“I reported him murdered. Missing! I reported him murdered. But would they listen? I had to make a ‘misper’ report. That’s what they called my little brother, a ‘misper’ report, not even a ‘missing person’, but a ‘misper’.”
“Why did you believe him to have been murdered, Mrs Torr?”
“Well, that cow, that calculating cow he married of course. She was one scheming female. Still is. Still in that house, Tony’s lovely old house he worked so hard to pay for, now she’s got it. He’s dead and she’s got it. He took her off the streets, gave her a house. He was forty-four, she was twenty-five. I warned him. I could see her for what she was, a woman can see another woman for what she is, a man can’t, not always, anyway. My waters told she was bad for Tony. But would he listen? He was in his forties, born premature, and was small, never a success with the girls. He was known as Pocket Watch at school, Tony Watch the Pocket Watch . . . but he became a computer geek and made a fortune . . . and then the blond bombshell who’s young enough to be his daughter drops in his lap ... he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘Worth waiting for’ was his attitude. Then just six weeks, I mean six weeks into the marriage, he came round here, devastated. Heard her on the phone . . . talking to a girlfriend. . . . She said, ‘I’ve only got to stick it for six months, then I get half the house.’ What she was saying was that if she separates after six months, she’ll get half the house as part of the divorce settlement. Tony would have to sell it, give her half the proceeds.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“She didn’t know that. But the point was, Tony knew why she had married him. If it was a marriage.” Mrs Torr looked at the summer-empty hearth and then the mantelpiece on which stood a framed photograph of a young couple, arms round each other. “Not like my marriage. I had a marriage. A proper marriage. But Tony was clever, wouldn’t agree to a divorce, wouldn’t give her grounds. By then she’d seen a lawyer, I think, and the lawyer told her it doesn’t matter what her mates tell her, she wouldn’t get her hands on half the property quite so easily. It was then that she moved out, left him. But they were still married. Tony got frightened then. Feared she would ‘do something’.”
“Do something?”
“He feared for his life. Took to phoning me each day, then one day he became a ‘misper’, except I knew my little brother was dead. After two years he was presumed dead, so she, as his wife, got everything. She didn’t get half the house, she found a way of getting it all. Each Christmas she sends me a card with a smiley face on the inside.”
* * * *
Hennessey and Yellich both thought Mrs Torr’s description of her late brother’s house as being “lovely, old” was apt. It was eighteenth century, graceful, balanced lines, the type of house which had given way to the Victorian Gothic style. It stood in landscaped grounds and was ivy-clad. A rabbit hopped across the lawn, doves cooed in a dovecote beside the house, a blackbird sang.
Mrs Watch, when she was met, was a woman with cold eyes. Tall, slender, all in proportion, but moved like a woman with considerable physical strength. A rapid piece of mental arithmetic by both officers put her age at thirty-three. She did indeed look about that age, having reached that age with a life blessedly free of arthritis-inducing drudgery or figure-ruining multiple pregnancies. Her clothes were sombre in a tasteful and expensive sort of way, but by far the most striking feature of her appearance was her jewellery, not her taste but her love, nay need of it: earrings; long necklaces; heavy, multiple bracelets; also heavy, multiple rings, too many to count; ankle chains on both ankles. She “received” the officers in the drawing room, after they’d been shown in by the muscular youth with timid eyes who had answered the door.
“My husband?” She had a hard voice. “He disappeared. He disappeared eight years ago. Presumed dead six years ago.”
“Well, he’s now reappeared. At least, his corpse has.”
The woman threw an angry glance at the youth who looked sheepishly away despite his well-toned bulk, hidden only by T~ shirt and shorts and training shoes.
Hennessey saw the glance, as did Yellich. No police officer would have missed it. Both officers knew that this case was about to crack wide open.
“You may have seen the TV reports . . . the body on the canal towpath?”
A second angry glance at the youth, who was, it appeared, no more than eighteen or nineteen years of age. Hennessey wondered if he called Mrs Watch “Mummy.” It seemed that sort of relationship.
“When did you last see your husband, Mrs Watch?”
“When I walked out on him. We had a row. I left him. He lived here in this huge house all by his little self for a while. Then he disappeared one night. During the bad winter.”
“What did you row about?”
“Can’t remember.”
