“You’d really give up your daughter’s husband?”
“Ex-husband. I am as good as my word, Duffy. If you do this for me, I’ll give you Dermot McCann.”
“I should tell you . . . I’m not an assassin. I want to arrest him but Dermot may not come quietly . . .”
“I’ll tell you where he is. What happens next is between you and him.”
“I can promise you that if I have anything to do with it, I will give him a chance to surrender.”
“Very good.” She offered me her hand and I shook it.
“And if I need to get in touch with you I can come by the house?” I asked.
“And if I need to get in touch with you I’ll write to you.”
“That’s probably the safest policy if they’re tapping your phones.”
“Good day, Inspector.”
She walked out of the back room into the café proper; I put the files in my briefcase, waited a decent interval, and followed in her wake.
The first thing I did on Monday morning was drive to Antrim RUC to talk to the investigating officer. He was now Chief Inspector Beggs and he had moved from CID to admin. He was a ruddy, saturnine character with black hair and a moustache. He was about thirty-nine or forty, and if his heart or the booze didn’t get him he would probably end up an assistant chief constable. He greeted me without suspicion, listened to my pitch, took the entire case file, and asked a reserve constable to copy it while we adjourned to a nearby pub.
“Just a pint of Bass for me,” he said, and I got the same.
“So why are Special Branch interested in a four-year-old accidental death case?” he asked, taking a sip of his pint.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that, sir.”
“Oh, it’s one of those, is it?” he said good-naturedly.
“Yes, it’s one of those, I’m afraid, sir. What can you tell me about the incident?”
“The poor wee lassie had locked up for the night, she was changing a light bulb, she got up on to the bar, she slipped, she fell, she broke her neck. End of story.”
“Dr. Kent thought differently, though, didn’t he?”
“Oh aye, him. He convinced the coroner to return an open verdict. The man’s a menace. We’ve had trouble with him before. He sees conspiracies behind every corner. He got that poor wee lassie’s mother worked up and no mistake. Three girls in that family. One falls off a bar and breaks her neck, another hightails it for America, the other’s married to some IRA lifer in the Maze. It’s like Fiddler on the Roof. It’s bad luck is what it is.”
“You didn’t think there was any kind of IRA connection in the girl’s death?”
“No chance. It was an accident. The place was locked up tight. The key was in her pocket. The front door was bolted. The back door was bolted. The windows were barred. I tried to explain to Dr. Kent and Mrs. Fitzpatrick that it was a logical impossibility that anyone else was involved.”
I nodded and took a big swig of the Bass.
“Have you ever read—” I began, but he cut me off.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Moonstone, The Hollow Man, The Rim of the Pit . . . among many others.”
“Well, yes,” I said, a bit shamefaced. Clearly he was no eejit-brained country copper.
“You see, Inspector Duffy, the essence of the “locked room mystery” is to assure the reader that the room is hermetically sealed when in fact there may be another way in. For example, in a lot of those stories there’s a second key. Well, here the key was in Lizzie’s pocket, and even if there had been a second key it wouldn’t matter because both doors front and back were bolted from the inside.”
“What sort of bolts?”
“Heavy bolts on heavy rings that were used during a traditional “lock-in” for after-hours drinking. The bolts can only be slid across from the inside. There was no hole in the door for a wire to go through or any other way that they could be manipulated externally. I checked for that. In fact that was one of the first things I checked once the constable told me that the place was empty and the doors had been locked and barred from the inside.”
“In the Rue Morgue they got in through the window,” I suggested.
“Yes. You know that story’s very dodgy. I don’t mean the trained killer ape, I mean the fact that an elderly French woman would ever go to sleep with the window open. The wife’s mother’s from Rouen. Believe me. No killer monkeys or vampires are getting into her flat. I don’t think she’s had the windows open since the Occupation . . . but that’s, uhm, neither here nor there. In poor Lizzie’s case the windows were covered with thick iron bars that were welded to the frames. This was to prevent burglaries and sectarian attacks. Needless to say, none of the bars had been tampered with . . .”
“In one of those stories the act of breaking the door down conceals the fact that the door wasn’t actually locked from the inside after all.”
“I’m glad you asked about that, Duffy. I checked that too. The bolt was so strong on the front door that when they smashed it open it was the hinges that gave first.”
I took another drink of Burton-upon-Trent’s finest.
“And the back door was definitely bolted?”
“I checked it myself.”
“A cellar door?”
“The Henry Joy McCracken has a cellar all right but the only way down to it is through the bar itself. I was thinking along those lines too. I went down there and had a look. It’s completely bricked up along the walls and there’s a solid concrete floor. I checked the walls: no loose pointing, no secret passages.”
“And the attic?”
“There is no attic. It’s a hammer-beam ceiling.”
I finished the Bass and shook my head. “Well then, I don’t have an explanation.”
“It’s not for me to question the wisdom of you lads in Special Branch, but what exactly has got it into your heads that this was a murder? Is there any new information that I don’t know about?”
“No. No new information. We’ve just been asked to look at it all again.”
