No Simple Death

by Valerie Keogh

  No, he decided, he didn’t think she was involved but he had to prove it. He turned to look at her. ‘What I think doesn’t matter,’ he replied eventually, choosing his words with care. ‘We’ll do what we do. Investigate, examine all evidence and then, and only then, draw our conclusions.’ He watched as her face fell, a look of disappointment in her eyes, as if he’d failed her.

  ‘I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have,’ she said quietly. She struggled to maintain control, biting her lower lip, but a sad, pathetic sob escaped. Just one. She drew a deep shuddering breath, wiped her face on the sleeve of her jacket, and turned red, swollen eyes to him, her lips resolutely firming the quiver that still threatened. ‘You have to believe me.’

  He justified himself by thinking that stronger men than he would have caved at the sight of her sad, vulnerable face and he stepped over the line dividing personal and professional without further ado. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you murdered anyone. I don’t think you were involved at all. Over the next few days, I’m sure, forensic evidence will prove it. Until that happens, I have to do my job, and that means, unfortunately, investigating our only suspect.’

  ‘Me,’ she said quietly, with drying tears like snail tracks down her cheeks.

  ‘You,’ he agreed, the lift of his lips not quite a smile as he reached out to wipe away first one tear, and then the other with the soft pad of his thumb. He forced down the quick flush of desire the small gesture brought to the surface, and he held it down until it gurgled. One final mental reminder of the consequences of any involvement with Edel rendered it not dead, but completely inert. For the moment anyway.

  He sat back and the rest of the flight passed in silence. In Dublin airport, they retrieved West’s car and drove across the city. Feeling the quiet becoming oppressive, he searched for something neutral to talk about and remembered she had told him she was a writer of children’s books.

  ‘What age group do you write for?’ he asked now. A question without agenda.

  She looked at him. ‘You don’t have to make conversation, Sergeant West. This isn’t a date.’

  He shrugged. ‘I was curious, that’s all. I’ve never met a writer of any sort.’

  Silence continued for several minutes.

  ‘Well, to satisfy your curiosity,’ she said, eventually, ‘I write for the pre-teenage group. I got into it by accident really, I won a competition. What I really want to do, as I think I already told you, is to write adult fiction.’ She shrugged. ‘That was why Simon insisted I keep the money from the sale of my house. It was supposed to enable me to write what I wanted to and not be at the beck and call of my publisher who wants a variation of what I have been writing for years. Their motto is, if it sells, don’t change, just keep churning the same thing out, year after year.’ She gave a derisive, dismissive snort. Seconds later, changing the subject, she asked, ‘Do you think, when this is all over, I’ll be able to remember the good times?’

  The question was unexpected and West wasn’t sure how to answer it. He decided on the truth as he knew it. ‘I had a rough time before I transferred to Foxrock,’ he said. ‘The details don’t matter; suffice to say it was difficult. I still remember the bad times but they have lost their ability to hurt.’ He stopped a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘Not their ability to disturb me, or make me sad, because they still do that; just their ability to sting.’ He gave a grunt. ‘I wanted to kill people who told me that time was a great healer, so I won’t tell you that now, but the fact is, they were right, it is. If you can get through the first few days, then the first few weeks and the months well, you’ll be okay. And as for the good times, they never fade, Edel. They will be with you long after the bad times have become a misty memory, I promise.’

  Neither said a word as he pulled up outside her house and switched off the engine. They sat a moment, unmoving. Finally, undoing her seatbelt, she turned to him. ‘What now?’ she asked quietly.

  Undoing his belt, he opened the car door and got out, waiting as she followed suit before replying. ‘Try and get some sleep.’ He stopped as she gave a tired grunt. ‘Try, at least,’ he continued. ‘We’ll be in touch tomorrow.’ He waited as she found her keys and opened her front door, before he added, ‘You need to be here when we call, Edel.’

  She stood framed in her doorway by the light of the hall and gave a tired smile. ‘Is this what you call house arrest?’

