Afterwards Cormac would wonder what would have happened if he’d had the presence of mind to come up with some excuse. To pretend that he’d driven to Tullamore at the tail end of an active op just to have a word with his commanding officer. But he knew it would have changed nothing. Murphy had executed this little plan perfectly, and had always intended for Cormac to be caught up in it.
‘Ah,’ said Murphy, stepping closer. ‘I see. You were the instigator of this little side drama, were you? But you didn’t come to me, as your superior officer. And you didn’t go to the Commissioner’s office, and you didn’t go to the office of the garda ombudsman.’ Murphy smiled, and it was like watching a minnow turn into a shark. ‘You went to your friend here, at Interpol, who seems to have called another friend, who called a friend. That’s an interesting chain of command. I wasn’t aware that Interpol had the authority to run operations on Irish soil.’
‘Sorry, Detective Inspector, that isn’t what we . . .’ Matt started to say. A look from Murphy quelled him.
Murphy drew Cormac aside. ‘You’re finished,’ Murphy said, and his tone was matter-of-fact. ‘There’ll be an investigation into all your off-the-book activities, but you should know that that will be a mere formality. After today, your career in the Garda Síochána is over. You will never run an investigation again.’ He gave Cormac one last, vicious smile. ‘Pity,’ he said. And he walked away.
Cormac left the incinerator without another word to anyone. When he glanced back, Matt was deep in conversation with Brian Murphy, no doubt trying to work out a deal where they could take joint credit for the successful raid and where Interpol could emerge smelling of roses. Best of luck to him. He might have a chance, too, now that Murphy had achieved his goals. He’d extracted his son from a messy situation, had probably secured a promotion for both of them while he was at it. And as an added bonus, he was now rid of Cormac. Murphy was absolutely right about that. There could be no coming back from this for him.
Cormac drove aimlessly. He had nowhere to go. How fucking stupid he had been. How could he have so completely underestimated Brian Murphy? Hadn’t he known, from their very first meeting, that that gormlessness had to be an act? And yet he’d somehow assimilated it, made it part of his picture of the other man. And had been utterly, utterly misled. Cormac called Emma’s number. No answer. That was probably as well. Christ. What could he say to her? His career in the gardaí was over. Europe would be closed to him after this too. Cormac let out a shaky laugh. Of course. Why wouldn’t Murphy put the boot in while he was at it? He would happily do a deal with Matt to let Interpol off the hook for breaking virtually every procedural rule there was, if they would just do one small thing for him.
Cormac’s phone rang. It was Emma, calling him back. He pulled in to someone’s driveway, answered the call.
‘Emma,’ he said.
‘Corm, I’m sorry I missed you.’ She sounded tired.
‘No, look. I should have called earlier. I know you tried to get me. This week has been . . .’ He let his voice trail off. He didn’t have the energy to catalogue the disasters.
‘You called last night, and you called this morning,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t answer. I just . . . I wasn’t ready for this conversation.’
Cormac blinked. The silence went on too long and Emma was the one who broke it.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, eventually. ‘I was angry when you left. Angry and upset. It felt like you were giving up on us. But I’ve been thinking about it all week. Being a garda, that’s who you are. It’s who I fell in love with.’ Her voice cracked a little. She was crying. ‘I still love you, Corm. I think part of me will always love you. And it breaks my heart to let you go. But I know that being a garda is part of who you are. You wouldn’t be happy being anything else, and I don’t think I could be happy watching you try. I wish I could say that I’ll come back.’
‘Emma . . .’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I know it’s selfish. And I think maybe I’ll regret it, in years to come. But I just can’t come back, Corm. I can’t do it.’
Cormac’s hand tightened around the phone. ‘I wasn’t avoiding you because I wanted to end our relationship,’ he said. Whatever happened between them, he couldn’t let a stupid misunderstanding be the reason that they didn’t work it out. ‘I was trying to find a solution. For both of us.’
