“No, it was…it was to do with what Daddy was working on. He used to have a thing about ill-gotten gains, how in Ireland, crime always pays. He’d talk about it at the kitchen table, criminals buying property after bank raids, Provos with holiday homes, heroin dealers coining it, living like kings. This was in the days before the Criminal Assets Bureau, there was no will to do anything about these people. Individual Guards wanted to act against them, and so did legal people within the DPP’s office and social welfare inspectors, and some of Daddy’s colleagues agreed that targeting criminals’ wealth was the way to go. But there was no cooperation between the agencies, no joined-up thinking.
“Daddy used to compile these—dossiers, he called them—present them to his superiors, and wait for them to take action. But nothing ever happened. He got so frustrated about it. He’d leak stuff to journalists, but they were hampered by the libel laws, they could only refer to the individuals in code. And it wasn’t as if everyone didn’t know who they were. Finally, he sent letters to three particular individuals setting out what he reckoned they were worth in assets, what that amounted to as income, and what their tax liabilities were.”
“He sent them letters,” I said. “Signed letters?”
“Yeah.”
“And you knew this back then? The day of his death?”
“Not that he’d actually sent the letters. Mammy only told me that later. But it was like…the Guards, as soon as they heard about Steve, that was it, it was him and Ma. They wouldn’t consider any other possibility.”
“You say your mother told you the letters had been sent. How did she know? She was having an affair…were she and your father even speaking?”
“They were keeping up appearances. They were still great friends, actually, even if the romance had come to a halt. Friends and comrades. They always talked, you know, at dinnertime, big debates about politics, the Irish language, what have you. Rows, you might say. But that’s when it all used to come out, who was getting away with what. Mammy told me he had made copies of the material he sent to each individual. She gave these documents to the Guards that day, she knew instantly who the main suspects should be.”
“So what happened?”
“There was no proof that he had ever sent the letters. And obviously, they carried no force, no legal force. The defense tried to use them at the trial, but they were ruled inadmissible. And of course the names never got out. The boyfriend did it, with the connivance at least, if not the active participation, of the wife.”
“Rule of Domestic Murder Number One. What happened at the appeal?”
“Steve was convicted on circumstantial evidence—he was in the area, because that’s where he lived and worked, he was a teacher in Marian College down the road, he had the opportunity, he had no alibi.”
“Motive?”
Anne Fogarty shrugged.
“A crime of passion. Ma wouldn’t leave Daddy. Allegedly, Steve was upset. He testified that he hadn’t wanted her to walk out, but…”
“But what?”
“But they had a letter…letters…between Steve and Mammy…where they’d live when they were together, how happy they’d be…how they couldn’t wait to be free of Brian Fogarty…how nice it would be if he were to disappear…how Steve couldn’t bear it much longer…”
Anne Fogarty’s voice cracked then, and she exhaled loudly and looked at the floor. I rounded the desk and rescued her cup, which was rattling in its saucer, and refilled it with hot coffee and brought it back to her. She lifted the cup to her lips and drank and raised her eyes to mine and nodded, and I sat down again.
“It was the way lovers talk. We two against the world. They were looking toward…four years or so, when Midge was out of school, when we were all grown up.”
“You sure?”
“There was a day…a couple of days…when I wasn’t sure. When I hated Mammy, and wanted to believe she and Steve had done it. But that passed.”
She held my gaze to assure me that it had. In her dark eyes I could see the embers that still glowed, the smoke of doubt that would never quite disperse.
“So it wasn’t as if the Guards had taken a personal set against Steve Owen,” I said. “There was enough in the letters to give them cause to believe he and your mother conspired together, or at least, had considered it.”
“Only if you ignore the other evidence. That’s what the judge said at the appeal, that the nature of Daddy’s work, even if unofficial, should have been considered. And it emerged that he had registered the letters he sent the three suspects, that the receipts had been collected as evidence, and that that evidence had mysteriously gone missing for the original trial.”
“The finger pointing where—at the prosecution or at the Guards?”
