The Ruin

by Dervla McTiernan

  Cormac hesitated, the squad room not being the best place for this conversation, and then the opportunity passed as Healy, Murphy junior and two of the uniforms temporarily assigned to the task force arrived back.

  Healy stared at Cormac as he settled back into his chair. There was a challenge there that Cormac thought he would have to deal with sooner or later.

  Cormac looked away, straight into the eyes of Carrie O’Halloran, who was watching the exchange with unembarrassed interest. O’Halloran. He’d asked around about her since his conversation with Danny. She’d worked her entire career in Galway, so it was difficult to get any meaningful information, but she’d once worked a case with a friend of his, Séan Hegarty, who’d come down to provide support on a suspected sex trafficking ring. The friend had said she was competent, efficient, not overly friendly. She was also young for her rank, and there had been rumours that her promotion was political. Not exactly consistent with Danny’s view of her, but then Danny’d worked with her longer. Best to make up his own mind. Cormac gave her a civil nod, which she ignored, returning her attention to her computer. Fantastic.

  Cormac went back to his desk to find an overtime report from Fisher awaiting his signature. He was claiming six hours at weekend rates for the Lanigan case. Cormac signed it, knowing he’d have to justify the use of overtime on a cold case at the next finance meeting, for which he’d probably get a bollocking. He hadn’t even caught up with Fisher yet, had been meaning to all day but somehow it had gotten away from him. He had a pile of paperwork to work through – the price he paid for spending most of the previous week out and about following up on leads. He got to work, became absorbed in it, and when he finally looked up from the files, his concentration broken by a buzzing from his phone, he found that the room had emptied out and twilight was setting in. He had a text from Emma.

  Sorry sorry. Late again. Tomorrow night? Xx

  Shite. Another evening of TV and cooking for one was suddenly unappealing. It was only Monday. He should go to the gym. Bad habit to get into though. He found Danny.

  ‘Pint?’ he asked.

  Danny rolled his eyes, then shrugged. ‘Yeah. Come on so.’

  Cormac returned to his desk and locked the Blake file into the drawer under his desk before putting on his coat. The drawer wasn’t remotely secure – it could be picked by a five year old with a fork – but the file was hardly sensitive, and putting it away would at least keep it from the casual curiosity of a contract cleaner. Cormac hesitated, looking down at the locked file drawer. This was certainly the first time he’d walked out of the station without even opening the file on a new case. Was he losing his appetite for the job? Had his willingness to walk away from the SDU been a symptom of burnout on the way? He snorted, turned for the stairs. No. This was just a piece of shit case, and he had no desire to start work on another time waster.

  Peter Fisher caught up with them on their way down the stairs. Coat in hand, he was obviously finished for the day.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ he said. ‘Did you get a case?’

  Danny gave him a look that clearly said none of your fucking business, but Fisher didn’t irritate Cormac, despite the fact that he was perpetually cheerful. He was smart, he was motivated, and if he didn’t have much respect for hierarchy, Cormac could sympathise with that.

  ‘If you could call it a case,’ Cormac said, and continued down the stairs.

  ‘Is it that suicide thing then, the thing Rodgers is on?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘Related,’ Cormac said. Then, catching the look on Fisher’s face, ‘Why, what did you hear?’

  ‘You haven’t heard the story?’ Fisher asked. He looked around, his face a perfect mix of excitement at having something juicy to share, and nervousness at being overheard.

  Cormac didn’t hesitate. ‘We’re going for pints,’ he said. ‘King’s Head. Will you join us?’

  The pub was quiet. On Friday the place would be packed with office workers celebrating the end of another week of the grind. But on a Monday evening at six o’clock, it had a bare scattering of patrons, and the background music was quiet enough for comfortable conversation. Danny led the way to the back bar, and claimed a table by slinging his jacket over the back of a chair.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ he asked.

  Danny got the pints, and came back with menus.

  ‘Sarah won’t expect you home?’ Cormac asked, taking a menu and scanning it.

  ‘She’ll get over it,’ Danny said drily.