  He returned the smile. ‘House arrest entails having a garda on your doorstep. I don’t think we need go that far.’ He raised his hand in salute. ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’

  He walked back to his car; for the first time in a long time, he was looking forward to the next day.

  15

  West drove home in silence. It had been a hell of a day. A hell of a week, since he was being honest. He pulled up outside his house in Greystones, sitting a moment as exhaustion hit him with a sledgehammer before pushing the door open and climbing out.

  The garden gate opened with a squeak, the sound loud in the quiet of the late night, and he made a mental note to oil it, adding it to a growing list of things to do whenever he had a chance. He knew how Edel felt about her house; he felt the same about this one. He’d been lucky; his parents lived a short walk away and had heard it was going on the market; he’d approached the vendor and made them an offer they, and he, knew they’d be foolish to refuse. Within a short space of time the house was his.

  An old Edwardian redbrick, it had needed work but luckily had many of the original features intact. He’d hoped to do a lot of the refurbishment it needed himself but when he had the house two years, and still hadn’t found the time, he gave up and got in the experts. They’d done a good job and it was as near perfect as could be.

  He wasn’t sure at the time how he felt about living so near to his parents but it had never been a problem. In fact, when he had that trouble last year his mother had been… he smiled slowly, she’d been a mother.

  He opened the door, listened and almost at once heard the pitter-patter that announced Tyler’s every arrival. The little dog looked up at him, big brown eyes asking the usual question. ‘Where have you been?’

  He sat on the sofa and the dog sat beside him; West told him about his day and Tyler listened in companionable silence. It was too late to bother about food, but never too late for a whiskey – just one – he wasn’t going to work with a hangover twice in one week. Tongues would begin to wag. He could tell them, if they were really concerned, that if he hadn’t hit the bottle last year, he never would.

  He sipped the whiskey, savouring the expensive single malt that had been a gift from somebody back when he had been a highly paid solicitor and gifts of expensive malt whiskeys were commonplace. Now as a garda, if someone gave him an expensive bottle of whiskey, he knew it would come with conditions and he’d have to say, thanks, but no thanks. He knew not all his colleagues believed as he did and were happy to pull a few strings here and there, but he wasn’t going down that road. The thin edge of the wedge and all that.

  His reputation for being as straight as an arrow held to him last year. Helped him get through it a little easier. Not easily, but definitely a little easier.

  What had Edel asked him? When this was over would she be able to remember the good times?

  He sipped his whiskey. He hadn’t lied to her. It had got easier with time. What he hadn’t told her was how difficult those first few days, weeks and months had been. The pain that hit at the most unexpected moments and left him gasping for air; the sympathetic looks from people that too quickly turned to frowns of impatience accompanied with a grunt that said, clearly, get over it; the complete inability to carry on with anything.

  He rested his head back against the sofa. Tyler, spotting a moment’s weakness, climbed into his lap, curled up and, within minutes, was snoring softly.

  West reached for the whiskey bottle and poured another. To hell with it. If he was going to start thinking about Glasnevin, he needed it. />
  He’d spent a year in Garda Headquarters before begging for a transfer. He hadn’t left his lucrative career as a solicitor to sit in an office formulating strategy for a fraction of the money. That wasn’t why he’d joined up. He wanted to be on the streets, investigating, solving crimes, putting the bad guys away.

  His insistent requests for transfer to an active assignment paid off eventually and he was offered the choice of two posts, one in Foxrock or one, further from home, in the north city suburb of Glasnevin. He’d decided on Glasnevin, an area he didn’t know very well, hoping for more diversity of crime than in upmarket Foxrock and he supposed, looking back, he just wanted a complete change.

  How many hours had he been there before it happened? One or two at the most. The call had come through just as he arrived, early as usual, and there was nobody available to take it apart from him. A report of a disturbance. The desk sergeant had given him the address, told him how to get there and he had gone. On his own, simple as that. Wasn’t that always the way things happened?

