Peter took the squad car and left the station. Des had said he should go on patrol, but he had no intention of driving aimlessly around Roundstone village. There was work to do – he was more determined than ever that he would work the Lynch case from every angle he could think of. He told himself that he was driven by the need to do the best work he could do, and not just a desire to prove his father wrong. The closer Des tried to get to him, the more Peter felt like he needed to pull back, to get the hell away. This role Des wanted to play, he was years too late for it, and the box he wanted to put Peter in was far too tight.
Peter pulled in on the side of the road and took out his notebook. He dialled the number he had for Stephen Kielty, the public urinator whose fingerprints had been found in the Lynches’ kitchen. It was a landline. Peter reached Kielty’s mother, who assumed he was a friend of her son’s and handed over Kielty’s mobile number without an issue. Peter dialled again, and this time Kielty answered. When Peter explained who he was and why he was calling, Kielty was cautious, but not defensive. It took him only a minute to come up with an explanation.
‘In Roundstone?’ he asked. ‘Ah, that would have been months ago. I put in a kitchen up there. You’re talking about the farmhouse, right? Way up on the hill?’
‘That’s the one,’ Peter said. ‘You’re a carpenter then?’
‘Cabinetmaker,’ Kielty said with obvious pride. He named the company he worked for, and Peter took a note with the intention of confirming the information later. ‘Yeah, I put in a kitchen for the old fella there . . . god, it would have been back in July? I’d have to check the invoice for the date. Do you need the date? I’ll be in the office tomorrow.’
‘A date would be very useful,’ Peter said. He gave Kielty his number.
‘So . . . something happened up there?’ Kielty said. ‘A burglary, was it?’
‘They were murdered,’ Peter said. ‘Both of them. Miles and Carl Lynch.’
‘Ah god, that’s terrible. I did hear something about it on the news, to be honest. I’d wondered, but no . . .’
‘Wondered what?’ Peter asked, more sharply than he’d intended.
‘I thought maybe the young fella had killed his uncle. That’s a terrible thing to say, now. He was murdered himself, like.’
‘Why? What made you think that Carl might have hurt his uncle?’
‘They used to argue, that’s all. They didn’t seem to like each other much. The younger one . . . Carl. He was very angry with his uncle. He’d have a go at him. But I just got on with the job, you know?’
Peter murmured agreement. ‘You don’t know what was behind the bad feeling?’
‘I haven’t a clue. But they lived alone, with just each other. Had done for years. I think you’d hate your own mother if you were cooped up in the middle of nowhere with her for years. Wouldn’t anyone?’
Peter asked Kielty a few more questions. The man was more relaxed the longer the conversation went on, seemed happy to talk, but didn’t have anything else useful to add. Peter rang off, made one more call and Kielty’s employers were happy to confirm that he’d installed a kitchen for the Lynches, back in late July.
Despite the fact that Kielty was looking like a dead end, Peter felt the beginnings of confidence building, felt a bit of fire in the belly. There was more to the Lynch case than met the eye, he could feel it. He had two months in Roundstone, and he would spend them investigating this case as it should have been investigated in the first place. He would think of his father as he would any other difficult senior officer. Someone to be avoided, or managed. It was obvious that Des had no interest in investigating the Lynch murders himself, and Peter was fairly sure he knew what his father’s reaction would be if he found out that Peter was out interviewing witnesses, following up on leads. Des wanted him to be a grateful little gofer, sitting in the corner, filing paperwork. Peter drove slowly down the main street. He didn’t want to go back to the flat, was half afraid that Des would show up with another lecture ready to go. It was nearly four-thirty. He should go to Maggie’s, see how she was doing. Meet this Anna, if he should be so lucky. There was one more phone call he needed to make in the meantime.
He drove up the hill to Maggie’s cottage. There was a car already parked there, a new-looking red Nissan Patrol. Not Maggie’s, that was for sure. And it didn’t belong to a local farmer. It had a back seat, for starters, and it was too clean and shiny to be a farm vehicle. She must have a visitor. Peter pulled in alongside the Nissan Patrol. He could make his call from the car.
