Deadly Intent

by Anna Sweeney

  ‘I’m glad we’ve been able to help,’ he said, when he answered the phone. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t learn about Oscar Malden while he was alive, but better late than never.’

  ‘You know that his products in Russia and Ukraine were described in the business media as “security systems”, which could cover a multitude of purposes. Well, I’ve heard this morning that he supplied equipment for use in prisons, including restraints that can deliver an electric shock to uncooperative prisoners.’

  Nessa let out her breath as she awaited Ben’s response. She had deliberately used the most neutral words she could think of, to allow him to interpret them on his own terms.

  ‘The word “restraints” certainly covers a multitude,’ he said slowly. ‘It could mean a type of cable or chain to prevent a prisoner from moving around, or else something bigger, such as electric fences or gates protecting an exercise area.’

  ‘Not fences or gates, no. Whatever precisely his company makes is packed and exported in packages that are smaller than shoeboxes. Or so I’ve been told in relation to one of his factories in the Ukraine.’

  ‘Well, he could be making stun guns, Nessa. They’re used all over the world as a defensive weapon in security situations, but unfortunately they’ve been known to cause very serious injuries. That’s just a guess, though, and there is another possibility.’

  Nessa braced herself. She remembered the photo of Oscar at the arms fair, next to the thin Englishman. Patrick’s account of the sharp pains his aunt used to suffer had been on her mind all day.

  ‘Restraints that deliver an electric shock suggest torture to me,’ said Ben. ‘There’s a big market out there for such products, I’m sorry to say, considering that torture is used regularly in at least sixty countries around the world, and electro-shock devices are the most common method used. They include stun guns and they’re made all over the world, the United States being the leading producer as far as I know, and certainly not associated with Ukraine in particular.’

  Nessa had to stop herself screaming out loud. ‘Torture devices is just what I was afraid you’d suggest. But all I have at the moment is third-hand information, and the company involved is not registered directly in Oscar’s name. It could take months to get proper details, including photos of these products, and a paper trail of documentation.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the Irish police about it? They must be asking some of these questions themselves by now.’

  Nessa studied her reflection again in silence. Perhaps she was holding back out of pride, in case she became the laughing stock of Bantry station, scrabbling for crumbs of information about companies that Oscar had nothing to do with. Or perhaps she feared the glee with which Jack Talbot would rework his depiction of Patrick as a stooge of Russian gangsters, if she gave him half an excuse.

  ‘I’ll give it another week before I tell them,’ she said, surprising herself by saying it so firmly. ‘But if you’ve any more ideas …’

  ‘One possibility would be to check the patents for the products manufactured in the Ukraine, and elsewhere in eastern Europe. I know someone who’s an expert at that kind of thing, and may be able to trace ownership of the patents.’

  ‘That would be really great. I know you’ve a million other things to do …’

  Ben laughed, and his tone became a lot warmer. ‘I’ve a new volunteer to call on, you know. Do you mind if I tell her about this? It may also be useful to talk to her sister, Stella, with her enviable network of contacts.’

  ‘I’d really prefer to keep it quiet for now.’ Nessa tried to choose her words carefully. ‘I don’t know Zoe or Stella well, and I hardly know you at all, Ben, but at least you’ve worked on these issues for several years. I feel I’m stumbling around in a minefield, and there are other allegations.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said quietly. ‘Zoe has already filled me in on the rape stories, and if Oscar Malden was as truly evil as we now suspect, we’ll get the full story out eventually.’

  When Patrick showed their visitors into the sitting room, Nessa was glad to see that Inspector O’Kelleher was accompanied by Sergeant Fitzmaurice and not Garda Joyce. She did not feel able for the younger garda’s supercilious airs. Caitlín had told her he had not been in Derryowen all week, so perhaps he had been taken off the team.

  ‘The first reason for coming to see you both,’ said O’Kelleher, ‘is to update you on those matters that affect you personally.’ He smiled as if to apologise for speaking in officialese, and turned to Patrick. ‘I’m referring to our inquiries into your movements on Thursday 17th September last, and indeed your own statements about your meeting with the deceased man, Oscar Malden.’

