Unti Lucy Black Novel #3

by Brian McGilloway

  “There can’t be many with both skull and leg injuries,” Burns conceded.

  “They might not have been suffered at the same time,” Tara said, suddenly. “Filtering like that might miss someone out.”

  “See what it brings up. Chase them again,” Burns said. “What was the story with Ciaran Duffy?”

  “We believe he was responsible for the body swap,” Fleming said. “He deposited five grand in his account a few days ago, so our assumption is that he was paid to get rid of whoever was actually in the coffin.”

  “Why would someone go to that effort?” Mickey asked. “Why not just dump the body? Or burn it, like Duffy himself, in a car?”

  “Whoever tried to burn Duffy knew we were onto him by this stage; there was no need to hide his death. We have to assume, on the other hand, that whoever was put in the coffin and cremated was someone they didn’t want us to know about.”

  “Duffy was found in Terry Haynes’s car, the same car used to dump Krawiec’s body, Krawiec was last known to be in the company of Aaron Moore, whose prints you found at a house burglary along with Krawiec’s,” Wilson said. “Have I got all this so far?”

  “So far, ma’am,” Burns said, smiling.

  “So, what about Terry Haynes? Are you any closer to locating him?” Wilson asked, directed this time to Burns.

  “Nothing yet, ma’am,” he conceded.

  “And Aaron Moore?”

  “We called at his flat, but there was no one home. We spoke to some of the neighbors, but no one has seen him for the past few weeks,” Tara said.

  “His flat? He’s not homeless then?”

  “He may as well be,” Mickey answered, then added a differential “ma’am.” “The flat looked deserted. Piles of newspapers everywhere, everything in bags.”

  “You searched it without a warrant?”

  “We looked in the window,” Tara said, quickly. “One of the neighbors said he’s a hoarder; holds on to everything. They complained to him a few times about the smell, said they think he doesn’t even dump his rubbish.”

  “Why did we have him on the system?” Fleming asked.

  “Shoplifting,” Burns said. “He was caught stealing soap of all things from a local chemist’s.”

  “Soap?” Fleming repeated over the laughter rippling through the room.

  “Fifteen bars of soap,” Burns replied, not containing his own amusement now.

  “He didn’t manage a clean getaway then,” Mickey said. The ripple grew now, with even Wilson cracking a brief brittle smile.

  “Tom, you and Lucy keep up the pressure on the coffin body,” Burns said. “Aaron Moore is our focus. Tara, you stay on that. Mickey, you and Ian are to follow up on Ciaran Duffy’s movements. Report back on the PM when it’s done.”

  ­“People,” Wilson said, calling the room to attention. “I know we’re all stretched at the moment. Unfortunately, events in Belfast are beyond our control and until someone starts to exert some form of political leadership, I don’t believe we’ll see much of an improvement on the ground. Use your time wisely. We do still have uniform support available when it’s needed, so maybe Inspectors shouldn’t be staking out banks, eh?”

  She smiled as she nodded at Tom Fleming who returned both. From his expression, though, it was clear that the intended recipient of her rebuke, standing just to her left, had got the message.

  Chapter Thirty-­Seven

  “SO, HOW WAS your afternoon with the Chief Super?” Fleming asked as he strapped himself into the car.

  “Wonderful,” Lucy said. “He’s a bundle of laughs. Caring and understanding.”

  “Just what you need,” Fleming said.

  “He seems to think so. He mentioned my applying to CID,” she added, not looking across at her boss.

  “Did he indeed? And what are your thoughts?”

  “Are you kidding?” Lucy asked. “What was your comment? I’m only beginning to enjoy my work. Why would I leave?”

  Fleming smiled. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “How was Boyd?”

  “Plausible,” Lucy said. “Friendly, welcoming. Playing down his importance in things.”

  “What was your sense of him?”

  Lucy shook her head. “I went in there looking to not like him,” she confided. “I didn’t come out persuaded I was wrong. Fiona has asked to meet me later, so it’ll be interesting to hear what she has to say about things.”

  Fleming stared out the side window, tracing the progress of a raindrop along the glass with the tip of his finger.

  “So, Aaron Moore?” Lucy said. “We know he was with Kamil but how did they connect?”

  Fleming shook his head. “I was just thinking the same thing. What have they got in common?”

  “Moore’s not a street drinker, or homeless,” Lucy said. “But, if he actually is a compulsive hoarder, like the neighbors claim . . . maybe they met through the Community Mental Health team?”

  Fleming nodded. “Try the team. See if they had dealings with Moore at any stage. If he is compulsive hoarding, he may have been referred on to them, OCD or some such. Check Krawiec as well.”

  Lucy glanced at the clock on the dash. It was already past six. “They’ll be closed now. I’ll try Noleen Fagan in the morning.”

  Fagan was the unit psychiatrist with the Community Mental Health team. If Moore had been referred to the team, she would have assessed him at some stage. While the unit would be closed, Lucy knew that Fagan ran emergency clinics on Saturday mornings.

  Fleming nodded softly. “Their paths crossed somewhere.”

