The first mug didn’t clear West’s head, neither did the second. Restless, he picked up the previous day’s newspaper and read the bits he’d missed, tutting over some of the more scandalous news, grateful there was no mention of his case.
He waited until seven before going back upstairs to have a shower and get ready for the day. It was still too early, but he was worried about the Bennets. If there was no word at the station, he’d go around and speak to Joanne Bennet again.
‘Sorry,’ he said, bending down to plant a kiss on Edel’s cheek, her arm coming up to wrap around his neck.
‘Hey, Mike.’ Her voice was still groggy and thick with sleep.
‘Hey, yourself. I’ll grab my clothes and leave you to go back to sleep.’
‘Okay. See you later.’
West kissed her again, removed the clothes he wanted from the wardrobe and headed to the main bathroom. He preferred to use it rather than the en suite. He’d spent a lot of time… and money… in getting the best he could afford when he had it put in, sacrificing the smallest of the four bedrooms for it. The original small bathroom was now the en suite to the main bedroom. Often, at the end of a stressful day, he’d spend a long time under the powerful shower trying to chase the demons away. It struck him suddenly that he hadn’t had to do that in a long time.
That morning his ablutions were quick. He left the house less than half an hour later and at 7.45 he pulled into the car park in Foxrock.
The night desk sergeant looked up as West pushed through the front door. ‘You’re eager,’ he said, stifling a yawn.
‘Morning, Chad,’ West said. ‘Long night?’
‘They’re getting longer the older I get,’ Chad Delaney said. ‘You’re wondering why we didn’t ring you about Milo Bennet, I suppose.’
‘I was, yes,’ West said. ‘Didn’t he turn up?’
‘He did, at four, wasted and belligerent with it. The Gardaí on the scene decided he was a danger to himself and brought him in. He’s in a cell sleeping it off.’
‘Good, best place for him. Was his wife told?’
‘They tried her doorbell but nobody answered. I was going to ask Tom to get one of the day shift to call around to speak to her.’
‘No,’ West said, making a decision. ‘Leave it to me, I’ll head around and speak to her now. She knows me so it would be easier. Make sure they keep a close eye on Bennet, okay?’ He raised a hand in apology. ‘Yes, I know it doesn’t need to be said.’ Delaney and his day counterpart, Tom Blunt, were the solid, dependable type. Nothing would happen to a man in their care.
Ten minutes later he parked outside the Bennet home. There were curtains pulled shut in one of the upstairs windows. He hoped it was a sign Joanne Bennet was home.
He heard the doorbell peal within and waited, eyeing the dark clouds overhead with a frown as he tried to remember where he’d left his raincoat. After a minute, he peered through the frosted-glass side panels and pressed the bell for longer but there was no movement within. He stepped back and looked up to the bedroom windows. One curtain was still pulled shut. Maybe Mrs Bennet was a heavy sleeper.
Maybe she was dead.
A side passage separated the house from its neighbour. West slipped down it but a locked gate barred his path. He rattled it in frustration before returning to the front door. Swearing softly under his breath, he kept his finger on the bell. He was debating ringing for assistance from the station to break the door down when a shadow through the glass gained substance as it approached and he could make out the figure of Mrs Bennet.
Seconds later, the door was opened. ‘Hello.’ Big eyes in a pale face stared at him.
‘Mrs Bennet, may I come in?’
Without asking why he was calling at such an early hour, she stepped back and stood to one side. She’d obviously been in bed. A terry cloth robe that had seen better days was wrapped tightly over lurid pink cotton pyjamas. The clothes swamped her. She seemed to be getting frailer by the day, disappearing from a world that had become too difficult for her.
‘Let’s sit down,’ he said, drawing her into the kitchen. He waited until she sat across the table from him before speaking. ‘I’d asked the uniformed Gardaí to keep an eye out for Milo so I could speak to him about the graffiti. When they did see him, early this morning, he was very drunk, I’m afraid. The officers were worried he was a danger to himself so they took him into the station to sleep it off. I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t be worrying about him.’