“The finger wagged back and forth, but left everyone off the hook. ‘An administrative error’ was how it was phrased. I think the Guards on the scene found the receipts on him that day, in his wallet or among his papers, bagged them without appreciating their significance, and when the defense asked if there was any sign of them, they deliberately vanished them.”
“Why would they do that? To protect one of the recipients of the letters?”
“The men to whom the letters were sent were Bobby Doyle and Jack Cullen.”
“Bobby Doyle?” I said. “The same Bobby Doyle who’s behind the Independence Day Bridge?”
“The very same.”
“I know he made a settlement with the CAB in ’98,” I said. “But I thought that was just for unpaid taxes. Crime the conventional way. A house on Clyde Road, a couple of hotels and shopping centers, and now Independence Bridge, the most prestigious building project in the history of the state. He’s done well, hasn’t he?”
“He’s done very well. He started off as a slum landlord on the northside in the late eighties. That’s what the settlement was about, undeclared rental income. Before that he’d been in America. And before that…well, he’s been talked of as one of the businessmen who’s sympathetic to Sinn Féin, and there’s no evidence to say he’s anything else.”
“But you wonder—what? Before he went to America?”
“He’s from the north. Was there throughout the seventies. But there’s no record of his family, where he lived, what he did. No one seems to know very much about him.”
“And you think…what?”
“I don’t know. He was one of the names on the list, is what I think. And Jack Cullen—”
“I know a little about Jack Cullen. I know Jack Cullen was in the IRA. Still is, insofar as it exists in any meaningful way. And I know what he does now. What about the third man?”
“The third man you know well, Ed Loy. It was in the papers, you grew up with them all. You sent his brother to jail. The third man was George Halligan.”
CHAPTER 5
I made more coffee. When I brought it into my office, Anne Fogarty was standing at the sash windows, staring down at the street. The procession of smoking mothers had been leavened by two thickset middle-aged men in dark coats. One paced; the other scrutinized a folded newspaper. Proud but bored granddads, perhaps, wondering how long they had to put in before they could go home, or to the pub.
“I was born there,” she said, indicating the National Maternity Hospital.
“Me too,” I said.
“And my ma was a heavy smoker. I wonder if she stood outside like those ones.”
“I think they let you smoke indoors then,” I said. “They had a room for it. Maybe you could even smoke on the wards.”
“Of course,” she said, smiling, a real smile this time, warmth and wit flashing in her eyes. “And all the dads with their cigars.”
Her right hand reached quickly for her left then, index and thumb stroking her bare ring finger, and the smile froze.
“Me too,” I said again.
“I noticed,” she said. “Women always do. It’s rare that a man would. Or that it would make any difference,”
She smiled then in an
other way, and then quickly pouted to push her lips back over her braces; it seemed like a reflex gesture, one she had been in the habit of to cover the slightly protruding teeth the braces were there to correct; however it had come about, it sent a rush of blood straight down my spine and beaded my brow with sweat; when I spoke, my throat was hot and dry.
“It’s just my job,” I said. “It doesn’t mean I’m any more…”
“Any more what?” she said, the tan skin around her eyes crinkling. “Sensitive? Caring? Ed Loy, these days, plain observant is good.”
I smiled in spite of myself, smiled and found I was unable to rearrange my face, smiled like the fool I was and always had been when it came to women. I had promised myself never again to fall for a client, and here I was. I could smell her now, mild lemon with a verbena musk, and then she did the thing with her lips again and her hair glowed in the light, and I turned and looked out the window and when frowning didn’t take, sank my teeth deep into the inside of my lips.
“How did things end up with your husband?” I said, in as disinterested a voice as I could muster; it sounded like I was shouting from underwater. Anne Fogarty didn’t react as if there was anything amiss.
