“You think if you find out what happened to Lizzie Fitzpatrick somebody in the Fitzpatrick clan will give you a tip on Dermot, which, frankly, is a stretch even for you . . .”
“You know what I like about you, Crabbie?”
“What?”
“You keep me grounded, mate.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Where to now?”
“Let’s go see the last of these three fearless fishermen.”
We checked the Yellow Pages and found Lee McPhail listed under Managers and Agents. His office was on Botanic Avenue near Shaftsbury Square.
We walked over and found that he was up on the third floor of an office block overlooking the Ulster Bank. It was an old building but the office had recently been renovated. There were two secretaries. An older and a younger. One to get the job done, the other to provide eye candy for the punters. The younger one was a fetching blonde who was nonplussed by our questions about her boss’s whereabouts. The older one informed us that Lee was unavailable as he was showing VIPs from America around the city.
“And who might these VIPs be?” I asked.
“Joe Kennedy from Massachusetts for one,” she said with a look of triumph.
“Will Mr. McPhail be in the office at all this week?”
She reached in a drawer and looked at Lee’s schedule. “Nope. It’s jam packed,” she announced.
“Mind if I have a look?” I said and took the schedule out of her hand, but it was no good. He was indeed thick as thieves with the Kennedy clan all week.
“Have you got a photocopier?” I asked her.
She reluctantly admitted that she had.
I photocopied McPhail’s busy life and gave her the book back.
We took our leave and I examined the schedule as we walked down the stairs. Kennedy was meeting priests and politicians and visiting prisons and factories on his visit to Northern Ireland. One trip that caught my eye was to the old DeLorean plant in Dunmurry—a factory that I had visited myself when they were still turning out clunky, underpowered gull-winged sports cars. Now it was a business park—whatever that meant.
“Do you fancy coming with me tomorrow to meet McPhail at the old DeLorean factory?” I asked Crabbie.
“I’d love to, mate, but I can’t. I’m in court all day.”
“What have you done? Something to do with sheep?”
“I haven’t done anything. I’m testifying.”
“A likely story.”
We walked back to the Land Rover, checked underneath it for bombs, and I took Crabbie back to Carrick. I signed the Land Rover in again, got in my Beemer, and drove to see Mary Fitzpatrick in Ballykeel.
Annie answered the doorbell. “You again,” she said.
“Me again,” I agreed.
“You want to come in? Me ma and da aren’t in. They’re away to Belfast.”
I hesitated on the doorstep. “Uhm, it was your mother I wanted to see. I just wanted to fill her in our progress in our investigation.”
“After four years there’s been progress?”
“Well, not as such, but I wanted to tell her what I’ve been up to.”
“You can tell me. Come in. Have a cup of tea.”
I went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. Countdown was on TV.
“Let me know when it’s the numbers game!” Annie yelled from the kitchen.
It was a word game. Both contestants only got five-letter words but the guy in Dictionary Corner got a nine-letter one.
“It’s the numbers!” I yelled, and Annie came in with two mugs of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. While she watched the screen I watched her. She was very beautiful. It was the eyes, I think. Those extraordinary eyes. It wasn’t surprising that it had been Annie who had finally got a charismatic fellow like Dermot to settle down. She had eyes like his sister’s and his mother. Intelligent and haughty and dangerously dark. “Ten plus five equals fifteen. Fifteen times fifty equals seven fifty. Seven fifty plus nine equals seven hundred and fifty-nine!” Annie squealed with delight, and was pleased even more when neither of the two contestants got the solution.
She turned off the TV.
“Sorry about that. I have to do the numbers. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane around here.”
“Don’t you have a job or a part-time job or . . .”
“No.”
“Weren’t you training to be a teacher at Magee?”
“I was. I gave that up. Dermot, that old romantic, said that no woman of his was going to have to work!”
“Wee bit Stone Age, no?”
“That’s Dermot. He’s old fashioned. But I didn’t really need to work, did I? Dad always spoiled me rotten and Dermot was getting a good, uhm, allowance.”
“What did you do when Dermot was inside all those years?”
“I still got the allowance from you know who and Dermot pulled a few strings and I wrote a few articles for An Phoblacht. I quite enjoyed that. I thought maybe I could parley that into something more permanent, but then, well . . . you know what happened next.”
“What happened next?”
“Well, Lizzie died and we closed the pub and Vanessa went to Canada. It was a bad few years and then the maddest thing of the lot!”
“What was that?”
“He divorced me!”
“I heard about that.”
“The eejit divorced me from inside the Maze! Just like that! I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t even see me.”
“Did he give you a reason?”
“No reason. Just a terse remark through his lawyers.”
“What was the remark? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I have it bloody memorized. He said, ‘I trust that Annie will not contest this divorce. I have no desire to drag her name through the mud or hurt the cause we both believe in so deeply.’”
“What did he mean by that?”
“You know what he meant. And it was a load of shite. Somebody must have been spreading gossip or something . . .”
Annie shook her head and turned away from me, looking through the window at the back garden.
There was a distant gunshot and hundreds of ducks lifted off from the lough en masse.
