Too Close For Comfort

by Niamh O'Connor

  ‘What about lunch?’ Joan asked.

  ‘Not if we’re going to solve this case today,’ Jo replied.

  ‘Today?’ Aishling butted in. ‘You’re joking?’

  Jo didn’t blink. ‘I might not be here tomorrow.’

  ‘You can’t go till we bring Derek in,’ Sexton said.

  ‘You’re presuming he’s still alive,’ Jo snapped.

  56

  HAWTHORNE HAD JUST finished a Y-incision on a young man’s torso, and was walking both elbows to separate the ribcage at the sternum when Jo pushed her way through the weighted door, out of breath.

  ‘Sorry for barging in. Your secretary said you’d be busy for the next couple of hours. I don’t have a couple of hours.’ She paused for breath, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was 2.30 p.m. Alfie would be starting his conference now.

  The sound of ribs breaking was like a creaking door that needed oiling. The victim had been a bloated man, with short, shiny, chestnut-coloured hair and skin aged prematurely from the sun, Jo observed.

  Hawthorne reached into the cavity and scooped out the heart, turning to the only other living person in the room, his assistant, Stephanie, studious behind a pair of big glasses that couldn’t hide her glamour-model looks. Two more bodies were waiting for his attention on trollies in the room.

  She glanced at Hawthorne – who was talking into one of those Madonna headsets that ran between the ear and mouth – to see if he was put out. He was tetchy at the best of times. But he was too busy mumbling his findings into the microphone, something about the signs of external bruising on the thoracic cavity being consistent with the internal evidence. He ran a rubbery finger under a cross-section of the flesh.

  ‘I need to establish Amanda Wells’s time of death,’ Jo told him. She was making a conscious effort to keep the language just about as formal as possible. Cage-rattling was her only hope of getting him to play ball.

  ‘Stephanie, bowl, please,’ Hawthorne said, snottily.

  ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re busy, but so am I,’ Jo said.

  He slapped a maroon stomach into the kidney-shaped bowl, snipping the tip with a scissors and squeezing the contents into the bowl. The smell was foul. ‘Spicy … Indian, based on the vivid reds and yellows, I’d say,’ he commented.

  ‘Well?’ Jo asked Hawthorne again. He had his back to her.

  His young assistant glanced at Hawthorne to make sure he was concentrating on the innards. He was a control freak as well as everything else. Then she held up four fingers for Jo to see, making a see-saw motion with the other hand, and mouthed, ‘Sunday morning, give or take.’

  Jo’s eyebrows soared. Sunday! Why had nobody seen Amanda on Saturday?

  Hawthorne plonked the liver down in another of Stephanie’s dishes. He incised the throat and checked the hyoid bone for damage. ‘Strangled,’ he said. ‘Unusual in a man.’

  Jo turned to leave. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time here. She’d got what she needed.

  ‘Amanda Wells’s time of death’s irrelevant,’ Hawthorne said without turning around.

  Jo stopped in her tracks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The autopsy was a complete waste of bloody time. Her body may have been illegally disposed of, but that’s not going to result in a life sentence. She wasn’t murdered. She died of fright, as I suspected. There was no murder as such, that’s why I’ve let cases of more importance take precedence.’

  57

  IT WAS USELESS, Liz could not shift the trapdoor lid. She’d been trying all night. Her shoulders ached from barging it, and the bruises were turning into watery welts. She’d waited until Conor had drifted off to sleep before starting, but had woken him with the bangs. In desperation, she’d tried to get him to help, but it had been no good. Finally he’d gone back to the couch, plugged in the earphones of his iPod, and was now rocking to a silent rhythm, munching his way through a packet of his favourite biscuits like being here was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Why do you want to get out, anyway?’ he asked, speaking over the noise of his music.

  ‘I’m just testing it,’ Liz had lied.

  ‘What?’

  She’d walked over to him and removed one of his earphones. ‘I’m just making sure Dad’s den is secure.’