Carl Lynch’s sister, Naoise, was living in California. Four-thirty p.m. in Galway meant eight-thirty a.m. in California. That was a little early, maybe, but not outrageously so. Peter called the number and it was answered on the third ring.
‘Hello?’ A woman’s voice. He heard heels on pavement, a shouted goodbye in the background.
‘Am I speaking with Naoise Lynch?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’m O’Gorman now,’ she said. ‘But yes, this is Naoise.’ Her accent was almost American, which surprised him. The Irish accent wasn’t an easy one to shed, and most people didn’t try. More background noise on the call. He heard a car door open and shut, there was shuffling, the sound of an engine switching on, and then a change in the ambient noise that told him he was now on speaker.
‘Is this a bad time, Mrs O’Gorman?’ he asked. ‘I’m Garda Peter Fisher, calling from Roundstone. I was hoping to speak to you about your brother and your uncle.’
‘Right. Oh, right. It’s fine. I’m driving, but I’ve got you on hands-free. And I have a crazy day, so if you want to speak to me, now is as good a time as you’re likely to get.’
‘Okay. Thank you.’ Peter hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself. ‘If you’ve already spoken to someone about this, then I apologise. We’re just trying to fill in a few gaps.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear from you, actually. I haven’t heard from anyone since you notified me of the deaths. And obviously I’d like to hear what’s going on. What sort of progress has been made in getting to the bottom of things.’
‘Right. Well, I’m just looking to fill in some background for now. To get a picture from you about the kind of people Miles and Carl were.’
She let out a little huff of breath. ‘I’m not sure I’m the right person for that. I hadn’t seen either of them for more than ten years.’
‘You and Carl weren’t close?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘We didn’t have an awful lot in common. Our parents were very traditional. They were happy to have Carl. Someone to pass the farm on to. They were less interested in me, and if I’m honest, I resented it. The circumstances didn’t exactly encourage a close relationship between me and Carl.’ She was matter-of-fact, like it was a story she had told many times.
‘I see. Did you fall out with your parents? Is that why you went to America?’
‘Nothing so dramatic,’ she said. ‘I went away to college – paid my own way, I’d just like to point out – and the gap that was already there widened. I came home in the holidays, at least for the first couple of years. But when I graduated, I applied for the green card lottery and got lucky.’
‘And you’ve never been back?’
‘Nope.’
‘Your parents . . .’
‘They passed on almost ten years ago now. My father first, my mother a few months later.’ Her voice was tight. ‘And no, I didn’t go back for the funerals. My daughter wasn’t well, and I was needed here. And, to be frank, I didn’t want to play the dutiful daughter when we’d had no real relationship before they died. I said my goodbyes my own way, in my own home.’
‘Of course,’ Peter said. She thought he was judging her. He really wasn’t.
‘Look, is there anything else? Because I need to get to the office.’
‘What did happen with your parents’ farm?’ Peter asked. ‘I’m just asking because Carl had been farming with your uncle. I would have thought he wouldn’t have needed to do tha
t if he’d inherited from your parents.’
‘Oh god. It was mortgaged to the hilt. They weren’t the best with money. I suppose they added to the mortgage over the years. In the end the place had to be sold and it just about covered what was owed. Carl was devastated.’ She paused. ‘I did feel sorry for him about that. Especially with what came later. He’d lived his whole life on other people’s promises. And it all came to nothing in the end.’ There might have been sympathy in her voice, but there was a hint of judgement too. Naoise Lynch had relied on no one. She’d struck out on her own.
‘What will you do with Miles’s place?’ Peter asked. ‘I assume you’ll put it up for sale. Will you come and see it first?’
‘Me?’ The surprise in her voice seemed genuine.
‘Well, you’re the next of kin. I think the assumption was that you would inherit it.’
‘No. Look, Miles would never have left the place to me anyway, but . . . hadn’t he agreed to sell it?’
