St Ernan's Blues: An Inspector Starrett Mystery

by Paul Charles

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Gibson took a call on her mobile from Maggie Keane. She immediately passed the phone to Starrett without saying a word.

  ‘Starrett, it’s the Major,’ Maggie gushed breathlessly, ‘Annette just rang to say he’s slipping away, he’s just received the Last Rites and she thought you’d want to be there.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Starrett replied, before disconnecting and saying to Gibson, ‘the Major’s please, Nuala, I don’t think we have much time.’

  Starrett tried to pass the time of the journey by reminiscing about the Major and their times together, but his stomach was fighting with him so violently for his breath, he was unable to do so. Forty-seven minutes and ten white knuckles later they were pulling into the Major’s drive.

  Annette Cunningham looked so relieved to see him. For the first time in his life, Starrett realised that he was just as important a presence in their lives as they were in his.

  As he walked into the Major’s dimly lit room he knew immediately to prepare himself for the worst. The reality was that the split second Nuala Gibson’s phone had rung, he knew it was the call he had been dreading. His time with the Major on the previous evening had lulled Starrett into a false sense of security. So much so in fact that he’d really wanted to conclude work on the Father McKaye case so that he could spend some more real time with the Major.

  As he stood there looking at his friend, his breathing laboured, Starrett also realised for the first time in his life that he only feared death when he was younger because he didn’t understand it. He feared it a lot more now that he was older because he’d grown to understand it that bit more.

  Annette sat on the bed beside the Major. ‘Darling,’ she said, her voice steady, ‘Starrett’s here to say goodbye – you don’t need to hang on any longer.’

  The Major opened his eyes, smiled lovingly at his wife and at Starrett, who’d walked over to the bedside. The old soldier didn’t resist the weight on his eyelids, which was slowly forcing them shut again

  Starrett quite literally saw the passing.

  It started before the last breath, when the colour started to fade and the breathing gently fell. He thought the Major was gone because he looked so peaceful. But then he noticed the clear pulse in the vein in the left-hand side of the neck (the Major’s right). Starrett focused on the pulse in the vein in the neck, willing it on. Then the pulse stopped and he could actually feel the Major slipping away. Starrett marvelled that in its own way, the passing was maybe just as miraculous as birth, because the body knows instinctively how to protect you against the continuous stresses, strains, and pains, by releasing you.

  Then the body, for the very first time in 73 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, 1 day, 7 hours and 5 minutes, was totally motionless.

  Starrett noticed the remainder of the colour drain quickly, very quickly, from the corpse. Sadly it was now most certainly a corpse, and the colour of life slowing was replaced with the viral efficiency of the death hue.

  People believe that clothes, shoes, hats, blankets, centrally heated houses all keep them warm, but it’s none of those things: it’s the heart. Because the very second the heart packs in, and even though the body is still protected, comforted by those clothes, blankets or central heating, the body is stone cold to the touch within minutes.

  Usually death is not this close to life, but Starrett could feel them both still lingering. He wondered, were these the sensations his mother had to deal with all of her life? And yet for all his knowing it was near, even still in the room, death still froze him in life. It was like death was looking for yet another body (perhaps his?) to draw breath from. Despite everything, in that moment he was still so unprepared for death’s presence and the single thing that cut him to the quick was how perfectly still the Major was. There were no more gentle rises and falls generated by the heart and lungs. There was nothing, because where there is no life, there is only death, and death is as still as sadness.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Day Seven: Tuesday

  Starrett was surprised by how little recent events had distracted him from his case. No, in point of fact, he was actually quite shocked. He wasn’t to know that the death of a loved one frequently does this to a person. In an average day he would see the Major once…maybe even twice, if mitigating circumstances dictated so. There were also days, possibly even two or three in a row, where he wouldn’t see the Major at all. On such days, mostly one would contact the other by phone, just to check in. So it was going to take a week, and possibly even as long as a month, before Starrett would really start to miss the Major’s towering presence in his life. That’s when the real hurt and emptiness would kick in, and kick in with venom. By then, he’d be thinking of their meetings, their chats by the riverside stone wall just across the road from Tower House, the Gardaí Station House in Ramelton. Starrett swore that the Major had used a section of the wall he so enjoyed sitting on as a seat for so many years that he had worn it down into the saddle-like shape.