  Liz sat down alongside him on the sofa, putting her arm across his shoulders. ‘We haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately, son.’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Mum,’ he answered in a jaded tone. ‘No bullies.’ He plugged the earphone back in.

  ‘Except for the person who took your schoolbooks,’ Liz said, taking it out again. ‘They shouldn’t have done that. You know how I feel about secrets.’

  ‘OK.’

  Where had he learned to do that? she wondered. Conor had the ability to move off a topic he didn’t want to discuss by accepting it, without agreeing or disagreeing, down to a fine art. He had completely mastered the art of diversion so as to keep his feelings locked away.

  ‘You win, Mum. It was some old geezer who said Dad owed him some money, and if I didn’t give them to him, he was going to hurt him.’

  ‘Sorry? What?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Um humm.’

  Every maternal cell in her body tensed at the thought of someone putting Conor under that kind of pressure.

  ‘What else did he say? Did he touch you?’

  ‘I really like this song, Mum. Can I just listen?’

  Conor had just played another one of his opt-out-of-the-real-world cards.

  ‘Remember how we told you when you were little not to talk to strangers?’ she said, softening her tone.

  ‘I know, I know, he talked, I didn’t.’ Conor’s voice sounded panicked.

  ‘You’re not in trouble at all, darling. It’s just … there are bad people in the world.’

  ‘You mean like the person who hurt Aunt Ellen, don’t you, Mum?’

  ‘He told you about that, too, did he?’ Liz swallowed the lump in her throat as blood rushed to her head. She and Derek had never discussed what had happened with Conor; there had never been a right time. He’d never said the words ‘Aunt Ellen’ before. Nobody else had the right to broach the subject with him outside the family. If she’d had a knife and that man had been in front of her, she knew she’d have used it.

  ‘Sometimes good people have to do things they wouldn’t normally do – bad things – to make sure good people, and great kids like you, can get on with their lives in peace, even if it means their lives change for a while, OK?’ Liz said.

  ‘Right,’ Conor said.

  Conor rested his head on her shoulder and stretched his arms out. ‘No, this is my Mum.’

  ‘What?’ she asked, confused by the remark.

  ‘Gross! I told you to look at the place, not her, didn’t I? Super cool, isn’t it?’

  Liz checked to see why Conor was babbling. His words made no sense. His extended arm was gliding the iPod around.

  ‘What are you doing? Who are you talking to?’

  ‘Just Jeff,’ he said, about his best friend.

  ‘What is he, psychic?’

  ‘No, he’s got Facetime credits.’

  ‘What’s Facetime?’

  ‘Duh! Mum, you’re such a dick. Sorry,’ he added quickly, holding up the iPod to show her. Liz had saved for months to buy Conor’s Christmas present, but that didn’t mean she’d any idea how to use it, or what it could do. But now Conor’s best friend was staring back at her from what Liz had always thought of as a jumped-up Walkman.

  ‘Hi, Liz,’ Jeff said cheerily.

  58

  IN MOUNTJOY, PRISONER Number 17582 was having a spectacularly bad day. First, the young screw with attitude had ordered a search of his cell, and had confiscated two of his mobile phones. That was going to stop him keeping abreast of his Dublin north inner-city runners tab. The bastards had been robbing him blind, throwing his Charlie around left, right, and centre to celebrate, so he’d had one of them shot in
the back of the head and dumped in the canal as a warning. If they sensed he was incommunicado, they’d start to plan a reprisal.

  Next, he’d heard on the prison grapevine that the slag who’d produced his four kids had just been jailed on shoplifting charges, resulting in his kids being put into care. And last, but not least, his drug-squad member on the payroll had tipped him off that some toerag named Derek Carpenter had fucked up the meat import-export route he’d had established to the UK – thanks to his old man’s connections to Mervyn’s Meats – by turning tout.

  ‘This is your fucking fault, Mervyn,’ he hissed down the backup phone, which he’d taped behind the cistern. ‘I’m supposed to vet everyone who works for you, so why do you keep hiring pensioners and people like Carpenter you haven’t cleared with me?’