  Christ. There was definitely a problem there. Danny held Cormac’s eye, as if daring him to press the question. Cormac looked away. If he was going to have that conversation – and he was going to do his damnedest to avoid it – it wouldn’t be in front of Fisher.

  They ordered food, and settled back, Cormac letting his eyes wander around the room. The King’s Head was a big place. It wasn’t their usual haunt, but he’d wanted somewhere they wouldn’t be overheard, where they could get a table a reasonable distance from the next punter.

  The table Danny had chosen was just the right distance from the fireplace – close enough to enjoy the heat and the flickering light, not so close that you’d be melting after half an hour. The pints were good and food was on the way. Suddenly Cormac felt very much at home. He sent a text to Emma, told her he was eating out, and got a reply seconds later.

  Perfect! Date night tomorrow? xxx

  Maybe he’d book somewhere decent.

  It didn’t take them long to get into it. ‘I don’t know that much,’ Fisher said. ‘Someone saw the guy, Jack, take a dive from O’Brien’s Bridge. Called it in. Car was out in under eight minutes. No sign of him so they mobilised the search team. They didn’t find him until the sun came up after nine the following morning. He had been washed out but the tide was coming back in and he was found at Lough Atalia. Pronounced at the scene and taken to UCHG.’

  Cormac nodded, and tried not to think about the little boy whose hand he had held twenty years before. The past twenty years had taught him a lot, including the necessity of keeping his distance from a case. You couldn’t carry the emotional load for the victims; if you did you were less effective as a police officer, and you burned out. But he’d been in his first month on the job when he’d met Maude and Jack, and Hilaria Blake’s was the first dead body he’d seen. Jack Blake had become a symbol for every neglected and abused child he came across in his career. What had caused Jack to take his own life, if that was what had happened? Maybe it had nothing to do with his early experience.

  ‘So the guy was pretty clean cut, it seems,’ Fisher was saying. ‘Not a drinker, didn’t do drugs. Had a good job and lived with his girlfriend. She’s a doctor, works at UCHG.’

  Cormac nodded, listening, but his eyes wandered across the room. Carrie O’Halloran had just walked in and taken a seat. She was alone. She hadn’t looked at them, but he had a feeling she knew they were there.

  Fisher’s eyes were bright and he was leaning forward across the table, his voice pitched low. He wasn’t hard to read. Something more interesting was coming down the track.

  ‘Anyway, Rodgers, if you’ll believe it, was assigned to family liaison. Can you believe that?’ Fisher raised both hands in the air in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. ‘Fucking Rodgers. Ceri is his second on it. She said the girlfriend is in total shock, so not really making things difficult. The parents are pretty old, the dad in a wheelchair, so they’re leaving everything to the girlfriend. So you know, despite Rodgers being about as sensitive as . . . Jesus, I don’t know, you’ve met him. He’s thick as pig shite.’

  Cormac gave a small smile, but shook his head. Rodgers did strike him as a particularly bad choice. Family liaison officers were female more often than not, which he’d always thought was a bit sexist, and they were generally expected to have good interpersonal skills, and to be personally presentable. Rodgers was an old-style guard, and in Cormac’s view should never have made sergeant. His personal hygiene was also seriously la
cking.

  Fisher took another drink from his pint, realised he was finished, and stood up to get a round. Danny hadn’t said much since they’d entered the bar, and when Cormac looked across at him he rolled his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t realise we were babysitting tonight.’

  ‘Dan, if he’s got the inside track about my case, I need to hear about it.’

  Danny rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe Murphy’s messing with you. Pulling out an old case you were hung up on. Winding you up and watching you go.’

  Cormac raised an eyebrow. ‘Bit of a stretch.’

  Danny returned his attention to his pint, and Cormac did the same. It wouldn’t kill Danny to have a pint with Fisher. They were the same rank after all, though maybe that was part of the problem.

  Cormac occupied himself with watching Carrie O’Halloran, while Danny brooded. She’d ordered a glass of red, and was taking her time with it. She had a file open in front of her. The jacket was blue, so it wasn’t a murder file. Galway had its own colour coding. What was blue again? Domestic violence?

