by Jo Spain
‘How did I do it?’ Sara’s voice seemed calm now. Her eyes, too. She looked less frantic. It was like she’d made a decision.
Rather than put him at ease, this new demeanour put Tom on full alert.
‘I’m guessing you left the bar just before 9.30 and hurried over to LH2000,’ he replied. ‘You were fortunate you didn’t bump into anybody in the corridor but you had to take your chances. You nipped into the lesser-used tunnel entrance so you wouldn’t be seen going through the lobby. I’m guessing, if it was around the same time the Taoiseach entered the building, all eyes were directed at him anyway.’
Sara nodded encouragingly. ‘There were a few people in the reception area with him; nobody was looking in my direction.’
‘The whole thing took you under a half hour; so fast, you didn’t have time to delete the images of your husband on Ryan’s old computer.’
She hung her head before looking up again. ‘Jesus, that damned computer. I couldn’t get into the thing when I went back up to the office. I thought about smashing it but knew that would draw your attention. If I hadn’t missed that picture of Aidan beneath Ryan, you’d never have gone looking for the photos.’
‘That’s probably correct,’ Tom agreed. ‘But we’d have got there eventually. I’m guessing you arrived back at the bar just before 9:55 p.m. Luckily for you, the last minister you had to find turned up around the same time. All along I thought you were lying for Aidan, but he was actually lying for you too.’
‘Clever, huh?’ Sara smiled thinly. ‘It would have been easier if Aidan and I had just stayed together, then we would have been each other’s alibi the whole time. But we split up to find Ryan. I knew what I was doing in the bar, but Aidan made the mistake of thinking Madsen would cover for him.’
‘Were you planning to just threaten Ryan, or did you know you were going to shoot him?’ Tom asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Sara said, her eyes flicking to Kathryn. ‘Maybe, in my heart, I thought I could appeal to him. But when I found him he slammed a door into me and ran off. It was like something took over. I chased him. I took the gun from my bag and when he didn’t stop, I pulled the trigger.’
The inspector was conscious of Kathryn a few pews beyond, green with nausea as her husband’s final moments were relayed.
He imagined that Sara had had to calm Aidan down after telling him what happened, and go over their alibi, which explained why it had taken them another half hour before they saw the Taoiseach and returned to the ball. He had thought they’d spent an unnecessarily long time in Government Buildings but assumed it was because Aidan was talking Sara round.
Tom’s ears were tuned for any sounds out of the ordinary and he thought he could hear the hum of vehicles over the storm. He prayed it was the Emergency Response Unit.
‘How did you know we were adopting?’ she demanded. ‘We never told you.’
‘Hugh Masterson told us. He wasn’t aware it was a secret. He hadn’t said anything before because he didn’t think it was relevant.
‘I had begun to suspect that there was a more fundamental motive for Ryan’s murder, something more important than the Resources Bill. At first, I thought Aidan was afraid he’d lose you and couldn’t take the risk that Ryan would tell you about the photos, even if he rewrote the legislation. But when he allegedly revealed all about the pictures, you stayed with him. I had to figure out why.’
‘I thought McNally would be your main suspect.’ Sara sounded resigned. She had lowered the gun, defeat written all over her face. Tom didn’t trust it.
‘But then Kathryn came to the house and I knew it wasn’t over.’
Sara turned to the young woman.
‘I didn’t want to have to hurt you, Kathryn, but I want my baby. I was going to drive you somewhere nobody would find you. It would look like you’d gone mad with grief and fled.’
Kathryn looked like she wanted to vomit. She buried her face in Beth’s hair, unable to look at Sara.
‘McNally left a note when he committed suicide,’ Tom said, drawing Sara’s attention again. ‘He swore he hadn’t killed Ryan. He made a reference to the importance of family. I only realised later what he meant – you wanted children.’
‘I suppose. When Aidan asked for his help dealing with Ryan he told him what the blackmail could do to our chances. McNally agreed to help but not for our sakes. It was to protect his relationship with Madsen. McNally never liked me. He thought I had got ahead of myself. He was my boss when I started working in Leinster House but then I married the man who became his boss.’
Tom said nothing. Something jarred with the sad tale.
In that instant, it came to him.
‘You left the tunnel doors open,’ he said.
Sara looked flummoxed.
‘What?’
‘You said you weren’t sure what you were going to do when you saw Ryan, but you’d made sure if he did try to flee that he would head in the direction of the empty tunnel. If he’d tried to leave via the main entrance to LH2000, somebody might have seen what was happening through the lobby’s glass frontage.’
A shadow fell across her face.
Tom didn’t have time to wonder what her reaction meant. Something wasn’t right. There was shouting outside.
Sara looked towards the bottom of the church. Kathryn did too, her eyes wide with renewed fear. She’d had the good sense to stay quiet for the last few minutes of the other woman’s exposition, probably scared witless that if she spoke the baby would wake from her fragile slumber and the situation would explode again.
Sara noticed Kathryn’s movement. Tom saw a range of emotions pass across her face as she looked at the young mother. Hate. Jealousy, because of the sleeping infant pressed to her chest. Confusion. Resolve. And then her gaze focused on Beth and Tom could see the slow, agonising realisation in Sara’s eyes.