  In a way, Major Newton Cunningham’s current absence from Starrett’s life was more akin to a friend who’d just gone away on holiday or business for a few days. When the cruel reality set in, then Starrett would start to miss his good friend the way a junkie misses his fix.

  Maggie Keane could have described the intensity of such a pain to him but she knew it was much better to let it creep up on him, silently and slowly.

  For now his preoccupation was with Father Matthew McKaye, and solving the case of his murder.

  * * *

  ‘I know who Father Matt left me for,’ spoke Mary Mooney.

  It was Tuesday, mid-morning, and on reaching St Ernan’s and setting up in the boys’ room, Starrett had braced himself and made the call, mainly because he’d nothing else to work on.

  Mary had insisted they meet in person – ‘I could never do this on the phone,’ she’d said. They had to meet alone, ‘I couldn’t do this if one of the real guards is with you.’ Starrett wondered if that meant Mary Mooney didn’t consider him to be a real garda; most likely something to do with the uniform, he thought, or his lack of one. She’d wanted to meet in a strange place, ‘I need to meet you where they don’t know me,’ she’d said.

  Starrett’s imagination had run away with him and he was half expecting her to say, ‘You book a room in the Abbey Hotel, ring me on my mobile, give me the room number, and I’ll come up.’ He was so half expecting her to say this, that he’d started to work up a reply and the only one he could come up with was, ‘I don’t cheat,’ because he didn’t. Never had.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the lounge of the Abbey in half an hour,’ she’d said, ‘I’ll already be there, I’ll find somewhere private, there’s lots of little nooks and crannies, you come looking for me. But Starrett…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just make sure you come alone,’ she’d said.

  That is how, thirty-three minutes later, Starrett happened, by accident, upon the very glamorous Mary Mooney, so discreetly hidden in the lobby of the hotel that he nearly didn’t find her there. In fact, he couldn’t find her and he’d only done so when she’d peeked out from behind a half-closed door and, quite literally shouted out to him, ‘Starrett, I’m over here!’

  Which kind of made the whole cloak and dagger approach a bit of a farce.

  ‘Would you like a drink, Starrett?’ she said, wiping her teeth with her tongue and then without waiting for a reply added, ‘God, I need a drink to steady me nerves. Be a wee pet and go and get us some wine.’

  ‘It’s only 11 a.m., Mary,’ he protested.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she hissed.

  Five minutes later he returned with two small bottles of Jacob’s Creek white wine for her and a bottle of sparkling mineral water for himself.

  Mary Mooney quickly unscrewed the top and emptied most of the contents of the bottle into her glass in one plop, some of it spilling onto the beer mat underneath. As she was pouring the wine, Starrett noticed the latest
edition to her canon of beauty: She’d each and every finger nail painted a different colour from when they'd last met, but not only that, she’d a totally new set of nail art, again in contrasting colours. A circle of white dots on a blue background on one, a small green diamond on a red background on another, and so on. She was clearly going for the Benetton Colours of the World look. Her long, bare legs were tanned to perfection, which was strange when you consider that the last time that the sun broke the cloud with any degree of anger, or heat, in Donegal would have been a weekend way, way back in July, back when summer arrived late and disappeared early. Starrett figured from the little he knew of these things that it must have taken Mary Mooney at least, at the very least, an hour and an half to turn herself out in such a flawless state.

  ‘Cheeky little nail varnish remover,’ she said, as she gulped down half of her wine.

  Starrett raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Jeez, Starrett,’ she said, after studying him intently for a few seconds, ‘you look like you could do with a drink yourself. What are you so nervous about?’