Annie crossed and uncrossed her legs. The clock on the mantel ticked. “Well, I suppose I better be running along, Annie. If you could tell your mother we’re still on it, I would appreciate that.”
Annie sniffed and turned to face me again. “Are you going back to Carrickfergus?”
“No, not yet. Since I was in the area I thought about paying a wee visit to that kid who was seeing your sister.”
“Harper McCullough?”
“Aye, that’s the one.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“I’ve got his address in my notebook.”
“Ach, I’ll walk you over. It’s about a quarter of a mile up the lough path . . . That is if you don’t mind me tagging along. I wouldn’t want to spoil your investigation.”
“No, I don’t mind. In fact it would be my distinct pleasure.”
We dandered along the Lough Neagh path. The sun was setting over the west shore and the light had taken on a color that you see sometimes in dreams. Wading birds of a dozen varieties were settling down for the night and the wind was stirring gently among the reeds. The blue lough itself was still and motionless but for a yacht cruising the north coast on an easy tack.
“It’s remarkable here,” I said.
“Yes,” she mumbled.
We walked farther along the track. A family of ducks got out of our way. Annie put her hand on my arm to stop me.
“What?” I asked her.
“You don’t judge me, do you, Sean? You never seemed the sort.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, what did Dermot expect? He was in prison for five years. Five years. And before that he said that he knew they’d catch him sooner or later. He knew it. He gets to be the
hero and where does it leave me? Alone. Living with my parents?”
“Annie, you don’t have to explain yourself—”
“You know what some of them say? They say that the first thing they’ll do when they get an independent thirty-two-county Ireland is to ban abortion and take away votes for women. Put women back in their place. The men in the fields, the women in the kitchen. That’s the kind of mind-set we’re dealing with here. You know?”
“I can’t believe Dermot ever said anything like that.”
“No . . . not really . . .” Her voice faded away.
The last arc of the sun had dipped behind the Sperrin Mountains and all the birds on the lough seemed to give a great collective sigh.
“Come on,” she said, and we walked a little farther on until we reached a huge Georgian house on the water’s edge with a pier and a boat dock to which a twenty-foot cabin cruiser had been moored.
“This is it,” Annie said.
“They have money, do they?”
“Aye. Harper’s father, Tommy McCullough, was a big . . . what’s the word?”
“Fish? Enchilada?”
“Magnate in these parts. His construction company built half of Antrim town. He was a Protestant but he was liked well enough by everybody. A real . . . uhm . . . character. Used to have these big Halloween and Christmas parties for all the local kids. That’s how Lizzie, Vanessa, and me got to know Harper. We’ve known him since he was a wee nipper. His dad was big into fishing and the rugby club.”
“He had a stroke, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. He was in a bad way for a while and died not too long after Lizzie’s accident. Harper was completely lost.”
“What about his mother?”
“Don’t mention his mother. She ran off to England with some actor when Harper was only five. She’s been pestering Harper for money since Tommy’s death. Of course, he gives it to her because it’s his mother, but she’s a frightful woman by all accounts.”
We opened the back gate and began walking up the garden path to the house, which I could see now was a lovely red sandstone manor from the 1780s or ’90s.
Annie took us to the back door, which led into a large scullery off the kitchen.
“Wait a minute, will he mind us coming in the back door like this?”
“I’ve come in this way a thousand times!” she scoffed.
I followed Annie through the scullery and the kitchen into an enormous, slightly old-fashioned living room that overlooked the lough.
“Hello!” she yelled. “Hello! You’ve got company!”
“Is that Annie McCann?” a man’s voice asked from an adjoining room.
“Annie Fitzpatrick, if you don’t mind!” she said.
A side door opened and Harper McCullough came in. He turned on the light and gave Annie a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He was tall, six four, handsome, about twenty-six or twenty-seven. He had an open, clean-shaven face with a sharp, square jaw, thick black hair, and dark brown eyes. His frame, however, was slight, and he was skinny, and when he walked it was with a stoop. In another age you would have had him down as a consumptive artist. He was wearing a mustard-colored sweater, blue jeans, and no shoes. If he put on a few stone he’d look like one of those wankers who are born with money and good looks and who swan through life; but this character wasn’t swanning anywhere. His mother had abandoned him, his father had passed away recently, and his girlfriend had died in some kind of bizarre accident . . .
“Is this your new beau?” he said to Annie, offering me his hand.
“God, no!” Annie laughed. “This is . . . well, I suppose you could say that this is an old friend of the family . . . Detective Inspector Sean Duffy of the famed Special Branch.”
I shook Harper’s hand and his grip was firm.
“A policeman? How can you bunch of rebels have a policeman as a family friend?” Harper asked with a laugh.
“You have slandered us, sir! We’re actually a diverse and pluralistic lot,” Annie said, poking Harper in the chest.
Harper shook his head and winked at me. “Your know her ex-husband is a famous IRA commander! You’re in trouble, pal. This is a classic honey trap if ever I saw one.”
Annie punched him on the shoulder. “Stop it! I’m not seeing Sean! I’m not seeing anyone. He’s here on official business.”
