Last Goodbye_An absolutely gripping murder mystery thriller

by Arlene Hunt

  ‘Policing’s not weird.’

  Miranda shrugged. ‘What do think undercover is if not acting?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s … it’s—’

  ‘Pretending to be someone you’re not.’

  ‘It’s performing a role for the greater good, Sergeant.’

  He drummed his fingers on the armrest for a while.

  ‘What do you make of our new recruits?’

  ‘They’re okay. I like Malloy.’

  Quinn harrumphed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Johnson says she’s a loose cannon.’

  ‘Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘If you ask me, the only reason he’s down on her is ’cos she wouldn’t go down on him.’

  Quinn shook his head disapprovingly. ‘You do have a way with words, Sergeant.’

  A few minutes later, a tall, handsome, incredibly tanned man came out to meet them. Getting to his feet, Quinn suddenly wished he’d worn a better suit, maybe shaved a little closer, grown a few extra inches overnight.

  ‘Dy Anderson,’ the man said, smiling, blinding them with a display of choppers so dazzling it was like they had harnessed the sun’s energy.

  ‘Inspector Quinn, and this is Sergeant Lynn. We’re here to talk to you about Andrea Colgan.’

  ‘Of course, I was expecting you. Please come this way.’

  He led them into a conference room off the reception area and waited until they were seated around the walnut oval table before he closed the door and took a seat too.

  ‘Can I get you anything, tea, coffee, water?’

  ‘We’re fine, thanks.’

  ‘As you can imagine, we’re all devastated, simply devastated.’ He shook his magnificent head sadly. ‘Andrea was a wonderful, beautiful human being. Her loss is incredibly difficult to comprehend and a real blow to all of us here at Albas.’

  ‘How long had she worked here, Mr Anderson?’ Miranda asked.

  ‘Please, call me Dy.’ He gave her the smile with extra wattage. ‘She joined two years ago.’

  ‘What did she do exactly?’

  ‘For the most part she handled promotional work for our various clients. She was exceptionally good with the talent, great natural energy. I mean, everyone adored her.’

  ‘Did she seem troubled by anything recently, mention any difficulties or something that might have upset her?’

  ‘No, absolutely not. We are a growing company, but we’re family, you know, and if there had been anything amiss, believe me, it would have been taken care of in house.’

  ‘What was Andrea working on before she died?’

  ‘She was heading up a campaign for Angel Agents. It’s an American company that attends to the wishes of the dying, the terminally ill … you understand. They plan to open a branch here in Ireland.’

  Miranda cocked her head to one side. ‘You mean like assisted suicide, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Yes, a little like that kind of thing.’

  ‘Controversial,’ Quinn said.

  ‘Well, it would be the first of its kind in Ireland, and naturally there’s always going to be a little push-back to what people perceive as radical change.’

  ‘What kind of push-back?’

  ‘You know, angry letters, protests, objections, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Have you had any of that?’

  ‘Not really. There again, we are in the very early stages of planning a strategic marketing campaign.’ Dy leaned forward, adopting a slightly conspiratorial tone. ‘Between you and me, Detectives, Andrea’s professional life was the least of her problems.’

  Quinn leaned in too. ‘Do go on.’

  ‘It’s not really my place to say.’

  ‘Andrea is dead, Mr Anderson,’ Quinn said. ‘If you know something, now would be the time to tell it.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be evasive.’ Dy waved his hand. Quinn noticed that his nails were pink and buffed to perfection. ‘It’s just … Look, PR is not a nine-to-five job. Partners don’t always respect that.’

  ‘You reckon Andrea was getting grief from her partner?’

  ‘We were all getting grief from Mr Furlong,’ Anderson said pointedly. ‘As I said, we’re expanding the business at the moment, so all of us are working long hours. Noel would regularly turn up here demanding to speak to Andrea, abusing our staff if she wasn’t available. Andrea was mortified by his behaviour. He was very controlling.’

  ‘Controlling how?’