  Nessa glanced at Conor Fitzmaurice to check his demeanour. Unlike the inspector, he was a familiar and friendly presence in the area. But he stood with hands clasped on the navy cap he had removed at the door, shoulders straight and eyes to the floor. She began to feel nervous of what was to come.

  ‘We’ve found two pieces of evidence to verify what you told us,’ said O’Kelleher. ‘Your mobile phone signals on that day place you in the Bantry area by one o’clock, so while we cannot confirm every minute of your journey, you certainly do not seem to have delayed en route, or had time to engage in any unexplained activity. In addition, we have a CCTV recording of your presence in Bantry town, where you stopped off to buy a bottle of water in a shop.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about that, inspector,’ said Patrick. ‘I should have included it in my statement, but my aunt’s death was so much on my mind.’

  O’Kelleher smiled gently, and said he’d prefer to be called by his first name. Nessa relaxed a fraction. ‘It’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘Most people forget large chunks of their day-to-day activities, unless they live by a very fixed routine.’

  Fitzmaurice looked from Nessa to Patrick, hardly a glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes. ‘If I may put in a word here,’ he said, ‘what the cig has given you is the good news. But unfortunately, it doesn’t amount to conclusive proof that you were in Bantry before Oscar felt the smooth pull of a cord on his neck. It’s still not impossible, you see, that he went off in your car and you managed to kill him and hide his body somewhere between Derryowen and Bantry. In other words, it’s very hard to prove a negative in this situation.’

  ‘What you mean,’ said Patrick drily, ‘is that it’s a pity I didn’t pick up a hitchhiker at Scannive Strand and have him watch me while I put his rucksack into the boot of the car. Then he could swear in court that I hadn’t hidden a trussed-up body under my own luggage.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ said O’Kelleher. He lapsed into silence, as if he was pondering how to continue. Both he and Fitzmaurice were more soft cop than hard cop, Nessa thought to herself, but there was still an air of wariness in the room. Their message was that while Patrick was not a lead suspect, they could not yet say so in plain words.

  She broke the silence by offering them something to drink. After a few rounds of refusals, Fitzmaurice agreed to tea and O’Kelleher conceded a fresh apple juice. When she returned from the kitchen, both men were sitting upright on a sofa, making polite small talk with Patrick. The inspector resumed business fairly quickly.

  ‘We’ve another reason for calling in this evening,’ he said. ‘We’d like to ask for your assistance with some filming for television, for the Crime Scene programme. We’ve asked to do a reconstruction of Oscar’s murder.’

  ‘When will that happen?’ The news was unexpected, and Nessa was unsure how to react. ‘Would you like to film here in the house?’

  ‘The production team will have to speak to you about that, but one or two short scenes may be helpful, yes. I think most of the filming will be outdoors, though, along the cliff path near the hotel, around the Briary and up to the Coomgarriff Walk. It’ll happen in a week or so, we hope.’

  ‘By all accounts this kind of thing can have a dramatic effect on people’s memories,’ added the sergeant.

  O’Kell
eher sipped at his juice before he continued. ‘The production team will bring in a few actors, but we’ll also ask some of your guests to return to the area – Fergus Malden, certainly, and two or three others who were around Derryowen that Thursday. We’ll encourage local people to take part too, and indeed the process of filming itself might jog a few memories.’

  ‘What about Maureen, inspector? Are you considering …?’

  ‘I think she’ll be invited, yes, but I doubt if she’ll be up to it. And unfortunately, there’s no question about Dominic. The actors will have to cover his part as well as Oscar Malden’s.’

  Nessa decided to venture a few questions about the investigation itself. ‘Can you confirm yet whether Maureen’s incident on the Thursday evening had anything to do with Oscar’s murder?’

  ‘Or whether she was actually assaulted?’ Patrick put a question that he had asked Nessa several times since his return home.

  ‘I’m afraid we can confirm very little,’ said O’Kelleher, ‘one way or the other. Either Maureen genuinely doesn’t know what happened, and gives us a different version each time we ask, or she doesn’t want to tell us.’