  Danny’s gaze followed Cormac’s to where O’Halloran sat, and he grimaced. ‘Whatever you do don’t ask her to join us too.’

  ‘You sure you’re not worried?’

  ‘About Lorna?’ Then at Cormac’s nod, ‘I don’t know Cormac. A bit, I suppose. I can’t get that girl on the phone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The hippy, ditzy one who gave me the story about the music festival.’

  ‘Where is she? Where’s she based?’

  ‘Dublin.’

  ‘You should go down. Go tomorrow. Track the girl down, talk to her in person.’

  Danny blew out a breath. ‘I should, I know. Maybe I will.’ He looked away. ‘It’s just . . . I’m trying to make something of this job, you know? I just know I’m going to trek all the way to Dublin, screw up my work, then find that little idiot laughing it up with her friends.’

  ‘Danny . . .’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Danny drank from his pint, refusing to look at Cormac.

  Cormac let his eyes drift over to O’Halloran again. She was sipping her wine, reading her file as if totally engrossed. She hadn’t looked their way once, which was enough to tell Cormac that she knew they were there.

  Fisher returned with pints from the bar at the same time as the waitress arrived with their food. They ate, and by unspoken agreement conversation was restricted to small talk until the last forkful had been eaten, and another round had been ordered at the bar.

  ‘So Rodgers is family liaison then,’ Cormac said, eventually.

  Fisher nodded. ‘It was at the last meeting that the sister showed up. No one was expecting her, by all accounts, not even the girlfriend. She lives in Australia or something, hadn’t been in touch with her brother for years. But she showed up for this meeting, full of attitude and questions. She doesn’t believe her brother did it. Killed himself.’

  Danny rolled his eyes again, but Cormac, thinking of a fifteen-year-old Maude carrying her little brother from their home, said, ‘Not unusual. Lot of family members are in denial in those circumstances. Hard thing to accept.’

  Fisher nodded again, leaned forward across the table and dropped his voice. It was so melodramatic that Cormac had to restrain himself from joining Danny in yet another eye-roll, but what Fisher had to say next caught his attention. ‘Yeah. But I hear she had good questions. And she wasn’t very happy that Rodgers had no answers.’ He paused. ‘She showed up at the station again this afternoon, this time with a memory stick loaded with CCTV footage of the bridge.’

  ‘She did what?’ Cormac asked. Danny didn’t look surprised, he must have heard the story before.

  Fisher sat back in his seat, a smile on his face, satisfied with the reaction he was getting. ‘She walked both sides of the bridge, found everywhere that had a camera up, and somehow talked them into giving her copies. Anyway, she got it, watched it, and found that there was no sign of her brother coming from either direction for two hours before he was supposed to have gone into the water. And the phone call reporting the jump? No sign of the caller either, but plenty of other people on camera just before the call was made. Some of them were still there when our people arrived and took statements. They all said that they saw nothing.’

  ‘Jesus. She got that in, what, twenty-four hours?’ Cormac asked.

  ‘Yeah. Got it, viewed it, edited it into one film. When she wasn’t happy with Rodgers’ reaction, she said she’d send it directly to the coroner’s office, then to the press. You can imagine Murphy had a fucking coronary.’ Fisher was laughing now.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Cormac again, imagining the scene. He’d had the briefest glance of Maude in the family room, and his memory of her as a girl kept superimposing itself over the more recent memory of the woman in the police station. ‘She’s not messing around.’

  Fisher shrugged, grinned.

  ‘Rodgers didn’t tell you all that,’ Cormac said.

  Fisher shook his head emphatically. ‘No way. Ceri was there. She filled me in.’

  ‘She’s still on the job?’

  Fisher shrugged. ‘Just part of the liaison team, with Rodgers. But she said Rodgers was pretty clear that there won’t be an investigation, even with the CCTV.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Danny. ‘Why would there be? Chances are the guy jumped from another bridge, and whoever called it in got the name of the bridge wrong. I said as much to Rodgers.’ He checked his watch. ‘Mountain out of a molehill.’

  Cormac watched Danny drain his glass. ‘Think so?’ Cormac asked.

