Siobhan could do nothing but stare across the table at him. The thing had to be worth thousands.
‘What’s the matter?’ He waved it at her like it was a trinket.
‘Are you kidding me?’ she said, finally, finding her voice again. ‘I can’t take that from you. Even if I wanted to. I mean, it’s incredibly beautiful, don’t get me wrong…’
He began to say something but she waved his interruption away.
‘No, seriously Vincent, it’s very generous of you, but it wouldn’t be right.’
She paused, watching a shadow creep across his long pale face, trying to find exactly the words she needed. But he got in first.
‘To hell with what’s right. I want you to have it.’ His voice was a low insistent growl now, his eyes blazing up at her. For an instant she sensed fully what it was that made him so formidable, so indomitable in business and she was sure she didn’t like it. She also knew for certain now that she couldn’t afford to lose this argument. Not on any level. Leaning in to the table, she dropped her voice to a confiding whisper.
‘Look, I’m delighted we’re pals, Vincent. And I’m thrilled you liked the splash we made with Maloney. But we’re both professionals here. I was only interested in Maloney for his news value. If you made money from it, that’s your business. I don’t want or need to know. More to the point, there can’t be any suspicion that I profited from it. Otherwise, how could I ever write anything again? You see that, don’t you?’
She held his gaze, until eventually the fire in his eyes died down. He nodded at her, closed his grip over the brooch, then reached again for the box and carefully pinned the brooch back into its dark red velvet folds. Something about the way his long white fingers worked made her more repelled than ever by the thought of his touch, but she knew a gesture from her would be expected. She reached across the table and quickly patted the back of his hand twice, sitting back again before he could respond, her best smile still in place.
‘You do understand, don’t you?’
‘No,’ he said, begrudgingly, ‘but dum spiro, spero, as they say.’
‘Do they?’ Siobhan laughed. ‘I don’t think I know that one – or even like the sound of it.’
That seemed to bring a smile back to his face. ‘It’s just a little Latin motto I have. I only meant, I’ll find another way to show my gratitude. You can be sure of that.’
6
He’d only just put his Starbucks down on the desk when they started coming in. First Hanlon, next McHugh, then the rest of them, looking like they’d all come up in the lift together. A minute or so later, Brogan and Cassidy – joined at the hip as usual. He wondered idly whether it went even further than that. He’d rarely seen an inspector and a sergeant so tight. Sure, he’d got on well with Liam Ford, and they’d always gone out for a few pints, but he couldn’t imagine meeting up with him before work just to make an entrance together.
‘You must’ve got in early,’ Brogan remarked.
‘Just as well,’ Mulcahy said. ‘You look ready to start.’
She looked perplexed. ‘Of course we are.’
‘You told me nine a.m.’
‘But we pulled it forward. I told Andy to…’ Brogan raised an eyebrow at Cassidy.
‘Sorry, boss, I must’ve forgotten. I was a bit knackered when we finished up last night.’ Again the flashing glance, half-suppressed smirk.
Brogan made a vaguely apologetic what-can-you-do-with-them sort of face at Mulcahy.
‘You must be driving the old sergeant here too hard,’ Mulcahy said, smiling at her. ‘Poor fella can’t keep up with the game.’
He wasn’t looking at Cassidy but could feel the man spitting bullets at him. Mulcahy turned and stared him straight in the eye, daring him to respond. Cassidy, though, did nothing but glare and go a deeper shade of purple, then he swallowed and walked away.
Brogan let out a sigh and stretched her arms behind her back. She was grinning now. ‘Okay, lads, we’ve got a pile of stuff to get through this morning, so we’d better get cracking. Andy, you go see if those video grabs are ready. I’ll get the ball rolling.’
There was a shuffling and clattering of chairs as everyone sat down, and Brogan stepped over to the whiteboard.