‘I wasn’t worrying,’ she said, calmly. ‘I didn’t even know he wasn’t home. He sleeps in the back room. And I take sleeping tablets so never hear him coming in.’ She sighed; a long slow sad sound that seemed to shrink her even more.
‘I’ll make sure he comes home safely,’ West said. It was all he could do. He had stood to go when a leaflet pinned to the cork board on the wall beside the kitchen door caught his attention. He pulled the pin out and took it down. ‘Do you go to this?’ he asked, turning back to Mrs Bennet.
When she looked at him blankly, he returned to the table, sat, and slid the leaflet towards her.
She picked it up, looked at it briefly and put it down. ‘No, I don’t. I like the counselling session I go to on Wednesdays with Cecelia O’Dea.’ She gave a trembling smile. ‘I’m not sure if they’re helping me to come to terms with my loss but sometimes hearing sad stories from others makes me feel less alone. Milo didn’t take to Cecelia so after one or two meetings he refused to go back.’ Her broken fingernail tapped the leaflet. ‘He started attending this group a few months ago, he wanted me to join him but I said no.’
‘And he goes every week?’ He wasn’t surprised when she shrugged. ‘Okay, would you mind if I took this with me?’
Another apathetic shrug was the only answer. Joanne Bennet was a woman who no longer cared about anything.
West slipped it into his pocket. ‘Maybe you should try to get some more sleep. Don’t worry about Milo, I’ll bring him home.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, her tone of voice stating clearly she didn’t even care about that.
Back in his car, West took out the leaflet and looked at it closely. He was almost certain it was the same. He took out his mobile and hit a speed-dial key, flicking the leaflet with his fingernail as he waited. ‘Hi, you up?’
Edel laughed. ‘Cheek! I’ll have you know, right at his moment, I’m planning on how to kill Matthew Foyle.’
West smiled. ‘Poor Matthew!’
‘I’m sure you’re not ringing me this early for an update on my book. Not that I’m suspicious or anything but what do you want?’
‘It might be that I simply wanted to hear your dulcet tones.’
‘Ha, why do I think that’s highly unlikely?’
‘Because you’ve a suspicious mind, Edel. But,’ he said, hearing her laugh, ‘I have to confess you’re right.’
‘Thought as much. So, go on, what can I do for you?’
West looked at the leaflet he was holding. ‘Remember those leaflets you picked up in the library? Do you have them to hand?’
‘I don’t but I can get them, hang on.’
The old chair Edel used squeaked as she stood and a few seconds later, it squealed when she sat, then he heard the rustle of paper.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I have them. Was there one in particular you were interested in?’
‘Is there one called Remembrance?’ He was sure he was right, but at the time it was the Marino Library stamp that had held his attention. This leaflet didn’t have the library stamp, but he was sure it was the same.
‘Yes,’ Edel said.
‘And under that, it says, join us and talk away your pain and grief.’
‘Word for word.’
‘Okay.’
‘Don’t you dare hang up!’ Edel almost shrieked. ‘You can’t ring up, disturb my train of thought and leave me with this puzzle… tell me.’
‘It might be purely a coincidence–’
‘You don’t belie
ve in coincidences,’ Edel interrupted.
He didn’t. They happened, of course they did, but a coincidence that linked two cases he was dealing with, where the death of a young man was a factor in both, this coincidence didn’t sit easily with him. He explained briefly what had happened.
‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘Mind you, Mike, there could be hundreds of these leaflets around. They might be in every library in the city, never mind GP surgeries, clinics and any one of a hundred other places.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so. There’s only one meeting place mentioned. In Sandymount. Plus, if you read it, there’s no accredited organisation or counselling service mentioned. It looks almost amateurish.’
‘In fairness, it does say join us and talk so maybe it is simply that, a place for people to chat about their experience.’
‘Maybe,’ West said. ‘Okay, thanks for that, I’ll text you later if I’m going to be late. You can go back to killing Matthew now.’ He could hear her laughing as he hung up.