  ‘It seemed to me he wanted to know every detail of her working day, who she spoke to, where she dined, that sort of thing. Certainly not the behaviour of a well man.’

  ‘She tolerated this?’ Miranda asked, raising an eyebrow. The idea of any man telling her what she could and couldn’t do was ridiculous to her.

  ‘She did, but she was getting tired of having to constantly reassure him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Andrea was ambitious; she had a clear vision. I think Noel was a distraction for a while. There’s no doubt that she enjoyed his company, but anyone with eyes could see they weren’t suited. It was inevitable they’d split up, but I could never have believed he would do something so horrific.’

  ‘Well, we don’t know that it was him.’

  ‘Oh, I thought he’d gone into hiding. The radio said—’

  ‘We’d like a list of everyone Andrea’s been working with in the last year,’ Quinn said. ‘Clients, other PR firms, whoever she might have had regular dealings with.’

  ‘Is that really necessary?’

  ‘You want us to catch her killer, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, well you hardly think she was killed by a client, do you?’

  ‘We don’t know, that’s why we’re investigating. A list of her colleagues, too; was she friends with anyone in particular?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of, but I’d be happy to introduce you to our head of advertising, Lucy; she’d be the best person to speak with about that.’ Anderson’s smile was back to full wattage.

  ‘That would be swell,’ Quinn said, not quite able to keep the sarcasm from his voice. He had taken a dislike to Anderson. It happened sometimes.

  Forty minutes later they left Albas Entertainment with a belly full of coffee and some of the nicest complimentary pastries they’d ever eaten, but no particularly useful information.

  ‘Angel Agents,’ Quinn said, shaking his head. ‘Ghouls more like, preying on the sick. It should never have been allowed in this country. The whole system is ripe for abuse.’

  ‘I wonder what the burn-out rate is for people working in PR,’ Miranda said, accepting his offer of a cigarette. ‘Can’t be healthy being so upbeat all the time. Never being able to tell someone to go shove it up their arse.’

  ‘Dunno.’ Quinn lit both their cigarettes. ‘’Bout the same as ours?’

  ‘Furlong is sounding more and more like a right creep, isn’t he?’

  ‘Needy for sure, but that doesn’t make him a monster.’

  ‘You don’t need fangs and claws to be a monster, Quinn.’

  ‘True.’ Quinn took out his phone and looked up Angel Agents online. ‘It would make our jobs a lot easier if you did, though.’

  ‘I suppose, it would certainly cut down on the—’

  Her phone and Quinn’s bleeped simultaneously.

  They read their messages, looked at each other and ran for the car.

  Chapter Thirty

  Quinn stared at the woman’s body and felt a strange compulsion to touch her leg to see if she was still alive. Even though he knew she was dead, it was hard to wrap his head around it.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘She looks like she’s sleeping.’

  Johnson took another photo and handed the camera to Jimmy.

  ‘It’s the make-up. Funeral homes do it all the time; helps people appear more lifelike.’

  ‘Macabre.�
�

  Johnson shrugged. ‘Death is never pretty.’

  Quinn walked around the bed, taking in every detail. The room was functional and felt masculine. It held a large double sleigh bed, a chest of drawers and a stand-alone wardrobe. There was nothing at all to indicate a feminine touch, nothing.

  ‘I’m guessing she didn’t live here.’

  ‘I doubt it. We found her handbag downstairs with her wallet inside. According to her identity card, her name is Estelle Roberts, with an address in Cypress Grove Road, Templeogue.’

  ‘That’s not too far from here.’

  ‘No, she could have walked it in less than forty minutes.’ Johnson pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘We found a toothbrush and clean underwear in her bag too.’

  ‘So she was planning to stay over.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  Quinn took a number of steps backwards until his shoulder blades touched the wall.

  Estelle Roberts lay in the middle of the bed with one hand over her heart, the other by her side. Like Lorraine Dell, it looked as though she’d been posed post mortem; her hair had been neatly brushed and her face was carefully painted with the same slightly garish make-up as the earlier killing.