‘Okay, so we now know exactly where the attack occurred and, as a result, a bit more about what happened to Jesica Salazar.’ Brogan plucked a pen from the desk beside her, to use as a pointer, and indicated a location on the roughly drawn map – which had expanded and become more detailed overnight. ‘Here, just opposite Kilmacud primary school, is where we’ve got a witness hearing a noise at two-thirty a.m. Out the bedroom window, she sees a van parked on the grass verge outside her house. It’s rocking on its axles, so you can imagine what she thought. We showed the woman some pictures; she thinks the van was white but can’t be sure, but says it wasn’t big. Technical managed to isolate some tracks. Wheel profiles and tyres would indicate a short wheelbase Transit, Sprinter or something about that size.
‘They also found blood spatter at the scene, possibly from the punch that broke the kid’s nose. We’re waiting for forensics to crossmatch and confirm. So what we’re looking at here, in all likelihood, is as follows: Jesica’s wandering home alone, perv in van spots her, pulls up, jumps out, decks her with a blow to the face, drags her into the van. Instead of taking her off to a lonely spot, though, he’s either confident enough, or desperate enough, to continue the assault there and then, in the back of the van. Are you with me so far?’
Everyone nodded and muttered affirmatives as Brogan surveyed her audience.
‘Right then, adding to that, the fabric found early on at the scene is definitely Jesica’s skirt – we now have three separate confirmations on that from pals and her house-parents. Some interesting red fibres on there too, that Technical are having a look at. One of the lads taking tyre casts found more fabric squashed into the grass. Turns out to be a pair of knickers, almost certainly Jesica’s – but obviously to be confirmed whenever we’re allowed to have a word with her again. A preliminary exam of both items of clothing shows they were cut off, not torn off – again indicating a high level of preparedness on the attacker’s part, despite the possible randomness of his victim selection.’
‘A bit careless of him, wasn’t it, boss?’ The question came from Hanlon. ‘I mean to toss the clothes straight out of the van like that.’
Brogan held her hands up. ‘Maybe he threw them out along with Jesica when he was finished with her. Or maybe he dumped them out his window as he was driving away and they went under the back wheels. By the way, Technical also did a fingertip search between there and the point – only a hundred and fifty yards up the road – where she was found afterwards. They’re confident this vehicle did not pull up anywhere else along that stretch, meaning the attack was almost certainly initiated and completed all in the one place, and Jesica made her own way to the location at which she was discovered.’
‘Do we know what happened to the rest of her clothes?’ This question from McHugh.
‘Yeah. Well, again, it’s impossible to be certain but by comparing what you and Brian got from her fellow students yesterday, and what she still had hanging from her when she got to the hospital, we came up with a checklist and, basically, it looks like that was it. She still had her top and bra on – although both were badly torn and scorched – and her shoes. So it looks like he was only interested in one thing.’
‘What about the cross and chain?’ Mulcahy asked.
‘No sign of it,’ Brogan said. ‘Both Technical and door-to-door were made aware, but nothing’s come back.’
‘So that means it could still be in the van?’
‘Well, it’s got to be somewhere. I suppose it’s as likely to be there as anywhere else. For now, we have no way of knowing.’
Brogan paused as Cassidy pushed through the door and into the room, with a sheaf of what looked like A4 photographs in his hand.
‘Oh, yeah, and the club’s CCTV conf
irmed the clothing tallies, when we finally pinned down the time at which Jesica left the club. She definitely left with a young guy. Andy will pass the video grabs out to you now. You’ll like these.’
A murmur of excitement filled the room as Cassidy handed out the plain-paper photographs scanned from the club’s security system. Mulcahy examined them closely. A sequence of monochrome frames, taken from an angle high up and to the left of two open doors, showed a young couple exiting the club, arms around waists, laughing and smiling. Despite the camera’s angle, aimed at people entering rather than exiting the club, a number of frames had captured each of them full face, and also in profile, as if they’d been turning to say goodbye, or to see if someone was coming after them. For Mulcahy the most striking thing, apart from how good-looking the pair of them were, was the clarity of the shots.