“Well, if my opinion’s worth anything (and it probably isn’t) I’d say that the simplest explanation is still the best. She locked up for the night, closed the till, was about to head home when she noticed that a light bulb was out. She knew her ailing father couldn’t fix it so she decided to do it herself. Accidents will happen . . .”
“And the lights were turned off why?”
“So she didn’t electrocute herself when she put the new bulb in.”
“So she clambers up on the bar and tries to change the light bulb in the dark?”
“There was a little ambient light from the street lamp outside. She probably thought she could do it. Alas, she could not.”
“Tell me about the three men in the bar just before closing time.”
“I interviewed all three of them independently. They all had the same story. Lizzie kicked them out after last orders and they drove home to Belfast. They’re all friends, so I suppose it’s possible that they concocted the tale and they’re covering for one another, but I didn’t think so at the time and I don’t think so now.”
I flipped open my notebook where I’d written down their names.
“Arnold Yeats?”
“He teaches history at Queen’s.”
“Lee McPhail?”
“An election agent in Belfast. A bit of a political fixer. Works both sides of the street.”
“What do you mean?”
“For the Prods and the Catholics. As long as you’ve got cash.”
“He sounds promising. Bit of a dodgy character, eh?”
“He was the driver that night. The only one sober enough. He’s connected up the Wazoo river and he’s got a few convictions for various things.”
“Still, that’s something, though, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “If you want to make something of it, sure. It’s three years since I interviewed him but I didn’t detect anything suspicious at the time.”
“This last guy . . . Barry Connor?”
“Chef. He owns Le Canard in Belfast,” he said, looking at me as if I would have heard of it.
“What’s special about that?” I asked.
“I see you are not an epicure, Duffy.”
“No. Not really.”
“It’s Belfast’s only Michelin-starred restaurant.”
“Didn’t even know there was one.”
“I’m surprised the Michelin Guide people braved the Troubles to sample our less than spectacular local delicacies, but there it is.”
“An academic, a political fixer and a well-known chef. It’s like an episode of fucking Columbo.”
“With an important difference . . . there was no actual crime committed here.”
We’ll see what Dr. Kent says about that, I thought.
“Tell me about the boyfriend. The one at the rugby club dinner.”
“McCullough?”
“Aye.”
“He’s a good kid. His father was a builder who made a mint when they decided to develop Antrim as a new town. House up on the lough shore. He was a university boy studying architecture or archeology or something.”
“You’ve always got to look at the boyfriend, don’t you? What’s his alibi like?”
“The rugby club dinner went on until one in the morning but he didn’t stay that late. He called Mary Fitzpatrick from the dinner about eleven thirty asking to speak to Lizzie. Of course, she hadn’t seen her. So he sped back home as fast as he could.”
“Was he definitely at the dinner?”
“Oh yeah. His father was getting an award and he had to give a speech on his father’s behalf and then he had to hang around for all the other speeches. Look to the boyfriend, as you rightly say, but even without the impossibility of him being in two places at once I still don’t like him for it.”
“Why?”
“He was knocked for six by Lizzie’s death. His da had had a stroke earlier that year and he’s an only child. Harper was looking after his dad at home and after Lizzie’s death he went to pieces. Harper and Mary Fitzpatrick were the ones pushing me to open a murder investigation. He completely refused to believe that Lizzie would have died in so stupid a manner. He didn’t buy it.”
“But you did?”
He took a big swig of his pint and grinned like a man content. “That’s how people die all the time, mate! You know how many non-terrorist-related murders Northern Ireland has in a bog-standard year?”
“I don’t know, fifty, sixty?”
“In an average year: twenty. All domestics. Drunken husband kills drunken wife. You know how many accidental deaths there are every year?”
“No,” I said wearily.
“About four hundred. In other words you are twenty times more likely to die by accident than in a non-terrorist-related homicide.”
“I see.”
“Do you see, Duffy? Because Harper McCullough and Mary Fitzpatrick didn’t see. And that batty doctor didn’t see.”
“Did Lizzie have any enemies at all?”
“Nope. None that came out of the woodwork. We interviewed her friends. We talked to her professors across the water. She was well liked. She was even . . . she was even a bit dull. She was into the law, Harper, horses.”
“What about the Fitzpatricks? They were a Republican family, weren’t they? Annie was married to Dermot McCann and he was doing time in the Maze. Could it have been some kind of revenge attack or something?”
“Without a claim of responsibility? And in this elaborate manner? And of a woman? Have you heard of such a thing before?”
“It’s not really the MO, is it?”
“No.”
I ordered another couple of pints and two bags of salt and vinegar crisps. While they were getting poured I stuck twenty pence in the jukebox and went for three Elvis numbers: “Suspicious Minds,” “In the Ghetto,” and “Suspicious Minds” again.
I sat back down with food, beer, and music.
“Ta,” Chief Inspector Beggs said.