‘I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through,’ she said, her voice despairing. Tom knew she was speaking to the baby, not to the mother. ‘I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t even consider you.’
Sara looked up at Kathryn.
‘Aidan met you after he tried to kill Ryan in the car and he said it affected him deeply. You’d just had Beth. But I told him that that was all I wanted too . . . that your husband would try to deny me what you had. It was our husbands who did this, do you understand? Not you or me.’
Kathryn stared at Sara as Tom held his breath. She maintained her silence, but her eyes were animated, burning with injustice.
The church door burst open.
Chapter 28
‘Don’t touch her, you stupid bitch!’
Aidan Blake ran up the centre aisle of the church.
Sara spun round with the gun.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried, torn between shock and fury.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Ray come through the vestry door behind him and approach silently. A black shadow appeared in the frame of the front door Aidan had stormed through, its owner slipping into the back of the church. More followed. The Emergency Response Unit. They must have been taking up their positions when Blake arrived at the church. But how on earth had he ended up here?
‘I’m warning you, Sara!’ Aidan Blake roared. ‘If you hurt that woman, you had better shoot me next. If you don’t, I will put my hands around your neck and wring it. This has to stop, do you understand? It ends here.’
Sara stared at her husband, her eyes full of venom.
‘What makes you think I wouldn’t shoot you, you spineless piece of shit? If you’d done the job properly six months ago, we wouldn’t be here. If you’d kept your trousers on, we wouldn’t be here. There is a baby all alone out there waiting for me to become its mother. My little boy. How dare you . . .’ She stopped, unable to put into words the loathing she felt for her husband.
Ray took the opportunity of Sara being distracted to creep towards the pillar. He caught Kathryn’s attention and signalled to her to duck down and follow him behind the m
arble.
When they were safely behind the pillar, Tom positioned himself so he was in line with Aidan.
‘Sara,’ he said. ‘Listen to me.’
Her gaze left her husband and travelled to Tom. She was so consumed with rage at Aidan that she hadn’t even noticed the inspector moving. Realising she’d lost focus, she swore and looked behind her.
‘Where –?’ she started to say.
‘Sara,’ Tom said more urgently. ‘Stop. There are trained marksmen in position all around the church. At any moment, one of them could fire at you. You need to put down the weapon. Do you really want to lose your life? Should anybody else die for this?’
Sara looked at Aidan. Tom could see she was seriously considering shooting her husband. If she did, she’d be shot herself.
‘Please, Sara,’ Aidan said. He reached out his hand. ‘Put the gun down. I’m so sorry it came to this. I don’t want to die and I don’t want you to die. You loved me once and I’ve never stopped loving you. This is all my fault. Please, don’t let it end like this.’
Sara stared at his outstretched hand, her expression agonised. Tom almost felt sorry for her.
‘I always thought that when I grew up I would be the adult that I’d needed as a child,’ she said quietly. ‘I wanted to do it for my own baby, not just other people’s. I wanted that unconditional love. I’ve been so lonely for so long. I can’t bear it any more.’
Time froze. The inspector didn’t know what was going to happen next when Sara abruptly jerked her arm. Whether bullets were going to rain down on her. Whether she was going to fire at him or her husband.
Tom counted the next moments in heartbeats.
Sara raised the gun. In that instant, he knew where she planned to aim it, why she’d been happy to talk to him.
In one swift movement he crossed the space between them, just as she made to put the weapon in her mouth.
He dived at her, forcing her arms up and behind as she fell to the floor. Sara issued a blood-curdling scream as she fired the gun. The bullet hit the church ceiling, causing plaster to fall to the ground.
There was a moment of absolute silence after the bang, then a shocked cry from Kathryn that woke Beth.
This was followed by frenetic movement in the church as the Emergency Response Unit and Ray sprang into action, the former moving to secure the minister and his wife, the latter almost carrying Kathryn and Beth out the back of the church.
Sara strained against the inspector as he held her.
‘Let go of me,’ she howled. ‘Let. Me. Go.’
She was surprisingly strong, but Tom had pinned her chest and arms down with his knees and prised the gun from her hands, sending it sliding across the floor to one of his officers.
He leaned down to her ear as she tried to claw and spit at him.
‘Kathryn has to live without her husband for the rest of her life. That child will never know her father. You can live with that. I’m not letting you take the easy way out.’
Sara looked at him with absolute malice in her eyes and then he knew for certain. Her actions hadn’t been those of a desperate, sad woman. She had known exactly what she was doing. She didn’t care who she had to hurt to get what she wanted.
But it was over now.
Chapter 29
December
Sean McGuinness had been fiercer than usual when giving Tom his dressing down. He’d waited for a couple of weeks to pass – there had been too much happening immediately after for him to get stuck into Tom properly. He had been furious at his inspector’s decision to enter the church that day before the ERU arrived on the scene.
His displeasure was kept private, of course. The media had been fed a line about how the heroic, quick-thinking actions of a senior inspector had saved the lives of a young widow and her child.
