ‘Ian was besotted with her, she’d stroll by twice almost every day, slowing down as she passed the garage, wiggling her ass for effect. I saw her do it myself.’ He pushed the chair along the desk until it was in front of the computer screen and turned it towards the Gardaí. ‘There are CCTVs outside.’ He clicked a few keys on the keyboard and the screen suddenly showed four windows simultaneously.

  ‘The top left is the street outside to the left of the forecourt and the one on the top right is the street to the right. I noticed her almost from the beginning, three months before her alleged rape. She’d be walking briskly, then slow down as she passed by the forecourt, tossing her hair, wiggling her backside, staring into the garage trying to catch the lads’ attention.’

  ‘Moore in particular?’ Edwards asked.

  ‘Not at first, but one day he was out talking to a customer who left as she was walking by, and he said hello to her. That was it. They chatted for a bit, then she left. Over the next few weeks, I noticed he’d make any excuse to be outside at the time she walked by. The other mechanics started to tease him about it. I heard them telling him to ask her out, but he never did. He was a shy lad, you know, not like the others always spouting off about their latest bird. In fact, I never, in all the years he’d worked here, heard him talk about a girlfriend.’

  ‘But he did ask her out eventually,’ Baxter said.

  Tedford shook his head, the chair squeaking loudly with each movement. ‘I think she did t
he asking, about a month after he first said hello to her. I was in the garage that Saturday afternoon, I heard the lads teasing him. He looked slightly stunned to be honest, as if all his Christmases had come together. Then on the Monday we heard he’d been arrested.’

  ‘It must have come as a shock to hear he’d been arrested for rape.’

  ‘I didn’t believe it then, I don’t believe it now. She said they’d been drinking and he wouldn’t stop when she asked him to.’ He leaned over the desk as far as his distended abdomen allowed and looked from Baxter to Edwards. ‘In all the years he worked here, the only complaint the other mechanics made about Ian was that he wouldn’t have a drink. Ever.’ He sat back. ‘So, answer me this, why would he suddenly start when he was out with a bird he’d been dreaming of for weeks?’

  ‘Maybe he needed some Dutch courage,’ Baxter said.

  ‘He insisted he was drinking soft drinks all night, but she said he was drunk and pushing drinks on her. The jury believed her.’ Tedford shook his head. ‘She’s a little bit of a thing, maybe only four ten and slight with it, has one of those irritating little girl voices and she speaks in a breathy whisper. Ian is… was… six feet tall and brawny. I could see why the jury was swayed by her.’ A long sigh hissed between his teeth. ‘Hell, I almost believed her myself.’

  ‘But only almost,’ Baxter murmured. ‘You allowed him to keep his job.’

  The answer was an abrupt, ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’d been with you over eight years so he’d have been what? Eighteen when he started?’

  ‘About that. He’d finished school and wanted to work in a garage. Came around every day for weeks, hanging around the garage, lending a hand when he was let. Eventually, I caved in and offered him a couple of hours work. It didn’t take me long to see that the lad had a natural inclination so I encouraged him to take it seriously and offered him an apprenticeship here. He took to it like a duck to water and got his National Craft Certificate in four years without any problem. I thought he might leave us then, you know, get a bit more experience elsewhere, but he stayed and I was glad to keep him. He was a good lad.’ The regret in his voice was genuine.