Edel threw the leaflets to one side and pulled her laptop closer to return to her story. When she finished, she read over the scene, satisfied with what she’d written.
Her eyes slid to the end of her long desk and the pile of leaflets, reaching automatically to pick up the top one. Remembrance. She’d never felt the need to talk to strangers after her husband was murdered. Perhaps it was because he never had been, not really. It had been a bigamous marriage built on lies and deceit.
There wasn’t a phone number on the leaflet, only an email address. Without thinking, she brought up her emails and tapped out a quick message asking about the meetings, explaining, with gross exaggeration that she was finding it hard to come to terms with the death of her husband, pressing send before she changed her mind.
Curiosity: it would be her undoing.
She went down for a caffeine boost. Coffee didn’t seem enough and she searched the cupboards for something to eat, finding a packet of biscuits she’d forgotten about. She sat at the table and looked out over the garden as she drank, munching her way through almost the whole packet as she thought about her story and what she wanted to write next. It was almost thirty minutes before she returned to the small spare bedroom she used as an office.
To her surprise, there was a reply from Remembrance. Holding her breath, she opened it.
You’ve made the first step… come and join us. We meet every Tuesday at 1pm at 22c Seafort Avenue, Sandymount.
Today. This afternoon. Edel smiled. It was so tempting. What harm could it do? A little voice in her head said, remember Liz Goodbody, but she shook it away. That had been different. This time there would be a group of people. This time she wouldn’t be locked in a cupboard, tasered and poisoned. She shivered at the memory and almost reconsidered her next step. Going to the meeting was a crazy idea, wasn’t it?
It was probably a better plan to ring Mike and tell him what she’d done. He could send a plain-clothes Garda along in her place.
That would have been the best option. Of course, it would. But she’d have missed the first-hand experience. Experience. She refused to call it innate curiosity.
But her recent dealings with what she’d heard Mike refer to as nefarious characters, had, at least, taught her the wisdom of caution. Before she left home, she sent him a message to tell him where she was going. Then she switched her phone off. He’d be annoyed but she wasn’t missing out this opportunity to do a little sleuthing of her own.
A little over an hour and a half later she was walking along Seafort Avenue, looking for number 22c. It was after one o’clock before she found it, tucked above a takeaway and accessed by rickety wooden stairs. There was no sign on the door at the top of the steps but standing close to it, she heard voices from within.
With a deep breath, she rapped her knuckles against the wood.
34
The voices stopped abruptly and seconds later the door creaked open.
‘Hello?’ A man peered around the edge, small eyes fixing Edel to the spot. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Hi. I’m Edel, I emailed earlier. I was told I could come to this meeting.’ She waved a hand towards the road. ‘Sorry I’m late, it took me a while to find it.’
A smile lit the man’s colourless face. ‘Oh, that’s all right, come on in and join the gang.’
Gang was a slight exaggeration. There were four people sitting around a table in the centre of the room, all turning to assess the newcomer.
‘Hi,’ Edel said, smiling nervously. They didn’t look particularly welcoming.
The man who’d let her in was obviously thinking the same. He rested a thin hand on her arm. ‘You’ve come at a rather sensitive moment,’ he explained. ‘Arthur was telling us about how he felt when he heard his daughter had been killed.’ He waved her to the chair he’d obviously vacated to answer the door and grabbed an empty one from a stack in the corner of the room. ‘I’ll introduce you to everyone later,’ he said. ‘Strictly first-name basis only.’
Edel wasn’t sure why there was a need for such confidentiality but she muttered ‘Of course’ and sat.
‘Please, continue, Arthur.’
For the next fifteen minutes, Edel listened to the sad tale. The beloved daughter who’d died in a car crash. Her boyfriend had taken a roundabout at speed, losing control, the car flipping over and imprisoning both. He’d escaped with minor injuries but her neck was broken on impact. They were both seventeen.
The silence when he finished telling them that he missed her every day was uncomfortable and prolonged. Edel glanced from person to person, wondering at their various stories. When the silence lasted, she glanced to her left to see tears rolling down the cheeks of the man who’d let her in. He was, she assumed, the leader of the group and she waited for him… or anyone to speak, to say something consoling, something to help Arthur move forward.
