The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six

by Valerie Keogh

  Tanya, a petite brunette with slightly protuberant brown eyes, smiled. ‘That’s very kind, thank you.’ She pointed up the stairway behind. ‘You can drop your coats up on the bed in the spare room while I get you a drink. What would you like?’

  ‘White wine would be lovely,’ Edel said, taking off her coat.

  West asked for a beer and followed Tanya through to the kitchen while Edel vanished upstairs. He knew quite a few of the people crowded into the house; Allen and Edwards were deep in conversation on the far side of the room, Andrews and his wife, Joyce, speaking to an older woman he guessed to be Tanya’s mother. ‘It’s a good crowd,’ he commented, taking the glass of beer Tanya held out.

  She smiled. ‘Seamus invited everyone under the sun, and everyone came.’

  The doorbell rang, the noise barely audible over the sound of voices and laughter. West sipped his beer and waited for Edel to return. ‘Here you go,’ he said, handing her the glass of wine. ‘Let’s squeeze through and speak to Peter and Joyce.’

  ‘This is Tanya’s mother,’ Andrews said when they joined him.

  West smiled and shook the older woman’s hand. ‘I guessed,’ he said, ‘she’s very like you.’

  They stayed chatting for a while, joined by others from Foxrock station until, as was often the way it went, the crowd divided into work friends, school friends, and old family friends.

  West smiled as Edel and Joyce got their heads together. ‘I bet I know what they’re saying,’ he said to Andrews.

  ‘That we always end up talking shop,’ Andrews said. ‘They know us too well.’

  A shout of laughter came from the far side of the room followed by Baxter’s loud, slightly inebriated voice.

  ‘I hope he’ll sober up by Monday,’ West said, taking a sip of his beer, wishing he could have another. But he knew even if he weren’t driving he wouldn’t have drunk any more. The same reason Andrews would stick to only one even though Joyce was driving. Neither man liked to let their guard down in front of the rest of the team.

  There was food; a chicken curry and a vegetarian curry. West and Andrews ate and talked about the case and about the team. It was pleasant, relaxing.

  When the food was cleared away, Tanya and Baxter opened their gifts, laughing at the funny ones, genuinely grateful for the suitable, if boring, ones. They laughed when they opened Edel and West’s gift. He hadn’t seen it. In fact, he didn’t even know what it was until Tanya opened it.

  ‘This is great,’ she said, punching Baxter’s arm. ‘You will have to divide your allegiance now!’

  Edel had bought a tea cosy and egg cosies in the Wexford colours of purple and gold. It was the perfect gift for the GAA-mad Baxter, who frequently wore a scarf sporting the Dublin colours of blue and navy.

  The Gaelic Athletic Association encouraged support of county teams. It wasn’t something West had ever been interested in, he knew the Dublin colours thanks to Baxter, but other counties’ colours were an enigma to him. He picked up the tea cosy. Did people really use such a thing anymore?

  ‘I’ll use it every day,’ Tanya said, answering his unspoken question.

  West put it down beside the smaller egg cosies. Purple and gold. He frowned. They were striking colours. Where had he seen them recently? It danced around the corner of his brain, tantalisingly close. Ignoring the hullabaloo that surrounded him, he thought back to all the places he’d been over the last few days. The Moores’ house? No, despite their link to Wexford, it hadn’t been there. It hit him then, Laetitia Summers’ house. The coat hanging on the coat stand. With the scarf stuffed into the pocket. The multicoloured scarf in purple and gold.

  Like most detectives, he didn’t believe in coincidence. Andrews had drifted away and was chatting to some men West recognised as Gardaí but didn’t know. He made his way to his side. ‘I think I have something,’ he said, drawing him away. He told him about the scarf.

  Andrews raised an eyebrow. ‘If you’re going into Morrison on Monday with that, give me warning so I can take cover!’

  ‘Think about it,’ West said. He knew he was on the right track. ‘Laetitia Summers is involved with a man from Wexford. Where Furlong is from. Where we’re pretty sure he committed a crime and got away with it.’ He recognised Andrews’ scepticism. He’d seen it there before. ‘I know I’m onto something,’ he insisted. ‘We need to look into Bolger’s family. Didn’t Edwards say that twin brothers came to live in Dublin?’

