Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘I’m not sure what the mast situation is like up there.’

  Jo flicked the sheet with a finger. ‘But this says he went home after town.’

  ‘Maybe he left his phone back?’

  ‘You think he drove home to drop his phone back, and then carried on up the mountains – where there may or may not be a signal – with her body in the car?’

  ‘It’s possible. It’s called the CSI effect. The way offenders are up to speed on the technology from all the crime drama on TV.’

  ‘Did Hawthorne get back with Amanda’s time of death yet, so we can cross-reference exactly what time she must have died and then try and work everything else out from that?’

  Foxy shook his head. ‘Hawthorne’s phone’s off. His secretary says the PM’s done, but he hasn’t had time to do up the report. He’s tied up in court for the rest of the day.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, we need to know now. If she died after Derek returned home, it’s going to change everything. He’s off the hook.’ She glanced at her watch. It was almost three. ‘I’ll catch Hawthorne on the way out of court.’

  Foxy lifted the phone on Jo’s desk, which had started to ring.

  ‘And put the restaurant manager on standby,’ she went on, opening her door. ‘When I get back I’m going to bring Derek in for a line-up, to establish if he’s the mystery man in the restaurant.’

  Foxy started talking into the phone before she’d finished. After listening for a few seconds, he covered it with his hand and called after her, ‘Derek’s phone is back in Nuns Cross.’

  Jo nodded and reached for her own mobile, which had started to ring. It was one of the crime-scene officers at Amanda’s house, informing her that Liz Carpenter had just arrived back at her home. ‘Any sign of Derek?’ she asked the officer, frowning when she heard his reply, and thanking him before hanging up.

  ‘Right, I need to find out Amanda’s time of death,’ she said, turning back to Foxy.

  ‘I don’t have time,’ she told Alfie, who had started trotting after her. ‘I’ve got to get to the central criminal court before four o’clock to catch the prof.’

  ‘You’d better make the time,’ Alfie told her. ‘And you can call off your Rottweiler,’ he said, motioning at Sexton. ‘I’ve just come from a meeting with the assistant commissioner. Until I officially retire on Friday, and you are technically promoted on Monday, I’m the head of this investigation. You should have moved on Carpenter this morning, like I would have. If the press find out that the killer of six, and possibly seven, women is still out there because of your relationship with your nearest and dearest, someone’s head is going to roll.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’ Jo asked, sounding tired.

  ‘It’s a reality check. As is the fact that it looks like you’re protecting Dan.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ Jo asked, turning to face him.

  ‘Maybe he covered up something for Derek Carpenter all those years ago that could come back to haunt you both.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’ve given Derek Carpenter a head start to get away.’

  What annoyed Jo most was that Alfie clearly knew something she didn’t, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of being asked what that was. After a pregnant pause he said, ‘Derek Carpenter’s phone is pinging in Nuns Cross.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean he’s there!’ Jo said. ‘Liz could be carrying it, for all we know. Derek would have been seen arriving back.’

  ‘I’m sending a team to check,’ Alfie said. ‘You can join them if you want. It’s up to you.’

  18

  UNLIKE PROFESSOR MICHAEL Hawthorne, who was currently sitting in the witness box of the Central Criminal Court giving evidence, Jo would never have acknowledged the accused’s lawyer during cross-examination by making eye contact. Having passed on Alfie’s offer to go directly to Nuns Cross to bring Derek in, she’d come to court to try to pin the pathologist down on Amanda Wells’s time of death once and for all. She watched through spread fingers as Hawthorne shook his head earnestly while his theory about the cause of death was ripped to shreds. She could tell by the way Sexton was jiggling his leg on the bench beside her that he was thinking the same thing, too. If either of them had been in Hawthorne’s seat, they’d have been straining their faces towards the judge – to send a signal to the jury that the senior counsel representing the accused was not worth giving the time of day to.