“Oh?” Harper said.
“Yes, I am, Mr. McCullough. I’m in the Cold Case Unit of the RUC Special Branch. We’re looking into the death of Lizzie Fitzpatrick.”
Harper’s eyes widened. “Finally!” he exclaimed. “Lizzie never got justice! I don’t care what they say. That whole thing was very suspicious, to say the least.”
“How so?” I asked.
“They say she fell off the bar and broke her neck? Impossible! She was very coordinated. She had terrific balance. She could do a handstand with one hand!”
Annie groaned. “The handstand thing again? We can all do that! Look!”
She got down on the kitchen floor, did a handstand and lifted her left hand off the ground. She fell and did it another two times until she managed to hold it there for a ten count. Harper looked at me, embarrassed, and I was embarrassed for Annie too.
She finished her handstand and sprung back to her feet.
“There! What do you think of that!” she said.
Harper smiled. “That was brilliant, Annie. All three of you girls were always incredibly talented.”
Annie smiled from ear to ear and unconsciously gave me a little nudge on the back.
“What is going on in here?” a female voice said behind me.
I turned to look.
She was blonde, winsome, pale, very pretty, and nine months pregnant.
“There she is! Ready to pop!” Annie said, and kissed the pregnant woman on the cheek.
There was the customary cooing over the baby bump before Harper introduced me.
“This is my wife, Jane. Jane, this is Sean Duffy. He’s a police detective. He’s looking into Lizzie’s death.”
Jane frowned and shook her head. “Poor Lizzie. Don’t believe them when they tell you she could just have fallen off a table. She could do these one-handed handstands that were—” Jane began.
“I was just showing them! I was just after showing them. Right this minute!” Annie interrupted.
“So did you all go to school together?” I asked.
“Aye. Antrim Grammar. I was a couple of years ahead of Harper. And Jane was in Lizzie’s year,” Annie said.
That would put Harper at about twenty-eight and Jane at about twenty-five, I thought, and made a mental note of it.
“I live about a mile that way,” Jane said, pointing down the lough.
“Jane was one of Lizzie’s best friends,” Annie added.
“The best friend!” Jane insisted. “Now just because I’m ready to explode I am not going to forget my duties. Who wants a cup of tea?”
Jane and Annie went to make the tea, which gave me a chance to talk to Harper alone.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. McCullough, I’m reinterviewing everyone. Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to bring you back to the night Lizzie Fitzpatrick died, 27—”
“27 December 1980, I’ll never forget it.”
“That night you were at some rugby club dinner in Belfast?”
“Yes. It was the Antrim Rugby Club Awards Dinner at the Montjoy Hotel. They were giving an award to my father. Lifetime achievement thing. I was his representative.”
“He’d had a stroke.”
“Aye. A month before. I didn’t want to go to the dinner, not with my old man sick and Lizzie’s dad in the hospital for his knee surgery. Did they tell you Jim was in the hospital for his knee?”
“Yes. That’s why Lizzie was running the pub.”
“She didn’t have to. It could have closed for one bloody night. She was going to be a lawyer. It still makes me furious. I think Mary guilted her
into it.”
“So you were reluctantly at this rugby club dinner.”
“Reluctantly is right. It hardly seemed a time to be getting blitzed with the bloody rugby club. A game I’ve never liked, incidentally. And if I hadn’t gone none of this would have happened.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, I would have been with Lizzie the whole time, wouldn’t I?”
“What do you think happened to Lizzie, Mr. McCullough?”
“Somebody killed her. Had to be. She would never have fallen off that bar. I’ve seen her jump from twice that height as happy as Larry.”
“How did they do it, with all the doors locked and bolted from the inside?”
“I don’t know. You’re the detective! She wouldn’t die like that. So random like that.”
“What do you do for a living, Mr. McCullough?” I asked him.
“I’m a builder.”
“You physically build things?”
He laughed. “Me? No. Look at me. I run a construction company. My dad’s company.”
“Were you working for your father when you were going out with Lizzie?”
He shook his head. “God, no. I was at Queen’s.”
“Studying?”
“Archeology.”
“A fascinating subject.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, his eyes lighting up for the first time in our interview. “I’ve always loved that stuff. I wanted to do underwater archeology. You know what that is?”
“No. Not really.”
“I got a book on it when I was ten. I’ve been entranced ever since. You dive on drowned cities. Alexandria, Piraeus, places like that. It’s a brilliant field and they’ve barely, er, scratched the surface.”
“Why don’t you still do that?”
He shook his head and sighed. “Somebody has to run the bloody firm, don’t they? After my dad had his stroke, I sort of got sucked into it. And then after Lizzie’s . . . after she died, well, I sort of buried myself in the work . . . And it’s too late now, isn’t it? I’ve a kid on the way,” he said, looking a little panic stricken.
“I see.”
“Do you have any kids, Inspector?”
“Me, no.”
“I mean, how do you raise kids?”
“I think it’s all quite straightforward, sir. Uhm, you get the book and everything’s in the book.”
In the Morning I'll Be Gone Page 16