  ‘Yes, they’d be twenty now.’

  ‘Maybe one of them hooked up with Laetitia Summers to plot revenge.’

  ‘You’re determined to tie her into this, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think she’s involved somehow,’ West said. ‘You’ve met her, Pete, she’s a tricky character.’

  ‘We need to check out the Bolger family anyway,’ Andrews said with a shrug that indicated he wasn’t convinced it was necessary. ‘The twins may not even be living in the city anymore.’

  ‘We need to find out. And where the sister is too.’

  ‘Enough, you two,’ Edel said, coming over and pushing them apart. ‘Honestly, you’ve done nothing but talk shop since you arrived.’

  For the remainder of the night, West made an effort to chat with everyone he knew, and a few he didn’t. He laughed when he needed to, kept an arm around Edel when one of the Gardaí he didn’t know made it quite clear he found her attractive, and tried to put the case out of his mind.

  But the purple-and-gold tea cosy kept drawing his eye. He knew he was onto something. But he wasn’t sure what.

  31

  Sunday was a lazy day. West and Edel enjoyed breakfast in a local pub, the newspapers spread out over the table, snippets shared and discussed. Relaxing conversation about nothing at all. Then a long walk along the seafront, hand in hand; not much was said, there being no need to make conversation, relaxed as they were in each other’s company.

  It wasn’t until later in the afternoon, sitting near an open fire in a pub they both liked, that Edel asked what was on his mind. ‘And don’t say nothing,’ she said with a smile. ‘I know you too well.’

  He picked up his Guinness and took a mouthful, leaving a trail of white foam on his top lip that he licked away. It rankled that Andrews hadn’t thought much of his theory. Maybe Edel would be more receptive. He told her about the scarf, his idea that maybe Laetitia was involved with one of the twin brothers of Gary Bolger. ‘Andrews didn’t think much of the idea.’

  Edel sipped her glass of wine, a slight crease between her eyes. ‘I’d like to believe she’s involved somehow. On paper, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She’s tiny, pretty, and that irritating breathy voice would probably appeal to many. But when you meet her, there’s something about her eyes. They’re cold. Hard. Mean even.’

  ‘You didn’t like her either.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Edel thought a moment. ‘Marcus… that other library assistant… said Laetitia wasn’t interested in him because he was too young. I don’t know how old he is exactly, but I’d have put him around twenty, maybe a little older. The same age as the twins would be, so that wouldn’t gel with your theory.’

  ‘I wonder if that was an impression Laetitia wanted to give, a young woman who older men fall for? Making herself out to be mysterious.’

  Edel didn’t look convinced.

  West reached for his pint. ‘Andrews will be pleased if I’m proved wrong. He didn’t say it outright but I think he thought my idea was rubbish.’

  ‘You’re going to check into the twins anyway?’

  ‘It’s on the list of things to do.’ West couldn’t put any enthusiasm in his voice so wasn’t surprised when Edel reached over and laid a hand on his knee.

  ‘You’ll get the tangle sorted,’ she said softly. ‘You always do. Stop worrying.’

  He covered her hand with his own. ‘You and Andrews have great faith in my abilities. I’m not sure Inspector Morrison will feel the same.’

  On Monday morning, however,
the inspector’s reaction to West’s shaky theory wasn’t the only thing he had to worry about. The Parsons had rung to complain of damage to their property and were laying the blame squarely on Joanne Bennet. They wanted her arrested. Immediately.

  ‘Come with me,’ West said to Andrews. ‘It might take our combined endeavours to calm this situation down.’ It wasn’t far to the Parsons’ home, West drove and filled Andrews in along the way. ‘Last thing I did on Friday was to ring Cecelia O’Dea, the grief counsellor Mrs Bennet attends. She said she’d have a word when she saw her on Wednesday.’

  Andrews looked at him, surprised. ‘Mrs Bennet is still going to the meetings then? They don’t seem to be doing her much good.’

  ‘She goes every week according to Cecelia. Mr Bennet only went to a few, said it wasn’t for him.’