  FLEMING WAITED IN the car while she ran into the PPU block. The time it took her to cover the distance from her parked car to the door, extended by her having to enter the key code at the door, meant that, when she finally made it inside, her face was slick with rainwater.

  She went up to her office and turned on all the lights to dispel the still grayness that had gathered in the room.

  A ream of sheets sat in the tray of the printer. Flicking through them, she found the list faxed from Beaumont. Despite having filtered down the names, there were still twenty pages, which consisted simply of lists of patients, the dates of their treatment, and their dates of birth. She realized that the names were listed, not alphabetically, but by date of treatment.

  She stuffed the pages into her bag, took a last glance across at the picture of Mary Quigg, pinned to her noticeboard, and flicked off the lights.

  Chapter Thirty-­Eight

  LUCY GOT HOME, changed, and showered. She’d planned to walk down to the Everglades, the two sharp inclines which she would have to climb on the way home sufficient exercise for the day, but the rain still pounded outside, the sky blooming with lightning occasionally, the boom of thunder reverberating along the Foyle Valley in the wake of each flash so, in the end, she drove down.

  Fiona was already sitting in the foyer, waiting for her, when she got there, despite Lucy being ten minutes early. She smiled nervously when she saw Lucy, her shoulders hunched a little, her hands worrying at the handle of the umbrella she held.

  “Hey,” Lucy offered. “Are you here long?”

  Fiona glanced at her watch absently, though so quickly the time could hardly have registered. “A while,” she said. “John goes to gym at seven so I had to leave before he got home.”

  The silence was punctured by the urgent beeping of a phone. “That’ll be him now,” she continued, blushing. She pulled the phone from her pocket and held it up to show Lucy the image on the screen. Lucy reached, took the phone from her, and turned it off.

  “We should all be non-­contactable sometimes,” she said. “Tell him you went over to Donegal for a run and lost network.”

  Fiona smiled briefly, the smile dying just as quickly on her lips.

  “Let’s eat,” Lucy said. “I’m starving.”
r />   THEY WERE FINISHING the curries they had ordered when Fiona finally broached the subject.

  “How did you know?” she said. “The other night? The bruises. How did you know?”

  If there was going to be an opportunity to tell her the truth about her job, this was it. But Lucy suspected that, having built the courage to contact someone, to talk, learning that she was a police officer would scare Fiona away before she’d even begun to speak.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve seen those type of injuries,” she said.

  “Right. In the gym and that,” Fiona explained. “I forgot.”

  “Not just that,” Lucy said. “I’ve come across ­people in abusive relationships before. They always hide the injuries. And the abusers always injure in places where it’s easy to hide.”

  “John’s not abusive,” Fiona said quickly.

  “He bust your lip,” Lucy said.

  “It was an accident. He’s under pressure in his work.”

  Lucy reflected on the man she had met that afternoon. He did not give the impression of someone under pressure in his job. Quite the reverse, in fact.

  “They’re doing some sort of audit of the whole department. He handles a lot of the money so they’re going through his stuff with a fine-­tooth comb. There’ll be no mistakes, I told him that. He’s so careful, so good with money. He handles it all for us.”

  “All?”

  Fiona nodded. “I was a bit useless with my money, he said, so he looks after my account for me.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow. “What if you need money?”

  Fiona blushed. “There’s never a problem.”

  “Do you ask him for your own money?”

  “He’s looking out for us both,” Fiona said, defensively. “What about you? Doesn’t your partner look out for you?”

  “Not in that way,” Lucy said, stopping herself from saying she didn’t need looking after, lest it appear implicitly judgmental. “Something happened a while back that changed things.”

  “What?”

  “He was injured while he was working on my car. I feel guilty about it. He’s suggested we move in together but . . . I’m not sure that I’m ready to do that quite yet. I need to be certain I’d be doing it for the right reasons, not just out of a sense of guilt and obligation.”

  “Is that why you’re staying with him?”

  Lucy shrugged. “It’s too strong a feeling at the minute for me to be able to work out what else is in there now, you know?”

  Fiona nodded. “I rely on John so much; I couldn’t leave him. I’d not be able to manage.”

  “Bollocks,” Lucy blurted suddenly, causing the elderly ­couple at the table next to them to glance across.

  “I do,” Fiona protested. “When we started going out it was . . . he was so attentive. So focused on me. Wanting to be with me all the time. He hated sharing me with anyone, even family. It was . . . it was intoxicating. Someone loving you that much that they couldn’t be apart from you.”

  “That’s understandable,” Lucy said. “At the start. But you need to have your own life. Your own identity.”

  Fiona stared at her, her mouth working, trying to form the words to adequately express the situation in which she had now found herself.

  “I didn’t see it changing. I got so used to it, so used to being the center of someone’s life. I never noticed it getting suffocating. He used to be hurt when I visited someone without him, like it meant he wasn’t important to me anymore. I was so important to him, he said, why would I need other ­people? Now he gets angry instead of offended. He seems to be angry all the time.”

  Lucy nodded. “So, how do you deal with that?”

