Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  He pitied her with a high-flying job like that, being married to the type of man you’d catch watching The Oprah Winfrey Show, or Dr Phil, or whatever people who’d nothing better to do did. Mr Jo Birmingham was in desperate need of a shave and a haircut, and a shot of self-esteem.

  Not like Paul. ‘A brilliant self-starter.’ That’s what it had said on the reference they’d given him after they’d shut the newspaper down. The secret to being a good blagger was just telling people what they wanted to hear. A woman like Jo Birmingham worked all day, therefore the last thing she’d want to do at night was clean her oven. Her crippled husband wasn’t about to do it, there was too much role reversal in this house as it was.

  He’d used the oven-cleaning trick countless times before. All you had to do was get down on your hands and knees and scour and scrub for the too-posh-to-push kind of women who thought it beneath them. The best bit was he’d never even needed to invest in any equipment: he could get on the bus or train carrying a bucket, oven-cleaner spray and rubber gloves. Even a recession couldn’t change the habits of some of the domestic slatterns he’d come across.

  She was sexy, this cop, Paul thought, letting his head drop to the side as he took in the furnishings. She had good taste. He’d been through her knicker drawer, found something new he’d have made her wear if he was giving her the seeing-to her husband couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

  He wondered if she was better on the job than on the job, so to speak. He’d presumed she’d link from the Henry Norton’s bag to Derek and Ellen, but no, Derek was still out there somewhere. It didn’t matter anyway, he’d be coming into a tidy sum soon enough: the baby story had run that morning, and the reward had been offered before the baby had been found. If they could just find out where the investigation was at, they might, despite last night’s catastrophe, pull it off.

  Paul felt his eyes starting to close. He hadn’t slept a wink because of all the activity in the house and the headache from the blow to his head. He’d woken up minutes after having his head koshed, and found Liz gone. He’d set off looking for her; she couldn’t have got far with her rescuer. But when he’d got back to the house the whole estate had been buzzing from all the garda activity around his place. Sitting on Jo Birmingham’s bed now, his last thought was that he’d better get up before he fell asleep …

  With a sudden sharp intake of breath, Paul realized he must have drifted off – he didn’t know for how long. As he blinked he tried to work out how long it had been.

  ‘I said get the fuck up, you wanker,’ a man’s voice growled.

  Paul squinted against the sharp overhead light. The butt of something was banged into his ribcage. A crutch.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the copper’s husband said.

  Paul turned and saw the cripple standing over him, with the little boy in one arm. This was going to be easy. He stood and lunged.

  54

  ALFIE WAS ALREADY waiting at Roly’s Bistro in Ballsbridge when the Daily Record editor pointed over for the benefit of the waitress checking the bookings at the door. He recognized him from the telly. He could waffle for Ireland a lot better than he could scrum half.

  Alfie sank his fork into a cube of deep-fried Brie and put it into his mouth, watching out of the side of his eye as the editor – in an expensive three-piece, pin-striped suit – approached.

  ‘I’m not late, am I?’ the editor said, slinging off his suit jacket and passing it to the waitress.

  ‘I was too hungry to wait,’ Alfie answered through his bulging cheek. He mopped up the beetroot with half a bread roll lathered with butter, and bit into it. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. Where’s Niall?’

  ‘He’s running late on a story. He says he’ll join us as soon as he can, if he can.’ The editor shook out the napkin and spread it across his lap as he sat, and then reached for the menu before continuing, ‘I wanted to talk to you personally, explain why your proposal just wouldn’t work in the current climate. It’s an absolute nightmare out there for newspapers right now. Nobody wants to pay for news anymore.’

  ‘I read his story about the baby snatched from the hospital,’ Alfie said, wiping the corners of his mouth. ‘Is it true you’re paying a woman half a million quid because of the information that led to the baby’s safe recovery last night?’

  The editor looked pleased. ‘That’s right. We put out the details of our plan to offer a reward in an advertising campaign on the radio every half hour, in the hope of reaching people before baby Hope had to spend a night without her mum. We never expected the campaign to result in a breakthrough so quickly, but we couldn’t have hoped for a better result. This story is going to run and run, and we’ve got the inside track. The phones have been hopping all morning with businesses wanting to take out advertisements. You can’t put a price on that kind of branding.’