  ‘We’ve heard that Dominic is still in hospital,’ said Patrick. ‘Is there any word?’

  ‘He’ll be staying in hospital a fair while,’ Fitzmaurice added. ‘And he may never be right in the head again, God help him.’

  Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Nessa wondered whether gardai had decided on the television piece because Dominic’s condition left them with little else to pursue.

  ‘I know you’re constrained in what you can tell us,’ she said then. ‘But is Dominic still suspected of killing Oscar?’

  Trevor O’Kelleher held his hands to his lips as if in prayer. Unlike most people, he was at ease with silence.

  ‘I can tell you one thing,’ he said eventually, ‘provided it stays in this room.’ He waited until Nessa and Patrick nodded their agreement. ‘We got some information this week that supports Dominic’s alibi for the day in question.’

  ‘Is this the boat he’s supposed to have seen while he was fishing?’

  ‘Yes, his story was that a group of tourists who were out on the bay watching seals waved at him a few times, and that they were within view of his rock for a number of hours. However, he couldn’t tell us the name of the boat, and as a result we were unable to send out a VHF message to track it down.’ The inspector weighed his words carefully. ‘All he told us was that it was flying the French flag.’

  ‘Which narrowed down the search to one or two hundred boats,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Exactly. We sent a description to all the marinas on the Irish coast, but got nothing useful back.’

  ‘It was very unfortunate for Dominic,’ said Fitzmaurice heavily. ‘It turns out he told us the truth about the boat, but the French group on board went off the next day on a tour of some of Ireland’s remotest islands, where there are no marinas to deal with.’ The sergeant glanced at the inspector and got the nod to continue. ‘They arrived in Donegal four days ago and mentioned their visit to Beara to someone in a pub, whereupon they heard about our alert for French boats who’d been in this area.’

  ‘And they confirmed that Dominic stayed put at Pooka Rock all day?’

  ‘They did indeed,’ said O’Kelleher. His eyes met Nessa’s and Patrick’s in turn. ‘As I said, I’m relying on you not to broadcast it, but as Dominic was your guest …’

  ‘We’re very grateful to you,’ said Nessa quickly. She was anxious to get in another question while she had the opportunity. ‘We also heard that there was forensic evidence against Dominic. Something about threads of wool, was it?’

  ‘Something of the sort, yes,’ said O’Kelleher. ‘But there was nothing to indicate what time of day they got snagged on Oscar’s jacket, or precisely why. So that’s another mystery we may not solve, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What’s more, I doubt if we’ll ever find out what was in Dominic’s mind when he drove down that pier.’ Fitzmaurice spoke in a tone usually reserved for someone who had just died. ‘Maybe the truth is that Dominic himself had no idea what he was doing. He was a fragile individual in the first place, as his wife was, and people like that can fall apart completely in the face of a public and media hullabaloo.’

  The four of them fell silent again, and Nessa wondered whether to risk the inspector’s forbearance with more questions. She would love to know what the gardai had found out about Oscar’s business dealings, to help her decide what to tell them about her own investigations. But before she had formulated what to say, a loud thud came from the direction of the kitchen, followed by a wail and a string of expletives from Sal.

  ‘Excuse me a minute,’ said Nessa. ‘I’d better check what’s up.’

  ‘We were hoping to speak to your daughter,’ said O’Kelleher, smiling a little. ‘But if this isn’t the best time …?’

  Nessa hurried out of the room. She found Sal in the kitchen staring at the coffee grinder lying on the floor amid scattered beans. Her lower lip was trembling like a child’s.

  ‘You sit down, Sal, and I can clear this up.’

  ‘Don’t pretend to be all sorry for me.’ Sal’s tone was bitter. ‘I’m sure you’re thrilled to hear that Marcus hasn’t phoned me for over a week. I think he’s left Derryowen, and no wonder.’

  Nessa found a brush and dustpan in the cupboard. ‘I’m not thrilled that you’re upset, of course I’m not. But maybe Marcus had to go away for some reason. Have you asked Darina about him?’