Peter was silent.
‘I mean, wasn’t that what was the argument was about?’
‘What argument?’ Peter asked.
Naoise let out a sigh. ‘Look, hold on for a moment.’ He could hear more background noise, a car door opening and closing, heels again, clicking on a hard surface, then low voices in conversation followed by quiet, before her voice came back on the line.
‘Carl called,’ she said. ‘We weren’t close, but he called me, rarely, and usually when he had a problem.’
‘When?’ Peter asked.
‘July. He was very drunk, and very upset. You have to understand that he was broken up about what happened with our parents’ farm. He’d built his entire life around his belief that he would inherit it. Then that fell apart. And Miles stepped in. According to Carl he made all sorts of promises. If Carl came to work with him on the farm, Miles would leave it to him in his will.’
‘And he didn’t?’
‘Carl told me he’d found out that Miles had signed a contract to sell the farm. Look, Carl wasn’t making a lot of sense. He was rambling. But he said something about Miles’s diabetes. Miles wasn’t well, and he was getting worse. His doctor said if he kept going as he was, he would need a lot of support. Nursing care, that sort of thing. And if Miles couldn’t afford that sort of care at home, he was going to have to go into a public nursing home.’
Peter frowned, thinking through the implications. Then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, turned his head, and saw a woman and a young girl, well wrapped in heavy coats, hats and gloves, cycling up the driveway. They glanced his way but didn’t stop, just propped their bikes up against the house and disappeared inside.
‘Are you still there?’ Naoise said, a trace of impatience in her voice.
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘I’m really going to have to go. I have a meeting.’
‘Just one more minute, if you can. Just so I can be sure I understand. You’re saying that Carl told you that Miles had agreed to sell the farm to someone, and that Carl was very upset about it.’
‘Yes. Well, most of the farm. He was going to keep the house and a bit of land around it.’
‘But Carl told you this back in July. So it looks like the sale never went ahead?’
‘I suppose. I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t call him?’ Frustration made the question sound like an accusation. ‘I mean, you didn’t speak again?’
Naoise sighed. ‘I didn’t call him, no. I felt sorry for him, but . . . Look, I told him he needed to get on with things. Go out, get a job, earn some money. Get some control back instead of being dependent on other people. That pissed him off. He hung up on me.’
‘And that was the last time you spoke to him?’
‘Yes.’
The word hung in the air. It was hard to see how the information could help him. There was fury in the murder scene. Fury in the injuries to Miles Lynch, who had been beaten about the head with the poker. It was one of the reasons Peter wasn’t convinced by Des’s theory about anonymous Dublin raiders. But clearly, Carl Lynch could not have first murdered his uncle, and then beaten himself to death with the poker. Still, Naoise had given him something. A thread that he would follow.
‘Look, I really have to go,’ Naoise said.
‘Yes, of course. Thank you for your time.’
She hesitated. ‘If you find anything out, you’ll call me?’
He assured her that he would.
‘I feel badly that I didn’t call him again. But there really wasn’t anything I could have said that he would have wanted to hear. I didn’t understand his choices. I got out the first chance I got. He stayed, and his life seemed to get narrower and narrower every year that passed. I just . . . talking to him made me feel panicky, you know? As if his choices might be catching. And he never listened to my advice anyway.’
She wanted forgiveness. This phone call from an anonymous garda thousands of miles away was probably her only connection to Ireland.
‘It sounds like you were very different people,’ Peter said, in the end.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Exactly.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then she hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cormac had thought about staying overnight in Lyon on Thursday night, but he and Matt had finished eating by four o’clock, and the conversation was not the sort that naturally led on to a night of pints and reminiscing. There was a flight to Dublin at seven. Matt drove him to the airport instead, and they used the drive to talk through a plan and make phone calls, set a few things up. They shook hands in the car at the drop-off area.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Cormac said.
‘You will. I hope this is the right call.’