  ‘What do you know about the woman who provided the tip? Only, I didn’t get a chance to read about it yet.’

  ‘Helena Moriarty?’

  ‘Yeah, the one who won the money.’

  ‘Well, Helena’s one of life’s salt-of-the-earth busybodies. She’s in her fifties, from Tipperary town, a member of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, who just happened to be in Dublin shopping for the day when she noticed a man in a maternity shop practically buying the place out. Helena became suspicious because he’d no girlfriend or baby with him. He bought a cot, a pram, a buggy, a potty – everything he’d need to get a child to the age of three, and he paid in cash. In her interview, Helena said it struck her as strange because normally the nesting instinct kicks in before a new mum gives birth, and they buy little bits in the run-up to the baby’s arrival. She’d heard about the missing baby through our radio appeals on the drive to Dublin, and she asked the man if the baby’s mum was at home minding the tot. He told her to mind her own business. She got such a bee in her bonnet that she followed him to Nuns Cross, saw him go into number thirty and then rang us. Niall called in to your lot, leading to the discovery of the baby. She’s now been reunited with her mum, and we’ve a photographer headed over to the hospital right now to take some shots of them together for tomorrow.’

  Alfie looked over the editor’s shoulder to see if there was any sign of his steak. ‘What was Helena’s surname again?’

  ‘Moriarty,’ the editor said, ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve been conned, my old son,’ Alfie said giving him a wry smile. ‘It was just old-fashioned police work that brought us to Nuns Cross last night. Niall had nothing to do with it.’

  The editor opened his mouth to say something, but it turned to a cough and he reached for the jug of water. ‘You’re wrong. Niall got there at the same time you did.’

  ‘That’s right, he did,’ Alfie said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Has Helena been paid the half million quid yet?’

  A waiter arrived over with a bread basket and tongs. The editor closed the menu and handed it back to him, not taking his eyes off Alfie. ‘The seafood chowder, please.’ He reached for the newspaper, and folded the rustling pages open to the one he wanted. ‘You’re saying Helena had nothing to do with what happened. That all these claims she made weren’t true?’

  ‘I’m saying that last time I met Niall out and about in town, he was with his girlfriend Monica Moriarty from Tipperary,’ Alfie said, chewing steadily.

  The editor sat back and waited for the waiter to move off after topping up his glass.

  ‘Cheer up. I presume the old chestnut that reporters don’t reveal their sources must be bullshit in the current climate. Management must have ways of establishing who they are. Do you record calls to the office, for instance?’

  ‘For training purposes,’ the editor said.

  ‘What about mobiles?’

  ‘We pay the bills, we can get the itemized printout, the texts.’

  ‘Email?’

  ‘It all goes through the company server.’

  ‘You’ll have a lot of material to go through, but at least you’ll be saving the compan
y half a million quid,’ Alfie said. ‘You did mention the newspaper was facing challenging times.’

  The editor reached for his phone. ‘I’m going to have to make a call.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Alfie asked, smirking. ‘You’re like a hen on an egg. You’re going to make my food go down the wrong way if you keep lepping about like that. Another newspaper might just click how badly you got it wrong.’

  The editor blinked and put his phone down. ‘That column you were so interested in: I’ve had a change of heart. When are you officially retiring?’

  ‘Friday,’ Alfie said.

  ‘I think it could really work for us,’ the editor said in a flat tone. ‘I see it as a weekly comment box on the crimes that most sickened, upset, or intrigued you. We’d want it to be opinionated, and zero tolerance in style to fit in with our demographic.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Alfie said.

  ‘And Derek Carpenter would be the perfect subject to kick-off on. Do you still think he’s the murderer on the missing-women case?’

  Alfie sat back, and smiled. ‘Not a doubt in my mind. Niall’s been stupid, and greedy, but he’s not a killer. Derek Carpenter is. I said it from day one. I staked my entire professional reputation on it, to take on some of the younger guns who think they know it all, and it’s about to pay off.’

