by Jo Spain
‘Why would Ryan Finnegan have been in that tunnel last night?’ Tom asked, sipping gingerly at a scalding hot coffee. ‘Didn’t you say, Mr Morrison, that this building was empty when it was last checked yesterday evening?’
Shane Morrison still wore the worried look of a man used to order and routine who had just witnessed the detonation of a metaphorical bomb. Tom could tell he was distressed by, but not upset at, Ryan’s death. He suspected the man’s main concern was what impact the murder would have on the running of the complex.
Darragh McNally sat wringing his hands. There was constant movement in the other man’s eyes. He was planning. McNally appeared to be treating the murder of Ryan Finnegan like any unexpected political event – an incident that needed to be managed. But Tom saw something else in the party chair’s demeanour. He was nervous, distracted, even.
‘I don’t know, is the honest answer,’ Morrison replied. ‘Ryan’s office is over in Government Buildings, beside Minister Blake’s. This building was closed earlier on Friday evening and on the last check by my ushers, there was no one on any of the floors. The offices aren’t locked at night and while the tunnel doors are closed, anybody with an internal swipe card can pass through them. The usher who found Ryan said the doors at this end were held open with fire extinguishers. That wouldn’t be usual.
‘The main House was still operating and busy enough. We’re trying to compile for you as complete a list as possible of people who were here. We had some visitors in – we’ll have a full log of who they were and when they arrived and departed. The Dáil bar was open until 11 p.m. or thereabouts and was quite full, I’m told. Some political staffers were working in the building, as well as the usual Oireachtas employees – civil servants, ushers, etc.’
‘It seems like a lot of people for so late on a Friday,’ Tom observed.
‘Unfortunately, there were many more people than normal because of the event that was taking place across the road. There’s also a good deal of legislation going through the House at the moment and that entails a lot of people working unusual hours. I’m afraid it’s going to make your job more difficult. If it had been a regular, quiet Friday night, my ushers would no doubt be able to account for the movements of everyone in the House, but with so many people here . . .’
‘You said an event was taking place across the road? What does that have to do with anything?’
McNally piped in. ‘Minister Blake’s wife was hosting a charity ball in the Grand Hotel on Merrion Square. Most of the cabinet were in attendance.’
‘Okay,’ Tom said, trying not to show alarm. Exactly how many ministers, he wondered, had been floating around Leinster House last night?
‘Talk to me about the security arrangements,’ he said. ‘Are there any cameras in these buildings?’
‘No.’ Morrison shook his head in response to the last question. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ve tried to install some on numerous occasions, but the TDs always complain about invasion of privacy. There are cameras at the perimeter gates.’ He furrowed his eyebrows to show how unsatisfactory he found this state of affairs.
‘Do we know how many people had left the complex by the time the body was discovered?’
Morrison shrugged and shifted in his seat, evidently uncomfortable.
‘Most people had left before the alarm was sounded. Anybody still in the complex gave initial statements to the on-site guards and to those who came later. We have their details for you to follow up.
‘That said, we have another problem in addition to the lack of camera footage. There’s no electronic check-in system for political staff. There are over one thousand valid passcards for Leinster House and their holders don’t have to swipe them at the main entrances. The cards are just flashed to the ushers at the entrance gates. Staff come and go as they please. We’ll try to establish who was here, but it won’t be easy. Unfortunately, this incident took place just as we are in the process of reviewing all our security procedures.’
Tom felt his shoulders tense. He, probably like most members of the public, had been labouring under the delusion that Leinster House was a secure building. It was starting to sound like anyone could get into the place, and that was before they considered just how many people had been in the complex legitimately last night.
‘How was it possible for somebody to bring a weapon in?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t there metal detectors?’
Morrison sighed.