‘Trust me, Matt,’ Cormac said. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by standing still.’
By the time Cormac landed in Dublin it was after eight and he was beginning to feel the effects of a long and challenging day. He picked up his car and drove the two and a half hours west to Galway, listening to music and occasionally rolling the window down when he felt he needed the cold air to wake himself up. He pulled in outside the little house on Canal Road at eleven-fifteen and turned off the ignition. He sat there in the dark for a moment. There was a car parked across the road. It was very dark, and the light from the streetlamps was muted, but hadn’t he seen movement in that car just as he drove up?
Cormac shook himself. He was overtired and wound up. He needed sleep and a shower, some food. He got out of the car and was halfway to the house when he heard the other car door open. He turned to see a slight figure making its way towards him. Moments later, as she passed under a streetlamp, he recognised Deirdre Russell.
‘How long have you been sitting out there?’ he asked.
‘Not long. I just came off shift. Sorry, I know it’s late. Can you talk?’
He led the way to the house, unlocked the door and invited her in. The place was freezing. She was wearing her uniform and a padded garda jacket, but he caught the shiver.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Heating’s been off. I’ve been away for a couple of days.’
They went into the living room and her eyes scanned the room, taking it in. Suddenly he saw the place as she might. It might not have the warmth of Emma’s presence, but it was still his home. Those were his books on the table. The ashes in the grate were from a fire he’d lit the previous Friday, before everything had gone south. The painting on the wall was one he’d chosen, and those were his family photographs on the mantelpiece. Emma had taken hers with her to Brussels when she’d left.
‘I’m sorry to come so late,’ Deirdre said. ‘I won’t stay long, but I need to talk to you about Peter.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, not about Peter, exactly. It’s about the Peggah Abbassi case. You know it’s been reassigned?’
‘Yes. To . . . Reynolds, wasn’t it? The inspector from GSOC?’
She shook her head. ‘He left on Tues
day. We were told that that was only a temporary arrangement, intended to “facilitate a smooth transition”.’ Deirdre held up her hands and made air quotes with her fingers.
‘So who’s running it now?’ Cormac asked.
‘Moira Hanley’s been made acting sergeant. She’s running it.’
The words were so unexpected that Cormac simply sat for a moment in silence. Moira Hanley might be one of the longest-serving gardaí at Mill Street Station, but she was not someone he would have chosen for promotion. And definitely not for a sensitive case like this. It was highly unusual, too, to appoint someone to an acting position in a city centre station, when there were surely other sergeants available to transfer into the position.
‘How are things going?’ Cormac asked, when he’d processed the information.
Deirdre shook her head. ‘We’re getting nowhere fast. And I don’t understand what she’s thinking. We spent half the day yesterday with the Abbassi family, grilling them on every member of their extended family, as if they’re all suspects.’
Cormac felt like he was on a go-slow. He needed a cold shower or a cup of coffee, anything that would shock him into wakefulness. Deirdre was looking at him with an intent expression on her face. She hadn’t come here lightly. She wasn’t the type to bitch and moan about office politics. Quite the opposite. She was the kind of officer who liked to be active. Where she could, she spent her time out on patrol or following up on burglary inquiries, minor assaults, anything that would get her out and about and working. The bruising around her mouth was healing, fading to a dirty yellow. She looked very young, sitting there. She was young, only what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?
‘You know, that needs to be done sometimes,’ Cormac said. ‘We may feel that the most likely suspect for the abduction is Jason Kelly, but the Superintendent was keen to ensure that we didn’t ignore other avenues of investigation. Everything needs to be done properly here. No stone unturned.’
‘Yeah, but that’s the problem. Do you remember the tarp? The one that must have been in Kelly’s boot when he took Peggah? On Monday, before you were taken off the case, you said finding that tarp was the first priority. Well, today’s Thursday and we still haven’t gone out to look for it and I don’t think we ever will. Moira says it would be a wild-goose chase. Which it probably would be now, because even if we found it, it’s been out in the weather for five days.’
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