  But he couldn’t find the house. He drove around for thirty minutes, got completely lost and had to ask for directions back to the station. Brian Dunphy, the garda assigned to be his partner, had arrived for his shift and West, totally embarrassed, had explained his predicament.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Dunphy had said with a laugh of genuine amusement. ‘We get so many of that type of call. Usually, they turn out to be nothing. We’ll have a word with the desk sergeant, see if they rang again.’

  They checked and no further calls had come through but West insisted they go, just to check it out. Dunphy had laughed again and called him an eager beaver, but had shrugged and agreed.

  He had driven, listening as his passenger regaled him with tales of the happenings in Glasnevin, all of which were amusing and, although he’d obviously told them several times before, Dunphy laughed at each one, a full-on belly laugh that filled the car with sound. And that’s how West remembered him, laughing heartily at his own stories.

  They had arrived at the address. It wasn’t far from the station; he would have been there in five minutes if he hadn’t got lost. He parked the car at the kerb and Dunphy got out and stood looking around the quiet, well-maintained suburban street.

  He had unbuckled his seat belt to follow.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother getting out, mate. I’ll just give the door a knock and see if they know anything about the call, okay?’

  Just then, West’s mobile rang and with a wave to Dunphy, he answered. It had been some query about paperwork at headquarters. He’d finished the call and was just about to get out of the car when the front door of the house opened.

  He’d looked towards the door in time to see a middle-aged man wielding a gun. There wasn’t time to move, or shout a warning. He heard the crack and watched his partner fall, then saw the man look across to him and taking aim, with a blank look of horror that was clear even at a distance, he reversed the weapon, wedged it under his chin and fired.

  West sat stunned for what seemed like hours but it was probably only seconds before he ran to Dunphy, stepping over a pool of blood to turn him over carefully. His eyes were open, but he didn’t have to feel for a pulse to know he was dead. He’d never had a chance.

  The other man had fallen backward into the house. West checked, but he too was dead.

  The shots had brought neighbours out and there were screams of horror. One woman came rushing up to him. ‘Can I help?’ she asked simply, her eyes wide with shock.

  ‘Do you know this man?’ West asked, indicating the body in the hall. It was a stupid question; there was little of the man’s face left to identify him.

  But the woman, keeping her eyes averted from the body, nodded. ‘I live next door,’ she said, pointing. ‘Our houses share walls, you know, and I could hear him earlier. He was shouting at his wife and kids, screaming actually. I rang the gardaí then, but nobody came.’

  ‘We are the gardaí,’ West replied, indicating the fallen man at his feet.

  ‘Pity you didn’t get here sooner, then,’ she said sadly.

  ‘You mentioned a wife and children?’ he asked, trying to stay focused, feeling shock seeping in and paralysing.

  ‘Yeah, they should be here.’ Her shocked face took on a new look of horror. ‘You don’t think he hurt them, do you? God, no.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I need you to go back home, and ring the gardaí and for an ambulance. Tell them an officer has been shot. Tell them his name, Brian Dunphy. Have you got that?’ He gave her Brian’s name rather than his own. The local gardaí would know the name and respond quickly.

  ‘Brian Dunphy,’ she repeated before running off, shouting at people to get out of the way.

  He stood, swaying a little, and looked around. There appeared to be a million faces looking back at him, all reflecting the look of shock he knew they saw on his. He pointed at one man, older than the rest, and called him over.

  ‘I’m Sergeant West,’ he said. ‘My partner’s been shot. I need someone to stay here and stop anyone else going into the house, can you do that for me, while I go and see where the wife and kids are?’

  The man nodded curtly, said nothing but took a handkerchief from his pocket and draped it over Brian Dunphy’s open eyes.

  The tears that sprang to West’s eyes were sharp and sudden. He blinked them away. He had to find the wife and children. ‘Damn,’ he muttered, as he stepped over the body of the man in the hall, he hadn’t thought to ask her how many children there were.