‘We can do a body search and bag examination if given cause for suspicion, but the only detectors in place are for visitors entering Government Buildings further along Merrion Street. There are no sensors in the complex, either. Anybody could walk around one of the locked buildings undetected. We’ve never had an incident like this. Ever. But, like I said, we were already considering updating our security procedures. More in light of recent international terror events than because of any possible domestic threat, but now we have fresh impetus.’
The chief of security couldn’t disguise how pleased this made him, despite the circumstances.
Tom nodded at Ray, who’d just joined them. He could tell from the look on the younger detective’s face that he had news.
He introduced Ray to the two other men before continuing.
‘How long had Ryan worked for Minister Blake?’ Tom asked, turning to McNally. ‘Was he going to this ball? You said it was Aidan Blake’s wife’s charity?’
‘Silent Voices,’ McNally said. ‘She’s the CEO. You must have heard of it?’
Now the pieces were falling into place. The inspector had read about the high-flying patrons’ ball for the children’s charity, to be held in a luxury hotel across from Leinster House. He remembered thinking that a great deal of money would be made for the charity if a seat at the dinner cost one thousand euro a pop. That, and if he was paying that price for a ticket he’d be expecting pan-fried Dodo.
‘Ryan wasn’t attending the ball, no,’ McNally continued. ‘And for the life of me, I also can’t figure out what he was doing in this part of the complex last night. I’ve thought about it: if he wanted to talk to somebody, he would have phoned ahead to check they were in – he was still limping. His leg was badly broken in the car accident.’
‘What was he like?’ the inspector asked.
‘He was just an ordinary staff member,’ Morrison said, his countenance filled with regret. ‘Smart. Polite. Maybe a little radical for my liking, but then I’m an old conservative. Such a waste.’
‘Was he the sort to make enemies?’ he probed.
Morrison looked taken aback, while McNally frowned.
‘You fall out with people in politics all the time,’ the party chair explained. ‘It’s the nature of it. If every row in this place resulted in a shooting, there’d be regular bloodbaths in the Dáil chamber.’
A door leading to the lifts behind the coffee service area opened and DS Laura Brennan emerged. She was wearing a fitted grey trouser suit and had her hair swept back in a neat ponytail. She had to be as tired as the inspector and yet she’d turned up earlier than him this morning, doing her best to look as fresh as a daisy.
Laura glanced around, spotted Tom and Ray, and signalled she wanted to speak to them.
The detectives excused themselves and joined her over at a glass safety barrier, beyond which a set of stairs led down to what Tom guessed were the committee rooms Morrison had mentioned last night. Laura was accompanied by a uniformed garda, who introduced himself as Eoin Coyle.
‘What have you got?’ the inspector asked.
‘Eoin here has discovered something significant. Hopefully, we’ve figured out the last known movements of our victim.’
‘It might be nothing,’ Garda Coyle insisted, almost apologetically, ‘but Detective Brennan thought you’d be interested.’
Ray noticed the sideways look the guard gave Laura. And she’d used his first name with a degree of fluency. There was a familiarity there that wasn’t usual between a detective and a uniformed guard. Did Lau
ra know him? Ray hadn’t noticed him before.
‘We’ve been over the offices upstairs,’ Eoin said. ‘I took the sixth floor, the top. Each office appeared undisturbed, until I got to the last couple. One in particular caught my attention. It was untidy, but not dirty, if you know what I mean. Sort of organised chaos, isn’t that what they say? So I almost missed it, but then I noticed papers scattered on the floor that just seemed out of place. Also, the internal door to the neighbouring office was open, whereas the corresponding doors in the other offices with similar layouts were closed. On the off chance, I put on my gloves, touched the computer keyboard and the screen came to life.
‘I went back and checked the other offices’ computers, but they were all shut down. Apparently, a diktat has been in operation for a year now ordering computers be powered off at night to save on energy costs.’
He hesitated and received a nod from Laura, urging him to go on. This time, Ray noticed the tiniest sparkle in Laura’s eyes. He wasn’t imagining things. Her face seemed different. She was . . . glowing. Ray refocused on Eoin.