  She and Sexton knew the innocent-until-proven-guilty concept would have been rigorously tested by the Chief State Solicitor’s Office and the Director of Public Prosecutions before a suspect ever came to court. The public had no idea how hard it was just to get a case tried these days, or how much crucial evidence was ruled inadmissible. There were a million and one ways that body language could be used to talk to a jury without anyone needing to utter a word. Not that Jo had the arrogance ever to try and predict what a jury might do. Their verdicts never ceased to surprise her, which was ironic considering that one jury always looked interchangeable with the next. That was the way she liked it. There was something about a collection of tracksuits, Christmas jumpers and old T-shirts wielding the real power in court that always managed to subvert the pomp of those entitled to wear wigs and gowns and look down their noses. Barristers were actors first and foremost, in her opinion. They cared about their delivery, their performance and winning – not about the truth, not about justice.

  The barrister – thumbs tucked into the sleeveless pits of the black waistcoat under his cloak – had just cut Hawthorne off. ‘No further questions.’

  Hawthorne took a moment to bang his notes together on the bench before stepping down from the stand.

  Jo made a beeline for him as he pushed through the crowd at the back of the court, Sexton following close behind. ‘Any chance of a word?’ she whispered to Hawthorne.

  ‘Not now, I’ve got a garda driver outside waiting to bring me to Galway for a slash-hook killing,’ he complained. A set of handwritten sheets on yellow foolscap, contained in a manila folder under his tweed jacket, started to spill out. Jo caught them before they fell, and then used them to lure him outside.

  ‘Won’t take a sec,’ she assured Hawthorne, flicking a speck of fluff from his shirt.

  Sexton held the door for them as they headed out on to the circular mezzanine floor of the new courts complex. Jo leaned over the marble balcony, notes dangling from her hands. ‘That girl you PM’d – what was the story? I need the time of death urgently.’

  ‘Which one?’ he asked, snatching back his paperwork. He only had two assistants, but between them they handled more than six hundred unnatural deaths a year.

  ‘The girl in the mountains, Amanda Wells.’

  ‘Alfie Taylor’s girl?’

  ‘I found her,’ Jo said.

  ‘Striking-looking woman,’ Hawthorne remarked. ‘Well proportioned.’

  Jo folded her arms. ‘Sometimes I worry about you.’

  Hawthorne didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘There were no defence wounds … either she knew him, or he took her completely unawares.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, that narrows it down, then!’

  ‘Language!’

  ‘What about the plastic bag?’

  ‘We found fibres inside it, navy gingham. My assistant will ring you once we have the rest.’

  ‘Did you get any DNA?’ Jo asked. ‘Was she raped?’

  Sexton stood listening with his hands in his pockets.

  Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Nothing came up under the UV light.’

  ‘Not raped, and nothing robbed as far as we can tell. Even her iPhone was left in her hand,’ Sexton said, trying to work it out.

  ‘Look, I really have to go,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I’ll have the report for you tomorrow.’

  ‘I need her time of death,’ Jo said. ‘It’s our only hope of ruling a suspect in or out. I know you’re busy, but—’

/>   Sexton threw his eyes to heaven and turned away.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with my workload, for once,’ Hawthorne said. ‘I have an assistant taking her temperature on the hour every hour to establish the precise drop, it’s the only way to be certain—’

  ‘Temperature?’ Jo exclaimed. ‘How’s there still any temperature? I saw the rigor had set in for myself. She must have died at least—’

  ‘If it was rigor mortis,’ Hawthorne cut in. ‘I can’t rule out cadaveric spasm …’

  Jo stared.

  ‘… when death occurs due to intense emotion such as fright, Birmingham. If she was scared to death, she might have died much, much later than we originally thought. Rigor, on the other hand, takes three to four hours to set in after death, reaches its peak after twelve hours, and lasts for up to three days. Depending on which it was, she could have been dumped very close to the time we found her. We may even have passed her killers on the way up.’

  Jo tapped her foot. ‘Prof, we know she was in a restaurant at half ten on Friday night. We found her at half seven on Monday morning. It’s imperative we establish if we should be appealing for anyone who may have seen her alive on Saturday and Sunday, or if she was already dead by then.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Hawthorne said, starting towards the lift.

