In the Morning I'll Be Gone

by Adrian McKinty

  Platt hadn’t the foggiest, but he thought he had an old agenda in his office.

  “Let’s go, then, we’ll bring our drinks,” I said.

  Platt’s office was neat and well maintained. A couple of plants. An empty desk. He was clearly a military man.

  “The Christmas dinner of 1980, you say?”

  “That’s the one.”

  He opened a metal filing cabinet and began rummaging inside.

  I noticed that even his shoes were shined to a brilliance.

  “By any chance were you in the war, Mr. Platt?” I asked to satisfy my own curiosity.

  “Indeed I was, my boy. RAF. Dumfries.”

  “Spitfires?”

  “Hurricanes.”

  “Any kills?”

  “A Ju-88 and I shared a kill on a 111.”

  “That’s not too shabby.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

  He handed me a file that contained press clippings, photographs, and a schedule for the rugby club Christmas dinner of 1980. There were lots of awards and presentations. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

  “Harper McCullough got an award and gave a speech that night, didn’t he?”

  “Oh yes. A speech on behalf of his father. It was the President’s Award.”

  “And what time would that have been given at?”

  “That would have been the next-to-last presentation, at about ten o’clock.”

  “And how long was Harper’s speech, if you remember?”

  “Two minutes, not more. We like to keep the speeches short,” Platt said, sitting on the edge of his desk and gulping the last of his gin and tonic.

  “You don’t happen to remember seeing Harper after his speech was over, do you?” I said with the chill marching up my spine again.

  I could almost predict the answer word for word.

  “Harper? He gave a very gracious speech. Very gracious. After it was over he excused himself to go to the Gents. Did I see him after that? Hmm, I don’t know. There was no reason for him to stay there until the bitter end . . .”

  In other words, from about 10:15 onward Harper’s movements were unaccounted for. He’d said that he’d stayed until 11:30 but would there be any witnesses who could back up that story?

  “Did you ever speak to the police before about this dinner?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever talk to an Inspector Beggs?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Beggs had missed it. Beggs had bloody missed it! He had taken Harper at his word and assumed that there would have been dozens of witnesses at the dinner who would have backed up his alibi.

  “How well did you know his father? Tommy McCullough?”

  “As well as anyone else. Tommy loved the rugby club.”

  “He was a builder, wasn’t he?”

  “A contractor. Very successful. They say his company built half of Antrim town.”

  “I heard that. How would you say that relations were between father and son?”

  “They were good.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  Platt opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “Go on, please, Mr. Platt,” I prompted him.

  “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead . . .”

  “He didn’t like Harper?”

  “It’s not that he didn’t like him . . . Well, it’s more that he never . . .”

  “Please, sir, I’m a homicide detective conducting what could be a murder inquiry.”

  “Well, one time . . . it’s probably nothing . . . one time I heard him call Harper ‘Carol’s wee bastard.’”

  “He didn’t think that Harper was his child?”

  “They weren’t alike in temperament and they certainly didn’t look anything alike.”

  “Did he say this sort of thing often?”

  “God, no! One time. Just that one time. He’d been drinking!”

  “Nice of Harper to pick up that award for his father. Had he done anything like that before?”

  “No . . . but his father had just had a stroke.”

  “Is there a picture of Tommy here in the club? Harper didn’t have one in the house when I went to visit.”

  “Of course!”

  He walked me out into the corridor and showed me several pictures of Tommy at various club functions and a couple of him playing for Antrim 1st XV. He was a big, strapping second row with blond hair, huge thighs and shoulders. Harper was tall like his father, but dark haired and thin.

  “Harper never played the game?” I asked.

  “Never. And his dad didn’t force him, which was right. You can force someone to play football or cricket, but with rugby you have to be committed or you’re going to get yourself hurt.”

  I studied the photograph for a while.

  “Mr. Pratt, did Tommy ever talk about leaving any money to the rugby club in his will?”

  “Gentlemen don’t discuss things like that. I would never have asked him!” Mr. Platt said, affronted.

  “Of course not.”

  We studied the photograph for another moment or two.

  “Although . . .” Mr. Platt said sotto voce.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, he did say to me once that the house was going to the RSPB after his death. He wanted it to be some kind of birdwatching center or something. He loved the birds.”

  “I heard that. Did the club get any money after Tommy’s death?”

  “No. Not a penny. It all went to his boy and, like I say, rugby wasn’t his game. Not at all.”

  “It’s a shame that he died intestate, then, isn’t it?”

  “Aye. But a man never knows when his number’s up. Even in the war you never really thought about that. They could have said to you, OK, chaps, this is a dicey mission and only one out of ten of you is going to make it back. You would have thought to yourself, oh, those poor bastards, I shan’t be seeing them again.”

  I thanked Mr. Platt for his time and asked him where I could make a phone call.

  He said there was a payphone next to the squash court.

  I got some change out of my pocket and called McCrabban at home in Ballymena.