  The editor rubbed his hands together. ‘If you pin those missing women to Carpenter you’ll be the cop who solved the biggest crime in the country. We’d be the paper that supplied you with the lead. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t have to think,’ Alfie said after a mouthful of water. ‘I’ve got two kids who want to go to university, and a wife who goes into decline if she doesn’t get some sun in January. I’m fifty-five years old. It costs seventy euro to fill my petrol tank, and don’t get me started on the cost of membership of Malahide Golf Club. What do you think I think?’

  The editor extended a hand. Alfie answered it with his own. ‘You tell Niall to be very careful who he talks to in the future,’ Alfie said. ‘And since I’ve saved your paper a small fortune, and no end of embarrassment, I’ll be expecting that to be reflected in my remuneration.’

  The editor nodded.

  Alfie sniffed deeply as a rare steak was put in front of him. His fork clanged off the bottom of the plate as he started to carve it up. He was going to put that bastard Carpenter away for life if it killed him.

  55

  SPOTTING THE TABLE the team were sitting at, Jo headed over to join them. She’d arranged to meet them off site at a Wagamama, after taking a call from Alfie on the way there. He’d informed her of his plan to relocate the incident room to Rathfarnham, with immediate effect.

  ‘The first conference is at 2.30 p.m., if you want to attend,’ he’d said. ‘It’s entirely up to you. I’m only extending the courtesy so you’re not in the dark if you should have to take over next week, which I doubt will be necessary. You already know how I feel about the direction you’ve tried to push the case in, and I’m not going to repeat myself. If you do choose to come, you should know that I will consider your role purely observational until I’m gone. After that you can dance on my grave for all I care. But I’ll be making it my business to have the case against Derek Carpenter bang to rights before then. From today we’re shifting focus from finding Amanda Wells’s murderer to finding Derek Carpenter, and I’ve assigned another twenty-five officers to the case to that end.’

  Jo had declined his offer to become a lame duck. However, as members of his team were still flitting in and out of the station organizing the transfer of paperwork, she’d arranged to meet the others in a nearby restaurant for a briefing, under the auspices of lunch, rather than have anyone accuse her of completely contravening the direct instructions of a superior.

  She handed Foxy the Daily Record, and flicked her phone shut as Sexton stood to pull out a chair for her. Alfie had finished up their conversation earlier by asking where Dan was and why his phone was off, reminding Jo that he’d planned to interview him today. Much as it galled Jo to have to be the one to ring first after last night’s stand-off, she’d been trying to get Dan ever since, and had just touched base with Harry’s preschool to learn that Dan had never arrived there with Harry. He hadn’t showed up for his physio appointment, either. She’d a few missed calls from him in close succession on her phone, but he hadn’t left any message. She wondered what was going on. If Harry was feeling ill, Dan would have called to ask for her view. Apart from anything else, she needed to talk to him about Dr Griffen’s news. Considering the way he’d kept her shut out last night, she wondered what had changed since her husband had come back. She felt more alone than ever.

  Foxy scanned the front page and curled his lower lip before passing it on to Joan.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ Aishling reacted, reading over Joan’s shoulder. ‘A woman named Helena Moriarty is getting half a million for finding the baby,’ she said. ‘She’s a regular Miss Marple.’

  ‘Half a million!’ Sue asked, cramming closer for a look. ‘I didn’t think newspapers had cash like that these days,’ she remarked through a bulging cheek.

  ‘If there was a Miss Marple involved,’ Jo commented, ‘I think she’s working for Niall Toland and his source. We’re getting very close to the truth, I can feel it in my waters.’

  Sexton put his hands behind his neck and stretched out his legs. ‘If Toland took that baby, he deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered for what he put that mum through.’

  Foxy gave Jo his theory about how Toland seemed to be acquainted with the source on the tape.

  ‘We need to build a profile of this Paul Bell,’ Jo said.

  Aishling started an internet search on her phone.

  ‘I just don’t see how Amanda’s murder and the baby snatch could be linked,’ Sue said. ‘They’re such different crimes.’