The girl, unrecognisable from the bruised and broken Jesica he’d seen a couple of days previously, was exceptionally pretty, her dark eyes radiant, glossed lips drawn in a wide smile over bright teeth, her black hair shiny enough to reflect the light over the door. She was wearing a short white top and matching mini-skirt; her long legs and midriff were bare. The young male cut a handsome figure, too. Tall, maybe six-two, narrow athletic frame, early twenties probably, fair hair feathered into a fashionable cut, his smile gleaming almost as much as the expensive leather jacket he wore over a striped high-collared shirt and dark jeans. The final photo was a blow-up of his face.
‘Have these been enhanced?’ Mulcahy asked, amazed at how good the images were for a club CCTV. He flicked back a couple of sheets and looked more closely. Sure enough, the glimmer of a chain was visible around the girl’s neck, the cross glinting bright against her white top.
‘No,’ Brogan laughed, ‘we got very lucky there. Somebody must’ve invested in some good-quality equipment without knowing it. Or maybe it was knock-off.’
The whole room laughed together, high on the knowledge that identifying the suspect could only be a matter of time. These stills were every copper’s dream.
‘Okay, so this is a real break for us, as you can see,’ Brogan continued. ‘Getting an ID remains our number one priority. We circulated copies to all Dublin area stations last night, so hopefully someone local will recognise this guy and contact us this morning. Maura and Donagh, I want you to get out and track down those three bouncers again, and shove this guy’s mug in their faces. There’s a good chance they’ll know him if he’s been there before. He’s older than the usual crowd at that club, and pretty distinctive anyway. I’d also like you to do some follow-up calls this morning, make sure every sergeant in south Dublin makes all his shifts take a good hard look at that face. We need this badly. Any questions?’
‘He’s a good-looking lad,’ Mulcahy commented. ‘No problems picking up girls there, it seems.’
Brogan tutted loudly, like he’d broken some basic rule of detecting.
‘And as we all know, Inspector, that means nothing. It might even go some way to explain why he did what he did to Jesica. If, indeed, he did it at all.’
‘Just an observation,’ Mulcahy said, wondering if the reproach was supposed to be some kind of payback for what he’d said to Cassidy.
Whelan put his hand up. ‘Is that something dangling from his right hand?’ he said, still staring hard at the video grabs. ‘Could it be a set of keys? Car keys, I mean, or van keys?’
A sound of rustling filled the room, everyone flicking back through their own set of photos, checking they were looking at the same image, squinting hard to see what Whelan was talking about.
‘Jaysus, I think he could be on to something there,’ Cassidy said, holding up the print in question for Brogan to see.
‘Can we get this blown up any bigger?’ Brogan asked urgently.
‘I’ll get straight on to it,’ Cassidy said.
‘But didn’t someone say the girl was walking home?’ McHugh asked.
A silence fell on the room, before Brogan turned to Mulcahy, the look in her eyes question enough for him.
He shook his head. ‘All she said was that a man hit her. But there was definitely an implication that it was outside. I mean, she said that she fell to the ground. And then, that he dragged her somewhere inside.’ He thought back over the exact words Jesica had used, and had no doubt that he was right.
‘And her pal said the guy had offered to walk home with her,’ Brogan said. ‘Look, it’s just one more thing to throw in the mix. Like I said, the sooner we get on with this the sooner we’ll sort it out, so come on, now…’
‘Hiya, Des,’ Siobhan began, cradling the phone on her shoulder with her chin as she finished a sentence on her screen and hit save. She looked over her shoulder automatically, making sure no one was paying any undue attention to her. ‘You took your time getting back to me.’
It was Des Consodine, the Garda sergeant she’d primed the night before for information on the attack. Consodine was okay, as sources go, but he could be a lazy old bastard sometimes and she liked to keep him on his toes.
He started making excuses but she brought him up short. ‘Okay, but what did you get for me?’
His reply was the one answer she hadn’t expected from him. He’d got nothing at all.
‘You mean it didn’t happen?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘For God’s sake, Des, what’re you on about?’ She was about to give up on the whole thing, when her brain kicked in. That wasn’t exasperation in his voice: it was unease. ‘What do you mean, “not exactly”?’