  The hall led directly to the kitchen. A quick look showed him it was empty. The back door was locked, the key on the inside. Retracing his steps, he tried the first door – it was empty as was an understairs toilet.

  He had to climb over the dead body to gain access to the stairway, carefully avoiding stepping into the brain tissue that was spattered around the area. Taking the stairs two at a time, he stopped at the top and listened. He heard nothing. ‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Is there anyone here? My name is Mike West, I’m a Garda Síochána.’

  He opened the first door; an empty bathroom. Slowly, he opened the first bedroom door and then the second. Nothing. Perhaps they had gone out, he hoped, his hand reaching for the last doorknob. He stood there a moment, hearing the distant sound of sirens, knowing help was on its way, wondering if he should wait until it arrived. But he didn’t, he pushed the door open and, then it was too late. Inside the small room, there was carnage. The man hadn’t used a gun here; he’d used a knife.

  Frozen in the doorway, he looked around. He could make out four bodies, although there was so much blood… so much blood. He felt his vision going, a blackness creeping in around the edges. Four bodies. He had slit the mother’s throat; it gaped like a wide toothless smile… the children… the three children… so very small, so very, very small.

  The blackness crept in and claimed him. He folded like a concertina just as he heard a yell from below announcing the arrival of gardaí and ambulance crew.

  When he woke, he was in a private room in a local hospital, a drip in his arm, a monitor beep-beeping behind him. He felt a fraud; he hadn’t been hurt, hadn’t been shot; hadn’t even been shot at. ‘I’m okay,’ he told the doctor who came to see him. He wasn’t aware of the tears that spilled down his cheeks until he noticed the drops peppering the blue hospital gown he wore. When he saw them, he couldn’t understand where they were coming from, pointing them out to the doctor who said nothing, just told him to sit tight.

  It wasn’t until his mother came in twenty minutes later, and said in distress, ‘Oh Michael, don’t cry,’ that he realised he had been crying the whole time, his tears soaking the hospital gown so much they had to change it. His mother sat with him, holding his hand, telling him it would be okay, that he would be okay.

  He didn’t believe her; he didn’t think he would ever be okay again.

  The inquest into the deaths exonerated him completely. The coroner told the court the w
ife and children had been dead several hours and had, more than likely, been killed while they slept. Had West arrived earlier, the inquest decided, he may have prevented the death of Brian Dunphy but only at the cost of his own.

  He was free to carry on as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t seen two men die in front of his eyes, one of whom was laughing and joking only moments before. As if he hadn’t seen those tiny, bloody bodies.

  He received counselling from the department psychologist and advice from friends and colleagues. From his mother he got unconditional love and support, and it was that that got him through. That and time.

  He still woke up in a sweat sometimes and saw the gun pointing at him. Sometimes, walking down the street or standing in a crowded place, he heard a laugh and thought of Brian Dunphy. Sometimes, when he saw a small child, he remembered those small, bloody bodies and wondered if they had known what was happening to them. But sometimes now, he didn’t think about it at all.

  He had returned to Glasnevin two weeks after the event, had stood in the car park and knew he couldn’t work there again. He went home and requested an immediate transfer. It was granted within hours and the next day he started in Foxrock.

  Before he reported for duty, he bought a satellite navigation system for his car; he was never going to get lost again.

  And it was working out all right for him in Foxrock. Of course, if he had taken the position there in the first place… well, how many times could he play the what if game.

  Tyler growled softly, a dog-dream of who-knows-what. West ran a hand over his head and smiled. He had told Edel the truth; it had taken a while but he had regained the pleasure in his house, his garden, friends and family. He tried to build up a store of things that brought happiness, things he could dip into when the sadness came sweeping over him, as it still did now and then. Edel Johnson’s smile came to mind and on that pleasing memory, he emptied his glass. He picked Tyler up without waking him and put him on the sofa, then got up, stretched his long body and took himself to bed.