  ‘This is what Paul Bell looks like,’ Aishling said, passing over her phone.

  Jo took it and after one glance at the thin man with slits for eyes she clicked her fingers. ‘He was the photographer up in the mountains with Toland at the crime scene yesterday morning. He looks really familiar.’ She frowned; had she seen him somewhere else as well?

  ‘Maybe he’s one of those rogue reporters who knows how to gather information,’ Sue said. ‘My ex used to go around with a spy pen in his pocket. He didn’t know how to turn it off properly, so half the time he was recording me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Jo said, thinking to herself. ‘Maybe it’s not that crime that links Amanda and the baby. Maybe it’s just money. It can’t be sheer coincidence that Derek had just come into money, and that there was half a million quid riding on finding that baby.’

  ‘Does this mean you want to rule Derek Carpenter out as a suspect?’ Sue asked, astonished.

  ‘He’s not in the clear yet,’ Jo said. ‘How did he get Ellen Lamb’s uniform?’

  Jo turned to Aishling. ‘We need to find the florist who put together the bouquet for the maternity hospital yesterday,’ she said. ‘Establish exactly what flowers were in the arrangement, and then try and narrow it down that way. We can check payments, phones, and possibly even CCTV to see if we can prove Niall, or Paul, bought them. Niall’s shirt was covered in lily-pollen stains.’

  ‘Got it,’ Aishling said.

  ‘Sue, can you track down the woman at the centre of these claims in the paper, this Helena Moriarty?’ Jo said, reading the name. ‘And again, establish if there’s any link to Niall Toland or to Paul Bell?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied.

  Jo stopped talking as her phone beeped. She put it down again without opening it, because it wasn’t from Dan. It was Alfie. Jo turned to Foxy. ‘Can you give me an update on the forensics? Any news from the lab on the ID of the blood in the room?’

  ‘It’s a close relative of Liz Carpenter’s,’ Foxy said.

  Jo held her hair off her face. ‘Christ, please don’t tell me it was her son?’

  ‘They’re running compariso
ns as we speak,’ Foxy answered. ‘They also established that Derek’s fingerprints were all over the Henry Norton’s bag in Amanda’s mouth.’

  ‘What about Ellen Lamb’s shoe? Any trace of DNA on it?’

  ‘Derek’s,’ he said, looking apologetic.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Jo said defensively. ‘Sisters share shoes all the time.’

  ‘We’ll find out the size they took in shoes,’ Foxy suggested.

  The waiter arrived over with the menu. Jo waved her hand that she’d pass. She’d eaten in Wagamama once before, at an officer’s retirement do. She thought it a good idea to have a bit of everything, instead of sitting there for the entire meal regretting what you’d picked because everybody else’s looked better. But she’d too much on now.

  Spotting a bottle of white wine that had already been depleted, Jo motioned to it and raised a quizzical look.

  ‘We’re allowed one,’ Joan said, pouring the dregs of the bottle into Jo’s glass before clicking her fingers in the direction of a waiter.

  ‘Not on my watch,’ Jo said, putting the flat of her hand over the top of the glass.

  ‘We really only wanted to get his attention,’ Joan said, admiring the waiter. ‘What do you think, Jo? Gorgeous, isn’t he?’

  The waiter, who was shining glasses with a white cloth, seemed to sense her interest and sent a winning smile in their direction.

  Jo reached for the menu, and angled it for privacy against her face.

  ‘No point asking her,’ Aishling said. ‘She’s the only one here who’s got a man.’

  Jo was thinking, If only they knew. She might be the only one at the table in a relationship, but she was willing to bet every one of them still had more of a love life than she and Dan at the moment. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d drawn her into his arms since moving back home. She’d tried to put it down to the heavy painkillers he still needed, had even used his dented pride as an excuse, but she was as insecure as any woman when it came to her relationship. His gift of sexy underwear just emphasized how far apart they’d grown. They were too pissed off with each other to be bothered. She wondered if he was seeing Jeanie again, and decided against ringing him. After draining a glass of water she said, ‘I’d better get a move on.’