‘You could have died. Kathryn Finnegan and that baby could have died,’ McGuinness had bawled. ‘What the hell were you thinking? It wasn’t heroic, Tom, and don’t you bloody well think it for a second. What you did was stupid and reckless and . . . stupid! And what the hell was Ray Lennon doing in that vestry the whole time? Singing hymns and drinking the communion wine?’
Tom took the bollocking. He had tried to explain to McGuinness that he had wanted to protect Kathryn and Beth and didn’t think he had time to follow procedure but his boss was having none of it. So the inspector kept his head down and his mouth shut and waited for McGuinness’s fury to expend itself.
‘Don’t assume there’s room to operate outside the lines, Tom,’ the chief said when he was done. ‘Don’t ever assume that. You came into my office a few days ago and complained about cops in Donegal you thought were receiving backhanders from businessmen. You moaned about political policing. Where’s the line? If you don’t work by the book, it doesn’t matter how you justify it, you’re breaking the rules. If you start making rash decisions like that now, thinking you know better, you won’t be able to control where you end up. Am I making myself clear?’
Tom had nodded, taken aback by his boss’s final remarks. He hadn’t considered his actions in that light. Not for a second. He felt indignant, but at the same time knew he would give careful consideration to what McGuinness had said. He had too much respect for the man to do otherwise, even if a part of him felt that his boss was angry for reasons that went far beyond the job.
Tom mentally dissected that recent exchange again as he and Ray stood to one side of the graveyard. They’d driven Kathryn out with Beth to visit Ryan’s grave. She could have taken her own car, of course, but the inspector knew she was still trying to come to terms with everything that had happened and needed the company. He would continue to check in with her from time to time, to make sure she was coping.
‘You never really said – when did it all click in your head?’ Ray asked, breaking the silence. ‘I know all the details, but when did it all come together? What was the lightbulb moment?’
Tom didn’t mind telling him. He’d kept the members of his team in the dark that morning as he’d waited for proof of his hypothesis. Ray was still learning and needed to know how his boss’s brain ticked. It was no use if Tom just announced the murderer’s name like they were playing a game of Cluedo, without rationalising how he had arrived at his conclusion.
‘I had a row with Louise on the night we found McNally,’ he said.
‘You two argue?’ Ray feigned horror.
‘The secret to any successful marriage,’ Tom retorted. ‘Bicker often and never be afraid to have an all-out stomper. It clears the air. Just remember to always make up and no matter what she’s done or said, you say sorry first. Trust me. Women love the s-word.’
‘What was it about?’
‘It was about . . . personal stuff. But I suppose I have to tell you for this to make sense. It concerned children. Maria is thinking of moving out and Louise realised we’re facing an empty nest. She had been given what felt like a second go at motherhood and suddenly it was being snatched away.
‘It occurred to me – my wife is a good woman, through and through, but the desire for children can make people desperate. We only had Maria but wanted more kids. It just never happened. The Blakes were desperate for a child. When you think of the money and time people devote to IVF, to adopting from abroad, even resorting to buying children . . .
‘Obviously, not very many people would be willing to murder to acquire one, but babies provoke very powerful, basic emotions. Aidan was always on our suspect list, but I’d overlooked Sara because I couldn’t see her motive for murdering Ryan.’
‘You did wonder about her, though,’ Ray said.
‘Fleetingly. I asked Linda if she thought Sara could have killed a man for her husband. Linda discounted the notion of her protecting Aidan for his own sake. She knew Sara didn’t love Aidan enough to kill for him. But, ultimately, she would kill if her husband’s ruination would affect something she wanted.’
‘You know she’s trying to plead insanity?’
�
��Hmm. Figured as much. It won’t work. The level of planning involved proves premeditation.’
‘How long do you think Blake will get?’
Tom shrugged.
‘He’s claiming Sara forced him to make that first attempt on Ryan, trying to apportion all the blame to her and make out he was manipulated. It’s a weak defence. We’ve nothing on him when it comes to McNally, though. The man committed suicide. It doesn’t matter how much poison Aidan dripped in his ear.’
Ray’s phone beeped. Tom knew from the look on his face who had texted.
‘Laura?’ he said.
‘Hmm. She’s asked us to drop by the station. We think that man murdered in Wexford last night might have been done by the same gang who killed that chap in Dublin last July. The stabbing incident.’
‘We’ll bring Kathryn home shortly then shoot over. How’s Laura’s boyfriend keeping?’ he asked. It was like being a minor character in Romeo and Juliet.
‘Not great, would be my guess,’ Ray smirked. ‘She called it a day.’
Tom observed his deputy closely. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said, at last.
Ray nodded, his face serious.
‘Yeah. I do, actually. Anyway, what’s the story with your love life? Will you and Louise be trying for another little one?’
Tom cocked an eyebrow at the younger man, ignoring him and turning back to look at Kathryn.
He’d read somewhere once that the secret to happiness wasn’t getting what you wished for but being grateful for what you already had. He and Louise had each other. They had their family and friends and their lives were complete.
Sara Blake had seemed to have it all but, beneath the surface, she was an unhappy woman, full of loneliness and bitterness.
Aidan Blake was a man with the world at his feet. And yet he had set himself on a path of self-destruction and paid the ultimate price.