  “I do what I know will keep him happy.” Fiona raised her chin slightly, staring at the wall beyond Lucy, as if considering what she had just said. “Did you ever . . . do you ever feel like you’re watching yourself just . . . disappear?” She looked directly at Lucy to gauge her response, then lowered her head again. “I feel like such a coward. Such a weakling, like Jenny says.”

  “You’re not a weakling,” Lucy said. “You have to stop letting other ­people define you.”

  “You see?” Fiona said, laughing helplessly.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. You’ve been conditioned through years of control into believing what ­people say about you, because it’s being said by someone you love. But just because you love someone doesn’t mean that they’re right about everything. I think you’re being braver than you give yourself credit for.”

  Fiona snorted derisively. “Yeah, right!”

  “You came here tonight,” Lucy said. “You admitted some things to a stranger that I’d have difficulty admitting.”

  Fiona lowered her head, studying the beer mat that she was tearing into pieces between her hands.

  “It’s easier than telling someone who knows me!” Fiona smiled, sheepishly.

  “And you’ve left your phone turned off since you arrived.”

  She looked up suddenly. “Oh, Jesus, I forgot,” she said, fumbling with the phone.

  Lucy reached across, laying her hand on top of Fiona’s. “And that was the right thing to do. The Donegal excuse will be good for at least another hour.”

  Fiona regarded the phone in her hand momentarily, as if physically weighing up the consequences of her action, then pocketed it again without switching it on.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Lucy asked.

  She nodded uncertainly in response. “He’ll go mental when I get home.”

  “If he does, turn and walk straight back out again. Jenny will be happy to put you up for the night. Or I will, if you’re stuck. Would you speak to the police? Or a counselor?”

  “God, no! I couldn’t face all . . . that. Besides, I can’t afford to leave him; I’ve no money,” Fiona said.

  She flushed suddenly as she saw Lucy reach for her purse. “No, not like that. I mean in general. If I did want to leave. He has my bank card and everything.”

  “No one will see you stuck if you do,” Lucy said. “But it needs to be your decision,” she added. “Don’t do it because you think other ­people want you to.” Lucy had seen too many times, women, and men, encouraged into leaving abusive partners by their families who, at the first moment of missing their former partner, blamed those same families for forcing the decision on them, for being more controlling than the abuser whom they had left. Often times, they ended running back into those same waiting abusive arms. If Fiona was going to leave John Boyd, and stay away from him, the decision needed to be her own.

  “TEXT ME AND let me know how you are,” Lucy said, as they parted company under the canopy of the porch. “And don’t be afraid. Lift the phone if he does anything. I’ll come and get you.”

  Fiona nodded, then reached suddenly and kissed Lucy lightly on the cheek. “Thanks for listening,” she said. “And for not judging.”

  Lucy smiled, gripped the woman’s hand once encouragingly, then watched as she turned and stepped out into the unrelenting rain and ran to her car.

  Chapter Thirty-­Nine

  THE BRIEF TEXT arrived an hour later: “All OK.”

  The thudding of the rain increased through the remainder of the evening, the windows shuddering in the frames, both with the thick buffeting of the wind and the occasional reverberations of thunder.

  Lucy went to bed early, then slept fitfully, waking before 1 a.m. The thin material of the curtains did little to hide the regular flashes of lightning. The rain had increased, both in tempo and ferocity. She had been thinking about Robbie’s proposition. Since her father had been committed to Gransha, his house, this house, had not changed. It was almost as if she had been holding her breath, waiting for him to come back. But she knew, even before the conversation with her mother, that her father would never be coming back and that she felt she
had reached a liminal point. Either she had to make this house her own, or else leave it and, perhaps, move in with Robbie. Yet the thought of the latter made her feel like she could not quite catch her breath.

  She thought of all the others she’d recently encountered who lived alone: Terry Haynes opening his doors first to Tom Fleming and, more recently, Kamil Krawiec; Doreen Jeffries welcoming Helen Dexter into her home. Lucy could not decide whether their reasons had been altruistic or an attempt to avoid the loneliness of single living. Or, in Haynes’s case, something more sinister still.

  Unbidden, too, she thought of the girl, Grace. The bank building in Waterloo Place had been sealed off as a crime scene, meaning she would not be able to shelter from the storm in there. She might have nowhere else to go.

  She reached across the bedside cabinet, feeling her way to her phone, then picked it up and dialed.

  It rang four times before it was answered.

  “Who is this?” the girl asked, without preamble.

  “Grace? It’s Lucy Black. DS Black. Where are you?”

  “What do you want?” the girl asked.

  There was another flash of lightning outside, followed almost instantaneously by a peal of thunder, which Lucy heard echoed in the girl’s phone a second later.

  “Are you outside in that?” Lucy asked.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll get soaked.”

  “I already am soaked. What do you want? Is it about the money?”

  “You’ll get more—­What money?”

  “I took from your boss. The guy waiting outside the bank.”

  Lucy remembered now that the girl had taken payment for the tip-­off about the scene of Krawiec’s killing from both her and Tom Fleming. “No. It’s not about the money. I was worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a teenager sleeping outside in a thunderstorm,” Lucy snapped. “Where are you? I’ll come and get you.”