  I bounced my idea off him. He liked it. He thought it was entirely possible.

  “There’s an expression in Irish, Crabbie. Olann an cat cluin bainne leis.”

  “Which means?”

  “The quiet cat also drinks the cream.”

  “I know what you’re getting at.”

  I left it at that. I didn’t say that I was going to make a collar. We both knew that all the evidence was circumstantial.

  This wasn’t his case. It wasn’t even my case. This one belonged to Mary Fitzpatrick.

  I told McCrabban that I’d see him next week and told him to give my best to his missus. I hung up and walked outside to the waiting BMW. It was a dark sky. A sleekit line of storm clouds had drifted up from the Mourne Mountains and the sun had finally set into the Atlantic. I felt the first spit of rain and looked underneath the Beemer for an explosive device and when I found none I got inside.

  I wondered whether it had all been Lizzie’s idea.

  After Mulvenna’s death from MS she must have known that she was the sole witness to Tommy McCullough’s spiteful will. All they had to do was get rid of the will and that would be that. She would marry Harper and they would inherit the estate and live happily ever after.

  But then why would he kill her?

  And how did he kill her?

  A dozen raindrops fell on the roof and then a score and then the heavens opened.

  “Shit,” I said. There was no point putting it off anymore.

  I drove to Ballykeel village, parked outside the Henry Joy McCracken, and took my lockpick kit from the glove compartment.

  I walked to the front door.

  I knew the lock now and I was inside the pub two minutes later.

  I turned the lights on, took an upturned chair from off the table
, and sat down.

  I flipped through my notebook for the hundredth time.

  Always with this case 1, 2, 3 . . . 5, 6.

  I looked at the bar and the front door and the back door.

  How did he do it?

  How?

  How did he—

  One beat.

  Two.

  Three.

  And just like that.

  I knew.

  I knew everything.

  I drove out to Harper’s house through the rain and dark. Perhaps I should have called McCrabban in for this one, but I didn’t want to bother him this late at night and Harper surely wouldn’t be much trouble.

  I parked the car next to an open horsebox in the muddy yard.

  I opened the glove compartment and put brand-new AAA batteries in the Dictaphone.

  I set it running in my inside pocket. It was a corny technique and it wouldn’t hold up in court, but I didn’t need it to hold up in court . . .

  It was raining hard so I turned up my collar and put on my baseball cap.

  I opened the car door and ran, but I still got soaked in the ten seconds between the car and the porch and I was lucky not to go arse over tit on the wet grass.

  I took off my cap, rang the bell, and ran my hand through my hair to get rid of some of the water.

  Jane McCullough came to the door holding the baby. She had that tired but happy look of new mothers.

  “Oh, hello, Detective Duffy,” she said.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Thank you. Madam finally decided to join us.”

  “A little girl, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well done. What was the weight?”

  “Seven pounds on the dot.”

  “That’s great. Congratulations. I’ll get you something. Is pink still in these days?”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary. We have a room full of stuff.”

  “Listen, Jane, I’ve come to see Harper. Is he about?” I asked tentatively.

  She smiled sadly at me. “You’re still working on what happened to Lizzie?”

  “I’m still on the case, yes,” I agreed.

  “You’re a regular plodder,” she said, and yawned.

  The baby looked at me. She was a beautiful little girl with her mother’s blond hair and green eyes.

  If I told Mary what I suspected about Harper she would grow up never knowing her father.

  “Have you picked a name yet?”

  “Grania.”

  “Pretty. From The Fenian Cycle?”

  “Yes! Cormac mac Airt’s daughter. Harper knows all about that stuff. History . . . all that.”

  “It’s a nice name.”

  “Like I say, Harper came up with it, but I love it.”

  “And where is the man of the house?”

  “I think he’s in the library. Do you know where that is? Next to the living room on the ground floor,” Jane said. “Go on ahead. Will you be staying for a bit of dinner?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll be putting the wee sprog down in a minute, it won’t be chaos.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just that I’ve another appointment tonight.”

  “All right, then, but if you change your mind let me know.”

  “I will, Jane, thank you.”

  The library was a rectangular chamber clearly modeled after Trinity College’s reading room. It had quite the collection of books, possibly three or four thousand of them, going back several hundred years. Harper was in a comfortable leather chair facing the boat dock and the choppy waters of the lough.

  He wasn’t pleased to see me but he got up quickly enough and forced a smile on to his face. And he wouldn’t have smiled at all if he’d known that I was the fucking herald for the Angel of Death.

  The book he was reading was called Archaeology under Water: An Atlas of the World’s Submerged Sites. It fell to the floor with a heavy bang as he stood up.

  “Hello, Inspector Duffy, it’s great to see you.”

  “Hello, Harper.”

  “Are you staying for dinner?” he asked.

  I closed the library door and sat down opposite him.

  “I’ll talk and you’ll listen and when I’ve done talking you’ll have a chance to respond, OK?”

  “What’s this all about? Have you found something out—”

  I put my finger to my lips.