Finally, after several minutes’ silence, the leader took out a large handkerchief and noisily blew his nose. ‘So, so tragic,’ he said. ‘Thank you for sharing with us, Arthur. And you say the boyfriend lives close by?’
‘Near enough that we go to the same shops, the same cafés and restaurants. Near enough that I see him getting on with his life while my darling daughter will never see another sunrise or sunset.’
Again, Edel waited for some form of guidance. Instead, the leader’s expression turned solemn. ‘We live in a world where the perpetrators of crimes – those people who wreck our lives – frequently go unpunished, or with a punishment that goes nowhere near meeting the crime.’
It was that moment when Edel bitterly regretted not phoning Mike. Maybe it was because she’d been thinking about Liz Goodbody earlier, but she could hear the same hint of fanaticism in the man’s voice as she’d heard in hers. Edel should have phoned Mike and passed the information on because he had been right; there was nothing coincidental about finding the leaflet in the Bennets’ house and in the library. This was the connection. The Bennets, Debbie Long, and Ashley Bolger had all lost someone, the perpetrator having gone free. If Edel had told him about today’s meeting, he could have sent a plain-clothes Garda and she could have stayed at home, where she belonged, writing her book.
A scrape of a chair beside her drew her attention. ‘We’ve time to introduce ourselves now,’ said the man she’d designated the leader. ‘My name is Pa. This group was my brainchild. So, if you’d introduce yourself and tell us why you’re here.’ He looked around the room. ‘And perhaps you’d all do the same for our newest recruit.’
She was there now, she might as well make the most of it and get all the information she could for Mike. Maybe it would mitigate his anger if she could provide something concrete.
‘Hello everyone. My name is Edel. My husband was murdered a year ago by a drug-dealing psychopath. It was a difficult time and I’m still coming to terms with it.’ The others looked at her intently. They seemed to want more, but it was all she was willing to give. ‘I find it hard to talk about it.’
‘I suppose they never caught the man responsible,’ Pa said, his voice thick with sympathy.
She turned to look at him. His smile and his small eyes were kind. ‘No, they did,’ she said. ‘He’s serving a long prison sentence for two murders and drug dealing.’
‘Good, good,’ he said, each word accompanied by an emphatic nod. ‘Right, okay, meet the others.’ He waved a hand towards the woman on her right. ‘Why don’t you start, Emily.’
Emily, Arthur, Jamie and Oisin. Edel repeated the names to herself as the introductions went on, each of them with their sad story to tell. Emily’s younger sister died in a swimming accident the previous year, Jamie’s father of a sudden heart attack two years before and Oisin’s brother recently from a drug overdose.
‘I know the bastard who sold it to him,’ Oisin told her. ‘The guards say there is no proof but I know it’s him. I’ll make him pay someday.’
Edel waited for Pa to say something positive, to steer the young man away from what sounded like a threat of revenge and was horrified when he said nothing. In fact, there was nothing positive or encouraging about the meeting. Sad stories told in sorrow. No attempt to put their pain into any context or to offer hope that their sorrow would be alleviated by time.
At two, Pa looked at his watch. ‘Well, that’s all for today, folks. Have a good week and I’ll see you all again next Tuesday.’
Edel was first out the door, breathing the chilly air outside with relief. Had Debbie Long or her nephew, Ashley come to this meeting and talked about Cormac Furlong, the man who got away with murdering Gary Bolger? He had been dealt with; was the boyfriend of Arthur’s daughter next, or the man Oisin was convinced had supplied drugs to his brother?
She crossed the road and stood watching the door, her phone in her hand as a pretext for standing there. Emily and Jamie left almost immediately, followed seconds later by Oisin, but it was several minutes before Arthur and Pa trundled down the steps side by side, deep in conversation. From where she stood, she could see their intent, grim expressions.
The Dublin Murder Mysteries: Books four to six Page 43