  Danny shrugged, and stood. ‘Nothing to me either way mate.’ He cut a not-very-subtle sideways glance at Fisher. ‘I’m off. I’ve an early one tomorrow.’

  Cormac nodded, watched him leave, made a mental note to tackle him again on the Healy issue sooner rather than later. He turned to Fisher. ‘So, what’s your take? You think we should investigate?’

  Fisher spoke in the direction of his empty glass, avoiding Cormac’s eye. ‘Not going to happen,’ he said. ‘If Rodgers is saying there’ll be no investigation, that’s coming from upstairs. Even with the CCTV, I don’t think they’re taking this very seriously.’ And with that Fisher perhaps felt he’d said enough. The conversation wrapped up, and neither of them showed any sign of wanting to stay for another one. When Cormac looked across the room, Carrie O’Halloran was already gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Aisling’s shift ended at 8 p.m. and by half past she was in the lift at the Radisson Hotel, heading up to the fifth floor. She felt shaky. Hunger was the main culprit – her only break had been the twenty minutes she had taken with Maude, and that hadn’t been the moment to wolf her usual sandwich – but she was nervous too. Her concentration had been shot to pieces for the afternoon, and it had been a relief when her shift ended. When she reached the door she paused to take a breath before knocking.

  Maude opened the door, a glass of wine in her hand. She wore a soft navy cardigan, open over a pristine white fitted T-shirt and skinny jeans. Her feet were bare.

  ‘You’re a little earlier than I was expecting,’ she said. Not the warmest of greetings, but she stepped aside to invite Aisling into the room. It was a small suite, with wooden floors, a grey velvet couch, and two blue, uncomfortable looking armchairs. Aisling walked across thick soft carpet to the window. The hotel backed onto Lough Atalia. During the day this room would have a view out over the water, which wasn’t a lake at all, but a tidal inlet. The Corrib, which ran deep and fast through the centre of the city, emptied into the bay just west of the inlet. Aisling stared out of the window, past the dull glow of the streetlamps below to the dark unseen water beyond. The water that Jack had died in. Was that what Maude thought about, when she woke here every morning and looked out of her window?

  A gust of wind lashed rain against the window and Aisling turned away.

  ‘There’s wine, if you’d like it, or water, if you’d prefer,’ M
aude said. The armchairs had been set up to face a small round table, and she sat and waited for Aisling to join her. Maude’s laptop was open on the table, and the arrangement felt curiously like a business meeting. Aisling folded her coat over the back of her chair – there was a small gas fireplace in the room, switched on – and poured a glass of water from a full pitcher. As she took her seat it occurred to her that Maude had said nothing yet about her pregnancy.

  ‘You said something about video?’ she asked, and then felt gauche. She just couldn’t bring herself to make small talk.

  But Maude was nodding. She took a sip from her wine glass, turned the laptop so they could both see the screen, then smoothed her hair nervously with one hand.

  ‘After that meeting I was angry. I went for coffee, and started to think it all through. The story didn’t sound right to me. Jack died on the Saturday night of St. Patrick’s weekend. It would have been incredibly busy in town. Packed with tourists. Don’t you think it sounded odd, that Jack could have jumped into the water, and just a few minutes later not a single person on the bridge had seen him jump? If you saw someone jump into the river, would you just shrug and keep walking? Or would you stay, lean over the wall, try to spot them, direct the rescuers?’ Maude didn’t wait for an answer. ‘It was all I could think about, once I left the meeting.’

  Aisling nodded slowly. ‘It can be busy at night. And it would have been busier than usual that weekend. But the police aren’t claiming no one was there. They interviewed people, took statements.’

  ‘Not from anyone who saw Jack jump. Anyway, I started to look around, and I found some cameras. I got the CCTV footage, and went through it all.’ Maude opened the laptop, and hit a key to wake it up.

  ‘How did you . . .’ But Aisling let her voice trail off as she watched Maude log in to the computer and open a screen that showed grainy black and white images of people walking on a city street.

  ‘This is the camera in front of the newsagent’s – the one at the very end of Bridge Street, just before the bridge itself starts,’ Maude was saying. ‘This is the clearest of them.’