  “Lizzie Fitzpatrick was murdered,” I said.

  “I told you. One of those characters who was in the bar that night. I—”

  “It was a smart play, Harper. Always pushing the murder angle because you couldn’t believe that an accident could have befallen your beloved Lizzie. It made you sympathetic. The man who was so consumed by grief he couldn’t see reality.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She wasn’t killed by any of the men in the bar that night.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “It was you, Harper. I know it was you. You were there, outside in the shadows. You waited until last orders. You waited until McPhail, Yeats, and Connor had gone.”

  “I was at the rugby club dinner!”

  “No. You were done by ten fifteen. You were in Ballykeel. Waiting.”

  “I was in Belfast!”

  “You waited until the three fishermen had gone. And then you knocked on the door and told her it was you. She opened it. She was excited to see you. You locked the door behind you. Did you say anything to her?”

  “I wasn’t there!”

  “No, you wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe ‘go get your bag,’ and when her back was turned you smacked her on the head with a tent pole or an axe handle. And when she was unconscious you snapped her neck. You made sure that she was dead and then you climbed up on the bar and put a dud light bulb in the socket and you put a good light bulb in her right hand. And you cracked the good light bulb to make it look as if she had fallen.”

  Harper shook his head. “This is crazy! Why would I do such a thing? She was my girlfriend. I loved her! We were getting on great!”

  “It was because you were getting on so well that she decided to let you in on a secret.”

  “Secret? What are you—”

  “She clerked for James Mulvenna. She spent the two summers before you killed her clerking for him. Appearing in court, filling in forms, filing briefs, witnessing wills . . .”

  “So?”

  “She witnessed your father’s will, Harper,” I said.

  I waited for a reaction but he played an impressively straight bat.

  “And as your relationship blossomed the secret was eating away at her. After Mulvenna’s death from MS it occurred to her that she was the only living witness to the will. That will in James Mulvenna’s filing cabinet and Lizzie’s word—the only two things between you and a fortune.”

  “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “Where is this mysterious will that you’re speaking about? Show it to me,” he said, his voice moving into a slightly higher register.

  “Oh, the will’s gone. Lost in the burglary of 23 December. But there’s a record of it in Mulvenna’s account book that I’ve made a photocopy of. James Mulvenna kept meticulous accounts.”

  I passed him the photocopy of the account book.

  “What does that prove?” he said dismissively.

  I took back the photocopy.

  “Your father paid Mulvenna one hundred and thirty pounds for work on his will,” I said. “As the official witness Lizzie got twenty pounds.”

  He laughed. “That’s pretty thin, Inspector Duffy. This is what you’re going to take to a jury?”

  “Mr. Wright might testify that he had a conversation with you about replacing your father’s will and you declined because your father was in poor health.”

  “I wasn’t going to drag him through making a new will.”

  “But he was getting better,
wasn’t he? He was getting better every day. And that’s what you were afraid of. The old will and the possibility that he might make a new one.”

  “The will, if it ever existed, is long gone, Inspector Duffy. And I’m afraid you’re going to need this mythical will of yours if you’re going to convince anybody about these wild speculations,” he said with some complacency.

  “This is what I think happened. Lizzie had no intention of telling you what was in your father’s will. It would be a breach of professional ethics and by all accounts she was quite serious about her legal career.”

  “She was.”

  “But after James Mulvenna’s death and as your relationship grew she knew that the only thing standing between you inheriting this estate and the construction firm and getting absolutely nothing was a silly piece of paper that your father had almost certainly drawn up in a fit of pique.”

  “That sounds like him.”

  “What did she tell you, Harper? Who was he leaving all the money to? A school? A charity? The rugby club? The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds? You weren’t getting a bloody penny, were you? That’s what shocked her. That’s what made her tell you.”

  Harper linked his fingers behind his head. “You’re trying to get me to blurt out some confession? This isn’t fucking Miss Marple, mate. I’m not confessing to anything. I’m not confessing because I didn’t bloody do anything.”

  “How do you explain this?” I said, holding up the photocopy of the account book.

  “You’re going to try to hang me on that? You’d be laughed out of court.”

  I pulled my chair a little closer to his.

  “She must have told you the week she came back from university at Christmas break. She knew that time was of the essence. If you were going to act you had to act soon.”

  “Maybe I killed Mr. Mulvenna too, did I?”

  “No, you didn’t. But his death was the catalyst. She knew there was an opening here. A tiny window of opportunity where you could act, where you could break into Mulvenna’s office, find the will, and destroy it.”

  “You should write a novel, Duffy.”

  “So she told you about the will. But here’s the thing, Harper. She couldn’t have known what kind of a man you were. Your father knew what sort of a person you were but she couldn’t have known how ruthless you could be.”

  “I’m enjoying this. It’s pure fantasy,” he said, attempting to light a cigarette with a box of matches. I pulled out my Zippo and offered it to him. He lit his cigarette and threw the Zippo back at me.