He waited for her to ask what the solution could be and searched for words with which he could answer her. But she didn’t ask. She just fell silent again, and that was when he realised that it didn’t matter. She’d already let him go.
‘It’s all right, Emma,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. He could almost feel her reaching for words and finding nothing. ‘I’m sorry, Corm,’ she said in the end. ‘I’ll call you.’ And she hung up.
Cormac closed his eyes and leaned forward, his head rested on his steering wheel. He’d lost her. He’d lost everything. Christ. He felt utterly hollow, unmoored. Emma was walking away from him. She was going because he didn’t make her happy, because the life he’d had to offer her didn’t make her happy. And he couldn’t even fight for her because he had nothing left to fight with. Nothing at all. Cormac raised his head from the steering wheel, stared blankly ahead. The world blurred around him.
After a few minutes a woman emerged from the house he’d pulled up at. She stood looking at him but came no closer. He was worrying her, probably, a stranger sitting in his car in her driveway. Cormac wiped his eyes and started the engine.
He kept driving. But he had nowhere to go, really. He thought of Galway, had no urge at all to return to the little house on the canal. What a house of ashes that was. He could go to his parents’ place, his sister’s, but he wasn’t ready to explain things to them.
Oh Christ. Peter Fisher. Cormac rubbed his hand over his head. Peter was on his own now, hanging out there, and there was nothing Cormac could do for him. Would Murphy leave him alone, now that he’d taken Cormac down? Maybe, maybe not. Peter needed to know what had happened, and sooner rather than later. Cormac plugged ‘Roundstone’ into his GPS, which immediately came back with a warning about poor conditions and serious traffic delays. It was roughly a one hundred kilometre drive he had ahead of him, in weather. If he headed straight there now, he’d make it before nightfall if he was lucky. With more resignation than resolution, Cormac turned the car north and west, and drove on.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Peter woke far later than he should have on Sunday morning. He was disoriented, thick with sleep and confused by dreams and snatches of nightmares that were slow to let go of him. It took a moment before the events of the night before came back to him. When they did, he reached for his phone and called Doctor Barrett.
‘He’s conscious,’ Barrett said. ‘In a lot of pain, some memory issues, but I think he’s out of the woods. I’ll keep him here under observation for another day or so, and then if the weather shows any signs of improvement, he should go to the hospital and get properly checked out.’
‘That’s good,’ Peter said. He breathed out a sigh of intense relief. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Barrett said. There was still no suggestion of outrage or concern about what had been done to Cummins, no anger on his part. It was strange, coming from a doctor. But even the very best of people could take extreme positions when it came to paedophiles. They weren’t exactly a sympathetic group.
‘I’ll do my very best to call in to see Maggie today on my rounds,’ Barrett said then. ‘With the weather the way it is, I can’t guarantee anything. I may need to borrow a set of chains from somewhere if the snow doesn’t let up.’
‘That would be great, thank you,’ Peter said automatically.
They hung up, and Peter was left wondering if Barrett had cleaned up messes made by Des and Jim before. He told himself that he was being paranoid, but something about the doctor had been off the night before. That look of fear in his eyes,
as though Peter was there for something other than help. What did he have to be afraid of?
Peter threw some coal on the last embers of his dying fire. He waited for the room to warm up, then braved the cold shower. The water was icy. He was lucky the pipes hadn’t frozen, but it didn’t feel like much to be thankful for as he stood under the spray for just long enough to get the soap out of his hair. He got dressed quickly, made toast with the heel of the loaf, and tea, and took it to the fireplace. Something was nagging at the back of his brain, something about Barrett that he’d heard or read that hadn’t sat quite right with him. It finally came to him. Barrett had discovered the bodies of Carl and Miles Lynch when making a house call. According to his statement Barrett had entered the Lynch house to check the bodies, to confirm that they were dead. Except that Miles and Carl had been dead for a week by the time Barrett was making his house call. Dead for a week, in the warmth of an Indian summer, and in a cottage where the front door was open. Peter had seen the photographs of the bodies. The flies had been at work for days. It would have been clear from the doorway that they were dead. Why then had Barrett entered the crime scene? It couldn’t have been to confirm death, as per his statement. He must surely have known it at first glance. Peter thought again about the unidentified fingerprints found in the Lynch house. Had Barrett’s prints been taken, as they should have been, to rule them out? He couldn’t recall for sure, but he didn’t think so. And something else nagged at him too. A connection. Peter stalked up and down the living room, thinking things through, trying to make sense of his burgeoning theory. He had the beginnings of something, maybe, but he couldn’t figure out a motive.