Surely not . . .
‘I think the victim may have been in that office, was discovered there by his killer and chased downstairs,’ the officer concluded.
Tom narrowed his eyes. He was happy to encourage some detective work in the young lad, but that was a hell of a conclusion to jump to. How to say that, though, without making Eoin Coyle think twice about showing initiative to his superiors again?
Laura guessed at her boss’s thoughts.
‘It wasn’t just the office, sir. Eoin?’
The guard looked to her and back to Tom. He was embarrassed to be thrust into the spotlight. He stood a head over Laura and was roughly the same age, perhaps early thirties, but his tight dark curls, full lips and wide blue eyes made him look younger, especially when his porcelain-skinned cheeks flushed red, as they were now.
He was like a big baby – far too pretty-looking for a man, Ray decided, then wondered why such a churlish and childish notion had floated into his head.
‘The office just got me thinking,’ Eoin said. ‘I wondered how the victim might have reacted to being confronted. I figured if it was me I’d have made a run for it through the adjoining office if an attacker was blocking the hall door. At the end of the corridor there are two lifts, but one is out of service and the other tends to wait on the ground floor unless summoned. There’d be no time for that. There is a stairwell, though. I took the stairs and on the bannisters two floors down I found bloodstains. I’ve checked and the cleaners come in at 6 p.m. on a Friday. If they were any way thorough, they’d have wiped those bannisters, which means the blood could be from our victim or maybe his attacker. Forensics are on it.’
Tom nodded. That was better. There was more to go on there.
‘Very good work, Garda Coyle. Did you notice any blood on the office door?’
‘None visible to the naked eye.’
‘Right, Laura, summon whoever normally works in that office to confirm whether or not the room was disturbed and if the computer had been left on. If Garda Coyle’s theory is correct, Ryan may have used that room to print out the image he was found with and there might be something on the machine.’
The inspector hoped this was the case. The photograph was the only solid clue they had right now.
*
Tom returned to the leather chairs.
‘Mr Morrison, would you be so kind as to help identify the occupant of an office upstairs? Detective Brennan will give you the details.’
‘Of course.’ Morrison nodded and stood up to leave.
The inspector turned to McNally, who was checking his watch distractedly.
‘Mr McNally, I want to speak to Minister Blake. If he worked closest with Ryan Finnegan, he may have been the last person to see him yesterday evening. And I’d like to take a walk around this place. Could you ask him to come in to Leinster House?’
‘He’s en route, Inspector. I spoke to him earlier and informed him you’d be here. I can give you the concise tour on the way across to his office – Government Buildings are at the far side of the complex. Give me a moment to call him and see where he’s at now.’
McNally moved away from them, phone in hand.
Tom turned to Ray to ask him what was on his mind, remembering his deputy had looked like he had new information when he’d joined the inspector at the couches.
‘Is there something going on between Laura and that guard?’ Ray blurted, before the inspector could open his mouth.
Tom creased his forehead, puzzled.
‘What? Who?’
‘That Coyle bloke. Didn’t you notice anything?’
‘I’m a little busy directing my powers of detection towards figuring out who shot Ryan Finnegan, Ray.’
He was about to irritably point out that his deputy had a habit of picking the most inappropriate moments to notice women, but stopped himself. He remembered only too vividly the timing of Ray’s last love interest and how the whole sorry affair had ended.
The younger man read something in his boss’s expression and his own darkened.
This was different, Ray’s inner voice reasoned. He didn’t have a thing for Laura. She was a work colleague. Nothing more. He was just being nosy.
McNally had returned, meaning Tom had no chance to ask Ray what he’d discovered.
They took the stairs back up to the front door of LH2000 and quickly covered the short distance outside to the main entrance of the parliament building. The early rain of the morning had drifted on, but the day was still overcast, the clouds low and grey. The inspector had always thought Leinster House was a beautiful building, but in this light it appeared rather bleak and imposing. Perhaps he was biased. His first visit inside, after all, had been to see a dead body.