“Fine, I suppose,” she said. “We could still be married, except he couldn’t keep his cock in his pocket, and I found out. He said, you know how it is, and I did, and I do know how it is, he went away on a lot of foreign trips, so it was all nicely handled, it wasn’t as if I’d caught him with my sister or my best friend, he’s a bastard, not a gobshite. And I thought I’d be able to handle it—I had imagined it, you know, after the kids came, when things got a bit dreary in the bedroom, I said to myself, well, if he has to go elsewhere for a while, maybe I wouldn’t mind. But I did mind. And he couldn’t quite understand that. I said, now you’re going to know how it is.
“He thinks I’m one of those awful modern women who don’t know when they’re well off. That I should have hung around because of the kids. And he makes so much money, so that’s all right. But it was because of the kids I couldn’t. I was angry with him, and I didn’t want them to see it, because it wasn’t their fault. And I couldn’t put it back together again. I had seen all that with my own parents. I didn’t want it handing itself on down the way…”
She faltered, and suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. In another gesture that looked habitual, she flipped finger and thumb into her eyes, blinked them dry and continued, as if tears brimming to the surface was as inevitable as the turn of the tide. It made sense to me.
“Anyway. That’s enough of that. What happened to your ear? Sorry, I’ve been wanting to ask since I came in. If it’s none of my business…”
My hand shot up to cup the ear, and I hauled it down like it belonged to someone else.
“I got kicked in the side of the head,” I said. “And you’d probably be better off not making that side of things your business.”
She looked at me then, Anne Fogarty, with her brown eyes still glistening, and her verbena scent fizzing in my nose, in my lungs, in my brain, looked me straight in the eye and said, “What if I wanted to, Ed Loy?”
This was the time to flash the red light very clearly. The case she had presented me with was going to be a minefield on any number of levels, and Anne Fogarty was, if not exactly explosive, certainly volatile material herself. Just say no.
“Then I wouldn’t want to stop you,” I heard myself say in a stupid big voice I recognized as my own.
I held her gaze until her cheeks flushed, and she looked away. She went back to her chair and dipped into her bag and took a card from her purse and pushed it across the desk. It had her numbers and her address on it, and the additional information that she was an interior designer. She lived around the corner from where she had grown up in Sandymount, but in a considerably more expensive house on the seafront. Just as I was wondering what her husband did to make all this possible, she told me.
“The Irish Pub. He exports them all over the world. I used to do the interiors. I don’t do that anymore. But I did enough to justify the house. If that’s what you were asking.”
“I didn’t ask,” I said. But of course, I kind of had, and she had answered like she could read my mind. Another warning sign I took as an invitation.
“There’s a few more things I need to know before I can take the case.”
“You’re going to take the case?” she said, and her eyes widened in relief, and suddenly she looked so uncertain and vulnerable, and I had a glimpse of the desperate teenager, anxious that her parents get along, and I thought I understood something of the pain her divorce had caused her. I was divorced myself, but I had never expected to be married, and when I was, my parents’ volatile match was certainly not the model I looked to. And my marriage had been such a storm of grief and betrayal that I was always reluctant to compare it to anyone else’s. But I had found that the damaged recognize one another, for good or ill. And you had to keep hoping it would be for good. I had forgotten that for a long long time, forgotten how important it was to hope.
“Of course I am,” I said. “First thing: the solicitor who took the appeal—”
“Daniel O’Toole. He died in a car crash a few years ago. I would have asked him to take it up, but…”
“Okay. Second, what about Steve Owen? Are you in touch? What’s his attitude to all of this?”
“I’ve put his contact details in the file. He doesn’t really want to get involved. He took my calls, and he was very sweet—Steve’s lovely. But he just didn’t want to get into it. Said he knew nothing about the others anyway. He said there was nothing to be gained by raking it all up again.”
“Even though the obvious implication is, the Guards still think he’s guilty? And maybe other folk do as well?”
“I made that point. He just shrugged. Said he had friends who knew he was innocent, and he didn’t care what anyone else thought. But he’ll talk to you. As a favor to me.”