  Jo trotted after him. ‘But what about the bag in the mouth and the bra around her neck?’ she said. ‘If the cause of death was suffocation or strangulation, wouldn’t that rule out the cadaveric spasm theory?’

  He stopped and turned to face her, breathing through his nostrils slowly. ‘It’s to do with the grip. Drowning victims often grab on to reeds in an effort to save themselves, but if death is brought on by cadaveric spasm, the reeds will stay in their grip – as opposed to being washed away. So, yes, the victim’s hyoid bone was broken, indicating that choking pressure was indeed applied to her neck, but you saw for yourself how tightly that phone was gripped in her hand. I wouldn’t be surprised if her neck was strangled after the event. It’s entirely possible the bag and the bra were added, the clothes removed, and even the phone put in the victim’s hand in the staging of the scene.’

  He stepped into the lift.

  ‘That doesn’t sound like our supposed serial killer, does it?’ Jo asked Sexton as the elevator doors slid shut.

  19

  2001: The Dorchester, London

  AFTER FLICKING A piece of fluff from his smart wine-coloured waistcoat, the waiter transferred four drinks to the silver-plated tray, glancing over at the table he was about to serve. The blonde-haired woman, who looked a lot like Princess Diana, was sitting at a table with four chairs. Opposite her was a Dubai prince in flowing robes, and beside her a black-haired geezer in a bright tie and sharp suit. The Arab’s suitcase was propped up on the empty seat facing her.

  The waiter found it hard not to stare. The likeness was scary. Her hair was cut the exact same way as Princess Di’s, and when she glanced up to see if anyone was looking at her, it was with the very same set of too-good-for-this-earth eyes. The waiter reckoned she was milking it.

  Propping the tray up on his fingers, he carried the drinks over at shoulder-level, ice cubes tinkling and pretzels standing to attention. The part-time job he’d applied for and had got some months back, as a waiter in the Dorchester, was just for this moment in time. All he had to do was bear witness, report back, and above all be sure not to bump into the suitcase, or make eye contact with the fake sheikh sitting opposite the princess, legend that he was – the King of Sting!

  ‘He’s ignorant of the countryside,’ the Duchess was telling the men. ‘His wife is even worse, she hates the countryside. She hates it!’

  The waiter knew how whoever they were talking about felt. He’d gone fishing once on a community policing project, and been eaten alive by insects. But he’d come a long way from his childhood, and it wasn’t as if he was about to get into it with them anyway. Time and place and all that, or ‘Ho hum’, as they all said around here. He placed the silk-and lace-embroidered coasters down first and the G&Ts on top.

  Close up, she was better looking than the dead princess; she’d better features – a smaller nose, and stronger bone structure. His mam used to drink her tea out of a mug with a picture of Di on her wedding day. It was still at home; he never used it, but he liked looking at it. It felt like she was looking back.

  But this princess seemed far too preoccupied by what was going on to notice him. She had just said something and was pulling a face. The waiter glanced at the sheikh, who had thrown his head back and was laughing. He could feel the ‘fuck off’ vibe loud and clear in the way the sheikh didn’t so much as glance back. If the other two at the table even suspected a previous acquaintance, he’d have blown it, and could forget about ever going back to his real job in the newspaper. He almost spilled a drink trying to get on with it, then; attempting not to be noticed. It looked like he’d got away with it—

  ‘He sounds like a puppet, unfortunately,’ the countess, or duchess, or princess was telling the sheikh.

  There were reporters in the palace and Downing Street, too, the waiter knew. It was said that an investment of that calibre usually took a few years to come good.

  He couldn’t think of any job he might get along the way that would ever tempt him to walk away from the newspaper. Working in the Dorchester would only have been good if he’d wanted to see how the other half lived and enjoyed being constantly treated like the shit half. There was no class system in a newspaper, that was the best bit. Inside the newsroom, it didn’t matter where you came from, or what you had, all that mattered was the story.