‘Visitors sign in over there when they’re coming into Leinster House,’ McNally said, pointing to a hatch on one side of the impressive lobby they’d just entered. Tom glanced across, then quickly tried to take in the rest of his surroundings.
A rare original copy of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence hung on the wall facing the revolving entrance door. A portrait of Cathal Brugha also caught the inspector’s eye. The oil painting of the revolutionary who had taken the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War faced a portrait of Michael Collins, the leader of the pro-Treaty side. Neither had survived the conflict.
The building was steeped in history but it seemed to all go – quite literally – over McNally’s head as the short man steamed ahead, eyes down. The party chair obviously saw the complex as his workplace.
‘How long have you worked here?’ Tom asked, stopping beside a tall pillar and forcing McNally to grind to a halt. ‘Do you know much about the main building – its history and that? It must feel like a privilege working here.’
‘It does.’ The other man looked around him, taking a moment. ‘I’m here decades. I tend to forget where I am – most of us who work here do. You just see it as the office. You know, it was only meant to be a temporary location for the parliament when Michael Collins requisitioned it in 1922, but the State subsequently bought it from the Royal Dublin Society.’
‘The RDS? I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes. The parliament was nearly going to be in Kilmainham Hospital, or in the Bank of Ireland on College Green. But nobody wanted to go near Kilmainham after the 1916 Rising leaders were executed in the Gaol there and the Bank of Ireland wanted too much money for its premises. Half of Dublin was living in slum tenements at the time, so overspending wouldn’t have gone down too well for the newly formed government.’
‘What’s through there?’ Tom asked, indicating an arch to their left.
‘The library and research room, and there are also stairs leading up to the Seanad Chamber, where the Upper House of parliament meets, or down to the tunnel we just came from. Have you seen the Seanad before?’
‘I haven’t seen any of the building,’ Tom replied. ‘So that’s the tunne
l entrance on this side?’
‘Yes. That’s actually the older part of the original house. I think the Seanad used to be the picture gallery. There’s a portrait of Countess Markievicz on the landing. She’s my mother’s idol, not least for insisting that the term “Irish women” be inserted into the Proclamation. Mother has always been ahead of her time, a bit like the Countess.’ McNally smiled fondly.
‘I must get a full tour at some stage,’ Tom said, indicating they could move on. ‘Tell me, Mr McNally, did you see Ryan yesterday evening at all? Or Minister Blake?’
‘I didn’t see Ryan. I saw the minister. And his wife, Sara.’
‘Were you at that ball she was hosting?’
‘No. I met them in Leinster House. She was chivvying some of the cabinet members over to the event. A few had started their evening in the Dáil bar and weren’t showing any signs of moving across to the Grand Hotel.’ The party chair lowered his voice. ‘There were a lot of journalists at the ball; it would have been a disaster to have ministers turning up barely able to stand. Poor Sara was tearing her hair out.’
‘So was Blake here to help his wife? Surely it didn’t need two of them?’
There was barely a pause before McNally replied, but Tom’s gut told him the other man was now on his guard.
‘Minister Blake had a meeting scheduled at 9 p.m. with a very important guest. Carl Madsen. The vice-president of Udforske.’
‘Udforske.’ Tom rolled the foreign word around in his mouth. ‘You mean the drilling giant?’
McNally nodded.
‘The very same. One of the largest exploration companies in the world.’
The party chair fell silent.
‘And?’ Tom said. ‘Why was Madsen here?’
McNally glanced up at him as they walked, as though he was trying to figure out whether the inspector really had no idea as to why Carl Madsen would have been in Leinster House. Tom’s face revealed that he didn’t.
‘There’s a significant piece of new legislation being introduced by the government that would revolutionise the country’s tax treatment of our natural resources. The Bill is being handled by Minister Blake’s department. It’s been mentioned on the news several times. That’s the chamber, by the way.’