“You can’t? Your last row and you can’t remember what it was about?” Hennessey had been married. His wife had died young of natural causes, so natural not even the medics knew what had caused it and offered only “sudden death syndrome”, which seemed embarrassingly inadequate to explain why a twenty-three-year-old woman of perfect health could suddenly collapse in the street as if in a faint, but in fact in death, probably before her head met the pavement. George and Jennifer Hennessey had had one row, it had taken place thirty years earlier, and he could recall it word for word. It had been about whether to have a pond in the garden or not. He had capitulated but wasn’t able to dig the pond until two years after he had scattered her ashes in the garden, where he still went to talk to her each day, rain or shine.
“I can’t. Something silly, like all rows, but it was the end. I left him then.”
“No matter. The body on the towpath. It had mummified. It had been kept in airless conditions for eight years. Where? Would you know?”
“No.”
Hennessey turned to the youth. “Do you know?”
“No . . .” He glanced at the woman and shook his head vigorously. He looked nervous. He had something to hide.
“Eight years ago, you were how old, son?”
“Eleven.”
“Got your life ahead of you, haven’t you? Pity to throw it away on a murder charge.”
“I didn’t murder him.”
“I’m sure you didn’t, but if you had anything to do with the remains, the body, and placing it on the towpath, you can be charged with conspiracy to murder. Even eight years after the event, when at the time you were in short trousers learning algebra.”
“And it could carry a life sentence,” Yellich added.
The youth paled.
“Got a name, lad?”
“Kevin.”
“Kevin what?”
“O’Reilly.”
“All right Kevin, you’re coming with us.” Hennessey saw that there’d be no confession from Mrs Watch. After eight years, forensic evidence would be difficult to prove.
“Is he under arrest?” Mrs Watch flushed with anger.
“No, he’s coming of his own volition, aren’t you, Kevin?”
* * * *
Kevin O’Reilly pulled nervously on the cigarette.
“Didn’t think we’d get much out of you with madam the queen there.” Hennessey smiled as he handed O’Reilly a white plastic beaker full of piping-hot coffee. “Believe me, you’ve got more to fear from her than you do from us. We, Sergeant Yellich here and me, we’ve been doing this for a long time. You’ve got guilt written all over your face, you’re shaking like a leaf. You’re in over your head, aren’t you?”
Kevin O’Reilly nodded.
“Known her long?”
“About six months. We met at the gym.”
“The gym?”
“She works out, desperate to keep her figure. She invited me home. It went from there. She made all the running ... I was ... I mean, I’d never . . .”
“All right, Kevin.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“If you want one. But this is still off the record.”
�
�Did you mean what you said about a life sentence?” O’Reilly looked at Yellich.
“Oh, yes. Technically it’s possible. Unlikely, but possible. But you’ll collect a good seven or eight years, minimum.”
“I couldn’t handle prison.”
“I know you can’t, Kevin. Big strong lad, but you’re a little boy inside. I can see that.”
“There’s only one way you can avoid the gaol, Kevin.”
“There is, isn’t there?” He looked round the interview room, dark, spartan. “I moved the body, I left it where it was found.”
“Alone?”
“She drove the car. I told her I’d put it in the canal and it had sunk. She told me to do that, but I panicked. Just dropped it on the canal side.”
“Where was the body kept?”
“In the cellar. There’s a little alcove. She put the body in there, and then bricked it up. She has to sell the house, you see. She sold his business, lived off the proceeds for six years -holidays, clothes, jewellery. Mainly jewellery. You’ll need a van to shift all her jewellery, she’s got a room put aside just for the jewels. But the money’s dried up so she’s got to sell to raise money to live, move to a smaller house. ‘Trading down,’ she said. Anyway, couldn’t sell the house with a body in the cellar. Now I think she picked me up in the gym for that job and that job alone. But she could have done it herself, there was no weight in him at all.”
“Did she tell you she had killed him?”
“Not in so many words, but it all points that way.”
“Does, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve helped myself?”
“Hugely. You may even escape prosecution for this information.” Hennessey smiled reassuringly. “All right, let’s get this down in the form of a statement, then we’ll get back and have a chat with Mrs Watch.”
<
* * * *
NORA B.
Ken Bruen
She had a mouth on her.
Jesus, like a fishwife.
And mean with it?
You fooking kiddin?
She’d slice your skin off with three words.
I was a cop, out of the Three Seven in those days.
Man, we’d do the night shift
Give me
Your scumbags
Your dopers
Your skels
Your preds
The zombies
Had ‘em all and twice over.
They came out of the fucking sewers, menacing, feral and lethal
And lemme tell you, we were ready for em..............no fucking innocents there.
We had a stone simple rule.