Peter picked up his phone and called the Madden house. John answered the phone. Peter made polite inquiries as to how they were doing. John said that the morgue in Clifden had promised to do their best to get out to the house on Monday.
‘John, this may seem like an odd question, but can you tell me, did your father own any land or other property?’
There was silence for a long moment and Peter could almost hear John’s leap of suspicion.
‘He had a farm,’ John said. ‘He’s been retired for years, though, so the land was leased. Why are you asking?’
‘Do you know if James had any plans to sell?’
‘If he did, he didn’t tell me,’ John said.
‘And earlier this year, your dad didn’t come into any money at any stage, did he?’ Peter was thinking about the new roof on the Lynch farmhouse. The new kitchen. Where had the money come from to pay for all of that?
‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘I know. I’m sorry, John. I’m sure this is all nothing, but if you could answer the question . . .’
‘He sent us on holiday,’ John said. ‘Me, Alisha and the girls. In June. He paid for us to go to France for a few weeks. We were delighted, but we were surprised too. Dad didn’t have a lot of cash sitting in a bank somewhere. He had the bit of rental income from the farm, and a small pension.’
‘And he didn’t tell you where the money came from?’
‘He wouldn’t get into it, just said we’d know all about it by the end of the year.’
‘Where’s the farm, John?’ Peter asked. ‘Who’s the tenant?’
‘It’s just off the Coogla Road,’ John said. ‘Miles Lynch was the tenant, until he died, that is. Dad’s farm was right beside the Lynch farm, you see. Down by the sea. Look, Peter, what’s all this about?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Peter said. ‘Really, it’s probably nothing. Can you leave it with me? I need to make a few more inquiries, but I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.’
John let him go, reluctantly, and Peter made a second phone call, this one to the lawyer, Stuart Connolly. The phone rang out. Peter left a message, waited an impatient forty minutes, then tried again. This time Connolly answered.
‘Peter, how can I help you this fine snowy day?’ he asked. His tone was upbeat. He obviously didn’t mind a Sunday interruption.
‘I have a few questions.’ Peter wasn’t exactly sure where to start. ‘Look, you mentioned that Miles Lynch had been in to pick up a copy of the record of his ownership of the farm – his folio, I think you called it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘If Miles had been planning on selling the farm . . . you said that he couldn’t have done so without all the original documents you have in your office?’
‘That’s right,’ Stuart said. ‘He would need all the paperwork to complete a sale.’
‘Okay, but could he have agreed to sell the farm, using just the folio to identify the land in question? You mentioned the folio includes a map?’
‘Well, yes. Depending on the buyer. But a verbal agreement wouldn’t hold up. You can’t form a binding contract for the sale of land in Ireland without a written contract. The law doesn’t allow it.’
‘Right,’ Peter said. His original idea had been that the killer was someone who wanted to get their hands on Miles Lynch’s land. Now he wondered if maybe the situation was almost exactly the opposite.
‘Stuart, Miles came into some money in June. It was enough to pay for a new roof and a new kitchen for the farmhouse. And Carl Lynch called his sister a couple of weeks later. He was angry, upset because Miles was going to sell the land. I’m thinking he may have been paid a deposit of some kind.’
‘That’s possible,’ Stuart said. ‘The standard Law Society contract provides for a ten per cent deposit to be paid on signing, the balance on closing after the title has been fully examined.’