“Last thing for now. There’s a new Garda cold case unit. A friend of mine has been assigned there, Dave Donnelly. They’re looking into a lot of unsolved cases—”
Anne Fogarty stopped me with a shake of her head. As she spoke, a cold anger I hadn’t heard before underscored her words.
“That was the first call I made. I read about it in the papers. I thought, this is exactly the kind of case they would look at. I called several times, and kept getting fobbed off with promises that they’d look into it, that they’d call me back. And then, sure enough, they did call me back. Inspector Dave Donnelly called to tell me they were no longer looking for anyone in connection with that murder. I asked how that could be, in the light of the appeal, but he just kept repeating the same thing over and over: the force was no longer looking for anyone, the case was no longer live. What they said off the record after the appeal is now official policy.”
Anne Fogarty wrote me a check. I charge a thousand a day, and she wanted to hire me for a week; I said within three days I’d know whether the case had a future. Then I walked her down to the ground floor. Before I had a chance to open the front door, or tell her I’d call her later on, she turned and reached for me, her palm cool on my right cheek, and kissed me on the mouth for a long while, although not long enough.
“I wanted to do that almost as soon as I saw you,” she said, and turned quickly and left, the door slamming behind her, and I had to stop myself from running out after her. I could hear the sound of the blood in my ears, breathe her scent deep inside me. Stupid, I told myself, stupid, stupid, but I didn’t believe me, or I did, but I just didn’t care. Worse still, I allowed myself hope.
CHAPTER 6
When I got back up to my office, I looked down at the street. A man was holding a newborn baby in a car seat while his partner got into the back of a Volvo estate. The men in the dark coats had been liberated from their vigil. There was something about them that had stuck in my mind, but I couldn’t quite retrieve it yet.
I sat at my desk and picked up t
he phone. Inspector Dave Donnelly of the newly set-up Serious Crime Review Team, the man who had rejected Anne Fogarty’s inquiry so emphatically, was my principal Garda contact, and an old friend. The unit had been running only six months, and Dave had been transferred there from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation; whether it was a promotion or a career setback, he wasn’t sure yet. As a private detective, I had an equally ambivalent attitude toward the unit’s foundation: either it meant I’d occasionally have a well-placed contact engaged on the same kind of case I was, or it could put me out of any kind of business apart from insurance fraud and divorce work, which paid the bills, but lined the soul with iron. I had to eat the same as everybody else, but I didn’t want that to be my only reason for going to work in the morning.
Dave and I had a complicated history, but on balance, I think he’d done well out of me: his promotion from sergeant and his transfer to the NBCI arose from cases I had worked. He knew that, and I knew it, and the health of our relationship relied on neither of us admitting it. And since I was the one who invariably came looking for a favor, it was easy to forget that the balance of responsibility, if not quite of power, was pretty evenly spread. Added to which, Dave had had some alarums and excursions in his marriage recently, and I had played a reluctant part in restoring order and at least a semblance of harmony. Of course, that kind of good turn, even among the closest of friends, seldom goes unpunished.
“I’m busy, Ed.”
“It’s about the Fogarty case. Brian Fogarty, a revenue commissioner, murdered in 1991. Steve Owen, the man who was convicted, was released on appeal. I want to know why the cold case unit won’t reinvestigate.”
There was a long silence, and then Dave said, “Merrion Square, by Oscar Wilde. Ten minutes. Bring the sandwiches,” and hung up.
THE STATUE OF Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock in the park bounded by the magnificent eighteenth-century Merrion Square (a park that is officially known as Archbishop Ryan Park, although nobody in the history of Dublin has ever called it that or ever will) is probably not quite as horrible as the statue of Phil Lynott in Harry Street, but I wouldn’t like to be on the panel of judges who had to come to the final decision. Still, there was a nice contrast between languid, elegant Oscar and the bulky steamroller that was Dave Donnelly as he advanced with heavy tread in a suit and overcoat that were too tight for him now he’d put back all the weight he’d lost when he was worried about his wife and his career, plus a stone and a half extra in beer and full Irish breakfasts.
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