  ‘I, ah…’ Starrett stumbled.

  She patted his hand before he’d a chance to formulate a reply, ‘Be a wee pet and go and get me a couple of ham toasties. There’re great in here – I’ll suffer if I drink all of this on an empty stomach.’

  The inspector did as he was bid and when he returned five minutes later, she was deep in conversation with a couple of female friends. So much for being discreet.

  He arrived just in time to hear one of the friends saying, ‘He didn’t! No! Shut up! Behave!’ All delivered like rapid fire from a machine gun.

  She introduced Starrett as a friend of Callum and hers.

  When they eventually left, nearly bumping into a pillar they were eyeballing Starrett so much, he said, ‘Okay, Mary, you said you’d discovered who Father Matt was seeing after he left you.’

  ‘Yes,’ she gasped, ‘un-fecking-believable!’

  She looked all around them, checking this way and that, and when she was sure there was no one within hearing distance she said, ‘You won’t believe who it was, Starrett.’

  Starrett waited and waited for the punchline. Mary kept glaring at him, daring him to make a suggestion just so she could say, ‘No!’ He didn’t fall for it verbally but he fell for it mentally, and it was doing his head in. Inside he was screaming, ‘Who the feck is it?’, while outwardly he stared at her as though examining every inch of her face in search of the secret of beauty.

  ‘Why are you so nervous, Starrett?’ she said.

  ‘Mary, who was Father Matt’s girlfriend after you?

  ‘Jessica Robinson,’ she hissed.

  ‘No!’ said Starrett. ‘Get away!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mary said proudly, proud in the way that only a revealer of a secret can be. At the same time she must have been thinking, ‘You wee bitch, you, nicking my man,’ while simultaneously feeling guilty for not hosting the thought, ‘Oh, my poor wee niece, defiled by that horrible, wicked priest.’

  Whatever she was thinking, a whole maelstrom of emotions were most certainly, and visibly, charging up Mrs Mary Mooney. Starrett, for his part, breathed a huge sigh of relief. He really had feared that she was going to ask him to get them a room.

  ‘So how did you discover that?’ he said, hoping to diffuse the situation.

  ‘Our Julia told me.’

  ‘Julia knows?’

  ‘Yes, she thinks her sister is about to lose it big time. Apparently she nearly did lose it at the funeral yesterday.’

  Suddenly the penny dropped. He remembered Maggie telling him that it was usually the younger daughter who takes to the mother’s new man, or cuckoo, the way Moya had taken to Starrett. Of course, Eimear Robinson and Father Matt weren’t lovers. Starrett’s second thought was: But in this case, who even knew for sure? When it came down to it though, Starrett believed Eimear when she said she’d never slept with the priest. So Eimear and Father Matt would have been good friends and he would have been around the house, so often as a friend, a friendly cuckoo, that there would have been that attachment but it should have been with the younger sister, Julia. But it wasn’t, it was the older sister, Jessica. Starrett had already noted Jessica was the one who was most upset by the priest’s passing and when he’d interviewed the two of them, Julia had said something that only Jessica could hear but it had obviously been something suggestive or crude, by the way Jessica had reacted to it.

  Yes, he’d noticed these things but he hadn’t put them together.

  ‘Have you spoken to Jessica about this?’

  ‘No,’ Mary admitted, ‘but it’s her mum I’m really worried about – she worships those girls, she just lives for them.’

  ‘Do you think there is any chance Gerry knows about this?’

  ‘Are ye fecking kidding me?’ she shouted out loud, and then whispered, ‘sure if he found out, there wouldn’t be a priest in St Ernan’s who would be safe. Scrap St Ernan’s, there wouldn’t be a priest in the whole of the fecking county who would be safe!’

  ‘Did Julia know about you and Father Matt?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’d like to think that if Jessica had known, she’d never have gotten involved with him. I’ve always gotten on great with my nieces. I like to think they can talk to me about anything.’

  ‘Did Julia know much about the relationship?’