“Could the murderer have been hiding in the bar the whole time and then maybe snuck out the next day when no one would have noticed?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because the constables who broke into the bar that night treated it as a crime scene. The broken-down front door was kept under constant surveillance. I arrived on the premises some ten minutes later and I conducted a thorough search of the place. This included the cellar and every available crawl space or empty barrel, and the full barrels, too. I can assure you, Inspector Duffy, that there was no one hiding in the Henry Joy McCracken waiting for a chance to escape.”
“OK,” I said, and wrote this in my notebook too with a note to myself to thoroughly search the pub for any concealed hiding places.
He smiled and began filling a pipe. “Like I say, it’s not my place to tell Special Branch their business, Inspector, but if you’ll excuse the pun, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Geddit?”
“I get it,” I said and finished my pint of bass.
“All right, me old chum, I’ll walk you back to the station and get you the photocopy of that file,” he said.
We went back to the barracks, I got the file, thanked the Chief Inspector for his time, and made my way to Antrim Hospital. In the car park I read his full report on Lizzie’s death. It was thirty pages long with complete witness statements, photographs of the body and of the pub, a comprehensive timeline, Dr. Kent’s autopsy report, and the coroner’s verdict. The file had been stamped “No Further Action” and it was clear that Antrim RUC considered this to be a closed case. Chief Inspector Beggs was not the usual time-serving incompetent that you found in these out-of-the way stations. He was an astute, thoughtful officer who was well read and good at his job.
At this stage everything was looking like an accidental death, which was not what Mrs. Fitzpatrick wanted to hear, but if that was the truth then somehow I’d have to break it to her.
I locked the car, buttoned my jacket, and went inside the hospital.
Dr. Kent, it turned out, was only a part-timer and he wasn’t in the wards that day, but the nursing station was kind enough to give me his home address.
He had no listed phone number so I drove out to a small sheep farm in a boggy townland south of Lough Neagh. Radio 3 was playing The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh by Rimsky-Korsakov—good head-clearing music if you’re ever looking for some.
Dr. Kent lived alone on a dozen desolate-looking acres. The wall of his barn had been painted with the words “Jesus died so that ye might live! Repent now and accept Christ as your personal savior!”
I parked the car and walked over the yard among chickens and a friendly nanny goat. Dr. Kent appeared with a border collie and I was a little dismayed to discover that he seemed to be well into his seventies. He had a full white beard and a rather wild hedge of white hair.
“Dr. Kent?”
“Aye.”
“Inspector Sean Duffy of the RUC Special Branch.”
I shook his hand and observed him close up. His skin had a healthy country tan and he was lean but not frail. His watery brown eyes looked sharp.
“What do Special Branch want with me?” he asked, a little worried, looking furtively at his barn. He almost certainly had an illegal still over there, which was more the concern of Customs and Excise.
To put him at ease I quickly told him that Special Branch were taking another look at the death of Lizzie Fitzpatrick. He didn’t initially recall the case, but when I told him the details it came back.
He invited me into his kitchen, where he made tea and offered me Veda bread and butter, which I accepted.
“Aye, that was an odd murder and no mistake,” he said, sitting opposite me at the sturdy, beautiful bog oak kitchen table. He had a very slight Scottish accent, which I knew would prejudice me in his favor. Everyone liked their doctors to be Scottish and their psychiatrists to be German. The Bibl
e quote on the barn, the putative still, and his age prejudiced me against him so it would all balance out.
“Are you sure it was a murder, Dr. Kent?”
“Aye, I am. She was struck on the head with a rounded wooden object, possibly a rolling pin, or a wooden pole, or a rounders bat, something of the sort. The initial blow knocked her unconscious and then the murderer snapped her neck with a quick and powerful lateral movement.”
“You were on the scene?”
“No, but I conducted the autopsy first thing the next morning.”
“It was impossible at that stage to be more precise about the time of death?”
“What did I write in the report?”
“Between ten p.m. and midnight.”
“Yes, that sounds about right.”
“I’ve read your findings. There was no sexual dimension to the crime, no other signs of violence. Nothing under her nails. No struggle. Does that not seem strange to you?”
“Not strange at all. Her assailant struck her from behind. She fell to the ground unconscious, and the assailant manhandled her into a position where he could break her neck. There would be no defensive wounds in such a case.”
“Well, yes, Doctor, I see that, but it poses the question why, doesn’t it? If there was no sexual motive and nothing was taken from the till . . .”
“There are other reasons to kill someone.”
“Of course, but Lizzie was well liked, she had no enemies that we know about, and there was no paramilitary dimension. And then there’s the compelling fact that the pub was locked and bolted from the inside. Does it not seem more likely that she was the victim of an accident? The light bulb was in her hand, the bulb in the socket was dead . . .”
He shook his head, stood up, and opened the window, letting in a salty breeze from the lough.
“I can’t account for any of that. All I know is that the wound on her head was consistent with a rounded, blunt piece of wood, not a flat hardwood floor, and the snapping of her neck vertebrae was more consistent with a sudden violent lateral motion—exactly the sort of damage that would be inflicted if someone (admittedly a very strong or a very angry man) grabbed her head in his hands and snapped it to the back and right.”
In the Morning I'll Be Gone Page 11