  This time the killer had decorated the scene. Hundreds of yellow rose petals surrounded the body. One of Johnson’s team had already found the stems dumped in the refuse bin outside.

  ‘Was there a card?’

  ‘In between the ring and middle finger of her left hand,’ Johnson said. ‘We’ve bagged it already.’

  Downstairs, the scene in the living was grim. The walls and soft furnishings were heavily stained with Hugh Bannon’s blood, and sometime between the arrival of the ambulance and the Gardai, a large black-and-white cat had gained access to the room. There were small bloody pawprints everywhere.

  ‘He decapitated him,’ Miranda said.

  Quinn squatted by the body. Bannon had been a relatively young, fit man, strong. Yet apart from the fatal blow, there was no sign of trauma. No defence wounds, nothing.

  ‘He took them by surprise in here.’

  ‘Yeah, the back door was jimmied. Probably he waited until they were getting busy, then he struck.’

  Quinn looked around the room. ‘We need to know everything about their movements last night: where they were, who they spoke to, everything.’

  Miranda watched a forensics officer dust the coffee table where the head was found for prints.

  ‘This man was able to come in, take two people out, set a stage and leave again without anyone seeing him. Why isn’t he worried about being caught?’

  Quinn took out his phone.

  ‘That’s it, I’m calling Lizzie Brennan in. I’m tired of chasing this guy’s fucking shadow. We need a new bloody profile.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Falstaff was sweating profusely when Roxy and Fletcher entered the interview room, despite the room not being particularly warm. Roxy wondered again if he was on some kind of drug or medication.

  ‘Are you okay, Mr Falstaff?’ she asked.

  ‘I have agoraphobia, did you know that?’

  ‘We can get the doctor for you if you like,’ she said briskly.

  Falstaff shot her a baleful look.

  ‘Do you want anything before we start, coffee, tea, a glass of water?’

  ‘I’m going to make an official complaint about this, and you better believe I know people. It’s not right, treating a law-abiding citizen this way. I had things to do today, lots of things.’

  ‘We won’t keep you longer than necessary.’

  Fletcher set up the video recorder, entered the time and date and gave all their names.

  ‘So.’ Roxy opened the folder she’d been carrying and began to read from it. ‘Andrea worked for Albas Entertainment; do you know the company?’

  ‘Yes, I know them, everybody knows them.’

  ‘What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I knew the owner, back in the day.’

  ‘That would be a man called Dy Anderson?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What was your relationship with him?’

  ‘Relationship?’ He barked a laugh. ‘We didn’t have a relationship, Sergeant. He was an arrogant jumped-up shit who thought he was the be-all and end-all of show-business.’

  ‘He was your agent, wasn’t he, at one point?’

  Falstaff narrowed his eyes. ‘So?’

  ‘What happened, why did you part ways?’

  ‘It’s common for actors to use many different agencies over the course of their careers.’

  ‘Let’s talk about your other career. You were arrested for trespass on three separate occasions.’

  He threw his hands up. ‘Oh my God, are you serious? I was a teenager, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘You were nineteen.’

  ‘Look, a little backstory might help. Alison Phillips was my girlfriend at the time, only her old man didn’t like me and said he didn’t want her to see me.’ He glanced at Fletcher, looking for support, but Fletcher’s face was impassive. ‘You know how it is: she didn’t want to get in trouble so she hung me out to dry and he pressed charges.’

  ‘Did she hang you out to dry when you came to her place of work and assaulted her?’

  He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘It’s not … that’s not how it happened, okay? We had a little argument, it was nothing really … okay, I admit voices were raised, but then next thing you know, her boss stuck his nose in and got involved, and after that everything was blown out of proportion.’

  ‘So what happened two years later with Rita Owen? Did things get blown out of proportion then too?’