‘I mean, it might have happened. But, if it did, nobody’s telling me anything about it.’
‘Actively?’
‘Very. When I rang Dundrum, they denied knowing anything about it at all. But…’
She heard him take a deep breath.
‘But?’
‘Look, Siobhan, this is as much as I’m going to be able to give you on this one. And, even at that, it didn’t come from me, okay?’
‘Sure. But at least tell me why, won’t you?’
‘All I can say is, after I didn’t get anything from the lads on the desk, I rang a guy I know in Dundrum – a sergeant. He jumped right down my throat as soon as I mentioned it. Started giving me the third degree over how I’d heard about it.’
‘You didn’t tell him?’
‘No, I fobbed him off. Then he told me to back off and stop asking. And he meant it.’
Siobhan was aware of her chest tightening slightly, as the feeling began to bloom inside her that she’d stepped into somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. She knew the feeling well. Loved it. Craved it, even. ‘Bizarre, huh?’
‘Too right,’ Consodine agreed. ‘And it sounded like it came straight from the top.’
She reached for a pencil and scribbled the phrase on to the reporter’s pad beside her keyboard, underscoring the word ‘top’ three times.
‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Des?’
She thought she heard him swallow during the short pause that followed.
‘No, why?’
‘Well, so far you’ve told me nothing I didn’t know already, except for some useless little hints. I can’t exactly magic up a story from that.’
‘Maybe there isn’t one.’
‘Yeah, well, in that case there’s nothing in it for you, either,’ she said sharply.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he whined. ‘Look, I did what you asked, didn’t I? And got a right bloody arse-kicking for my trouble. I need this. I’ve had a lousy run the last couple of weeks. You’ve got to give me something.’
It was just as Griffin had told her once: you couldn’t beat a betting man when it came to making a good snout.
‘And I say the same to you. We’re not a charity. No lead, no wedge.’
‘But I’ve told you everything.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Des, you’re just taking the piss now. Let’s just leave it.’
‘No, wait.’
She didn’t say anyt
hing, just waited for him to cave.
‘Okay,’ he sighed at last, ‘it definitely came from the top, like I said.’
‘From the Commissioner’s office?’
‘Higher.’
The significance zapped straight from the earpiece into her brain.
‘What, from the Minister’s office? Why would Harmon stick his oar in?’
She didn’t wait for a reply. Her own thoughts were popping like flashbulbs now. It must’ve been even more serious than the informant on the phone had suggested. Why would the government be interested? Were they worried about the effect on tourism or something? But a cover-up would be a ludicrous over-reaction. She was pulled up by Consodine, speaking again.
‘I’ve no idea, Siobhan. That’s all I know. God’s honest truth. Even telling you that much, I’m in the shit if it gets out. I’m putting my job on the line here. Are you going to stump up or not?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake Des, you still haven’t told me anything worth having. Can’t you give me a name, at least? Who’s handling the case? Who’s in charge?’
Sounding sick to his stomach now, Consodine mentioned a couple of names who might be called in to handle something sensitive like this. Neither of them meant anything to her but it was something to follow up on at least.
‘Alright, Des,’ she said after she’d scribbled the names on the pad. ‘I must be in a generous mood today. I’ll put the usual in the post tonight.’
Siobhan put the phone down, her mind racing. Maybe Consodine hadn’t told her everything he knew, but that only meant he was protecting himself from something serious. She was sure in her gut that she was onto something. How big it was, only time, and a few more phone calls, would tell.
‘Boss… boss?’ Cassidy was all gruff urgency as he clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone away from his face. Brogan, leaning over a desk, talking to McHugh about something, turned awkwardly towards him.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Sergeant Gerry Leahy from Blackrock, says one of his uniforms down there reckons he knows our boy in the photo.’ He paused to look at the name he’d written down.‘ Student by the name of Patrick Scully. Even knows where he lives. Wants to know do we need them to go out and pick him up for us?’
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