  ‘Everybody’s heard of Derek Carpenter,’ Mervyn argued. ‘He bumped off six women. I thought his reputation would keep the others in line. Pensioners will work for half nothing, as your old man knows. And I didn’t think with those kinds of credentials Derek needed a reference.’

  ‘Until you get the money Derek Carpenter stole from me back, I’m holding you personally responsible.’

  ‘I told you, I know where he is. We just have to sit tight. He’s holed up in the office of a local solicitor he’s bumped off. I’ve told the boys not to move on him yet because it will bring too much heat.’

  ‘Has he got any firepower?’

  ‘He’s got a Glock semi-automatic, otherwise we’d have moved in ages ago. That said, he’s currently asleep on the office floor. Looks like he had one too many.’

  ‘Get in there, you cunt, and get me the hundred thousand euro he robbed off me,’ the prisoner said, frowning at the sound of a siren growing steadily louder over the phone. ‘Tell me it’s driving by,’ he added, conscious Mervyn had started to pant like he was sprinting in a race.

  ‘Torch it,’ the prisoner shouted. ‘Are you running, you stupid fucking cunt? Do not leave there before the pyrogenic display, do you hear me?’

  59

  IT WAS MID-AFTERNOON. The last of Alfie’s crew had all finally vacated the station, and Jo was relieved to be back at base. Aishling hurried up to her – one arm outstretched to hand her some paperwork – as she crossed the detective unit. Foxy was waiting in the doorway with the phone from her desk in his hand, telling her that there were two callers waiting on lines one and two.

  ‘The chief state solicitor is on one, willing to discuss if you’ve got a case against whoever dumped Amanda Wells’s body,’ he said. ‘And the chief of the drug squad is on two, to fill you in on what Derek’s boss has been up to. Who’ll I tell to ring back?’

  ‘Neither, I need to talk to both of them now,’ Jo said, taking the document from Aishling and trying to work out what it was. She had free rein to direct the investigation as she wished, but only until Alfie either located Derek and had him charged, or found out what Jo was up to and had her charged. The clock was ticking, but she had assigned fifty officers to work on the leads she wanted chased down, including locating Paul Bell, Niall Toland, and Bell’s wife, Jenny.

  ‘This is the bit of interest,’ Aishling said, pointing to some handwriting on the official form, a two-tone, multi-paged document, the type that requires every letter to be capped and boxed, Jo observed.

  Jo flicked it over and turned it upside to read the back, which was in English. It said ‘Department of Education’ across the top.

  ‘What is it?’ Jo asked.

  Aishling took it off her, turned it back the way it had been, and returned it. ‘It’s an application form for a home-tuition grant for Conor Carpenter.’

  ‘I don’t speak Irish,’ Jo said.

  ‘Well, one of the Carpenters clearly does,’ Aishling said, showing Jo how the side of the form least likely to be understood had been filled in.

  From his seat on the far side of the room, and with his back to them, Sexton patted an extended arm in the air and, covering the mouthpiece of the phone he’d been talking on, yelled, ‘Quiet!’

  Jo looked over with curiosity. ‘So, what is it? Quick, I need to take those calls.’

  ‘Well, it may be nothing,’ Aishling said.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The form was stamped on Friday by Amanda Wells.’

  Jo’s curiosity was stoked because Liz had made no mention of this meeting when Jo had quizzed her.

  ‘A clerk in the Department had it couriered over to us because he saw what happened to Amanda on the news,’ Aishling went on.

  ‘Is there something in it?’

  ‘Nothing. This is what’s of interest.’

  She handed Jo a white envelope that had been opened, with a letter inside. Jo pulled it out.

  ‘Amanda sent it by registered post on Friday, and it arrived today,’ Aishling went on. ‘In it she states that she did not rubber-stamp a grant application for the Carpenters, should such a form arrive. She goes on to say she noticed the date of her stamp had been changed, but that she hadn’t used it that day, and so it hadn’t been changed by her, but she suspected one of the Carpenters might have had the opportunity.’

  Jo turned to the form and glanced at the stamp, suddenly intensely interested.