  ‘No,’ he said after a while. ‘You have to understand that I was a different man back then, Sergeant. I drank, I did drugs; my life was a mess. But then I discovered acting and learned how to channel my emotions in a more healthy and productive manner.’

  ‘You threw corrosive liquid in Miss Owen’s face, Mr Falstaff; you blinded her in one eye and scarred her for life.’

  He licked his lips.

  ‘She pushed your buttons.’ Fletcher spoke for the first time.

  ‘That’s right,’ Falstaff said, nodding furiously. ‘She did, she was a cheat. Now I’m not saying what I did was right, but yeah, she was … she … It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You paid your dues, turned your life around.’

  ‘That’s true, I did.’

  ‘I’ve had a look at your financials,’ Roxy said. ‘You’re going through a bit of a dry spell, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sign of the times,’ Falstaff said. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Let’s talk about Albas Entertainment again. They’re involved with Storycast, an online soap series.’

  ‘I think so.’ Falstaff was very wary.

  ‘That’s your kind of thing, right? Voice work and all that jazz. Did you ever ask Andrea to put a word in, maybe get you a gig?’

  ‘A gig?’ Falstaff tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, I might have mentioned something to her in passing.’ His forehead was dotted with sweat and he squirmed in the seat. ‘I gave her one of my recordings.’

  ‘You’re very behind on your mortgage repayments, aren’t you?’

  ‘I see what you’re trying to do.’ Falstaff bunched his hands into fists. ‘I do, I see it, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t kill Andrea, I swear to God.’

  ‘Then what were you doing snooping around her apartment?’ Roxy asked.

  Falstaff looked from one detective to the other, his mouth twisting in on itself, his expression full of hatred, self-pity and fear.

  The dam broke.

  ‘She could have fucking helped me, she had a million connections. All she needed to do was put in a word for me. There’s a code, you know. We’re industry, she could have helped me, but she didn’t. She
wouldn’t even put my name forward for a single audition.’

  ‘What were you doing in her apartment, Mr Falstaff?’ Roxy repeated.

  ‘I never said I was in there. Look, I want a solicitor. I’m not saying another word until I get one. I know my rights.’

  ‘Okay.’ Roxy sat back and regarded him coolly. ‘That’s absolutely your right. It’s not like you did anything wrong. Well, lying to the Gardai is wrong, obstruction is wrong, interference in a criminal investigation is wrong. After we compare the urine samples, I imagine we’ll get a warrant, search your place. Hope we don’t find anything wrong there.’

  Falstaff looked like he was going to be sick.

  ‘You got to listen to me. I didn’t hurt Andrea. I never … I liked her, see. She was nice to me sometimes.’

  ‘You liked her so much you went creeping around her apartment while she lay dead in her bedroom?’

  His gaze flitted between them. He reminded Roxy of a trapped wild animal, half crazed, terrified, dangerous.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Fletcher said calmly. ‘We don’t, so explain it to us.’

  ‘Okay, well things are really bad at the moment and I needed the money. I mean, she was already dead, you know? Cold. There wasn’t anything that could be done.’ His hands flapped wildly. ‘But I didn’t kill her, I swear. I just needed the money.’

  ‘What money? Did you take money from the apartment? Did you take her phone and her laptop?’

  ‘Are you crazy? I never touched her stuff. Check my apartment if you don’t believe me. It’s not like I could have saved her.’ He was practically heaving. ‘She was already dead.’ His eyes darted about desperately. ‘Don’t look at me like that; you have no idea what it’s like. The bank is threatening to take my home. I can’t let them put me out on the fucking street.’

  Roxy and Fletcher exchanged a look.

  ‘What did you do, Mr Falstaff?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean, I only took some photos. I swear, I didn’t even send them!’

  ‘You took photos of your dead neighbour?’ Roxy was disgusted. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘He was going to sell them,’ Fletcher said, in a tone that made it clear he thought Falstaff was nothing short of vermin. ‘There are websites that offer good money for true-crime photos, am I right, Mr Falstaff?’