‘Do you think there’s any chance Miles would enter into a contract like that, something so serious, without talking to a solicitor? Without talking to you?’
Stuart was quiet for a moment, thinking. ‘He might. If he was persuaded to. If he trusted the person he was dealing with. And if the money was right.’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said about the rezoning rumours. What if someone signed the contract to buy the land thinking it was about to be rezoned, and then found out it wasn’t? Could they pull out of the contract?’ Peter asked.
‘Not if the contract was unconditional. It would really depend on how the contract was drafted. I couldn’t tell you without reading it.’
‘But it’s possible?’
‘Yes. In fact, if you’re right about the deposit money, then it would have to have been an unconditional contract. The money doesn’t get released otherwise. It would have been held in escrow by the solicitor involved . . . assuming there was one, of course.’
Pieces of the puzzle were clicking into place in Peter’s brain. It made sense. In many ways, it made sense. Barrett might have believed that the land was about to be rezoned which would have doubled land values. He’d had access to Miles Lynch – and to James Madden – that others didn’t. They trusted him. He was their doctor. He saw them alone. He could have convinced them to sell their land to him – maybe he’d even offered a bit above the going rate to sweeten the deal. And then the rezoning had fallen through, and Barrett had wanted out. He wouldn’t just have lost his deposit. If the contracts were unconditional, he would have been on the hook for the entire overvalued price of both plots of land. Peter could see the scene in his mind’s eye. Barrett visiting the Lynch farm late one evening, sure that he could talk his way out of the contract as easily as he’d talked his way into it. And Miles Lynch – stubborn, unyielding, refusing to let him go. Barrett could have lashed out in a rage. Hit Miles with the poker, and from that point there was no going back. He’d killed one man in a temper, the other to cover it up. He hadn’t been able to risk a similar scene with James Madden, so decided to make the problem go away before it even surfaced. Peter racked his brain for other loose ends the doctor would have had to tie up – loose ends which could be evidence if Peter could track them down. The realisation hit him like a blow to the head.
Oh god.
‘Stuart, I have to go,’ Peter said. He hung up, grabbed his jacket and keys and made for
the door. He found the car covered in snow, the windscreen frozen.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
He turned it on, got the engine running, put the heating on full blast. He couldn’t see a thing through the ice. He dialled Maggie’s number and Anna answered the phone.
‘Anna, is Barrett there?’ Peter said.
‘What? No, he’s not here.’
‘He said he’s going to go and see Maggie today. If he comes to the house, don’t let him in, okay. Just keep the doors locked and do not let him in to see Maggie, under any circumstances. I’ll be there as soon as I can, all right?’
Moving as fast as he could on the ice and snow, Peter went back inside to grab a kettle of water. He defrosted most of the front and rear windscreens, then set off for the village. He had to drive at a crawl, couldn’t risk ending up in the ditch, but the delay was sending his blood pressure through the roof. He couldn’t get the car up the hill to Maggie’s house. He tried three times, and on the last he ended up sliding ten metres backwards and into a wall. Peter abandoned the car, started to run up the hill, his feet slipping but making progress all the same. It took him minutes, but it felt like days. When he got to Maggie’s house, the driveway was empty, but he could see tyre tracks in the freshly fallen snow. Peter ran for the house. The front door opened before he could knock. Anna stood there, face tight, stepping from foot to foot with pent-up anxiety.
‘I wouldn’t let him in. He didn’t like it. He tried to make me open the door, but I said no. I thought he was going to break the window, for a second. And then he just left.’
The relief hit Peter so hard that he wanted to sink to his knees. ‘Thank god. Oh thank god. Thank you, Anna.’ He wanted to hug her and then suddenly, without any conscious movement, he found himself with his arms wrapped tightly around her, bending down so that his cheek was against the top of her head. ‘Thank you,’ he said again. Her slight body stiffened and he let her go immediately.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s all right,’ she said.
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