Fuck ‘em first.
We did.
Always.
Our Sarge, half wop, half Mick and deadly, he’d go,
“Bring em down, fast, don’t let em ever...............and I mean fucking ever, get up, got that?”
We did.
Did we fucking ever.
My wife had run off with some carpet salesman and if I’d had the energy, I might have cared.
Got a free carpet though.
Nice Persian job, I piss on it every chance I get, which is most mornings after the usual boilermakers with the guys.
First though, we clocked off, we went over to May’s, diner Eighth and 28th.
There is no May, it was owned by a Polack hardass who wouldn’t give you the time of day if you paid him.
Our kind of guy, he never charged us neither and we kept an eye on the joint. He was the cook too, did hash browns, eggs over easy and bacon like your mother might have, if she’d ever been sober.
* * * *
How I met Nora, the guys had been yapping about this Irish broad who’d been working there a time, I missed her first two weeks as I caught a knife in the gut from a domestic. The guy, he caught the fucking hiding of his life, you gut a cop, better have more than a small blade.
* * * *
But it put me in the hospital for four days and then I had some time coming so I went fishing.
Like fuck.
I went to the OTB and the track.
Lost me whatever savings I might have had.
You might say, I came back on the job, a wiser, more cautious guy.
You might say shite.
I was meaner, more violent, more intent than before and lemme tell you, I was no Mr Nice to start.
So, me and Richy, we’re heading for the diner and Richy says, “Wait till you get a load of Nora.”
“The fuck is Nora?”
Like I gave a flying fuck.
Richy, he was a small guy, but he had my back and he was real good in the close-up stuff, a guy got in his face, he lost his face. Think I’m kidding?
But here he was, sounding kinda............goddamit............shy?
He said, “Jeez, Joe, she’s like............I dunno, special, I’m thinking of you............know, mebbe asking her out, a drink or something?
I gave him the look, but the poor bastard, he was............what’s the word.........smitten........or better, fucked.
I cuffed his ear and he didn’t even notice.
We went into the place, got our usual booth at the back, watch the exits, yeah, cop stuff.
And there she was.
* * * *
I felt something move in my heart, like a melting. Ah Jesus, I’m not that kind of guy, but a jolt and I hadn’t even had me my caffeine yet.
She was small, red hair, green eyes, nice, nice figure, real built but not showy with it, she knew what she had, didn’t need to push, pretty face, not spectacular but there was an energy there, you found it hard to look away. She had her pad out, and of course, the coffee pot and without asking, filled our coffee mugs, cops, you gotta ask? She smiled at Richy, said,
“Tis himself.”
He smiled like a love-struck teenager, I wanted to throw up, then she leveled those eyes on me and here was the goddamn jolt again, asked.
“And who is Mr Silent here?”
Richy blurted out about me being his partner, how I’d been in the hospital and she cut him off, asked me,
“Cat got your tongue, fellah?”
Something had, I had a million put-downs, couldn’t bring one to mind, I put out my hand.
Jesus.
She looked at my hand, laughed, said,
“Tis shaking hands now is it, my my, aren’t you the polite devil.”
Fucking with me.
She said to Richy,
“Usual?”
He nodded like an idiot and to me,
“What about you, gorgeous, you able to eat?”
I mumbled something about having the same as Richy.
She gave that smile again, said, “Christ, what a surprise.”
And took off.
* * * *
Richy was almost panting and I swear, he had a line of sweat above his eyes. He asked, “Isn’t she something?”
I wanted to bitch slap him, but I went with, “Got a mouth on her, I’ll give her that.”
He had his Luckies out, lit one with a shaking hand, hard to believe that back then you could smoke anywhere, he persisted, “But you like her, don’t you, I mean, she’s hot, isn’t she?”
Fuck yes, I felt the heat offa her the moment she rolled up to us and I knew I was in some sort of serious bind, had to bite down, keep my cool, said, “Whatever..........so you going to the ball game Sunday?”
* * * *
She was back, balancing the plates with easy grace, put them down, gave me a look, asked, “You have a touch of Irish in yah, haven’t yah?”
I wanted to put more than a touch of Irish in her, right there, right over the mess of eggs, bacon and linked sausages. I said, “Second generation.”
She blew that off like it was horseshit, said, “And a house full of harps and Irish music, fecking sad.”
Left us to our food.
Her voice, the real deal, the soft lilt, those gentle vowels, you could have her cuss at you all day and stil
l want more of that sound.
Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology] Page 40