  ‘Not really, I think she just knew there had been one and she was at her wits end, she was really worried about how to help her sister.’

  ‘Okay,’ Starrett said, ‘look Mary thanks for this–’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier,’ she confessed. ‘I just couldn’t utter those words in my sister’s house.’

  She toyed with her wine and half of her sandwich.

  ‘Look at me, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. But I just knew I had to tell you,’ she said and then she looked like she was considering something else. ‘I was surprised you didn’t ring me sooner…’

  ‘I–’ Starrett started.

  ‘You didn’t! Shut up! Behave!’ she semi-screeched, doing a double wipe of her teeth with her tongue.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘I’ve got it, you auld dog you,’ she whispered, checking her position on the seat as though conscious of her decency. ‘You thought I was going to try and shift you!’

  ‘No, no!’ Starrett lied, in relief.

  ‘Behave! Starrett, you’re much too high profile for me,’ she said, and smiled, placing her hand on his arm, the way one would do affectionately with an uncle or a grandparent. ‘On top of which, everyone in the county knows you’re Maggie Keane’s man.’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  ‘I know who Salome is,’ Starrett declared, as he walked into the gardaí temporary quarters in St Ernan’s.

  ‘Who?’ the gardaí trio asked in unison.

  ‘Jessica Robinson.’

  ‘Eimear’s daughter?’

  ‘The very same, Gibson’ Starrett replied, immediately and upbeat, very upbeat.

  ‘So, okay,’ Browne said, appearing to be concentrating for all his might, ‘so are we now thinking Jessica Robinson was Father Matt’s girlfriend at the time of his death?’

  ‘Yes,’ Starrett replied.

  ‘And what exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Good question,’ Starrett said. ‘That’s what we need to find out. I think the Ban Garda and I need to go and have a chat with her.’

  As it happened, Starrett and Gibson, in Starrett’s BMW, passed Eimear Robinson, in a battered VW Golf, on her way to St Ernan’s on the mainland side of the causeway. They acknowledged each other with brief waves. With benefit of hindsight, Starrett realised just how important that sighting was, in that the mother hen wouldn’t be fussing around the house while Starrett and Gibson tried to interview her eldest daughter.

  At first, for comfort or support – or maybe even both – her sister, Julia, joined them. After Jessica seemed comfortable with the gentle, ca
ring tone of the interview, she told her sister she was okay and she could leave her to finish the rest of the meeting on her own.

  ‘No!’ Julia protested, ‘I don’t mind staying.’

  ‘I want you to go,’ Jessica said, quietly but firmly.

  ‘Dope,’ Julia said, as she glided out of the room on her wheels.

  ‘Jools,’ Jessica cried out after her, ‘mum’s floors! We’re not even meant to be in here!’

  Jessica was dressed once again in her blue, floppy shapeless jumper, but this time she had paired it with loose black tracksuit bottoms and dark blue canvas tennis shoes.

  ‘We understand you and Father Matt were close?’ Starrett started, deciding the best way into this interview was to treat Jessica as the adult she was.

  ‘Very close,’ Gibson added.

  Jessica eyed them both. She didn’t appear to be as uncomfortable as she had looked during their last chat, nor did she seem as upset as she had been up in the graveyard. She still played with her long blonde hair though, flicking it around her finger and then placing it behind her shoulder. Starrett reckoned she most likely didn’t even realise she was doing it. He remembered the long strand of blonde hair Dr Aljoe had discovered on Father Matt on the first day. Jessica was most definitely more relaxed with them on this visit. Perhaps she was happy to finally have the chance to get whatever was upsetting her off her chest. Perhaps she was happy Starrett and Gibson were now going to help her bring the subject out into the open and she wouldn’t have to continue living with guilt while at the same time trying to secretly mourn the man she loved.

  ‘You know Jools and I told you he was unhappy in the priesthood?’

  ‘Yes, I remember that Jessica,’ Starrett replied.