  ‘She said she didn’t stamp it?’ Jo clarified.

  ‘Correct, which means one of the Carpenters must have, suggesting face-to-face contact with her on Friday, the day she was last seen.’

  ‘Maybe Derek isn’t in the clear yet after all,’ Foxy said, sitting on the edge of Jo’s desk and lifting the handset.

  ‘You realize that if you’re right, I’m wrong,’ Jo told Aishling, adding, ‘Get around to her office and bag and tag the stamp that was used. We’ll get it fingerprinted, find out if it was Liz or Derek that used it.’

  Foxy was jotting numbers on a pad, and murmuring into the phone that Jo would call as soon as possible. As soon as he’d hung up it rang again and he answered.

  ‘The blood in the bedroom …’ he said, putting Jo’s phone down.

  Jo turned.

  He indicated with a set of walking fingers that she should close the door behind her.

  ‘… belonged to Ellen Lamb,’ he said.

  Jo sat down. ‘What?’

  ‘The lab indicated it had to be someone close, so I organized collection of the original sample of her DNA. Legally, we’re not supposed to retain them after a certain time, but …’ He pulled a face so she could fill in the blanks.

  ‘Ellen?’ Jo said.

  ‘She must have been alive all these years,’ Foxy said.

  Jo nodded, watching Sexton haring across the room outside towards her.

  ‘Jo, they’ve found the Carpenters,’ he said, bursting in the door.

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘All three,’ he continued breathlessly. ‘The control room in Tara Street took a 999 call twenty minutes ago from some kid telling them his friend Conor Carpenter was in Amanda Wells’s office basement. An ambulance and a squad car were sent out, and they found the place on fire. Two units of the fire brigade had to be dispatched.

  ‘They’re taking Derek to the Mater Hospital. He’s in a bad way. They were treating him for smoke inhalation in the ambulance but they’re doing extra tests to see if there’s more to it. It looks like a murder-suicide bid.’

  ‘What about mum and son?’ Jo asked.

  ‘They’ve gone home.’

  ‘Home? That’s about the most dangerous place they could go.’

  ‘No, we’ve got Derek,’ Sexton said.

  ‘Did anyone stop them?’ Jo said, rushing for the door.

  ‘Alfie’s going to try and have Derek charged with attempted murder, Jo,’ Sexton called after her. ‘If he hadn’t collapsed, he might have pulled it off.’

  ‘Or maybe he was going to the rescue of his family,’ Jo said.

  60

  ‘DO IT,’ PAUL told Niall. ‘You’ve got the gun. What’s the big deal?’

  The woman was kneeling on the edge of a disused quarry in th
e Wicklow mountains that rainwater had turned into a lagoon. Her hands were bound behind her back. She kept turning to see what was going on, her eyes out on stalks. There was a good forty-foot drop to the surface of the water and, based on how sheer the drop was, Paul reckoned the lagoon was at least as deep again. They didn’t even need to use the gun. All they had to do was push her in. Her knees were less than a foot from the edge. One swoon brought on by an attack of vertigo, or a faint, and she’d be over the edge. Given the amount of blood she’d lost, her collapse wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility. They hadn’t expected to have to bump her off, but what choice had they had? Events had taken yet another unforeseen turn.

  ‘Why don’t you do it?’ Niall asked, the revolver cocked limply against the back of the woman’s head the way he’d been instructed. He hated heights himself, and kept turning his head sideways so he wouldn’t have to see. His brain kept instructing him to get down on all fours. Paul was indignant. ‘Do it.’

  ‘You should do this one if only to prove the point.’

  ‘What point? What are you on about?’ Niall asked. He was more inclined to swing the weapon around in the other direction and blow Paul’s brains out than shoot this woman he’d only just met.

  ‘That people are all the same,’ Paul said, ‘that the impulses that drive cops and murderers, rich and poor, famous and ordinary people, are all exactly the same. That was the point the News of the World made every Sunday. That when you look through the keyhole of the ivory tower, people are just people.’