  ‘He appears to be handling his grief better than his poor wife.’

  West turned down the road the Parsons lived on. The initial report passed to him hadn’t specified what damage had been done but it was obvious as they approached the house. The cream, pebble-dashed wall that surrounded their garden had been graffitied with red paint.

  West pulled up on the other side of the narrow road and peered out the window to read. Confess was written on the wall to one side of the wrought-iron gate and on the other, Sinner.

  ‘To the point,’ West said. He turned the car around and parked in front of the house.

  Andrews took a few photos of the graffiti with his phone, then rubbed a hand over the words. ‘They’ve used gloss paint: it’s not going to come off easily.’ The red paint had trickled from each letter and pooled in the angle where the wall met the footpath. It was a mess.

  The front door was answered almost immediately by a man whose face was set in angry lines. ‘About time you lot got here,’ Nick Parsons growled before standing back and waving them in. ‘And keep your voices down. Max is asleep.’

  West and Andrews exchanged glances but remained silent as they followed Parsons into the large open-plan room at the back of the house. There was no sign of Ella Parsons.

  Parsons shut the door behind them, then folded his arms and stared from one to the other. ‘Well?’

  Tempted to reply with a childish well what? West took a breath. ‘We will investigate the incident which resulted in damage to your property, Mr Parsons,’ he said formally. ‘We’re aware you have security cameras covering the front of your home. Can you show us the footage, please?’

  Parsons glared at him. ‘There’s no point! They didn’t come into the garden, did they? Did all the damage outside where the camera couldn’t catch them.’ He crossed the room in long angry strides, stopping at the window to rest his forehead against the glass before turning to look back at the two detectives. ‘Confess sinner. All our neighbours reading that on their way to work this morning, gossiping, telling everyone else. Laughing and spreading it around. Wondering what we did to warrant such an action.’ His anger faded as his chin trembled and he lifted a hand to his mouth and held it there. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, taking his hand away.

  He waved West and Andrews to seats. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said, fussing with a kettle and cafetière. He was calmer when he brought it to the table. ‘The graffiti was done sometime during the night. I saw it when I was leaving for work. I had to come back in, of course, I couldn’t leave it there for Ella to see when she went out.’ He poured the coffee and pushed milk and sugar towards them, picking up his mug and holding it between his hands without drinking.

  ‘I didn’t want her to go out but she insisted. She was hysterical when she saw what it said.’ He gave a sad smile. ‘I know you lot think that we’ve been pushing Ella’s poor mental health as a ruse to stop her taking responsibility for the death of that young boy, but we haven’t, you know. She really isn’t capable of answering questions about what happened. She was always emotionally fragile. The pregnancy and birth appear to have made her more so. These last few months haven’t been easy. The doctors keep telling me she’s doing well but she’s a shadow of the women she was.’

  West sipped his coffee. He’d met Nick Parsons on the day they came to arrest Ella. He’d been a pleasant-looking man in the best of health. Now he was pale, his cheeks gaunt and dark circles ringed his eyes.

  Both families were suffering for Ella’s catastrophic lapse of judgement.

  ‘We’ve applied for a barring order to stop the Bennets coming here or approaching Ella anywhere,’ Parsons said. ‘It hadn’t come through yet but anyway, what good will it do if they can do something like that instead? You must stop them. Please.’ There was a plea in the words, tears in his eyes.

  Nick Parsons, West decided, was a man at the very last fragile thread of his tether. ‘We’ll go around to them now,’ he said. ‘We’ve taken photographs of the graffiti for our files so you can have it removed.’

  ‘I was lucky,’ Parsons said. ‘A firm I contacted were able to send someone out to sandblast it this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They’ll be here any moment.’

  West took the hint. ‘We’ll head off and keep you informed of the results of our investigation. I know you think it was the Bennets, Mr Parsons, but we need to be sure.’

  Parsons’ face tightened again in anger. ‘What? You think there are more people out there who hate us that much, do you?’

  West waited a beat. ‘We don’t deal with emotion, we deal with facts. We’ll speak to the Bennets and hear what they have to say.’

  Parsons’ lips disappeared into a compressed line.

  ‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ West said. He shut the door after them and turned to Andrews with a hint of a smile. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  They were at the front door when they heard a shuffle on the stairs and looked up to see Ella Parsons staring down at them, a wraith of the woman West remembered from only a few months before. She said nothing, simply stood there, huge eyes in a thin, pale face.

  West raised a hand in greeting. It wasn’t returned.

  Outside, Andrews blew a gusty breath. ‘Tragic.’ They went back to look at the two words that were so dramatically displayed. ‘Neighbours must be having a field day,’ Andrews said. ‘I can imagine them saying, this kind of thing shouldn’t be happening in Foxrock.’

  ‘This kind of thing shouldn’t be happening anywhere,’ West said, taking his car keys from his pocket. He used the edge of one key to scrape a paint sample into an evidence bag. ‘Okay, let’s go and see what the Bennets have to say about it.’

  The Bennets lived ten minutes’ drive away in Cabinteely. The day of the accident their son had gone home with a friend who lived not far from the Parsons. The friend had escaped with a simple fracture when Ella Parsons’ car had hit them but Milo Bennet had been left with devastating injuries from which he’d never recovered.

  West pulled up outside the house. He’d visited several times over the last few months and had seen a subtle deterioration on each visit as both Joanne and Milo Bennet Senior struggled to survive the death of their only child.

  It was Joanne who answered their ring of the doorbell. Once, she would have been called a pretty woman but that was before sorrow and grief had carved lines on her forehead and painted dark circles under her eyes. She’d lost weight and her clothes sagged on her frame. Straggly hair was pushed behind her ears and the white tramline down her parting said it had been too long since she’d had it coloured. ‘Come in,’ she said, in a lifeless voice that matched the rest. She led them into the small kitchen at the back of the house.

  It had been a couple of weeks since West’s last visit. Then the kitchen had been tidy, if not particularly clean. Now, the sink was filled with dirty dishes, the floor strewn with crumbs. Half-finished cups of tea sat on various surfaces. It looked as if things had got a lot worse.

  ‘Please sit down,’ Joanne said. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘How about you sit and talk to Mike and I’ll make us all a cuppa,’ Andrews said gently. ‘I�
�ll find where everything is, don’t you fret.’

  She threw him a grateful smile and sat.

  West took the chair opposite, smiling to himself as he watched Andrews quickly find his way around the kitchen. A few minutes later, the dishwasher was churning, the sink was empty and all the kitchen surfaces had been wiped clean.

  ‘Here we go,’ Andrews said, putting mugs of tea in front of each of them.

  ‘You see why I bring him with me,’ West said, with a smile for Joanne. ‘He’s a domestic god.’

  ‘He’s a truly kind man,’ she said, taking a tiny sip of tea.

  ‘Where’s Milo?’ West asked. Milo Bennet had taken leave from his job in the bank when his son had been killed and hadn’t returned. Usually, he was there, reluctant to be far from his wife.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Joanne’s voice was defeated.

  ‘You don’t know?’ This was unexpected. West pushed his tea aside and leaned across the table. ‘What do you mean you don’t know, Joanne?’

  ‘He comes home for a few hours to sleep, then goes out again.’

  Andrews reached across and patted her hand. ‘That must be very worrying for you. How long has this been going on?’

  She shrugged. ‘A week, maybe more. I don’t know really. All the days are drifting into one another.’

  All the days since she lost her son. ‘And you don’t know where he goes?’

  ‘No idea.’ It was obvious she no longer cared.

  West met Andrews’ gaze. Maybe it was Milo Bennet who’d done the graffiti, not Joanne? ‘Joanne,’ he said, ‘we’ve had a complaint from the Parsons.’ He waited for a reaction but her expression didn’t change. ‘Someone daubed graffiti on their garden wall. Was it you, Joanne?’

  ‘Graffiti?’ She shook her head. ‘Seems a strange thing to do. I simply want that woman to tell the courts what she did, that’s all.’

  ‘The words confess and sinner were painted on the walls.’

  ‘Ah,’ Joanne said with a tiny smile. ‘So that’s why you’re here. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it wasn’t me.’