  ‘Yes, as it happens I asked her yesterday but it was no use.’ Sal sat hunched at the table, cradling her phone in her hands. ‘She was all, like, terribly busy with some art exhibition abroad that she’s getting ready for, so she couldn’t be disturbed for long. The only thing I know is that Carl asked her to drive the hackney one day earlier this week, and that means that Marcus wasn’t around.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s genuinely flat out for the exhibition, Sal. It’s a big opportunity for her, and it’s also a hard time of the year, with her mother’s commemoration coming up.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s all fine but I’m having a hard time too.’ Sal lifted her head and looked defiantly at Nessa. ‘And maybe Darina should count herself lucky in one way, not to have a mother who shouts at people in the middle of the night. Can you not understand how totally humiliating that was?’

  ‘Sal, you can’t speak like that, as you know well.’

  They both turned at a soft knock on the door, which was opened by the sergeant. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said, but stopped when he realised that Sal was staring at him.

  ‘Is there bad news?’ She spoke in a strangled voice. ‘I just knew it, I told Darina that Marcus wouldn’t go away without telling me.’

  ‘I haven’t any bad news, thank God,’ said Conor. ‘But we’re anxious to have a word with Marcus O’Sullivan as soon as possible, and we’ve found it hard to contact him. So if you had an opportunity …?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing from him in the past week. Not a single solitary text, and he’s posted nothing on Facebook or Twitter either. Something awful has happened to him, I’m sure of it.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday 17 October, 1.30 p.m.

  Filming was well underway. The TV crew and actors had installed themselves at Derryowen Hotel the previous night, and got to work after an early breakfast. They recorded a scene on the coastal path and another at the hotel. Nessa and Fergus Malden were filmed driving off from Cnoc Meala and passing by Scannive Strand. Then Ambrose exerted his theatrical talents to the full, telling the actor in Oscar’s part the precise tone of voice needed for the encounter by his gate. He was back on form after the attention lull of the previous two weeks.

  Nessa became rather less enthusiastic as the day passed. There was no guarantee of a breakthrough in the case, and the television broadcast would stir things up anew, reminding the country of how Oscar Malden arrived at Cnoc Meala on holiday and left in a coffin. The
blemish left by his murder could only deepen.

  She had begun to understand why people wanted to hide such traumas from the public gaze, and closed their doors to journalists when shocking events struck their home place. No matter that she bore no responsibility for Oscar’s death, she still felt guilty and ashamed of it. Her guilt was irrational, of course, and the truth had to be sought, but she found herself wishing hard for the quiet life she had come to enjoy.

  In the end, only two of the guests had returned to Beara to assist with the reconstruction. Fergus asked to stay at Cnoc Meala in order to avoid prying eyes at the hotel and, after consulting with Trevor O’Kelleher, Patrick and Nessa agreed. Zoe was also keen to return, but luckily she opted for a hostel in Castletownbere. She would hardly make good company for Fergus, spitting fire at him over his father’s sins while he sank further into nervy silence. Stella was too busy to travel, it seemed, so her restraining influence was absent. As for Maureen, she had declared to gardai that she would never set foot on the peninsula again, but then she had helpfully suggested which well-known actors might suit her Crime Scene role.

  Nessa allowed Ronan to watch her own short scenes being filmed. Afterwards, she stayed on chatting in a huddle of neighbours near Ambrose’s gate. It was a good opportunity to pick up on the local mood, but by lunchtime, Ronan was getting impatient. She looked around for Fergus, to check on his lunch plans, and saw Zoe beckoning her urgently.

  ‘Ben’s just texted me,’ she said. ‘He emailed you an hour ago but heard nothing back. It’s something about a patent, if that makes sense?’

  Nessa quickly checked her phone. She had switched it to mute earlier, and saw now that she had missed two calls from Ben. His news was that his expert source had found a record of a patent taken out by Oscar Malden on a particular electrical device made by his firm and installed on high-level security gates. Repeated attempts to open the gates without a required code would cause an electric shock to be delivered to the culprit. According to Ben’s contact, the same patent was being used by the company in the Ukraine that manufactured prison restraints.