  Take the sheikh, aka the investigations editor. He’d got his first story exposing family friends who sold pirate videos. It had earned him two weeks’ work on the News of the Screws when he’d been just sixteen. Since then he’d been blazing a trail, living it up like a lord. He earned over a hundred thousand pounds a year, but could live off his expenses – sleeping in hotels, being driven around in limousines, and moving about with an entourage to keep up the pretence of his alter ego. His technical team – aka bodyguards – were standing behind him now, paying close attention to the suitcase, making sure it was recording everything. The closest he’d come to being rumbled on a story was when a soldier who’d served in the Middle East approached him speaking Arabic. The sheikh might have grown up in Birmingham, but he’d turned that situation around by refusing to speak in Arabic to a white man, and had managed to keep his cover. For a Paki, that was impressive.

  The waiter had heard enough. He carried on, and put the tray under the bar. After telling the manager he needed a leak, he found a quiet place where he could ring the newsroom to tell them what he’d heard, to give them an early heads up on the exclusive so they could come up with a headline.

  20

  BY 4.30 P.M. Liz was standing in her hallway, the phone pressed tightly to her ear with a trembling hand. She’d phoned a taxi from her mobile outside Mervyn’s Meats after being frogmarched out like a common criminal by Tom – who’d got the bloody job through Derek in the first place! It had cost an arm and a leg, but there was no way she was getting back on a bus. She was exhausted, and was still reeling from what she’d found out today – that Derek had not only been fired, but that whatever he’d done had so pissed off his employers that they wanted to kill him, and had sent someone to intimidate her precious son. Then there was her neighbour George, whose messages on her husband’s phone were, to her mind, virtually death threats, too. Was that the real reason he’d had the car crash? Had someone been following him? Had his brakes been tampered with?

  She’d never thought there’d be a worse day in her life than the one when Ellen disappeared, but today had been it. And just when she’d thought it couldn’t deteriorate further, she hadn’t even had the chance to put the kettle on before the cops had landed on her doorstep, demanding to know where Derek was.

  They’d only just left the house, after producing an arrest warr
ant for him and barging in – criss-crossing each other in the hall and going through every room – checking under beds and even in wardrobes, as if they’d expected to find him hiding there. She felt sick, exposed, like her own home was no longer safe. Her life was unravelling. She was so traumatized she was numb, and had switched into automatic mode, trying to plan what to do next.

  On the other end of the phone a man in the bank was about to tell her how much deeper in the shit than usual they were, now that Derek had no job. She needed to start making plans to shore up Conor’s future. The news that Derek had been lying through his teeth to her should not have come as a body blow, given everything else she’d discovered today, but her stomach literally felt as if it had been punched, and she kept one hand holding it while she waited. Where had he been going every morning when he’d said he was off to work? And how had she not noticed that his wages had stopped coming in? Where had he fled to when he’d left the hospital, and why had he still not been in touch? These were the questions making her doubt not just who her husband was, but who she was, too. What planet had she been living on? If she was the kind of person who hadn’t noticed what was going on right under her nose, was it any wonder that she hadn’t realized Derek might have been involved in Ellen’s death?

  Chewing a nail, she listened to the teller tap her personal details into the system.

  ‘Here we are,’ the voice on the other end of the phone said. ‘You have one hundred thousand, four hundred and thirty-three euro and seventy-nine cents in your account.’

  ‘Sorry, I said my name was Liz Carpenter, of twenty-nine Nuns Cross, Rathfarnham; maiden name, Lamb; date of birth, the twenty-sixth of September—’

  ‘Yes, I heard you,’ the man answered. ‘You have one hundred thousand, four hundred and thirty-three euro and seventy-nine cents in your account. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

  Liz felt her centre of gravity shift, as if she was standing on a ship and the ground was moving beneath her. Her head felt so light and fuzzy her hands didn’t feel connected to her body. She was aware she’d just tried to bang the phone down, but her palms were so clammy, the handset slipped from her grasp and fell on the floor. The man on the other end was asking if she was still there, but time had started moving differently. Even though everything was now in slow motion, she didn’t feel there was time enough even to bend to retrieve and replace the receiver. She took the stairs two at a time.